aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Media Lab

We’re opening a Media Lab in the fall; I’ll manage it. As I plan the student media production, the podcasts and webcasts, I keep in mind what Duncan has to say:

By the way, welcome to the future.  I know the future is already here but it’s noticeably more distributed this week.  Lisa has a show and I’m going to watch it.  I found it through a trusted filter and I enjoyed it.  It’s free, syndicated and entirely unmediated.  The cost of content production/distribution is rapidly approaching ZERO and I haven’t turned on my television in over a week.  Nothing on TV will engage me like something Lisa can and will create.  The quality of television has never been better in terms of production value but the content is like a race to the bottom.  Who can come up with the worst show ever!?  What is it now?  Evander Holyfield dancing or something?  Sofa king (#2) mindless.

Lisa’s show is Walk Los Angeles with Me and Duncan finds it “wonderfully engaging/bizarre:”

If you think its hack, amateur or stupid then you just don’t get it yet.  Turn your computer off and go back to watching TV and don’t say another word about the “main stream media.” Or pick up your weapon of choice and become the media!

My job is to create an atmosphere where our students can explore and become part of that future, and to hold those who “just don’t get it” at bay.

Conservative blogs lead locally

Chris Bowers is out with his ”most comprehensive survey” ever of blog traffic on the left and on the right and while he finds again that large liberal blogs get more traffic than large conservative blogs:

The conservative advantage in smaller blog traffic is tremendous. In fact, for blogs ranked 67-250, conservatives hold a whopping 1,469,730 to 861,827 weekly page view lead over progressive blogs (70.5%). Even more stunningly, the conservative blogs ranked 67-250 make up 21.5% of all conservative blogosphere traffic, while the liberal blogs ranked 67-250 make up only 8.3% of all liberal blogosphere traffic--a five to two edge in favor of conservatives. Clearly, smaller blogs are a much, much more important part of the conservative blogosphere than they are a part of the liberal blogosphere.

I’m definitely a smaller blog (today I fell from Marauding Marsupial to Adorable Little Rodent; disappointed, I have to remember that just weeks ago I was happy to become a Flappy Bird) and my experience tells me Bowers’ observation is true.

Now, right now you may be asking why this is important. Who cares if conservatives are leading among smaller blogs--that means that liberal blogs have an even larger lead among large blogs, right? While that is certainly true, it is also true that the smaller a blog tends to be, the more locally focused it tends to be. For a party obsessed with running a a fifty-state strategy, and with a midterm election coming up where all politics are indeed local, an edge among small, local, political blogs also means an edge in small, local, political races. While progressives may be taking a decisive edge in general blogosphere discourse, it could also be argued that conservatives are taking a decisive advantage in targeted blogging that will provide them with real, tangible benefits in the 2005-2006 elections.

Yes, all politics is local and yes, Republicans have demonstrated an ability to mobilize locally for their national causes.

Once the Republicans were thought of as the party of the moneyed elite and the Democrats as reflective of the grass roots. That has apparently changed.

More in favor of Brooklyn development

Nathan Newman weighs in on an alternate plan to the Ratner Brooklyn development proposal I commented on the other day:

And this new plan would provide only 573 units for lower-income residents, versus 2250 units reserved for low- and middle-income residents in the original plan.

That there is even a debate over these two proposals just shows the bankruptcy of progressive politics in New York City. Yuppie “quality of life” arguments should not trump the desperate need of families for a place to live. Yes, large development will change the character of downtown Brooklyn, but that character is being changed by the fact that all but the wealthy are being driven out of many parts of it, as rents soar out of control.

Brooklyn faces a choice. It can hold onto a physical “look” of the past to benefit the remaining wealthy who can afford to live in a yuppie theme park of low-lying buildings, or it can embrace massive new housing to hold onto the actual residents who might be able to afford to live in the community.

More housing is desperately needed and this is one of the few undeveloped areas where massive housing can be built. To miss that opportunity is a betrayal of the working people of New York who need that housing.