http://www.bermanexposed.org/facts

BOWLING PROPRIETORS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

Berman and a colleague lobbied on behalf of Bowling Association that lists same concerns as liquor industry on disclosure forms. Berman and Kristen Eastlick, both of BCI, lobbied on behalf of the Bowling Proprietors Association of America on small business issues and “any provision relating to drunk-driving countermeasures.” According to Congressional Quarterly, the Bowling Proprietors Association and the American Beverage Institute list the same lobbying issues, word for word, on their lobbying disclosure forms.

* Eastlick, who lobbies for the Bowling Association and ABI, denied that bowling alleys were fronting for the liquor industry.

Berman helped establish GOP-friendly political action committee (PAC). Berman and Eastlick created a Republican-friendly PAC for the Bowling Proprietors Association, which contributed $93,000 to GOP candidates in the 2003-2004 election cycle.

BCI paid $20K by Bowling Association. For its work, BCI was paid $20,000 from July through December 2004

Do they honestly believe the bovine excrement that they are spewing?

Oh, and according to CREW, if you’re against unconstitutional, anti-4th Amendment DUI checkpoints and mandatory breathalyzers installed in all vehicles, you’re a shill for Richard Berman and the alcohol industry.

AMERICAN BEVERAGE INSTITUTE

Berman is executive director of the American Beverage Institute (ABI), a trade association representing bars, restaurants, alcohol distributors and manufacturers. The group reportedly works against Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

ABI opposes drunk driving laws. According to at least one report, ABI is a group that principally “opposes drunk driving laws.”

ABI opposes DUI checkpoints. During the 2005 Holiday Season, John Doyle, the group’s current executive director, wrote: “Sadly, the holidays are always accompanied by an increase in alcohol-related fatalities. The American Beverage Institute believes this is due, in part, to misdirected drunk-driving policies which often fail to target the high BAC (blood alcohol content) drivers who cause the vast majority of drunk-driving accidents.”

* American Beverage Institute has said that alcohol-related traffic deaths dropped in the 11 states that don’t allow checkpoints while they increased in Ohio.

ABI opposes ignition interlock systems for cars. In December 2005, it was reported that ignition interlock systems (a sophisticated system that tests for alcohol on a driver’s breath) came under some scrutiny the U.S. in the wake of a report issued by California Department of Motor Vehicles. ABI contended that the report showed ignition interlock systems were not effective and actually increased the risk of accidents by 130 percent. The Department, however, “strongly refuted this interpretation.”

* The California Department of Motor Vehicles wrote “t’s true that our study showed that court orders to first offenders to install an ignition interlock device are not effective in reducing recidivism among that group perhaps because many first offenders tend to be in denial, resent the devices and refuse to install them. But … the devices can have a real effect on repeat offenders who are beginning to come to grips with their alcohol problem and who often find the mechanical devices to be helpful in keeping them out of cars when they’ve been drinking.”

Just remember that bermanexposed.com is run by CREW, a front for Soros, Rockefeller, and the Tides Foundation. And remember that Berman’s website, the Center for Consumer Freedom, is a front for Monsanto which is a front for………….ROCKEFELLER! You CANNOT make this shit up. Pot, meet kettle.

New payday loan rates still ‘astronomical,’ group says – thestar.com.

The Poor - Where We Find Money For Free! Thank You Corporatocracy!

But then, This is what you get in a corporatocracy. Governments are indeed on guard – against any incursions of the people into the territory of profit making by corporations. Social needs have no place in a neoliberal society in which all there is is the marketplace and exchanges based on money. If you don’t have money, you are invisible. And try getting by when you have no rights and can make no claims as a citizen because your citizenship no longer means anything. You have to be a consumer to have rights.

The following is my ‘offered’ online comment to the article linked to above. I don’t count on seeing it show up online though. The Toronto Star disappears 99% of my comments. Their pro establishment, too free (like their bosses) gatekeepers can’t tolerate views like mine that conflict with the revealed truth that they would prefer to preach, either themselves or via endorsement:

** I’m anticapitalist because capitalism is against me. I do regret not getting a better education. I do regret not getting off my butt sooner and trying to do something to better my life. I’ve only ever done menial work and the pay doesn’t pay./ But someone’s got to the jobs I’ve done. I’ve kept my nose clean, paid all of my taxes (unlike the rich) and have always worked to my bosses’ satisfaction (for which reason I’ve held steady, if unrewarding, jobs). I’ve been in security now for 10 years straight./ It’s a money system. Groceries and shelter (life) aren’t free. Therefore, If I’m doing what my boss asks, easy or hard, at least give me enough that I don’t have to go to Money Mart each month, which I have been doing for over a year now./ Some yahoos call us economic losers (who the system depends on to discipline labor) ‘fools’. I only know I’d be a fool to care about a mafiosa-type system that treats me like a criminal. **

We’re gonna party like it’s 2009.

And by party I mean make lists of all the anime I liked over the past decade.

Been awhile since I posted. Stuff happens and blogs cease to happen. You know how it goes. Now I find myself a scant month or so away from the turn of the decade and I feel like laying down some elaborated listage when it comes to my favorite anime series of said decade. There’s been plenty of awesome shows and there’s been an awful amount of crap, so I figure we’re par for the quality course. I’ll be doing a separate post for each year. Each of these posts will showcase three series that I feel represent the best of the best from that year, with one of those series being declared “best of the year.” Along with those elaborated-upon series will be a short list of “also-rans,” representing series that were good-but-not-good-enough.

You may see some popular series in these “also-ran” lists. Don’t take that as some backhanded insult. I’m not listing anything that I feel is mediocre or crappy. Even a series that get a passing mention is pretty snazzy. So when you see, say, Gurren Lagaan mentioned in passing, don’t get up in arms. It’s a good series, but not as good as the three series from that year that I felt were superior.

I’m only including anime TV series in these lists. No movies, no OAVs. Also, I considered series as a whole. So if a series had a sequel at a later date, said sequel was taken into consideration for that series’ ranking during the year it was released. No sequels will appear as separate entries on these lists. This means that despite being a series from the 2000s, the second season of Big O won’t appear here. The first season aired in 1999, so it isn’t “from this decade” according to my arbitrary standards.

For the record, my favorite anime movies from this decade were Ghost in the Shell 2 and Paprika.

With all of that said, let’s get a move on to 2000’s series.

Honorable Mentions

Tsukikage Ran

Tsukikage Ran, aka Carried With the Wind, is a fairly straightforward anime series. It plays out like an old-school samurai live-action drama, as the main characters drift from town to town and deal with a new dilemma each episode. That makes the story episodic in nature, and “episodic” seems to be a four-letter word in most anime fans’ dictionaries. This is a sentiment I’ve never understood.

The episodic nature of a series like Tsukikage Ran allows for greater opportunity for character interaction. Note that I said “interaction” rather than “development.” The two main characters, a female ronin and a female martial artist, don’t go through any sort of narrative metamorphosis over the course of the story. They’re fairly static characters by most standards. By interaction I’m referring to the interplay between the characters and their situations. Since we don’t have a overarcing storyline to keep up with, we can pay attention to the character’s personality, get to “know” the character, and better appreciate the ways in which they behave and interact with the story-of-the-week.

This is the charm of episodic dramas and sitcoms. You get to know the characters and look forward to how they’ll react to a given situation. It’s a different sort of viewing experience. Some might call it a “comfort factor,” in that you know what’s going to happen next. That’s an understandable viewpoint, but I think it’s a bit reductive and dismissive. Saying that it’s comforting is to say that there’s no real value in what’s taking place beyond immediate gratification. Not that there’s anything wrong with immediate gratification, but there’s more to this sense of familiarity than mere creature comforts.

This is a narrative device not unlike a plot. Where a linear plot that stretches from one episode to the next creates a certain context for characters to interact within, the episodic story creates another. It allows for a wider variety of scenario to take place, so we can see the characters in different situations that they might not encounter in a more linear storyline. There’s more variety to what we’re getting, and I consider this a strength rather than a weakness.

This is the charm of Tsukikage Ran. Instead of following these characters on a single storyline, we see them encounter several differing situations, and said situations create interesting stories. It doesn’t hurt that the action scenes are reasonable executed, making the obligatory sword scenes enjoyable to watch.

So there we go. Tsukikage Ran is an excellent example of an episodic storyline that works well. It’d do most anime fans some good to give such series a shot. They might find the change of pace refreshing if they don’t dismiss such stories without a second look.

Argento Soma

What do you get when you throw Shakespeare, Marlowe, and a post-Evangelion mecha show into a food processor? You get Argento Soma.

Guy wants revenge. Guy infiltrates an alien-fighting organization to get said revenge. Guy pretends to be someone he isn’t to get revenge. Guy is thoroughly obsessed and is driven to self-destruction due to revenge. That’s pretty much Hamlet-with-a-Giant-Robot, and that’s a fairly accurate description of Argento Soma. Throw in a little Dr. Faustus dealing-with-the-devil in the form of the man that he bargains with to get into said organization, and you have an anime version of Elizabethan drama as a whole.

Argento Soma takes some classic themes that we’ve seen a thousand times over and executes said themes with great success. The degree to which the main character takes his revenge is great to behold. The mecha scenes are pretty good for that sort of thing. All in all this is one of the better post-Evangelion mecha shows that came along in the late 90s and early 00s.

It also has one of the greatest end themes and animations of all time.

What’s awesome about this ending is that it shows everything that the main character could have had if he chose not to pursue revenge. He had every opportunity to live a normal, fulfilling, complete life. The only thing compelling him to self-destruction by way of vengeance is himself and he’s well-aware of the fact. He isn’t coping out and claiming that this is the only path available for him. He knows that he made a conscious decision to seek out revenge, and any longing for a normal life is futile at best. By showing this in the end credits, the series re-emphasizes this point with each episode, reminding the viewer that the main character’s path isn’t one to emulate. That’s one way to moralize without being preachy and obnoxious.

Also, the song is great, and if you think it’s cheesy you suck.

Best of the Year

Boogiepop Phantom

Artistically, Boogiepop is a masterpiece. The series uses lighting and colors in a very unique way. The series starts off using very dark and muted colors and lighting, and as the series progresses said colors and lighting become increasingly clearer, sharper, and brighter. The tone of the series may grow increasingly darker, but as we gain insight into the goings-on of the plot, the appearance of the series begins to mirror our outlook. It’s as if we’re literally stepping into the light and having everything revealed to us as said light grows brighter.

Narratively, Boogiepop utilizes its non-linear nature to great effect. Events are revealed to us in terms of their relevance rather than in terms of their chronological order. This is hardly a new technique, but Boogiepop uses it to create a sense of the unknown, and by slowly revealing information over the course of the series, it helps create that sensation of stepping into the light that is created by the series’ art direction.

The series has a distinct theme of rejecting self-denial and blinding oneself to the world around them. Several characters try to escape from their problems, either through attempting to deny said problems or having said problems removed in some manner. Such actions are constantly punished by one means or another. The series doesn’t accept the “I can do anything so long as I believe in it” mentality that’s frequently championed in anime. Such attitudes are seen as undesirable, as anyone who feels they can change who they are or what their life is like through “accentuating the positive” is usually killed in a horrific manner. This is not a positive series in the least bit, but it also reinforces the idea that one should face one’s problems rather than try to pretend said problems don’t exist.

You can’t have someone eat a bug that represents your inner turmoil and think you’ll be hunky dory. That’s just weird, man.

Also-Rans

Sakura Wars, NieA_7, Gate Keepers

A few weeks back, I reviewed Roger Martin’s brilliant text, The Opposable Mind. As I typically do, I googled Roger Martin’s email address so I could send him a copy of the article, along with my gratitude for writing such a timely and insightful book.  As is not uncommon, I found that his direct address was unlisted, but I was welcome to contact his staff.  Undaunted, I did so.  Here’s the email, verbatim:

Hi all,

I know you are all very busy, so I won’t take more than a minute of your time.  Just a quick note to Roger and your team:

I recently read The Opposable Mind.

I loved the book.  So I wrote about it.

If you’re so inclined, you can read the article HERE.

If not, I completely understand.

Have a great week and keep doing what you’re doing!

All the best,

Roger himself wrote me back within 2 days.  Here’s what I love about this – I have no problem with gatekeepers.  In fact, I think they’re important… when managed properly.  Obviously, Mr. Martin has a system where the content and emails of value get through to him.  And get through efficiently.  When Mr. Martin wrote me back, it was a warm, courteous email that opened the gates to further conversation.  He could afford to be open because he knew my first email was already through the screening process.

David Allen was similarly warm and open when his gatekeepers let through my review of Getting Things Done. Again, because I’d already “passed” the screening process, Mr. Allen was able to spend a little more time with me and trade a few discussion emails.

Obviously, it’s nice when you can get in touch with your ideal contact directly, and I am truly amazed and grateful for a few of the authors who offer a direct email address, and then actually write back when you contact them.  (Seth Godin, in response to all three of the Goose articles – Tribes, the dip, and Purple Cow as well as Malcolm Gladwell in response to the Outliers article  in particular were fantastic with their quick replies and kind words).

However, I’ve only really had true interaction (as in, back and forth, personalized emails) from the authors with gatekeepers.

It’s an interesting position to choose – “instant accessibility”, giving fans the sense of closeness, but limiting the depth of interaction  or “pre-screening”, allowing for fewer interactions, but more time with each?

Either way, this much is clear – you need to bring something of value to the table if you want to get on the radar of any of these very busy people.

Learn more about Roger Martin & the fascinating work he’s doing @ http://rogerlmartin.com

When I was doing the interaction design for the new CHOICE website I advised them that continuing to put $ signs on items to buy wouldn’t encourage membership. When you assess the cognitive processes behind people and communities an individual needs to understand the value proposition before they’ll join. The CHOICE website now gives you many more chances to interact with members, non-members and staff, and get stuff for free, in order to establish the value proposition for membership.

When the Project Management Institute (PMI) was established in 1969, the world was a different place. Baby boomers ruled the landscape and knowledge was power. The model of spend money to join and we’ll give you access to our professional Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) seemed like the right business model. Today, with Baby Boomers nearing retirement and Gen-Xs and Gen-Ys being the predominant workforce demographic, is the ‘buy now before you know our secrets’ business model likely to work?

The world of the internet means knowledge is free and is a resource to share — this is what Gen-Ys in particular believe and demand. We have Wikipedia that holds the worlds knowledge as a result — much more than the ‘professionals’ would ever put into standardised tomes of knowledge like Encyclopaedia Britannica for example. Academics blog about their research so they can share it with others immediately rather than waiting for a peer review process that can take years. Professional bodies like the Information Architecture Institute (IAI) turn to wikis and blogs to share their knowledge freely. In this landscape, though, professional communities of practice like the IIBA continue to adopt PMI’s 40 year old business model. Their self-professed experts create what they believe to be the definitive body of knowledge in much the same way as Encyclopaedia Britannica is written. In fact, the president of the IIBA defined business analysts as people who did what was inside the BABOK, and defined the BABOK as the body of knowledge for business analysts …. the definition seems rather circular, no? They the IIBA asks you to join before you can see what a business analyst is or does. So I can only know if I’m a business analyst by reading the BABOK? What if I do something different to your definition? Am I no longer a business analyst?

Where’s the value proposition in this business model? Where’s the community in that?

Typically, when I twitter about these things, members of the IIBA immediately jump on me. I even had @IIBA_Australia suggest that asking to read the BABOK without becoming a member or buying it first was like going to a book store and asking to read a book before buying it. Strangely enough, that’s exactly what you can do. You can always take a book off the shelf, read it a little, see if you like it, and then buy it. And if you go to Borders you can order a coffee and sit down and read it.

Jesse James Garrett in his essay IA Recon posited the issues of community, definition and discipline back in 2002. It had a profound effect on me when I first read it only 2 years ago and shaped the way I now feel about these professional communities and turning into a not-for-profit business what is rightly the job of the community not the professional body. Definitions change over time. Practices grow and evolve. Disciplines overlap with others in messy ways. But it’s always the people themselves who need to consciously or otherwise make that decision. To the IIBA and other bodies who attempt to ‘own’ this knowledge and definition I say this (in a tone that reflects my rantiness about this whole issue of course):

• Open your so called bodies of knowledge to the community. Let the community contribute directly. Contribution engenders ownership and shared ownership builds trust and trust builds communities.
• Let the body of knowledge reflect the community’s direction, not the one you’d prescribe.
• Stop defining and prescribing the profession, the role and the discipline. Your efforts only serve to alienate the very people who you should be encouraging to join your communities.
• Start sharing your knowledge openly and freely. Become mentors and thought leaders, not gatekeepers of the BABOK.

M

ps – as a rant, so as to not incite riots and flame wars, comments and trackbacks have been disabled on this post

Our world is becoming saturated by mass media. It has come to a point that it is even becoming common in developing countries, and due to this widespread phenomenon, we have to remain aware that such exposure to these effects of the media can somehow be positive and negative. Many would say that most of what we know comes from the media as it has the ability and the power and the network to be used to reach out to millions of people to relay messages, to influence and even to educate. However, we cannot avoid the fact that it has the power to affect, to manipulate and also to change opinions of the audiences due to the extensive exposure.

There are many different ways that mass communication is affecting our lives today such as the increase in the production of the thousands of magazines and newspapers and books that we have today definitely stimulated a responding rise in literacy. This form of communication brings knowledge and current information to the masses and it’s even hastier now with the use of the Internet. So are we, and our culture and our opinions shaped or even manipulated by the media through mass communications?

As we all know, we “see” the world based on individual differences of upbringing, race, gender, social economic status and life experiences. The results of these differences are that people perceive and interpret the world differently which in turn shape how we make sense of the world, people, issues, culture and society. As a result of these differences, we all create our own meanings of events around us, filtering information that reaches us through our own prejudices and prior knowledge, framing information so that it makes sense in our own context.

I feel that in the context of Singapore, our media has an agenda setting function. For example an event for the news, the reporter (gatekeeper) decides what stories to cover, what sources to interview, what questions to ask and what parts of the reporter’s very own input is enough to make a story, after which the process still goes through other rounds of filtering from the editor. So clearly, individual perceptions of the world and what things are important are in play in this process, but really, we are the real ‘gatekeepers” in the end. What do we think is important or relevant enough to permit through the gate of our conscious minds? In this context, the media does not reflect “reality”, they filter, shape and construct a “reality”.

The images and impressions and topics that appear in the mass media, especially on Television, serve to “cultivate” in all of us certain impressions of the world. These messages and the way they are framed, may serve to change our own individual perceptual frame of the world around us. The mass media build and maintain a stable set of images, stories about our culture, our society, who we are that govern our lives and how we see the world, and influence the decisions we make. Ultimately, mass media messages in sufficient accumulation may gradually influence our behaviour, attitudes, decisions and life choices.

Earlier this year, Nicholas Carr declared the Web, Google, and Wikipedia our information triumvirate.  What does that mean, exactly, in this era of 24/7, all-access information consumption and production passes? 

It means, according to Carr, that the Internet has transformed from “a radically heterogeneous information source to a radically homogeneous one.”  This, despite a steady flood of new online participants and content producers every day.  What gives? 

Turns out that Google, the Internet’s ubiquitous search engine (read:  gatekeeper), and its search algorithms have created a bias for Wikipedia results.  And I, for one, daresay Wikipedia is not the end-all of information sources, web-based or otherwise. 

It all began back in 2006, when Carr decided to survey Wikipedia result rankings on Google. In his blog he wrote “Much has been made about the upward creep of Wikipedia entries in search engine results, but there hasn’t yet been much discussion about what this “centralization” means. Just to double-check the phenomenon, I wrote a list, off the top of my head, of ten important and various topics to see how highly Wikipedia’s entries would rank on Google.” 

He updated his survey on the same search terms each year, with the following results: 

The take away?  Carr says it best (my emphasis added to his words). 

“What we seem to have here is evidence of a fundamental failure of the Web as an information-delivery service. Three things have happened, in a blink of history’s eye: (1) a single medium, the Web, has come to dominate the storage and supply of information, (2) a single search engine, Google, has come to dominate the navigation of that medium, and (3) a single information source, Wikipedia, has come to dominate the results served up by that search engine.

It’s hard to imagine that Wikipedia articles are actually the very best source of information for all of the many thousands of topics on which they now appear as the top Google search result. What’s much more likely is that the Web, through its links, and Google, through its search algorithms, have inadvertently set into motion a very strong feedback loop that amplifies popularity and, in the end, leads us all, lemminglike, down the same well-trod path – the path of least resistance.”

Hmmmmm.   I’ve never thought of myself as much of a lemming before reading Carr’s analysis.  But now I understand that faint music in the back of my head as I happily Google my way through the web . . . .  

Clearly, to make the most of all the web has to offer, we must pay attention to the subtle filters that shape our access and exposure to its vast pool of information resources.

BTW, Nicholas Carr’s most recent blog post is a rockin’ read for this week’s J-713 discussion re: email!

Review by Jill Williamson

We last left Xander and David King in the Civil War world where they stumbled onto a clue to their mother’s whereabouts. They rush back to tell their father, only to discover Taksidian and some cops at the front door. Taksidian has reported the Kings’ house as unfit to live in. Then another strange old man arrives on their doorstep, claiming to be a long lost relative. Does this Jesse really know stuff about the house? And could he be right? Had the house called the King family back because they are Gatekeepers?

I love this series. Book three took off right where book two ended and hooked me with non-stop action, adventure, and surprising new twists. I read this one so quickly, I was thankful I had book four waiting, but then when I finished book four…yep. Now I have to wait! Book five isn’t out yet. Rats! I highly recommend this series for boys, especially, but also for any reader who loves suspense, action, and adventure. A very creative and continually surprising tale.

Age Range: 12-16
Genre: Suspense
Part of a Series: Book three in the Dream House Kings series
Pages: 305
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Released: 2008

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54514

 Thursday, September 24, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief

HUMANITARIAN CRISES IN WESTERN JOURNALISM

The topic I have selected for is media censorship in Western journalism. Journalism covers a vast range of news and current affairs across all media and is recognised as a form of communication around the world. Most individuals rely on journalism for surveillance- to inform them of what is going on in the world. The main area of analysis is the people of humanitarian crises and advocates the weaker members of emergencies in third world countries. These third world disasters are often forgotten in Western Journalism, as they are considered to be of little newsworthiness. According to Hannabus (1995), journalists act as ‘gatekeepers’ to the publics exposure about crises’. The main examples of unreported humanitarian crises’ will be drawn from two website called Reuters AlertNet and also Project Censored, which provide coverage of emergencies that, for a variety of reasons, receive only irregular coverage elsewhere in the media, so-called ‘forgotten’ or ‘hidden’ emergencies.

Journalism and public life at a time of crisis support the status quo and mirror society; the role of sources in shaping the news; its prominence in the public sphere is inevitably increased by global news reporting on current affairs broadcasting; news photography and trauma. Oliver Boyd-Barnett argues that because the news media have failed to supply links among different wars over time, war reporting deceives and obfuscates, with the result that the media serve merely as propaganda mediums in imposing their economic and political models on the world. The topics will critically evaluate the ownership and control of media of the media, and theoretically, socially and culturally contextualise the objectivity and bias in reporting the news and censorship of newspaper content in Australia. The research will be undertaken from a wide range of sources including books, government reports, newspaper reports, journal articles, charitable organisations and lobby groups.

This research seeks to determine the differences between in coverage amoung crises. According to Livingston, Gatekeeping, is the “process by which nearly infinite array of possible news items is narrowed to the realitive handful actually transmitted by the media and heard, read or seen by audiences” (Rotberg, p7).  Debate over the extent to which the mass media serves elite interests or, alternatively, plays a powerful role in shaping political outcomes has been dogged by dichotomous and one-sided claims. Some attribute enormous power to the news media (the so-called CNN effect) while others claim the media ‘manufactures consent’ for elite policy preferences.

Some humanitarian crises receive only a scarce response, in terms of media coverage or external aid, despite the attempts of the media, aid supporters, humanitarian volunteers and policy-makers around the globe. In order to describe these from other crises they are often characterised as being ‘forgotten’, receiving a lower portion of media attention. Unfortunately, this happens at the expense of the victims. Many experts have criticised the Western media of constantly overlooking major crises in countries considered of low geopolitical or economic significance, despite the enormous level of suffering. This suggests the manifest censorship, inequality and indiscretion in media coverage and public awareness, as well as the stipulation of assistance to the crises of the world.

The media play an increasingly demanding role in exposing humanitarian crises, and convergence in technology has intensified the urgency of coverage.  At present the news reaches the audience as a flow of information part of a continuum with exceptional events gaining the spotlight. This information flow engages a variety of mediums together (from the radio to internet, daily newspapers to television, and many other media sources) and merges space, time, and history into a series of visual, oral and written discourses that are generally based on the increasingly sophisticated use of images (Burnet, 2004). This change in our attitude toward “news” is not simply a straightforward fact about the history of news, it is an approach to revolutionary change in our attitude toward what happens in the world, how much of it is news, and surprising and important.

Analyses suggest that a number of requirements have to be satisfied if the Western mass media are to focus solely on a crisis. For instance, a humanitarian crisis in Africa has to fight for the media spotlight if there are emergencies in other parts of the world. At the onset, the crisis has to be news and the emergency assistance has to communicate the source for generating sensational and emotive imagery through television footage and still photographs. According to Natisios (1996), another requirement for media coverage has to do with what is sometimes called the ‘news-attention cycle’ or the ‘issue-attention cycle’. There can be without a doubt that the most imperative requirement for media attention is that a humanitarian crisis has to be newsworthy, and has to be capable to convey emotive reporting.

The Western public normally obtains its information about third world disasters from newspapers and the television. For example, Smallman (1997) observed that the amount of news reports about disasters broadcasted annually by Reuters newsline service expanded by 75 percent during 1992 and 1995, at the same time disaster stories with a strong human interest dimension rose by 50 percent. All events are news, but according to Hannabuss (1995) they are “newsworthy only to the extent that they have obtruded themselves”. On the contrary, humanitarian crisis may be regard as too distant to be newsworthy, too depressing and too complex for readers to be able to comprehend (Bennett & Daniel, 2002).The historian Johan Huizinga, also shares this opinion, as demonstrated by his statement that ‘the mind gradually received so much material and opportunity for purely visual perception of the past that it is in danger of neglecting reading and thinking about it (Frank van Vree, 2002).

Reuters’ AlertNet is a humanitarian news network based around a popular website. It aims to keep relief authorities and the wider public up-to-date on humanitarian crises around the globe (Reuters’, 2005). AlertNet attempts to represent the people of humanitarian crises and advocates the weaker members of emergencies that are forgotten in Western media. Reuters’ foundation AlertNet, published a crisis news poll in 2005 that identified ten major humanitarian crises that the news media failed to cover. Respondents of the news poll selected ten crises most worthy of media attention including; Congo, Northern Uganda, Western and Southern Sudan, West Africa, Colombia, Chechnya, Nepal and Haiti. These major crises selected were the most neglected humanitarian emergencies that rarely hit the pages of newspapers.  

The crisis in Nepal gained minor coverage compared the coverage that Indian Ocean Tsunami or the September 11 terrorist attack on America, receiving major coverage in all western media. There is evidence that the volume of media coverage of the “forgotten” emergencies has decreased post-tsunami (Reuters’, 2005). The crisis in Nepal is a forgotten emergency that the news media failed to cover. AlertNet attempts to expose the misrepresentation and deception, revealing the illegal activity and the fight for bureaucracy in Nepal. On the other hand, Livingston (2000) questions why the horrendous suffering of Sudan’s thirty year old civil war was and is a “non-story” in most of the media whilst its neighbor, Somali, was on so much of the focus of media concentration in 1992-1993. Therefore, it should be known that the media are important through inconsistent players in their coverage of crises.

Journalism covers a vast range of news and current affairs across all media and is recognised as a form of communication around the world. Most individuals rely on journalism for surveillance- to inform them of what is going on around the world (Burns, 2002). Journalists can be described as unfavourable witnesses. Hannabus (1995), acknowledged that journalists act as ‘gatekeepers’ to the public’s exposure about crises. Emergencies are not created equally, as Western journalism has said to overlook major crises in countries despite the enormous scale of suffering. The media portray information from the real, which as Roland Barthes proposed, ‘has been worked on, chosen, composed, constructed and treated according to professional, aesthetic or ideological norms’ (Fontana, 1997, p.17).

In a sense AlertNet endeavours to be the voice of the less powerful people in society. According to Giovanni, journalists should “write about the small voices, the people who can’t write about themselves” (Jamie D Giovanni, The Place at the End of the World). The challenges faced by foreign journalists in reporting humanitarian crises is a towering ‘media nightmare’ [19 December], with hundreds of journalists murdered around the world from holding power- sacrificing their lives for a news story. Journalists attempt to describe society to itself, seeking truth from crises. The pressure of parachute journalism means that the network pays a great deal of attention to a story but only momentarily (Hess, 1994).

The Tsunami was a crisis of the Indian Ocean killed up to 300,000 people and invigorated the public to send donations like never before as media coverage went into mayhem. Research found that the Indian Ocean tsunami got more media attention in the first six weeks after it hit than all of the worlds top ten ‘forgotten’ emergencies in 2005 (Reuters’, 2005). In contrast, about 11,000 people have been killed in nine years of conflict between Maoist rebels and constitutional monarchy war, relocating large numbers of people and demolishing livelihoods in Nepal’s society and economy. With more than 40 percent of Nepal’s population living below the poverty line and half of all children aged under five were underweight, the world’s highest rate (Reuters’, 2005), yet global media has hardly covered the crisis of Nepal (Reuters’, 2005).

The Indian Ocean Tsunami received front-page coverage in global newspapers simply because it is a current natural disaster that is visually enticing and disastrous (Paul Harvey, as cited in Reuters’, 2005). Images of suffering have this dual effect of distance and closeness and are examples of the weakness of communication as well as its strength. There is an irony, because traumatic events are more often than not the most challenging experiences to recall, let alone picture. It is by bearing witness to trauma that humans learn how to connect time, subjective experiences, and history. According to Felman and Laub (1992), “weaving trauma into art, images, and aesthetic forms is part of bearing witness to occurrences that cannot be understood or experienced in any other manner” (Burnet, 2004. p.57). Victims of natural disasters are viewed as innocent residents struck by Mother Nature, while ongoing humanitarian crises such as the complicated civil conflict in Nepal are often difficult to report as fresh-sounding stories, hence wait in vain for their turn in the spotlight.

According to Andrew Gilligan, a prominent British journalist, “the fact is that news is about things that are new” (Reuters’, 2005). Former crises can still make the news and this is evident in news stories probed from the September 11 terrorist attack on America, such as “the war on terror” in Iraq, still dominates the international limelight in the news spotlight today (Zelizer, 2002). Iraq has been the main international news story not only because of its everyday violence but also because of post-Saddam Iraq’s continuing proposition for the rest of the world. The world’s addiction with Iraq has probed to the limits many other stories of mass violence (Reuters’, 2005). The most typical photographs record sudden moments of agony, terror, wondering, death and cry of grief (Berger, 2003).  The possible contradictions of war photograph now become apparent and it is generally assumed that the purpose is to awake concern as what we see horrifies us. The next step should be for us is to confront our own lack of political freedom (Berger, 2003).

Nepal has simply been off the international public eye of the world media and indisputably is the deadliest conflict in Asia, with some 10,000 killed over the past few years. According to AlertNet, Western press have failed to report the widespread human rights abuses and disappearances at the hands of the Royal Nepalese Army, in fact, the human cost of violence is reliably reported at 1000 deaths a day (Reuters’ 2005). Nevertheless, the global media have shown no interest in the Nepal crisis in any way. According to AlertNet, of the 10 million people who die each year from hunger and malnutrition, just 8 percent die in the kind of emergencies we hear about on the evening news (Reuters’, 2005). The lack of international media attention on Nepal’s crisis, only allows the precursors of mass violence to continue.

The western public normally receives its information about third world disasters from media, with sentimental pictures representing catastrophes, media driven public pressure and the fear of potential public reaction to the crisis (Robinson, 2000). Still pictures and television footage capturing disasters appeal to the public imagination (Bennett and Daniel, 2002).  Unfortunately, journalist report what they believe is in the publics interest and this is not only a problem of Western journalists; rather it is universal. When things explode, foreign journalists will undoubtedly be parachuted to ask why no one saw the humanitarian crises, when the truth is, the crises have been calling for media attention to resolve the crises.

On the other hand, stories about foreign disaster may be considered to remote in proximity to be newsworthy, too depressing and too complex for readers to understand (Bennett and Daniel, 2002). In this context, I argue that proximity in journalism has become a paradox. Even while the practice of ‘live’ reportage has continued to increase, presentational techniques that create the illusion of this practice, by decoupling geographic location from the significance of proximity, have helped to create the sense of ‘placelessness’ that many analysts perceive in modern media (Huxford, 2007).

 Journalism and public life at a time of crisis support the status quo and mirror society; the role of sources in shaping the news; its prominence in the public sphere is inevitably increased by global news reporting on current affairs broadcasting; news photography and trauma; the emotional well-being of reporters driven by events rather then issues, as well as a host of relevant issues around news, democracy and citizenship.  Journalists need to help gather news in emergencies- to ensure responsibility of reporting (Harding 1995). Oliver Boyd-Barnett argues that because the news media have failed to supply links among different wars over time, war reporting deceives and obfuscates, with the result that the media serve merely as propaganda mediums in imposing their economic and political models on the world (cited in Allan & Zelizer, 2004).

In Western politics there is spotlight on human suffering in relation to distant crises and wars. The media expose pictures of victims of civil wars, genocide, massacres and other violence against civil populations, and play a basic role in giving exposure to human suffering in these humanitarian crises (Hoijer 2004). Pictures of a sense of crises, for example, come from so many sources, that the parts become the whole and the whole seems to have no end or even any parts. All of these elements interact in new and unpredictable ways images become tools for the creation and expression as well as visualisation of stories (Burnet, 2004).

Western media are faced with the pressures on the professional model, and many journalists have failed to cover these humanitarian crises due to a lack of editorial independence or the dissenting voices; making the decision to publish crises. Journalists recognise potential news value in facts that might by themselves seem unimportant and therefore select parts that will interest people. Straubhar (1991), and Moragas Spa & Lopez (2000) have demonstrated that people generally simply prefer national or ‘culturally proximate’ media anyway, therefore reducing the potential for the influence of Western media. This has led to the notion of ‘glocalization’ and the idea that we live in a ‘cultural mélange’ where there is a complicated flow of cultural influences and transformations around the world (Machin & Van Leeuwen 2004).

It has become normal for certain mass circulation newspapers to publish which earlier would have been suppressed as being too shocking (Berger, 2003).  One might explain that this development by arguing that these newspapers have come to realize that a large section of their readers are now aware of the horrors of war and want to be shown the truth. Alternatively, one might argue that these newspapers believe that their readers have become inured to violent images and so now compete in terms of ever more violent sensationalism (Berger, 2003). Many people would argue that such photographs remind us shockingly of the reality, the lived reality, behind the abstractions of political theory, casualty statistics or news bulletins (Berger, 2003).  .

Despite the alarming forgotten crises identified by Reuters’ AlertNet, these crises are considered “non-breaking” news issues. Therefore, from a western journalistic point of view, they lack significance. The media play an increasingly crucial role in publicising humanitarian crises, and advances in technology have intensified the immediacy of their reports (Rotberg and Weiss 1996). Journalists have to make foreign news relevant to local audiences and making the story newsworthy to society. Unlike written texts, images present us with real people, and things; that is what gives the representation a natural legitimation. The images overwhelm us, as it were, and make it difficult for us to remain impartial, distanced and critical. (Frank van Vree, 2002)

Pictures, or more accurately our interpretations of pictures, can make unforgettable impressions on our minds, and as a distant audience we become holders of inner pictures of human suffering. Particularly when emotional pictures are shown repeatedly, as for instance the pictures of the refugees from Kosovo, they have a lasting impact on our shared memories. When the audience says ‘You never get rid of all the crying children and the elderly’ they emphasise the penetrative power of the image (Hoijer, 2004). The impact of photographic pictures is not least due to the reality claim connected with them but they are perceived as accurate eye-witness reports of reality. In this context, the role of images as purveyors of meaning and aesthetic objects constantly changes.

Natural disasters capture the attention of the world and make the front pages, but it is the manmade crisis situations that the news media has failed to cover, resulting in disparities and injustices in the world. Western media consistently overlooks these major crises in countries considered little political significance and Western countries, the richer countries should continue to be aware take more responsibility of these humanitarian crises and reflect the right perspective on the world. On the other hand, stories about foreign disaster may be considered to remote and often difficult to report as fresh-sounding stories and therefore wait in vain for their turn in the spotlight.

Three emails I would really like to send:

Dear Dethroned or Exiled Monarchy, 

I would be happy to help you with your banking needs.  When can I expect the check?  Would it be okay if I used your money to float my business until my ship comes in? Since we are on a first-name basis, and you are so gracious to give me this opportunity, I feel it only fair to tell you that every now and then I have to close out my checking account and open a new one because, well, quite frankly, I hate balancing my checkbook and the ladies at the bank laugh at me when they have to do it.  Hope this is okay.  Your BF forever!

Dear Well-Meaning Friends and Associates,

Thanks so much for forwarding me all of the emails that you receive.  I just don’t get enough of my own. Thanks for thinking of me, again, and again, and again. 

Dear Realtors,

Thanks for the 12,739 flyers you email me every day telling me about all of the properties that I can find on my own in the MLS.  Hope you don’t mind, but I am returning them to you as I know you have spent good money on them and I hate for them to go to waste. I am sure you can reuse them for someone else, sort of like re-gifting, only with email.  Think of it as e-gifting.

 
Email has become both a blessing and a curse.  While email marketing is cheap and allows you to broadcast your message for mere pennies, email marketing is losing its effectiveness as more and more consumers are fed up with unwanted messages and opt out or block marketers from sending them any further content.

Frankly, as marketers, I think that we are our own undoing.   We have used email as an all you can eat buffet without considering the consequences. We have overloaded, over-reached and over used the in-boxes of not only out registered customers, but also the in boxes of potential consumers who find our content irrelevant and unwanted.   So, as a means of defense  to keep you and I out, consumers are using gate keepers, i.e. SPAM blockers, to keep us out, or are hitting the delete key and sending our fabulous offers to never-never land. 

If you’ve run an email campaign, it’s likely you’ve checked the statistics to see what percentage of bounces, opens, forwards, click throughs, unsubscribes, and unopens your campaign produced.   If you haven’t been looking at that data, you need to be.  An important part of an email campaign is not only getting your message past the gate, but getting it opened.  Here’s a few tips to make certain that your emails are welcome and your email campaign are a success: 

BEST PRACTICES FOR SUCCESS

1.  Use Opt-In email Practices Only 

• Single Opt-In
• Notified Opt-In
• Confirmed Opt-In

 2. Clarify and Disclose as Customers Sign Up (Web or Registration Sheet)   

•  The Type of Content You will be Sending
• Frequency of Contact
• From Whom (Email Address)

    3.  Only send the content you disclosed

     4. Stick to your promised frequency

5.  DO NOT SHARE YOUR LIST with anyone else unless you have asked for and have signed permission from your subscribers/prospects to do so.

     6.  Ask subscribers to add your email address to their contact list.  Send out a test email initially in the form of a personal follow up email so that you will see if it comes back as undeliverable. Let’s face reality: people do put down bogus email addresses and when registering by hand sometimes it can be very hard to decipher their writing.  Train your team to verify any information collected in writing with the prospect just are leaving, especially the email address and phone numbers.

     7.  Use a SPAM checker before sending your email out; this will highlight key phrases and words that may get caught by the “gate keeper” programs and move your message from inbox to SPAM box.

     8.  Avoid Trigger Words (Tomorrow’s Blog) BIG BOLD TYPE and CAPS, especially in the headline

     9.  Use the same “From” email address and user name in all of your emails

    10.  Make sure your ESP (Email Service provider) is “WHITELISTED”

    11.  Keep your list updated.  With free mailboxes at Yahoo, gmail, AOL, etc. people are creating mail boxes just for the purpose of giving out to people like you and I, while family and close friends get another. This is often why you get “bounces” on your emails, and unless you are checking to see which ones bounced, you’re unlikely to keep your e-list up to date.  If you get a bounce, just call the person and tell them that you sent them an update (special offer, announcement, etc) and it didn’t go through, and use that opportunity to update their level of interest in your product/services while getting their new email address.

In the next post we’ll discuss market segmentation, personalization and targeting, but for now, this is a lot to consider when thinking about your email strategy.

If you are unsure things that I am talking about in this blog, for example, you  don’t know the differences between single, notified and confirmed opt-in, just start a dialogue between both my readers and myself by asking questions in the comments section at the end of each of my posts. Remember, marketing is a science and art unto itself, and while you may be a brilliant engineer, designer or builder . . . you can’t be expected to know everything about every field. To wit, there are no dumb questions. Don’t be afraid to ask.

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To the conservatives (taken from here):

Freepers, Birthers, Morons of all stripe, You didn’t get mad…

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.

You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn’t get mad when you saw the Abu Grahib photos.

You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.

You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.

You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when.. when… wait for it… when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all ok with you but helping other Americans… well f**k that. That about right? You know it is.

You people have all lost your f**king minds. You are selfish, greedy, obnoxious, narcissistic, and frankly… stupid. Your pathetic little misspelled protest signs are embarrassing. Maybe you ought to find the smart person in your midst and let them make up all the signs, cause man, you look like a bunch of idiots. Also you’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny.

That’s the new liberal spin of whitewashing everything bad that the Obama puppet administration is doing. “Bush ruined the country and you said nothing, now it’s Obama’s turn to ruin the country. Now sit down and shut up.”

To the liberals:

Did you get mad when Rockefeller sabotaged a true investigation into MK Ultra?

Did you get mad when Harriman/Bush/Rockefeller blew JFK’s brains out in the bankers coup d’etat of 1963?

Did you get mad when they did the same to MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X?

Did you get mad when Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground worked with the FBI as agent provacateurs to execute Fred Hampton while he lied in his bed (as well as destroy the entire Black Panther Party and the Peaceful work of the SDS)?

Did you get mad when Larry Potts of the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center conspired with Army Intelligence Asset Timothey McVeigh and Terry Nichols to blow up children in OK City?

Did you get mad when Clinton/Larry Potts/CIA gunned down babies at close range at Waco?

Did you get mad when Patrick Fitzgerald covered up the FBI’s involvement in the ‘93 WTC bombing?

Did you get mad when Clinton committed genocide in Boznia, Africa, and Iraq killing over 2,000,000 people?

Did you get mad when Obama is continuing the same genocides in Iraq and Africa?

Didyou get mad when Obama is still hiding torture?

Did you get mad when Obama is increasing surveillance of innocent American citizens?

Did you get mad when Obama is continuing the contracts with Blackwater?

Did you get mad when the international banking cartel used Obama just like Bush to steel over $23.7 Trillion from your unbourn children.

“You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite,  favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting amongst themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery.”—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Last week’s episode of The Philosopher’s Zone was titled, “The Epistemology of Blogging.”  Alan Saunders discussed blogging’s impact on the development and dissemination of knowledge in society with two speakers, Rutgers University’s Alvin Goldman and the University of Tasmania’s David Cody.

Professor Goldman argued that, to the degree to which blogging hastens the demise of the traditional media, investigative journalism will suffer.  In addition, the blogosphere lacks the traditional media’s gatekeepers, who work tirelessly to ensure that the information we get from outlets such as The New York Times, Time Magazine, CNN, and Fox News is only of the highest quality.  Professor Goldman is concerned that blogging enables consumers to self-select unfiltered information that merely confirms their biases.  This could lead to less informed voters, which could end up harming the democratic process. 

Professor Goldman obviously has a much higher opinion of the traditional media and of the democratic process than I do.

David Cody, on the other hand, took the glass-half-full perspective on blogging, suggesting that the democratic process doesn’t need gatekeepers in the first place, and that blogs offer some healthy competition to the world of news and information.  He drew a parallel between modern arguments against blogging to the arguments made against the printing press in the 15^th century.  It seems that Johannes Gutenberg took some flak from the established information gatekeepers of his day, too. 

Obviously Mr. Cody’s viewpoint more closely reflects my own. 

As I listened to the podcast, though, I was struck by Professor Goldman’s implication that the traditional media actually provide the range of perspectives that he believes is so important to the body politic.  As a libertarian, the idea that consuming information provided by the major news outlets would lead to a more informed, unbiased populace is laughable.  I can probably count on one hand the number of times that a pro-liberty perspective has ever been presented by the mainstream media.  Instead, all we ever get is a comparison and contrast of two marginally different big-government approaches to any given issue, and at no point is a serious critique of the role of government ever allowed to enter into the conversation.  If it weren’t for the advent of blogs and other non-traditional media outlets, these more fundamental questions might never be considered at all.  

This idea stayed with me all week as I listened to and read the traditional news media.  For example, The Dallas Morning News ran a story about how parents are left to decide when their children are old enough to stay at home alone.  To quote the article, “Laws govern when children can drive, vote, drink, even quit school. But in Texas, there’s no limit on the age when a child can stay home alone.”  What primitives we Texans must be!  How can we possibly be expected to handle the pressures of parenthood if the state government doesn’t even tell us when our children are old enough to be left alone?  I suppose next we’ll be expected to make our own decisions about what our kids can eat or what clothes they can wear.  When, oh when, will the madness stop?

Not to be outdone, NPR threw its hat into the ring this week to compete for the honor of the most idiotic piece of journalism with a story on how the poor American dairy farmer is suffering from the low prices paid for milk these days.  At no point in an almost thirteen-minute piece covering the price of dairy products did the reporter, John Burnett, manage to mention the myriad government subsidies and price supports that have controlled the dairy industry since 1937.  Instead, all we heard was whining about the “free market” and (of course) “too little government oversight.”  I understand that journalists can’t know everything about everything, but how is it possible to know nothing about anything?

And then there’s health “reform.”  As far as I can tell, all of the traditional media outlets – no matter what their supposed political biases may be – use the term “reform” when covering President Obama’s efforts to nationalize the health care and insurance industries.  Of course, the word “reform” means “to improve through alteration.”  This is a normative statement that begs the question, and it has no business being mentioned by allegedly objective journalists in their discussion of the issue.

With stories like these shot through the traditional media outlets, it’s hard to take Professor Goldman’s concerns too seriously.  If this is the kind of service that the traditional media’s vaunted “gatekeepers” provide, we’re probably all better off just reading unfiltered blogs (like this one).

Due to public acceptance of digital distribution, majors are now forced to compete more and more with indie artists. The world is upside down. It used to be the major labels and distributors controlled all of the content in record stores. It used to be that they were the gatekeepers. If you wanted to get heard, you more or less had to play ball with them. Much to their chagrin, it’s all moving online now.

They tried to control the distribution there too, remember? By adding DRM and doing various PR shenanigans, which only served to alienate their customers more and more. Really, they didn’t treat their customers all that well. When I bought a Compact Disc, I could make as many copies as I liked without hassle. It wasn’t copy protected. But when I just wanted the mp3 that I was going to make with my Compact Disc, they were blocking me all the way. So I waited. And waited. And finally the Apples and Amazons of the world managed to convince enough guys in suits to get their heads out of their own arses and sell me something I actually want.

But how do you cope with all the onslaught? Anybody with a few bucks can get digital distribution now, and the album is never out of stock. And that’s a good thing. Tons of new music all the time. But how are customers to choose? Where are they finding their music? These are things which keep me up at night. If access is not limited, then is it all about exposure? And who do you trust for recommendations?

Personally, I rely on friends, and chance. If I come across something I love, I’ll make an effort to find it. Otherwise, I ask for trusted friends to recommend stuff. It is the most reliable method. Strangely, they mainly recommend the same stuff. Somehow the music is snaking through the social network. And not just in the Twitter sort of way. Lately I’ve taken to having good old fashioned listening sessions with buds, sort of an extended musical show and tell. I really find it helps to cut through the mammoth mountain of choices.

For this reason I suspect some releases and careers will take longer to build. The slower the burn, the longer the fire – that type of thing. I try to take comfort in this when I ponder the microscopic corner of the music universe I presently occupy. At least I’m not some raging forest fire.

Do major labels still have something to offer? Surely they must. They are a finely oiled PR machine. They have money – lots more than the artists usually have, but less than they used to. And if you want to be a massive overnight Pop wonder, you would have a tough time doing it without big label clout.

I often think the role of the majors may eventually become more like a consultant or an investor. Like to nurture artists to grow. Leverage their experience, their contacts. Offer something the artists need. Since a distribution monopoly is no longer something they are offering, they must offer something else. Without expertise or other value, how will they inspire their bread and butter to sign on the dotted line?