Getting paid for journalism

AP’s payment plan, explained

Boing Boing shows what the venerated wire service is really doing with their “container” for news content.  A NYT story tries to explain AP’s side of things, while Scott Rosenberg takes a different view (and Ars Technica remains skeptical). What remains to be seen is how AP will enforce such a plan when something like the Associated RePress can be built using AP’s own RSS feed. (Salon’s King Kaufman offers another view on how journalists can make money on stuff people are using for free.)

What about the children?

Porn Book Vender This is just reprehensible. They’ve got this “Book Vender” machine right out in public, where impressionable children can see it. As everyone knows, children are the future — do we really want to see our precious children growing up thinking “Vender” is a word? It’s “VendOR,” dammit! With an “o”! Won’t somebody think of the children?

Two takes on “Twilight”

Buffy vs. Edward makes a pretty good case that the romantic vampire hero of the “Twilight” series is really just your basic creepy stalker type.

Another take by The Last Psychiatrist blog, The Twilight Movie Review Your Boyfriend Doesn’t Want You to Read, makes a good case for why the real danger isn’t that impressionable teenage girls will be enthralled by Edward Cullen (the creepy stalker vampire guy, for those not living in caves), but that teenage boys will figure out that imitating him is a good way to manipulate the girls into falling for a guy who pulls that kind of B.S.

Masterful failure of online journalism

Washington Post’s Masterful Failure of Online Journalism “The delusion that the web is “an endless newshole” where journalists “have the space to do what needs to be done regardless of length” dates to, oh, the first term of the Clinton Administration.” — Ouch! Guilty as charged. Hopefully we’ve all learned something since then. Although, it must be said that when the writing is good enough, it’s worth putting online no matter how long it is. Gene Weingarten’s epic profile of children’s entertainer The Great Zucchini is an example.

Worst Halftime Show? Or best?

YouTube labels this blooper collection “Worst halftime show ever” — I think they mean “Most awesome.” I saw my share of cheerleading and band bloopers as a marching-band guy in high school and college, but never anything as wonderful as these.

Keillor channels McInerney

Garrison Keillor channels Jay McInerney The “Prairie Home Companion” guy comes off as a Midwestern answer to McInerney in a National Geographic piece, extolling the virtues of state fairs in McInerney-esque second person narration: You and the child stand at the entrance to the midway, barkers barking at you to try the ringtoss, shoot a basketball, squirt the water in the clown’s mouth and see the ponies run, win the teddy bear, but you don’t want to win a big blue plush teddy bear. You have no use for one whatsoever. There is enough inertia in your life as it is. And now you feel the great joy of revulsion at the fair and its shallow pleasures, its cheap tinsel, its greasy food.

Sex at the supermarket

Another take on evolutionary psychology:  A review by Colin Tudge of “Spent: Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism,” a book by Geoffrey Miller that examines how ev psych (or “evo psy,” as Tudge puts it) can shed light on marketing and economic theory. Tudge (like Miller, apparently) gives ev psych more credit than is currently popular (while acknowledging that the field “has not had a good press, nor done itself many favours).

Apparently Miller emphasizes the role of cooperation, rather than competition, on making us more “mate-worthy,” which is a refreshing change from the more traditional ev-psych view that it’s all about being (or hooking up with) the “alpha male” in a never-ending competition for dominance.

We are all Michael Jackson

Dance You Into The Sunlight Rebecca Blood is right: No matter how you felt about Michael Jackson, no matter how sick you are of the coverage of his death (and life), you should watch this. It’s good, and it’s important. Michael Jackson was as messed up as he was because he grew up surrounded by media scrutiny. Today, what with Facebook, blogs, YouTube and everything else, we’re all surrounded by that, and kids are growing up with that. It’s worth taking some time to think about what that means, and how we might avoid the pitfalls that come from living your whole life in public.

The Monocle Gesture

The Monocle Gesture Apparently people in a small part of Venezuela use their index and middle fingers to create a “monocle” and hold it up to their eye to indicate that someone is being pretentious or high-falutin’ or something. Now that you know this, take a look at the first paragraph of the page devoted to this gesture, and see how many times you’re tempted to direct the gesture at the person describing it (I got as far as “Good day” before wanting to do it the first time):

Good day; my name is Clifford Conley Owens III. During the spring of 2008, I took a holiday from my graduate studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Tech to retreat to Maracaibo, Venezuela for a week. The people of Maracaibo have some very interesting customs, but there was one that struck me more than any other: the monocle gesture.

(via Clusterflock)

MetaFilter turns 10

MeFi turns 10 The Globe and Mail is Canada’s best newspaper, MetaFilter is the world’s best public (or semi-public) group blog, and this is a nice little article on the site as it reache its 10-year mark. I’ve never bothered to pony up the $5 fee to be allowed to post or comment, but I’ve been a faithful lurker for most of its history. Congrats to Matt Haughey (pronounced like the second part of his screen name, matthowie) on a wonderfully successful run!