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Danny Westneat’s rave review with reservations and my pal Paul Andrews’s more scathing piece about Amazon’s new e-book device (the latter admittedly written without having seen the machine in person) both refer to the old, tired meme of “The Book.”
This meme, which I’ve bashed before, can be divided into two arguments; both of them, I believe, are specious.
First, Andrews reiterates that chestnut argument I’ve been hearing my entire adult life, that nobody reads anymore (particularly those vidiot kids guilty of not being From The Sixties); thus, The Book, and with it all capacity for rational intelligence, has become the refuge of a small literate elite just like in pre-Renaissance days.
Second, both Andrews and Westneat trot out the notion that there’s something sacred about The Book, something that will never, can never, be equalled by any electronic device imaginable; and even if it could, hardcore “people of the book” (especially the older male ones) are, by nature, proud Luddites, who’d rather be living in some imagined pre-20th-century pastoral Eden.
Andrews cites a recent National Endowment for the Arts study claiming that “reading for pleasure” among adults has dropped bigtime since the mid-’90s. Actually, all “legacy media” have dropped bigtime in popularity, from broadcast TV/radio to newspapers and magazines to movies in theaters. The culprits: DVDs, video/computer games, them danged Interwebs, and more active leisure pursuits such as gyms.
And if book buyers really were such technophobes, Amazon wouldn’t have made its first market niche from them.
Folks “read for pleasure” on screens all the time these days. You’re probably doing so right now.
The catch is that Internet-based reading has, to date, emphasized short-form content, such as that featured in this splendiferous web-column thingy.
The trick has been to devise an environment that facilitates/encourages long-form reading; i.e. single book-length texts.
That’s what all the developers of specialized e-book reader machines have strived for this past decade or so. From what I’ve read about Kindle (I haven’t seen one in person either), they’re still not there yet.
But that doesn’t mean it’ll never happen.
I can foresee something a little bigger than the iPhone or a little smaller than a Tablet PC, running open source software or at least non-encrypted file formats, that’s pleasant enough on the eyes for extended reading times, and which enables the total immersive feel of burying oneself in a good tale.
Further updates still: According to the SeaTimes’s Brier Dudley, Amazon didn’t develop the Kindle hardware here but in Silicon Valley. And Amazon indeed ignored the Seattle media at Kindle’s launch, not even inviting anybody from here to its big debut presentation in NYC.
…many things. Not among them are cutesy-poo “dignified” new neighborhood names.
Unless, of course, we do it properly.
Herewith, some suggested new monikers for some micro-sections of our too-fair city:
…Seattle Times “expose” piece on Sunday? The one blasting certain local Democratic politicians for approving costly budget earmarks benefitting a big campaign contributor?
Well, prog-blog star Matt Stoller has his own take on the topic.
Stoller’s opinion on these favors ties into his opinion about Rep. Brian Baird, one of the three lawmakers cited in the Times story. (The others are Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Norm Dicks.)
Stoller lists Baird as a “Bush Dog Democrat,” one of several Congresspeople who regularly vote with the right wing on key issues at key moments. Stoller would like more progressive Dems to run against these Congresspeople at the next primary season.
Stoller looks at Baird’s work to force the Navy to buy an unneeded $4 million boat from a local builder as part of a larger “nexus between Bush Dogs and corrupt practices.”
A Seattle Times Sunday editorial rejected the Roads and Transit ballot measure, following its Friday “expose” of Sound Transit light-rail construction costs.
Both pieces were built upon faulty reasoning.
About the supposed revelation of cost overruns, those “wasted” $5 million or so were out of a budget approximately a thousand times that high. Of course construction projects that drag on a decade or more are going to rise in price, especially during Seattle’s condo-mania when everything from concrete to cranes has been in overheated demand. The article failed to mention that if the original Sound Transit scheme had been approved in 1995, let alone the Forward Thrust transit scheme in 1968, we’d have gotten many more miles of light rail at a lower total cost.
And about the editorial’s assertion that we don’t need no new-fangled pubic transportation, that all we need to get around better is more and bigger highways?
The next day, the Monday Times’s big headline gave the startling news that people in Puget Sound country are driving less these days and taking public transportation more. The region’s vehicle population is still growing, but at a third its ’80s rate. And Sound Transit’s ridership has trebled since 2000. And that’s without light rail. Might the Times editorial board be persuaded to change its mind and acknowledge the value of adding more transit? Naaah…
AWAKENING FROM THE DREAM(LINER): Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner will now be at least six months late to its maiden flight.
Boeing says it’s due to multiple snags in the plane’s global outsourced production system.
So much for author Thomas Friedman’s claims about the world (of global commerce) being flat, Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat concludes.
Still, don’t expect Boeing to go back to making more pieces of its products itself. Global deals, political tradeoffs to get state-owned foreign airlines to buy the finished planes, you know…
FALLING DOWN: Shortly after the start of Sunday night’s Seattle Seahawks-New Orleans Saints football game at Qwest Field, NBC’s skycam mechanism fell from its high wires onto the field below.
The mishap occurred during a called time out. Nobody was on the playing field when the skycam suddenly became a groundcam.
Once play resumed, about ten minutes later, the Seahawks did all the crashing. The unsung Saints, in their first victory of the season, trammeled the hapless Hawks in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as its 28-17 final score. It was the Hawks’ second nationally-televised collapse in as many weeks.
THINKING GLOBALLY, PICKETING LOCALLY: The P-I Monday headline: “Stripped-down student protesters rush Macy’s aisles.”
The reality: Less flamboyant, more serious, more global.
Six female college students simply walked into the ladies’ room at the downtown Seattle store formerly known as The Bon Marche. They emerged clad in odd, but street-legal, garments assembled from black plastic trash bags. After 15 minutes on the premises, the six left to join 12 other female and male picketers outside.
The protesters’ slogan: “I’d rather wear trash bags than Macy’s sweatshop clothing.”
The protesters’ message: A statement of solidarity with unionized textile workers in Guatemala, who have been locked out by factory management. The factories in question, Cimatextiles and Choishin, make clothes for such U.S. brands as Talbot’s and Liz Claiborne.
DISSED FOR LISTENING TO DISSERS: Gov. Christine Gregoire’s been traveling the state, patiently listening to citizen gripes at town meetings. Republican Party operatives blast the meetings as a big political stunt.
Let’s figure this one out: When the gov, as part of her regular governing duty, hears the voice of the people, that’s “political.” But when, say, undeclared un-candidate Dino Rossi travels the byways to make himself heard, that’s just public service?
Attended the Washington News Council’s panel discussion at the downtown library Monday evening, entitled “Today’s News: A ‘Webolution’ in Progress.”
The six panelists came from different corners of journalism/commentary (Cory Bergman of KING-TV, Robert Hernandez of the Seattle Times, Josh Feit of the Stranger, Alex Johnson of MSNBC, Chuck Taylor of Crosscut, and Joan “McJoan” McCarter from Daily Kos). The moderator, Merrill Brown, used to work for MSNBC and was now with a Vancouver-based “citizen journalism” site, NowPublic.
But all seven of them are nowadays competing for the hearts, minds, and eyeballs of you, the online reader.
As one who’s seen this medium (or, as one panelist called it, a “distribution vehicle” that can carry umpteen different types of media) grow, I must confess I didn’t learn much I didn’t already know, and didn’t hear many arguments I hadn’t already heard. Buzzwords included: “Aggregation” (i.e., links to stories on other sites), “user generated content” (i.e., unpaid bloggers and videographers), “the end of the news cycle” (i.e., posting new content all the time), the supposed last days of print newspapers (someone suggested that some papers might not last another decade; I say we’re more likely to see some suburban and JOA papers fade out, but local monopoly papers in major markets would decline far more slowly).
The one real disagreement came when an audience member asked how these different organizations would reach out to under-40 readers. The Times guy mentioned recruiting teen volunteer bloggers from the Vera Project to cover rock shows at Bumbershoot. Crosscut’s Taylor, being the ever-dutiful David Brewster acolyte, scoffed at the very idea of needing anything to do with them pesky kids. The Stranger’s Feit gave the loveably cocky reply that his outfit already owns the advertiser-beloved young demographic; it’s built into everything they do. MSNBC.com’s Johnson had the best answer: He’s got a genuine 26-year-old single woman running the afternoon editor’s desk.
You’ll be able to view the whole thing on the state-owned cable channel TVW sometime in the coming weeks.
…may still tout the notion that our local real estate biz isn’t crashing at all, not really, at least not like some other places.
That rosy perspective hasn’t stopped Washington Mutual’s CEO from warning the national housing market could be heading for a “near-perfect storm.”
I used to say that upscale, whitebread Seattle’s favorite “minority groups” were (1) upscale white women, (2) upscale white gays, and (3) dead black musicians.
When I said that, I’d forgotten about a fourth ethnic fave–the mythical Native American Symbol-Person.
Nearly every Seattle Caucasian loves this fantasy figure, in one pose or another.
Athletes and corporate-motivation fans love the Warrior.
Stoners and ex-stoners love the Wise Philosopher attuned with the Earth.
New Agers love the Healing Shaman.
Art collectors and interior decorators love the Anonymous Artisan. (I once met a young white sculptor who griped that no local tribe would let him buy his way into membership.)
All these groups tend to be somewhat less fond of actual, living, flesh-n’-blood indigenous men and women; particularly those who fail to live up to the symbols.
All this is a prelude to a plug for Native Seattle, a new UW Press book by UBC historian Coll Thrush.
Mary Ann Gwinn’s Seattle Times review covers Thrush’s basic plot points well. To summarize: Amerindians weren’t just icons and muses. They were real people. And they still are. And they’ve remained a vital part of the city’s life, whether whitey’s aware of this or not.
Native Seattle is an important book, despite its shortcomings. Thrush has a stilting, academic writing style; he repeats the same arguments over and over. He admits to gaps in his research, particularly in finding actual living native folk willing to talk with him. And in the introduction, he audaciously compares his own “outsider” existence as a gay man with that of the First Peoples. (In real life, there’s no comparison. Trust me on this.)
In one sense, Thrush also stereotypes the local native people, as Tragic Colonial Victims whose story requires a Brave White Liberal to tell it.
But if Thrush fails to fully grasp the human side of his tale, the research-wonk side still fascinates.
He vividly depicts the seasonal camps and full-time settlements in and near the present-day city. He’s particularly fond of discussing the topography of these places, before Seattle’s great regrades, landfills, canals, and drainage projects changed it all.
And he rightfully notes that natives didn’t just “go away,” peacably or otherwise. They were integrated (sort of) into the urban economy from the start, as mill workers, cannery workers, sailors, cooks, maids, hookers/mistresses, etc.
Even as the reservation system developed, local Amerindians continued to live and work here, full-time or seasonally, through all of Seattle’s 156-year history.
They intermarried with whites and Filipinos. They came here from outlying tribal communities. They worked for Boeing, for construction companies, and for fishing fleets.
And they’re still some of us. Not ghosts, not apparitions, but actual humans, who live and die and think and feel and love and try to muddle through somehow.
David Postman informs us that Seattle Times reports vocally cheered when Karl Rove’s resignation was announced on a newsroom TV.
Postman, defending traditional media “objectivity,” said they shouldn’t have done that.
Dan Savage replied that the departure of Bush’s favorite manipulative operative was something “worth cheering for.” Savage claims, “Maybe the reporters cheered because they, of all people, are in the best position to recognize Rove’s departure as a positive development for the nation—and for the ideal that all journalists everywhere honor the most: the truth.”
I’ve no problem with professional reports having minds, nor with them speaking their minds, even if it’s just amongst themselves.
As for the “Mayberry Machiavelli” himself, Rove was the dirty trickster who always got away with it, and now he’s away with getting away from DC. It’s not as if he had anything left to do for Bush, having played such a big hand in every ruination, disgrace, and failure of Worst-Preznit-Ever. Rove’s first love has always been the next election cycle, for which he’ll surely work as a string-puller for the GOP or one candidate. Expect the anti-Hillary mud to start slinging, and soon.
Danny Westneat thinks we can outfox the Oklahomans who bought, and now overtly want to take away, the Sonics. Westneat thinks we can freeze ’em out with a megadose of “Seattle polite” and “Seattle process.”
I’m not so sure.
It’s true that the Okie cowboy-capitalists who bought the team are firebrands, and that the best way to fight fire is with water.
But frozen water, perhaps not.
As you know, I was never a sports-hating hippie. I believe in bigtime sports as community institutions.
I want to keep the Sonics and Storm (no, not just the Storm).
Yet, the NBA’s business model is broken. Fewer TV viewers (the inevitable result of new home-leisure technologies) mean less money to pay overpriced diva superstars. Limited arena capacities (even in bigger arenas than ours) means ticket revenues have inherent caps, no matter how high teams raise prices. Team ownership has become a speculative hobby–a zillionaire buys a team, loses money on it, then sells it at a profit to some other zillionaire.
That’s who Clay Bennett and Co. are. They know they’re unlikely to turn an operating profit on the team, wherever it is. They want pro basketball in their town as means of boosting their town’s nightlife and tourism industries, in a place traditionally lacking in both. They’d only keep the teams here if we paid them such ridiculous amounts of corporate welfare that they just couldn’t say no.
Like ex-Mariners owner George Argyros and ex-Seahawks owner Ken Behring, Bennett and his cohorts are parasitical figures who need to be expunged from the local and national sports scenes.
How?
If we all boycott the teams, Bennett will just claim we don’t deserve ’em.
If our socio-economic upper crust shuns the owners, they won’t mind; they never intended to make any friends here.
Nope. We gotta do to Bennett’s crowd what we did to Argyros and Behring–push back with legal threats and procedural stalls, until a new local ownership group can be formed.
…Marlow Harris n’ Jo David have a nice, pretty puff piece about ’em in Sunday’s Seattle Times.
Meanwhile, yr. ob’d’n’t Web-ster’s continued the crowd-control detail at the orthodontists’ convention. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do usherin’ duty at a Philips-Sonicare sponsored free concert at Benaroya Hall, starring the ultimate dentist’s-office musician.
…playoffs begin with Seattle fans once again relegated to spectator status, Danny Westneat suggests a simple, elegant solution. If the Sonics/Storm owners put up as much money as they would have put up for a new suburban arena, let’s get the state and/or county to front the remainder of what it’d take to fix up KeyArena (hey–remember that joint?) with a bigger food court and a few more tiers of seating. The teams not only stay in Seattle, they stay in Seattle. Everybody’s happy except the sports-hating hippies (and the owners, if they were really only looking for an excuse to move the franchise).
…that couldn’t be saved has been saved. In a stunning victory for the Hearst Corp. and print-media-diversity lovers, the P-I and the Seattle Times have settled, suddenly ending four years of litigation over the papers’ joint operating agreement.
Apparently, the lightly-substantiated “expose” of Times anti-P-I business practices posted on the first day of Crosscut.com may have been at least somewhat accurate. The terms of the settlement seem to imply that the Times feared losing big when the dispute reached binding arbitration, which would have begun this week.
Under the terms, the Times promises to beef up P-I promotion, and to treat the P-I equally in production/printing/delivery infrastructure. Hearst gives up a JOA provision that would allow it to a share of Times profits if the P-I closes.
The new pact runs for the next nine years. By that time, online news-consumption might become so dominant that the manufacturing and shipping of printed newspapers won’t matter.
