Darkest Suburbia...and Beyond!

To the extent that there's a common thread running through these events, it seems to be that their instigators were looking for attention.  And in almost every such instance -- the media has given them that attention in industrial-size quantities.  Which sends a message to those viewers who are potential instigators: if you do something like this, you will get all the attention you could ever want.  (It generally doesn't matter that you may not be alive to revel in said attention, at least not to this specific subset of the population.)

If you're a veteran of Internet or pre-Internet online communities, you're doubtless familiar with an earlier formulation of this premise: "Do Not Feed the Energy Creature".  The fastest way to defuse a flamewar or rout a troll/bully is simply not to respond.  The same applies in the present context -- if we simply stop giving these events more attention than they deserve, we supply less motive to the next generation of real-world "energy creatures".

The major media outlets need to learn and assimilate this lesson -- and to stop perpetuating the life-cycle of such events as the Aurora shootings, those in Clackamas Town Center, and those today in Connecticut.  Saturation coverage, especially when it consists of reporters saying "information is still developing" every five minutes for hours on end, is expensive.  If we as viewers stop watching it, we can help teach that lesson; if we tell our media outlets why we've stopped, it may teach that lesson more quickly.

Let me be clear: I don't mean to suggest that there should be no news coverage of such events, especially in communities where they may occur.  But the style of coverage needs to be thoughtful and careful and investigative, and the level and focus of coverage should be appropriate to the needs of those directly affected by the specific event being covered.



 

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, I am in fact a resident of Darkest Suburbia (for metaphorical values of "darkest").  While I'm technically inside the Portland city limits by a few hundred yards, my neighborhood is interspersed with some moderately dense forest and steep hillside.  Forest Park proper is over some of the hills and on the other side of a freeway, but you definitely don't have to go over the hills and far away to find woodlands -- and, correspondingly, woodland creatures.  Indeed, some months ago I spotted a raccoon in my back yard.  And when said raccoon noticed that I was watching it, said raccoon cheerfully clambered up onto my back porch and came over to look at me through the glass window in my back door.  This is a little friendlier than I like my woodland creatures, notwithstanding a childhood in which I happily read about a raccoon named Ranger Rick in one of the magazines my parents ordered for me.  After making a brief investigation of my back porch, the real live raccoon went on about its business and did not return.

( Or so I thought.... )

For those following developments regarding Sen. Obama and the remarks made by now-retired pastor Benjamin Wright:

It so happens that I grew up in a United Church of Christ church household (and attended several different UCC churches before eventually falling out of active church membership).  And it seems to me that little if any of the news coverage I've heard on the matter has acknowledged a key characteristic of the UCC that provide important context for the response (or lack thereof) to the Rev. Wright's statements.

Specifically: the UCC is a denomination in which there's a very high degree of congregational autonomy -- pastors are hired and employed by each individual local church, and to the extent that there's a central denominational hierarchy, its function is almost entirely administrative rather than theological.  An illustrative analogy: the Catholic church operates as a unified corporate hierarchy, in which local churches function essentially as branch offices or wholly owned subsidiaries, with everyone ultimately answerable to Corporate HQ in Vatican City.  By contrast, the UCC is essentially a coalition of hundreds of local, independently owned businesses -- while they all operate under the same brand name, and have set up regional and national networks to pool resources and manage the brand, each congregation is fully self-governing.

As a result, when a UCC pastor says or does something controversial, the only people in a position to easily discipline or fire him are the members of his own congregation, which is run in much the same way as any other mid-sized nonprofit organization.  Yes, this means precisely what you think it does: the committee structure and internal politics of a typical UCC church aren't all that different from, say, SFWA's....

Local news outlets, as usual, missed the real news story this week as they waxed amused at Stephen Colbert, who claimed during a recent show that Powell's Books owed him $8 for selling his new book at a 30% discount.  In a similar amused vein, they uniformly quoted a Powell's spokesperson who said that they'd sent Colbert the $8.  (They didn't, he said, plan to send any more than that for additional sales.)

The real story?  Colbert out-and-out lied on national television -- and if he cashes that $8 check, one might argue that he successfully committed extortion.

Now for most pro authors, the next paragraph is basic publishing knowledge, but it's important in context, so bear with me.

The truth is that Colbert, like any other author with a book contract, gets royalties from his publisher for each retail sale of his book, amounting (going by general industry standard) to 10%-15% of cover price for trade hardcovers.  On a $26.99 hardback, that's about $2.70 to $4.05, which the publisher will either credit against his advance (if the book hasn't earned out yet) or pay out in his first royalty check (if the book has earned out).  Moreover, what consumers don't always realize is that most of the time, bookstore discounts don't affect the author's royalty; the author gets his or her percentage on the cover price, whether the book is discounted or not.  [There are exceptions, and some publishers now try to key royalties to net price, but generally speaking, percentage of cover price is still the standard.]

Now I'm reasonably confident that Stephen Colbert knows how publishing works, so he should know very well that his publishers will, in fact, pay him the $2.70-$4.05 royalty they owe him on that copy of his book he caught Powell's selling for $18.89 -- just as they will pay him that same figure for a copy sold for $26.99 up the street at 23rd Avenue Books, and for a copy sold for $16.19 on Amazon.  He didn't lose a penny on that Powell's sale, and Powell's did not and does not owe him $8 (strictly, $8.10) for selling the book at a discount.

But he said they did, and that makes him a liar.

Now having said that, I should add that I'm actually less offended by Colbert's riff than I am by the local media coverage and by the fact that Powell's caved so easily.  Colbert is, after all, a comedian, and you can make a case that what I'm calling a lie is justifiable comic exaggeration.  (I'd disagree with such a case, but I can understand it.)

OTOH, I think it's ethically wrong and journalistically irresponsible for the local media to support and perpetuate the lie.  Consumers are already confused enough about how authors get paid; this was a chance for media outlets to educate folks on How Publishing Works, and to point out that Colbert was engaging in a Foghorn Leghorn moment (i.e. "That's a joke, son!").  Instead, they covered the joke as if it were a true statement, and thereby did their readers and viewers a disservice.  And Powell's, I'd think, would have gotten even better PR value by pointing out that Colbert is probably making more on each sale than they are, and thus Powell's is arguably even more patriotic and civic-minded than Colbert himself.

But I suppose that expecting that much brain out of the mainstream media is an exercise in wishful thinking....