圣安地列斯c点任务:哪位大大介绍下Ken Layne乐队

Now the corporate world seems to be heading blogward. Fox News hired blogger Ken Layne and put him on its Web site. National Review Online, an indispensable site, has added a blogging section. ABC.com now runs a bloglike political commentary, "The Note," which recently mocked the "Forrest Gump-like existence" of Sen. John Kerry and the role of the Boston newspapers in keeping his reputation aloft.
In two cases, bloggers have prepared the way for new newspapers in major cities. Smartertimes.com, a running account of the sins and omissions of the New York Times, led to the founding of the New York Sun, New York City's new conservative daily paper. A similar path is being followed in Los Angeles, where LAExaminer.com regularly snipes at the Los Angeles Times to prepare the way for a new anti-Times daily paper. Check in with blogworld. It's definitely worth your time.

-- John Leo, U.S. News & World Report, May 13, 2002

They're trying to start another newspaper in Los Angeles, so now the local media establishment's knickers are in a knot .... Well, not entirely. But it is true that the germ of the new paper is LAExaminer.com, a Web site founded by media gadflies Ken Layne and Matt Welch that regularly needles the old harrumphers at the Times.
-- Catherine Seipp
United Press International, May 2, 2002

Blogs are far less parochial, the New York-Washington axis of mainstream media coverage offset by the strong presence of West Coast bloggers (Ken Layne, Matt Welch), with others chiming in from Australia (the acerbic and hilarious Tim Blair).
In the early days of the anti-Taliban campaign, foreign and domestic bloggers countered the defeatism of the dominant media -- which was then in its "quagmire" funk -- and corrected the falsehoods, exaggerations, and rote groupthink of the punditry. "We can fact-check your ass!" Ken Layne crowed, and the phrase quickly became the rallying cry of blogland ....

This gap between the can-do right and the can't-do left -- between entrepreneurial deeds and rhetorical blather -- was drawn most vividly by Ken Layne on his blog, where he compared Harvard professor, advocate, and recording artist Cornel West with basketball great Magic Johnson:

"Other than whatever gauzy form of Christian Marxism he advocates, West is absurdly free of concrete solutions to the problems of poor minorities. Like most sheltered academic stars, his goal is to 'open up dialogues.' I'll take Magic Johnson's actual achievements over West's musings, thanks. Thanks to Johnson, Southeast Los Angeles now has a big shopping mall and banks and supermarkets and a multiplex and chain bookstores and a Starbucks. While West drones on about the evils of consumer culture, those malls and stores are filled with people delighted by the convenience and commerce and jobs for their neighborhoods."
-- James Wolcott, "Blog Nation" Business 2.0, May 2002

The LA New Times did a fine story on the LA Examiner and its founders, Ken Layne and Matt Welch. Dig the picture of my office.
-- Tony Ortega, New Times LA, March 7, 2002

Andrew Sullivan says blogs are the future, and "previous unknown" Ken Layne "tells it like it is."
-- Times of London, Feb 24, 2002

Indeed, since Sept. 11, the number of new blogs has grown at an exponential rate, with 41,000 new ones created at blogger.com in January alone. Conservative estimates suggest there are now 500,000 on the Web in total. "After Sept. 11, a lot of bloggers couldn't leave their computers for a few weeks," wrote journalist Ken Layne on his blog (www.kenlayne.com), "and many new blogs were born. With so much news, it's good to have smart people acting as filters."
Fox's inaugural column [Will Vehrs actually had the first FoxNews blog column], published on Tuesday, is written by Layne and described by Fox as "a tour of the Net guided by a pilot you will come to know over time." In his first Fox column, Layne links to stories from The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard and his personal blog, while offering chatty commentary on "the sleazy Winter Olympics" and "nut sandwiches like bin Laden." The blog is an interesting mix of the standard news of the week (cloned kittens, Mike Tyson) and the strange (a Web page announcing Olympian Michelle Kwan as the official spokeswoman for Star Skater Barbie). The only real difference between the Fox site and the hundreds of other news blogs is the corporate brand name ....

As it stands, it's doubtful that personal blogs will supplant newspapers anytime soon. "There could be no blogs without full-time reporters collecting news and full-time editors putting out papers," Layne said. "One valid criticism of bloggers is that they sometimes just link back and forth to each other. Remove the actual journalism from the Web and you've got a couple of hundred thousand people talking about nothing."

-- James Cowan, National Post, Feb. 22, 2002

Ken Layne, Los Angeles' rollicking Internet war pundit, thinks we should all fly naked. Prepare for takeoff!
-- Mark Steyn, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 30, 2001

(Steyn soon gave credit to Jeff Jarvis for the original idea, which soon appeared in a Thomas Friedman column. You must read every Steyn column, because every one is good.)

Another quality of weblogs that I appreciate: the feeling of author and reader together, equally ignorant, on a web journey of discovery. There is nothing worse than an ignorant Sky News anchor asking scripted questions designed to shore up their credibility. I like the tone of modest inquiry that the best of the bloggers adopt.
I enjoy the rants, although the mainstream media has not been short of these. Ken Layne has been on particularly good form: "We can be greedy, dumb and sloppy. But we made the nation that is the defining nation of this world. There's a reason our crappy movies and pop songs are worshipped in every corner of the world: everybody wants to be in this country, with their whole lives wide open." Lovely.

-- Nick Denton, The Guardian, Sept. 20, 2001

Online reporter and award-winning journalist Ken Layne tackles a subject he knows well. Layne tells the story of Larry Jonestowne, an unemployed journalist who sets out to enact vengeance upon an Internet entrepreneur. Jonestowne unwittingly uncovers more than he bargained for and an online frenzy and subsequent media scandal is set in motion. A chase begins across Middle America, and a discerning eye is cast upon the role played by corruption in the increasingly profitable online market. Layne possesses an ability to convey messages through detail, and the result is an interesting mix of sardonic humour, well-paced action and insightful social commentary that plays itself out through likeable, if somewhat eccentric characters. A contemporary tale with its finger firmly on the pulse of an e-world.
-- Amanda Beadman, Illawarra Mercury, Sept. 8, 2001

Editor's note: Some of the information in this story about Stephen Mayne and Crikey.com previously appeared in an article by Ken Layne at OJR.org.
-- BusinessWeek, Sept. 7, 2001

Ken Layne, a columnist with The Online Journalism Review, at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, went to the Web last week to shame a Business Week Online reporter who, he believed, had stolen his work without credit.
As plagiarism accusations go, Mr. Layne's article, "Want My Story? Help Yourself!" had more heft than some. Comparing his Aug. 14 article about an Australian Web site and an Aug. 28 Business Week Online article that mentioned the site, he found suspicious similarities.

Both pieces used identical language in reporting that the founder of the Web site, Crikey.com.au, was awarded a prize for 16 articles detailing "his adventures as a loudmouth shareholder in 50 of the country's biggest companies." Each article compared Crikey.com's costs to those of Salon.com, saying that Salon loses $30,000 a day.

-- "An Accusation of Online Plagiarism,"
Felicity Barringer, NY Times, Sept. 3, 2001

Washington Monthly covers the AOL/Time-Warner nightmare, with various quotes from Ken Layne.
-- Washington Monthly, July/August 2001

IWantMedia.com has a Layne interview about online journalism, broadcast teevee and other stuff.
-- I Want Media, May 1, 2001

Australia's Sunday Herald Sun on DOT.CON: How much bolder could a gossip columnist be if no one knew who they were? That was the thought that led to author Ken Layne's new thriller novel about a frustrated journalist who exploits the anonymity of the internet to reveal the truth about sleazy characters running California's Silicon Valley. The book, Dot.Con, follows tech writer Larry Jonestowne who, disgusted at his magazine's willingness to pander to the bloated ego of multi-millionaire tech company CEO Thomas Sanders, digs deeper to find that Sanders has a dark secret: he gained his wealth through murder and theft. This is not a story Jonestowne can write, so he takes on the identity of a dead neighbour, Jesus Ramirez, creates a news site called Sluicebox.net and posts the story online. Fiction, yes ?but for how long? Layne has no doubts such muckraking sites will soon be burgeoning in real life. Layne, in Melbourne this week to promote his book, says the internet provides the perfect veil of secrecy that would allow whistleblowers to reveal sordid truths about wrongdoing by anyone ?from bigwigs to small-time neighbourhood pests.
-- Sunday Herald Sun, June 24, 2001

Suck.com had this to say about the NAB coverage:
Lately the sense of Weltschmerz on the Web has been so overpowering that we welcome any indication somebody may be worse off than we are. And this week at least, the Online Journalism Review's reports from the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas have been providing this much-needed spiritual laxative. It's hard to tell whether the greater part of the suffering is being done by the vastly depleted NAB or by dyspeptic columnist Ken Layne, whose combination of personal sob story and industry thanatopsis constitutes a sort of anti-gonzo journalism. To read this coverage is to relive all the unique horror of being a no-profile reporter covering a conference: The feigned conversational interest; the panicky, mutually unwelcome cornerings in hallways between working sessions; the busy-work attempts to cull sources among display booth schnooks; the pathetic hoarding of blueberry danishes; the overwhelming urge just to stay in the press room reading that copy of Hunger you crammed into your laptop case. Still, while NAB — a lobbying group with less political clout than the TV networks that used to be members — can still attract comedy geniuses like Lou Dobbs and Jack Valenti as headliners, it's the organization that's really suffering. Layne's depiction of the group's forced merriment and sense of dawning obsolescence, some memorable descriptions (high definition television makes news anchors look "like grotesque, makeup-crusted whores"), and a rogues' gallery of pious monopolists and phony baloney public servants make this the feel-good story of the year. Read about NAB and your own problems don't seem so bad anymore.

-- Suck.com, April 26, 2001

Citizen Layne's Last Dispatch: Part 5 in an excellent series covering the National Association of Broadcasters' Convention in Las Vegas, for Online Journalism Review. Ken Layne watches Letterman, drinks wine and reports, "There just wasn't much talk about the Internet. It's last year's fad, happily forgotten by the very unhip members of the NAB. Beige was this year's Black, and the cappuccino stands were rarely patronized."
-- MediaBistro, April 27, 2001

They also had this to say:
Citizen Layne's Dispatches From 'the E-Ghetto': Online Journalism Review's entertaining columnist Ken Layne is at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas, churning out brightly written and sharply observed dispatches a couple times a day. Here's convergence for you: "The cable talk shows are full of print reporters -- still sullen, still ugly -- and national broadcasters file reports to text-heavy Web sites and newspapers are as flat and fake as the 5 o'clock news." Meanwhile, he says, the NAB still shoves all the online stuff to out-of-the-way corners -- the e-ghetto.

-- MediaBistro, April 25, 2001

Spain's big-ass daily El Pais had something about me in the Nov. 19, 2001, edition. Here's the Google cache of the article, since I forgot to save it.

Ken Layne was easily the most colorful editor ComputorEdge has had. During his short reign, his Editor抯 Stacks became must-read material for their edgy style and often controversial arguments.
Since leaving five years ago, Ken has started and dropped the highly popular Tabloid.net site (the archive is still active at that site), started working for and quit working for the UPI wire service, moved out of the United States forever at least twice (and come back both times), and quit journalism in disgust at least a half-dozen times.

Fortunately (for us, if not him), he keeps coming back. His acerbic, biting wit has gotten only sharper in the years since he was at ComputorEdge, and if he can miss wide of the mark (as in a recent vicious and utterly unjustifiable attack on Union-Tribune writer Jim Hebert), he can also nail the hypocrisy of both political parties, as well as the national media.

-- ComputorEdge Magazine, November 2000

Seems my OJR column about journalists being frauds got some attention. About.com's news king Jack Downs talked about it, as did the dangerous Romenesko, Editor & Publisher, Global News Central, and some other stuff I can't find.

Various online and print publications -- LA's Zone Magazine, CapitolHillBlue, NewsForChange, etc. -- used some of my Democratic and Republican convention coverage. Also got some kind mentions from Editor & Publisher's Steve Outing and the San Jose Mercury News.

So who's winning -- the puritans or the apostates? It may be too soon to tell, but certainly last week's upheavals were enough to try a Web journalist's soul. On Friday, Ken Layne, a columnist for Online Journalism Review, posted a piece saying, 'Whenever the dot-com business/media system is bumming me out beyond my ability to type -- generally, every three or four months -- I convene other disgusted new-economy scribes and present the question, 'How in hell did we end up doing something so gut-wrenchingly stupid?''
-- New York Times, June 12, 2000

(The above-referenced OJR column also wound up in The Standard, Green Magazine and some other stuff.)

The French daily Liberation reports the online bloodshed: "Ken Layne, columnist for several online publications and cofounder of the low-budget site Tablo飀.net, says the problems of Salon, APBNews and CBS originate elsewhere: 'The lesson to be learned from these collapses is you don't need 150 people to run a Web site. It is ridiculous for Salon to spend $18 million dollars a year without the burdens of the newspaper industry: the expenses of printing and distribution.'"
- Liberation, June 11, 2000 (Translated badly by AltaVista.com)

SoMuch.com says, "Alternative reporting with a cynical and very sarcastic edge. Good writing style."

From 'The Net's Hottest Columnists:' Ken Layne and Matt Welch -- These two columnists for the Online Journalism Review pull no punches in their coverage of the media world. If your name appears in one of their columns, most often it's not because you're being praised. What else would you expect from the originators of the controversial Tabloid.net zine (currently in limbo)?
- Steve Outing, Content Exchange, June 12, 2000

Ken Layne, a writer for the Online Journalism Review, sees through this approach. He wrote that a speech by Jonathan Sacks, GM of AOL, translated nicely to: 'Thanks for empowering yourself by visiting this site, which aims to bring you the best in convenience and tools to help you make purchasing decisions and get important news about our corporate family of entertainers. Click here to buy some crap!'
- New Media Age, May 18, 2000

We had tons of dough, and with it we brought in a lot of good writers. No, we didn't get Tucker Carlson or Christopher Buckley. But screw those guys; we didn't want them. Instead we had some heavy hitters of the counterculture writing for us: Illuminati illuminator Robert Anton Wilson, the aforementioned David Pescovitz, Grrl goddess Lydia Lunch, John Marr of Murder Can Be Fun, Andrei Codrescu of NPR fame, conspiracy theorist Robert Sterling, and my personal favorite to read, Ken Layne, publisher of the late, great Tabloid.net.
- Mat Honan, Green Magazine, May 15, 2000

There's also the Evil Media Baron theory, according to which the Net was invented so that a half dozen megamoguls could trick consumers into buying only products produced by their companies. Right now, those people are busy hating AOL/Time Warner. In a recent Online Journalism Review, writer Ken Layne wrote that a speech by Jonathan Sacks, general manager of America Online, amounted to this message: "Thanks for empowering yourself by visiting this journalism site, which aims to bring you the best in convenience and tools to help you make informed purchasing decisions and to get important news about our corporate family of entertainers. Click here to buy some crap!" Layne and others aren't necessarily wrong in fearing that the Net will be so abused -- but we've heard it all before, every time a new medium popped up.
- Anthony Wilson-Smith, Maclean's, April 10, 2000

Sometimes featured at Jim Romenesko's Media News and Yahoo! Media Watch.

"TODAY IN SEATTLE PROTESTS: WE'RE TYPING THIS WITH NO PANTS ON BECAUSE WE'VE BURNED ALL GAP PRODUCTS: GettingIt humorist Ken Layne sums up exactly what everybody in Seattle was thinking last week."
- Yahoo Internet Life, Dec. 12, 1999

"The 'punitive withholding' of a teen's license to drive for a non-driving offense may look acceptable to many adults, but as Ken Layne writes in Getting It, the situation in Florida 'is something adults would never tolerate.' Layne explains that across Florida, 'where there's no regular crime to worry about,' the state has used a chunk of a $13 billion settlement with big tobacco to finance smoke patrols to solely drive through the suburbs looking for puffing teens."
- Utne Reader, Sept. 28, 1999

"You won't have to navigate far to find the strident writings of this daily online news site's co-founder and co-editor. Layne represents a throw-back to an earlier voice-of-outrage writing that he hopes to resurrect as a significant voice online. Layne also does reviews and a column for the Online Journalism Review under the rubric Citizen Layne. One of his columns ('The Summer of Sackcloth and Ashes,' Aug. 14, 1998) argues that the best columnists are found online. Not quite, yet, but they're getting there."
- Newspaper Columnists and Editorials

Tel Aviv's Ha'Aretz newspaper names TABLOID's Ken Layne one of the Web's five best writers on Earth. (The story appeared in July 1998 and is printed in Hebrew, so we don't know the details -- but if your browser reads Hebrew, Israel's IOL Magazine also ran a nice feature on Ken Layne, on Feb. 21, 1999.)

A beautiful article on TABLOID appeared in the Times of London's July 17, 1998, edition. Reporter Helen Rumbelow tells all of TABLOID's dirty secrets.

G.L. Marshall wrote a wonderful piece on the mysteries and tragedies behind TABLOID. You can read it in the March 1999 issue of his The Mag.

"Scathing and hilarious commentary by Tabloid's Ken Layne ... " - Networker, December 1998

Entertainment Weekly, for the second time in TABLOID's two-year history, annoints Tabloid.net its Site of the Week. Read the review from Sept. 25, 1998