Camille Paglia

“The notion of the decentred subject [is] one of the fattest pieces of rotten French cheese swallowed whole by American academics . . .” (p 180)
“The number one problem today is not ignorant students by ignorant professors who have substituted narrow 'expertise' and 'theoretical sophistication' for breadth and depth of learning in the world history of art and thought.” (p. 207)
-Camille Paglia, in Sex, Art, and American Culture

George Woodcock

“The arts are only viable and only justifiable if they serve values that are neither economic nor political. Their real contributions to society have nothing to do with paying taxes or creating jobs or providing propaganda for causes like national unity. They have their justification in irradiating our lives by the gifts of the imagination.
– George Woodcock in “Jackals' Dream” in The Bumper Book, p. 51 (Noted Sept. 19, 1993)

Big holes in Microsoft's core products

There are some big holes in Microsoft Exchange that could let an attacker seize control of a machine and run arbitrary code. The holes could let in someone who wants to unleash a worm or a virus. Systems affected include those running Windows NT, XP, 2000.
Microsoft has some patches posted.

  • <a href="http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/byid?searchview&query=VU%23467036,VU%23575892,VU%23422156,VU%23435444"A description of the problems.
  • Microsoft calls these security updates “Critical” — it's highest rating.
  • Not surprisingly, the geeks at Slashdot have a few opinions.

Blogs and Journalism — will this discussion never end?

There's already all sorts of comments and Trackbacks for a post Jay Rosen made to his blog, PressThink. I've never met him but he sounds like a smart guy and he knows a lot about my job. That's because he runs New York University's journalism school.
Now, I've read his post but I've not read the Trackbacks or the comments yet. I'd thought I'd shoot first and read questions later, so to speak.
The post in question is titled “What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism?” and it's a top 10 list that presents some of his observations about the relationship between blogs and journalism. This is a hot topic these days. Actually, it seems to be one of those topics that arrived with the popularity of blogs and now, like Sheridan Whiteside, won't ever leave and is taking over the joint.
I wish this debate would end becuase it obscures a more important issue: What is journalism and how does it serve its audience?
But first let's dispense with the idea of framing a discussion that compares, as Rosen's list does, blogs to journalism. Recognizing that definitions for both the term blog and the term journalism are still under debate, it seems to me that the term blog describes a form; the term journalism describes a process or a system. Of course, blogs can be part of a system we call journalism and, just as obviously, not all blogs are part of that system. (Nor do all bloggers want to be journalists.)
Yet people want to argue that blogs will upend or revolutionize journalism and mainstream journalists argue that blogging isn't Real Journalism. They do this, I think, because the output of the blog form and the journalism process are similar — that is: A reader or viewer learns something new about the world as a result of exposure to both. And so bloggers and journalists believe they are all working on the same thing. They are not. Or not always.
Now, I'm not an academic — I'm a working journalist who returns to work Monday after a month off — and I'm still trying to solidify these thoughts but the system or process of journalism includes several things that are independent of the form of output (the form of output could be newspaper articles printed on newsprint, broadcast journalism distributed on the Internet or, yes, blogs): Here are just three characteristics of the system that is journalism:

  • A contract or an understanding between reader and journalist about how the bills are paid. I think most consumers of journalism have a good idea how the bills are paid at The Globe and Mail — through the sale of ads. My salary is paid by my paper and does not normally rise or fall depending on what we say about a particular advertiser. (I can't stress the importance of this enough. A reader needs to know who's paying the bills. It's a key factor in a reader's ability to determine the validity of the news that is presented to hime or her. )
  • A reader has some sense of the instititional existence of the process. In other words, the reader need not be worried that if I, the journalist, disappear tomorrow, that the contract we have will end. You can argue with me on this one but I believe it becomes journalism when you have a system in place to ensure that whatever information you're in the business of providing keeps on being provided in my absence. You may accuse of me saying that journalism must exist within an institution and I would say, yes, that's what I'm saying I'm guess. Now the tricky part: What do we mean when we say institution? What are an institution's defining characteristics in this context?
  • With journalism, a reader can count on some regularity. This, too, is a key point and key part of the contract between journalist and consumer. While journalists may write sporadically, the system works to a deadline — be it once a year or once an hour. We promise to say something at a certain time on a certain date and our readers start to look for and count on that that regularity. Journalists do this becuase it enhances our validity and says to our readers that journalism is what we have committed ourselves to doing.

There are more characteristics of this system called journalism. You may know of some and I'd encourage you to post some comments. I can feel them and intuit them, but it's tough to precisely codify them (particularly between changing the diapers of a very active two-year-old and the feedings of the newborn that is the reason I'm on holiday in the middle of October.)
Perhaps most importantly, the whole “are blogs journalism” debate is about the control of journalism and I don't see enough journalists facing up to this question honestly. Many journalists and many critics of journalists want to control who is allowed to call themselves a journalists. On some journalism listservs I belong to, a perennial topic revolves around whether Canadian journalists ought to form a professional organization like doctors or lawyers and set standards for admittance and all that. I'm dead set against such an idea or any other idea the prevents anyone from doing whatever it is he or she thinks is journalism. I say, if you think what you're doing is journalism, go ahead and call yourself a journalist. Mind you, I don't have to agree that you're a journalist and you don't have to agree that I'm one. But, if you want to be a journalist, knock yourself out and be one.
Journalism is to important to the functioning of a democratic society to seal it off, license it, and prevent anyone from becoming a practitioner.
So let's stop asking if blogs are journalism. Instead, let's start blogging and talking about real important things. Like, when are the Toronto Maple Leafs actually going to win a game?

Antonin Artaud

“The problem is to make space speak, to feed and furnish it, like mines laid in a rock which all of a sudden turns into geysers and bouqets of stone.” (p. 98)
“From the point of view of the mind, cruelty signifies rigour, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination . . . There is no cruelty without consciousness.” (p. 101-102)
From Antonin Artaud The Theatre and Its Double, (noted Sept. 14, 1993)

Jean-Paul Sartre

“It must be borne in mind that most critics are men who have not had much luck and who, just about the time they were growing desperate, found a quiet little job as cemetery watchmen.” (p 324)
“Nothing is more respectable than long impunity.” (p. 336)
“Genius [is a] conflict between the Relative and the Absolute, between a finite presence and an infinite absence.” (p. 374)
-Take from Jean-Paul Sartre, Essays (noted Sept. 1, 1993)

Jean Paul Sartre

“What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first, he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something and he himself will have made what he will be.” (p. 36)
“The existentialist … thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with him: There can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think of it.” (p. 41)
“… that a man is nothing else than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organization, the ensemble of the relationships which make up these undertakings.” (p. 49)
“What people would like is that a coward or a hero be born that way.” (p. 49)
“(Existentialism) can not be taken for a philosophy of quietism, since it defines man in terms of action; nor for a pessimistic description of man — there is no doctrine more optimistic, since man's destiny is within himself; nor for an attempt to discourage man from acting, since it tells him that the only hope is in his acting and that action is the only thing that enables a man to live. Consequently, we are dealing here with an ethics of action and involvement.” (p. 50)
– Jean Paul Sartre, “The Humanism of Existentialism”, in Essays

Online Journalism's Best Friend

John Warnock, the co-creator of the Postscript language that lets us print beautiful documents and the co-founder of Adobe Systems, is surely the best friend online journalism ever had. He is single-handedely keeping Salon afloat.
Back in February I and lots of other journalists wrote that it seemed Salon was about to be shuttered. It was unable to pay the rent on its pricey San Francisco office space and it seemed to have no prospects for some long-term stable financing.
But, as some Salon execs crowed shortly after we wrote those words, word of its demise seem greatly exaggerated.
That's because Warnock, who is now retired from Adobe but sits on its board, has written one cheque after another to keep Salon afloat. The latest cheque, according to an SEC filing this week, was for another $100,000 (U.S.) of his own money. He gets — as he has several times already — warrants to buy up to 300,000 common shares of Salon Media Group Inc. for .0805 cents a share. The stock (SALN.OB), which trades in the Nasdaq over-the-counter market, is trading at about 6 cents a share right now.
(The Hambrecht family, tool, has been a big supporter of Salon. Bill Hambrecht is the venture capitalist behind Hambrecht and Quist and his daughter, Elizabeth, is Salon's president. Hambrecht was also an early investor in Adobe and Warnock.)
But Warnock isn't doing it for the money. He thinks Salon is a good idea and he wants to it succeed.
I've met and inteviewed Warnock twice. He's a charming patient man. And a good friend to journalism.
As for Salon, well . . .
“The Company will use the capital raised for working capital and other general corporate purposes,” it says in the SEC filing, which means, as it has every time Warnock has written a cheque, that this money is urgently needed to pay the writers, pay the rent, and pay for the Internet services it needs to keep publishing. Despite Warnock's largesse, this is not yet close to being a sustainable business.
According to its most recent financial statements, Salon Media Group had just $83,000 on hand at the end of June, down from $162,000 at the end of March. It ran an operating loss for the quarter of $1.32-million on a revenue of $1.045-million. That, though, was an improvement, believe it or not, over the same quarter in 2002, when it had an operating loss of $1.66-million on revenue of less than a $1-million ($972,000).
It was able to sign up about 18,000 paying subscribers in the quarter, bringing the total number of netizens paying for what may be the Web's premier online-only journal to about 66,000. There are, by the way, about 600 million people on the Internet.
As the company itself says in that financial statement:
“Salon has incurred losses and negative cash flows from operations since inception and has an accumulated deficit at June 30, 2003 of $83.6-million. These factors raise substantial doubt about Salon's ability to continue as a going concern.”
Let that sink in for a moment: This is a company with revenues of barely $4-million a year and it's more than $80-million in the hole!