Compare and Contrast – Poly in Five Years – WaPo and Washingtonian
When it comes to social matters, I’m an optimist. Whatever happens in the present, the fact is that better communications have always driven a more liberal culture. Sometimes they drive a more repressive one first because a facet of new communications is often that a group of people who weren’t involved in broad cultural discourse […]
Letters to Dave Navarro
I got this from JayLynn. I don’t ordinarily promote causes here, but this is something so bizarre and enormous that I felt I should pass it along. I honestly did not believe the first site…talking about the internet harassment of Dave Navarro for seeking a divorce, until I actually went to the second site. Part […]
MacMcClelland, Rape, and PTSD
In the past few weeks there has been a lot of traffic in the online world about a piece by Mother Jones journalist Mac McClelland for Good. That’s not surprising in itself. If you’ve never heard of Mac McClelland, she’s one of those rare people in the world who is out to do some good…and cut a […]
A Warm Fuzzy Tale–PART TWO!
So…probably most of you in School, or Church, or some other Institution of Cultural Assimilation, read Claude Steiner’s “A Warm Fuzzy Tale” in grade school. And if you’re like me, you sort of shrugged and said “well that makes sense but whatever.” So…most people get “A Warm Fuzzy Tale” without any explanation that it’s […]
I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner…
The Sexting scandal with Representative Weiner is a source for plenty of tittering and twittering, not least because most of us still have enough Junior High mentality to think “Weiner’s weener” is funny. For me it opens up a larger question. Has the dichotomy between conventional conservative American morality and the new media led to […]
Advocacy for M/s and other Fetish Issues…
In a group I follow on FetLife, the question came up of displays of M/s in public and whether or not that was appropriate. I wanted to share my personal feelings, and expand that into the larger sphere of public advocacy. The first thing I want to say is that I think that effective advocacy […]
Every Blog will have his day…
In an effort to curb my tendency to be unable to write about a subject in under 4000 words, there are now Tumblr and Twitter accounts for Gordonsdrysin. At the very least, they’ll carry occasional visual ‘humor.”
New York BDSM club near strangling…..
First some Newspaper articles. Thanks to a friend in Philadelphis for putting these into circulation. First Article Second Article Third Article Okay first the facts. For folks who don’t want to jump links, there are precious few. Richard Benjamin is a 67 year old retired college professor from Montreal. For years he’s been sneaking down […]
Poly, BDSM and FedEx
So the Post carried an article on Poly couples yesterday. For those of you just joining this channel, that’s a generic term for “people who fuck around like I do.” Apparently based on some local convention. I don’t know that you deeply need to go read it. The article is just about exactly what you’d […]
Goodbye Washington Post
Today I first ran into the Washington Post’s new paywall, which, while poorly explained seems to track me and want to charge me a subscription fee for the Washington Post. I deleted the Washington Post from my media bookmarks as “go to” reading, and will stop linking to its articles when I post to Twitter of Facebook.
Let me explain why. It isn’t that I don’t feel, in principle the Post’s coverage is worth paying for. At the same time, I want the Post to be a success. It only matters if it’s a success. And paying for it when I can get the same coverage from a dozen different sources…especially paying for it’s “Opinion” coverage is an act of mercy and loyalty, not an intelligent act.
Yes I know other newspapers have embraced this model. But MSNBC doesn’t. CNN doesn’t. The BBC doesn’t. The world news leaders don’t. That leaves the Post essentially trying to put forward either one of two arguments. The New York Times does. Great! Way to define yourself as last century’s press.
a) It has specialized news content that the others don’t, something like “Financial Times.” I find this difficult to believe. The Post has some excellent writers, certainly. But why is it more insightful about Washington than other free content providers. What specialized content does WaPo present that a dozen other sources don’t also. Free. Washington Insider talk? Politico and a dozen blogs. International Politics? The Economist, BBC. Washington area information. Washingtonian.
b) It admittedly can’t compete with other free content providers but for some reason I should prop it up anyway like a beloved friend’s YouTube Channel. That’s depressing and hopefully not the case.
I hoped new ownership would help WaPo. I could see it as the platform basis for something the US lacks. A world-dominating platform that seriously competes with CNN, MSNBC, or BBC. Not to burrow back into the 1990s in search of a payer model that failed years ago, thus insuring that its content is never routinely accessible.
Post…I’m not going to post links to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit that people can’t get to. (I make occasional exceptions for academic content…good luck with that). You live or die by your social media. Please don’t go the route of making the Washington Post another insular, irrelevant news source to get a few pennies from readers.
I love the Post. And this is tough love. Goodbye and Goodnight.