The Unknown Man jogged down the hall and turned the corner towards the kitchen, leaving me and Dr. Jeremy Wraxtiorre, the under-rated celebrity of physics and philosophy, standing there in the hallway with Dr. Eppie Blight and the Escaped Lunatic, who were watching in confusion at the TV Host and the Cameraman. The frenetic gesticulations were lost on them, indicating that their aggressions and hostility were making good television and that the two should continue to enact such behaviors. The Homeless Man merely stood there looking on with half-glazed eyes, and sheepishly opened up the door to allow the Cartoon Dog and Stoic Cat to enter.
As the Cartoon Dog bumped past my leg, I turned from the Steady-Cam's lens and watched the animals excitedly sniffing around the room. The Cartoon Dog flitted from one side of the room to the other, sniffing noisily at the floorboards. The Stoic Cat padded carefully across the carpet, sniffing the air suspiciously. I watched admiringly for a few moments, then allowed my gaze to follow the footprints in the carpet where the Unknown Man had strolled off towards the kitchen. I half-muttered, "He's right. We all need a stiff drink." I grabbed Dr. Wraxtiorre by the scruff of his collar and pulled him towards me. "Let's all go to the kitchen and get something to drink," I commanded.
The CEO and his wife sprang into step, walking intently down the hall in the direction I was indicating. The Itinerant Philosopher shrugged and slapped the Homeless Man on the back, stepping past him and following the CEO and his wife down the hall along the path of the footprints left by the Unknown Man. "It's a shame we didn't make your argument about trust in media journalism more clear," he smugly admonished. "Your audience deserves to understand the basic dynamics of a facet of their lives which has just taken a dramatic leap into greater complexity."
I hung my head in despair and trudged despairingly down the hall after them.
When the Itinerant Philosopher entered the kitchen's foyer, his eyes fell upon a mesmerizing image. "Wow." He stammered. "What detail! I can almost see the individual bricks in the walls. What the hell is that thing?" He stood in front of the picture, dangling his arms by his sides with his mouth hanging open and a trickle of drool rolling towards his chin. "It's like a Behemoth!" He leaned closer to examine the image more carefully. "It's like High-def TV--I can't even get this good an image on my cablebox with DVR!" He leaned backward, nearly lost his balance, and stepped backward to keep from falling. "It's like I'm standing in the footprint of King Kong while he's still standing there, casting his massive shadow on my receding hairline." Dr. Wraxtiorre, who was standing at the other end of the kitchen's Dining Area beside another photograph, waved his hands at me in a cautionary gesture. "Shhh, now would be a good time to be careful with your elaborate metaphors." He pointed at the picture on the wall behind him. "This guy in this picture is probably the guy who took those pictures, and I don't think he would take very kindly to some of your descriptive expressions!"
I walked in behind the Itinerant Philosopher and sat down in one of the empty booths, ignoring the pictures on the walls and the debate that had begun to swell around them.
Ignoring me, the Itinerant Philosopher stepped sideways along the empty booths, throwing his stare almost bodily into the next picture. "Where is this? It looks so bleak! I mean, you can actually see the raindrops falling across the road! And, it feels so cold I'm almost tempted to bury my hands in a pair of fluffy woolen gloves to keep them warm!" The CEO chuckled. Holding out his hands palms down, he goofily suggested, "Maybe we should get you some cute little fishy gloves in the shape of sharks, so that you can pretend your hands are fighting each other when you wring them together for warmth?"
Dr. Wraxtiorre waved his arm dismissively, as though hushing them. "I think you guys should really try to control your flippant commentary."
"What? There's nobody here! What are you getting so sensitive about?" The CEO looked around at the tables and booths, the cash registers and order wheels. They were all still and silent. The kitchen itself and its dish-washing areas were all abandoned. "Are they even open?"
Continuing to ignore them, the Itinerant Philosopher hopped aside to the next picture. "See? Now this one is good. A nice cozy street in France, showing the warm comfy booths of a creperie, with the sweet aroma of delicate pastries drifting out into the street. There's not a hint of modern technology in the picture--no cars in the street, not even a bicycle leaning against a wall." The Unknown Man strolled into the center of the dining area, lost in thought. "I have to agree, these are much better pictures than the ones in the hallway. Who took these?"
The Homeless Man wandered past him, striding straight into the kitchen. "I don't know," he muttered. "I'm just wondering why nobody is cooking any food. I'm famished!"
Dr. Wraxtiorre looked over his shoulder and answered, "It's that guy, Trey Ratcliff, from the StuckinCustoms website. He's a successful photographer who travels around the world taking pictures of exotic locations, and he's also the author of the famous HDR Tutorial and a book called A World in HDR.
The Itinerant Philosopher backed across the middle of the dining area and spun around to look at another picture. He swayed on his heels as he gazed at the clouds in the Texas skies over Austin, the puffs of smoke blossoming behind the spreading explosions, and the partiers in the boats on the river with their running lights shining on the water. He stepped backward, covering his mouth with his hands. He gasped. "It's so celebratory! I wish everybody could buy a calendar with these pictures in it!" Still looking at the one photo in the room not taken by Trey Ratcliff--because he was the subject in it--Dr. Wraxtiorre exhaled dismissively. "Ugh. I can see that I haven't taught you anything about product placement yet, have I?"
The CEO stepped across the room in front of the Itinerant Philosopher. "Aw, c'mon! Why do you always have to be so serious? That worried look on your face--it causes wrinkles and ages you faster. Do you have any idea how much better-looking you would be if you worried less?"
Dr. Wraxtiorre pshawed loudly. "Oh, yeah, and in addition to not understanding the dangers of irresponsible blogging, you are also being recalcitrant in your refusal to listen to my warnings and concerns!"
I shrugged and sneered, "So, now isn't a good time to discuss my blurb called The Wandering Reporter, in my book, Mangled Doves, which is no longer on sale for 40% off at Lulu.com?"
"No. Now is the time to discuss another article in that Opposing Viewpoints book, Mass Media, or that other book, We've Got Blog, by John Rodzvilla and Rebecca Blood."
The CEO harrumphed and sat down cross-legged on the floor, pulling at the Itinerant Philosopher's sleeve. "C'mon, guys. You know he's not gonna let this go until we let him get his lecture out."
Dr. Wraxtiorre turned around to face us, keeping our view of the picture he had been studying blocked. "Look, it's a simple premise that too many authoritative figures find it way too easy to ask you to sidestep. 'But those with a stake in the public perception of an issue--as working professionals invariably have--are those we can rely upon least for an unbiased perspective.' I quoted that from Rebecca Blood's article, Blogs are not Journalism, but that's just a distinction between academic citation and product placement. What I did earlier when I simply named the book and didn't say anything about it was mere name-dropping, which is what product placement is. However, when I cited the article that I quoted, that was acting on my academic responsibility without product placement. However, in a blog, the authoritative verification that your readers can have for checking your facts is the very links which would amount to product placement. As a blogger you have to ask yourself: Are the facts that you cite in your article reflected in an article published by a newspaper which has posted that article online? Are the arguments you have borrowed from a technical paper actually supported by the content of that technical paper, and is that technical paper available online? Then it is no outrageous favor to ask that bloggers link their sources when they are available on the web--it adds no extra burden to your reader who doesn't seek that verification, and it invites trust from those readers who do. For example, one of the articles in that Mass Media book is about the building of a new baseball stadium in Milwaukee being spear-headed by the owner of both newspapers in that city as well as a television and a radio station, and that article is also posted online. Any blogger who wishes to cite the conflict-of-interest problem revealed by it should link it when they refer to it so that readers can trust that the blogger isn't making up the example in order to support a fictitious accusation." He paused, looking around triumphantly.
The Itinerant Philosopher stepped into the center of the Dining Area and spoke robustly. "Another example of distrust with bloggers is the recent mishap with the falsely reported death of Jon Bon Jovi." He inhaled confidently, not noticing that Dr. Wraxtiorre's scowling face behind him began to deepen in color. Blindly, the Itinerant Philosopher continued. "A newbie blogger posted a story reporting the rock star's death, and the Los Angeles Times reported two days later that the blogger's article was very similar to an LA Times article which had reported the death of Michael Jackson. But, unsurprisingly, the blogger's article has been removed from that blogger's archive--which would render the LA Times' article unverifiable."
I raised my hand meekly. After waiting for Dr. Wraxtiorre to pause and look at me expectantly, I stammered, "I had the same problem when I wrote the original 'Social Networking and Anti-Consumerism' article, researching the news reports of the deletion of the Boycott BP page from Facebook and its eventual restoration. The news articles that reported the deletion and its coincident timing with the rally in Washington D.C. provided quotes from Facebook executives that contradicted each other. But when I researched the story six months later, those same news articles on the internet--from different websites even--did not have those quotes that contradicted each other."
Dr. Wraxtiorre pointed at me, as though I had blurted out the correct answer to a baffling riddle that he had been watching us struggle to comprehend for several hours. "Exactly! The kind of trust that we have with newspaper reportage cannot be replicated in the internet because web-pages can be modified to no longer reveal the inconsistencies which make cover-ups and illegal maneuvers obvious."
Listening on from the Dining Area's foyer, the Escaped Lunatic clenched his fist and pounded it into his other hand. "Darnit, now I'll never get to the bottom of this!"
Dr. Eppie Blight did a double-take and raised his hand as if to call a nurse, but immediately thought better of it and lowered his hand to his side shamefully. He looked disparagingly at Dr. Wraxtiorre and meekly asked, "So, lack of trust with Internet Journalism isn't a failure on the part of the readers, is it? I mean, if the few, scarce and unpopular providers of genuine journalism on the internet want to be taken seriously, they will need some way to differentiate themselves from the blogosphere?"
Dr. Wraxtiorre furrowed his brow again and cupped his hand across his forehead. "You guys weren't really listening to me at all, were you?" He shook his head and stepped aside. "This picture of Trey Ratcliff was taken at the Nuclear Power Plant at Chernobyl, and the worried look on his face is directly related to the number on that Geiger counter that he is holding.
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| Trey Ratcliff at Chernobyl |
Very interesting blog you have here. Thank you for your nice comment on mine. :)
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