A self-fulfilling iProphecy?

Tomorrow, our saviour cometh, and he’s doing signings (credit card) at JB Hi Fi for about a grand.

But is it just me detecting a note of self-fulfilling prophecy to media reviews of the iPad’s impending rescue of print media?

Image by Jun Selta

There has been a ‘build it and they will come attitude’ for months, both from Jobs on the iPad andApp store platform, but also from media outlets sharpening their incisors over new potential revenue streams.

Is it any wonder, that while tech reviewers have been less than kind to the ipad, editors and publishers have lent some dramatic headlines to the forthcoming ‘game changer’:

‘iPad could save newspapers and attract ad dollars’  The Australian, April 12, 2010

It like advertising to both readers and advertisers at once – ‘Junkies AND dealers. New crack shipment Friday’. It’s somewhat ironic that a Murdoch-owned publication under a looming pay wall is trumpeting  a subscription model – Or is it not at all? Sometimes you can be so sarcastic that even YOU don’t know what you mean.

The big question yet to be answered is: how many people will buy a newspaper subscription application — and yes, there will be an app for The Australian available for the iPad as soon as it launches in Australia in a few weeks,’Mark Day, The Australian. April 12, 2010.

Worse still, is the mutual back-patting between Jobs and the media outlets, one influential German publisher said we should “Sit down once a day and pray to thank Steve Jobs that he is saving the publishing industry. For his part, Jobs has participated in the circle jerk, stating he believes in proffesional journalism (epecially when he gets a cut).

Like most articles on the iPad release, this very article will conclude in the same way:

‘Time will tell if the new iPad will save our salaries, er I mean newspapers, and incredibly boost advertising opportunities for fantastic advertisers such ascarsales.com, the only way to buy a car. The iPad’s sleek, sexy and designer curves hide its complete lack of nessesity on the modern tech market, but whatever, jobs from Jobs, and at least you can finger your way through the new Andy Park’s blog iPad app, available soon on iTunes.’

Why I love and hate Jon Stewart.

Sycophants be still. Yes, he reigns supreme over US political satire, and okay, he ages gracefully with a salt and pepper coiffure.

My thigh tattoo which was not fully thought through. Image by Mez Lov

But for all the FOX News lampooning, the leftist scorn at hellfire Tea Party hicks, pot shots at Glenn Beck’s blackboard and deliciously sardonic Sarah Palin mockery there is a niggling disquiet. Despite my greatest saccharine affections for him, there’s a gnawing unease that asks the coldest question of media commentary:

To present without conviction is to convict without presentation.

The Daily Show disclaimer is thus:

“The show you are about to watch is a news parody. Its stories are not fact checked. Its reporters are not journalists. And its opinions are not fully thought through.”

Stewart’s ability to stand outside accountable journalistic practice and justifiable political reasoning, at once makes his views dismissible and yet incredibly irresistible. Most of the FOX News jibes come back to the fact that they are ‘bound’ by journalistic duties, whereas he is not.

Although Stewart is both transparent in his disqualification and obvious at times with his viewpoint (to the point that you are in no doubt about his inclinations), I can’t help but feel that there is a missed opportunity here. Which is why there seems to be an increasing amount of serious political chit chat with authors, minor senators and US congressmen.

If you believe the media stands as a democratic regulator, you must also accept that the media must generate an audience and I suppose comedy is an attractive beacon. But to what extent does this interfere with the democratic reasoning? Isn’t that just what FOX News does? Explosive, confrontational entertainment rather than bipartisan news reporting? Agreat point was made at the Paley Center (sic) for Media in a discussion for reaching an audience, evaluating Jon Stewart’s benefit in this light.

Jon Stewart is a political satirist, but the unintended effect of his popularity is that he now has the influence to educate and enliven public debate. Does this contravene the charter of a political satirist? Sounds more like a Journalistic charter to me.

Digital Electioneering

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.”

President Obama, Hampton University Commencement Address, 2010.

It’s ironic that the most tech savvy President, the Democrat with an email list of 13 million frommy.barakobama.com, is suddenly starting to spurn technology. But the extent to which information technology is influencing media consumption is undeniable, to the point that traditional media (TV, press, radio) is being sidelined from the electioneering that it has conventionally hung its circulation hat on.

‘It is (social media/technology) useful for making politicans look like they have a personality, it allows them to directly talk to people that haven’t already been able to do before because all other media, TV for example, they don’t know who they are talking to.’

– The Guardian’s  new media correspondent, Jemima Kiss.

After Gordon Brown’s fabulous off-camera gaffe, ‘Bigot-gate’,(can we please move on from Watergate, is there no other political suffix denoting scandal?) he emailed supporters his apology before appearing for a doorstop in front of TV and press. It was only perforce of the fact that it was such a monumental barnstorming balls-up that he needed to front the cameras.

Again, traditional mud slinging that would have been reserved for the press club appearance or a front lawn volley was robbed from journos with the Conservatives ‘Cash Gordon‘ facebook campaign, although it did kind of back fire.

“The role of Twitter and You Tube has a big impact on the news cycles, speeding them up, giving people access directly to politicains but also directly to journalists’.

– Matthew McGregor from Blue State Digital, creators of my.barakobama.com.

But as to whether clicks and tweets convert to votes is perhaps Obama’s original point. And that still applies to views or reads in the old media guard. It does not necessarily make people passionate, it just facilitates the conversation that perhaps traditional media platforms will continue to miss out on.

Man over board love-panther or how not to fake your own death.

Patrick McDermott, Olivia Newton John’s ex lover who looks like a suave eurasian daytime TV love-pather, was found last month.It seems he faked his own death by slipping over board to avoid a possible jail sentence, unpaid child support and mounting debts.

Love-panther, top swimmer and Father of The Year.

It turns out, an unusual amount of people in the small Mexican town of Puerto Valla were inordinately interested in the investigation into his disappearance and their IP addresses were logged and followed. McDermott in hiding could not resist narcissistically following his own scent trail and took the bait.

A faked disappearance is so irresistible. It reeks of Raymond Chandler meets American’s Most Wanted; insert stressed exec/celeb/father-of-four, insert mostly white-collar crime with a gigantic payout, insert hotel room in a distant land without an extradition treaty, a bedspread of cash and comical moustache disguises. Ronnie Biggs has to personify this genre although he ultimately won the game by handing himself in AND being released from prison on humanitarian grounds. It would only have been sweeter if he skipped out of the UK then. A cheeky postcard from a Barbados hospice – triple check mate, Home Office.

As with Biggs, it seems the limey pull of ‘real’ beans and ‘proper’ tea drags the wayward fraudster home. The Canoe Man story gripped the UK in 2008, I remember it was all that was talked about in offices and pubs around the country. Again it was the great accountability of the internet that brought John Darwin and his wife down after faking John’s death at sea and hiding him in the back bedroom to collect the insurance pay out. Pity they were pictured (below) by a real estate agent as just one more happy british retiree couple buying a unit in Panama some months later.

'Does the unit have water views?, my husband so loves to canoe at night'

Duping your family (the Darwin’s have two sons who were not complicit) into thinking you have died was too much for John Darwin and he turned himself in, claiming memory loss. Defence lawyers and tv writers around the world picked up a pen when that story broke.

A 38 year-old Indiana man named Markus Shrenker recently attempted the disappearing trick.

Usual story, down-and-out finances, the Mrs has filed for divorce, he’s riped of friends in a annuities scheme, a passionate pilot, a seemingly intelligent guy but he cocked up his disappearance beautifully. Radioing in a distress call from his single engine Piper Malibu, Shrenker parachutes to safety while military aircraft are dispatched to tail the plane. They notice the cockpit hatch opened from the inside and the lights off and the wreckage shows no sign of blood or Shrenker. He then turns up with ‘memory loss’ in Alaska, authorities find google results “how to jump out of a plane while parachuting’ on his pc and he is then tracked to a Florida campground where he is found alive in a tent with slit wrists. Fail.

How exactly do you disappear? A pathological ability to leave everything and everyone you ever knew is a great start. Only the quiet and clean get away with it. Planning too, fastidious, secretive planning of the kind that would make you a double agent in your own life. The digital trace: internet log ins, social media, CCTV all creates a trail that in a post-digital age, is all too easy to find.

Finances. A tough one to rinse clean, you would always need assistance from a second party and lastly, loved ones. Its the people closest to you that you would have to dupe the most, not the nameless authorities at the helm of your investigation.

I remember once visiting the site of a mysterious plane crash in New South Wales on a day tour. Standing at a public lookout, the tour guide hammily recounted the mysterious tale of a light airplane disappearing and mentioned the conjecture surrounding the crew’s disappearance, did they fake their own death? Were bribes and drugs involved?

Suddenly from the back of the crowd young woman in tears screamed; ‘he was my dad and that’s bullshit you arsehole’.

It turned out that that very day happened to be the ten year anniversary of the crash and some of the men’s families had come to hold a small vigil. After a stunned silence the sheepish guide stuttered a qualification and an awkward apology and the woman and her family skulked off upset. Naturally the tour guide said little on the ride back.

How would you fake your own death or disappearance? Could you get away with it?

Long, Long Lunch.

A soupy broth of PR swans, channel Seven pseudo chefs, wine bloggers and Hong Kong journos, all curdling in the St Kilda Rd sun – thus goes the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival World’s Longest Lunch. Close to a thousand baking diners are lined up down the St Kilda Rd northbound service lane, as if two Indian industrialist empires are being wed together – sans glittering elephants (although there are Chinese Dragons). Roughly half are frantically photo-digitizing the table setting, taking high res snaps before racing back to the airport, the other half (mine) are on the “plus one” lamb and slowly unbuttoning our clothes. To my right, a seemingly important restaurant industry squawker wastes no time in putting his hand on my knee. To my left, after certain coded pleasantries – “Oh I’m with Lara, I only got a call this morning” – I discover another “plus one infiltrator”. You can tell us, the late notice friends who got facebooked at 10am with an offer to take the spare seat of GQ’s wine writer. That’s exactly how I found myself sitting on the media table at the World’s Longest Lunch, accepting limitless top ups from model agency waiters and generally pretending to matter.

And then the kisses start. The clawing, gnashing, networking-kiss-greetings, which always accompany a middle distance scan for the next relevant foot hold. And I’m the guy without a card and make poor covering jokes wondering about a business card of a business card maker – which thankfully no one hears. A yahoo account scrawled across the back of their own card is as pariah-chic as a pants suit mother made you from old drapes. The cards pile up next to my entrée of four seasons dumpling and Beijing duck. Several women in raffia hats cruise past the pack, they had done this before. Eyeing up a potential media victims to greet and then arranging to send them a case of obscure French rose they are currently spruiking. It’s essentially one long speed dating exercise to swap cards without the usual obstacles of walls, doors and extraneous public foodie rubberneckers. I heard; “…now we must get together and do that thing with Adrian/Sue/Jacques..” 76 times between entrée and main – a delicious slow cooked lamb.

The sun is so hot and the warm white wine is making everyone giddy, except the Hong Kong journo’s photographer, who is obsessively photographing leaves that have fallen on the table setting. I look up and a giant telephoto lens is aimed at my conversation with the squawker with his wandering hand – this official event photographer has been waiting for me to look like I’m having the-time-of-my-life and then motions brusquely for me to smile as I false out a head cocked gape. Thankfully a promotions model squirts sun cream in my hand, except this will force me to break ranks and remove my sunglasses to apply it. They’ll know I’m not one of them. I opt to rub it over my glasses instead. Better to look drunk/eccentric than an outsider. The other infiltrator decides to sunburn.

I wonder exactly how broad the appeal of this is, I know there are almost a thousand diners here but it seems (from where I am sitting) all very inner-foodie-media-hanger-on (“here, take my yahoo email on the back of your hand, have you a pen?”). But then I don’t care, as we demand more white/red/sticky/Qatar Air branded hats. The table setting is documented thoroughly in soft focus, the pile of business cards next to my crème brulée is tall and we have already made dinner plans by calling the mobile of La Luna’s chef. The people who write miscellaneous blogs and industry newsletters scramble for the unattended goodie bags and the last of the minor shake-and-fakes are squeezed out. Not even shouting will make them reopen the bar it seems and the plus one infiltrators (me) sweep up the business cards with vain hopes of infiltrating the next festival event.