Print is Dead, and I Don't Feel So Good Myself

In the 1984 film, Ghostbusters, mousy secretary Janine tries to sex up uber-nerd scientist Egon Spengler by impressing him with the books she's read, to which Egon replies: "Print is Dead."

It's no secret I get frustrated with electronic journalism. Conservative, liberal, politics, showbiz, lifestyle, all of them, they just disappoint the crap out of me sometimes. When I was a kid, there were some truly great journalists working in the electronic media, but, the only one left in the business is Barbara Walters and she's a hundred and eight(sorry, Barbara).

For fifty years, print journalism was able to compete by offering more depth, and better quality. Newspapers survived by doing the same things TV and Radio news did, only better, even though they were less convenient. They were even pretty profitable.

Then along came the web, and you could get the same data (the exact same articles in many cases) without having to deal with a stack of printed pages. It could have been really cool. Newspapers could do pretty much what they always had, but without the expense of having to print anything.

The problem was, it's a lot harder to sell advertising on the web. Most advertisers only want to pay for web advertising if the end user actually clicks on their ad. Nobody wants to pay just for the exposure without somebody clicking on the ad, even though anybody who's ever studied advertising will tell you, exposure is the most valuable part of advertising. There's also no way to insert a whole page of advertising in the middle of the news on the web.

Newspapers are in the business of publishing the news, but they made their money by selling advertising, which gave the end user the expectation that the news itself is either free or nearly free. Double that on the web where almost all the non-pornographic content is free and it became almost impossible for newspapers to profitably make the transition from printed paper to the internet.

I think you'll see many of the best writers and comic artists and some of the most fleet-footed mastheads successfully make the transition over to web journalism, but it will be a painful transition and the newspaper printed on paper itself will be an anachronism in fifteen years. Ironically, I think we'll probably retain the term "newspaper" for text based journalism long after there's no actual paper involved.

This will be painful, and I can't promise that what we'll get will be nearly as good as what we had, but I don't think there's any way to change the path we're on either.

Seth Godin makes an interesting blog entry on what he'll miss about newspapers. He's kind of an asshole about it, but he makes some good points.

Brownie points and kudos if you can name the newspaper writer I ripped off for the title of this article.

Confessions of a Superhero

You see these guys on Jimmy Kimmel a lot, but it's fascinating to watch this behind-the-scenes documentary on the life of people who dress up like super heroes to sell photo opportunities to tourists on Hollywood Blvd.



Of particular interest is Christopher Lloyd Dennis who plays Superman getting ready for a day as the "man of steel"

Cool animated GIF

I hope everybody can see this in all the various formats they read the blog from

At first I thought maybe it was just an optical illusion, but it really is an animated gif. I love images with subtle movement.

The source is an article on the Popular Science website about a real-life cloaking device which sounds way cool but is still pretty limited in its capabilities.

A Radical Proposal For Peace

How do you respond proportionately to somebody who's willing to die to attack you? You can't, and that's Israel's dilemma. That's also why their enemies have chosen this tactic: it's almost impossible to defend against.

A person who's already decided to die attacking you will attack from a school or a hospital or a mosque. They don't care. Attacking from a place you might be reticent to counterattack might give them a few more minutes to inflict whatever damage they can while you hesitate.

The only thing Israel can accomplish with counter attacks is to diminish the enemies capacities before they build up enough strength to inflict more damage.

It's a catch-22 though. The collateral damage from their counter attacks creates more fanatics who are willing to attack them, so each counterattack may end the current round of attacks from that area, but it lays the groundwork for the next round. It is literally a vicious cycle.

So, how do you break the cycle?

It's brutally painful, but one tactic might be to adapt a policy of no reprisals. If Hamas or Hezbollah launch missiles or mortars into Israel, simply don't respond with violence of any kind.

If counterattacks had any hope of ending the violence, then I would never suggest such an outrageous course of action, but since counterattacks don't end the violence, one has to look at the total body count here, not just which side has the most casualties and a policy of no counterattacks dramatically reduces the total amount of suffering in the region.

Nonviolence may be the only hope for dealing with an enemy that's willing to blow themselves up to attack you or launch missiles from a school playground. An enemy who's already decided to die attacking you isn't going to stop for fear of counterattacks. They don't care what you might do to their countrymen either. All they care about is inflicting as much damage as they can before they die.

It may be inappropriate to refer to the teachings of Jesus in this context, but there's a real genius behind his lessons to give your coat to the man who stole your cloak or turning the other cheek.

Israel can break the cycle of violence if they respond, not with guns but with love. If they worked to build up these areas and improve the lives of the people who lived there, despite the attacks, then their enemies would soon learn that life is a lot better with Israel than with the people who are encouraging them to attack Israel and the violence would end.