Top 25 undercovered news stories in the United States. [via Bird on a Wire]
Archives for April 2000
From the “I’m sure I tested this theory out in college” file:
Baseball season
starts today! At least it does for most teams, my Expos included.
Outrageous:
It seems that the editors of US-based magazines are selling out their editorial space – to the DEA. Now, the line between edit and ad isn’t as clear as it used to be – in the old church-and-state days. My old high school friend Tyler is even leading the charge to dismantling the line altogether with his magazine Wallpaper*, which features an in-house ad agency, I understand.
That said, media outlets have always been commercial enterprises, and I’ve read my Chomsky. I know what’s what. I know, intellectually, that there is no purity. That much (if not most) editorial content is bought and paid for. And that even that which isn’t bought outright overwhelmingly supports a non-critical stance towards the commercialism etc. I’m not naive!
But still – there’s a difference. Magazines aren’t supposed to be outright gov’t propoganda tools. Salon reports that they have been just that.
I should add one thing – I don’t have a problem with Wallpaper* doing their thing, particularly. It’s a fashion mag, or a lifestyle mag – you know what you’re getting. If they did hard news, that would be a different story. In truth I kind of admire the ballsiness Tyler and his crew had in putting the whole thing together.
Now Wallpaper*
Wallpaper* they didn’t have a website at all for the longest time, and I’m pretty sure that they looked at the web pretty disdainfully in terms of design etc. But check out their site. It’s not even launched and it’s shitty. It looks exactly like the old webzine Scroll which was produced in 1997 by Behavior New Media here in Montreal – and that no one ever read – mostly (in my opinion) cause the interface, award-winner though it was – was practically unusable.
