In Praise of OLD Friends

Pilgrims walk the earth
Crippled they are, hump-backed;
Hungry, half-dressed;
In their eyes, a waning;
In their hearts—a dawning.

—From Joseph Brodsky’s “Pilgrims”

And from Stanley Kunitz, RIP. Died from a full life…at 100…

The Layers

[excerpt]

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!

…

“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
…
I am not done with my changes.

*

Dear ones, have you met an old friend lately? One from your tribe – albeit of a different generation?

Miss B implores you to explore a glorious grey-zone: Pal-dom in the Ben-Gay aisle. Just when you think you’re unique, your struggles unparalleled in the great expanse of history, your dreams silly and unrequited, enter the oldie-goodies.

If you lift your weary head from the navel and notice, you’ll find fabulous oldsters who are treasures incarnate.

Nikolai Dronnikov sketches poets in Paris – when he’s not making sketchy glances at nubile tourists.

Stanley & Bebe Barkan: Long Island Bohemians. He, a publisher of ink-stained wretches; she, a painter of their portraits.

Sasha Yeryomenko, reading in his Moscow garret. And sharing evil Russian meat-products with we groupies.

Acclaimed thespian Viktor Persik makes me all teary-eyed when he performs. Nevermind I know only 15 words in Russian. Emote? Hah. He makes fire and smoke from mere lines.

Like to call this one “After & Before.” Slava Lyon and Aleksey Dayen in a Muscovite taxi.

Poets. Ruddy-faced drinkers. Lovers of women and other words for life.

ProcrastiNation

What’s the haul today, Bergmann?

Beans or manure?

I wish I knew…[insert existential sigh here.]

Anna Politkovskaya: Ultimate Journalist

Anna died for daring to tell the truth about “Poot-Poot” Russia.

Am only now learning of this courageous writer from Aleksey, my Russian-dissident bf and a journalist.

“It’s like shooting Tom Brokaw, if Tom Brokaw had balls. She was trying to show the real picture, not the bullshit. And for godsakes, she was a woman. To kill a woman like this you have to be an asshole and a piece of shit. But not a coward; the person got paid for it. A true professional.”

Aleksey tags the hit on goons of Ramzan Kadyrov. A man who drives a Ferrari, owns a soccer team and is majordomo of an aquatic park. He also holds down a side gig as Chechnya’s prime minister.

Before being shot in her apartment building’s elevator, Anna endured a starvation stint in a zindan* prison for deigning to question pro-Kremlin Chechen movers and shakers. Upon comparison to our journalistic chafes, now feel shame, sadness and resolve.

As Aleksey says, “Because of her investigations, many lives have been saved.”

Just not hers.

“When something like this happens,” says Aleksey, “I always think: Who’s next?”

“So? Who?”

“Garry Kasparov,” he replies. “He’s heading up the Coalition for Choice 2008 otherwise known as The Other Russia to make sure opposition to Putin is heard.”

We can only hope the chessmaster will out-wit the pitiless thugs.

And that the world’s journalists continue to confront them.

Otherwise, Anna’s died in vain.

Listen to her here.

*Zindan is the Chechen name for a hole in the ground where POWs are held.

J-Blog Buffet

Tips: Keep content hot; rotate selection; avoid tater-tots.

It’s mighty chilly in the art-hovel tonight. Put an extra scoop of super-protein powder en el arroz con frijoles to help warm the froze toes. [BTW, for those still squeamished-out by that Food Lion tape, consider an alternative. Miss B's never scraped slime from her lentils; her address book is an entirely different matter.]

Which brings us to the question of journalism blogs. [Non sequitur? Non really.]

Call me cavewoman, but I still think j-blogs serve as protein-boosters to The Man’s take on news. Most do not perform much original reporting or break stories. Most, not all.

The great j-blogs, however, have hot content and variety and aren’t simply dehydrated rehashings of other folks’ potatoes.

Offer for your clicking-consideration:

Reason magazine’s Hit-n-Run.

When punk-rock anarchists grow up, they head for Reason’s libertarian politics.

The fun of Reason is its love of choice. Heck, they named their anthology CHOICE. Choose a free, free-market economy. Yep, legalization of drugs, sex-work, rock-n-roll. Choose a free-minded cultural ecology. Every idea, every scheme, every voice—bring it. Sure, it gets a little loopy in Libertarian-Land, but it’s well worth a gut-check and a click now and then.

At the other end of the political spectrum, stumbled upon the trowel-wielders at TruthDig.

These progressives are new to me, but seem to be doing decent original reporting—very dear to Miss B’s ticker. The site is bulging with perspicacious pieces. Suggest you head to the “Interviews” section for Gore Vidal on the Oscars. Gorgeous.

For personal reportage, have to logroll for the man largely responsible for my journalism career [have his address should you want to send him a freighter of fungal tomatoes for this shameful act], Neal Pollack.

Neal and I haunted the same smelly and wonderful spots in Chicago. He being a then-staffer for the Chicago Reader; me being a snoop with hopes. He could’ve cut me off at the pass; instead, he granted me a pass at one of his cover pieces. We have the goods on each other so we stand together at delish detente. Anyhoo.

Neal’s blog focuses on parenting the lively and brilliant Elijah alongside the stalwart and comely Regina, his wife. I’m not a parent. I do not like most children. But I do like Neal’s ear for dialogue and his take on what Gen-X parents endure, especially when contrasted with similar situations from our youth.

For bracing giggles, we should all visit the poor blokes who have to deal with our comma issues.

Testy Copy Editors is not a blog per se, but a discussion board. These guys and gals save our collective butts on a daily basis. And they don’t forget. So it behooves us not to forget them.

Bonus: You’ll learn to perfectly punctuate dirty jokes.

 

 

 

Against Parasitism: Bring Us Acidophilus!

Cholera.

A frustrated Malcolm Gladwell tugged at his fuzzy head and began to wail against the “parasites,” his assessment of bloggers. “Without mainstream-media types upon which to feed, they’d wither and die.”

At least that’s how I remember it. Gladwell had been on the dais with Arianna Huffington, Norm Pearlstine and Jacob Weisberg to celebrate Slate’s 10th anniversary and to debate the future of media. My heart leapt at his rant. Three months later, and now a blogger myself, am firmer in my assent to his dissent. Smell a disconnect? Not if you lift your sniffer starward, mates.

Too often, blogs are nothing more than bacteria coasting on waste, waiting to infest the media stream, resulting in a choleric culture of the cut-down. The hyped “conversation” being no better [or worse] than that produced by neighborhood scolds, Cassandras and coffee shop layabouts. I suggest we avoid the haunts of such “let’s pile on and kvetch” creatures.

Building an alternative cyberculture requires more effort, however.

Just as my last post urged industry and self-reliance, this plea is for a parallel positivism.

No, no, no. I don’t mean an enforced “Up With People” proviso. Please. My favorite writer’s column was called “The Misanthrope’s Corner.”

What blogs should be are exchanges of ideas.

Original, insightful musings.

Scathing critiques with thoughts on how a putrid policy, book, class, movie, etc., could be done better.

Since I must continue with the bacterial analogy, let’s bring forth some blog acidophilus. This bacterial family, best known for giving yogurt its marketing hook, improves intestinal flora [flowers! nice!] and, more importantly, improves elimination [yes, let's do speed away all the mind-clouding, tummy-twisting shite]. 

In other words, stop with the rehashing; start cooking from scratch.

We’ll all be better nourished for it.

No journalism jobs for you! Grab a hanky and get a business going already

Ah, if only Elisabeth Kubler-Ross would have lived to see today’s interactive journalism class.

Her five stages of grief were in high relief…

Denial: What do you mean you aren’t hiring? And current writers must now file five times a day, make photos, create podcasts, train their free replacements [er, citizen journalists] and be available 24/7? No!

Anger: I ain’t nobody’s content aggregator. I am Upton Sinclair. Look! I got the t-shirt.

Bargaining: But if I learn Dreamweaver, I’ll be worthy, right? Right?!?!

Depression: The guy from ESPN.com can’t get paid online. Grad school is futility on the installment plan.

Acceptance: This sucks. I gotta eat. Could [gulp] entrepreneurship be the answer?

Yes.

Today’s wearying presentations brought out the capitalist evangelist in Miss B.

Had a chance to testify to a classmate on this afternoon’s shuttle train. She asked, “Why should we bother trying for a NYT internship with all the cuts and competition?” I nodded and replied, “I’d spend my time meeting editors of mags you want to write for, pitch them ideas and do those stories FOR MONEY instead. Build your business. No one is going to hire anyone. But they’ll buy from everyone with good stuff.”

To be blunt, I think the school is perpetrating a fraud on its less-work-world-wise students.

By emphasizing traditional newspaper “craft”, CUNYGSJ feeds a belief that blacksmithing is back. The emails touting interning tests for AP, Boston Globe, WashPost only exacerbate the delusion.

The only way CUNYGSJ students should expect a living wage is by coming to the marketplace as versatile communicators ready to drum up business for themselves, by themselves.

Scary? Yep.

Liberating? You bet.

It is up to you to make your invisible hand visible in the marketplace. That means summoning courage and making first-move introductions. It requires a broader view of where your talents may be useful—speechwriting, product taglines, corporate patter, oh my! And it forces your being in control of your own time.

If you want security, try the postal service.

If you want to play with words and make a living doing so, get serious about business.

Damn.

Why hang around parking garages doing dumb stuff like taking down the president when we could be updating the Web site?

[This concludes my sentimental snark for the evening. Sob.]

Loose Lips Sink Chips

Newsweek did a bang-up job recording the ridiculous human drama behind Hewlett-Packard’s phone-spying scandal. Read it and feel the makings of a TBS original movie with Patricia Dunn in a Melanie Griffith turn and Check-Out-My-Bulging-Yacht Tom Perkins channeling his randy twin, Richard Branson.

Then the NYT teased us with the tricks of the pretexting trade that make such snooping successful.

But there’s much more we can do online to cover this cautionary corporate kookiness:

• Snoop-cam video. Since H-P honchos were seeking a leaker, snoop-cam plumbs the depths. Snoop-cam zooms from the first leaky press report—WSJ, to furious Fiorina’s office, to January 2006 CNET leaky article, to Dunn’s office, to general counsel, to internal security, to outside counsel, to security consultants, to private investigators in their sticky little offices, to telco centers [In prisons? In India? In Indiana?], to enflamed boardroom featuring THE leaker Keyworth, to inside counsel, to outside counsel, to the not-leaker-but-aggrieved Perkins alerting the feds. Each stop on the bouncing buck tour has an accompanying snippet of dialogue. I’m fond of Keyworth’s response to being found out, “I would have told you all about this. Why didn’t you just ask?” Ah, but where’s the fun in that? Max time: 3 minutes.
• Running underneath the video, a timeline ticker connecting facts with images.
• Audio files of pretexters plying their trade with telco saps. Listen as David Gandel transforms from middle-aged white Coloradan to young Latino to aged phlegmatic widow. No need for video, but a still photo of Gandel is a must alongside the impersonating intonations.
• Audio files from off-shore call centers—perhaps operators in training—with interviews revealing their level of sophistication in handling pretexting scoundrels.
• Link to raw phone records with graphic call-outs of a damning “pattern of contacts.” Insert bubbles of investigative expert’s comments about what distinguishes a random call from a red-flag pattern.
• Moderated live Q&A interview/chat with one of the spied-upon journalists and exposed leaker, Keyworth, about fiduciary duty vs compelling scoops.
• Slideshow of SEC filings [with faces to match] disclosing fabulous resignations. There must be some fatuous verbiage that could be translated into what really went down. Pithy on parade. [SEC regs require these filings whenever anyone quits; H-Ps failure to promptly file theirs on Perkins helped blow his whistle.]
• Video: Perkins reflecting on the importance of integrity—as he commands his 287-foot sailboat, the Maltese Falcon.
• Sidebar explanation of how a board member fits and does not fit within the category of “employee.”
• Expand from there to a “Selfish” section of the page where we answer the question, “Yeah, but how does this apply to me?” The Selfish section includes:
• On-the-street video interviews asking folks about what they think their bosses have a right to do vis-a-vis monitoring communications. Present as split-screen with running facts and fallacies about how far employers may legally snoop on how employees use telephones, computers, etc., even if owned by the employee.
• Step-by-step guide to preventing release of phone records—video or slide show.
• Graphic map of potential entry points for an investigator to break into one’s private communications: From USPS mailbox peeping to cyberstalking.
• Links to electronic privacy organizations as well as employer rights pages.
• Coup de Google grace: A teaser inviting user to punch in home address, this links immediately to GoogleEarth. Graphic pops up: “Who’s watching you?”

Arthritic Punk Goddess Beseeching Grace

Avert these eyes; perk those ears; thump heavy boots; refuse that realise. [not real lyrics]

Should a woman of 37 be at Radio Birdman’s Irving Plaza show dancing in a mini skirt & combat boots, waxing ironic at how things turn out?
The punk princess in me says yes.

The demure enigimatician says nyet.

The wise one who’s smart enough to toss away false personas says as long as the spirit moved you, glory be!

Oh yes, my friends, it was a beautifully ugly evening. The Australian blokes still kick out the jams, and if you close your eyes everything is again young, rebellious, silly and sweet. Gone are divorces. Banished all failures. Treasured are memories of acid and acrid practice spaces. Rekindled are embers of that little part of Gen X that lifts its collective eyebrow at all things collective. Twas so perfect to laugh at my brethren there: balding, bulging, besieged. And to know I was just the same.

Romenesko as recommended reading

All journalists need to check in with their peers around the world. Poynter.org is one such gathering place for industry news and advice. Within this site is Jim Romenesko’s compendium of media-related articles, often confronting ethical and other sticky issues in journalism.