Ben Franklin has always been my hero.  You know the story: Writer. Inventor. Diplomat.  Pretty much founded a country.  Et Cetera.

Franklin was always pretty much a one-man band.  If you were a lesser man - oh, say, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson - you might find reason to complain that Franklin would do stuff like negotiate the birth of a nation with France without ever fully letting you in on what was going on.

As a newspaper and almanac publisher, Franklin was even better - or worse, depending on your point of view.  It would be interesting to run some of the great man's antics - living up a dead edition by writing letters to the editor under pseudonyms, for example - past, say, the ethics doyens at the Society of Professional Journalists.

Be that as it may, here's the relevant point:  You're not Ben Franklin.  (Neither am I, natch.)

In the centuries since Franklin gave up the publishing business to go into diplomacy and science, newspapers evolved from one-man bands into complex organizations.  It stands to reason, if you think about it.  First, few people are polymaths, never mind one on the scale of Franklin - did you know that he invented a musical instrument that had pieces composed for it by both Mozart and Beethoven?

Second … doesn't it just sound exhausting?

Third, it seems to stand to reason that in most cases a staff will be stronger than an individual: more heads should equal more talent and more ideas.

So here's a question.  Let's say, for the sake of the discussion, that the first rush of blogging is over.  If so, what comes next?

That's one of the things I'm planning to explore here in the coming weeks.  This again is part of the conversation the great Dean Brown and I have been having for the last few months.

So here's a thought: If the natural progression for newspapers was from single proprietor to staff-driven publications, won't the next phase be group blogs?  There are already a few interesting ones out there …

More on that soon.

I can't remember exactly when I started reading blogs, but it was before they were called that. I started reading Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish in 2002, I think.

But I'm sure when I stopped reading almost all of the ones mentioned in the media.  That was October of 2004, several weeks before the presidential election.  And it ended where it started, with Sullivan.

A some point Sullivan -- and almost all the rest of the political blogs now so discussed and feared in the "Main Stream Media" -- became so shrill, so predictable ...

So tiresome.

That I just stopped.  Oddly enough, I never really restarted, at least with those.  These days the only "big" blog I read regularly is InstaPundit, which is light and largely free of invective and pointed commentary.

I still read a lot of blogs, though, but they tend not to be what are thought of blogs in the current discussions.  So no Sullivan or Power Line or Josh Marshall.  I still read InstaPundit, but other than that, it's mostly what I call expert blogs -- smaller traffic blogs that specialize deeply in one area, and are often written by professional practicioners.

One of my favorites, for example, is The Luminous Landscape, a wonderful blog that focuses on landscape photography.

Which brings me to several points.  Over the next few weeks I'll be writing and discussing -- come on, click on those comment links! -- about how the blogosphere is maturing, and starting to develop in new and interesting ways.

And I won't be linking for the sake of linking.  One of the things I'm thinking about is that the blogosphere is dividing into different species.  I think that An Imperfect Equilibrium will be more about thinking, and essays, and conversations in the comments, and less about delivering a big bag o links every day.  But more about that as we go through this emerging ecosystem.

I had been planning to get going with the blog full blast yesterday, but fate intervened.

Did my morning meeting, and started on my email when I lost my DSL: Vonage, Net access, everything. Spent several hours rebooting, tracing wires, etc.

Finally called Verizon to see if they could trace the line. After 10 transfers and 20 minutes on various types of hold and inputting my phone number every six seconds got to the right line, on hold, which played the following message: Verizon customers in Southern California and North Texas are currently unable to reach the Internet while we perform maintenance.

So I went to the range and hit golfballs for the rest of the afternoon, then spent the evening rebooting, restoring the cabling.

So let's try again, shall we?

First, as I mentioned last week, it should be obvious now why I've been incommunicado for the last couple of months -- we shipped askSam 6 last week, almost 20 years to the day after the original askSam shipped.  I apologize for the lack of blogging, returning phone calls, returning emails, actually turning my IM on, etc.  If I owe you a call/email/IM ... I'm working on it, and hope to get caught up over the next week or so.

While I've been less than communicative, I have been thinking a lot about blogging, partly for this blog, and partly for a class I'm teaching in the fall at IUPUI.  I'm starting to think about the different types and forms of blogs, and have had several long conversations on this with Dean Brown.  And that's where I'd like to start ... tomorrow: If blogging is a new part of the media ecosystem, must not there be more than one type of inhabitant?

And wouldn't Marshall McLuhan enjoy this?

what I've been up to for the last few months. Here's what Phil and I and the crew have been working on. Go and take a look: http://www.asksam.com/

After I get some rest, blogging will go back to where it was last year, complete with semi-frequent essays. Or so I say, anyway.

Thanks for your patience.

Sorry about the light -- ok, complete lack -- of blogging the last week. But we're through the tunnel, and in a few days I'll be able to tell you all about it. It's good news! Blogging will remain ... sporadic ... for a few more days, though: I'll be at a convention, doing the wall-to-wall meeting thing.  Including Saturday and Sunday. Sigh.

Meanwhile, a few things to think about:

My (and James Jennings) new patent.  It's about as tedious as you'd expect.

A new study showing  that 70 percent of blog readers -- that's you! -- are influentials.

To put the blogosphere's influentials density in context, consider that the WashingtonPost.com likes to brag that 34% of its readers are influentials. (See bottom of page 4 on this PDF.)

Which brings me to one of the very many things that have piled up while I've been off doing ... stuff, Which Will Be Revealed Ever So Soon: Apparently, I'm teaching a class on blogging next semester on blogging at IUPUI for Dean James "I'm the Dean, Not The GodFather Of Soul" Brown.  And I have to put together a textbook/reading list by next month.

I have a couple of thoughts here.  First, almost everything about the mass media is inappropriate.  Blogs are not measured in terms of tonnage, or the number that they reach; they work in terms of who they reach, and how that reach spreads through those people's secondary and tertiary networks.

So I'm thinking of three books: One I'm pretty certain on.  One I'm thinking on, but could turn fickle at any moment.  And I fear I have a plethora of candidates for the third, and am having trouble deciding.  Here they are:

I'm pretty certain I want to use Gladwell's The Tipping Point. Beyond the titular discussion, there is a series of theories about the types of people who spread information -- people who are experts in a narrow area, people who are experts on what people are experts on which topics, and so forth.  I think that as the blogosphere matures many of these same patterns will emerge.

The second book is Stephenson's The Diamond Age. This has a fascinating discussion of information flow, with the lowest classes getting totally personalized news, and the 100 most important people in government receiving a newspaper printed on a hand-cranked letter press to ensure their having a common view of the world. But I'm not sure if that is worth the whole book, or if it is just one discussion.

Finally, I generally assign a Melissa Scott book to any new media class because Melissa is that good and because ... well, just because.  I'm thinking of assigning Trouble and her friends, because it's a great book, and because of the discussion of the malleability of identity online.  In the past, I've almost always assigned  Night Sky Mine, because it is good, and beautiful, and has the most unengineering discussion of user interfaces I've ever encountered. (Note to self: make programmers read this; add it to their project plans.)

Then, of course, there is  The Jazz.  This is from the Amazon review:

Misinformation, PR, disinformation, rumors, spinning, lies--in the near future, the art of untruth has evolved into the jazz: virtual-reality Internet theatre, an entertainment for the cognoscenti and a source of pain and scandal for those who believe what they see, read, or experience. Tin Lizzy has escaped her troubled criminal adolescence to become one of the premiere design programmers of the jazz. But when she agrees to design the back-tech for a teenage boy's brilliant jazz scenario, she discovers too late that Keyz created his jazz with a sophisticated program stolen from a Hollywood studio. Now Lizzy is a criminal again, a desperate fugitive on the run with Keyz through the dangerous underground of the 21st century, fleeing cops, bounty hunters, studio detectives, and a powerful, ruthless CEO who has a secret to preserve, and boundless resources and vindictiveness.

So, here are my thoughts for the moment:

Maybe 3 is too small a number! But, of course, given the amount of writing and such that I'll require ...

Maybe some thoughts/comments will come my way from you, gentle readers!

Maybe I should add Melissa to the blog mailing list? Hmmm, why haven't I done that already? All the rest of the Friends of Feola are being regularly tortured ... Maybe Melissa will have a suggestion!

-30-

cjf

The late, great Michael O'Donoghue used to do a rather unusual impression of Elvis:

I was home watching television the other afternoon and I happened to catch Spinout, a great Presley movie with an incredible cast -- Nancy Sinatra, Bill Bixby. I was watching this movie and a funny thought occurred to me. I thought, what if someone took steel needles, say, mm, fifteen, eighteen inches long and plunged them, plunged them into Elvis Presley's ... eyes. What would his reaction be? We can only guess ... but I think it might go something like this... (turns his back to the camera, pulls up shirt collar over his neck, removes eyeglasses and pockets them, then spins quickly, his right hand clutched to his eyes, screaming, shrieking at the top of his lungs. He staggers, collapses to the floor, tries to get up. Laughter and applause as O'Donoghue falls off stage and rolls into audience.)

Now that is fairly tasteless.  It is also a fair summary of how I feel listening to the majority of the "whither the media" discussions.

I met someone recently who crossed over into media companies after a long and healthy career in other industries.  We got into a discussion where I expressed the rather novel -- to him -- opinion that business arguments don't work on newsroom folks because a large percentage find the very idea that they are in a business to be offensive.

Today, a friend pointed me to a memo on Poynter that pretty well summed it up:

Ever since the Chandler Family plucked Mark Willes from General Foods, placing him at the helm of Times Mirror with a mandate to destroy the institutions in ways that would boost dividends, journalism has suffered at Newsday. The pain of the last year actually began a decade ago: the sad arc of greed has finally hit bottom. The leaders of Times Mirror and Tribune have proven to be mirrors of a general trend in the media world: They serve their stockholders first, Wall St. second and somewhere far down the list comes service to newspaper readerships. In 1996 I personally confronted Willes on that point, and he publicly confirmed that the new regime was one in which even the number of newspapers sold was irrelevant, so long as stock returns continued to rise.

That's from Laurie Garrett's memo detailing why she is leaving Newsday. Leaving aside the gratuitously silly idea that the owners of a company want to destroy it -- and all their money -- just to annoy journalists, take a look at that last sentance.  Does anyone think that makes sense? Especially now, after a year or so of circulation scandals -- at Newsday and elsewhere -- and weaking of ABC rules to include things like bulk delivery?  If we drop the price of the paper to a penny a week, will circulation go up? Does ANYONE think that makes sense?

Never mind the minor detail that circulation -- and therefore news -- do not pay for the newspaper in and of themselves.  Advertising does, especially classifieds.  And as Pennysavers and Auto Traders everywhere have shown, it is possible to have a successful newspaper with classifieds, and no news.

No one has shown a successful newspaper that has news, and no advertising, though.

Meanwhile, let's take a look at the reality based part of our show.  This is from Craig's List:

And then there's this, from the same link:

craigslist monster careerbuilder hotjobs NYC $25 $335 $269 $275 LA $25 $335 $269 $275 SF $75 $335 $269 $275 Boston $0 $335 $269 $275 Chicago $0 $335 $269 $275 Seattle $0 $335 $269 $275 Denver $0 $335 $269 $275 Miami $0 $335 $269 $275 Dallas $0 $335 $269 $275 Phoenix $0 $335 $269 $275 Wash DC $0 $335 $269 $275 Phila $0 $335 $269 $275 Atlanta $0 $335 $269 $275 Detroit $0 $335 $269 $275

Do ya feel the needles?

cjf

ps: More on this in a bit -- I'm in a time crunch tonight.

This just in from the Washington Post:

The group, which includes representatives of Steve Winwood, rapper Chuck D and the band Heart, said in court papers to be filed today that it condemns the stealing of copyrighted works. But it argues that popular services such as Grokster, Kazaa and others also provide a legal and critical alternative for artists to distribute their material.

Not that it surprises me that this is Chuck D's position.  He's been pretty consistant on this for a long time, just in a different venue.  Here's the first verse of "Caught! Can I get a witness?" from the 1988 Public Enemy album It takes a nation of millions to hold us back:

Caught, now in court 'cause I stole a beat
This is a sampling sport
But I'm giving it a new name
What you hear is mine
P.E. you know the time
Now, what in the heaven does a jury know about hell
If I took it, but but they just look at me
Like, Hey I'm on a mission
I'm talkin' 'bout conditions
Ain't right sittin' like dynamite
Gonna blow you up and it just might
Blow up the bench and
Judge, the courtroom plus I gotta mention
This court is dismissed when I grab the mike
Yo Flave...What is this?

Now if we can just get a picture of Sandra Day O'Conner wearing Flave's clock necklace ... I will be a happy man.

On a similar note, ExtremeTech notes that the RIAA et al theory that everyone is a copyright criminal until they can prove otherwise is not doing so well in court. A three-judge panel has just overruled the FCC's broadcast flag requirements, ruling that the FCC's mandate to oversee broadcasters does not give it the right to oversee broadcastees. The flag is a nasty piece of work that protects copyright not only from "stealing" -- like watching it on a portable during a trip -- but "misuse" -- like fastforwarding through the ads.

Next thing you know they're going to want your fridge and bathroom to lock themselves during commercial breaks.

cjf