Marisa Bowe and Ken Kurson
A Few Good Readers
By Marisa Bowe
Posted Wednesday, June 28, 2000, at 11:59 AM ETGood morning, Ken.
Back down from the lofty heights of yesterday, I'm thinking about "e-content." Don't gag. It's already a beaten horse, I know: I'm tired of seeing the phrase "chickens coming home to roost" used about the layoffs at Salon, the shutdown of APBNews, etc. But I, and perhaps you, have a special interest in this kind of thing.
I was just reading Lamar Graham on Mediachannel.org. The effect on online journalism of having accurate statistics on readership of every single article and page is really interesting. It forces people to confront the value of this semi-sacred cow, "journalism," in a way they haven't quite had to do since during the days when Gannet began cloning USA Today in every city.
Salon, as everyone knows, openly said they were canning the people whose pages got less traffic. "Frankly, I believe what's really got us journalists scared here is the idea of being held personally, quantitatively accountable for whether our work really reaches anyone," writes Graham.
Horrors! What are we, widget salesmen? Assembly-line workers? Because the numbers have never been brought to bear on us, we fear and loathe them. We maintain that mere statistics can't possibly measure the intellectual value of our work.
But they can to some degree. ... And I'm not sure that's such a terrible thing. Frankly, I find it both a little amusing and a little hypocritical that we journalists--we who are so judgmental, we who are always demanding accountability of corporate lackeys, celebrities, government bureaucrats and other mere mortals--are scared so witless of having to prove that our own ideas have some actual value in the marketplace of ideas.
While I like the way that having this traffic information available causes people to start questioning older ways of constructing and disseminating journalism, I think that an argument like this (and granted, I've probably distorted it a little with my excerpts) doesn't take enough factors into account. Certainly, traffic accountability is important for a business, and if you don't have a business, you can't afford to do good journalism on a large scale.
But journalism and its related enterprises are not purely about business, are they? They're about communication, something that has constantly been touted for decades as one of the lifebloods of our society, and certainly it's the very core of what the Internet is about. And "communication" is a pretty complicated affair. I'm thinking of the parts I've read of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, for example, where he talks about exactly how ideas are spread. It's not an automatic process, meaning that it's not about pure numbers. It's organic. Things are spread by particular types of people in particular types of ways. PR people understand that a lot better than journalists do.
Anyway, I think that those more complex understandings of how "communication" works ought to be woven into these discussions of online journalism business models. The business people at publications rightly care how many people are reading everything. But the editors and writers often care more about who is reading what. That's a big part of their "actual value in the marketplace of ideas." And it shouldn't be lost in the haste to apply an inadequate model with which to examine these problems.
A Few Good Readers
By Marisa Bowe
Posted Wednesday, June 28, 2000, at 11:59 AM ETMarisa Bowe is the editor-in-chief of Word, the executive producer of Sissyfight.com, and a co-editor of Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium (click here to buy it). Ken Kurson is the editor of GreenMagazine.com, writes the "Green" column each month in Esquire, and is the author of The Green Magazine Guide to Personal Finance (click here to buy it). Reader Response from The Fray (to be read after the final entry):
[From the Fray Editor: Ken, Ken you didn't need to mention homosexuality or abortion to encourage controversy--saying there are too many people and they live too long (Tuesday) worked just fine. Fray posters came out in force, bringing with them Spinoza and a 95-year-old grandmother. The post below was titled Don't tell me when to die Mr Kurson:]
What an ugly letter by Mr Kurson! How exactly is the premise that people should live longer demonstrably false? I like the idea of using government money to prolong life (especially my life, it's demonstrably true that my life is cool). We have a right and responsibility to know what makes us tick and we have a right and responsibility to use that knowledge to help people better enjoy their lives. If science produces a way for people to live longer, I will gladly participate. If you don't want to, Mr Kurson, then don't. I'd hate to see you go, but I won't interfere. Just don't go around saying that longer lifespans are demonstrably bad--it might not seem so biting on the abstract level, but it's hurtful to individuals who are dying and would rather live. Whether or not this new knowledge brings us a step closer to godhood remains to be seen. Even if the answer is no, or if the question is irrelevant, it does make me happy to see that we humans are so clever, curious and philosophical that we've finally started to figure ourselves out--if not metaphysically, at least physically.
--Michael Maiello
(To reply, click
here.)
Since when are books not technology [Tuesday's entry]? I suppose Ken's definition of technology is any invention that makes people better off in a way of which he disapproves. But hey, if utter incoherence lets him live more comfortably in his savage little world, more power to him. Just don't make me live in it too.
--Ananda Gupta
(To reply, click
here.)
[This is part of a much longer post, detailing the many ways in which the writer disapproved of Mr Kurson's views and disliked the choice of Breakfast Table participants.]
(6/29)
What was the last big discovery that had so many scientists crowing and so many empty talking heads yelping at some utopian moon [genome project, Tuesday]? Splitting the atom, yes? After so many decades, what wonderful benefits has that achievement provided to us? Good lord, I can't think of any. (Don't give me any jive about radiation therapy.) Is there no one who can analyze this situation in a realistic way without sentimentalizing about God or waxing rhapsodic about science? Give us a damn break. You're not going to see any benefits derived from geeks in labcoats mucking around with genes.
--tek
(To reply, click
here.)
To tek: Humanity is richer, healthier, and happier today than ever before, largely because of scientific and technological advance. Please spare us the self-indulgent crap about lab-coated guys ruining life. In fact, it's been the damn artsy types (Hitler, Stalin, Mao--all prided themselves on their artistic abilities, none was a scientific or technical guy) who have been the architects of the last century's horrors. Where's the responsibility for that?
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click
here.)
[And this argument ran and ran--"had smallpox lately tek?" "No, how about AIDS?" "I feel quite the moron responding" "Trust your feelings".]
There's a huge amount of information in life other than DNA. Protein folding is one of the less complex and difficult. This is why Marisa Bowes is considering things that couldn't possibly be explained by DNA. I'm sure it's well for her to ask, but it's clear that the brain that questions the genetic code is extremely more complex than is the DNA that pointed it in the right direction.
What happens in the brain has crucial roots in DNA, yet its complexity and operation are far more ordered by the brain's environment, inside and outside of the body, than it is by DNA. You don't ask of anything as complex as a thought what its relation is to DNA without severe reductionism. The sooner the media learn something of the complexity of everything, the sooner we'll learn something of the complexity of what they usually report on. They've moved in that direction in the last 10 or 20 years. They still have a long way to go. One hopes the genome sequencing will take the media that way.
--Glen Davidson
(To reply, click
here.)
[Ms Bowe responded to this post in her second Tuesday entry.]
(6/27)
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Reader Response from The Fray (to be read after the final entry):
[From the Fray Editor: Ken, Ken you didn't need to mention homosexuality or abortion to encourage controversy--saying there are too many people and they live too long (Tuesday) worked just fine. Fray posters came out in force, bringing with them Spinoza and a 95-year-old grandmother. The post below was titled Don't tell me when to die Mr Kurson:]
What an ugly letter by Mr Kurson! How exactly is the premise that people should live longer demonstrably false? I like the idea of using government money to prolong life (especially my life, it's demonstrably true that my life is cool). We have a right and responsibility to know what makes us tick and we have a right and responsibility to use that knowledge to help people better enjoy their lives. If science produces a way for people to live longer, I will gladly participate. If you don't want to, Mr Kurson, then don't. I'd hate to see you go, but I won't interfere. Just don't go around saying that longer lifespans are demonstrably bad--it might not seem so biting on the abstract level, but it's hurtful to individuals who are dying and would rather live. Whether or not this new knowledge brings us a step closer to godhood remains to be seen. Even if the answer is no, or if the question is irrelevant, it does make me happy to see that we humans are so clever, curious and philosophical that we've finally started to figure ourselves out--if not metaphysically, at least physically.
--Michael Maiello
(To reply, click here.)
Since when are books not technology [Tuesday's entry]? I suppose Ken's definition of technology is any invention that makes people better off in a way of which he disapproves. But hey, if utter incoherence lets him live more comfortably in his savage little world, more power to him. Just don't make me live in it too.
--Ananda Gupta
(To reply, click here.)
[This is part of a much longer post, detailing the many ways in which the writer disapproved of Mr Kurson's views and disliked the choice of Breakfast Table participants.]
(6/29)
What was the last big discovery that had so many scientists crowing and so many empty talking heads yelping at some utopian moon [genome project, Tuesday]? Splitting the atom, yes? After so many decades, what wonderful benefits has that achievement provided to us? Good lord, I can't think of any. (Don't give me any jive about radiation therapy.) Is there no one who can analyze this situation in a realistic way without sentimentalizing about God or waxing rhapsodic about science? Give us a damn break. You're not going to see any benefits derived from geeks in labcoats mucking around with genes.
--tek
(To reply, click here.)
To tek: Humanity is richer, healthier, and happier today than ever before, largely because of scientific and technological advance. Please spare us the self-indulgent crap about lab-coated guys ruining life. In fact, it's been the damn artsy types (Hitler, Stalin, Mao--all prided themselves on their artistic abilities, none was a scientific or technical guy) who have been the architects of the last century's horrors. Where's the responsibility for that?
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click here.)
[And this argument ran and ran--"had smallpox lately tek?" "No, how about AIDS?" "I feel quite the moron responding" "Trust your feelings".]
There's a huge amount of information in life other than DNA. Protein folding is one of the less complex and difficult. This is why Marisa Bowes is considering things that couldn't possibly be explained by DNA. I'm sure it's well for her to ask, but it's clear that the brain that questions the genetic code is extremely more complex than is the DNA that pointed it in the right direction.
What happens in the brain has crucial roots in DNA, yet its complexity and operation are far more ordered by the brain's environment, inside and outside of the body, than it is by DNA. You don't ask of anything as complex as a thought what its relation is to DNA without severe reductionism. The sooner the media learn something of the complexity of everything, the sooner we'll learn something of the complexity of what they usually report on. They've moved in that direction in the last 10 or 20 years. They still have a long way to go. One hopes the genome sequencing will take the media that way.
--Glen Davidson
(To reply, click here.)
[Ms Bowe responded to this post in her second Tuesday entry.]
(6/27)