…big business and its wholly-owned politicians have so thoroughly and deliberately disassembled America’s social and economic infrastructure that we’re not a “superpower” anymore. That might actually be a positive thing. Let Time founder Henry Luce’s “American Century” pass into history, along with the “We’re Number One” chants, those expensive and bloody crusades on behalf of “democracy” (i.e., oil), the trashing of everything noble and hopeful about the human species in the name of shareholder value, and the glut of special-effects-leaden sequel movies in the world’s cinemas. Let’s go back to being one country among many.

…the media industry is, or perhaps ought to be, “laying the newspaper gently down to die.”

Rosen cites long-term circulation declines (especially among the younger demographic slices) and conglomerates beholden to The Almighty Stock Price at the expense of all other principles of careful management. He sees an industry heading steadily into a “death spiral” of cost-cutting and shrinkage, an industry still able but not yet willing to fully invest in transitioning itself to the Internet age.

So why am I still trying to make a go of the newsprint racket?

Perhaps because I believe there’s still value in the ol’ beast. It’s a tactile experience, a verbal/visual showbiz of information and juxtaposition. Sure, the old monopoly-daily business model, in which every household every morning gets a big package of supermarket and department-store ads interspersed with moderate-conservative editorials and celebrity gossip items, is an antiquated relic. But the newspaper itself isn’t just a business, and it isn’t just a news medium either. It’s an art form. A form capable of endless variation and renewal.

My particular current newsprint product, the Belltown Messenger, isn’t yet my ideal expression of this art form. But I hope to get closer to that with every issue.

Let us now praise The Boondocks, the animated series.

Parts of the first two episodes have been too dark and disturbing for even an ol’ hardboiled viewer like me to watch as light humor. But it’s expertly written and animated.

I’ve always said every work of satire contains, within its internal aesthetic, a view of the satirist’s ideal world. The internal aesthetic of Boondocks is one of solid storytelling, fine draftsmanship, attention to detail, and a careful sense of beauty. This is nothing like the cheap slapdash computer cutout worlds of most Adult Swim shows. Nor is it the jagged-edged aesthetic of the gangsta culture Boondocks’ young protagonists both sneer at and aspire to.

The aesthetic of Boondocks is the culture creator Aaron Macgruder obviously would like to see–a world of talented people who give a damn about what they put out into the world.

…is here, and, like we predicted, it’s a fiasco that has more in common with the dorkier industry-friendly gossip rags than with the great video bible of yore.

Ex-staffer Jeff Jarvis, noting that the mag’s also slashing its circulation “base rate” (the rate guaranteed to advertisers) from 9 million to 3 million (it peaked at 19 million in 1974), calls the relaunch “the incredible shrinking magazine.” He also calls it “the official end of the mass market,” with the print media’s one everything-for-everybody holdout reinventing itself as a niche product.

OK, I can deal with that. But if so, then the new TV Guide ought to be a niche product targeting people who really like watching TV, and want more info about what they’re watching than they can get in a standard gossip mag or a daily paper’s entertainment section. A TV Guide that’s scrapped its local listings had better make up for it by adding reviews, analysis, and background info.

The new TV Guide doesn’t do that, at least not yet. It presumes its typical reader to be a celebrity-obsessed, attention-span-challenged “vidiot.” It offers this mythical reader nearly 60 pages of breezy, show-bizzy material for which “fluff” would be too good a term, coupled with 18 pages of listing grids so nationalized and generalized as to be near-worthless. (There are no weekend daytime listings; weekday daytime and late-night grids are full of “various programming” and “local programming” disclaimers.)

With just a little effort, this could be improved. The articles could be at least as intelligent as they were in the magazine’s golden age under founder (and Nixon crony) Walter Annenberg. The listings could be brought back up to a useable level of completeness, and could be put out in Central and Mountain time-zone versions instead of just Eastern and Pacific. The local listings could be brought back in vestigial form, as an eight- to twelve-page newsprint insert stapled into the middle.

In short, it could be much more like TV Guide Ultimate Cable, a short-lived test-marketed revamp of the mag from the mid-’90s.

Or, let someone else do the job. The new TV Guide, in dumping its costly programming-database costs, has lowered the bar toward potential competition. Let’s get another TV mag out there, one that gives a damn about viewers/readers who give a damn.

As some of you know, I’m in the midst of writing a book to be sold exclusively online, Take Control of Digital TV. It’s intended for readers who know about computers but don’t know about television, particularly the new hi-def generation of TV gear. As part of the research, I’m currently watching the DVD Digital Video Essentials, a way-comprehensive guide to installing and adjusting medium- to high-end video gear. The HDTV and home-theater subculture is audiophile geekiness cubed (at least).

TV has become high-attention, long-attention-span material. A print mag that wants to keep calling itself the authority on the field ought to be becoming smarter, not dumber.

…at The Guardian now speculate whether the ’08 Presidential race could feature an all-female final heat.

…hardly written a thing for this site this week. But wait ’til you see what I have done, specifically the orangey October Belltown Messenger! It’s even more fab than the previous ish, complete with yummy color photos by yrs. truly. Distro starts today at over 100 dropoff spots.

…friendly blogger John Tabin’s posting free links to some of the NY Times op-ed columnists you’d otherwise have to pay for.

…the NY Times is now charging for online access to its op-ed columnists.

So instead, let’s link to other qualified, distinguished Bush-beraters; such as Robert Perry’s comparison of the White House press corps to “the enabling family of a drug addict insisting nothing is wrong.”

Or ex-Clinton aide Robert Reich’s claim that the Bush gang’s success at running a perrmanent-offense political machine is the very reason for its utter failure at running a government.

…so much popular back when they were “bigger, bolder, and more beautiful.”

…the SeaTimes and the Weekly run scare stories speculatin’ about what would happen if a huge natural disaster were to hit the PacNW, Forbes comes out with a list of the “safest places to live in the U.S.” Half of them are in our very own region, particularly Oregon’s Willamette Valley and eastern Washington’s Inland Empire. Oh well, there are plenty of other things we can get paranoid about….

We can only sympathize with the editors of the regional gay magazine 99, who stuck a fluffy li’l travel article about New Orleans (“At Play in the Big Easy”) into their current issue, then watched from afar as the awful stuff happened to the town while the issue was at the printer.

Tablet, a monthly freebie newsprint mag of local fashion, music, and whatnot, is calling it quits after five years.

I was a peripheral participant in the team that launched Tablet, and can now tell how it came to be. Everything in the beginning was by consensus vote, including an hour-long debate over what to call the publishing company (not the publication itself; that came later). Two early collective decisions would eventually lead to my leaving the mag. It was decided that (1) the mag would shamelessly suck up to every potential advertiser with uncritical reviews and hype-profile pieces, and (2) no writers would ever get paid. While I’m at least partly thankful this business plan proved ultimately insufficient to create a profitable publication, I’m still sad to see the mag go. We need all the voices we can get, ya know.

…the proverbial question: If a thousand right-wing radio hosts are in a forest and nobody hears them, do they make a sound (or just a lot of wind)?

The first issue of the new-look Belltown Messenger will be off to the printer on Monday. Editing the various texts and contriving the paper’s redesign has meant the first full work week I’ve had in more than a year, and it’s felt good (both the working and the end work). It’s still just a small monthly tab, but I hope to help it grow.

…in the once-hoppin’ town of Kansas City, our favorite TV critic Aaron Barnhart thinks Wired magazine’s “TV of Tomorrow” issue doesn’t go far enough. Barnhart foresees a TV that’s not just from NY/LA/SF anymore: “…It’s not a stretch to imagine high-quality drama and comedy shows someday originating from St. Paul or Cleveland or Dallas or … or … Kansas City.”