California notebook: New highs, new lows
Filed under: California, media, politics | Tags: California, economy, environment, food, politics
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San Francisco’s Tom Ammiano, a former city supervisor turned state assemblyman, wants to go green to help bail out the state from fiscal crisis. His plan would boost weed farms not wind farms. He introduced a bill Monday to legalize recreational marijuana and regulate it in a manner similar to alcohol, with a potential tax windfall of more than $1 billion. (The fragrant green stuff is thought to be a $14 billion cash crop in the state. Then there’s the potential savings in law enforcement costs in the hundreds of millions.) Not likely to fly, despite California’s reputation for cutting-edge policy and a devastating $42 billion deficit. But credit the San Francisco maverick for thinking creatively in a time of crisis. And credit the political opposition with the Most Mangled Cliché Award — said Calvina Fay, executive director of Save Our Society From Drugs, in the LA Times: “This would open another door in Pandora’s box.” (What’s she been smokin’?)
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It’s been raining in the Bay Area for almost a week straight, happy news after a bone-dry January. But 2009 is on track for a third straight year of drought in California, with reservoirs still sitting at alarmingly low levels. It’s not just the prospect of shorter showers and less lush front lawns. As Jesse McKinley reported on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times, the twin calamity of recession and drought is hitting the Central Valley, the nation’s biggest agricultural engine, hard. Even as your income may be headed south, you’ll soon be paying more if you want almonds and avocados.
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The once venerable San Francisco Chronicle may be the next casualty of the besieged newpaper industry. The paper lost more than $50 million in 2008 and is on pace to fare worse this year. Its owner, the Hearst Corporation, is demanding deeper cuts among an already downsized staff. If that doesn’t stem the tide of red ink, Hearst execs say, “we will have no choice but to quickly seek a buyer for The Chronicle, and, should a buyer not be found, to shut down the newspaper.” As with many others the publication’s reporting capacity has been shriveling as it struggles to survive the industry’s upheaval. But San Francisco without its oldest and largest newspaper? At the very least, another clarion call for digital journalism 3.0 to really get cranking.
Update: David Cay Johnston explains how the Chronicle, tellingly, failed to report adequately on its own serious situation.
Nothing to fear but everything itself?
Filed under: media, politics | Tags: economy, language, media, poetry, politics, recession
Comments (2) With the stock market sitting at half the level it did a decade ago, and with new surveys showing carnage in consumer confidence and housing, I’m struck by the saturated language of the national nightmare. (It’s not just the apocalyptic headlines driving us to despair.) This story from the Associated Press today gathers the poetry of the pain — after its lead sentence announcing that American confidence went into “free fall” in February, the relatively short dispatch uses each of the following terms at least twice:
fear (2)
decline (2)
plummet (2)
plunge (2)
collapse (2)
severe (2)
slash (2)
shrinking (2)
battered (2)
suffer (3)
drop (4)
sink/sank (4)
worried (4)
low (6)
Superlative phrases in the story include “massive job cuts,” “driven to their lowest level ever” (consumer expectations) and “the largest drop in its 21-year history” (a national home price index).
Recently a friend sent me an email wondering why President Obama hasn’t done more to talk up confidence as he’s traveled around promoting his economic recovery plan. The answer probably lies most in the calculus of Capitol Hill, and the political pressure apparently needed to pass his legislative agenda. There’s also Obama’s admirable position that he won’t sugarcoat the truth about our troubles the way the administration before him did to such disastrous effect.
But it’s a daunting balancing act with perception at this point. You don’t have to be an economist to sense how the downward spiral of fear could itself become deeply damaging. (If it hasn’t already — as Robert Shiller warned in a recent column, a Great Depression narrative “could easily end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy.”) And Obama’s political opponents increasingly are able to agitate using raw emotional appeal: Last night CNN’s in-house ideologue Lou Dobbs hammered at Obama’s “fear mongering” and accused him of repeatedly talking down the markets and economy. In the New York Times today David Brooks feigns sympathy for the president while suggesting that Team Obama is in way over its head. (“I hope the president succeeds even though he probably won’t!” is the message.)
Many will be watching intently tonight when Obama addresses a joint session of Congress for the first time. The only positive polling in sight shows that he’s still got the thumbs-up on job approval from a decisive majority of the public. It’s a remarkable measure of confidence floating on a tide of ugly numbers — Americans believe Obama will sail us in the right direction, even with no horizon in view.
Truth and fantasy among the Slumdogs
Filed under: culture, media | Tags: film, foreign affairs, globalization, writing
Leave a Comment Not surprisingly, “Slumdog Millionaire,” director Danny Boyle’s frenetic tale springing from the vast underbelly of Mumbai, swept the Academy Awards last night. The film was suited to the national mood, with its combustible mix of corruption and class warfare, despair and materialistic hope. The Academy has done worse in years past; on the whole “Slumdog” is an engaging ride, and at times an extraordinary visual postcard from a world mostly unseen by those in the West. The film’s biggest problem is a narrative one, as it struggles to reconcile competing forces of hard-hitting realism and romantic fantasia.
The same might be said of Katherine Boo’s timely feature story in the Feb. 23 issue of the New Yorker, “Opening Night.” Boo reports from Gautum Nagar, one of numerous large slums squeezed around Mumbai’s international airport. Set on the night of the Indian premiere of “Slumdog Millionaire,” her story traces the fortunes of a 13-year-old boy named Sunil, who has turned from airport garbage scavenger (a primary trade in the slum) to scrap metal thief after the global economic crisis has pummeled the local recycling business.
Boo is an award-winning journalist who has reported extensively from poverty-stricken front lines, and “Opening Night” is a compelling read dotted with insights about the effects of globalization. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder about certain passages in which Boo ascribes intellectual and lyrical qualities to Sunil’s thinking that seem to strain belief. In several scenes she takes us deep inside his mind:
Sunil still did not feel much like a thief. When he took a bath in an abandoned pit at the concrete-mixing plant, he pushed away the algae to inspect his reflection. The change in his profession didn’t yet show on his face: same big mouth, wide nose, problem torso. He was too small all over.
And when recounting Sunil’s thievery at a newly constructed airport parking garage:
The roof had two kinds of space, really. One kind was what a boy got when he stood exactly in the middle and knew that even if his arms were ten times longer he’d touch nothing if he spun around. But that kind of space would be gone when the garage was open and filled with cars. The space that would last was the kind he leaned into, over the guardrails.
From a writing standpoint this is the recognizable stuff of fiction, prose concerned foremost with thematic imagery and character depicted in the service of narrative. That’s not to say that it isn’t truthful to what Boo may have learned during what clearly was a devoted and exhaustive journey into India’s underclass. (According to the magazine’s contributor notes, she has spent the past 14 months reporting from the Mumbai slums for a forthcoming book.) But particularly in an era when the blurring of nonfiction and fiction has turned up some serious stinkers, Boo takes some intriguing risks with her reportage in this respect. We do learn late in the piece that Sunil was to some degree “privileged,” having been taken in for a period by a Catholic charity for private schooling outside the city. Still, given his age and background it seems unlikely that he would have thought or been able to express himself in such sophisticated terms, even to a highly talented journalist who apparently spent much time in his company.
The New Yorker has also posted a video montage from Boo’s trip, a rather striking contrast to the high-gloss footage that just scored eight golden statues.
Obama’s next epic crisis on the horizon
Filed under: politics | Tags: foreign affairs, intelligence, Iran, Israel, national security, politics
Comments (1) Sure, the Dow is hitting new lows and the economic meltdown is looking pretty damn frightening. (If the recent flood of headlines hasn’t made you want to hide in a hole, just read Paul Krugman’s mostly despairing analysis today.) But for the new president the trouble is only just beginning, as dark clouds gather to the east. Iran, it seems, is accelerating down a path toward nuclear weapons. That’s troubling in its own right — but far more so when adding to the mix a new right-wing government in Israel, the possibility of which looks imminent as hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu gains an edge in the country’s close election.
In late 2007, my friend and fellow journalist Gregory Levey took an in-depth look at Netanyahu’s political resurgence and the regional conflict that potentially could be unleashed if he returned to power. (This would be his second time as prime minister, having served from 1996-1999.) For anyone in the Israel peace camp, it would be an understatement to say that the prospect did not bode well. And now Iran may be even closer to being perceived truly as an immediate and existential threat. So while President Obama, admirably, has been signaling interest in a new era of diplomacy with the Iranians, he soon may be facing a much more dangerous brew in the Middle East.
Not even sexy ladies will save them
Filed under: culture, media | Tags: future-of-journalism, media, technology
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It’s no secret that the print magazine business, like the newspaper business, is in deep trouble, due primarily to a nosediving ad industry. The New York Times laid out the grim picture a few weeks ago. From Forbes to Time to the New Yorker, few have been immune. Playboy announced Wednesday that it lost $158 million in 2008 and may put itself up for sale. It expects a 27 percent decline in ad revenue in its publishing division in the first quarter of 2009.
It’s not just a matter of the plunge in ad sales, of course, it’s the fact that consumers are ever-more plugged in online, where the expectation remains that most content should be available for free. Last month Playboy stated it would cut costs by closing its New York offices and combining its print and online editorial operations. (Sources tell me that Hugh Hefner’s storied publication might face a particularly competitive environment in the online space, where reportedly there is upwards of 260 new alluring ventures launched each day.)
The print media industry has been under pressure for years per the rise of the Internet, but the economic crisis is causing it to implode. Dare I say there could be a silver lining in these circumstances. Because advertising is so depressed at a time when technology is rapidly changing media consumption, it could force more rapid innovation toward viable production and delivery of digital content.
Plenty of people are talking about what they think isn’t likely to work. (Howard Kurtz takes a turn running the list today.) But Slate’s Jack Shafer, arguing that not all information wants to be free, points to an interesting prospect — moving beyond the Web browser as we know it. Whether an autonomous online application such as Apple’s mega-successful iTunes, or Amazon’s Kindle book reader, or the New York Times’ experimental news reader, I agree with Shafer that it’s still early in a major transition period. Quality information eventually wants to be paid for — and produced with the right combination of creativity, authenticity and authority, in the digital future (when “Web browsing” may easily look antiquated) it may not have to ride on a bunch of SUV ads.
Apocalypse Dow
Filed under: media | Tags: economy, globalization, media, Wall Street
Comments (5) Just about every day the headlines across the national media range from grim to utterly frightening. Today being no exception.
Swift, Steep Downturn Crosses Globe and Automakers Seek $14 Billion More in Aid and Florida Court Blasts Through Foreclosure Cases and No One Can Escape the Crisis.
As someone who has written many a front-page headline, I know not to underestimate the power publications have in setting a tone. At what point does the steady drip — or the full fire-hosing, as the case may be — become torture? And more importantly, does the flood of doom-laden headlines itself deepen the economic crisis? Obviously the role of reporters and editors is to cover what’s going on in the world to the best of their knowledge and belief. No doubt the current economic reality is ugly. But the public mood matters, not least because so much of U.S. economic activity is based on consumer spending.
I’m working on a related magazine article right now and have been looking into how the media’s influence on the economy can be measured. According to a study published in 2004 from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, media coverage does have an impact — and sometimes can even serve to unhinge sentiment from reality:
In addition to moving in line with [data on] economic fundamentals, consumer sentiment also swings in response to the tone and volume of economic reporting by the media. Over the past 25 years, there have been several periods when the tone and volume of economic reporting pushed consumer sentiment significantly away from what economic fundamentals would suggest.
In an article published in Political Research Quarterly, economists concluded: “Consistent with previous research, we find that, overall, the media tend to follow negative economic conditions more closely than positive economic conditions.” And those findings were published back in 1995, when media ubiquity and consumption was a sliver of what it is today.
To its credit, National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” tried in earnest on Tuesday to buck the trend, tracking down a relatively upbeat economic story in Youngstown, Ohio. (A thriving bit of technology entrepreneurship in the Rust Belt, of all places!)
Until it soon returned to the horror show: Zombie Banks Feed Off Bailout Money.
Reports of its own death are greatly exaggerated
Filed under: media | Tags: future-of-journalism, media, writing
Leave a Comment Today my friend and former Salon colleague Gary Kamiya joins the debate about the imperiled newspaper industry. With passion he points out that the gravest danger at hand isn’t the potential death of newsprint but of news reporting itself.
Quality reporting — made of tireless, independent investigation and clear-eyed, vivid storytelling — is essential to cultural progress and a healthy democracy. (I say this as much as a citizen as someone who works in the trade.) Indeed it seems deeply troubling when a once mighty institution like the Los Angeles Times kills its own section devoted to covering California. That’s just one of many convulsions in the industry of late. The future of the fourth estate is, in one unsettling sense, very much unwritten.
But there is also a tendency in the whole ongoing debate to overplay concerns about impending calamity. “If newspapers die, so does reporting,” Gary writes. Of that I’m not so sure — the present crisis is also an immense opportunity of necessity. If the technological change recasting the newspaper industry is synonymous with its traditional medium (and business model) fast losing viability, then it’s prime time for further innovation in how news can be gathered, produced and delivered digitally.
It’s not at all clear yet how to succeed in terms of a business model. (I have my doubts that it will be “tip jars” or “micropayments,” or even philanthropy.) But the number of talented people tackling the challenge is growing, and the ferment is giving rise to some very interesting experimentation. One example is the open-source approach to generating reporting at Spot.us. Another is the convergent foreign coverage at GlobalPost.com.
Given the bad economy in general, now may seem an unlikely moment for optimism. But the rising connectivity and capability of the Web holds much further promise for quality journalism. As the newspaper industry’s old analog houses burn down, I’m most interested in thinking about what more could go inside the digital ones that inevitably will replace them.
Against the gratuitous cheeseburger
Filed under: culture, media | Tags: food, media, music, Vancouver, writing
Comments (1) I’m a fan of cheeseburgers. I’m also a fan of the singer Neko Case. I haven’t the faintest idea, however, as to how the two are connected.
And yet, here they are, dished up together in the lead paragraph of a long profile of Case published in Sunday’s Times Magazine:
“I wish I had a tremolo,” Neko Case said. She looked at the Samburger she was wolfing down — Samburgers and Zinburgers being the specialties of a restaurant called Zinburger, in downtown Tucson, where Case lives, for now. With their maple bacon, American cheese and Thousand Island dressing, Samburgers are a cardiothoracic surgeon’s dream. Case had been talking about singers whose music and voices she admired — Iris DeMent and Roy Orbison prominent among them. She now banged her hand on the table, flounced her bright-red hair, leaned over and said, “I want a tremolo!” Then she looked up and laughed at herself.
Why do so many journalists insist on reporting what their subjects (or they themselves) were eating at the time of an interview? What do such cheeseburgers, delectable as they sound, have to do with the price of peanuts in Paducah? (Note that the reference to cardiothoracic surgery lends no real relevance to the cheeseburger, as the article gives no reason to think Case has suffered physical impediments to her singing.) What follows is a serviceable if somewhat overwrought 4,300-word portrait of the indie rock vocalist from the Pacific Northwest.
The above cheeseburger moment exemplifies one of the laziest tics in journalism, about as ubiquitous as In-N-Out Burger is along the California interstate. This may seem an esoteric criticism of the writer-editor sort, but I bring it up foremost in defense of the attentive reader. Describe to me the details of a cheeseburger, particularly at the outset, and I’m inclined to think that’s one rather important cheeseburger. Until I’m left only half-wondering, “Can I get some fries with that?”
Veteran journalist and author Sam Freedman contends with the problem in his incisive book, Letters to a Young Journalist. If an article begins with an appropriate anecdotal scene, he writes, it should lead inexorably into the broader themes and content. “I’ve read far too many leads over the years that described someone sitting back in a chair and taking a pensive drag on a cigarette. That scene only matters if you’re writing about lung cancer or tobacco litigation.”
Great journalism can be drizzled with evocative details. But its essence is still focused and lean. It gets to the point. Anything else in the mix is just indulgent calories, perhaps tasteful only to the person who served them up.
Toxic banks one-up bin Laden
Filed under: media, politics | Tags: economy, foreign affairs, globalization, intelligence, national security, osama bin laden, politics, terrorism, Wall Street
Leave a Comment I’ve been thinking about the economic crisis as a rising national security danger since sometime back in December, and I’m sure I haven’t been alone, even though scant attention has been paid in the mainstream media — until now. It’s only an odd coincidence that the same day earlier this week that I was suggesting we’d soon be hearing more from President Obama’s intelligence chief on the matter, Dennis C. Blair was in fact on Capitol Hill sounding the alarm. The global economic crisis now represents the top security threat to the United States, he told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
“Roughly a quarter of the countries in the world have already experienced low-level instability such as government changes because of the current slowdown,” Blair said. (That would be nearly 50 countries. Including Iceland, whose government collapsed three weeks ago.) Blair further warned of the kind of “high levels of violent extremism” seen in the 1920s and 1930s if the economic crisis persists beyond 2009.
The fears have now reached the front page of Sunday’s New York Times: “Unemployment Surges Around the World, Threatening Stability.” The trio of images above the fold are a quick world tour of worker displacement and unrest, from Bejing to Reykjavik to Santiago, where street graffiti declares “unemployment is humiliation.”
Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
Just one glaring manifestation of a troubling global trend.
From decadent to ominous in Dubai
Filed under: culture, politics | Tags: economy, environment, globalization, national security
Leave a Comment Laid-off foreigners are fleeing Dubai as the emirate’s economy collapses, according to Thursday’s New York Times. Thousands of their abandoned cars reportedly now sit at the Dubai airport, while dark rumors spread about luxury developments sinking (literally) and lavish hotels turning decrepit.
Long ago I was astonished by the development-cum-decadence of Dubai — the excess seemed nuts even in unprecedented oil-boom times. (The desert as home to the world’s largest indoor snow park? A 154-story skyscraper sired by a “cybersheik”? A giant artificial island whose palm-tree-shaped land cost north of $12 billion in reclamation alone?) It couldn’t end well.
Now it may well be ending. What’s most haunting about the Times report isn’t the opening tale of a young French expat who leveraged herself with a $300,000 apartment and may have to flee the country or face debtors’ prison. It’s the circumstances of Hamza Thiab, a 27-year-old Iraqi who relocated from Baghdad to Dubai in 2005, and who lost his job with an engineering firm six weeks ago:
Mr. Thiab was sitting in a Costa Coffee Shop in the Ibn Battuta mall, where most of the customers seemed to be single men sitting alone, dolefully drinking coffee at midday. If he fails to find a job, he will have to go to Jordan, where he has family members — Iraq is still too dangerous, he says — though the situation is no better there.
What happens with all of those frustrated young men when the shaky economies of the Middle East really implode? (It seems unlikely the price of oil will scale Burj Dubai-esque heights again any time soon.) In the early days of the Obama presidency we’ve been terribly preoccupied with our own reeling economy, and understandably so. But the peril clearly is global (never mind that silly theory of “decoupling” in vogue not long ago) and certain areas of the world are looking increasingly explosive just beneath the surface. It’s all stimulus bills and Obama’s economic team in the headlines of late, while only a few voices have drawn an explicit connection between economic and national security. But soon enough we may be hearing a whole lot more from Obama’s Director of National Intelligence and Joint Chiefs of Staff.
What this blog is about
Hard to say, precisely, and that’s the idea, at least for now. I plan to traverse a wide range of interests in this space. For more of a sense of where I’m coming from and where I may be headed, read this.
Mark Follman 
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