Saying Goodbye To Seth

I'm going to go through all the blogs I follow on Feedly and cast out as many as I can (a quarter would be nice).

The first on my list is Seth Godin's blog. Not because it's crap, it isn't. On the contrary, it has been an inspiration over the past few years as I was wondering about what I wanted to do with my life. One of his most important lessons (which I haven't fully internalised yet) is to get going. To start and set off without fear of failure. Now I realise that I must throw of some of the weight of stuff I look at so as to spend more time creating. I'm sure Seth will understand and support my decision.

 I will throw out a few other things work related, where watching should turn to doing as well. The problem is that these days I have this list of blog posts I feel I need to take some time for to read at ease. And this just adds up because I never find the time, the list becomes endless and I just feel guilty.

My best salute to the blogs I'm throwing out is to mention them here so you can check them out. They are all valuable in their own right, but I need to create room and I'm not radical enough to just ignore all blogs, deactivate facebook and twitter. Besides, I still want to communicate with people. More than ever.

Front Towards Enemy (aka Miah´s Tannhauser blog). Previously dedicated to FFG's Tannhauser, but now includes reviews of new Dust (Tactics), Heroes of Normandie and Zombicide products. But it is best for its high quality self-designed stuff, like customised Zombicide survivors and map tiles.

Savage Tales. All things pulp. Nice

2D6. A boardgaming blog with the focus on euro games, but with wargames and some Ameritrash as well.

Lonely Gamers. These guys have such beautifully painted minis: ACW, Napoleonics, Samurai, and the most wonderful colonial.

Opinionated Gamers. The old Boardgaming News site, without the news (which was acquired by Boardgamegeek.com). These guys, with the exception of Matt Carlson, all prefer euros over my beloved Ameritrash.

Military Obituaries. A tradition in the Daily Telegraph. Well written, often interesting people or interesting views on small actions in war.

Senchus. Author Tim Clarkson's blog on Dark Age Scotland.

Plastic Zombie. About zombies, obviously. Just much more creative about it than most other zombie lovers.

Civil War Horror. I'm a fan of Sean McLachlan's military history writing, like his Osprey books on western gunfights and the Battle of Adowa (1896 - Italians vs Ethiopians). He´s also a travel and fiction writer.

Korosho. This is self protection. This guy is a great designer of fantasy/scifi/nearfuture miniatures, with occassionally brilliant posts about the quality differences in 3d printing. So far I've managed to resist the temptation. I don't know how much longer I can hold out.

The Arabist. Some of the most original reporting on and from the Middle East. Puts most western pundits to shame.

Mark Mardell. I've followed Mark Mardell since he was BBC correspondent in Brussels, clearly disecting the behind the scenes issues in the EU. Now in the US.

Bruce Schneier. He's done great stuff on internet security, the surveillance state and how our society deals with non-conformist behaviour, often with a link military issues. That link is to a review of his great book Liars & Outliers.

Steve Buttry. An evangelist on using digital means in journalism. He's obviously ahead of most of the pack that still clings to paper. Good for suggestions on software and digital approach, as well as journalism in general.

Presentation Zen. A blog that looks at presenting from a bit more distance. I go there for inspiration when I have to make a presentation, and from this guy I took the useful rule: NO BULLET POINTS. There's always an image that conveys that point better. I've also learned to make presentations shorter (if you can bring your message in 15 minutes, you can do it in 5).

Flat Earth News - The Dumbing Down of Journalism

Hopelessly late in reading this, but Nick Davies´ Flat Earth News is probably more true now than it was when published first in 2008, before the great culmination of scandals that brought down the Sun and threatened the Murdoch media empire.

Davies argues that by the establishment of media empires in the 1980 and 1990s there started a trend towards rationalisation of news production. Budgets were lowered, fewer journalists were required to produce more news. This has led to a decline in the quality of journalism as there is not enough time to check facts and dig beyond what is delivered to them.

News is now delivered by press agencies with similarly reduced staff, but increasingly directly by PR organisations from the government, interest organisations, companies and intelligence agencies. Davies notes that the time is fast approaching where PR personnel outnumbers the journalists.

PR people have become much better at offering journalists ready-made news items. Political press officers provide Sound bites, arrange exclusive interviews and plant scoops. Interest groups selectively quote-mine scientific reports to support their arguments. Businesses subsidise related research that draws headlines, so that their message gets across. This is just what allows journalist, short of time, to meet their expected levels of productivity.

How journalism is squashed between rationalisation 
on the one hand and expanding PR on the other

The lack of time available has led to several sub-trends, picking stories which:

• Are easy to process. So only give the facts, not the context
• Carry low risk. They come from 'trusted' sources like the government, don't offend those powerful/wealthy enough to sue you or block your access to new stories, present both sides of the story as is they are equal. It also means that news media tend to hunt in packs, because a story published elsewhere is a safe source. Esepecially when there's a moral panic.
• Are guaranteed to sell. So no news from far off places that nobody cares about, but endless celebrity gossip. And nothing that challenges the preconceptions of your audience.

The most interesting development is the support of astro-turf organisations, that is (fake) grassroots organisations supported by companies or intelligence agencies. Look for instance at the many patients representation groups supported by the pharmaceutical industry and non-representative expatriate organisations like the Iraqi National Council.  Or the dubious think tanks and research establishments used by the oil industry to sow doubt about climate change.

Most worrying is that the intelligence agencies have found their way to the newsrooms as well. It is not entirely new, as Cold War agencies also had their journalistic ´assets´, conduits through which they could convey their message. Or undermine the credibility of someone who lifted the lid on them. But since the 1990s they have used their information monopoly to steer reporters in their desired directions.  Their power is as big as those of the independent press agencies. The War in Iraq being a case in point.


Davies´ chapter on The Observer shows how the CIA led reporters astray by misinforming them (through the Iraqi National Council) while the political editor was bagged by Downing Street. But the chapters on other newspapers are as chilling and depressing, especially the collusion with private investigators and policemen that bug phones, gather private information from protected databases and harrass victims to get their side of the story even when all they want is to be left alone.

Tragically, it seems that this book has not been able to change much, although I can see an undercurrent of journalists trying to wrest away from Big Media. And judging by the results of the Leveson Inquiry and the opposition from the media to its conclusions, I have no confidence that it will prove more than a dint in the trend, let alone a break.

Even though this book isn't directly about gaming and history, I think it holds very important lessons when it comes to current military subjects. We cannot assume that information on opponents of the intelligence agencies is truthful. Information is leaked, planted through 'assets' and distorted. It also hold important lessons about the role of the press and the way in which it can be used to keep the truth from the public. We should be thinking hard about how we integrate these lessons into our game design.

It would be nice to say that this trend is only confined to the UK or the anglo-saxon media, but there's enough signs that it also applies to the Netherlands. Joris Luyendijk, writing about the same time, showed the weakness of foreign correspondents in the Middle East. He argued that in countries with hardly any room for independent public opinion, lacking social scientific research or even opinion polls, if not controlled by security services, how could the foreign correspondent really know what people felt?

And when you cover such a large and diverse region, you end up doing a standup from your hotel roof 30 minutes after you'd flown in based on nothing more than what you got from the newsroom and a quick chat with your taxi driver on the way in from the airport. But his criticism of the work of foreign correspondents was met as much by indignant replies from his colleagues as by others commending him for his bravery to be open about the limitations of his job.