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The term “sock puppet” has come to denote people who create false web identities with which to generate online attention to and (usually) praise of themselves ― such as posting favorable comments about and reviews of their own work at Amazon and other sites. We need another term for those who hide behind false names in order to do other kinds of online harm to people, and I propose “web weasel.” […]
We need to preserve anonymity in some situations― that’s what makes whistle-blowing possible, among other things. But no reputable print periodical would publish unsigned letters to the editor; they require a verifiable sender, though they’ll withhold a name on request if there’s a good reason for it. No reason that online forums, and the comments section of periodicals and blogs, shouldn’t subscribe to the same standards. […]
If I were Robert Frank today imagining The Americans ― or Larry Clark working on Tulsa, or W. Eugene Smith and Aileen Smith on Minamata, or Dorothea Lange and Paul Schuster Taylor on An American Exodus ― I’d do them as ebooks. Indeed, several of them, specifically Minamata and An American Exodus, strike me as prophecies of the ebook, prototype hypertexts straining at the confines of the printed, bound book. […]
Those who reviled me as “misogynistic” in early 2012 for my opposition to such tendencies as cut-rate breast and buttock augmentation will doubtless find further proof of my woman-hating attitude in my celebration of a grass-roots movement known as “The Mom Stays in the Picture,” which arose spontaneously in response to an op-ed piece by Allison Tate at The Huffington Post. […]
I expect the digital component of BookExpo America to expand and the print component thereof to shrink over the coming years. Eventually, I predict, the print-only publishers will huddle in a distant corner, and the digital publishers will rule the floor. For similar reasons, I expect specialized photo-book publishers, and the authors of such works, to move steadily toward ebook format. […]
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SPJ Research Award 2014
Thought for the Day Ignorance is a condition; dumbness is a commitment.
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Forumization and Its Malcontent (6)
The term “sock puppet” has come to denote people who create false web identities with which to generate online attention to and (usually) praise of themselves ― such as posting favorable comments about and reviews of their own work at Amazon and other sites. We need another term for those who hide behind false names in order to do other kinds of online harm to people, and I propose “web weasel.” […]