adderslj | (no subject)

(no subject)

My blog just got linked from Wired. That's a month's bandwidth gone in 12 hours.

I'm getting really uncomfortable about getting so much publicity over something so horrible.

I can't help but think about Lucy's friend, lying there in hospital with 25% of his calf muscle and a chunk of the bone still lying in the underground somewhere.

This feel wrong, somehow.

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Would you prefer to be completely ignored over something so horrible?

I mean, really, the horrific or non-horrific nature of events seems orthagonal to whether or not you should be getting publicity. I may grant or argue against the question of whether your role is worthy of such publicity, but the reasons are wholly unrelated to the incidental issue which has brought you to the public eye.

Sometimes I admire your ability to unpack events from their emotional context.

And sometimes I'm terrified by it. :)

Think of it as the photos getting publicity, not you. If you were actually making something out of it then a charitable donation might not be a bad idea - but it's just linkage.

True - and, if anything, it's actually going to cost me money, the way the bandwidth is going.

There you go, you're just playing your part to ~~feed people's prurience~~ keep the populace informed.

Hey, someone has to be the one trusted with the gun when the zombies go rampaging through. Some guy has to be objective when others are screaming in the dark. Some poor sap has to get stuck with the recognition of what is rather than what he's told to feel.

That's pretty much my role. Comes in handy, on occasion.

In this particular case, you (and indirectly, your magazine) are gaining notoriety because of your adeptness with verbage and your rather "mainstream" appearance in terms of journalism. You sit astride the line between "real" (in their minds) journalists and bloggers, and are thus more palatable to the ranks of the former. You are simultaneously on the spot in a location of newsworthy import.

Mainstream media mouthpieces can thus score dual-buzz with you on both the London bombings and the scary media publicus thing. Without, you know, having to deal with someone terrifying like, say, myself (or my British doppleganger, which must, in theory, exist).

Ergo, its a waste of time for you to feel bad because you're getting publicity from a tragic occurance, as you're no more profiting from others' suffering than the poor disheveled Southern housewife in rollers and a mumu the TV folk always find in the wake of a tornado, inevitably saying something along the lines of, "It shore sounded like uh train wuz commin' through, it did!" You may feel a moment's pang in the recognition that your compatriots in profession perceive you as a bridging tool, but that's, as I said, an orthagonal concern.

(Honestly, my first reaction on reading the article you're getting batted around the mediasphere within was, "What, they couldn't be bothered to email one of the folks other than a fellow journalist posting pics and blogs around for an interview? Weak sauce!" Not, notably, to demean you, but you'd think it'd make for a better story to have Joe Brit.)

No disagreement there - I actually said to the guy upfront "Look, I'm not a real amateur, I's a professional journalist." I guess I was just easier to track down when he was on a deadline.

Eh. He clearly has never dealt with we obsessive email-riding geeks ...

Publicity isn't the same as praise or for that matter profit. You aren't really profiting from it, or benefitting very much other than by having your name infinitesimally better known.

And as you mention, this is probably costing you more than it benefits you, in a purely economic sense. You aren't profiting from the suffering of others; you're just helping several million other people understand events a little better.

If it's wrong, then so is the entire field of journalism. Grab your 15 seconds and run, mang. Do something with it while you can.

Adam, I'd rather have something from you, who I know to be an objective view in the world of journalism, than some pleb screaming about the whole tragedy. It is more of a respect, than a fangirl squee, that I salute you to have taken these photos. It takes a lot of a person to stop and focus on the situation with photography.

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