Netcetera

What New Journalism Really Means

Those who still purchase the New York Times are purchasing a legacy. Handing over that $1.25 for a weekday edition means putting one's trust in an eras-old publication that, readers believe, always delivers the goods.

But how much fun can you find in a newspaper? Print doesn't have to worry about "clickability." You already paid for the paper and chances are, you'll buy it again tomorrow. But the Times is losing money. (It will distract you from this fact by writing articles about how the Tribune Company is losing money). Nielsen data on the time users spent on the New York Times site this year increased only slightly; papers like the Seattle Times had much bigger gains (and yes, Tribune papers had losses).

What is the Times trying to do to fix this?

The tone of its articles is relaxing. Adam Nagourney has digressed from relative straight talk to uses of the second person and painterly, incomplete sentences.

Op-ed contributors are loosening their ties and conducting sparring matches in the liberating Blogs section of the Times site. (Just try keeping track of the number of blogs the Times has here; it might very well be 200.)

TV critics are trying to make regulars laugh, or recruit a different set of readers entirely, by writing more often about reality series (or is that just an unavoidable...er...reality of TV?)

Fancy graphics replace dramatic photographs to show how Obama's coolness spreads from white to black and old to young.

The Times' new method is to tap into what people really think: what Brooks really thinks. What Nagourney really thinks. What MTV viewers really think. The inside information, unless it means straight-up celebrity gossip. By the time you've finished a print newspaper, the whole picture has changed. Web news is there to fill in the gaps, give you updates, and above all, break the rules of paper. You'd never see David Brooks and Gail Collins sounding off on paper. "On paper," news is reliable and factual. On the Web, it's "all the cuts from our print articles that are fit to print (online)."

What's our obsession with the backstory, the background, the other side of the coin, the other side of the mirror? We've taken this task on with the corporate blog of findingDulcinea, which chronicles the experience of interviewing from the interviewer's perspective, and adds things that the interview doesn't. People undoubtedly want this, and benefit from it. But we, like the Times, continue to stress the importance of keeping a fence up. Deep thoughts go here, and essential information goes there.

The fear is that no one will want essential information at all in two, five, ten years. I rue the day the Times reports its readers are spending less time on the site than they once were. But wait! There is so much to do on the site! (it's almost--ahem--fatiguing).

There is no doubt that people want to delve deeper into news. But there is a difference between delving deeper into the thoughts, jokes, one-liners, asides, off-topic reflections, and novelist turns of phrase of journalists, and exploring the deep and complex history of a country like Gabon. When I'm selecting news stories to write on at fD, I often turn abroad to the BBC and the Guardian, two worldly papers with thoughtful, organized articles that reach outside the British Isles. On these sites, design additions, sidebars, and tools are utilitarian and simple to use. Sounding off occurs, but it retains the trappings of the old school, and it is strong and usually witty.

As an aside, one thing remains from the print edition of the New York Times that should probably be killed: wistful, faux-thoughtful headlines sawed in half by commas and full of innocuous verbs like "eyes" and "battles." Most of them start with the word "for" (as in "For Obama, New York is Goal") or "when" (as in "When Food Is the Family Enterprise"). The best combine all the above features, and perhaps add a couple of alliterations to create one hell of a tongue-twister. Here are some winners:

Winning Again, Clinton Weighs Her Options

Far From Her Party’s Bitter Feuding, a Breezy Island Weekend for Clinton

A Battered Feeling at Obama’s Former Church

For English Studies, Students Say Goodbye to Dad

How Natural is Nature?

Specially, Niagara Falls. The answer: not very. Sure, the Army Corps of Engineers is a great group of guys and gals. But the fact that the falls can be turned off and on like a bathroom tap is a little scary. Catch the latest Niagara drift.

Figuring out how to use our site means figuring out how to use the Web.

College ain't what it used to be

There is plenty of evidence of it––from student loan billz, bank statements, memories of college dominated by drinking and dorm life, the prevalence of unpaid jobs snatched up happily by Ivy and liberal arts grads, and the strong desire to work in finance even if you can't add.

FD reports on rising tuition costs and less rigorous course loads.

There is plenty of evidence of it––from student loan billz, bank statements, memories of college dominated by drinking and dorm life, the prevalence of unpaid jobs snatched up happily by Ivy and liberal arts grads, and the strong desire to work in finance even if you can't add.

FD reports on rising tuition costs and less rigorous course loads.

"I think I forgot something"

Last night I was walking from my house in Kensington to the B35 bus, which is like a rollercoaster without brakes that takes me down the hill to Sunset Park, abode of my significant other, in about 10 minutes. Walking to the bus, I asked myself, Did I forget anything (I always do)? Did I have the bottle of wine? Yes. Did I have my wallet, phone, running shoes, shirt, shorts, socks? Yes. Did I have the "Touch of Evil" DVD? Yes.

Then it struck me––because I like to joke with myself, and create possible "Oprah" episode plotlines––perhaps I forgot my soul. What do I need to take to work every day, besides the things mentioned above? Oh yes, my soul! So I reached an Inspector Gadget arm back through my window and collected it from between the pages of perhaps..."The Portrait of a Lady."

Here's why it's needed. I was reading an article in the Times yesterday called "Working Life (High and Low)," a fascinating and disturbing  description of employment terms at two major U.S. companies: FedEx and Patagonia. They couldn't be more different from each other. But you knew that already. FedEx requires its drivers to be independent contractors (giving the company a nice, illegal tax break of billions each year), buy their own trucks, and pay fuel costs and other charges. Patagonia, on the other hand, lets its employees take large stretches off work to look after their newborn children, go ice climbing, or participate in an Ironman (just to name three). Taken from Steven Greenhouse's new book, "The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker," the article shows just how ludicrous and luxurious work can be in this country.

I've had degrees of both situations: a boss at Ralph Lauren who didn't believe in using recycled paper, even for reports and other matter that no one besides us would ever see (he chose the glossy, expensive paper instead), and a sports store, Jack Rabbit, where the employees are required to be serious athletes. Like the Patagonia employees, they are given legitimate time off for their sporting endeavors. Their knowledge, experience, and testing of the products is crucial to the store's success. It makes the store better. Get help from an employee who doesn't know anything about endurance sports, and you're likely to leave disappointed, and probably empty-handed. Their loss.

The FedEx situation sounds like a disaster (though the company has been told it has to fork over billions from 2002––social security money it owes its employees. This is likely to continue as the government pores over its tax returns from 2003-2007). But in many other companies' cases, it's often up to the employees to enhance the experience and better the company. At FindingDulcinea we're given excellent benefits, even though benefits are rare in startups. It's incentive to see this thing through––a completely new kind of website, totally unprecedented.

Our experiences and interests tailor what we do here every day, and they make the site better. Our "soul" is the part of us that brings all the romance of running and writing and music, or whatever you're interested in, into the office, and finds ways to use them all on the job. Any company that doesn't want that from each of its employees should be shot, so to speak. Agency doesn't mean paying for your own FedEx truck––paying for it long after your company has fired you for getting cancer. Agency means flexing your unique muscles, not seeing your job as a hermetically sealed environment from which all creativity is banished. If this sounds like your career, think about what you could add to the company if the company knew that you were a such-and-such enthusiast or had a background in such-and-such. If that doesn't work, well, I hear "a better job awaits" on Monster.com.

Is Internet Fame Real?

Probably not. Read my article for more deets, then watch this great interview with Alice Harwick, PhD in training specializing in internetology.*

*not a real word

Mixtapes!

My former roommate Rebecca has her mixtape as her away message; next week we're featuring the site in findingDulcinea's Site Spotlight section. It's beautiful, it's simple, it's legal, and it's free. Never go hungry for [primarily indie] music again! Click on this pretty screen shot to get Lizzyville's mix:

Hello, I'm a Mac, and I'm also a PC

My laptop, a Powerbook that I had for two years, is now resting in peace in Toowoomba, Queensland, where a young man named Toran is nursing it back to health (I sold it to him on eBay). It's a sad day when you lose your laptop, but that laptop and I never really got as close as my college iBook and I did, that tiny white creature on which I wrote 400 pages of a novel. Once I got the Powerbook, the magic had gone (the iBook was sold for parts to some guy in Paris). On that iBook, I had self-installed a hard drive, one of the most difficult tasks a regular person can complete. It felt like operating on someone: don't magnetize the surface, remember where every microscopic screw goes, etc.

Anyway, the point is, I just bought a PC. Shocker! Before I purchased it, I had considered typewriters and pens, wondering if agents might not mind receiving a 500-page manuscript that had been handwritten. But instead I chose a lightweight, 13-inch Toshiba that cost around $600. The day after that, I visited my accountant, and regretted the purchase. But anyway, it was necessary, or so I claim.

And is it worth it? Well, as far as I can tell, Vista is trying very hard to be like Leopard, what with fake "widgets," a fake "dock," and illustrative backgrounds, as opposed to Photoshopped grassy fields and fake sunflowers. It takes about 30% longer to do any task on a PC, if you're a relative novice like I am. The mouse's clicking noise is a touch too loud for my taste. But the keyboard is lovely.

In a perfect world, I would've bought a MacBook Air. But who would I be kidding? Myself, Steve Jobs, and, oh yes, my accountant.

My mantra (or is it my accountant's?) is "It's just stuff." As I move to my cheaper apartment in a more residential area, I've decided to sell a lot of the stuff I own––furniture, clothes, niknaks. It feels good to give it to "someone who really needs it," as the saying goes, rather than to me, who just wants it, or rather, who can't stomach the idea of a typewriter, no matter how much she prefers eras gone by to the present one.

Okay, okay, I like StumbleUpon

Because this morning it yielded, among other things, THIS!

A Ms. Thing

"Just as women and girls are offered a kind of ersatz defiance through drinking and smoking that interferes with true rebellion, so we are offered a pseudo-sexuality that makes it far more difficult to discover our own unique and authentic sexuality. How sexy can a woman be if she hates her body? She can act sexy, but can she feel sexy?" - Jean Kilbourne.

Found in this excellent article on advertising in the 2000/01 issue of Ms.

Also, this awesome video: