V@nity Fair, Most Foul

All right, the credibility of this blog is being challenged, and so I am called to respond.

As everybody knows, credibility is the coin of the realm in the blogosphere [though Google Ads often suffice]. The fact that I have to defend my honor against the smarmy, snarky [smarky?] pretties at Vanity Fair magazine makes it all the more distressing.

To recap the action:

Back in September, I wrote one of my effortlessly coruscating entries in which I unmasked a Twitteur calling herself VanityFairer as a stooge of the magazine’s inept communications staff. While she feigned innocence–just a fan of the magazine, nothing more, blah blah blah–I was able to demonstrate without question that she was an inside job trying to appear independent of the Conde Nast mothership.

How was I able to verify this? Flecks of circumstantial evidence,  a hunch virtually indistinguishable from certitude, my strong desire to embarrass the smarky pretties and–most tellingly–the fact that Vanity Fairer convincingly denied my accusations! Not just once, but repeatedly!

My case irrefutable, I dusted my hands and moved on, continuing my unerring quest for truth in other matters. Vanity Fairer, meanwhile, quietly wallowed in her shame. Although she did manage to accumulate over 700 followers and turned out to be a pretty good Twitterer. Which of course only provides further evidence of her guilt.

Then, recently, the plot thickened.

Someone calling himself “Michael Hogan,” writing on what appears to be the real Vanity Fair website, claimed that he was just beginning to use Twitter, the magazine’s first Twitter profile!

Wrote he, about the 50-some followers accumulated by the “official” Vanity Fair magazine’s profile, @vanityfairmag:

One of them is a mysterious and fascinating (to us, anyway) character who calls herself vanityfairer…. She has been doing an amazing job of covering our work here on the site without our knowledge. There was even an article written about her, [n.b. that's my original post!--cs] which speculated that she was an undercover operative for the magazine.

She’s not, though I wish I’d been smart enough to think of that. I have no idea who she is, but I’m very curious to find out.

Ha! Nailed again! Mssr. “Hogan” denies Vanity Fairer is an inside job, once again proving the case that she is. He compliments her lavishly, demonstrating that the is trying to curry favor with an insider. And he uses the hoary “I’m not smart enough to do that” denial, as transparent as any Wall Street bondsman’s casual lie over drinks.

But there’s more!

A few days ago a blog called “blog, p.i.,” co-written by someone calling himself “William Beutler,” published “Who is @Vanity Fairer? [Hint: Probably not Graydon Carter]“. He brilliantly disassembled the argument in my original post, like Tinkertoys, demonstrating with a brisk intelligence how Vanity Fairer virtually could not be an inside job. I was momentarily devastated. Until I looked at “blog, p.i.” closely and discovered that one of the blog’s co-authors is named “Not Paul Begala”!

So here we have a blogger, defending the honor of a Twitteur of dubious provenance, who keeps company with a fellow who misrepresents himself with fake names on the Interwebs! Luckily I could now seize the logically irrefutable “consider the source” argument to reassert my correctitude and scramble back to the high ground.

Close, “Mr. Beutler,” but no Cohiba Cubano for you!

In response to all of this I felt compelled to continue my research into the whole sordid affair, deposing witnesses, using powerful Internet discovery tools and goofing off with Twitter more than I should admit. My investigations are now complete. Here finally I lay out the facts for all to see:

1. William Beutler is really Michael Hogan

2. @vanityfairmag is ghosted by Not Paul Begala

3. The author of the Vanity Fairer Twitter profile is @joaquin_phoenix

Thank you. I trust this puts the matter to rest once and for all.

5 Reasons Hearst Should Go Online-Only in Seattle

The suits at Hearst Corp. are cogitatin’ furiously about what to do with the teetering Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The deal is entangled in a web of union contracts and a joint operating agreement with the equally teetersome Seattle Times that makes the decision even messier.

One option for Hearst: To keep the P-I alive as an online-only newspaper.

Why this would be the best option if not for Hearst, then for. . .everyone. [The following points assume the Times would survive as a print newspaper--not guaranteed but perhaps more likely if Paper No. 2 disappears from the market.]

1. This would be the first case I’m aware of where a major metropolitan daily went web-only, providing at least a partial proof-of-concept case study. Get rid of the trucks, the newsprint and paper-only support staff [sorry; not all jobs can survive] and determine whether online revenues can support a vital, or at least competent, newsroom.

2. It would help answer a key question: Do competing newsrooms produce journalism that better serves the public interest than a monopoly newsroom alone? Or does the competition create a race to the bottom? A scrappy online-only competitor to the Times would test that case in the new environment.

3. It would force the paper-bound Times to compete, hard and daily, for online audience, ensuring staff develop the fast-and-sharp, multimedia-focused, link-rich journalism chops necessary to thrive in the developing news world.

4. It would therefore force the old dogs to learn new tricks or get the hell out of the way more effeciently than buyouts, firings or any of those bootless “writing for the web” or “video 101″ seminars.

5. It would preserve real jobs. In this economy, any corporate leaders who choose to responsibly preserve paychecks over habits acquire a gigantic karmic IOU. Redeemable in the next life, if not later in this.

Tufte Gone Wild ™: Debate Graph

And now a new feature of this blog: Tufte Gone Wild ™.*

This refers, as some of you may know, to the work of Edward Tufte, the reigning master of data visualization. He has inspired and taught a generation of designers and journalists to tell stories and explain the world with graphics. Tufte is a cult figure in the field who travels the world hosting seminars for communications professionals, some of whom are regulars, sort of like Deadheads with Photoshop.

And yet: Since Tufte arrived on the scene, graphics have been put in motion, via Flash and other web technologies, raising the bar for visual presentation of data. By inviting users to parse and rearrange information, interactive visualizations have the capacity to teach even more than a “dead” image, invite original understandings and permit users to add and manipulate data. It’s exciting stuff.

And so here on this blog I’ll occasionally nod to interactive visualizations that aspire to Tuftian clarity but have the additional dimension of interactivity.

First up is DebateGraph, a bit plain to look at but a fascinating demonstration of how interactive graphics can explain, and invite participation, in the sort of issue debates that usually are carried out via articles, essays and speeches. It reveals, in ways I haven’t seen before, how ideas relate to each other in a variety of dimensions.

Here’s an example of a graph that explores drivers of the global financial crisis. Note how in this presentation I’ve put “human cognitive biases” at the center. You can choose other ideas as the focus, which then brings in and aligns other ideas that relate to that central concept.

What’s cool here: This tool lets you “see” and engage with ideas, and explore their inter-relationships, very elegantly. Ink-and-paper, or even a dead online graphic, does not invites, or even permit, this kind of thinking. The Debate Graph also invites users to add content and extend the argument.

Current topics include:

• What should Obama do next?
• Climate change
• Intelligent design [is this really a legitimate argument, or a political ruse?]
• Flash vs. Ajax [!]
• To be or not to be [a fun mapping out of Hamlet's existential dilemma]

So far, DebateGraph is mainly used as a publishing platform. It doesn’t appear too many people have used its wiki functions to extend the content.

I hope the project gets some publicity and participation. The idea of “visual” policy arguments deserves some exploration by thinkers professional and amateur.

Even if, in the end, the action doesn’t turn out to be “wild.”

* The ™ is a joke, of course. I suspect I’ll get a cease-and-desist order from Graphics Press LLC, Tufte’s company, very soon. I’ll keep you posted.

All Things in Moderation, Including Wikis

A cluster of news items last week suggests a phenomenon worth keeping an eye on: The Rise of the Moderated Wiki.

Jimmy Wales, founder of the 8 trillion ton gorilla Wikipedia, has proposed that edits to certain entries to the user-generated encyclopedia be approved by “someone trustworthy.” This follows incidents in which Democratic senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, both in failing health, were proclaimed dead for a brief time on their Wikipedia entries.

Encyclopedia Britannica, which has stood firm against the tide of user-generated content with its flagship pulp-and-petrol encyclopedia, is preparing to accept edits from users to its online edition. These changes will be approved [or not] by Britannica’s paid experts, with a goal of 20-minute [!] turnaround time. [Oddly, this news has been thinly reported, mostly in the Australian and international press and not stated where I could find it on the EB site, so--ironically!--I can't vouch for too much of this.]

Meantime, the Washington Post Co. has launched WhoRunsGov.com, a wiki that collects profiles of members of the incoming Obama Administration. Currently profiles are authored by paid writers, but the company says it will open up to user-generated contributions later in the year. These contributions will be vetted by the paid staff members, however.

So what’s this mean? From where I sit, it says that the 2.Utopian ideals that gave the world Wikipedia–that leaderless crowds can self-organize and -police to create a more perfect compendium of knowledge than a group of paid experts–does not hold up in the harsh light of reality.

Woot, I say, woot!

Why am I gleeful? “Web 2.0,” to use the icky shorthand, can’t find its real place in the world until the grandiose fancy that well-informed judgment and hard-earned expertise doesn’t add value to user generated content is flushed away.

Predictably, the Wikipedia community has gone guano over Wales’ proposal that edits receive some level of moderation. It didn’t take long, in fact, for one of the disputants in the online spatterfest to play the Hitler card, a well-known marker of intellectual desperation. [To be fair, the leader of the National Socialists is used as an example to illustrate a legitimate point, but the stain remains.]

Yes, it’s tough to figure out how to balance the contributions of the People and the Elites. [See any chapter of the seminal Jefferson vs. Hamilton drama for details].

But frankly is strikes me as much more productive to engage the conversation of how to balance the two rather than whether to.

Have your doubts? I invite you to check out the Wikipedia entry for blowfish. Without my prompting, a couple of years ago one of my boys inserted a small but comical error into the entry. There it remains.

I am very proud.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Addendum, 10:36 a.m. Today comes word, per TechCrunch, that Jimmy Wales has launched Wikianswers. Says Wales: “Wikianswers uses the unique characteristics of a wiki to form the very best answer to any question.”

Sample question on the site this a.m.: How can a 12-year-old-boy burn fat?

Wikianswer:

How to burn fat everyone knows, it is not a secret, or a difficult question. The problem is not fat, problem is how it appears.

It appears cause men eat more that he needs to. Learn to control body and mind, and after that you will not go to eat if you dont want to eat. In most case people eat when they do not want to, it is just a habbit. Knowing yourself give a difference to do only that you want to do, not that habbit wants.

A lot of things helps to understand yourself - such a Joga, Dzen and others. But if you want just to burn fat, eat proper food and run.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mommy, make the mean man stop.