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October 11, 2014

Geoff thinks the articles are too long, that you cover everything and maybe you ought to leave some thoughts for the reader...

- FHK

FHK -

You're right about the length/density................ and wrong. It will self-correct some as others besides me contribute articles. But there's a sense in which it really should/will have many longer, denser articles (even if you don't read them). The sense that Newton Minow intended when he started the public broadcasting system and chaired the FCC. It wasn't to broadcast a bunch of popular programs everybody wanted to hear. It was to give air time to specialized programs that had a very hard time getting broadcast or advertisers. He envisioned NPR as a place you'd tune in only when you were really interested in what was offered, and the rest of it, no. [stopped reading yet?]]


TZN is a little like that. Journalists might read through the whole "Debut article" because it has some novel ideas about what makes a story "biased'. People with oil trains going through their back yards, or advocates trying to stop the trains might read through the 'Oil Trains' piece because it offers a very different strategy than they're using. But nobody else would. [stopped reading yet?]


So its a bit of a balancing act. The Z is more interested in readers with a personal interest in a subject, than with some "general audience" (whatever that is). Otherwise, TZN would just degenerate into the kind of pablum NPR has become. That's not what I'm doing at all. so its a yes & no kind of thing. [stopped reading yet?]


btw: We're not much interested in "real names" around the TZN. What our correspondants write and think is name enough, much more important than what name they might use. Still, we're pretty sure this comment from 'FHK' is from Kermit the Frog (or, as he prefers to be indexed in the library catalogs, "Frog, Heroic Kermit"). So thanks, Kermit, for taking time from your busy schedule to think of us. You've truly been an inspiration to generations of z-axis thinkers. -- RS [this part was good, though]