Want Your Bad

File under: shirts that will only really matter for about two more weeks. File under: shirts I actually can never wear, ever, because it is too much the torso version of Frank Rossitano's hats. File under: awesome.

Via the aptly named Relevant Now.

Publicists, Journalists, Twitter, Attribution, Blogging, Oh My

For reasons various and stupid, I was reading through the twitter feed this morning of one of my favorite restaurant writers, Julia Kramer, and I noticed this tweet, directed at me, that I had completely missed like three months ago: "@ellit, re: content shortage+lots of blogs=qs about attribution etiquette. <--pls to write a blog post about this?? [really.]" And then later this afternoon, completely out of the blue, came an email from another restaurant writer in my personal A list, asking a related question: Why (on my work blog) do I give credit in certain posts to Ellen Malloy, who's a publicist? It's her job to get the word out about her restaurants. Why do I, asked this writer, "give her double play"?

So then I wrote this epically long email response, in which I started to crystallize all sorts of abstract thoughts that had been swirling around in my head about Twitter, and blog citation, and the blurring line between PR and journalism.

The first question is one of crediting sources. If I get a story from Twitter, no matter who it's from, I'll credit that tweet as my source, because it's public communication. Anyone can see what Ellen tweets, for example, and she does that on purpose: part of her (well-publicized) philosophy of PR is to cut out the journalistic middleman. My post about Dale Levitski taking over at Sprout is a good example: if Ellen had emailed a press release or posted information behind RIA's password-protection, I might not have credited her by name. But Twitter's public, just as public as sourcing my info from the Tribune or TOC, so it gets cited.

For stuff that appears on RIA, Ellen's members-only aggregation of news and information about her restaurant clients, the ethics of attribution is a little cloudier. The stories that are posted there are press releases, yes. But on one hand, they have a public component to them - they're linkable as sources even if you're not a journalist with a password. On the other hand, that public component isn't RSSable and it's unlikely that non-journalists are reading it.

(Still, I feel uncomfortable omitting credit, because it is essentially publicly available information. I wouldn't, for example, upload the PDF of an emailed PR blast, and I get twitchy when I see blogs that just repost release text wholesale. Even when I get a newsy press release I'll often attribute it to [Inbox] or mention that it came over the wire - I think that kind of transparency is important when it comes to creating trust between me and my readers. Off the high horse now.)

But then there is the question of attributing biased sources. While Ellen's game-changing approach to restaurant public relatinos often blurs the lines between PR and journalism, there is that fundamental thing that separates what Ellen does from what I do (or the Trib or TOC or someone with a Yelp account or whoever): she's being paid by the restaurants. As publicists go, I trust what Ellen sells me - unlike many other PRs, I don't think she tries to pass off non-stories as incredibly important breaking news - but I can't forget that it's her job to make sure that the stories that get out about her clients are positive. The objective measure of her doing her job well, as she's pointed out to me before, is butts in seats.

That's where I (and other journalists, bloggers, and people who get press releases) come in: our goal isn't butts in seats, it's to dig up news and - in some cases - to express our opinions about it. So when Ellen hands me a story (or really, since most of what RIA does is non-exclusive, I should say: when Ellen broadcasts a story and I pick up on it), my job ought to be to look at it with skepticism and then, if it passes muster, to take it beyond the press release: calling chefs for comment, providing broader-picture context (there's an example of a RIA-sourced story I didn't attribute), or - occasionally, if it's warrented - just being like "hey, this is awesome."

When I reblog folks like TOC, the Reader, etc., that additional legwork has often been done already - they start with a news nugget and garnish it with their own editorial perspective - so I don't necessarily feel obligated to embellish, just to point my readers to their insights. But with press releases, Ellen's or otherwise, I do think I've got an obligation to take it a step beyond the information I (and everyone else on the bcc list) am handed. That doesn't always happen (sometimes a release is just facts. Sometimes it's a tiny story and there isn't more to add. Sometimes it's just a painfully busy day and I literally don't have time), but I like to think that I add something to the conversation more often than not.

So then let's go off in another direction: there is, of course, always that bcc list to keep in mind. It's rare that I get my hands on a piece of information - big or small - that half a dozen other people covering my beat don't also have at the same time. Taking a release (or even an exclusive) as just a starting point is, I think, good practice among journalists in order to account for redundancy. I can't count the number of times I've stared at an empty MT input field with no idea what to do, simply because other bloggers who got the same PR blast I did had just gotten the information online faster than I could. (Argh, lunch breaks, so dangerous.)

In those cases, I'm unsure what to do. Do I kill the story completely, and hope my readers pick it up elsewhere? Do I just run the same set of facts that's already been put out there, credit the press release, and pretend I haven't seen that, say, Julia Kramer already put it up on TOC? Do I run the facts but link to TOC as a source? It's not accurate - I didn't get the news from Kramer, after all - but it makes me look like less of a dick. Is the goal here to avoid looking like a dick?

But if I stick to the high-hat tenets of journalistic obligation that I got into above, this "take the facts and then add value" thing, then it alleviates that concern: I've got my own angle to add to the story ("angle" in this case could be as little as a stupid pun or as big as an interview with the chef), so my readers (who probably overlap significantly with TOC's, LTH's, Gaper's Block's, Chicagoist's, the Reader's, the Stew's, and probably Ellen's) don't feel like they're trapped in an echo chamber.

Of course all this depends on news being good and interesting, and sources being compliant, and the internet not failing, and people caring about what I have to say, and my mental bad-pun-generator firing on all cylinders. It's not perfect. It never is.

Decent Enough Hair

Mr. B and I went to see Good Hair last night. It was, well, good. Observations:

1. We were at the Magic Johnson Movie Theater on 125th St, in Harlem. 125th St is mentioned multiple times during the movie, and a number of the salons Chris Rock stopped by are within spitting distance of the theater.

2. And yet, more than half the (admittedly small) audience was white.

3. Even in the darkened theater, I felt self-conscious and strange that I had blow-dried straight my (naturally curly) hair that day.

4. After the movie, four women other from the theater and I were all in the bathroom staring at ourselves in the mirror and touching our own hair in complete silence. It was David Lynchian.

Fewer Clicks

This ad for Windows 7 (a) features a guy I went to summer camp with a million years ago (hi, Jack! Don't unfriend me on Facebook for this!) and (b) uses the mass adjective "less" when it should be the count adjective "fewer."



Because of these two things, I now feel surprisingly connected to Windows 7. Probably not in the way Microsoft wants me to be, but whatever.

Infinitely Recursive Jewelry

For as long as I have been alive I have hated wearing necklaces. Even the lightest, most ephemeral versions make me want to claw at them in a terrifically unladylike way until the damn things are ripped off my neck. Just thinking about it, seriously, just typing this is making me get all agitated and have creepy-crawly feelings growing up from my collarbone. Obviously I have problems. One of them, also necklace-related, is that I don't own this:



This is a diamond and sapphire necklace designed by Mark Newson for Boucheron. It's inspired by fractals, uses a particularly minimal setting "so the stones appear to float on the wearer’s throat," took 1500 hours of labor to craft, and is one of the most expensive pieces Boucheron has ever produced. Some lucky tycoon's wife gets to wear this, and that is all the proof I need that the world is horribly unfair.

[via The Moment]

The Tetris Dress

It's a dress with Tetris on it.

I've really got nothing more to say on the matter except that now that song will be stuck in my head FOREVER.

(via the inimitable A Dress A Day)

Dreamy Dream Computer

I'm home sick today with this epic cold that, last night, led me to stay up until 5am drifting in and out of fever-dreams about David Chang (no joke, and it's less fun than it sounds). After finally caving to a double dose of Nyquil I've spent the rest of the day cocooned in bed feeling sorry for myself and wanting to die.

This all has nothing to do with the fact that the latest in HP's attempts to sexify their netbook (Vivienne Tam, really?) has me completely enraptured. The darn thing is designed by Tord Boontje, which means it's one of the few things in the past day that's warmed my little Moss-obsessing design-snob techie heart enough to cut through the fog of this cold.



It's also delightfully in line with my realization that what I need, computer-wise, is not actually a tricked-out laptop, but instead a serviceable desktop machine and a nice handbag-friendly netbook. And a wee little netbook laser-etched in Boontje's awesome techno-flora graphics, cute enough to get me to abandon the Apple brand-loyalty I've carried for all twenty-seven years of my life? Yes and yes and yes, please.

Helen vs. The Piglet

I wrote a cookbook review-slash-judgment for Food52.com that's up today in their March Madness-style cookbook tournament: Well-Preserved vs. Babycakes.

Go read it and help me put up a feeble defense against the crushingly massive pageviews that will no doubt ensue from the tournament's later judges, who include folks like Grant Achatz, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nora Ephron, and Harold McGee. I know, right — how did I get invited to this party?

Pump It Up

The Lo Res pump from United Nude is the result of a pump being digitally scanned into 3D modeling sofware and then adjusted to (get it?) a lower resolution. Translated: The Lo Res pump from United Nude is what your shoes would look like if you lived in a 1980s computer.

Obviously I want them.

The King Of Consumer Rights

My friend Paul bought a Kindle from Amazon, and he dropped it one day, and it sort of broke but not entirely, and Amazon wanted $200 to replace it. Paul is generally speaking a very smart cookie, plus he went to law school, so he sent them a very strongly worded letter noting that Amazon falsely indicated the device's durability, and he would be willing to settle the matter for a payment of $400 ($200 to cover his replacement fee and $200 for incidental mucketymuck). He told Amazon they had 30 days to agree to his settlement offer, after which point he would file suit. Twenty days later, Amazon sent him a $400 check.

I am so impressed right now.