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…and then instantly presuming them to be bad or criminal, based on their superficial appearance, is a major fault among today’s U.S. populace—or so says the heir to the original reality TV franchise.
…the latest mail-in-ballot results from the big mayoral three-way (alas, this is the first election since 11/07 in which I haven’t worked on King County’s tabulation squad), we get the disturbing news that Seattle’s municipal tax base has shrunk to its 1987 level.
I was around here in those pre-townhome, pre-Internet, pre-Stranger, pre-Sub Pop days. Seattle wasn’t necessarily a “sleepier” place back then, but was certainly a less frenetic place. Over-the-top displays of wealth were as frowned upon in that Seattle as, say, unseparated trash is in this Seattle. It was still, in many ways, an industrial/seaport city—even as downtown office towers went up, new fortunes were being made in something called “software,” and Starbucks opened its first out-of-state store.
And there were fewer people living in Seattle then. Between post-integration “white flight” and the lingering effects of two recessions, families with kids had already become scarcer in a city predicated upon “the single family home.”
The economy we need is neither the one we had then (too Boeing-dependent), the one we had last year (too speculation-dependent), nor the one we have now (stuck in multiple ruts).
Update: Today’s tabulation results are in, and Wednesday’s trend continues. Mallahan narrowly leads McGinn, while incumbent Greg Nickels drifts further back. We might not have a definitive count for a couple more days.
…build the world’s greatest cars, and Boeing’s new airplane production model’s a work in (halting) progress, but we do know how to create the greatest soft drink vending machine the world has ever known!
…the spectacular new-look MISCmedia.com site up yet. But here’s a preview of the logo I’m thinking of using. Any opinions?
I really wanted to like The Progressive Revolution, ex-Clinton aide Michael Lux’s breezy review of liberal thought and action from the Revolutionary War days to today.
Or rather, to some time early last autumn.
That’s the problem. For reasons known only to publisher John Wiley & Sons, Lux’s book had an official publication date of Jan. 17, 2009. As Lux admits toward the book’s end, “I’m writing these words without knowing the outcome of the 2008 election, and you are reading this with the knowledge of how it came out.”
If you’re putting out a bigtime hardcover treatise about American progressivism, and you leave out that movement’s most recent history-changing event, you’ve got a product that’s obsolete even before it’s for sale. Throughout, Lux refers to George W. Bush’s administration in the present tense, and wonders out loud when the lefties will ever regain any influence in the federal sphere.
The bulk of Lux’s work, the historical stuff, is fine. It’s a quick and easy read, albeit incomplete. It reassures readers who suffered through all the Bush-era nonsense that, yes, progs really are Americans—indeed, that “the best in America” is progressives’ doing. Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson, the long drives for race and gender equality, the labor movement, the environmental movement—whenever and wherever Americans got anything right, the progressives got it done and the conservatives fought like hell to stop it.
Had The Progressive Revolution come out at the start of the 2008 Presidential season, it might have been a building block toward an Obama/netroots philosophy of pride in progress. As for now, maybe Lux will bring it up to date for a paperback edition.
Strangely enough, Wiley did bother to include a copyright-page “Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty” more appropriate for the company’s computer books:
“While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.”
USA Today has launched, and is charging money for, a full-scale “e-Edition.” It’s a fully zoomable, clickable, searchable reproduction of the print paper. It adds direct links to online videos, computer-solvable puzzles, and text-to-speech functions.
My opinion: It’s a step toward the future of online news. But it’s held back by its fidelity to the print paper’s layout. The digital news product that will make it will be one that’s fully made from the ground up for on-screen reading.
This morning brings another skinny 26-page SeaTimes, with only eight major staff-written news stories. Nevertheless, a laudatory NY Times piece relays that the SeaTimes is now claims to be “operating in the black,” though the Blethens are quiet about the financial metrics they’re using to make this claim.
The NYT story also notes the SeaTimes circulation has risen from 200,000 to 260,000, having kept most of the P-I subscriptions it had inherited in March.
However, that’s still a drop from the former combined circulation of the SeaTimes-dominated Joint Operating Agreement, which had been approximately 311,000 at the print P-I‘s demise.
Still, the SeaTimes’ current readership is close to its ’90s, pre-Internet peak.
Just don’t expect the paper to restore its newsroom staff size to ’90s levels. Not with the ad market still so shaky.
…will perform another Vanishing Seattle book signing, for those who missed the previous two. It’s Saturday, 1-3 p.m., at the Aurora Village Costco in salacious Shoreline.
…would take Craig Ferguson’s lucid monologue about why corporate youth marketing is the reason “why everything sucks,” and illustrate it with a tacky photo of a reality-TV starlet.
Somebody with the cute pseudonym of “Jane Austen Doe” has issued yet another of those “why the book biz sucks” essays.
Like most essays of this type, Doe’s invokes nostalgia for the kind, tweed-suited, boutique industry book publishing’s supposed to have once been.
I’m not buying it.
The book biz used to be such a personal industry because it used to be such a small industry. Low volume, low profits, high barriers to entry (especially for distribution to the small, sparse bookstores and department-store book sections of the day).
“Serious” publishing was subsidized by textbooks and technical/instructional books. Fiction was predominantly the realm of pulp magazines and of short-story sections within nonfiction magazines. Authors proved themselves worthy of book deals by placing stories in either the biggest or the swankiest mags.
The chubby, insider clique at the top of the publishing world kept things manageable by keeping the supply of available titles down.
Would Jane Austen Doe have fared better in that book industry than in today’s book industry? Only if she’d managed to break into a much smaller inner circle of literary stars.
Literary people often profess to progressive stances about politics and society. But when the topic is their own business, too many of them turn into the worst kind of nostalgic reactionaries.
At least the people who complain about the music industry sucking usually admit that that business always has sucked.
Postscript: None of the above caveats diminishes the fact that, just as Doe says, today’s book business does indeed suck.
Part of it’s due to the oversupply of stores (particularly big chain stores), copies, and titles. (It’s great that so many tens of thousands of books are coming out; it’s bad that publishers don’t even bother to promote most of them.)
Part of it’s due to the general media/entertainment glut and shakeout, which is affecting everything from TV and radio to magazines and DVDs. (Theatrical films, which still have gatekeepers, also still have profits.)
But a lot of it’s due to conglomerate-owned publishers striving too hard, as execs in so many other industries have, for unfeasible profit margins, in worship of the Almighty Stock Price.
The following is based on notes written last Friday afternoon at the new “15th Avenue Coffee and Tea, Inspired by Starbucks”:
The first thing to know about this place is that Starbucks isn’t pretending not to own it. Besides the “Inspired by” subtitle, it sells Starbucks’ Tazo Tea and Via instant coffee packets.
The second thing is there are many precedents for corporations setting up faux-indie divisions. I’m old enough to remember Gallo Wines’ many pseudonymous brands of the ’70s and ’80s. Media giants have long hidden themselves behind pseudo-independent brands (Focus Features, Caroline Records). And of course there’s “Shoebox Greetings, A Tiny Little Division of Hallmark.”
But a more apt comparison would be to Britain’s local pubs. Thousands of them are owned by national or regional chains; some of those chains are owned by big breweries.
Many of these corporate-owned boozers maintain individualistic names and decor. That’s what Starbucks boss Howard Schultz seemed to have in mind when he recently said he wanted to add locally-themed coffeehouses to the firm’s regular, standardized outlets.
The company seems to have spent a LOT to make a former regular Starbucks branch site, in a recently-built building, look oh-so raw and rustic. One could say it looks like a studio backdrop for a 1992 “designer grunge” fashion spread. Like a Las Vegas resort with a “Seattle” theme. Like a big stage set for La Boheme.
It definitely looks like it’s trying too hard to imitate other eateries and drinkeries in the neighborhood (Victrola, 22 Doors, Smith, Redwood, Linda’s, Oddfellows, Buck, etc.).
The place sounds differently, too. Instead of the Starbucks-curated CDs that play in the chain’s regular stores, 15th Avenue features an oh-so carefully “eclectic” music mix. Neko Case, Belle and Sebastian, dance remixes of West Coast jazz standards.
15th Avenue’s products and service routines are truly different from the Starbucks norm. Are they better? That’s a matter of personal taste, but I prefer this to the chain standard. Every drink is made from freshly ground beans, in your choice of varietal roasts and blends, on a La Marzocco espresso machine (not the more automated devices found in regular Starbucks stores).
“For here” orders are served on real dishes, without logos for now. (A hand-lettered sign promises, “Our logo serveware is coming soon.”)
Unlike regular Starbucks branches, 15th Avenue serves wine and bottled beer for on-premises consumption, including several Redhook flavors. (Both Redhook and Starbucks were originally cofounded by local serial entrepreneur Gordon Bowker.)
One thing 15th Avenue has in common with a regular Starbucks is the lack of free WiFi (though you can leech a wireless connection from the Smith bar next door).
Even if 15th Avenue Coffee doesn’t earn its keep as a coffeehouse, it could survive as a lab for the mother chain, testing new products and shticks.
It could blossom into its own subsidiary chain, perhaps with each unit named for its own street. (Note the name for 15th Avenue’s Web site, “streetlevelcoffee.com.”)
It could flop and be replaced by another Starbucks-“inspired” concept.
What it won’t become is a real threat to the indie coffeehouses and their devout clientele.
Indie coffeehouses, with their lingering beat/hippie historical vibe, are natural gathering places for “creative class” people, who frequently style themselves as non-corporate or even anti-corporate.
To these customers, chain-owned coffeehouses—no matter how idiosyncratic looking—will never be good enough.
…the biggest online-only news organization? Would you believe, AOL? Well, it does, if you count all the assorted AOL-owned content sites as one organization.
…struggle to hold on to every possible source of civic revenue—even the Mustard Museum.
Or rather, I’ve visualized it in my head, based on some recent items on tech-rumor sites.
As some of you longtime readers know, I’ve long believed the Web page, as we currently know it, is not the ideal showcase for professional journalism (or several other forms of professionally-made content).
News-biz people will tell you how Web ads just don’t attract nearly as much money per reader as print ads.
They’ll also tell you how the Web’s basic structural metaphor (individual pages, infinite links) works against the notion of a journalistic product combining different stories about different topics into one whole.
And I’ll tell you that Web-based typography and layout, despite many clever workarounds, still leave a lot to be desired.
And it’s damn difficult to charge for content on the Web, as you may have heard. Even some commercial porn sites are having trouble.
Meanwhile, two or three big new platforms have emerged with great possibilities for content-based profits:
In the New Yorker, novelist and print-media historian Nicholson Baker lauds the iPhone/iPod Touch platform as a more satisfying e-reading environment than Kindle or Sony Reader. He likes that the iPhone’s screen offers sharper resolution and full color. He likes its (slightly) greater typographical diversity.
I agree, except for the size of the thing.
Yeah, I’ve got 52-year-old eyeballs and prefer larger-sized type.
But I also want the juxtaposition of word and image you get on a well-designed print page. I want the visual sensation of ordered confusion a good newspaper page can express. I want the “splash” of a good magazine spread. I want the visual sequential narrative of a well-curated photo essay.
Yet I’d like that in a handy, go-anywhere device. Something where you just turn it on and it works; no complex interface to fuss over, no confusing setup and maintenance issues, no frustrations. (Hint: This means I don’t want a Windows tablet.)
What I want is the iPhone/iPod Touch, only in a bigger, splashier, more useful size.
And that’s apparently what we’re going to get, sometime in early to mid-2010, if you believe the current industry rumors.
Some of the rumor articles call the gadget a “Mac tablet,” and claim it would run a stripped down version of Mac OS X.
But that’s not what I want it to be.
I want it to be an iPod Touch with more, not a Mac computer with less. I don’t want something that runs MS Office really slowly; I want something that delivers documents and media really well.
I truly believe such a device, or the second or third versions of it, could be the breakthrough product we need to truly replace print.
I’m no Photoshop whiz or demo designer, so let me verbally display what I’m imagining.
In my vision, individual newspaper and magazine articles would still be available as Web pages for free access. What readers would (quite willingly) pay for, in one-shot buys and subscriptions, is a whole package of carefully-chosen and carefully-designed words and pictures, in on-the-go tablet reader form.
Each “issue” would be a complete, self-contained document, including any embedded audio or video files. No additional downloading would be required. The reader could receive it at home in the morning, then access it on his/her iPod Tablet whenever and wherever, with or without a cell or WiFi connection.
They’d have full use of modern digital typography, not merely Microsoft’s ten “Web-safe” fonts or Flash-based font substitution schticks. PDF-like rendering would overcome HTML’s severe typesetting limitations. Justified columns, smart hyphenation, kerning, footnotes, superscripts and subscripts, indentations, drop caps, charts and graphs—these e-mags would look and read like professionally made works. (Technical manuals and scientific textbooks could go treeless and keep the typographical tricks they need.)
Like Zinio’s electronic editions of magazines, they’d have clickable headlines and table-of-contents listings, zoomable text, and intuitive navigation including animated “page turning.” Unlike them, they’d be designed for on-screen reading from the ground up, not merely digital replications of print layouts.
On the software end, this is all doable. The pieces and programming tools exist. So do the e-commerce platforms, such as Apple’s App Store.
Now, at last, the user-end hardware is almost here.
If my suspicion’s right, near-future historians will see the mid-to-late aughts as a tough but necessary transition period from print to ebooks and emags.
What will far-future historians will have seen ebooks and emags evolve into?
That’s a topic for another day.
…has even made the pages of the Harvard Business Review. Their writer’s take: It’ll never make it.
