Apple’s tablet — the savior of traditional publishing?
January 25, 2010
The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple reps have been meeting with publishers ahead of its expected release of its tablet on Wednesday. Which could be amazing news — absolutely amazing — for the struggling publishing industry.
Apple representatives have been in New York this week talking to the largest trade publishers, according to industry executives. They said Apple had proposed an arrangement under which publishers would get to set the price of their books, with Apple taking a 30 percent commission and the publishers keeping the rest. Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, declined to comment on what he called “rumors and speculation.”
Depending on whether Apple sets an upper limit on pricing, its model could be much more appealing to publishers, who resent how Amazon has aggressively discounted their books. Typically, Amazon charges $9.99 for new releases and best sellers, a price that other e-book vendors, including Sony and Barnes & Noble, have effectively been forced to follow.
Apple revolutionized the electronic music market with the iTunes store, and with the New York Times preparing to charge for content, I can’t help but think the iTunes model can blow the lid on this awful publishing industry — both traditional book and newspapers. With the sheer size of the tablet versus the iPhone, you could buy and comfortably read newspapers online. Think a portable version of Politico’s digital print version.
Thousands of words at a time
January 19, 2010
When I worked in the newsroom and had access to the AP Photo feed, there were certain photos labeled Graphic Content. Most of them showed bodies, or people in near-corpse states, and they were hard as hell to look at — the kind of photographs you can’t unsee.
But they told their stories better than the more family-friendly shots.
I’ve long been a fan of the Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature. Gorgeous high-res shots from around the world. This one’s titled Haiti six days later.
People run toward a U.S. helicopter as it makes a water drop near a country club used as a forward operating base for the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010. Relief groups and officials are focused on moving aid flowing into Haiti to survivors of the powerful earthquake that hit the country on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
If you’re an adult, you need to see it. You need to click the photos that are labeled graphic content. You need to see what you’re not seeing elsewhere. Then you need to help. I’m a huge fan of Doctor’s Without Borders, who lost some staff in the earthquake, and the UN’s World Food Program, who are getting emergency rations to the people who need them. Please. Give.
Miami Univ. classmate’s kicking ass and taking names
December 28, 2009
So Jon Gambrell, who graduated from Miami University’s journalism program in ‘04 (I think), is now the AP Bureau Chief in Lagos, Nigeria. It turned out to be great timing for him, what with the Christmas underwear bomber departing from Lagos. I’ve been reading his updates on the Wii News Channel, of all places.
His Twitter feed is nothing short of amazing. Check it out.
And Jon, keep chasing the stories, but for God’s sake, be careful.
Good news for the Pulitzers
December 8, 2009
So Jim VandeHei, executive editor of Politoco, has been named to a term on the Pulitzer board, which is great news for the top prize in journalism.
There’s been some huffing and puffing about online journalism being included alongside traditional print organizations for the Pultizers, and rightly so. Bloggers who fancy themselves investigative reporters, lacking any editorial oversight or journalism training, certainly aren’t on par with the Boston Globe, which spent years and millions of dollars investigating the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. And blogs that merely aggregate real reporting and add a paragraph of commentary certainly aren’t on the same level—there’s no way I’d expect to be eligible for a Pulitzer for this post.
That said, Politico is a great step in the right direction. With papers closing their doors (or in precarious financial states) around the country—the shuttering of the print editions of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News come to mind—adding Politico to the Pulitzer board makes sense. It cranks out a daily print issue in D.C., but only while congress is in session. Its bread and butter is its amazing Web site and original reporting. After just a few years, it has the clout to pull in heavy-hitting politicians and, well, politicos as guest writers from all spectrums.
Now, if only we can get papers like the Boston Globe to see this business model makes sense, maybe it’ll stop bleeding $1 million a week.
How to Disappear Completely
December 1, 2009
It’s been ages since I’ve posted on here, and there really isn’t an excuse. This winter, I’ve been doing a bit of driving back and forth from Chicago to Ohio, once for Thanksgiving, and twice for my first season out trying my hand at deer hunting.
My mom will never understand this newfound fascination of mine, and my wife’s sick of hearing about it. But for me and thousands of other people, hunting isn’t about killing defenseless animals. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division pegs the whitetail population in the state at just over 650,000, far beyond the natural carrying capacity of the state’s ecosystems. Which explains why there were three huge whitetails in my mom’s suburban front yard last week.
I didn’t managed to harvest a deer my first year out—yet. But I’ve had an amazing time out at my friend’s 93-acre farm in Bellefountaine, Ohio. I’ve seen plenty of deer; after all, it’s a long-neglected apple orchard ringed by cornfields. And even though my first trip was cut short thanks to the flu, being outside and off Chicago’s pavement for a few days is indescribably refreshing.
It’s more than a few days of solitude and a chance for my mind to quiet down, though. It’s ethical. If I’m going to eat meat, I better be able to man up and harvest it myself. Besides, I’d rather have an animal on my plate that’s lived its entire life in the wild than one that spent its life on a factory farm. And it’s worth noting that no group—none—contributes more financially to conservation than hunters and fisherman (there’s an 11 percent federal excise tax on all firearms and ammunition that goes directly to the Department of the Interior). The press release that’s linked to above points out that deer season brings almost $900 million to Ohio’s economy. And I can get behind that, especially if I can clear the city air out of my lungs while I’m doing it.
Morning in the ground blind. Click to enlarge.
Branhaven today, Or, You Can Never Go Home Again
October 26, 2009
Branhaven was a Jackson Township, Ohio, staple while I was growing up. A HUGE pool (500,000 gallons, if memory serves, which is larger than Olympic-sized), six lifeguard towers, more than a dozen tennis courts and a backboard, sand volleyball court, and acres of grass for kids to play on.
I grew up two blocks away, and Branhaven was the farthest I was allowed to walk or ride my bike—no doubt because my grandpa worked there. Always unable to sit still, he kept that pool crystal clear and handled general maintenance after he retired from Ohio Bell. As a kid, I remember him driving his powder blue Plymouth Duster over to our house every day we weren’t at the pool, just to have lunch with his daughter and grandkids. Those lunches and Grandpa taking me down to show how the filtration system worked are some of my most cherished childhood memories.
A few years ago, the owner of Branhaven passed away, and the new owners decided to do something new—make it into a water park. “Jackson Township doesn’t have a community pool. I think there’s a need here for this type of aquatics facility,” the new owner told the Massillon Independent. So before the bottom dropped out of the economy, that’s what they were doing.
Today, it looks like this. Click the image to see more of this on my Flickr page.
National Book Award finalists are out
October 14, 2009
So the National Book Foundation announced its finalists for the 2009 NBA.
Honestly, I haven’t read any of them, though I’ve read great reviews of all of them (plus, according to Judge Lydia Millet’s Facebook page, “Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead and Paul Harding’s Tinkers.”)
Speaking of the five-author panel of fiction judges, Lydia Millet is one of three—count ‘em, THREE!—Story Week alumni. Junot Diaz appeared at the 2007 Story Week Festival of Writer’s between winning the National Book Critic’s Circle Award and the Pulitzer for The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Charles Johnson came by before my time at Columbia College, and won the NBA in 1990 for Middle Passage.
Good company to be in. Congrats to all the finalists!
The cream ought to rise
September 8, 2009
In a market where publishers are putting out fewer and fewer books (down 3.2 percent to just about 275,000 titles in 2008), the best writing ought to rise to the top, right? That is, if publishers have tighter budgets, editors ought to have less discretionary money for the long shot, and the best writing ought to burst forth from the slush pile. Personally, I think the literary marketplace should be contracting a lot more than it already has. There’s far too much white noise out there for great new voices to shout through.
Then today, on the, well, Today Show, the penultimate marketing position for authors (just behind Oprah, and don’t get me started there), we see my former Governor, Rod Blagojevich, making an ass out of himself and going against pretty much every bit of legal advice he’s been given. So what does this mean for the literary marketplace?
Nothing much.
After all, some turds float to the top, too.
Pirated eBooks?
September 4, 2009
The Christian Science Monitor’s Marjorie Kehe has put together a list of the top 10 pirated eBooks (e-books? Ebooks?) of 2009.
It seems like most people are downloading what they’re too embarrassed to buy.
Don’t look at this list if you want to believe that the Internet is feeding a hunger for a deeper kind of learning. The 10 books most downloaded on BitTorrent (a free file-sharing application) this year do not include titles by Victor Hugo or Emily Brontë (or even Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling).
Instead, with the exception of Leonardo da Vinci and Stephenie Meyer, they mostly focus on either self-help or sex (or in the case of a couple of titles, both).
We just got a new digital SLR, a Canon 450/Rebel XSi. I kind of hate calling it a “Rebel,” as it brings to mind a mulletted Andre Agassi showing everybody how great the Canon Rebel was—so much so, that it was my first 35mm SLR.
Anyway, the way I see it, getting back into shooting is a nice way to transition back into writing on a regular basis. That’s how I got into journalism in the first place, by shooting for my high school newspaper, then the Miami Student, which led to more writing assignments. But the truth is that it forces me to see the world through new eyes, and I’m hoping that’ll be the hair of the dog that’ll jumpstart me out of this post-MFA writing hangover.
Besides, Annie has a BFA in photography (She’s a darkroom wizard; her silver gelatin prints are gorgeous), and we’ve been looking to get better photos of the jewelry she makes to try to market that out. So, you know, two birds.
Anyway, there’s a ton of new photos on my Flickr page if you’re interested.
