Washington Post pay-for-access event for lobbyists

By Michael Fraase

Thursday, 02 July 2009 06:51PM CDT

Section: Media

LogrollingEarly this morning Politico reported that the Washington Post was offering healthcare lobbyists access to members of the Obama administration, Congress, and Washington Post editorial staff for fees ranging from US$25,000-US$250,000. The Politico report has been updated and the original story is gone.

In the early afternoon, Post staff writer Howard Kurtz wrote that the paper’s publisher, Katharine Weymouth, cancelled the series of “salons” scheduled to take place in her home. “This should never have happened,” Weymouth told Kurtz. “The fliers got out and weren’t vetted. They didn’t represent at all what we were attempting to do. We’re not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom.”

Sorry, but the fact that the fliers were distributed to DC lobbyists already impugns the integrity of the Washington Post. It’s not like you can put that particular tootpaste back in the tube.

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Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle, indeed

By Michael Fraase

Saturday, 27 June 2009 02:28PM CDT

Section: Media

Hung, drawn, and quarteredFirst the Wall Street Journal publishes a breathless article announcing Steve Jobs’s liver transplant. The article was unsourced and disgraceful in its violation of the Apple chief executive’s privacy. Then the New York Times got all pissy about being beaten to the scoop and published a ridiculous story about Apple’s corporate secrecy.

Now this, from the Times on the death of entertainer Michael Jackson:

“The death of Mr. Jackson was the latest Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle that is specific to Los Angeles, with the customary body-slamming paparazzi, weeping celebrities, grim-faced officials trying to maintain dignity and tourists seeking their succor along Hollywood Boulevard, where the police were forced to place barricades on Friday to hold back the throngs seeking to peer at his star on the Walk of Fame.”

You’re kidding me, right? Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle, body-slamming paparazzi, and tourists seeking their succor? If that’s not the worst piece of “news” reporting I’ve ever read, it has to be in the top two.

Never mind that the photo caption at the top of the article notes a billboard “tribune” at the 02 Arena in London. The billboard is presumably a tribute.

Everyone makes mistakes—even stupid ones—but the US paper of record is really, really slipping.

No links because links are votes and represent a value of exchange on the web. The Journal and Times are undeserving lately.

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The lost manuscripts: Mac hypermedia introduction and overview

By Michael Fraase

Tuesday, 23 June 2009 07:42PM CDT

Section:

Macintosh Hypermedia Volume I, Reference GuideIn 2003, I had a catastrophic equipment failure in my office. My working hard disk—including all of my manuscripts—and its backups were destroyed. Back then I never archived my projects, only backed them up, redundantly. I thought that was enough. I was mistaken. In referring to my earlier writings, I discovered that much of that writing holds up pretty well, so I’m reproducing it here for reference and the record. This article is the introduction and overview from Macintosh Hypermedia Volume I, Reference Guide (Scott, Foresman and Company, 1990).

The concept of hypertext, and its more recent hypermedia branchings, has not changed much since first envisioned by Vannevar Bush in 1945. It has taken this long for both the hardware and software to catch up. Now, with the introduction of the Macintosh hypermedia software tools such as OWL International’s Guide and Apple’s HyperCard, we have the beginnings of nothing short of a paradigm shift in the way we deal with data, information, and knowledge.

These software tools, however, are only half of the complete hypermedia solution; to be really useful, they require appropriate hardware that is only now beginning to appear. Apple’s recent introduction of a CD-ROM drive targeted for the mass market signals the first acknowledgment by a major computer manufacturer of this vast opportunity to reshape the way individuals work with overwhelming amounts of data and information, and, in turn, refine that raw data and information into useful knowledge tools.

The availability of appropriate hardware and software solutions for the Macintosh community leaves only a single stumbling block to overcome - a somewhat typical chicken-and-egg dilemma. Few CD-ROM titles will be available, and most will be of questionable quality and innovation, until a terminal mass in unit sales of the CD-ROM drives themselves is reached. Conversely, few CD-ROM drives will be sold until unique and plentiful titles are available. This is at least partially addressed by Apple’s entry into the CD-ROM drive market with a reasonably priced unit that is sure to appeal to a broad base of users.

The foreseeable CD-ROM products, however, can at best be termed first generation and as few as two years from now will be seen as terribly obsolete. CD-ROM is a read-only storage medium (it’s only half-literate; it can’t write), and as Ted Nelson said, “... a read-only medium in this day and age [is] intrinsically oppressive.” For this reason, CD-ROM will not play an equal role (relative to the hypermedia software tools) in the work proposed here; it will be surveyed, along with other mass-storage devices as guideposts to future incarnations of more appropriate hardware.

More...

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