Bill Simmons

Last week I went to my first ever book signing. It was at midnight, at the ESPN Zone over on F street and it was the debut night of Bill Simmons' book "The Book of Basketball." Now, this may not be riveting stuff for those of you who don't read Simmons, or particularly care about book signings but it is actually relevant to the course and, if you enjoy the act of blogging, to you.

See, it was midnight, and raining. And Cold. Still, the line to meet this guy stretched from his table deep in the bowels of the Zone, outside, and all the way around the block. The line, about 4 people wide and a hundred-fifty or so yards long, looked like it should have been for the midnight releases of the Harry Potter series or a new twilight movie. Only instead of families or teenagers and their parents, it was twenty somethings and middle aged men, with the occasional girlfriend in there doing a favor for her boyfriend who couldn't make it. I digress.

The point is, for those of us who enjoy finding our voice through new media, Simmons is an inspiration. Now possibly the biggest sports writer in this country, (I can't imagine another who would draw what I saw last week) ESPN's "The Sports Guy" had his first gig writing for himself, on his startup website, bostonsportsguy.com (this blog is still running and it looks eerily similar to yours). His only readers at that point were family and friends, and he was bartending and chasing a dream. Without getting into a detailed biography here, I just find it interesting how this story wouldn't have been possible 30 years ago. Actually, it might be impossible now too - Simmons began his website at a time when there weren't millions of bloggers clogging the web, and by harnessing new media he was able take the alternoute route.

What's the point? I honestly am not sure. No one needs a motivational speech from me on this subject, especially given my media393 blogging record thus far. I suppose its simply that occasionally one might be inclined to zone out during class, or miss a blog as i do, but it was just refreshing to attend that signing and view living proof of what can happen when you ride the cutting edge.

Simmon's ESPN page is located here.

If you want to see an interesting interview he did with "The Huffington Post" before his book tour commenced, check here.

I guess I'll leave you with a clip from that interview that relates closely to our experience right now, and see if you agree or disagree with "The Sports Guy." Leave a comment and tell me how you feel:

Younger writers gravitate towards blogging and I'm not sure that would have necessarily been a good thing for me. You don't have to work at building an audience because, really, you can get a wad of traffic from established blogs right away with just one post. You're training yourself to think in shorter, more immediate bursts into putting real thought into what you want to say. And you're reading other bloggers constantly, which isn't necessarily the best way to get better as a writer.

When I was younger, I was something of a journalism/book/short story junkie and read every conceivable type of writer. I had hundreds and hundreds of books; I had every issue of Sports Illustrated and Inside Sports since 1974; I had two decades of clippings from GQ, Esquire, The National, New Yorker and other places saved in manila folders. Now, if there had been an internet back then ... would I have done all that? Probably not. I would have been surfing the 'net all day like everyone else.

And again, it's dangerous to have the ability to get an audience instantly. I started my old web site in 1997, when there wasn't the quid pro quo system of "I'll link to you if you link to me." I needed to bring readers to my site every day -- knowing that I wasn't getting traffic from other places -- and the only way that was happening was if I pushed the envelope and wrote angles that I wasn't seeing anywhere else. That constant fear of "I need people to keep coming back!" made me better in the end.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-pinter/interview-with-bill-simmo_b_326515.html&cp

RE: Meghan Mccain

cnn.com — Meghan McCain is breaking her silence following a wave of media attention over a picture she posted on Twitter Wednesday night.

The revealing picture of herself in a tank top, which left little to the twitterverse's imagination, immediately drew harsh criticism from other tweeters, prompting an upset McCain to declare of the social networking Web site, "What once was fun now just seems like a vessel for harassment."

I think it is fitting, given our discussions lately about the blurring of public and private, to discuss this weeks uproar over a somewhat revealing picture of John McCain's daughter that she posted on twitter. The picture, which I have chosen not to post here, shows McCain essentially falling out of a tanktop while reading an Andy Warhol biography. She took the photo of herself, and tweeted it out to the universe (to less than rave reviews).

Without thinking about McCain's claim that there is a double standard with regards to this sort of thing (probably is), there are still a number of issues here that pertain to our class discussions. McCain said that twitter has morphed from something fun to a vessel for harrassment. While I agree that twitter could potentially be both, I still can't understand her defense here. That it was a tasteful picture?

Meghan also has said that she was offended by the comments about her being skanky, or even worse... but I still can't imagine what the senator's daughter thought was going to happen once she tweeted this out in to the universe. I mean, they say no publicity is bad publicity but this certainly seems like a poor choice.

The point here is that, like McCain pointed out, these social networking sites can be either fun or a burden. What she doesn't seem to realize, however, is that the user is generally in control of these situations. Im sure that some of the responses to her picture could have been more tactful, but it seems to me like an outright stupid thing to do in the first place, so I don't appreciate hearing her play the victim. The bottom line is that someone of her age who grew up in this hyper-mediated generation, especially in a high-profile situation, knows exactly where the lines are and what the consequences are in the digital world. A classic example of a publicity stunt gone wrong.

Who Cares About Facebook Updates? I do

Maybe I'm self loathing, but I cannot possibly imagine that anyone would want to see what I was up to as much as some think I want to know what they are doing. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some mildly entertaining musings from my facebook "friends", but there is an appearing trend wherein five or so people who I could not care less about dominate my feed. The ultimate contradition and hypocrisy is that I care. For some reason or the other, a handful of obscure references in my past have a way of keeping me occupied for an inordinate amount of time. I secretly enjoy seeing which south park character they are, or what color they are. I find perverse pleasure in reading the inane music lyrics they put up to illustrate their absolutely trivial (in relation to me) existence. My question is; is anyone else like this? They must be right, or why else would this feature even exist? I cannot stress enough how little it would affect my life if these people were dissappear altogether(oh boo hoo I'm not compassionate... obviously I would feel for them and their families, just trying to say that at this point we are essentially strangers). Still, I find myself absorbing their meaningless output into the cyber world. And I hate myself for it - Do you?