Our Man in Abiko's Blog, page 26
March 13, 2012
A BIT MORE THAN 15 SECONDS, BUT STILL NO FAME
Here's Our Man pontificating about Reconstructing 3/11. Perhaps he should think about changing his shirt for all these video things, Reconstructing His Wardrobe...?
March 11, 2012
OUR MAN'S 15 SECONDS OF FAME
You may need to be in Google to see this TV Asahi clip from last night's 3/11 disaster anniversary special. And also, don't blink you'll miss it. Love that they zoomed in on "Quakebook" and my tweet.
Cheers, Asahi!
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzGe7e3LT9uKbDBGTEV4cGJSbldzMmM5Y18wN3FpUQ/edit?pli=1
March 9, 2012
JAMIE AND THE TRUTH ABOUT VOLUNTEERING AFTER 3/11
Our Man is honoured that Jamie saw fit to join his Reconstructing 3/11 project. And that he did this Skype interview for him. You can go get the book now, OK?
March 6, 2012
SHOULDER TO SHOULDER
Our Man hasn't liked the phrase "standing shoulder to shoulder" ever since Tony Blair used it to describe his preferred position with George W. Bush, but it has to be said, this is exactly the phrase to use right now.
Our Man stands shoulder to shoulder with anyone who has been bullied by a certain fantasist "journalist" who is thriving on the oxygen of notoriety. Our Man will not name him or speak of him again to avoid fueling his fantasies. His latest enemies appear to be Jake Adelstein, Quakebook and Our Man.
Well, all Our Man would like to say on this matter is he prefers to define himself by his friends and allies, not his enemies.
That is all.
February 28, 2012
February 17, 2012
WE ARE THE MEDIA MOGULS
Our Man has far too many irons in the fire to do much more with this post than write a few disjointed thoughts and hope that you, dear reader, can bear with him while he tries to pull it all together before bedtime. Or perhaps he will leave it to you to figure out. He's sure you have a better clue than he does. Anyway, here goes nothing...Amid the hypocrisy of The Sun screaming a witch hunt against it after "Fleet Street legends" were busted and had cops going through their bins and sullying their public reputations, the Murdoch minions have suddenly discovered due process, rule of law, human rights and innocent until proven guilty. Ahhh, bless.
This must be the reasoning behind Murdoch announcing the coming of The Sun on Sunday to replace CSI News of The World -- to add a principled voice amid the muck that the other Sundays churn out.
You know what? Our Man is beginning
not to care any more.
Sure, you, dear reader, are no doubt ahead of him already, but Murdoch's time is up. Him and all his ilk.
Because, in the age of the internet, we don't need him. We don't need a lot of things Our Man grew up believing we needed. We don't need newspapers to know the news. We don't need publishers to publish books. We don't need the middleman to know the man.
Granted, we are not quite there yet - folk still think we need the middleman, the branding, ("How do I know it's true unless Anderson Cooper read it from an auto-prompt?") but Our Man would venture to say that we don't.
President Obama says he is shit hot. Michael Moore says he is not. We can go to both their twitter feeds and decide for ourselves which is full of more shit. Christopher Johnson says some bollocks about X, we can go to X's twitter stream and decide for ourselves. We have become the journalist, unless we are too lazy to do the research. But then,
we are no lazier than the pros.
Are they doing anything other than typing in a news release and doing a Google search? In fact, just one of the two.
Sure, we still need pro journos to dig out the stories that Joe Blogger can't get time to get to. But the pros don't need the middleman. Why can't they go straight to the reader with their story, and sell it directly to them? In time they will. The Abiko Free Press is Our Man's attempt to prove it. At the moment we still rely on Amazon, but only because we think we need to.
It strikes Our Man that if bloggers are the reporters, Twitter the editor, we, the people, are the media moguls.
Just not all of us have figured that out. Certainly not Our Man yet, but he's getting there.
Night all.
