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E M P T Y L A

A fantastic—if not realistic—view of our populous city. Yeah, you wish, LA.

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Issuu Launches on Apple’s iTablet or on Amazon’s Kindle?

We use Issuu for the digital edition of URB magazine. My mouth is watering thinking about a handheld tablet full of graphics, fonts and video. As for which platform should they go with, I’ll have to go with Apple, mainly for compatibility reasons. But with Amazon’s advances with Kindle, it’s really a toss up.

Stay tuned …

If you’ve followed the Katrina debate at all, this won’t surprise you—except that a court finally found some government accountability. No disaster like this is solely about finger pointing, but the prevailing claims of the Katrina flooding in New Orleans as an Act of God was unfortunate and untrue.

I remember being in New Orleans only a few months after the storm and seeing the devastation, especially in East New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward. It was clear then that the city’s damage was largely caused by a man made failure(s). Hopefully this ruling not only helps residents get compensated for their losses but, more importantly, pushes the Army Corps to rebuild the coastline and the levees properly.

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—St. Francis (found inside the pages of Pigeons: The fascinating saga of the world’s most revered and reviled bird)

Just got this after ordering this on Amazon. It’s a book written just for me—one of this hearty, beautiful animal’s staunchest defenders. At least one of its biggest fans. They have never been “rats with wings” to me—although I have a soft spot for rodents too.

NY Times review

“He needs to be gone from this Earth.”

—Sonia Wills (mother of slain bus driver Conrad Johnson)

I admit, I’m not going for PC here. This is an emotional response to the execution of John Muhammad. And one that I’ll probably reconsider and rethink many times in the future, but it’s what I feel today (and in the months leading up to this). I agree with Ms. Wills and supported the execution last night of the so-called DC Sniper.

I’m glad this man is dead for the heinous murder of 10 innocent people, all of which left families and loved ones to grieve for decades to come. I’m glad that the state did what I would have liked to have done (‘cept my execution would have been much crueler and unusual).

I’m not traditionally for the capital punishment, but I no longer reject it outright due to principle. And if there was a time when state sanctioned killing fit, this one is it. The turning point for me was the obscene murder of that poor bus driver (Conrad Johnson) on the early morning of October 22, 2002. When I heard of that particular shooting, all I could think of was how hard this man works each day and why somebody would snuff his life out. How he must have had a family and maybe a son who loved him. And how, without a hint of concern for any of that by his killer, he was gunned down. In that moment, in my mind, John Muhammad ceased being a life worth saving.

I am the first to say that the death penalty is a barbaric and cruel institution. And that it’s historically been unfairly waged on minorities and other disenfranchised in our criminal courts system. But Muhammad was guilty. So this is not about whether he got a good attorney or if blacks are more likely to be executed than whites—that’s an entirely different argument and one that can absolutely be discussed. But, in this case, with this killer, the value of his life disappeared when he took those DC-area lives.

While I agree that life is precious, I don’t believe that all life is. Some life, just like life in the wild, must die. Some life is just cancer, a natural occurring mutation, but no more welcome than a tumor in your head. Cut it out, kill it, whatever. But get rid of it. I don’t accept that we must treat all life as sacred. It’s clear we don’t, given the wars we wage, the people we allow to die in the streets, starve or go without clean water. Every day people in this country have their lives cut short by lack of healthcare, proper nutrition or street violence. This fact alone leaves me little interest in safeguarding the life of a senseless and evil murderer like Muhammad.

In a perfect world, we’d be able to have harmony and the Muhammads among us would find other ways to lash out that didn’t result in killing others. But we don’t live there yet. In the meantime, while we work to achieve a human utopia, I can sleep at night with certain folks simply disappearing. The world is a crowded place and most of us are just trying to stay safe and grow old with loved ones. We don’t need more cancers of the human kind. The DC Sniper was a cluster of bad cells and I say good riddance.

Google’s mouth watering offices seem so 2007 right about now. All Facebook’s new Palo Alto digs need are bunk beds and employees would simply move in.

Click through the pics and weep (or just apply for a job)

Reporter receives $500k prize for investigating decades old hate crimes

I just saw this guy on Colbert and probably like the rest of the audience I was humbled by his actions. With all the talk about the loss of reporting, journalism and newspapers (Which I’ve written about before), Jerry Mitchell is the type of investigative journalist we really can’t afford to be without.

Watch the videos for the story of how Mitchell, after becoming inspired by the movie Mississippi Burning (1989) cracked open a long dormant murder case. In 1964 three young civil rights activists were brutally murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and the crime was never solved. But through Mitchell’s tenacity 25 years later, the perpetrators were eventually convicted and sent to jail.

Mitchell’s winning of the $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship won’t save the jobs of thousands of newspaper reporters, but it will at least draw attention to why, even as we embrace new media, we need to find a way to fund and support serious reporting. It’s simply in society’s interest to.

Colbert Interview:

Economist editor John Micklethwait on Charlie Rose

Plenty has been written about sneakerheads and their blogs. This recent Adweek story is only an update for those in the know, but sneaker blogs are still a phenomenal scene and online industry to behold.

In the 2000 book The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell laid out a theory about how hit products or movements spread. People who know a lot of people (called connectors) cross paths with mavens. Nine years down the line, it seems that the connectors are unnecessary. Give mavens a blog and access to Facebook or Twitter, and they will rule the category.

So true.

Full story

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Not just because she’s ridiculously hot, but this is a great example of a personal celebrity blog. Lots of info candy and calls to action. Makes good use of social media (ex: Twitter). Plus, Olivia has a very matter-of-fact personal style that feels natural, even though she’s clearly not talking to you (Sorry, no).

An interview I did with the LA WEEKLY on the announcement of URB going digital. The writer Dennis Romero has followed our career since our first year, having written a long piece on us for the LA Times circa 1991.

“I don’t have sympathy for those displaced by the media shift, and I’m as much a victim of if as anyone. That’s the cost of freedom: If people want to write long-form about music, they need to cultivate an audience that cares. But no crying.”

Knowing me, Dennis quizzes me about music philosophy, whether I’m as passionate today as in the past and what challenges we’ve had and will have in the future. He definitely hits all angles.

Dennis Romero on Twitter

URB.com

1981 science broadcast on the coming “electronic newspaper”

This is so telling. Almost three decades ago, long before Facebook’s inventors were even born, the The San Francisco Examiner was tinkering with ways to deliver the news electronically. Amazing that even with this forethought, the industry would soon abandon this prescient quest and dig its heels into what would become quicksand.

You can laugh at the KRON newscaster’s cute snickering at the two hour download time and the newspaper not going anywhere anytime soon. That was accurate, as it would take a quarter century for things to finally start to really unravel for the industry.

David Cole, S.F. Examiner > “This is an experiment. We’re trying to find out what it’s gonna mean to us as editors and reporters. And what it means to the home user”

But imagine if the powers that be had taken this technological paper chase seriously. What if instead of just leaving the experimentation on the drawing board, The Examiner, Chronicle, LA Times — all available electronically back then — had formed a coalition to explore this brave new frontier? Imagine if they’d spent the last 28 years developing the technology we’re surrounded with today, and gone on to revolutionize news delivery.

But, obviously, that isn’t what happened. Back when this report aired, just down the street from the station, some kids were probably in a garage, hacking away at what would become the tools that would someday make newspapers obsolete. Sad those early newspaper pioneers didn’t know how right about the future they really were.

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Babelgum’s Radar Six // Cut & Paste

Built in the spirit of a hip-hop battle, this “live digital design tournament” looks pretty fresh. Had never seen this in person or on video before. It does seem strange to me, as a designer used to long late nights in solitude, to imagine “performing” in front of a full house (and Webcast worldwide!). But in this hyper real world, it makes perfect sense.

Had lunch with the future today. My new 23-year-old friend Levi. Last name Maestro (or at least that’s what his grandmother called him when he was a kid). But, wait, he’s still a kid. About as old as I was when I started my then print-only magazine URB. And as we move into almost 100% digital land, a kid like Maestro again reminds me why.

Maestro is a skater, something he wants me to remember—as well as all of his fans. But he also happens to be a self taught (I think) video auteur. He shoots, edits and scripts his own video series (Maestro Knows), traveling around the globe to bring back first hand stories of the freshness. Nike granted him an unprecedented video tour of their headquarters. He just returned from Tokyo, and is heading to New York this week for his next season (he produces episodic vignettes just like television—why not?). From there, who knows.

There’s a lot more than can be written about Maestro, but it’s more fun to feel you know him from his personal vlog and first-person adventuring. He’s defined a new media future with him squarely at center focus. His videos, which feature his road trips, friends and heroes—along with some smart product placement—get anywhere from 20-200k views. Maybe not quite prime time numbers, but in the world of viral clips, totally respectable. And definitely not bad for a self-made millennial. All I can say is watch this space.

Maestro on Twitter

Building with Levi late Sunday at Insomniac on Beverly Blvd, LA

Maestro Knows - Episode 9 (Nike Campus) from Maestro Knows on Vimeo.

Is your hair like mine?

I haven’t found a verifiable source for the story behind this photo (Wonkette thought it was a noogie). I saw it on a friend’s Facebook page, where it claimed the little boy was asking if the president’s hair was like his. I want to believe that’s what’s going on here, because that choked me up a bit. And it would make sense.

The story of black hair is a long and involved one, far too much to open up here (So just watch Chris Rock’s new movie). But the profound message this black man—with curly black hair and sitting in the White House—sends as leader of the free world, can’t be shaken. Images like this—regardless of what was said, the image alone conveys the kid’s awe—remind us what a momentous shift this country took in the last election.

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