Category: Business

Business 2.0 is no more impressed with Kinja than we were:

After only a few months in the lab, the Kinja team scrapped the marketing-tool angle. The project persisted as a kind of Google for blogs, and at launch, to no one’s surprise, the New York Times ran a piece about it. But so far, the thing has turned out to be an overhyped bust on par with “push technology.” Hourihan quit the day of its launch. Power bloggers eschew it as a weaker version of the programs they already use, the blog-gathering RSS applications, which keep tabs on hundreds of blogs at once. People new to the blogging world, of course, don’t look at it at all.

Denton’s genius is his uncanny ability to exploit bright but emotionally-disturbed young women, a formula from which he departed in the case of Kinja. Perhaps he’s learned something.

Bendomenech.com: The Rundown

Safire has the best take on the coverage of the Sarin gas shell. Or non-coverage: Only at the NYTimes is a gallon equivalent to “small traces.” The find is significant, as Joe Carter points out effectively.

I’m experimenting with WordPress, a GPL blogware that’s a lot faster and more solid than Movable Type. There’s a lot of controversy over the new Movable Type licensing terms, and I don’t want to weigh into all of that because I don’t care. I’m looking at other packages because MT is way too buggy and way too poorly designed for my purposes. The WordPress conversion was extremely easy – you just export your MT blog and import it, and the only problems I’ve encountered so far are with the hosting server, Hosting Matters, because they set default permissions too strictly.

WordPress accommodates zFeeder, the Robopundit software, extremely well. I’m still using the default template, and learning the tricks. Check out the experimental blog here: Mossback on WordPress.

I found an odd little tidbit from Doc Searls today: KPOJ, the Portland station that carries Frankenradio, is owned by Clear Channel Communications. Please excuse me while alert Lessig about this encroachment on his civil rights.

If you want to get in on a little moment in media history, watch the Dennis Miller Show on CNBC before it’s canceled. It’s a valiant attempt to skewer the Bush-hating left with humor that’s failing to find an audience. The problem is that Dennis’ hip humor, laden with pop-culture references, is lost on the conservative audience most drawn to his unvarnished support of the President and his conduct of the war on terror. Not that there aren’t plenty of people who get the humor and support the President – the South Park audience is full of us – but I’m not sure they’re in the mood for another daily news/talk/politics/humor show, and they’re certainly not in the studio audience; those stiffs sit on their hands when Dennis makes the most hilarious jabs, just not getting any of it.

One of the show’s unique moments was an interview with Eric Alter-the-facts-man, where Dennis just quit talking and pretended to doze off after his guest exhausted his quota of received opinion, knee-jerk response, and scripted claims. See the Observer’s account:

[Miller] pretended to be asleep.

When Mr. Alterman finished his spiel, Mr. Miller went bolt upright and snapped at the camera: “All right, you’ve been great. Come back anytime.”

Mr. Alterman left stunned.

Alterman flogged the heck out of the story on his blog, and was livid with the Observer’s account.

Whether the incident was a melt-down for Miller or a brilliant move probably depends on where you sit. It’s clear that there’s not much point in trying to engage someone as dishonest as Alterman (or Chomsky or Moore) in a point-by-point debate, so yawning is probably the best move. Mocking would be another angle, but Alterman himself wouldn’t know he was being messed with, and neither would the dimwitted audience. So yeah, maybe it was brilliant, but if it was it was too brilliant for TV.

I like Dennis Miller and want him to succeed, but the show clearly needs work.

Here’s the new URL.

(note: PW was one of the wittiest of the old-school blogs)

Those who want to believe that Howard Stern is being persecuted for his criticism of the President may want to brush-up on their history:

A 1988 Howard Stern broadcast of a “Christmas Party” over three stations including WXRK-FM, New York prompted the F.C.C. to fine each station a paltry $2,000 because of indecent programming broadcast at times when children would likely be listening. Then, in 1995, Infinity – the company that fired “Opie and Anthony” – paid $1.7 million dollars in fines for Stern’s “indecency”.

The big fine levied against Stern by the Clinton Administration served to raise the bar for shock jocks, essentially providing Stern with the franchise for tasteless radio programming. Nobody could compete unless they were able to pay such a fine, and nobody who didn’t already have a huge audience could get a syndicator.

So now Stern has climbed upon a cross and declared himself a victim of Bush and the Religious Right, weaving a web of lies to cover himself, such as the claim that he can’t go to XM radio because it’s 30% owned by Clear Channel (the correct figure is somewhere between 4 and 8%; see comments here.).

How far will this idiot go to promote himself, and how gullible are his supporters?

Jeff Jarvis suggests that Howard Stern should go to satellite radio, Dave Winer thinks Jarvis is reporting rather than suggesting, and Stern himself discusses it on his show:

He said that if he went onto satellite, they’d sell 12 million receivers immediately; “they wouldn’t be able to make them fast enough.” It would change the entire radio industry, making broadcast stations worth a helluva lot less, he said, and he’s right.

Never in history has a man been more full of crap than the talentless Howard Stern. His whole schtick is dependent on standards of decency setting the boundaries of good taste so he can position himself outside them. He’s like the little kid who’s learned that he can get attention saying bad words who then works the gimmick to death. He didn’t even invent this gimmick himself, he stole it from Alex Bennett.

In a setting where adolescent content isn’t circumscribed, his show would have no audience. He was created by the FCC, and he knows it, so all this whining about the government cracking down on his free speech rights is just crocodile tears. He benefits from being pushed out of the 6 markets that Clear Channel has banned him from by generating buzz for his tired formula.

If Stern was to go to satellite radio, which he won’t, he’d lose his audience because the 13-year-old boys who dominate it don’t have the cash for an XM radio and the monthly fee. Who’s he trying to kid?

Mike Sanders makes an interesting observation on the Echo Chamber question:

It seems to me that an Echo Chamber is a group that ignores other opinions to their own detriment. I keep on thinking that David’s defense of the EC is rooted in an idea from Arnold Kling’s Downfall of the Annointed post in which he pointed out that some feel that trying to change people’s minds is a waste of time. Instead they just rally their supporters and wait for those who disagree to see the light

The essay he links is right on as well. Weinberger’s sticking to his guns on this issue, despite the fact that nobody agrees with him.

How ironic.

Megan McArdle will be on your TV set tomorrow:

I’ll be on CNNfn tomorrow at 9:00 am. If you are among the three cable subscribers who gets CNNfn, and you happen to be homebound, check it out.

I’ll betcha she doesn’t talk about blogging.