Category Archives: Blogs

Sunday media musings: From General Shinseki to Ancestry.com

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Just a few random checks of the news.

• Joe Klein, in a Time Magazine column, calls for Eric Shinseki’s resignation (“Ten Years After: A National Disgrace“).

Eric Shinseki, the secretary of veterans Affairs, should be the leading advocate for these troops. He should have been everywhere in the days after the massacre, promoting those veterans–and they exist all over in this country–who are fabulous employees, fabulous first responders, brilliant entrepreneurs in both the public and private sectors. But here’s a question: When was the last time you saw Shinseki say or do anything in public? He is universally regarded as an exemplary man. But even his supporters say he’s old-school military, stoic, wary of the press. And his detractors, who are legion among the generation of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, say he lacks the creativity and leadership skills to deal with Veterans Affairs’ mind-boggling problems, like the 900,000 unprocessed disability cases. In any event, he has been in office for four years, and the problems our veterans face are worse than ever–and about to get still worse as the military demobilizes tens of thousands of additional troops in the next few years. It is time for him to step down.

• A couple of names jumped out at me from today’s Star-Advertiser obituaries–Harry Boranian, civil service director in the administration of the late Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi, and former Honolulu fire chief Boniface Aiu, who also served during the Fasi years. The Star-Advertiser certainly missed an opportunity to look back at that period through the lives of these two men, but they don’t seem to put much effort into obituaries any more, it seems.

• One of my classmates from the University High School Class of 1965 (OMG! So long ago!) sent around a link to a story that appeared in Vogue a couple of years ago featuring Sylvia Nolan, another member of our graduating class of 80-something people (“Focus on Costume Design:
A talk with Sylvia Nolan, Resident Costume Designer at the Metropolitan Opera“).

• From the Of Two Minds blog written by my friend and Lanai High School grad Chuck Smith: Why do we read blogs?

Though it may seem self-evident to those in the blogosphere, the question “why do we read blogs?” directs a critical light on our media, culture and society.

The primary reason we read blogs is the abject failure of the mainstream media:

1. The mainstream media has failed to provide independent analysis of official policy and data.

2. The mainstream media’s spectrum of “opinion” is narrow and superficial, limited to columnists who repeat the same canned, increasingly disconnected-from-reality ideological perspectives.

• My very talented cousin, Leslie Madsen-Brooks, now an assistant professor of history at Boise State University, has a very interesting article in The Blue Review comparing Wikipedia to Ancestry.com (“Engendering Online History–Wikipedia vs. Ancestry.com: Historianship at a crossroads“). She finds both a large gender divide (around 65% of Ancestry users are female, while women make up only 8.5% of Wikipedia editors. And she analyzes another interesting difference, Ancestry’s reliance on primary documents vs. Wikipedia’s reluctance to rely on primary sources. Both have implications for styles of blogging, don’t you think? Anyway, good stuff.

Fair warning: Moderation

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Yes, it’s true.

I do occasionally moderate your comments.

I don’t have any hard and fast rules to refer you to. If anyone is really into rule making, perhaps you can suggest a workable set of rules.

Sometimes I delete things that strike me as potentially libelous or, more typically, are just unnecessarily nasty.

In a few cases, I will simply edit and approve the edited comment. Other times I just delete in total.

On still other occasions, someone will comment several times on the same issue using different pseudonyms. I do try to cut those off.

My main goal is to reward serious and substantive exchanges of views, while limiting those who just want to “talk stink.”

If you use a valid email address, I will often try to contact you prior to editing or deleting a comment. But I don’t have any qualms about deleting anonymous comments that aren’t constructive.

And, by the way, insults about the blogger by anonymous commenters are a quick way to find future comments blocked.

As I say, fair warning.

Civil Beat criticized for withholding data on subscribers

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Publisher and journalist Dave Pellegrin suggests that it’s time for Civil Beat to become more transparent.

Last week Andrew Sullivan announced he was separating his blog (The Dish) from The Daily Beast and taking it independent — to be supported by paid subscriptions. Within a couple of days after making his first appeal, he showed his readers the results.

We know how many paid subscribers Sullivan has, the average subscription amount, even the break-down state-by-state. That transparency should be applauded.

Contrast that to Civil Beat, which, going on three years, still has not released its number of paid subscribers — even, apparently, to its own staff. That means CB employees have no idea of the revenue of the company they work for, nor of its profitability.

It’s an outmoded way of doing business. Loyal subscribers and employees alike would benefit from having such basic information. Long overdue for CB to be more open.

– Dave

Subscriptions and readership have been important metrics in the publishing industry, where these data are important indicators of value for advertiser and readers as well, it seems. But with Civil Beat pursuing an ad-free business model, they haven’t been under the same pressure for disclosure.

How portable is Sullivan’s independent, subscription model? Here’s another view (“The Dish Goes Indie: Big Change for Blogging, or Just for Andrew Sullivan?“).

Looking at whiteness, masculinity, and gun violence

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If you don’t read anything else today, please do check out this post on my cousin’s blog, ClutterMuseum.com (“Into the heart of whiteness and gun violence“).

Leslie Madsen-Brooks is a fine writer and an astute cultural observer (and her other half is no slouch at the keyboard, either). Here’s part of what Leslie says about herself.

To my great surprise, I live in Idaho, where I am an assistant professor of history. I specialize in U.S., gender, and public history, with extra-special emphases on women in science, the democratization of public history practice, and the history of museums, zoos, botanical gardens, and the like.

We’ve never met, at least not as adults. Her mother and I are first cousins, so I guess that makes us 2nd cousins. I highly recommend her Clutter Museum blog, and several others she maintains, as well.

Her post on whiteness brings her own analysis together with a review of some of the best being written by others in response to the Newtown, CT shootings.

Her selection of sources is enlightening, for me at least.

Michael Kimmel and Cliff Leek, writing in the Huffington Post:

In the last 30 years 90% of shootings at elementary and high schools in the U.S. have been perpetrated by young white men. And, 80% of the 13 mass murders perpetrated by individuals aged 20 or under in the last 30 years have also been committed by white men. There is clearly something happening here that is not only tied to gender, but also to race.

Leslie calls it “the white elephant in the room.”

She also quotes an article by Richard Florida in The Atlantic reporting on surprising findings from a statistical study of gun violence. This finding is a shocker.

It’s hard to quantify political rhetoric, but we can distinguish blue from red states. Taking the voting patterns from the 2008 presidential election, we found a striking pattern: Firearm-related deaths were positively associated with states that voted for McCain (.66) and negatively associated with states that voted for Obama (-.66). Though this association is likely to infuriate many people, the statistics are unmistakable. Partisan affiliations alone cannot explain them; most likely they stem from two broader, underlying factors—the economic and employment makeup of the states and their policies toward guns and gun ownership.

In a state where using the term “haole” can generate waves of hostile reactions, the idea that whiteness and white culture may have its darker side is challenging indeed.