Technology And The Decline of Gonzo Journalism 215
johnny maelstrom writes "Pitchfork has an article on how being unable to write about technology has dumbed-down the media. It's quite interesting to see that the formulaic writings in the technology media and the assumption that we don't all get it has lead to a stagnant media. They call for the next Bangs or Thompson and a revival of Gonzo.
From the article:
'They [the audience] want a tastemaker, a voice of authority, who can put it all in perspective and knock our heads together with his or her crazy-yet-dead-on arguments.
But I think I've found the answer: We don't have a new Bangs or Thompson yet because pop culture today is primarily a technology story. And we don't know how to write about technology.'"
I'd do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
And if they could read.
We already have a Bangs and a Thompson (Score:5, Funny)
Bangs, Thompson, O'Rourke, and now Dvorak.
There you go...no need to read any further, our borders are safe. Carry on.
Re:We already have a Bangs and a Thompson (Score:2)
Still, I'd take the job. I write good tech.
Re:We already have a Bangs and a Thompson (Score:3, Insightful)
John Dvorak and Robert Cringely. I don't think we need any more tech-Gonzos.
Re:I'd do it. (Score:2)
Re:Taking advice from Pitchfork? (Score:4, Informative)
In some cases, yes, Thomson readily admits to having stories that have fictional components In particular, he admitted publicly on numerous occasions that fear & loathing in las vegas was party fictional (probably because it's not the best idea to write an entirely truthful story where you admit to committing a large number of felonies).
BUT, F&L is the exception, not the rule and it was marketed as a novel, not as a journalistic piece. HST did write things that were partly fictional, but the idea behind Gonzo journalism really doesn't have anything to do with fact vs. fiction at all. The idea behind Gonzo journalism is that no journalist can really say that they are completely unbiased about anything, so a gonzo journalist goes completely the other way and writes themselves right into the story, readily admitting and embracing bias and effectively becoming part of the story they are writing about. They aren't fictional though. This is actually something that Thomspon wrote about in some of his books and he is very adamant about it.
More about gonzo here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo [wikipedia.org]
HST's classic article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:HST's classic article (Score:3)
Re:HST's classic article (Score:2)
More accurate than you realize (Score:4, Interesting)
But the WOD has been 'won'; the vast majority of the people of HST's literary and intellectual caliber are 'too smart' for drugs, and would never even consider mind-altering experiences. And if they did, they'd likely fail the piss test that every employer seems to require. It was, IMO, the common nature of altered perception that gave rise to the electricity of the sixties. Anything that follows, bereft of unique experience, must seem prosaic and boring by comparison. As Bill Hicks said - "All that cool music they made in the 60s? *real* fuckin' high!"
Re:More accurate than you realize (Score:3)
I think HST saw the same thing: "Bazooko's Circus is what the world would be doing every Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This was the Sixth Reich."
America has been the Sixth Reich.
In some areas the WoD has been hel
that would be cool (Score:3, Funny)
I just love the muppets !!!
Re:that would be cool (Score:5, Funny)
"We were somewhere around Redmond, on the edge of Microsoft campus, when the drugs began to take hold...
I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit light headed, maybe you should drive..." when all of a sudden, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge popups, all swooping and screeching about vi4gr4 all around us. "Holy Kermit!" I shouted. "What are those goddamn animals?!?!"
"What the hell are you yelling about?" My attourney, who was pouring orange juice on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process, disclaimed. No point in warning him, I thought. He'll see those bastards eventually, the poor doomed bastard.
"As your attorney, I advise you to run Firefox with the Adblock extention and put another rock of crack in your pipe. Wakka wakka wakka!!" Damn it, I thought. So that's why that rat-bastard Fozzie Bear was so calm.
My consternation was broken once again when what appeared to be a large ergonomic office chair smashed the windshield of the convertible, a red '69 Cadillac from the rental agency. The chair bounced up, over our heads, and gracefully landed, somehow, on its wheels. My following of the chair's flight through the air with my neck nearly caused me to run into the most frightening thing I have ever seen. It may have been a monkey, or an ape, or some other type of beast, but possibly it was an executive from Microsoft. Whatever it was, it was huge, thick, and with a glare and ferocious face the like of which I had never seen. With a baboon-like intensity he was shrieking, "FUCKING GONZO!!! I'LL FUCKING KILLLLLLLL THEEEEEEEEEEEMMM!!!! DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELO..." and then it began what appeared to be a seizure, uttering gibberish at the highest possible volume like an air-raid siren and foaming at the mouth.
"As your attorney, I advise you to run that bitch over and never look back - Wokka wokka wokka!!"
That's right, I thought. Listen to the bear.
May the spirits of Jim Henson and Hunter Thompson forgive me
More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's important that people aren't sure how to interpret stories about technology. You can write an article about AOL hogging bandwidth, and while 20% of your audience scoffs at a lack of detail and your own lack of understanding, 50% of your audience doesn't understand. And rather than studying up or discussing the issue with their friends, like an average reader might do for a political or religious story, they completely lose interest.
I think this has very little to do with not knowing how to write technology, and much more to do with the fact that it is (IMO, provably) impossible to write a tech story that is understandable to even a significant portion of the population.
Maybe we do need a new kind of article, though. Perhaps we can display an article on the web, with a slider on the right, so readers can choose the level of detail and accuracy they're comfortable with. If they slide the indicator toward "troglodyte", then the article replaces certain nouns with aphorisms and factual statements with questionable analogies ("...a series of tubes"). If they slide it toward "industry insider", then all the technical jargon reappears and item names transform into well-known acronyms.
Re:More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:2)
You must not live in the same world that I do...
Re:More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the media caters to the lowest common denominator no on really thinks they need to learn anything, because after all, CNN can package stories about net neutrality in 2 minute segments. I personally believe that a lot of the "masses" are more than capable of understanding the issues, we just need someone to raise the bar.
I don't think this is unique to tech either. I think we see the same problem in politics, i.e. wiretaps, and DMCA. Rather than explain the real issues, have two talking heads barking at each other. It just so happens that this gets really ugly when technology and politics merge.
All these failings come down to one thing - money. Let's face it news is big buisness, and journalism has known for a long time that sensationalism sells papers - they, by and large, just haven't managed to preserve the noblility of their profession while selling papers. And as a result we're suffering, and the average American is more poorly informed, they're suffering, and newspaper subscriptions are falling and news segments get squeezed out for human interest, or entertainment news.
But hey, the politicians love it. Instead of debating on the merits of, say NASA funding, they get to preach about flag burning and gay marrige.
P.T. Barnum said it best (Score:2)
In the case of Fox News it is just a matter of they know their audience.
"You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public" - Attributed to PT Barnum
Re:More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:2)
Of course there is a large extent to which an author would need to write and rewrite the content, but that's hardly your fault, is it?
Re:More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:2)
An average reader would lose interest in all 3, and just read about N Sync band members coming out of the closet. That's all they want to know about anyway.
Re:More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:2)
Re:More like we don't know how to read tech... (Score:5, Funny)
First stop was CD time. The Microsoft operating system comes on an even-shinier-than-a-normal-CD CD. I shoved the disc into the drive and skinned up a quick bifter while waiting for my assistant. I mounted it and had a look at the files. Nothing special. I made an ISO. No copy protection. Well, that was handy. I sparked up the dube, then shut down the PC and stripped out its hard drive.
For a job like this I figured I had better have a decent workstation, so I'd ordered an Athlon 64 4000+, with a top-of-the-range nVidia {at least there are some i-tal drivers for nVidia cards, even if they are slow; beside which, I had plenty of cycles to spare}, two gigabit ethernet ports, serial ATA, old-fashioned parallel ATA and 8 USB ports. A case positively studded with blue diodes and enough fans to change the air in a two-bed semi in an hour. CD-RW and DVD+RW drives. Plenty of DVD+RW discs, that also worked in the TV recorder I had never sent back. A no-nonsense two-channel sound card {no point having more speakers than I have ears} plumbed through several amp and speaker combos. My trusty bipolar NAD 3120 feeding homemade speakers, a Japanese MOSFET amp working into Tannoy Mercurys, and a valve amp I had had rebuilt by a firm in Cambridge, with a response flatter than a witch's tit from DC to long wave radio into some ex-BBC studio monitors. I had a 480mm flat panel LCD, 1600x1200 pixels and not a single dead one among them. All this, you must understand, was absolutely necessary for testing the system. I had already customised Debian the way I wanted it on that machine. Now I was about to abandon the operating system I knew and loved for this Windows thing.
Kate burst through the door as I was fitting the new hard drive onto which I would install Windows. She was giggling uncontrollably. I hoped she hadn't Made A Scene. These were early days. I had the review to write, and I needed Kate to stay sane so she could keep me sane. I screwed the drive in place and attached the SATA and power cables. Then I powered the machine up.
"What's it doing now?" asked Kate.
"Booting."
"Sounds like a good idea." Kate reached for the aluminium foil. "I brought us some Naughty!"
"And I brought us some Nice."
So we had a boot of the heroin and a couple more spliffs while Windows started installing, and between tokes I configured another Linux box with two network cards as a highly-restrictive firewall. I thought we could log every packet going in or out of the Windows box just to see what it was sending where.
A word to the wise (Score:5, Insightful)
Now consider whether they can write about other topics, where you happen to be less capable of spotting any flaws.
Ignorance = cool (Score:3, Insightful)
My only consolation is that your children will reap the world that you've built for them long after I'm worm-food.
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:3, Insightful)
My consolation is that I will be the one saying "no thank you", not "ok, sir".
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:3, Funny)
Me: OK, sir.
I don't see your problem with that... : p
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:4, Insightful)
Just look at the commentary here at
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:2)
Anyway, someone else hit it on the nose: that "gonzo" stuff was clever for maybe a year or two, decades ago. Wanting more of it is like wishing more people would wear raccoon coats and do the Charleston. Actually, I'd much rather have that than a new Lester Bangs.
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:2)
it seems to be a worrying trend even for the thinkers / those who used to be bothered to think.
it's almost as if not-thinking has become the new black, or something.
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:3, Interesting)
The majority of people everywhere in the world have always expected the technology to just work. It is only from period to period that being a scientist/engineer in a specific field has really been fashionable, mainly when a breaktrough in science produce huge impact on everyday life and for a while look like magic.
When the magic is over
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:2)
$80,000-$100,000 a year.
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:2)
Yeah, it's as if the point of technology was to make things easier for everyone. Don't they realise technology is supposed to be awkward and complex, and the whole point of it is to give geeks employment?
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:2)
Being able to make the unable suffer... painfully.
Well at least until they pay large sums of money.
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:2)
They st
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:2)
Hate to say it, but attitude counts for a lot. I sympathise with everything you said, but what I DO about it is different. I explain to people, patiently, NOT condescendingly, how technology works. I defend logic, casuality, and self-critisicm as being vital to our existence and experience of the universe, and that brains are fun, and that it is worth understanding the world, and worth doing something to change it. In being a living example of how a geeky perso
Re:Ignorance = cool (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly not true given the apparent urge of slashdotters to compare technology with cars.
Rich
Car analogy warning! (Score:3, Interesting)
what is worth commenting (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, the raised points are valid and makes you wonder: what is it worth writing about? Seth Godin (video [google.de])gives no clues, but makes you think about it.
Interesting Idea.... (Score:2, Funny)
Part of the problem.... (Score:2)
The stark reality is that all of these things - ALL of them - will be "mama's stuff" in about twenty years, give or take.
as soon as you get technical, its flame on (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:as soon as you get technical, its flame on (Score:3, Interesting)
Say, what the hell are you, anyway? =)
Re:as soon as you get technical, its flame on (Score:2)
For all the flames, there is however, some healthy exchange of ideas, which I would prefer over the uninformative crap the gets spewed on the nightly news.
Is it a technology story indeed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it really? I think the problem is that we want it to be. Lester Bangs wrote about rock. Rock would not exist withoug electric guitar, tape recorder and analog amplifier. Could Lester Bangs fix a broken tape recorder? Was he a great critic because he understood how a guitar works? No. He wrote about rock music as a cultural phenomenon, not a technological one. I see crisis in videogame criticism precisely in the fact that there are too many technofetish geeks covering it. We read too many reviews focusing on technical details - what 3D engine was used, how many frames per second you get in given resolution, what are the system requirements etc. We read too few focusing on the storyline, character development or the background information. It's like art criticism focusing only on chemical composition of the paint used by the painter. Ever since Gutenberg, culture ALWAYS was a technology story, but what we need now are critics writing about stories and meanings, not about the 3D engines, pixels and frames per second.
Re:Is it a technology story indeed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it a technology story indeed? (Score:5, Interesting)
We may even be able to expand that to a societal issue, as it seems movies are having the same problems [slashdot.org].
Re:Is it a technology story indeed? (Score:2)
You had me. :) I'd almost clicked to the next story, content that you'd made a comment that put this in perspective, but something nagged at the back of my head. In the end, I think I have to disagree this time. Let me explain.
Looking in the wrong places (Score:2)
Look at magazines like Edge in the UK - 'serious' games journalism for serious gamers. They seem to 'get' gaming, and I rarely read an article in there that strikes me as dumbing down (and if you want Gonzo-style journalism, there's always the Biffovision or Jeff Minter columns).
It's out there. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason Hunter got published at all in his day was he sold media. Then as now, the elderly media corporations aren't taking any editorial interest in what they print beyond how many papers/ads/commercials it'd sell. In Hunter's day there was the old Rolling Stone magazine (not yet a totally hideous corporate parody of itself) which ate his work up as long as it sold well to its target audience of hippies, armchair revolutionaries, and other stoned people.
Unfortunately, the things that sell the most homogenized corporate papers and magazines these days usually mention "Brangelina" picking something out of their teeth or Britney Spears drop-kicking another baby while driving. Average Joe Sixpack doesn't want to be bothered with anything more than whether his favorite useless overpaid sports team won, who his favorite useless overpaid movie stars are getting it on with, and possibly a feel-good local piece about Granny Gums Magillicuddy who turns 103 years young this week and swears it's all thanks to a lifelong diet of yogurt and aquarium gravel.
This could well shift as more people turn to the customizable, user-publishable news sources on the Internet, but the old school are not going to leave quietly. One result of this is newspapers' web sites renaming their columnists' writings to "blogs" and setting up RSS feeds.
Re:It's out there. (Score:2)
The only reason Hunter got published at all in his day was he sold media. Then as now, the elderly media corporations aren't taking any editorial interest in what they print beyond how many papers/ads/commercials it'd sell.
It might also have something to do with the younger generation being less interested in print media. It's hard to sell papers/newszines to people who would rather go to MySpace, YouTube, or watch The Daily Show.
In my own little world, there IS one gonzo journalist. His name is Matt D
Re:It's out there. (Score:2)
So, were hippies as common as Joe Sixpack today?
I don't think so.
Trust me, there is still fringe stuff out there, but the current trend is for there to be fringe stuff that gets bought out by some big corp and then converted into a brand name, rounding off the edges, and then selling said brand name to the masses. Yes, Rolling Stone is a perfect example. To some degree, Netscape and Napster are other more recent examples. All three of these really only have one thing in common with the original -- the na
Don't see his point (Score:5, Insightful)
shooting at the wrong targets (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the reason nobody is able to discuss pop culture to the satisfaction of the author is due to pop culture itself, or more specifically its ever-shortening average attention span and its ever-increasing demand for the Next Big Thing. The fact that technical knowledge provides the objects of pop culture's current desire is entirely coincidental.
I disagree: The changes just come too fast (Score:3, Interesting)
The 70s? Disco, Glamrock, and so on. And again, a whole decade was in Saturday Night Fever.
80s? New wave, Synthpop.
Sure, there were some counter-cultures, by-cultures, trends that went along and against the mainstream, but trends held their ground for years.
The 90s started to change things. Trends started to emerge, get hyped up and disappear just as quickly again. And it didn't slow down in the new millenium. Quite the opposite. Things that are on top of the coolness list are just SO outdated within a few months or even only weeks.
Who can keep pace? Additionally, what adds to the problem (for the writers, that is) is that today, more and more people detest the media hype and instead rely on "peer" reviews. What's hot on YouTube is not up to the editors of the RollingStone or some other pop culture magazine, but it's the other viewers. You could well end up with some crap video being the pinnacle of entertainment, because it is just SO crappy that it's rolled over to being cool.
Badger,Badger,Badger, anyone...? Hey, ow, stop hitting me! Yeah, sure, it's over. Been over for LONG. The French Erotic Film is over (in case it ever started, that is), but that's today. 2 weeks of fame. MAYBE three if you're really exceptional. If you land 2 hits right next to each other, you're a star. For the month they are known.
What critic could keep up that pace? The only thing this has to do with technology is that technology offers the means to spread it faster. The content as well as word about it, the ability to let others know about something cool you found, encountered or did. But aside of that, technology plays a minor role. It's just the development of pop culture, not something miraculously technological that pushes the writers aside.
Re:I disagree: The changes just come too fast (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
Top 40 hits for:
1960 [cylist.com]
1965 [cylist.com]
1969 [cylist.com]
Distance in time reduces our level of resolution just as surely as distance in space; we tend to think of recent decades as homogeneous chunks of time (and, if we go back a century or so, we think of centuries the same way; go back further, and it's millennia.) But they are not homogeneous at all to the people living in them. In the case of 1960's music, what made it an exciting time for music journalism was that it was changing so fast.
Re:I disagree: The changes just come too fast (Score:2)
Today, you can consider yourself lucky if you manage to be hit for a month. Then again, after a month everyone downloaded the song already, so...
flawed thesis... (Score:2)
The 80s came in with disco, had a huge dose of hard rock/heavy metal/glam metal/pop hard rock and turned to new wave and then past that to alternative & "college rock" (REM, U2, etc.) and a subcurrent of industrial and dance industrial.
I'm not as familiar with the 70s, as I was a lot younger then. But the early 70s had folk, the Beatles and the leftovers of the summer of love. The middle 70s moved to guitar rock and black R&B (Earth, Wind and Fire FTW) and then the later 70s
I saw the title of this piece... (Score:2)
I think Gonzo would be good journalist and commentator... certainly a lot more dignified than Dan Rather or Bill O'Reilly and a lot less shrill and cartoon-like than Sean Hannity or Katie Couric.
Extrapolation. (Score:4, Insightful)
Whenever I see journalists talking about technology, I notice that most of the time they are completely wrong or way off the mark. When I think about it, I cannot recall any instance of mainstream media getting a technology story right. Whether it is ignorance or an overwhelming need to sensationalize, I do not know. But that is besides the point.
If they are getting all of this stuff wrong, what are they getting wrong about topics in which I am not well-versed? Could it be that everything they are reporting is as erroneous and confused yet we take it at face value because we know little about the subject matter? I think that if you find reporting on technology to be crap, you should be a little concerned about everything else you read and hear on the news. But then, you should be sceptical regardless.
Simple solution ... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why we read
Really, this is hardly a new problem. Print journalism has long had high-quality sources of scientific and other tech news, though most of them are now online [sciencenews.org]. The fact that 99% of the general public, including the mainstream media (MSM), were unaware of them didn't change the fact that good information was available to anyone at all interested. We've had weekly publications like Science and Nature for more than a century, and note that both are much fatter than Time or Newsweek.
We do have a bit of a problem with the commercial consolidation in the MSM, which naturally goes with reducing costs by dumbing down. But anyone with access to a computer and the Net can easily spend their entire day reading good quality tech news. And that's probably where we'll find the next Hunter Thompson.
Or maybe (s)he's already here, blogging away. Anyone got any nominations?
He's so wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine...
So finally I've learned all the little tricks to surviving in this hellish desert village and I've just started to rack up some meaningful kills. The avatars of children and adults lay strewn everywhere with the walls painted red from the splatter of bullet impacts. I crouch down in a corner and plant the bomb when I hear a boom and the inevitable HEADSHOT. And it's over...until someone reveals to me that he'd been watching though the eyes of he who slayed me and that I had been cheated. My assailant had been using wallhacks and aimbots, prfire scripts and quick reloading tricks, speed hacks and he'd painted a dot on his monitor. What kind of rat bastard cheats at a kids game I thought? What kind of slimy son-of-a-bitch would stoop so low? I had MONEY riding on this for God's sake!
ok, stop imagining...
hunter Thompson saw nothing there because of the sanitized nature of the game. When you walk away NOTHING is changed. It's why I stopped playing RPG's. If I spent all the time I wasted pretending to blacksmith online ACTUALLY BLACKSMITING I would know HOW TO BE A BLACKSMITH BY NOW.
As for music criticism? Who needs it when I can LISTEN to the album and decide if I like it.
There is no gonzo journalism about games because games do not deserve it. Games are what you do between doing significant things. Where's the gonzo journalism about Monopoly?
And there's ons more thing. You cannot marginalize the far left and still expect to see crazy, status-quo shaking arguments.
Blacksmithing (Score:3, Interesting)
(Flickr set of all my Philmont photos [flickr.com])
Re:He's so wrong. (Score:2)
Gonzo, please no. (Score:5, Interesting)
'I hate that shit...' he muttered.
Not a man of technology ...
Politics , yes [sex, drugs] . Music, yes [ rock and roll]. Technology - no ..
Not medium for gonzo journalism.
I work for the British national press and, although it saddens me to say it, the last thing journalism needs right now is more people humping the 'gonzo' thing. There are so many kids out there who think that any thing that crawls into their ADD ridden brain is 'gonzo' and therefore worthy of print. Well, it's not. It's just verbal vomit.
In the current media climate, what journalism needs is FACTS backed up by well researched and thought out opinion. Not ten million myspace blogs.
Anyway, that's my 2c.
Cheers
Rob
PS : in my humble opinion, Matt Taibbi [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Taibbi] is doing an excellent job are carrying on the beat/gonzo thing.. check out his article in the Stone on Iraq [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/106871 89/fort_apache_iraq/] . It's well researched and well written..
PPS: if this post doesn't deserve a modding up - I don't know what the hell does.. Also, my nickname was chosen years ago - before becoming a journalist. (to stop the trolls calling me a hypocrite ;) )
Re:Gonzo, please no. (Score:2)
PPS: if this post doesn't deserve a modding up - I don't know what the hell does.
In the current Slashdot climate, what you need is FACTS backed up by well researched and thought out opinion.
Re:Gonzo, please no. (Score:2)
Feh! (Score:2)
'They' just don't know where to look.
-Charlie (who is off to Vegas, coincidence?)
Plenty of Gonzo (Score:2)
Let's see, off the top of my head, Gary Brecher [alternet.org], Matt Taibbi [rollingstone.com], Mark Ames [alternet.org] or John Dolan [mokk.bme.hu].
Of course, those are all eXile [exile.ru] alumns, and one of them is probably a Nom de Guerre, but I'm sure others can be found if you look hard enough.
I write Gonzo Journalism (Score:2)
While not on drugs like HST, I do suffer from mental illnesses that give me a HST type style.
Re:I write Gonzo Journalism (Score:3, Insightful)
We were somewhere around Arakkis when the spice... (Score:2)
These articles are written in a chronological, personal style that you might call Gonzo, though I'm not sure I'd call it all "journalism". My favourite is the insanely long but utterly fascinating account of an enormous heist in Eve Online, The Great Scam by Nightfreeze [circa1984.com], which will be a hit with the Slashdotters. Any roaming Diggers will want to skip directly to the also well written S [gamegirladvance.com]
Re:We were somewhere around Arakkis when the spice (Score:2)
The solution will come in time... I think (Score:2)
1) It's hard to write about technology. If you write about it in a way those who understand the technology will appreciate, the majority of your audience won't get it. If
Who need them? (Score:2)
Re:Who need them? (Score:2)
Yes, we can now log on read any number of opinions from any number of "experts". We can develop our own short list of sites and blogs that we use when cultivating our thoughts. That is the benefit of the Internet, but I believe that the author would also see that as its Achilles' Heel.
Finding a strong voice that captures the attention of many, inside and outside of the primary subculture, is something that hel
What is special about technology? (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdotters know something about technology. (Score:2)
This reminds me of something I wrote in 1998 after Harlan Ellison announced that there was something particularly broken about journalism on the Internet.
And all this time...... (Score:2)
End of the Line (Score:2)
Now, with even CNN and the NY Times offering reporters' blogs up for perusal, Gonzo has lost its reason f
Gonzo is gone (Score:2, Insightful)
It's just not possible anymore. I've been an adult in the pre-internet, pre-tech-explosion world and the post. And I'll tell you this: that world is gone, never to return. The outsider who has an overview is a thing of the past. The massive communications and tech explosion that started in the 70s and accelerated thereafter every year has added so many layers to the onion of life that no one can possibly pull it all together, even in the superficial sense of clever and entertaining social commentary. He won
Quality (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone mentioned the lack of tech understanding, and I think that's another big reason for the lack of good tech writing. How many tech journalists can discuss at length and in depth the difference between AAC and mp3 file formats? Or the advan
Re:What about John C. Dvorak? (Score:4, Funny)
Since Dvorak evidently whiffs large amounts of raw ether before typing his column, I'd say the comparison is valid.
Re:Gonzo == crap (Score:2)
Re:Gonzo == crap (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the reason "Gonzo" and New Journalism is so underappreciated today is two-fold. One, there is just no longer any capacity to be shocked by anything. Gonzo at it's best is shocking writing that jolts one out of a staid, or concrete mindset. But what is there left to be shocked about in 2006? I think one could argue pretty persuasively that Steven Colbert does Gonzo Journalism every night on Colbert Report. But Colbert Report is considered satire, not journalism and is largely dismissed by mainstream media [crooksandliars.com]. Ditto John Stewart, of course.
The second reason for the depreciation of Gonzo is simply dilution through imitation. There are/were so many HST wannabes (including yours truly) that the style has been run into the ground. Few people know or acknowledge that Wolfe, Thompson, Terry Southern, et. al. were serious writers who worked very dilligently at the craft of writing. It all looks thrown together, but that was artifice. For example, Thompson as a young writer used to spend evenings retyping Hemingway and Fitzgerald so that he could get a feel for the words as they were laid down on the page. Few so-called Gonzo writers today are that serious about their craft.
More's the pity. We could use some good Gonzo writing nowadays. With all the hair-pulling within and without the media and its close observers with regards to whether "objective" journalism and "journalism as usual" serves the purposes of an informed republic, how refreshing would it be to see a serious journal take the wraps off a new writer in the gonzo style willing to rip the status quo a new asshole. Giant bats are optional.
Re:Gonzo == crap (Score:2)
http://www.bigempire.com/filthy [bigempire.com]
One could draw some paralells between his style and Gonzo.
Re:Gonzo == crap (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't find a cite right now, but a coworker and I were talking some time back and he said that he read somewhere that people that got their political news from The Daily Show were more informed than those who got their "journalism" from mainstream media.
Daily Show viewers better informed (Score:3, Informative)
I don't get Comedy Central right now but I love both Daily Show and Colbert Report. I would say they inform me of issues in a way similar to scan
Re:Gonzo == crap (Score:2)
Re:Gonzo == crap (Score:2)
HST always seemed to me to be a carrier of a weirdly contagious sort of self-centered-ness, where neither he (HST) nor his fans could see past the curious myopic vision of HST himself. The best example, I think, is the book Hell's Angels. Here's this toady wierdo, shows up on his Triumph motorcycle and ingratiates himself into the biker gang. As the book progresses, HST think
Re:Gonzo == crap (Score:2)
I know the gonzo journalist wouldn't care (heck, most of you would likely say the gonzo was non-gonzo if concerned about PC), but so many in society today don't want to offend anyone. Have we innoculated ourselves against strong opinions by raising a generation that believes that hurting someone else's feelings is tantamount to murder?
Re:Gonzo == crap (Score:2)
In some circles you'd be shunned if you suggested that pot wasn't the answer to all the devine questions, while in others you'd be shunned if you suggested it wasn't the devil's weed.
It's really the anti-political correctness idea that's new. The concept that bad manners and hurting someone's feelings is a good thing.
Re:Gonzo == crap (Score:2)
But as you yourself said, the style's been run into the ground. Perhaps a clarification is necessary: we could use someone with the creativity and work ethic of Thompson. Just keep far, far away from his style. It's not effective anymore and it's completely ineffective for technology (as the submitter implied).
Re:But Hey... (Score:2)
Re:But Hey... (Score:2)
If anything Leo from the Screen Savers was the best tech journalist I've ever seen. He took tasks and tech well beyond my own knowledge and explained it in terms simple enough that even my one step away from computer illiterate mother could understand without much of a problem.
If you gave him a segment on a Today Show or Good Morning America I guarantee you'd start seeing computer literacy levels rising throughout the country.
Re:But Hey... (Score:2)
Re:What is Leo up to? (Score:2)
Re:Summed up the best by his own words (Score:2)
It's amazing...for all of the choice and diversity of opinion available on the Net, people return to wanting one person to tell them what is good or not, or what products are worthy and which are not.
Re:I was Gonzo and I still am. (Score:3, Insightful)