Month: August 2004

Dan Gillmor — Silicon Valley blogger, blog evangelist, and my copanelist at SXSW last year — has posted the entirety of his new book We the Media online, free for anyone to take. (Or you can pay $24.95 to buy a dead-tree version.)

I’d like to thank The New York Times for writing a story on Anastasia Myskina suing GQ over two topless photos it allegedly allowed a shooter to resell to a Russian magazine.
I’d like to thank the Times primarily because the article has apparently sent tens of thousands of tennis pornhounds running to Mother Google and searching lasciviously. This site has gotten more than 4,000 “myskina topless” hits in the last 36 hours — and my site is only No. 13 in Google’s rankings for the phrase.

Who knew Norman Mailer’s son was executive editor of High Times, America’s premier pothead periodical?
Here, father and son converse.

I’ve written before about the strange joy/frustration that comes with being a Dallas music fan the week before SXSW each March. Dozens of bands, aiming to make a Texas jaunt worth their financial while, schedule shows in Dallas on their way to Austin. It’s a concentrated burst of musical talent, the sort we don’t get too often from the tour bookers of indie rock.
The unfortunate thing is that these bands all play in a few days, leaving the music lover with a host of unpleasant choices to make. (This year, you had the Decemberists, Modest Mouse, the Unicorns, and Crystal Method playing on the same night. Then Broken Social Scene, Calexico, Polyphonic Spree, the Unicorns, and Pedro the Lion the next night. Then Sonic Youth, Trans Am, and International Noise Conspiracy the next night. A man shouldn’t have to choose between all those!)
Anyway, it looks like we North Texans will now face the joys and pains of a similar bandclog each fall, now that the Austin City Limits Festival is revealing its glories to the world. On September 17, Dallas gets My Morning Jacket and Wilco/Calexico on the same night, and I’m sure a couple other bands will get booked over the next month.
(While the Wilco shine has tarnished in my eyes over the years, there’s no doubting that will be the best “bands-ending-in-the-letter-O” double bill in years. Now if only they can get Chromeo, Cee-Lo, TV on the Radio, Bebel Gilberto, Brian Eno, Disco Inferno, Caetano Veloso, and Grant Lee Buffalo signed on.)

Weezer lead singer Rivers Cuomo — perhaps the most famous Harvard dropout not named Bill Gates — decided he wanted to go back and finish his degree. This is the self-effacing, confessional essay he had to write for readmission. It gets at why Weezer’s brilliant second album was followed by the crap pablum of the green album and Maladroit. Turns out it’s all Nietzsche

My photographer friend Antrim Caskey took some photos at the Democratic National Convention.

The big news in Dallas today is the Cowboys’ releasing starting QB Quincy Carter, just a few days into training camp. It’s a pretty shocking move, as these things go, and the Cowboys are refusing to say why they did it.
But what’s interesting is how different organizations are reporting it. ESPN, since early afternoon, has been reporting that Quincy failed a drug test. Fox Sports, which I believe broke the drug angle (if my rapid Googling earlier today was accurate), says specifically it’s cocaine. Both attribute the news to unnamed “sources.” I haven’t had a chance to listen to local sports radio, but I’m certain The Ticket has been buzzing with drug talk all day.
But my employer, The Dallas Morning News, isn’t mentioning drugs at all in its story. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram doesn’t either. And the Associated Press story is mum on the subject too.
Now, the DMN, the Startlegram, and the AP all have the same sources that ESPN and Fox do. Len Pasquarelli, ESPN’s reporter, is a terrific journalist — one of my favorites dating back to his days at PFW. But he’s not so much more plugged in than our guys or the Startlegram’s guys. The DMN is hearing all the same rumors from all the same sources.
But none of the local print media has decided to write about the drug angle. They haven’t even gone the route that many out-of-town news orgs have: reporting about ESPN reporting about it. (That’s the classic journalism cover-your-ass way of getting a rumor out there — pointing and saying, “Well, somebody else is reporting it!”)
I’m not passing any judgments — I don’t know what I would do. I just think the difference is interesting. When people talk about the difference between the standards of newspapers and the standards of Drudge, blogs, and other less traditional forms of media, this is exactly the sort of gap they’re talking about.
Were I a betting man, I’d bet $100 that ESPN and Fox Sports will eventually be shown correct in this case, probably very soon. I bet a drug test is what’s fallen Quincy Carter. But I’m not sure I’d print it in the newspaper right now. We’ll see what the DMN and Startlegram do in the morning.

The trailer for Team America: World Police, the new marionette-based terrorism flick from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Love that Kim Jong-Il action. That man doesn’t get enough screen time.

Had a short and not all that interesting story in today’s paper, on teacher health-care benefits. (Boy, I sure know how to sell ’em, don’t I?)
My TV appearance went okay. I was a little off, but didn’t screw up anything too badly. You may be seeing more of me on Fox in the future, assuming their ratings can handle it. Trivia: Fox’s is the only local morning show with its own makeup artist, so I got to spend a few minutes in The Chair getting my paleness lacquered away. I think I still have a yellow tinge despite attempts to wipe it all off, so if you see me today, don’t worry: I don’t have jaundice.

Media update update: I’m apparently going to be on Fox 4’s morning show twice tomorrow, at 7:40 a.m. and again at 8:20. And as always seems to be the case for my TV appearances, I’ve been asked to talk about two subjects I know nothing about.
By the way, people, the comments link still works. No comments in five days makes Josh a sad boy.