Chris Boese's Weblog

Will he pose nude too?

Perhaps bring a buff military escort along at $1,200 a pop?

Note to Jeff Gannon... er, James Guckert, whoever you are:

Yes, I went and looked at your studmuffin nekkid piccies, and I really wasn't impressed. But I must say it boggles my mind that folks at the National Press Club won't be flying paper airplanes of printouts from the sites where you advertised your services when you deign to speak at that august body.

Link: Editor and Publisher: The National Press Club Welcomes ... Jeff Gannon?.

The National Press Club Welcomes ... Jeff Gannon?

By Joe Strupp

Published: March 28, 2005 Updated 11:00 AM ET March 29

NEW YORK Jeff Gannon is back -- at the National Press Club?

Yes, the same day that the prestigious Washington, D.C., journalism organization plans to present a lunch talk by former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, it will also allow the former White House reporter/escort to be on a panel discussing bloggers and online journalism.

Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, resigned his job with the conservative Talon News last month after it was revealed he had used a pseudonym, had little journalism background, and had ties to male escort Web sites.

Still, Press Club leaders will include Gannon on the panel April 8 that includes Wonkette.com editor Ana Marie Cox, National Journal's John Stanton, and others. Gannon has been asked on numerous occasions about charges that he worked as a prostitute, and has refused to deny them.

Gannon told E&P today that he always considered himself a legitimate journalist, and "perhaps their invitation is recognition of that."

Press Club President Rick Dunham, who also covers the White House for BusinessWeek, called Gannon "a figure in the news" who is involved in an important journalistic issue. [emphasis mine]

[...]

Gannon's ability to gain access to regular daily White House briefings, despite not being able to obtain a permanent "hard pass" [no pun intended? cb] or a congressional press pass, sparked new discussions among reporters and White House staff about who should be granted regular access.

"The idea was talking about these issues and who should be allowed to set up shop [as a legitimate journalist]," Madden told E&P. "It is not intended to be a forum for [Gannon] to present his side unchallenged. It is going to be moderated and there will be others on the panel."

Well, that's a relief!

When asked if giving Gannon a spot on the panel wrongly legitimizes him as a journalist, Madden disagreed. "It depends on how you look at it," he said. "He is there because the panel is presumably going to talk mostly about his case. He was, in large part, the central figure in the case that got us interested in the topic."

Dunham said "journalists should be given a chance to question him." Reminded that many reporters had interviewed Gannon in the past month, Dunham still believed his presence would be good for the event. "I want us to be on the news," he said. "I think it is better to have people ask any question they can ask."

The Press Club's Web site, however, does not tout the event as focusing on Gannon but rather as a discussion about the differences between "bloggers" and "journalists." In other words, it is a journalism panel, not a press conference featuring, say, a politician or author in the news.

John Aravosis at Americablog, which highlighted the Press Club event on Monday, wrote: "What is GannonGuckert doing there at all? Like he's an expert on the difference between blogging and journalism? How so? He thinks journalism means parroting press releases and transcripts. As for blogging, again, he started a so-called blog 3 weeks ago and now he's representative of all bloggers?"

Gannon told E&P he "thinks it is a good opportunity for me to speak to issues related to bloggers." He also added that he was, "trying to stay out there where people can see me."

[...]

Newsflash Dude! I've already seen too much of you!

If you can stomach an edited/censored version of the Gannon/Guckert pictures, the Americablog has a few screenshots. I had to go and check out all the originals myself back when it first came out. Like a train wreck, it is hard to look away.

A love affair with Netflix

I started this affair last year, but I'm a total addict, and not for the reasons they advertise. I use it as a poor person's TiVo.

Most of the titles I select from Netflix aren't even movies at all. But they definitely do come from what Wired magazine calls "the long tail."

I've canceled cable and so far don't miss it. All I was doing was leaving on the Food Network and Home and Garden channel all the time as mindless wallpaper.

So anyway, I wanted to share my particular Netflix "programming" strategy, in case there are others doing this or thinking of doing it. One of my favorite things to do is to take interfaces and services and to use them for purposes the founders/advertisers seemingly did not intend. I first started using blog software, for instance, because I was too lazy to create my own content management system from scratch, and RSS was Really Simply Brilliant.

BTW, a number of your custom Netflix pages are available for RSS feed readers... I'm proud to say I was probably one of many bugging them to implement that feature, and they did! How cool is that?

So sure, I could actually BUY a TiVo, blow the money, but what would I record? The Food Network and Home and Garden channel?!

I love what the TiVo revolution is doing for interactive media on the social level. It just doesn't suit my usage patterns. Netflix does.

You want to try what I do? Here's a trick: create your own time-shifted PBS channel with Netflix. Just plug PBS into the search field and find all the DVDs that come up (start with the documentary sub-field if you don't want a gazillion results right off the bat).

Think of it. Your own personal PBS channel, and you know public broadcasting will get money from your patronage, but you won't have to listen to those nauseating extended beg-fests.

I've never been able to figure out weekly programming guides anyway, and PBS programming isn't set up to fit into my schedule. I never know what day of the week it is, so my favorite broadcast programs tend to be the kind that play every day at a set time, like "The View" or "Xena, Warrior Princess," or "Gilligan's Island." Working at CNN is a good thing for me, because every day is different and the same all the time: news, news, and more news.

I think trying to make us remember the days of the week is an oppressive conspiracy, right up there with trying to tell left from right. (Hey, I can tell left from right just fine! The problem is I'm only right about 50% of the time)

I find the same joy in Netflix that I first found at the audio download site Audible.com. Now they call what Audible does "podcasting," and that is cool. Wish we had a cool name like that for Netflix. (see also my column, Invasion of the Podcasting People?"

If I had money, I'd invest in Netflix stock, and not for any of those standard "broker" reasons either. Even before I'd heard of the "long tail," I loved any business that gave me a piece of that long tail. I was an early miner of the Amazon.com backlist. Market analysts lather all this whoo-haa over challenges to Netflix's business model from companies like Blockbuster. Ha. Even the name "Blockbuster" belies its vapid business model in the face of the long tail. It always makes me laugh when "analysts" don't get the most basic things. I remember when they thought Barnes and Noble's online site would challenge Amazon. Barnes and Noble wasn't even Amazon's competition. Massive department stores were, any business whose long tail inventory is limited by the size of warehouses.

So what else do I put on my Netflix queue? I've gone documentary-mad, that is true. But you can bet all the back seasons of the Xenas and Star Treks are there. HBO series I was always too cheap to subscribe to when I had cable, they are there (premium cable services are a sucker play... WAY too expensive). I'm wondering when "Gilligan's Island" will make it to DVD. Canceled series, like Chris Carter's "Harsh Realm" are on there, and that late night favorite, "Millenium."

Nearly any show that ever played once on TV can be found on Netflix. It's time-shifting, I tell you.

Oh yes, and I do watch some movies. Never new releases. Netflix has TOTALLY spoiled me. The new release-hyped movies are some of the most pathetic offerings in the Netflix corpus. Last year I'd still check the list, and the top 100 rentals, as I am a fan of many contemporary movies that are just feel-good schlock (I loved "Under the Tuscan Sun"). I'm not a film snob. But when those lists are weighed against the full Netflix choices, they seem a lot less attractive than they do on the Blockbuster "New Release" walls.

It really made me realize how much the entertainment industry puts into manipulating us into that funnel of demand, probably right down to measuring blink rates, like they do in supermarkets. You take away that artificial creation of marketing, and you end up reflecting on how much you really want to see that latest formula comedy or suspense thriller that will make box office numbers for one to two weeks and then thankfully disappear.

But the good stuff isn't shoved into the background so easily at Netflix either, particularly when you use the new "Friends" feature. One of my friends is mining all the foreign films. He watches them all so I don't have to, and he recommends the best that he finds. Handy, that. Other friends are mining other regions of the long tail, and they also share their discoveries. What fun! I try to turn them on to my endless documentaries. And we don't have to put our views out there for anyone and John Ashcroft's ghost to see.

OK, I'll be the first to admit Netflix may not have all the bugs out of "Friends" yet, but community-building features were another thing I've been pestering them about, just like RSS, so I was ready to give it a shot. Right now, the feature isn't customizable enough, and that is enough to make people nervous. I mean, do you really want to put your mother on your "Friends" list knowing she can see ALL the movies you watch? They need FOAF-style privacy customization, and you can bet I bug them about it. But FOAF (friend of a friend network, for those who don't know it) isn't even far enough along yet to handle layers and circles of access and privacy.

I'm already addicted to many aspects of the "Friends" features. My group is small now, and some privacy controls are creeping in, so I know Netflix is getting the message. I only have people in my group whom I don't care if they can see my entire rental history. Some I've invited have declined when they see that their rental history becomes an open book to their friends.

I did try to make a profile for my dog, a queue for films I don't want anyone to see I've rented (that horrendous Suze Orman thing, for instance... who does her hair?!). It was too clunky to use much, though.

Now the Friends feature allows you to hide movies you've rated from ALL of your friends as a group. I'm not sure what value that is, although it would incline me to invite my mother to join my friends list. But I'd really like to be able to say which friends can see which rated movies, to be able to customize what is ON the list, instead of being able to customize what is OFF the list. I mean, I've rated more than 700 titles.

And here's my biggest complaint: I can't view my own Friends Share Page. I see my friends' share pages, but I have to guess what my own looks like, or ask them to log in and show me how I am presented in that forum.

Anyway, I've been wanting to log in with this personal Netflix ramble for a while now. I'm seldom so in love with a company to wax on like this. I think Netflix has its own part to play in the democratization and interactivity of media, with time-shifting and custom programming, more so than TiVo, which mostly limits people to time-shifting content that was already broadcast. I think digital video recorder companies mainly want to prime the pump for the entertainment industry's obsession with video-on-demand, that boondoogle of the 1990s.

Mainstream media still doesn't want to give up its control of the funnel, and usually prefers "psuedo-interactivity" to real interactivity. To my mind, all the video-on-demand model wants to do is control interactivity by hiding parts of the long tail, sort of like a border collie herding us around like sheep, past ads and product placement and other BS. I suppose that Netflix technically has that kind of power as well, but I'm less likely to cynically seek out the hidden agendas under the politics of Netflix interfaces than I am to the tricks they are trying to embed inside TiVo and other digital video interfaces.

And as Forest Gump would say, "that is all I have to say about that."

Newsday.com column: Title IX protection under attack again

This gets me riled up beyond belief. Title IX has directly affected my life in ways I can't begin to describe, as well as the lives of so many of my friends who have participated in organized sports. I remember so well the fights we had back then, just to get new uniforms, to get to use the gym at some time other than 5 am or 8 pm. I remember the reasoning used AGAINST these "privileges," saying stuff like "nobody pays attention to girl's sports" and "girls aren't interested in anything that strenuous."

And last week, I was visiting with my aunt and uncle, who were avidly following the NCAA women's tournament and the University of Minnesota women's team. They told me the women pack the auditorium, outselling the men. This happens all over, but evidently some would like to undo the laws that created the environment where this can happen. It just boggles my mind.

Link: Newsday.com column: Title IX protection under attack again.

Title IX protection under attack again

By Johnette Howard
SPORTS COLUMNIS

March 25, 2005

There are dozens of ways to illustrate why the new guidelines issued by the Bush administration a few days ago to determine schools' compliance with Title IX are an outrage and a deceit that should be attacked until they're stricken from use. But the simplest way to make the argument is to ask a simple question:

What's not to like about the 1972 federal law that outlaws discrimination on the basis of gender, opened the playing fields of this country to girls, not just boys, and survived every single court challenge it has faced the past three decades?

Bush administration officials have been under heavy criticism since the U.S. Department of Education quietly released a surprise legal clarification on its Web site Friday advising colleges that, for the first time, they can remain in compliance with Title IX based on an e-mail survey of their undergraduate students designed to gauge "interest and ability" in sports. If the responses do not show enough interest - and what exactly constitutes enough has yet to be determined - then an institution can go ahead and presume it is in compliance.

Imagine that. There'll be no more pesky need to compare an athletic department's spending outlays or scholarships offered for men versus women. The burden will be on the students to enforce the law, not the universities.

Schools also have been told they can count an unreturned survey as a lack of interest. Which means one of the most effective federal laws on the books, a measure that resulted in an eight-fold boom in girls' participation in sports, can be undercut if one too many 19-year-old co-eds merely forgets in a blur of classes and keg parties and homework assignments to open, download, answer and return an e-mail survey that, right now, numbers eight Web pages.

Is this any way to set public policy?

[...]

Three members of Bush's Title IX committee were reached by phone yesterday. Ted Leland, the co-chair of the committee, said he had no idea the new guidelines were coming, and he had serious "concerns" about the closed process used to reach the decision, and the rationale that a standardized on-line, e-mail survey "can measure a complicated issue" like interest and ability."

Committee members Cary Groth, the athletic director at the University of Nevada-Reno, and Donna de Varona, the former Olympic gold medalist in swimming who was involved in the initial fight to get Title IX passed in the early 1970s, voiced the same concerns.

As de Varona said yesterday, "It shows no respect for the law or the process. It's disappointing because no matter what wonderful role models we produce, or what honor we bring to this country as women athletes, we still always have to reprove why we have a right to the opportunity to be the best we can be. Why is it that for 32 years women have to justify themselves over and over again as athletes?"

[...]

Read the entire column here.

NASA: New View of Saturn's Blues

And doesn't it just match my new blog color palette? Stunning.

Link: Photo in the News: New View of Saturn's Blues. Photograph courtesy of NASA. By Ted Chamberlain

February 9, 2005—Striped by shadows of its rings, Saturn is a true- blue backdrop for the icy moon Mimas in this just-released image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. As on Earth, a clear sky on Saturn is generally a blue sky, because the unclouded atmosphere scatters sunlight at bluer wavelengths.

Cassini is the first craft to explore Saturn's moons and rings from the planet's orbit. The Cassini-Huygens mission made headlines last month when the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which had been ejected from Cassini, began transmitting data from Saturn's moon Titan.

Whoa! Wild times in Death Valley

I really wish I could see this! Take the links for some very pretty pictures. My mom had mentioned that desert blooms after a rainy year were spectacular. So here's the upside of all those mudslides and storms in California.

Link: The New York Times > Travel > Escapes >

Journeys: In Death Valley, a Technicolor Season

By FINN-OLAF JONES Death Valley, Calif.

CROSSING over the Jubilee Pass on Route 178, drivers expect to encounter the monochromatic wasteland of Death Valley National Park unfurling before them. But these days they see something very different: Technicolor plains of primroses, larkspurs, poppies, verbenas, lilacs, orchids, phacelias and other wildflowers. It raises the question of whether Death Valley even deserves its name.

The same rains that have brought mudslides and destruction in one of California's wettest seasons on record have also brought an early and spectacularly kaleidoscopic spring to Death Valley.

"We were shocked when we saw this," said Lew Friedman, a visitor from Old Chatham, N.Y., as he stood before a fragrant carpet of gold sunflowers that curved over the desert floor toward the Black Mountains. "It certainly doesn't seem like Death Valley," his wife, Jackie, said. "It smells like a floral shop."

The coyotes and the tiny kit foxes that have the run of the valley during the summer months, when 120-degree weather deters human visitors, are now out of sight. Instead, on a recent day when temperatures in the 60's prompted the wearing of a jacket, the usual silence of the valley was broken by a constant hum that at first seemed impossible: the sound of bees pollinating flowers that had sprung from the basalt.

"This could well be the bloom of the century," said Tim Croissant, a National Park Service botanist. "We have many years where we don't see any blooms at all, which makes this all the more extraordinary."

The wildflower bloom this year began in early February, as much as two months sooner than in normal years. As the early spring moves into the national park, the southern part of Death Valley, much of which is below sea level, is awash in a sea of flowers. The upper valley is a pointillist landscape of opening buds. And as the season progresses, the plants farther up the surrounding mountains will also start blossoming, extending the wildflower season into May or even June.

Death Valley averages less than two inches of rain a year, but in the past seven months it has received more than six inches, on pace for a high since record-keeping began well over a century ago. The rains were so extreme that last August, flash-flooding washed away part of Highway 190, one of the main roads into the valley, killing two people and closing the park for 10 days. The highway is not scheduled to reopen until late April.

Death Valley's narrow roadways are heavily bordered by thick paths of flowers, as if each roadside mile had been highlighted with a full set of crayons. "When the Park Service grades the roads, they're inadvertently spreading plants," Mr. Croissant explained. "These disturbance areas become prime areas for growth."

[...]

The sheer surrealism of Death Valley's current appearance is overwhelming. The normally black walls and terraces of the basalt hills in the valley are now etched in yellow and white flowers, giving the terrain the appearance of a photo negative. Clusters of chias with their strangely shaped purple flower float above the desert floor like a vision from Dr. Seuss. Drab-colored shrubs are entwined in what appears to be screaming-orange-colored silly string: dodder vines hitching free rides for the nutrients of their captive hosts.

And then there's the enormous lake that suddenly appeared. "This is the first time I've ever seen Lake Manly," said Alex Cabana, who works in the park, referring to the 90-mile-long lake that covered Death Valley 10,000 years ago but that today is normally dry desert flats. "Legend has it, it only shows up every hundred years." The winter water run-off has collected in Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level and the lowest place in the Western Hemisphere, creating a vast reflecting pool extending more than 100 square miles from the eastern roadbed to the base of the Panamint Range on the western side of the valley. Although the temporary lake is only a few inches deep (two and a half feet at its deepest point), a group of park rangers recently took the rarest of trips: a canoe excursion across Death Valley.

Here are some links from deep in the article, to other pictures and places to go:

The Joshua Tree in Bloom, and Other Desert Flora

SOUTHERN California's unusually wet winter has caused an unusually rich flowering in several of the state's desert areas.

Digital West Media maintains a Web site that provides frequently updated overviews and field reports on California desert wildflowers: www.desertusa.com/flora.

The California Native Plant Society is a nonprofit organization that studies and preserves California's native plants. Its Web site is full of interesting descriptions and photographs of local desert wildflowers: www.cnps.org.

DEATH VALLEY To obtain information about when and where the best blooms are occurring in Death Valley National Park, or for information on the daily wildflower walks conducted by the Park Service, call (760) 786-3200 or visit www.nps.gov/deva.

OWENS VALLEY Owens Valley is one valley to the northwest of Death Valley, but it is startlingly different in terms of scenery and wildflowers. Not only does the Owens Valley have beautiful high desert plains with the snow-clad Sierras as a backdrop; it also has the picturesque Gold Rush town of Independence, which still looks like the set of a cowboy movie.

Because Owens Valley is 3,000 feet above Death Valley, the desert bloom usually occurs a few weeks later. This year, the wildflowers are expected to peak in April and May. For more information, call the ranger station at the Interagency Visitor Center (760) 876-6222 or visit www.fs.fed.us/r5/inyo.

JOSHUA TREE As with Death Valley, Joshua Tree National Park is witnessing a spectacular early spring. On the western side of the park, creamy white blossoms are beginning to appear atop Joshua tree cactuses. When they come into full bloom, these clusters of cactuses, some of which reach heights of 15 feet, resemble natural candelabras, an unforgettable sight against the desert background.

The Joshua tree is expected to be in bloom through April. Other cactuses will be in bloom all the way into May. The national park also features many of the same desert wildflowers that exist in Death Valley, but because Joshua Tree is at a higher elevation, the blooms are expected to peak a few weeks later. For visitor information for the park, call (760) 367-5500 or go to www.nps.gov/jotr.

ANZA-BORREGO DESERT STATE PARK A two-hour drive east of San Diego takes you to the 600,000-acre Anza-Borrego, where winter rains have brought an outstanding wildflower bloom. The park is aflame in desert sunflowers, brown-eyed evening primrose, lupines, mustard, Spanish needles and popcorn flowers. The higher elevations should be in bloom within two or three weeks, and beavertail, hedgehog and barrel cactuses are expected to be in bloom from the end of March until June. Wildflower information: (760) 767-4684 and www.anzaborrego.statepark.org.

PJStar.com: 6 out of 8 journalists agree: We are boring"

Boy, there sure isn't much I need to add to this. I've seen it happen repeatedly, where any sense of "voice" is surgically removed from so-called "journalistic writing." Meaning if it doesn't sound like it was written by a machine, it won't pass the gatekeepers. It feels like it has those little strips of paper you used to get around motel toilet seats... "Sanitized for your protection."

At this rate, soon "journalists" will be replaced by AI agents that parse syntax on a Semantic Web, like that cool 10 x 10 site, researched Google-style, entirely by algorythms, and finally, ultimately, written by AI algorhthms as well. Corporate media outlets will totally bypass the outsourcing of journalism to rooms of people sitting in cubicles in India, and go straight to machine-generated copy.

It references the author's previous column, quoted here at poynter.org:

[TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2005 People are too busy to read boring newspapers, says writer Peoria (IL) Journal Star "Newspapers once heaved and gasped and screamed with the intensity of the cities and people they covered," Phil Luciano writes in his Hunter S. Thompson tribute. "Not anymore. Today's reporters are dullards. They have college degrees. They're book smart. That's good. But they treat reporting like a cubicle-dweller at IBM. They wait for news to happen: an agenda out of City Hall or news release over the fax." Publishers say people are too busy to read newspapers, but Luciano contends people are too busy to read boring newspapers.

OK, so I gotta add another cool quote from the original column on Hunter S. Thompson, in the name of wonderful writing everywhere:

As I tell students, Thompson at the core was a reporter. He actually went out and talked to people - interesting people. He wrestled the weirdness around him and shoved insight down the reader's throat. In "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," he cuts through political poppycock:

"There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you've followed him around for a while."

Link: 6 out of 8 journalists agree: We are boring

Phil Luciano

NEWS COLUMNIST
Friday, February 25, 2005

Looks like Hunter Thompson and I touched a nerve among my newspaper colleagues.

[...]

And, I said, today's newspapers are boring.

The column got picked up by a journalism Web site, www.poynter.org. Since then, e-mails have poured in from newspapers coast to coast.

Here's what they have to say about the industry. I'm leaving out the names because their employers might not take kindly to a kick in the pants.

Hands too clean: There are too many "professional" journalists these days. Too many reporters have lost the ability to talk with people who wear baseball caps during the course of their daily work lives. - Chicago Tribune

The edge: The better reporters have seen and lived life on the edge - or at least broken curfew. Reporters don't have to do drugs and drink all night, but I have known my share of journalists who could never understand why a guy would rob a 7-11 to feed his family. The world to those sheltered reporters was black and white. It's hard to listen or show compassion (and then tell good stories) if the world is so cut and dry. - bizjournals.com

Can't be too careful: Editors look askance at untried approaches and relentlessly tone down any lively, potentially controversial writing. - Minneapolis Star Tribune.

[...]

Fast-food journalism: I spent more than 20 years in the business, at the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and smaller dailies and weeklies. You still have good newspapers and reporters out there. But you run a bank, you get bankers and tellers. You run a fast-food joint, you get people flipping frozen burgers. You run a newspaper where the priority is raking in high profit margins for shareholders, where the stuff of life becomes the "daily product," where stories and layouts all look and read more or less the same, then you get a boring newspaper staffed by unimaginative, bank-tellers-turned-journalists. - Mark

[...]

Yuck: These days, the more controversial the fact, the more likely it will be rewritten by a gun-shy copy editor until it resembles nothing more exciting than yesterday's oatmeal. - The Morning Call, Allentown, Penn.

[...]