Thursday, November 17, 2005

OxyMORONS

I’m not paying much attention to Pajama Media’s new moniker, Open Source Media, or OSM, but - as The Talent Show pointed out on announcement day Wednesday - this is still the copyright notice included in their Privacy Policy found on every page of every blog:

2. Our Site and all its contents, which includes, but is not limited to, text, graphics, photographs, logos, video and audio content, is protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. All individual components of Our Site, including, without limitation, articles, content and other elements comprising Our Site are also copyrighted works. Additionally all of the weblogs linked to by us are likewise protected. You must abide by all additional copyright notices or restrictions contained on this site and our linked weblogs.

3. You may not reproduce, distribute, copy, publish, enter into any database, display, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any part of this site. The only exceptions to this are that you may download material from Our Site for your own personal use, provided such download is limited to making one machine readable copy and/or one print copy that limited to occasional articles of personal interest only. No other use of the content of Our Site is permitted. Please contact our Sales Department if you wish to have rights other than those stated above.

May they crash and burn.

RELATED: James Joyner on the copyright notice and the name.  Apparently Brendan’s crew has long had the name Open Source Media:

Don’t get us wrong; we didn’t invent the idea of working with bloggers to make media, we certainly didn’t invent the concept “open source,” and there’s plenty of room for everyone to do what we’ve been doing. But they chose the same name that we established in May and, seeing as how we work in the same industry, people might find that a little confusing. And that has us puzzled.

David Corn (he’s on the Advisory Board) explains:

OSM, get it? It’s not MSM--the pejorative nickname for the mainstream media. [Blogger Roger L.] Simon says this site will “emphasize” bloggers, what he calls “citizen journalists.” The goal is a “global news service of the future,” with a “firewall” between news and opinion.

Definitive roundups from Joe and James.

NAME UPDATE: They’re liars too? Via Dan Gillmore, whose content comment - “The company gets to pick the bloggers it likes, as it should, and it’s hardly monolithic.” - I agree with completely.

Alaskan Pork alive & well & aided & abetted by big media

Recall that the highway bill of 1982 had 10 “earmarked” projects-the code word for pork. The 2005 one had 6,371. The Bridge to Nowhere got the most attention.

Today the Times headlines, Two ‘Bridges to Nowhere’ Tumble Down in Congress. The Washington Post, Funding for Alaskan Bridges Eliminated. Problem is, as The Carpetbagger Report notes:

It’s a classic case of Congress pretending to respond to public demands. Congress passed the most bloated and expensive transportation bill in American history - complete with 6,371 pet projects, a new pork record - sparking cries of Republican excess. In response, lawmakers have “trimmed” the legislation without actually cutting a penny.

In fact, the bridge linking Ketchikan and Anchorage may still be built. Instead of a congressional earmark, Alaskan officials can just go build the bridge themselves with federal money.

But there are two stories here, and John gets the other one right. This is a media story:

Why didn’t the Washington Post report: Congress refuses to delete money for Bridge to Nowhere? Nope. They put a headline and first couple of paragraphs that make you think the bridge has been killed and Congress did the right thing. When in fact, Congress went out of its way in order to trick the American public. That should be the headline, congressional deceit.

Both the Times and the Post buried the lead, buried the real news, and reported - spotlighted - the spin. So much for the value of editors. As to playing to audiences, John also points out that the one paper to get it right was The Anchorage Daily News.

The end of “off”

A friend wondered how to turn off his TiVo. I said you never turn it off. He was baffled. But even when we do turn off TVs & VCRs:

They remain ever in standby mode, silently sipping energy to the tune of 1,000 kilowatt hours a year per household, awaiting the signal to roar into action.

“As a country we pay $1 billion a year to power our TV’s and VCR’s while they’re turned off,” said Maria T. Vargas, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program, which sets voluntary standards for energy use, and grants its ratings to the most efficient products.

The end of “off:”

[T]he words “off” and “on” no longer seem to apply; a better word might be “idling.”

“They won’t even say ‘off’ now; they’ll say ‘power,’ “ noted Alan K. Meier, a senior energy analyst at the International Energy Agency, a consortium based in Paris. “My washing machine draws five watts even when there’s no sign of intelligent life.”

[...]

It doesn’t cost much to make a more efficient device: sometimes just 50 cents a unit, they say. But consumers don’t consider invisible energy use - “there’s no labeling of power use in ‘standby,’ “ Mr. Meier said, and “no way for people to recognize what a low-standby device is” - making government-imposed energy efficiency the best hope, he said.

PR & Tom & Alexis

On vacation, I stoop to celebrity gossip. From Salon, Tom Cruise’s new PR person is effective, Alexis Stewart best get one:

I happened to catch an hour of her radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio last Thursday night. Called “Whatever,” Alexis co-hosts the show with the daughter of Martha Stewart Omnimedia Chairman Charles Koppelman, Jennifer Koppelman Hutt. The airing wasn’t touted. It was, as one Sirius exec stated, “a soft launch.”

It was a hoot. In one hour, Alexis complained in detail about not knowing what do or how to act on The Apprentice, confessed that she had slept with the cameraman assigned to shoot her, and had experimented with lesbianism. She certainly seemed and sounded serious about all of it. Hutt was surprisingly funny too. She prattled on with a pretty good yarn about being summoned to New York dining hot-spot Nobu to meet Alexis and Martha for dinner only to be stuck manning a table for eight alone for almost two hours waiting for the Stewarts. Martha called her to let her know her progress toward showing up at which point Hutt informed her that fellow Sirius star Howard Stern and his daughter had just sat down. Stewart insisted Hutt ask the already peeved hostess to re-seat her next to Stern’s table. Who knew Martha was such a Howard fan?