Ms. Adverthinker

This fictional Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview had me laughing out loud.  A highlight:

“Students will learn time-saving tricks, like how to construct an 800-word blog entry in 30 seconds using a simple news article and copy-and-paste. And, as an exercise in the first-person narrative form, students will blog intimate details about their lives, their studies, and their sexual histories (with pictures), with the intent of being linked to by gossip sites and/or discovered by future employers.”

Enjoy.

Ms. Adverthinker is a bit of a compulsive magazine reader: at last count, I believe my subscriptions totaled 13 magazines at home and five at the office.  And, Wired is one of my favorites.  I have not yet received my May issue, but after reading the NY Times article about the puzzle embedded in the issue, I am very excited:

“…the intent of their new issue, created in collaboration with Mr. Abrams [is] to immerse their audience in a series of riddles — some announced, others not — that were buried just deep enough for the readers who wanted to dig them up.”

At a time when publishers are struggling to keep readers engaged in print editions of both newspapers and magazines (and thereby sell advertising), this idea is brilliant.  While the larger puzzle has already been solved, Wired says that there will be additional prizes for subsequent readers that solve the puzzle and there are still a few codes that haven’t been cracked yet.

I have been frustrated lately by poor writing on blogs.  I know that I should expect this from blog-writers: we are amateur writers, writing quickly and writing frequently.  However, many of my frustrations are actually with those who are considered professional journalists and are writing poorly (to be fair: this is mostly local).  They should be worried about these citizen journalists we call bloggers taking over the news-sharing business; the good blog writers are more thorough, yet concise, and more articulate than many of our local journalists.

Why am I thinking about this today?

• NY Times article today about “hyperlocal websites.” The idea: with the newspaper business suffering, local coverage is suffering.  These “hyperlocal websites” compile links and information from community bloggers, “along with data feeds from city governments, with crime reports, restaurant inspections, and notices of road construction and film shoots.”  Some even hire journalists: “One journalist in each town travels to school board meetings and coffee shops with a laptop and camera. Patch also solicits content from readers, pulls in articles from other sites and augments it all with event listings, volunteer opportunities, business directories and lists of local information like recycling laws.”  And while many of these start-ups are relying on traditional newspapers for some of their content, “many hyperlocal entrepreneurs say they are counting on a proliferation of blogs and small local journalism start-ups to keep providing content.”  I love this idea of community reporting and sharing.  The Arkansas Times already does some of this locally, but we could definitely use more.  (FYI: Blake’s Think Tank has been advocating something like these “hyperlocal websites” for some time now.)
• “The Poetry in Your Head.” A few weeks ago, I wrote a post to Twitterers suggesting that they take their writing cues from poetry.  Today, I stumbled upon the “On Point” NPR radio show about memorizing lines of poetry.  The host says: “In the era of the iPod, Americans can have anything they like, anytime, in their ears: hot music, the news, this show.  Jim Holt knows that, says it’s fine, but he’s stumping for something more. Something ancient. Something so old it’s new again: memorizing poetry.”  Jim Holt also wrote an article for the New York Times Sunday Book Review about memorizing poetry.  In neither the radio show nor the aricle does he claim that this memorization will make a person a better writter.  However, I want to believe it will; an increase in vocabulary, in word combinations and in rhythm could surely come from poetry memorization.  As writers, we should want all of these things.
• Who needs the media when “content distributers” can go straight to the consumer? I know this is not exactly a valid argument since “content distributers” (advertisers/brands, celebrities, government, etc.) would hold back all the “bad” news if they were totally in control.  However, with consumers talking back in our two-way communication model that is the Internet, it is now much harder for companies to hide anything.  It is our new transparent world.  And consumers are in control.

So, I talk about wanting quality writing (typically provided by professional and experienced journalists), then advocate citizen journalists (those amateur bloggers).  Really what I want is quality content delivered in a quality format.  It doesn’t matter who or what gives it to me, but someone or something needs to stand up and deliver.

As a reader of this blog, you must, by now, know of my frustrations with Twitter.  To recap–before delving into the subject matter of this post–Twitter is fantastic as a tool for disseminating and gathering information quickly, but it is maddening for its overuse by people who both have nothing interesting to say and then say those things in the most trite ways. (This is not an open invitation to judge my Twitter posts; I recognize that I have fallen into that latter category more than once over the last couple of years.)

I think I have found a solution for those poor, inept Twitter-ers that I despise: take your cues from poetry.  My interest in poetry is recent; and in reading verses today, it occurred to me that poets can say a lot with just a few words and make it a compelling read–and how relevant that is to our modern day communication tool, Twitter.

My advice to Twitter-ers: don’t let the tool’s ease-of-use make you dumb.  Think about what you are writing, how it is fed out your network, and how that reflects on you.

My challenge to Twitter-ers: hone your voice, establish a rhythm, become poetic.  You will stand out from the crowd.

I love this idea: someone created a Flickr group for photos of books at your bedside. This is my contribution.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Slate has an interesting article summing up how we read online.

Earlier this week I wrote about my love of the Kindle after reading that Steve Jobs thinks it is stupid (I am exaggerating, of course) because no one reads anymore. Well, it seems his comments stirred up some others as well. Advertising Age disputes Jobs’ statistics on reading as well:

“‘Who are these “people” to whom Steve Jobs is referring?’ Publishers Weekly Editor in Chief Sara Nelson asked me last week. ‘Not the million-ish who are devouring Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” or the ones who line up for Harry Potter and/or James Patterson novels.’ She added: ‘All I can say is that when I sat in restaurants and airports or on buses or trains and pulled out my Kindle, I got more attention than if I’d shown up naked–with an adorable puppy.’”

Right on.

I’ll admit it. I bought the Amazon Kindle, the electronic reader that received much hype and not-so-great reviews. And, I’ll admit that I love it. But, I am a reader. I read a lot and I read fast. I also travel pretty frequently. So, the idea of a device that holds 200 books that I can purchase for $9.99 each was appealing to me. The device has its faults (clunky page turn buttons that are too easily pressed mistakenly, the cover sucks, the power switch is on the back), which I am sure will be repaired in the next generation. I am a little self-conscious using it in public places because it is not that common and people tend to stare (and, I am a little embarrassed about how much I paid for it). But, nonetheless, I love reading from it–it is lightweight, easy to hold, doesn’t hurt my eyes, and holds more books than I can read. The New York Times has even said that “Amazon’s device could turn out to be the iPod of the written word.” I would agree, except supposedly no one reads anymore:

When Steve Jobs “was asked two weeks ago at the Macworld Expo what he thought of the Kindle, he heaped scorn on the book industry. ‘It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,’ he said. ‘Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.’” Jobs, however, is not always right: “a survey conducted in August 2007 by Ipsos Public Affairs for The Associated Press found that 27 percent of Americans had not read a book in the previous year…the same share–27 percent–read 15 or more books. In fact, when we exclude Americans who had not read a single book in that year, the average number of books read was 20, raised by the 8 percent who read 51 books or more. In other words, a sizable minority does not read, but the overall distribution is balanced somewhat by those who read a lot.”

“The book world has always had an invisible asset that makes up for what it lacks in outsize revenue and profits: the passionate attachment that its authors, editors and most frequent customers have to books themselves.  Indeed, in this respect, avid book readers resemble avid Mac users.

“The object we are accustomed to calling a book is undergoing a profound modification as it is stripped of its physical shell.  Kindle’s long-term success is still unknown, but Amazon should be credited with imaginatively redefining its original product line, replacing the book business with the reading business.”

Using the Internet as a tool, more and more consumers are engaging in culture consumption, broadening their knowledge horizons and then using that experience and knowledge to contribute their own creative expressions and deposit those right back into our culture for further consumer consumption. According to a recent article in Ad Age:

“For years, marketers viewed the cultural consumer as an elite market segment, estimated to represent 2% of the overall population. As we witness a maturing knowledge economy, it’s become evident that we must enlarge our view of who’s consuming cultural experiences and how often. To benefit from the coming era, smart CMOs need to see that American consumers aspire to be viewed as thinking, expressive human beings…Consider these facts:

• The typical adult attends an average of 1.9 cultural events per month.
• 68% of the American public is interested in independent films.
• Gen Y-ers (those ages 18 to 29) attend an average of 2.3 cultural events per month.
• More Americans visit museums, historical sites, zoos and aquariums than attend all professional sports events combined, including auto racing.
• In 2006, 65% of households ranked “avid book reading” as their No. 1 at home leisure activity, according to the Standard Rate and Data Service.”

(Then again, according to a recent article in The New Yorker titled The Twilight of Books, you might not believe consumers are more culturally inclined and reading literature “…if you consulted the Census Bureau and the National Endowment for the Arts, who, since 1982, have asked thousands of Americans questions about reading that are not only detailed but consistent. The results, first reported by the N.E.A. in 2004, are dispiriting. In 1982, 56.9 per cent of Americans had read a work of creative literature in the previous twelve months. The proportion fell to fifty-four per cent in 1992, and to 46.7 per cent in 2002. Last month, the N.E.A. released a follow-up report, To Read or Not to Read, which showed correlations between the decline of reading and social phenomena as diverse as income disparity, exercise, and voting. In his introduction, the N.E.A. chairman, Dana Gioia, wrote, ‘Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.’”)

If your target is an avid Internet user, they are more likely than not consuming cultural experiences frequently. And, as that Ad Age article notes, “Knowledge is power. Ideas are the killer app. Learning is the new status skill. This is an enlightened age, and culture consumers revere brands that teach them new things without pontificating.” What can brands do to feed that consumer hunger for cultural and knowledge?