Dr. Dobb's Journal January 1997
Larry, Mo, and Curly Joe are usually the first to arrive at Foo Bar, where I moonlight as late-night relief bartender. Journalists Laurence Wilde, Maureen McBean, and Joe Weaver are their full names, and they are, reading from left to right, two cynics and a cheerleader. In modern journalism, that's called balance.
On this particular night, I was hoping to get their views on some significant recent events in the computer industry. That's the real reason I man the bar rag at this hangout for journalists. Larry, however, scooped me with his own news item: His high-tone British journal had been purchased by media powerhouse Time Warner.
"Ah," Mo taunted him, "you've become a cog in the well-oiled Time Warner media machine."
"Well-oiled is precisely the state to which I aspire," he said, gazing at a bottle of the bar's best chardonnay. "Barkeep?"
I oiled him up. "So what do you think about this Microsoft/Intel Network PC reference platform? And where did this reference-platform business come from, anyway? Is this how standards are set now?"
Joe, ignoring me, frowned over his cream soda. "You don't sound happy, Larry. I thought you'd be thrilled. You're always complaining how your magazine is underfunded."
"It's perpetually financially challenged -- and will continue to be so. The company that owns it and several other publications, however, was doing splendidly. Which is precisely what made it ripe for the picking."
I poured Mo her Haig & Haig and tried again to turn the conversation to the computer industry. "Sounds like no real difference for you, then, Larry. Say, could one of you tell me the difference between the Network PC and the Sun/Oracle Network Computer? Apart from who calls the shots, that is?"
"No real change, except that I might find it disadvantageous to write critically of Time Warner properties, like Seagram's 7, the Sega Channel, the Atlanta Braves, Book-of-the-Month Club selections, CNN, Martha Stewart, or Superman."
Mo's nostrils flared, smelling a scandal. "Have you been pressured?"
"No, just reading the tea leaves. I truly hate to see the corporatization of my little corner of journalism. Doubtless, we'll soon be turning out processed McNews like the nightly pabulum on the telly."
"If you think that's bad," I said, "the popular press is still harping on whether Microsoft or Netscape will 'own' the Internet. Do you think there's anything to that?"
"The corporatization of news is a done deal, Larry," Mo said, also ignoring me. "Within a decade, ten CEOs will determine who says what to whom. Corporations already define our reality."
Joe drained his cream soda and, apparently emboldened by the sugar rush, demurred. "Now that's just nonsense. Even if there is a problem, all we need is tougher enforcement of the antitrust laws."
Antitrust. I missed that opportunity to turn the conversation to Microsoft, as Larry smiled wryly and told Joe, "Antitrust laws are a remnant of the days when national governments attempted to control the predations of robber barons. We're in a different world now, Joseph: a world of transnational robber barons beyond the control of mere nations."
"But there are trade agreements," Joe protested, still feeling his sugar. "NAFTA. GATT."
Mo snorted. "Show me a trade agreement that wasn't written by and for transnational corporations. And isn't that inflight magazine you write for owned by a transnational, Joe?"
"It's a Rupert Murdoch property, yes."
"You do know that, according to Andrew Jay Schwartzman in The Nation, your boss apparently agreed to programming changes in exchange for favors from the Chinese government?"
But Joe wasn't giving in. "Even if all you say is true," he said, the Internet will change everything. Nobody can control information flow on the Net."
Larry and Mo just snickered.
Journalists. They only want to talk about themselves.
--Michael Swaine