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November 30, 2006

Defending news mags; GQ interviews Al Gore; Iran president blogs to Americans; Football tonight; Animals levitate; Lego-making

Time, Dec. 24, 1956, featuring painter Edward Hopper

Save the waiting-room schools: I don't much want to wade into the crossfire of the alpha-male news-biz heavies over Jeff Jarvis's post, Whither magazines?, but I'd like to add a small voice that remembers being a girl who first got a general view of the larger world from Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest and, later, Time and Newsweek.

Jeff says this:

I think that general-interest magazines may well be fated to fade away. General-interest anything is probably cursed. For the truth is that interest never was as general editors and publishers thought it was, back in the mass-media age. Old media just assumed we were interested in what they told us to be interested in. But we weren’t. We’re proving that with every new choice the internet enables.

Yet special-interest magazines — community magazines, to put it another way — have a brighter prospect — if they understand how to enable that community.

I entirely understand why a middle-aged NYC media pro would say this, but...

I first read Time and Newsweek in the eye doctor's waiting room from the age of 7, and the waits were long indeed. (Dad had glaucoma, and sometimes we sat for him, and sometimes for our own frequent, if unnecessary, appointments with his East Side specialist.)

Later, in college, a Newsweek subscription was my one glimpse outside my closed world of classes, dating and friends.

So when Jeff writes,

...even when I do still read the magazine in print, I want a relationship with the magazine — and, more important, my fellow readers — online,

I want to say, "Remember when you were grateful for the crib sheet, some idea what was going on, in art, movies, news, economics, literature, politics, etc....?"

I think these news-survey magazines aren't for him any more, saturated as he is with sophisticated sources.

But it would be a big loss to those newly or casually involved in the world of information if the news magazines -- survey courses on recent events and culture -- were to slip into oblivion.

Keep those doctor's office subscriptions coming.

And those at the libraries, hair salons, and auto-body-shop waiting rooms -- general education centers, all.

Thursday Night Football: Ravens vs. Bengals tonight as the work week's second night of pro football on TV launches. If you have Cox digital cable, it's on Channel 137. From NFL.com,

Cincinnati head coach Marvin Lewis used to work under Baltimore head coach Brian Billick. On Thursday night, they will match wits on NFL Network (8 ET). Full Story

Political blogger: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posts a message to the American people on his blog. It's in English, with the lines flush right, and not as flowery as you might expect.

U.S. dismisses Ahmadinejad's open letter. UPI.

GQ interviews Al Gore: Al Gore: Movie star. Sample:

Do you know if President Bush has seen the movie yet?
Well, he claimed that would not see it. That’s why I wrote the book. He’s a reader.

What page do you think he’s on?
I would encourage him to see the movie and read the book. I wish that he would.

Don’t you find it appalling that he won’t?
Well, you know, he’s probably no more objective about me than I am about him.

So have you been offered any other movie parts?
Yes! I actually just performed a voice-over role in a movie last week. I am reprising my role as a disembodied head in Futurama, which is being made into a movie. There are a significant number of people who appear not to know or care that I was Vice President of the United States, but who are very tuned into the fact that I uttered the immortal line, “I have ridden the mighty moonworm.”

Birth of a block: The Making of a LEGO Brick: Show your kid this slideshow at Business Week.

No Transcendental Meditation involved: Scientists Levitate Small Animals, at Live Science.

Change of address: Jorn Barger, my personal "first blogger," is back at a slightly different spot.

Loony law:

Only streetwalkers and the people who solicit them can be found guilty of a prostitution-related crime, under a 26-year-old law with a loophole that exempts indoor prostitution.

...If she had made the same offer outside, on the grass or in a minivan, she would have been guilty of soliciting for prostitution...

This is not The Onion. It is The Providence Journal: Two charged at massage parlors.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 11:08 AM | Permalink