Bookworm

Why I Enjoy Brijit (and response to Barbara Kay piece)

What makes Brijit worth reading?

• Brijit abstracts and reviews nonfiction content -- from newspapers, magazines, a few top tier blogs, radio, and television -- in no more than one hundred words.  It also rates the piece from zero to three "dots" (including half dots), with three dots being the best.
• Brijit reviews some content that isn't available online for free.  This is helpful if you're trying to decide whether to pick up the newest New Yorker or New York Review of Books, or can even help you target the choicest pieces in your slithery stacks of O magazine and Entertainment Weekly. 
• You can subscribe to RSS feeds for individual sources or particular subjects.
• The red, white, and black design is crisp and the interface is clean with a few Web 2.0 touches (for example, you can click to open or close the top headlines on the main page without a page refresh).

What if I want to write for Brijit -- how does it work?

1. Register as a writer.
2. Choose an open assignment (but make sure you can access the content first). Most assignments can be claimed by up to three individuals; a few sources call for only two submissions and one source (The Onion) calls for as many as five.
3. Read the article, listen to the audio, or watch the video.
4. Write the abstract, include relevant tags, and choose your dot rating.
5. Submit your work prior to the deadline.
6. The Brijit editors choose the best submission, edit it, and publish it on the website.
7. You can (obsessively) check the status of your submissions within your profile pages, haunt the main page for a familiar headline, or (for the more Zen among you) simply wait for the congratulatory email telling you of a published abstract.
8. Writers of published abstracts of print sources earn $5 for each; published abstracts of audio and video broadcasts earn $8.  Brijit pays by PayPal or check once a month.

Response to Barbara Kay's article

Yesterday I read an article on canada.com by Barbara Kay, who expressed her distaste for the competitive nature of writing abstracts for Brijit.com.  Her son, Jonathan Kay, gets a thrill from competing against a few other writers (in one particular case, a co-worker) for the prize of getting an abstract published, whereas Kay "shuddered at the very thought of exposing myself to such humiliation," and began talking about gender differences with regard to competition. 

1. First of all, presumably most people aren't making a game out of it the way Jonathan did (although it is very satisfying when your abstract is chosen).  Therefore, in most cases no one but you and the Brijit staff know when your lovingly crafted abstract was not the chosen one. So, really, how humiliating is that?
2. Also, we live in a world where, for better or for worse, we all find ourselves in competition for places on a sports team, for acceptances to the college of our choice, or for our dream job.  I can't imagine a safer environment than the Writers Area of Brijit.com to embrace a little private humility (when someone else writes a better abstract) and deserved, earned pride (when yours is selected and hits the front page). 
3. You can even benchmark yourself against the most successful writers to try to improve your skills.  Brijit is really an English major's dream -- you can get paid for reading and writing.
4. Kay calls the pay scale "nugatory".  Sure, most of us wouldn't be able to afford to work full time for this rate of pay or with this degree of uncertainty.  But perhaps there is sufficient benefit if you think of it differently.  Writing for Brijit causes someone to read, listen to, or watch high quality nonfiction, and hone his or her skills of critical thinking, synthesis, and concise writing.  And, if the skill is sufficient, some extra cash can be had (which is no small thing in the current economy).
5. Finally, Kay states: "Just as most war gamers are male, I bet this Brijit website has been inundated with male “reviewers” and very few women writers." I'm not privy to the overall statistics, but she might be surprised to know that, as of today's date, five of the top ten most prolific and successful writers on Brijit are women.

[Disclaimer: I am a Brijit writer.  But even if I wasn't, I'd be reading the content on the site.]

Are We the Thought Police?

In this Salon piece we, the American people, are under indictment for self-censoring what we know about the Iraq war. Although the Bush administration and the press don't always make it easy for us to be informed, Michael Massing asserts that we don't need their interventions to keep us from the full truth. We simply choose not to read the military blogs and books, among other sources, that detail some of the more horrific aspects of this war: the number of civilian deaths, the proliferation of pornography, and drug use by the troops, among others.

Oprah's favorite guy? In politics, anyway

Can the powerful voice of Oprah Winfrey, whose book recommendation sent Anna Karenina shooting to the top of the bestseller lists, wield similar influence by campaigning for Barack Obama? This fast-reading article uses poll numbers and conventional wisdom to attempt to answer that question. It was announced yesterday that Winfrey will "barnstorm" early primary states with Obama. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson concludes that there might not be a huge effect, noting that she will not be using her show or magazine as a platform, but says, "if I were running for president, I'd rather have her with me than against me." [Quotes from Washington Post column]

Good grief, CNN, who makes these decisions?

I received three Breaking News emails from CNN today.  Two of the three I would consider to be important news and one I would not.  Can you identify the "Gee, I could've waited 'til later for this one" story?

• Three major earthquakes strike Peru -- a magnitude 7.7 and two magnitude 7.5, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. There is no word on casualties but Reuters reports buildings shaking in the capital, Lima.
• President Bush's daughter, Jenna, is engaged to be married, the White House says.
• Jose Padilla is found guilty on charges he conspired to kill people in an overseas jihad and to fund and support overseas terrorism.
  

Happy Birthday, Daniel Schorr

"When someone works at his trade every week, at age 75 or 80, we say, "That's admirable."  When he does it at age 90, we say, "That's Daniel Schorr." The NPR senior news analyst is celebrating his 90th birthday." [NPR]

Arianna Huffington: It's News, Right?

"Another story last week that did not involve a "Six-Year-Old Beauty Queen" was the news that in July the death toll in Iraq was the deadliest since the start of the war -- over 3400 people, or about 110 a day. I don't know if any of these 3400, or of the tens of thousands who have been killed since the beginning of the war, were prepubescent beauty queens, but with numbers like that, it wouldn't be out of the question. Maybe MSNBC can be "first" on that one, too.

In the meantime, the only people happier than the cable "news anchors" must be Bush, Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld. When you've basically screwed up the world, and you're headed into a heated anti-incumbent election, it must be a gift from heaven to have a story that, essentially, shuts down the delivery of news." [The Huffington Post]

Who blogs? And why?

"If all these people really want from the Web is a hobby and to talk to their friends and family, they'd be better off taking pottery lessons and purchasing more cell-phone minutes." [Jack Shafer at Slate]

Shafer's column talks about the findings of a recent Pew survey of bloggers.  It's a relatively reasonable article, but he ends it with the above sentence.  What a stupid and rude thing to write.  I'm sure he was being facetious, but let's take it at face value. 

Why would bloggers be better off creating pottery instead of blog posts?  I'm sure it's cheaper to pay for a TypePad account than it would be to pay for pottery classes, supplies, kiln time, etc. 

Why would bloggers be better off purchasing more cell phone minutes to use for  more synchronous conversations, when, perhaps, it is the convenience of asynchronous communication that they find appealing?  Family and friends are spread across the globe and a convenient time for one to call might be supremely inconvenient to someone else.  Plus, a blog can be a permanent record in a way that phone calls cannot.  Finally, why on earth does Jack Shafer care what we do with our time?

Couric Listens, but Who Will Watch?

". . .[M]any of the younger people I asked about Ms. Couric or the evening news responded as if I were an archaeologist inquiring about a quaint custom dating back centuries. Unless Ms. Couric was planning on setting herself on fire every night, few people thought they could find a way to be home at 5:30 in the evening (Central Standard Time) to gather around the television set. . . [However] millions of people who have not watched the evening news in years will tune in come September, and even those who are there to check hair and make-up may find something relevant enough to stick around on the following nights. . . Leon Trawick, a lawyer from Minneapolis who stopped in for a drink at J. D. Hoyt’s, a steakhouse in downtown Minneapolis, said the opinions he was interested in seeing expressed should be on the newscast itself. “Africa is a mess, the Middle East is blowing up, but I don’t see any teeth in any of these stories,” he said. “People are already informed. You have to give me something more — tell me what you think the truth is — to expect me to take the time to tune in network news.” It is clear that the battle that Ms. Couric will be confronting this fall is less uphill than up against a wall — one composed of real-time data that leaves very few stones unturned by the end of the day. “I like her. I watched her this morning,” said Stephen Paul, an investment banker who was at the bar at J. D. Hoyt’s, warming up for dinner. “I have Bloomberg, CNN and all of the information coming at me over the Internet every day. By the time I get home, I pretty much know what I need to know and could use a little peace and quiet.” [NY Times]

Arianna Huffington on Tony Snow

"I've known Tony Snow for a long time -- and there's no question that he's a very bright and articulate guy.

But he's showing himself to be an honors graduate of the Shit Happens School of Politics. The new poster child for the Bush administration's brand of Callous Conservatism.

It's worth noting that Snow is arriving on the scene just as Michael Gerson, the conscience of the administration and the intellectual architect of the Bush White House's never-made-it-off-the-drawing-board compassionate conservatism, is heading out the door.

According to Josh Bolten, Gerson "reflected the president's heart." So if Karl Rove is Bush's Brain, and Gerson reflected his heart... what part of the president does Snow embody?

So far, I'd say it's located below the waist and to the rear." [Link: The
Huffington Post]

O'Reilly Doesn't Know What He's Talking About

I know -- the title of this post isn't exactly a revelation.  Apparently he made quite the boo-boo while talking to Wesley Clark the other night and Fox News is already trying to clean up the evidence. 

"'In Malmedy, as you know, U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed and they shot them dead, you know that. That’s on the record. And documented.'"

Anyone who knows their World War II history is probably cringing right now — because O’Reilly got that one totally backwards, it was the German troops of the 1st SS Panzer Division that massacred 84 unarmed U.S. soldiers who had just surrendered." [QDN]