A first response to Jeff Jarvis’ column in The Guardian

Jeff Jarvis got all up in Rupert Murdoch’s face over Murdoch’s plan to start charging for access to The Times (London). The column ran in The Guardian, which a commenter pointed out is losing millions of pounds each month. It is well worth reading, and before more time passes I want to post some of my thoughts on what Jarvis said about the future of newspapers, free versus paid content on the Internet, and low-cost news businesses.

• Why so emotional, Jeff? Rupert Murdoch instituting a paywall isn’t intended as a personal affront to you. It’s just business.
• If something can’t go on the way it has, it won’t. There is no reason why there won’t be a second bursting of an Internet bubble, though this won’t return the genie to the bottle or restore newspapers and magazines to financial health. But it’s unreasonable to expect publishers (or anyone) to go on losing money year after year if profitability isn’t imminent.
• Real journalism (sourced, fact checked) isn’t for amateurs. That doesn’t mean they can’t do it but that doing it consistently and well, and maintaining a site of some kind, is not going to be common. (See Dr. Johnson quote in the right column.) Some people keep on with their hobby, a very few make money at it, many give it up. Opinion is easy; news stories take time.
• If journalism can’t pay more than twice the minimum wage, why should anyone with intelligence and ability go into the field?
• What’s my personal bias in this? I don’t want to read a full newspaper or magazine on a computer monitor, e-book reader, or iPad. I don’t want to spend that much time tethered to the screen when I’m not at work. I would be willing to pay for an online subscription to The New York Times, but if I could afford it I’d prefer to buy it each day and read it on my way to and from work. I won’t subscribe to all the papers whose Web sites I look at now—very occasionally, to be sure. I almost never watch network TV news (PBS News Hour aside, usually on Friday for Shields and Brooks, and Washington Week—maybe I should have majored in poli sci) so I’m definitely in a minority here.

Everyday I Have the Blues #17

Before too much more time passes I would like to welcome Hilton Als and The New Yorker copyediting team to the Hall of Embarrassing Usage with this example from the February 15/22, 2010, issue.

When the camera hones in on Linney’s heart-shaped face...

I confess that I had to look up ‟home in on” and ‟hone” in the dictionary before I could be sure that I wasn’t the one who was confused. After all, I’m just a freelance copy editor. The New Yorker is — or used to be — one of the best edited magazines in the country. As this example shows, ‟used to be” is more like it.

Horton Foote and David Mamet in Conversation, part II

Here is another page of my notes on the program Horton Foote and David Mamet gave at the 92nd Street Y in 1986, the first part of which is here. I will post additional material if I find more pages.

Mamet: [In Hollywood] if someone gets shot in Act III, they don’t see why they can’t get shot in Acts I and II also.

Mamet: More and more, the kind of movie I like is a silent movie.

Mamet: Wait a second—you’re writing about human beings and I’m writing about Chicago?
Foote: I mean, human beings in Chicago.

Mamet: ...wishing they hadn’t sent the limo because you know you’re going to pay for it at the story conference.

Mamet: They always invite me to come on the set... they never mean it. Sure, I’d love to stand on the corner for three hours feeling like a damn fool while they massacre my screenplay.

Mamet: It’s like the mother of Moses—you just watch your baby go [when you sell the copyright].

Mamet: All you can put on the screen is the narrative line or what Aristotle called the ‟structure of the incidents.”

Foote: Couldn’t your work [About Last Night, based on Sexual Perversity in Chicago] have been done correctly?
Mamet: Yes, but it was done by venal and unpleasant people.

Foote: I wanted to be an actor in the worst way.
Mamet: I did too. I was an actor in the worst way.

Everyday I Have the Blues #16

VentureBeat is a Copyeditor-Free Zone.

Keeping the experience inside the social network makes the user inclined to stay their longer or even share it with friends.

Kim-Mai Cutler, author of the above blunder, must belong to the generation that doesn’t see any difference between “there,” “their,” and “they’re.” The sentence quoted above comes from ‟Marketers: ‘Twitter Is Your Small Forward, Facebook Is the Point Guard,’ ” a story carried by The New York Times’ Technology section,which isn’t responsible for the error. They have enough of their own to worry about (note correct use of “their”).

Everyday I Have the Blues #15

Blues on the Subway

The New York Daily News is welcomed to the blog with this story by Pete Donohoe, a staff writer, about a 3-D presentation available to a relative handful of subway riders: Ageing subway goes 3-D. Go down to the seventh paragraph and you will find this quote from a passerby:

Still, as Fleurante pointed out, “You don’t see stuff like this everyday in the subway. Only in New York, right?”

Wrong, Pete! You don’t see stuff like that every day.

Everyday I Have the Blues #14
What is AP style on “everyday”? Here's a paragraph from a story on PIMCO᾿s CEO, Mohamed El-Erian, by Bernard Condon, an AP business writer, that ran on December 27th :

El-Erian says he learned to be open to many different views on the world (and markets) from his father, an Egyptian diplomat who insisted on reading several newspapers everyday, both on the right and the left. El-Erian had hoped to become a college professor. But when his father died, he took a job at the International Monetary Fund to support the family. He rose through the ranks, eventually becoming deputy director.

Read the whole article here.

Horton Foote and David Mamet in Conversation

When I moved to New York in 1980 I went a little bit wild. Yes, I did, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. After years of relative deprivation in Denver, I subscribed to concert series like they were going out of style, joined Manhattan Theater Club and the Public Theatre, and even became a member of the 92nd Street’s Poetry Center. Those were the days, my friend! I heard Eudora Welty, Eugene Ionesco, Bill Murray perform in a Yeats play, Robert Merrill, Salman Rushdie, and so on.
And there, on October 6, 1986, introduced by Lindsay Crouse, Horton Foote met David Mamet for a conversation on writing for the theater and the movies. I took notes, either to share with a friend who couldn’t be there or for my own amusement. When Horton Foote died earlier this year, I looked for the notes but couldn’t find them. It would have made a nice commemorative post, I thought. Since then, one page of the notes turned up and even though there’s more Mamet that Foote in my notes, I’m going to share them in Foote’s memory.
Mamet: Their idea of the craft of screenwriting jingles when you put it in your pocket.
Foote: Nobody is writing plays, stories, or poems much — they’re all writing screenplays. I quickly try to discourage them from that.
Foote: I was an actor and I started from the most terrible reason: I wrote myself a part.
Mamet: Why should one go back to that other hell-on-earth unless one’s wife needs a new kitchen?
Mamet: Tolstoy, I kind of think, was a Russian Dreiser.
Mamet: I just kind of write down what people say to each other. That’s where I think the theater differs from the movies.
Mamet: Dodsworth was one of the greatest American movies ever made.
Mamet: Sandy Meisner told me I’d starve in the gutter if I became an actor. And well I would have, if any gutter would have had me.

The Star-Pupil Syndrome

One of the things I’ve done this summer is catch up on my reading, specifically the books that have been sitting around, waiting for time to read them. Some have been in boxes, packed away more years ago than I care to say. A few were sitting on the bookshelf and now that I have to make room I have finally taken them down and worked my way through them. I finished The Art Lover by Carole Masi, which was quite a slog, and Larry McMurtry’s Film-Flam: Essays on Hollywood, which was also a slog, to my surprise. There was entirely too much of McMurtry decrying the state of Hollywood and drawing conclusions on the state of America’s youth from the behavior of characters in movies. There wasn’t a whole lot of oomph in the writing, as if he decided too late that he wasn’t all that interested in writing the columns for American Film but a promise is a promise. I realized, when I was almost done with it, that it would have gone down more easily if I’d read it with a Texas accent.

Still, I’m a persistent cuss and I finished it, and so I came to the paragraphs I’ve excerpted here. There was a shock of recognition as I read about the Star-Pupil Syndrome and saw myself in it. I wanted to defend myself to McMurtry, even as I saw that he was absolutely right. I wanted to add that rather than conferring respectability, in some circles **cough** Parterre Box **cough** status depends on having seen, heard, and read everything. More and more I realize that is impossible, an insight that now seems obvious but that I appear to have ignored for most of my life, as I made lists of records to buy and books to read. And so for your delectation and edification, here’s Larry McMurtry.

My problem with great founts, apparently, is that the water which flows from them is sometimes so satisfying that having drunk deeply once, I feel no urge to drink again. I knew fourteen years ago, walking out of The Naked Night, that it would be a long time before I really needed to see another Ingmar Bergman film. I was simply filled by that film, where its author is concerned. I went on and checked out Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal and several others, and I admired a few lyric moments and few great austere images, but I had stopped being hungry for Bergman and they meant little to me. I felt the same way about Truffaut, after seeing Jules et Jim.

This is not, I should say, an attempt to propose a one-man, one-masterpiece theory. Artists are welcome to as many masterpieces as they can pull off, and a great artist might manage to pull off several. My point is that one’s need for masterpieces is not simple or uniform—one is not obliged to confront them every time one has the opportunity. For most of us, the opportunity comes too often; so much magisterial art is not easy to incorporate into one’s life.

The belief that one is obliged to read all the books of every author, hear all the music of every great composer, and see all the films of every great director is surely a kind of neurosis, and a neurosis whose origin can usually be traced to one’s university career. A compulsion toward over-informedness is most apt to occur in individuals who have been arrested at a graduate school level of development; it is an intellectual infirmity, rather than a sign of health, and is so common now that it perhaps deserves to be elevated to the status of a syndrome: the Star-Pupil Syndrome. If the desire to shine as a pupil is sustained too long it can cause even the most committed worker to work badly.

[I omit a digression on Joyce Carol Oates. Addison]

The weight of the academic experience is such, for most of us, that it sometimes takes about ten years to realize that we have, after all, graduated. There comes a time when one no longer has teachers to please; thus it is not really necessary to read everything, see everything, and hear everything in order to remain respectable. One eventually begins to notice that the cellars of all the arts are filled with the over-informed, and finally one is forced to admit that there is just too much art—far more, at least, than I can use, either as a writer or as a person. With that recognition the nature of the search changes, and instead of trying, perhaps unconsciously, to please one’s teachers one begins to seek out sources of response for oneself—people and books and films that one can hearken to, and perhaps be heartened by.

One of the reasons, I imagine, why I continue to go to silly films rather than serious films is that the vast majority of serious films, like the vast majority of serious books, are mediocre, and nothing can be more disheartening than mediocre, realistic art.

Movie-Tripping: My Own Rotten Film Festival (originally published in New York magazine)
from Film-Flam: Essays on Hollywood (1986) by Larry McMurtry.

Everyday I Have the Blues #13

CompuServe remains a source of surprising copy. I call this one “It’s A Hell of a Wine.”

Zin vs. Primitivo

What happens when American Zinfidels

go head-to-head with Italian Primitivos?

Everyday I Have the Blues #12

Sara Elder had a good story in The Times last month called “Learning How to Walk (Chewing Gum Not Included),” about retraining adults to walk in a non-stressful way. It was quite interesting but I’d say it illustrates the danger of cutting and pasting from your notes. I scanned the relevant part of the article and tried to highlight the passages that escaped the copy editor’s eye, but if the highlighting is hard to read here they are:

“Each part of the body has it’s own job, and everything is connected.”

“You can’t make your bones go in different direction than than they want to go in,” he said.

said Ms Goldman, the editor of a marketing trade magazine.

And darned if they aren’t all in the version of the story posted on the Web.

NOTE: I checked the story on August 27, 2009, and “than than” had been corrected in the online version. The other mistakes were still there.

Everyday I Have the Blues #11

AOL’s CompuServe features several stories on its home page each day. Here’s the headline and teaser for one from Thursday, October 2:

The Secret of How to Barter
Why pay $100 for something if you can get it for $75? Learn how to barter in 4 steps.

Why indeed? And why barter when you can bargain?

Everyday I Have the Blues #10
Monday, September 29, must have been an extraordinary day at The Times, what with the bailout package collapsing and stock markets swooning. Just look at the lead story on the first page of Tuesday’s Business Day, “The Banking Crisis Trickles Up,” and let your eye travel down until it stops just above the fold. There you will see HEAD W. SANDWICHKICKER TAG, underneath which are two lines of what we call in the business Greeked type. Oops. Of all the things they hate in the newsroom, a big goof in a headline or caption is right up there at the top of the list. Maybe it was corrected in a later edition. I hope so.

But that’s not what gave me the blues. It was a story in SportsTuesday about Charles “Chongo” Tucker, a rock climber who lived in Yosemite Park: “His Roof Is the Sky” by Michael Brick. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I rarely read a sports story. It’s not a very Addison thing to do. This story piqued my interest, though, and I read it from beginning to end, stopping only to puzzle over two sentences.

The first was this one, on the first page: “Rumors of his whereabouts began to trade around the big rocks and rope-walking fixtures of the Western states.” Huh? Rumors traded? “Hold on a doggone minute, Mr. Brick,” I said to myself. “Rumors are not independent actors, no matter how much you may want them to be, and they’re not traveling around the West on their own.” The sentence reads as if he wanted to construct it without any people, who would be the ones trading rumors as they climbed the rocks. Why he’d want to do that I haven’t a clue but it didn’t work for me.

On the next page, Mr. Brick tries to strike another literary note in describing Chongo: “Leathery skin, knowing eyes and a dilettante’s smile gave him the cabalistic twinkle of a movie pirate.” Leaving aside the dilettante’s smile, which I still have trouble imagining, I was baffled by the cabalistic twinkle. If the second meaning of “cabala,” according to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, is “a traditional, esoteric, occult, or secret matter,” then is a cabalistic twinkle “a way of looking at someone that implies possession of esoteric or occult knowledge,” a la Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean? It could be but just what was twinkling? His whole face? Just his eyes? If they’re already knowing how are they radiating cabalistic knowledge at the same time?

It’s a pity no one had the time to wrestle his meaning out of Mr. Brick when the story was being edited. Except for those two clunkers it’s a good story.

Everyday I Have the Blues #9

Last week, The Times published an obituary of Norman Whitfield, the Motown Records songwriter and producer. As a dedicated follower of obits and a fan of Motown’s golden era, I read it with great interest until the last sentence in this paragraph stopped me cold.

For all his renown as a composer, Mr. Whitfield was even more prominent as a producer and arranger. He was known especially for his work with the Temptations; he produced many of their recordings for Motown, including the album “Cloud Nine,” whose title track earned the group a Grammy in 1969. He also helped usher in the era of psychedelic soul, producing the work of artists like Edwin Starr and the Undisputed Truth.

Look at the name of the second artist. If the group’s name is Undisputed Truth, then that is what it should be called. If the group called itself The Undisputed Truth, then “the” should be capitalized, the same way The New York Times styles its own name. Sheesh.

NOTE: And the same thing goes for The Temptations.

Everyday I Have the Blues #8

David Pogue had me awfully confused today. In his State of the Art column, “Nontechies, This One's For You,” he threw what looks like a comma splice into his review of the Peek.

The power cord ends in a micro U.S.B. connector, alas, you can’t recharge the Peek from a computer, as you can with a BlackBerry or an iPod.

I had to read that pesky sentence two or three times and I still don’t know why he didn’t either put a semicolon after “connector” or just split the darn thing into two sentences. If anyone can explain what he was doing there I’d love to hear it.
“Nontechies, This One's For You,” by David Pogue. Page C1, The New York Times, September 11, 2008.

NOTE: Read the comment for David Pogue’s response.

Everyday I Have the Blues #7

That little gem is from the NewEgg.com e-mail newsletter “Back to School All-Category Savings Spectacular! Up to 60% Off!” from August 19.

Everyday I Have the Blues #6

Sometimes Spellcheck is your friend.

Add creative inspiration and a love for trends and brand indentity, and you’re on your way to forging breakthrough ads.

“Copywriting: Mastering Ad Writing. Break into advertising,” e-mail from MediaBistro.com

This was the pullquote they used:

Before taking this course I knew nothing about copywriting now I know how to take an idea and turn it into a great ad.
--Latrice Harris

Everyday I Have the Blues #5

Typos don’t really count as wince-inducing but this one is too amusing not to pass along.

It is also the most ambitious classical music offering to date at Le Poisson Rouge, a new Greenwich Village club started by a pair of still-practicing classical sting players intent on presenting music of every description.

Can’t you just see Robert Redford on violin and Paul Newman on viola, playing the Maple Leaf Rag?

The Listings: Classical: Opera: “The Coronation of Poppea,” by Allan Kozin. The New York Times, p. E21, Friday, August 15, 2008.

Everyday I Have the Blues #4

When I read today’s sentence my first reaction was “Didn’t anyone read this?” And it’s possible that there wasn’t time to read the story, just run it through the grammar and spelling checker. Spellcheck is a great thing, but it won’t save you if you don’t know the difference between “there” and “their,” “your” and “you’re,” or “a device that fits inside or around a garment for hanging from a hook or rod” and “a covered and usually enclosed area for housing and repairing aircraft.”

A vibrant 55-year-old, Ms. Olsen is coming to terms with the unceremonious end of her fashion career — as the windows of the last remaining stores were papered over last month and the stock sold at discounts of 70 percent, including the hangars — at the same time she is starting over as an artist and entrepreneur.

“Her Forced Retirement” by Eric Wilson. The New York Times, G1, August 14, 2008

Everyday I Have the Blues #3

I tell people not to use “comprise” unless they have the proper training and permit, but do they listen to me? No, they don’t. They just go right on and embarrass themselves in print anyway. This is from sign-on instructions I received the other day from the human resources department of one of the biggest banks in the world.

Step 1 Begin the Sign-on Process.
* Enter your standard ID on the single sign-on screen.
* Enter your default password, which is comprised of:
* The first three characters of your Standard ID
* The last four digits of your Social Security number or national ID number.
et cetera

Everyday I Have the Blues #2a and 2b

I know, I know, it’s not really fair to spotlight goofs in The New York Times. They work under a daily deadline and there aren’t enough copy editors to give the copy a good going over. However, my criterion is the wince factor and these two examples supplied a good wince apiece.

Mr. Medoff said he hoped that people would read the comic and agree. “There’s a certain amount of ongoing pressure, but it’s been so far not efficient to make the authorities bow.”

“Comic-Book Idols Rally to Aid a Holocaust Artist” by George Gene Gustines, p. B7, Saturday, August 9, 2008

Did Mr. Gustines transcribe the interview poorly, did he misread his notes, or can we blame the editor for transforming “sufficient” into “efficient”? I can’t say but the quote doesn't make sense as it was printed.

(Mr. Kraus said he was germophobe when it came to the subway.)

Jamie Bishop/Christian Kraus wedding announcement, Sunday Styles p. 16, Sunday, August 10, 2008

Just what did Mr. Kraus say? That he was a germophobe or that he was germophobic? Maybe the editor couldn’t make up her mind, or maybe she doesn’t know the difference.