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7.15.05
Culturally Speaking #70: A Couple of Rants and Some Other Stuff
By Sarah Stodola
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~Tinkering with the format this week. If you are so inclined, let me know what you think~
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The Internet in the Dark Ages: Amazon.com, circa 1995, apparently well before anyone figured how to actually design a webpage. (via mobylives.com)
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Hunter Thompson: though dead, still manages to be weird...
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Bush Plays Dumb and the Media Falls in Line: Reading the newspapers from the UK and then reading their counterparts in the US can make a person feel like he is getting coverage of two entirely separate planets, with different concerns and different problems to be addressed. This is especially true when it comes to issues involving the environment and, more specifically, global warming. President Bush (ugh, how many more times do I have to see those two words side by side) wants there to be no global warming, and so he pretends that there isn't and bankrolls scientists to support him in this assessment -- although of late, he has at least acknowledged that there is such a thing as global warming, but that it is not as important as the economy and oil and stuff. and The New York Times did give all of this a cursory glance on July 7th.
But then you go from New York to London, and all of a sudden it is a consensus -- on the streets, in the papers, on the telly -- that global warming has to be addressed NOW. Yesterday's Guardian, for example, featured not one but two lengthy articles on, among other things, how the world can get on with solving the problem without America's help.
If only America's newspapers would cover the problem as it actually is -- urgent and dire -- rather than following Bush's lead, then public opinion might shift accordingly.
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The Nick Denton Sweatshop: A few months ago, a friend forwarded me an ad that had appeared on Gawker that day, calling for a writer to take over the helm at a new little site called Gridskipper, which is meant to be a "blog" covering "urban travel." I thought it would be a good job for me because 1) I am a writer and I do a lot of what I am on the internet, and 2) because I was living in Buenos Aires at the time with the knowledge that I'd be moving to London in a couple of months, and I'd lived in New York for four years, so I know a bit about the urban places of the world. So I sent in a letter, and Nick Denton emailed me back pretending that he had no knowledge of any such opening at Gridskipper. What he did have to offer me was this:
Best way to start doing items for Gridskipper is to send in tips, or post items on your own blog that you think would be of interest. As you'll see, we regularly excerpt and link.
Um...what? I was responding to a JOB AD!!! What I was not doing was trying to sign up as a volunteer. I do enough of that right here on Me Three. So what I took from this was that Denton was trying to get free content by posting a fake job ad (and sure enough, my BA Blog was linked just a couple of weeks later). I do understand that by their very nature, blogs pilfer content from other websites, but this was a step beyond that, and it confirmed in my mind everything I've heard about Nick Denton and Gawker Media (after link, scroll down).
So what did it take to land the apparently nonexistent Gridskipper job? It took this. Yes, that's right, it required obsession with Gawker sites, professed in a public forum in Gawker's very own snarky tone -- imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all. What it apparently did not require was any knowledge of world travel, which is what the site is about, because they leave that to all of the other sites that unwittingly provide Gridskipper's content, free of charge.
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Feel Their Pain: Last week's terrible bombings in London, while absolutely unfortunate and unnecessary, should help us empathize with Iraqis, who go through this sort of thing on a routine basis, and who we usually don't pay enough attention to. Iraqi civilians experience bombings like the one in London all the time, and no matter whose figures you look at, tens of thousands have been killed. Our tragedy close to home ought to help put those kinds of numbers in perspective. We lament (as we should) the death of 50+ in London. So just think how bad it is for the Iraqis right now.
Click here for the last Culturally Speaking.
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Sarah Stodola is the Executive Editor of Me Three. She can be contacted here.© 2005 Me Three