“Now … we see why ‘who’s a journalist?’ is so wrong-headed,” tweets Jay Rosen in response to the news. Clay Shirky chimes in: “Bloggers have no right to speech unless they’re part of the ‘official media establishment’? Ethiopia,Belarus &…Oregon.”

I can’t tell from those tweets if they read the actual ruling, but I did — and it actually doesn’t seem that bad. Rather than representing a luddite judge’s ignorant dismissal of a new medium, the ruling seems to lay the groundwork for a fairly expansive legal definition of journalism.

In the ruling, Judge Marco A. Hernandez upholds a defamation claim against blogger Crystal Cox, rejecting Cox’s seven defense arguments. The initial journosphere reactions have focused on Hernandez’s rejection of two of those arguments: that Cox shouldn’t have to reveal the source of this column because she is protected by Oregon’s media shield law; and that Cox should be protected from damages claims because she is “media.” In both cases, Hernandez rejects the arguments on the grounds that Cox is not “media.”

Hernandez’s rejection of Cox’s shield law defense seems to rest on a literal reading of Oregon’s shield law, which applies to people affiliated with a “newspaper, magazine or other periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”

Hernandez says, correctly, that Cox is not affiliated with any of the above; therefore she is not “media” according to Oregon’s law. It seems reasonable that the judge applied the law as written rather than expanding the interpretation of the law to include online media. If Oregon had updated its shield law to cover the Internet, as Washington state has done, perhaps Hernandez would have ruled differently.

But it’s Hernandez’s rejection of Cox’s second media defense that, to my mind, actually gives hope for future expanded legal definitions of “media” and “journalist”:

Defendant fails to bring forth any evidence suggestive of her status as a journalist. For example, there is no evidence of (1) any education in journalism; (2) any credentials or proof of any affiliation with any recognized news entity; (3) proof of adherence to journalistic standards such as editing, fact-checking, or disclosures of conflicts of interest; (4) keeping notes of conversations and interviews conducted; (5) mutual understanding or agreement of confidentiality between the defendant and his/her sources; (6) creation of an independent product rather than assembling writings and postings of others; or (7) contacting “the other side” to get both sides of a story.

If Hernandez believed that you need to have a Columbia J-school degree or work at the New York Times to be considered a journalist, he would have stopped at No. 2. But he doesn’t stop there — instead, he offers five additional criteria that could define someone as a journalist. These criteria aren’t based on a credential or business card — or a particular medium — but on practices, values, and standards.

By doing this, the ruling smartly avoids saying “bloggers aren’t journalists.” It merely says “this blogger is not a journalist.” By listing criteria 3-7 and avoiding any mention of specific media, Hernandez is basically saying: “Bloggers may be journalists — but to be considered as such, they have to do something that could fit a standards/practices-based, medium-agnostic definition of journalism.”

It’s easy to quibble with Hernandez’s choice of canonized practices and standards (I can see some in the journosphere taking issue with No. 6 in particular) or say his criteria aren’t expansive enough. But to the extent that “journalist” and “media” need to be defined in the law, Hernandez’s approach seems like the right one. And his criteria seem as hopeful a starting point* as any.

—–

* Note: I’m not up to speed on other definition-of-journalist case law. I’m sure there have been other rulings that offer their own criteria for such definitions.

The Rising is a failure. It purports to document a nation’s rupture and guide us toward salvation—”here the poet, not unlike the priest and community during Mass, opens a window in space and time for communion with the dead themselves: the dead who alone, perhaps, can transform the rage of the living and awaken in us a vision of something more than more of the same,” is how one Catholic critic recently put it. You can almost feel the weight of Springsteen’s duty on the record—these are his people, these firefighters. This is his backyard. A nation turned its weary eyes to the Boss, and he keenly felt the need to answer. But the answer was overwrought, grandiose, bombastic. He went big. We didn’t need anymore big things.

Cook’s right that The Rising is a failure, but he doesn’t quite get at the reasons why. The Rising isn’t just big and overwrought. It’s lyrically vague to the point of being a 9/11 album in name only. Absent the marketing push that announced the album as Springsteen’s big 9/11 statement, The Rising could be interpreted as being about pretty much anything (or nothing at all).

I wrote about the Boss’s 9/11 dodge in a 2003 piece for the Valley News in New Hampshire. (It’s actually a section from a larger essay about that year’s Grammy Awards.) I think it holds up pretty well.

*****

From “Pop Go the Grammy Awards”; the Valley News, Feb. 20, 2003

When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band released The Rising last summer, it was greeted as the first response to Sept. 11, 2001, by a major artist. Kurt Loder, writing in Rolling Stone, took the lead in praising Springsteen for his approach to the attacks:

“The small miracle of his accomplishment is that at no point does he give vent to the anger felt by so many Americans: the hunger for revenge. The music is often fierce in its execution, but in essence it is a requiem for those who perished in that sudden inferno, and those who died trying to save them.”

But Loder ignores, as did many, that The Rising barely mentions Sept. 11 directly at all. By my count, there are two specific references: “The sky was falling and streaked with blood/I heard you calling me, then you disappeared into dust/Up the stairs, into the fire” (Into the Fire); “I never thought I’d live/To read about myself in my hometown paper/How my brave young life was forever changed/In a misty cloud of pink vapor” (Nothing Man). One song is about a suicide bomber, but doesn’t refer to Sept. 11 itself.

Otherwise, the album is one rousing, generic chorus after another, with alternating images of doom and perseverance — “Blood on the streets/Blood flowin’ down,” “With these hands, with these hands,/I pray for your faith, Lord” — that could apply to just about anything. The lyrics are often so banal that they don’t even support the album’s ostensible theme of hope in the face of unimaginable tragedy: “I’m waitin’, waitin’ on a sunny day/Gonna chase the clouds away/Waitin’ on a sunny day”; “I’m countin’ on a miracle/Baby I’m countin’ on a miracle/Darlin’ I’m countin’ on a miracle/To come through”; “Empty sky, empty sky/I woke up this morning to an empty sky”; “Come on, rise up! (8x)”

Of course, as a friend pointed out, it wouldn’t have worked had Springsteen written songs with lyrics like, “And when those planes crashed into the two towers, I remember how I felt.” That’s the approach Alan Jackson took with Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning), with predictably syrupy results. But, however clumsy, Jackson at least approached Sept. 11 straight on.

Jim Dwyer, a New York Times reporter, wrote about the aftermath of the attacks by focusing on specific details and letting them speak for themselves. A man finds a photograph in the rubble belonging to someone he knew but hadn’t seen in a decade, who had escaped the falling towers. A woman who walked home through clouds of pulverized-glass dust finds, later that night, “a plastic cup that had been full of water when someone — a stranger, she doesn’t know who — handed it to her as she passed the restaurant supply district along the Bowery.”

Such specificity is nowhere to be found on The Rising. Likewise missing are more general issues of religious fundamentalism, root causes of support for international terrorism or the nature of revenge.

Springsteen, instead, wants to have it both ways: seeming to respond in a mature, nonjingoistic manner while not actually addressing anything at all. His words, in their lack of detail — and, in the case of several party/love songs, their randomness — ultimately refer to nothing. Meanwhile, the music is unabashedly rousing, catchy and anthemic, like Springstenn’s Born in the U.S.A. — but, Ronald Reagan’s misunderstanding notwithstanding, lacking that song’s sense of anger and despair.

Far from being the clear-eyed Sept. 11 album it’s made out to be, The Rising is just a hummable, feel-good arena-rock record.

I thought of Ironhead last month as well, while standing in the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel, where a special meeting of the league’s Head, Neck, and Spine Injury committee was convening in one of the function rooms. Bert Straus, an industrial designer with a background in bathroom fixtures, dental-office equipment, and light-rail vehicles, was showing off a prototype of a new helmet called the Gladiator, whose primary selling point is that it has a soft exterior.

– Ben McGrath, “Does Football Have a Future?”  Emphasis mine: I love that there are industrial designers who specialize in bathroom fixtures, dental-office equipment, and light-rail vehicles. This guy must be pretty unique to know about all three. (Also — interesting article.)

On February 11, 2004, he made a presentation to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Army’s premier laboratory for biodefense research. Hours later, a researcher at Fort Detrick accidentally stuck herself in the thumb with a needle while injecting mice with the Ebola virus. Ebola has gruesome symptoms that often cause the victim to bleed to death; there is no licensed vaccine or therapeutic drug to stop it.

– David E. Hoffman, “Going Viral” (subscriber-only). Emphasis mine: How can you work with live Ebola virus and not a) wear mithril gloves, or b) be extra careful so you don’t inject yourself with Ebola??? (Another interesting article.)

Figuring out how to better serve local businesses and connect those businesses to readers is a big part of local news organizations’ hopes and ideas for making money online.

Facebook’s Deals platform, announced in November, was a blow to these hopes. Now Groupon has piled on with its Groupon Stores platform.

Here’s what Groupon Stores offers:

Businesses can now create and launch their own deals whenever they want. Think of it as the online equivalent of a merchant’s physical storefront. Merchants can now:

• Setup a permanent (and free!) e-commerce presence on Groupon for promoting their business.
• Create their own offers to run deals whenever they want.
• Submit deals to be promoted to Groupon subscribers through email and the Deal Feed (explained below).
• Get customers to follow their Groupon Store, and stay in touch by sending messages through the daily email and deal feed.

Groupon takes a 10 percent cut of deals sold through this platform without its promotional help, and a 30 percent cut of such deals that it promotes. (Groupon takes a 50 percent cut of its bread-and-butter deals-of-the-day.)

Facebook Deals, meanwhile, is free.

What can a news organization offer a local business to top these platforms? It’s not like businesses will be lacking an audience through the platforms, since the entire universe uses Facebook and a growing number of desireable-demographic folks use Groupon.

If Groupon adds aggregation of restaurant reviews, Better Business Bureau rankings, and the like, it’ll have local-business content that equals or is better than that of most news orgs.

No wonder Google is willing to spend $6 billion to get in on that.

Greetings Josh,
Thank you for writing in and giving us the opportunity to answer your questions.

Ticketfly provides a service, for a fee. Ordering through Ticketfly couldn’t be easier and you can do it from the comfort of your home or office!

Tickets purchased on Ticketfly.com are typically subject to a per ticket convenience charge and a non-refundable per order processing fee. In many cases, delivery prices will also be owed.

As we do not collect any of the ticket face value, we use the fee to pay for hardware, employees, training and so on. Basically, the fee is what keeps us running. If you wish to avoid paying the service fee, please contact the venue or promoter of the event to see if they offer tickets directly. This also explains your comparison to companies like Amazon. They do, in fact almost every “retail” outlet, charge a fee. For them it’s called “Mark Up”. Because they own the product they are selling, that mark up is where they get the money to pay their employees, train their staff, pay their rent and so on.

Ticketfly does not claim to be the cheapest ticketing alternative, but we are striving to be the better ticketing alternative.

Please do let me know if you have any other questions.

Thank You
Damon @ Ticketfly

My reply:

Hi Damon,

Thanks for the prompt reply, and for explaining what the service fees pay for.

However, this doesn’t answer all of my questions.

True, Ticketfly does not claim to be the cheapest ticketing alternative. But as I quoted in my first email, the company clearly recognizes that people are frustrated with ticketing services (citing “downright absurd” practices) and makes claims to being different (“We plan to get rid of all those hidden fees”).

Given this:

1. Why does the site talk about killing hidden fees if you still charge those fees?
2. What are some examples of “downright absurd” ticketing practices that Ticketfly does not engage in?
3. What does being a “better ticketing alternative” mean if you charge similar fees as other ticketing companies — fees that are by far the most frustrating thing about buying tickets?

Further, you say that “Ticketfly provides a service, for a fee” — i.e., letting consumers buy tickets “from the comfort of your home or office.” But there are thousands upon thousands of e-commerce websites that provide the same service — letting consumers buy something online — without charging “service” or “convenience” fees on top of the product price. (Of course, in many cases it’s *cheaper* to buy something online versus by phone or in a store.) The vast majority of these sites also have various hardware and overhead costs, but still don’t tack on extra fees.

Given this,

4. How is Ticketfly’s business (or the ticketing business in general) so different from nearly all other online businesses that the company has to charge consumers this fee?

Thanks,
Josh

As a music fan who has long been frustrated by Ticketmaster’s fees and service charges, I was glad to see this statement on your About page before I purchased a ticket recently:

[W]e’ve spent a lot of time examining what works in ticketing and what is downright absurd. We plan to get rid of all those hidden fees and we won’t charge you to print your ticket at home – after all it is your printer and paper!

So I have a few questions:

• Why did buying a $20 ticket to the Julian Casablancas show at DC’s 9:30 Club require paying a $4.75 Service Fee and a $4 Order Processing fee? (Total cost: $28.75. Service charges’ percentage of total cost: 30 percent.)
• Exactly what services does the $4.75 fee cover?
• Why is there an order processing fee, when I ordered via your automated online system rather than speaking to a live ticketing agent? There is no order processing fee when I buy from other websites, whether the purchase is from the site proprietor (e.g. a ticket from Southwest.com, a book from Amazon.com) or from a third party using the site as a middleman (e.g. an item from an Amazon Marketplace or Etsy seller). Why is Ticketfly different in this regard?
• Why do you include the statement about hidden fees on your About page if you charge the same kind of hidden fees as Ticketmaster does?
• Can you explain why these fees are not “downright absurd”?

Sincerely,
Josh Korr

If I had to guess, I’d have said a bonsai tree was some dwarf species or a bush that looks like a tiny tree. A little kitschy, no big whoop. But today Melanie and I went to the National Arboretum’s Bonsai and Penjing Museum, and my ignorance was slightly diminished at the same time my mind was officially blown.

As any non-ignorant person (or Wikipedia reader) must have already known, bonsai (the Japanese term) or penjing (the Chinese term) refers to “the art of aesthetic miniaturization of trees, or of developing woody or semi-woody plants shaped as trees, by growing them in containers” (I would have used a more authoritative source’s definition, but I can’t find one on the American Bonsai Society’s website).

I guess the “semi-woody plants shaped as trees” part could be the “bush shaped like a tiny tree” that I had in mind. But most of the specimens at the Arboretum are literally miniature trees.

Walking through the exhibit is like walking through the forest sets of A Nightmare Before Christmas or Coraline. Except in this case, the trees aren’t painted models with popcorn for blossoms — they’re actually trees!

The other cool thing is that a bunch of the trees are 100 or more years old. One is from the mid 1600s! The age combined with the warped perspective makes the whole exhibit pretty dizzying.

Here are two examples from the Arboretum. But you don’t get the same vertiginous sense of scale unless you’re standing in front of them — or rather, over them.

Update: Here’s a photo that gives a better sense:

If you’re in the D.C. area and, like us, have overlooked the Arboretum because of all the higher-profile things to see in these parts, I highly recommend a visit. (The rest of the grounds are very pretty, too.)

Sidenote: Pat Morita was nominated for an Academy Award for playing Mr. Miyagi??? Wha?

I’d chalk that up to a few factors: Star power and obsequious entertainment media. American culture’s general shift toward multiculturalism and, for the enlightened majority post-9/11, religious tolerance. A shrug-your-shoulders, post-modern “Scientology is no more bizarre than other religions” attitude among potential cynics. And, of course, the fruits of the group’s notoriously litigious/personally invasive stance toward pretty much anyone who had anything bad to say about Scientology in the ’80s and ’90s.

The St. Petersburg Times’ recent expose, on Scientology’s staff culture of intimidation and abuse allegedly driven by leader David Miscavige, won’t change all that. But if Scientology’s fortunes and reputation decline in the coming years, the paper’s stories recounting defectors’ accusations should mark a turning point.

The group had one possible strategy for persuasively rebutting the Times stories: deny everything. Instead, the hapless response turned into a classic emperor-has-no-clothes moment — the ostensibly matured Scientology revealed (or re-revealed) as a pitiful personality cult that no one should even consider taking seriously again.

(Note: The excerpts below are drawn from parts 1, 2 and 3 of the series and this sidebar. Disclosure: I worked at the Times from 2003 to 2008.)

The first plank of Scientology’s genius strategy was to confirm the thrust of the accusations, but claim Miscavige wasn’t involved or wasn’t at fault.

Responding to former executive Marty Rathburn’s accusations that Miscavige physically attacked staffers dozens of times, Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis doesn’t deny physical abuse among the group’s high-level staff. He just says Miscavige didn’t do it, and blames Rathburn for a “reign of terror” — even though Rathburn already admitted to the Times that he had attacked colleagues, allegedly at Miscavige’s direction (emphasis added):

If Rathbun’s responsibility was as limited as the church says, the Times asked, how did he get people to submit to a reign of terror? Davis, the church spokesman, erupted.

“He’s the one who’s saying that Dave Miscavige beat these people,” Davis screamed. “And he’s saying that Dave Miscavige beat the exact same people that he beat. And that’s what pisses me off. Because this guy’s a f—— lunatic and I don’t have to explain how or why he became one or how it was allowable.

Davis is right; he doesn’t have to explain. We can figure out how Rathburn was allowed to behave that way.

In a similar example, one of the defectors accuses Miscavige of jumping on a table and attacking a staffer. Rather than a full denial, we get a my-wife-tripped-and-fell-into-my-fist explanation:

“[Church executive David] Bloomberg said that he was seated next to [staffer Jeff] Hawkins that day and that Hawkins became belligerent with the leader. Hawkins fell out of his chair and ended up putting a scissor lock on Miscavige’s legs.”

The second plank of the response strategy was to confirm the accusations but insist the inappropriate/abusive behavior is perfectly normal.

Being ordered to jump in a pool fully clothed?  Nothing wrong with that.

The Sea Org is a “crew of tough sons of bitches,” said church spokesman Tommy Davis. …

“The Sea Org is not a democracy. The members of it agree with a man named L. Ron Hubbard. They abide by his policies . . . And if you disagree with that and you don’t like it, you don’t belong. Then you leave.”

Anyway, the church says, “the pool was heated, towels were provided, a lifeguard was present.” (The defectors don’t remember things so benignly.)

Being tossed off a boat? Toughen up, pansies.

If a Sea Org member messes up, “you throw him over the g– d— side of the ship,” [former captain of a Scientology ship Norman] Starkey said.

The church also doesn’t deny a story of Miscavige forcing staffers to play a twisted musical chairs game, which defectors say he conducted under threat of transferring the losers to other locations and greatly upsetting their lives.

Again, church officials said, the defectors are making the normal seem abnormal. Miscavige was merely trying to make a point, they said, citing a Hubbard policy that says frequent personnel transfers are like “musical chairs” and can harm a group’s progress. Miscavige wanted the group to see for themselves how destructive that can be.

Oh, sure — totally normal. We play cutthroat musical chairs, under threat of forced transfer, once a week at my office!

The final part of the response strategy is most telling: A series of Dear Leader non sequiturs that are clearly the tics of a deeply ingrained personality cult.

Hubbard biographer Danny Sherman told a story of Miscavige spotting an injured sparrow, talking to it and checking back later to see if it lived. “It was immensely tender.”

Also, David Miscavige’s tears can bring dinosaurs back to life.

[Administrator Faith] Schermerhorn wrote that she has never heard Miscavige use the n-word: “As a matter of fact, I know that Mr. Miscavige has been the person in Scientology who has done the most for black people.”

Also, Spike Lee’s Malcolm X is actually based on the life of David Miscavige.

The spokesmen described him as a “hands-on” leader working in video editing bays, proof­reading manuscripts, helping write scripts, staying up each night to listen to every one of Hubbard’s 3,000 lectures and setting up a construction office to outfit the 66 new buildings the church has acquired since 2004.

Also, David Miscavige has memorized the Oxford English Dictionary, and he personally copy edits every babysitting flier posted to bulletin boards in Scientology facilities.

The most absurd example of this Miscavige worship comes in Part 2 of the Times series, which recounts the last major Scientology scandal: the 1995 death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson.

The defectors say Miscavige was involved in McPherson’s counseling and “determined that she had reached an enhanced mental state that Scientologists call ‘clear’.” These are serious accusations because a) McPherson subsequently had a mental breakdown (Scientologists who achieve “clear” state are supposed to be at the top of the mental-health heap); and b) only specially trained Scientologists are allowed to pronounce people “clear.”

As with the other responses, the organization could have simply denied that Miscavige was involved. And they start with just such a response (emphasis added to highlight creepy Scientology nomenclature):

“I can tell you that’s utterly, totally false,’’ said Angie Blankenship, a top administrator in Clearwater from 1996 to 2003.

“I was here. Chairman of the board (Miscavige) wasn’t even here at the Flag land base during that time. He’s a liar. Never happened.”

But again, they couldn’t leave well enough alone (emphasis added):

The church’s representatives said there are no notations by Miscavige in McPherson’s file. In any case, they say, Miscavige would have been qualified to supervise McPherson’s case had he been so inclined. “He is an expert in every field,” said Jessica Feshbach, a church spokeswoman.

It’s worth noting that the Times series includes multiple direct denials of specific accusations. (e.g. “Yager, Starkey, Mithoff, and Lesevre all emphatically told the Times that Miscavige never attacked them.”) But the cumulative effect of the pseudo-denials and ridiculous hagiography is to render all of the denials non-credible.

“He is an expert in every field”: that’s all we need to know.

Some day — hopefully soon, for the sake of those caught in Xenu’s clutches — that’ll be Scientology’s epitaph.

But if the real Palin appears on next week’s show — as has been rumored and now allegedly confirmed by the New York Post’s Cindy Adams — then Saturday Night Live will have proven its intellectual bankruptcy and moral cowardice once and for all.

When it comes to politics, SNL has always focused more on “cuddly caricature-making than worthy satire,” as Slate’s Troy Patterson wrote earlier this year. Patterson quotes Russel L. Peterson’s book Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy Into a Joke:

“The show’s political ‘characters’ are as one-dimensional and ‘lovable’ as any of the other catchphrase-spouting mannequins Lorne Michaels might hope to spin off onto the big screen (Jason Sudeikis as George W. Bush and Darrell Hammond as Dick Cheney in—Night at the Roxbury II).”

This is somewhat defensible in normal times. It’s at best irresponsible in elections like this one. Here’s Peterson again, via Patterson:

“By avoiding issues in favor of personalities and by ‘balancing’ these shallow criticisms between conservatives and liberals, late-night comics are playing it safe but endangering democracy.”

With Sarah Palin, SNL found a politician so shallow and farcical that personality-based satire was actually appropriate. The McCain campaign’s policy proposals deserve plenty of criticism, but the biggest problem with Palin isn’t her policies (or her abuse of power, or her serial lying). It’s that she’s absurdly unprepared for the vice presidency and apparently has little grasp of policy in the first place — that she’s a farce, as Andrew Sullivan put it. In this respect, SNL‘s take on Palin was spot-on: a fauxlksy, beauty-pageant contestant who thinks winks and ignorance are appropriate for a vice presidential candidate.

If Lorne Michaels gives Palin a cameo and SNL‘s writers don’t protest, they will be undermining their own criticism. A cameo would say “Hey, never mind those silly Tina Fey sketches! It’s not so bad that a vice presidential candidate is dangerously unprepared — if it were, we’d never have let her appear on the show!”

If SNL‘s writers and performers do this, they are apologists, not satirists.

If they shrug off their previous personality-based criticism but also won’t criticize the McCain campaign’s policy proposals or recent mob incitement, they simply have nothing to say. (Mocking McCain’s doddering mannerisms and making bogus Williams Ayers mentions, as they did in a debate sketch Thursday, does not count as satire, either.)

And if they put Palin on, they are cowards twice over. First, for mercilessly mocking her on national TV but pretending everything’s peachy when she comes on the show. Second, for not believing a single word they say.

So what’s it going to be, Saturday Night Live: Should we take you seriously, or are you just a big joke?