by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Many of those in my now-loyal audience first became acquainted with my work by supporting me in the Community Marketing site’s Great Blog-Off contest a few months ago. A number of people have asked me to write a little case study about my (overwhelming) win in that test, which illustrates some basic principles everyone who writes for the Internet should keep in mind: Hook ‘Em With Headlines. Keep ‘Em There With Links. And Remember You’re Only As Strong As Your Fan Base.

I’ve been a heavy-volume print journalist most of my working life. But after a several-year sabbatical from the field, I returned to find the world of magazines in disarray, Big Media under fire from Little Media, and the Internet emerging as the place where a busy and educated audience of professionals tended to go for both news and features.

I was also dismayed to find that the current dominance of a few major search engines tends to exclude from Internet visibility anything written prior to 18 months ago or so. Magazines are particularly poorly represented. So the more than 3,000 print magazine articles I’d published over a 30-year period were virtually inaccessible, in Internet terms. I was suddenly a journalistic ghost, while Buffy the Siamese Cat, with 14,000 Twitter “publications,” was now a media superstar.

What to do? Well, with the help of my cousin the Internet guru, I first scanned in a selection of about 50 of my magazine articles and placed them in a little virtual portfolio on the Web. Then I wrote a couple of articles for Internet “aggregators,” but soon decided they were pretty much pimps, and I was a lady, not a Lady of the Night.

So I decided to create a Web presence of my own by publishing and administering my own blogsites and developing an audience in the Brave New Blogosphere. While this idea was germinating, I heard about the Great Blog-Off contest at a website called Community Marketing.

Marketing is not my area of expertise, although I’ve done a few stories on it over the years. (I’ve probably done a few stories on everything over the years.) But this contest was not designed for marketing writers only. It welcomed all bloggers who professed to be “thought leaders” on any kind of subject matter. I had been contemplating starting my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series, which most of you now know about. (See the latest Index at http://wp.me/pxD3J-2a )

I signed up for the contest, describing myself as a “thought leader” on the subject of Baby Boomers. The owner of the site asked contestants – there were a couple of dozen originally, although some turned out to be not very active – to come up with punchy little descriptions of themselves, a few words that would make us memorable. I offered the following:

Dr. Ellen Brandt – “Sophisticated Rabble-Rouser”

About my professional background: I’m an Ivy League-educated Ph.D. cultural historian and the author of over 3,000 magazine articles. I’m now a professional in the senior services industry – the fastest-growing sector of this economy for the next 100 years or so – while also resuming my career as a heavy-volume journalist.

When I’m not working: I’m a mezzo soprano trained at Juilliard Prep when it was at 123rd and Claremont. I like lighthouses, carousels, and botanical gardens. And my Dog-Nephew Garcia, named after Jerry Garcia, was – honestly! – the inspiration for the Obamas getting a Portuguese water dog.

My Pre-Blog-Off Blogsite

Said punchy blurb was accompanied by a photo and the notation that I would be the contestant representing Boomers among a field of mostly Gen-Xers and Millennials.

The punchy blurbs were posted about ten days before the contest proper was to begin, at which time I contemplated what kind of strategy might set me apart from the field, help win me a loyal audience, and address the essential differences between a static print environment and this dynamic sphere which calls itself the Internet.

I decided to establish a “pre-Blog-Off blog” at WordPress, where I now house the blogs I publish. The site was called “Preparing for the Blog-Off” with the subhead “Seeing What Works.”

It basically consisted of the same page repeated ten times with different headlines. More about the headlines in a second. The main purpose of the page was to introduce readers to the Blog-Off, with an easy link to the contest embedded in the text.

I also said a little bit about my background and stated that I would be the contestant representing Content and Experience, as befitted a Baby Boomer. On the blogsite’s About page, I offered further links to my Linked In profile, about 50 examples of my print magazine articles, and a wide-ranging interview about my career. (See Why This Blog at http://wp.me/sycK6-about )

This adds up to a whole lot of links! Which illustrates one of those three principles successful website owners should keep in mind: Don’t keep your Readers on one static page, in which case they might as well be sitting at their kitchen table reading a newspaper. Keep your audience moving swiftly from link to link, offering them choices of what to read about next. Make your site a textual Treasure Hunt, with riches galore opening before their eyes.

Now For Those Headlines . . .

All I needed now was an interesting topic for the site, broad enough to warrant several blog entries over the two-week period of the contest, and compelling enough to attract a brand-new audience previously unfamiliar with my work.

The Blog-Off winner would be the contestant who attracted both the most comments and the most clicks – or page views – on the Community Marketing site. So I conceived the idea of a series of stories about attracting both page views and comments via the strength of one’s article headlines.

The series would be called “Thank You For Clicking!” and would be based on the experience early in my career within the world of those Headline Hotshots, the tabloid newspapers. (See “In An Economy and World Gone Haywire” http://wp.me/pycK6-v )

No one does headlines better than the tabloids. Their titles may amuse you, intrigue you, infuriate you, or have you scratching your head – but they are superb at drawing you in and getting you to read the accompanying stories.

Looking at this exercise as informative, as well as fun, I decided to use ten Faux Tabloid Headlines representing different kinds of typical tabloid stories, which I categorized as The Big Story, Plausible-But-Off, Purely Ridiculous, and What-the-Heck-Is-That-About? You can read about these tabloid story categories – and I certainly hope you will – in the four-part series of blogs which made up my composite entry in the Blog-Off.

Here are the ten Faux Tabloid Headlines:

Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker

Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu

Each of these headlines was placed on a separate page at the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site at Word Press, with the exact same text accompanying each one. In other words, the only element that differed page-to-page was the headline itself. A reader’s clicking on any particular page instead of another would demonstrate that the headline on that page attracted that reader in some way. I also encouraged readers to comment on why they clicked on that particular headline.

Please click on this link to see what the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” page looked like: http://wp.me/pycK6-2h I have used “7 Out of 10 Blog in the Nude” as an example.

Finding Your Fan Base

At this point I needed an audience to read my Blog-Off entries. Several of the younger entrants in the contest publically stated they’d be concentrating on their Twitter networks as potential bases of fans. But I wasn’t on Twitter yet, nor was I active on Face Book.

So I decided to focus my efforts on my Linked In network – considerably smaller then than it is now – and my 50 Linked In Groups.

Starting about two weeks before the Blog-Off’s official commencement, I began to post each of the ten Faux Tabloid Headlines in turn, with a link to the appropriate “Preparing” site page, first in the News sections, then in the Discussion sections, of my various Linked In Groups. I made sure each of the ten Faux Headlines appeared in News and Discussion threads an equal number of times, meaning that an approximately equal number of site visitors would have the opportunity to click – or not click – on each distinctive headline.

Readers who did choose to click were encouraged to make comments about why they chose the headline they did. Many got into the spirit of this exercise and made comments which were sophisticated, insightful, and often quite funny.

It was also soon very clear who my own “fan base” tended to be: over-35; equally divided between female and male; well-educated; and with professional, managerial, or creative careers.

I’m quite happy with that audience. And, in fact, many of those who first “found” me and my work via the Blog-Off are now friends and members of my network.

A quick note about my Baby Boomers series: I intended to introduce the first of my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation articles towards the end of the Blog-Off contest. But I collected so much material from the Faux Tabloid Headlines exercise – most of which turned out to be genuinely interesting, as well as humorous – I decided to stick with that “mini-series,” consisting of four separate “Thank You For Clicking!” results stories, as my composite Blog-Off entry.

Here are links to the four stories in the series:

Thank You For Clicking! Part One: Corpse Found In Internet Guru’s Gym Locker http://wp.me/pycK6-2i

Thank You For Clicking! Part Four: New Reality Show To Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers http://wp.me/pycK6-2o

I urge you to read these stories in sequence, after looking at the Introductory page from the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site, linked above.

This sequence of four Thank You For Clicking! results articles made up my Blog-Off entry. They were posted on the Community Marketing site at about three-day intervals over the two-week course of the contest. Other active competitors also posted about four stories on average, with three to five blogs being the typical range per contestant.

When the results were tallied, my articles garnered about twice as many page views on the Community Marketing site as my nearest competitor. But the number of page views on the “Preparing for the Blog-Off” site itself was over double that amount, meaning my total views overall, counting both sites, was between six and seven times as great as the next-nearest contestant.

Tell Me What You Think

The series of Thank You For Clicking! stories also did extremely well in terms of reader commentary, which I believe is one of the essential components of successful Internet-based publishing.

Internet gurus tell us that a comment-to-click ratio of 1-2 percent is the average among publishers across the Web. Adding together the approximately 200 comments the Thank You! series received at the Community Marketing site, my Linked In Groups, and the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site, these articles had a comment-to-click ratio of almost 4 percent, considered an excellent showing.

The comment-to-page view ratio on the “Preparing” site alone, where I – and not other managers – had complete control of the blog and its content was similar, with close to 100 comments from readers, out of 2700 page views in a three-week period.

I am including a selection of original Reader comments from the Community Marketing site and the “Preparing” blogsite as an appendix to this case study. To see them, please click here: http://wp.me/pycK6-2q and http://wp.me/pycK6-2r

The superb reader response demonstrates how enthusiastic – and witty – an audience I was fortunate enough to make an acquaintance with during the course of the Blog-Off contest.

There were a few detractors. If you’ve read my serious humor piece about Malice on the Web, you’ll remember a small cadre of loonies at a couple of Linked In media groups – including a PR man! – who thought anything whatsoever to do with tabloids was just too undignified for Internet discourse. (See “Vultures and Stiletto Heels” http://wp.me/pycK6-5 )

But most readers loved the premise of the Faux Tabloid Headline experiment and understood that it was not only entertaining, but also told us some interesting things about which kinds of headlines readers respond to viscerally and why.

Even coming from a heavy-volume print background, it was essential for me – as it is for every writer and publisher – to discover just who my Internet “fan base” might be and how I could best appeal to them in future Web publications.

My gratifying win in the Blog-Off contest allowed me to do that.

Soon afterwards, I launched my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series. (See http://wp.me/pxD3J-2V ) And “Tell Me What You Think,” a catch phrase I used throughout the Blog-Off, became the subtitle of my EllenInteractive site, a cornucopia of diverse stories designed to elicit above-average reader response. (For instance, see “The World is Divided,” a key question story which received well over 100 comments: http://wp.me/pycK6-n )

I’m now moving on to additional Internet publishing projects:

Media Revolution, a subseries of EllenInteractive, talks about how the entire media sector is undergoing a sea change of enormous proportions and how we must prepare for it. (See “Is Big Brother Here-And Is He An Algorithm?” http://wp.me/pycK6-1Y )

Romance After Fifty is a series on dating and relationships I’m developing with a Baby Boomer matchmaker. (See “A Chance for Romance” http://wp.me/pxD3J-R )

A Little Knowledge will look at Internet security and cloud computing from the perspective of an audience which is well-educated and has used computers for years, but which lacks information on some of the serious recent developments that are changing the Web as we speak.

And The Rest of US - pun intended – is a new blogsite I’m launching about and for political Centrists.

So there have been many interesting developments built upon the foundation of my Blog-Off win.

I invite my brilliant, sophisticated, and in-every-way-perfect audience to join with me in these new projects and others to come.

Any success I have is due to you!

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

How have you attracted viewers to your on-line blogs and articles? Please add your solo to our cacophony of voices.

Don’t be shy! Sing out how you feel about the topics broached in our “Thank You For Clicking!” series and the Faux Tabloid Headlines experiment which preceded it.

For instance, 1) Compared to strategies used in traditional “print,” do you have to be especially aggressive or clever or cagey to attract viewers to your on-line blogs, articles, and other sites? Why or why not?

2) Has a shocking, surprising, or tabloid-like headline ever gotten good results for you on-line? Tell us about it.

3) What other techniques have you used to attract more “clickers” to your blogs, articles, and other Internet sites? Which have been most and least successful?

4) Why do some disparage the real skills – and real talent and creativity – of tabloid journalists? Shouldn’t good journalists – whatever niche they favor – strive to learn from one another and be supportive of the choices other journalists have made?

5) Is there truly a divide between “serious” journalism and tabloid journalism, or are both just parts of the full spectrum of journalistic endeavors?

6) For that matter, shouldn’t all writers strive to participate in as many different genres as possible, working to reach and provoke as many different audiences as possible? In this Brave New World of media transition and flux, isn’t this kind of versatility not only valuable, but possibly essential?

Fellow Writers, fellow Thinkers, fellow Theorists: Don’t seethe. Don’t carp. And please, don’t attack blindly.

Discuss! Debate! Talk to us!

To return to Part One of the “Thank You For Clicking!” series, Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker, click on: http://wp.me/pycK6-2i

To see a selection of reader Comments from the original sites, see: http://wp.me/pycK6-2q

To return to “Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex – How I Won the Blog-Off,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2s

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

In these troubled times, readers seem to appreciate humor, the more off-the-wall the better. But they also like stories about villains, corporate and otherwise. And bad times or good, chocolate and babies sell.

While our results with the Faux Tabloid Ten experiment are based on a fairly small sampling of readers, they don’t surprise me at all. And I believe a larger sampling would yield results that were very similar.

Let’s start with the least successful headlines in the group and why they might not have attracted as many clicks as the front-runners did.

At the bottom of the pack were “Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu” and “Transvestite Running For Mayor” – and readers were quick to tell us why. Both headlines, they said, were too much like what you might see in any ole newspaper, any ole day.

That’s despite the fact that the two titles fit into different categories of tabloid headlines. “Pet Hamsters” is what I call a Plausible-But-Somehow-Off headline. It seems reasonable on first glance, but is based on a glaring logical flaw, in this case, the sound-association of “hamsters” and “ham.”

“Pet Hamster” was rejected, though, not because it was “off,” but because readers have been inundated with swine flu stories lately, to the extent that they will only click on a title that is way more shocking – or perhaps humorous – than this one is. In the county where I live, for instance, some high schools have been temporarily closed because of suspected swine flu cases, which means this topic is the hardest of hard news, immediate and local.

But Rene suggests a way the topic could be made sufficiently humorous to persuade her to click: “I’d rather see . . . College Son’s Laundry Source of Swine Flu,” says the New Jersey mom and editor.

Readers thought “Transvestite Running For Mayor” was just too ho-hum, too. It falls into the Big Statement category of tabloid headlines, those based on news that might be true but is shocking to a portion of the population.

In this case, maybe not all that shocking anymore. One reader, an insurance broker from California, wrote me privately that in the Golden State, there are possibly dozens of transvestite politicians. Although he may be exaggerating, there are probably at least a few. On the other hand, a revelation about an existing Mayor or Congressperson discovered to be something the voters didn’t think he/she was would probably be not only clickable, but the lead story at every media outlet in town! I could come up with examples – “Michael Is Michelle!” - but I don’t wish to be sued until the Blog-Off is over.

Scoring slightly better in our reader poll – with results somewhere in the middle range – were “Are You a Cheetah Or a Crocodile?,” “Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer,” “Women Want Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches,” and “7 Out of 10 Blog In the Nude.”

Interestingly enough, three of these titles have a behavioral – some would call it psycho-babble – slant, popular not only in the tabloids, but in many other kinds of consumer publications. So these are familiar kinds of headlines, with which most readers are comfortable.

“Are You a Cheetah or a Crocodile?” falls into the well-liked Idiotic Quiz subcategory, part of the greater What-the-Heck-Is-That-All-About? category. If you’re human, you probably love such quizzes and are happy to take them – and some of our readers did, imagining their own quiz to correspond to the headline. Michigan writer Rowena, for instance, told us that “It pains me to say so, but I think I’m a crocodile. I lurk . . . patient, tenacious . . . I might even be a bottom dweller.”

But Art, a healthcare executive from Tennessee, wondered if this one might be more than a mere quiz. “I think this is an adjunct to the reality show for bankers and lawyers,” he told us.

“Women Like Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches” and “7 Out of 10 Blog in the Nude” are not only both Big Statement titles, they both fit into the very popular Strange Research subcategory. Like Idiotic Quizzes, titles like these are familiar to anyone who has ever read a newspaper or magazine, not to mention the average scholarly journal, and our readers jumped right in.

Re the fruit: Scott, an architect from northern California, confessed, “If I had some fresh peaches and wanted a romantic night, I would definitely read this one.” Ann, a business coach from Missouri, said, “I like peaches, and I like men, but maybe not together.” While Jamie, a designer from Florida, remarked, perhaps too revealingly, that “I love that my husband smells like cinnamon after a shower!”

Re the naked people: One anonymous respondent said he’d “like to blog in the nude, but it might upset my co-workers.” Cheryl, a Texas entrepreneur, thinks someone should form a new Linked In or Twitter group called the Buff Bloggers, which might be well-received, particularly among fitness-oriented writers.

“Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer,” which falls into the Plausible-But-Somehow-Off category, may have gotten only about 1/5 as many page views as the top-clicked title, but it got the second-highest number of comments of any of the ten headlines, about 1-in-10, a terrific ratio of interactive responses for an Internet-based page.

This is the classic “double-take” headline, which sounds fabulous until you think about it. One Californian said, tongue-in-cheek but bathing suit-clad, “I’m very interested in not only working from home but working from my pool, so an underwater computer is exactly what I’m looking for.” Lawyer Michael from Florida mused, “What’s so funny about that? Sometimes I’m in the Jacuzzi, connected to my office by two different computers, with an I-phone on one side, non-alcoholic beer on the other, HD-exterior TV mounted in front and a music system giving me good sounds.” Sounds like my kind of guy! But New York marketing guru Cindy, again meshing two of the titles, asked, “Will there also be crocodiles in the swimming pool? That could make focusing on the computer challenging.”

Murder, Sex, Sushi, and Bankers: The Top Four

Neck and neck for third and fourth place in our Clickability poll were the headlines “Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam” and “New Reality Show to Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers.” While only about half as popular as the Number Two headline, “Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies,” these two had quite a few adherents, especially, for some reason, among Southerners and Ivy Leaguers, not to mention Southern Ivy Leaguers.

“Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam” is the kind of Purely Ridiculous headline one of my former clients, the Weekly World News, used to specialize in, and commentators on both the blog and at the Linked In Groups got into the spirit of things. Alabamian Butch quipped that “I thought it was a lobster.” Several others had the same idea, saying they heard it wasn’t Thailand, but Laos or Malaysia or maybe Indonesia. But one of my sorority sisters believed it was Thailand, commented on her happy days working in that country, and commiserated with former friends and colleagues who had to relocate because of the Evil Mollusk.

Talk about Evil – or at least currently unloved – various readers said they can’t wait to see an actual contest between Wall Street Bankers and Wall Street Lawyers, which would move our “New Reality Show” headline from the Plausible-But-Off to the Big Statement category. Mr. Burnett, are you listening?

One said, “This is a reality show I might actually watch. Winner gets their job back, but has to pay 50% of salary and overpaid bonus to losers.” But Art said, “One group will be made up of timid souls laid-off because they were too conservative . . . They will never get out of the starting gate. The other team will be the group that was so aggressive, they either burst the bubble or got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Good luck getting this group to form a team!”

Neither clams nor laid-off executives can compete with decadence and baby animals, of course. Such has it ever been, and such shall it ever be. “Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies,” our number two-clicked headline, also succeeds because it falls into the What-the-Heck-is-That-All-About? category, which lures you in, because it could fit a wide range of possible topics. Dashing Breeder of Siberian Huskies absconds to Belgium with Ingenue Judge he met at the Westminster Kennel Club Show. Well – could be.

Kim, a physician from Florida, liked the headline trio, but thinks we should have added in a good champagne. Sherry, a publicist from Massachusetts, was OK on the kinky sex and candy, but Adorable Puppies “took the imagination, for me, down a slippery slope to a dark place.” Wow, Sherry! You should get in touch with Jeff, a sports producer from New York, who joked that he “prefer(s) barnyard animals, a midget, and a taser.”

Personally, I am a sucker for baby animals and am prone to click on any story that features them. When the German magazine Der Spiegel was running their never-ending daily series about Knut, the mega-adorable baby polar bear, I visited their on-line site nearly every day to Ooh and Ah over baby pics of the white, furry cutie-pie.

But even babies and chocolates couldn’t compete with Dire Foul Play – at least in our little survey. The number one Faux Headline by far was “Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker,” which received over ten times as many eager clicks as the lowest-ranking headline.

This is clearly an example of a Big Statement tabloid headline, based on material that is actual news, but shocking or intriguing to many viewers. Just as I understand the impulse to seek out stories about baby animals, I empathize totally with the impulse to click on stories about Love Triangles Turned Tragic, Postal Workers Going Berserk, Cowboys Fighting Indians, and Corpses Found in Gym Lockers. In other words, Blood, Gore, Fury, and Passion appeal to me – and to many, many other readers.

Jan, an executive trainer from Arizona, thinks “a corpse in a gym locker would get a click from just about anyone.” But the fact that an Internet Guru was a principal in this (faux) saga seemed to attract people even more – although some seemed to hope the Guru might be the Corpse, instead of a possible Murderer. As a viewer from one of the Linked In groups said, “Those Internet guys are so full of themselves, he probably got what he deserved.”

Others were intrigued by the locker side of the equation. “How does one get a locker big enough to hold a body?” asked Ann Lia, a healthcare executive from Washington, D.C., whose fitness club must be stingy with their space. But Bob, a marketing manager from Florida, took it one step further, into the realm of political favoritism. “Who in the Administration,” he complained, “did the Guru know to get a gym locker that big?”

As these responses show, the vast majority of readers found our Faux Tabloid Headline project both useful and amusing, encouraging them not only to click, but to get creative themselves with some delightful – or downright hilarious – comments.

There were a handful of dissenters – none on the site itself, but some who posted at Linked In groups. A couple of them were the garden-variety crazies you seem to find all over the Internet today, and whom I intend to write about in a future blog.

Others were thoughtful – although to my mind, dead wrong – dissenters. Their essential argument is that there’s Serious Journalism way over heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere and Tabloid Journalism way over theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere, and Never the Twain Shall Meet – a conclusion which the famous Twain – Mark – would have disagreed with vehemently. (Probably Shania, too.)

If this opinion were ever true – and I doubt it – it is certainly not true in the creative flux and cacophony of voices which mark the Brave New World of Internet Journalism right now.

The best-written, most thoroughly-researched and intelligently-reasoned article or blog may not get the audience it deserves just because it’s there. That audience often has to be brought to it, to find out it exists.

By Fair Means or Foul Play – like a Corpse in an Internet Guru’s Gym Locker – it is a legitimate exercise to seek out readers and bring them into your authorial fold.

Part Four of this series will suggest some topics for further discussion. Please comment. Your cacophonous voice is important, too!

For Part Four, New Reality Show to Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers, please click on: http://wp.me/pycK6-2o

To return to “Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex-How I Won the Blog-Off,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2s

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Under certain circumstances, a headline can be Purely Ridiculous and accomplish its goal. Otherwise, go for The Big Statement, Plausible-But-Somehow-Off, or What-the-Heck-Is-That-All-About?

Examples of all these kinds of click-attracting headlines were used in the Faux Tabloid Ten.

Before I discuss individual headlines, let me establish my tabloid credentials for those who don’t know me. In fact, if you have a moment, you might want to read the very recent interview with and about me that was published at Name of Site. (I subsequently moved this story from a blog aggregator’s site to EllenInteractive. Here’s a quick link: http://wp.me/pycK6-v )

In this interview, I talk about the period, early in my career, when I wrote for all the major supermarket tabloids on a heavy-volume basis. I got my first assignment in this specialized media niche via a women’s page column – remember the days when every newspaper had a women’s page? – which ran weekly in 40-plus California newspapers.

One of my stories featured a Sierra Nevada hotelier, Sue Clark, whose gold rush-era hotel boasted a resident ghost named George. One of the tabloids sought me out and asked if I could do a story for them on just the ghost! I did; they loved it; and I became a tabloid writer, with a rather strange specialty virtually nobody else shared – turning serious business articles into fodder for a tabloid audience.

So I learned to write the attention-grabbing headlines you’ll see at the checkout counter, spurring you on to put down that milk carton and learn why “Veterinarians Date Supermodels,” “Ferret Owners Have High I.Q.s,” or “Peanut Butter Plus Anchovies Burn Fat Quickly.”

As you can see, none of the above headlines is particularly funny, but they are all typically tabloid, which brings me to a certain kind of comment I got from a few of those who perused the pre-Blog-Off blog. These few – typically people in creative jobs – helpfully made suggestions about how a certain headline in the Faux Ten could be made more “riotously funny.” A novelist, for instance, outlined a few other possible male scents I could use in the “Peaches” headline that might provoke more chuckles, while an adman thought other kinds of candy would be funnier than truffles in the “Kinky Sex” title.

But unless a headline is patently absurd, the tabloids don’t want it to be too comedic. Slightly silly actually draws in more readers than stand-up-comedy hilarious. Do I know why this is so? Not really. But it probably has something to do with the typical reader of the National Enquirer or the Globe being different from the average reader of Mad Magazine. The latter wants to laugh out loud. The former wants to hear some gossip, read some service pieces, all the while being pleasurably titillated.

So let me first tell you which of my Faux Tabloid Headlines falls into the four categories of attention-grabbers I mentioned above, then move on in Part Three to reader comments which help explain why some titles got more page views than others.

An example of a Purely Ridiculous headline is easy to spot on the list: “Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam.” Why ever use this kind of headline? Frankly, one should do so only sparingly and certainly not without a purpose. But I thought this headline was a perfect one to introduce this particular Faux Tabloid experiment. Besides, it’s so ME, reflecting my own personality and sense of humor, which is what a Purely Ridiculous title should do.

But make sure the humor is in some way related to the topic of your story. “Elephant Chosen Prom King” might be a ridiculous, catchy headline for a story about high school students who are avid Republicans. “Nonagenarian Gives Birth to Triplets” could head a piece on excesses in the field of in-vitro fertilization.

A Big Statement tabloid headline may be based on a perfectly true bit of news that is nonetheless shocking or intriguing to many people. “Transvestite Running For Mayor” is just this sort of headline, and I can imagine it appearing in virtually any issue of virtually any tabloid. Surely sometime, somewhere, somehow, Transvestites have run for the office of Mayor, and many people will be happy to read about it.

Another sort of Big Statement headline may precede an article detailing the results of a strange piece of research. “Women Want Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches” is a good example. I’ve been told that Dr. Hildegarde M. Von Smitzen of the University of Alpen-Wassen published exactly this kind of research finding last year. Or maybe not. But she could have. If she existed.

Articles based on real – and often extremely weird – research projects are a staple of tabloid reporting. If you ever run out of things to write about, go straight to the scientific journals!

Our Faux Tabloid Ten also included some prime examples from the Plausible-But-Somehow-Off category of headlines. These are titles that seem straightforward and true at first glance, but which have a glaring logical flaw when one looks a bit closer. “Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer” is an obvious example. Your first take might be,”Wow! I’d like one of those.” Your second take: “But I guess I’d need scuba gear to use it.” And your third take: “Wouldn’t the mouse keep shorting out?”

Similarly, “Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu” looks sensible when you read it quickly, as the faux-association “hamster-ham-swine” echoes through your brain. In truth, hamsters are probably no more likely to spread swine flu than pet cats or pet parakeets – unless they escape from their cute little wheels and run away to Latin American pig-breeding sites. Which I guess is possible.

Two of our Faux Tabloid Ten fit nicely into the What-the-Heck-Is-That-All-About? category. “Are You a Cheetah or a Crocodile?” is an exemplar of a subgroup of this category that’s a staple not only of the tabloids, but also of women’s, men’s, and many general interest magazines: the Idiotic Quiz. I do not use that term pejoratively, because I’m convinced the vast majority of human beings adore Idiotic Quizzes of all kinds . They are quite simply fun to participate in, and you don’t have to take the results seriously, as opposed to, say, bar exams or mammograms.

And one of the most popular of our Faux Ten Headlines, “Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies,” might make the front page of any respectable tabloid, mostly because it could be about nearly anything at all: A scandal involving a Hollywood director? Goings-on at the ASPCA? Next week’s topics roster at the Tyra Banks Show? You’d have to read further to find out.

We’ll discuss which of our Faux Tabloid Headlines readers liked most – and least – in Part Three.

Click here for Part Three of the series, Thailand Swallowed by Giant Clam: http://wp.me/pycK6-2m

To return to “Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex-How I Won the Blog-Off,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2s

Als ich heute meine Unterlagen vom Jugendmedienevent durchgekramt habe, ist mir folgendes Video entgegengesprungen. Unser Seminarleiter (Gott.. mein Namensgedächtnis) hat uns dieses Video gezeigt, und ich war erstaunt, wie nah es an der Wirklichkeit sein könnte.

Zuerst wird die Geschichte der Informationspolitik (/der Medien) erzählt. Dieser Teil führt einen in die Wirklichkeit hinein, wie sich die Medien (mit besonderem Blick auf das Internet) bis zur Gegenwart verändert haben. Der Begriff “Prosumer” wird dort ganz groß geschrieben. Aber dann knüpft die Zukunft direkt an die Gegenwart an, ohne einen Schnitt zu machen. Hier verwenden die Macher ein starkes stilistisches Mittel, das die gezeigt Zukunft noch realer erscheinen lässt.

Ich persönlich musste bei dem Blick in die Zukunft an einigen Stellen schmunzeln. Aber ich möchte nicht zu viel verraten.

Ich frage mich: Ist das unsere Apotheose?

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Join in their volley of insults, they’ll continue to play as long as they can . Ignore them completely, readers could take them to heart. In the Flame Game, a quick victory – fueled by wit – works best.

Most people don’t visit websites, blogs, or group discussion boards intent on making trouble.

Most people respect the opinions of others and debate them, if they must, in the spirit of fairness and camaraderie.

Most people don’t embark on lifelong vendettas based on a few words posted on the Internet.

But then, most people aren’t Flamers.

I sometimes think of Internet Flamers as Locusts. They descend upon a target website quickly. Under suitable conditions, they breed rapidly and form a swarm. Their noise is so overwhelming, they can drown out everything else in the vicinity. And if left unchecked, they can do great harm, sometimes devastating damage.

Like Locusts, too, Internet Flamers seem to pop up spontaneously more or less anywhere. If you write or publish anything whatsoever on the Internet, even the most harmless-sounding, out-and-out innocent site or blog – on kitchen countertops, say, or miniature poodles – chances are that somehow, someday, when you least expect it, Flamers will swarm.

In Internet terms, Flaming is defined as a hostile or insulting interaction between or among users of a discussion board, chatroom, or increasingly, the Comments section of a website or blog.

But the expression of hostility or anger per se isn’t necessarily Flaming. It’s when such expressions are aimed at others – including authors or website owners – and are neither constructive nor clarifying to the progress of a discussion that true Flaming occurs. Often, these attacks go off on a tangent so extreme, they have only the most tenuous connection to the original material that supposedly inspired them.

I wrote about a classic Flamer – I called him “Herbie” – in my story about extreme malice on the Internet. (“I Don’t Like What You Wrote. You Should Be Poisoned, Garrotted, Stabbed With Stiletto Heels, Thrown Off A Tall Building, and Have Vultures Eat Your Liver” http://wp.me/pycK6-5 )

Herbie, supposedly a genteel gentleman in his 70s, somehow found the Comments section of a reprinted version of my quite-popular story, “Summer Camp for Seniors,” which talks about unqualified activities directors at assisted-living sites and their disrespect for elderly residents. (See http://wp.me/pycK6-t )

On his first appearance there, Herbie made a statement along the lines of “There is so much that is horrible about this article, I don’t know where to start.” Already suspecting something – having worked for both the tabloids and women’s mags, I know a potential crazy person by instinct – I asked the site’s publisher to take down the comment and ban this fellow from his site. He didn’t.

So Herbie came back. And as I suspected he would, he quickly proceeded to make comments that were totally unrelated to the story itself, but nevertheless – without any citations from the text – called it untrue and unsupported and elitist and . . . I dunno, possibly seditious and definitely fattening. After which he went on to lambaste me – someone he knew nothing whatsoever about – as an unfit writer, scholar, dancer, chef, electrician, Olympic athlete, and Mayoral candidate. (All except the first two are, of course, accurate.)

Even Without an Audience, Determined Flamers Flame Away

With the unfortunate lack of civility in our public discourse these days, silly – but often hurtful – attacks of this kind are an everyday occurrence. Until recently, though, Flamers’ targets tended to be celebrities of some kind – actors, politicians, sports figures, or Jay Leno.

Now, if you breathe – particularly if you both breathe and write – you’re potential prey. My friend Elizabeth contacted me just the other day, horrified that her simple act of posting a news story from a UK publication on a message board attracted a vicious Flaming attack. She didn’t even write the story – for Goddess’s sake! – but her Flamer ripped into her with a “People like you don’t know what you’re talking about” diatribe that had scant threads linking it to the story in question and no threads whatsoever linking it to Elizabeth.

“People Like You” is a common kind of Flamer opener, by the way, mostly because it’s so versatile. “People Like You – (Baby Boomers, Lawyers, Moroccans, Bowlers, Meat-Eaters, Satanists) – should be condemned because you – (Own Two Cars, Don’t Recycle, Have Freckles, Talk Too Fast, Remind Me of My Cousin Jimmy, Have Bodies Buried in Your Backyard) – and therefore need to be (Censored, Quarantined, Tithed, Sent to an Optometrist, Drawn-and-Quartered, Forced to Read Marketing Copy).

In nearly every instance, Flamers like to jump quickly from attacks on things – articles, movies, music, games – to attacks on people responsible for those things – authors, directors, composers, athletes. That’s because things don’t have feelings and can’t get hurt. People tend to get hurt pretty easily.

To be sure, if you’ve been the target of Flamethrowers often enough, you develop a sort of immunity. Personally, I’m not prepared to run for president yet. How candidates – or even Britney and Lindsay – take it is beyond me. But in the case of my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series, which has been the constant target of a group of Crazed Millennials who think I’m out to incite a rebellion of We-Won’t-Be-Bullied-Into-Retirement middle-class businesspeople – (Yes, of course, they’re right) – I now fully expect the attacks and have begun to find them rather funny.

The funniest was clearly an attack I endured when I posted one of my Angriest Generation articles – I believe it was “No Gold Watch When You Work For Pariah Corporation” (http://wp.me/pxD3J-N ) on one of the News feeds at a film-related group at Linked In.

Minutes after the story was posted, a tag team of Flamers – let’s call them Manny and Moe – bit into the Comments stream with relish. Not that they even mentioned the article itself. They first began with the standard “Boomers Are To Blame For the Ills of the World” harangue, which has been permeating the Internet the past few months and which I talked about in my story on Anti-Boomer propaganda. (See “You Have Cooties – Go Play Golf” at: http://wp.me/pxD3J-8 )

According to this so-predictable-it-has-to-be-scripted spiel, Boomers are to blame for not only our current economic malaise, but also for the Biblical Flood, the Black Plague, the Wars of the Roses, and Cholesterol. Moreover, both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are Boomers, which proves . . . absolutely nothing, but they think it does.

I responded to the first barrage of Flamelets – (for my Fight-Flamers Game Plan, see below) – with a link to my Anti-Boomer propaganda story and several of my own canned answers for dealing with criticism aimed at Boomers.

Predictably, Moe and Manny went on to attack me – my integrity, my scholarship, my ancestry, my hairdo, and my taste in breakfast cereal. Actually, their main attack centered on the fact that one of these two gentlemen – I believe it was Moe – had attempted to post a couple of Flaming Anti-Boomer comments on my blogsite, and I zapped him, which is my right as a website owner.

I made one additional post specifically aimed at this Fireball, stating that not only do I moderate my own blogs, I strongly suggest that others do the same. And I pointed out that M&M’s hero, President Obama – also a Baby Boomer, by the way – now moderates all of his websites at the White House. So call me Obama-like in my decision.

Manny and Moe disregarded the analogy and went on Flaming – but I decided not to participate further, nor did any other poster. So for the next two weeks, Moe and Manny continued their Flame-throwing dialogue, talking to each other, possibly without a single outside observer, and turned their Flamefest into a hundred-comment extravaganza. Alas, it’s been removed from the site now, or I would gladly link you to it, as a sort of relic.

Bring in the Clones

An even funnier Flamefest is in motion right now, at the date of publication of this story. I don’t think I’ll tell you where – think of it as a Treasure Hunt – but the venue is a political discussion board at a social media site. The topic which started this particular Comments thread is by now lost in prehistory, but the thread has now reached the 80-plus posts point. What makes it so hilarious is that there are – as in the Manny and Moe scenario – now only two posters left in the stream, trading virulent insults with positive glee. The twist is that these two “opposing” Flamers are almost certainly the exact same real person. A Man and his Clone, together at last.

The “Man” in question – I’ve confirmed he does exist – is quite intelligent, a Harvard grad in his early 30’s. The “Clone” is his Avatar, in the three-dimensional, rather than graphic, sense: a distinct Internet personality created by its user to represent him/her/it in Web interactions. Avatars like this are the essence of Virtual World-type communities, like Second Life, and various multiplayer games, like World of Warcraft.

I’m sure that the Man and the Clone are one in the same, because He/They have made multiple verbal slips in their Flame-Party-A-Deux. Sometimes, the Man (let’s call him Ralph) claims credit for remarks the Clone (let’s call him Rafe) has made and vice versa. Or Rafe insults Ralph insults Rafe for characteristics of “background” or “opinion” formerly attributed to the other.

Possibly, this is all preparation for a Hollywood blockbuster – or a political coup. One can’t be sure.

The moderator of this discussion board may have declined to intercede in this split-personality Flame thread because (s)he found it entertaining and/or mind-boggling. The moderator of the Manny-Moe Flamerama inspired by my article probably should have intervened and doused – i.e. deleted – the conflagration as soon as it included malicious insults.

As I have said elsewhere, most discussion board and other group moderators don’t take this facet of their responsibilities seriously enough. They don’t consider the emotional distress Internet bullying, sometimes escalating to character assassination, can cause, even among we sane and stable adults who make up the majority of Internet participants.

And by not choosing to Just Say No to Nastiness, they may be encouraging Flamers to continue in their dubious careers of Cyber-Sadism.

But We Who Have Felt the Burn can certainly do our part to douse the flames.

The Little Man Behind the Screen

Remember the denouement of the Wizard of Oz? Toto kicks over a screen to reveal the Wizard as a shriveled up, rather pathetic-looking little man, whose manifestations of power are nothing more than magic tricks.

Flamers are just junior Wizards, whose power is illusory, based as it is on a certain facility to string hurtful words together, reinforced by what are clearly sociopathic tendencies.

Your concern as a writer or website owner isn’t with the Flamer or Flamers, anyway. It’s with your audience of readers, potential readers, or website visitors. You don’t want to have them shun you because of lies and character assassination coming from your attackers. But you don’t want to participate in a “volley” of exchanges with your Flamers, either – because if you do, it may go on for years!

On your website or blogsite itself, there’s the simplest of solutions: Insist on moderating your own Comments streams. Allow in comments which disagree with your text or ideas, if they are made honestly in the spirit of discussion and debate. But simply zap comments which are irrelevant to your text, insult entire groups of people, or insult you.

“I find a logical flaw in your argument about aardvarks with leprosy,” is OK. “Dentists are aardvarks with leprosy,” “Romanians are aardvarks with leprosy” or “You are an aardvark with leprosy” are not.

In a social media discussion thread or the Comments section of a News feed, the situation is more difficult, because you don’t moderate the site. You can try appealing to whomever does moderate it to delete posts from Flamers. Good Luck! I have found that most site moderators either don’t care, are too busy, or – quite often – believe that a Flame Exchange brings new readers to their group and is therefore positive.

Your real concern is that Flamers might be taken seriously enough by the rest of the group that they’re persuaded not to read your article or visit your website.

So I suggest you post once – sometimes twice – politely but firmly stating why you believe whatever the heck they’re saying is all wet. If you can deflate them with wit or humor, that is a definite plus:

“No, our site was not designed by a ten-year-old. Stanislaus is 43, lives in Cleveland, and won the Website of the Century award last year.”

“There are 80 million Baby Boomers in the US. Surely, you’re not suggesting all of us are cannibals?”

“My parents are not a gangster and a chorus girl. Dad is a veterinarian, and Mom owns a dress shop.”

Then, painful as it is, just walk away.

Possibly, they’ll say more cruel, nasty things about you. Possibly they’ll continue saying them for weeks, like Manny and Moe, or Ralph and His Clone.

But you won’t be there to hear them.

What Do You Think?

Have you been the victim of Internet Flamers? OK – Of course, you have! But tell us about the most interesting, horrible, or funny incidents.

Should moderators of social media groups and message boards be compelled by top site management to delete posts that insult or damage the reputations of group members?

Should web security organizations or law enforcement agencies step in and stop the activities of perpetual Flamers?

What do you think motivates the typical Flamer? Does their existence indicate greater problems on the Internet or within our society?

Should Ralph and his Clone be given a Hollywood contract?

For the Introduction to the Media Revolution series: http://wp.me/pycK6-1Y

For our story about False Spam Accusations as Political Weapons: http://wp.me/pycK6-21

For Ellen’s popular article, “Will Boomers and the GOP Save Twitter? http://wp.me/pxD3J-K

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Misuse and misinterpretation of the term “spam” is now so blatant, one has to wonder if Big Media might not be behind it. But we in “Little Media” are aware of the abuse, and it can’t last much longer.

If you publish a blog, own a website, or participate in various social media sites, chances are you’ve been accused of “spamming” at one time or another. You’re probably seriously angry about it. Well, so am I.

Besides the (ongoing) campaign of pure annoyance coming from my darling Twitter Stalker Agatha-Anne and her buddies (see “Slaughtering Your Pet Hamster” http://wp.me/pycK6-L ), I’ve been subjected to two accusations of “spamming” this past summer, one truly silly and inconsequential, one more serious in its implications.

First, the purely silly one. Several weeks ago, a young woman I’ll call Janette sent me an invitation to connect on Linked In, where I have a fabulous high-quality network of over 1400. Because she was a member of an organization I belong to and trust, I said Yes.

But the first time I sent one of my standard To-My-Network mailings with links to a couple of my stories, Janette wrote me what can only be called a hateful, malicious note, along the lines of “How dare you pollute my mailbox with your vile publications, You Evil Spammer You?”

Huh? You’re in my Network. You asked to be in my Network. I’m a publisher and writer. Do you expect me to send my Network pictures of bunnies or needlework instructions? Moreover, if one does not wish to click on a link in a letter, the obvious solution is not to click on a link in a letter.

And Linked In has a handy little feature called “Remove This Person from Your Network.” This handy little feature allows you to “Remove (Any) Person from Your Network,” for any reason whatsoever, quietly and efficiently, without having to write them letters and insult them.

I immediately took Janette out of my Network, after replying to her charming missive by telling her about the handy Remove-This-Person feature, thinking perhaps she honestly did not know about it.

As the teens say, As If . . . Over the next few days, I got five or six additional charming little notes from Janette, escalating in venom, going on about “You sent me Spam. Your stories are Spam. I hate your stories. My father hates your stories. My third cousin hates your stories. My goldfish hates your stories. My goldfish will not eat Spam. Spam, spam, spam, spam, and spam.”

OK, Janette. You’re just another Flamer, playing Kiddie games and trying to make people unhappy, because making people unhappy is “fun.” We’ll treat the general subject of Flaming in the next article in the series. But in the context of this story, you are silly and inconsequential, and I am now going to ignore you.

Except to say that as someone with a large Linked In network and a growing one on Twitter, every day I receive maybe a hundred mailings of various kinds from people with whom I’m connected. I like some of these mailings. I don’t like some others. Several fall into the category of articles and other publications. Some are newsletters. Others are new product or service announcements or out-and-out advertisements.

I click on the ones I want to read. I archive the ones I don’t want to read. I send a return message of Thanks, if it looks like I am expected to do so. I am never annoyed or upset receiving these mailings, because I allowed these connections to come into my Network, meaning they are cordial on-line acquaintances, and I want to hear about what they’re up to.

If at some point I find a connection annoying or upsetting, not to mention downright rude – remember Palance? – I remove him/her/it from my connections list, and that is that. This is what nice people do. This is what sane people do.

You’re Not Foie Gras, But You Sure Squawk Like Geese

Which brings us to the second incident this summer, a far more serious one, which goes to the very heart of the misuse of the term “spam” and demonstrates why we should all be concerned about it.

I honestly don’t know – nor particularly care – what Mz. Janette’s political leanings are. But I do know, from several people who are acquainted with him, that a young man I’ll call Chaz is a committed Leftist Democrat. He’s also the appointed manager of a large group for computer professionals at Linked In. I joined this Group because I’m an Internet publisher, but also because I’ve been seeking some interesting Boomer IT people as interviewees for my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series. (See http://wp.me/pxD3J-3 )

As you undoubtedly know by now, Angriest Generation is already popular among Boomers, Centrists, and Republicans, but decidedly unpopular among a vocal cadre of mostly young people on the Far Left. Primarily, they dislike this series because I’m among the few to have called them out for spewing anti-Boomer propaganda.

Chaz refused to allow stories from Angriest Generation to make it into his Group’s News feed, even though this particular Group’s feed is generally a dozen pages long and includes many utterly hideous stories from the likes of shady SEO purveyors in Bangladesh and Taiwan.

The first time he deleted one of my stories from his feed, I complained to the Group’s owner and Customer Service. It was reinstated. The second time he did it, I complained again. Reinstated again.

But the third time he did it, Chaz decided to escalate the quarrel and reported me for “spamming” his News feed. I cannot tell you how shocked I was that he would stoop so low. I could have escalated this little tiff in turn and transformed it into a first-class vendetta. But I decided I was tired of Chaz’s shenanigans and simply left the Group.

I want you to ponder this incident for a couple of reasons. First of all, as in the case of a Network of connections above, a bona fide member of a social networking Group should always – that is always – have the right to post blogs or other publications of which he/she is the author or publisher without any restrictions whatsoever – except, perhaps, if they’re pornographic or in some other way universally offensive.

If you don’t want someone in your Group in the first place, by all means, you have the right to refuse them membership. But once they’re in the Group, a manager can’t arbitrarily refuse their right to post articles they’ve written, just because he doesn’t happen to like their subject matter or agree with their political bent.

Chaz’s behavior is offensive to other Group members, too. Is his Membership a gaggle of geese, who have to be protected from being force-fed material they might not like to read, turning their livers into a certain French delicacy? Most adults are capable of deciding for themselves what they want to read and clicking on it. Or deciding they don’t want to read it and not clicking on it. Personally, I have no interest in reading anything from the shady Bengali and Taiwanese SEO purveyors. Or for that matter the New York Times.

Hookers and Con Artists – Good! Bloggers – Evil!

But far worse than Chaz’s battle to shelter his Membership from exposure to us dread Republicans and others he considers politically incorrect is his daring to label our articles as “spam.”

This takes us to the heart of the matter: Publications are not “spam.” Never ever, ever, and ever.

In fact, nobody really thought of labeling any publication as “spam” up to a few months ago, as it became more and more apparent that Big Media was being forced to relinquish its absolute domination of the Internet to hordes of upstart bloggers and websites keen on garnering their own “eyeballs” and audiences, taking them away from the Official – in their own minds – Gatekeepers of the US Media.

The term “spam” was originally – and quite clearly – meant to apply to annoying, repetitive, and unsolicited Internet-based advertising – solicitations that want to persuade you to part with your money. “Here’s a Hot Stock Tip” is usually spam, as are “Buy Foreclosed Houses,” “Get 10,000 Twitter Followers,” and even “Eat at Joe’s Diner,” although I have nothing in particular against Joe.

But someone posting a link to their article, blog, free newsletter, or website, without desiring that you pay them any money to do so, is in no way “spamming.” They are offering information and attempting to build an audience, the same way the Wall Street Journal or CNN or Oprah.com is, when they post and disseminate their latest articles.

Oh, but those are “professionals,” you argue, while bloggers are in a different category. If you think that, I suggest you are reading the wrong blogs. There are many thousands of former or current high-volume print journalists who have their own blogs now. If you’re unfamiliar with my background, I have over 3,000 print articles to my credit over the past 30-odd years. Now I’m in the so-called Blogosphere, working to develop and increase an audience of my own. I like it, and so do many others.

But I also strongly defend the right of newer and less experienced writers and website owners to try to build a readership of their own through the exact same means more established media outlets, including a handful of now-institutionalized Big Blogs, do.

If the New York Times can aggressively post its stories on numerous Linked In Group News feeds, so can Carolyn’s style blog or Arthur’s blog on economics. If the Huffington Post can get staffers and friends to retweet pieces repeatedly on Twitter, so can Charlie’s senior care publication or Nancy’s small business-oriented website.

And if Mashable can strive for blogroll and pingback links from other blogs, John the orthopedist, Patty the homeschooling expert, and Lou who writes about horses can use these tactics, too.

Without fear of being called “spammers.”

Proof positive that the abuse and misuse of the term “spam” applied to Little Media has been calculated is the fact that the mostly young, mostly Far Left-leaning Twitterers and others who’ve been doing the complaining have completely neglected to make complaints about all the real no-doubt-about-it spammers in our midst.

There’s nary a mention of the various get-rich-quick marketing schemes touted constantly by the Trump Network and others. No complaints about barkers for tooth whiteners, gourmet coffee, organic pet food, or Cars Seized from Drug Dealers. Nor even the offensive-to-many pleas to buy male enhancement products or patronize Ladies of the Night.

But Jim or Jane may be harried and harassed by a battalion of “concerned youth,” if they dare to try to publicize their Right-of-Center political articles. “Spam, spam, spam,” some Kiddies now wail – but I don’t think they can get away with it much longer.

For one thing, the social media sites are becoming very wary of Kiddies with chips on their shoulders, since they’ve now been implicated in the Twitter and Facebook Denial-of-Service attacks and the Word Press worm scare in Europe and Asia.

For another, if social sites were persuaded to adopt the “Spam-means-non-Left-Little-Media” theories of MoveOn.Org and their ilk, it’s only a (short) matter of time before they’d start getting hit with some serious and costly lawsuits.

More intriguing, though, is whether any part of Big Media – maybe rogue PR outfits who believe they’re working on media clients’ behalf – are encouraging these youthful legions of “You’re Spamming” accusers or otherwise conspiring to get Little Media’s audience-building efforts unjustly labeled as “spam.”

Surely, we hope not. But one wonders.

What Do You Think?

Have you ever been accused of “spamming” while trying to publicize your blog or website?

If so, what was the outcome? How did you rebuff this accusation?

Do you believe there are sometimes political motivations and biases behind accusations of spam?

Is Big Media using the S-word in its efforts to hold onto Web dominance against the onslaught of Little Media sites?

How should the social networking sites, like Linked In and Twitter, change their spam policies to protect and promote their Little Media members?

For the Introduction to the Media Revolution series, see: http://wp.me/pycK6-1Y

For “Flame, Set Match-Trounce Those Internet Flamers” http://wp.me/pycK6-25

Thought-Provoking Articles on What’s Happening Now – And What’s About to Occur

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

The old rules no longer apply. The new rules haven’t been written. But out of chaos comes opportunity. Those of us with decades of experience should be leading, not following, in a media sector undergoing profound transformation.

I used the paragraph above to describe Media Revolution, the new Group I “own” and manage at Linked In, welcoming experienced journalists “to theorize, debate, and collaborate on how to navigate a sector in flux.”

I’ve decided to crystallize some of my ideas about what’s happening now – and what may happen as we go forward – in a series of articles exploring various aspects of the media sector’s transformation, specifically on the Internet.

For now, I’m publishing these stories as a subseries on my EllenInteractive blogsite. As the series develops, they may be relocated to their own site or become part of another media blog.

Much of what I write may be controversial, particularly to those with a stake in the status quo or to anyone who believes a change in current media sector “Gatekeepers” may decrease the influence of certain political groups or other elites which they support.

Others, I hope, will find my ideas helpful – and hopeful – in illustrating what seems to be amiss right now; what needs to be changed; and how the greater public of Internet users generally and those of us in “Little Media” specifically might work together to effect profound change in how information reaches our audiences and which information is “permitted” to reach them.

Because make no mistake, what’s happening right now is a major battle between so-called “Big Media” and its political and financial allies and all of us upstart publishers and entrepreneurs who have broken away from Big Media the past few years.

It is nothing less than an attempt to oust the Official Gatekeepers of this country’s media establishment from the extreme domination of viewership and influence they’ve enjoyed for the past two or three decades – an abnormal concentration of power, in American terms, which many think has paralleled a similar unhealthy maldistribution of wealth and influence in other sectors.

Interestingly enough, those with the clearest sense of such inequalities in Internet access and influence are two large groups you’d think would have plenty of both: Baby Boomers and the political Right (and Center-Right). I say this, because despite their size and collective financial clout, both of these groups have had to fight tooth and nail for Web viewership against the institutionalized biases of the major search engines and social media sites towards today’s Big Media, which tends overwhelmingly to skew to the Left of the political spectrum.

This is changing, though – perhaps rapidly changing. (Please see my hard-hitting story on these changes, Will Boomers – and the GOP – Save Twitter? http://wp.me/pxD3J-K

Is Big Brother Here? And Is He An Algorithm?

Both Boomer bloggers and website owners and those representing the political Right-of-Center have also reported widespread malware attacks on their ability to keep functioning on-line, putting them in the forefront of another media battleground – Internet safety.

Safety issues are now on everyone’s mind, however, after widely-publicized malware attacks on such major sites as Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress, breeding widespread disgust for the costly and sometimes devastating damage wreaked by “Script Kiddie” hackers.

Although there is clearly some disagreement about whether or not organized groups of hackers have tacit – or even formal – ties to political entities, particularly those on the Far Left, there is no disagreement on one important point: Everyone concerned about political freedoms, especially Freedom of Speech, needs to support Internet safety and equal Internet access for everyone, even those with views considered other than “politically correct” by some.

Because even more than financial clout, the ability to control the media equals political power. And more and more, the source of such media control resides in the Internet.

One aspect of such control that many find particularly disturbing is that recent technological “advances” in autonomic computing and so-called botnets now allow for the establishment of Cyber-Gatekeepers which control the flow of Internet access and information.

These Cyber-Gatekeepers are often linked to Big Media or its affiliates, which implies some overt conflict-of-interest from the outset. But one wonders if even Big Media is prone to lose control of these Cyber-Gatekeepers at some point. Think of Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster.

It’s bad enough, say many, if the New York Times or Google or CNN or Fox News or Disney has excessive influence over what we hear, read, and discuss. But it’s worse if people are taken out of the equation and programs – maybe mathematical formulas – are allowed to take control of the public conversation on issues crucial to our economy, country – and world – going forward.

We’ll expand on this topic in future entries. But this series will begin with what seems a straightforward topic on which everyone can agree, controlling Internet “spam.”

Not so! I hope you will see that the topic of “spam” – what it actually is and who should have the power to control it – is anything but simple and straightforward. Indeed, it is actually quite complicated and quite controversial.

As are many other topics this series will highlight.

Please keep tuned. Because the Media Revolution has already begun.

For the first article in this series, “Accused of Spam? It May Well Have Been a Political Attack,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-21

For “Flame, Set, Match-Trounce Those Internet Flamers” http://wp.me/pycK6-25

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Join in their volley of insults, they’ll continue to play as long as they can . Ignore them completely, readers could take them to heart. In the Flame Game, a quick victory – fueled by wit – works best.

Most people don’t visit websites, blogs, or group discussion boards intent on making trouble.

Most people respect the opinions of others and debate them, if they must, in the spirit of fairness and camaraderie.

Most people don’t embark on lifelong vendettas based on a few words posted on the Internet.

But then, most people aren’t Flamers.

I sometimes think of Internet Flamers as Locusts. They descend upon a target website quickly. Under suitable conditions, they breed rapidly and form a swarm. Their noise is so overwhelming, they can drown out everything else in the vicinity. And if left unchecked, they can do great harm, sometimes devastating damage.

Like Locusts, too, Internet Flamers seem to pop up spontaneously more or less anywhere. If you write or publish anything whatsoever on the Internet, even the most harmless-sounding, out-and-out innocent site or blog – on kitchen countertops, say, or miniature poodles – chances are that somehow, someday, when you least expect it, Flamers will swarm.

In Internet terms, Flaming is defined as a hostile or insulting interaction between or among users of a discussion board, chatroom, or increasingly, the Comments section of a website or blog.

But the expression of hostility or anger per se isn’t necessarily Flaming. It’s when such expressions are aimed at others – including authors or website owners – and are neither constructive nor clarifying to the progress of a discussion that true Flaming occurs. Often, these attacks go off on a tangent so extreme, they have only the most tenuous connection to the original material that supposedly inspired them.

I wrote about a classic Flamer – I called him “Herbie” – in my story about extreme malice on the Internet. (“I Don’t Like What You Wrote. You Should Be Poisoned, Garrotted, Stabbed With Stiletto Heels, Thrown Off A Tall Building, and Have Vultures Eat Your Liver” http://wp.me/pycK6-5 )

Herbie, supposedly a genteel gentleman in his 70s, somehow found the Comments section of a reprinted version of my quite-popular story, “Summer Camp for Seniors,” which talks about unqualified activities directors at assisted-living sites and their disrespect for elderly residents. (See http://wp.me/pycK6-t )

On his first appearance there, Herbie made a statement along the lines of “There is so much that is horrible about this article, I don’t know where to start.” Already suspecting something – having worked for both the tabloids and women’s mags, I know a potential crazy person by instinct – I asked the site’s publisher to take down the comment and ban this fellow from his site. He didn’t.

So Herbie came back. And as I suspected he would, he quickly proceeded to make comments that were totally unrelated to the story itself, but nevertheless – without any citations from the text – called it untrue and unsupported and elitist and . . . I dunno, possibly seditious and definitely fattening. After which he went on to lambaste me – someone he knew nothing whatsoever about – as an unfit writer, scholar, dancer, chef, electrician, Olympic athlete, and Mayoral candidate. (All except the first two are, of course, accurate.)

Even Without an Audience, Determined Flamers Flame Away

With the unfortunate lack of civility in our public discourse these days, silly – but often hurtful – attacks of this kind are an everyday occurrence. Until recently, though, Flamers’ targets tended to be celebrities of some kind – actors, politicians, sports figures, or Jay Leno.

Now, if you breathe – particularly if you both breathe and write – you’re potential prey. My friend Elizabeth contacted me just the other day, horrified that her simple act of posting a news story from a UK publication on a message board attracted a vicious Flaming attack. She didn’t even write the story – for Goddess’s sake! – but her Flamer ripped into her with a “People like you don’t know what you’re talking about” diatribe that had scant threads linking it to the story in question and no threads whatsoever linking it to Elizabeth.

“People Like You” is a common kind of Flamer opener, by the way, mostly because it’s so versatile. “People Like You – (Baby Boomers, Lawyers, Moroccans, Bowlers, Meat-Eaters, Satanists) – should be condemned because you – (Own Two Cars, Don’t Recycle, Have Freckles, Talk Too Fast, Remind Me of My Cousin Jimmy, Have Bodies Buried in Your Backyard) – and therefore need to be (Censored, Quarantined, Tithed, Sent to an Optometrist, Drawn-and-Quartered, Forced to Read Marketing Copy).

In nearly every instance, Flamers like to jump quickly from attacks on things – articles, movies, music, games – to attacks on people responsible for those things – authors, directors, composers, athletes. That’s because things don’t have feelings and can’t get hurt. People tend to get hurt pretty easily.

To be sure, if you’ve been the target of Flamethrowers often enough, you develop a sort of immunity. Personally, I’m not prepared to run for president yet. How candidates – or even Britney and Lindsay – take it is beyond me. But in the case of my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series, which has been the constant target of a group of Crazed Millennials who think I’m out to incite a rebellion of We-Won’t-Be-Bullied-Into-Retirement middle-class businesspeople – (Yes, of course, they’re right) – I now fully expect the attacks and have begun to find them rather funny.

The funniest was clearly an attack I endured when I posted one of my Angriest Generation articles – I believe it was “No Gold Watch When You Work For Pariah Corporation” (http://wp.me/pxD3J-N ) on one of the News feeds at a film-related group at Linked In.

Minutes after the story was posted, a tag team of Flamers – let’s call them Manny and Moe – bit into the Comments stream with relish. Not that they even mentioned the article itself. They first began with the standard “Boomers Are To Blame For the Ills of the World” harangue, which has been permeating the Internet the past few months and which I talked about in my story on Anti-Boomer propaganda. (See “You Have Cooties – Go Play Golf” at: http://wp.me/pxD3J-8 )

According to this so-predictable-it-has-to-be-scripted spiel, Boomers are to blame for not only our current economic malaise, but also for the Biblical Flood, the Black Plague, the Wars of the Roses, and Cholesterol. Moreover, both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are Boomers, which proves . . . absolutely nothing, but they think it does.

I responded to the first barrage of Flamelets – (for my Fight-Flamers Game Plan, see below) – with a link to my Anti-Boomer propaganda story and several of my own canned answers for dealing with criticism aimed at Boomers.

Predictably, Moe and Manny went on to attack me – my integrity, my scholarship, my ancestry, my hairdo, and my taste in breakfast cereal. Actually, their main attack centered on the fact that one of these two gentlemen – I believe it was Moe – had attempted to post a couple of Flaming Anti-Boomer comments on my blogsite, and I zapped him, which is my right as a website owner.

I made one additional post specifically aimed at this Fireball, stating that not only do I moderate my own blogs, I strongly suggest that others do the same. And I pointed out that M&M’s hero, President Obama – also a Baby Boomer, by the way – now moderates all of his websites at the White House. So call me Obama-like in my decision.

Manny and Moe disregarded the analogy and went on Flaming – but I decided not to participate further, nor did any other poster. So for the next two weeks, Moe and Manny continued their Flame-throwing dialogue, talking to each other, possibly without a single outside observer, and turned their Flamefest into a hundred-comment extravaganza. Alas, it’s been removed from the site now, or I would gladly link you to it, as a sort of relic.

Bring in the Clones

An even funnier Flamefest is in motion right now, at the date of publication of this story. I don’t think I’ll tell you where – think of it as a Treasure Hunt – but the venue is a political discussion board at a social media site. The topic which started this particular Comments thread is by now lost in prehistory, but the thread has now reached the 80-plus posts point. What makes it so hilarious is that there are – as in the Manny and Moe scenario – now only two posters left in the stream, trading virulent insults with positive glee. The twist is that these two “opposing” Flamers are almost certainly the exact same real person. A Man and his Clone, together at last.

The “Man” in question – I’ve confirmed he does exist – is quite intelligent, a Harvard grad in his early 30’s. The “Clone” is his Avatar, in the three-dimensional, rather than graphic, sense: a distinct Internet personality created by its user to represent him/her/it in Web interactions. Avatars like this are the essence of Virtual World-type communities, like Second Life, and various multiplayer games, like World of Warcraft.

I’m sure that the Man and the Clone are one in the same, because He/They have made multiple verbal slips in their Flame-Party-A-Deux. Sometimes, the Man (let’s call him Ralph) claims credit for remarks the Clone (let’s call him Rafe) has made and vice versa. Or Rafe insults Ralph insults Rafe for characteristics of “background” or “opinion” formerly attributed to the other.

Possibly, this is all preparation for a Hollywood blockbuster – or a political coup. One can’t be sure.

The moderator of this discussion board may have declined to intercede in this split-personality Flame thread because (s)he found it entertaining and/or mind-boggling. The moderator of the Manny-Moe Flamerama inspired by my article probably should have intervened and doused – i.e. deleted – the conflagration as soon as it included malicious insults.

As I have said elsewhere, most discussion board and other group moderators don’t take this facet of their responsibilities seriously enough. They don’t consider the emotional distress Internet bullying, sometimes escalating to character assassination, can cause, even among we sane and stable adults who make up the majority of Internet participants.

And by not choosing to Just Say No to Nastiness, they may be encouraging Flamers to continue in their dubious careers of Cyber-Sadism.

But We Who Have Felt the Burn can certainly do our part to douse the flames.

The Little Man Behind the Screen

Remember the denouement of the Wizard of Oz? Toto kicks over a screen to reveal the Wizard as a shriveled up, rather pathetic-looking little man, whose manifestations of power are nothing more than magic tricks.

Flamers are just junior Wizards, whose power is illusory, based as it is on a certain facility to string hurtful words together, reinforced by what are clearly sociopathic tendencies.

Your concern as a writer or website owner isn’t with the Flamer or Flamers, anyway. It’s with your audience of readers, potential readers, or website visitors. You don’t want to have them shun you because of lies and character assassination coming from your attackers. But you don’t want to participate in a “volley” of exchanges with your Flamers, either – because if you do, it may go on for years!

On your website or blogsite itself, there’s the simplest of solutions: Insist on moderating your own Comments streams. Allow in comments which disagree with your text or ideas, if they are made honestly in the spirit of discussion and debate. But simply zap comments which are irrelevant to your text, insult entire groups of people, or insult you.

“I find a logical flaw in your argument about aardvarks with leprosy,” is OK. “Dentists are aardvarks with leprosy,” “Romanians are aardvarks with leprosy” or “You are an aardvark with leprosy” are not.

In a social media discussion thread or the Comments section of a News feed, the situation is more difficult, because you don’t moderate the site. You can try appealing to whomever does moderate it to delete posts from Flamers. Good Luck! I have found that most site moderators either don’t care, are too busy, or – quite often – believe that a Flame Exchange brings new readers to their group and is therefore positive.

Your real concern is that Flamers might be taken seriously enough by the rest of the group that they’re persuaded not to read your article or visit your website.

So I suggest you post once – sometimes twice – politely but firmly stating why you believe whatever the heck they’re saying is all wet. If you can deflate them with wit or humor, that is a definite plus:

“No, our site was not designed by a ten-year-old. Stanislaus is 43, lives in Cleveland, and won the Website of the Century award last year.”

“There are 80 million Baby Boomers in the US. Surely, you’re not suggesting all of us are cannibals?”

“My parents are not a gangster and a chorus girl. Dad is a veterinarian, and Mom owns a dress shop.”

Then, painful as it is, just walk away.

Possibly, they’ll say more cruel, nasty things about you. Possibly they’ll continue saying them for weeks, like Manny and Moe, or Ralph and His Clone.

But you won’t be there to hear them.

What Do You Think?

Have you been the victim of Internet Flamers? OK – Of course, you have! But tell us about the most interesting, horrible, or funny incidents.

Should moderators of social media groups and message boards be compelled by top site management to delete posts that insult or damage the reputations of group members?

Should web security organizations or law enforcement agencies step in and stop the activities of perpetual Flamers?

What do you think motivates the typical Flamer? Does their existence indicate greater problems on the Internet or within our society?

Should Ralph and his Clone be given a Hollywood contract?

For the Introduction to the Media Revolution series: http://wp.me/pycK6-19

For Ellen’s popular article, “Will Boomers and the GOP Save Twitter? http://wp.me/pxD3J-K

So, admittedly I have been off the blog circuit for a little while… but as life is getting back to semi-balanced I think it is becoming increasingly important to keep up with current events and honing in on the media.

My next blog topic must be on filler news and my ill feelings towards it.

As my second month as a News Producer I am learning very quickly how detrimental filler news is to our society. One is example of a story that came down the wires just the other days was about a woman releasing a book about cats who wear wigs.

I cannot pretend like stories such as this are not enticing as a kickers for a news show (a kicker being the last story, that is light and leaves a viewer feeling uplifted). However, as I watch other newscasts I am finding many of my producing peers out there are using stories like the “cat wigs” half way through there shows.

I must say… living in an area where there is not a lot of hard news most certainly cannot become an excuse for newsrooms to avoid seeking out more stories. It is to my understanding that investigative journalism can be come quite expensive… but if we steer away from it, we are cheaping the product we deliver. This, not to mention, becomes an even greater disservice to the public.

My tip, news stations need to stick to harder news stories. The top block of a show MUST always be hard news, and if viewers are upset about how depressing news has become… include a positive economy story or two!

And my tip for viewers… quit demanding the fluffy junk. It is degrading the journalism profession. You cannot contradict yourselves and say you want us to go out and investigate… but fail to actually actively listen or even tune in. Without good viewership the news will fail… and trust me, nothing could be worse then a society without media. Call us out on our biases… but at least we offer up something to contradict all the political propaganda filth you are being fed daily but celebs, the gov’t, etc.

Here’s why “unfiltered” media matters today: there are dozens and dozens of reporters, editors, online publications, editorialists, et al in so-called traditional media. They all own their media properties and screen their content. They sell ad space, online and in print and broadcast. They each have their own style guides. They all filter content from contributors so it aligns with their sense of their publications, their attitudes and their sense of responsibility to manage and control the content they place in their publications.

That’s all well and good.

The problem is that today everyone is a publisher. Individuals – hundreds of millions of them world-wide – are accustomed to generating their own content and gaining audiences for that content, even if they’re microscopic audiences. There’s no filtering. There’s no creative limitation. There’s no editorial policy. Just straight, unfiltered content in text, video, audio and photo imagery.

Increasingly, corporations and institutions have discovered the same thing about unfiltered content – and it’s hard for them to adjust in particular because they’ve been used to extreme filtering of their content to the outside world. This new revolution is forcing corporations and businesses, large and small, to rediscover authenticity in what they say and how they generally communicate to the outside world.

Why? Because web audience demand it. The lack of transparency and authenticity by businesses in the publishing world is perceived and detected to be phony and wooden by extremely sophisticated consumer and B to B audiences.

That’s where the action is. Authenticity. Unfiltered content. That’s why most media properties are struggling today, because they’ve always been all about control. As for the business community, those who adjust their culture to fit the new reality will do well.

Those who can’t find their way to transparency will simply shrivel and die.

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Misuse and misinterpretation of the term “spam” is now so blatant, one has to wonder if Big Media might not be behind it. But we in “Little Media” are aware of the abuse, and it can’t last much longer.

If you publish a blog, own a website, or participate in various social media sites, chances are you’ve been accused of “spamming” at one time or another. You’re probably seriously angry about it. Well, so am I.

Besides the (ongoing) campaign of pure annoyance coming from my darling Twitter Stalker Agatha-Anne and her buddies (see “Slaughtering Your Pet Hamster” http://wp.me/pycK6-L ), I’ve been subjected to two accusations of “spamming” this past summer, one truly silly and inconsequential, one more serious in its implications.

First, the purely silly one. Several weeks ago, a young woman I’ll call Janette sent me an invitation to connect on Linked In, where I have a fabulous high-quality network of over 1400. Because she was a member of an organization I belong to and trust, I said Yes.

But the first time I sent one of my standard To-My-Network mailings with links to a couple of my stories, Janette wrote me what can only be called a hateful, malicious note, along the lines of “How dare you pollute my mailbox with your vile publications, You Evil Spammer You?”

Huh? You’re in my Network. You asked to be in my Network. I’m a publisher and writer. Do you expect me to send my Network pictures of bunnies or needlework instructions? Moreover, if one does not wish to click on a link in a letter, the obvious solution is not to click on a link in a letter.

And Linked In has a handy little feature called “Remove This Person from Your Network.” This handy little feature allows you to “Remove (Any) Person from Your Network,” for any reason whatsoever, quietly and efficiently, without having to write them letters and insult them.

I immediately took Janette out of my Network, after replying to her charming missive by telling her about the handy Remove-This-Person feature, thinking perhaps she honestly did not know about it.

As the teens say, As If . . . Over the next few days, I got five or six additional charming little notes from Janette, escalating in venom, going on about “You sent me Spam. Your stories are Spam. I hate your stories. My father hates your stories. My third cousin hates your stories. My goldfish hates your stories. My goldfish will not eat Spam. Spam, spam, spam, spam, and spam.”

OK, Janette. You’re just another Flamer, playing Kiddie games and trying to make people unhappy, because making people unhappy is “fun.” We’ll treat the general subject of Flaming in the next article in the series. But in the context of this story, you are silly and inconsequential, and I am now going to ignore you.

Except to say that as someone with a large Linked In network and a growing one on Twitter, every day I receive maybe a hundred mailings of various kinds from people with whom I’m connected. I like some of these mailings. I don’t like some others. Several fall into the category of articles and other publications. Some are newsletters. Others are new product or service announcements or out-and-out advertisements.

I click on the ones I want to read. I archive the ones I don’t want to read. I send a return message of Thanks, if it looks like I am expected to do so. I am never annoyed or upset receiving these mailings, because I allowed these connections to come into my Network, meaning they are cordial on-line acquaintances, and I want to hear about what they’re up to.

If at some point I find a connection annoying or upsetting, not to mention downright rude – remember Palance? – I remove him/her/it from my connections list, and that is that. This is what nice people do. This is what sane people do.

You’re Not Foie Gras, But You Sure Squawk Like Geese

Which brings us to the second incident this summer, a far more serious one, which goes to the very heart of the misuse of the term “spam” and demonstrates why we should all be concerned about it.

I honestly don’t know – nor particularly care – what Mz. Janette’s political leanings are. But I do know, from several people who are acquainted with him, that a young man I’ll call Chaz is a committed Leftist Democrat. He’s also the appointed manager of a large group for computer professionals at Linked In. I joined this Group because I’m an Internet publisher, but also because I’ve been seeking some interesting Boomer IT people as interviewees for my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series. (See http://wp.me/pxD3J-3 )

As you undoubtedly know by now, Angriest Generation is already popular among Boomers, Centrists, and Republicans, but decidedly unpopular among a vocal cadre of mostly young people on the Far Left. Primarily, they dislike this series because I’m among the few to have called them out for spewing anti-Boomer propaganda.

Chaz refused to allow stories from Angriest Generation to make it into his Group’s News feed, even though this particular Group’s feed is generally a dozen pages long and includes many utterly hideous stories from the likes of shady SEO purveyors in Bangladesh and Taiwan.

The first time he deleted one of my stories from his feed, I complained to the Group’s owner and Customer Service. It was reinstated. The second time he did it, I complained again. Reinstated again.

But the third time he did it, Chaz decided to escalate the quarrel and reported me for “spamming” his News feed. I cannot tell you how shocked I was that he would stoop so low. I could have escalated this little tiff in turn and transformed it into a first-class vendetta. But I decided I was tired of Chaz’s shenanigans and simply left the Group.

I want you to ponder this incident for a couple of reasons. First of all, as in the case of a Network of connections above, a bona fide member of a social networking Group should always – that is always – have the right to post blogs or other publications of which he/she is the author or publisher without any restrictions whatsoever – except, perhaps, if they’re pornographic or in some other way universally offensive.

If you don’t want someone in your Group in the first place, by all means, you have the right to refuse them membership. But once they’re in the Group, a manager can’t arbitrarily refuse their right to post articles they’ve written, just because he doesn’t happen to like their subject matter or agree with their political bent.

Chaz’s behavior is offensive to other Group members, too. Is his Membership a gaggle of geese, who have to be protected from being force-fed material they might not like to read, turning their livers into a certain French delicacy? Most adults are capable of deciding for themselves what they want to read and clicking on it. Or deciding they don’t want to read it and not clicking on it. Personally, I have no interest in reading anything from the shady Bengali and Taiwanese SEO purveyors. Or for that matter the New York Times.

Hookers and Con Artists – Good! Bloggers – Evil!

But far worse than Chaz’s battle to shelter his Membership from exposure to us dread Republicans and others he considers politically incorrect is his daring to label our articles as “spam.”

This takes us to the heart of the matter: Publications are not “spam.” Never ever, ever, and ever.

In fact, nobody really thought of labeling any publication as “spam” up to a few months ago, as it became more and more apparent that Big Media was being forced to relinquish its absolute domination of the Internet to hordes of upstart bloggers and websites keen on garnering their own “eyeballs” and audiences, taking them away from the Official – in their own minds – Gatekeepers of the US Media.

The term “spam” was originally – and quite clearly – meant to apply to annoying, repetitive, and unsolicited Internet-based advertising – solicitations that want to persuade you to part with your money. “Here’s a Hot Stock Tip” is usually spam, as are “Buy Foreclosed Houses,” “Get 10,000 Twitter Followers,” and even “Eat at Joe’s Diner,” although I have nothing in particular against Joe.

But someone posting a link to their article, blog, free newsletter, or website, without desiring that you pay them any money to do so, is in no way “spamming.” They are offering information and attempting to build an audience, the same way the Wall Street Journal or CNN or Oprah.com is, when they post and disseminate their latest articles.

Oh, but those are “professionals,” you argue, while bloggers are in a different category. If you think that, I suggest you are reading the wrong blogs. There are many thousands of former or current high-volume print journalists who have their own blogs now. If you’re unfamiliar with my background, I have over 3,000 print articles to my credit over the past 30-odd years. Now I’m in the so-called Blogosphere, working to develop and increase an audience of my own. I like it, and so do many others.

But I also strongly defend the right of newer and less experienced writers and website owners to try to build a readership of their own through the exact same means more established media outlets, including a handful of now-institutionalized Big Blogs, do.

If the New York Times can aggressively post its stories on numerous Linked In Group News feeds, so can Carolyn’s style blog or Arthur’s blog on economics. If the Huffington Post can get staffers and friends to retweet pieces repeatedly on Twitter, so can Charlie’s senior care publication or Nancy’s small business-oriented website.

And if Mashable can strive for blogroll and pingback links from other blogs, John the orthopedist, Patty the homeschooling expert, and Lou who writes about horses can use these tactics, too.

Without fear of being called “spammers.”

Proof positive that the abuse and misuse of the term “spam” applied to Little Media has been calculated is the fact that the mostly young, mostly Far Left-leaning Twitterers and others who’ve been doing the complaining have completely neglected to make complaints about all the real no-doubt-about-it spammers in our midst.

There’s nary a mention of the various get-rich-quick marketing schemes touted constantly by the Trump Network and others. No complaints about barkers for tooth whiteners, gourmet coffee, organic pet food, or Cars Seized from Drug Dealers. Nor even the offensive-to-many pleas to buy male enhancement products or patronize Ladies of the Night.

But Jim or Jane may be harried and harassed by a battalion of “concerned youth,” if they dare to try to publicize their Right-of-Center political articles. “Spam, spam, spam,” some Kiddies now wail – but I don’t think they can get away with it much longer.

For one thing, the social media sites are becoming very wary of Kiddies with chips on their shoulders, since they’ve now been implicated in the Twitter and Facebook Denial-of-Service attacks and the Word Press worm scare in Europe and Asia.

For another, if social sites were persuaded to adopt the “Spam-means-non-Left-Little-Media” theories of MoveOn.Org and their ilk, it’s only a (short) matter of time before they’d start getting hit with some serious and costly lawsuits.

More intriguing, though, is whether any part of Big Media – maybe rogue PR outfits who believe they’re working on media clients’ behalf – are encouraging these youthful legions of “You’re Spamming” accusers or otherwise conspiring to get Little Media’s audience-building efforts unjustly labeled as “spam.”

Surely, we hope not. But one wonders.

What Do You Think?

Have you ever been accused of “spamming” while trying to publicize your blog or website?

If so, what was the outcome? How did you rebuff this accusation?

Do you believe there are sometimes political motivations and biases behind accusations of spam?

Is Big Media using the S-word in its efforts to hold onto Web dominance against the onslaught of Little Media sites?

How should the social networking sites, like Linked In and Twitter, change their spam policies to protect and promote their Little Media members?

For the Introduction to the Media Revolution series, see: http://wp.me/pycK6-19

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

The old rules no longer apply. The new rules haven’t been written. But out of chaos comes opportunity. Those of us with decades of experience should be leading, not following, in a media sector undergoing profound transformation.

I used the paragraph above to describe Media Revolution, the new Group I “own” and manage at Linked In, welcoming experienced journalists “to theorize, debate, and collaborate on how to navigate a sector in flux.”

I’ve decided to crystallize some of my ideas about what’s happening now – and what may happen as we go forward – in a series of articles exploring various aspects of the media sector’s transformation, specifically on the Internet.

For now, I’m publishing these stories as a subseries on my EllenInteractive blogsite. As the series develops, they may be relocated to their own site or become part of another media blog.

Much of what I write may be controversial, particularly to those with a stake in the status quo or to anyone who believes a change in current media sector “Gatekeepers” may decrease the influence of certain political groups or other elites which they support.

Others, I hope, will find my ideas helpful – and hopeful – in illustrating what seems to be amiss right now; what needs to be changed; and how the greater public of Internet users generally and those of us in “Little Media” specifically might work together to effect profound change in how information reaches our audiences and which information is “permitted” to reach them.

Because make no mistake, what’s happening right now is a major battle between so-called “Big Media” and its political and financial allies and all of us upstart publishers and entrepreneurs who have broken away from Big Media the past few years.

It is nothing less than an attempt to oust the Official Gatekeepers of this country’s media establishment from the extreme domination of viewership and influence they’ve enjoyed for the past two or three decades – an abnormal concentration of power, in American terms, which many think has paralleled a similar unhealthy maldistribution of wealth and influence in other sectors.

Interestingly enough, those with the clearest sense of such inequalities in Internet access and influence are two large groups you’d think would have plenty of both: Baby Boomers and the political Right (and Center-Right). I say this, because despite their size and collective financial clout, both of these groups have had to fight tooth and nail for Web viewership against the institutionalized biases of the major search engines and social media sites towards today’s Big Media, which tends overwhelmingly to skew to the Left of the political spectrum.

This is changing, though – perhaps rapidly changing. (Please see my hard-hitting story on these changes, Will Boomers – and the GOP – Save Twitter? http://wp.me/pxD3J-K

Is Big Brother Here? And Is He An Algorithm?

Both Boomer bloggers and website owners and those representing the political Right-of-Center have also reported widespread malware attacks on their ability to keep functioning on-line, putting them in the forefront of another media battleground – Internet safety.

Safety issues are now on everyone’s mind, however, after widely-publicized malware attacks on such major sites as Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress, breeding widespread disgust for the costly and sometimes devastating damage wreaked by “Script Kiddie” hackers.

Although there is clearly some disagreement about whether or not organized groups of hackers have tacit – or even formal – ties to political entities, particularly those on the Far Left, there is no disagreement on one important point: Everyone concerned about political freedoms, especially Freedom of Speech, needs to support Internet safety and equal Internet access for everyone, even those with views considered other than “politically correct” by some.

Because even more than financial clout, the ability to control the media equals political power. And more and more, the source of such media control resides in the Internet.

One aspect of such control that many find particularly disturbing is that recent technological “advances” in autonomic computing and so-called botnets now allow for the establishment of Cyber-Gatekeepers which control the flow of Internet access and information.

These Cyber-Gatekeepers are often linked to Big Media or its affiliates, which implies some overt conflict-of-interest from the outset. But one wonders if even Big Media is prone to lose control of these Cyber-Gatekeepers at some point. Think of Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster.

It’s bad enough, say many, if the New York Times or Google or CNN or Fox News or Disney has excessive influence over what we hear, read, and discuss. But it’s worse if people are taken out of the equation and programs – maybe mathematical formulas – are allowed to take control of the public conversation on issues crucial to our economy, country – and world – going forward.

We’ll expand on this topic in future entries. But this series will begin with what seems a straightforward topic on which everyone can agree, controlling Internet “spam.”

Not so! I hope you will see that the topic of “spam” – what it actually is and who should have the power to control it – is anything but simple and straightforward. Indeed, it is actually quite complicated and quite controversial.

As are many other topics this series will highlight.

Please keep tuned. Because the Media Revolution has already begun.

For the first article in this series, “Spam I Am Not – The Big Media Weapon Hidden in Plain Sight,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-1b

I have always been impressed with the work of my mates in Australia for the innovation in growing the tourism Industry. Three of my favorite examples are the Tourism e-Kit, Come Walkabout campaign and Australian Experiences Industry Toolkit.  I am adding Tourism Futures National Conference – “Re-Defining the Future”, August 17-19 to this list.

Tourism Futures National Conference, Gold Coast, Australia,  has focused its August conference – ” Re-Defining  the Future” into five subthemes - They are 1) Tourism Online Marketing and Distribution, 2) Destination Management – Policy and Development, 3) Business Events Tourism, 4) Consumer Research and Market Winning Insights and 5) Susitainability and Climate Change.  An impressive line-up of speakers  and conference program make this an incredible conference to attend.

Tourism Queensland just happens to be the place where Ben Works - The Best Job in the World and blogs regularly.

This whole Future of Journalism thing and the various blogs, articles, and presentations I’ve done on it, is all a relatively recent epiphany for me. Or so I thought.

An accidental trawl through my old blog posts unveiled two articles predicting almost exactly the same as I’ve written about recently….from 2006.

“Never a better time to be a journalist” (31st December 2006) highlights an article from Andrew Neil saying:

The journalists of tomorrow will write for newspapers, contribute to magazines and podcasts, work for TV production companies, write their own blogs, because you wouldn’t give them a column – and then they will sell the blog back to you at an inflated price…“The journalist of the future…will  have more than one employer and become a brand in their own right.”

“Futures” (28th September 2006) I put it (not so) delicately:

If you’re a newspaper journalist, you’re fucked. No not really, but it seems big change is on the horizon for the old hacks. UK paper circulation is declining big time; one doomsayers predicted something like 2043 as the year the last newspaper closes down.

I don’t know, it took me completely by surprise people were predicting this media revolution as long as go as 3 years ago.

Journalism tip #218: always be able to recycle old content as new!

The news production process has pretty much always been divided into two parts: input (newsgathering) and output (news production). In the debate about the future of news, is this being forgotton?

For example, my blog post Introducing: the Journalist of the Future focussed, unwittingly, entirely on news output – the way the content will be produced. It mentioned nothing of news gathering. It may be that in the future, these two sides of the coin will be completely separated.

And while the editors and managers engage in a bout of synchronized-head-scratching over how to get us to pay for the output side of news, the input side appears to be generating itself a nice bit of revenue potential.

It’s time to give that area some attention.

new media news gathering

These operations could succeed not because they offer the audience a pre-packaged, scripted and editorialised view of the world; quite the opposite. Their value is in allowing the audience easy access to the raw data. The police statistics, the council decisions, the official documents.

Of course, these are (or should be) accessible to the public anyway, but are often too time consuming to get hold of.  Another characteristic of these operations is they often (although not always) involve some form of crowdsourcing for their success

Three (potentially) successful new-media newsgathering operations

01. Everyblock

Everyblock (in the US only) currently covers a dozen or so cities. It works by providing its audience with critical official data by geographical area. When when I say critical official data, some of it is hard to believe. Residents, and even casual visitors, can see how many 911 calls were made for any particular street and what they were about. They can see every restaurant inspection carried out in Boston, and details of every building permit in Seattle.

Sadly the appalling lack of public information available in the UK means this type of site may not make it to the UK.

02. Help Me Investigate

Just launched in the UK in July, Help Me Investigate is effectively crowd-sourced reporting. Members of the public can suggest issues they want investigated, and other members of the public can help uncover the details; each person does their own little bit. It’s already had a couple big hits in the Birmingham local press.

Again, Help Me Investigate isn’t about sexy audio slideshows or a great package, it’s about public access to raw data.

03. Spot.US

Working along the same theme, Spot.US allows the public to get access to the answers they want. Members of the public suggest stories they want covered, and then a fundraising effort gets underway to pay a professional reporter to get to work. I like this idea because it still gives some currency to the trained journalist and their abilities to uncover the truth.

So what makes these sites different?

They’re all about the information, the data, the evidence. It’s not about finding a new way to produce content; no new ways of shooting video, or unique storytelling device.

And while they might not resemble a newspaper or anything like that, they still provide the same vital public service. These news input projects are one of the first tangibly positive things to emerge from this media revolution.

Forrester Research recently released it’s report -”US Interactive Advertising Forecast” and predicts that online marketing will increase by 17% over next 5 years.  No great surprise in the Travel Industry where online marketing has grown in leaps and pounds. Google’s research indicates travellers take 6-7 weeks to search, 78% of transactions involves search and 75% are searching before booking online. 

But the comment I like by Alicia Whalen, a Couple of Chicks E-Marketing is where online is the best place to focus your dollars. The growing importance of social media (87% of Canadians belong to one social network) as well the mobile phone/PTA opens your eyes especially when 2020 the mobile will be the most connected device on the internet.

So where do we move forward…by measuring and tracking your online marketing strategy. Find out where you customer is seeing your online presence and your referring sites.  Move slowly into social media and start looking at developing your website for mobile phones. Continue to use Adwords or PPC,  e-mail marketing and Display advertising.

 Below is an excellent video – “The World We Live In” developed by 180 marketing for the 4th Annual Online Revealed Canada Conference that provides an overiew of where online marketing is going in the future. 

One of the most important lessons I have learned about social media is to delegate. You need to spread things out so more hands and people are helping you. Involve your team and assign them tasks and responsibility.  Otherwise you will get burned out quickly and turned off by social media.  

User Generated Content (UGC) - Lets look at some great examples where content is user generated  – 1) Blogging - here are a few examples - a)  CTC – Locals know.ca - a blog where locals provide content on attractions and events, b) Share a Nova Scotia Favorite - people write about their experiences and c)  Tourism Cafe Blog - where three collegues share their thoughts on various topics, 2) Videos – Create a contest and have people submit content – a good example is iLove Nova Scotia contest,  3) Photos – create a group category in Flickr and have people submit photos on events & activities, ie. Camping UK ,  4) Create a group page in facebook  - ie . Hike the Highlands Festival and asked people to submit photos, videos and content. 

Some other important lessons I learned about social media – write less,  be discplined with your time management skills - stick to a schedule and don’t let it take you over.  In concluding, by delegating and involving  your team, offering opportunites for user generated content and good time management skills, social media can be made to be manageable.

Nova Scotia Tourism has launched a new contest for visitors to the province and residents - the i Love Nova Scotia. Contestants are asked to share and shoot a two minute video what you love about Nova Scotia…the winner will receive a custom built Nova Scotia vacation valued at $15,000. The contest runs from July 9 to August 31st. Voting continues until Sept. 30, 2009.  Contest rules and regulations..  and contest entry form. 

Below is a nice video to start the contest off :

In 1999 Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Everyone’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen) became a huge hit, with its sage wisdom  over a haunting and shimmering melody and mellow beat.

The words, written in the Chicago Tribune by American journalist Mary Schmich, seemed to reflect perfectly the feelings of a generation about to enter a new century; as a 15 year old the words seemed to speak directly to me.

Well, ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2009, there might be a new edition.

It emerged through Twitter last week; some sage wisdom from one journalist to another – again seemingly reflecting perfectly the fears and feelings of a generation on the verge of a massive revolution.

Its here in full; you need to read the question to understand it fully, but the answer, I think, is poetry.

I studied print journalism. Now what?

By Cary Tennis (published in Salon Magazine)

Dear Cary,

I spent the last four and a half years studying print journalism in college and watching vacantly as the newspaper/magazine industry crumbled before my eyes. The decline never bothered me. I always figured I had what it takes to get a job even in an extremely competitive market: Before I ever graduated, I had completed four internships at newspapers, magazines and a Web site, published almost a hundred clips (including longer, high-quality pieces), and left a good impression with everyone I worked with. I knew I wanted to be a journalist, and I knew that I wanted to write for a living.

Now, six months after graduating, my parents still pay my cellphone bill and I am working full-time making ice cream. I make a couple hundred bucks here and there freelancing for a magazine I interned at, but otherwise my “freelance” career, as well as my journalism career, is dead in the water. I find myself despondent and unable to send out any more cover letters, and I can’t find the time or motivation to research a story idea enough to send it to an editor because I assume he or she will simply reject my half-baked idea. I’m panicking, but I fear failure so much that I can’t even get started. Freelancing seems to be my best option career-wise, but I can’t summon the willpower and enthusiasm to do it. Plus, I lost my license to a DUI conviction (that got me fired from one of those newspaper internships), which has immobilized me and left me unable to relocate to a new job until October. The DUI also contributes to my job-hunting anxiety.

What I see is that my passion for journalism and writing is waning. Working full-time has taught me that work is work and play is play, and that I need to maximize the efficiency of my hours I spend at work in order to maximize how much I can play outside of work. I am looking into jobs in other fields that pay better. Is it healthier to stick it out working at an ice cream store and desperately try to make it as a writer, or should I pursue a career where financial security is more realistic?

Scared Journalist

Dear Scared Journalist,

If you are a true journalist, the world is going to kick your ass. If you are a true journalist, you  are supposed to be having a hard time. This is how the world makes writers. It kicks their ass long enough that they start finally telling the truth. They just finally give up and start bleating out little truthlets.

If we are honest we occasionally wonder why we aren’t starving in the gutter, or dead, or working in a windowless office stuffing envelopes. Though luck has played a part, so have other things. We have been cunning and ruthless. Sometimes this will be an almost spiritual thing; you sit in your room and visualize your eventual occupation while others are furiously pounding on doors. You refuse to show that you want what you so desperately want; sometimes you refuse even to admit it to yourself. And then it comes and you quietly take it to your corner to chew it to death.

A measure of charm has been necessary. A modicum of hygiene has been necessary. A measure of keeping one’s mouth shut and pulling the cart along with everyone else has been necessary. A measure of compromise and pretending has been necessary, as it was necessary in nursery school and kindergarten and first grades through 12, and in college and graduate school and in the innumerable low-paying, humiliating bullshit jobs that followed.

We have applied and applied and applied for jobs and gotten nothing, and then things have been dropped at our feet that we were not sure we wanted but which we accepted because there was nothing else available. We have applied and applied and applied for jobs and been rejected and been forced therefore to work in unsuitable occupations that surprisingly led us to good fortune. We have kept our heads down and crawled forward like G.I.s in Korea. We have alternately railed at the system and begged it for favors and received the same infuriating coolness and indifference either way. We have ranted and we have started movements and we have tried to infiltrate the ranks of journalism as poets and insurrectionists. We have attempted to better our public relations skills. We have tried to network and join organizations. We have bought drinks at bars frequented by journalists and have praised works we detested. We have tried to detect trends and written queries suggesting feature stories about such trends. We have tried to develop specialties and gained immense knowledge of the inconsequential. We have interviewed celebrities and resold the interviews to numerous publications, each paying less than the one before in a vector of diminishment resembling our own entropic trajectory toward death. We have entertained the notion of getting into TV. We have wondered why the best quit or get fired and the mediocre persevere. We have wondered how mediocre we must be if we are still employed. We wonder why so many brilliant writers remain unheard, and why we ourselves were not thrown out long ago. We wonder why we don’t have a six-months cash reserve. We wonder who will save us from our own foolishness. We wonder if maybe there is a God who is quietly taking care of us. We take note of our increasing store of mediocre ideas such as that one. We think of Sartre. We read Boswell. We picture the harsh levity of a drunken Samuel Johnson and think to ourselves, well, things could be worse. We think of Samuel Pepys on London Bridge getting blown by whores. We think of him singing with his wife and friends in the parlor. We think of him being treated, again, for another venereal disease. We think of Neanderthals scratching on the walls of caves. We think of their flutes 18,000 years old, the music they must have played, the fears they must have had; we wonder if they thought about us, their descendants, trying to figure out our VCRs. We embark on stories that do not get sold. We spend weeks investigating. We sit in airports waiting for the governor. One of us strikes gold: Look, there’s the governor, returning from Buenos Aires! Look, it works! Journalism works! Hunches pay off! We have played a thousand hunches and not one has paid off but look, there is the thousand-and-first hunch and it paid off! We think plodding away is the solution so we continue to plod away and get nowhere. We change our strategy. We think networking is the solution so we lavish false blandishments on the successful. We share our marijuana with editors who go back inside before our pitch is half done. We take up music. We go through phases where we are “reading the masters.” We peruse brochures for MBA programs at prestigious East Coast universities. We think about the exponential growth of creative writing programs. Maybe our skills could be useful in detective work. Maybe we could start our own newsletter. Maybe someone will call today about our résumé.

And then, with the irony that cloaks us against utter nihilism, we think, if only we were living in more interesting times! And that is the confounding thing about it, isn’t it? That we stand on the nodal point of a great, creaking, crunching change in historical direction, at the beginning of cataclysmic planetary collapse, at the dying of civilization, at the rising of new empires, at our own meltdown, as a million stories bloom out of the earth like wildflowers in the spring and we think, gee, uh, if only there were some good stories to tell. The stock market just collapsed, the seas are rising, polar bears are dying, a whole generation is transcending its corporeal limitations and creating essentially a new civilization outside the body, a chimerical wonderland of holographic and spiritual representation permanently liberated from face, hands, feet … and rather than celebrating the destruction of the old paper-bound media and assuming with a shrug that no way in hell could it be any other way, instead we cling to our occupations like ox-cart drivers who do not want to climb down from the ox cart. Miracles and tragedies are bursting all around us but we plod through the village in our ox cart, selling vegetables one at a time.

Yeah. That’s the ultimate irony, no? That in the midst of remarkable and unprecedented change, in the midst of the greatest stories to happen all century, we are paralyzed by some changes in the delivery system. Well, we do know, as McLuhan taught us, it is not just the delivery system; paper itself is a kind of message; it tells us that information is permanent, whereas the Net tells us that information is in motion. So the print journalism curriculum may have taught, incorrectly — because it is  taught by ox-cart drivers — that information is permanent, not that it is in motion, and you may well be struggling to throw off that teaching, as perhaps you must if you are to tweet your way to victory. We must ask: If information is in motion, does that make it more or less true? That depends on whether you believe the world is in motion. Obviously the world is in motion. So information must be in motion as well.

There it is in a nutshell. No need to read Terry Eagleton, just ask me! But, well, he’s funnier.

And so we add to the list of attributes: a breathless arrogance; shameless comfort with our own ignorance!

So that’s where we’re at. That’s how we are, me included. We stand paralyzed before the fire, like animals watching their habitats burn. I can see what’s happening but am also somewhat paralyzed, doing an essentially 19th-century thing in this 21st century medium. I can scarcely figure out how to download the MP3 of my band from 1983 — but believe me, when I get it together next week, I’ll sell it to you for $1.50 a pop and maybe make enough to pay my cellphone bill.

It’s a weird world but it’s interesting and fun. Fuck the little stuff. Don’t worry about your career. Find a story and write about it, and stay off the streets if you’re drunk.

Over 100 Million from around the world watched Susan Boyle preform on Britains Got Talent 2009 Show on youtube in three weeks, one video had over 45 million viewers….. Canadians watch the most online video with 3.1. billion online videos in February 2009,  the average canadian spending 10 hours online during the month. Google reports that 22% of Canadian travellers watch travel related videos when planning and researching their trip. 

The benefits of video were clearly presented by Rob Hughes, Director of E-Strategies at Brewster at Canada e-Connect Conference in January, 2009  where he highlighted a video on the Town of Jasper and Icefields Parkway Tour.   The opening video at Online Revealed Conference – “The World We Live IN”, produced by 180Marketing, had some amazing stats on video stating “if Content is King, Video is King Kong”   On a slow day 150,000-200,000 videos are uploaded to youtube , that is 73 million a year, 1.2 million are tagged as travel related, 80% are USC – user generated content, 5.6 billion videos streamed in November 2008 – 85 million unique visitors ,  70% growth in 2008 from people 35 and over, 64% of all users is 35 and over. 

A good example of a video produced for a destination area is “Not Since Moses Race” at Five Islands, Nova Scotia. This video was produced by Terri McCulloch, Bay of Fundy Travel Show. It had over 8000 people view the video to date.