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There’s power in a name. Shakespeare said it, millions of moms agonize over it before/after the birth of their children and the rise of Paris Hilton/the Kardashian brood all confirm that names alone can be enough to overcome/ignore things like objective reality to create a more powerful illusion.

Just the name “the Dream Team” likely struck fear (and no small sense of awe) into its opponents. The name was apt:  the team that took the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona — and, by extension, the world — by storm included 12 of the best basketball players of their era, at least a half dozen of those ranking among the greatest of all time, banding together as one team, united by their love of and pride in their country.

A team that was so impossibly better than every other team, even in defeat their opponents would ask for autographs. Even during the game opposing players instructed their teammates on the bench to get a photograph (with a camera smuggled onto the bench) of Michael Jordan stealing the ball from them. And a team largely credited with boosting the game’s popularity internationally, directly attributable to the careers of such current stars as Manu Ginobili, Dirk Nowitzki and Pau Gasol, to name but a few.

This book, then, is …  not really their story.

It’s ostensibly their story. It’s supposed to be their story. But really it’s the story of one sports journalist (Jack McCallum) hanging around the players who would eventually become the Dream Team.

That’s not to say it’s entirely devoid of interesting tidbits about the Olympics and the mighty Adonises who trampled the competition en route to the basketball gold medal. There are some behind-the-scenes tidbits about the hotel room, about Sir Charles Barkley’s evening/early morning ramblings (surprisingly tamer than you’d expect), and even some good old-fashioned gossip/backstabbing perpetuated on Isaiah Thomas, widely acknowledged to have been left off the team at the sole whim of one Michael Jordan.

You can tell the book’s trajectory was off simply by tracing how much of it is devoted to the Dream Team playing basketball games. The answer, sadly, is “not much.” Of the book’s 36 chapters, we don’t even get to training camp until chapter 19, and we don’t get to Barcelona until well after chapter 28.

If you’re just wanting to pick this up because you’re a general fan of basketball (and because Twitter didn’t exist in 1992 to give us the execrable minutiae of celebrities’ lives) and want to learn more about the background of Dream Team stars (as well as what John Stockton eats at the restaurant his father used to co-own), this is probably worth picking up. But if you’re looking for the whole story of the Dream Team — the games, the locker room rivalries, the in-depth analysis of getting the world’s best to play together as a team — you may just want to go watch the incredible documentary from NBA.tv.

I imagine this tome at one time was simply supposed to a McCallum memoir before either he or his editor (who is quoted in the book as replying to McCallum’s supposed reluctance to put himself in the story with, “You can’t help it. You were along for the ride.”) decided that it would be a) easier marketing and b) more profitable to restructure it around the Dream Team in time for the 2012 Olympics.

There’s nothing wrong with choosing to do that, but the book’s title is “Dream Team,” not “Jack McCallum’s brief recollection of the Dream Team along with some interviews conducted 20-odd years later.”

That’s the trouble with names. They have the power to cow people over but, in the end, you have to be able to back them up.

It is at this point a truism that we do not daintily sip from the fountains of knowledge anymore, leisurely basking in the reflected glow of our intellectual or cultural betters whenever they so deign to create something and offer it up for the masses.

But bits and pieces gave way to bytes and kilobytes, to megabytes and gigabytes and high definition and on demand and watch anywhere and distance learning and all those other things that ostensibly simplify our lives, apparently by giving us an unending torrent of text, videos and infographics to process or (more likely) gloss over and ignore, at best parroting it back when prompted. We modern futurians fully grasp the firehouse of information and aim it directly down our throats, scarcely even pausing to breathe as we desperately try to keep abreast of everything.

This is not a diatribe against the information flood. It is impossible for anyone to come up with anything approaching a model for how everyone should process the enormity of information churned out even in small sections of our lives, be it the internet or television (if even you can separate things like that out by medium anymore). We all have different needs and desires, diametrically opposing likes, and even different constraints/necessities put upon us by our professions.

This is simply an anecdote. Take it as you will.

———–

I am a media omnivore. In addition to meaning I consume several different types of media (which, let’s face it, everyone does), it also means I am constantly consuming media, even at several points consuming different kinds of media simultaneously (imagine how pleasant it must be to eat near me at restaurants).

It’s a system that works for me, by and large because there are so many things that interest me and my personal threshold for boredom is set appallingly, a fact I can only partially blame on media-overload-induced ADD. There are a great number of television shows I’ve seen every episode of, more than one author or book series whose entire oeuvre I’ve read and nearly a dozen discographies currently sitting on my hard drive (while some have a few albums I prefer to willingly forget, only a few, such as KE$HA, are embarrassing in their entirety).

I value completeness in a story. It’s a good character trait when you seek out only quality (Joss Whedon, Lev Grossman, Christopher Moore, K.Flay), but it can be a hindrance when you encounter those things that reach the point of their freshness and moulder on (The West Wing, Studio 60 … well, pretty much Aaron Sorkin in general, but also Flogging Molly, Charlie Stross’ The Laundry Files, Daniel Suarez). The compulsion to finish, to know what happens, overwhelms whatever individual unit you happen to be consuming at the time. This leads to a backlog, as in addition to the crap I’m stuck on, there are new, amazing things coming out all the time that pique my interest.

Thus, in order to fit in even some of the things I desperately want to know/read/watch, I’m forced to binge on all of them. It’s not bad in and of itself. When Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom came out, I inhaled the 1000+ combined pages of both its predecessor The Corrections and itself in the span of about a week. I didn’t particularly enjoy The Corrections (or Freedom, for that matter), but I felt better able to appreciate and give an accurate accounting of the newer book as a reviewer having read both, especially in such close sequence.

In the past few months, though, real life has intruded itself into my media-consuming life (these are two separate lives that should be kept apart, as diffusing the barrier between them can lead to dire consequences).

As a result, when I went to see The Dark Knight Rises on Saturday, there were several factors in play. 1) I had not been to a movie theater in several months. 2) I had not even watched a movie at home all the way through in at least a month. 3) I didn’t see the movie until it had already been out for a week; by contrast, I saw The Dark Knight three times before it had been out two weeks, including twice in IMAX. I actually found myself trepidatious, as I had enjoyed TDK so much I feared there was no way TDKR could possibly compare.

Spare the suspense: It blew my socks off.

First of all, I think it was a good movie in general. But I’m not saying I saw a good movie, I saw a great movie. The thing that most threw me for a loop were the thought processes in my brain as I was enjoying it — there were several pivotal moments where I had two wildly diverging ideas simultaneously, and I kept along the paths I normally shun.

One big example was a classic Hollywood cliché — should the hero live or die at the end? I’m not giving anything away, but I actually found myself rooting for the cliché. It wasn’t that the movie set it up as a reverse-ironic-commentary or anything, I genuinely wanted the good guys to win for no other reason than to see the good guys win. Similarly, I found myself desperately hoping he would get the girl in the end, even though I fully well knew the entire thing hadn’t been given anywhere near enough time or space to develop organically or believably. I rooted for the contrivance. And I didn’t care a whit.

 I remember a similar experience when I went to see Brave, the only other movie I actually remember seeing in a theater since February. Based on the generic Disney trailers that had been shown, I fully went in expecting to hate the movie, to pillory it as the sign of the Disney gentrification of the otherwise otherworldly Pixar brand. At their core, Pixar movies were always about impossible situations — and now we’ve got a generic “girls can be heroes, too!” plot? I expected to get allTangled up in the inevitable romance (“I don’t need men except I’m going to do whatever I can to save MY man because I love him”), and generally be offended on behalf of feminists everywhere.

And yet I loved it.

Once again, in the back of my head I knew there were tropes and plot holes and all that, but on a much more basic level I just didn’t care. It’s the difference between experiencing the movie and analyzing the movie, and there’s no question which is more enjoyable.

This probably speaks somewhat to the generic box office/critical divide, but once you start expecting movies to do anything more than entertain you, you’re almost rooting for them to fail. While there’s nothing wrong with setting high expectations or wanting to be wowed by directors/writers/producers you know are capable of it, i feel like it somehow cheapens the overall experience.

And this extends beyond movies. When you consider the huge wealth of choices we have for movies, books, TV, journalism, music and everything else, it makes sense to take advantage of things like on-demand or Netflix or Spotify to constantly sample things, only sticking around for those things that truly speak to you. But I fear in the process, it’s far too easy to become inured to those things you actually like and wind up not liking anything because you feel like there’s something better out there. It’s not even just entertainment, really. Even when you’re out at a bar with some friends you’re probably texting some of your other friends or checking Facebook or Tweeting an update …

I should be clear: I’m not necessarily going to change my ways.

I’m still going to voraciously devour a good number of TV shows, books and movies. I’m still going to marathon through TV series when they’re brought to my attention, I’m still going to have two books going at once, and I’ll still probably do many things the way I currently do.

But when it comes to the stuff that you’re really going to like, the stuff that’s “important” — and that means everything from new Arrested Development episodes to hanging out with friends —  maybe it’s better, in the sense of deriving the most happiness, to slow down. Maybe it’s better to really enjoy a few things, rather than trying to kind of enjoy everything.

When I woke up this morning, the obvious story dominating my Google Reader was, of course, the shootings at the Dark Knight Rises premiere in Colorado.

After reading the very first story, I cringed a little inside. Working at a newspaper brings a different perspective to many different activities, none more so than major news events. That was a) a big event, b) one likely to go national, and c) covered by a paper also under the umbrella of the same company I am meant that I very likely would have to go into the guts of this story.

To me, that meant having to see the photos of grieving family members over and over, trying to determine which was most “newsworthy” — as if the grief of one was some how more important, or valuable, than another. It meant having to sort through the inevitable deluge of stories about the attacks, about the emergency response, about the response around the country (I almost guarantee you every single newspaper and most TV stations sent a reporter out to a movie theater to find out what moviegoers were thinking, praying for something deeper than, “Well, that sucks. I’mma go watch a movie.”), about whatever morsels could be found (or invented) about the shooter … and then the reactions to those very stories, literally ad nauseum.

(A very special “get a life” is reserved for the Colorado tea party, which took the time to be stupidly qualified in its outrage about an erroneous report mistakenly linking to the shooter to the group. It’s fine to be pissed off, but to be angry because ABC “made no effort to contact our organization” is stupid because the tea party claims to have no organizational structure so it’s nearly impossible to know whether he was affiliated; the tea party would have immediately disavowed the claim even if he was the group’s president (as would any group) based on the “no true Scotsman” fallacy; absolutely no one (save them) thinks it was done in anything other than simple error, so to call it “shameless and reprehensible” is a bit much.)

But what I would wade through is not what made me wince when I thought about what was coming. The primary problem with these types of tragedies (other than their very existence) is the kind of coverage the media gives them, which I think largely serves to do two things: Bring in pageviews/viewers/readers, and glorify the perpetrators.

1) Stop nationalizing stories

I don’t know where the impetus to hyper-nationalize stories comes from; the news media does it, yes, but so do politicians (both Obama and Romney put out statements that they were, like, super sad about the shooting and think that stuff like that is bad) and others in the national spotlight. Maybe it’s the delusional omnilocational intimacy of the internet, I don’t know. But just because something is really tragic does not necessarily mean it’s a national tragedy.

This is not to undercut the scope and scale of tragedies that occur, but to better understand who they actually impact.

Sept. 11 was a national tragedy. It was clearly an attack on a nationality basis, and therefore was an event that, though confined to the East Coast, had a lasting and influential national impact. Even people who weren’t there remember where they were when they heard about it; anyone who’s flown on a plane since then can see the vast, direct impact it had on their lives; anyone who pays taxes, anyone who’s served in the military … The list is virtually endless.

Virginia Tech, by contrast? HUGE national headlines. Weeks of stories. Comments from Obama. All three evening broadcast news anchors descended on the campus. Newspapers in countries around the world put the massacre on the front page.

Yes, 33 people died. Yes, the shootings were appalling. But international front pages? It seems a bit much. And it only gives more reason for mentally deranged individuals in the future to continue to perpetuate such acts. (More on this below.)

I have no problem mentioning that a shooting occurred. I have no problem running it as a main bar, with a photo or two, on the front page of the national news section, or dedicating 5 minutes to it on the evening news. But as there’s never enough actual information to justify going to round-the-clock coverage, we’re instead treated to talking heads spouting nonsense (great explanation from The Atlantic), which really isn’t good for anyone.

2) Stop focusing on the perpetrators

Every single shooting, bombing or other incident has happened for one reason: Those bastards were crazy.

I don’t understand why we go any deeper than this. Maybe it made a little bit of sense after Columbine, the first “big” school shooting, to go back and examine teen culture and figure out how such tragedies might be preventable in the future. But we obsess over every little detail. It’s not even about the rush to blame video games, or movies, or whatever the current pop-cultural demon is. It’s about the urge to dig into every possible aspect of this person’s life, trying to find THE THING that caused him or her (almost always him) to do it.

At what other point would you ask a crazy person why they committed a crazy act? Do you regularly traverse mental hospitals and give credence to the reasoning patients give as to why they build sculptures with their fecal matter? Or do you simply think, “that person needs serious help and we should definitely not give positive feedback to their delusions” and just avoid ice cream for a few weeks?

Undoubtedly there are lessons to be learned in every shooting: Take threats seriously, try to prevent bullying/ostracizing, those kinds of things. But on the whole, the (often postmortem) vetting that occurs serves only to give more airtime to/further spread whatever misguided message the person was attempting to disseminate. This was especially true when NBC aired that package of materials sent to them by the Virginia Tech shooter. Who the hell cares what misguided cause the person thought he was fighting for?

Think of it this way: What are the possible reactions of any given person if they know the killer’s motivations?

1) Not caring
2) Being against the mission
3) Being for the mission

Off the bat, there’s only a 33% chance of a positive (that is, being against whatever cause condones such acts) response regardless of the actual specifics of the mission. And even that’s probably not a very significant impact, given that any cause that would condone such actions is probably something the vast majority people were going to be against anyway. Unless this extended dwelling upon a killer’s motivations somehow allows to finally crack the code of what makes crazy crazy, there’s no actual reason to care/publicize/explore what made the killer tick aside from pure morbid curiosity. There’s a far better chance of negative consequences in the form of copycats or converts to an ignoble cause.

3) Slow down

I don’t know if I necessarily want to advocate the slow-news movement, but I think it’s pretty clear we’re completely out of control as a society in regard to how we consume information. We prize the immediacy of information, mocking those who actually try to verify information, then go right ahead and pillory those who focus on getting the information to you NOW.

This is more of a pie-in-the-sky dream, but I wish people could just step back and realize that news, though important in the larger scheme of things, doesn’t really affect them at all on a minute-to-minute basis. I thought along similar lines when CNN misreported the outcome of the Supreme Court health care case — yes, the case obviously will have lots of impact, but absolutely zero more than if they had waited 10 minutes or an hour to actually digest the opinion and realize what it said.

There was only really one example of reporting erroneous information in the interests of speed in this case, but there’s the larger issue of sitting back and deciding whether the story should be written and what should be covered based on where you are. Obviously the Denver Post should go all-out on trying to figure out what happened and provide that information to its readers. The rest of us, though, would likely do better to sit back and figure out how the story will actually impact anyone in our community — and, when theaters decide to restrict costumes and such from future Friday-night showings, report on how absurd and pathetically useless* such actions truly are.

Again, this one’s more of a fervent wish than anything, so I don’t really have any concrete suggestions here. To newsrooms, I would just say calm down and make sure you actually have time to report the whole story (and make sure the story’s worth reporting) before you go all cuckoo-bananas trying to be first to report it.

*This is a wonderful example of security theater, in that anyone who really wants to break into a theater and shoot people is going to be able do so whether they’re dressed as Batman or Thor or whomever. The costume restriction is just going to hurt the fans. 

This time, I still have the boxes from last time. They’ve been sitting in my hall closet ever since I unpacked them about 18 months ago. Every time I go to grab the vacuum or add another box because I bought something else expensive/large (the latter occurs more often than the former), I saw them there. Most were folded up, but they were still obviously in good, working order. Waiting.

I didn’t plan on using them again. As you might notice from reading posts that really aren’t that old, I didn’t move to New Mexico with the intention of then moving right back out again quick. I had planned on sticking around for awhile, getting the lay of the land (and other time-worn clichés).

Plans change.

I have received an offer for and accepted the position of Assistant News Editor at the York Daily Record in York, Pa. Apparently I love moving?

I’m thrilled beyond belief with the opportunity, though I’ll miss some of my current co-workers dearly. I’m not sure exactly how introspective I’m prepared to be in this post; I think I may need more time/distance in order to gain the proper perspective on my time in Farmington, N.M. Regardless, though, I cannot tell you how enthused I am about this new opportunity. Let’s focus on that, shall we?

For those who do not know, Digital First Media is the corporate parent that manages both the Journal Record Company and MediaNewsGroup, the latter of which is the company that owns both the Farmington and York papers. The eponymous managing directive for everyone under the DFM umbrella is a focus on digital products, while not cutting the throat of the print product prematurely. (*cough* New Orleans Times-Picayune *cough*)

This is what makes York so exciting, because they get it. I came up with a metaphor I found apt (and so good I keep repeating): Most places where I looked, being someone who knows how to crawl around the interwebs means you’re forced to pull everyone else in the right direction to get them going; In York, I’m not only going to be pushing from behind (because they’ve got such a good head-start), there are many areas where I’m going to be sprinting just to catch up. And I can’t wait.

The world’s greatest sitcom (bear with me), COMMUNITY, got renewed. And there was much rejoicing throughout the land.

COMMUNITY is a little bit like the Sacramento Kings of television: A program supported by a small, devoted fanbase that lives in constant terror of having it taken away if they don’t manage to “improve the numbers.” In COMMUNITY’s case, it meant the abysmally small number of Nielsen viewers it gets per week (on par with the rest of No. 4 network NBC’s Thursday “Must See Something Else” lineup, though the show does well among college students who’ve mostly eschewed television in favor of Hulu/Netflix) put it in constant threat of cancellation. In fact, many believe the only reason it survived to see a fourth season is simply because NBC had absolutely nothing else.

Then, the night after the epic three-episode finale (which you should watch right now), Sony decided to announce that the showrunner, whose voice really defines the show, is out. In favor of Moses Port and David Guarascio, who wrote for HAPPY ENDINGS. And there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.

The reaction has been, as you might expect, completely insane. Most of the fans are understandably furious, calling for boycotts and petitions and Evil Abed mustaches sent to Sony (who distributes COMMUNITY). Still others are Chicken Littling it, urging fans to wait until after they actually see the episodes before making a judgment.

From Splitsider:

Look, it sucks that Harmon’s gone, really really sucks, because his unique, occasionally insane, often genius vision is why we adore Community so much, but it’s not going to be a totally different show in season four. It’s likely there will be fewer bottle episodes and fake clip shows, but McHale, Jacobs, Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Donald Glover, Danny Pudi, Chevy Chase, and Jim Rash will still be around, and their ability to sell the scripts is one of Community’s greatest aspects.

Not exactly.

The new showrunners are going to have to make difficult decisions, especially in regards to how much of the show’s DNA they’re going to have to keep in order to placate the heavy fans. If these guys sit down, watch the whole thing and truly understand what COMMUNITY’s all about, it might be OK.

However, they also have to balance that with whatever the Sony suits told them in terms of broadening appeal; clearly, that’s at least part of the reason they even have jobs now, so it’s going to be a factor. My biggest concern is they think the story structures in and of themselves (fake clip show, bottle episode, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE homage) were the reason they were funny, rather than the pathos that accompanied them.

What happens when the first episode out of the gate isn’t up to the fans’ (at this point, impossibly high) standards? They start rooting around in the bag for COMMUNITY tropes, thinking the familiar will placate. BAM! Fake clip show scheduled for episode 3 or 4 (assuming there’s at least some time required for turnaround after the first one airs). BAM! Two or three direct parodies/homages of, say, BACK TO THE FUTURE or GREMLINS (involving Furbys, natch), because “the fans super loved THE GODFATHER chicken fingers” thing.

Of course, since they have to broaden the appeal, they also have to head into the sitcom stable and beat some dead horses. I’m not going to be surprised in the slightest if midway through season 4 we watch Britta and Troy hook up, Jeff and Annie hook up, and City College appear in almost every single episode as “the enemy” (complete with the Changmelion double agent) in an effort to streamline the “Us vs. Them” dichotomy that gives us clear protagonists and antagonists. Look for lots of Pierce-centric episodes (familiar face!) that have Chevy either severely reining in his dislikability or going full-on SH*T MY DAD SAYS — because both of those things have been done before, to the tune of CBS-like ratings.

In short, look for things to be less confusing, because that’s what “accessible” means. Unfortunately, “less confusing” also means “less complex,” which is the very antithesis of COMMUNITY. Expect to see Abed getting his, too, either through a horribly contrived reappearance of the Secret Service agent or a meet-cute with a “weird” (read: pixie-haired ethnic) girl who “just gets him.”

The problem with bringing in people from the outside is they don’t (appear) to understand what keeps those on the inside interested. And, given the new showrunners’ utter lack of a web presence and their quite laughable misunderstanding of geek culture (as evidenced by the US pilot of THE IT CROWD, which somehow managed to copy almost all the British dialogue and appeal to neither US nor UK senses of humor), these problems worry me more than the rest of their pedigree.

Abed with a non-digital girlfriend? Just shoot me.

Amazon is selling too many books too cheaply!” shouted the publishers. “People want to read ebooks when they’re priced cheaply!” Amazon shot back. “I’m torn as to whether I should be rooting for the people who are selling my books to Amazon or the company that sells millions of books to consumers,” wailed the authors. “Hey guys, you all should sign agreements that give you price control over books then set them to the level we’re telling you to, which’ll get you $3-5 more per book, on average,” Apple sent in an email (from its iPad, no doubt). ”Uh, I’m pretty sure you can’t do that,” observed the Justice Department (who was probably tracking the whole thing from MSN.com on Internet Explorer or some such nonsense).

As an avid reader of ebooks, I feel that my voice (and voices like mine) is the only one that has been entirely ignored throughout the whole Amazon/Big Six/Apple/Justice Department ordeal.

First, a few points: I buy lots of ebooks. I have purchased lots of ebooks in the past, and will likely continue to purchase more. When ebooks were only $9.99, I bought them almost without thinking. Whenever I go to Amazon now and see them for $12.99, $15.99 or even $17.99, I will only buy them if I absolutely have to read it now — and there are no $9.99 books that interest me.

Now, there are many valid (and some not-so-valid) viewpoints in this whole debate, somewhat humorously condensed and exaggerated above. I’ll let you take in their arguments in full on your own time. But there are a few of note that I want to point out.

First, a story from the New York Times today, which points out:

Not surprisingly, booksellers and publishers hated this price with the force of 10,000 suns because it made physical books sold for $25 or more seem outrageously overpriced.

Guess what, sports fans? A pbook sold for $25 seems outrageously overpriced regardless of how much ebooks are selling for. Even growing up, I always gravitated toward used books, which typically retailed for less than $10. When I bought a new book, it was usually a paperback (market price of around $14). The $25 price for hardbacks seemed to me to be a result of the physical presence of the book itself: It paid for the sustaining power of the hard cover, which theoretically “protects” your $25 investment.

That’s the only way I could even justify spending $14 on a paperback book, which theoretically was inferior and wouldn’t last as long. Thus, when I first started purchasing $9.99 ebooks, it seemed perfectly natural: I wasn’t paying for the physical printing of the book, so the cost difference should reflect that. And when it got raised to $12.99, it not only broke the psychic “under $10″ barrier, it also broke the pricing model implicit in book-buying — if the information itself was worth $13, and the paper a softcover books used to print cost only a dollar more, where the hell was the $10 hardcover markup coming from? Unless the spines of the books were literal spines torn out from some precious animal, the hardcover price seemed ludicrous.

In the same article, a paragraph starts with “But pull back a few thousand feet and take a broader look at the interests of consumers,” only to pull back and rehash the complaints of every publisher (big and small) against Amazon. I’m not saying the complaints are invalid, or something to be waved off. But they’re (at best) only tangentially related to readers, and definitely not their biggest concern.

It’s not just that the actual reader’s perspective is ignored. We’re also being assailed for daring to take a side at all in what apparently is not our fight.

John Scalzi, sci-fi author who also pens the excellent Whatever blog, wants everyone on the sidelines to know that none of the players is on your side:

Amazon is not on your side. Neither is Apple, or Barnes & Noble, or Google, or Penguin or Macmillan. These are all corporations, not sports teams, and with the exception of Macmillan, they are publicly owned. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize value. You are the means to that, not the end. The side these companies are on is their own side, and the side of their shareholders. This self-interest doesn’t make them evil. It makes them corporations.

He ends with this exhortation: “In other words, ditch the simplistic binary framing. You’re not watching a sporting event, with simple rules and clear-cut goals.”

But the problem with this argument is the metaphor itself: I don’t think anyone’s arguing that they’re on the same team as Amazon, or the publishers (with the possible exception of the authors). Reducing the argument to a binary sporting event means you’re a fan of one of those teams, which I think is entirely apt.

Personally, I’m on Team Amazon (used in the “Twilight” sense, not “I’m a member of the Patriots in the same way Tom Brady is a member of the Patriots”). I’m aware that Amazon is a corporation whose sole fiduciary responsibility is to the shareholders. I’m fully aware that Amazon is trying to lock me in to its walled garden of content, with the Amazon Kindle (and assorted apps) as the key.

I’m OK with that.

Thus far, and likely due to the fact that they’re the only entity in this fight who directly interacts with consumers, Amazon’s moves are the ones that seem aimed at making my experience better. They’re the ones arguing for lower pricing, the ability to use the content on all my Amazon apps (which includes my Android phone, iPod Touch, iPad, PC, Mac, Web reader and Kindle) and a larger availability of ebooks. Given all that, why shouldn’t I be waving my Amazon pennant around?

I’m not saying this is the best long-term solution for publishers to continue making their profit margins, or for authors to get the best deal or even for the consumer, should Amazon decide to unilaterally raise prices. There is a dizzying array of variables involved in each of those arguments for both sides, and anyone who claims doing A is inevitably going to bring about X is playing with algebra where differential calculus is required.

To extend (and torture) the sports metaphor, I don’t particularly care what the front office is doing so long as the team on the field is winning. And since most of the players save for Amazon are treating the fans with indifference, at best, it’s not hard to see why I’m rooting for the home team. If any of the other teams want to engage some fan interest, they might want to remember that, after all, we’re why they exist in the first place.

You know how sometimes, when you get a new newspaper reporting gig, you think you’re so amazing you put together a fake press release (including the official letterhead of your new company) that includes quotes from your (obviously) confidential hiring letter and then post it to your blog?

Khristopher Brooks, a recent(?) graduate of the NYU j-school, clearly was psyched about landing a new gig with the News Journal Media Group. So psyched he faked a press release (a la the NBA, according to him) and posted it to his blog.

Then he got fired for it.

According to him (via Romenesko), he was fired for “improper use of the newspaper’s logo on his personal sites, and for using executive editor David Ledford’s hiring-letter quotes in his press release.”

There are two points I want to make on the meat of the argument: 1) It seems like Brooks could have not used the official logo and quotes, and 2) The News Journal could have solved the whole conundrum by simply asking him to take it down.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. It’s some other quotes he gave to Romenesko:

“I’m a really big NBA fan,” journalist Khristopher J. Brooks tells me, “and whenever an NBA team acquires a new player there’s always a press release announcing it. I’d look at those releases and think, ‘The organization is really proud” of the new hire. Brooks notes that newspapers don’t announce new employees unless they’re stars, but “what’s keeping me from doing it?” …

“I didn’t do it to showboat,” he says. “I did it to tell family, friends and ex-co-workers about the next step in my career.”

Notice what he did there? That’s right, he said two diametrically opposing things. When you begin your explanation talking about how you were inspired to write a (let’s face it, totally unnecessary) fake press release because of how NBA teams seem proud of their acquisitions, you can’t then turn around and say it wasn’t about showboating — which, after all, is nothing more than an exuberant excess of pride.

This actually provides an example of two separate (but, I think, related) problems many in the 20something age cohort have: An over-brimming self-confidence and an appalling, severe lack of personal responsibility.

It’s interesting this young journalist thinks his acquisition, which probably is somewhere in the mid-five-figures range, salary-wise, and impactful to somewhere around 100,000-300,000 people (who might read his stories, though this figure could be wildly overstated, as the paper has a 100,000 daily circ and I highly doubt every reader is going to read every one of his stories and then care about them) is somehow equivalent to an organization that has, at minimum, millions of fans acquiring the talents of a player who’s being paid, at minimum, more than $450,000 a year.

I realize the young people like the Twitter and the Internet is the ultimate democratizing force, but are the young so deluded as to think that there is no difference between two people, regardless of reality’s cruel determination? Because that’s really what his actual reasoning comes down to: Other people do it, so why shouldn’t I?

Of course, that’s not what he says/thinks his reasoning is. He’s just trying to get the word out, you know? He’s just telling his “friends, family and ex-co-workers about the next step in my career.”

And the only way you can let people know about big changes in your life is via fake press release, right? That’s how most people do baby announcements, I think. “The Mortensens would like to announce a new addition to the family unit. Though they expect the child to be a burden at first, it’s hoped that as he matures, learns and grows he will eventually grow up to be a functioning, contributing member of society. This is the second time the Mortensens have attempted to expand the team, and they hope they have learned from the mistakes of their first acquisition, Robby, who they unfortunately had to part ways with after the infamous spaghetti incident just four years into his original contract.”

It’s not like he could have called those closest to him (more personal), sent out an email to friends/acquaintances (making sure they know), or even just written a straight blog post on the blog he posted the release to (common sense).

Nope. Fake press release.

We all know he was bragging. We all know he committed the shameful sin of pride. So why can’t he just come out and say it? Probably for the very same reason he made the stupid thing in the first place: A shockingly vast array of younger adults simply don’t have the self-awareness to function properly. You can tack on an “especially in the Internet era” if you must, but I feel it’s both cause and symptom.

Because we’ve grown up in an era where we’re encouraged to share everything, because self-esteem was considered more important than education and because the Internet allowed everyone to post their every thought and whim and have it appear next/equal to (if demonstrably less well-designed than) The New York Times, there was simply no gatekeeper, no arbiter who stood around to let everyone know they’re not the best, they’re not special and no one else is watching them — yet.

“Social networking platforms have a leveling effect and tend to make hierarchies disappear,” Monnier says. “They are only one link away from that celebrity.” — USA Today

I’m aware there’s no small amount of irony in writing this on a blog post, but the above paragraphs (or diatribes) are not arguing that blogs or the Internet or Twitter shouldn’t exist, or that you shouldn’t email or Tweet or poke (does anyone poke anymore? Does it even exist as a function?) celebrities. You’re more than welcome to try all those things, to rap on YouTube in hopes of being discovered, or to rant incessantly on your blog about inside-baseball journalism stories. There’s nothing wrong with a (heavy emphasis) healthy dose of self-expression or celebrity fawning; All of these things have been done for years, it’s just the medium and method that have changed.

The difference is that when girls screamed and threw their underwear on stage on rock concerts, they didn’t think they were making a personal connection. The form letters Ringo Starr sent to his fans didn’t really encourage those fans to think they were creating some sort of two-way relationship. Even if the medium wasn’t television or radio, the dynamic of fame was broadcast (one to many, largely one-way), not interactive.

And while Slash may tweet his displeasure about being nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (because he’s Slash) and you can tweet back about what a twit he’s being, chances are Slash is never going to see your tweet. Unfortunately, too many people don’t get this. They think that by putting their thoughts into the world people will be interested in them, rather than self-selecting interesting things to put out there. (How else do you explain the infamous pooping tweets? [mildly SFW, no pictures])

More than emotional or empathy education, more than being able to pass a test, more than being able to create a 15-minute movie about a basketball-playing leprechaun*, what we need to teach kids/young adults is the ability to filter and judge information. Whether you’re trying to determine the veracity of an external source or simply trying to figure out if the picture of your cat wearing berets made of Cheerios is worth sharing, the ability to determine what information is important and appropriate for which venue is a vitally important skill, and one sorely lacking.

*This was my actual senior project, a graduation requirement.

I want to get behind the Occupy movement. I want to believe that from the ashes of the most disaffected, distant and distracted generation can rise the flame of opposition, of discontent with the status quo and (most importantly) a willingness to change it. I want to see a peaceful (for God’s and our own sake, let it be peaceful. This is not the group with a stockpile of ammo and firepower at a bunker out in the woods) revolution that wants to hit home the idea that poor is an economic label, not a moral judgment, and one that no person should have to wear.

I want very badly for these things to be true, but unfortunately the latter two are connected to the first only tangentially. This is the problem.

The first rule of hostage-taking is that you must have demands. It doesn’t really matter who the hostages are, what group you represent or even what those demands are. It’s simple common sense — I’m not going to stop doing/release/let live X persons until you perform Y action. You’re not going to leave the lunch counter until people of every color are served. You’re not going to let the American servicemen go until the U.S. releases some ridiculous number of terrorists. You’re not going to leave the radio station unless you get airplay, nude photos of Bea Arthur and a helmet full of cottage cheese.

With the Occupy “protests*,” the hostages can be considered both the Occupiers as well whatever plot of land they choose to squat in, be it a park near Wall Street or a Red Robin. The problem is, outside a very vague notion of “it’s unfair that rich people get richer while the rest of us suffer during a recession” — which, for the record, is a sentiment I completely agree with — the people at these camps aren’t actually protesting anything. They’re not demanding anything. They just want things different. Sure. I agree. How?

Personally, I find it mildly offensive when I receive more than five emails over the weekend imploring me to “unite” with the 99 percent and “help supply the protesters against the freezing cold.” Surely these people, who have the spare time on their hands to do nothing but stand around, wave signs and beat drums,** also possess winter clothing. At what point does it stop being a protest camp and start being a homeless shelter? Not that I have anything against starting public, donation-funded homeless shelters in major cities with a lot of public attention per se, but a) most of the people in the camp have homes, and b) don’t call it a damn protest camp if that’s what you’re doing.

The purposelessness problem looms ever larger now with the latest events from the camps. Several deaths have occurred, which gives law enforcement prima facie evidence to shut down the camps as a matter of public safety. Again, I find myself wanting to link arms with the protesters, demanding that they have a right to free assembly and that you can’t judge an entire movement by its lunatic fringes.***

The problem is that, as a matter of both statistics and basic sociology, the camps are unsafe. Gathering a group of people in a confined area with limited (and dwindling) resources increases the likelihood that crime will occur. Even just going by the law of averages, the fact that a given place has more people in it than usual means the number of accidents and incidents will go up. It’s inevitable. So the argument becomes “keep the protest camps open because we want to protest!” versus “shut down the camps because people will be hurt.” Kind of a no-brainer.

If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that you need to be able to remember a list of three things an endgame. A plan of withdrawal, a list of demands; whatever you call it, you have to be able to figure out what winning means to you, and when that is accomplished. I’m suspicious of groups that don’t publicly state goals, as you can never tell if they’ve ever actually done anything or not.

In order to support the Occupy movement, I need to know what it supports, what it wants. They need to be able to complete the phrase, “We will Unoccupy the camps when _______.” Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of people screaming that they don’t like where the country’s headed.

And sorry, but we’ve got enough of that as it is.

*This kind of feeds back into the whole idea, but you can’t protest nothing.
** Bringing back the drum circle was possibly even dumber than Tea Partiers calling themselves “teabaggers” unironically.
*** Semantically, is it even possible to have a “fringe” in the absence of a definition of the “center?”

Poems for our “bureau” reporter in Santa Fe, whose stories I’m always left waiting for when I’m laying out:

Sitting at my desk
wondering if you’re still alive
unmoved either way.

Four stories at noon
two out, two new by midday;
none ever find me.

He’s slaving away
Interviewing, contacting;
AP filed at 5.

A blank page, staring
waiting to be filled with news …
Angry Birds high score!

I have to interact with people.

To wit:

Our HERO is biking to work, since he lives like six blocks away and gas is well north of $3 in New Mexico. After a minutes-long coast (it’s mostly downhill), he arrives at work and begins to lock up his bike. FRIGHTENING BLOND WOMAN, who was lurking behind the building, comes around the corner talking loudly on her cell phone.

FBW: I don’t know, I don’t have the money.

Our HERO is doing his best not to listen, as it doesn’t sound like a fun conversation to be dropping eaves on. Due to the volume the conversation is conducted at, however, he has no choice.

FBW: I don’t have the money to file papers! If I have to go see a lawyer, I’m gonna go bankrupt.

At this point, our HERO realizes he’s overhearing a discussion about divorce. Though the woman is glib, it’s difficult to tell if she’s joking or not. Her face is strained, even when smiling, giving it an almost movie-like quality –  as if, at any moment, you’d expect her to pitch forward with an arrow sticking out of the back of her head.

FBW: Well if you’re just going to die, I won’t have to worry about it. I’ll just be a widow, no problem.

Our HERO finally manages to work the lock, clicks it into place, and fairly runs into the building.

See, you can give me the environmental, physical and financial benefits of the bike versus the car all you want, but at least when I’m in my car I don’t have to deal with the crazy-pantsosity* of others. It’s not like I’m deficient in that category myself.

* The clinical term.