In a totalitarian land you can be rendered a non-person at the stroke of a despot’s pen. In a small town like Aspen, you run the risk of a complete disappearance if you goad the powers that be.
That’s the only way I can explain what happened Wednesday morning in the Aspen Times’s coverage of election night 2006. There I was after midnight at Jimmy’s downtown, yakking and yukking it up with Jerry Bovino after four-plus hours yakking and yukking it up with him and Shellie Roy on GrassRoots TV. A Times photographer took a picture, and yo that was me above the fold on the front page, smack in the middle of Bovino and Rachel Richards, now the inbound Pitkin County Commissioner.
It wasn’t until I read the caption that I realized I had ceased to exist.
“Richards wins,” it read in toto. “County commissioner-elect Rachel Richards, right, has a laugh with Jerry Bovino at Jimmy’s Tuesday night after her slim election victory.”
No mention of yours truly. Like I said: I get it: I don’t exist. But my disappearance might be an omen for what’s happening to newspapers across the country. At the rate they’re going, they will cease to exist if things don’t change like now.
I can’t say I was surprised at the Aspen Times—no, that’s not true: I was surprised. The commandments of journalism begin with the question “Who?”—and to ignore it with such brio left me with the distinct impression that my extinction had to be personal.
Now that made perfect sense. I’ve been sticking it to the local newspapers about their non-coverage of Sheriff Bob Braudis and the drug issue in the race for Pitkin County Sheriff. Before that, I stuck it to the Times in a column I wrote for the Aspen Daily News that managed to get people at both papers pissed off.
But the really weird thing is the Aspen Times has had the hardest time mentioning me or Aspen Post, the new blog in town, by name. For example, they managed to do a story on talk radio in the Roaring Fork Valley without even talking to me, an amazing feat when you consider I have the only full-time talk show in the Roaring Fork Valley, with the show “Con Games” on KNFO 106.1 FM. And three separate columnists have written about blogging with nary a mention of Aspen Post: one of them even quoted me directly in the Times without attribution. One time an Aspen Times reporter mentioned my name–in a letter-to-the-editor in the Aspen Daily News, where he somehow neglected to mention his affialtion with the Times.
So I am a non-person in a non-paper. And that’s the point: newspapers don’t stand for much of anything any more, and not just here in Aspen. Disagree with them at your own peril.
Two of the proudest newspaper companies—Knight-Ridder and Tribune Co.—have been forced to dismember themselves as display and classified advertising declines have accompanied the shift of readers and advertisers to the Web. And more to the point, Gannett Co. just announced the company is embracing blogging with a vengeance in a desperate attempt to survive.
“Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper chain, plans to create stories with information from bloggers, people who post in Internet discussion groups and other non-journalists,” according to the Associated Press, “in hopes of winning readers from the Internet, television and other news sources, officials with the company said.”
In other words, they have seen the enemy and it is us here at Aspen Post, Snowmass Post, Skiing Post, and more Posts to come. They hate us for our freedom, and so they use freedom of the press here in Aspen to ignore us as they might an illegitimate child. But like Republicans who come out of the closet, it won’t be long before the local newspapers follow the lead of Gannett and realize they have no choice but to embrace what we have already done here in the valley.
Some people want their picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone, but my ambition is more modest: to have my name spelled correctly one day in the Aspen Times. Gonna send five copies to my mother.
Michael,
When I saw that picture, it looked like two people talking in the foreground and one person in the background talking to the bartender. In all honesty, you don’t really look like you are part of the conversation. Seems to me it could be innocuous. Not to say you’re not right–I suppose only the editors of the Times know.
Of course, if they really wanted to deny your existence, the path of least resistance would be to print a photo without you in it. Perhaps you should celebrate the Forrest Gumpesque aspects of the situation. The voice of practical reason captured in the background of moments of historical significance.
I say send it to your mom anyways–she’ll recognize you.
Cheers.
Michael,
When I saw that picture, it looked like two people talking in the foreground and one person in the background talking to the bartender. In all honesty, you don’t really look like you are part of the conversation. Seems to me it could be innocuous. Not to say you’re not right–I suppose only the editors of the Times know.
Of course, if they really wanted to deny your existence, the path of least resistance would be to print a photo without you in it. Perhaps you should celebrate the Forrest Gumpesque aspects of the situation. The voice of practical reason captured in the background of moments of historical significance.
I say send it to your mom anyways–she’ll recognize you.
Cheers.
Michael….Oh my gosh can you really be so vain!! No one cares who you are.
Michael….Oh my gosh can you really be so vain!! No one cares who you are.
Yes, it must be your utterly pathetic “goading” (your mom must be so proud!) that made the Aspen Times leave your name out of the paper. And the three columnists. After all, since you spend so much time thinking about you, then logically everyone else must be doing the same.
After all, all we have to do is read you to learn that you are just as important as the big newspaper chains across the country. What’s happening to them is all because of you.
By the way, are you sure your non-mention wasn’t in the Aspen Daily News? I thought THAT was the paper that had it out for you. Are you saying both papers, which have existed for decades before your arrival and continue to thrive without you – are lowering their journalism standards just to get you?? Wow – we can only hope another blog will pick up the scandal!
By the way, have you talked to Al Gore about this? He takes so much of the credit for the internet revolution and now you’re staking a claim for the success of blogs (and based on the number of ads on your site – and I’m not talking about all the free ones – we can all be the judge of just how well you’re doing) – you guys should get together and talk about all of your successes. Boy, I’d love to be a fly on the wall during that conversation. Except for the noxious odor sure to fill the room from all of your gassy hot air.
Yes, it must be your utterly pathetic “goading” (your mom must be so proud!) that made the Aspen Times leave your name out of the paper. And the three columnists. After all, since you spend so much time thinking about you, then logically everyone else must be doing the same.
After all, all we have to do is read you to learn that you are just as important as the big newspaper chains across the country. What’s happening to them is all because of you.
By the way, are you sure your non-mention wasn’t in the Aspen Daily News? I thought THAT was the paper that had it out for you. Are you saying both papers, which have existed for decades before your arrival and continue to thrive without you – are lowering their journalism standards just to get you?? Wow – we can only hope another blog will pick up the scandal!
By the way, have you talked to Al Gore about this? He takes so much of the credit for the internet revolution and now you’re staking a claim for the success of blogs (and based on the number of ads on your site – and I’m not talking about all the free ones – we can all be the judge of just how well you’re doing) – you guys should get together and talk about all of your successes. Boy, I’d love to be a fly on the wall during that conversation. Except for the noxious odor sure to fill the room from all of your gassy hot air.
Oh man, (crying), as soon as I can stop uncontrolably laughing I will try to finish this response…
HOURS LATER:
Conniff – If this is a serious gripe, and from every observation of you in the past few years, it is, then you have to be the the most arrogent, ridiculous, hubristic, contemptuous and clusless asshole that I have ever seen running around this valley, and I have seen plenty…Tell us this is a joke, let us in on your self abasing, giddy sence of humor, your (big word to follow:) obsequiousness and ruseful nature…Only then will I ever be able to see your name and not think of a self-promoting idgit…
“Anyone who thinks they’re important is usually just a pompous moron who can’t deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential.”
William Thomas
-Heed
Oh man, (crying), as soon as I can stop uncontrolably laughing I will try to finish this response…
HOURS LATER:
Conniff – If this is a serious gripe, and from every observation of you in the past few years, it is, then you have to be the the most arrogent, ridiculous, hubristic, contemptuous and clusless asshole that I have ever seen running around this valley, and I have seen plenty…Tell us this is a joke, let us in on your self abasing, giddy sence of humor, your (big word to follow:) obsequiousness and ruseful nature…Only then will I ever be able to see your name and not think of a self-promoting idgit…
“Anyone who thinks they’re important is usually just a pompous moron who can’t deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential.”
William Thomas
-Heed
Apologize for poor spelling, the tears jammed me keys….
Apologize for poor spelling, the tears jammed me keys….
The single most important and influential personage in our area code, uncaptioned.
Oh, the irony.
The single most important and influential personage in our area code, uncaptioned.
Oh, the irony.
Under_score–LMAO at that comment, right up to the last sentence, where you had to go all Hugo Chavez on the conmeister and accuse him of lighting up the room with a gut bomb… At least you didn’t call him the antichrist.
I’m still having fun with the image of the conman and Al Gore talking internet over skinny decaff lattes. There’s a conversation that’d last all afternoon and lap over into early evening martinis at the St. Regis. Maybe Al would teach Michael to rant like a Southern Baptist minister. Even if a southern accent might be a tall order for the conman, wouldn’t that make your morning commute even more amusing than it already is?
Cheers,
Under_score–LMAO at that comment, right up to the last sentence, where you had to go all Hugo Chavez on the conmeister and accuse him of lighting up the room with a gut bomb… At least you didn’t call him the antichrist.
I’m still having fun with the image of the conman and Al Gore talking internet over skinny decaff lattes. There’s a conversation that’d last all afternoon and lap over into early evening martinis at the St. Regis. Maybe Al would teach Michael to rant like a Southern Baptist minister. Even if a southern accent might be a tall order for the conman, wouldn’t that make your morning commute even more amusing than it already is?
Cheers,