Hendrik Hertzberg explains the Oscars’ new voting system. The change, while making it more likely that blockbusters will be nominated, makes it more likely that an underdog will actually win.

From 1946 until last year, the voting worked the way Americans are most familiar with. Five pictures were nominated. If you were a member of the Academy, you put an “X” next to the name of your favorite. The picture with the most votes won. Nice and simple, though it did mean that a movie could win even if a solid majority of the eligible voters—in theory, as many as seventy-nine per cent of them—didn’t like it. Those legendary PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants don’t release the totals, but this or something like it has to have happened in the past, probably many times.

This year, the Best Picture list was expanded, partly to make sure that at least a couple of blockbusters would be on it… To forestall a victory for some cinematic George Wallace or Ross Perot, the Academy switched to a different system. Members—there are around fifty-eight hundred of them—are being asked to rank their choices from one to ten. In the unlikely event that a picture gets an outright majority of first-choice votes, the counting’s over. If not, the last-place finisher is dropped and its voters’ second choices are distributed among the movies still in the running. If there’s still no majority, the second-to-last-place finisher gets eliminated, and its voters’ second (or third) choices are counted. And so on, until one of the nominees goes over fifty per cent.

This scheme, known as preference voting or instant-runoff voting, doesn’t necessarily get you the movie (or the candidate) with the most committed supporters, but it does get you a winner that a majority can at least countenance. It favors consensus.

Via Balloon Juice

I’m posting this Dave Eggers remembrance of JD Salinger because it’s nice, but mostly because I wanted a place to memorialize the crazy ass 1st comment in case it’s deleted for some reason. The world needs to see stuff like this, and I guarantee that every one of you English majors out there has a sneaking suspicion that you had class with the person who wrote this.

First, Eggers on the possibility that Salinger continued to write:

Of course, the possibility most intriguing—and fictional-sounding—would have Salinger having continued to write for fifty years, finishing hundreds of stories and a handful of novels, all of which are polished and up to his standards and ready to go, and all of which he imagined would be found and published after his death. That, in fact, he intended all along for these works to be read, but that he just couldn’t bear to send them into the world while he lived.

And now the CRAZY! Excuse the length, I quoted the entire thing because I was terrified it would some day disappear. Maybe crazy isn’t the right word… No, it is.

I’m sure this is an inappropriate venue to air these grievances, but after wading through a few ‘vexing’ remembrances, it looks like I’m going to set my thoughts down in writing, and the foot of this graveyard seems as safe as place as any to plant a sword – no one to kill: everyone’s dead. I may get long-winded, so I’ll offer up the point from the get go: the moral of this probably-never-to-be-posted internet comment is do not let middling twits near the obituaries of great men. It is fashionable to dislike Salinger and acceptable to regard him as a demigod. Those who dislike him seem to take offense at his Sincerity (properly capitalized, framed by generous margins), or claim acumen that sees through his characters’ adolescent whining and precious fragility. Those people, I find (and I mean this strictly as an insult), generally have not read Proust and do not like Shakespeare. And then there are his hopeless devotees, not of the assassinating sort, but of the I Am Holden Caulfield, lead eastward by the promise of his brilliant figure type (you can provide the hyphens yourself). These people, I find, generally have not read anything – maybe Lolita, which they mispronounce [Loll- as in lollipop, see: Strong Opinions] and never finished. All of this is to say that like select canons before his, Salinger’s work frequently attracts readers ill-equipped to understand it, which, as both Proust and common sense tell us, is symptomatic of genius. Not of talent, mind you, not even of tremendous talent, but of that most rare and dazzling gift afforded only a handful since creation – the ability to render black and white in color, to settle the darkness without reference to history or constellation, to provide not only essential information about the nature of existence but also a reason to exist. Salinger was a genius. That’s not something to be said lightly or proudly, because it is a terrible and humbling thing to behold: genius is the perpetual state of the terrifying sublime, to behold the mountain and feel small, to register the universe and feel unreal, to witness the passing of the mountain and universe, (I told you I’d get long-winded, but I didn’t say I’d get kooky, clerical oversight, apologies) to, in short, understand that you will die, to know that the conditions of this world are hilariously insignificant and to, therefore, reorient yourself to what is nameless and highest and most frighteningly joyous. Man is not the mountain. I don’t care why he retreated into seclusion; I know there’s no convincing the self-righteously blind that the stars are real and furious and gorgeous. No one should hold out for insight: all I expect is some courtesy. You like his dialogue? I like your shoes. What of the soul?

Posted 1/29/2010, 8:57:48pm by willowfog

Ken Auletta from the New Yorker wrote a book about Google, “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It” and before he published it, he cut the last chapter of 25 media maxims. Click the link above to read the chapter, or see below to see them in cribbed form. You might recognize the first maxim from Steve Jobs’ Stanford graduation address (video below via AllThingsD)

1. “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
2. Passion Wins
3. Focus is Required
4. Vision is Required
5. A Team Culture is Vital
6. Treat Engineers as Kings
7. Treat Customers Like a King
8. Brand Often Means Trust
9. Every Company is a Frenemy
10. The Speed Of Change Accelerates
11. Adapt or Die
12. “Life is long but time is short.”
13. A “Free” Web Is Not Always Free
14. Digital is Different
15. Don’t Think of The Web as Another Distribution Platform
16. Technology Provides Potent New Targeting Tools
17. The Web Forges Communities, and Threatens Privacy
18. Beware The Government Bear
19. Paradox:The Web Forges Both Niche and Large Communities
20. More Media Concentration, Yet More Choice
21. Luck Matters
22. No More Old Media Magic
23. No More New Media Magic, Either
24. Don’t Ignore the Human Factor
25. There are no Certitudes

I would have never started reading Maureen Tkacik’s Gladwell for Dummies in The Nation if I had known that it was over 8K words, so, you know, be warned. And yet it has an “irritating, unrelenting readability” that kept bringing me back to it over several hours. While Anti-Gladwellian screed might be too strong of a descriptor, I’d be comfortable throwing around phrases like petty and jealously thorough. Profiles like this don’t get written without there being some sort of personal vendetta involved. And yet, while it’s a devastating look at Gladwell’s work, it also functions as a takedown of those who enjoy his books. The title of the article should not have been “Gladwell for Dummies” (that would have been better lampooned as “Pseudoscience for Airplanes”), but “Gladwell is for Dummies”. Maureen, you make me feel dumb for having read Gladwell’s articles, what SHOULD I read?

That success is in the eye of the unsuccessful would seem to be the great unspoken dilemma dogging critics asked to consider the work of the rich and famous author and inspirational speaker Malcolm Gladwell. No matter how well intentioned or intellectually honest their attempts to assess his ideas, the subtext of Gladwell’s perceived success, and its implications for their own aspirations in the competitive thought-generation business, obscures their judgment and sinks their morale. Nearly a decade has passed since the New York Times dryly summarized Gladwell’s first book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000), as “a study of social epidemics, otherwise known as fads,” and yet, each Sunday, it still taunts perusers of the paperback nonfiction rankings, where it currently sits in sixth place. Gladwell may be merely “a slickster trickster” who “markets marketing” (as James Wolcott put it), or a “clever idea packager” who “cannot conceal the fatuousness of his core conclusions” (science writer John Horgan); he might even be an “idiot” (Leon Wieseltier). But one thing is clear: Gladwell is no fad. He is a brand, a guru, a fixture at New York publishing parties and in the spiels of literary agents hoping to steer writers toward concepts that will strike publishers as “Gladwellian.”

Via Fimoculous

Photo by Flickr user danielweir.esq
It’s important to note when discussing the problems at newspapers that spending on advertising is down almost EVERYWHERE, not just in newspapers. Industries that are dependent on ad dollars, of which Big Newspaper is just one, are all hurting. Yes, circulation is down, but there aren’t less people reading the news necessarily, there are just less people subscribing to newspapers. If newspapers were able to charge higher fees for online advertising, they’d be in much better shape, obviously.

On that note, I noticed I had about a zillion tabs open related to the newspaper industry and I thought I’d collect them all here.

Via Daring Fireball, The Awl, demanding context from how bi-annual newspaper circulation numbers are typically reported, put together a chart showing newspaper circulation over the last 2 decades. It’s pretty if you like looking at line graphs with dramatically plummeting line graphs. The LA Times’ fall is breathtaking in its suddenness, and circulation is down 10% across the board.

In supporting Steve Coll’s idea that newspapers should be nonprofits and in attempting to determine the value of local newspapers, Clay Shirky decides to do a “news biopsy” on his hometown newspaper, the Columbia Daily Tribune. From his biopsy, he finds that only 1/6 of the newspaper is “created news” or content created by the newspaper’s 6 reporters and those 6 reporters work for a newspaper with 59 employees.

The city desk editors and the copy chief make the work…more valuable than it would otherwise be. But you can pick any multiplier you like for necessary editorial and support staff and that number, times six reporters, won’t be a big number. In particular, it won’t be 59, or anywhere near it.

His conclusion? “There are dozen or so reporters and editors in Columbia, Missouri, whose daily and public work is critical to the orderly functioning of that town, and those people are trapped inside a burning business model.”

Also commenting on the “the power and necessity of local reporting” Esquire.com uses the recent Samoan earthquake/tsunami as an example of the big guys besting the little guys.

Newsosaur looked into pay walls and found that paywalls might never come because publishers are realizing they can’t afford to lose the traffic a paywall would cost. Which is good news, because some columnists are quitting over paywalls. At the end of the Newsosaur’s piece, there is bleating from Stephen Brill that, “You are misinformed about folks being less inclined” to add paywalls. Stephen Brill, by the way, founded Journalism Online, a company dedicated to helping publishers charge consumers for content, so, you know, he might be biased. (Journalism Online has a funny section of their site called Why Readers Will Pay For Online News, which features several different newspapers talking about why people SHOULD pay for news, but not why they WILL. That’s a distinction worth making.)

Finally, via Kottke, Daniel Gross has a piece in Slate that says despite the falling circulations numbers, it’s not as bad as you think. Several publishers were able to raise subscription revenue by raising subscription costs enough to make up for canceled subscriptions. “This is the new emerging model—cutting costs, raising prices.”

I debated whether to include this last one because I kind of hate Megan McArdle’s writing. I figured since I had already read her post and linked it, I’d leave it there for you to decide if you want to read it or not. Here’s Megan McArdle doing what she does best, spewing confusing nonsense. She doesn’t add anything to the conversation, but wants you to know she’s very concerned about the future of journalism.

Hell yeah! This is the kind of web documentation I can get behind. Malcolm Gladwell has a new book coming out called What the Dog Saw made up of articles he’s written for the New Yorker over the last several years. Kottke took it upon himself to grab links for all the articles, so it’s up to you if you want to read the articles for free or buy them in a pleasing collection.

Two of my favorites: Troublemakers and Late Bloomers.

Mad Men Season 3 starts on Sunday and I am…excited. Here’s a round up of some of what’s been said about the show in the last couple weeks.

-Like cocktails? Here’s a Mad Men Cocktail Guide.

-Lots here from Vanity Fair, including a word on their obsession with set design:

A scene-setting anecdote everyone in the Mad Men orbit tells is how Weiner came onto the set one day and focused on some pieces of fruit he said were too large and shiny and perfectly formed; produce in the early 60s—period produce—wasn’t pumped up. Get smaller, dumpier fruit, he ordered. (Depending on who was telling me the story, from cast members to network executives, the offending produce morphed from apples to oranges to bananas, but Amy Wells, the set decorator, said definitively: it was apples.)

-HuffPo’s take.

-The New Yorker on advertising Mad Men:

The theme of season three is change. “We wanted our key art to be more high-concept,” Schupack explained, unveiling the new poster, which hits this week: Draper is sitting in his office, looking nonchalant, as water rises up to his knees.

-From Esquire, Christina Hendricks and some other female players.

-Story about the real life person Don Draper is based on.

In the 1960s, Draper Daniels was something of a legendary character in American advertising. As the creative head of Leo Burnett in Chicago in the 1950s, he had fathered the Marlboro Man campaign, among others, and become known as one of the top idea men in the business. He was also a bit of a maverick.

-Playboy is getting Madmenized for the next couple weeks.

-Interview and podcast with Jon Hamm.

-Talking with the Mad Men costume designer:

Bryant mixes original creations with vintage pieces for the principal cast’s wardrobe, which is designed from scratch, starting with sketches. Her use of kaleidoscope colors, sparkling jewelry, brilliant prints and florals can be deliciously distracting.

-New York Magazine got into the act with a profile of Christina Hendricks

Which is kind of the point of Mad Men. Bad is sexy. And then just very, very bad. The show lures you in with a glittering surface, but just below is a hothouse of homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and a more general and crushing sense of isolation.

and Pete Campbell whom everyone hates except Matt Weiner apparently:

“I went to an all-boys school, and Pete’s like the kids I went to school with. He could have been Holden Caulfield’s roommate, who borrowed his coat and didn’t bring it back.”

and a handy Guide to the First Two Seasons.

-Finally here’s the Wall St Journal on the story, which seems to be getting a lot of play this year, of the writing staff that is mostly female:

The story centers on Don Draper and his shadowy past, but a key part of the series, the writers say, is its complicated female characters. “It’s less skewed than it appears,” says consulting producer Maria Jacquemetton.

You know how it sounds like Michael Jackson is making up works in Wanna Be Startin Something when he’s all, “Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa”? Turns out the song is inspired by Manu Dibango’s Soul Makossa. MJ didn’t credit Dibango originally, but worked it out with him financially a bit later.
Check it out:

Malcolm Gladwell’s recent review of Chris Anderson’s latest book, ‘Free: The Future of a Radical Price‘ caused a round of reactions from big thinkers. Here’s a round up:
Gladwell started things off by disputing the thesis of the book:

The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws

Seth Godin stepped into it, saying Malcolm was wrong.
Mark Cuban says:

The videos on Youtube, magazine articles, newspapers reports, anything that used to be analog that now is digital have a perceived value that is based on their legacy delivery.

and

The music is often free, but it is NEVER freely distributed.

Anil Dash takes a step back, says the dust-up is likely conceived to sell books and magazines, argues that Gladwell’s main point is that Anderson didn’t provide evidence only anecdotes and then goes on to mention all the people who say Gladwell is heavy on the story and light on the science.
Henry Blodget agrees with Gladwell.
Mike Masnick at TechDirt is firmly in the Anderson camp.
The Opinionator Blog (at NYTimes.com) gleefully discusses some of the bloodsport.
Fred Wilson says some things will be free and some won’t.
Finally, Chris Anderson somewhat bitchily responds (sniffingly referring to Gladwell as a ‘journalist’ (the horror!) using GeekDad to prove the idea of paying people to get people to wirte instead of paying writers.

“The big problem of small change” is Italian economic historian Carlo Cipolla’s way of describing the hoarding of coins when because of inflation the face value of a coin is less than than the value of the metal used to make the coin. This hoarding of coins is one of 3 explanations for the current coin shortage in Buenos Aires.
The other two:
1. Coin-only bus companies were saving coins to sell to businesses at a mark up.
2. The left wing government of Argentina is conspiring to embarrass the right wing government of Buenos Aires in advance of a electronic bus card system that is way behind schedule.