Am I reading this wrong or are they forcing people to be searchable? Some people don't want to be found by others. At all.
But go to that page where you used to be able to choose who searches for you an you get:
"Your privacy settings are secured for your protection."
with a lock box. How is putting your info out there against your will "for your protection"? What if you have an abusive ex who will now find you?
You have to enter your password to even alter the new default settings. There are also multiple pages in which you'll have to visit to get all your original settings back, ei. all your profile pictures will be viewable to everyone unless you specifically go into a second screen and change that back as well. You also have to go into the Settings tab and change each item, posts, links, notes, photos, etc, that you post back to only friends, as it's been defaulted to everyone. Also, there is no way now to keep your profile completely viewable by only friends, as the option of who can add you as a friend only has two choices everyone and friends of friends. I used to be able to completely hide my entire profile so that only friends could see it, and if I friended someone, I had to add them because no one else could see my profile. That layer of protection is now no longer an option.
It also looks like they altered the profile picture album privacy settings - I logged on tonight and realized that I was suddenly able to see a non-friend's profile picture album. So then I just started randomly clicking on strangers, and everyone's albums were viewable. I checked my privacy settings and sure enough, my profile photo album settings were set to "everyone". Some shiesty shit right there.
I'm not one of those people who throws a big hissy fit whenever they make changes, but damn. If they're gonna be going around quietly fucking with everyone's privacy settings, I might have to deactivate again.
So what. The worst thing about this is it tips off competitors to what you're working on. The second worst is that someone will try to pull one over on you, and that NEVER happens in journalism. The best thing is you can reach a ton of potential sources or people who know a lot more than you about what you're writing about in, oh, about less time than it took me to write this comment. It's better than pissing in a closed pool of sources by e-mailing just your friends and asking them or e-mailing a journalism undergraduate listserv.
Ryan, come on. "Journalist" is not a synonym for "columnist"; you must be aware of this.
Julia Allison (btw, Baugher is her last name, not Allison) writes opinion pieces, not articles involving research or interviews with actual human beings. Just because she has been paid to write a series of words in a weekly newsmagazine does not mean she is a journalist. If that's the case, then Anna Quindlen should stop yammering on about her family and start reporting on the goings on in Afghanistan.
Calling her and those like her journalists -- which Gawker does a hell of a lot for no real reason -- is demeaning to people who have actually earned degrees in journalism and have pursued careers in this field.
One more thing: If journalism is now being defined as copying and pasting from Wikipedia, someone had better order a few million press hats for anyone with a Tumblr account.
The granddaddy of all aggregators is the inimitable, much-imitated Herb Caen of the old Chronicle Way Back When. He called it three-dot journalism, and it was simply a string of items phoned into his office each day and it was the premiere column in all North America probably so everybody wanted to appear there. He had his stable of regular contributors, but he'd take amateurs if they were good. He was a one-man clipping service, and he lived the dream of Willie Loman, whose idea of the perfect saleman was one who opened his suitcase in his hotel room in any town and the buyers came in droves.
@Tremonius: Great point. Walter Winchell worked in a similar fashion. Actually, may have taken it further: Publicists would actually write whole items, some of which were good enough to run unedited. He had a longtime editorial assistant ( name escapes me at moment), employed by him not his papers, that would do any further rewrite and do items of his own.
Not to say Winchell didn't do his own items but many were delivered to him whole, not just the facts but the actual words.
Caen, from what I gather, took info and tips from outside and wrote them up himself, right? Or did they come in whole?
Anyway, just goes to show, lazy does not always mean inferior. To the contrary.
@Ryan Tate: Was Winchell the model for J J Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success? I don't know much about him, only that he was one of the Walters represented in some novel I don't recall; Winchell as the flippant superficial sort whereas the penetrating substance was represented by Lippman.
I'm curious about the time when the writer becomes the brand and others take over the tedious work of composition for them. Fitzgerald in Hollywood and his cups, it was reported, would call on his gofer, a teenager named Billy Warren (a creator of Gunsmoke in his latter days) to put the mess in order. (Of course, Fitzgerald wasn't around to refute Crazy Sundays so it may have been just another episode of résumé padding.)
One of the Trumpettes was in classic company when she signed a contract to deliver a murder mystery and placed a notice for a writer to do it for her. Most, like Palin, are more discreet.
To the best of my memory, Herb Caen strung out items from contributors, and he made no claims of originality. He reported the charge he was merely taking dictation, and never denied it. Seemed he was on perfect terms with the process, as were we all.
@Tremonius: Actually, Hunsecker was modeled on Winchell; it's amazing how utterly forgotten Winchell is given the power of his column and radio broadcast back before television came around (his TV show never took and Winchell entered a long sad and well-earned comeuppance).
Fitzgerlad is interesting, though I thought his Hollywood period was pretty dark; which Trump was that?
Ya, I read Caen when I first moved up here in 94, though if I recall correctly they were already starting to re-run old columns some day (very confusing). He was great. Still unmatched.
@Ryan Tate: I'm sure it was Ivana; I see her yet posing in an ad for an author for the novel for which she already had a contract.
All powerful columnists should have a copy of Ozymandias on their desks. How the mighty have fallen. Back before he was a wideout with the Cowboys, Drew Pearson was a feared muckraker, as became his understudy Jack Anderson. There was a rancid guttersnipe name of Westbrook Pegler who was feared and loathed by presidents. And who remembers him today?
If you're interested in Fitzgerald and have a spare evening, you might want to find Crazy Sundays by Aaron Latham, about the late-stage alcoholism of Fitzgerald. I read it around 1972 and the stories are vivid still.
I came to the west coast in 1972, and Herb Caen was god, or at least the most powerful figure in San Francisco, which may be the same. The Chronicle was the only paper in those days for the Bay Area, and Herb Caen was the cause of it. And just look where the Chronicle is today (although I don't think that can be laid to the account of the passing of Caen).
"The meta-philosophy of free — we should get rid of this philosophy," said Christoph Keese, Springer’s head of public affairs and an architect of its online strategy. "A highly industrialized world cannot survive on rumors. It needs quality journalism, and that costs money."
This is a quote from a Bild spokesman, a newspaper that has famously low editorial standards. I don't get his appeal to the public interest here. These people have made a business of publishing irresponsible rumors that appeal to populist sentiment.
There are German newspapers that are actually doing poorly. These are mainly the broadsheets with high standards. Bild is not having any major financial issues like the broadsheets are having. It's true that its circulation is decreasing, sure, but for a newspaper that has consistently chosen the profit motive as a guiding principle over quality journalism in the public's interest, it's obviously disingenuous of them to justify their price increase as a way to provide better journalism.
The motivation is so clear here: squeeze as much money out of their readers before the great unwashed migrate away from Bild to equally poor-quality blogs.
@i'm a bottle: I worked for a short period at Axel Springer. From what I saw, that company has a way of putting douchebags in charge and repressing people who actually have good ideas — even at the online division! But isn't this what the print media business does nowadays, anyway?
@freakshowtime: The douchebaggery doesn't surprise me at all.
Also, those douches aren't doing their job. Most of the Bild properties haven't changed their format in years and their online presence is especially a mess.
They can't expect to just keep doing what they've been doing since the eighties yet hope to preserve or increase their circulation numbers. The major problem I see is that the Bild concept is graphics heavy but commentary light -- a format that's easily supplanted by anybody with an Internet connection and a Wordpress account.
08:18 AM
But go to that page where you used to be able to choose who searches for you an you get:
"Your privacy settings are secured for your protection."
with a lock box. How is putting your info out there against your will "for your protection"? What if you have an abusive ex who will now find you?
06:31 AM
04:41 AM
I'm not one of those people who throws a big hissy fit whenever they make changes, but damn. If they're gonna be going around quietly fucking with everyone's privacy settings, I might have to deactivate again.
12/09/09
Isn't this the entire premise of NonSociety?
12/09/09
12/09/09
12/09/09
12/09/09
12/08/09
12/08/09
12/08/09
Julia Allison (btw, Baugher is her last name, not Allison) writes opinion pieces, not articles involving research or interviews with actual human beings. Just because she has been paid to write a series of words in a weekly newsmagazine does not mean she is a journalist. If that's the case, then Anna Quindlen should stop yammering on about her family and start reporting on the goings on in Afghanistan.
Calling her and those like her journalists -- which Gawker does a hell of a lot for no real reason -- is demeaning to people who have actually earned degrees in journalism and have pursued careers in this field.
One more thing: If journalism is now being defined as copying and pasting from Wikipedia, someone had better order a few million press hats for anyone with a Tumblr account.
12/08/09
12/08/09
12/08/09
12/08/09
Not to say Winchell didn't do his own items but many were delivered to him whole, not just the facts but the actual words.
Caen, from what I gather, took info and tips from outside and wrote them up himself, right? Or did they come in whole?
Anyway, just goes to show, lazy does not always mean inferior. To the contrary.
12/08/09
I'm curious about the time when the writer becomes the brand and others take over the tedious work of composition for them. Fitzgerald in Hollywood and his cups, it was reported, would call on his gofer, a teenager named Billy Warren (a creator of Gunsmoke in his latter days) to put the mess in order. (Of course, Fitzgerald wasn't around to refute Crazy Sundays so it may have been just another episode of résumé padding.)
One of the Trumpettes was in classic company when she signed a contract to deliver a murder mystery and placed a notice for a writer to do it for her. Most, like Palin, are more discreet.
To the best of my memory, Herb Caen strung out items from contributors, and he made no claims of originality. He reported the charge he was merely taking dictation, and never denied it. Seemed he was on perfect terms with the process, as were we all.
12/08/09
Fitzgerlad is interesting, though I thought his Hollywood period was pretty dark; which Trump was that?
Ya, I read Caen when I first moved up here in 94, though if I recall correctly they were already starting to re-run old columns some day (very confusing). He was great. Still unmatched.
12/09/09
All powerful columnists should have a copy of Ozymandias on their desks. How the mighty have fallen. Back before he was a wideout with the Cowboys, Drew Pearson was a feared muckraker, as became his understudy Jack Anderson. There was a rancid guttersnipe name of Westbrook Pegler who was feared and loathed by presidents. And who remembers him today?
If you're interested in Fitzgerald and have a spare evening, you might want to find Crazy Sundays by Aaron Latham, about the late-stage alcoholism of Fitzgerald. I read it around 1972 and the stories are vivid still.
I came to the west coast in 1972, and Herb Caen was god, or at least the most powerful figure in San Francisco, which may be the same. The Chronicle was the only paper in those days for the Bay Area, and Herb Caen was the cause of it. And just look where the Chronicle is today (although I don't think that can be laid to the account of the passing of Caen).
Thanks for the memories.
12/07/09
12/07/09
12/08/09
12/08/09
12/07/09
12/07/09
12/07/09
This is a quote from a Bild spokesman, a newspaper that has famously low editorial standards. I don't get his appeal to the public interest here. These people have made a business of publishing irresponsible rumors that appeal to populist sentiment.
There are German newspapers that are actually doing poorly. These are mainly the broadsheets with high standards. Bild is not having any major financial issues like the broadsheets are having. It's true that its circulation is decreasing, sure, but for a newspaper that has consistently chosen the profit motive as a guiding principle over quality journalism in the public's interest, it's obviously disingenuous of them to justify their price increase as a way to provide better journalism.
The motivation is so clear here: squeeze as much money out of their readers before the great unwashed migrate away from Bild to equally poor-quality blogs.
12/07/09
12/07/09
Also, those douches aren't doing their job. Most of the Bild properties haven't changed their format in years and their online presence is especially a mess.
They can't expect to just keep doing what they've been doing since the eighties yet hope to preserve or increase their circulation numbers. The major problem I see is that the Bild concept is graphics heavy but commentary light -- a format that's easily supplanted by anybody with an Internet connection and a Wordpress account.