Monthly Archives: January 2009
Blown to bits: NY record shops
In my everlasting search for blown to bits items I found this at www.brooklynvegan.com.
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Etherea on Avenue A (via Stupefaction)
“Pretty soon, Other Music is going to be the only record store left in Manhattan. Blog Stupefaction reports that Etherea Records will shut down this February after 13 years in the East Village. The shop, on Avenue A between 4th and 5th Streets, plans to honor all gift certificates and store credits, and until the doors close, everything is 30% off.This news, of course, comes as Mondo Kim’s empties on St. Marks and both the Times Square and Union Square Virgin Megastores limp out their final days. (Remember when chains like Virgin were the main threat to little independent record shops? The 90s were such an innocent time.) For more context, check out this New York Times map from last April illustrating Manhattan’s surviving record stores, as pointed out by a helpful Stupefaction reader.” [Racked]
I don’t think there is official word yet on Virgin Megastore Union Square actually closing, but some say it is inevitable.
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At the same day this post appeared, the Free Record Shop in the Netherlands (150 outlets) stated that it will become a games retaller..
No more shopping heroism: our collective cold turkey
Artist: Ilana Kohn http://ilanakohn.com/ .
The GDP figures for the fourth quarter of 2008 are something I’ve never seen as an adult—a decline in growth of 3.8 percent (the number is by no means final either, and is susceptible to being revised later). It’s hard to cheerlead the economy with numbers like these, but The NYT gamely tries with its headline (“Steep Slide in U.S. Economy, but Not as Dire as Forecast “) which stands in stark contrast with the lede:
The United States economy shrank at its fastest pace in a quarter century from October through December, the government reported on Friday, in the broadest accounting yet of the toll of the credit crisis. Consumer spending and business investment all but disappeared, and economists said the painful contraction was likely to continue at an alarming pace well into the summer.
Felix Salmon thinks the timid consumer has become the new normal:
I don’t see any sign of a recovery any time soon: America’s culture of competitive consumption has disappeared entirely, and it’s not coming back.
I walked past a brand-new high-end casual menswear store last night, and it struck home to me how much things have changed in the past few months. It was always a bit weird that anybody would pay hundreds of dollars for a flannel shirt, but somehow, such shops managed to survive during the boom years. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the owner today, though, or even in the years to come, should the store survive that long.
Merrill Lynch analyst David Rosenberg (who has been calling a consumer-led recession for a while) has a similar view in this dire commentary. He argues that the debt overhang from the boom must be eliminated before there is a recovery. Consumers, therefore, will be forced to save rather than spend. Rosenberg goes further and posits a lingering shift in consumer mentality (at least for baby boomers) that outlasts this necessary debt elimination:
in this post-bubble, mean-reverting process, the ability for policymakers to re-create the credit cycle, reinflate asset values and ignite a consumer-led recovery is going to be thwarted by secular changes in attitudes towards credit, savings, discretionary spending and homeownership. In other words, even after enough debt is paid off, the baby boomers’ spending years will be focused on putting their money in the coffee can.
Rosenberg elaborates on the “secular change” in consumption habits he expects, the shift from frivolity to frugality (already a popular theme in the mainstream press).
There are lags between changes in household net worth and changes in consumer spending patterns, and the $13 trillion loss to-date is a harbinger for sustained consumer spending contraction in coming years. The reason for the lags is because households only change their behavior after a shock, negative or positive, if it is considered to be permanent or at least semi-permanent. For example, the institutional changes over the decades in 401k plans and matched employer pension contributions helped reduce the steady 10-12% savings rate of the 1950, 60s and 70s down to 8% by the late 1980s. But it was the increased boomer reliance on asset inflation for savings rather than organic income that drove the savings rate down to 2% by the time the dot-com boom was in full swing in the late 1990s.
If Salmon is right about the end of the hundred dollar flannel shirt, then maybe this depression thing really isn’t all bad. But will the same marketing ideology merely be used to promote something cheaper for the time being? I’d expect the consumerist ideology to be more tenacious than that—when we can’t spend, we don’t immediately adapt to that new reality; we just experience want more painfully. We probably haven’t been in a depression mind-set long enough for our consumer behavior to change in a fundamental way and are still in the lag period Rosenberg mentions. Collectively, American consumers could be overreacting in the short term, cutting back like crazy with the assurance that we can resume spending stronger than ever when the storm passes. (Kind of like trying to catch up on sleep all at once on Saturday rather than changing one’s habits to get more sleep every night.)
Rosenberg suggests we may well come to accept our reduced means as a permanent condition just as economic trends are reversing, causing our recession mentality to persevere and act as an added drag on recovery. BUt virtually every form of public discourse is aligned against that possibility; the commercial media may be too robust to ever allow us to resign ourselves complacently to a penny-pinching mentality.
In other words, we may never reach the soul-searching stage, in which we reject the entire set of social relations that can produce a $100 flannel shirt or makes $300 jeans seem normal. It may be easier simply to suspend our consumerist hopes, manifest in so much of the material belongings that surround us, rather than interrogate those hopes and reject them for a new way of life. The competition that had been taken place through consuming has shifted to a more fundamental level—for now we are competing to hold on to jobs. Maintaining what we had already achieved will probably feel like relative progress. But the useless ethic of status competition and possessive individualism, the endless war of all against all that capitalism breeds as an inevitable by-product, won’t disappear. We are still likely to regard any cooperation brought on by hard times as a type of humiliation, even if we are grateful.
Consumerist society has for too long emphasized possessions as the route to social recognition, not collaboration. The tangibility of objects seems to substantiate the argument—the inarguable presence of more stuff seems to testify to a richer life, and marketing gives all that stuff rich meanings and fully developed fantasies we can readily enter into vicariously. And our ability to soberly question consumerism’s role in our lives is hampered not only by our hedonism (the familiar and common-sense-seeming logic of “more is better”) but by the persuasion industry’s relentless collective efforts to invalidate ways of life that are not reliant on consuming products. Lifestyle magazines and the styles sections in newspapers help by making frugality into a trend that is marked by buying certain products and shopping at certain stores. The underlying message: We can spend less but remain consumers. So we don’t need to fear.
Taking its cue from the press, the ad business will try to sell us anticonsumer goods, goods that paradoxically promise to fit in to our new recession-minded lifestyle. This not only helps ad firms continue to sell ads in a downmarket, but also helps ads maintain their prominence in the sum of our daily thinking. Ads preserve a lever in our minds, so they can reorient us to luxury when the time comes. Then it will be morning in America all over again.
Artist: Ilana Kohn http://ilanakohn.com/ .
In support of twestival
Artist: Ilana Kohn http://ilanakohn.com/ .
Always willing to party. And sometimes or more often the urge to twit. What does prevent you fromt attending Twestival. Moreover, your support benetifs social change. That is why this post is included over here!!
Mashable has partnered with Twestival to promote the world’s largest Twitter fundraising drive. Today, New York Twestival co-organizer Paull Young explains the campaign’s vision.
Social media can be a transformative force for society. For the individual, whose community now extends beyond geographical limitations into global common interest groups. For corporations, who are beginning to embrace new methods of communicating with consumers. But most importantly, social media can be a tool to enable social change.
The latest example of this is Twestival – an event taking place on February 12 in over 100 cities around the world, bringing Twitter users together with their local communities to raise money and awareness for charity:water, an innovative non-profit dedicated to providing clean water to developing communities in desperate need.
Charity:water is a natural fit with the decentralized, global ethos of the social media community. Its commitment to the aggregation of many discrete efforts, its use of the Web to provide transparent communications of its efforts, and its focus on cumulative action to do the most possible good worldwide are perfectly aligned with the key tenets of social media. Each 140-character tweet from an individual contributes to the worldwide social narrative that is Twitter, and each small donation to charity:water is another drop in the bucket that can quench the thirst of many people in need.
Twestival = Social Media for Social Change
Last September, a group of Twitter users based in London organized a live tweetup accompanied by a food drive and fundraising for a local charity. As a result of the event’s success, Twestival was borne out of the idea that if local Twitterers in several cities collaborate on an international scale, it could have a spectacular global impact.
On February 12, thousands of socially engaged Twitter users will convene at specific venues in cities across five continents to meet, mingle and make a difference. There are already events being planned across the globe from New York to Sydney, but Twitter users who don’t already have a Twestival in their cities can sign up to spearhead a local event themselves.
Twestival New York’s 20/20/20 Vision
Twestival New York will take place at M2 (formerly Mansion) in Manhattan with ticket prices starting at just $20. 100% of funds raised will be donated to charity:water, whose funding model ensures that the full amount of donations goes directly to communities in need.
Since it costs charity:water between $4,000 and $12,000 to build a well in a developing country, a donation of $20 can provide one person with fresh water for 20 years. In this spirit, Twestival New York is encouraging attendees to use “20/20/20 vision”: give $20, raise $20 and tell 20 friends.
Give $20: A minimum $20 donation for Twestival New York is a simple act to provide one person with clean water. Pay the entry fee for your Twestival local event through event sponsor Amiando to take the first step to support charity:water’s mission.
Raise $20: Take it further and raise money by inspiring those around you to donate as well, whether they can attend Twestival themselves or not. Ask four of your friends for just $5. Make it easy by encouraging them to donate using Tipjoy, one of Twestival’s global partners. Last year, Mashable founder Pete Cashmore and I joined hundreds of other people born in September in an impromptu fundraiser for charity:water, the cumulative efforts raising almost $1 million for the cause.
Simply putting a call out to your existing network for donations can have a powerful result, especially when you’re joining with thousands of other Twestival attendees around the world.
Tell 20 People: By its very nature Twestival will spark a great deal of word of mouth through the vocal digerati – this provides ample opportunity for charity:water to reach a whole new audience of potential supporters.
Raise awareness for Twestival by utilizing all the platforms at your disposal: Twitter about it (use the hashtag #twestival), blog about it, add a charity:water banner to your Web site, mention it in your Facebook status and join the Facebook Cause, share charity:water’s inspiring videos. Go old-school and send out a mass e-mail to your friends, why not?
It’s Not Just About the Party
Although Twestival is a fun event to provide Twitter users with a venue in order to meet and have a good time, it’s important to focus on the fact that the true goal is to harness social media and effect social change. The fact is that 1.1 billion people around the world don’t have clean water – that’s 1/6 of the world’s population, for scale consider that GigaTweet highlights that this audience is currently equal to the total number of tweets on Twitter.
For perspective: unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. The world’s children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water — of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from contaminated water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old.
Get Involved
There’s room for everyone in this first-of-its-kind event. Attend your local Twestival and turn your online mates into real-life friends, show the world how Twitter and social media can spark real change, and help the needy obtain safe drinking water in the process. When global citizens work together, just one tweet, one 20-dollar bill, one drop in the bucket can make an enormous, long-lasting, worldwide impact.
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Artist: Ilana Kohn http://ilanakohn.com/ .
Don’t forget your customers
I stated it before. Focus on the results desired by the customer and the experience created. Deliver this at acceptable costs for the customer and be aware of the customer’s channel costs. This post has a similar approach for contact centers
Artist: Ilana Kohn http://ilanakohn.com/
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During tough times, we are all asked to take a close look at the bottom line.
However, cost-cutting alone won’t by itself see an organisation survive the downturn in a healthy state.
What’s also needed is a customer strategy. If customers feel that money is being saved at the expense of service standards then they could soon be heading for the exit door – making the impact of recession ten times worse.
So how can companies cut costs while retaining a focus on customer satisfaction?
Here are a few ideas:
1. Cut Wastage
Examine customer-facing and back office business areas and streamline all operations to cut wasted time. The time saved will equate to cost savings and better bottom line performance. It could also lead to improved service quality and more rapid time to answer.
2. Eliminate Unnecessary Calls
Look at why customers are calling and try to eradicate the common root causes of unnecessary calls. Not only will call elimination benefit your bottom line but, if your customers are calling less, it could also boost customer satisfaction.
3. Make The Most of What You’ve Got
Maximise opportunities with your existing (people and technology) resources. Sometimes you can be too close to your own operations to see what might be obvious to others. How about getting a trusted supplier to look at your business with a fresh pair of eyes?
4. Deliver Holistic Customer Management
Do your customer care, telesales, collections and service departments look at customers in a co-ordinated way, or do they have separate strategies and maintain separate customer records? By bringing strategies and records together, companies can more effectively manage the ‘customer lifecycle’ – helping spot opportunities to upsell and cross sell, incentivise customers at particular points along the ‘customer journey’, and improve service levels
5. Recognise the Value of Data
The customer contact centre is often a company’s most valuable source of customer data – yet many organisations are failing to make the most of it. That can be remedied by taking advantage of the richness of today’s analytical and reporting tools – from Datamart (data consolidation and analysis) solutions, to MI reporting and speech analytics tools. Not only can customer service operators access near-real-time feedback on what their customers are saying and doing, but they can also do so in an automated way – saving valuable management time and money.
6. Future-proof your technology
Make sure whatever you invest in today is future-ready. See if there are realistic ways to make your current infrastructure ready – and if not, take the time to determine what your ‘go forward’ strategy is. You might be surprised that newer technologies often have lower install and maintenance costs – as well as enabling higher customer service – thus providing an unquestionable ROI even in a tough economy.
7. Extend customer service beyond your contact centre
When contact centre advisors aren’t able to answer a particular customer query it’s important that they can rapidly access knowledge experts outside the contact centre in order to maintain service standards. That calls for unified technology solutions – and technology that supports ‘presence’, enabling advisors to see what experts, with what skills, are available at any point in time.
8. Ensure your contact centre operations are unified
If customers look at your organisation as a single entity then it’s important that your customer contact centres operate as a single entity too. Regardless of how far apart your offices and buildings are, ensure that you have modern technology solutions that can unify all your customer contact points, CRM systems and management reporting – ensuring that calls are answered promptly, by advisors with the right skills, and up-to-date information, wherever they happen to be located.
9. Check the financial stability of your partners
Especially during the current recessionary times. The consequences of being tied into a failing vendor for upgrades and support could have dire consequences.
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Artist: Ilana Kohn http://ilanakohn.com/
If i could get as much invitations for Valentine as from the Social Networks
Dave Taylors wrote a nice post about the surge of upcoming social networks. In my humble opinion, he reflects the current state we are in. Wonder whether any really breakthrough will take place in 2009!!
Artist: Barbara Claustre www.barbaraclaustre.com
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From Mashable! written by Dave Taylor
timeDave Taylor is the author of both Ask Dave Taylor.com and the Business Blog at Intuitive.com. You can find him online – and see what social networks he prefers to use – at Dave Taylor Online.com.
I’ve been keeping track of what I call my invitation stream for a few weeks now and am impressed with just how many social networks there are. I can tell because of the frequency with which I get these invitations to sites that I’ve never heard of, from people I don’t know.
For example, in the last week or two I have seen invitations to join my ostensible circle of friends on Loopt, Zorpia, Kiwibox, TripIt, Jhoos, indiashines, SiliconIndia, Grouply, Going.com and Affluence.org.
Then there are the social networks where I’m already signed up, but never hear anything about nor use, like Orkut, Plaxo and Ryze. They’re still around, presumably some people still dig ‘em, but as far as I can tell, they’re just not big players in the market. Or at least the slice of the market where I live, both in a physical and digital sense.
But I’m still getting these invitations. For me, this leads to the obvious question: when is it time to jump into another social network? This could be one of the key questions of our digitally connected age, the question of when you should expand your online social networks.
Filtering our digital experiences
In the physical world it’s rather straightforward. As you move into new activities, join new groups or gain new friends, you are introduced to new groups of people and organizations, de facto expanding your social circles based on need and demand. There’s also a useful inherent filter here too: people whom you don’t know are unlikely to be successful inviting you to join their club, come to their meeting or hang out with their friends.
Perhaps that’s how we should be filtering our digital experiences too. If we imagine that our friends can be ranked by how well we know them, trust them and can rely on their judgment, then our closest friends probably have carte blanche to invite us to join new and otherwise unknown groups, organizations or events. You’ve probably done this already without thinking about it, attending a party because your friend promised it’d be fun or you’d meet someone interesting, while skipping the rave that heavily pierced Hank in the mailroom swears is the bomb.
This is how I filter out what social networks I should join. The upside? If the invitation comes from someone who isn’t in my closest circle of friends, I am far more likely to ignore it. If it is from a good friend, I still want to know why they think I should join YASN (yet another social network, of course), and if it’s from someone I don’t know (as many are) then, well, I just delete it.
Joining a community
Sometimes you want to join a social network without a reference or recommendation simply because you want to become part of that community. This is more likely to be an online social network organized around a common belief or set of values (for example, a support group for a particular illness), but ultimately your level of satisfaction with the network is dependent on how pleasant and welcoming the current members are since it is a social network.
Building a network
There’s a flip side to this issue that I’d like to remind those of you who seek to invite me to join your favorite social network, the importance of explaining in the invitation message itself who you are, how we know each other and why you believe we should connect. That way you can jog my memory and greatly increase the chance of me joining the new community and connecting with you.
social-networkIn this day of measuring popularity based on how many Facebook friends you have, how many people follow you on Twitter and how many subscribe to your blog, I think we should all operate under the assumption that other people are more likely to not remember you than to know exactly who you are when they receive that all-important invitation to connect or link.
Now let’s get back to the business of linking and not just building these social networks, but learning how to use them effectively and entertainingly!
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Artist: Barbara Claustre www.barbaraclaustre.com
My only post you need to read: get inspired for Valentine
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Despite Harvard Business Review’s efforts to revamp their print edition (with a zippier format, hip graphics and bite-size summaries) and to expand their online initiatives, HBR has always felt behind the times. Even when HBR has addressed issues critical to my own research or summarized the research of my friends and colleagues, reading the Harvard Business Review has always left me feeling more anxious than inspired about the future of organizations.
But the February 2009 issue is different.
This month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review contains The Only HBR Article You Need to Read.
That article? Gary Hamel’s Moon Shots for Management.
Moon Shots for Management is a Valentine to progressive managers everywhere .
The article lists 25 challenges that make up the Agenda for Management Innovation, an effort to reinvent management as a concept and practice and to create new ways of mobilizing and organizing our collective activity. The list was culled from conversations among 35 “veteran academics, new-age management thinkers, progressive CEOs, and venture capitalists” at a conference sponsored by MLab , a research/practice institute co-founded by Gary Hamel & Julian Birkinshaw.
[The list is in its own post, after this one.]
The 25 goals on the list compose “a roster of make-or-break challenges — management moon shots– that should focus the energies of management innovators.”
Scanning the list, you’ll note that not a single item is new.
If you track conversations about sustainability , complexity , innovation, social networking , organizational democracy , employee engagement , social responsibility, non-profit for-purpose business , reinventing management education , changing the world, positive organization scholarship , or for that matter any other progressive organizational issue, you’ll see something from your focus area represented in this list.
What is new, though, is that these 25 items are all on an agenda TOGETHER .
Looking at the whole package of challenges encourages us to imagine working on the issues closest to us, those within our span of influence, in ways that allow our focused efforts to generate multiple values streams. That is, working on any one item with the big picture in mind can move forward several goals at once.
Imagine the future of organizations if we saw these items not as a laundry list of things we “ought” to do, but rather as description of what we could do. Talk about Saving the World at Work !!
Wouldn’t it be great to work in organizations where we “Empower the renegades and disarm the reactionaries” ? (#16)
How about working at non-profits and for-profit companies that “Enable communities of passion” ? (# 22)
Even #4, “Eliminate the pathologies of formal hierarchy” looks possible!
(I acknowledge that this one is somewhat ironic, coming as it does from HBR, a bastion of capitalist, “free-market” privilege. But I digress).
Just two things are missing from this article: (1) recommendations for how to put this agenda into action and (2) a concrete invitation to join in the work. But I hope expect that the folks at MLab have a plan. I look forward to seeing the plan unfold and to finding ways to link my work to this agenda.
For starters, we’re all invited to to the HBR site to participate in a survey where we can rate the importance of these 25 items (to our company) and report on any progress our organization has made towards each of these challenges. Then, you might check some of the links in this post to find out more about MLab and read about the progressive organizational movements that have helped to generate and sustain enthusiasm about these challenges.
And, just because this article is The Only HBR Article You Need to Read, don’t imagine that reading it is enough. You should also:
(1) Go to the HBR site (if you can get behind the pay wall),
(2) Print out/download a copy of Moon Shots for Management
(3) Share the article with some colleagues & friends, (or, send them a link to the list, using the ShareThis button)
(4) Talk about it, think about it, and then …
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Artist: Jacob Steingroot www.catsaregrey.com
Ego or IQ: will posting create a learning capability
A post of Rob Horning at ww.popmatters.com is included. It reflects on my earlier post about ego versus knowlegde. And it also gives food of thought whether posting is broadcasting or creating a learning capabity for individuals within a network.
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Artist Jacob Steingroot www.catsaregrey.com
Stephen Baker had a recent BusinessWeek article (via PSFK) that explores the kind of labor arrangement that by and large makes PopMatters possible: It’s called “Will Work for Praise.”
The gist is this: The Web makes it possible to aggregate the labor of volunteers, who hope to be paid in publicity—who want to build their “personal brand” and feel like “mini-Oprahs.” The marketing-oriented site Baker mainly looks at is reminiscent of the “BzzAgents” who offer to promote products for free, merely so that they can feel as though they have been an “influencer”. Such is the centrality of marketing in our culture (it is arguably our culture’s dominant, defining discourse) that people seek to to seize some of its relevance by merely mimicking it—they don’t care what they are influencing people to do as long as they are speaking the language of influence, channeling its power through themselves and thereby becoming socially relevant.
Laura Sweet…searches intently, unearthing such bizarre treasures for sale as necklaces for trees and tattoo-covered pigs. As usual, she posts them on a shopping site called ThisNext.com. Asked why in the world she spends so many hours each week working for free, she answers: “It’s a labor of love.”
Later this morning, a half-hour’s drive to the west, a serial entrepreneur named Gordon Gould strolls into the Santa Monica offices of ThisNext. Gould has managed to entice an army of volunteers, including Sweet, to pour passion and intelligence into his site for free. Traffic on ThisNext is soaring, with unique visits nearly tripling in a year, to 3.5 million monthly. What’s in it for the volunteer workers? “They can build their brands,” Gould says. “In their niches, they can become mini-Oprahs.”
That sounds a lot like he’s saying “My volunteers are daydreaming dupes.” And maybe that’s right. Gould seems pretty cavalier about his star contributors, assuming that the amount of volunteer labor he can throw at any problem compensates for the singularity of any individual’s efforts. Baker writes, “The trick in the volunteer economy is less to keep a superstar from quitting than to make sure that plenty of eager volunteers are ready to work to take her place.” Volunteer laborers of this sort are almost always implicitly assumed to be gullible and deluded, misunderstanding what their real motive should be—namely moneymaking. Free labor devalues paid labor, of course, and challenges the underlying concept of labor itself: Work is compensated in wages because it is presumed to be a disutility—a pain in the ass. What we do for free is socially regarded as hobby activity by definition; it’s unserious, leisurely play.
Consequently, uncompensated work tends to be regarded as inherently suspect, as is the case with the way “amateur” critics online are often regarded by the professionals they are rapidly superseding. An article (annoyingly firewalled) in the Columbia Journalism Review by David Hajdu offers a good example. He quotes New Republic writer Leon Wieseltier:
Every crisis in criticism supposes that it is unprecedented, he says, but now there really is a new reason for alarm. Criticism has always been a mixture of opinion and judgment, judgment being something more learned and more seasoned and more intellectually ambitious than mere opinion. But beginning with Amazon, which made anybody who could type into a book reviewer, and now as the Web sites and the blogs have proliferated, we have entered a nightmare of opinion-making. This culture of outbursts, and the weird and totally unwarranted authority that it has been granted, has been responsible for a collapse of the distinction between opinion and judgment. It’s one of the baleful consequences of the democratization of expression by the Web.
This seems like pure elitism to me. The chief distinction between “judgment” and “opinion” in his account basically boils down to whether or not the opinion giver is properly credentialed, and that is typically a matter of who you know and who is paying you. It’s not as though book reviewing is phenomenology. The problem is that the “weird and totally unwarranted authority” of noncommercial critics threatens to devalue the cultural capital of people like Wieseltier, which is why they bluster to each other, trying to discredit uninstitutionalized opinion. Reviews on Amazon are generally not “outbursts” but often attempts to articulate a useful explanation of a work’s value. And the reviewers here, many written by academics, don’t presume a “weird authority.” What’s weird is the monopoly on judgment that crypto-sages like Wieseltier seem to believe is their unique entitlement.
Worse, the implication is that judgment as exercised by the wise Wieseltiers of the world should do nothing to truly educate their readers, who, perpetually incapable of their own judgment, remain ignorant sieves waiting to have wisdom poured through them. The “baleful consequences” of democratization are that Wieseltier faces more competition, and his publishing-world connections aren’t as valuable anymore. Wieseltier basically admits he has no stake in seeing cultural capital more widely distributed and shared in the world; instead, covetous of its relative value, he would like to keep opinion making as hierarchical as possible. (Requiring that a capitalist bankroll you in order for you to have credibility is a fine way of accomplishing that end.)
So paid critics often don’t have the best interests of readers in mind; they want to undermine readers’ feelings of expertise. Also, as Hajdu details, paid journalists often end up co-opted by the entertainment industry that readers expect them to evaluate objectively. “Music critics, too, feel the pressure to make nice. In an era in which home-studio software and social networking sites have greatly simplified the production and the distribution of popular music, the sheer quantity of new releases by unknown artists has, among other effects, made it more tempting to accentuate the positive.” Since the music-business is threatened by disintermediation, it behooves its support system in the print media to give it a boost. The writers end up as an adjunct of that entertainment industry, working for the big media companies themselves. Otherwise, constraints on their editors force writers to eschew critical discourse for consumer-guide-style advice.
I’m not sure how the criticism on PopMatters is regarded out in the world. But in many ways, the volunteer status of most contributors makes the criticism published here potentially more valuable—it vouches, at least, for the writing’s integrity (though I suppose one could argue that, like underpaid judges, unpaid critics may merely be susceptible to being bought off more easily by PR people with tickets to shows and free DVDs and the like). Thanks to internet publishing, it becomes possible to read a different kind of critical voice—sure, one that emulates the paid press at times, but one that is more likely to preserve an earnest sense of its critical mission. Cynicism is thereby usually reserved for deserving subjects. The writing can grow indulgent in places, but in general there is a sincere effort to be disciplined by the craft of criticism itself, rather than the need to be snappy, or to accommodate column-space concerns, or attract advertisers. I know, that’s hopelessly idealistic, but it’s an ideal that could only ever blossom outside of capitalist relations.
Anyway, as more outlets for uncompensated content creation proliferate on the Web—Amazon.com and social networks being the most conspicuous ones right now—the perception that it’s all hobby writing and/or self-branding online (it’s all “weird” pseudoauthority; “baleful” democratization; untoward “outbursts” of silly plebes with their silly opinions) will become even more entrenched. Sites may have to go more explicitly capitalist—pay writers, collect subscriptions, feature advertising, etc.—to ensure that they are regarded as “professional” and worthy of being read by people who otherwise limit their consumption of amateur copy to those they have friended.
Artist Jacob Steingroot www.catsaregrey.com
