news…

I’m thinking about how you say that the death of the New Times L.A. was because the management didn’t give the readers what they wanted, the New Yorkers didn’t understand the L.A. scene. How did that play out? I’m imagining a gradual loss of readership, a ship going dead in the water. What prevents that from happening to the Weekly? It has a community of readers, a buzz… like the Macintosh “evangelists” who do the brand’s advertising for it.

I am faithful to the Weekly, I read it when I was in Berkeley and in Chile, because I think it’s been a damn good paper with a recognizable style and produces reliably good writing on issues that I care about. Even if I didn’t agree with Manohla Dargis, I loved her reviews. I’m not an urban black man, but I always read Erin Aubry Kaplan with fascination. I always appreciate what Haefle and the others do with political coverage. The themes like the special issue on the L.A. River and the transit system and elsewhere, covered by Brendan whatsisname, they’re always right on the money, timely and informative. The Weekly has had guts, like when it spent the money and effort to publish daily issues during the 2000 DNC.

Even your boringest MBA student who would never touch a Mac will bow before what he will call “the greatest word-of-mouth advertising in the world.” I used to be a higher-voltage Mac fanatic than I am now, but the same way I would talk up the computer to my friends, I also do about the Weekly.

On a side note, I just want to say that when I was in Berkeley, I was surprised at how sucky the SF Weeky is, and how good the East Bay Express is. I thought the SF Weekly was the LA Weekly’s sister, and that didn’t make sense.

I’m hearing a lot of nasty things about the new management but tend to believe there is some hyperbole being tossed around.

In a perfect world we’d have both publications. I think they made each other try harder.

Anyway, I’m out of the country until next spring so I’ll have something to look forward to upon my return.

I don’t care who was banned from who’s blog. And I don’t understand why it is such a hot topic on a completely different blog. It must be annoying to the host.

My comments were actually directed at GM Roper. I was asking him to back up his claim that you deserved to be banned by providing some links to your “obnoxious” comments. Like I said, I had read the thread where Simon banned you and don’t remember your comments there being ban-worthy. If there is a history before that thread then I would like GM to post some links to those threads, if he would deign to back his shit up.

Aw Roger, you’re not that thin-skinned are you? I was down front and it was interesting that Hewitt was booed because of his, shall I say labeling the host of the festival. Ken Auletta denied the label wingnuts apply to everything that doesn’t move in perfect lockstep with their predispositions. I agree with him.

When it becomes the bloggers book festival and the paper is out of business then Hewitt can gloat. It ain’t happening in our lifetimes, nor should it. I interviewed for a flunky reporter gig at a sister paper here in LA. It required two stories a day. That’s a lot of original reporting. No blogger chases down 6-8 sources every day. All they are is opinion sites commenting on real reporters’ work. Yeah that’s a tough peanut gallery. The real work is something else.

Posted by: marky48 at April 24, 2005 09:22 AM

Roger:

I decided to give Marky a break by checking out his blog. He had 10 post’s dated from April 15th to April 28th. Most were about enviromental issues. He had received a grand total of 2 comments for all his posts. His opening line about himself mentioned his wisdom and punditry. It must be the quaint idiocy of the blogosphere that is keeping everyone away from his site.

Posted by: Kevin P at April 28, 2005 09:21 PM

And the obligatory conspiracy charge:

Poor Marky Snark,the worst case of projection I’ve ever seen.
Why do those starting a blog think that the best way to attract commenters to their sites is to sneer and jeer on the site of an emminent and established blogger?

There is obviously the fastest gun in the West syndrome in evidence here,but they invariably end up like Daffy Duck with their beaks shot off.

The real way is to link the thread with something apposite on their sites,make careful and intelligent comment,worked for all the great bloggers.

Invent a better mousetrap and the world will flock to your door,if however, it is only mouse crap……

Posted by: PeterUK at April 29, 2005 03:44 AM

The board (PJ Media) seems a bit lopsided doesn’t it? Marc Cooper and the conservatives. What kind of readership requirements are there?

Posted by: marky48 at April 28, 2005 07:14 PM

——————————————————————————–

Wouldn’t it be much simpler to just get Arianna Huffington to bankroll you?

Posted by: Richard Nieporent at April 28, 2005 07:26 PM

——————————————————————————–

marky48 – PC w/modem, ISP, literacy. Happy? No, of course you aren’t. The Way to Happiness — form your own board. May we contact you at momigotaloadinmypjs.com?

Posted by: Stephen_M at April 28, 2005 07:28 PM

——————————————————————————–

“What kind of readership requirements are there?”

The ability to read without moving your lips and running your finger accross the screen,there are those around who will help with the big words.

Posted by: PeterUK at April 28, 2005 07:32 PM

These two carried over their attacks from another thread. To which answered,

I see the same imbecilic trolls live under all bridges here. How quaint. Readership refers to numbers of viewers. Of course these nitwits don’t actually create anything of their own so I can see where difficulty comes in with my question.

Posted by: marky48 at April 28, 2005 08:24 PM

Meaning they don’t have blogs of their own, or books, but freely criticise those who do with the same sort of slams tried here. Nitwit is as nitwit does.

Like everyone else at the Weekly, I have no idea howf this will change the paper. I suspect it will mean a lot of changes. I don’t know what they are. Nor their intensity or character.

How doesn’t usually have an f.

I’m all in favor of banning assholes who refuse to engage in rational debate but I read the thread where he was actually banned and I didn’t think his comments there were out of line at all. If he made comments in previous threads that you think were out of line, and that put his banning in a fuller context, then you need to post some links here, as a matter of good debate form, so that the rest of us can play too.

People have been making creative suggestions on how to establish and fund progressive alternative noncommercial media sources for years. Here are some examples that I have read about:

Per a July/August 1997 article in EXTRA!:

“The 1996 Telecommunications Act prevents the FCC from charging the broadcasters fees for use of the (broadcast) spectrum, unlike other commercial users of the spectrum.” Were we to be able to charge broadcasters those fees, the $2 billion – $5 billion that could be generated annually could subsidize an extraordinary nonprofit and non-commercial broadcasting system.

Other ideas touched on in the EXTRA! article include:

· The Telecom Act requires the commercial broadcasters to get free license for digital broadcasting, but it doesn’t state that they should have nearly all the potential channels. Let them each have one channel per market and then open up several, perhaps as many as a dozen, for nonprofit and noncommercial utilization in every community.

· Get rid of all advertising on kids’ TV shows and require all broadcaster to do at least 10 hours per week of commercial-free kids programming during the hours kids watch TV.

· Remove advertising from TV news programs and require all broadcasters to do 15 hours per week of local and national news and public affairs programming.

· Remove control of news divisions and children’s divisions from corporations like GE and people like Rupert Murdoch, and establish independent elected bodies controlled by some combination of viewers and journalists/programmers to call the shots.

· Place a 5% tax on TV advertising to generate the funds to do this.

These suggestions were made with television in mind, but I would think that there are savvy and bright people out there that can develop proposals for print media.

Just because liberal foundations are not doing what the right has been doing for decades in terms of building a labyrinth of right wing think tanks and using their funds in a strategic manner doesn’t mean that we can’t pressure more liberal foundations to make their grants more strategic in nature.

We shouldn’t, as you appear to do, simply shrug your shoulder and say, “Well, they aren’t funding it NOW, so therefore we should accept as reality that it can’t or won’t happen.”

Accepting the status quo as inevitable, or a reality that won’t or can’t be changed, is a pretty pathetic position to take.

We never could and we can’t now afford to accept the status quo. If it took women a hundred years to win the vote and hundreds of years to advance civil rights, end Jim Crow, etc., we continue to fight for the change we want to see even if it isn’t easy or quick to get where we want to go.

Being “pragmatic” and “realistic” about the status quo I think is adopting a defeatist attitude.

The question was need to ask is what kind of media do we want? Then we have to strategize to see what ways we can make it happen.

That is such a disgusting racist thing to say about Tibetans.