The panelists were Greg Beato, from Reason Magazine; Markos Moulitsas, from Daily Kos; Amy Langfield, from NewYorkology; and David Carr, from the NY Times. The panel was moderated by Henry Copeland, from Blogads.com. Much of it became a discussion between Moulitsas and Carr, with Moulitsas arguing that traditional media is asleep at the switch and Carr arguing that nobody else has the resources to man that switch. It was an interesting conversation that nonetheless trafficked in some pretty standard fare; questions of authority and reputation, integrity, the investigative reporter argument. It’s also worth noting (because media is all about gossip) that Moulitsas, representing new media, seemed more defensive towards old media than Carr did towards new media. Then again, Carr is also older and a recovering crack addict, so probably less prone to getting agitated. The most telling comment, however, was made near the end by Carr, who said, “The fact that I make a living wage is probably a part of an economic model that never made any sense. The fact that people spending money on classified ads should pay for me going to city council meetings is the result of an (idealistic notion) on the part of newspapers. I don’t think it will be solved by an economic model because it never came from one in the first place.”

Forthwith, as much of the discussion as I could write down.

Would you cheer the demise of the NYT?

Moulitsas: I want them to do their jobs… “they cheerleaded their way to the Iraq war.” It’s more about maintaining the public trust… it’s more about us being disappointed in them than actually wishing traditional media ill will.

If the NYT disappeared, would the bloggers in NY be able to step in?

Langfield: No… NY has alot of other media that would step in instead… and bloggers aren’t doing the sort of reporting that would replace the NYT.

Do you think Gawker does your job now?

Carr: I think Gawker is growing in that direction. I was writing the first post on the demise of Portfolio magazine, but got scooped by the guy at Gawker while I was copy editing. “As we’ve adopted the tools of the insurgency, the blogosphere has (grown in our direction). The web is still mostly about annotating that which is in plain sight, but increasingly you see new parts of the ecosystem growing new muscles.”

“What you’re saying is Gawker beat you?”

Carr: “It happens all the time.”

“If you weren’t here, would 100 Nick Denton’s fill the gap?”

Carr: “I don’t think he’d keep people where it’s physicially dangerous to report… Accountability reporting would be in retreat in a world with no NYT.” Somebody’s got to have the wherewithall to seek out the kinds of stories we don’t know we want to read.

“Markos has 3000 people at his disposal… if he says to them, ‘let’s go through this data dump from the White House…’ it will add up to something that becomes in-depth and substantive.” It’s great to harness people’s passions through crowdsourcing… but they tend to put those passions to contentious ends. The problem with assembling bits from everywhere else is you don’t know where it’s coming from. The upside to one (or several) tent poles is knowing where they stand.

Moulitsas: people like me don’t have the built-in credibility that let Judith Miller push the war in Iraq.

Carr: When you’re making an arguement about how we’re always falling down on the job, you’re reaching back through 5 years of really important work. ”The free press is freer than ever. The problem is that we’re getting more and more news… how do we make sense of it? Some of these organizations don’t have the standards of the NYT. The NYT was a content aggregator before google. The NYT has a 150-year-old editorial tradition of pouring money into a story, and people are now willing to do some of the fact-checking themselves.”

Moulitsas: people need to be smarter, realize we live in a de-centralized media world, and not take everything at face value. People need to be savvier. “Whether it’s the latest celebrity gossip or news about a politico, people need to be smarter because pretty much anyone can say anything.”

Carr: “Markos is right, it’s up to people to assemble the facts from a variety of sources.” ”I don’t want to give the impression that journalism is rocket science… I think the fact that there’s an organization willing to pay me for it is a unique part of the equation.” ”I think it’s good to have a number of places where the story starts.”

Beato: “There’s no economic model that supports what the NYT does anymore.”

“Who’s going to do the big investigative work?”

Beato: Politco, Gawker… these places are growing much faster than newspapers ever did.

Carr: “There’s no question that the NYT is economically challenged…. so I don’t think it’s an unimportant discussion to have… on the other hand, we are making money… there’s also something to be said about mass. 18M uniques… it gives us a competitive advantage. We’re not just the elephant falling to earth… we’ve been online for a long time, I’m pretty proud of our site.”

Moulitsas: “In a world where everyone can speak, not everyone’s going to be telling the truth.”

Carr: “The fact that I make a living wage is probably a part of an economic model that never made any sense. The fact that people spending money on classified ads should pay for me going to city council meetings is the result of an (idealistic notion) on the part of newspapers. I don’t think it will be solved by an economic model because it never came from one in the first place.”

You might also want to read former colleague Laura Porto Stockwell’s notes on the panel, too. She was sitting right next to me and I swear I didn’t cheat off of her paper.

1. the government ran out of money on the cash for clunkers program
2. therefore, the government has proven it cannot run the cash for clunkers program
3. therefore, the government could not run the health care system

My first argument with this argument would have to be with point 2: I think the arguer is confusing “succeeded beyond their expectations” with “failed.” Which I understand look similar, but are in fact the exact opposite.

My more salient argument, however, has to do with the ultimate conclusion: the government, having failed at one thing, should not attempt another. To prove this argument one need look no further than somewhere liberals, admittedly, tend not to look: national defense.

The government, most agree, boggled the Iraq War. And if you don’t agree, they certainly boggled Vietnam. Korea didn’t go so well either, M*A*S*H notwithstanding. And if failing at one thing — so the anti-healthcare arguers logic goes — means you shouldn’t try another, then it certainly means that you shouldn’t re-try the actual thing you failed at. So, having failed at it before, the government ought get out of the national defense business.

This conclusion is, of course, ludicrous. Governments defending their citizens and their way of life is part of the social contract, and shortcomings don’t amount to a get-out-of-jail-free card. The point isn’t that the government can walk away from national defense, just as the government didn’t walk away from cash for clunkers. What has to happen is the government needs to try harder. It needs to reinvest — which is exactly the path taken regarding the cash for clunkers program.

Healthcare, furthermore, is much like national defense in that the government cannot walk away from it because it is — or it should be — part of the social contract, as well. It boggles my mind that people who want the government to end lives on their behalf bristle at the notion that government would save lives on their behalf, as well. It is not only a logical falacy, but a human one.

That Apple is, in the OS wars, the victim of this philosophy makes it all the more ironic. Another feature of the new firmware (which is unavailable to me as I’m on a 2G iPhone) is the availability of MMS, which is implemented in a fashion clearly superior to all of the regular-ass cell phones that had it, oh, 30 years ago. Or the upcoming availability of video… better on the iPhone than on the many handsets that had it years ago. Remember that the iPhone itself was only introduced in 2007, a full 7 years after even Microsoft made it’s Pocket PC Platform available for phones.

Rare is the person who argues that Apple doesn’t take UI design and make an honest woman out of her. But can today’s technorati really afford to hitch themselves to a platform that lags so far behind?

It would have been a short enough conversation, for the reason behind the sad, downtrodden looks is reasonably obvious. Saving it from brevity, however, was my observation that I, myself, am doing great. When my friend criticized me for being self-absorbed, I explained myself: I didn’t buy a house I can’t afford. More importantly, I didn’t design esoteric, convoluted and ultimately unsustainable investment instruments that strained the laws of economics, physics and morality. And my company is doing pretty well right now… partly due to a number of new clients I worked until 4 in the morning to acquire. So while the overall economy is unquestionably in the shitter, my personal economy is doing pretty well.

My good fortune unquestionably plays a part in not feeling too bad about the economy, but I don’t think we should ignore the other two factors. This is New York City. Though most of the people who signed up for homes they couldn’t afford don’t live here, some of the people who put the mortages in front of them do. And most of the people who turned those mortgages into labrynthine financial instruments definitely live here. They’re the ones who built a ring of kindling around the spark of mortgage defaults and ensured it burned through stock markets from here to Tokyo. Leverage is a powerful thing, especially when wielded by the unscrupulous… and this recession lies at their feet, not mine.

So yes. We’re in a rough patch. But I didn’t put us here, and since none of my friends have real money, you probably didn’t, either. So relax. It’ll blow over soon. And when it does, we should have some fresh regulations that keeps people like Madoff from finding success that rightly belongs to people like us — the people who come by it honestly.

I’m in the minority because I voted that twitter will not go mainsteam. I voted this way mostly because I’m a dick. But also because I think it’s true. And since I will not receive statistical vindication, I’ll have to make due with posting the comment I left explaining why:

Minority (non-racial) populations always think they paint with a bigger brush than they actually do. Living in Manhattan, people all the TIME act like EVERYONE votes Democrat (or has gay friends, or makes alot of money, or doesn’t go to church, etc, etc). Likewise, geeks always think that everyone twitters (or blogs, or has a smartphone, or posts photos immediately to Flickr, etc, etc). But they don’t. And we shouldn’t need the whole world to salute the twitter flag for us to feel comfortable using it.

But that’s not my point. My point is that “you suck at your job” is a common rhetorical tactic in papers, presentations, emails, proposals, blogs, POVs, etc. And I am tired of it.

Thing is, it’s done neither so blatantly or so clearly. It’s done in the first slide of a presentation on Social Media: “Marketing Used to Be Easy.” It’s done in the research paper: “As the web is becoming ubiquitous, interactive, and multimodal, technology needs to deal increasingly with human factors.” It’s done in the proposal: “It’s not good enough to simply have a webpage any more.”

The message of all these statements is hidden but clear. YOUR JOB USED TO BE EASY. Your job used to be easy, now it’s hard… and you need me to help you deal.

Thing is, YOUR JOB WAS NEVER EASY. If you never use to have to deal with social media in your marketing efforts, then you never used to have a computer or the internet or rich collaboration applications, either. Technology gives as good as it gets.

If technology increasingly needs to deal with human factors, it only has to do so because it’s figured out lots of other things, like, I dunno, how to get the entire library of alexandria to show up on a kid’s monitor on a farm in Montana. Technology’s had a lot of shit to do, man, and new priorities don’t come out of the blue; they come out of the resolution of old priorities.That’s a bad example, though, because technology’s had to deal with human factors ever since people have been putting wool on looms. And that’s a corollary to the arguement; stop pretending that things we’ve had to deal with forever are brand new challenges. And “as the web becomes ubiquitous,interactive…” wait, what? Interactive? as opposed to when the web was non-interactive? And the last time the web anything less than ubiquitous would have to be before May 1995, when AOL gave its users access to the World-Wide Web.

Finally, “it’s not good enough to simply have a webpage any more,” while true, misses the point. Ever since newspaper advertising moved from type-only to include pictures, businesses have had to evolve the way they communicate with their customers. The idea that we were ever going merrily along until we got smacked in the ass by some  agent of change is ridiculous.

“Life is a process of becoming,” says Anaïs Nin, “a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” Yet much rhetoric treats the processes and struggles of the past as if their resolution means they never happened. But they did happen, and their resolution doesn’t invalidate that. We may have moved onto newer and more interesting things, but that will be old hat soon enough, and we’d do well to remember that. Past, present or future, your job is hard; apply yourself to the challenges of today without the need to hyperbolically dismiss those that have come before.

This past weekend, therefore, my shit was starting to look a little ragged. So off to the salon I go. I walk in and there’s a little girl sitting in the chair — neighborhood of eight years old — and 15 seconds later, I hear her gasp. I turn, and she’s got her hand over her mouth and she’s pointing at my toes. So I smile at her, cover my own mouth, and gasp, saying… “I KNOW! They’re PINK!” To which she furrows her brow, sits back in the chair, and interrogates, “Are you a boy or a girl?”

If you knew me, you’d know I have a beard (as in facial hair, not as in Katie Holmes). I also pretty clearly don’t have breasts. But I know it takes a village to raise a child, so I helped her out and said, “No, I’m a boy.” And this seemed enough for her. Until she later came back and told me, “pink is for girls!” to which I responded, “well, I guess that’s not true, now, huh?”

I imagine some might read this and think, “well, you know Michael, you paint your toes pink and people will talk.” Really? I need to live my life within the lines fingerpainted by an eight year old? What sort of low-ass common denominator is that?

“But Michael,” they’d continue, “all the adults were thinking that, too.” And maybe they were. And maybe I think they’re stupid. Because the people I know, their sexual orientation isn’t dictated by the color of their toenails or the cut of their trousers or the neighborhood they live in or whether they have the ability to list everyone who’s ever played Danny Zucko in alphabetical order. It’s dictated by who they care to wake up next to in the morning.

As my ex-girlfriend the smarter-than-I-am economist liked to say, “correlation doesn’t equal causality.” Maybe more gay men know the lyrics to “Music of the Night” than do straight, but to think that translates into some sort of sex/gender legislation points to a serious flaw in logic. Gay men are men who like to fuck other men, and everything else — the clues, the signs, the gaydar — prejudice wrapped in levity, and nothing more.

It’s more, however, than a question of prejudice, or narrow minds, or whether or not my toes are the right color to get laid on any given evening. It’s a larger question of our painfully broad need to define everyone. There’s certain things that most of us are comfortable not having spelled out regarding other people — how they trim the hedges, for instance. Then there’s certain things few of us are comfortable not having spelled out — sexual orientation being one, race being another. Gender, of course, is the biggest one. When most people encounter someone who, due to attire, hairstyle, whatever, is somehow unclassifiable as a man or a woman… they get friggin’ angry. As if the long-haired boy or the broad-shouldered woman ought somehow be punished for not running around in a blue or pink headband. Headbands which parents use on their children to demarcate their gender if only because at that age, nature sure hasn’t. But dare call their cute little boy a cute little girl, and there will be hell to pay. Really? Why? What does it matter?

This obsessive need to categorize, to label, this tyranny of taxonomy… ironically, it only hurts us ourselves. If we stopped caring so much about other people’s plumbing, we might afford ourselves time to connect with others on a more significant level. So next time you’re in a bar, stop trying to figure out if the person next to you is gay, or white or male. And while you’re at it, try not to ask what the person does for a living.

Instead of making judgments, try making conversation. It’s more fun and better for you.

And if you happen to see me in that bar, and you happen to be interested, buy me a drink. Flirt. If I don’t flirt back, it could mean a number of things — I’m tired, for instance, or maybe I’m just not that into you. But if I flirt back, it’ll be about more than your toenails.

Getting closer, I hear her scream “OH MY GOD! SOMEONE HELP ME!” and then drop onto the ground. Undaunted, though, she gets up very quickly and starts running to the corner, screaming as she passes inches from me to yell, “GOD WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!” and then, as I turn to see her pass, she disappears into the fencing and barriers demarcating the construction of the Second Avenue subway. Turning to a woman walking near me, I ask her, “I DID just see that, right?” and she gives me the confirmation that I’m not, in fact, crazy — confirmation I have rarely needed more. There’s a construction worker there, and I ask him what had happened, but he’s looking up at a window from which I only assume the woman had descended. There are a few heads poking out of it, looking down the street, and I ask the construction worker if someone’s called 911.

I notice that I was kind of looking to the construction worker for some sort of guidance, which is kind of funny… that I would consider the construction worker an authority figure, or perhaps that I was so desperate to make sense of the situation I grasped onto whoever seemed least like myself. It was the guy he pointed to, however — a guy who looked fairly like me — who was on the phone with 911. The woman who confirmed my sanity asked if it was bad for her to want to just go on home to her apartment, and I said no, and went on home to mine.

And since my brother might read this, no, she wasn’t that hot.