Children – that is, any person age 25 or younger – live in a world so different from the adult world that it could almost be described as a parallel universe.
This is nothing new. It was as true of my generation, in the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s, as it is today, except in the matter of degree. I am now 66. When I was 25 and younger, it was popular to say, “Never trust anybody over 30.” Yet we had to live with, and live like, the old fogies, because that is the only kind of living there was.
In America in the 1950s, American post-war mainstream culture, and the companies that marketed to it, was still adult-oriented, and in goods and services, movies and entertainment, the kids wore and watched and listened to the same things as their parents because that’s all there was. It was very much a youth culture that convened at the movies and in the hamburger joint parking lots, but the movie was "Three Coins in the Fountain," and Perry Como, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Eddie Fisher and Patti Page sang practically all of the music coming out of the car radios. In the youth of that era, it set up the sort of angst that began to show up in movies like “Blackboard Jungle,” and “Rebel Without a Cause.”
That all started to change after 1954, with the arrival in the youth awareness of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, and with the spread of television. But compared to 2005, the 1950s in America might as well have occurred on another planet. Recently, in the comic strip “Zits,” Jeremy’s mom has asked him to take out the trash. Jeremy, not moving from the couch, says, “Ages 14-25, $94 billion in discretionary spending.” His mom counters by offering to freeze his allowance. In the last panel, Jeremy, dumping the trash in the can, says, “The retail industry respects me more than my parents do.”
That’s not generally true, but it is true in most cases that the retail industry pays at least as much (and frequently more) attention to children than their parents do. The kids are spending the $94 billion on things they want and have been manufactured, created, or organized for them. If parents researched their kids one-tenth as much as the retail industry does, millions of parent-child relationships would change.
In 1954, parents didn’t have to pay attention to what was out there; it was all the same. In 2009, parents can’t keep up with what’s out there, even the ones who try. When my kids were teenagers, I watched MTV regularly, because it was the best way to find out what was going on in my kids’ world. I also tried to watch “The Simpsons.” But I failed. Bart didn’t interest me as entertainment. Neither did MTV, though it was fun to mute the sound and play old Patti Page LPs while Madonna and Aerosmith tore up the screen.
I had it easy. I only had to check in on a few cable channels. Parents today, if they are to remain aware of the children world, have numerous cable channels, tons of magazines, and of course the Internet. All are swollen with opportunities aimed at the 8-to-18-year-old demographic. It gives kids today terrific power. They have the retail industry wrapped around their little finger, and the media furiously develops product that shows children in control of their, if not the, world. In their world, the 2009 kids find it popular to say to anyone outside that world, that is, anyone over 30, “Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.”
I have heard chatter coming from that world lately. At the college where I teach journalism and media studies, female students began to adopt anti-intellectualism as a tool of popularity. Apparently they would expend quite a bit of energy at their desks, affecting and maintaining an air of indifference. One student told me that when she raises a hand to contribute to the class discussion, the girls behind her roll their eyes at each other and say, “There she goes again.”
Then in the San Diego media, a story developed about a high school girl posing for artsy photos in a student-produced “literary” magazine. The girl was also a professional (though very much still at the portfolio-building stage) model. The story developed when her parents, who knew about her professional activities, became angry when the “lit mag” was published without their knowledge. Apparently the girl never told them about the project.
Shortly after that, being 16 years old and pregnant landed a teen idol named Jamie Lynn Spears (she is Britney's sister) on the cover of OK! Magazine. And that story inspired a teen-world reaction story on the front page of The New York Times. Talk about a fame party!
But that's another story. The story here is about three recent examples of activity in the parallel-universe youth world that give us fogies useful, if occasionally terrifying, information about that world. It is possible that kids in their youth world believe in their power, and that their power is greater than ours. They no longer are obligated to check with us, or to participate with us, and don’t expect us, or want us, to speak unless we are spoken to. More often these days, I get that feeling when I am speaking to them from the front of my classroom. Maybe educators should put the entire curriculum on YouTube and just go home.
September 28, 2009
September 27, 2009
graynation: being white in the 1950s
I was saying a couple of Sundays ago that remembering the 1950s didn't make me feel particularly old, but remembering the 1940s sure did. I think that must be because the 1950s have a similarity to the world I live in now, whereas the '40s were truly the ancient times.
The '50s were the years when the world started to change from old – pre- 1950 – to new. In fact, the 1950s were tumultuous with change. The media and consumer driven world of the early 21st century can trace its roots directly to events of the 1950s. It's strange. To people with only a general attentiveness to history, the 1950s have receded into memory as a quiet time, a period of Eisenhower-era tranquility. The tumultuous 1960s by contrast certainly did what they could to enhance that memory. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author David Halberstam saw so much happening in the 1950s that he wrote a complete book, titled, simply, “The ‘50s.”
Cars, television, radio, music, suburbs, shopping centers, clothes, advertising, everything was changing. It is true that at the time, in Abilene, Texas, much of that change occurred with the force of a pebble dropping unheard into a distant pond, such as the unanimous Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, that ended the “separate but equal” doctrine of educational facilities for whites and blacks. That ripple would not reach Abilene for another decade.
Which means that I, essentially, grew up in an exclusively white community. Of all the strange things about life on that planet, I believe that, today, for me, remains the strangest. In Abilene, Texas, in the 1950s, there were separate facilities, wherever they were required, for the black population. Water fountains, restrooms, waiting areas, a part of town, all identified by the same label: “Colored.” Downtown stores, restaurants and movie theaters were closed to blacks, to whom the Abilene media commonly referred as “Negroes.” If it were socially necessary, newspapers of that time would airbrush photos to remove black people from the image before publishing it in the paper.
The education codes, unlike the social (written and unwritten) codes, didn’t say anything about any of the other races: Hispanic, Asian, Indian. Not many of them did, but any of those could attend white high schools and play white high school football. There were black Abilene teenagers in those days who were very good football players, like Robert Kelley and Louis Kelley, who played for the Woodson Rams, the Colored high school down in Colored Town on the east side below the railroad tracks. Woodson and black high schools in the other cities played in their own league. The Rams, whose colors were green and white, did play some of their games at the white stadium, Fair Park Stadium, but that was as close as the Kelleys or any of those high school kids could come to wondering what it would be like to go to Abilene High School, be an Abilene Eagle. White kids liked to go to the Woodson games because it was good football and Woodson High had a small but joyous band.
Those games were the only social contact I ever had with black kids. Then, in 1961, I was graduated from Abilene High and in the fall began my freshman year at Stanford University. Total culture shock. The biggest shaping event of my life. In 1969, after school and three years in the Army, I came back to Abilene and got a job at The Abilene Reporter-News, covering high school sports. Something had happened while I was gone. Desegregation reached Abilene. On the teams were kids like Kelvin Ceasar, at Cooper High, and Don Brown at AHS. Today, in Abilene, it's like segregation never happened. But one thought stays with me, as I sit here in my skin, in this place on the planet that I have arrived this morning in my 66th year. To change all that, to change my life completely, you would only have to change one thing about me. Make my skin black.
The '50s were the years when the world started to change from old – pre- 1950 – to new. In fact, the 1950s were tumultuous with change. The media and consumer driven world of the early 21st century can trace its roots directly to events of the 1950s. It's strange. To people with only a general attentiveness to history, the 1950s have receded into memory as a quiet time, a period of Eisenhower-era tranquility. The tumultuous 1960s by contrast certainly did what they could to enhance that memory. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author David Halberstam saw so much happening in the 1950s that he wrote a complete book, titled, simply, “The ‘50s.”
Cars, television, radio, music, suburbs, shopping centers, clothes, advertising, everything was changing. It is true that at the time, in Abilene, Texas, much of that change occurred with the force of a pebble dropping unheard into a distant pond, such as the unanimous Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, that ended the “separate but equal” doctrine of educational facilities for whites and blacks. That ripple would not reach Abilene for another decade.
Which means that I, essentially, grew up in an exclusively white community. Of all the strange things about life on that planet, I believe that, today, for me, remains the strangest. In Abilene, Texas, in the 1950s, there were separate facilities, wherever they were required, for the black population. Water fountains, restrooms, waiting areas, a part of town, all identified by the same label: “Colored.” Downtown stores, restaurants and movie theaters were closed to blacks, to whom the Abilene media commonly referred as “Negroes.” If it were socially necessary, newspapers of that time would airbrush photos to remove black people from the image before publishing it in the paper.
The education codes, unlike the social (written and unwritten) codes, didn’t say anything about any of the other races: Hispanic, Asian, Indian. Not many of them did, but any of those could attend white high schools and play white high school football. There were black Abilene teenagers in those days who were very good football players, like Robert Kelley and Louis Kelley, who played for the Woodson Rams, the Colored high school down in Colored Town on the east side below the railroad tracks. Woodson and black high schools in the other cities played in their own league. The Rams, whose colors were green and white, did play some of their games at the white stadium, Fair Park Stadium, but that was as close as the Kelleys or any of those high school kids could come to wondering what it would be like to go to Abilene High School, be an Abilene Eagle. White kids liked to go to the Woodson games because it was good football and Woodson High had a small but joyous band.
Those games were the only social contact I ever had with black kids. Then, in 1961, I was graduated from Abilene High and in the fall began my freshman year at Stanford University. Total culture shock. The biggest shaping event of my life. In 1969, after school and three years in the Army, I came back to Abilene and got a job at The Abilene Reporter-News, covering high school sports. Something had happened while I was gone. Desegregation reached Abilene. On the teams were kids like Kelvin Ceasar, at Cooper High, and Don Brown at AHS. Today, in Abilene, it's like segregation never happened. But one thought stays with me, as I sit here in my skin, in this place on the planet that I have arrived this morning in my 66th year. To change all that, to change my life completely, you would only have to change one thing about me. Make my skin black.
September 25, 2009
Archives: Johnny Gerhart
April, 2006: Johnny Gerhart’s name came up again this week, in an incidental way. Oran Logan, a ninth-grade classmate of John’s at South Junior High School (Abilene, Texas, 1957-58) came into possession of scrapbook material that Oran’s mother had kept all these years. Among these was a page from the school newspaper, the “Coyote Howl” (coyote pronounced “ky-yoat,” in the West Texan dialect).
The page announced the results of student polling for ninth-grade class favorites. There were Friendliest Girl and Boy, Beautiful Girl, Handsome Boy, Most Talented Girl and Boy, Best All-Around Girl and Boy, Girl and Boy Most Likely to Succeed, Most Athletic Girl and Boy.
This page was circulated among an email classmates list. It was fun seeing again who won, and wry comments were passed around (“Bob Cluck was runner-up Handsome Boy?”).
Most of the comments, though, were about Johnny Gerhart, who was selected Boy Most Likely to Succeed.
It shows the power of even the unsophisticated to detect greatness. Not a single one of us in the hallways of South Junior in 1957-58 would have seen Gerhart coming down the hall and thought: “Harvard grad, double degree in English and French history and literature; at Harvard, he wrote for the Crimson (school newspaper); took a year off in 1963 to teach high school in Tanzania; a Masters and a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Princeton; international educator and philanthropist; from 1969-98, a Ford Foundation representative all over Africa; president of The American University in Cairo, 1998-2002; named by Princeton’s graduate faculties as one of their 100 most notable alumni of the 20th century.”
Nope, we just saw Johnny, coming down the hall, on the short side, plaid shirt, Levi’s rolled up two laps, grinning and waving hello (I’ll bet he won Friendliest, too, but they couldn’t give two awards), just one of us. But we knew something. We looked at Johnny Gerhart and voted him Boy Most Likely to Succeed, hands down. How did we know he would be South’s most notable 1958 alumnus of the 20th century, 43 years before the Princeton vote?
That’s what the talk was about this week. It felt so good to us to find his name there. Johnny Gerhart died of cancer in July, 2003. We had hardly seen him in all those decades; he left Abilene, went to private school in Austin, then to Harvard and off on his international path of brilliance. But we didn’t forget him. We were among the first to see, somehow, the unforgettability that stayed with him wherever he went, among whomever he walked, from unschooled ninth graders to foreign kings. We felt included in a natural community with John at its center, the creator of the community, which is how, after his death, he was remembered by so many.
The eulogies and remembrances and stories were collected and now are maintained at the Website of “Alliance” magazine, “the leading magazine on philanthropy and social investment across the world." The first three tributes are from the president, the first lady, and the prime minister of Egypt. The rest, “Messages from friends and colleagues,” from all over the globe, scrolling down and down, are more informal and informative, filling in many blanks that our South Junior instincts knew were there.
Not a one of the 40 messages is from one of John’s South Junior classmates, a gap which I undertake to correct. Much of the affection is nothing new. “Always when we met again it was as if we were resuming a conversation that we had left off in mid-sentence.” Yep. That’s the way Johnny put us all first. “I have been lucky to know all kinds of wonderful, smart and original people,” says another. “But John was one of the very, very, very special ones.” No lie, as we used to say at South.
But he was also a collector of African art, and an expert bird watcher. I never knew that. He was also an expert storyteller, and I don’t remember that, but it makes sense. Many of his friends remembered John’s father, the Rev. Willis P. Gerhart, as anyone does in 1957-58 Abilene who met John’s father. There was no mistaking Rev. Gerhart’s intellect, or vivre, or fondness for good stories, or willingness to tell them. Being his son made Johnny mysterious. So austere a robed presence, commanding a towering white Episcopal church on South Sixth. Directly across from the church was a neighborhood grocery store, with wood floors and screen doors, owned by Eddie Baldwin’s father. Eddie was named “Friendliest Boy” in our poll. And just around the corner from these two lived Pam Oswalt, who was just gorgeous but, darn it, went to Lincoln Junior. That block on South Sixth must have been the closest thing to a vortex that Abilene had.
Now there are a couple of things about Johnny that the other messengers may not know. Wherever in the world he was, or whomever he was with, if Johnny saw a coyote, and called it a ky-yoat, he was only being true to his roots. Once a South Junior Ky-yoat, always a South Junior Ky-yoat. Secondly, a Ford Foundation colleague wrote about John and women: “His reputation for hiring smart, dynamic women was known throughout the Ford Foundation.”
When you went to junior high with Gena Jay (“Friendliest Girl”), Pat Wright (“Best All-Around Girl”), Crystal Ragsdale (“Most Beautiful Girl”) and Nancy Shoemaker (“Girl Most Likely to Succeed”) AND lived across the street from Pam Oswalt, you couldn’t help but take that appreciation forward. We haven’t forgotten Johnny Gerhart. And Johnny didn’t forget us.
The page announced the results of student polling for ninth-grade class favorites. There were Friendliest Girl and Boy, Beautiful Girl, Handsome Boy, Most Talented Girl and Boy, Best All-Around Girl and Boy, Girl and Boy Most Likely to Succeed, Most Athletic Girl and Boy.
This page was circulated among an email classmates list. It was fun seeing again who won, and wry comments were passed around (“Bob Cluck was runner-up Handsome Boy?”).
Most of the comments, though, were about Johnny Gerhart, who was selected Boy Most Likely to Succeed.
It shows the power of even the unsophisticated to detect greatness. Not a single one of us in the hallways of South Junior in 1957-58 would have seen Gerhart coming down the hall and thought: “Harvard grad, double degree in English and French history and literature; at Harvard, he wrote for the Crimson (school newspaper); took a year off in 1963 to teach high school in Tanzania; a Masters and a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Princeton; international educator and philanthropist; from 1969-98, a Ford Foundation representative all over Africa; president of The American University in Cairo, 1998-2002; named by Princeton’s graduate faculties as one of their 100 most notable alumni of the 20th century.”
Nope, we just saw Johnny, coming down the hall, on the short side, plaid shirt, Levi’s rolled up two laps, grinning and waving hello (I’ll bet he won Friendliest, too, but they couldn’t give two awards), just one of us. But we knew something. We looked at Johnny Gerhart and voted him Boy Most Likely to Succeed, hands down. How did we know he would be South’s most notable 1958 alumnus of the 20th century, 43 years before the Princeton vote?
That’s what the talk was about this week. It felt so good to us to find his name there. Johnny Gerhart died of cancer in July, 2003. We had hardly seen him in all those decades; he left Abilene, went to private school in Austin, then to Harvard and off on his international path of brilliance. But we didn’t forget him. We were among the first to see, somehow, the unforgettability that stayed with him wherever he went, among whomever he walked, from unschooled ninth graders to foreign kings. We felt included in a natural community with John at its center, the creator of the community, which is how, after his death, he was remembered by so many.
The eulogies and remembrances and stories were collected and now are maintained at the Website of “Alliance” magazine, “the leading magazine on philanthropy and social investment across the world." The first three tributes are from the president, the first lady, and the prime minister of Egypt. The rest, “Messages from friends and colleagues,” from all over the globe, scrolling down and down, are more informal and informative, filling in many blanks that our South Junior instincts knew were there.
Not a one of the 40 messages is from one of John’s South Junior classmates, a gap which I undertake to correct. Much of the affection is nothing new. “Always when we met again it was as if we were resuming a conversation that we had left off in mid-sentence.” Yep. That’s the way Johnny put us all first. “I have been lucky to know all kinds of wonderful, smart and original people,” says another. “But John was one of the very, very, very special ones.” No lie, as we used to say at South.
But he was also a collector of African art, and an expert bird watcher. I never knew that. He was also an expert storyteller, and I don’t remember that, but it makes sense. Many of his friends remembered John’s father, the Rev. Willis P. Gerhart, as anyone does in 1957-58 Abilene who met John’s father. There was no mistaking Rev. Gerhart’s intellect, or vivre, or fondness for good stories, or willingness to tell them. Being his son made Johnny mysterious. So austere a robed presence, commanding a towering white Episcopal church on South Sixth. Directly across from the church was a neighborhood grocery store, with wood floors and screen doors, owned by Eddie Baldwin’s father. Eddie was named “Friendliest Boy” in our poll. And just around the corner from these two lived Pam Oswalt, who was just gorgeous but, darn it, went to Lincoln Junior. That block on South Sixth must have been the closest thing to a vortex that Abilene had.
Now there are a couple of things about Johnny that the other messengers may not know. Wherever in the world he was, or whomever he was with, if Johnny saw a coyote, and called it a ky-yoat, he was only being true to his roots. Once a South Junior Ky-yoat, always a South Junior Ky-yoat. Secondly, a Ford Foundation colleague wrote about John and women: “His reputation for hiring smart, dynamic women was known throughout the Ford Foundation.”
When you went to junior high with Gena Jay (“Friendliest Girl”), Pat Wright (“Best All-Around Girl”), Crystal Ragsdale (“Most Beautiful Girl”) and Nancy Shoemaker (“Girl Most Likely to Succeed”) AND lived across the street from Pam Oswalt, you couldn’t help but take that appreciation forward. We haven’t forgotten Johnny Gerhart. And Johnny didn’t forget us.
September 24, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Some late, lamented freezer space
For several years, we have had two refrigerators in the house, one in the kitchen and one on the back porch, which is enclosed but not air conditioned. The BPIB (back porch icebox) was an older model, with exposed coils. When we looked for ways to cut our electric bill, our eyes fell almost automatically, and sorrowfully, on the BPIB. Last week, the men came to take it away.
It puts a dent in stretch cooking strategies. I have lost half my freezer space. The back freezer is where I held the meats I bought at CostCo, sliced into cooking sizes, and wrapped for freezing. In there, for example, were 17 wrapped packages each containing two half-inch slices of pork loin from a whole loin I bought for $17.65, a dozen half-pound packages of hamburger, and some sirloin steaks. Not to mention a six-dozen package of Porkyland’s tortillas, which freeze beautifully.
How Karen got all that stuff into the kitchen freezer, I do not know. But it was FULL. Excavation is now required to find everyday meal items like frozen slices of Trader Joe’s sourdough. But we will adjust. Freezer items we tend to use every day – bread, fruit, black-eyes, green beans, etc. – will gravitate toward the front.
The vegetables are already cooked and frozen in plastic containers. They get eaten before freezer burn can start. I hate those containers, by the way. I hate washing them, they are hard to store, and they have a built-in bounce that drives me nuts. I tolerate them, though, because of the facility with which they keep black-eyes and other stretch goodies in the freezer until you’re ready to eat them.
Many people cook everything first, then freeze it. Many people belong to that part of the stretch culture that does once-a-month cooking. I am not among those. I do quite a bit of once-a-week cooking, and freeze half of it, if it is what I call freezable. You can freeze chili, for example, but not barbecue, either beef or pork. I would no more put barbecued pork shoulder in the freezer than I would throw it in the dirt outside.
So I freeze a goodly amount of fresh meat. I avoid freezer burn by wrapping the meat tightly in foil and placing the packages in gallon-sized Ziploc freezer bags. It is air, of course, that causes freezer burn. If you have any question at all about freezer burn, by the way, go here. Or to any other of the 370,000 results that Google shows for “freezer burn.” I tell you, there’s not an adjective astonishing enough to describe the Internet as a repository of information.
It puts a dent in stretch cooking strategies. I have lost half my freezer space. The back freezer is where I held the meats I bought at CostCo, sliced into cooking sizes, and wrapped for freezing. In there, for example, were 17 wrapped packages each containing two half-inch slices of pork loin from a whole loin I bought for $17.65, a dozen half-pound packages of hamburger, and some sirloin steaks. Not to mention a six-dozen package of Porkyland’s tortillas, which freeze beautifully.
How Karen got all that stuff into the kitchen freezer, I do not know. But it was FULL. Excavation is now required to find everyday meal items like frozen slices of Trader Joe’s sourdough. But we will adjust. Freezer items we tend to use every day – bread, fruit, black-eyes, green beans, etc. – will gravitate toward the front.
The vegetables are already cooked and frozen in plastic containers. They get eaten before freezer burn can start. I hate those containers, by the way. I hate washing them, they are hard to store, and they have a built-in bounce that drives me nuts. I tolerate them, though, because of the facility with which they keep black-eyes and other stretch goodies in the freezer until you’re ready to eat them.
Many people cook everything first, then freeze it. Many people belong to that part of the stretch culture that does once-a-month cooking. I am not among those. I do quite a bit of once-a-week cooking, and freeze half of it, if it is what I call freezable. You can freeze chili, for example, but not barbecue, either beef or pork. I would no more put barbecued pork shoulder in the freezer than I would throw it in the dirt outside.
So I freeze a goodly amount of fresh meat. I avoid freezer burn by wrapping the meat tightly in foil and placing the packages in gallon-sized Ziploc freezer bags. It is air, of course, that causes freezer burn. If you have any question at all about freezer burn, by the way, go here. Or to any other of the 370,000 results that Google shows for “freezer burn.” I tell you, there’s not an adjective astonishing enough to describe the Internet as a repository of information.
September 21, 2009
Media Literacy: Newspapers' online salvation: subscribers and multipliers
I hope Nicholas Negroponte doesn't get mad if I quote two full paragraphs from his 1995 book, "Being Digital." I only do it because 1) I desperately want newspapers to survive their transition from newsprint to digital, and 2) I desperately want other Internet content to survive. It is history's greatest library, and it can only survive if the paragraphs that follow become reality. Here are Negroponte's words from 1995:
"It was through The New York Times that I came to know and enjoy the writing of the computer and communications business reporter, John Markoff. Without The New York Times, I would never have known of his work. However, now that I do, it would be far easier for me to have an automatic method to collect any new story Markoff writes and drop it into my personalized newspaper or suggested-reading list. I would probably be willing to pay Markoff the proverbial 'two cents' for each of his stories.
"If one two-hundredth of the 1995 Internet population were to subscribe to this idea and John were to write a hundred stories a year (he actually writes between one-hundred-twenty and one-hundred-forty), he would earn $1,000,000 per year, which I am prepared to guess is more than The New York Times pays him. If you think one two-hundredth is too big a proportion, then wait a short while. The numbers really do work."
Now that it is 2009, Negroponte's figures will need updating. The target percentage of the 2009 Internet population, to make the system work, may by now be one two-thousandth. It would be easy enough to do the math. But the key words in the two paragraphs are "two cents" and "subscribe."
In the old, traditional days of newspapering, subscribers didn't make the publishers rich. Advertising did. But the Internet is truly revolutionary because 1) between the media and the public, the Internet turns the direction of information around 180 degrees, and 2) it eliminates the old, traditional distribution costs, which was – still is – cruelly expensive. That's why advertisers have fled traditional newspapers. The cost for companies to do their own online advertising is a tiny, tiny percentage of the traditional distribution arrangement.
A third revolutionary effect, which Negroponte realized 15 years ago, is the multiplier effect. Since the Internet is global, immediate, and available for pennies to the masses, Internet businesses can attract millions or billions of visitors, and make billions or trillions by charging each visitor two cents each per visit. I realized this myself, in the 1990s, when one day I was trying to tie my necktie. For decades, I wished I could tie a Windsor knot. By then, I was familiar enough with the Internet to understand its reach, and the ease of that reach. So I decided to search.
My search engine at the time was Alta Vista. I searched "Windsor knot" and was presented with 37 returns for sites about Windsor knots. At that instant, I knew that the Internet was something of great power. Just now, Googling "Windsor knot," I am presented with 105,000 returns. This volume is possible because the information is only files in a computer, waiting to be accessed by a global audience whose only expense is access to the Internet.
Why should Windsor knot merchants spend a penny on advertising? So newspapers, and other traditional distributors of advertising, are left high and dry. If the advertising money tree has dried up, where can newspapers turn? Subscribers. It is truly revolutionary. Reading his book, I believe Negroponte thought it would happen naturally. But it hasn't. On the Internet, businesses give away information for free. This can't go on. On the Internet, the only businesses that advertisers will support is themselves.
What should transpire? A subscriber system. Every time an Internet user clicks into a Website, that site should receive two cents from the visitor. Every Internet user will open a subscription account of $30 a month (1,500 site visits) through a central payment system. The account will be debited two cents for each site visited. If the site is The New York Times, the fee will be charged to each story visited. The Times and the reporter will negotiate an agreement in which the reporter gets a cut of the two cents – let's say it is 50-50 – which means, in Negroponte's aging Markoff example, both the reporter and the newspaper will earn $500,000 a year from the reporter's stories. I am prepared to guess the arrangement would be acceptable to both parties.
Every content provider – this blog, for example – will receive two cents per visit. Popular blogs will realize considerable revenue, which is appropriate, and schlock blogs will wither, which seems equally appropriate. Internet surfers, when they are required to pay for it, will think twice about where they deposit their two cents, always wanting their two cents' worth. The result will be better Internet content quality. That will be a nice bonus. My only concern in writing this today, though, is the quality of the free, aggressive, well-staffed, well-edited press. Without that, this country is in danger of collapsing.
"It was through The New York Times that I came to know and enjoy the writing of the computer and communications business reporter, John Markoff. Without The New York Times, I would never have known of his work. However, now that I do, it would be far easier for me to have an automatic method to collect any new story Markoff writes and drop it into my personalized newspaper or suggested-reading list. I would probably be willing to pay Markoff the proverbial 'two cents' for each of his stories.
"If one two-hundredth of the 1995 Internet population were to subscribe to this idea and John were to write a hundred stories a year (he actually writes between one-hundred-twenty and one-hundred-forty), he would earn $1,000,000 per year, which I am prepared to guess is more than The New York Times pays him. If you think one two-hundredth is too big a proportion, then wait a short while. The numbers really do work."
Now that it is 2009, Negroponte's figures will need updating. The target percentage of the 2009 Internet population, to make the system work, may by now be one two-thousandth. It would be easy enough to do the math. But the key words in the two paragraphs are "two cents" and "subscribe."
In the old, traditional days of newspapering, subscribers didn't make the publishers rich. Advertising did. But the Internet is truly revolutionary because 1) between the media and the public, the Internet turns the direction of information around 180 degrees, and 2) it eliminates the old, traditional distribution costs, which was – still is – cruelly expensive. That's why advertisers have fled traditional newspapers. The cost for companies to do their own online advertising is a tiny, tiny percentage of the traditional distribution arrangement.
A third revolutionary effect, which Negroponte realized 15 years ago, is the multiplier effect. Since the Internet is global, immediate, and available for pennies to the masses, Internet businesses can attract millions or billions of visitors, and make billions or trillions by charging each visitor two cents each per visit. I realized this myself, in the 1990s, when one day I was trying to tie my necktie. For decades, I wished I could tie a Windsor knot. By then, I was familiar enough with the Internet to understand its reach, and the ease of that reach. So I decided to search.
My search engine at the time was Alta Vista. I searched "Windsor knot" and was presented with 37 returns for sites about Windsor knots. At that instant, I knew that the Internet was something of great power. Just now, Googling "Windsor knot," I am presented with 105,000 returns. This volume is possible because the information is only files in a computer, waiting to be accessed by a global audience whose only expense is access to the Internet.
Why should Windsor knot merchants spend a penny on advertising? So newspapers, and other traditional distributors of advertising, are left high and dry. If the advertising money tree has dried up, where can newspapers turn? Subscribers. It is truly revolutionary. Reading his book, I believe Negroponte thought it would happen naturally. But it hasn't. On the Internet, businesses give away information for free. This can't go on. On the Internet, the only businesses that advertisers will support is themselves.
What should transpire? A subscriber system. Every time an Internet user clicks into a Website, that site should receive two cents from the visitor. Every Internet user will open a subscription account of $30 a month (1,500 site visits) through a central payment system. The account will be debited two cents for each site visited. If the site is The New York Times, the fee will be charged to each story visited. The Times and the reporter will negotiate an agreement in which the reporter gets a cut of the two cents – let's say it is 50-50 – which means, in Negroponte's aging Markoff example, both the reporter and the newspaper will earn $500,000 a year from the reporter's stories. I am prepared to guess the arrangement would be acceptable to both parties.
Every content provider – this blog, for example – will receive two cents per visit. Popular blogs will realize considerable revenue, which is appropriate, and schlock blogs will wither, which seems equally appropriate. Internet surfers, when they are required to pay for it, will think twice about where they deposit their two cents, always wanting their two cents' worth. The result will be better Internet content quality. That will be a nice bonus. My only concern in writing this today, though, is the quality of the free, aggressive, well-staffed, well-edited press. Without that, this country is in danger of collapsing.
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