Saturday, November 5th, 2005

Paris Is Burning


Deputy mayor of Aulnay Franck Cannarozzo said, “Rather than playing on their Playstations, they attack the police.”

It’s the 10th day of rioting in the poor suburbs of Paris in what appears to be shaping up as a fight between second- and third-generation French Africans and the hard-line interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Earlier this year Sarkozy promised an all-out “war without mercy” on the residents of these areas, and now the rioting has spread beyond the capital to other areas across the country. These are the biggest race riots Europe has seen in decades.

Some context for those unfamiliar with the French way of housing poor people: substitute “inner-city” for “suburb”, and think “housing projects” instead of “subdivisions. These are areas of concentrated poverty created decades ago when French sought to push working class folks out of the city’s core toward the industrial jobs on its outskirts. The idea was not unlike Robert Moses’ urban renewal plans to clear Manhattan of the poor by shuttling them to the Bronx and Brooklyn. Of course, deindustrialization and white flight have since been the rule, and poor African immigrants replaced working-class Europeans in the projects.

Bomb the suburbs, indeed.

posted by @ 10:06 am | 0 Comments

Friday, November 4th, 2005

Rumors of Jay-Z Buying The Source Circulating Again

Been receiving this news item from Women’s Wear Daily all morning: the rumor that Jay-Z is part of an investor’s group including Lyor Cohen and Steve Stoute seeking to acquire The Source is making the rounds again.

Here’s the question for the day: is this a potentially good thing for the magazine and hip-hop journalism in general? Or is it an ethical red-flag only slightly less troublesome than the mag’s current situation?

Damon Dash’s own investment in America Magazine wasn’t a smooth one. This fall, editor-in-chief Smokey Fontaine and Dash were reportedly having it out over control of the magazine, with Dash allegedly attacking Fontaine in an argument over a Sean John advertorial. The beef apparently continues, and Fontaine is looking for new backers.

posted by @ 10:25 am | 5 Comments

Friday, November 4th, 2005

Hip-Hop Voters May Swing Mayor’s Election In Detroit

The Detroit Free Press describes a a swing in young voters toward Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the 35 year-old self-dubbed “hip-hop mayor” who has been trailing in his race for re-election to 55 year-old deputy mayor Freman Hendrix. Young voters have closed Hendrix’s one-time 13-point lead to almost single digits in the closing days of the campaign.

Four years ago, Kilpatrick mobilized a large wave of young voters in winning the office. But although he was celebrated early on by Russell Simmons and hip-hop magazines, he has stumbled badly in recent years with multiple corruption scandals.

posted by @ 8:18 am | 1 Comment

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005

Defend New Orleans

This great read is from John Biguenet’s blog at the New York TimesDefend New Orleans:

“Saturday night, Marsha and I attended a Nine Inch Nails tribute concert for relief and emergency workers as part of the Voodoo Music Experience, an annual New Orleans festival. The concert was held on the banks of the Mississippi River in weather that turned crisp after darkness fell.

Earlier, as the setting sun silhouetted tankers and container ships gliding down the river toward the Gulf, we had been entranced by Worms Union, a local punk drum ensemble, one of whose members wore the most commonly seen T-shirt at the festival. It featured, just above a musket, a skull emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis; circling the skull and gun was a simple message: Defend New Orleans…”

posted by @ 8:42 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005

Hyphy vs. Thizzin’

OK, in my screed a while back against the Voice/New Times merger, I left out a not unimportant fact–that amidst all the crapola, there are some incredible writers at some New Times papers. They include my man Sam Chennault at the Miami New Times. And I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Eric Arnold runs the Bay. We just bow down.

This week, in addition to a feature on Damian Marley, he updates the Yay slang book with a lesson on Hyphy vs. Thizzle. Fine graphic by the crazy Ariel Shepard. Teach.

None of this means I take back a word of what I said. It’s just about recognizing game, yadamean?

posted by @ 12:44 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005

Rant Addendum

So while we’re on the topic of that rant, I did want to say that I’ve been having lots of conversations with friends and not-so-much-friends about the future of alt-media.

Some who objected felt the piece was far too pessimistic. Others figured, eh, I don’t get paid that much anyway for this stuff, so what. To those who feel I’ve slipped off my meds, I will take this opportunity now to say I told you so, so that I don’t need to do it again in a few years when, as one very good friend put it, we could be talking about the sale of Village Voice Media to Gannett.

Still others wanted to draw me into a comparison of Bay alt-weeklies, pointing out that in particular the East Bay Express has been much bolder than the Bay Guardian of late, both politically and culturally.

This week’s Express, for instance, features a thoughtful piece on a friend, Van Jones and the future of environmentalism. Yes, it’s good reading–reminiscent of the Express of the late 80s, actually.

This argument is a sometimes a fun one for those of us in the Bay–and if this were a Friday-night fight, I agree that the Express would be way ahead on the card. (Let’s not even talk about the websites, for which the I think the BG should be crying “No mas! No mas!”)

But it misses the larger point. The Express is unique among NT titles because it’s serving one of the leftiest constituencies north of Havana. When the NT bought the SF Weekly and the Express, it actually did slide right for a time, but swung back left when it realized that because of competition from the BG, that formula wasn’t going to stick in this market.

It is possible that the Express–especially if the quality of its writing remains this good–could generate a number of progressive pieces that flow into red states via syndication. (A very good friend reminded me that this was the case around reviews of my book. Fair enough. I still owe him a few lunches. Though I still don’t forget that Express writers took it upon themselves to personally attack me a year before the book was even out. I guess I had a “KICK ME, I’M PROGRESSIVE” sticker on my ass back then. And I guess they’re gone from the staff now.) But the irony is this: that kind of progressive shift comes at the expense of localism. It’s top down, not bottom up.

Worse, I think it’s just as plausible that if competition ever dries up in the Bay (read: SFBG loses lawsuits, does a Source-like nosedive off the Cliff House) we could have an East Bay Express that is no longer interested in Oakland, but in the growing exurbs on the other side of the tunnel.

So call me a pessimist, call me a whiner. I said what I said, meant what I said. At least I think I did. Thank you and good night.

posted by @ 12:09 pm | 1 Comment

Monday, October 31st, 2005

Clear Channel Could Lose Its Licenses In California

On the heels of an action on Friday evening against Clear Channel, Youth Media Council and Media Alliance are taking the unusual step of going after Clear Channel’s broadcast licenses in California.

Every 8 years, the FCC reviews the licenses of broadcast outlets.This license renewal process is the only official opportunity for communities to challenge the licenses of large media corporations. So the YMC and MA have announced a media justice coalition to specifically challenge the license renewal of 4 Bay Area Clear Channel stations: 106.1 KMEL (urban format); 94.9 KYLD (urban format); KSGO (Spanish music format) and 910AM KNEW (talk format).

The coalition wants the FCC to investigate the stations for problems such as lack of attention to local issues, talent, and music, and consistent advocacy of violence against people of color, immigrants, and gays.

The challenges were filed last week. Clear Channel will be given 14 days to respond. The FCC will decide by December 1st if the licenses will be renewed.

Stay tuned for more info as this develops.

posted by @ 7:42 pm | 1 Comment

Friday, October 28th, 2005

At The Source: Evictions, Lawsuits, and An $18M Bill

From today’s New York Post Online Edition, Keith Kelly reports that The Source has bled $11 million in the past four years, has failed to file taxes, and is even missing subscription mailouts.

One of its lenders, Textron, has called in its debts–reportedly $18 million dollars–and has gone filed a lawsuit in order to recover the losses.

To top it off, the magazine appears to be facing eviction on Monday from the Chelsea digs they moved into not so long ago. David Mays has said the magazine is moving into rented offices about half the size of their current space as part of a “downsizing”.

Here’s an excerpt from the NY Post piece:

The Source’s freewheeling, self-styled moguls appear to routinely write checks to themselves for parties, jewelry, exotic trips and other things — with little or no record-keeping.

“Borrower’s records of checks and wire have little or no back-up and [the] borrower appears to have no internal controls,” claims the suit filed by Textron’s attorney Thomas Finn.

“Senior management seriously mismanages borrower’s cash,” claims the suit.

The suit says that in the first half of 2005, auditors unearthed nearly $1 million in unauthorized expenditures. The figure comprised $422,000 in payments to company insiders, $357,000 to travel agents, and $80,000 for “promotional jewelry.”

The suit estimates 2005 sales at $20.7 million, a decrease of $5.1 million from 2004. The suit alleges that the company’s net loss widened from $831,000 in 2004 to $2.26 million in 2005.

On top of that, the flagship magazine has seen its circulation plunge.

The Source was selling 500,000 copies per month in 2002 and 2003, and is now selling about 250,000 copies a month, the suit claims. Part of the reason for the decline was that the company did not put out the January 2005 issue and has failed to mail at least 140,000 subscriber copies this year.

Reached yesterday, Mays insisted that everything was under control.

“The company is going through a restructuring, which many companies are doing today due to the economy.”

He said The Source has been “hurt because of what is going on in the hip-hop world.”

There are “monopolies” driving hip-hop record labels to merge or go out of business, drying up an advertising base, he said. At the same time, the number of hip-hop clothing lines is shrinking.

“We’re downsizing our space and finding ways to cut our operating costs,” said Mays.

All this comes days after the magazine sued BET for $100 million for backing out of The Source Awards this year. The event was to reportedly to have taken place in Miami on Columbus Day weekend.

In an article with Allhiphop.com, Mays described himself and his colleagues as “freedom fighters”, and promised to file more lawsuits soon, including ones against Funkmaster Flex and against major labels.

Mays told Allhiphop.com, “We are about to enter into a period of serious legal activity.”

posted by @ 3:28 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, October 28th, 2005

Alt-Media: The Other Shoe Drops…

Peter Scholtes talks about the Punk Planet magazine and the impending end of Big Top Distributors, the largest remaining distributor of independent magazines.

This is huge, and also hugely depressing. It hasn’t just been a bad week for Bush and for fans of big-money baseball (Go Shoeless Joe! Come on, smile, we need it…), but for alt-media all around. Peter reprints the heartbreaking letter. It begins:

“Hey there, Last Thursday we received some distressing news–the kind of news that made our very bones ache when we heard it; the kind of news that felt so significant we simply couldn’t function after it sank in. With a few days time and the ability to process it, we decided it’s news worth sharing: It was a letter from the president of the Independent Press Association, the not-for-profit organization that owns the company that distributes the majority of Punk Planet’s copies, BigTop Newsstand Services. The letter acknowledged the truth of a rumor that had been running through indie publishing circles for months now: the distributor was having cash flow problems…”

posted by @ 2:56 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, October 27th, 2005

New National Consensus After Katrina: FIGHT POVERTY

The first poll to look at racial attitudes on governmental policies after Hurricane Katrina found that, by strong majorities, all ethnic groups believe fighting poverty is more important than fighting terrorism.

“To my great surprise, the priority was fighting poverty,” said Sergio Bendixon, who conducted the poll for New California Media. “It was not on the radar before Katrina.”

“This is a sea-change in attitudes,” he added. “This is an opportunity where the country is united.”

A recent, much-cited Roper Poll taken before Hurricane Katrina found that most Americans blamed poverty on people’s choices, and that there was little need for government to establish programs that would address it.

That consensus seems to have taken a complete turn since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the flooding of New Orleans, and the destruction of the Gulf Coast.

Many tie the Katrina recovery effort to the war, agreeing that the best way to fund the recovery effort was to remove troops from Iraq. Communities of color–including Blacks (77%), Latinos (69%), and Asian Americans (60%)–were much more likely than whites (46%) to agree with this particular point.

64% of Blacks and 57% of Latinos said they were very angry with President Bush for his handling of the aftermath of the hurricane. More than half of all Blacks, Latinos, and Asians felt that they could not rely on government to protect their families in a crisis. Half of whites disagreed.

The national survey polled 1035 Hispanics, Asians, African Americans and non-Hispanic whites on Hurricane Katrina’s impact. The poll was conducted in six languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, and Vietnamese, and was released today by New America Media.

The poll result’s executive summary is here. A fuller report is here.

posted by @ 10:33 am | 0 Comments



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