Who’s Going to Challenge the Worldwide Leader?

Because of a two-week old baby, I’ve found myself awake at every conceivable hour during the football season’s peak and baseball’s culmination. As a result, I’ve increased my usual intake of sports radio. (While my wife has miraculously become a football fan since moving to Chicago a few years ago, she can’t abide sports talk radio, forcing me to access my audio succor through headphones.) My standby overnight show has become ESPN Radio’s AllNight.  Jason Smith, and his replacement host Michael Salk, ask informed questions of a roster of guests derived from the more intellectual end of the ESPN stable: Keith Law, Jayson Stark and Jerry Crasnick. (These are the types of guests who prefer facts over phony sports constructs like  ”momentum,” “proven closers,” and “clutch.”)

These voices whispering to me in my semi-conscious state may explain why I’ve been dreaming about ESPN, and pondering its domination of sports journalism in the US– if not, as it humbly asserts, worldwide. Is there another media organization with a similar stranglehold over a single topic? (Jeff Jarvis suggested that “it could happen in business,” but that would require some sort of a CNBC/WSJ/CNN Money merger.)

Frank Deford worried recently about the impact ESPN’s “omnipotence” has on its journalism.

Where is ESPN’s competition? It could come from the leagues and athletes it covers. We didn’t need reporters to fill us in on the friendly jockeying Cincinnati Bengal @OGOchoCinco instigated with assorted Chicago Bears . (Why are reporters unwilling to link to the twitter chatter they summarize?) A combination of sports leagues reporting on themselves over their own networks, athletes, owners and executives who speak directly to fans via blogs, social networks and iPhone applications,  and code that converts stats into narrative pose a greater threat to the Bristol juggernaut than any traditional sports network. (Medill’s Rich Gordon tells worried journalists ‘If your game story CAN be generated by a computer, at some point itWILL be generated by a computer.”)

ESPN miscellany:

• Kathleen Hessert presented an “ESPN Social Media Case Study” at Blog World last week. I can’t find the presentation, though there was Twitter chatter.
• Thanks to class acts like Steve Phillips, Mike Tirico, Chris Berman and Harold Reynolds, ESPN has built a reputation as a leader in for more than journalism.
• The highlight of ESPN Film’s 30 for 30 series promises to be Steve James‘ No Crossover: The Story of Allen Iverson.
• As I noted last week, ESPN is able to transmit real-time scores whilst  the New York Times lives hours in the past.
• Like the Huffington Post, ESPN chose Chicago for its first local web play. Neither has fulfill the high expectations that accompanied their arrival.

Chicago Political Hijinks Come to Wikipedia

Did someone from Alexi Giannoulias’ Senate campaign vandalize opponent David Hoffman’s Wikipedia entry? That’s what one veteran Wikipedia editor suggests after cleaning up the encyclopedia’s entry on Hoffman.

Hoffman officially announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the Illinois seat of the U.S. Senate.  [See my caveat at the end of this post for my personal thoughts on this election.] Hoffman is an unknown quantity to most voters; no doubt many curious Illinoisans have migrated to his Wikipedia entry over the last few days. What they found for much of the week, until it was cleaned up this evening, is a page edited by the user “Deparvid” in a manner that contradicts Wikipedia’s NPOV policy and that suggests an intent to politically undermine Hoffman. ”Deparvid” appears to be a new account, and Hoffman’s is the only page to which s/he has contributed. The information that Deparvid has added, on two occasions, emphasizes the votes and views of Sen. David Boren, for whom Hoffman worked, and the opinions issued by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, for whom he clerked. Among Deparvid’s contributions to the original entry on Hoffman:

As a clerk for Rehnquist, Hoffman would have contributed significantly to those opinions.

David Hoffman’s first job out of college was working for U.S. Senator [[David Boren]] (D-OK).  During Hoffman’s time with Boren, the Senator consistently voted against abortion rights, against gun control and voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice [[Clarence Thomas]].

• “Hoffman also clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Rehnquist is credited for leading the Court to the right during his tenure. Rehnquist was ardently pro-life as one of only two dissenters in Roe v. Wade (1973) and dissenting in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). Rehnquist opposed gun control measures, ruling the Gun Free School Zone Act of 1990 unconstitutional in United States v. Lopez (1995). In 1978, Rehnquist joined a majority opinion in maintaining that federal law does not permit a university’s consideration of race in admissions (University of California v. Bakke). Rehnquist also wrote a concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore (2000)..”
• “During Hoffman’s time with Boren, the Senator consistently voted against abortion rights, against gun control and voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice [[Clarence Thomas]].”
• “Hoffman served as a law clerk for Judge Dennis G. Jacobs, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York City. In 2006 the New York Sun described him as “Widely recognized as one of the more conservative jurists on the 2nd Circuit.” In decisions he wrote in a sex-discrimination lawsuit against Vassar College and in a securities fraud case against Merrill Lynch, Judge Jacobs sets high hurdles for plaintiffs. Most recently, Jacobs led the fight to rehear a case of bias filed by white firefighters in New Haven (Ricci v DeStefano).”

These edits do not sound like those of a disinterested Wikipedian, and the facts they contain about Boren, Rehnquist and Jacobs are arguably irrelevant to Hoffman’s candidacy. (One could make the case, and I presume that as the campaign unfolds, Hoffman will, that the experience of engaging in intellectual discussions with ideological opposites like Jacobs and Rehnquist is just what we need  more of in the  Senate.)

64.241.37.140, the aforementioned Wikipedian, says s/he “wouldn’t be surprised if the IP traces back to the Giannoulias campaign.” Without such a tracing, who knows? In the mean, we’ll just have to wonder if the Chicago Way has finally made it to Wikipedia.

(My caveat: I’ve avoided using this blog for overt political statements or endorsements, like Mark Bowden, I rarely find partisanship interesting. That said, I have met David Hoffman in the course of my day job and found him to be insightful and intellectually curious, and I respect the work he’s done for the City.  I’m excited at the prospect of voting for a candidate– in Illinois, no less– with the morals and abilities of David, and though I have a full fall ahead of me, hope to find time to support his campaign in other ways. I may still write a “Why I’m supporting David Hoffman” post, but wanted to append this to this here. Also, I’ll note that my friend Daniel X. O’Neil , who is advising the Hoffman campaign, first pointed me to the NPOV-deficient Wikipedia entry.)

John Updike on declining newspaper industry, in 1969

Prompted by his death, I’ve been slowly picking my way through John Updike’s Rabbit series. Rabbit’s boss Pajasek, upon laying Rabbit off from his job running a printing press drops this note, which would suggests that Craig Newmark, Arianna Huffington, Google and the internet in general are off the hook for the collapse of the newspaper industry.

Maybe one of the Brewer dailies can take you on, maybe something in Philly or up in Allentown, though what with papers dropping out or doubling up all over the state there’s something of a glut in the trade right now.

CookCountyEmployees.com and the limited value of transparency

On Monday, Cook County Commissioner Tony released his “transparency project,” CookCountyEmployees.com, a data base of names and salaries of some 25,000 County employees. Via Twitter, Peraica announced it as an “online database of county employees/vendors;” on Youtube he said it was “so that you know how your money is being spent” Peraica has stood out on the ethically-challenged Board for his crusade against corruption, and in favor of openness and “transparency.” He offers live reports, via Twitter, of Commission meetings, and uses YouTube to draw attention to the fiscal shenanigans of his colleagues on the Board.

Peraica’s goo-goo credentials are not in question. I do wonder, though, of the efficacy, and manners, of making publicly accessible a data base of County employees’ names and salaries. As Dan O’Neil, himself a leader in drive to make government data available and usable, often points out that most government employees do honest work that improves our lives. But I’m uncomfortable with the degree of transparency that CCE provides– the personal information almost feels hostile, and doesn’t carry with it the sense of appreciation and “gratitude” that undergirds related projects. More pragmatically, what value is it to me to know what nurse clinician B. Alston earns? Would it be more useful to know if she’s had any complaints, or commendations, filed recently? Of course, it I know she’s a Commissioner’s niece (she’s not, as far as I know), that could be interesting. As Carl Nyberg points out, however, “without knowing how people are connected, the data doesn’t tell the full story.”

The Internet’s potential for making government more open and responsive is of course exciting– even more so for those of us in Chicago. Perhaps my concerns about CookCountyEmployees.com and transparency are prosaic; perhaps they derive from the fact that I work in a sector that bends more to the opaque. In any case, we’re early in this government transparency game. In the end, we may decide that not all information is useful, or appropriate, to share.

[Update: On a higher plane, Joi Ito is doing some important out-loud thinking about innovation and government.]

[Update II: Thanks, GB, for the point. Related thoughts on efficacy of transparency, here.]

Is TMZ less credible than CNN?

This afternoon, in my workplace and on Facebook, friends and I spent about an hour wondering whether we could believe TMZ’s reports of Michael Jackson’s death. “Since when TMZ is a reliable source?!?” asked a friend on Facebook. “Since when are other news sites reliable sources?” responded another friend. “Excuse me, i have to get back to watching CNN, they are quoting some facebook pages and twitterstreams on the news.”

Was it just denial that kept us from mourning until CNN (finally) chimed in? Are we prejudiced against TMZ because of the vacuity of its coverage and employ of pappaazzi? Several thoughtful responses came in to my Twitter query along those lines. (@dansinker raised a related point.) Mark Glaser, @mediatwit, anwered that ours suspicion “Shows that we have *varying* levels of trust for random tweets, TMZ, Drudge, LAT blog, AP and CNN (possibly in that order).” Erik Hersman, @whiteafrican surmised that such skepticism is “probably just hardwired into US ppl that way…I think non US ppl are more skeptical of MSM period.” Mike Janseen, @mjanssen, emphasized that that traiditonal journalism’s “sourcing lends more credibility. Without it we’re denied a way to assess the context of the information presented.”

Wikipedia, for one, has a section on TMZ critcism full of questionable ethical practices, but I nothing about inaccurate reporting. When it comes to celebrity reporting, is there any reason–  other than snobbery and disdain for pappaazzi publications– to disbelieve the gossip sites while waiting for traditional journalism organizations to pipe in?

PS, three top Michael Jackson links of the evening:

• Dan O’Neill’s Appreciation of Michael Jackson: “I fully believe, with my entire heart, that Jesus Christ Himself came down from heaven in 1982 and sat next to a man named Michael Jackson while he wrote a record called Thriller.”
• Andrew Sullivan’s obit: “There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child.”
• At our Michael memorial dinner, one of my hosts and my wife lamented the absence of his music in the media coverage and Facebook chatter. Enter, thanks to a tip from Dan Sinker, a live tribute mix from Maseo of De La Soul. (A capella Billie Jean, insane.)

Obama eyes Lisa Madigan

Item: Obama meets with Lisa Madigan re the Senate seat.

Response:

1. So much for the notion that Obama (and Jarrett and Emanuel, who were also reported to be in on the meeting) would stay above the fray of Prairie State politics.
2. Apparently Barack  isn’t as down with his basketball buddy as he was back in ‘06 when he cut that TV ad for Alexi. Rahm & crew can’t be happy with Giannoulias‘ Bright Star problems– and are likely privvy to the rumors I hear that more ugly headlines are likely.  Could the White House be worried that Alexi is “Blagojevich all over again,” as someone speculated recently?
3. Lisa running for Senate would brighten the futures of her father and the governor.
4. Which will come first: Lisa’s decision, a state budget, or Aramis Ramirez’s return to Wrigley?

Meanwhile:

• The incumbent junior Senator, Roland Buris, just learned that the Pentagon runs its own research labs.
• The city is potentially on the hook for another $500 million in Olympics funding.
• In the dog-bites-man department, Ron Huberman is looking to bring quantitative analysis to CPS.
• Richard Lindberg’s look at Big Mike McDonald looks to provide insight on our own times, alas.

Reunited: Gladwell & Simmons

I have a friend, whose opinion I generally trust, who swears by Bill Simmons. (OK, said friend is a Knicks and Yankees fan, but that’s not his fault, he was born that way.) The only time I’ve found Simmons worth reading was during his 2006 exchange with Malcolm Gladwell. Happily, the two are back for a second round. Until Gladwell finally writes that sports book (I’d even accept, say, his co-authoring Peyton Manning’s autobiography), we can read his his exchanges with Simmons on Larry Holmes, Nick Faldo and, er, Jennifer Aniston.  (For sports-inspired critiques of Gladwell’s May 11 How David Beats Goliath piece, check out Chad Orzel, G.D, or Alan Jacobs.)

Dorkiest. Blog Post. Ever

Choosing Star Trek as the theme for my first blog post in a month is dorkalicious, no way around it. In my defense, I use this blog to point out interesting chatter I see on the internet, and lately many smart folks have chosen to comment about Star Trek; among them:

 

• Eugene Volokh is bothered by Chekhov’s accent: I don’t recall his pronouncing it Pawel Andreiewich Chekow (though maybe I missed something).
• Juliet Lapidos looks at toruture in Star Trek, and calls up the famous Four Lights episode. 
• Peter Suderman: There are things to love in Abrams’s Star Trek, yet very little of the original series’ appeal remains. Rather than concern itself with politics, ethics, or social organization, Abrams’s Star Trek focuses on familiar quests for individual self-discovery…. it’s about adolescent heroes coming to terms with themselves and their pasts, struggling with friends, rivals, and enemies while searching for power and place in the world. Where the original was poorly fashioned and outwardly focused, this one is gorgeously designed and self-obsessed. It’s personal rather than political, aesthetically pleasing at the expense of conceptual depth. 
• Reihan Salam asks, where are the Black Vulcans? There were no black Vulcans at the highest levels of the Vulcan Science Academy. This could mean that black Vulcans are a very small minority. Yet Tuvok’s wife, T’Pel, was also a black Vulcan. And so the pool of black Vulcans couldn’t be trivially small. Or perhaps endogamy is relatively common across Vulcan ethno-somatic groups. But doesn’t this strike you as an affront to the iron laws of logic? If ethno-somatic endogamy is not particularly common, one assumes that sharp “racial” distinctions would erode over time. ..The iron laws of logic do cast doubt on another hypothesis, namely that the late emergence of black Vulcans in the Star Trek universe suggests human-like discrimination against Vulcans who vary from the phenotypic norm. 
• Devin Faraci: the movie just kept working, even though the script was obviously shoddy and half-done.
• Phil Plait reviews the film’s science: Drilling a hole to the center of a planet is not a simple matter! Planets tend to be thousands of kilometers in radius so that’s a heckuva hole. A problem with deep mines is that the pressure of the overlying rocks tends to collapse the hole. A cubic meter of rock weighs in at about 2-3 tons, and there are billions of cubic meters of rock above such a hole. You could try to use a beam weapon to vaporize a hole, but the rock to the side would keep flowing in. You’d never get anywhere.

 

(Is it a coincidence that a disproportionate amount of thoughtful Trek commentary is found on the right side of my RSS reader?)

The Clarovista’s soggy mattress

The Clarovista is the (re-branded) culmination of the largest construction project in my Chicago neighborhood of Edgewater in a couple of decades. I didn’t oppose the development, enjoyed watching the construction unfold over the last few years, and have looked forward to the business my new neighbors could might bring to some of my favorite local spots, including Third Coast Comics, Ethiopian Diamond and Metropolis Coffee.  I didn’t join the chorus of boos that objected to the construction of an Aldi’s on the ground floor—in this economy, business development is welcome, even if its not a sexy brand.

The Clarovista's mattress, getting soggy, after a week

 

 

My curmudgeonly hackles have been raised by the property failure to keep its sidewalks free of snow and garbage over the last few months. The capper has been the appearance and steadfast presence for the last week of an abandoned mattress steps from the building’s main entrance on Granville St. I’ve chronicled the mattress’s week via Flickr; through the wonders of Page Rank, these photos are now for anyone searching “Clarovista.”

Upon my discovering the mattress last Thursday afternoon, I called the 49 Ward’s Alderman, Joe Moore –the Nation’s “Most Valuable Local Official, neighborhood bloggers’ opinions to the contrary. (Through some districting quirk, the 49^th Ward, which is comprised for the most part by Rogers Park north of Devon, extends through a sliver south to encompass the Clarovista and some properties owned by Loyola University. ) A woman in Ald. Moore’s office named Ann promised to take care of it. I’ve checked in on the mattress twice a day since, on my morning jog and on my walk home from the train, and it has held together, despite frequent April showers. 

I have to admit that I’ve come to appreciate the mattress—I’ll have mixed feelings if I return Friday night to find it gone.  

 (As you can see, the mattress is snuggled up against one of those new fangled parking meters that are causing so much sturm und drang. I’ve seen the LAZ Parking coin collectors step over the bedding whilst collecting coins—I wonder if a city-employed coid collector or meter maid would be more likely to call the local Streets & San office to arrange a pick-up?)

The Economist Misses Facts on El Salvador

The Economist is one of the few English-language media operations that regularly reports on Latin America, so I am slightly hesitant to point out some obvious errors in its report on the build-up to Sunday’s presidential election in El Salvador.

1. The Economist asserts that since the cessation of the war in 1992 the FMLN has been “fielding former guerrilla commanders as its presidential candidates.” Now, I’ve never been a close follower of Salvadoran politics, but as a resident of LA in the early-90s, it was hard to miss the candidacy of Rubén Zamora, who ran and lost as the FMLN candidate in the 1994 election.  Far from being a guerilla commander, Zamora was a social democrat from, at least, the 1970s.

2. The Economist refers to Mauricio Funes, the FMLN’s winning candidate in Sunday’s election “as a fresh, moderate politician in the mould of Barack Obama or Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.” Referring to Lula as “fresh” seems odd, given the fact that he’s been a national political leader for 30 years,  first ran for office in 1982, and started the first of his five runs for the presidency 20 years ago.

3. Like others before it, The Economist portrays the Salvadoran civil war as a simple conflict of moral equivalency in which “an American-backed army battled Cuban-supplied left-wing guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).” Before it writes up Sunday’s results, The Economist might want to send someone to find Mark Danner’s thorough 1991 New Yorker piece on the1981  El Mozote massacre,  and the U.S. role in it. Or one could listen, below in Spanish, to the recollections of Rufina Amaya, a  survivor of the massacre.

For a more insightful take on the election, look to Esmeralda Bermudez’s LA Times article on young Salvadoran-Americans who were involved with the election in their motherland.