Brave News World

Posted on November 9, 2003 by Stefan Geens

Ten days or so ago, Felix had a screed against long, elaborate stories in the New York Times. He makes some good points, but I disagree with the conclusion he draws. For newspapers, writing short straight news is a recipe for decline into irrelevancy.

How is a newspaper supposed to compete these days? Unlike websites, newspapers are not searchable, and unlike TV, the news is 12 hours old by the time people consume it. How do you survive when you are a compelling read only for those sitting on the subway or toiletI hate to bring this up in polite company, but wifi plus laptop actually makes for great toilet reading.?

The New York Times a while ago decided to compete by becoming more like that other unquestionably compelling toilet read, The New Yorker, with long meandering articles that go in-depth in ways that Reuters and AP do not. I think this is a good idea, in principle; it would help if the subject matter were not breaking news, however. New Yorker articles aren’t built in a day, so it is no surprise that these NYT pieces are badly written, as Felix shows.

But there is another reason why longer articles often fail. Their writers often do betray a political point of view, yet would deny it if asked. This pretence — that they are practising objective journalism — undermines the emotional honesty of the writing. It makes for pieces that can’t quite come out and say what they mean, because the obvious, intended conclusions are left dangling. Seeming objective means pulling punches; we’re left with intimations and juxtapositions that are supposed to make us reach the right conclusion, but in fact all this divining of intent just makes for tedious reading.

The solution is obvious: Do what Raines would have hated. Take a page (ha) from the European press and advertise your leanings. Go ahead, become openly slanted, crusading, editorial, the way that European papers are. In Europe, the news is reported as part of a running commentary from a specific world view, and all with truth in advertising. Wouldn’t most of the conservative complainants shut up if the NYT simply outed itself as a liberal paper? Let me rephrase that — shouldn’t conservative pundits shut up if the NYT just declared, “Yes, we are aligned with liberal causes; our choice of news articles and their prominence will as of now reflect this. If you don’t like it, go make your own newspaper.”

The New York Post already practices a form of this, aligning itself with populist causes, taking the side of the man in the street, baring gut reactions in 240 point type on its frontFor example: “Wanted: Dead or Alive” next to Osama Bin Laden..

What of the Wall Street Journal? It is clearly thriving where the NYT is stagnant. I see two reasons:

positioning: Covering every news item from a financial perspective pays, because the target readerships knows the value of timely news, and ponies up for online subscriptions. Many people who read the WSJ read it online first. The paper becomes merely a record of the state of the newsroom’s reporting efforts at the end of the day. In line with this thinking, it has now included online subscribers in the circulation numbers.

design: The WSJ front page has long been designed like a news website, before such things even existed. Two columns of news headlines “link” (manually) to the full articles inside — it’s ideal for scanning. And then there is the New Yorker-esque piece, the A-hed, which is hewn for days if not weeks into a compelling, quirky read, teased with punny headlines. The subject matter is topical, but not breaking; unlike the NYT, the WSJ does not make the mistake of trying to rush this.

This segregation of stories gives you various ins into the paper, depending on your mood, and in that it is similar to The Economist, which can be attacked head-on via its opinionated leaders or slipped into via the more urbane back pages.

The Economist is in a sweet spot. It smudges the line between informing and opining in ways American media should emulateFoxNews is emphatically not an example of American media already doing this. It simply subjugates information to opinion. Stovepiping for the masses, if you will.. Reading the editorial pieces in the WSJ and NYT, caged as they are on that one page, I get a sense that they are more strident than they should be, having to abstain as they do from contributing to the rest of the paper.

So my free advice to the NYT: For your longer pieces, try to poach some of those editors at The New Yorker or Wall Street Journal. And then flaunt your colors.

Swish Nobels

Posted on November 5, 2003 by Stefan Geens

The Volokh Conspiracy has a spirited defence going of Swiss creativity, for the most part successful, marred only by its dependence on dubious sources, namely the Swiss.

There seems to be a widely parroted perception that the Swiss have the most Nobel Prize winners on a per capita basis. But divide absolute totals for nationalities with CIA population estimates and you get 0.30 Swiss Nobel prize winners per 100,000 Swiss, whereas the Swedish manage 0.34 per 100,000 Swedes.

A breakdown of the categories shows the Swiss are fatally weak in Nobels for literature, trailing Sweden by 5. Perhaps writing in Swedish sometimes has its advantages.

(A note on my methodology: Data for nationalities seems to be up to date for 2002; neither the Swedes nor the Swiss won anything in 2003. And if it’s on the internet, it must be true, right?)

Why iTunes will win the music wars

Posted on November 3, 2003 by Stefan Geens

My apartment building complex is wired like a university dorm; every single one of the 100 odd apartments is on a 10 Mbit LAN network, connected to a Bredbandsbolaget backboneThat’s 10Mb downloading and uploading. On this network, iTunes applications find each other effortlessly. I share my entire music library by default and have set the application to look for shared music, and I regularly have several other people’s music pop up in my application. Sometimes people use my music. With this kind of bandwidth, it’s a seamless background transactionBy “sharing” I really mean streaming music off somebody’s harddrive, without copying it..

For a few glorious weeks in May, a new version of iTunes allowed music sharing across the public internet, though doing so usually usurped the available bandwidth. Braying by music companies quickly put an end to that, though sharing is still allowed within the local network, the intention being that home computers can share music amongst themselves.

Intention or no, college dorm networks (and my apartment building) behave in exactly the same way, except that the sharing is done between people who likely have never met. All this is done legally. It’s why Stanford University students seem to be taking a shine to iTunes. Napster 2 can’t share. MusicMatch can’t either. And sharing benefits from the network effect, making iTunes a more and more compelling choice for each new user.

How does Apple get away with it? The iTunes music store’s digital rights management scheme allows those songs it sells to be used by up to three computers simultaneously, but these computers need to be authorized, a non-trivial process. Other music is sharable without restriction, however. This way Apple gets to protect its business, as well as that of the record companies.

Campus dorms and techsavvy Stockholmers are exactly the kind of trendsetters who will tip the balance in favor of iTunes.

Sunday morning

Posted on November 3, 2003 by Stefan Geens

My Statue of Liberty postcard went missing overnight, 3 days after I put it up. Any suggestions for the next step? I would of course never dream of pulling down the annan världsbild poster in retribution; that would be stooping to the same level and contradict the whole point of the exercise. Shall I try putting up a pro-WTO stickerI’m out of Statue of Liberty postcards.? Or shall I do a control experiment and put up something everybody agrees with, like End hunger now! just to check that it is really the content of my speech that is being objected to, not the delivery?

Interestingly, the ad for the real estate agent also disappeared. This leads me to believe that the censor must have had a small pang of conscience; something along the lines of: “Well, we really can’t let that misguided response continue to sit alongside the poster, but taking down just the postcard might look a bit too targeted, so I will also take down some of the ads to make it look like I did a regular clean-up of the bulletin board.”

In an apparently unrelated movevia Erik, via Manhus Beta., the Swedish chapter of Indymedia decided to start censoring contributed articles on its website as well as appended comments [Swedish]. The reason seems to be that articles were being posted [Swedish] criticizing the human rights abuses of regimes in the Middle East other that Israel. American Indymedia chapters, to their credit, are up in arms on the move by the Swedish chapter:

Readers say the editors have started to act like the fascists they claim to oppose, and to use tactics aimed to stymie free debate. Others have complained about the apparent racism of the editors, since censorship has been particularly harsh regarding comments or articles from specific ethnic groups.

Maybe the editors live in my building.

Biting the bulletin

Posted on October 29, 2003 by Stefan Geens

The entrance to my apartment building in Stockholm has a bulletin board. On it you will find a memo about the drying cabinets in the laundry room, an ad from a locksmith, one from a real estate agent, and then it has a small poster depicting a world painted in the American flag, subtitled En annan världsbild är möjlig, “another conception of the world is possible” &mdash or, “another idea of how the world should be is possible.” It’s been there for at least a month, ever since I moved in.

I don’t disagree with the literal message on this posterNov 3,2003: Clarification: What I mean is, it is trivially true that other conceptions of the world are possible; it is a non-normative statement., which is one reason why I think it fails as a piece of propaganda art. What is clear is that the person who posted it holds assumptions that do not bear closer scrutiny. Something compels me to list them.

1. The world is currently like that: It is not. American ideas hold very little sway in most parts of the world (Sweden being an obvious exception).

2. A world like that is undesirable: It is not. Attaining American levels of corruption, crime, due process of law, freedom of speech and democracy would be a huge improvement in the quality of life of an overwhelming majority of the world’s population (Sweden again being an exception).

3. The American flag symbolizes American imperialism:Leave aside for a minute the absurd idea that the US is a cultural imperialist, forcing its films and fast food on unwilling victims. To indict the American flag — and the entirety of the American project it represents — on the grounds of Bush’s foreign policy is like condemning the Swedish way of life on account of a profitable arms industry, or its neutrality during World War IIWere the poster in question to date from 1944, with not a letter changed, it would have done an admirable job rallying support against Nazism.. It is not unlike condemning all of Islam on account of its more radical strains.

Perhaps I resist the use of the American flag in the context of this poster because I do not think of the US as a nation state, of the same mold as European countries. Bash the French flag, and you bash France. Bash the Italian flag, and you bash Italy. But reproach the American flag and you cannot help but lash out against a whole lot more.

This is because — unlike nation states — America is not founded on a myth of common provenance, but on a myth of common arrival. And while we can never choose our provenance, we should certainly be able to choose our destiny. Many millions of immigrants have done just that, becoming Americans by sheer force of will. Try that in Germany. Or Denmark. America is not so much a country as a state of mind; a subscription to a set of parameters within which an inclusive democratic society would be built.

Spreading this meme — painting the globe with the American flag, if you will — is a worthwhile cause, as far as I am concerned. Of course, I completely disagree with the neo-cons on how to go about it.

Which still leaves me with that poster on my doorstep every morning. The concept of a free-speech zone in every hallway holds great appeal to me; it’s a very American thing, really. It reminded me of this highly entertaining piece by Mike Adams, an American college professor who earlier this year documented his testing of the limits of tolerance of speech at his university. He turned his office door into a free speech zone, and allowed anyone to post anything on it, waiting to see who would be the first to fail the testIt was a feminist student who complained first; she objected to the sticker “So you’re a feminist?… Isn’t that cute”..

In that spirit, I’ve now made my own contribution to the bulletin board. On my way back from New York, I bought a 79c postcard of the Statue of Liberty and that poem by Emma Lazarus“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”. I put it up late last night. Oh, I know, it’s corny, and I feel guilty for stooping to the challenge like that, but I no longer feel like I implicitly agree with the poster’s sentiment every time I walk by it. And whoever put it there no longer assumes that I do.

Northern plight

Posted on October 29, 2003 by Stefan Geens

Why oh why am I never allowed to see the Aurora Borealis? It’s the solar storm of a lifetime up there, it was one of the main reasons for moving to Sweden, and now we have stupid clouds.

This is not the first time I’ve moved to a place for the astronomy. I pleaded with my parents to move to Australia in 1984 because Comet Halley was all set to make a splash in the southern hemisphere in 1986. (It proved worthwhile. And the southern sky is definitely more impressive than the northern offerings. Unless, of course, there are northern lights in them.)

Blog for life

Posted on October 28, 2003 by Stefan Geens

There are a growing number of these around, but this is the first one made by a friend: noahjoaquin.com, a most excellent baby blog.

Yes, the idea is now being commercialized by babyblog.com but the site name indicates the entrepreneurs there don’t appreciate how grand the idea can be: A blog for life, a present from the parents back to the child as it grows older, one to which the kid starts contributing drawings, then writings; eventually it becomes a group blog, a place for family holiday reports, or elegies to deceased pets. During the teenage years, it’s a place for articulated selfabsorption — at college, for reporting back to the parents. Eventually, it’s time to start a new baby blog.

I wonder what effect such a public platform for self-expression would have on children, especially if it is interactive, with positive feedback from grandparents and teachers. Kids must get as much out of it as we do, surely?

My Swedish dentist

Posted on October 27, 2003 by Stefan Geens

American and European dentists must really loathe each other’s work. In the US, my dentist was agape at the coarseness of the European works in my mouth, and proceeded to finesse all manner of things in there. Today, I visited a Swedish dentist, and she was equally aghast, this time at the hurried look of American efforts.

So I need a recent American-made filling replaced. But first, a medical questionnaire. In Swedish. Rather than accidentally admitting to having sold off a kidney, I leave most of that blank“Snussar du?” is one question. Do you use snuss, a teabag of tobacco you stuff between your gums and your upper lip, making you look like an out-of-whack Don Corleone? It doesn’t get more Swedish than this. I’ve tried it, and as the buzz builds up, you begin oozing brown drool whenever you smile. Apparently, it takes practice. Whoever makes it should really expand into New York City bars, though..

My Swedish dental vocabulary is about as good as my dentist’s English dental vocabulary. As I lie there, open mouthed, with an 800,000 rpm diamond drill in my mouth an inch from my brain, she proceeds to rattle off all manner of Important Dentistry Observations in Swedish, to which I nod earnestly, incapable really of asking for vocabulary clarifications. I get an irrepressible flashback of that Gary Larson cartoon where a dog owner tells off his pet but all the dog understands is “blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah.” Yeah, I’m the dog.

I’ll find out next week if I agreed to having all my teeth pulled and getting dentures. I hope not.

What is Sweden's murder rate?

Posted on October 26, 2003 by Stefan Geens

I’ve been sent an English translation of an official body-by-body investigationStrangely, the English translation is more detailed than the Swedish original conducted earlier this year into Sweden’s murder rate for 2002. The conclusion: “A total of 95 persons fell victim to incidents of lethal violence in Sweden in 2002.” For a population of 8.94 million at the end of 2002, that makes for a homicide rate of 1.07 per 100,000 people per year. Not 10 per 100,000, as The Economist reported, and lower than Japan’s rate of 1.10 per 100,000 in 2002.

The Economist used old Interpol data for 2001PDF thanks to Jan Haugland, which has since been “corrected”. The old Interpol data showed 892 murders in 2001 and a suspiciously exact rate of 10.01 per 100,000Could it have been a data entry error?; new data shows 167 murders that year, with a concomitant murder rate of 1.87 per 100,000. Interpol has not yet published 2002 data for Sweden.

That’s quite an improvement. But putting both PDFs — old and new — side by side raises many questions. The new data is clearly wrong when it comes to counting totals. Both PDFs count the total number of crimes committed in 2001 to be exactly 1,189,393. But the new data is now missing 622,232 instances of theft reported in the old data. In the new data, the total for category 4, all thefts, is lower than some of its subtotals! The old data also doesn’t add up, but not so flagrantly. What a mess.

Meanwhile, the Swedish report accounts for an overreporting of murders of around 60% over the last decade:

This would reconcile Interpol’s own new rate of 1.87 in 2001, based on Swedish police statistics (red line), with the lower total of around 1.10 in 2002, based on a counting of actual bodies (blue line).

What we’re seeing, then, is a compounding of two errors. Interpol’s bizzare error, and then a systemic overreporting of murders in Sweden’s own police statistics.

From the chart it is clear that the divergence between the two lines becomes much larger starting in 1992. That’s when the police implemented a computerized case tracking system that was intended to solve cases, not give accurate crime figures, but from which statistics were culled nonetheless.

The result is overcounting. For example, murders committed abroad but reported in Sweden were counted. Conspiracies to commit murder that were not consumated but discovered were counted. Attempted murders were counted. Suspected murders that later proved to be accidents or suicides were counted. False murder reports were counted. Some murders were counted repeatedly:

One example of this phenomenon may be found in a case where there were two victims, but which was recorded as involving three victims; and where, in addition, the offence report was completed twice. This means that a total of six offences were registered, of which only two were correct. Furthermore, the two offences actually involved had been committed several years earlier.

Here is the breakdown in numbers:

Quite a cautionary tale, then. But it’s probably too late to combat the frisson of excitement that coursed through the conservative web when The Economist‘s chart unwittingly endorsed Interpol’s error. A typical reaction, from the conservative American news site NewsMax:

Sweden, supposedly the land of granola-munching socialist peaceniks, had 10 murders for every 100,000 people. Yes, Sweden is branching out and is no longer just Suicide Central.

Maybe Stockholm will take a cue from our Second Amendment and allow its citizens the right to defend themselves from its out-of-control population of greasy-haired blond killers.

The moral: How nebulous statistics can be, and also how dangerous it can be to draw conclusions from improperly vetted data.

A block of writers

Posted on October 24, 2003 by Stefan Geens

I already know how my next post will begin:

The bus from Newark discharged its passengers — a … of Swedes and myself — into the halogen murk of the Port Authority bus station on 42nd.

But now I’m stuck. I can’t think of a good collective noun for Swedes. This is what I’ve come up with so far, but rejected. What do you thinkI have, however, found an excellent collective noun for my fellow city dwellers: A syndrome of Stockholmers.?

A binge of Swedes? (Doesn’t cover the sober ones);

A curiosity of Swedes? (Doesn’t cover the drunk ones);

A share of Swedes? (Too Third Way. Or too First Way? In any case, too confusing);

An angst of Swedes? (Too stereotyped);

A collective of Swedes? (Too literal for my tastes).

Any suggestions?

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