Archive for the 'media' Category

What Malcolm Gladwell gets wrong about Free

paperhaus July 2nd, 2009

Malcolm Gladwell reviews Chris Anderson’s Free in this week’s New Yorker — I wrote about the dust-up surrounding uncredited passages in the book and what the implications of Anderson’s error might be in the LA Times, so I was curious. I think Gladwell brings up many good questions about Anderson’s thesis — that as stuff becomes close enough to free to round down, our economy is changing.

He’s correct in saying he that the end cost of a product is only partially the product itself — that distribution, execution and other expenses make up the bulk of the cost.

But he’s not correct in implying, then, that things aren’t free. Just because it’s expensive to produce something — a specialized drug — doesn’t mean that the cost will be passed on to the buyer.

Take, for example, the music industry and journalism, two things I know a bit about. Whether it’s the millions it takes to put Metallica on CD or a couple hundred bucks in home recording, songs can be copied and recirculated for free. And the LA Times can be accessed online for free, no subscription necessary. It’s not that songs or newspapers are free to produce — they’re not — but they are free to acquire.

In Gladwell’s drug example, he concludes, “In this case, information does not want to be free.* It wants to be really, really expensive.” But what information wants is not necessarily what information gets. Metallica does not want you to download their music without buying it. But the expectations of Free aren’t dictated by information, or Metallica, or the producer of a drug — they’re from the um, purchasers — people who know that Free is possible, and will continue to choose it first over notfree.

* The phrase “information wants to be free” came from Stewart Brand in the 1980s. It was remixed a few times, but each time he said or wrote it, it was paired with the idea that information also wants to be expensive. Sometimes, when people argue against “information wants to be free,” they overlook the fact that this free-expensive duality was part of the statement in the first place.

Noncrediting bozo steals photo. Mine.

paperhaus January 19th, 2009

That’s the picture. It can be found here, on Jacket Copy. It can also be found here, on the bozo’s website. Click to see the bozo’s version big, which shows how yes, the clouds and reflections are exactly the same.

Not that I am surprised some bozo runs around using other people’s photos. It’s what bloggers are accused of — irresponsibility, lack of journalistic ethics, deliberate un-awareness that people gots to get paid for their work. Or, at the very least, given credit. I’m all for Creative Commons. I let people use my pictures all the time — for free, but with credit. Think about it, bozo: did I drive out to Book Soup last Sunday for you? No, I did not. The picture is not yours.

What really galls me is that this pic ends up on LAist — credited to the bozo. LAist — where I WAS EDITOR — get the whole blogging thing. They provide photo credit. To, unfortunately, the bozo, who does not.

Emily Gould ankles Galleycat

paperhaus June 9th, 2008

Emily Gould, onetime Gawker turned publishing industry blogger, has left Galleycat. Her tenure at the site began two months and six days ago.

Emily Gould’s first Galleycat post; her last Galleycat post; and that little New York Times Magazine cover story she had published in between.

Tony Pierce is The King

paperhaus December 1st, 2007

tony pierce

Tony Pierce, the enthusiastic, wild, obsessive, peerless* editor of LAist is moving on to manage the blogs of the Los Angeles Times.

Congratulations, Tony!

Photo: That’s Tony in the center, mid-Skooby’s hot dog, telling Rob Takata and Cecil Castellucci what’s what.

* not predecessor-less, though: his predecessor was me.

100 Notable

paperhaus November 24th, 2007

The New York Times has printed 100 Notable Books for 2007. I’ve read 5, including Ian MacEwan’s slender On Chesil Beach, the hefty Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson, and Don Delillo’s midsized Falling Man. The others, I’ve both read and reviewed — Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis and The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta.

There are several others that are in my to-be-read pile or wish-I-owned hypothetical pile or started-but-haven’t finished pile. And I’m not the only one.

What’s funny is that the NY Times only includes books on its list which it deigned to review in the first place. The paper didn’t look beyond its own review pool to consider books that might be “notable.”