What We Call the News

Are Google & Yahoo thieves for using their search abilities to create news-feeds aggregated from all the news sites? Rupert Murdoch thinks so. The Wired story I just linked to is nothing new -- we've talked about this before if you remember. That time, it was in relation to the Wall Street Journal (owned by Murdoch's News Corp) raising objections to other news sites quoting them so extensively that they were essentially re-publishing the articles from WSJ. Now Murdoch is expanding his complaint to include the search engines that display the top stories of the day from various partners and unaffiliated news sites, operating (so it is thought) within the "Fair Use" provisions of US copyright law (Title 17 USC). Because - as ever - our laws are lagging behind our cultural and technological advances this entire area is in the phantom zone. The idea that news should be a solely for-profit enterprise is certainly not a new one (far from it) but it does make you wonder what the future holds. He's not wrong. When Murdoch says that others are profiting (through their ads) from his content (which should be profiting his advertisers), he's not wrong. But the search engines are not wrong either. Collating information and presenting it in its original format and with correct attribution (and linkback) to the originators has been how the internet has operated since it's inception. That's the nature of grey areas, I suppose. So what now? I'm all for forcing people to pay for news about Michelle Obama touching the queen. Or Bill O'Reilly freaking out on some hapless intern because he doesn't understand what Sting is about to do. But not for actual news. Is "Your time is up, please deposit another $.75 to hear about the impending biochemical terrorist attack?" what's really next? Rupert seems to think it is...

"People reading news for free on the web, that's got to change..." ~ Rupert Murdoch (qtd. in Wired Magazine)

The press may be free, but the news never has been. Newspapers charge per copy as well as renting your viewing time to their advertisers (much the same way websites do), and television news programs have sponsors out the yin-yang. But access was free. Access to news has never been curtailed in this nation or restricted to those who can pay. The funny thing about this is that even if Mr. Murdoch has his way and the Wall Street Journal and Fox News stop appearing on the Google and Yahoo homepages, it won't restrict the free flow of information one iota. Information is and shall remaind free for all who seek it. Murdoch doesn't own the news (though if wishing made it so...) news is about the presentation of the "Facts as we know them". All Fox and the WSJ can lay actual claim to is the way in which they present the news. The only thing Murdoch actually can corner is the news the way his minions write it and the opinions of his staff. My personal feelings about Mr. Murdoch's journalistic ethics aside, what he's planning to charge us for access to isn't the news. Without Fox and the WSJ the internet won't starve for facts... it will simply lack content from the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Who really loses out in that equation, I ask you?

To Kindle or not to Kindle? Round II

I own thousands of books. Old-fashioned pasteboard, buckram, leather and paper. I love the written word in all its forms and the ebook is something I am very gradually coming to terms with over the Luddite impulses that have generally ruled my reading life.

As part of my ongoing internal wrestling match on the incipient eBook revolution, I've been researching the potential prizes and pitfalls of the current iteration of the phenomenon.  

The Defender... Awhile back, Newsweek Published this Op/Ed by Techie Geek Chic Jacob Weisberg In Defense Of the Kindle makes the argument that the Kindle - while clunky - is a step forward for struggling publishers and writers. He scores several good points regarding the inevitability of the e-book as a format and makes good mileage with his theme that "sure it stinks now, but do does every technology when it first comes out, be patient."

The ebook may well be inevitable. But is the Kindle?

A Kindle world is a world where your books are infinitely portable - as long as you don't lose your $400 Kindle reader. Your books don't belong to you, but you have a limited lease to read them, a very limited ability to loan them to others. I pick on the Kindle because it's the big fish and the easiest target, but this is a model that is propogating all over the place in various forms. The Sony eReader is much the same (also $400) a device that gives you access to a digital library of books that you can't really pass to the guy next to you on the airplane.  

Which brings us to our Challenger... Literary agent Michael Bourret wrote an interesting blog post at his agency's (DG) blog titled "Is Kindle a Danger To Ownership?" (He was apparently inspired by this article in the Christian Science Monitor.) Both Michael and CSM make a compelling case that our libraries are headed the way of our movies and music, down a road where the concept of "owning" a book you buy is a foreign concept and loaning a well-loved paperback to your friend is a thing of the past. Michael and CSM both point out that there is a middle ground, a path that does not take us down the Kindle road toward a third party claiming proprietary ownership of our libraries. A hybrid model where the purchase of a hardcopy comes with a free ebook version of the text is working for several publishers. A model that can reflect the current culture of a book as a possession, where the word-of-mouth can be accompanied by the load of a well-loved copy of the text. A loan that often leads to more sales for an author and a broadened fanbase.  

And then there's me... I'm still trying to make up my mind about the Kindle. To be honest, (aside from the price) the most significant drawback for me is the fact that you don't want to use an eReader in the bath tub or on a sandy beach. I like to read in circumstances that the eReaders of the world might consider "adverse conditions". My reading habits aside, I'm still torn on the whole thing. Like I said, the ebook might be inevitable, but the platform isn't necessarily. The idea of a world where we don't own the books we buy makes me intensely uncomfortable. As an avid collector of books, the very idea is anathema to me. I can come to terms with the idea that the ebook is an environmental necessity. That the forests of the world cannot support the creation of yet another mountain range of pulp paperbacks to match the ten or twenty the publishing industry has generated in the last hundred years or so. And with the written record of culture in the industrialized world growing exponentially, this is ever more true with each passing year.

Nevertheless, there are cross-platform formats available already which might mean we can avoid a Betamax-vs-VHS problem (and remember that the lesser of those two won that bout) between the Sony eReader and the Kindle and avert a future where the reader never feels that they own the book they hold in their hands. It's a future where recommending a new author or idea you just discovered to your friends necessitates either a broken law (or Terms of Use contract) or an immediate outlay of cash before they can see if you're right -- where such recommendations become less common thereby and word-of-mouth authors die on the vine.

In the snarl of Digital Rights Management and contracts and whathaveyou, the larger picture so often gets obscured... Whether it's ink or electrons, the growth or literary culture and the transmission of ideas depends largely upon the works belonging to the reader, not to the librarian.

---

Please let me know what you think of Kindle, the Sony eReader, and others as well as eBooks in general in the comments section.

Would you like fries with your Twilight?

In a recent interview, Newsweek tried to deconstruct what made David Baldacci's books so damned buoyant despite the weight of negative opinions from the likes of the Newsweek and the New York Times.

"The suggestion that reading a thriller is a kind of civic obligation is questionable, to say the least, and there are plenty of people who dispute that reading potboilers encourages an engagement with more-demanding texts. [...] Baldacci offers a break—and people who care about books should care about him. Whether or not thrillers are crucial for democracy, they are certainly crucial for publishers. Where a more literary book might be considered a success if it sells 50,000 in hardcover, a novel by a writer like Baldacci can sell more than a million." www.newsweek.com/

This is an interesting article, not so much because it's about Baldacci but because even though the alleged premise of the article (as expressed in the subtitle) as a sort of populist defense of the thriller as a genre "David Baldacci's 16 books were all bestsellers. Why do people have such a problem with that?"

The interviewer makes a number of statements that make it clear she's not entirely on-board with her (assigned?) premise.

Baldacci isnt alone in ascending the bestseller lists while the literati stand aside in frustrated amaze. Literature maven Harold Bloom's dismay at the popularity of JK Rowling and her boy wizard is nearly legendary. Stephen King himself once infamously likened his books to the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large order of fries. Tasty and momentarily satisfying, but not good for you in the long run.

One gets the impression from some authors that they are embarassed at thier status as the MacDonalds of the bookworld. But what really tends to get me is the distancing of the literati from the very thing that is keeping the industry alive. As they stand aside and decry the blockbuster model that is keeping the presses rolling and the bookstores open, they live under the same tent that is held aloft by the Davinci Codes and Prisoner of Azkaban.

The backlash against genre writers lives in a world that has forgotten that Shakespeare was the equivalent of a sitcom writer for his age. A quill-for-hire who transcended his genre to ascend the heights of historical figures whose very existence will be forever debated. So many of the great classics of our time were salvaged from the slushpile of history by a mixture of lucky happenstance and an author who didn't care what the critics of his or her time had to say and kept plugging away at the quill or typewriter or computer keyboard.

Will future generations see Baldacci as the Dostoevsky of our time? Perhaps not. Will Stephanie Meyer be looked upon by our literary heirs as the unheralded Jane Austen of our age? Not bloody likely. Nor will JK Rowling for that matter, though she might be our JM Barrie or EB White.

I'm constantly reminded as I read articles like the one in Newsweek what the always-pithy GK Chesterton said in an essay about detective fiction:

"By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece."

I was working at the bookstore when the two biggest phenomena of recent eras began and ran their course. What is often forgotten is that JK Rowling's bestseller status was built upon word of mouth. Advanced Reading Copies were sent to booksellers and the story captured their imaginations. The strange little kids fantasy novel broke out as the booksellers recommended it over and over again to teacher and parent alike. I should have held onto my ARC of Sorceror's Stone. I still have my reader's copy of Davinci Code -- which is ironic since I enjoyed Rowling's little book and didn't so much care one way or the other about DC. Nevertheless, I was there when it came down the pipe and read it before most people.

My personal feelings about both books aside, it was almost amusing to watch as the esteem of the booksellers and literati who frequented my store waned in the face of growing commercial success. You can't be good and popular at the same time. That's just the way it is!

Both narratives have problems which I will discuss at another time. Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series has similar flaws in the execution of the ideas to the point where I would put them on a descending scale with Rowling at the top, Dan Brown in the middle and Meyer at the bottom. Yet all three caught the crest of the wave, defied the dismay of their critics and built empires bolstered by their many imitators.

Are they good? That's not for me to say. There are better out there, for certain. But that doesn't invalidate the opinions of the masses. I'm not about to argue for market-driven literary criticism, but the pooh-poohing that happens every time Baldacci, King, Brown, Rowling and Meyer put a new book in the stores ignores a very germane element of their stories that undercuts the criticism: They're obviously telling stories that resonate -- stories we want to hear. Manifest in their sales data and the adherence of their fans.

As he was lambasting Stephanie Meyer as a hack, even King took a moment to point out that the strength of her books is the resonance of the stories she tells. Davinci Code, Harry Potter, and pick-your-thriller by Baldacci (or anyone else) all have one thing in common... they are all crafted from archetypal stories that resonate from a time when such tales were told to stave off the darkness that edged in from the corners of the wilderness beyond our firelight. Some of them are the tales told by the children at a campfire in the backyard, but those stories are simply smaller echoes of the greater tales being related at the fires of the grownups.

In the Newsweek interview, Baldacci suggested that reading thrillers was a democratic institution, a blow struck for literacy. The Newsweek interviewer sniffed at the very idea, but he was right. He was right because the more we tell stories, the greater our hunger grows for more. Every book put into the hands of someone who might not otherwise be willing to read one is a victory for literacy. I don't care what imprint the book has on the spine or who the author is, when people are reading, literacy wins. And one way or another, a literate nation will take care of the industry that feeds its need.

This doesn't necessarily mean we will always throw the greatest literary heroes up the bookcharts, but the taller and stronger the tentpoles that bolster the industry, the better chance the unheralded geniuses have of getting into the tent at all.