Links and commentary on media, politics and culture by Steve Rhodes.

 

Advertising critic Leslie Savan has an interview on Alternet
with Carrie McLaren about the New York Ad Map action I wrote about on Tuesday, May 23rd.

Mediachannel.org has a feature,
Rewriting The Book Business which gathers together a bunch of articles on changes in the publishing industry. http://www.publisherslunch.com>Publishers Lunch gathers stories on the publishing industry daily.

Ms. Magazine has put up some content from their June issue including a http://www.msmagazine.com/jun2k/marryafeminist.html>story on marriage by Lisa Miya-Jervis, the editor of Bitch magazine (which I've http://www.well.com/~srhodes/bitchmag.html>written about). She's co-edited an anthology on marriage, Young Wives' Tales, which will
come out next year from Seal Press.

posted by steve at 5/31/2000 10:14:00 PM

 
Clerks The Cartoon Series. debuts on ABC tonight at 9:30 pm ET. It has been getting
some bad reviews, but I'll check it out. There are six episodes, but ABC might not air them all unless ratings are relatively good.

Plus Kevin Smith was pretty upset when the show didn't debut in March and posted
a profane rant about ABC after he found out about it from an article in Variety. Indiewire has an http://www.indiewire.com/film/interviews/int_Smith_Kevin_000531.html>interview with him about the show.
There's also a longer interview at Ain't It Cool News (but it is hard to read
because of the color of the text). And there is lots of info at Newsaskew.

I rented the DVD of Clerks recently to see the film again.
The website has an interesting Production Art section which shows how a
couple of scenes were created. It has storyboards, scripts, the rough animatic and the final scene.

posted by steve at 5/31/2000 11:59:00 AM

 
Matthew Mirapaul has his annual look on the New York Times website at this year's mostly lame movies sites, Summer Movie Sites Lack Hollywood's Digital Magic.
The most interesting site seems to be for The Perfect Storm which has an original 13 minute long
documentary on the events that inspired the book and film (Taking Hollywood by Storm is an article on the film from the March/April issue
of Book Magazine).

Dreamworks usually partners with a company like reel (for
Chicken Run) or amazon (for the horrible Small Time Crooks site). And the NYT fails to
provide links to Mirapaul's previous summer movie site columns which offer some historical perspective (I emailed Mirapaul and he had them add links
to the previous columns). And if you click on the links you get a sense of how many sites
either have vanished or haven't been updated since they launched (even though all of them are now available on video).

• Summer Movie Sites Fall Short of Blockbuster Status 1999
  
• Summer Movie Sites Finally Exploit The Web's Multimedia Potential 1998
  
• Click, Click, Bang, Bang: The Summer Movie Wrap-Up 1997
  
• Razzle-Dazzle of Summer Movies Is Lost on Hollywood Web Sites 1996
  

posted by steve at 5/29/2000 12:30:00 AM

 
Every Tuesday, American Movie Classics, features http://www.amctv.com/ontheair/realtoreel/>Reel to Reel
which is a documentary followed by a related movie or
movies.

This Tuesday, May 30th at 8 pm eastern, AMC will be
showing Reel Models: The First Women of Film. It was produced by Barbara
Streisand's production company. It focuses on directors Alice Guy-Blache,
Lois Weber and Dorothy Azner and screenwriter Frances Marion.

It is followed by a number of films.

• 9 pm Elain May's A New Leaf
  
• 11 pm Nocturne, a film noir produced by Joan Harrison
  
• 12:30 am Algie, the Miner - a silent short by Alice Guy-Blache
  
• 12:45 am How Men Propose, a silent short written and directed by Lois Weber
  
• 1 am Pollyana, a silent film written by Frances Marion
  

Then Reel Models repeats at 2 am and a New Leaf at 3 am.

A related book by Cari Beauchamp is http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8227.html>Without Lying Down: Frances
Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood.

posted by steve at 5/28/2000 05:52:00 PM

 
The WNBA starts their 4th season on Monday, May 29th. Here is the first
week of televised games.

New York at Houston, Monday at 3 p.m. ET (NBC)

WNBA 2000 Season Preview, Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET (ESPN)

Indiana at Miami, Thursday at 8 p.m. ET (Lifetime)

New York at Washington, Sunday at noon ET (NBC)

posted by steve at 5/28/2000 05:42:00 PM

 
It looks like I'm going to be covering the Audio Publishers Association Conference next Thursday and
Book Expo from Friday through Sunday. So now I'm reading Publishers Weekly's Book Expo http://www.publishersweekly.com/articles/20000508_86192.asp?>preview.

It should be a lot more interesting than Comdex which I went to a few weeks ago. More like the http://www.ala.org/>American Library Association conference I went to in San Francisco a few years ago (it is actually taking place in July in Chicago http://www.ala.org/events/ac2000/>this year).

At the ALA conference, I went to a panel on feminist publishers and bookstores. One panelist mentioned that a feminist bookstore in Indianapolis I used to go
to had closed. Nancy Bereano of Firebrand Books, a feminist press which first published Dorothy Allison, said they might not be around for the next millenium (this was before that became an overused phrase). That they were only surviving because of fundraising efforts. The growth
of chain superstoresm and returns and closing of feminist bookstores and other independents were really hurting them. Jewell Gomez wrote this letter
which appeared in the 5-26 Holt Uncensored:

Dear Holt Uncensored:

Before the BEA subsumes you and everyone I wanted to take a moment to
acknowledge the major contributions of one who won't be there this
year---Nancy Bereano of Firebrand Books. She has sent out letters to all of
her writers announcing that she's sold Firebrand to http://www.lpcgroup.com/>LPC, which has
distributed
Firebrand for years.

Firebrand has been my publisher for the past ten years (15 years/100
titles!) and I am honored to have had an independent feminist publisher's
faith in my work. I feel many things right now: sorrow at the passing of
this era; relief for Nancy who's fought the corporate tide so wonderfully;
and alarm at how narrow the field of publishing is becoming for
non-blockbuster women authors.

posted by steve at 5/26/2000 11:09:00 PM

 
For people in NYC, this Saturday, May 27th,
Stay Free magazine is distributing maps in Times Square from noon to 5 pm on the
growth and nature of outdoor advertising in Manhattan.

If you want to help hand out http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/admap/index.html>New York's Great Outdoors maps, they will be meeting at the army recruiting center
around noon. Wear red. People will also be shooting the event to make a doc about it.
Here's a related article
and a piece from 1960 on http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/admap/howardgossage.html>How to look at bilboards.

For people outside NYC or who can't make it, they have some versions of the map http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/admap/index.html>online. The easiest to read
is the flash version. There is info on what
you can do and related links.
There is also info on getting copies of the map which will
be included in the next issue of the magazine (which is worth http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/admap/order_info.html>subscribing to -
there are back issues online).

Carrie Mclean, who edits Stay Free (and used to edit http://www.matadorrecords.com/escandalo/index.html>Escandolo, http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/15/intro.html>wrote about wanting to do public
actions. She also has a sort of weblog.
posted by steve at 5/23/2000 02:47:00 PM

 
I don't read Suck daily like I used to when it first launched. But I try
to read Hit & Run every Thursday and check then to see if they have had anything else interesting in
the previous week.

Josh Quitner did a good article, Web Dreams on Joey and Carl and Suck back in 1996,
but I also wanted to know more about Owen and Ana Marie Cox (who have both since left) and Heather Havrilesky's (aka Polly Esther). Luckily, Online Journalism Review has a profile (5-22-00) of Heather.


posted by steve at 5/22/2000 08:29:00 PM

 
Newsweek points out in A Life or Death Gamble (5-29-00) that only two states, Illinois
and New York, give death row inmates the rigth to use DNA tests to prove their innocence. In How Sure Is Sure Enough? (3-22-99), they looked at the case of a man who
was executed who may have been innocent.

Salon's May 11th article,The hanging governor asks, "Did execution-happy George W. Bush sign off on the lethal injection of an innocent man?"

Sara Rimer and Raymond Bonner looked at the cases of five people for their May 14th New York Times article Bush Candidacy Puts Focus on Executions and wrote:

...a close look by The New York Times at a half dozen executions carried out
during Governor Bush's tenure -- including interviews with jurors,
prosecutors, judges, witnesses and co-defendants still on death row -- makes
clear that a legal and judicial system rife with these conditions creates,
at the very least, the risk of an innocent person being sent to death row.

Nightline looked at the death penalty on Monday, May 22nd. There is a transcript
with a link to a video clip (the transcript will only be available for about a week).
There is online piece Rethinking the Death Penalty. Gov. Ryan of Illinois
says he does not think anyone will be executed while he is in office. The 1999 Chicago Tribune series on The Failure of the Death Penalty in Illinois was one factor in his decision
to stop executions.

Ralph Nader, one of the only presidential candidates to oppose the death penalty was http://abcnews.go.com/onair/PoliticalPoints/000522_politicalpoints/index_nyt.html>interviewed (in real video) today on Political Points, daily webcast
from the New York Times and ABC News.

posted by steve at 5/22/2000 07:40:00 PM

 
There has been a crackdown on the Serbian opposition over the last few weeks culminating in the http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_751000/751839.stm>shutting down of http://www.freeb92.net/>Radio B92 on Wednesday.

This has received very little coverage
in the US media. The BBC's Europe
page is a good source for news. You can also sign up for daily news summaries via email on the
http://www.freeb92.net/>Radio B92 page, and there is a page
with updates on media repression. There also are a bunch of
video pieces in real video. The Institute for War & Peace Reporting has a http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl5?balkans_media_index.html>Serbian Media Special with news and background.

B92 has also sent out a plea for bandwidth. If you can provide
any send email to www@freeb92.net

posted by steve at 5/18/2000 03:49:00 PM

 

I'm left handed, so I was interested in this NYT article,
On Left-Handedness, Its Causes and Costs
. I don't know what to think of the theories. My mom is left handed, my father right handed, my sister left handed and my brother right handed.
posted by steve at 5/16/2000 09:46:00 PM

 
In her column today, Geisha Boys, castigating Rudy Giuliani and Newt
Gingrich, Maureen Dowd writes:

Last week, Mr. Gingrich and his soon-to-be third wife, Callista Bisek, 34, registered online for wedding booty, listing more than $14,000 in items, from a $298 Waterford decanter to a $2.50 chef's spoon.

The new Republican definition of family values can be found at a Web site where "Macy's celebrates the wedding of Callista Bisek and Newt Gingrich." Well-wishers can e-mail the happy couple. (Felicitations, you roly-poly hypocrite . . .)

You can see for yourself
what Newt has registered for at Macy's (currently only the cheapest items have been purchased for them). The link to Dowd's column will be good until around
June 14th.

Don't bother trying to send Newt & Callista email. I sent them a brief message and got this reply:

Dear WeddingChannel.com visitor,

Thank you for visiting an engaged couple's "Our Wedding" pages at
http://www.weddingchannel.com. During the months leading up to the
big day, WeddingChannel.com will be your link to helpful information about
the wedding and all of the excitement surrounding the bride and groom.

At this time the couple you are contacting has not provided us with an
email address. We all know how busy newly engaged couples can be, so
please hold on to your best wishes. Be sure to visit us again soon to
view the latest news, search for their gift registry and find all the
information you need to be a wedding insider.

Thanks again for visiting WeddingChannel.com.


posted by steve at 5/14/2000 08:23:00 PM

 
The much hyped media news site Inside.com had a soft launch on Wednesday. They have some interesting
writers, a mix of vets from the trade and entertainment press along
with some people from the web and print zine world.

There is the first column
by Tom Fontana who produced Homicide. A digital news section which pulls
together stories from all the other sections. The first day's stories are interesting, but probably not worth $200 a year. Maybe
$20 (though even Slate failed at a price nearly that low and some similar features plus free umbrellas). Though
there is some free content, a free newsletter and a 30 day free trial. It is less than Variety which
soft launched a redesign charges for their Extra subscription ($33 a month).

Already the reactions are flooding in to medianews.org.
posted by steve at 5/11/2000 01:12:00 AM

 
Time and Newsweek actually have some decent articles in their May 15th, 2000 issues.

Time has a special investigation of proposed changes in bankruptcy laws and how lobbyists have influenced them. Green Magazine's Ken Kurson discussed the legislation back in 1998 on Talk of the Nation. The Time piece is written by Don Barlett and Jim Steele who wrote prize winning
America: What Went Wrong? and America: Who Stole the Deam? (which http://www2.shore.net/~dkennedy/>Dan Kennedy has http://www.salon.com/media/media961202.html>pointed out didn't receive nearly as much attention) when they were at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Their latest piece for time is part of a series they are doing this year called
"Big Money & Politics." The first part was a cover story in February.
They did a cover story on corporate welfare in 1998. All of these stories
are worth reading.

Newsweek has an investigation of the actual military results of the war with Yugoslavia,
The Kosovo Cover-up:

An antiseptic war, fought by pilots flying safely three miles high. It seems almost too good to be true—and it was. In fact—as some critics suspected at the time—the air campaign against the Serb military in Kosovo was largely ineffective. NATO bombs plowed up some fields, blew up hundreds of cars, trucks and decoys, and barely dented Serb artillery and armor. According to a suppressed Air Force report obtained by NEWSWEEK, the number of targets verifiably destroyed was a tiny fraction of those claimed: 14 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450. Out of the 744 "confirmed" strikes by NATO pilots during the war, the Air Force investigators, who spent weeks combing Kosovo by helicopter and by foot, found evidence of just 58...

In one sense, history is simply repeating itself. Pilots have been exaggerating their "kills" at least since the Battle of Britain in 1940. But this latest distortion could badly mislead future policymakers. Air power was effective in the Kosovo war not against military targets but against civilian ones. Military planners do not like to talk frankly about terror-bombing civilians ("strategic targeting" is the preferred euphemism), but what got Milosevic's attention was turning out the lights in downtown Belgrade. Making the Serb populace suffer by striking power stations—not "plinking" tanks in the Kosovo countryside—threatened his hold on power. The Serb dictator was not so much defeated as pushed back into his lair—for a time. The surgical strike remains a mirage...

posted by steve at 5/07/2000 03:22:00 PM

 
In his piece that broke the story of the Pets.com lawsuit against Robert Smigel, Aaron Barnhart writes:

Besides his occasional appearances on "Late Night," Smigel contributes a sharp-edged cartoon to "Saturday Night Live." One of them, in 1997, mocked NBC's parent company General Electric so mercilessly that "SNL's" executive producer Lorne Michaels had it pulled when the episode was repeated later in the season. But Michaels never suggested he had legal motives for his action, and afterward Smigel licensed the censored video to the media watchdog htp://www.fair.org>FAIR, which used it as a premium to new members.

You can watch a streaming version of that video in real video,
Saturday Night Censorship.
posted by steve at 5/06/2000 01:12:00 PM

 
Mike Godwin's
article on Jessica Litman's speech at CFP 2000.

Jon Katz's slashdot piece, Shut Down Metallica, Not Napster.
posted by steve at 5/05/2000 12:12:00 AM

 

The showdown between Disney and Time Warner has raised some debate
about all of the media mergers of the last two decades, but there needs to
more discussion about the public policy issues raised by this trend and by new technologies.

Jeff Chester of the Center For Media Education raised these issues in a piece for Alternet (which has just relaunched), Remember Community Access As Broadband Technology Rises .

posted by steve at 5/04/2000 04:34:00 PM

 
When Nightline breaks out of the standard set-up piece followed
by Ted interviewing a few people, it can do some amazing stuff from the documentaries Jay
Allison did a few years ago to Robert Krulwich's work.

On Monday, Nightline began a 3 part series on Lesley-Diann Jones, an elementary school teacher in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The second part airs tonight. They have an overview of the series, a transcripts of first and
second show (the transcripts will be up for about a week), and entries from a http://abcnews.go.com/onair/popoff/ntl_ldj_journal_000502.popoff/index.html>journal Jones kept.
posted by steve at 5/03/2000 12:38:00 PM

 
On Sunday's episode of the X-Files, one of the plot threads (amid
the Hollywood spoof) was a forger who sold documents to the Catholic
Church that defied church teachings, so a priest bought them to keep
the suppressed.

David Duchovny (who wrote and directed the episode) may have read about the case of Michael Hoffman who sold faked religious documents that undermined church teachings to the Mormon church which then surpressed them.

Cythia Cotts has a Press Clips column in the Village Voice on how an article on Michael Hoffman by Simon Worrall focusing on an Emily Dickinson poem he forged finally was published in the latest issue of the Paris Review. That article isn't online, but a shorter version of the piece was published in the British Guardian on April 8th
and it makes pretty fascinating reading. Worral's agents are trying to option the article for a film and expand it into a book.

It would have been nice if the Voice had linked to the Guardian piece so people who aren't reading this weblog could easily find it.
posted by steve at 5/02/2000 09:35:00 PM

 
The video by Indymedia on the IMF and World Bank protests, Breaking the Bank, is up in realvideo/ Part 1
and Part 2 are each half an hour. Also, see the This Modern World http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2000/04/24/tomo/index.html>cartoon (in color)
on the protests.

The British video colective Undercurrents has video up of the may day protests in london (though be careful my computer crashed when I tried to look at the video).
posted by steve at 5/02/2000 02:15:00 PM