The Chicago Tribune dips its toes further into the online video waters

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A couple weeks ago, I noticed that the Chicago Tribune removed the navigation window that allowed direct access to its blogs from its front page. (Boo-hiss, incidentally.) In its place was an expanded video console that gave you access to more of its taped video packages, from site-specific packages to CLTV news reports.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when they launched an entire separate site devoted to video called ChicagoLive.com. I wrote a brief post about it for TOC, but it started squeezing my mindgrapes again today when the Trib posted a story about Mayor Daley’s response to his son’s investment in a company that had business with the city.

(That’s a whole separate post, so I’ll just say this, particularly to those Chicagoans who’ve found themselves calloused over by corruption as of late: if you’re giving Mayor Daley the benefit of the doubt, and believe he didn’t know his son was involved with Municipal Sewer Services, is that really a man you want running a world-class city?)

Here’s what’s great about the way this story is posted: I can get the 4 W’s from the story itself, and then see what happened at that news event via the video of the news conference, unedited and uninterrupted, complete with some guy shushing the chatterboxes in the background and Daley’s voice cracking when he speaks of how much he loves his son. It’s a complete picture.

Unfortunately, it’s the exact opposite of how the Trib normally handles video on its site.

More often than not, the Trib slaps video segments on its site that aren’t at all complimentary of the stories they’re paired with. In fact, they’re usually CLTV stories on those same topics. CLTV is fine on its own, but everyone knows that television news presents a shorter, capsulized version of a newspaper story. So instead of the video providing more of the story, it actually provides less.

And that brings me back around to ChicagoLive.com. The Trib is honest enough about the goals of the site. In a press release (posted in full at The Lost Remote), Allison Scholly of Tribune Interactive said:

“Chicagolive.com serves our customers by creating a unique and visually engaging environment for users to post or view videos and for advertisers to promote their messages.”

An excerpt from an internal memo posted by Chicagoist put a finer point on the matter of advertisers:

“Chicagolive.com will also serve our advertisers by offering a new avenue for them to reach the audience they are looking for. Online video is growing by leaps and bounds, and advertisers are looking for ways to take advantage of its interest to web users.”

As I alluded to on TOC‘s blog, ChicagoLive.com is “unique,” but for all the wrong reasons: it doesn’t have many of the social networking or community aspects people normally expect of sites that depend on user-submitted content, and it requires an approval process before videos will post.

The latter is perhaps to be expected: The Trib’s a huge entity, and an easy target for lawsuits. So it’s in its best interest not to post videos that would be controversial. The likelihood that someone will submit hard-hitting citizen journalism is certainly there, but it’s unlikely it’ll get past the Trib’s screeners since they’d be unlikely to post anything that would anger a potential source or their advertisers. But if they’re serious about it, they’ll need to find a way to come to terms with it. Still, I think the jury’s still out on the feasibility of crowdsourcing in journalism so perhaps it makes sense for the Trib to take tentative steps. (Then again, it’s been a year so perhaps a mistrial’s already been declared.)

That hesitancy is, I think, what is at the heart of the the Trib’s reluctance to embrace all of the Web 2.0 tech. In its past online offerings, the Trib has taken a wait-and-see approach. Tribune columnist Eric Zorn was an early adopter – early for the MSM anyway – of the power of blogs, but it was a while before the Tribune extended the privilege to anyone else. But with all its resources, the Trib is in a position to give people exactly what they’re looking for so it can compliment what it already offers, and provide that complete picture. The Daley story above is a great example of that.

Sooner or later, the Trib will get more comfortable providing this kind of instant access to news events, and will see the value in allowing people to create their own version of its site, whether through crafting user-specific front pages or offering more user-submitted content. They’ll do this if for no other reason than because advertisers follow users, and users follow content that gives them more information, not less, and information that gives them exactly what they’re looking for, and allows them to move it around as they please. Even if that information is as mindless as a bunch of kids from Park Ridge High School doing “The Safety Dance.”

And for anyone who’s reading this and thinking “Hey, why don’t you take all these high-minded musings and put ’em to work on TOC‘s site, smartass?” all I can say is: just wait.

My first mistake was listening to White Lion in the first place

Music,

Today I was working on the TOC site, and listening to the Hard Rock Cafe: 80s Heavy Metal compilation. If memory serves, I acquired this from a friend who works at a radio station and occasionally raids their prize closet before throwing a bunch of stuff in an envelope destined for Chicago (this is also how I acquired the KISS boxed set). Several weeks ago, I discovered that 80s heavy metal is the perfect genre to code to for three reasons:

1. Despite its volume – and often its misogyny – it’s pretty easy to ignore because most of it is performed by people who are not very bright (For instance: “I’m into total affection/Not being scared if you never please me” from “Lay It Down” by Ratt. I’ve had some less-than-ideal sexual experiences but I don’t think I’ve ever had a fear that I wouldn’t get an orgasm. Maybe a concern, but it never evolved into all-out fear.
2. Most 80s heavy metal – and man is that a loosely applied term when it comes to this collection – combines driving guitars and drums with aggressively poppy melodies. This is ideal sonic motivation for tasks that are largely devoid of intellectual thought.
3. Occasional involuntary air guitar/drums helps to keep my fingers loose and stave off carpal tunnel.

Anyway, all this is a precursor to saying I had a moment of sheer disappointment today when I realized I have been mis-hearing a lyric from White Lion’s “Wait” for years. I thought the lyric was:

Wait, wait – I never got the chance to lie to you
Now I only want to say I love you one more time

Not exactly Dylan, but not exactly Fergie either. In fact, I’d say it’s a solid kiss-off lyric.

Except it isn’t. It’s actually:

Wait – wait no I never had a chance to love you
Now I only wanna say I love you one more time

From kiss-off to kiss-ass. A weak, wet noodle of a lyric that also sounds a little stalkerish too. I felt so foolish, like the time I found out a lot of the songs Freddie Mercury wrote for Queen’s last album were about his cat.

Rock'ed

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Actual press release I received this week (with subject heading that read “Shiri Appleby Wears Katie Zorn to Movie Rock’s![sic]”

“Shiri Appleby wears Katie Zorn to Conde Nast Media Group’s Movies Rock 2007
New York, NY
December 2, 2007–Katie Zorn is pleased to announce that Shiri Appleby, star of upcoming Charlie Wilson’s War, wore her deep V dress to the star studded event.”

Too bad Shiri Appleby doesn’t look very pleased. Seriously, have you ever seen a sadder face on a person? It looks like she’s being forced to wear a dress once worn by Miss Puerto Rico. If you’re going to cross-promote with someone (and the inclusion of her new film there clues you in to exactly what’s going on here), at least take a decent picture of her. Then again, maybe she looks like that because someone asked “Hey Shiri, how come your character’s name in the film is Jailbait.” (I really wish I was making that up.)

Also, can we declare a moratorium on the use of the word “rocks?” In the last few days I’ve seen that “Movies Rock” (or in the case of the release above “Rock’s”) “Change Rocks” (the evidence offered in the form of Jeff Tweedy and Stephan Jenkins certain begs the contrary) and “Chicago Rocks” (heard in an on-air promo for The Loop radio station, which then listed several things that supposedly rock including “Millennium Park” which almost made me run off the road). Then, of course, there’s the old chestnut “Cleveland Rocks” and the less said about that the better. (“Chinese Rocks,” on the other hand, is a total different story.)

I’m not even sure what “Rocks” is functioning as in the above examples. Predictive adjective? Verb? And if it’s a verb, what exactly is being rocked? We as a collective? The universe? I’m not a total curmudgeon though so let’s agree to limit its use to only incidences where music is involved and a direct or indirect object is in evidence.

The Reader loses writers, the city just loses

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The Beachwood Reporter says it so I don’t have to.

No matter what your stripes, or what you look for from your local periodicals or city journalism, you should be mourning the loss of John Conroy from the Reader’s pages. If a newspaper can be said to have a soul, he was it. That’s no knock against the work that Henderson, Mogira and Marlan turned out, but Conroy was the living, breathing spirit of the paper’s advocacy wing.

As usual, Michael Miner is offering the best reporting on the Reader’s goings-on including the spot between a rock and a hard place that editor Alison True’s been living in since August: cut the budget but don’t lose what makes the Reader, the Reader. The rock just gave way.

I think the Reader is about a year away from going online-only, and I have yet to have someone tell me why that would be a bad thing, or how it would be any more damaging to the paper than a move like this.

Journey's lead singer found in the Phillipines

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I know that makes it sounds like Steve Perry was lost somewhere in Manila, but no. Apparently, Journey have been on the hunt for a new singer because the public demands it. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s the press release I got today (which, like me, is way late to the game but I can’t resist an easy post these days so here we go):

JOURNEY WELCOMES ARNEL PINEDA WITH “OPEN ARMS” TO THEIR FAMILY AS THE BAND’S NEW LEAD SINGER

Proving that Journey is incapable of issuing a press release without a bad pun.

After much speculation…the wait is finally over.

Who was speculating? I mean, I wrote a whole post on the last guy who left and even I stopped thinking about it after I hit the Publish Post button.

JOURNEY–Neal Schon (guitar), Jonathan Cain (keyboards), Ross Valory (bass), Deen Castronovo (drums)–is proud to introduce fans all over the world to their new lead singer, Arnel Pineda (“pin-eh-da”). He replaces Jeff Scott Soto, who parted ways with the band earlier this year after stepping in for Steve Augeri, who had to leave the band in 2006 for medical reasons.

Arnel hails from Quezon City in the Philippines and has been singing Journey songs–in addition to original material–with his band, The Zoo, for the past couple of years in clubs all over his homeland. Joining the legendary band is a dream come true for him.

Now, you’re probably saying “They couldn’t find anyone in the U.S. who could be their lead singer?” The answer is yes. I think they just couldn’t find anyone in the U.S. willing to be their lead singer. So they went the Judas Priest route and plucked a guy from cover band obscurity.

Speaking of, this is The Zoo:

The fact that I can hear only two people clapping during the performance notwithstanding, I’d give the guy a 7, with 10 being Steve Perry and 1 being a drunk frat boy singing karaoke at Trader Todd’s after a Cubs game who intersperses drunken “Fuck yeaaaah”s every half a verse. I was going to go with an 8 but he needs to work on the “Woaaaaah”-derived aspects of his vocals. The band I’d give a 3 so I am pretty sure Arnel is not looking back.

“It’s so exciting to sing with one of the best bands in the world.

“But singing with Journey will be fun, too.”

“It’ll be a lot of hard work on my part and I’m actually looking forward to the scrutiny I’ll get from the hardcore JOURNEY fans. I know they’ll expect me to sound exactly like ‘the voice’ (Steve Perry), but that will never happen. I know there’s only one Steve Perry in this world.”

Yes, and even he is saying “C’mon dude, ‘the voice’? That’s a bit much.”

When it was time for JOURNEY to look for a new lead singer, the internet came to their rescue. Guitarist Neal Schon wanted someone new to the music business…

…so that person would be unfamiliar with how royally screwed he was going to get…

…so he turned to YouTube. After finding Arnel singing “Faithfully,” he knew he had found the perfect frontman.

So Neal Schon used the exact same method I did five minutes ago to find a performance by Journey’s new lead singer.

“I was frustrated about not having a singer,” explains guitarist Neal Schon, “so I went on YouTube for a couple of days and just sat on it for hours.

Although apparently Neal is far less efficient than I am.

“I was starting to think I was never going to find anybody. But then I found The Zoo and I watched a bunch of different video clips that they had posted. [snip] Arnel doesn’t sound synthetic and he’s not emulating anyone.”

Um, dude was in a cover band. He made his living by at least somewhat emulating everyone.

“I tried to get a hold of him through YouTube and I finally heard from him that night…”

God, what a rough 12 hours that must have been.

“…but it took some convincing to get him to believe that it really was me and not an imposter.”

This seems overly paranoid on Pineda’s part, but I suppose if you are covering Journey songs every night, you’re expecting one of your friends to call you and say “Hi, this is Neal Schon and I want you to be the new lead singer of Journey” on a daily basis.

Arnel Pineda picks up the story: “My friend Noel picked up the message on YouTube and told me it was from Neal. I thought it was a hoax so I ignored it. Noel said, ‘what if it really was Neal and he wanted to offer you the chance of a lifetime?’ So I e-mailed Neal back and the rest is history.”

Well, not yet. But I’m giving it about six months before this is “history.”

JOURNEY is currently working on a new album with legendary producer Kevin Shirley, which they hope to release by spring/summer 2008. Details will be announced early next year.

If by “legendary” you mean “has produced some legendary bands’ lesser albums, then yes, legendary. Kevin Shirley appears to be the guy you go to at the end of your career which…seems about right in this case.

There must be some misunderstanding

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The Trib’s internet critic, Steve Johnson, doesn’t always have a firm grasp of the issues he’s writing about, but this non-tech-y post really takes the cake:

Jennifer Love Hewitt is protesting unhealthy women’s body expectations after allegedly unflattering bikini photos of her were published on the Web. We’re with you in principle, Jennifer, but isn’t insisting on your blog that you are still a “size 2” part of the same problem?

Sorry, fella, but the reason why a woman like Jennifer Love Hewitt needs to point out that she’s a “size 2” is because someone ought to recognize the stupidity of criticizing a woman for being “fat” even when she is, in fact, a size 2. In doing so, she draws attention to the hypocrisy of expecting a woman – any woman – to keep her body looking the same at 28 as it did at 18.*

I know it’s supposed to be OK to mock someone because they’re pretty and famous, but that doesn’t always make it right.

Speaking of not understanding the Internet, there’s this story from Michael Booth at the Denver Post:

The dirty little secret about the wildly popular Craigslist is that one click away from its home page are some raunchy and often deeply offensive forums inviting blatant racism, rants and sexual kinks.

That’s a secret?

While Craigslist guidelines threaten to cut off users who post offensive or abusive material, in daily practice the site’s handful of full-time employees can’t keep pace flagging and removing rogue entries.

True enough. In fact, that was the exact reason why Craiglist objected to a lawsuit filed against it last year.

This lawsuit ignores the essential nature of craigslist, demanding that we cease treating our users with trust and respect, and instead impose inappropriate, mistake-prone, and generally counter-productive centralized controls…controls which would actually be less effective in catching discriminatory ads than what we have in place currently, and which would vastly reduce the number of legitimate non-discriminatory ads that the site could process.

In fact, it’s up to USERS of Craiglist to flag those posts, not the employees. As Booth acknowledges at the end of the piece:

Buckmaster said user flags result in millions of postings wiped out each month, from about 30 million monthly entries.

Not that it stops him from engaging in a little fear-mongering, including raising the possibility that “your kids” are probably exposed to every manner of filth.

‘Course maybe they’re the ones flagging it all as inappropriate, which ought to make you pat yourself on the back for some good parenting skills.

* This graf originally appeared on the TOC blog, but I was still irked at the end of the day and needed to further vent.

High infidelity

Music

Greg Kot has an interview with Paul McCartney this week. There’s a quote in it on whether he’s an audiophile that just about made me erupt into apoplexy:

“I’m used to hearing things on the radio. OK, I’ve got a sound system on my car. But we used to listen on the beach. As kids, in the summer, you’d listen to a little mono radio. It sounded great to me. The joke was when George Martin first announced this new thing called stereophonic and we walked into the studio and there were two speakers, we went, ‘Great, twice as loud!’ I still think like that. That’s what stereo should’ve been. Never mind all these putting things in funny places. It sounds OK on iPod. Those little headphones come out of my ears all too readily. Obviously, I love to hear the music on a great big system straight off the master. But if you’re in a car, or on the beach, or somebody’s playing it on a railway station, it still sounds good.” (emphasis mine)

So there you have it. The man who – for most people – earned co-credit for the sound experience that is Sgt. Pepper’s and the 2nd half of Abbey Road is saying that such groundbreaking studio wizardry was little more than “putting things in funny places.”

Also, when is the last time you suppose Paul McCartney spent significant time in a railway station? Was he waiting for the one after 909?

A bit of bizness

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I had just a spot of time this morning to post on the whole art vs. commerce debate – a subject I imagine I’ll come back to time and again – and while I appeared to have enough time to get all ponderous on that subject, I didn’t have time to eke out a few housekeeping items:

* I’ve done a little updating on the blogroll. Mainly to add the folks around town that I’ve been reading regularly, but also to create a long-delayed section for some non-Chicago folks I’ve met at various music fests.

* I was busy on the TOC blog last week with reviews of Sharon Jones and Dan Wilson. The post on Wilson was rather painful to write. I don’t enjoy writing a bad review of an artist I really like, and while I really have more of a problem with his new album than his live show, when the live show is mostly made up of material off the new album, it’s tough to write anything but. I still seem him next time he rolls through town, but it’ll be with some hesitation.

In addition to those posts on music, I also found some time to talk about last week’s episode of Heroes, and these ads I saw for two re-releases that made me double-check what year it was.

* I’m not one to delve too much into the personal here, but I found myself quite happy and fulfilled over the long Thanksgiving weekend as it was filled with the things for which I’m most thankful: lots of good times with co-workers, family, my lady, and friends, along with generous dollops of movies, books and music (big ups to Rory Lake’s Karaoke Dreams at the American Legion FDR Post 923).

I can’t imagine my life without these people and things, in part because each always gives me a little lesson in who I am, and who I’m hoping to be.

And apparently that person does a kickass version of “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.”

Art, the non-Garfunkel variety

Music

There’s been some fiery back and forth in the comments in this post on the selling of art (specifically music) and I thought it was worth bringing it out into the open.

Julene said: Um, wow. So if art is sold – it is no longer that artist’s work? I think what you are trying to say is that commissioned work for a specific ad or commercial reason is different than art created for for oneself or art’s sake and ended up being purchased.

No, I’m saying that if you create art ostensibly for yourself or under the auspices of a set of ideas (the way, say, Jeff Tweedy writes music as a part of Wilco) and then allow it to be used for commercial purposes, then be prepared for people to have a very different idea about what your art is or even who you are. Does anyone else think of The Caesars as anything other than “the iPod band?”

Now, this isn’t a value judgment. When you are commissioned to do public art, you are operating under a specific set of circumstances and creating art within them. It can still be striking, moving art. But this is different than creating art for its own sake. The motivations behind its creation and then how it’s perceived are fundamentally different.

Julene’s absolutely correct in saying that an artist does not have complete control over how his or her art is perceived whether it was created as a commission or for its own sake (witness the way the meaning of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Born in the U.S.A.” has been lost behind a fist-pumping chorus). When I said “artists need to be OK with is the notion that it is no longer their art when it is sold” I meant that they are placing that art they created for its own sake within a different context than the one in which it’s created. So the feelings behind it are no longer purely their own. It’s seen as Apple’s or Volkswagen’s.

There’s a giant gaping hole in my argument here that anyone is welcome to exploit and that’s this: most musicians don’t just create art for its own sake, it’s created in the hopes that they can make a living (a.k.a. money). My short retort to this argument is that most often music that can also be called art (not all of it can) is still created for its own sake in the hopes that someone will be willing to put up money to support that artist’s efforts without compromising the creation of the art. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes the artist is complicit in this, sometimes the artist is not.

But that’s a whole other post, even though I’ve now opened this can and dumped the worms are all over the place.

Addendum: My man in Memphis, Kerry Hayes, has a related post at his blog Rural Free Delivery, where he points out that Kevin Barnes, lead singer of Of Montreal, posted about this issue on Stereogum. I read Barnes’s missive after my original post but found his logic so lacking in…well, logic that it didn’t seem worth it to post a counter-argument.

Addendum 2: Thanks to a referral link, I just found this piece by Anne Elizabeth Moore on this topic that’s a response to the Miles Raymer column that started this whole jag.

If your fans jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?

Music, ,

There’s little point in raising any objections to The Eagles’ exclusive distribution deal with Wal-Mart for their double-album Long Road Out of Eden just because it’s about money. Back in 1994, The Eagles had an unfortunate influence on the music industry thanks to their prolonged absence from it, and were therefore able to command upwards of $100 – then a princely sum – for a ticket to one of their reunion shows, which has led to an ongoing competition to see who can command the most dollars per ticket. But in terms of sheer greed, The Eagles are far outpaced by other bands who jump at every licensing deal throw at them. Plus, it’s far less disconcerting to see a band “selling out” when its music no longer matters. So this move means almost nothing to anyone who isn’t on the Eagles Inc. payroll.

I can’t even get that irritated by the obvious hypocrisy. In a recent CNN interview, Don Henley says that Wal-Mart made them “a really good offer” and that’s presumably why he’s excepting Wal-Mart from his usual tirades about the evils of corporations. Henley is rock’s biggest blowhard, and I’ve long felt that the louder someone has to be about their beliefs, the less sincere they are. It’s as if they’re trying to convince themselves while they’re convincing you. Social responsibility was good for his career, until it wasn’t. And again, it’s not like the Eagles have been above a big money grab before.

No, the thing I find objectionable is Henley’s further reasoning about the wisdom of their decision:

And a lot of our fans are customers of Wal-Mart, so we thought it was a good fit.

Hmm, where have I heard that before? Oh wait, I remember.

We feel okay about VWs. Several of us even drive them.”

Is this the new standard? It’s OK as long as it’s something you or your fans use? If so, I can’t wait for, say, Tegan and Sara’s “Knife Going In” to show up in an ad for Land O’ Lakes Butter. Or maybe an exclusive distribution deal with BP Amoco stations for the next album by Rihanna because “a lot of my fans have cars that use gas, so it seemed like a natural fit.” Or music from Nickelback’s next album showing up in an Ex-Lax ad because it’s so shitty.