Not amused.

[jaguar]

ok UT - so your point is americnas cafes can't make half-decent coffee to save their lives so starbucks does well.....Logical enough... Here *shock horror* to the distraught of MBAs everywhere its more like jet silvers cafe, except probably better coffee ;p

Real cups, relaxed atmosphere, and fantastic coffee in ohmygod real cups.

Oh and UT - call me a luddite but i'd rahter enjoy my news away from a computer screen most of the time :p man i'm in a bitch mood today

What we are really railing against is change. Today business is short on luxuries like expensive real estate to devote to people sitting around consuming borrowed newspapers and not buying anything. Space is a resource, so in a busy culture where time is at a premium, you'll more likely succeed by volume and throughput.

Is this a good thing? Its sure got allot of people pissed. FUck it gets to me, sure it makes good busienss sense but fucking hell what the pointof life if you cna't enjoy it, do we need to maxamise, rationalise and cost-cut absolutely everything.....

*sighs* Ah well, cafe culture here is as strong as ewver and mroe are opening by the die - die starbucks die!!!

[lisa]

Originally posted by jaguar
Is this a good thing? Its sure got allot of people pissed. FUck it gets to me, sure it makes good busienss sense but fucking hell what the pointof life if you cna't enjoy it, do we need to maxamise, rationalise and cost-cut absolutely everything.....

Well, that's a common complaint for a lot of people... The free market gives them what they say they want -- with actions. Which is often, unfortunately, not what they want in their hearts.

For example, I have a friend who thinks the airline industry should be re-regulated. He doesn't think prices were that much more expensive than they are now, but the service is much less, meals are worse, seats are smaller, etc.

So, I asked him an obvious question: "Last time you flew, how did you decide which airline to take?" He said "I did some price shopping and went with the best deal." I asked, "Did you ask any of them about the quality of their food? Size of seats? Etc?" He replied, "Of course not."

I explained to him (in nicer language) that he was part of the problem. He was looking for the cheapest airfare and not even, apparently, investigating anything else. By not even asking he was effectively telling the airlines that all he cares about is price.

And, how do the airlines minimize price? By searving cheap (or no) food, putting more seats in the same space, etc, etc. All the things that he hates.

Unfortunately, in a large industry, it's hard for one person to make a difference. It's easy to say "I can't change it, so I'll just save the $$$." But it's like voting for someone and then complaining that s/he got into office.

If you don't like chain stores, go out of your way to NOT shop at them. Find the "mom and pop" stores and buy there. Help them stay in business. Don't let the large conglomerates think that they can make money in your area.

Anyhow, that's what I try to do. I try to buy books at a small stores rather than Dalton's or Barns & Noble's. I dunno if it'll work, but I sure feel better when I do.

[jaguar]

I know...its just depressing.
Reminded me in some vague way of privatisationhere and in Britan - waht a stupid idea that turned out to be.

[elSicomoro]

This was sorta touched upon earlier, but to put it out there...

Starbucks has been around for 30 years. Obviously, you can't expand your business if you don't have a good product. I personally think they make a great product. They also give back to the community. Hell, you could argue that they make Joe Q. Public *think* about coffee.

The one thing I've noticed is that each Starbucks, while generally similiar, has its own uniqueness about it. Be it a particular couch, the layout, etc. For example, the Starbucks at 36th and Walnut in University City (Philadelphia) has an upper level and a large patio. While the Starbucks at Delmar and Leland in University City (St. Louis) has a small patio, but a little "nook" where there are a few cushy chairs for you to sip and read the Post-Dispatch or Newsweek or whatever.

And it's not like it's just Starbucks. There is also Seattle's Best and Panera Bread/St. Louis Bread Co., popping up all over the place.

Hopefully jag, Melburnians will not do what was done in Chicago 2 years ago. Starbucks has a TON of locations in Chicago...even I would say there are too many there. Apparently, a new one was opening up in a neighborhood, much to the chagrin of its neighbors. One night, the soon-to-open location was vandalized...windows broken out, even some graffiti I believe.

I believe the local folks and the big chains can coexist happily. If anything, they should keep each other on their toes.

[jaguar]

SO they took coffee to the tribals and converted them - happened ehre a long time ago, try post WW2 with millions of european immigrants.

I can't imagine vandalism happening but i did ask one waitor in one of my regualr haunts about a street away waht the thought. Summed it: if ameircans think they are gonan tell us hwo to make coffee they've got another thing coming.

[Xugumad]

Originally posted by Undertoad
And one more thing. These "newspapers" you speak of. I've heard of them, but it's been a while. Isn't that where they used to cut down tons and tons of trees, mash them into pulp, run that through rollers, just to deliver it to big industrial presses, to print "news" that is up to 24 hours old by the time it reaches you?

How quaint. How wasteful!

Print is dead. I get better news from Yahoo and CNN, better editorials from 100 different websites, and better "letters to the editor" from here. And the local papers duplicate their dead-tree models on their websites.

Tony,

I respect your opinion, but this was dreadfully misinformed. Print isn't dead. Print is alive. Much more so than the net. The 'duplicate' papers are financially unviable: the NYT and WP couldn't produce one hundredth of their in-depth reporting through website financing. Where do you think they get all the money from to pay their foreign correspondents, journalists, editors, and freelance writers? It sure as hell isn't from banner ads.

The 'better' news from Yahoo or CNN are usually piped straight from Reuters or the Associated Press, without any perspective or background. The vast majority of the news provided for our western eyeballs is pre-cut down to size on the web, so we can easily digest it. As the vast majority of people don't read news items that take longer than 30-60 seconds to read, most sites tailor 'content' to the smallest common denominator. Yes, even the my.yahoo-type sites.

The editorials in decent national papers beat pretty much anything on the web; the amount of research materials and existing knowledge in a major newspaper office (and I'm not talking about the New York Post here) is unbeatable when it comes to putting the world into perspective. Editorial knowledge and experience isn't something you pick up from hacking together a 'My Opinion Here' website.

Newspapers aren't about news, and the news aren't 24 hours old. News deadlines can be as short as 10 hours if I pick up a paper in the morning when I get on the subway to read it on the ride to work.

Quaint? Wasteful? Paper is easily recycled, and trees can be regrown. A decent national paper is $0.25, and brings you unparalleled width and depth of news and BACKGROUND, all in one well-organized, portable, easy-on-the-eyes package. You can read it in a coffee shop, and socialize with others - *around a paper*. What is the investment cost in a computer? Internet connection? Energy? Time and effort to browse the net for all the news you want? Hunt down background information? Ensure that the people who wrote it have at least some cursory knowledge of the topic? Editorial integrity? Sure, there are some tools that help you, but in the end it's a horrible waste of time and effort, trying to keep your fingers on the pulse of information that is shallow, opinionated by badly-educated people, and often without the proper context, all under the pallid glare of a CRT tube.

If you think that you can truly get better editorials from 100 websites than from the New York Times or Washington Post, please do try to get a College education in the arts, preferable a Social Science like Political Science or Economics. Once you understand how much underlying information you aren't being told by the 'popular media', you will see the world differently.

Sure, the NYT and WP have websites. But those websites simply couldn't exist in their current form without their print counterparts who finance it all, and who provide all the 'meat'.

Wasteful? Quaint? $0.25 buys you the world. Try waking up at 8am on a weekday, go out to buy a copy of the NYT or WP, and sit down with a decent cup of coffee (Starbucks if that's what you like) and READ. Not just the main pages, sports, and comics - but the entire paper. Don't skim, read. When you're still there, two hours later, understand that there's more to the world than just the web's click-a-minute, pre-chewed, pre-thought, pre-processed synaptic pulses.

News on TV is dead. Their agenda is to sell advertising minutes, not to inform. Quality papers have an audience that's slightly more traditional: people who buy US Today might watch Fox News, and that's all fine and dandy. But if you read the NY Times, you may as well try to see if your cable package offers BBC World News.

Yeah, I'm sure there're great news sources on the web. Sure, TV news can be decent. Someone will post an URL that has incredible editorials and awesome in-depth reporting from around the world, for free, thus disproving everything I said.

Until then - do yourself a favour and pick up a decent paper. Your brain will thank you. Stop thinking in 2-second flashes. Don't give in to cravings. Refuse to accept the need for immediate satisfaction. Fight the power.

X.

[jaguar]

i agree
but salon.com is very, very good.

[jet_silver]

Someone will post an URL that has incredible editorials and awesome in-depth reporting from around the world, for free, thus disproving everything I said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest

Ever since 9/11 when -they- were the site I could get to and load, I've gotten my news there.

[Undertoad]

I was being a tad facetious when I said "print is dead" -- which is really a <i>Ghostbusters</i> quote, and not one of the more memorable quotes from that film. But I can take sides and advocate if you like!

I'm a little unique in my situation, in that I'm able to watch CNN for about 5 hours a day, and have a very serious broadband situation from which to watch the net. Now, CNN doesn't take anything from the AP. The other day, I watched Christiane Amanpour - the future Mrs. Undertoad, in my dreams - sorting through actual papers she'd actually found in an actual Taliban house, to find the documents that referred to nuclear weaponry and hold them up to the camera. Now that's reporting!

Now, I read a paper recently but was nonplussed to find that there was no "reply" button. People said that in order to reply I should send the folks at the paper an email. And I did that, and nothing happened.

Furthermore, I notice that in most papers the editorials aren't signed. What the hell!

How much traffic would any web site get if it only published unsigned and unreplyable editorials? What is the worth of an anonymous opinion? How can I correctly judge the biases involved if I don't know who wrote it?

Five years ago the Philly Inquirer wrote an editorial in which they called my wife's views "wacky". I share her views. So I am kinda biased against my hometown rag. (By the way, most people here would share her views too; they had no idea what her views were when they wrote that.)

Socialize around a newspaper? Jesus, do people actually do that? If I'm in a coffee shop reading a paper - leave me alone, woudja?

Here's another one for you. In 1999 the Eagles drafted Donovan McNabb, and I was in the media room at the time. (I swear I'm not just saying this to show off. We lost the Eagles gig, so there are no bragging rights in it.) The first thing the team did was to toss him into a limo and speed him from the draft (in NYC) to the Vet (in Philly) so the folks there could interview him and get pictures, etc.

But the very first thing that McNabb did upon arrival was go into a side room for a web chat we had set up.

After we were finished with the chat, we transcribed it (well, copied and pasted and formatted) for the site. As I finished up the work of putting the chat up, a few NEWSPAPER reporters gathered, looking over my shoulder. They figured out what it was, and were very excited. They started writing down quotes FROM THE CHAT for their stories, which would appear in the next day's paper. Well, it would be easier and probably better than gathering their quotes from the press conference.

I know this is just sports, and I know much of sports news is staged, and I know nobody cares. But when I saw that happen, it really blew me outta the water. What lousy reporting: pulling quotes from the chat that appeared in real time, then again in transcript. They didn't even have to be in the media room - they could have sat at home and read the web site to write their stories.

Lastly, the BBC, NYT, Washington Post, etc. all post full unadulterated versions of their stories to the web, so I'm not missing anything. In fact, by selecting stories from lists of relevant headlines, via news-accumulating weblogs and sites like newshub.com (try it), I'm getting sources out the wazoo.

Okay, now having advocated my side, I'll advocate yours. The worst thing about my approach is that I wind up ill-informed about local events. The local TV news, from all five TV stations that offer it, is just horrible. Webloggers don't offer a local perspective very often, and when they do, they don't have a wide variety of sources to pick from. I do hit the local suburban rag's site, but they don't publish all their stories and the site is awful.

[Xugumad]

Originally posted by jet_silver


http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest

Ever since 9/11 when -they- were the site I could get to and load, I've gotten my news there.

Thank you for proving my point. The Guardian is one of Britain's top 3 broadsheets. (quality newspapers) Without the paper funding its website, it wouldn't be there. However, the link you specify is - once again - a feed that mixes AP/Reuters stories and the Guardian's own reporting. The newspaper's editors - who are paid not through the website's income, which is probably negligible, but through the money the newspaper makes - are the ones who make it a worthy read.

Click on one of the stories from the worldlatest site for once; see how after the location name at the beginning of the story it often says 'AP'? That's pure news coming from a news agency. The decent bits of that page are the written articles on the right-hand side of the page. Written by journalists. Paid for by the paper's income.

That's more or less the same as going to nytimes.com or washingtonpost.com - a mixture of instant news feed reporting and actual articles from the newspaper. Which was what my entire post was all about. :-)

Tony:

Originally posted by Undertoad


Lastly, the BBC, NYT, Washington Post, etc. all post full unadulterated versions of their stories to the web, so I'm not missing anything.

Sigh. That's what it's all about. Without the papers financing the actual WRITING of the decent articles and editorials, those articles wouldn't exist. Print isn't dead. The web is dead - it can't finance and pay the people who write all the good in-depth stuff. The web can't finance the Reuters and AP links - all the Reuters and AP people are paid by their news agencies because the newspapers and TV stations pay for the feeds (amongst other things).

Sure, Salon is a nice site and all. But it doesn't have independent news reporting, it doesn't have real correspondents, it takes a news feed like everybody else, and it is 100% pure unadulterated editorializing that you need to pay for. If you really want to pay aditional money to read somebody else's opinions on the web, go ahead. Oh, unless you are at school or work there. The federally mandated filtering software for public schools in the US almost always filters salon.com out. N2H2 and the likes. Maybe one too many hooker stories, I guess.

The examples you have about CNN etc. are nice - but all TV stations are owned by large commercial entities and need to *make money*. Newspapers can rely on much less temperamental advertising than TV stations. TV needs to cater to the lowest common denominator - the PATHETIC coverage CNN gave us when that plane crashed in Queens a couple of weeks ago is typical. Every second question was 'can you speculate on the possible causes of this as yet completely unknown event'; they were foaming at the mouth to imply terrorist activity, for something like ten hours non-stop. Without providing any information, any coverage - ANYTHING. Come on. CNN doesn't really employ journalists. The situation you describe with Amanpour is quite typical - don't you think it sounds just a wee bit staged? Have a look at www.indymedia.org, if you really want commercially unbiased reporting.

Oh. Or have a look at www.worldnews.com. Their current top story is about five Palestinian children being killed in an explosion on Thursday, and mourners being shot on. Where is CNN? They sure as hell would have a camera team floating around the scene if it were Israeli children who had been butchered.

CNN reports that.. oh.. how surprising 'Hamas vows revenge' is the headline. And they're talking about Hamas will avenge the death of their leader. The rest of the story is meaningless numbers, all scrunched together - a bunch of Palestinians were reported dead. No details, nothing. You wouldn't want to annoy anyone, would you? Have a look at cnn.com right now. Almost all the top stories in most categories are about the Taliban defeat and northern alliance victories, rah-rah.

Oh, sorry. The two top stories that aren't about the Taliban's defeat are titled 'True love overcomes anthrax scare' and 'Survey: Fewer Thanksgiving shoppers hit malls'.

Journalism? CNN? Jesus. Bite-sized info that's neatly pre-packaged and pre-chewed so as to not upset your viewing habits.

X.

[jaguar]

Ah the guardian - fantastic newspaper. Hopefuly getting a subscription for christmas.

I'm not sure what oyu mena bu unsigned editorials....I've never seen an article or an editorial in a paper that hasen't had aname attached... Newspapers aren't about some frigging community, its baout high quality, in depth news, far deeper than something like CNN can do purely because it would not be intersting to msot CNN viewers - no pretty pictures.

I read, on average 2 full papers a day when i have the time, plus time magazine. I also hit salon.com and news.com.au . The news is bitesize online compared to print. Althoug hsalon.com i have to say is the big exception - i love it i wish i could get a print copy i could read on the train.

[russotto]

Originally posted by Xugumad


Tony,

I respect your opinion, but this was dreadfully misinformed. Print isn't dead. Print is alive. Much more so than the net. The 'duplicate' papers are financially unviable: the NYT and WP couldn't produce one hundredth of their in-depth reporting through website financing. Where do you think they get all the money from to pay their foreign correspondents, journalists, editors, and freelance writers? It sure as hell isn't from banner ads.

I haven't read the WP or the NYT in a long time, but the way the Philadelphia Inquirer gets the money is.... they don't. The Inky's idea of in-depth reporting is fictionalized documentaries (_Blackhawk Down_, _The Hunt For Whazzisname the Drug Dealer_) and the occasional series denigrating "Generation X".

The 'better' news from Yahoo or CNN are usually piped straight from Reuters or the Associated Press, without any perspective or background.

Which is to say, without any spin. The Washington Post certainly showed its roots as a Democratic Party organ when I used to read it; it was less biased in the opinion section than the front page. And then they had an "Ombudsman" who simply made excuses for the paper's shortcomings. Blech.

News on TV is dead. Their agenda is to sell advertising minutes, not to inform. Quality papers have an audience that's slightly more traditional: people who buy US Today might watch Fox News, and that's all fine and dandy. But if you read the NY Times, you may as well try to see if your cable package offers BBC World News.

News in print is there to fill the holes between the advertisements. The places for the stories are called "news holes", after all.

[Xugumad]

http://www.plastic.com/article.pl?sid=01/11/23/1530233

I believe the above link can stand by itself, without further commentary.

Buy a decent national paper. Fight the 12-second attention span trend.

X.

[Undertoad]

X, your words have been making me think a lot these past few days. Thanks.

My main CNN time is between noon and 5pm. From noon to 3, most of it is straightforward reporting of facts. These days, much of it is live coverage of events and press conferences; there is about a half-hour per day of Ari Fleisher. At 3 they do a call-in show called Talk Back Live, which is mostly opinion and it's easy to spot biases in their guests, but that's part of the whole deal. At 4 they do an hour of "regular" newscast, which is not as interesting.

I think I'm "covered" if there is anti Palestinian bias in CNN, because I read robotwisdom.com, which is operated by a hard-core lefty who believes that all Israeli violence is 100% racist and 100% unjustified. And I agree with tw's assertion that Ariel Sharon is a "dichead" (sic), so some if it must have "taken". I don't read robot wisdom because it's anti-Israel; I read it because the guy is a good editor, and since I <i>know</i> his bias, his bias doesn't really exist for me. All I really want is the information he points to, much of it coming from indymedia and other similar sources.

Now, personally, I can always point to major facts and events that are left uncovered by the national media. I promoted Project Censored on the original Cellar incarnations. I also have a pseudo-libertarian viewpoint that doesn't register on the bias map of any major news organization. But after about a decade of working hard to figure out what is news in these broadcasts and what is just crapola, I'm ready to admit that lack of coverage of the news from MY bias is not an atrosity but merely a fact of life.

As far as electronic media being subservient to its master - the advertiser - that's certainly true and I wouldn't say it's not. Chomsky and I will stop short of claiming that the old-style newspaper is NOT subservient to ITS master - print advertising. And furthermore, I'll wager any amount of money that the online versions will outlast the print versions - the cost of which is set by the price of wood pulp. By the way, some huge percentage of the mass in landfills is newsprint, and the disposal cost MUST be part of your calculations. Don't leave it out like everyone else does!

Lastly, just as important as understanding the news is understanding the popular culture. This culture drives what is reported, but it also drives what people feel is important, and thus, what WILL BE news. The people for whom CNN is presented are the masses. Do they care if Ashcroft does a power grab as a part of the war on terrorism? Well, apparently they do. Do they understand that a single school shooting is meaningless in the noise of tens of thousands of schools? No they don't.

You and I know that what O.J. does isn't news even if he kills someone; the resulting hijacking of the legal system may not even be news. But the furor over the case is our popular culture, and that we cannot avoid.

[jaguar]

I feel vindicated amoung equals. I was standing a few doors down from one of the 3 soon-to-open starbucks and watched 3 gorups of people (ranging for 18-24 male to +60 group of females)
"disgusting, fucking americans"
"how arrogant"
"what the fuck do they think they are doing?"
And two blokes spat on the place.

And they are not alone