Mayhem's Allstate Presence

Back in October, I expressed admiration for Allstate’s Mayhem commercial branding.

But today, I got contacted by the fine marketing folks at Allstate, who clearly appreciated my post.  But they also wanted to make me aware that while I linked to the Allstate Mayhem YouTube page, I overlooked Allstate’s main Mayhem page, which is pretty engaging in its own right–as it provides links to the videos and Mayhem’s equally funny Facebook posts.

My thanks to Allstate for the comedy and for making me aware of the page. Enjoy.

Business of Science Fiction

Normally I try to incorporate the interview subject’s latest project in the interview headlines, but Mike Resnick has so many books on the cusp of being released (or already released) that I did not want to focus upon only one. This email interview covers a wide range of books, including The Business of Science Fiction: Two Insiders Discuss Writing and Publishing (Set to be released on March 6); The Buntline Special (Pyr) and Blasphemy–as well as a variety of other topics. My thanks to Resnick for his time and to Kevin J. Anderson for putting me in contact with Resnick.

Tim O’Shea: When you and Barry Malzberg started collaborating on columns a number of years ago, did you ever envision it could grow into a full fledged book?

Mike Resnick: It wasn’t why we began the column, but once I saw that it was popular and continuing, yes, I always assumed there’d be a book.

O’Shea: Are there any central ways that you hope readers benefit from The Business of Science Fiction? Are there certain books that helped you when you were first starting out as a writer or were the lessons you learned something that had to be experienced firsthand–not in a book?

Resnick: We’ve got a combined 90 years in the field, we’ve each written or edited over 100 books, we’ve each edited science fiction magazines, I’ve been a publisher, Barry has worked for an agent…there’s simply nothing we haven’t seen, no scam we can’t describe, and we’re secure enough at this point in our careers that no one’s likely to blackball us for letting unpleasant truths out of the closet.

Most of the book for beginners were filled with idealistic misinformation. Still are, for that matter. This book isn’t quite for beginners; it appeared initially in the pages of the SFWA Bulletin, and its audience is the membership of SFWA, which means they know a little something about writing.

O’Shea: Unless I am mistaken, your upcoming Pyr book, The Buntline Special, marks your first foray into steampunk. What motivated you to tackle steampunk?

Resnick: Easy answer: Lou Anders, my editor at Pyr, asked for a “Weird Western”. I had to look up the term in Wikipedia before I knew what he was talking about. All my life I have wanted to do a novel about Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo. I own perhaps 50 books on them, and the Earps, and Tombstone circa 1880. This may not be the book I’d been envisioning all those years, but at least I get to write about Doc and Ringo.

O’Shea: What is it about Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo dynamics or history that has always made you want to write a novel about them?

Resnick: They were the only two college-educated gunfighters in the Old West; they could each read Greek and Latin. And they were purportedy the two best with their weapons. Doc was the Earps’ muscle, so of course Ringo was the Clantons’ muscle. I think whichever side one was on, the other would have fought on the other side, just to indulge in competition at the highest level.

O’Shea: In October, Golden Gryphon Press will release Blasphemy, which is partially described as five short stories–”all conversations elaborating the philosophies of God, Jesus, and the Wandering Jew, from the perspective of Resnick.” Are the stories inspired by current events, or do they reflect ideas you’ve been contemplating for a number of years?

Resnick: Blasphemy is actually an omnibus volume of stories and novels that could reasonably be considered blasphemous by the religious. It includes The Branch, a novel about the true Jewish Messiah who shows up about 50 years from now; Walpurgis III, about a planet populated by Satanists and covens which comes face-to-face with what it’s been worshipping; and 5 short stories, 4 of them humorous, in which God or Jesus have speaking lines. Don Maitz has produced a great cover painting, in which your blasphemous author (me) is the main focus.

O’Shea: You have worked with a number of different publishers over the years. When developing a new project, how do you and your agent decide which publisher to offer a book?

Resnick: I made up my mind a long time ago that I would only work with editors I liked, and I’ve stuck to it. Usually – not always, but usually – I choose the editor and pitch my book, and once we get to the point where he or she wants it, I turn the negotiations over to my agent. Doesn’t always work that way, but usually it does. And once I’ve dealt with an editor or publisher, it’s not unusual for them to request a certain type of book, as Pyr just did with The Buntline Special, or Watson-Guptill did with a trio of Young Adult novels I wrote for them a few years back about the creation of certain classic paintings.

O’Shea: Given your vast body of work, you have the ability to choose to only work with editors you liked. From your perspective what essential things does an editor need to do in order for you to like and want to work with them?

Resnick: It’s not that difficult. Throwing money at me instantly puts me in your corner. But I also want an editor who understands what I’m trying to do and is enthused about it. If they treat it as yard goods, we’re never going to do business.

O’Shea: In terms of Starship: Flagship, your book from late 2009, what inspired you to develop an alien character that thought he was Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield?

Resnick: Initially I just wanted it to be diverting, something to wake the reader up – but I quickly saw that this character had a lot of possibilities: he’s the biggest fence on the Inner Frontier, so he has tons of connections; his obsession with Dickens is amusing if not overdone; and he’s an arrant coward, which means that once in the series he gets to overcome his cowardice in a meaningful way. Useful secondary character. You know, until I heard the Audible.com audio version, I never pictured him with a British accent, but of course he has one.

O’Shea: When you hear one of your books in an Audible.com or audio book format,does it ever inspire you for other ideas to explore with your characters or settings in future adventures down the road?

Resnick: Sorry, but no. Never.

O’Shea: On a related Starship: Flagship front, have you had a chance to hear Sci Fi Songs musician John Anealio‘s The Ballad of Wilson Cole?

Resnick: Yes, I have. And it’s always a kick when someone is so inspired by your work that they create a filksong, or a masquerade costume, or anything like that. John did a fine job, and I hope he was properly rewarded.

O’Shea: You have frequently collaborated with other writers on short fiction, what attracts you to collaboration in that form of literature? What is it about Lezli Robyn‘s storytelling approach that makes you two such strong and frequent collaborators?

Resnick: I’ve had 42 collaborator, so yes, it’s obvious that I enjoy collaborating. It’s a way of bonding with a friend who is a few hundred or a few thousand miles away; it’s a way of seeing how other writers, writers you admire, attack their stories; and it’s a way of bringing more expertise and insights to any given story. Back in the early-to-mid-1990s I collaborated on eleven stories with Nick DiChario, but usually I collaborate on just a single story. Then I started collaborating with Lezli Robyn. I’ve never met anyone else who sees things exactly as I do, who words things precisely the way I do, whose insights are as much in tune with my own. She’s the only collaborator I’ve had where, when I proof the galleys, I truly can’t tell you who wrote which parts. We’ve done 6 stories together in the past year, and I think we have 3 or 4 more, plus a YA novel, on tap for 2010.

O’Shea: What were some of the writing insights that you gained from those 11  stories with Nick DiChario?

Resnick: Nick was a beginner back then, and the insights I got from him were artistic, not technical. Remember back in the 1960s when there were a bunch of books out introducing readers to science fiction, and there was always a chapter of comparisons: if you like Clement, try Asimov; if you like Sheckley, try Tenn. And then you’re come to R. A. Lafferty, and it would say, in essence: if you like Lafferty buy everything you can find of his, because no one else writes remotely like him. You could say the same then and now about Nick; his worldview is totally unique, and no one else sees things the way he does.

O’Shea: Over the years, you’ve constructed many characters and worlds. When developing a new character or plot, do you ever find yourself having to step away from the character or plot element and revising because they become too similar to a previously established work of yours?

Resnick: I go out of my way to avoid it. Tor asked for a sequel to Santiago for 17 years before I came up with one that I thought was sufficiently different that it wouldn’t seem like a replay. I waited eleven years to write Kilimanjaro, a companion piece to Kirinyaga, to make sure it wasn’t just more of the same. And cetera.

“The web, in essence, is the photo album brought out to show what a logo looked like in its awkward phase – and for that, it should be praised.”

I also greatly appreciate this post by Bump, because it introduced me to Logo RIP, a virtual graveyard for discarded commercial logos.

Venky Harinarayan

In the past few months, while researching for this site’s various interviews, I’ve found Kosmix to be quite effective in providing me with a great deal of background for questions. Curious to learn more about the helpful web presence, I contacted its staff for an email interview.  They were quite open to the idea and put me in contact with Kosmix Co-Founder Venky Harinarayan. Here’s the official bio for Harinarayan from Kosmix: “Venky Harinarayan and his business partner Anand Rajaraman co-founded Kosmix in 2005 with the vision to connect people to the information that makes a difference in their lives. Together with Anand, Venky developed the first ecommerce search engine, Junglee, which was acquired by Amazon.com in 1998 for $250 million. At Amazon, Venky and Anand created the company’s search and marketplace business. In addition to Kosmix, Venky is a principal at Cambrian Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the Indian Institute of Technology.” Regular readers know I typically run my interviews on late Wednesday evenings, but I so enjoyed the amount of ground we covered with this particular exchange, I opted to post it a day early. My thanks to Harinarayan for his time.

Tim O’Shea: Recently at the Kosmix blog, there was a mention of Sean Parker’s October speech, where one of his points about the future of the Internet was “Parker argues that the next phase is about building connections between people and things.” Is Kosmix’s acquisition of Cruxlux an effort to do just that–build stronger connections between people and things?

Venky Harinarayan: Absolutely.  At Kosmix, our mission is to connect people to the information that makes a difference in their lives. Our acquisition of Cruxlux fits perfectly with that vision.

In the early days, the Internet was about finding information, not about connecting people. Now with the advent of sites like Facebook and Twitter, the Web has an amazing capacity to illuminate social networks.  Interacting with other people has moved to the forefront our online activities.  The next step will be to connect people with information that matters to them—without you having to search for it.

We’ve made progress in this area with www.Meehive.com, our personalized news site.  You tell MeeHive your interests, and then the system scours millions of news outlets and blogs to bring you fresh stories about the people and things you want to follow.  For example, if you’re passionate about Broadway theatre, MeeHive will let you know every time there’s a review of a new musical, or breaking news about your favorite playwright’s latest work.  Facebook is about what you’re up to, and Kosmix and MeeHive are about what you’re into.

O’Shea: Jeff Bezos, through Bezos Expeditions, is a major investor in Kosmix. In fact, he is also on the board of Kosmix. How does Kosmix management utilize the expertise of its board members (like Bezos) to help the company in its future planning?

Harinarayan: Jeff has supported Kosmix since the beginning, and we deeply value our relationship with him.  He’s a private investor in the company, and is not part of our board.  We initially starting working with Jeff when Amazon acquired our company, Junglee, which was the first search engine for shopping.

O’Shea: According to a March 2009 Forbes article: “Kosmix has seen its market-share grow 730% year-over-year.” In what ways do you hope to grow in 2010?

Harinarayan: We anticipate continued growth for 2010.  We began 2009 by launching Kosmix.com, and the growth curve has been steep. In the coming year, our users can expect to see some interesting additions to the way we enable them to tap into the Deep Web, which is the portion of the Internet that is invisible to traditional search engines. This includes things like social networks, media-sharing sites for photos and videos, library catalogs, airline reservation systems, phone books, and all kinds of scientific databases.  We’ll also be adding some great real-time Web features, to let people receive content and information as soon as it’s posted online.

O’Shea: What is it about the Kosmix concept that makes it a more effective search tool than more established search options like Google or Yahoo?

Harinarayan: From our perspective, there are two navigation paradigms on the Web:  Search and Browse.

Search lets you find specific bits of information or navigate to sites you already know.  Search engines like Google are great if you want to find something specific, like a phone number for your local pizza place or the train schedule. You know exactly what you’re looking for, and search engines will take you there directly.

These search engines break down, however, when you want to browse and explore the Web.  You’re planning a trip to Kauai and want to know what to do when you’re there; or your kids are huge fans of Taylor Swift, and you want to find out more about her; or someone in your family has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and you want to learn all you can about the disease.  In these cases, a list of millions of blue links isn’t very helpful.

That’s where Kosmix comes in.  We organize the Web by topic to give you a 360 degree view—so you get a much for visual way to explore the Web.  If you look up “Kauai” on Kosmix, we’ll show you videos of top attractions, reviews of the best rated hotels and restaurants on the island, tips from fellow travelers, hot deals from local resorts, and much more.  In the “Taylor Swift” example, we’ll let you listen to her songs, check out her videos, tell you when she’ll next in concert and recommend similar music that may interest you as well.  Our page on breast cancer, in contrast, will give you an overview of the condition, connect you to support groups, offer statistics about the disease and bring you the latest research from top physicians in the field.

Here’s a quick way to think about the difference:  Use Google to FIND something, use Kosmix to FIND OUT about something.

O’Shea: In terms of search performance and metrics, where has Kosmix made its most effective improvements/strides to date in 2009?

Harinarayan: Relevance has been a major focus for us this year.  It essential that we bring you the best sites and the best content on the Web, regardless of what topic you’re looking for. So, in the examples above, we’ll make sure content from the Center for Disease Control and articles from the Mayo Clinic appear on the Breast Cancer page, and that content from MTV appears on our Taylor Swift page.

Unlike Google, we’re not going to show you millions of links for each topic—we only show you the best content from the most trusted sites online.  To do that effectively, the relevance on the page needs to be top-notch.  We bring you the best content, based on what your query is.

O’Shea: As companies like Kosmix seek to seemingly redefine Internet search techniques, do you think these kinds of changes may ultimately influence how the Internet evolves going forward?

Harinarayan: Absolutely.  Central to what we do is the anticipation of a fundamental change in what people expect when they go online, and how the Web connects people to information.

Until now, most of what makes a search engine work is the searcher himself or herself.  Think about it:  You type “Coldplay” into Google, and you get 27 million results.  It’s up to you to quickly scroll through the first few pages of links and find the link that matches what you’re looking for most closely.  The search engine provides 10% of the intelligence, and you provide the other 90%.

So, what we’re asking here at Kosmix is, how do we turn this around?  How can we bring information to you, wherever you are, whenever it’s relevant?  You shouldn’t have to go online to hunt for content; it should come to you, when you are most likely to need or want that information.  In the Coldplay example, you might get an alert on your mobile device that said, “Hey, there’s a surprise Coldplay concert happening tonight in a club in your city—you may want to check it out.”  That message is personalized to your interests and location, and is potentially much, much more valuable to you than a list of links to the Coldplay fan site or a Wikipedia definition of the band.

O’Shea: As noted by the Kosmix blog in late September, Jeremy Liew, the managing director of Lightspeed Venture Partners–one of Kosmix’s key investors–recently wrote a piece, In Search of the Next Ad Network Breakthrough. How can Kosmix and/or its users hope to benefit from following trends like that?

Harinarayan: Consumers don’t want to be bombarded by irrelevant ads.  Our first priority is always our users, and so we’ve created an ad model that is meant to be as helpful and meaningful for our users as it is for the advertisers.  We have whnt we call “Sponsored Modules” which strive to give users offers in context.  For example, if you’re checking out “Mercedes C Class” on Kosmix, the sponsored module might show you car listings for the Mercedes C Class on Vast.com.  These types of ads are highly effective, because they reach the user at the moment when he is most engaged in that particular topic.

O’Shea: How much has MeeHive helped to elevate Kosmix’s profile since its introduction in March of this year?

Harinarayan: MeeHive has been well-received since we introduced the site earlier this year.  We’re currently a finalist for Mashable’s OpenWeb Award for Best Online Newspaper, shortlisted alongside the New York Times and the Huffington Post.  It’s very exciting to see a new media model like MeeHive gain this kind of traction.

We find that the average MeeHive user tracks about 20 different interests, and more than 50% of users prefer to use MeeHive on their iPhones.

O’Shea: What kind of process does Kosmix use when it decides to feature certain video streaming sites (like Hulu and YouTube) as opposed to lesser known sites (like Mevio)?

Harinarayan: We aim to give users a snapshot of the best of the Web, for any topic.  To do this, we choose our sources based on a combination of algorithmic relevance and editorial judgment. That said, we’re always interested to hear from our users, if they have specific sites they would like to see us include into Kosmix.  Send us any and all feedback—we love it!

Dalton Trumbo testifying before HUAC in 1947 (Library of Congress/World-Telegram photo)

Growing up in the 1970s, I knew nothing about the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities (to get a glimpse of this government committee’s impact, be sure to examine Google’s timeline on this organization from 1938 to 1975)–or more specifically I knew nothing about the Hollywood Blacklist. Fortunately, as I grew older, I learned a great deal about this recent dark portion of U.S. history. Sometimes when I hear some talk radio and much of the cable news channels (either side of the political spectrum), I wonder if we’re on the cusp of another age of blacklisting. I hope not.

Thanks to researcher and author Jeff Kisseloff, there is now a website that provides documents related to the days of blacklisting. I first became aware of Kisseloff’s blog, thanks to Mark Evanier who knew about it because of Aaron Barnhart. Kisseloff does not just provide links to blacklisting-related documentation, he covers a range of topics, as varied as the topics he addresses in the books he writes (a list of which can be found here).

What’s great about Kisseloff’s approach to blogging is, as an established non-fiction author, rather than rehashing old ground covered in his books with the blog, he gives a glimpse of life while he was researching and writing a certain book. (That’s not how he approaches every blog post, he covers a range of topics in unique ways) In the case of this post, Kisseloff juxtaposes the lives of a CBS TV executive, Frank Stanton, and Allan Sloane, a writer negatively impacted by the blacklist. Plus Kisseloff tosses in a link to the CBS loyalty oath.

Once I update the blogroll, likely over the holidays, I’ll be adding The Kisseloff Collection to it.

In preparation for the upcoming speech, Mark Bialczak of The Post-Standard interviewed Hamill. It covers a great deal of ground and is well worth your time reading. (Hat tip to Poynter’s Romenesko for the link)

I am hard pressed to find one quote that stands out, but here’s a snippet of one great exchange in the interview:

What can news organizations, media organizations, do to help keep consumer interest in words and images survive, not just videos and links?

I think they have to begin in high school. They have to somehow find ways to convince teachers that they have to turn their students onto real news sites, not TMZ, where you find celebrity stuff, not the endless life and times of Jon Gosselin, whoever the hell he is.

Hamill has an insightful perspective on the newspaper industry.

Sexuality and commerce are intertwined in numerous wacky, and yet, fascinating ways. Laurenn McCubbin grasps that reality better than most. So when she recently contacted me (and several of her other many, many Facebook pals) about an upcoming performance and art installation she is raising funds for, I was curious.  I’m not asking you (in tight economic times) to fund this project, but I do want to make readers aware of it–in case it is something you would like to support–be it fiscally or, for those of us on tight budgets, by spreading the word about the project (as I am doing). As performance and art installations go, I have to give McCubbin credit for her creative take with this particular topic.

This post, beyond this paragraph, is definitely not safe for work by many company’s standards. For young readers of this blog or folks who do not want to look at this, I place the main info after the jump.

McCubbin understands that not everyone will want to support the project, but if you want to support her work in another way, by buying some of her art at Etsy.

A Slice From My Childhood

So tonight I was at my mother’s house, looking for something that required me to dive into the folder of stuff my parents keep in a file for me (honor roll notices from grade school, summer reading program certificates from the 1970s…amazing stuff).

And then, in the file, I found a few of these. Tickets sent to me, due to my good grades (I’m fairly certain I was not a straight A student). As a kid, I did not appreciate the printed signature on the certificate (yep, that’s Ted Turner). The logo was WTBS on the eve of Turner Time (remember when TBS shows started at 5 minutes after the hour or half hour)–before the days of TBS Superstation.

Holding these tickets took me back to my childhood. Back in the days when the Braves were managed by Bobby Cox on his first round with the team (his second to last year as manager on this round)-but far from first place. It’s funny, as a kid I remembered them as always being a last place team, but as documented by Wikipedia, there were two teams (San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres) worse off than the Braves.

[Apologies for the fuzzy quality of the image, O'Shea mansion does not have a readily available scanner, so I shot this with my wife's Blackberry...]

Slanted and Enchanted

In the introduction to her book, Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture, Kaya Oakes writes: “If we understand culture to mean something more than a style of music, a visual aesthetic, or a literary mode and try to define it from its Latin root, cultura—“to cultivate”— then we can see how indie artists have traditionally worked together to cultivate many things: credibility, freedom, the ability to promote their own work and to control how it’s promoted, self-reliance, open-mindedness, and the freedom to take creative risks. Likewise, if a culture is truly a group of people working and living together, independent artists have traditionally embraced the value of networking, making connections, and striving toward doing their art, their way. If being independent in your choices about what you listen to, look at, read, and watch implies a lack of compromise, then many of the people still making music and art independently would absolutely fit that definition. Indie’s ambiguity can partially be chalked up to its emphasis on making its participants feel individual and unique. But before any of us were able to be creatively independent, we had to build on the practice of our independent predecessors. Because indie’s history is in many ways a shadow history— one that parallels and reflects mainstream culture but also poises itself as being a subculture of outsiders— the threads connecting the twentieth- and twenty- first-century indie movements are not always readily apparent, especially in this day and age, wherein young artists face a plethora of choices about what kind of art they will make and how to distribute that art. Young fans often encounter art that builds on traditions of independence with which they may not be familiar.” (The entire intro can be read here at Oakes’ site). In the book, Oakes (who co-founded Kitchen Sink magazine) set out to examine the evolution of the indie movement and the scope of its impact. My thanks to Oakes for her time and insight into the DIY dynamics.

Tim O’Shea: In the preface, you concede that you “did not manage to interview a number of people” that you assumed astute readers may “have liked to hear from”. How did you go about deciding who to interview and who to not?

Kaya Oakes: Mostly it came down to two factors: availability and willingness. Interestingly, those are not the same thing. Lots of folks were willing but not available and vice versa. My initial approach was very typical of DIY: I just asked people I knew who they knew, working the network. After that it was a matter of sending out lots and lots of email queries, explaining what the book was trying to do. One of the first people I talked to was Ian MacKaye, who of course answered the phone at Dischord when I called. When I described the book to him, he initially said, “that’s a terrible idea! You can’t define indie!” At that moment I thought, oh shit, I am screwed. But after two hours on the phone, he got that I was trying to do more of a series of historical snapshots and we had a great conversation. Other people were happy to talk but scheduling didn’t work out. Others have left indie behind and have no desire to discuss it. In one case I discovered someone I wanted to talk to was already collaborating on a different book and there was a conflict of interest. And others were willing and available, and that’s who you see in the book.

O’Shea: In the comments section of a Cleveland Plain Dealer review of the book, you engaged in a respectful and enlightening dialogue with the critic. Coming out of that, you mentioned “One of my post book projects is compiling an indie city guide for the book’s website” How is that project going?

Oakes: Ah, abandoned. There wasn’t enough time available to make it appear in a timely fashion close to publication, but maybe I’ll pick it back up again, along with learning the banjo, how to knit, finishing several abandoned poetry manuscripts, cleaning the bathroom, and various other things I don’t have time for at the moment.

O’Shea: In analyzing the evolution of the indie culture can you point out certain breakthrough moments in your research that became some of the lynchpins of your final analysis?

Oakes: A big “aha” moment came talking to Peter Berg of the Diggers. When he described some of their methods of communicating and putting on happenings, something clicked. He talked about putting out live news sheets while Digger events were going on, using the printing press the Diggers owned, and I thought, hey, that’s just what zines were doing, and what we do now with the internet. I’d always known we took from the 60s counterculture in the 80s, but I hadn’t previously thought about how closely the two cultures mirror one another since punks had such a bad relationship with hippies here in the Bay Area. Secretly, I think many punks admired the hippies, but the problem for many people in my generation was that the hippies were our parents.

O’Shea: You toured to support the book, in fact your plans were “This tour is happening DIY style: I’m flying to Seattle on donated frequent flyer miles, no media escorts are involved (Google maps and public transit will suffice), I’m crashing with family and friends, and I’m hoping to make it on a budget of about $20 a day. If I can manage that, my reward will be spending lots of money at the stores where I’m reading.” How did the tour go?

Oakes: Good and bad, like any book tour. In San Francisco I got something like 5 people, the next night in Berkeley more like seventy, the next night in Seattle five again (that was the night Michael Jackson died, which made me worry about being cursed), then at Powell’s in Portland a big turnout again. Since the summer jaunt I’ve also gone to LA and did a great event at Skylight Books with a panel of indie people, and the final event was just this past week in Berkeley, another panel. The panels turned out to be a great idea because it’s not just me reading from a book; it helps other people showcase projects they’re working on and encourages audience involvement. Oh, and I did buy a lot of books.

O’Shea: In the acknowledgments, you thank your agent, Michelle Brower, describing her as the “first person to take this project seriously”. How long had you been contemplating the book before she threw her support behind it–had you faced a great deal of pushback to the idea before then?

Oakes: Michelle actually sparked the idea for the book. I’d written an essay for the magazine I co-founded and edited, Kitchen Sink, about the underground music course I teach at UC Berkeley. Somehow Michelle got her hands on this small circulation magazine and asked me if I wanted to develop a book proposal around the article. So I consider myself absurdly lucky; she has had my back the entire way.

O’Shea: I love the conflicted tone of your writing (scholarly while irreverent)–case in point on page 74: “In 1987, Livermore took an interest in another local band. Green Day was less politically engaged that Op Ivy, but had a tremendous advantage over many other bands: its music was catchy as fuck.” How enjoyable is it for you to take tonal shifts in your analysis while writing?

Oakes: The shift between more scholarly prose and vernacular really mirrors the way I speak. While I do teach writing to university students, I am not a traditional scholar in the sense that I don’t primarily write for scholarly journals, nor do I hold a PhD (I do have an MFA). Although I speak at academic conferences, sit on committees, judge literary prizes and do other typically academic things, I also come from a zine writing background and a small press, alt weekly, indie magazine background where the informal style is more typical. My writing has always gone back and forth tonally, which drives some people nuts, but the way I speak drives some people nuts too. It’s a love it or hate it kind of thing, I’m afraid.

O’Shea: Speaking of Livermore, that seems like the case of where success ruins a business. Is that a fairly common trend in DIY circles?

Oakes: Yes and no. Merge is doing great even after Arcade Fire and Spoon blew up, but they’re a rarity. In Lookout’s case there are many reasons why it didn’t work out. Larry gave me some of the story, but if people are interested in hearing more, I’ve been reading Gimme Something Better, the new oral history of Bay Area punk, and that details the demise of Lookout from multiple points of view, including the bands they worked with. It’s a sad story but ultimately other indie labels seem to have learned from it.

O’Shea: Have you heard from Pavement fans who picked up the book because of the familiar title, but ended up enjoying the book even though it may have not been what they expected?

Oakes: Only on sites like Goodreads where people like to rank books based on things like titles and paper quality without actually reading them. The original subtitle, by the way, was the Evolution of Independent Culture, but “indie” seemed more marketable to certain parties so we changed it. The word indie has gotten me into more misunderstandings and confusion than the Pavement reference. It’s a polarizing term for sure.

O’Shea: When you originally set out to write this book, which did you want to do more: entertain or inform the reader (or a mixture of both)?

Oakes: Both. I’m a big, dorky person in real life, but I also know my shit, and ultimately I’d like both of those things to come across. The biggest pleasure has been reading and getting comments from people who say this book made them want to start a zine, make music, make art. I wanted to honor the people who created the subculture but hopefully to inspire or at least nudge others to keep it going.

O’Shea: In a down economy like this one, what part of indie culture benefits the most and the least?

Oakes: Based on what I’ve seen and heard lately, the really small scale stuff is doing fine, whereas medium to big indie projects are suffering just like independent businesses are suffering. It’s similar to the one or two person small press publisher versus the indie press that tries to do multiple books a year. The multiple book press is suffering because they have to spend more but take in less. I think micropresses, people having shows in their living rooms, mini comics, web zines, crafting… those kinds of things are hugely appealing right now because start up costs are minimal.

Tim O’Shea: How did the idea for the textbook first come about?

Jennifer Holt/Alisa Perren: We both teach classes about the media industries and were frustrated with the lack of course materials devoted to this subject – especially materials approaching the topic from a humanistic perspective. We also saw that the study of media industries had been growing and expanding but it had not yet been mapped as a field in an academic text. So we enlisted some of the people who have done formative work in this area as well as those doing new scholarship to help us put what we saw as the emerging field of media industries into context for our readers. (To view the book’s table of contents, click here.)

O’Shea: How did you divvy up the editorial duties on the textbook?

Holt/Perren: This was truly a collaborative effort. We worked together in recruiting contributors, editing all of the essays, and writing the introduction. And amazingly, we remained friends through it all.

O’Shea: How did you determine the topics covered and how many abstracts were submitted for you to consider?

Holt/Perren: We had to pare down to what was a reasonable and manageable table of contents for one book. That was one of the most difficult parts of this project. We wanted to provide readers with an understanding of the historical foundation of various media industries, and also look to the future. We also sought to look at the many ways these industries have been theorized, and consider the various methodologies that have been employed in their study.

After much discussion, we finally settled on four main sections. We decided to keep our focus mainly on visual media (with the exception of radio which is fundamental to television’s history and industrial traditions).

Choosing the proper scope proved to be one of the more challenging tasks in developing the book. There is no question that the media industries expand far beyond film, television and new media (the focal points of our collection). We chose the scope we did for a few key reasons: first, we thought that looking primarily at audio-visual media would offer a greater degree of coherence and specificity across the essays. Readers would not only be able to learn about concepts, but also about the operations of these industries in greater detail, from a variety of perspectives.

Second, we felt this approach would make the material more accessible for those undergraduate and graduate programs oriented toward film and television studies – programs that are often less likely to have extensive course offerings on the media industries than those based in communication departments, for instance.

Third, this focus offered a means of differentiating our book from others already in print. The emphasis on audio-visual media enabled us to address a key tension in studying the media industries: namely, that these industries are at once distinct (in many respects, the film industry differs from the cable television industry, for example), and yet they also are and always have been deeply interdependent and interactive.

Thus, while focusing primarily on the audio-visual risks overlooking the important relationships and contributions of other industries such as comics, music and publishing to film, television and new media, were we also to examine all of those other industries as well, we would likely have a book both too general and unwieldy (not to mention several hundred pages longer!). We believe that the case studies offered by our contributors explore concepts that, though most directly applicable to audio-visual media, can also be extrapolated to other media as well.

It is worth adding that, on several occasions, our contributors do weave in examples from other media forms to make their points. Should we pursue a second edition of this book, one of our goals would be to further expand our discussion to other media. We see the current book as but an early step in what we hope to be a much more extensive conversation about what theories and methods are most productive when studying and writing about the media industries.

After deciding on the chapters we wanted, we commissioned various authors to write them. We were fortunate enough to have most of our writers sign on pretty quickly. Their enthusiasm for the project reinforced the demand and desire for this kind of book.

O’Shea: I was struck by the scope of the textbook, given that you cover historical data like Depression-era advertising to advertising trends in You Tube. Are there topics you wished you were able to address, but were unable to, due to time and/or space constraints?

Holt/Perren: Oh yes! We have enough left for three more volumes! Figuring out what to leave out was probably more painful than deciding what to include. As noted in our answer to your last question, we could easily have entire chapters (or sections) devoted to video games, comics, the music industry, and publishing, just to name a few that we had to leave behind. We would have loved to have issues such as intellectual property rights, labor and emerging marketing practices discussed at greater length, too. We are well aware that there is much more that can be discussed…but we are also proud of how much we – and our contributors – managed to explore. From our perspective, this is but an early step in what we hope to be a longer conversation about how and why the media industries need to be studied.

O’Shea: In teaching students, how hard is it to get them to fully grasp that in order to properly construct theory, they must fully grasp history? This question came to me in looking at Prof. Perren’s dissertation topic (“Deregulation, Integration and a New Era of Media Conglomerates: The Case of Fox, 1985-1995.”) and finding out Prof. Holt is “currently finishing a manuscript entitled Empires of Entertainment, which examines deregulation and media conglomeration from 1980-1996″.

Holt/Perren: As our contributor (current CEO of Generate and former WB network executive) Jordan Levin notes in his essay, executives immersed in the media industries often face strong institutional and economic pressure to “think in the now.” Similarly, at times it can be easy for scholars to get caught up in the proclamations by the press and industry that what is happening in the present is unlike anything that has ever taken place before.

But we have both been trained as historians, and thus recognize that the more you know about these histories, the more similarities and parallels you can find between past practices, behaviors and assumptions and present-day activities. From our view, an historical perspective is crucial because it forces you to more profoundly consider what is in fact new, or the specific ways in which something is new. Certainly policy shifts, the rise of new technologies, media consolidation, and the growth of niche markets have dramatically altered how media are produced, distributed and consumed. Yet we think it is important to move past the broad generalizations that are often made in top down approaches to consider more precisely how and why these changes have taken place.

On the one hand, looking closely at media industry history can lead one to look at the present more closely, forcing one to question the latest marketing or journalistic claims about how “this new technology will change the way media is produced” or how “this new corporate strategy will reshape how media is consumed.” We can see that, in fact, much of what we take to be so novel has been around for years (if not decades). On the other hand, contemporary developments can also lead us to reexamine and rethink historical processes in a new light. In recent years, talk of the rise of “convergence” has led many media historians to look back at what were previously conceptualized as “distinct” media forms (not just film and television, but also comics, music, radio, magazines and newspapers).

O’Shea: I find it interesting that in a book about Media Industries, newspapers get mentioned on one page out of 280+ pages. How much of newspapers’ current struggle stems from the fact the industry did not effectively embrace new technologies?

Holt/Perren: Yes, newspapers were certainly neglected in our desire to focus on the television, film and new media industries. Perhaps if they had adapted better, they would have made it into the book! On a more serious note, the problems facing newspapers are certainly also being faced by all other sectors of the media industries to varying degrees. Every industry – film, TV, newspapers, etc. – is scrambling to find a workable business model. So far, there are many compelling ideas, but few solutions. Right now the situation facing the newspaper industry is especially dire, but other sectors of the media industries – including broadcast affiliates and indie film distributors – are also struggling as their long-standing ways of doing business are faltering.

Having said that, we both agree that much of the current crisis that the newspaper industry is facing is a result of their inability to compete with and adapt to new digital technologies. Primarily, it is their failure to come up with a workable business model that can be reconciled with the very expensive business of reporting news and with the dwindling supply of advertising dollars for publishing, along with the new habits and expectations of so-called digital natives. Add in the fact that traditional media outlets have used up their supply of investor goodwill in this economy, and there are major problems. New media ventures seem to have more latitude for failure at the present moment. Consider this: Google is on schedule to lose $470 million this year on YouTube alone, which is almost five times more than the Boston Globe’s anticipated losses. You don’t hear people talking about the disappearance of Google, though.

There is an excellent interview with Walter Isaacson on The Daily Show that addresses this very question. Isaacson thinks it is the notion of “free” that has killed the business.

O’Shea: How much do you expect the future of the media will be shaped by scholar-activists?

Holt/Perren: One of the unfortunate consequences of the free fall going on in both the newspaper and magazine industries is that there is less money to support more in-depth research and reporting. However, on the flip side, something interesting has begun to occur within the academy: a wider range of media scholars are indicating a desire to communicate with the broader public. The ease of communicating through the Internet has enabled and encouraged some scholars to disseminate their work in a wider range of platforms and venues. The types of activism take a variety of forms depending on the scholars and organizations. Many of the most prominent scholar-activists are interested in addressing systemic policy issues (such as Lawrence Lessig, Patricia Aufderheide and Robert McChesney).

It is worth adding that, along with these scholar-activists, there are many others who are increasingly acting as public intellectuals. These people are communicating with a wider audience about current topics in accessible and engaging prose. Among those who are doing so on a regular basis (through blogs as well as other venues) are Henry Jenkins, Jason Mittell and Chuck Tryon. In addition, a number of sites have launched in recent years that serve as places where diverse conversations take place between scholars, journalists, and the wider public. For examples, see Flow and In Media Res.

O’Shea: Every month seemingly brings the premiere of some form of new media. Are there certain types of new media that you have been surprised to find have gained in popularity or potentially did not click with consumers as much as you initially expected?

Holt/Perren: Generally we both try to avoid playing the prediction game for, as you note, these days one technology or platform is quickly being replaced by another. Twitter, of course, is all the rage these days, and after spending some time on it, one of us (Alisa) can see its value. However, we both remain skeptical as to whether it will take off in the same way that Facebook did, or whether either one of these platforms will be around in a few years.

One problem right now is the sheer bounty of both technologies and content. Many people working in the industry and studying these developments agree that there will soon come a time when the computer and television will “marry.” They are most definitely already in a serious, committed relationship. Companies have tried to push this relationship forward for years now (remember WebTV?). And there is no shortage of technologies available now (see Slingbox, Roku, AppleTV, Microsoft Xbox, etc.). Yet we wouldn’t be willing to make a bet as to how they will take the final plunge. Till death do they part? …Not yet.