HELIUMSAGAS

A Polemic on Journalism Ethics by David Arthur Walters

2010-02-04T12:02:00.001-08:00

On journalism’s appearance as sophisticated hogwash

Edward Wasserman, Knight Professor of Journalism Ethics at Washington & Lee University, mounted the editorial podium at The Miami Herald, under the heading “Special interests write ‘news’,” to chasten the news business for publishing so-called news articles penned by mercenary writers whose expenses and fees are paid in full or in part by special interests instead of by the publishers themselves. Those special interests may take the form of non-profit foundations set up by “plutocrats.” One never knows, said Mr. Wasserman, "what kind of influence the charismatic plutocrats or their purpose-built foundations exert on the operations they fund." Therefore he advises news businesses to suppress the expression of outside factions simply because they might have an interest in conflict with his professional opinion on journalism ethics.

Some distinguished members of the mainstream press have refused to outsource news reporting to nonprofits that have special agendas: for example, the McClatchy news organization, which has long taken pride in its independence from outside influences. Prior to his retirement as McClatchy’s Vice President of News, Howard Weaver indicated that McClatchy papers did not accept news content from “outside groups” because relationships with them would be “sufficiently unorthodox that we don’t need to do it.”

However, McClatchy was going against a trend towards orthodoxy at that time. A seasoned Miami journalist informed this writer that, although she agreed with Professor Wasserman’s opinion, the “ship has already sailed” in the other direction. Hence the subject is old news no longer worth discussing – she summarily turned her back and walked away. Anders Gyllenhaal, executive editor of The Miami Herald, which was taken over by McClatchy in 2006, was queried on the subject via email on February 1, 2010, and responded with: “We don’t accept news stories from foundations or non-profits pushing a particular point of view. There are an increasing number of investigative groups, that happen to be non-profit, that operate with traditional media standards, and we will consider running their work, with a clear explanation of how they operate. That hasn’t happened yet in Miami, but it is coming up in other places.” As for expenses, “Our policy is for staff members to pay their own way.”

Professor Wasserman referred to billionaire banker Peter G. Peterson, who indirectly funded via his foundation Fiscal Times the production of an article published December 31, 2009 in the prestigious Washington Post, entitled 'Support grows for tackling nation's debt’, an article allegedly promoting the sort of fiscal stinginess that would rob us of our Social Security and Medicare benefits. Forty national organizations protested, he reported, creating quite a “flap” over the integrity of the newspaper, but we can see that the protest should be addressed to Congress and not to the editorial policies of the Washington Post.

The Washington Post is a conservative, moderate, or liberal paper, depending on how you read it – it was once called “Pravda on the Potomac” and compared with the Daily Worker, but some departments have slid far to the right. The big "flap" was a tempest in a teapot whipped up by hypersensitive liberals inclined to abhor the slightest representation of the naturally conservative (of their own fortunes) "plutocrats", whom defamed liberals naturally despise with a vengeance. Mind you that the plutocrats would have faced a firing squad long ago if red-blooded Americans did not fervently desire to join their ranks, believing, as pragmatic philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce noted well, that every poor bloke has a chance to get rich in America, thus is revolution forestalled – a truism, but the chance is slim given the slight circulation of the classes in respect to the power elite. Peirce wound up impoverished despite his schemes, at times dependent on his friend William James for his daily bread.

Naturally everyone is a liberal to the extent that he would be liberated from something or the other, especially from the faction that opposes him. Carl Schmitt, a German expert on jurisprudence whose ideas are secretly admired by American neoconservatives although he is infamous for his theory of the Total and for condoning Hitler’s emergency suspension of governing law, defined politics as finding out who your enemies are and eliminating them. No doubt the liberals who find themselves identified by neoconservatives as liberals in the pejorative sense would like to be rid of the particular plutocrats whose wealth they would like to distribute to the needy. But what is liberty if it is not liberty for all, if it is suppressed by a faction whether that faction is a majority or a minority? So-called liberty would be tyranny to all those persons not in power. Even if the plutocrats were a sociopathic faction that deserves the death sentence, a free press should be at liberty to publish their last words some time before the mass execution.

The Washington Post article at issue is more fact than opinion, and does not recommend treason, which might be useful at this juncture in a history that is turning out to be a quite a mistake. Spending is reportedly burying this great nation of ours in debt, the newspaper reported, therefore 35 Democratic and Republican senators – the number is not broken down by party - have proposed the creation of a fast-track commission with broad power to ramrod spending cuts and tax reform through Congress. An 18-member task force has been advocated. Under that proposal, if 14 members of the task force agree on how to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, Congress would be obliged to take immediate action, voting up or down on whatever measure was recommended. That is news to those of us who hope to survive without unaffordable health insurance until we reach entitlement to the Medicare and Social Security benefits we and our employers paid for.

Our personal reaction to the disclosure by The Washington Post is, "To hell with the greedy plutocrats and their political prostitutes!"

Professor Wasserman says that “the article described, approvingly,” the effort to create the deficit-reduction commission so dear to billionaire Peterson. We are not sophisticated enough to notice any such approval hence we beg to differ. The report, written by professional reporters, definitely points out that, "Congress has been down this path of entitlement commissions before, with nothing to show for it." Despite the belief that such a mechanism can "force a consensus among the warring political factions," critics say that the same old problems would arise to thwart its implementation. The report is relatively balanced notwithstanding its funding source. The newspaper's ombudsman declared it to be up to par in terms of professional journalism standards, yet threw a sop to the 40 national foundations that complained: the piece had "serious deficiencies," he declared. Still it was good enough. Any reader who was misled by the informative article and who changed parties or ideologies over it must be self-deceived or a blooming fool, and we should thank The Washington Post for publishing the alarming information.

In any case, our estimable ethics professor avows that it used to be fairly easy for a news business to keep its nose fairly clean and self-respecting: "You didn't accept material from outsiders apart from freelancers you knew or bona fide news agencies." But today's news media is picking up free content from foundations with special interests, and is turning to cheap freelancers. Freelancers in turn cannot make a decent living wage off the media, which he says might pay a meager $300 a week, so they are renting their souls out to the special interests in one way or another, or the special interests may be paying their expenses if not their fees –we note that there are many competent journalists out there who would be glad to have the $300 per week, and that nonprofit journalism has been a boon to the largely unemployed scribbling population. Again, Professor Wasserman would have publishers cut ties with outside special interests, and pick up the whole tab for journalists lest narrow-minded interests unduly corrupt the news. "At a minimum, the outside ties should be severed. With freelancers, the publisher must pick up the full costs of the work. That's fundamental."

Just what interest is so universal as not to be somewhat "special”? Professor Wasserman's own special interests apparently rest near the authoritarian apex of the Establishment’s power pyramid: politics, management, law, business, media censorship, and so on: He was educated in politics and economics at Yale University and London School of Economics. He served as a staff writer and business reporter for very brief periods before rising to executive editing positions at Casper Star-Tribune, Knight-Ridder’s Miami Herald, and Miami's Daily Business Review. He was CEO as well for American Lawyer Media, and he created and launched a monthly, Florida Lawyer. He served as chief editorial officer of Primedia, with 160 magazines and newsletters covering the media. He wrote a column for Knight Ridder's The Miami Herald on economics, business and public policy from 2000-2003. Now he holds the Knight Chair in journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. That chair was established with a grant of $1.5 million from the Knight Foundation, reads the university website’s rhetoric:

"Chairholders are professional journalists who inspire excellence, collaborators who reach out and innovate, catalysts around whom universities can build expanded programs and visionaries who strive to improve American journalism." Knight Foundation’s website advertisement claims that the Foundation wants to “transform both communities and journalism, and help them reach their highest potential. We want to ensure that each community’s citizens get the information they need to thrive in a democracy…. We passionately believe things can get better. We believe nothing big happens without a big idea, nothing new without a new idea…. . Every day, we ask the question, of ourselves and our partners, ‘Is this the best there is?’ We seek out leaders who ask the same…. The five basics that all transformational projects seem to have: discovery of the facts; the vision to see what's possible; The courage to push for change; the know-how to get it done; the tenacity that gets results."

Now Professor Wasserman, while sitting on a Knight Chair, worries that special interests funding nonprofit foundations might unduly influence or somehow pollute the news business with their philanthropic focus on issues that publishers and “independent” editors have heretofore excluded as unprofitable hence not newsworthy, but may now be inclined to air if they are running out of money to pay staff for content. We urge him to report on the influence the Knight Foundation has had on the news business and on the professors who hold its chairs at universities as well as the influence its millions of dollars contributed to journalists. We suspect that a little muckraking on his part will turn up some hypocrisy in regards to catchwords such as “democracy.” “If the citizens are unaware, then democracy is in peril,” stated Alberto Ibarguen, president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, former publisher of Knight Ridder’s Miami Herald, at a Council on Foundation conference in San Francisco, where nonprofits were urged to adopt quality journalism practices so that “professional journalism” might survive alongside the advance of “citizen journalism.”

In the good old days, anh aspiring writer like Theodore Dreiser could hang out at a newspaper office in his youth and beg so persistently for reporting assignments that an editor would send him out on the least desirable one just to get rid of him, and perchance he would learn, with the right editor, to be a good reporter on the job, and perhaps go on to write realistic novels or become editor himself. It was not so complicated in those days to gather information and put it in order, from the most relevant to least relevant, logically connect the dots and write up a story. But today the aspirant had better get expensive credentials if he wants to be a professional journalist. And that goes for columnists as well as reporters – columnists usually begin as reporters.

The more credulous persons among us tend to believe that the product of professional journalists who work for the major daily newspapers are the most credible and authoritative simply because their writers and editors went to journalism school and are closely associated with whatever passes for news in their newspapers. Accordingly, professional journalists have a rather high opinion of their work, and usually scoff at amateur or “citizen journalists” instead of bringing them into the fold and educating them on the tricks of the trade – a free Internet school would help. Yet it is the unpaid and even naïve citizen journalist who might get the real albeit ignored scoop and tell the truth about it simply because he or she is in fact independent of the thumb the professionals are under. Of course modern journalists at large have always had a reputation for being scoundrels who will say anything to turn a buck or win an argument, although the truth does come out now and then. The truth of the matter is that professional journalists are highly unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them if not other hand is available to hire them. And besides that they are cultivated in a kind of academic ignorance. Sadly, that ignorance as well as their arrogance has had tragic results throughout the world.

Again we ask: Just what interest is so universal as not to be somewhat "special”? Professor Wasserman did not mention in his imperial ethics decree that the gigantic media business that he subserves represents a special interest, the power elite, which is a minority faction with far too much power. The news business is the figurative spokesperson for the executive branch of the Establishment, a member of the power elite whose interest is intimately identified with the invisible forces of darkness presiding over corporate board tribalism. The higher one ascends on the power pyramid, the less relevant ethics becomes; rather, absolute power is the sole good to those who have it, hence might makes right. But that good so limited to the few is certainly an evil for the many. As Lord Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

The press habitually betrays the public interest. For example, the press reported approvingly on the rush to war and the Bush Administration's fascist-like infringement of civil rights, almost down to the last publisher and editor. The McClatchy organization was the most notable American exception: In 2008, McClatchy's bureau chief in Washington, D.C., John Walcott, was the first recipient of the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence, awarded by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. In accepting the award, Walcott commented on McClatchy's reporting during the period preceding the Iraq War: “Why, in a nutshell, was our reporting different from so much other reporting? One important reason was that we sought out the dissidents, and we listened to them, instead of serving as stenographers to high-ranking [Bush administration] officials and Iraqi exiles.”

In any event, the truth about the pre-emptive war that destroyed the sovereign state of Iraq, that is was based on fabricated pretexts taken for granted by the jingo press, could no longer be voluntarily suppressed because that truth was eventually revealed. The jingo media did not dig up the facts about the packs of lies fed to it by the hawks and vultures; instead, they declared the opposition to be un-American and they embedded themselves in pre-emptive attacks on suspected enemies and waxed enthusiastically on “what makes America great,” i.e. war, paying scant heed to the collateral damage.

Why should media conglomerates whose special interest is in the bottom line bother to dig up dirt and rake muck when a telephone call to the authorities suffices to get the news patriotic Americans want to hear? The publishers did not listen to the traitorous independent voices and publish their presumably seditious libel pleading for peace when it was time to profit on massive violence again. Super-patriotic leaders and the citizens who voted for them were unwilling to hear from America's own independent journalists, most of whom were unemployed because they did not suit the current "market needs" of the media. The recent conduct of the mainstream media at large disgraced this great nation of ours, and everyone of sound mind knows it. But we are supposed to forgive them, now that they are exposing facts they could have helped prevent. Yes, we may forgive them now that they are taking the liars to task – they have even fired a few of their own kind for being on the government payroll. Yet despite our forbearance and forgiveness, or because of it, the U.S. press is still stuffed with self-righteous, highly paid press executives whose main interest is in maintaining the corrupted power structure and keeping up the Big Lie with catchwords such as “democracy.”.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Indeed.

Ironically, in the 1920s amateur press critic Adolf Schicklgruber warned against the press falling into the hands of bad men, for they would have a most pernicious influence on the most numerous and credulous class of readers whom they would educate, "those who believe everything they read...who have neither been born nor are trained to think independently.... It is of paramount interest to the state and the nation to prevent those people from falling into the hands of bad, ignorant or even vicious educators. The state, therefore, has the duty of watching over their education and preventing any mischief. It must particularly exercise strict control over the press, for its influence on these people is by far the strongest and most penetrating, since it is applied, not once in a while, but over and over again."

Schicklgruber was convinced that a liberal press controlled by the Jewish special interest had ruined Germany by ridiculing morals and ethics, belittling the military, cutting military funding, sabotaging the draft, while the state stood by bragging about the value of the press, its educational mission, its objectivity - "The bourgeois-democratic papers knew how to give an appearance of their famous objectivity, painstakingly avoided all strong words, well knowing that empty heads can judge only by externals and never have the faculty of penetrating the inner core."

And Schicklgruber complained most vehemently that the German press suppressed or ignored the truth. The real truth was radical and must be suppressed instead of printed, for if the truth were published by publishers perceived as legitimate, the most numerous party of readers, those who believe everything they read, would tend to overthrow the liars in charge. Today many vital issues and newsworthy events are never aired by the American mass media due to the biases of editors and the need for the news business to please or at least refrain from offending advertisers. It is well known that money buys and controls the news business, and the news media ultimately operates to the advantage of conservative business interests despite conservatives’ complaints about “the liberal media.” After all, the business of the news business is business. Dissenting or “liberal” voices must conform to the agenda to be heard, and the lack of radical perspectives leaves the press stagnant if not regressive, serving to keep the flock that believes in everything they read in good order, i.e. the top-down imposing order of the Establishment. Now the Internet poses a real threat to the ability of mass media to inculcate order in a docile public that is growing awfully weary of the pabulum it has been fed, wherefore the media organizations and foundations such as the Knight Foundation are scrambling to co-opt the great possible alternative to censored information in an effort to legitimize i.e. control it to the ends of Business-As-Usual.

In any case, Schicklgruber claimed that truth can only be arrived at through critical analysis by a few discerning thinkers capable of forming independent opinions, not the sort of readers the press was interested in cultivating. Of course he wanted his own truths to absolutely obliterate other opinions, including the opinion that he was in truth a jackass. Today's fast-paced, sensational news distracts readers from the careful consideration of vital issues. Indeed, there is insufficient time and space for critical analysis of the issues that are covered; the weighing of alternatives is habitually censored. The censorship and consequent stultification of the average mass reader is aggravated by the consolidation of news businesses into media conglomerates. The differences between news, analysis, and opinion are substantially ignored, although the formalities are maintained. In effect, news, analysis, and opinion, despite the stylistic formalities, often amount to advertising.

The news business is really one national propaganda paper for a single party, a party-paper we might as well call Pravda given its distance from the truth. The differences between most major daily papers are as superficial as the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, both of which cater and answer to Big Money. Certain types of content, often advertisements posing as news articles, are displayed time and time again throughout the media as a "public service" to keep the public in line for the continued progress of the vested interests. So-called debate is generally confined to simplistic conservative vs. liberal rhetoric and appeals to partisan clichés spewed out by the Democratic and Republican parties. Thus are those apt to believe whatever they read in terms of an either/or, borderline social-psychology artificially divided and herded off to the same processing plant where the spoils of the rotating political table are divvied out, the best portions going to the invisible gods and high priests – the gods get the smoke, incensed with herbs, the priests the fat, liver, and kidneys, the warriors the lean meat, and any remaining scraps go to the beggars cringing on the fringes. The media business serves itself well, extorting huge fees from political candidates who rely on contributions from about the same major contributors that the media business relies on for advertising revenues.

We believe Professor Wasserman might sympathize with some of Schicklgruber's views on the need to restore ethics to the media, if only the person speaking were not Schicklgruber back then but a currently estimable professor of journalism ethics who had couched them in more sophisticated terms today. As we have seen, the professor obviously has his special interests with their questionable purposes. He is himself a professional censor, a gate-keeping member and elite media spokesman for the power elite, whose special interest for the sake of his livelihood is in maintaining its legal power over the political economy of the United States at all costs. We suspect that his occasional appearance as a liberal professor interested in social justice is that of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Any form of social justice that would provide universal health care and housing and feed everyone by emphasizing production and a just distribution of the products instead of the accumulation of abstract money-power into a few hands, is intolerable to the power elite and the vested interests whose main purpose is to get as much as they can for nothing by buying cheap and selling dear. After all, if production were ramped up to potential capacity, or roughly ten times or more of current production, the world would be awash in goods and capitalists as organized would go broke because there would be no more profit in distributing plentiful basic goods than there is in distributing everyday air. In effect, production must be sabotaged in order to profit by it.

But Schicklgruber's "mob of the simple and credulous" must not hear of that from the mainstream press, not the one subject to editors interested in our polemical interpretation of Professor Wasserman’s journalism ethics. He has no doubt profited handsomely for upholding the Establishment, which cloaks itself in a pretense of democracy, which is a democratic republic that actually represents a particular minority, the big money interests, not the majority of the people, the less privileged whom the vested interests fear and would pacify at the least expense. He may pose as a liberal, but he obviously adheres to the Republican model, the Democratic model being too dangerous to govern effectively.

Professor Wasserman would keep the plutocrats' filthy mitts off the news business that its virtue be maintained, yet he neglects to point out in his article, perhaps due to lack of space, that the business of the news business is business, that the news business is ultimately dependent upon and beholden to the same plutocratic or Big Money interests he is wont to criticize. If that be true, then in effect he has said nothing at all, at least not to the critical reader, yet his editorial advertisement is sophisticated enough to resemble wisdom and may trap unwary students of journalism ethics into believing that nothing exists but fine arguments which might prove that bad is good and vice versa - the protean sophist can devise all sorts of conversations to win arguments, and thus enroll ambitious students for a fee. Plato suggested that the art of a Sophist "may be traced as a branch of the appropriate acquisitive family which hunts animals - living and tame animals - which hunts man, privately or for hire, taking money in exchange, having the semblance of education, and this is termed Sophistry, and is a hunt after young men of wealth and rank."

As for virtue, the chief one presumably being the Wisdom that sophists imitate, "Our friend the Sophist, where art may now be traced from the art of acquisition through exchange, trade, merchandise, to a merchandise of the soul which is concerned with speech and the knowledge of virtue." Loquacious people such as the present writer converse for the pleasure of conversation, and their conversation might not please everyone within earshot, but the "wonderful Sophist…is a money-making species of the Eristic, disputatious, controversial, pugnacious, combative, acquisitive family."

Must we war for peace? Must we fight for happiness? Shall Apollo or Zeus be our chief guide? Must journalism always be a crossing of swords, such as this one declaring that the journalism ethics of a certain esteemed professor is sophisticated hogwash? Are not the artful games at Delphi far more rewarding than the violent competition on Olympus?

The phase, “the pursuit of happiness”, was substituted for the original phrase, “The pursuit of property”, for the sake of appearances, but the materialistic spirit of the latter nevertheless prevails. The disagreeable fact of the matter is that our system has made whores of us all if we are not that by nature, and that is why, for example, that the United States Congress is the greatest whorehouse in America. How can we justly condemn prostitution when the most of us rent out not only our bodies but our souls as well to earn our daily bread? Of course our whoredom is mostly involuntary as the most of us have to work most of our lives to produce mountains of junk, trash and garbage that we may not want but must produce in order to have a bite to eat and a roof over our heads.

It finally appears that a truly virtuous journalist should not be paid at all for representing truth, and neither should publishers profit from doing the same, nor should virtuous ethics professors take a fee for preaching ethics, not to mention fees for the Savior’s salvation. Indeed, we would all be better off devoting ourselves to virtuous works, and working less for pay. Then we would all be a lot wiser, and our Establishment far more just and democratic.

Back to the Future of Journalism by David Arthur Walters

2009-06-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the US Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, was so alarmed by The New York Times Co.’s threat to close his financially distressed hometown paper, the Boston Globe, that he called a hearing of the subcommittee to order on May 6, 2009 to consider the future of organized journalism.

The New York Times Co. bought Senator Kerry’s beloved Boston Globe from Affiliated Publications for $1.1 billion back in 1993. The Globe, a full service newspaper, was founded in 1872, and went public in 1973. The Jordan family and Taylor family maintained a financial interest in the paper since its founding; the families received substantial New York Times Co. stock at the buyout. The descendants of Charles H. Taylor continued to manage the paper after the buyout, until late 2000.

Now the paper is suffering. The advent of the Internet long before the Great Recession gets a large share of the blame for diminishing advertising revenues. The Times Company is blamed for financial mismanagement during good times. Frank Phillips, one of the Globes’s most respected reporters, has charged the Times with “Wall Street journalism”, and with squeezing profits out of the Globe even during an economic downturn. He said that during bad times the Taylor family used to operate the paper for slim profits or even a loss rather than let the Globe wither, but not the Times Co.

Of course the future of journalism is a topic of inordinate concern to a number of corporate newspapers throughout the country who are drowning in red ink and consequently blame their predicament on the Great Recession and the Internet. They are watching the Globe/Times controversy intently because they believe some workable compromise may be forged that may become a model for their viable future. Their worst critics claim that the mainstream press is getting exactly what it deserves for buying into free-market deregulation ideology, and for selling out its readers and the truth to the corporate power elite including warmongering profiteers, greedy real estate developers, and avaricious Wall Street paperhangers. (1) Let the papers fold, they say, blogging citizen journalists will take up the slack for what passes for truth.

Much of the opposing criticism during the rush to war was well taken although repressed by the National Establishment’s propaganda organ, the jingoistic mainstream media. Carl Schmitt, theorist of the ‘Total’ and the jurisprudential godfather of the Bush Administration’s pre-emptive attack and emergency suspension of constitutional safeguard policies, had advanced the notion that leaders must fabricate truth to get anything done in a democracy with all its conflicting factions. Newspaper readers gradually became wise to the deception, thanks in part to newspapers that did leak the truth from time to time, and to alternative sources of fact and opinion on the Internet – which at this writing the Obama administration for the National Establishment would “nationalize” for national security reasons because America’s hacking enemies have cost Americans $200 billion over the last two years.

The fact of the matter became increasingly plain for all who had eyes to see, that the news was being routinely manipulated and slanted to suit the ideological prejudices of the power elite who own and control the Establishment and its mass media trumpets. We know very well that some of the editors, reporters, and columnists of our local corporate press subsidiaries associate with operatives within the “intelligence community” – after all, the corporate media is towards the top of the apex of the Establishment, a key component of the military-industrial-energy complex. Notwithstanding their familiarity and identification with the power elite, the media controllers, when terrified by the officially defined enemies within and without, believe they have a duty to press the orthodox dogma while suppressing dissent, wherefore we are not surprised when it is eventually revealed that media managers and employees actually censor objections and press patriotic dogma. And some of them do this not only because they feel they must be patriotic or altruistic but because they receive payments and favors from employers, government agencies, and war profiteers.

Wherefore intelligent newspaper readers have become cynical, read their papers with a jaded eye, and learn to never believe outright anything they read in newspapers, especially in the editorial pages. They increasingly turn to the Internet as a source of diverse perspectives on crucial issues. In fine, readers do not trust newspapers anymore – they have gotten a bad reputation since they were consolidated into publicly-owned newspaper chains and the public trust obviously betrayed locally. But we still want them around for the good they have done and might still do – opinionating bloggers, citizen journalists, and Web2.0 news aggregators need major newspaper reports as grist for their mills because, despite all their faults, they are cloaked in legitimacy by the authorities people love to envy if not admire. I recall being told by my sixth grade teacher that everyone should read the newspaper every day if she or he wants to know what is going on and how to succeed.

No, we cannot succeed without our newspapers, whether they are online or in our hands. Senator Kerry said that his subcommittee would discuss the implications of the closing of newspapers such as the Globe on the future of journalism and the country. It is important, he said, to "preserve the core society function served by independent and diverse media" and to question whether online journalism will "sustain the values of professional journalism the way the newspaper industry has." Maryland Senator Ben Cardin chimed in later on, stating that online journalism does not supply the in-depth reporting and investigative journalism provided by traditional newsrooms that are essential to a free society.

‘Regulation’ is the key word again now that the power elite, including their cabinet, the United States Congress, and their press, have blindly led the world towards a supposedly inevitable, disastrous uncovering of the truth they managed to suppress for quite awhile, a veritable apocalypse inviting, if you will, the wrathful doom of the god sometimes identified with the ultimate truth, The Truth. If the dwindling major papers are to be bailed out in order to survive, some critics say they should be regulated. Yes, the government may have to intervene in some way or the other so that the newspaper business can be profitable in the future. Maybe taxpayers should fund a nonprofit press in the interim, a Public Press System. Alberto Ibarguen, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Knight Foundation, testifying at the hearing on the future of journalism, said that nonprofit status for newspapers might allow them to "extend their useful life until we figure out what's next and what online model can afford professional journalism."

Mr. Ibarguen, a lawyer with a financial background, was the publisher of the Miami Herald until succeeded by Jesus Diaz Jr., an accountant. Mr. Diaz, much to the credit side of our general ledger, fired three journalists for accepting payments from the United States Government for working for anti-Cuba-propaganda media organs –seven journalists who did not work for the Herald were also implicated – but he caved into pressure from Miami’s government-supported anti-Castro elite, rehired the journalists, and resigned, claiming that the journalists violated the ethical principle of independence. Mr. Ibarguen is a well known member of the Big Business-Big Government Establishment: His most recent relationships include positions such as an advisory council member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board; as a director of the Council of Foreign Relations; as director on the boards of AMR Corporation, PepsiCo, and ProPublica; and chairman of Newseum.

The Knight Foundation has granted grubstakes to several Internet journalism experiments, including $1.1 million to hyperlocal information aggregator EveryBlock.com, which, in the name of journalism, links databases of news stories, crime reports, police crime logs, building-permit records and the like together. Yet Mr. Ibarguen apparently feels that it is wise for taxpayers to bail out corporate newspaper journalism until the corporations figure out how to make a profit on journalism, whatever its form, i.e. how to control journalism for the greater good of the corporatist system. But in that case, say those who are under the illusion that newspapers are really independent, we might as well kiss the independent press goodbye. (Can the truth ever be independently told, or fully told for either private or public profit?) The truth is better told independently, or so they say, by so-called “citizen journalists” on the Web instead of by press prostitutes adhering to the beck and call of their pimps, the bean-counting gatekeepers who preside over the press for the godfathers in Wall Street’s shadows.

We may abhor derogatory terms, but perhaps the term ‘prostitute’ would be better applied to derogate those who sell their souls instead of their bodies, including so called press putas or professional journalists, an act even worse than selling one’s body unless one is a soulless materialist or a wage slave. Eileen McNamara, a Pulitzer-prize-winning, former columnist for the Boston Globe, implied that the Globe is a whore when she called its owner, the Times, a pimp: the highly regarded Brandeis University teacher confessed that the Times “pimped” the Globe out for profit in the booming 1990s, and then “pillaged” her during lean times. (NYT 5/8/09) At this writing we don’t know if Ms. McNamara participated in the alleged prostitution ring she presently declaims.

Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, testifying at Senator Kerry’s hearing on The Future of Journalism, said she opposed government intervention into journalism, and testified that the future of journalism is to be found in “a linked economy, its search engines, it's online advertising, its citizen journalism, and the foundations supporting investigative journalism. That's where the future is, and if you can't find your way to that, then you just can't find your way." She said newspapers must adapt to the Internet and make their money from clicks instead of subscriptions – alas, Internet users are used to getting information for nothing, and their clicks do not provide enough revenue for a real newspaper to live on. She rightly pointed out that the conventional media missed the truth about the biggest stories of our time: the coming of war and financial disaster.

Her antagonist at the hearing, seasoned newspaper reporter David Simon, said that Huffington Post journalists do not show up for zoning hearings and the like, and that the Huffington model, i.e. armchair journalism, would provide corrupt politicians with lucrative field days: “You do not – in my city -- run into bloggers or so-called citizen journalists at City Hall, or in the courthouse hallways or at the bars and union halls where police officers gather. You do not see them consistently nurturing and then pressing sources. You do not see them holding institutions accountable on a daily basis.”

Mr. Simon did not mention that the ‘hyper-local” news site, Patch.com, created and funded by AOL’s chief, Tim Armstrong, hires journalists in each locality covered, to attend school board meetings and the like, and to hang out in coffee shops with their laptops and cameras. Patch also solicits information from local readers. Nor did Mr. Simon discuss Rue89, a successful French site that includes input from skilled journalists, expert knowledge, and amateur participation that is fact-checked and edited by the site’s reporters. Readers, who, as in the United States, believe the mainstream press is incredible, find Rue89’s stories and investigations quite credible.

Notwithstanding the notion that citizen journalists could care less about the facts, never mind distorting them, and would probably, because nobody would remain to dig into facts or files, pollute our “democracy” with toxic journalism, subjecting this great nation of ours to a tyrannical, uninformed opinion poll, the “citizen journalist” is still held up as the hero on the leading edge of the publishing revolution – some call it devolution. The Knight Foundation of Miami has awarded $837,000 to Printcasting, whereby “citizen journalists” can create their own publications and hustle advertisers for support. “Printcasting” is an “aggregator” of information from Web sites that have agreed to the scheme. The Bakersfield Californian is testing Printcasting, getting the bulk of its content from 3,600 blogs written by readers.

Mr. Simon said the very phrase “citizen journalist” struck his ear as virtually “Orwellian.” This statement elicited in some conservative hearers at the hearing a conservative’s standard image of illiterate French rabble marching on the Bastille, waving copies of Rousseau’s ‘Rights of Man’ overhead, overcoming the guards, sticking their heads on pikes and tearing out their hearts and eating them, proclaiming that members of every nation who joins them in the sacrifice of rejected authority shall become liberated citizens of the free and ‘republican’ (democratic) world.

What the citizen reader who still reads religiously would really like to hear is the honest-to-goodness truth, and not truths fabricated by citizen journalists from fragments collected by machines from all over the World Wide Web. Alas, the constructivists, who claim that truth is manmade and has little to do with any thing-in-itself or reality, because human nature is essentially fallible, are having a rather pernicious, long-term influence on the world, for in the end the truth will be known, and those made intimate with it in their falseness shall be crushed as flat as matzo by reality’s doom. The truth is a means to an end, that end being the happiness of the human race, yet some folks would ignore truth because it does not correspond to their immediate needs and wants.

Why even bother with facts if only opinions count? Did not President Wilson say “to hell with the facts” when said facts flew in the face of his divinely intuited schemes? Furthermore, says the devil’s advocate, if there are opinions without facts or events to support them, and simpletons like to hear about facts, why not just make up facts? In any case the activist historian and journalist will interpret whatever facts he chooses to report in such a way to persuade his readers to accomplish some great good.

Now we should know that any perception of an object is in part judgmental, so the selection and perception of any fact is in part prejudicial; but newspaper reporters who collect, filter and report objective information are not supposed to deliberately falsify facts to suit their prejudices or personal interests, or to fabricate facts that have never occurred. When a “fact” depends too much on someone’s opinion, an independent journalist will, like an ethical lawyer, report contrary opinions for our considered judgment. Many bloggers or armchair journalists who consider themselves “citizen journalists” could care less about such ethical issues because of their inability or unwillingness to concentrate on abstract subjects for very long; they may believe that whatever feels good to them at the moment is good for everyone else.

Even writers for reputable newspapers such as the Boston Globe have occasionally fabricated stories on their desktops, tales that somehow passed muster with their editors. Globe columnist Patricia Smith resigned in 1998 after it was discovered that she had fabricated people and quotations in several of her columns. And Globe’s Mike Barnicle resigned after he fabricated a story about two cancer patients. The Globe apologized in 2004 for printing fantasy pictures lifted from an Internet porno site, graphic pictures of U.S. soldiers supposedly raping Iraqi women – not that any such rapes, part of the warrior’s traditional booty, never occurred. In 2005, the Globe was forced to retract Barbara Stewart’s story describing disturbing events of a seal hunt near Halifax, Nova Scotia, before the event had even taken place – when you know what is going to happen from previous experience, why bother seeing it happen again?

Those most glaring incidents along with other, allegedly quotidian fabrications and distortions of local events offended many Globe readers, who blamed the rag’s predicament on “poor reporting…laziness… deference to officialdom – it’s easier to quote a spokesperson than to do the actual research….” An anonymous reader said s/he had to compile the real facts about an issue and send them along to the misreporting Globe, who then changed its tune but with no thanks in return: “What the hell good is a newspaper if the readers have to fact-check it all? That's what the paper itself is supposed to be doing - it began when every writer began to see himself/herself as a “journalist” and not a reporter. Your days of fabricating stories are over. The cost of these unreasonably high profit expectations, in the form of diluted and less serious, less substantive news, could be high for a nation whose democracy literally depends on an informed citizenry.”

Now, then, with the supposedly impending demise of the gate-keeping, hardcopy mainstream press, which has always been the propaganda organ for the Establishment despite its internal, oligarchic conflicts, and occasional external opposition from a few newspaper intellectuals, we may mistakenly suppose that the citizenry may inform itself even better via unorganized citizen journalists. The “free” press that was never free will be replaced by what? Anarchy?

Hardly! The Establishment must not let the mainstream media fail it, because the majority of authoritarian-oriented people, despite their ambivalence, respect it and believe the most of what they are fed. The corporate press is too important to the survival of the Establishment hence the Nation to fail. The official gospel, no matter how costly, must be disseminated. Freewheeling, freeworking bloggers must not get the upper hand; if they are to constitute the future of journalism, the corporatists must organize them and take control on behalf of their masters at the apex of the national pyramid – a licensing scheme would certainly be helpful, and only those who received an education from a certified corporation should get a license. A way must be found to bail out the professional marching band. The hogs at the trough claim that the future of journalism does not hang on the issue of money but on its quality, yet that quality must be purchased. Knowledge, as Bacon said, may be power, but money is more powerful, for it can buy and control the vital information. Yes, the bomb is more powerful than the keyboard when recruits are wanted – the ancient Chinese inscribed the “news” on their swords.

Journalism, to be effective, Mr. Simon claimed at the hearing, must be a paid profession. Post-modernists may rally around the cry that information itself wants to be free, he said, but “it costs money to hire the best investigators and writers…the best editors.” Recent history proves beyond a doubt that unregulated free-market capitalism produces “little of social value.” Moreover, “laissez-faire” theories have “burned the poor, the middle class and the consumer… bloating the rich and mortgaging the very future of the industry (and) the country itself.” Whether funded publicly or privately, “High-end journalism can and should bite any hand that tries to feed it.”

Another publisher on the leading edge of that bright future happens to be Web publisher Helium Exchange Inc., the Andover, Massachusetts owner and operator of Helium.com, which claims that it is the “face of the publishing revolution” where “great writing rises to the top,” and is “the first true meritocracy in the publishing industry,” was touted in a March 1, 2007 New York Times podcast as a budding organizer of “citizen journalism,” “separating wheat from chaff, providing some hierarchy of value to the booming, buzzing confusion out there.” To that end it relies on the magic of “Web2.0 tools,” which turn out to be, when carefully examined, an incestuous writer-rating and -ranking system employing a traditional scalar consensual method that has little scientific merit except to create a “buzz” and provide a great deal of user-generated “content,” the overwhelming bulk of which is unpaid for – only participating writers are allowed to rate contributions to topics the corporate administrators and their minions believe will be of interest to real publishers, who are expected, in turn, to buy some of the content on the cheap, saving them the cost of hiring professional writers; a pittance of the fees paid, after Helium’s cut, will be remitted to the few lucky writers who make the grade by furiously rating other writers when submitting hundreds of articles. A supposedly top Helium™ writer who has identified herself as ‘Candace’ in an external blog (created by another Helium™ writer to present Helium™ as a means to earn money at home) and to criticize writers such as HE™, who criticizes Helium™ policies and claims that the Helium corporation is exploiting writers for content on the cheap and mostly for nothing, claims that she has posted 900 articles at Helium in 31 months. As of yet ‘Candace’ has not fully identified herself so we may examine the quality of her articles, nor has she revealed her average monthly earnings.

In other words, the “community” of Helium’s citizen journalists, to obtain status, must not only write but must also rate one another’s written opinions on such topics as "Is the New Contraceptive Pill That Stops Menstruation Healthy for Women." So the Helium™ brand of truth is established by a popular opinion contest among presumably the most sophisticated opinionators or sophists, who, in this instance, may be males that have had no medical education nor must they have any experience menstruating whatsoever. Newspaper editors are expected to swoop into the Helium™ Marketplace to pick up the best articles under that topic or another, such as "The importance of self-image in the business world.” If the subject is real estate, evidently the writer needs to know next to nothing about real estate, at least according to Helium’s oft-quoted Senior Steward, Rex Trulove: "It is surprisingly easy to write about real estate if a person lives in a town or knows someone who does. Not a lot of research is required.” All the real estate researcher needs to do is call that someone, perhaps a single friendly realtor. This constructivist knowledge will be passed on to the public as knowledge of reality by Helium’s publisher-partners such as Hearst, which recently signed an agreement with Helium.

“Think about the main argument against user-gen out there,” effused Helium CEO Mark Ranalli during the Times podcast. “Sure, there's a tiny amount of great stuff among so much junk, and how can you find the good stuff? Helium's answer to that is to throw a set of 2.0 tools against the problem. User rankings, star ratings, a meritocracy that rewards the best stuff with money and recognition. It's a set of tools – but more importantly, a way of thinking – that should have a lot of resonance with those news sites trying to figure out how to engage and to apply quality-centric standards to non-staff written content.”

William B. Huff, former president and 25-year veteran of the Boston Globe, is listed as Chairman of Helium’s Board of Directors. Peter Newton, Helium’s Vice President of Business Development, enjoyed an 18-year career with the Boston Globe. Both men are accountants who initially served the Globe as internal auditors and controllers. We do not know whether or not Senator Kerry is familiar with these esteemed gentlemen or with the Helium™ model, hence we are sending along our files for his subcommittee’s consideration. The subcommittee shall see that the Helium™ model, in the name of “civilized” discourse, i.e. commercial civilization, does not tolerate self-criticism whether it is hand-biting or back-biting. Writers who refuse to be loyal ‘Helium Heads’ have their criticism deleted. Indeed, any sort of criticism whether positive or negative that Helium administrators believe may harm their image is routinely deleted. Freelance author and website critic Craig Kohler, who holds degrees in Religion, Philosophy, and Architecture, studied Helium’s censorship program and concluded:

“Helium.com has been actively removing questions and answers that address valid issues pertaining to the website or are otherwise relevant to Helium.com content or contributors, all without warning or explanation. This systematic deletion has taken place despite the fact that Helium is a user-driven site for writers that claims to celebrate multiple viewpoints…. Helium.com also claims that all articles are of value to the site and can earn people money indefinitely. Apparently, these claims do not always apply to articles that point out negative or problematic aspects of Helium.com.” (2)

Critics have been banned from the Helium site; their intellectual property, however, has been seized and displayed pursuant to an unconscionable adhesion “agreement” that not even lawyers bother to read until burned – its fluctuation terms are designed to massively exploit the writing community with big-opportunity rhetoric for very little or no pay. In some cases writers’ bylines have been replaced by numbers; e.g. “Name Withheld No. 9”. A former Helium Head, an advocate of the Power to Delete whose service mark is HE™, alleges that the Helium™ User “Agreement” is an invalid adhesion contract hence Helium’s refusal to discontinue displaying writing, for which it has paid no consideration, on its website against the will of writers may constitute violations of civil and criminal copyright law.

Again, those most interested in the future of journalism, that it be competent and truthful, testify that the main concern is the quality of journalism; but in the next breath they imply that good quality cannot be had without a good business model, i.e. a profitable system. Mark Ranalli, the president of Helium Exchange Inc. referred contemptuously in the Times podcast mentioned above to the low quality of content “contributed” to his site: "Of the first 100,000 contributors, thousands of them should have their computers removed.” John Rozen, Helium’s Vice President of Operations, did not respond to suggestions for the installation of a heuristic program whereby the self-taught citizen journalist would follow specific “pop-up” rating guidelines based on generally acceptable journalistic and critical literary guidelines for each article rated, thus inculcating the standard in himself for application to his own journalism.

Some of the best journals in the history of our race were kept by unpaid journalists – good journalists had the prestige of their names, but no legal copyright Why should the collection, filtering and reporting of information be a sort of trade secret to be monopolized by graduates of certified schools so the graduate can obtain a job and press credentials with a respected journal?

Why? For Business-as-Usual! Some folks worry that the Senate will do nothing about the future of journalism, while others worry that it will do something. We may rest assured that, whatever the Big Business-Big Government partnership does, we will have Business-as-Usual in America and plenty of free airtime for its national president short of a true publishing revolution. People are going to have to pay, one way or another. They are going to have to make sacrifices, one way or another, to keep the power elite in business, for the main business of our government is business, and they are not going to let their advertising and propaganda organs go down the tubes.

NOTES:

(1) Indeed, corporate newspapers, in their haste to please both Main Street and Wall Street at the same time, put the accountants in charge and became little more than advertisements posing as news for the power elite’s pet projects – not that accountants cannot tell a good tale, especially when keeping tallies for the powers-that-be does not pay well enough, in which case the proverbial tyrant’s bookkeepers, who learned to give their own accounts of events instead of keeping inventory accounts for kings, have at times incited the people to riot.

Knight Ridder’s Miami Herald, until McClatchy took over, was a case in point – about the only reason a poor man would subscribe to the old Herald is because people would know he was dead before he began to stink, by the papers piled up at his door. But we take another example of press prostitution, where the scribes subscribed to the will of the dynasts: Knight-Ridders’ Kansas City Star.

The Star, following the lead of its city mayor (Kay Barnes) and city manager (Wayne Cauthen), prostituted itself out whole hog to real estate developers in the name of revitalization, decorating its front page with “news” articles and features blatantly boosting whatever the downtown developers desired. Just for starters, the corporate welfare included a complimentary downtown headquarters for needy H&R Block, whose revenue was then a paltry $2,100,000,000. The Kansas City Star’s cut for its unbalanced boosterism was a $200,000,000 downtown printing plant facility. The power of imminent domain was invoked to seize downtown properties from longstanding, profitable businesses to make way for the businesses favored – just as imminent domain was invoked in Manhattan to deliver a new Times Square headquarters to New York Times Co, over the objections of a longstanding profitable business.

As over $500,000,000 was committed to the revitalization of downtown landlords, bankers, and big corporations while basic services to the poorest city dwellers were slashed, objections to the plundering were ignored pursuant to the Ignore Naysayers doctrine, which had been officially proclaimed by Mr. Cauthen in the press. Take for instance this representative example of the arrogant and dismissive attitude of the mayor's office, expressed in a June 4, 2004 letter by Mayor Barnes' Director of Administration, Richard DeHart, implying that anyone who begs askance of her proposals is not, like her, an optimistic progressive helping the community but is rather a pessimistic regressive who wants to hurt the community: "She has to frequently battle naysayers who think Kansas City can't do this or shouldn't do that. The Mayor is more focused on helping Kansas City move ahead instead of looking for reasons why we can't or won't."

No doubt the mayor and the city manager thought it would be more productive to just ignore naysayers than to do battle with them, and their major propaganda organ, the Star, seldom published naysaying –that was left to bloggers, and to a free sidewalk paper that the elite who did their thinking in the upper boxes in the office towers scoffed at as beneath their dignity to respond to. Eventually the Star recognized the fact that there were “a few” objections to the downtown makeover. Steve Glorioso, one of the mayor's aides, belatedly responding to questions about and objections to the mayor's rush to development, summarily dismissed the questions thus: "The questions raised.... will be answered, we believe, to the satisfaction of everyone but the self-interested." That is to say that the mayor and her clique are altruistic people. while those who disagree are selfish people. Of course we became familiar with that approach, and on a grander scale, during the national government's rush to war, almost universally supported by the press putas and media moguls: all those for the war were patriots, all those against, traitors.

Star reporter Kevin Collison called Walter Cronkite’s cousin, Mayor Kay (‘Mayadevi’) Barnes – who had previously made a career in the positive mental attitude business as president of Kay Waldo Inc., the “best supporting actress” for obtaining development approvals. Finally a big business, a car rental company headquartered in St. Louis, actually objected to the development, hence the Star could not ignore its major advertiser’s concern and at last took up the other side of a downtown revitalization issue at length. Mayor Barnes wanted a new sports arena downtown; it would be supported in part by a rental tax. Mr. Collison said she would have to be the “leading actress” to get a new sports arena approved without a major league team to go with it. She finally publicly recognized the existence of a Naysayer, the car rental company, though she said she could not understand why anyone would actually say Nay. She praised taxpayers for being “brave” enough to fund the proposals that she was making on behalf of the People – better said, the dynastic, paternal clique that runs the city – implying that to do otherwise would be cowardly. She skipped doing her duty at the Democratic Convention in order to stay home and fight Kansas City’s great rival, St. Louis. By diverting attention to this historic civil rivalry, she got her way.

Sports economist Robert Baard had analyzed the arena proposal. He concluded that “People of modest means would subsidize attendance at arena events for the financial privileged.” The same might be said of the new concert hall plan. The downtown development as a whole, bolstered by the tax slush fund, was more for the privileged than the underprivileged. The notorious “white flight” would be finally reversed – the housing department, allegedly corrupted by blacks in favor of blacks, would be shut down for financial mismanagement.

Perspicacious Kansas City individuals, albeit totally ignored due to the Ignore Naysayers doctrine – as a matter of policy the mayor would not meet with ordinary individuals but only with the cooperative leaders of groups – had already arrived at a similar conclusion in respect to most of the downtown revitalization projects that were being rushed to construction. The vested interests and power elite would realize immediate gains in the form of profits on land deals, condominium conversion deals, bond deals, consulting fees, investment banking commissions, architectural fees, construction profits, and the like. As hundreds of millions of dollars were being handed out for the benefit of the already affluent, millions were being cut from the fire and police departments and from health care services to the desperately poor. Intermediate-term, lifestyle advantages were expected from the downtown revitalization as homeless people, working poor and lower middle-class people would be pushed out of the "blighted" downtown by higher housing, food, and entertainment costs during the gentrification process. Homeless people who remained would be contained in shelters in the so-called Compassion Zone on one side of town, near the police station.

“Jonathan’s Building” is also worthy of mention here. Jonathan Kemper, an illustrious member of the Kemper dynasty, is CEO of Commerce Bank and Board President of the Kansas City Library. He deserves credit for getting part of the collection from the “vagrant library” moved from the blighted downtown government center to a beautiful old bank within eyeshot of his Commerce Bank. The renovated bank is the centerpiece of the downtown residential-commercial area dubbed the Library District. The collection was dumbed-down somewhat for the transition. A private security force was installed to protect the new digs and preclude social misfits from misbehaving. The vagrants must now walk across town to attend, but their main concern is still with the restroom facilities, which are greatly improved.

All told, the gem of a library deserves everyone’s respect, and this writer would enjoy living in a condo right across the street from it. But the cost of the renovation and relocation was costly and the new operating costs in comparison to the old are high. The Star trumpeted the new library every inch of the way, and blacked out objections to the cost and to the dumbing-down of the collection. Apparently none of the $50,000,000 raised by Mr. Kemper was devoted to the collection itself or to human resources. The Kansas City Star knew about but did not explain why the cost of physical improvements were over $1,000 per square foot of net added library space, in comparison to a cost in Denver of less than $200 per foot for net additional library space. The newspaper monopoly must have known about but ignored the fact that a brand new building could have been built at the same or less cost, and that the old building might have been renovated for far less money. And then, after the new library was opened, the editors of the Star, under the rubric, 'Library must pursue more ambitious path,' disclosed that the library trustees cut $500,000 for purchasing books and other materials, and said that library hours might be cut back. And what should be done to save the library? "Library trustees should consider asking voters for additional funds." Was not that the plan all along?

The voting public eventually caught on. The web of illusion that ‘Mayadevi’ Barnes had woven over the Heart of America was demolished by Mark Funkhauser, who objected vehemently to her mollycoddling of developers, and was duly elected mayor in 2007. Fortunately, Knight Ridder sold the Kansas City Star to McClatchy in 2006 – Knight Ridder’s trumpet for Miami developers, the Miami Herald, was also thankfully sold to McClatchy, whereupon much dirt was exposed, albeit much too late. The newly owned Star endorsed Mark Funkhauser, and to this day it is amusing to behold the journalist who cottoned to Mayor Barnes most of all flatter him to no end instead. Yes, Madame Barnes had lost her magic power: her maya also failed her in her dismal run for Congress.

Now we must refer to the other side of the story for the sake of balance. We observe that, although force wrongly applied may not get the work wanted done well, it still takes force to get anything done, and it is unfair to criticize the work until projects are complete. Of course we would like the means to be as nice as the ends, but means do require sacrifices for the greater good supposedly at the end.

We might criticize illiterate Tamarlane for his barbaric advertisements, his towers of skulls, but his capital city was grand indeed, thanks not only to physical booty taken, for example, from backsliding infidels in India who had taken up the worship of golden idols again, but to captive intellects also seized – artists, architects, scribes, etc. Tamarlane loved the truth, but it could only be told by the members of a small tribe descended from the Prophet – other critics, including tenants of his shopping center who objected to revitalizations, were beheaded.

Now the jury is still out on the revitalization of the Heart of America. The new downtown Kansas City may very well be recognized as the Jewel of the Midwest in the future, at which time the cost, in comparison to inflated future prices, may seem well worth the result, and then the fact that naysayers were ignored will not matter but to anyone but the naysayers, if they have lived that long: They will not want to be identified as those who said no to such a wonderful thing. After all, Kansas City, Missouri had become a one-cow town since the stockyards were shut down and Sprint fled to Kansas, and that sole cow was mounted on the top of a pole barely to be seen at the edge of the Bottoms (the lower flats, where the railroad yards were). Many Kansas Citians wanted something to be done, anything at all, to break the boredom of their once thriving downtown.

Likewise, for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, now spreading to Pakistan: A good history may not be told for 25 years; observe Germany, Japan, and South Korea – where the “forgotten” war was not wrong in the end, at least not in comparison to North Korea, although many objected to the means.

See www.downtownkansascity.blogspot.com

(2) Mr. Kohler presents his analysis of key examples of Helium’s censorship at:
http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/heliumcom-censors-content-deletes-accurate-articles/

Miami Beach
June 1, 2009

On Open Publishing via Themestream.com by David Arthur Walters

2009-06-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

WRITERS WANTED

Themestream seeks writers of all kinds and experience levels to publish their writing on the Web, reach thousands of interested readers, and get paid in cash for their work. Visit http://www.themestream.com or email: mailto:employment@themestream.com to become a Themestream author.

The Writers Wanted advertisement in my daily newspaper seemed to be the answer to my dreams. I responded and thus began my career as an Internet writer. I was paid a dime per click on my articles to begin with. Themestream Founder and Chairman Bill Turpin figured the incentive would motivate writers to become the company’s vast promotional force attracting general and email-subscribing readers to the sorts of content the public was passionate or enthusiastic about, stuff they would naturally want to buy and would buy if given this wonderful opportunity to do so. The quality of writing was not expected to be an issue because a simple rating and commentary system, offered to readers at the bottom of each article, would somehow push the best material to the top of the enormous pile.

Themestream was funded by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and Redpoint Ventures. Themestream reportedly ran through $25 million before going broke, all the while describing itself as a "central source for articles, information, and gear related to consumers' personal interests…. Themestream enables experts, publishers, enthusiasts, and first-time authors alike to contribute to the site and help eliminate other people's need to endlessly surf the Internet for useful information and products related to their interests."

I posted the essay below in Themestream’s writing contest category. The contest gatekeepers had selected the topic, ‘Open Publishing,’ as the subject of the contest. Themestream censors deleted the article, claiming that it violated the particular term of its adhesion contract prohibiting the posting of any material that might have, in its sole opinion, a negative impact on its business. I was warned that if I reposted it, my account would be terminated forthwith and I would not be paid any sums previously due to me.

Themestream, citing financial restraints, had at that time already reduced its payments from a dime to two-cents per click, and had limited the total amount paid per article to $350. Its technical platform was floundering and the engineers were fighting desperately to restore stability as contributors, angered by the new payment schedule, and censorship policies, including the deletion of the entire Women Issues category, fled in droves. Some writers had already made many thousands of dollars each by copy-pasting content from other sites onto the Themestream site and setting up automatic “hit rings” to click on the plagiarized posts. Complaints about this conduct were largely ignored to begin with, leading to suggestions of internal corruption. Short-lived Themestream went belly up in 2001.

ON OPEN PUBLISHING

By David Arthur Walters

Honolulu, Hawaii

December 2000

Almost everyone in the civilized world writes. The invention of the printing press and mandatory education has turned nearly everyone into a writer of sorts. But when writers seek fame and fortune in the literary world, they are frustrated by editors. Everyone cannot get rich at once: without those gatekeepers, the literary ship to fame and fortune would soon collapse under the weight of everyone trying to get on board. Until the advent of open publishing on the Internet, this screening process left a multitude of aspiring writers without a means to satisfy their need for public expression, a need greatly aggravated by the diminution of their subjective sense of self in our objectivist age.

The vanity press provided a means to express the depressed and suppressed subject, a way for frustrated authors to publish their own works at their own expense. The fees charged by vanity publishers prohibited the multitude of would-be writers from climbing aboard. Instead of sending the author an unsigned rejection slip, the vanity press endorsed the author's check and signed a contract for its services, a ticket to possible success. On rare occasions, the book enjoyed some success. Regardless of whether or not the book was profitable itself, the well-heeled author felt successful because he had a book to show off to friends, acquaintances, and prospective customers. But the waitress who worked many extra shifts to save enough money to pay off the vanity press to publish her novel was severely disappointed. Indeed, it is believed that the failure of vanity press books has been one of the leading causes of suicide among poor scribblers. At least the cost of producing vanity books fell, thanks to advancing technology, but the vanity press remained beyond the means of many frustrated writers until most recently.

Enter the Internet, the solution to all our problems! Everyone can publish anything, dirt cheap if not for nothing. But who is going to organize the profusion of chaos so everyone can make a killing? Just exchanging email or posting messages on bulletin boards will not provide the publicity frustrated writers need. Along comes Themestream.com, an open publisher with a crazy scheme to make it easy for anyone to publish everything everybody is enthusiastic about; that is, except criticism of the site itself. And here's the clincher: scribblers will be paid for their contributions! How much? Well, it started out at a dime for every hit an author received on his article.

All the writer had to do was unload his works in the frame provided at the website. If he wanted to make serious money, he would to learn how to make hyperlinks and how get high rankings with search engines. He might learn how to induce hundreds of members of social networks to click on his articles, and could set up automatic “hit rings” to run up his totals while he sleeps – if he could sleep knowing he is a fraud. Why bother to write anything when a computer nerd can just copy-paste something off the Internet and get more and more hits every day in the struggle for survival in a vain world where the content is frequently a never-ending stream of superficial trash? Of course the ambitious nerd who enjoys writing might become a technical writer, for technical writing is where the money is today – he might write a success book on how to make a fortune getting traffic to come your way.

To old timers concerned with something more substantial than sheer vanity, something seemed financially unsound with the rosy picture most writers perceived open publishing to be. They believed that open publishing is just another commercial conspiracy. Let those with great expectations micturate in the Global Ocean for nothing, but the serious writer who wants an income rather than a vain exercise knows that there is no free lunch, and that the open publishing enterprise is an advertising scheme, a way to capture an audience and build their enthusiasm for buying things they are interested in. The open publishing scheme is just a way to create a buzz, to generate a mountain of content that will convince people that something great is happening. People can post articles about things they like, and enjoy relating to each other by going around commenting and rating each other’s productions in the little boxes provided for that purpose at the end of the articles.

Vanity is not always a bad thing. We could use more of it now that authority has its subjects literally buried alive in the technical details of a humiliating objective life. Open publishing makes casual writers feel good and even writerly, and nothing is wrong with that given their actual positions in real life, but the free punchbowl is bound to be taken away if the venture is unprofitable. People are going to have pay for their vanity some day, either with their time or with their money, for whatever they get out of the community and its universe of discourse. That may be well worth it in terms of new-found friends. Still there is a negative side to social networking on the Net, especially when its participants can use fictitious identities or “handles” to stir up the awful downward spiral of mutual abuse and “flaming” that sucks so many otherwise friendly people into a bonfire of injury, anger, and vengeance.

As for the quality of writing, one does not have to be a literary critic to see what is really going on at Themestream.com and other open publishing sites. We find a preponderance of mediocrity. We also notice a rapidly growing population of neurotics pouring forth verbiage, people who might but may not buy advertised goods to pacify their anxieties. The commotion or buzz might be profitable for those who want to make purchases or to contribute material to attract those who do, but that remains to be seen as one site after another flops financially. Of course open publishing sites can be wonderful forums for exchanging views and perhaps making a few friends. And much can be learned from mutual abuse providing one can eventually wind up abstaining from it. However, it might be better for professional writers to refrain from posting even their rejected works on open publishing sites lest they tarnish their reputations and lose first rights to boot. Indeed, how many reputable authors do we see posting their works on open publishing sites?

After all, what editor in his right mind would not laugh at the writer who submitted clips from an open publishing site as his credentials? How absurd! On the other hand, we might wonder why editors require clips at all, regardless of their origin, as the proof of anything at all except that some other editor may or may not have had good taste: What goes on in editorial orifices anyway, some sort of imbecilic daisy chain? Thank Athena for the occasional expert who writes a completely absurd article couched in scientific jargon and gets it accepted by a prestigious journal, much to the later embarrassment of its amply credentialed editorial committee. But let us stay on topic and return to open publishing, ala Themestream.com, where editors are supposedly obsolete; where quality, on the whole, has been rendered irrelevant; where justice and money will be more fairly distributed to the writing community, which is almost the world at large nowadays.

As for all the money to be made from hits regardless of the quality of content, it is obvious that, given the rising demand for vanity publishers, the fee paid to anyone who contributes content to open publishing will eventually be reduced to nothing once a site becomes well enough established to attract hordes of contributors and consumers hence sufficient business from advertisers. And if money gets tight, it might even make good business sense to actually charge contributors a monthly minimum rate, if not merely for the exercise of vanity, then for socializing, word processing, and storage.

Again, vanity or a little pride can be its own reward – humility is not as virtuous as it is made out to be. The money paid for hits is a loss-leader to get contributors hooked. And that is just fine for the community who enjoys it. The serious writer does not plead sour grapes here; he simply takes the rhetoric with a grain of salt and exercises discretion instead of pouring out his heart for next to nothing. After all, once a secret is out, it is worthless. So he might simply post a few tantalizing works on the open publishing sites as free advertising. He might as well give it a whirl for nothing, but not stake his life on it. Yes, a few writers will be discovered on the open sites: several have already been contacted.

Other than that, as an advertising means for the relatively unknown writer, open publishing is no place for a professional unless he is writing copy for the ads. But such are the attractions of the vanity that Biblical authors ranted about, quite a few would-be professionals have hastened to post everything they could think of. After all, this is the Information Age where the New Economics makes the fulfillment of dreams possible! If only two cents per hit or even less is maintained, the idea is that, with millions of hits per day, the rate won't matter, everyone will get rich whether they are amateurs or professionals. That is how the Internet works, you know. Or at least we knew that before one or more dot-com companies started failing every day and we saw the alarming results in our hot-fund statements.

Nevertheless, as long as the party lasts and someone else is paying for it, why not give open publishing a few hits? Let the roosters who can sell their articles for umpteen dollars each be very professional while the rest of the flock scratches and scrapes for the pennies as long as they last. But do try to exercise some discretion!

Never Stop Writing

Helium's English Is Not Good Enough by HE™

2009-06-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

Helium’s English Is Not Good Enough
By HE™

[Text quoted below is excerpted from an imperious email issued by Helium.com to its writers outside of the United States. Helium.com is the product of an Internet publishing company whose trademark is Helium™. Parenthetical comments are provided by a former Helium Head whose trademark is HE™]

“As you may be aware, Helium recently changed its policy about accepting contributions from every country around the world. Helium.com instituted this policy as a result of careful consideration of its members and its publishing partners.”

[Every Helium.com participant was not aware of this new policy until frustrated members posted it in blogs. The email was originally sent to participants in foreign countries where English is not the native language, although English speakers in those countries may speak English better than many Brits, Americans, Canadians, et cetera. We suppose they will have to move to English speaking countries if they want to contribute to the enterprise, or at least set up virtual addresses in those countries. However that might be, Helium.com did not ask its members to consider whether or not English speakers from foreign countries where English is not the native language should be discriminated against. Its policies are simply “instituted” i.e. dictated or imperiously handed down. Helium.com is not a writers’ community, cooperative, or “open” WEB2.0 social network as its administrators occasionally imply. Quite to the contrary: even constructive criticism is routinely deleted from its site. There was even less consideration of the will of its members in reaching this dictatorial decision on linguistics than there is consideration paid for content pursuant to Helium’s perpetually changing, non-negotiable, “take it or leave it”, invalid adhesion contract. The great majority of writers receive no consideration whatsoever for their “contributions” because, regardless of the quality of their work, they never reach the $25 payout threshold. The fact of the matter is that Helium Exchange Inc is a Delaware corporation, registered to do business in the State of Massachusetts, whose sole interest is produce a profit for its owners. Its ability to do so is naturally based on its financial resources, its business plan and organization structure, and the abilities of its officers, directors and employees. It is obviously wasting its financial resources on a business plan quite similar to the plans of many other Internet publishing companies that have dismally failed their investors and the writing community because of their closed, hierarchical structure and lack of consideration for and underutilization of the intellectual capital they believe they can inconsiderately exploit for content.]

“Since our goal is to become the top-quality content site on the web, we realize that, as a US-based company, we cannot accept writers from countries where English is not the primary language. It has put those writers at a disadvantage in rating and getting the most from writing on Helium. To prevent frustrations from all writers and to limit staff time spent trying to accommodate non-English-speaking writers, we have decided to stop accepting submissions from locations that may have a negative impact on the quality of our site.”

[English is not the official language of the United States, and Spanish is rapidly becoming its main competitor as the first or primary language of many Americans. In some regions, such as in South Florida, Spanish is the primary language of the majority of residents; but this does not mean that Spanish speakers speak no English or broken English at best – incidentally, popular novels and nonfiction accounts have been written in broken English. In fact, many Spanish speakers are fluent in both languages, and they may have to be fluent in both languages to be employable in a bilingual culture. Likewise, there are many residents of foreign countries whose primary language is English although non-English may be the lingua franca of that country – of course English is often the common language used as a medium of communication where several languages are spoken. Helium’s new policy definitely discriminates against writers based on their native language, country of origin, and place of residence, and effectively eliminates many fine writers of English. It cannot be said that the policy was designed for the convenience of the writing community, so that “bad English” could be gotten rid of and writers could more easily rate each others work according to the incestuous rating system in place, for no vote was taken. Helium™ advertises itself as the “face of the publishing revolution” where “great writing rises to the top,” and is “the first true meritocracy in the publishing industry.” It was touted in a March 1, 2007 New York Times podcast as a budding organizer of “citizen journalism,” “separating wheat from chaff, providing some hierarchy of value to the booming, buzzing confusion out there.” To that end it relies on the magic of “Web2.0 tools,” which turn out to be, when carefully examined, an incestuous writer-rating and -ranking system employing a traditional scalar consensual method that has little scientific merit except to create a “buzz” and provide a great deal of user-generated “content,” the overwhelming bulk of which is unpaid for – only participating writers are allowed to rate contributions to topics the corporate administrators and their minions believe will be of interest to real publishers, who are expected, in turn, to buy some of the content on the cheap, saving them the cost of hiring professional writers; a pittance of the fees paid, after Helium’s cut, will be remitted to the few lucky writers who make the grade by furiously rating other writers when submitting hundreds of articles. Eliminating bad English certainly will not change the fact that its rating system is virtually useless in terms of winnowing out quality writing, or, for that matter, the sort of writing that readers – who are not allowed to rate at Helium – may want to read.]

“Because you cannot access Helium, or will soon be blocked from access, we feel it is only fair to remove your content from the site. Full rights to the work revert to you. We recognize that the version of your work that exists on Helium may be your only copy, so we will not begin removing content for four weeks (in mid-July). (For an easy way to copy multi-page articles, click “Print article” in the Article Tools tab on your article page, then copy and paste that version to your computer.) If you have earned over the $25 minimum payout, we will be crediting your Paypal account.”

[Helium censors routinely delete articles posted by writers because they feel those articles are not on the salable topics preconceived by staff, or because the article is considered too short or long, or politically incorrect if not otherwise offensive, and so on. The arbitrary and often ridiculous character of its censorship behavior is a cause of some amusement, annoyance, and discouragement among its writers. The writer will discover that, although his article is deleted from public view, it still remains on the server as a Helium “property” file. But if the writer wants to delete her own article, she discovers she cannot do so, nor can she have her account closed down and her articles removed from public view, although she has not actually received a red cent for her work. If she feels that she has associated with a bad company, she cannot withdraw her work and disassociate from the site. She is referred to an adhesion agreement, which can be changed any time, at the will of the corporation, a clickable “agreement” that supposedly commits her posted work to the site forever, by way of a perpetual license. And if she does not maintain activity at the site, she may never be paid anything for the work she has posted. When she claims that she thought the staff had discretion to delete postings for her, or claims that she did not read the User Agreement every time she posted to make sure she understood and recorded every change in that “agreement”, and when she points out that she is able to remove her work at the half-dozen other sites where she posts articles, she is informed that no exceptions are made, that no work may be deleted at the author’s request, and that this policy is a norm for the industry. In other words, Helium can delete work for any reason whatsoever, but the providers of that work can never do so. Helium’s arbitrary deletion policy and its unconscionable adhesion contract has alienated many writers, who are spreading the word: “Stay away from Helium. It is a mediocre company run by mean people.” If you wish to be a Helium Head and believe that your work has value worth enduring, be sure to back up copies of your articles somewhere else in the “computing cloud” as well as on CDs. Also print out a copy with good ink on good paper for long term preservation. Many Internet publishing sites have failed; Helium.com will probably fail in a year or two unless it changes its way; the Internet itself is not an entirely safe place to store material; CDs will become obsolete and may be unreadable in the distant future.]

“Readers from around the globe are welcome to enjoy Helium's articles. In the future, we hope to be able to offer a full experience of Helium that works well for everyone. Thank you for your understanding, Team Helium.”

[The conclusion penned by Helium’s PR writer is utterly absurd and hypocritical in the context of what Helium has previously stated.]

The Helium.com Interview with John Rozen

2009-05-31T09:27:00.000-07:00

“Mr. Rozen, I cannot understand why Helium.com is stealing my work if the company thinks it is only worth a dollar. I mean the last time I looked, before my account was cancelled and my articles seized by your company, your accounting department stated they were only worth around $1.15 after a year or so. And I would never even be paid that since you don’t make payments of any total less than twenty-five dollars. It just doesn’t make sense to me why you would go to the trouble to alienate me, even to make me Helium’s worst enemy, over a measly dollar. What Helium is doing is really insulting even if it isn’t criminal. There is a lot of bad publicity out there, in the anti-Helium blogs, because of these systematic petty thefts, other writers who say they have had dozens of articles if not hundreds evaluated by Helium at even less than a dollar and then stolen. It’s not so much the small amount of money, which implies that Helium believes most of the work it publishes is so worthless that it should not be paid for, as the indignity of having one’s work displayed against one’s will. I just don’t understand, sir, why Helium….”

“If you would stop talking for a minute, I would answer your question,” Mr. Rozen interjected.

“Okay, then, excuse me, go ahead.”

“We have to make up-front payments, so we cannot remove the posted content. We have a non-exclusive right to keep the work. If you had sold an article to a magazine or a newspaper, a copy would be in the issue forever.”

“That’s different. The publication would be buried in archives, not instantaneously accessed like on the Net, and the publishers charge for back issues, and writers are in fact paid up front. I would have no objection to your keeping my articles if you had paid me at least $200 for each one of them – top writers get a lot more. So what do you mean by up-front payments? I thought the Helium rating system determined who would be paid and how much, after and not before articles are posted, and that publishers could arrange to buy copies of articles directly from writers to post in their publications, Helium taking a cut. Helium has not paid me a single penny either up-front or after the fact. So why won’t it remove my work from the site? Because you are raking in advertising money?”

“We make very little money on advertising. I mean we are paying up front for the infrastructure. This is a writing site, not a reading site. And writers rate the articles, not external readers. What we are building here is a platform for eventually generating revenue from publishers. We just made a bulk sale of content for $20,000 the other day.”

“How much did the writers get?” I asked.

“Well, that varied, some got $5….”

My attention wandered from that paltry five bucks to the thought that Helium might be making handsome advance payments to favored writers, despite all the Helium rhetoric about the fairness of its rating system. Helium literature discloses that John Rozen, who is Helium’s current Vice President of Operations, was a global network server manager and builder for fifteen years, and is now responsible for Helium’s infrastructure. The infrastructure expense of a company would normally be for its underlying organization or platform for doing business. The superstructure would be the going business erected on that foundation. It occurred to me that Helium did not have enough capital to pay out anything less than $20 to the thousands or so content contributors whom its CEO, Mark Ranalli, contemptuously said should not even own a computer: "Of the first 100,000 contributors, thousands of them should have their computers removed.” (i)

The commercial preachers of Internet democracy really have little respect for democracy in itself, I mused – its just a sacred cow to be milked for profit. The fabulous freedom, openness and collective intelligence of the much-hyped Web2 is illusory – Web2 is a new way of thinking about is business as usual, but it is not really a new way of being: Its bottom is not pretty.

“How beautiful buzzards are when lifted aloft by high-flown helium, yet they are oh so ugly on the ground, when gorging on carcass!” I exclaimed to myself, and then remembered an image of a man’s best friend feeding on his dead master. At that point I was tempted to hang up on Mr. Rozen and write a poem about Helium™.

The bulk of the superstructure appearing in virtual space, or its content, is literally trash, but in terms of raw content, trash may be a gold mine for the masses inclined to dig into it, so the deeper the pile, the greater the buzzing around that content dump, the better. The site operators certainly would not be expected to actually pay for rubbish, trash, and garbage coming from people who should, according to anyone with so-called good taste, like Mr. Ranalli, have their computers removed if it were not for the energy they generate.

AOL’s plan for its MediaGLow unit, which encompasses more than 70 content sites, is business as usual: “Many of MediaGlow’s most recent content hits (share) a common online business model: Hire a few low-cost bloggers and stroke traffic by having them fling torrents of posts, links, and photo galleries at the Web. But a raft of recent hires of well-known writers, especially at AOL’s sports site FanHouse, shows the company is willing to pay for established talent.” (ii). Helium’s Kristina Knight advertisement for the Helium partnership with Hearst stated: “For any content website the key to more readers and to readers remaining on-site is the addition of more content.” Peter Newton, Helium’s Vice President of Business Development, in his discussion of the Hearst deal stated, “For any content website the key to more readers and to readers remaining on-site is the addition of more content.” Of course the key words are “cheap” and “free” for the bulk of “consumer-rich” content. Vanity alone is motive enough for hundreds of thousands of would-be writers; why not exploit their wish for recognition, and make webslaves of them? Instead of farming out the production of content to development countries, Hearst would outsource the production of consumer-rich content to developing sites like Helium. But readers could go directly to Helium for the same content and get it free, and a single website developer at Hearst could get all the free content it wanted.

As far as I am concerned “up front payment” no matter how much or little it is, means advance payment to moi. Mr. Rozen did not explain why I did not receive an upfront payment from Helium into my bank account, even though I was a star writer. A Helium press released had announced: “Helium announced upfront payments for all new articles being written by starred writers on Helium.com. This change to Helium's Terms of Service is a move to reward the site's highest quality writers and to promote quality content at Helium.com.”Helium’s Community Development Manager, Barbara Whitlock, spread the word in a blog critical of Helium’s censorship, refusal to delete articles although it deletes accurate articles about it: “Recently we began upfront payments for informative, non-exclusive articles plus improved ad revenue share….” (iii)

I concluded that Helium was probably paying off favored writers for “quality” writing, and that its many statements about how much writers were making could not be believed until it produced its financial records and other documents appertaining to earnings and method of payment. As we have seen from the Helium press release, its Terms of Service had been changed to reflect the new payment system, which seems to contradict its rating scheme. The TOS are included in the Users Agreement, which very few people read before posting articles at Helium. And to keep up with all the changes, those writers who post, say, 150 articles would have to read it 150 times to make sure of its “living” terms, to trans-load a time- and date-stamped copy into an electronic archive, and to relate the changes in the scheme to their income if any. In Catheryn Elaine Harris et al vs Blockbuster (Case No. 3:09-cv-217-m), the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has already held that a perpetually changing contract, where the parties have not reviewed and signed each change, is invalid. And generally speaking, one-sided, nonnegotiable “adhesion” contracts, which hardly anyone reads because they expect fair dealing including due consideration, are frowned upon by the judiciary. In fact, a check of an Internet archive by anti-Helium journalist Steven Hart revealed that the TOS term regarding the deletion of articles had been changed. (iv)

“Mr. Rozen, your adhesion contract is invalid. In my opinion, Helium’s officers know very well that. Helium™ is simply a scheme to exploit the community for content, and its refusal to delete or remove content at its creator’s request is copyright infringement and perhaps a violation of the federal computer crimes statutes.”

“As I said, we have very little advertising revenue.”

“Well, I am in the process of contacting all those advertisers who have ads placed on my articles, to let them know exactly what I think about Helium’s refusal to remove them. I still cannot understand why Helium would refuse to remove them after evaluating them at slightly more than a dollar. I can display my work on hundreds of sites for nothing, and delete it at will. I’ve received no consideration from Helium, and my work is obviously not considered of high enough quality for up-front payment, even though your community development director named me as her favorite writer, and if Helium does think my work is so valuable, then it anticipated its breach of whatever agreement it had in mind, so there is no valid contract, there is fraud….”

“The contract is valid,” Mr. Rozen peremptorily proclaimed, in the authoritative tone of a chief justice.

“Mr. Rozen, I don’t think so. That has not been adjudicated. But I must inform you that, to begin with, I had politely asked that my work be removed from your site because I no longer wanted to have my name associated with Helium™. I would have gone my way without a word more if my wish had been honored.”

As a matter of fact, I was treated by the officers of the Helium imperium as if I were some sort of plebe at the Naval Academy, and my indignation was righteous.

“I really don’t want to argue with you,” I continued, but there is a very serious self-contradiction in your denial to writers of the Power to Delete. Helium itself has deleted some of my best work because of the prejudices of the censors, yet it keeps the deleted articles on its server and claims the right to display them later. Indeed, it was the absurd editorial policies and inept so-called channelers and stewards that annoyed me to begin with and made me aware of the mediocrity of the enterprise. After my account was cancelled at my request, yet my articles were not removed, I signed up twice again and posted copies of my exchanges with Helium’s community development manager under several titles in Helium’s Business Ethics category.”

The email exchanges certainly were not an invasion of Ms. Whitlock’s privacy, as they revealed nothing more than what she had publicly stated in external blogs, and the email cast her in a good light, revealed how surprised I was to find out that I could not delete my articles or have her delete them, and indicated that she had no power to change the bad policy.

“What you did was criminal and we will have you arrested,” Mr. Rozen, having lost his corporate cool, stated angrily.

“Well, then, at least I won’t have to come to Massachusetts and appear in a Boston court, to testify about Helium’s unconscionable terms, as per your adhesion Terms of Service.”

“Don’t worry, it will be in federal court! And it will be expensive.”

Well, accusing people of crimes works both ways, and I may have arrived at a Mexican standoff with Helium outside the virtual courthouse on this issue. It was my belief that Helium, in employing misleading representations and an adhesion contract to obtain and keep and display articles on its site against the will of their creators, was a form of thievery, and I was not afraid to say so. Whether or not Helium Exchange Inc. is technically in violation of U.S. Code §1343 – Fraud by wire, radio, or television, or §506 – Criminal infringement of a copyright – remains to be determined by competent authority, and there may never be a determination since a prosecutor might not give such a case the slightest consideration. Neither would she be inclined to prosecute me for criminal trespass under §1030 – Fraud and related activity in connection with computers – knowing that I had not been barred from the site, a site that unnecessarily leaves the barn door open for anyone to gain access at any time, and knowing that my so-called unacceptable use of the site’s system as a “citizen journalist” was limited to a journalist’s protest, in its business ethics category, against its own unacceptable behavior. My “fraud”, if it were a fraud, would be limited to the value of the mere use of the system, which was free to all comers, a use that has no value at all, much less than the “more than $5,000 in any 1-year period” set forth in §1030.

In any case, Mr. Rozen, who seemed to be a gentleman and democrat at first, had adopted an intimidating, top-down transactional tone, that of Parent-Child. Woe to the child who points out to its parent the self-contradictory or hypocritical behavior of the parent. But I was not about to submit to his domineering demeanor.

“No, it will not be expensive. You don’t have the slightest idea of who I am. You put Newt Gingrich’s advertisement smack-dab on one of my brilliant essays [actually, I had submitted only what I considered to be my worst work at Helium, although I knew it would become valuable when I received the recognition I deserved]. I will pick up the phone and call Newt, and perhaps then you will understand who I am – or is it whom?”

“The User Agreement doesn’t allow people to sign up for more than one account, or to sign up again after being expelled.”[I didn’t know that, but I don’t think that the term is part of a federal criminal statute]. “I think you asked that your account be deleted?”

“Yes, but by ‘deletion’ I meant that my work be removed from the site altogether. I did not attempt to conceal my identity – I revealed it when I signed up again and posted the example of Helium ethics in the business ethics category. At one point I thought I had been excommunicated, but I had misunderstood the issue. Anyway, your deletion policy is contradictory.”

I knew that Helium has many ‘phantom’ observers and posters using fictitious names on its site, and several writers have indicated in blogs that Helium did not mind them posting the same article under numerous topics.

“Your conduct was criminal,” Mr. Rozen barked, “and we will have you arrested! Do not ever contact Helium again! Do not try to sign up again! Do email Barbara Whitlock or anyone else at Helium! Do not call us! Do not contact us again!”

I did not want my guerilla interview to end on a hostile note. I was more annoyed than angry with Helium. I believed that I might help change Helium for the better, perhaps add something of value to the enterprise, and by doing so negotiate a more favorable arrangement not only for writers but especially for my anarchic self, not withstanding the “take-it-or-leave-it” adhesion agreement. So I adopted a childish, wheedling tone.

“Oh, please, Mr. Rozen,” I pleaded hurtfully. “I didn’t mean to make you angry. You are such a gentleman, and I thought we could settle this as gentlemen, and that I could remain as a Helium writer. I have better things to do than to bother with some Internet site, but this site has raised capital and has many distinguished directors on its board. Helium is obviously on the leading edge of the transition in this business, and I want to be part of it. Please, sir, let’s be gentlemen about this.”

“All right,” he kindly responded. “I can arrange to have your account reinstated over the weekend. But you must promise not to engage in unacceptable behavior again.”

“Oh, thank you. I’ll be good. I won’t be a hassle. You know your Barbara Whitlock has said I’m her favorite writer. I’m thinking you might take a look at my work, give me a hand up with the publishers, a way around the rating system.”

“We have to stick with the rating system.”

“Do you believe that a really great writer could be elevated to the top of the business by the system.”

“No.”

“The rating system gives writers something to do,” I observed, “and creates a buzz. It reminds me of the hog farmer who gives his piglets broken bowling balls from the bowling alley in town to play with so they don’t bite each others ears and tails off. Academically speaking, nominal rating system’s like Helium’s is not scientific. It might be useful, but I believe in divine intervention, so to speak, of a hand reaching down from above to pick up talent intuitively.”

“We have to stay with our rating system. We are perfecting it little by little,” Mr. Rozen declared.

“But it will never get close to perfect. It is rating opinions to discover which ones are most popular, and doesn’t address the facts, or, at the very least, the quality of writing. I’ve been around many rating systems on writers’ sites – they are ridiculous. I gave some thought to the subject, and came up with a better idea for a funnel.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I concluded that there is no truly "scientific" critical method as to quality, nor any one way to determine what will sell best even if it is "vulgar", but there are sociological aids that can be employed to make a better funnel, so to speak, than the constipated funnel being used by orthodox or mainstream publishers. I figured it would be a good idea to build a bigger and better funnel, utilizing a set of simple and usually valid critical techniques which could be easily taught to "focus groups" of reader/raters by means of pop-ups and online guides, etc. Your CEO has publicly declared that thousands of Helium contributors should not even own a computer, the quality of their writing is so bad – instead of insulting them, why not educate them? A few persons with professional critical experience and a knack for knowing what might sell well would make selections from those works sifted out by the trained reader/raters, and those works would be published. Funds could be raised from investors, subscriptions to the monthly book club selections could sold, and so on. Stars could be discovered, best-selling authors, in a sort of American Author competition. I tried to develop this concept with publishers ten years ago. Only one publisher’s representative would speak with me. He said my notion of an Internet-based funneling or screening process was generally a good one, but way ahead of its time, and publishers themselves might eventually employ it themselves, but would tend to drag their conservative feet because they fear for the bottom line and are reluctant to invest in something that might result in self-cannibalization.”

Mr. Rozen was a good listener, so I droned on:

“Cooperation is the way to go, but many temperamental creative artists do not seem to go for it. In forums, for instance, they tend to form cliques or vicious nose-to-tail circles that exclude others, and the process spins into a private club of backslappers who really do not appreciate serious criticism. So-called serious writers who set themselves up as helpers at various sites were not really competent critics, were not even acquainted with many of the orthodox principles of criticism worked out over the years, and worse, many of them buttered up friends and put down enemies as part of the community activities, trying to make a public impression on everyone. Hence I saw the need for a more informed and objective critical process behind the scenes, conducted by focus groups with rotating membership, "self-trained" in basic principles via drop down instructions in pertinent categories, Q&A, Mini Courses, and the like. Other data, of the quantitative sort such as traffic data, would be used in conjunction with the critical process. Those works sifted out of the mass would them be reviewed by an editorial panel, all but one of whose members would also rotate. One editor could "veto" one selection and replace it with his arbitrary choice, even if a piece of nonsense (might be a best seller). At first, two books would be published each month. And so on, the actual details to be discussed and worked out.”

I paused, but Mr. Rozen did not comment.

“You know I wrote an interview with the owner of a now-defunct net-centric business called BLOSM, which means “by the light of the silvery moon,” meaning he worked late nights as a bootstrap capitalist. His rating methodology was quite advanced. BLOSM was designed to take the reading and selection process off publishers. “Would you like to read it?” (v)

“Send it along, and I’ll read it over the weekend. I will have your account reinstated. It will take four days. Go to the site, enter your identification and ask for a password, and it will be sent along.”

“Thank you. It has been a pleasure.”

#

Shortly after my conversation with Mr. Rozen, I received a terse email from him that my account would be reactivated providing that I admit I had wrongfully accessed the site; to which I responded:

"Thank you very much, John. I was pleased to converse with you, and found you to be quite a gentleman. I am eager to move forward constructively without a admission or denial of wrongdoing on anyone's part. By the way, you may be interested in the constructive suggestion in this little unedited 7-minute article I whipped out with our conversation in mind: An "adhesion" contract is basically a one-sided, so-called contract that the other side will supposedly adhere to because there is no alternative. Most adhesion contracts are so one-sided as to also be "unconscionable.” People rarely read the documents before they click their so-called acceptance…. If someone did read the terms and took them seriously, as enforceable, s/he probably would not want to sign…. When something goes wrong and the writer wants to leave the so-called community, there is, for example, the clause preventing the writer from having his or her work removed from the writers’ site. If writers (often insultingly called "content providers") took a look at the "User Agreements" on Internet sites, they would not click on the "I agree", not if they have something at risk. Now if Helium were really a "community" or “cooperative” venture, members acquainted with the above issue should want to get rid of the most offensive terms, so as not to alienate writers who could cause the community a great deal of trouble over what they believe is an injustice, or, for the sake of the community's integrity, make sure that everyone does in fact read and agree to the terms, in writing, and the parties to the agreement are really known to each other and not fake identities. The way to do that would be for the community to proceed as usual but to send out to a real address via snail mail the Agreement to the user for him or her to sign and return within 30 days or have their trial account terminated. Some good and valuable consideration might then be paid, say $5, to each writer upon receipt by Helium of the signed document. Additionally, the site might display the awful licensing clause above the PUBLISH button, in a striking font, as a sort of "caveat", instead of couching the term in a long text that hardly anyone, especially the naive, reads. The statement as to deletion should appear both at the beginning and end of that clause in bold font, and the language of that sentence should make it clear that under no circumstances will any material accepted by the publisher be deleted at the request of its creator.”

Mr. Rozen did not respond. I followed up my email with a suggestion that we discuss the Helium adhesion contract and that I write up an interview of that discussion with him for publication on the Helium site, whether I was a member or not.

Mr. Rozen did not respond. However, another publisher, who became aware of my concern with Helium’s terms of service informed me that she had visited Helium.com and was unable to find any ‘Writers Agreement’, but she had found the ‘Users Agreement” and found it to be a “disgrace.” She also discovered that Helium had in fact submitted the issue as a topic to its writers, where the issue was settled internally – only Helium writers can comment and rate – to the effect that anyone who does not read the so-called agreement and complains when they are surprised by its terms is obviously wrong.

Due Mr. Rozen’s unwillingness to reinstate me without my admission to what he claimed was a federal crime, and due to his unresponsiveness to my suggestions, in fine, to his utter silence, I arrived at the tentative proposition that Helium™ would change forms only under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature, and that, despite all the rhetoric about the “freedom, openness and intelligence” of “Web2.0”, about the hands-off rating efficacy of Web2.0 tools, about “citizen journalists” and the “wisdom of crowds”, that Helium is not free, is not open, and is not of superior intelligence at all. But inert Helium™ or its successor, say volatile Hydrogen™, could be all of that – at least Hydrogen™ would provide the energy that diverse and independence freelances like myself (HE™) treasure.

Notes:

(i)
New York Times, Mar 1, 2007… ‘Writers struggling to find a publisher are taking the high-tech, grass-roots approach’

www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/books/01podb.html: …citizen journalism (is) separating wheat from chaff, providing some hierarchy of value to the booming, buzzing confusion…Helium's answer to that is to throw a set of WEB 2.0 tools against the problem.… more importantly, a way of thinking -- that should have a lot of resonance with those news sites trying to figure out how to engage and to apply quality-centric standards to non-staff written content…. “Of the first 100,000 [contributors], thousands of them should have their computers removed,’ acknowledges the ceo…. Create a local meritocratic community of community writers. Let the writers rate each other, let the best rise to the top, and harvest it for online.”

(ii)
AOL’s Plan: Content, Content, Content, May 4, 2009, Businessweek

(iii) http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/heliumcom-censors-content-deletes-accurate-articles/comments-page-2/#comments 26 - Barbara Whitlock

(iv)
Antihelium’s blog: http://antihelium.wordpress.com/category/heliumcom

(v) http://funnelpublishing.blogspot.com/2004/12/blosm-brought-authors-and-publishers.html.

Helium staff rejected the article. The censor said Helium does not publish interviews because there is no structure for competing interview: “From Helium Content to David Arthur Walters, Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 1:00 PM Re Your Title: Media: Internet: Ezines: BLOSM. Failed professional writer's site was promising Hi David Arthur Walters “Helium.com is sending this email to inform you that your submission was declined because we don't have the structure in place to deal with interviews--other members typically would not be able to write competing interviews about the same person or event.”

When I objected strenuously to Barbara Whitlock, Helium published ‘BLOSM.’ So Helium does in fact publish interviews; for instance: “The solution to freelancers? Posted by Lauren Drablier on November 19, 2008: Peter Newton, the VP of business development at Helium.com… has worked at Monster.com and The Boston Globe where he was the vice president of advertising… PN: “Helium represents the first true meritocracy in the publishing industry…We don't select writers ….After a writer submits an article, he/she is presented with two anonymous articles in the same topic area to rate in an "A versus B" comparison. Through the wisdom of the crowds, the best articles rise to the top….”

Captain Blight's Skum Skow - based on a true story

2009-05-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

Captain W.W.W. Blight arose with a startle one Tuesday morning when his beloved barge, The Skum Skow, suddenly listed and threw him out of the filthy bunk where he'd been sleeping in his grimy long johns - he usually slept with his face in his sweaty armpit, which he licked with great pleasure when he had sweet dreams of long lost love.

"Cap'n Blight! What's that?" he heard Billy Barnakle, his First Mate, yell, from somewhere starboard, he thought, but the Captain couldn't really say for sure, because, you see, he couldn't remember which side or end was starboard or windward, although he often thought about "starboard" and "windward" and also "fore" and "aft" when he wasn't thinking about the "head", which he referred to as his "poop deck." It certain was a poop deck, and the stench was overbearing, quite disgraceful considering the fact that the captain was a plumber by trade - his license was suspended in five states due to his defective handiwork.

"Ahoy, Billy!" Captain Blight clammered to his feet and called out as the barge arighted itself, "Avast ye, mate, have ye no fear, this old square-bottom is made to last!"

Captain Blight felt pleased with his turn of phrase, but grimaced when he saw his computer had crashed to the cabin floor during the night, taking the monitor with it. Billy Barnakle came down the stairs into the cabin.

"Man, it stinks real bad in here!" Billy complained, "What you been eat'n?"

Billy had come on board The Skum Skow as First Mate after quitting his job as dishwasher over at Bittenbyme. He had a truck, so he brought practically the whole Barnakle crew - cranks all - with him after they had been banished for swearing like sailors - one Barnakle had even peckered his profile.

"Blimey! The server's shot!" Captain Blight began cursing profusely after repeating his favorite scatalogical term three times.

"Hey, Cap'n, no sweat, John MacLeech has one stowed away."

"You fool!" exclaimed Blight. "I am MacLeech!"

"Oh, right, I forgot, Cap'n. Congratulations on winning the writer's contest." - Captain Blight had several fictitious entities on site, so he could award them the top writing contest prizes.

"Thanks."

"You got a back up server stowed away, right?"

"I had to give it back to the homeless shelter."

"They actually called the cops?"

"Yeah. Now how am I gonna work on Slimelife.mag? I got some backing up to do today, dang it, so I can throw the writers overboard and grab their stuff. I ain't gettin paid until Friday. What to do, what to do?"

"Ahoy, I've got it!" Billy ejaculated, and excitedly scratched his rear end, "just ask the Full Crew for money, say $30 each, for high ratings - that'll cover it."

"Hey, great idea! Ahoy! But I'll have to get lots more than that from the members, mate, cuz many of them are really me." The Captain suddenly thought of Jen, his main source of funds, then his heart sagged after he remembered their quarrel over the pedophilia charges against him. "Oh, oh, I won't be gettin' nothing from Jen."

"Oh, yeah, Cap'n, guess that source's dried up. " Billy noticed the decaying sandwich on one end of the captain's bunk, and thought he was going to puke. "Excuse me, I gotta get some fresh air.

"Don't worry, Billy, I'll figure something out. I'm not captain for nothing. I swear on Davy Jones' locker, I'll get Slimelife.mag up and running before the week is out."

To Be Continued

Written- By-Me In Memoriam

2009-05-23T12:46:00.001-07:00

I fondly remember the good old days when WBM writers were involuntarily organized into metallic feudal orders, allegedly to reflect the quality of their writing. Whereafter divisive critics arose from the baser ranks to express the commonplace objections. Of course the insubordinate members wanted to be of the highest ranking - they wanted to be Gold Members, aka Golden Lords. A certain Dumb Duck went so far as to post his criticism of WBM policy at another thriving site, to the effect that only "abusers" at WBM had been appointed Gold Members "because of their abuse." Yet none of the nouveau aristocrats had had the slightest say in the matter, nor were they notorious abusers.

One fractious faction, reportedly prompted by a dissident who was banned by the WBM staff for exhibiting a photo his pecker on his profile page, abandoned WBM altogether. They went to graze on the slime accumulating on a devious hulk captained by Bob - it had lost its mooring at Themestream.com some time before and had ran aground on a Florida sand bar. A few defectors became firmly encrusted as barnacles there because they could not take their beloved work with them if they jumped ship - if they complained about the policy and deleted their work, they were barred from the site and their work was restored from backup. Ironically, those who remained were governed by the very epitome of the so-called "fascist" policies they had objected to at WBM - they loved Captain Bob's site and joined in the abuse of anyone who protested. And even worse, now they had to pay to be highly ranked writers at the new site. Furthermore, their Editor-in-Chief awarded his own virtual identities with prizes for excellent writing!

But back to the ranch at WBM: of course the Golden Lords who were awarded the gold by the WBM staff were loyal to the noble cause of mounting quality of writing at WBM - none defected that I know of. And most of the Silver and Bronze members remained and behaved in the honorable and loyal manner befitting to their relative positions. And the Commoners or Newbies gradually worked their way up to the first rung. However, a raucous rabble preponderated in the WBM forum - no Newbies allowed - many Newbies were formerly banned members who rejoined with new handles. The forum chambers frequently resembled a dungeon of vipers who believed they were dragons. It was dominated by four brazen hussies known as the Gang of Four even when they were at each other's throats too.

When the forum clouds over the new orders dissipated, the dragons were obviously crickets. Golden Lord Lap0530 compared the croaking crickets with crotchety crabs in an open bucket who, instead of crawling out of same, prefer to exercise their pincers on each other to the end that each may be equal instead of inferior to their superiors. Notwithstanding the anti-social socialist theories young Sir Conspiracy learned at a prestigious British university, a democracy of equality tends to boil all differences down to dinner for the new aristocracy - if the old one is overthrown. Anarchy per se is chaos or nothing; people are equal only before they are born and after they die.

There was much truth in Lord Lap0530's crab-bucket analogy. Nevertheless, as a fan of the French Revolution who is personally related to both sides of the question and who does not eat crab, I protested his figurative speech. After all, he offered no solution and he seemed to be a crab himself, albeit a more sophisticated and lucid one - no doubt inherited qualities. But I, Golden Lord Walters, was constructive: I recommended that the squabbling riffraff take up bowling instead of incessant crabbing.

My proactive suggestion was based on a farmer's solution to the damage his piglets were doing to each other in their nursery pens - biting each others tails and ears off, and worse. He went to the bowling alley, got some broken bowling balls, and put the balls in the pens for the pigs to play with - the problem was solved. Well, why not give the crabbish cliques at the WBM forum a new bowling ball? Their feelings would not be hurt so often; they would believe they are getting something done together. At least they would enjoy playing around. And of course they would be fattened up rather nicely and maybe even discovered by the media aristocracy.

The Bowling Ball I recommended to keep members preoccupied and entertained with was an exceptional rating system, a heuristic method whereby raters could train themselves to focus on standard critical criteria instead of personal likes and dislikes. Instead of putting each other down in comments and in the forum because of jealousy or for no reason at all except for the hell of it, writers would have an effective device to not only raise truly worthy authors to lordly status, but would at the same time learn how to employ the best standards to their own scribblings. I viewed this device as a better funnel or a net which would use free labor to lift up excellent writers, buried in the lower depths under the mountains of garbage erected by the Most Popular trash kings who cater to vulgar taste. Thus would all boats would be lifted, ala Ortega y Gasset.

Of course the positive aspects of my suggestion were ignored by all except Lord Lap0530. He, a gentleman and a scholar, was very helpful and encouraging. Oh, there were numerous nasty ad hominem remarks made by others simply because I was a Golden Lord, but never mind the impertinences.

Soon thereafter, I figured WBM was doomed as a writing site but not as a community. Mind you that, prior to the establishment of the metallic orders, I had not visited the forums nor had I given anyone less than a perfect rating - only a fool tries to rate or criticise fairly on such sites. But I felt I had a duty as a Golden Lord to participate; hence I visited the WBM forums. Other than one glorious thread soon deleted by the staff because it was hampering the server, the WBM forum was initially the most disappointing experience of my life. I became convinced the community had no future either in the virtual or the real world. I threw some mud back. Sullied, I visited the site less frequently until the decision was made to fold the site, at which point I engaged in raunchy misbehavior in the forums and had a great deal of fun in the process. In retrospect, it is true: I was stuck up.

There is nothing left of WBM except fond memories of the golden days there, especially of the days when I was a Certified GO(l)D Member, fell from grace, and became a forum jerk. Now, as I approach real Equality, I grow fond even of the bad times, of the abuse I was subjected to just because I was a Golden Lord. I am comforted by the knowledge that I was universally despised by the forum clique, and I have no hard feelings whatsoever.

What the hell, nothing is perfect anyway - that is why I worship Nothing. Okay, then, Now I will return to my opus, The World is a Bowling Ball.

Ø¿Ø

TOPICAL HELIUM

2009-05-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

I had several topics in mind when I called the Andover, Massachusetts office of Helium Exchange Inc, owner and operator of Helium.com, a “community of knowledge” purportedly created by “citizen journalists”, and spoke with John Rozen, its Vice President of Operations, to complain about what I believed to be Helium’s massive exploitation of writers, and the probability that it was engaging in copyright infringement, maybe in violation of the spirit of the federal computer crimes statutes. I made the call with a constructive attitude: My objective was not to destroy, but to change Helium™ - I soon discovered that, like the element its trademark suggests, one can get nothing liquid or solid out of Helium™ except under extreme temperatures and pressures.

The presumably almighty cornerstone of the Helium™ approach is the Topic. Its “community of knowledge” is ruled by competitive or dialectical discussion of particular topics dictated by editorial policy. The fashion of the arguments is also governed by management. The “community” of writers, to obtain status, must not only write but must also rate one another’s written opinions on such topics as "Is the New Contraceptive Pill That Stops Menstruation Healthy for Women." [i]

The Helium™ brand of truth must be established by a popular opinion contest among presumably the most sophisticated opinionators or sophists, who, in this instance, may be males that have had no medical education nor must they have any experience menstruating whatsoever. Notwithstanding the issue of whether or not the propositions put forward truly correspond to reality, the critic should know that Helium™ truth is not fabricated democratically. The system itself is not even democratic-republican or a democracy led by elected representatives, but is rather an imperial schemata imposed by corporatist dictators. The incestuous rating progeny of writer/raters may not survive for long without the incorporation or cooptation of outside insemination of seminal material.

Peter Newton, Helium’s Vice President of Business Development, said, “Helium represents the first true meritocracy in the publishing industry. Helium welcomes anyone and everyone to join its community of writers. We don't select writers; they naturally come to the site and write to areas in which they have an interest (in many cases, a passion) in sharing their knowledge or opinion… After a writer submits an article, he/she is presented with two anonymous articles in the same topic area to rate in an "A versus B" comparison. Through the wisdom of the crowds, the best articles rise to the top, resulting in a rank-ordered list for every topic. The end result is that the best writers are promoted, recognized and rewarded for their work.”

We can appreciate Mr. Newton’s need to resort to often spurious rhetoric to promote his topic, but we have to smirk at “the wisdom of crowds” – knowing that two-thirds of any crowd will tend to agree with anything said by perceived authorities whether it is true or false, moral or immoral, beautiful or ugly. As we used to say: GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out.

To give another example of the Helium™ topical approach, if the subject is real estate, the writer needs to know next to nothing about real estate, at least according to Helium’s oft-quoted Senior Steward, Rex Trulove: "It is surprisingly easy to write about real estate if a person lives in a town or knows someone who does. Not a lot of research is required.” All the real estate researcher needs to do is call that someone, perhaps a single friendly realtor.[ii] This constructivist knowledge will be passed on to the public as knowledge or reality by Helium’s publisher-partners such as Hearst, which recently signed an agreement with Helium.

The word, topic, so beloved by the Helium organization, is derived from topos (place). The term used to refer not only to place or locality but to rhetorical argument. Aristotle authored an early work entitled Topics. This random sampling of the work will give the reader an idea of what the book is about:

“Our treatise proposes to find a line of inquiry whereby we shall be able to reason from opinions that are generally accepted about every problem propounded to us, and also shall ourselves, when standing up to an argument, avoid saying anything that will obstruct us…. We must say for how many and for what purposes the treatise is useful. They are three-intellectual training, casual encounters, and the philosophical sciences. That it is useful as a training is obvious on the face of it. The possession of a plan of inquiry will enable us more easily to argue about the subject proposed…. The question which is the more desirable, or the better, of two or more things, should be examined upon the following lines: only first of all it must be clearly laid down that the inquiry we are making concerns not things that are widely divergent and that exhibit great differences from one another (for nobody raises any doubt whether happiness or wealth is more desirable), but things that are nearly related and about which we commonly discuss for which of the two we ought rather to vote, because we do not see any advantage on either side as compared with the other. Clearly, in such cases if we can show a single advantage, or more than one, our judgment will record our assent that whichever side happens to have the advantage is the more desirable…. The discussion of Definitions falls into five parts. For you have to show either (1) that it is not true at all to apply the expression as well to that to which the term is applied (for the definition of Man ought to be true of every man); or (2) that though the object has a genus, he has failed to put the object defined into the genus, or to put it into the appropriate genus (for the framer of a definition should first place the object in its genus, and then append its differences: for of all the elements of the definition the genus is usually supposed to be the principal mark of the essence of what is defined): or (3) that the expression is not peculiar to the object (for, as we said above as well, a definition ought to be peculiar): or else (4) see if, though he has observed all the aforesaid cautions, he has yet failed to define the object, that is, to express its essence. (5) It remains, apart from the foregoing, to see if he has defined it, but defined it incorrectly…. Next there falls to be discussed the problems of arrangement and method in pitting questions. Any one who intends to frame questions must, first of all, select the ground from which he should make his attack; secondly, he must frame them and arrange them one by one to himself; thirdly and lastly, he must proceed actually to put them to the other party. Now so far as the selection of his ground is concerned the problem is one alike for the philosopher and the dialectician; but how to go on to arrange his points and frame his questions concerns the dialectician only: for in every problem of that kind a reference to another party is involved. Not so with the philosopher, and the man who is investigating by himself: the premises of his reasoning, although true and familiar, may be refused by the answerer because they lie too near the original statement and so he foresees what will follow if he grants them: but for this the philosopher does not care. Nay, he may possibly be even anxious to secure axioms as familiar and as near to the question in hand as possible: for these are the bases on which scientific reasonings are built up.”[iii]

In his editorial Introduction to Aristotle – Selections (1927), W.D. Ross, then Provost of Oriel College and University Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Oxford, stated:

“The Topics, of which the whole central part (Books II-VII) moves almost entirely within the Platonic circle of ideas, and betrays no knowledge of the syllogism…. The bulk of the Topics again is early. If you consider the vast part which dialectical discussion plays in the age of the sophists and in the pages of Plato, it would seem natural to expect that Aristotle’s thought would be drawn pretty early in the study of it. Further, the main part of the work constantly uses methods of argument and instances that were common form in the Academy. The doctrine of the syllogism, which (we must remember) is just as applicable to dialectical as to scientific reasoning, is entirely absent. The whole mode of thought strikes one as immature in comparison with the Analytics. And above all, once Aristotle had discovered how really to prove things, it is hard to believe that he would have devoted so much time to showing that it is possible to reason in an ingenious but essentially futile fashion about them.” (iii)

Writers are taught that writing must be about something or the other, and they are counseled to stay on topic and persuasively so. The so-called objective writer almost disappears in the chosen object. The technical and scientific writer may claim that his articles have nothing to do with him and his prejudices, and everything to do with the truth about the subject identified by his topic – several erudite philosophers have disagreed with that perspective, mainly because it is a perspective. Modern science proves propositions by experiments so that everyone interested in the subject can conduct and arrive at the very same empirical conclusion – even so, given human fallibility, there might be a very slight chance of error. A logical demonstration by way of rhetorical argument does not prove the truth of a proposition, or its correspondence to reality, though it may point out erroneous thinking. Logic is rather a method of persuasion.

I recall a reader who complained that a writer’s propositions must be a false because the author had used the personal pronoun ‘I’. I myself have written a great deal of “stuff” that was exciting to me but stuffy to many readers, mostly academic stuff, wherein I took care to not use any ‘I’s and to be as “objective” as I could be, to be as true to my chosen subject as possible. More often than not, the truer I was to a subject, particularly a non-scientific one, the less often I could arrive at the pointed propositions readers lacking a sense of ambiguity think every good writer should put forward – “What’s the point? Get to the point!” At least my stuff sounded true. Sometimes, when I am researching subjects on the Internet, I encounter a paragraph or two and think, “By god, this writer knows what he is talking about, what he is saying is true,” before I realize that I myself had authored the article several years ago, and had soon forgotten almost everything about the subject at hand.

My favorite writing is not about something in particular but about the about, and I have a roundabout way of going about it. One of the best avant-garde films I saw in Greenwich Village during my youth was “about” flies buzzing around a cow paddy, but it was really not about the manure and flies, it was about the personal expression of the filmmaker, his own truth. When art is for the sake of art, the matter referred to matters little. I am a free lance: I lance my topics out of thin air, sometimes because of their smell, and I like to title them myself, as briefly as possible – which is contrary to the imperial Helium™ policy. I am chiefly an essay writer whose sole teacher has been the greatest literature I could find by browsing in libraries –students of writing sometimes ask me how to write, but I always decline to answer, except to say that I don’t know how to write – I just write. An essai is an experiment. Once I begin, I go where my muse takes me. It is only after I have concluded an essay that I discover its topic – if there is none, well, the experiment has failed.

A brilliant author does not necessarily have to have topics chosen for him, or to construct one himself before the fact, or to explain to anyone what his method might be. Writing can be a way of being, or, if you will, a way of metaphysical constructivism that I call ‘Ising.’ In one of his seminal essay, ‘Thinking and Being, or the Heavenly Twins’, Jose Ortega y Gasset avers that “Philosophy is a certain idea about Being. A philosophy that breaks new ground brings forth a new idea of Being… a way of thinking radically different from those previously known…. One philosophy differs from another not so much, or primarily, for what it says to us about Being as by its way of saying it, by its intellectual language”; that is to say, by its way of thinking…. It is not important whether or not a philosophy explains the method by which it operates…. When we study their dogmas, we discover easily enough in what their method consists…. It is a bad thing if…we fail to see clearly…its way of thinking.”

Helium’s Peter Newton also said, “There will always be a need for professional journalists, especially in covering breaking news or conducting investigative journalism, and Helium is definitely not out to undermine established journalists or copywriters.” If the rhetoric hawked by Helium Exchange Inc is primarily inexpert insights into subjects, and dialectical arguments on pre-selected topics, and not fact-based news, the writer-critics should be more interested in the sophistication or persuasive quality of their rhetoric than in rating their agreement or disagreement on whether or not a certain contraceptive pill that stops menstruation is healthy, or whether whatever a friendly realtor says about the future of real estate in his area is true or not. Perhaps Helium’s writers’ guidelines should require the reading and criticism of Socrates’ and Plato’s dialogues as well as Aristotle’s before being qualified to take a position on other topics. Going further, since astute critics may say those dialogues are immature, the writer should take up the classical trivium, grammar, rhetoric, and logic: once the trivium is mastered, the writer will most likely abandon his $1-a-year job at Helium.com and take his position near the top of the social hierarchy, somewhat above scientists and technicians, the topos where persuasive lawyers and politicians preside – but even they do not rule the world, but are, despite many freelancing exceptions, powerful lackeys to those who do.

Sometimes my experimental essays fail dismally because my intuition does not grasp the root principles under the superficial or topical layer. Every Helium Head should have some idea of what a principle is in case s/he encounters one. I think the principle of a line is the point. The primary meaning of principal is “origin, source, beginning.” Secondarily, the term means “fundamental truth, law or motive force.” Jose Ortega y Gasset, in ‘The Idea of Principle in Leibnitz’, says that scientific method is a calculated procedure relates data to a principle that “explains” them. Philosophy attempts to discover such principles, hence philosophers may be called “men of principles.” Gasset claims that the identifying characteristic of a principle is “being found before another.” “The essential feature of a principle is, therefore, that something follows it.” “True propositions form an ordered whole…. The truth of one (proposition) follows the truth of another. That is the principle of the truth of this, and this is the consequence of that…. The logical order appears to be made up of pairs of propositions, one of them being the principle of the other, which in turn is its consequence… Every logical proposition –except the first ones [“first principles”] –is at once a principle and a consequence…. ‘Truth’ has a double value and because of that becomes equivocal. Within the logical corpus every proposition is true because it has ‘reason’ or its ‘proof,’ which is another proposition….But at the end of the series we find ourselves with propositions – the ‘first principles –which are not in turn ‘consequences,’ which are not ‘proven,’ which do not have ‘reason.’”

So, when we examine our logical order with the essential principle of logic in mind, that one proposition follows another, we may discover that our reasoning is true to that principle, but if we track our conclusion back to the first premise embedded in it, we find that our argument has no foundation in reality and is therefore neither reasoned nor reasonable but is only true in itself or self-evident.

By now the readers I have left can see that I have a metaphysical disposition, and that I always prefer the subjective over the objective and am not afraid to say so – the Helium™ pretense to objectivity is offensive. That is not to say that my scrawlings do not reveal the general truth about the sub-jects thrown underfoot, objects such as Helium.com. A subjective writer who wants to display his talents by expressing his self might as well write “about” the rare gas, helium, for instance, which is actually the second most abundant element in the universe, as about hydrogen, the most abundant one. Now helium is odorless, but it happens that a certain company that uses the common noun as its trademark (Helium™) began to stink in my nostrils, and that smell as perceived presented to me an occasion for writing that is as good as any other, at least until distracted by something else, some other element of the great, seemingly discombobulated blob called reality – of course I do not have the wherewithal to claim that Reality-in-itself is not One..

Helium.com bills itself as “the face of the publishing revolution,” “a knowledge cooperative where our writers are also our editors who read and rate every article on the site,” a place where publishers may efficiently “get the content they need” and where writers can “contribute what they know to share with millions of readers” “who want a choice of viewpoints.” But as far as I was concerned, Helium.com was actually the reactionary rump of the publishing revolution, a site where the blind lead the blind around and around narrow topics selected by staff, therefore a place that progressive publishers and noteworthy writers should definitely avoid if they are in the market for the exchange of true knowledge, no matter badly it smells, instead of tasteless and colorless content. If lucre instead of truth were wanted, I knew that a few aspiring writers, who, following the example of camels, put their noses to rears and circled the Helium™ topics long enough, might make over $20, enough to actually get paid as per Helium™ policy, but they would in the process become a clique of shrill helium heads.

And that is why I (HE™) wanted to disassociate myself from Helium™. I had posted a few brilliant essays on site, and then grew disenchanted with the absurdity of Helium’s editorial policies, which had become an intolerable nuisance, and respectfully asked that my work be removed from the site, in which case I would have gladly gone my way with no hard feelings. But apparently the distinguished directors of the firm desire to make enemies of mighty pen-wielders in order to gain publicity for their frigid and relatively inert enterprise. Perhaps the dissidents will eventually incorporate Hydrogen™ and blow up in the directors’ super-cooled, counter-revolutionary corporate faces, citing the motto: Why be Number Two when you can be Number One?

I was informed by Helium officers that the copies of my work that I had posted at Helium had been seized and could be displayed there forever without certain consideration, all in accordance with Helium’s non-negotiable, unconscionable adhesion “agreement” laid down on its content contributors. The licensing agreement, which very few contributors had read, also apparently mandates that their contributions may be chopped up and altered into a form unrecognizable by the creators – the editors have even gone so far as to replace writers’ names with numbers! For example, former Helium Head Steve Hart’s name has been replaced with Name Withheld No. 9. Mr. Hart reportedly engaged in “unacceptable” behavior when the site refused to remove his work from the site. Apparently, since a “contribution” is a gift and not something a writer should be paid for, the honorable donor should not try to take it back if he received nothing in return. (iv)

As for inconsiderable consideration, my work, although praised by Barbara Whitlock, Helium’s considerate community development manager, was valued at a little over $1 by Helium’s rating system; but that is precisely the dollar that Helium never intends to pay to me nor does it intend to pay the illusory dollar to each of the hundreds of thousands contributors who stand outside of the inner rotating clique, the mere handful of claquers who worked the rating game for several hundred dollars over many months, posting perhaps 15 articles each per week and rating others works madly, without due consideration, to improve their own status. Not that I resent the success of hardworking conformists who compete according to the rigid rules mandated by an imperium. I am an elitist who believes that every game should have a few winners. Let the best man win the most; indeed, let him own the house. More power to the winners. But the Helium™ gamesters, when they quit the game (little did even the most skilled writers know they were gambling for the house to win), they do not have the sacred Power to Delete, nor do they have the power to criticize Helium™ policies without being downgraded or excommunicated for “inappropriate” or “unacceptable” behavior. Mind you that the protests thus far do not come anywhere near the definition of “unacceptable” offered by a member of the now-defunct Written-by-me.com site, who uploaded a picture of his pecker on his Profile page, with the subtitle, “(expletive deleted) WBM!” Nevertheless, that is how some former Helium Heads feel about Helium™ now that their balloons have been deflated. The scribes say that one becomes much closer to knowing YHWH once crushed as flat as matzo – the most standard adhesion contract of all was given by Moses, and its nonnegotiable terms must be subscribed and adhered to for one’s own good – at least that good is considerable; i.e. GOOD.

[i] Publishing - Podcasts - New York Times Mar 1, 2007 ... Writers struggling to find a publisher are taking the high-tech, grass-roots approach. www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/books/01podb.html] 3/27/2009 8:16 AM http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2009/03/victoria-strauss-hearst-partners-with.html

[ii] 3/27/2009 8:16 AM http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2009/03/victoria-strauss-hearst-partners-with.html

[iii] http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/topics.1.i.html

[iv] Antihelium’s blog: http://antihelium.wordpress.com/category/heliumcom

Introduction to the Helium.com Scheme

2009-05-02T07:39:00.000-07:00

On Friday, April 17, 2009, I called Helium Exchange Inc. to protest against the publisher’s refusal to remove several of my brilliant essays from its website at helium.com, and I wound up interviewing John Rozen, the corporation’s Vice President. My account of that interview shall be released aloft soon after this Introduction to helium.com, and may be of some considerable amusement to anyone seriously interested in the future of paperless publishing.

Helium Exchange Inc. is a Delaware corporation registered as a foreign corporation with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on March 26, 2006. Its offices may be visited at 200 Brickstone Square, Andover, Massachusetts 01810. A permit may be required to stage protests at that location, but service of process may be had without a permit – Helium’s terms of service specify that disputes with its writers or content suppliers are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal, state and local courts for Boston, Massachusetts. The corporation operates the website Helium.com, where it advertises itself as “the face of the publishing revolution,” “a knowledge cooperative where our writers are also our editors who read and rate every article on the site,” a place where publishers may efficiently “get the content they need” and where writers can “contribute what they know to share with millions of readers” “who want a choice of viewpoints.” At the very top of the ad appears the three-pronged hook: Write - Publish - Get Paid.

I myself joined up and became a Helium Head although I (HE™) had serious reservations about the Helium™ model. First of all, it seems that almost everyone who is halfway literate with some vanity is a writer nowadays; if all those who do fancy themselves as writers are also the raters and the editors at Helium, the process would invariably boil down to a sort of incestuous popularity contest, which would not speak well for the quality or the survival of the product. Helium writers must present opinions on certain titled topics pre-conceived by the Helium staff; if they do not stay on those topics and in a way that satisfies the biases of select writers-editors, their articles are summarily deleted. A Helium Head may devise his or her own title and try to stay on it, but if the topic and the content there under do not please the writers-editors, it too shall be deleted. However, if an article is acceptable, the writer will discover, usually to his surprise and dismay, that he may not have it deleted by the staff, although he may revise it if the revision is to the staff’s liking. Incidentally, readers who are not Helium Heads do not rate articles nor do they have a say in the editorial process. This process would be analogous to a modified America Idol where listeners would not participate in the process: amateur singers would rate each other; and some amateur singers serving as amateur editors would disqualify performers according to the prejudices of the overarching staff as to what songs might be popular. The singers, of course, could not pick song titles nor choose subjects to sing about. Imagine the result.

The Helium rating game and writing contests would purportedly identify the best “citizen journalists”, but those journalists would be amateur opinionators instead of fact-hardened reporters rounded off by thoughtful analysis into glib columnists. Professional columnists normally rise from the reportorial ranks at newspapers, or, in some notorious cases, they distinguish themselves as professional ideologues on campaign trails and the like before becoming political hack columnists who manipulate facts and distort truth to suit their prejudices; hence it appears that most Helium writers would be beginners who expected to start at the top. And if the quality or the product were anything but mediocre, one wonders why publishers would want to pay for material that people could get at Helium.com for nothing, printing out copies for themselves at will. Surely very little pay would trickle down to the writers – Helium employs the word ‘cooperative’, but the writers do not own the venture.

A number of Internet writers’ sites have offered fame and fortune to writers in the past. Most of them are now defunct. Readers refused to pay for the kind of content offered, being accustomed to getting free information and entertainment on the Internet. Writing-content per se did not create enough action to generate enough revenue to turn a profit, nor was there much money in hustling the writers for writing courses, editing services, book publishing services, agency services and the like. Of course some writers’ site operators are not in it for the money, and have the means to continue indefinitely. Perhaps the best way for a writing platform to succeed is to offer a great platform to serve the writing community, giving writers good cause to subscribe to use it to present themselves as personalities and to strut their stuff whether for income or not.

All in all, the Helium site at first appeared to me to be another ploy to create a buzz for the sake of advertising revenue and hopes of getting a slice of the pie-in-the-sky, but I decided to give the site a whirl in view of the prestige of the officers and directors of the firm and their experience with the new publishing frontier – they are the experts, and might have something rewarding up their corporate sleeve for writers, perhaps contracts with publishers who pay writers upfront instead of leading them on with promises about the hereafter.

Signature Capital, a self-styled “revolutionary” venture capitalist, apparently supplies not only capital but several of Helium’s distinguished directors as well. Signature’s website rhetoric describes its investment criteria as follows: “Signature Capital invests only in early-stage growth companies without any prior significant funding that have a proprietary position in timely new products or services, serving a large, established market permitting rapid scalability of revenue to over $100M per year. The company must have one or more strong, visionary managers and be in a field with good valuations in the securities markets. We select those investments where a combination of the vision and skills of the company management, a highly qualified board of directors built with Signature Capital's help combined with those of our firm's partners and additional capital can create the opportunity for a successful liquidity event in a 3-5 year time period."

According to Signature Capital’s ‘Who’s Who Boards’, Helium Board of Directors and Board Advisors includes persons with expertise in investment banking; internet-centric marketing strategies; development and support services for mainframe and personal computer services; website strategies and forensics; public relations for search engine marketing; advertising and sales leadership within the Google organization; brand management; intellectual property rights and general counseling in technology law; corporate counseling in international law; grassroots political campaigning and book writing about the so-called democratic Internet revolution; Associated Press staff writing and Harvard Business Review editing; and presiding over the Boston Globe, a New York Times media firm.

I eventually became disenchanted by the overall mediocrity of the Helium organization and politely asked that my articles be removed from the site. Helium President Mark Ranalli refused to remove my articles, although, according to Helium’s calculation, they were worth barely more than $1 after roughly a year’s exposure, an inconsiderate dollar I could not collect because accruals less than $20 are not paid out. I promised Mr. Ranalli that I would have his firm sued. But legal action may not be taken if it appears that Helium™ will probably dissipate before the removal of a one-year curse laid on it.

When I called Helium, I wanted to speak to Helium’s Paula Schmitz about Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, and about what, in retrospect, appeared to me to be Helium’s scheme to lure aspiring writers to become “citizen journalists” and to post their intellectual property on its website where Helium could plunder it for little or no pay. Those writers who eventually felt that the writing community was being exploited, and who protested on the bulletin board or posted critical articles on the site, had their protest and criticism deleted. When they demanded that their accounts be deleted and their articles removed from the site, they were referred to the adhesion User Agreement or Terms of Service which they had not bothered to read – studies indicate that even lawyers rarely read TOS on Internet sites – before clicking on the ‘Publish’ button: They trusted the integrity of the Helium officers and thus the experts who had drafted the complicated document for the company, and expected the terms to be in the best interest of the writing “cooperative.” Besides, they were in a hurry to achieve the fame and fortune held out to them by the persuasive marketing strategy explained under “Write - Publish - Get Paid.”

Dissidents were informed, much to their chagrin, that the ‘click-wrap/browse-wrap’ adhesion contract they had unwittingly “agreed” to imperiously legislated that Helium keep and display their property, without exception, on the site or elsewhere indefinitely, against their will, where some of it might be sold in bulk to other publishers. To add insult to injury, in some cases their names or bylines were removed from their work – at the very least, an author is entitled to his vanity. Naturally the dissident “citizen journalists” Irish ire and innate sense of injustice was aroused, particularly if they had enjoyed the customary power-of-deletion at longstanding writing communities such as authorsden.com, postpoems.com, authorsuk.com, and elsewhere.

Now a writer might sell a work he has posted at other writing communities for the purpose of criticism, providing that he could remove it when the possibility of a sale arose.. But if he cannot delete it, it becomes virtually worthless. Indeed, considering the fact that several fine citizen journalists are earning around a dollar a year or even less at Helium, and that they cannot collect any money less than twenty dollars, the terms of service now offered by Helium is tantamount to an unconscionable contract for professional suicide. By “unconscionable” we mean “shocking to the conscience.” Of course we might say that the writers who “x”ed the Writers Agreement box, which refers to the purportedly non-negotiable terms of service in the browse-wrap Users Agreement, and then went ahead and clicked “Publish”, are fools if not blooming idiots – no offense intended to those persons professionally classified as fools or idiots. Nonetheless, it is obvious that the most of them felt tricked in one way or another; at least their innate sense of justice caused them to expect the staff to remove material for good reason, as it is constantly removed for bad reasons, as can be seen by the editorial behavior.

Paula Schmitz was obviously the right person to speak to when I called Helium, for she is not only listed by Signature Capital as Secretary to the Helium’s Board of Directors, but as Helium’s General Counsel with “extensive experience handling a variety of legal issues including patents and other intellectual property rights,” who has “worked in both large firms and as inside general counsel to technology companies.” She is also listed on the Helium.com site as the contact person for formal notices of copyright infringement. Of course if she were part of a copyright infringement conspiracy, or an effort to legitimize with legalese what might be adjudged illegal if tried, it would seem that she might have a conflict of interest. I speculated that that would put her on the leading legal edge of the corporate effort to seize the Internet and exploit genuine citizen journalists, who once fancied that the Internet would empower the People. But I would not thus judge her in advance, as being a member of the fascistic corporatist front, wherefore I wanted to chat with her to assess her character, and see if I could get my work removed if she were a wise lawyer, or, in lieu of removal for lack of consideration, “upfront” consideration for my work.

I had already asked Helium’s Director of Community Development, Barbara Whitlock, who had identified me in an article as her favorite writer at Helium, to remove my work from the site; she informed me that Helium’s terms forbade deletion. I scanned over the brief “Writers Agreement” that referred to the tedious terms of service and then studied the pertinent terms. I was appalled, thinking that no writer in his right mind would agree to such conditions without genuine upfront (advance) payment for his work. I felt tricked and stupid although I found some comfort in studies that show intellectuals can be far more gullible to scams than so-called stupid people, who are unaware of ambiguity and absolutely believe in something or the other in exclusion to all else. Then I did some research via Google and found scores of other writers who had similarly become Helium Heads and whose balloons were let down by the low down strategy.

Therefore I filed a complaint with Helium’s president, Mark Ranalli – he had become an Internet startup executive after getting his MBA at Tuck in Dartmouth in 1992, and gained considerable experience at a marketing strategist working large communication company clients such as AT&T Broadband and AOL. I asserted my belief that Helium’s adhesion contract was invalid, and that Helium’s refusal to remove articles displayed against the will of their creators, articles upon which major companies were posting advertisements, constituted copyright infringement, and might even be a federal computer crime. He tersely insisted that Helium’s adhesion contract was valid, and that there would be absolutely no exception to Helium’s policy of retaining every author’s work even against his or her will. He called the Helium policy of perpetual retention a “normal” practice, although every experience writer on the Internet knows that it is in fact abnormal for a site to disallow removal of postings, especially a site that implies that it is a writers’ cooperative.

The firm’s automatic answering facility referred me to a directory. Ms. Schmitz’s name was not on it, and apparently the system did not have a live operator. So I selected Barbara Whitlock’s name from the directory, as my email exchanges with her had been quite amiable – I had on several occasions remarked on the silliness of the Helium rating game and the incompetence and obvious prejudices of its editors and so-called stewards or channelers. She sounded shocked that I had actually called her on the telephone. I informed her that I was simply following up on my desire to have my work removed from the website, and was planning to contact all the advertisers who were displaying their ads on my work, but I wanted to speak to Ms. Schmitz about the copyright infringement issue before I proceeded, in hopes it could be resolved so I could go about other business. She said Ms. Schmitz was not located at the office. I asked for Ms. Schmitz’ telephone number; she said she would not give out that or any other information, and said I must speak with Helium Vice President John Rozen about such matters – Helium literature discloses that Mr. Rozen was a global network server manager and builder for fifteen years, and is now responsible for Helium’s site infrastructure.. I thanked Ms. Whitlock for our pleasant exchanges in the past. I wondered out loud how she could, as a writer herself, tolerate a policy that seized writers’ work against their will. She said she could not speak to that, so I bade her farewell, thanking her again for her past kindness. Then I called John Rozen as she had suggested.

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN ROZEN SHALL SOON BE RELEASED ALOFT

Radical Love Spurned

2009-04-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 12:20 AM, wrote:
Hello David Arthur Walters, We’re writing to inform you that we have removed [AGAIN] your article [RADICAL LOVE] written to the title Four great ideas in history, because it is off topic . Your article is inserted below. The Helium Content & Community Team
=================================
The article we have deleted:

On Radical Love, perhaps the greatest idea in history!

by David Arthur Walters

Radicals have generally acquired a bad reputation because they hate evil and some of them would forcefully replace evil as they perceive it with their own version of good. Although there are right-wing radicals, the term is usually associated with leftist radicals, and we shall use the term in that context. Radicals on the left political wing believe the many are oppressed by the few, and that something should be done about it forthwith instead of just talking about change or making changes that accomplish very little except tweaking the status quo.

For instance, when President Barrack Obama, during the latest bust phase of the latest boom of the usual capitalist business cycle, appointed the very same people who had as usual helped cause the latest banking crisis with the usual credit expansion, to manage it as usual, people began to think that the only change he was making, despite his so-called leftist rhetoric, was to capitalize every letter of the usual superficial catchword, i.e. CHANGE. And it appears that he and his party would tweak the health care system as well, instead of forcing through national health care legislation that would bring the United States up to par with other civilized countries. And so on and so forth. Tinkering with the engines may get a few more repetitive cycles out of them, but that is about it. Not that his rival, John McCain, who, as a "reform" candidate, also rivaled George W. Bush, yet bragged way back then that he helped effect change by going along with voice votes, instead of engaging the arduous debate that is prerequisite to any real radical reform, and who bragged most lately that he was a maverick while standing in President Bush's shadow, is any more of a radical changer than President Obama. Can we blame any one of them for falling short of truly radical reform? The fact of the matter is, the herd is normally conservative: people at large do not really want radical change, and, when called upon to give some skin to the radical cause, they would rather save their skins from that cause. Still, sometimes, during critical times when many people are in dire straights, big changes have been made; such is the progress of history, by sudden lurches, when restrained too long by the lethargic status quo.

Radicals of the leftist bent call for radical reforms to free people from oppression. Radicals love the mob over the powerful minority because they initially intend to distribute freedom more broadly and improve the well being of more men. They have in fact led the historical movement to expand the circle of freedom to all men and women. Nothing gets done without the application of some force: When reason seemed of little avail to the radicals, they called for the force of arms to accomplish their goals.

Aggrieved people are attracted by radical rhetoric with its special vocabulary of humanitarian and democratic terms expressing an indignant and sometimes inflammatory ideology calling for the destruction of what is hated and its replacement by a good society. On the other hand, those who feel that their interests are threatened by the utopian program respond with fear and hatred to such proposals for radical reform no matter how rational and socially just the proposals may be.

The conflict between the relatively powerful few, namely the power elite, and the less powerful many shall presumably persist until the radical ideal of political-economic social justice is realized, until perfectly equalitarian justice is done, for the essence of radicalism is to extend freedom from oppression, in all its forms, to all people: democratic-socialist politics would distribute equally the absolute power worshipped by religion lest it be hoarded by one person to the detriment of the rest. The goal of freedom is, supposedly, individual happiness, which is naturally psychological or egoistic psychologists for the power elite claim that it is the experiences of individuals that makes them happy, and not how much they own, implying that the less powerful should be happy with what little they have. But the individual is also a social person with attendant sympathetic interests in the general happiness so that he may have his own happiness; hence everyone has a real and legitimate interest in the sum of the individual pleasures of the whole society, in the greatest happiness of the greatest number - as the Philosophical Radicals, whom President Garfield and the Radical Republicans admired, often said. In any event, a radical intent accrues to any plan of economic or political reconstruction for distributive freedom, and the most radical program of all aims at the maximization of the welfare of the greatest number of people.

But if the radical root of freedom is in the individual, then every freedom fighter is a radical, is he not? Since people can gain freedom from oppression by controlling each other, will they not always be in conflict and therefore within a vicious cycle of hate? No, they will not, for freedom comes with responsibility; it must have some ground to stand on in order to accomplish anything at all. Without human society there is no human being. People are naturally attracted to each other for very good reason. We need company to be human beings and to enjoy what freedom we have; we have our families and our clans, and through conflict and cooperation we have merged into nations and beyond as our horizon expands.

And what is that universal principle of attraction, unity, and harmony called? What sums up the greatest good of the greatest number, the golden rules, the highest good, the social good, or, if you will, god? What is the common English name for the most radical principle of all, the flip side of hate? It is the name of an idea the Philosophical Radicals hold valuable, but in the interest of a more objective science than subjective sympathy, they subordinate it to the selfish interest in countable things. It is a word that infuriates haters so much that they bite their tongues off because they do not have enough of what it connotes, yet it remains universally popular among those who do have much of it, and those folks do not take kindly to having their affection disparaged. What is it, in a word?

Love is the Word.

"Oh, no!" some radical exclaims, "Get ready for the preachy sermon. He's going to pull Jesus Christ out of the bag, and push the opiate of the masses that kept them oppressed. He's going to talk about praying for people instead of feeding them. He's not going to mention the millions and millions of people selfishly murdered in Christ's name."

I have neither religious nor political sermon to preach, as I am an optimistic skeptic who places his blind faith in Nothing. Nevertheless, I confess that Jesus' name has been repeatedly bandied about and abused. I admit he was a radical reformer who was tried twice: once in the ecclesiastical court, where he was apparently adjudged innocent of spiritual offenses, of blasphemy and the like, that carried a penalty of death by stoning, and once in the political court, where he was tried and convicted of a trumped up-political charge, of treason, that warranted a penalty of death by crucifixion. I admit he was an advocate of genuine love instead of empty ritual. I deny that he invented love. I opine that he inherited love, as the son of the originally good part of humanity, if he was not Love incarnated as the gnostic son of that god who was once called the Stranger because he was previously unknown on the plane presided over by the selfish god of the Garden of Eden, the jealous and wrathful god who was hell bent on punishing mankind forever for stealing a few apples from his orchard.

We might expound on any religion that liberates the individual from selfishness, and still speak of love. I personally view religion as the love of absolute power, the power of life that would endure forever if it could, and politics as the relative or mundane distribution of that power. The so-called original sin is the accident of individuality, but the sin is forgiven in the universality of the category of one, the unity enjoyed by everyone despite their differences. I see at the center of every religion the celebration of the natural sacrifice of the individual for the common good, by which love the individual is made even strongerradical religion is, in a manner of speaking, virtual suicide, by means of which the glorious hereafter is made present now.

"Love is hardly a political or moral principle, you cannot make people love each other. They have good reasons to hate each other."

Radicals have good reasons to hate evil. No, we cannot make people love each other; the very idea of loving some people disgusts laymen lovers. It is said that he who loves everybody loves nobody. Nevertheless, love is available to all persons by virtue of the self-love they naturally share at least with their kindred, a love in part imparted to the person by the care others, for a person is a social individual. Without the care of others, the helpless infant is doomed. We can help people to make sacrifices for the good of all; we can educate them to stop hurting each other, and to do so for their own good or self-love. Hence doing no harm is a form of love. Fortunately, that good can be demonstrated scientifically and is available to almost every understanding, for love wants freedom to endure forever. Your life, my life, every life, is your love, my love, every love.

The "instinct" of love is our social gravity. Just as we now employ our knowledge of the universal law of gravity to launch our ships to the stars, we can and we have employed our knowledge of love to bring heaven to Earth.

Therefore we speak of the science of love. And yes although everything of value is not really calculable, there is a social science of love supported by statistics for those who need numbers as indicators and indexes of happiness. In this day and age many people demand quantification to support qualitative claims: love pays off. For example, one may refer to the research of sociologist Pitirim Sorokin validating the practice of love.

Since the vocabularies of love and god seem unscientific today, we might want to be polite and more politic: it might behoove us to couch our science in other terms. Theists may pray to god; pantheists can worship god everywhere. Deists may presume that god wound up the Universe, and that the rest is up to them. Atheists may presume there is no god, and be on their own too. Humanists, well, they can be romantic and love either god or man or both. In any case, we all need a better education towards our mutual improvement, and we all can therefore employ reason to achieve radical reforms for the betterment of our race. Therefore I may soon be moved to honor my promise to briefly discuss the work of a certain cadre of philosophical radicals who approached people of all parties and persuasions with offers reason could not refuse; as a consequence, radical reforms were made, the benefits of which we greatly enjoy to this very day. I have merely paused here, by special request, to! make a note on love in the context of our intercourse.

-XYX-

Helium Betrays Citizen Journalism

2009-04-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

If the reader has difficulty imagining an editorial policy that routinely rejects excellent political satire for its political columns because it is "too opinionated", please feast on the following from Helium.com, the site that touts its writers as revolutionary “Citizen Journalists” and intends to sell their work in bulk to the mainstream media – a deal was recently cut with Hearst. The Parent-Child instructions by anonymous Helium censors in the second email from Helium to the author certainly indicates Helium's bias at the time, which was decidedly not that of the overwhelming majority of the world population which had grown weary of so-called neoconservative misleadership. Fine, but William Randolph Hearst at least knew what sold newspapers. David Arthur Walters

From; content@helium.com
To davidarthurwalters@gmail.com
Sat, Nov 24, 2007 at 3:49 PM
subject Thanks and info on your article status

Hi David Arthur Walters,

Thanks for submitting your article: Would Eric Rudolph make a good neoconservative president?, and thanks for helping Helium™ get one step closer in its mission to create the most indispensable reference resource for users, by users. Your article is on the ‘pending” list, awaiting review. We wanted to let you know that it may take a few days before your article is reviewed, approved and appears live on the site, available to an instant audience of thousands. You can monitor your article’s progress in this process. Simply Login and visit My Articles in My Helium. Better yet, why not take this moment to write another article? After all, Helium is the ideal place for people like you who are passionate about a topic to write and be heard, and your potential is limited only by the quantity and quality of the articles you write. Every article you write is an asset which can earn you recognition and revenue---into perpetuity. The better you write, the higher you rank, the more your reward. If you have any questions that are not answered by our FAQ, please contact help@helium.com. And thanks again for your efforts. We think we (you and me, that is Team Helium) are on to something special. We hope we can enjoy your continued company.

All the best,
The Helium Team

Helium asks you to revise your article
content@helium.com
11/24/07
Helium asks you to revise your article

Hi David Arthur Walters,

Helium.com is sending this email to inform you that your submission was declined because it is too opinionated or biased. However, we encourage you to consider revising this: Title: Would Eric Rudolph make a good neoconservative president? While we welcome all points of view, we are building a lasting treasury of knowledge at Helium™. When knowledge is framed in the right objective tone, others can add to the topic. Your article compares not only the current administration (which would be acceptable), but also a wide swath of other people with a well known killer/murderer. This comparison is not only false, it is also unfair and highly biased. Please rewrite your article in a manner in which you are not making offensive implications of others who are of a differing opinion from yours. Sometimes new writers at Helium, especially those who come from the world of blogging, MySpace and other post and comment sites, need time to understand Helium's quality standards. We ask that extra care goes into writing your articles, with the long-term value in mind. For help in understanding Helium's quality needs, please read our Writing Standards. There are more writing tips collected in the Writer's Workshop forum. You can resubmit your revised article by repeating the "initiate a new article title" process. To do this, click the "Write" button in the top Helium navigation bar. At the next screen, use the drop down boxes to select an appropriate channel for your piece, then click on the words "Initiate a new article title" near the bottom of the page. The following screen is where you can enter your revised article. Please remember to begin your title with the word "Resubmit" in the "Write a New Title" field so our editors can give it special attention. (For example, "Resubmit: How to write an article") You can find your submission enclosed in this email and access it in your My Helium: My Articles area. If you have more questions, please forward this email with your comments to content@helium.com. Thank you for working with us to help Helium rise! We value the wisdom you have to share.

All the best,
The Helium Team 16

Title: Would Eric Rudolph make a good neoconservative president?
By: David Arthur Walters
Article: News Analysis: a case can be made to nominate serial bomber Eric Rudolph neoconservative president of the United States.

"It isn't just our homes and selves that need defending," U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas proclaimed to the National Rifle Association Convention in April 2005, "it is our freedom... God gave it. The Constitution preserves it. And together we will defend it."

President Bush of Texas concurred via videotape, promising to fight new gun controls and calling for Congress to grant immunity to gun manufacturers. Politicians and gun-rights advocates present at the convention also denigrated Democrats, belittled the liberal media, and condemned the United Nations to hell.

Mr. DeLay's gun-loving speech got a standing ovation, an image that he hoped the national media, now preoccupied with the corruption charges against him, would broadcast to the people of America: "I hope the national media saw that." Gun sales are presumably booming as a consequence of Mr. DeLay's speech, not only to neofascist pseudo-conservatives but to those who want to protect themselves against Mr. Delay's version of god, constitution, and freedom. In the final analysis, freedom-loving liberals feel Mr. DeLay's god is arbitrary, his constitution unconstitutional, his freedom anarchic, and his character corrupted.

Serial bomber Eric Rudolph is back in the news; he obviously sympathizes with Mr. DeLay's love for gun-toting freedom as well as his well known prejudice against abortion and homosexuality - control over other people's genitalia and the womb is a traditional concern of patriarchal regressives and political primitives. An analysis of Mr. Rudolph's 'Manifesto of Hostility' indicates that, under different circumstances, Mr. Rudolph would be an ideal candidate for succession to the neoconservative presidency of the This Great Homeland of Ours.

According to Park Dietz, the forensic psychologist and former F.B.I. profiler who linked the Olympic Park, gay nightclub, and abortion clinic bombings, Mr. Rudolph is not original. "He doesn't say anything in this manifesto that hasn't been said by a lot of other characters." Unlike Unabomber Kaczynski's complex and sometimes novel manifesto, Mr. Rudolph's work is the product of a "second-rate college." Mr. Rudolph, he said, has an ordinary human need to be accepted an admired: "I think he has an eye on retaining fans." And, "What his manifesto shows is the expected inflexibility and rigidity of thought that's necessary to have carried out these acts."

That is not to say that Mr. Rudolph is a moron, not in the loose sense of being a fool. His clever evasion of the authorities proves otherwise. Still, he was not wise: he was personally identified and apprehended, which disqualifies him for the presidency of the United States at this time. If he had limited the commission of his heroic crimes against humanity to perceived enemies in foreign countries by means of surrogate terrorists, he might stand high on the eligibility list today. Once in the oval office, he would be able to vent his fear and hostility, in the form of massively organized terrorism, almost to his heart's content given the natural admiration of high authority and love of violence providing people are bored and provided the violence is justified by the god-given constitution.

Mr. Rudolph's self-justificatory manifesto is "an unapologetic letter from an arrogant, defiant commander," said Brian Levin, California State University's Center director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. The manifesto, he says, displays the typical black-and-white thinking that intolerant, paranoid people need to carry out violent acts against an enemy they perceive is out to get him. This sort of attitude would be most appreciated in the White House, where those who are for the president's agenda are patriots, and those who are against it are traitors, or enemies not entitled to the protective conventions of "civilized" warfare. If Mr. Rudolph were president, he could go before the world assembly and demand that it sanction the application of his malice aforethought; if the judges disapprove, he could then spit in their face and proceed with impunity, cheered on by patriots led by the super-patriotic, card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association!

But he did not take the right tack; he went astray in his youth, and wound up murdering only two persons and hurting only a hundred and twenty or so instead of killing a half-million people and hurting millions. Therefore he is "paranoid" and "delusional."

"Paranoia" of course is the ubiquitous disease of modern individuality, which is beset by the insignificance of the individual unit who naturally longs for absolute power: life would persist forever without impedance if it could. The physical and social world is in fact out to get the individual, who is doomed by death; but he is told he can save himself in the interim, at least for the next world - he might save a great deal of time by means of war and suicide.

Of course the term 'paranoia' ordinarily refers to the more pronounced delusions of persecution and grandeur. Experts described Mr. Rudolph as representative of persons suffering from "delusions of grandeur, paranoia and a classic antisocial personality." Nonetheless, the two delusions, of persecution and of grandeur, are really the flip sides of the same coin. Paradoxically, only a grand person would be insignificant enough for world to conspire to persecute him - I am sometimes amazed by the grandeur of my own insignificance. Mr. Rudolph felt that a monolithic government was out to get him. That government of course was monolithic and liberal -worst of all, it encouraged and condoned the fatal sins of abortion and homosexuality. Both sins are an attack on life itself and must be avenged. Wherefore Mr. Rudolph was elected by his god and moved by his homophobia and desire to own the womb and to liberate life with bombs and so on and so forth.

"If you thought you were just a cog in the machine... if you didn't have some high self-image, you wouldn't think yourself worthy of taking other people's lives," stated Jack Glaser, psychologist and expert on hate crimes. Running for high political office does require a high self-image; the highest of political offices, the office of President and Commander-in-Chief, requires a willingness to kill millions of people. We know from Mr. Rudolph's letters to the media that he is Commander-in-Chief of the "Army of God," serving not the insignificant, selfish "I" but the grand, social "We".

Furthermore, we now know from Mr. Rudolph's manifesto that he is fighting for the same independence alluded to in the Declaration of Independence. So he is, after all, not "anti-social." He had his friends, although they did not dare come forth under the circumstances; for instance, the armed power of the United States government, still infested by mother (expletive deleted) liberals.

Well, we recall that no more than ten percent of the population, led by traitors, favored the North America Revolt against Great Britain. In any case, it is not easy to move the masses without dividing them: the "great men" of history thrived not on compromising consensus but on divisiveness, often in violent times, of war and revolution. The majority prefers the herd, and are not easily moved to do great good or great evil, for they know the road to paradise may be the way to hell, and that people are more readily moved to hate one another than to love one another - their love is often hate-others-based love. A war against injustice at home? No way. A war to make the world safe for our Republic? Yes, indeed.

Mr. Rudolph used high technology to avoid collateral damage: he carefully shaped his explosives in order to develop a reliable "command-detonated focused device." Of course innocent bystanders will always be killed in wars, but self-righteous commanders who read the Bible will do their best to save them. More importantly, if guilty people repent, they will be spared. Mr. Rudolph portrayed himself as a compassionate conservative, willing to "forgive" degenerates who change their ways.

All in all, if only Eric Rudolph were high-born, and had a better upbringing in the modes of violence and how to avoid prosecution, a case could be made for nominating him the neoconservative candidate for President of the United States. Who needs a separate god when the President is in the White House?

Quotes taken from:
'Manifesto of hostility', Miami Herald, April 17, 2005
'DeLay: Guns crucial to liberty', Miami Herald, April 17, 2005

Helium deletes By the Light of the Silvery Moon

2009-04-26T16:03:00.000-07:00

Helium publicity claims that it's site is a platform for Citizen Journalists, but its citizenship does not provide for newsworthy interviews on a subject its owners and editors should be intensely interested in.

from content@helium.com
to davidarthurwalters@gmail.com
Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Helium asks you to revise your article
by helium.com

Hi David Arthur Walters,

Helium.com is sending this email to inform you that your submission was declined because we don't have the structure in place to deal with interviews--other members typically would not be able to write competing interviews about the same person or event. However, we encourage you to consider revising this before resubmitting:

Title: Media: Internet: Ezines: BLOSM. Failed professional writer's site was promising

We'd like you to revise this submission along these lines: Please revise your article to be more informational, like a magazine article.

For help in understanding Helium™'s quality needs, please read our Writing Standards (http://corp.helium.com/help/tips_heliumwritingstandards). There are more writing tips collected in the Writer's Workshop forum (http://www.helium.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0) on the Helium Community discussion boards.

You can resubmit your revised article by repeating the "initiate a new article title" process. To do this, click the "Write" button in the top Helium navigation bar. At the next screen, use the drop down boxes to select an appropriate channel for your piece, then click on the words "Initiate a new article title" near the bottom of the page. The following screen is where you can enter your revised article. Please remember to begin your title with the word "Resubmit" in the "Write a New Title" field so our editors can give it special attention. (For example, "Resubmit: How to write an article")

You can find your submission enclosed in this email and access it in your My Helium: My Articles area.

If you have more questions, please forward this email with your comments to content@helium.com.

Thank you for working with us to help Helium rise! We value the wisdom you have to share.

All the best,

The Helium Team

Title: Media: Internet: Ezines: BLOSM. Failed professional writer's site was promising

Article: Interview with the president of BLOSM, a new dot com dedicated to bringing authors and publishers together.

by David Arthur Walters

Professional writers were certainly be interested in BLOSM, a new dot.com whose reason for being was to make it easier for publishers to find writers and for writers to find publishers. Unfortunately, the enterprise was ahead of its time, and failed.

If BLOSM would have survived as intended, relatively unknown professional writers would not have to fool around with other ezines that come and go, hoping to be discovered like a needle in a haystack. Nor would they have to depend on direct submissions to a publisher's funnelling system that all too often rejects excellent saleable work because of an inadequate rating system and subjective opinions on what will and will not sell. Instead, BLOSM proposed to build a broad focus audience to do the sorting for publishers, not with the subjective guesswork of a few people, but with the objective assessment of the reading public.

It was a neat concept. But good ideas are a dime a dozen. The proof is in the execution, and that calls for a considerable investment. This brilliant author is glad someone else put up their money to implement this good idea.

No, BLOSM.com was not a free site. Newcoming authors were being asked to pay $5 per month to upload and maintain their work. The published rate schedule indicated a fee of $15 to upload and maintain 10 items over three months. For fees to stick, some real value would have to be added, namely an improved chance for an writer to make some serious money at his or her art or craft.

One of BLOSM's key selling points was that its "objective"rating system would be more efficient and effective than the systems now being used by publishers to funnel the daily avalanches of submissions coming in. BLOSM's "powerful, sophisticated rating system... measures not only what a user says about a manuscript, but also measures the actions a user makes surrounding the manuscript." The emphasis is on "quantity" rather than "quality", since it is up to publishers to decide how "good" the content is. BLOSM proposes to provide the publisher with a real gauge of "potential popularity" to supplement their usual "subjective" educated guesses.

According to BLOSM, aspects of manuscripts were point-rated from least to most favorable. The aspects rated in one particular category were: plot, character development, language, focus on thesis. Points were added for comments, page views, unique downloads, and purchases by viewers of more attractive formats. The scoring is weighted and summed.

I wanted to find out if there was anyone at home behind the BLOSM pages, so I shot off a few questions to the site's Customer Service department. I was answered within the hour by Michael "Mac" McCarthy, President of BLOSM, Inc. His bio stated that he had 25 years of experience in publishing as a writer, book company founder, magazine publisher, online publisher, and start-up manager. Mac gave me permission to quote his responses to my questions, which I have done below.

December 2000

INTERVIEW WITH:

Michael "Mac" McCarthy
President, BLOSM Inc.
www.BLOSM.com

DAVID: I have read your pages with great interest. I have three areas of concern that I ask you to address with your QUOTABLE responses:

My first impression of BLOSM was that your firm is only interested in "book-length" manuscripts, but then I noticed that poems, screenplays, outlines, and short stories were included in the definition of "manuscript." Therefore it seems you will be glad to have anything at all, whether it is a book or not. That might give your audience cause to believe BLOSM is another vanity publisher, not that there is anything wrong with that, as long as that is made perfectly clear.

MAC: Oh dear. Our initial focus is on book publishers. That's what we know, that's where our experience is, and those are whom we've got as beta publisher testers. However, one of our principles is not to make the member/authors do anything in particular or to fit into any definition. They post what they think is best. Initially, we are targeting the book publishing industry, so what we want most is books - that is, book-length manuscripts, proposals for same, sample chapters, whatever the author thinks is right for the purpose of generating strong interest from among our members in order to get higher ratings. But they *can* post anything they want, and many have uploaded short stories and poetry and somewhat indefinable things. Fine the members like reading some of that, the rest they will ignore, and the book publishers will too. Short story and poetry writers are desperate because it's really really hard to sell anything, especially for money (instead of copies).

So now this week we launched our commerce system, which means NOW it costs you money to upload and maintain things on the site - five bucks a month, basically, although we'll be experimenting heavily with that, because of course NOBODY wants to pay anything. But WE have to pay for the business, don't we? It's my guess the less relevant stuff will be first to drop off (beta testers get to leave their work up until December 31 without charge, in appreciation for their help beta testing). Someone with a promising book might pay $5 to upload it I wouldn't think many poets would. But let them decide. For all we know, nobody will pay at all, book authors *or* poets. We'll see.

As to the hurtful remark about vanity publishing - we aren't a publisher, in any way shape or form. We are a service and mechanism that (if it works) will give authors a real opportunity to stand out from the crowd - unlike other upload sites, which are just slush piles. Think of ours as a *filtered* slush pile - with the public doing the filtering.

DAVID: Exactly what sort of relationship do you have with publishers? Are publishers paying your firm or will they pay your firm for organizing a focus-group audience and attracting content? Are you in fact entering into a definite relationship with publishers? How many publishers are currently examining authors' works? How many works have actually been selected for consideration thus far?

MAC: No, unfortunately, the publishers aren't paying, nor the editors, nor the agents. For many reasons, not least of which is that we need the editors and agents, the more the better. I can afford to cut the number of author-submissions in half when we charge fees I can't, for the authors' sakes, cut the number of participating publishers in half.

The relationship with the publishers and agents is informal partnership - as you can see from elsewhere on the site, we have a couple dozen publishers (some quite well known) we've visited personally to sell them on the idea of what BLOSM can do for their acquisitions process - and I have been very happy with the fact that we've been able to make every publisher we've met with understand what we're up to, and they all like the idea. As a tool to help them deal with unsolicited manuscripts, especially ones that might get overlooked, or ones on the margin of topics or handling, it's a really cool idea. And it costs them nothing and obliges them to do nothing. So we have a couple dozen editors checking the site from time to time.

We have several publishers whose editors are actually including a reference to BLOSM in their rejection letters. And we have two publishers (Berrett-Koehler and IDG Books) who are using BLOSM as a posting tool for electronic manuscript submissions.

We've only been up since late July, and have 700 manuscripts and 2,000 rating members, on a small budget, testing the waters in hopes of supporting our business plan so we can get another round of financing from the VCs. We have no works that have been selected for publication by our publisher-partners yet, but we aren't expecting that this early (we would of course welcome it because it would be the only really convincing demonstration of the efficacy of our proposal). Though we have had editors and agents tell us they find some of the higher-rated works "interesting." It will take time.

DAVID: Please provide a more complete description of your rating system. I am particularly interested in what questions you are asking readers so that I may ascertain what theory of rhetoric you are employing if any.

MAC: The rating system is based on specific rating using a Simple form (thumbs-up or -down), and a longer form that lets the rater be more specific. We put up an initial list of questions, based on nothing in particular (let alone any theory of rhetoric), and we need to tinker with it, as some of the questions are clearly less useful than others. Works also earn ratings points for actions of the rater-members, such as reading pages, adding comments, moving a work into MyLibrary, or downloading a copy for offline reading, or using the Tell a Friend feature to draw attention to someone's work.

Don't be distracted by the details of the ratings or the actions. The object is to show interest by large numbers of people. The publishers aren't expected to read the comments and be impressed by what the readers say at its crudest level, we will end up with one work with 75,000 BLOSM rating points in a category where the average number of points is 5,000 - then the editor says to self "Hmm, 10,000 people are interested in this work. I should take a closer look." The acquisitions editor still makes his/her own decisions.

DAVID: Thank you very much. I need your permission to quote you in my article.

MAC: Of course. Please refer to my full name and title.

David Arthur Walters
Free Lance

EMPIRICAL PRAGMATICS
"Truth Comes True