Burnin’

Poet and professor, David Kirby, writing in Paste Magazine sounds as if he likes the poems of Beth Ann Fennelly, a Chicagoan now teaching at Ole Miss.

Beth Ann Fennelly’s best poems are as noisy as a rat in a coffee can: They twitch, scramble and all but turn themselves inside out on the page. A classier way to put it is that the poems are over-determined, like dreams. Freud observed that dreams have more than one cause, which is what makes them action-packed; the same is true for poetry. In Fennelly’s best work, you get an entire bookful of images in just a page or two.

With vivid language of this sort in a review, I had to find out more about Fennelly’s work. A few Google clicks in, I stumbled upon this poem from her new book Unmentionables:

from The Kudzu Chronicles - Oxford, Mississippi
by Beth Ann Fennelly

1.
Kudzu sallies into the gully
like a man pulling up a chair
where a woman was happily dining alone.
Kudzu sees a field of cotton,
wants to be its better half.
Pities the red clay, leaps across
the color wheel to tourniquet.
Sees every glass half full,
pours itself in. Then over the brim.
Scribbles in every margin
with its green highlighter. Is begging
to be measured. Is pleased
to make acquaintance with
your garden, which it is pleased to name
Place Where I Am Not.
Yet. Breeds its own welcome mat.

2.
Why fret
if all it wants
is to lay one heart—
shaped palm
on your sleeping back?

Why fright
when the ice
machine dumps its
armload of diamonds?

If you have an extremely popular blog, other media makers might be willing to bet on you. That’s the idea forwarded in today’s Sunday Styles.

image of the white guy likin’ a dog, courtesy of Flickr user, PancakeJess

At the center of the piece is Christian Lander, an Internet copywriter who launched Stuff White People Like last January. The blog has since entertained millions of visitors with things white people like. Some of those things are: Having Gay Friends, Dinner Parties, Book Deals, Graduate School and The Idea of Soccer.

One of the intriguing aspects to this story is how literary agents have swooped in to scour the net for talent.

One of the first literary agents to troll the Web for talent was Kate Lee, who in 2003 was an assistant at International Creative Management, the sprawling talent agency, looking for a way to make her name.

When she started contacting bloggers and talking to them about book deals, many were stunned that a real literary agent was interested in their midnight typings. Her roster was so rich with bloggers, including Matt Welch from Hit & Run and Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit, that the New Yorker profiled her in 2004. Two years from now, the magazine noted, “Books by bloggers will be a trend, a cultural phenomenon.”

And two years after that?

“If I contact someone or someone is put in touch with me, chances are they’ve already been contacted by another agent,” Ms. Lee said. “Or they’ve at least thought about turning their blog into a book or some kind of film or TV project.”

I found it interesting that Kurt Andersen, a founder of Very Short List, who is represented by the William Morris agency and acts as an adviser to Random House, had a taste maker’s role in taking Stuff White People Like to book form. Lander’s agent asked Anderson to bring it to the attention of Gina Centrello, the president and publisher of Random House, which he did.

Inhabit is encouraging citizens of the world to participate in tonight’s Earth Hour, an idea from World Wildlife Fund that asks us to turn off our lights for an hour (to conserve energy and build awareness for the growing need to do so).

The program has a blog and a Flickr page.

Let’s talk some more about newspapers and their primary challenger, the internet.

Stowe Boyd, a social web application designer and developer, has some provocative things to say about the situation.

I still read the thinner and thinner New York Times regularly, but less of us do that everyday. And online, there is a brave new world, where I am learning more about what’s going on through Twitter, blogs, and an increasingly social web than could ever be confined in a few dozen pages of newsprint.

I left a comment on his site that says I’m shocked. For sure, I “learn” what some pretty smart people are thinking and doing via Twitter and blogs, but the mainstream media, particularly our nation’s best newspapers, helps me learn what’s going on in my community, country and world. Two different types of learning.

Boyd’s comments were made in response to David Carr’s New York Times opinion piece about newspaper owners struggling to cope.

Newspapers continue to gain on the Web in part because they have the best talent, the biggest news hole and the most comprehensive coverage. But that value, which gave many papers their near-monopoly, could be wiped out by a sustained downturn.

Boyd does’t care for Carr’s comments about talent. He says, “it is ridiculous to assert that the folks scribbling madly for the companies that are falling into the abyss right before our eyes are somehow to be judged as ‘the best talent’.” But it’s an interesting question. Take the 1000 best bloggers, whatever best means to you, and compare them to the 1000 best mainstream journalists working today. Which side has more firepower? For me, that’s easy. MSM has the edge. “Real journalists” have the background, the sources, the discipline to fact check and copy edit and the benefit of face-to-face support from their peers in the profession.

If the guy down the proverbial blog street has some news to offer, I’m going to listen. But I’m not going to count on him for that news. Not like I count on a community newspaper. Newspapers need to survive. Maybe they don’t make the margins they came to expect in the past, but they need to be profitable so they can invest in their people and their product. Why do I care? Because a high quality news product, like clean energy or health care for all, is something our nation desperately needs.

None of this is meant to say I don’t prefer reading some blogs over MSM. I do. And I’d like to see these bloggers make a living at what they do best. Hell, I’d like to make a living at what I do best. Who wouldn’t? My point is this: disruption creates opportunity. Where there is destruction, there is rebirth. The media business is struggling to find its way. To me, this means anyone with the necessary skills, the right outlook and some pertinent answers has a chance at a rewarding career in media today. Whether that media is produced in a Manhattan skyscraper or in someone’s spare bedroom doesn’t matter. Quality matters. Transparency matters. Collaboration with the community matters.

I think it’s clear that both sides are learning from one another. MSM does quality better, but social media practitioners are good at transparency and community building. This whole thing boils down to the fact that newspapers, like pro and semi-pro bloggers, need to find a way to make money on the web. Advertising, subscriptions, content licensing and whatever else anyone can think of is what’s needed. We need a professional class of writers, photographers and multimedia makers.

Moving forward, the media business will encompass all. Petty distinctions–like who is a real journalist?–will fade. It’s already happening. MSM is embracing social media and prominent bloggers are fast becoming media company owners. Today, you’re a real journalist if you cover a beat consistently, honestly and professionally.

Eric Alterman writing in The New Yorker looks at the tumult being felt in newsrooms around the nation. The historical context he provides is particularly illuminating.

The tensions between the leaders of the mainstream media and the challengers from the Web were presaged by one of the most instructive and heated intellectual debates of the American twentieth century.

Between 1920 and 1925, the young Walter Lippmann published three books investigating the theoretical relationship between democracy and the press, including “Public Opinion” (1922), which is credited with inspiring both the public-relations profession and the academic field of media studies. Lippmann identified a fundamental gap between what we naturally expect from democracy and what we know to be true about people. Democratic theory demands that citizens be knowledgeable about issues and familiar with the individuals put forward to lead them. And, while these assumptions may have been reasonable for the white, male, property-owning classes of James Franklin’s Colonial Boston, contemporary capitalist society had, in Lippmann’s view, grown too big and complex for crucial events to be mastered by the average citizen.

Journalism works well, Lippmann wrote, when “it can report the score of a game or a transatlantic flight, or the death of a monarch.” But where the situation is more complicated, “as for example, in the matter of the success of a policy, or the social conditions among a foreign people—that is to say, where the real answer is neither yes or no, but subtle, and a matter of balanced evidence,” journalism “causes no end of derangement, misunderstanding, and even misrepresentation.”

Lippmann likened the average American—or “outsider,” as he tellingly named him—to a “deaf spectator in the back row” at a sporting event: “He does not know what is happening, why it is happening, what ought to happen,” and “he lives in a world which he cannot see, does not understand and is unable to direct.” In a description that may strike a familiar chord with anyone who watches cable news or listens to talk radio today, Lippmann assumed a public that “is slow to be aroused and quickly diverted . . . and is interested only when events have been melodramatized as a conflict.” A committed élitist, Lippmann did not see why anyone should find these conclusions shocking. Average citizens are hardly expected to master particle physics or post-structuralism. Why should we expect them to understand the politics of Congress, much less that of the Middle East?

John Dewey took the populist point-of-view, arguing that Lippmann’s critique had merit, but that the solution could be found in education. The central concept of John Dewey’s view of education was that greater emphasis should be placed on the broadening of intellect and development of problem solving and critical thinking skills, rather than simply on the memorization of lessons.

What does Dewey vs. Lippmann have to do with the rapidly shifting mediascape today? The old guard, of which mainstream media institutions are part, is working to uphold the standards that have guided the news business for more than a century, all while inviting the customer into the so-called “conversation.” It’s a delicate balance, but one newspapers need to get right.

There’s so much focus on the vehicles–print vs. digital. But that’s not what any of this is about. What this is about is freeing media from authoritarian top-down control by a few key corporate bodies–something needed just as badly as well-considered, fact-checked journalism. Ultimately, it’s about more voices and more voices requires more work. Our informed citizens have more data to process than ever before. Thus, the need for the critical skills Dewey called for.

Spend any time in Austin today and you’ll see sharp looking modern homes popping up in historic neighborhoods every direction from the Capitol. With their funny shapes and bold colors, they are hard to miss.

Austin culture ‘zine, Odic Force, is reporting on the action.

Nobody said living in modernity was easy. Even so, more and more people in Austin are taking the plunge. The trend is noticeable all over the city. Scattered along streets like North Loop and Live Oak between South 1st Street and South 5th Street, Woodrow Avenue north of Koenig Lane, and in various parts of neighborhoods like Bouldin Creek and Hyde Park, houses have materialized that may as well been teleported there by aliens bent on taking over the real estate market. These structures tend to throw conventional home design out the energy-efficient window. They have angles where traditional homes have straight lines. They have straight lines where normal homes have curves. They hoard light where other homes collect shadows.

Modern Austin kindly offers page after page of modernist imagery and links to listings.

As I was clicking around, I also stumbled upon this Lake Flato modernist masterpiece on 17 acres in Kyle, TX, which one can rent for the night.

I like to follow Romenesko’s blog, to see what’s shakin’ on Media Lane. What’s up is Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily says Associated Press is hiring 21 new employees in 2008 spread across Los Angeles, New York and London to work the entertainment beat. It’s good to know some journalists are finding new jobs, but it’s disturbing to see where the market’s going.

Certainly, the AP is under intense financial pressure during these doomed economic times for newspapers: Dow Jones newswires just announced it’ll stop using AP stories after failing to agree on a price after more than a year of negotiations. Clearly, the AP now thinks that Hollywood coverage can become its new cash cow. It’s already led to AP signing a deal to provide celebrity video for People.com.

Lou Ferrara, the AP’s managing editor for sports, entertainment and multimedia, explained to The New York Times that the news service’s more than 1,500 daily papers and thousands of other media outlets were hungering for more photos and videos of celebrities.

I can’t blame AP for filling a business need. But the fact that there’s a growing interest in all things Britney isn’t just sad, it’s scary. It means our collective eyes aren’t on any big prizes–like better schools, a sustainable energy policy, healthcare for all. We’re at war in the Middle East, our economy’s falling apart and the icecaps are melting. But who cares? What’s important is Britney went to the c-store for ranch-flavored Doritos. And our nation’s best reporters were there!

The Chicago Tribune looks at James Allen Smith’s documentary film, Floored, about open-outcry traders at the Mercantile Exchange.

Here’s how the paper describes their lot:

Open-outcry traders always stood apart from the rest of the financial crowd, or maybe their rough-and-tumble grab for megabucks just made it seem that way. With their colorful jackets and a swagger born of fast money, they were the gaudiest ornaments in the downtown Chicago business world.

Floored is currently in production. It will be released in 2009.

How is the web helping independent filmmakers today?

These insiders offer some interesting insight via their wildly divergent thinking on the matter.

Actor and musician, Glen Hansard, calls it “a toilet cubicle.” That’s a new one.

German, Dutch and British retirees looking for some southern sunny weather are finding it in Puglia, at the heel of the Italian boot.

According to The Wall Street Journal, one of the draws is the trulli — the cone-roofed structures that dot the countryside. The most basic trulli are one-room, round huts constructed of stacked, dry stones, which form walls and a simple vaulted cone roof. They date back to as early as the 14th century, and most housed peasants or livestock — or both.

The recent trulli boom is partly a continuation of the foreign-fueled real-estate speculation that began in Tuscany several decades ago, where so many British began buying second homes that it was given the nickname Chiantishire. As the values of country homes in Tuscany soared, the more adventurous wandered into nearby regions such as Umbria, and then farther south to the Marche and Abruzzo, buying up abandoned farmhouses or run-down villas. Puglia is the end of the line.