Being Amber Rhea

Excellent video:

Please repost!

(Via Derek.)

Last night, Jen and Tony were kind enough to give me the dubious gift of a copy of the latest issue of The Sunday Paper. The cover story is (in huge pink letters), “ATLANTA’S HOOKER SCHOOL.” Then in smaller letters, the subhead: “New Program Aims To Make Prostitution A Risky Business For Johns.” (Okay, so it’s not really a hooker school at all, is it, dumbasses? It’s a johns school. But that won’t grab readers by the throat the way “HOOKER SCHOOL” will.)

Now, for those of you who aren’t in Atlanta, The Sunday Paper is a pretty worthless rag. It always has sensationalistic, overblown headlines, especially in the cover stories (I remember one with a big explosion on the cover, and something like “Countdown to Armageddon” - and they were totally serious) and generally includes some of the worst writing I’ve seen in a print publication. They try to publish “controversial” stories with the most watered-down, trite mockery of point/counterpoint you can imagine. And here’s how I think they go about writing features: they have a template, and they drag and drop various talking points from a database, maybe some clip art as well (e.g., in this case: photo of fishnet-clad legs and high heels, standing in a dark alleyway; Julia Roberts 20 years ago), and click “Generate story.” Voila! Your next issue is complete.

I said that at the table last night, and Kim brought up a good point, that if she were still working at a newspaper and getting paid $8.00 an hour, she wouldn’t exactly pour her heart and soul into researching every story in-depth and writing a thought-provoking, well-rounded piece. Can’t say I blame her. And The Sunday Paper is a free weekly, so who knows what those writers are getting paid. This is a topic that isn’t discussed much in all the various rants about the mainstream media and why they suck so badly. So maybe new media and independent media (often the same thing, but not always) can fill the void? But that’s a tangent for another time.

I’m always torn on stories like this. One the one hand, they’re such pathetic, rehashed tripe, that it feels like a waste of time and energy to address them at all. But then I think, that kind of rationale might make sense in some other situations, but when it comes to sex workers’ rights advocacy, we are dealing with an issue that is literally (yes, literally!) life and death for many people, mostly women; and it’s an issue fraught with layers and layers of bullshit, where all of a sudden everybody thinks they’re a damn expert, and everybody loves to hear themselves talk except they can’t be bothered to listen to the people who are actually affected by all the laws and stigma and such; and the silence is rather deafening when it comes to calling bullshit.

So, I feel compelled to call bullshit, yet again. And I just hope that if people keep on calling it out whenever they see it, whether on 20/20 or in some piddly little hometown rag, maybe progress can slowly be made.

Kim actually read the article before me (I didn’t read it last night when we were at Manuel’s), and afterward, she said, “Yeah, you’re going to need your meds after reading this.”

The article starts off talking about how “hookers” are portrayed on film (because that’s so relevant), and how it’s in stark contrast to “the truth.” (Yeah, the truth which includes sex workers being talked about but not talked with, and called “hookers.”) From there it’s just a matter of marking off the various Bingo squares. It includes the phrase “selling their bodies” and refers to them being “victims of abuse.” (No sources are cited, of course, but why bother? I mean we all just know this is true.) And oh of course there’s that whole thing about how “john’s schools” don’t work, but why get sidetracked with that annoying little piece of information?

They do include a quote or two from Carol Leigh (a.k.a. Scarlot Harlot) representing SWOP, which is more than most articles of this type do. But I’m not giving them a cookie. No, they don’t get a gold star for doing what should be the bare minimum in anything purporting to call itself a journalistic endeavor.

One thing that I really hate about bullshit articles like this is that they reinforce the idea in so many people’s minds that “sex worker” == “street prostitute.” Hell, that’s what I thought until I was 18 or 19. In fact, street workers account for only 10%-20% of all prostitutes/escorts/courtesans (not using the term “sex workers” here since that term encompasses many other types of work).

And once again, they don’t give a shit about actually helping sex workers, or any of it. (I know The Sunday Paper certainly didn’t come right out and say, “We care about sex workers!” but with all the victim language and talk about the “johns,” that’s what the superficial message clearly is - even if it falls miserably flat with its condescending, pearl-clutching tone.) They make bank on perpetuating the very stereotypes and stigma they dramatically wring their hands about in articles such as these. It’s so transparent it’s pathetic. Sex workers aren’t people after all… they’re just an easy way to move some papers!

From Chris Hall at Sex in the Public Square (be sure to read the full post). Chris is a wonderful writer.

The real tragedy of [Palfrey's] death, from where I’m standing, is not anything extraordinary about her story, but how common and familiar it is, to the point of being cliché. If the story of Deborah Jean Palfrey had been laid out in a novel or play or screenplay, I would be angry at having my time wasted by a writer who was unable or unwilling to rise above cheap hackery that was old and worn out in the days of the Victorian penny dreadfuls. But Palfrey was a real person, and it makes me sick and angry to think how often the lives of people who should live peaceful, untroubled lives are forced into old patterns.

When I heard that Palfrey had hung herself, one of the first things that I thought of was the story of Ida Craddock. Craddock was a freethinker and feminist who wrote several sexual education manuals and pamphlets in the late 19th century. She was hounded and pursued for over a decade by the moralists of the day, in particular the infamous Anthony Comstock. In 1902, she was finally convicted for sending obscene materials through the mail and sentenced to five years in prison. Craddock was 45 years old at the time of her conviction and didn’t think that she could survive her sentence; the night before she was supposed to report for incarceration, she slit her wrists. Comstock showed no signs of regretting her suicide; in fact, he commonly bragged that he had driven as many as 15 people to suicide in his crusade for public morality.

One hundred and six years later, I want Ida Craddock’s story to seem quaint and old-fashioned, like an aged relic of less enlightened times. But Deborah Jean Palfrey is dead, hung from the neck by a nylon rope; her former employee, Brandy Britton, went the same way. David Vitter is still in the Senate. So it goes.

In the eye of the media, Palfrey’s death was regarded almost without a blasé fascination, as if the urge for a woman who transgressed to hang herself in her mother’s shed was as natural and unavoidable as birds migrating. And it seems unbelievable that one hundred and six years after Ida Craddock, we have to work so hard to justify not only the course that she chose to make for her life, but that we also have to fight to make others see that her death was a stupid waste, and not the inevitable end to a badly-written melodrama.

What we do, all the blogging and writing and organizing sometimes can seem futile, especially with stories like Palfrey’s. The one thing that we can be grateful for, in a somewhat grim way, is that Palfrey had to do more than merely write about sex before she was hounded and shamed into her grave. That, at least, is something that we’ve accomplished in the one hundred years since Ida Craddock opened her veins with a straight razor. But it’s not enough.

And I’m crying, again.

Yeah, I’ve mentioned before that I can be pretty emotional, and cry at inopportune times. But this week, I think it’s appropriate.

Imagine my surprise this morning, during breakfast at Radial, when I saw an article in Creative Loafing(!) about the under-21 stripping ordinance.* Imagine my downright shock when I read the article and discovered that it was not sensationalistic, full of stupid jokes and bad puns, dripping with value judgments, or any of the other countless traits that too often characterize mainstream media coverage of anything related to sex work.

I would’ve liked to hear more from Danielle Barbee and other dancers. But since the article focused on the lawsuit, the plaintiffs probably couldn’t (or, were wise not to) speak to the press directly.

The article also made me feel frustrated and a little angry at the lack of a cohesive sex workers’ rights movement in Atlanta. Those of us who were at Charis on Dec. 17th should be “plugged in” to the same support network as Barbee et al. Caitlin set up a listserv but so far I’m the only one who’s emailed anything to it… my hopes for a bad-ass march through midtown this December are fading, unfortunately.

But more on that another time. Ahem.

Memo to MSM (and especially to Andisheh): it is possible to write a straightforward article about sex work issues. You have no excuse for fucking up so badly 99.9% of the time.

* The ordinance was mentioned during our Dec. 17th event, but I hadn’t heard anything about its status since then.

Cross-posted from Bound, Not Gagged:

As an active sexworker, longtime sex worker rights activist, and member of SWOP and this board, I urge anyone and everyone who viewed Diane Sawyer’s “Prostitution in America” on 20/20 last night to write to ABC in one of two ways (or both):

1. Seen something? Heard Something? Know something? Please let us know — by being the reporter yourself. If you have facts or information to add to the story, fill out the form below and we’ll get in touch with you. You have a 2000 word limit to add your own story about your reality as a sex worker. Make sure to link back to either boundnotgagged.com or your local SWOP chapter.

2. You can also leave a comment about the story on the ABC site. Again, make sure to link back to either boundnotgagged.com or your local SWOP chapter.

Blog comments on this board can be found here.

Commenter “Could Be Your Sister” on Bound, Not Gagged:

There are a number of things that I simply do not discuss openly because of my activism for sex workers rights.

If I say I was never sexually abused or never worked the streets or never had a drug problem, then I automatically become some exception.

If I am an abuse survivor or did street-work or ever used drugs, then I instantly prove their theories.

It’s too often a no-win situation, where my truth is not welcome.

(Yes, I give them a ton of pingbacks… because they deserve ‘em! People, if you’re not reading BNG, you really need to start.)

The media (and hell, society in general) just doesn’t get it.

Audacia Ray, former sex worker and editor of the sex worker magazine $pread, has pointed out that the public doesn’t even seem to understand what exploitation really means. The woman who did sex work for Spitzer has had her picture and personal history splattered all over the media in an incredibly insulting way. Nobody seems to realize she’s being degraded far more now than she ever was when Spitzer was her client. And she’s not getting any retirement savings out of it, either.

And, funnily enough, I haven’t noticed a whole lot of “media critics” talking about this point. It’s been mostly… *crickets*.

Guess what, the definition of exploitation is not “a type of sex that makes me uncomfortable.”

I have more to say about the Alternet article (which, interestingly, had its title changed sometime between last night and this morning) because there are a few points where I disagree with Annalee, and a few points I just want to expand on. But I’ll get to that later.

BNG keeps crankin’ out the good stuff. As such, I keep giving them a crap-ton of pingbacks.

Most recently, there’s this post from existentialhedonist, entitled The media, gender, and representation:

I think the media’s obsession with Kristen’s childhood ties directly into the prohibitionists’ habit of using the term “girls” when referring to sex workers who are between 18 and 28. It seems to be a form of infantilizing women when they exercise their sexual and economic autonomy. It reminds me of the Swedish model, and it makes me want to wretch.

How about talking about her strength in overcoming a challenging youth to grow up and land a job that paid her for one hour more than most of her critics will see in a month? How about talking about her strength in the face of this onslaught of media attention and scrutiny? How she hasn’t cowered off into some corner- how she has kept her myspace page up, and how so many of the comments there are full of love and support in the face of this?

Kristen deserves to be seen for the amazing and strong woman she is. The obsession with her childhood is simply a cheap ploy to diminish the inherent fortitude of a person who faces challenges head on and rises above and beyond to become a creative entrepreneur beholden to nobody but herself. This is the hallmark of successful sex workers everywhere, and something that must be quashed by society lest more of us become such entrepreneurs.

I think it is important for the media and people like Farley to portray us as broken and weak people. It is ironic that some of them actually do this in the name of “feminism.” The truth is that the “abused girl” thing has to be played up to create a smokescreen to hide the reality: sex workers like Kristen don’t need you or anyone else to validate them. That is power. And that is dangerous.

Check it out.

Interestingly (or not), a lot of regular “media critic” sites have been deafeningly silent on this whole thing.

I’m feeling emotionally exhausted, and I haven’t done even a tiny fraction of what Dacia, Ren, Amanda, all the BNG folks, and more have been handling with grace for the past two days. I can’t imagine the constant interviews, last-minutes radio spots with angry callers, TV crews showing up at your apartment… well, okay, I can imagine it, and the thought leaves me feeling drained!

And now, we see that the NY Times has exposed the escort previously known as Kristen.

Real smart move there, credible, authentic, trustworthy, high-and-mighty MSM.

All the news that’s fit to print, right? You fucking assholes.

Look, it’s not that I’m surprised. I’m not surprised in the least; this is what sells papers, air time, ad space… duh. And yet MSM people continue to look us in the face and declare that it’s bloggers who are unconcerned with actual discussion, presenting facts, equal time… how can they say that with a straight face?? Meanwhile this shit could actually destroy this young woman’s life. You know that, right, NY Times? But you don’t give a shit. You want to break a good story. You won’t give a second thought to this actual person whose life you have put in real danger. You’ll forget about her by next week.

And like I said, I’m not surprised. All media outlets want to break a good story… sensational is good… I get it. You don’t have to tell me. They don’t care… no shock there.

But I wish it weren’t this way. Maybe this is the nasty side of capitalism (which I generally think isn’t so bad)? Or maybe it has nothing to do with capitalism - it’s just the way media works. I’m inclined to go with the latter, but as an eternal optimist (often at my peril), I have to believe that it doesn’t have to work that way. It can change. Everything can.

Right?

Edit: Or, as Amanda succinctly put it, “Notice how there doesn’t seem to be a single ethical quibble in outing this young woman who obviously has another career in the works.”

In the past two days, the media has been increasingly clamoring to talk to sex workers and sex workers’ rights activists (who are often one in the same). Late last night there was an influx of media requests, but I had to go to sleep.

Take a gander at some of the requests Dacia received, for example.

A sampling from my inbox and phone queries today:

From Fox News:
“I am trying to find someone to explain how credit card payments work with escort services. Specifically, how do you make sure the name of the escort service does not show up on a credit card bill. If anyone can explain that I would be very grateful.”

“Good Morning America is looking for anyone who has ever worked in high-end prostitution as a madam or sex worker for their coverage of the Gov. Spitzer scandal. Their preference is def someone along the lines of Heidi Fleiss (have interviewed tons of times and don’t want to call on again).”

From an Italian news channel:
“I need a prostitute to describe what it is like to meet with men, how she selects them, what they do in the meeting.”

And this:
“We need someone familiar with the political, social, legal and economic issues that affect sex workers to comment on this story. Someone who advocates for sex workers is preferred.”

Oh wait, I made that last one up. Because it doesn’t exist.

Ren received similar requests.

I thought maybe it might be an opportunity to bring some light to issues such as sex workers rights and the hypocrisy shown by fellows like Spitzer. However, that is not what the media is interested in. That’s not what they want. They want to know how one goes about hiring a “high-end” escort, how prevelant is it, what goes on, do the working girls care if the men are married? What else do they spend money on when with the woman? They want the scandal, the titilation, the naughty little thrill….but nothing too dirty. Nothing about the women on the streets. They don’t want to hear about the truly unseemly side of the biz. They want to hear about the men…the rich and powerful men who spend the money on “high-end” girls. They want to hear how the men will fly in to see a girl, or fly her in, spends thousands on her and on the dinners and events and everything else. They want to know how he likes it. Sure enough, men do this sort of thing. I’ve been paid 2000$ to spend an evening with a New Jersey business man at a boxing match then do a strip show for him. No actual sex involved. He bought an expensive dinner and a bottle of Dom to go with it, and tipped me an extra 600$. Why? Because he could, and in this case, he did not even have to worry about the actual act of sex for money. This is one such story in my experience, and one such story in the countless experiences of women like me. And that’s the stories the media wants. They don’t care how we feel about legalization, or rights, or men like Spitzer building careers and policy on us, let alone about the women working on the streets. Those politics and dirty tales don’t sell.

Last June, at the Atlanta Press Club panel on new media, several audience members, but in particular Susan Capeluto(sp?) from Georgia Public Broadcasting, were practically jumping out of their seats talking about how bloggers lack “credibility” and “journalistic integrity” and are (this was the real “WTF” moment) obsessed with Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan.

Wait, what?

Have these people turned on any national TV news program lately?

Fox News has “The Daily Britney,” for fuck’s sake. CNN and MSNBC cover Britney, Lindsey, and other celebrities’ antics like it’s going out of style.

Are there blogs that cover this stuff? Sure. There are blogs that cover pretty much anything you can think of. But saying “bloggers” when what you really mean is Perez Hilton, Pink Is The New Blog, and Gawker is like simply saying “television” to refer to cable news channels.

I hear these lines, as if rehearsed, again and again from mainstream media folks and I just have to wonder what planet they’re on.

Mainstream media, are you willing to actually LISTEN and become worthy of the adjectives you say bloggers don’t deserve but you do?

So, media folk, show us your stuff. Spend more time on our needs and wishes in the media- portray us honestly and not just sensationally, take us seriously when we speak, and we’ll be much more willing to talk to you.

(link)

In growing numbers, there are sex workers and allies of sex workers who have a critical and political take on how our bodies and our labor are legislated. Not to mention, we are well aware of and constantly struggling with the ways our stories and our work are grossly exploited by the mainstream media in an attempt to get a juicy story. You want to talk about exploitation of women, media? Look at your own goddamn questions, the exposure you ask us to engage in, the personal questions you want us to answer. Look at the sexy container you put us in, all sultry bad girl secret story, no room for brains with the boobs. We don’t want to tell you our naughty secrets. What’s in it for us? You won’t give us the space and air time to talk about issues that matter to us, we won’t give you the dirt.

Sex workers aren’t represented in the media because the media does not create space for us to talk intelligently about the issues that face us. Like I said in my post last night, we are being cast into roles, roles that are nearly impossible to break. We’re afraid of being abused and manhandled by a media that has no interest in our well being, only in our cunts and the details of how we got to be so bad.

Mainstream media, if you’re so concerned about the exploitation of sex workers - stop perpetuating the exploitation with your own tools.

(link)

So everybody knows about this Eliot Spitzer bullshit by now. Of course, I have plenty to say about it.

There’s the obvious point that the problem in the Spitzer situation is not “OMG he paid for sex!!1!1″ but the utter hypocrisy of it, given his history of prosecuting prostitution cases. There’s also the fact that he’ll get off with a ruined political career (if even that), while the women whose services he paid for will possibly be arrested on felony charges, jailed, and for any who are not U.S. citizens, deported; and the real-life hardships of these women will go unacknowledged by the media except as objects to be used for moral grandstanding or sophomoric titillation.

But for now, I want to talk about language. Because, as I’ve mentioned before, words matter.

Yesterday on the way home from work, Rusty and I were discussing the terminology the mainstream media - hell, pretty much all media - uses when discussing sex work. In particular, we were dissecting the terms “high-class hooker” and “high-priced” hooker. Both of those terms carry a mountain of assumptions and implications.

“High-class hooker” automatically sets up the person in question as an exception. Jen said that she doesn’t think describing someone as high-class necessarily implies that everyone else is low-class, but rather “just average.” Well, of course it doesn’t imply that everyone else is low-class, but it does set up the need for a low-class corollary. And more importantly, it sets up a hierarchy of high, average, low - and who defines what constitutes criteria for each class? It’s a nasty, divisive, insidious tactic. It’s classic classism… because of course no one would ever want to be considered “low class.” (Queer Dewd has written about this phenomenon much more extensively/intelligently, so check her blog for more.)

Making a point to designate a particular sex worker as “high-class” serves to differentiate her from most people’s idea of what a prostitute is: a street worker. Street workers may in fact be the most visible element of prostitution - often because they are associated with other problems such as drug use, violence, and more - and the media certainly does nothing to dispel the popular impression of “prostitute” as analogous to “street prostitute.” However, street workers constitute only about 20% of all prostitutes. So yet again, the media reinforces a stereotype and popular assumption that is false.

Rusty said that while “high-class hooker” is total bullshit, he could see how someone could make a case for “high-priced hooker” being apt. I can see how someone could make a case for it - but the case would be faulty and laden with unquestioned societal assumptions.

First of all, the hooker herself is not for sale, as is implied by applying the adjective “high-priced” to her. Using the term “high-priced hooker” reinforces the rhetoric about sex workers “selling their bodies,” which is so often used by both conservatives and radical feminists. The fact that so many people simply accept this idea of sex workers selling their bodies is indicative of a deeper sexual more in our society: for a woman, having sex with a man constitutes at transfer of ownership. (Look at Purity Balls for a particularly creepy example of this belief in action.)

It’s bullshit, of course. A prostitute is no more selling her body than is a seamstress, a massage therapist, a professional athlete, a mechanic, a pianist… you get the point. A sex worker provides a service. (We do live in a service economy, after all.) Clients pay for that service. They do not own the worker. They do not, to use an analogy Ren has used, buy her like you’d buy a car and then drive her home and park her in their garage. That is ownership. Exchanging money for sexual services is nowhere close.

Finally, “high-priced hooker” carries the assumption that the worker in question is somehow over-charging, or charging more than most other workers. I don’t really know what’s going on with that assumption… should she charge less? Is she slightly more respectable because she charges more? But the bottom line is, it’s bullshit anyway, because nine times out of ten the people described as “high-priced hookers” aren’t charging rates out of the ordinary; they’re charging a competitive market rate. It makes me wonder, what the hell do people expect to pay?

More later, when I get time.

Fucking mainstream media. Oh, who am I kidding, why be so specific… fucking mainstream society.

The MSNBC request came through Seal Press, the publisher of Naked on the Internet. I said I would talk to the show’s producer and possibly do the show if I could talk about sex worker rights, politics, and trafficking. They were casting for someone who had been a sex worker to talk about the mechanics of hiring a prostitute, and the producer I talked to point blank asked me the question that is the title of this post, though then he quickly backtracked and said, “I’m sorry if I’m not using the right terminology,” and I told him that no indeed he was not. When asked if I have had sex for money, I told him I had been a fetish worker and sensual masseuse (I’ve briefly been an escort too, though for a fraction of the time of the other jobs) - which seemed to disappoint him, and he said things like, “So you weren’t a real… you didn’t have sex…”

MSNBC was only interested in having a woman who had been a prostitute talk about the mechanics of hiring a sex worker - a little salacious how-to on national television, gotta love it. They told me flat out that they weren’t interested in discussing the political interests of sex workers or the issues around sex trafficking as it is today. And while I am not ashamed that I was a sex worker, and I know sound bites are short and cannot be anywhere near as complicated as my shit is, I don’t want to be MSNBC’s whore on television. It does nothing for me personally and nothing for the movement I’m part of for me to be boiled down to the essence of “will fuck for cash. here’s how.”

Read Dacia’s full post here.

I may have to ignore the internet tomorrow just so I don’t stumble onto blogs/tweets/etc. talking about the Spitzer thing. Because I just can’t fucking take the stupidity and the teeming assholes anymore.

There has been talk lately about “semantics” and “picking [news stories] apart word by word.” These things are said in a fairly derisive way, as if “arguing semantics” is bad or pointless.*

But you know what?

WORDS MATTER.
Because words carry implications.

Anyone who makes their living as a writer should know that words are important, and should be mindful of the words they choose, with everything they write. They should know better than anyone that words can be loaded, and the implications can go way beyond the dictionary definition, and that in the end it’s not just the dictionary definition that matters.

For example, “running a high-class call girl ring” is not factually inaccurate. But it’s sloppy reporting, and sex workers were rightly pissed. Because each of those words is pretty loaded. They carry with them assumptions that are embedded in the societal consciousness, which most people don’t even think about.

Another example: Violet Blue’s column entitled Kink.com and Porn Hysteria: The Lie of Unbiased Reporting, wherein she writes,

Steve Rubenstein and Jesse McKinley are reporters, and so we require that they report and not serve us with opinion, instead. In both articles, slanted phrases such as “dirty movies” were slipped in like a hostess silently sliding a coaster under your drink — blink and you don’t even notice it’s part of the judgmental scenery — when a more accurate term like “adult” could serve better. Rubenstein’s piece went the distance, making Kink’s employees into “manacled performers.”

But the most interesting example was the presentation of unchallenged material in the form of quotes from people on the street as anti-porn pundits — with no weigh-in from pro-porn pundits. Protesters were quoted as saying, “This neighborhood is already plagued with enough violence and prostitution as it is” and “Kink degrades the neighborhood, degrades women and offers ‘dead end’ jobs that no decent person would want.” Such statements bracket the piece — with no counter-opinions about pornography — and are presented in such a way that readers could interpret opinions as fact. Kink.com was indeed quoted — but only about their use of the space.

If the only yardstick we had for media were “Is is factually inaccurate?”, then no one would have grounds to complain about anything. Errors of omission and the connotations of specific words would be unimportant. The public would be effectively silenced.

We should hold our media accountable; we should hold them to a high standard. (One would think they would want to be held to a high standard by their readers.) Criticism of media is healthy and important, and should be constant. Or are we supposed to operate from a lowest common denominator perspective?

Speaking dismissively about “semantics” undermines the media/editorial process criticism so many of us in this conversation profess to stand for. So which is it? Is criticizing media and exposing biases a good thing, or a bad thing? Should we hold them accountable to tell our stories fairly and accurately, or just accept whatever we’re handed?

Part of the solution is to use new media to tell our own stories, without the filters of mainstream media; but that does not mean we should accept anything less than the highest quality reporting from mainstream media. After all, not everyone has access to new media tools yet (though access is improving on a daily basis).

So yes, I will gladly pick news stories apart word by word. Because those words are everything.

* I can’t link to the one conversation that is really sticking out in my mind, because Rusty removed the post where it took place. Similar conversations have gone down in other places, though. In fact, it’s becoming a bit of a blur at this point.

While I’m always wary of earnest, romanticized appeals to “the past,” I do like James F. Elliott’s description of the state of the U.S. media today. Whatever fantasies he may have about the nebulous past, I think he’s right on target about the present.

In the past (and, interestingly, in Britain today), opinion journalism was just that: journalism that gave a shit, that had an opinion and reported on the facts from that perspective openly and with a commitment to intellectual honesty. In today’s American media culture, opinion journalism means you can say whatever you want and be considered a pillar of political punditry and claim that you’re the most gay-friendly conservative on the block. I mean, after all, it’s not like Carlson tied that fag to a truck’s bumper and took a long drive on a dirt road. And Scarborough thought it was funny, so it’s okay.

Last night’s Social Media Club meeting was certainly better than last month’s! It was a smaller group - six of us - and I feel like we started to make some progress on investigating the issues of new media vs. traditional media (including, of course, the question of whether it has to be one versus the other) - but there’s a lot still to unpack. The thing that struck me the most last night was the use of certain terminology to both disparage new media and prop up traditional media. The word in question last night was “artistic.”

A guy named Mike, whom I hadn’t met before, criticized vloggers/vidcasters by saying they aren’t professional, they aren’t trained… etc., etc., all the usual stuff… but then: “Professional videographers know how to find the art in a shot.”

So, videographers in traditional media are artists, not just amateur hacks. And that’s a good thing.

But - remember last month’s meeting? - bloggers are artists, and that’s a bad thing. Real reporters are much more serious, you see. They’re not just artistic. They’re professional.

Honestly, I am baffled by this.

“Artistic” is, at once, a compliment to certain people, and a dismissive wave of the hand to other people. Bloggers are unprofessional, irresponsible, unreliable, amateur hacks - and part of the problem is that they’re too artistic. But, vloggers/vidcasters are also unprofessional, irresponsible, unreliable, amateur hacks - and the problem is that they are not artistic enough.

I mentioned this disconnect to the meeting participants, but the discussion ended up going in a different direction, and I never heard an explanation of why artistic is sometimes good and sometimes bad in media. I wonder if people just say these things without really thinking about what they’re saying. I’m not sure, which is why I would’ve liked to discuss it further. Interestingly, Mike and a few others seemed to get very defensive when I asked the question. I don’t think I asked it in a confrontational or accusatory manner; I was honestly curious. Like I said, I think there’s a lot to unpack here. And yeah, it might get uncomfortable at times, but really, that’s part of the point.

I don’t want to just write it all off as, “Well, old media types are scared, and they say reactionary things, using whatever terminology suits at the time.” Because I really do think there’s more to it than that (although certainly, there’s quite a bit of that, too). I think it’s worth exploring in more depth.

Other quick thoughts from last night:

• Why the continued emphasis on drawing and maintaining lines between “bloggers” and “journalists?” Why is the divide so important?
• How and why do certain bloggers (e.g., Michael Arrington, Arianna Huffington) come to be known as journalists, not “just” bloggers? What is the tipping point? Why are labels important, anyway?
• I’m tired of being discussed as a third-person concept. Bloggers this, bloggers that. HELLO. I am a blogger, and I’m sitting right here. Instead of making a bunch of grandiose generalizations about bloggers, talk to me. And listen.
• Frankly I’m getting pretty tired of being verbally kicked around and talked about in dismissive ways because I’m “just a blogger.” Well, I’m a person. It’s really not cool to sit there and talk about how stupid and unimportant a large, diverse group of people is, when a bunch of them are in the room - and expect them not to notice or not to mind.
• Why do some people see “bloggers” as a monolith? Is it honest ignorance (just not knowing much about blogging), or willful ignorance? Again, why is it important to maintain this monolithic view, and the distinction of “blogger” and “not a blogger?”
• Somebody said last night, as if it were a bad thing, “We could’ve been having this conversation in a bar” - ostensibly to lament that there weren’t more people, or it wasn’t more structured, I guess. But I was thinking, “Yes, we could - and that would be awesome!” I love having conversations like that, at a bar or anywhere else - let’s just leave the egos, the stupid little power trips, the weird superiority complexes, all the rest of it, at the door.
• When managing online communities, don’t start from a place of condescension or assumed superiority. It puts people on the defensive and (rightly) pisses them off. Also, people rise to the expectations set for them.

Would write more, but gotta get going for now. Looking forward to more conversations like this - some at bars, some in conference rooms. :)

ETA: This Gaping Void cartoon makes me laugh. I thought it was somewhat relevant to, well, not really last night’s meeting in particular, but just a general type of conversation that tends to go on at social media events and unconferences.

MSM hates bloggers, ah yes, that was it.*

Promoted from comments on Griftdrift’s (ZOMG NOT HIS REAL NAME) blog, because I like quoting myself, and sometimes comments on other people’s blogs lead to even greater glibness than my own blog posts:

That NPR thing was a hoot! Some of the most ridiculous hand-wringing I’ve heard in a long time. (Well… maybe not so long, come to think of it.) THE INTERNET WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN.

Also, I can attest that Jmac has been called “Jmac” WAY before he ever had a blog. I’m talking about back when he was playing Doom (or was it Quake?) over a dial-up modem with his nerdy high school friends.

Finally, speaking of high school… this…

That’s the way we do things in the ol’ MSM (again for the uninitiated, that’s mainstream media, bane of the blogosphere). We use our real names, too. It’s called accountability.

OMG THAT IS SOOOO FREAKING HIGH SCHOOL!! The drama! Make it stop! “We use our real names… so THERE!”

Hey, I use my real name. But I’m sure they’d find something else to make fun of about my blog. Probably all the swearing. That’s usually the next thing they go to. “You said the F-word, so you’re not CREDIBLE!”

Also, I should reiterate what Griftdrift said:

Do my readers know any more about Jim Thompson than they do me? Does somehow a proper name combined with a surname make someone more real? Lend credibility?

Okay, time for bed now, before I end up writing a post about how an animated movie about dancing penguins is a political allegory addressing the relative merits of capitalism and socialism.

* Yes, yes, I know hate is too strong of a word. But it’s late, and I think it’s funny, and besides, if I don’t use “hate,” I can’t employ the “[x] hates America” meme, of which I never tire.

See? If you wear a chicken suit and hold a politically charged sign, the mainstream media will flock to you!

Click To Play

Way to go, Shelbinator!

Last night, Rusty and I attended an Atlanta Press Club event entitled “New Media”: The Changing Media Landscape. Panelists were Mark Bauer, WSB-TV; Lea Donosky, AJC; Lila King, CNN I-Reporting Team; John Patton, ThePort Network; and it was moderated by Grayson.

The room was packed with people from a variety of traditional media backgrounds, public relations, marketing, and even a few people who just wandered in off the street out of curiosity. Oh, and a bunch of us bloggers sitting in the front row (in addition to a few other bloggers in other parts of the room). J. Brotherlove asked what the median age was of the audience, but it’s hard to say because it was really all over the place. One woman who spoke up and asked a question was a recent college graduate; there were other audience members who had 30+ years experience in the media industry. The room also had a surprising degree of gender and racial diversity.

I “live-twittered” the event to an extent. Most of those tweets showed up in yesterday’s daily Twitter digest posting, and the rest will show up tonight. I also took a bunch of notes in a sort of old-school live-blogging exercise, which I’ll scan and post later.

Grayson did a wonderful job of making the event very unconference-like. I got the feeling that this surprised some of the audience members who may have been expecting a more traditional question-and-answer routine from moderator to panelists, but people got the hang of it quickly and soon were speaking up with nearly as much zeal as at PodCamp Atlanta. Grayson and the panelists kept a good handle on things, not letting any of it spiral out of control (and there was one audience member who, had she gotten her way, I think would have willingly led us all down a dark path of unadulterated blog-bashing).

Overall, I think the event went well. There were a few audience members who were seriously rude and antagonistic, but a pleasant surprise (and in contrast to last week’s Social Media Club event) was that the panelists themselves were open-minded, eager to learn - and willing to call bullshit when they heard it. And they did, in response to some of those aforementioned audience members!

It wasn’t all roses, though, and I’m not going to sit here and give everybody a cookie just because it managed not to come to blows. There were a lot of people in that room who just did not get it (blogs are “entertainment” and apparently bloggers are obsessed with Lindsay Lohan?) and frankly need to wake up and answer the clue phone. There were people who apparently think it’s fine and dandy to say extremely rude, dismissive things about the entire spectrum of blogging, and then expect bloggers to bend over backwards to hand them content and do hard work for them.

But, all in all, it was one of the most productive discussions of this kind that I’ve participated in. I’m hoping that things will continue to get better.

I’ll write more later, going into more detail of specific things that happened and things that were said. Just wanted to get an overview post up for now, though.

Here is the podcast of the event, on the Georgia Podcast Network.

Other posts about the event:

• Rusty: Atlanta Press Club panel podcast/thoughts
• Amani Channel: Hangin’ Out At The Atlanta Press Club
• Griftdrift: Facing the Beast, A Blogger Answers A Few Questions, and A Question For The Traditional Journalists
• Grayson: Shout-Out To MY Social Network Peeps
• Sara: Blogger Navel Gazing

Update: Sara’s post articulates some of the problems I had with many audience members’ assumptions last night. I’ll still probably write about this more later.

These two things represent pieces of a larger picture, so naturally they are being discussed together.

For your reference, here’s a bunch of posts and such! I know you’re so excited. (Actually, this is mostly for my reference, so I don’t have to keep clicking around looking for all the different threads.)

• Moi: Mainstream media splatters here and there
• Rusty: A strange confluence of negativity and More on the latest kerfluffle
• Grayson: Pretend Voices Carry, What Planet Did I Land On?, Blogger 24, and Things Change
• Ranty Mostly ITP episode w/ Grayson, Rusty, and me: Thoughts on the Social Media Club meeting
• Dave: Reflections on SMC Atlanta Event
• Griftdrift: Feel The Snark!
• Soon-to-be-expat (*sniff*) Doug: Andisheh does the blogs — including this one!
• Metroblogging Atlanta: top blog?
• j. brotherlove: Atlanta Bloggers Who Matter - Who’s to say?
• Buzz Brockway: Atlanta bloggers meet with Big Media Officials…
• Joeventures: Crying bloggers, a slow news week, and a simple(?) suggestion
• Mingaling: Blogosphere says huh?
• Joseph G: Train-Wreck: Atlanta Blogs vs. OldSkool Media
• Thomas: Everybody’s Talkin’
• James: this whole creative loafing blog-o-sphere thing.

I’ll update this post if people write new stuff.

What Grayson said, about the Creative Loafing “five shining swallowed pennies in the overflowing toilet bowl that is the Atlanta blogosphere” story:

This piece was just wrong on so many levels, Andy. But essentially, you missed the ENTIRE story. To single out a few blogs (and they’re all great blogs… that’s not the issue here) and give the readership the impression that those five blogs are somehow BLOG FUCKING ATLANTA is such a slap in the face to the entire social media community here.

The many bloggers, academics in citizen media like Leonard Witt at PJNET.com, podcasters, the techno entrepreneurs, videobloggers like Amani Channel for instance, who have worked long and hard, and those who have helped organized social media events and conferences like PodCamp Atlanta and SoCon07 were reduced to five blogs you want to make a teen style, MySpace style list over. You and Ken should be ashamed of yourselves for trivializing and reducing an entire new direction in media to five blogs with this “starter piece” on social media.

It’s just lazy, uninspired journalism really. Just look to the state of the music industry to see how long you have to “get it.”

While we’re on the subject of traditional media, I should mention that Rusty, Grayson, and I went to the Social Media Club event last night where a guy from the AJC and a guy from WSB were there to, ostensibly, converse about how they’re embracing social media. (Har har.) You can listen to our podcast review of the thing, if you’re so inclined.

And I didn’t even mention all the sexism. We tried to keep it to about a half hour. This was after the full-on rant session at Central City Tavern… be glad you got the “toned down” version. (Yes, it’s all relative.)

It’s hard to say what my favorite part of the night was, but I think I’ll have to go with WSB’s Steve Riley saying to me, “What you’re doing seems more… artistic.”

…

*blank stare*

Obvious notes: 1) he has no idea what I’m doing; and 2) artistic? the hell?

Clue Phone ringing… it’s for you, Mr. Riley!

On a completely unrelated note, the next time I hear some asshole ask plaintively, “What crime is not a hate crime?” I’m going to verbally eviscerate them while assuring them that no, don’t worry, this is not a hate crime.