Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan
Hey, remember I was talking about ownership of what you work on, and the fact that I get depressed when I think about my lack of ownership/control about what I wrote for io9 the other day?
It may be difficult to tell from that screenshot, but that’s what happens if you click on my name on any story I’ve written for that site now. Instead of a profile that lists all of my stories, you get a “Profile not found” page. I found that out yesterday, finding an old story of mine while Googling for information on something, and then clicking through to have what I expected would be a bittersweet moment of nostalgia.
There’s no malice behind it, I don’t think; the site has been updated and overhauled at least twice since I left, and it’s more than likely no-one bothered to update profiles for writers who weren’t with the company any more when such updates were being made. But still, it’s a funny/sad full stop to that whole period of my life, I guess, and an illustration of what I was talking about before.
At least you can still find me on Techland.
Authority has been replaced by authenticity as the currency of social journalism. The key to engaging with a community is to seek out those closest to the story. They rarely have a title but are people of standing within a community. They are guides to the wisdom within their crowd and interpreters of nuance: if you are verifying video from Syria you don’t want a foreign policy wonk, you want someone who can distinguish between a Damascus and a Homs accent.
From here, by Storify’s Mark Little.
There’s definitely something to this, I think; the way that social media has changed journalists’ interactions with sources, and where they find sources. I’m not exactly a fan of the “LazyWeb” crowdsourcing of listicles (“Hey, Twitter! What are the Top 10 [Insert Subject Here]!” is something it always makes me mad to see out there, because it’s… well, lazy, but I know that I have found multiple sources via social media that would’ve eluded me otherwise, and different types of sources, too.
Here’s something unusual; an unfinished review that was intended for the Savage Critics; it’s been sitting on my laptop for the last few weeks, untouched because I couldn’t find enough time to complete it – I don’t know why I didn’t finish it, it stops midthought, suggesting that something distracted me as I was writing – and, now that the subsequent issue is also a few weeks old, it seemed so untimely that I decided to leave it alone. Instead of just dumping it altogether, though, I thought I’d throw it up here.
It feels as if there’s now some sort of belief, or suspicion, perhaps, amongst comic professionals that in order to get readers and retailers on board with your new series, you essentially have to tell them enough of what the story is that you spoil whatever plot twists may be in the first issue. That’s certainly true of SPIDER-MEN #1, which – in terms of plot – doesn’t get any farther in its first 20 pages that getting Peter Parker and Miles Morales face to face. And yet… that that climactic moment doesn’t have any punch can’t be blamed on spoilers or PR or anything else; the title of the comic, after all, is Spider-Men, the cover features both Peter and Miles swinging together with their masks off (which would happen further on in the story than what’s actually in this first issue), and the recap page at the start introduces both Peter and Miles. The comic itself spoils that final page without breaking a sweat.
And that last page feels like a fudge even beyond that; it’s a full-page splash of Peter and Miles coming face to face, with both figures in the air, Miles quietly saying “No way.” On the one hand, that’s a nice moment – Miles is literally verbalizing what Peter’s inner-monologue had just said twice (But I’ll get back to the problems with repetition later), making the Miles-echoing-Peter-in-choice-of-superhero-identity more explicit – but on the other… Outside of the fact that we as readers and writers have the meta-textual knowledge that this is one Spider-Man meeting another Spider-Man, this shouldn’t actually be a big moment for Peter. After all, he’s met clones before, he’s met fake Spider-Men before… Why would running into someone who’s not even wearing the same costume as he does, who is shorter and has a different body type be anything more than a “Kid, why’re you biting my style?” moment, exactly…? The only way that final page works as a dramatic moment is with the added knowledge of this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for… but that same added knowledge also robs the moment of any power, because this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, if that makes sense.
Because there’s no “Who’re you?” “I’m Spider-Man!” “No, I’m Spider-Man!” exchange, it means that #2 is forced to carry that scene, which… I don’t know; I find myself feeling as if that we don’t need two issues of a five issue story to get to the “We’re both Spider-Man, oh, I get it” point, you know? If you consider that, thanks to the page count of comics these days, this is going to be a 100 page story (5 issues of 20 pages), then the “first act” of the classic three act structure should be totally done with by page 34 – yet, by page 20, we’ve only really been introduced to Peter Parker and had hints of the two other core characters in the story. That leaves 13 pages or so to (a) introduce Miles Morales, (b) explain that Peter is now in an alternate universe – Something, that, again, shouldn’t phase him that much considering everything else he’s even done, but I suspect will because otherwise how will the readers know that this story is supposed to be important? – and (c ) presumably allow both heroes to put together that Mysterio has something to do with all of this. Somehow, I don’t really see all of that happening, do you…?
The feeling that this first issue is poorly paced isn’t helped by the fact that Bendis’ Peter Parker is so frustrating, offering schtick instead of characterization. Bendis’ monologue for Parker is horrifically written; unsubtle (It’s full of things like “I am including the part where my life seems to be in constant danger by elaborately themed costumed crazies. And the part where, no matter what I do, I’m hated by just about everybody this side of the Verrazano Bridge,” because, I guess, telling is much faster than showing when you only have 20 pages), almost entirely expositionary, and just plain clumsily constructed. Here’s the opening to the issue:
I love this city.
Love it!!
And, really, the best part about being Spider-Man is getting to swing around up here and just… take it all in.
The best part!
Why the dual repetition? You got me; emphasis, I guess? A sneaky shout-out to the “two Spider-Men” concept? I have no idea, but as inner monologue – or, even, narration, which’d make more sense, unless we’re supposed to believe that Peter Parker spends his evenings reintroducing himself to himself and justifying his life choices – it’s extremely awkward and takes Peter from “quippy” to something akin to “over-caffinated preteen with limited attention span trying to explain why they love Justin Beiber so much.” Maybe I’m way too old-fashioned with my Spider-Man, but for me, his inner monologue would be slightly more ordered and less “OMG!!!” than this; it’s not that it just reads poorly, it also “sounds” wrong for the character.
(Also: Am I wrong in my read on the character that Spider-Man’s quips aren’t necessarily the way he thinks, as such, but an attempt to hide nervousness/anxiety/guilt behind what he considers bravado? Bendis’ narration reads as an excitable version of Spider-Man’s personality, whereas the set-up of the character suggests it should be the opposite.)
Oddly enough, there was a really easy fix to so many of these problems: Use the other Spider-Man. Not only would Bendis have a better handle on Miles’ narration – Being the sole writer of Miles to date, there was almost no way that he could get that voice “wrong” – but Miles, being the newer and less explored character, not only needs the space of the lengthy introduction more (Despite the high sales of Ultimate Fallout #4 and Ultimate Spider-Man #1, there’s no way that the character is as well-known as Peter Parker) but works better as a point-of-view character for the series: He hasn’t dealt with Spider-impostors before, he has an emotional connection with (a version of) Peter Parker that Peter doesn’t have with him, and he’s new to all of the super-science that’s necessary to get through a story about parallel universes and crossing over and the like, allowing him to need the exposition that the audience also needs.
More importantly, using Miles as the main character for the first issue would have validated him as Spider-Man. As it is, this first issue does the one thing the character didn’t need: it underscores his position as the “alternative” Spider-Man, the other one. As far as this first issue is concerned, Miles’ character is so unimportant that his part could be filled by Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Man India or even Ben Reilly; he’s literally a non-character who plays more part on the cover (where at least
I’ve been thinking recently about online entertainment journalism, and pageviews, and the responsibilities and realities and everything involved. To explain what started this train of thought it something that’d get me more hassle than it’s worth – Suffice to say, it was the discovery that a site I used to work for wasn’t covering a particularly important news story because it was presumed it wouldn’t get hits – but, thinking about the subject over and over again, I find myself depressingly out of step with the way that the Internet works, it feels like.
I mean, I get that it’s all about the hits. I worked for Gawker Media for two years, and that really gets drummed into you there, or at least it did for me: The eyeballs are what matter, the clicks and the important clicks, not just any clicks. It’s a number that constantly gets whittled down: At first, it was hits, then it was “unique visitors,” then it was “new unique visitors” (Eventually, it’ll be “People who’ve never even been online before, but bought a laptop just to read your piece,” and then people will get fired for not inspiring at least one MacBook purchase every week). That’s not just the case at Gawker sites, though; elsewhere, I’ve had series killed because the hits weren’t good enough, pitches approved based solely on how much traffic they would likely bring even if they were weaker ideas than other ones vying for attention, the whole thing. The internet exists to get your attention, after all.
And yet, that all seems curiously, unhealthily, short-term thinking to me. “Content is King” was the mantra of the Internet for awhile, the idea of “If you build it, they will come” made into something resembling a business plan. It was… optimistic, naive, maybe? There was a sense of good work will find an audience because it’s the Internet – which, come to think of it, feels like part of the thinking behind Kickstarter and other crowdsourcing ideas nowadays. Hmm – that was ultimately replaced by “Content is Content,” which translated into something along the lines of “Fuck it, we can get people to write for us for free and who cares whether or not it’s good as long as it drives traffic, right?” The quality of the work became secondary – if even that – to the fact that the work existed. Curation became more along the lines of “Will this get hits?” than “Is this any good?” because everyone had to earn their keep, and so sites became less about an editorial voice or vision, and more interchangeable as a result with everyone chasing after the same exclusives, the same images and videos and interviews and with the same formula to write it all up.
Surely, if you’re looking to make your site stand out, it makes more sense to decide to actually have its own voice and viewpoint? Have a sense of. Okay, this doesn’t get good traffic but it’s something we should be covering, so we’re going to take the hit on it? Comics Alliance feels like a good example of this; consider the way that the site followed Laura’s passions to the point where it became known for doing so, and for having smart, nuanced writing on gender and webcomics and other subjects that weren’t being covered by other comic sites. It’s a return to “If you build it, they will come,” definitely, but – and this is where I find myself out of step with the Internet – what’s so wrong with that? If you wait long enough, they will come.
Weirdly, surprisingly, Gawker may have the best solution to this issue (That’s Gawker.com, not all of Gawker Media); the idea of traffic-whoring to offset more important, more individual and quieter pieces felt like the closest to an elegant solution to the problem that we could get, short of someone having the guts to say “Screw it, let’s just do good work we believe in and hope for the best.” It feels like it’s a way for sites to fulfill hit/financial responsibilities to their owners, while also the responsibility to readers of something worth reading. I wonder how that experiment worked out…?
Ramble ramble ramble. I should come back to this when I know what it’s clearer in my head.
Well, this was nice:
Yes, I made it to the lead story of Time.com. Which, you know, feels like a big deal to me, at least.
Go read the story here, if you want.
Not every staffer is so happy to dive in to the comments, not the least of whom is Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio, who described Gawker comments in April as “a tar pit of hell.” Any journalist writing for a highly trafficked website knows what a miserable time suck that can be. But that’s their job now. Gawker staffers are essentially professional commenters now — or maybe commenters are amateur bloggers. [Gawker boss, Nick] Denton does not even like the word “comments.” Supposedly he imposed a $5 penalty for any employee heard using the word. “These are posts,” Denton told the Observer in June.
(From here.)
That sound you’re hearing might be me screaming in frustration. I feel, sometimes, like my feelings towards comments mirrors comic creators’ feelings towards blogs in general, creating some kind of weird Internet hierarchy by accident, but I can’t help it; while the best comments sections can illuminate and expand the conversations and ideas coming from any particular online piece, all too often – by which I mean, “almost always” – they devolve astonishingly quickly into vitriol and ignorance, namecalling and side-taking. I genuinely wouldn’t lose that much sleep if I could remove the comments from almost every venue I write for*; seeing Denton allegedly fine people for not referring to them as posts is astonishingly depressing to me, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I feel it devalues the actual posts that the comments appear under, by suggesting that they’re the same thing, and secondly, it underscores how much of the Gawker business model is built upon essentially selling the unpaid writing from each site’s fan community, which gives me all kinds of depressed Huffington Post flashbacks.
(* Despite that, I find myself longing for comments on this blog, sometimes; it’s weird, it started as me writing in secret in public, if that makes any sense, but occasionally I find myself wanting to know who reads it.)
I actually came across this in a different way recently — a startup, Hyperink, wanted to publish an eBook that was a collection of my previous posts. No brainer, until I realized that technically AOL now owns a majority of the things I’ve written online (after their purchase of TechCrunch in 2010). They were totally cool with me repurposing the content — kudos to them — but it’s interesting that I did have to ask. And it makes sense — they paid me to write those words.
I guess my point is that while I do actually value owning my own words, I’ve also spent the majority of my career not actually owning my own words.
– MG Siegler, from here. This is something I’ve been thinking about since my Feb-May rush of looking for work and wondering where my career was going. Almost everything I’ve written since… what, Fanboy Rampage!!! (which was a linkblog, and as such not original-content-heavy), has been the property of someone else. Certainly, the work I’m most proud of doesn’t belong to me in any legal sense. That’s depressing and worrying, but I can’t necessarily see a way past that right now; I can’t afford (financially) to take the time to write something that I do own, and I don’t have the clout to build in a rights-reversal clause into contracts with outlets that I’m working for these days. But it’s something I think about, often. Here’s Gina Trapani, from the same conversation thread:
Similar to what MG said about TechCrunch, it’s been difficult for me watching 4 years of my daily work on Lifehacker suffer from linkrot and broken images over the years. Gawker owns that content and I got paid for it, but it’s something I think about when I’m *not* getting paid to produce content.
Sometimes, I get depressed when I think about some of the things I created for io9. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot – a lot – of content I wrote for that site that was so of-the-moment or of-the-quality that I wouldn’t be too upset if it disappeared in the memory hole and was never seen again (It helps/hurts that, the more I look back on that time, the more I feel like it was bad for my development as a writer, but that’s another complaint for another day), but there were also plenty of stories/posts/essays/justplainideas that I wish that I had some ownership over. At the time, I didn’t think too much about it because (a) I had to come up with new ideas on a regular basis to hit deadlines and quotas, and (b) I had a sense of equity in the site, stupidly, because I’d been there since Day One (Since before Day One, even; I was part of the team writing for the beta version of the site before it had a name or went live), but now…? Yeah. There’s a bunch of things I wrote for io9 that I feel sad about not being able to use/recycle elsewhere.
I spent it working.
That hadn’t been my plan, of course; I had wanted to spend it relaxing and treating the holiday as a holiday, spending it with my wife doing little requiring much effort. The problem was that it fell on a Saturday that year. I worked on Saturdays at the time – in fact, Fridays and Saturdays were the heaviest days of my week by a considerable amount as I ramped up to have enough material to be able to write the majority of the material appearing on the site over the weekend and edit the other material that appeared on Saturday and Sunday – and I had found myself really looking forward for the chance of the day off, and a break from the weekly grind just a little bit. I could spend my Friday prepping for Sunday, instead, and spend my first July 4th as an American citizen doing what the majority of other American citizens would be doing: as little as possible other than relaxing, eating and watching some fireworks.
And then I was told by the site’s editor that that wouldn’t be happening. The way it was explained to me was that, because July 4 was a Saturday, that meant that everyone else on the site (who all worked Monday through Friday) wouldn’t actually get a paid vacation, they’d just get their regular weekend off. And so, in order to make it more fair to everyone, I was told, July 3 would be the paid vacation, and July 4 would be a regular, full day of posting on the site, and a regular, full day of work for me. You know, kind of a “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” thing.
The additional problem for me – because having to work on what I’d been considering this oddly symbolic holiday considering my newly-sworn-in status wasn’t enough – was that, in order for me to be able to handle a full day of posting on Saturday, I’d have to do prep work on Friday; there was literally no way around it unless I wanted to spend all of Saturday running behind deadlines, hacking out shit in order to have something on the site and, even then, I might not have been able to do it. So, the Friday paid vacation that I was getting instead of actually being able to take July 4 off ended up being spent working, as well.
That was not my favorite July 4, needless to say.
This week’s Time piece is an essay inspired – if that’s the right word – by seeing Safety Not Guaranteed last week and watching trailers for Ruby Sparks and Lola Vs beforehand, with each film seeming curiously like the others. It was one of those things that just killed me to write; I ended up starting over and trying to find what I was trying to say more than once (I almost ran one of the abandoned versions here, but then thought better of it; there’s only so much of my dirty writing laundry that I can expect other people to want to see, after all), and only realized after a number of hours that what I was thinking about as the middle of my piece was actually my end point.
Along the way, it made me realize a couple of things about the way I write things. Firstly, and frustratingly, I can’t redraft; I have to start over, and rewrite from the beginning, even if all I’m doing is rewriting things that worked the first time around until I get to the problem parts. I have no idea why this is the case, but it is; cutting and pasting things into a different order or working around them just doesn’t work for me, my brain doesn’t hold the information the same way. Secondly, and more interestingly to me, I think of essay structure as song structure. The part I ended up pushing to the end of the essay? I found myself thinking of it as “the bridge” at one point, and then as “the coda.” I constantly worry about the rhythm of what I write, too. Maybe I’m a frustrated song writer and I didn’t know it.
