Re: Book excerpts - "Hot, Fat, and Clouded"

512-560-2302

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 3:13 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

No problemo, been busy myself with this Wikileaks crackdown. Do you think the last peg idea I sent regarding Wolff is closer to what you're looking for than the earlier ones? If you get a bit of time, please let me know a bit more about what you're looking for in that regard. I'll keep searching, but perhaps in the meantime I should think about other of the profile subjects we discussed and see if I might have better luck locating a peg for any of them, such as Douthat or the Wall Street Journal editorial board? The latter had a particularly ridiculous editorial today on David Frum, who is apparently a scoundrel and a traitor.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Christopher S Stewart <csstewart@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, Sorry to have been incommunicado; things have been busy. Definitely still interested in Wolff.We just need the right peg.

Christopher S. Stewart
+646-338-3756
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:33:25 -0400
To: <csstewart@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Book excerpts - "Hot, Fat, and Clouded"

Hi, Chris-

When you have a moment, please let me know if you'd like me to pursue other potential pegs on the Michael Wolff piece or if you're still considering my most recent proposal on that.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's something - the Columbia Journalism Review is making the case that Wolff's general statements on how Newser works and his recent post taunting the NYT and Murdoch over their soon-to-be-implemented pay walls in particular are putting him on a crash course with any outlet that does end up adopting such things - and by all accounts, Murdoch is indeed going to go through with it, and others will certainly follow even if this model doesn't end up being adapted across the board. Newser will actually become more attractive to readers to the extent that it summarizes any such paid content and thus makes it not only possible but desirable for those who might otherwise actually pay for such content to simply read Newser's capsulized versions instead. At that point, it will also make sense for Murdoch and others to proceed with legal action against Newser lest it render their soon-to-be-implemented pay model considerably less viable; such action may very well succeed insomuch as that any outlet using a pay wall will be in a far better position to prove damages. And there will be quite a few media entities inclined to launch such a suit in light of last Friday's ruling, described in the link above, regarding some site that disseminated summaries of WSJ content and which has been ordered to knock it off to some extent.

Wolff himself seems to be aware of this possibility in light of Murdoch's stated intention to sue Google. Or maybe he's not. At any rate, he doesn't seem to be taking the prospect seriously. He also didn't take blogs seriously.

This might serve as a better peg insomuch as that (a) it involves something will probably happen in the near future and (b) Wolff's recent post regarding Murdoch gives it an element of something related that has just recently happened and (c) so does Friday's ruling regarding flyonthewall.com, which also shows the strong possibility that Murdoch or someone else could win such a case, and (d) the Murdoch/Google thing shows that Murdoch has lawsuits on the brain (and if he's even thinking about trying to win against Google, he'd probably be inclined to think he could win against Newser, which is much more egregious in its relative dependence on taking other peoples' content and which of course has fewer resources with which to defend itself in court).

Using that peg, and going with the case that Wolff is wrong to be as confident as he seems to be in this regard, the rest of the piece could make that case by showing to the extent to which Wolff has a track record of being wrong both in his predictions and his understanding of the past and present (for instance, that thing with him going on about how Twitter's notably skewed female demographic contributes to a business model without even bothering to check to see if Twitter's demographic is anything of the sort; plenty of errors can presumably be found in his past political analysis as well).

Let me know what you think.

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Christopher S Stewart <csstewart@gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah, I like the Newser angle, if there's something new there.

Christopher S. Stewart
+646-338-3756
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:13:42 -0400
To: Christopher S. Stewart<cstewart@observer.com>

Subject: Re: Book excerpts - "Hot, Fat, and Clouded"

Sure, I'll look into that right now. Do you think it would be best to concentrate on a peg regarding Newser or Wolff in particular? I'm not sure what else he has coming up that might work better than him speaking at the London conference - would you prefer me to try to tie it to something he's written recently or something else that he might be up to professionally with regards to Newser, or do you have any other general suggestions?

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 4:03 PM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:

Thanks for this, Barrett. Sounds interesting. Do you think we can come up with a stronger peg?

On 3/22/10 3:56 PM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Howdy-

Quick clarification regarding my e-mail from last night (and please let me know if you received it, as I got a bounce-back from another e-mail I sent someone else this morning and I'm not sure what the problem is). I wrote that "American Twitter users were divided 53 - 47 male to female," whereas I meant to write "female to male" - as in, 53 percent of American Twitter users as of 2009 were female, which is to say they make up a slight majority but this is nearly in line with the slight majority of American citizens who are female anyway, and thus Wolff and his super-elite media friend are still totally off-base in asserting that "[t]he Twitter demographic skews notably female" and Wolff himself is thus wrong in much else he asserts throughout that column - and even if ninety-nine percent of Twitter users were female and the remaining one percent was made up of Wolff and other inexplicably respectable narcissists, his overall contention that the possession of an easily-summarized demographic base somehow constitutes a business model, or whatever he is attempting to convey here, is still nonsense; it is double nonsense by virtue of the data by which he reaches his already-nonsensical conclusion being demonstrably nonsense itself.

Of course, American Twitter users do not comprise the totality of them, but it is extraordinarily unlikely that there is some significant difference in worldwide user gender ratio. Still, I'm going to check; one of the girls I'm seeing works in a high capacity for TED and has access to the principals at Twitter, and she says she'll try to find out if they'd be willing to provide that info. If that doesn't work, I'll Google "Twitter demographics" and spend a couple minutes looking for that info, which is almost certainly available insomuch as that the U.S. demographics have been released. I'm just trying to find activities for us to do together.

Anyway, the piece itself could concentrate mostly on Wolff's hilariously unwarranted role as a go-to guy for insight into the dynamics of the internet and information, or it could start off by addressing that and then go into his tendency to try to pass off studied shallowness as sophistication in the course of his writings on politics and policy. I may have mentioned that I write for the same politics-oriented Vanity Fair blog as he does, and I remember reading his stuff on occasion and wondering why the fuck I was reading it.

Let me know what you think. Incidentally, the tone I would use in writing any pieces for you would be far less self-consciously cute than the tone I use in e-mails and considerably less self-righteous and ramble-oriented than the tone I use for Huffington Post when I'm trying to cajole everyone into following my orders. I'm also willing to write on spec if you'd like. Get back to me when you have a moment, if you would.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 3:51 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Howdy-

Quick clarification regarding my e-mail from last night (and please let me know if you received it, as I got a bounce-back from another e-mail I sent someone else this morning and I'm not sure what the problem is). I wrote that "American Twitter users were divided 53 - 47 male to female," whereas I meant to write "female to male" - as in, 53 percent of American Twitter users as of 2009 were female, which is to say they make up a slight majority but this is nearly in line with the slight majority of American citizens who are female anyway, and thus Wolff and his super-elite media friend are still totally off-base in asserting that "[t]he Twitter demographic skews notably female" and Wolff himself is thus wrong in much else he asserts throughout that column - and even if ninety-nine percent of Twitter users were female and the remaining one percent was made up of Wolff and other inexplicably respectable narcissists, his overall contention that the possession of an easily-summarized demographic base somehow constitutes a business model, or whatever he is attempting to convey here, is still nonsense; it is double nonsense by virtue of the data by which he reaches his already-nonsensical conclusion being demonstrably nonsense itself.

Of course, American Twitter users do not comprise the totality of them, but it is extraordinarily unlikely that there is some significant difference in worldwide user gender ratio. Still, I'm going to check; one of the girls I'm seeing works in a high capacity for TED and has access to the principals at Twitter, and she says she'll try to find out if they'd be willing to provide that info. If that doesn't work, I'll Google "Twitter demographics" and spend a couple minutes looking for that info, which is almost certainly available insomuch as that the U.S. demographics have been released. I'm just trying to find activities for us to do together.

Anyway, the piece itself could concentrate mostly on Wolff's hilariously unwarranted role as a go-to guy for insight into the dynamics of the internet and information, or it could start off by addressing that and then go into his tendency to try to pass off studied shallowness as sophistication in the course of his writings on politics and policy. I may have mentioned that I write for the same politics-oriented Vanity Fair blog as he does, and I remember reading his stuff on occasion and wondering why the fuck I was reading it.

Let me know what you think. Incidentally, the tone I would use in writing any pieces for you would be far less self-consciously cute than the tone I use in e-mails and considerably less self-righteous and ramble-oriented than the tone I use for Huffington Post when I'm trying to cajole everyone into following my orders. I'm also willing to write on spec if you'd like. Get back to me when you have a moment, if you would.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 8:07 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, never mind Douthat, got something else for now. Michael Wolff is in London for the Changing Media Summit, where he was one of a handful of speakers along with the likes of Jimbo Wales (Wikipedia). Meanwhile, he's been writing a series of blog posts and tweets that, together with certain aspects of his career as well as past statements, would seem to illustrate why this fellow shouldn't be speaking at any conferences billed as being a "a blueprint for creative and commercial success in the digital world." Here's a brief what's-wrong-with-this-picture for you:

1. On the 16th, Wolff posts a piece entitled "What if Twitter is for girls" in which he cites some unnamed "person from the high media stratosphere" as offering "the following hypothesis: The Twitter demographic skews notably female." Then he goes on to "analyze" this non-data by way of a number of observations he seems to have pulled out of the air, eventually concluding with the following: "Anyway, my friends point is a large one: If Twitter is really for women, if we can define this medium so conventionally, then this is a media business modelfinally." This makes no sense. How would that make it a business model? You might assume that I am taking this out of context and that the reasoning behind this may be found somewhere else in the column. Nope. Also, keep in mind Wolff's quickness to grant Twitter the elusive "You've found a business model!" badge; we will come back to this.

2. Wolff's high-media stratospheric friend is wrong. As of last year, American Twitter users were divided 53 - 47 male to female in a country in which females make up a slight majority. There is no "skewing" here, particularly not of the "notable" sort. This took me all of two minutes to find out, and no one sends me to fucking London to go tell everyone about how the internet works.

3. In the same column, Wolff writes, "Perhaps, no surprise, women's tweets seem much more likely to be personal rather than professional, upbeat rather than serious, confessional instead of political." Later: "And, indeed, men seem to try to turn Twitter into PowerPointa set of professional notes." Elswhere: "The men who do well on Twitter, in fact, sounderlike women. Theyre self-consciously menschy." I've never been able to figure out what menschy means, but if we're going by gender stereotypes, take a look at what's up on Wolff's own Twitter feed, in which two of the last four tweets as of 7 EST Sunday are as follows:

But first lunch at the Wolseley with A.A. Gill...then to Heathrow

A British lunch (new British) in Lambeth at Anchor & Hope...fennel gratin and roast wood pigeon

These strike me as sounding "personal rather than professional," to put it nicely. Which is not to say that the manly Wolff does not "try to turn Twitter into PowerPoint - a set of professional notes." Here are his most recent forays into his professional realm of news:

I just can't get enough of this Pope story.

There's an awesomeness to the Church and the Pope's predicament. It starts to feels like the end of European history. Yikes.

One has to wonder how he would have felt during the Reformation or even the time of John Wyclef if he thinks some already-dying scandal with minor implications for the pope marks "the end of European history" or even a tingling of such. Is the Catholic Church really going to go into decline over the minor possibility that a particular pope did not take some action that he should? Is he unaware of World War II, or that pope who had the corpse of the previous pope dug up, clothed, and put on trial? This man has zero news instincts and he's supposed to be some icon of the news industry, at least according to Newser press releases.

4. Noting that Wolff has deemed the alleged yet clearly non-existent dominance of females on Twitter to be something akin to a "business model," it is all the more wacky that he continues to attack Rupert Murdoch and Sulzberger's attempts to monetize online content as some sort of crazy, crazy scheme that will definitely fail, as he did once again less that a week ago. Would the NYT be more viable if they figured out that a lot of women read the paper? Would that constitute a "business model"?

5. I mean, what the fucking fuck, man?

6. Remember that Wolff is writing all of this on a blog - blogging being a medium that he predicted would fail, as The Observer itself noted <http://www.observer.com/node/32512> a few years back. This is the guy who was flown to London last week to go share his expertise on all things internety.

So, hook could be Wolff's inexplicable speaking gig at this London conference, could move from there into his tenuous grasp of internet media and his incompetent spokesmanship on behalf of Newser, and then go into his lack of any value whatsoever as a political analyst (he writes for the same Vanity Fair Politics and Power blog that I do, so I've seen him try his hand at political analysis - he never bothers with policy, being of the sort who presumably considers concern with such things to be provincial.

Let me know if you want me to go ahead and go after Wolff. It'll take, like, a day.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Off the bat, Ross Douthat has been spending a lot of time defending his precious Vatican in light of the latest revelations regarding child molestation and the apparent acquiescence of Ratzinger, as may be seen in the first couple of posts here:

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/

<http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/> Would something along these lines work as a hook if I can move fast on it? Also, will get back to you with a peg on Michael Wolff as soon as I'm done looking into it.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 5:21 PM, Christopher S Stewart <csstewart@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, thanks.

Christopher S. Stewart
+646-338-3756

From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:13:02 -0400
To: Christopher S. Stewart<cstewart@observer.com>
Subject: Re: Book excerpts - "Hot, Fat, and Clouded"

Howdy again-

Finished up some other projects and ready to begin on these articles. Will try to determine who's got the best hook off the bat. Will I be able to contact you at this e-mail address over the weekend to run any said hooks by you first?

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 5:15 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Chris-

Thanks again for having me in today; I'll get back to you soon when I've figured out which of our targets provides for the best pegs.

I've got another piece on Thomas Friedman <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-brown/friedmans-failures-remain_b_493552.html> that just went up a few minutes ago on the politics section of Huffington Post, in case you're interested in the guy's general ridiculousness.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Heading over now, see you at 3.

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:

See you then

On 3/15/10 2:30 PM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Sure, three is fine.

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:
Yes. Can we actually say 3?

On 3/15/10 2:25 PM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Absolutely. We're meeting at your office, correct?

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:24 PM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:
Hey. Just confirming Wed. 2, right?

On 3/10/10 11:18 AM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Certainly. Let me know what day and time would be good for you; I should be wide open.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:
Lets talk. Maybe coffee next week?

On 3/9/10 9:38 PM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, Chris-

Thanks for getting back to me.

We could go a couple ways with this. If by critic profile you mean a piece on a particular pundit, then certainly; I could do one on Friedman, Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, Peretz, Bennett, or a couple of other fellows I've been researching but didn't put into the book, such as Ruben Navarette. Let me know what you're thinking in terms of format.

Thanks again,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 9:54 AM, Christopher S. Stewart <cstewart@observer.com> wrote:
Hey Barrett,

Thanks for sending this along. The subject looks intriguing. And it makes me wonder: are there any profiles that we could pull from it? Or maybe youd be up to proposing a critic profile? Im open to ideas.

Thanks,

Chris

From: Barrett Brown [mailto:barriticus@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 6:16 PM
To: Kyle Pope
Subject: Book excerpts - "Hot, Fat, and Clouded"

Hi, Kyle-

I wanted to check and see if you might be interested in taking a look at a few excerpts from my upcoming second book, Hot, Fat, and Clouded <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982139144/ref=s9_simi_gw_s0_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1Z0RYG59CYBZAVNP0E6T&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846> , which concerns the manner in which our nation's most respected columnists - Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, and Richard Cohen, for instance - have gained and maintained their positions of prominence despite having made all sorts of failed predictions, contradicted themselves on rather important issues, and otherwise contributed to the general public misunderstanding.

I'm a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, Skeptic, and True/Slant, and my other work has appeared in dozens of additional publications. My first book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny, was released in 2007 to praise from Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School and Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, among other swell folks.

Let me know if you'd like to see a selection of excerpts for potential publication.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown

Brooklyn, NY

512-560-2302

--
Christopher S. Stewart
Deputy Editor
The New York Observer
1.212.407.9348