How to kill newspapers

Just heed the advice of old-school newsmen and women, who can't get their heads around the media revolution that's leaving them behind.
The Boston Globe is in trouble--and not just because its owner is threatening to shut it down. It's in trouble because the best minds in journalism can't get their blinders off long enough to get on board with innovative business models that can support a participatory model of journalism.

The New York Times Co., which purchased the paper in 1993 for what the Associated Press calls "a record $1.1 billion," is now threatening to shutter the paper unless its union accepts $20 million in concessions.

Right on schedule, economists and media analysts are offering up their ridiculous resolutions to this impending crisis. Management consultant Peter Cohan, for example, suggests this wacky solution: Scrap dead-tree printing, move the paper to an online-only news source, and charge readers to view the content.

Cohan writes that if the Globe goes to an online-only format, it will lose a significant revenue source in paid print advertising; as a result,

in order to make up the lost revenue The Boston Globe will need to charge users for access to its online content as the Wall Street Journal does. This might not be as difficult as it would first appear. If it stopped producing a dead-tree version, The Boston Globe could roll the unfulfilled portion of its print subscriptions into online ones. Then it would face the challenge of getting others to pay for a previously-free online subscription.

This argument calls to mind Jon Stewart's recent interview with Walter Isaacson, who argued, first in a Time Magazine article and then on the Daily Show, that the way to save newspapers is to charge readers to access online content. Stewart's response to this argument was a deadpan look of utter disbelief, followed by this:

"This is ridiculous--I can't believe we're talking about this. Sir, the internet is free."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Walter Isaacson
comedycentral.com
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As the primary blogger for sleeping alone and starting out early, I spend a lot of time trolling the internet looking for interesting news items to write about. I poke around a lot, following links wherever they take me. But do you want to know where I never look? News sources like the Wall Street Journal that require paid subscriptions for accessing content. Why would I, when I can a.) find coverage of most of the most interesting stories for free at other news sources; or b.) find links to free online reprints of the WSJ stories that matter to me?

The problem with newspapers is not, contrary to the opinions of journalists and critics, that people are dumb or the Internet is destroying real reporting or that kids today just don't care about good journalism. The problem is that the people who are running print news can't shake antiquated approaches to journalism. In the Christian Science Monitor, for example, former Globe senior editor and current CS Monitor editor John Yemma calls Boston without the Boston Globe "unthinkable"--privileging, I assume, the traditionally territorial nature of beat journalism.

Yemma and others think of a city's newspaper as an institution in line with sports teams and local celebrities--an integral element, in other words, of that city's character. Sports teams and newspapers have traditionally served an important purpose: Uniting a city when it has become too big for social ties alone to do that work. When people feel like they belong to something larger than themselves, after all, they're more likely to care, to pitch in, to align with the larger cultural work of the city and its residents.

But increasingly, citizenship is less about geography than it is about affinity. I may live in Boston, but the crew I run with largely depends on the context. Members of my Friday afternoon book group all live in the Boston area. As a blogger, my network is much more widely distributed. Bloggers I follow live as close as Cambridge, MA, and as far away as New York, Michigan, Indiana (Indiana, Indiana, Indiana, Indiana), the UK, and Peru. At my day job, I also happen to be a part of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative, a globally distributed network of educators and researchers.

Traditional newsmen and women understand, I think, that in a participatory culture people affiliate with networks outside of their geography. What they don't seem to understand, though, is that these identities aren't like hats that we put on and take off at will. We all position ourselves somewhere inside of a constantly fluctuating network of interests, affinities, and causes. Print media, to the extent that it has been willing and able to accommodate this shift, has successfully adjusted to this change--but so far, adjusting is the best it has been able to do.

Newshounds remember the good old days when the newspaper was the fastest, most cutting edge information source; chasing after emerging trends that have come out of online innovations has been a difficult change. People like Cohan, Yemma, and Isaacson remember with great fondness the time when journalism felt an awful lot like tap dancing to a medley of greatest hits while seated in front of a single camera trained on their every movement. One camera, two chairs, three television stations: The days of single-digit anything are long, long gone.

The future of journalism: We Report, We Decide

What happens when everybody is a potential media outlet?

In a recent post I argued that blogging is better than newspaper journalism. As a former newspaper reporter, I explained that

unlike the experience of being a newspaper reporter, my experience of blogging is one of jumping in to a conversation. The goal of print journalism is to break the story. In general, the goal of blogging is to comment on the breaking news. When I speak here on sleeping alone, I'm generally picking up on an idea or news item presented in an online paper or another blog; ideally, my ideas will get picked up by another blogger, and so on, and so on.

My former editor, Philip Allmen, posted the following comment:

You make some good points. But I bet that most people haven't put as much thought into the differences between reporters and bloggers. The two, I think need each other to thrive, but most don't realize that.

Phil is right and he's wrong. To support his point, I turned to a recent article in The Nation by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. The article argues that the crisis of newspapers is not a brand-new phenomenon; in fact, it began in the 1970's, "when corporate ownership and consolidation of newspapers took off." By the 1980's, journalists and editors were "quitting the field in disgust at the contempt corporate management displayed toward journalism."

Here's the result of a decades-long watering-down of journalism:

The news media blew the coverage of the Iraq invasion, spoon-feeding us lies masquerading as fact-checked verities. They missed the past decade of corporate scandals. They cheered on the housing bubble and genuflected before the financial sector (and Gilded Age levels of wealth and inequality) as it blasted debt and speculation far beyond what the real economy could sustain. Today they do almost no investigation into where the trillions of public dollars being spent by the Federal Reserve and Treasury are going but spare not a moment to update us on the "Octomom." They trade in trivia and reduce everything to spin, even matters of life and death.

Obviously, the decline in journalistic rigor has wide-reaching implications. What kind of journalistic environment are we in, after all, when Jon Stewart is the only one who can take on cotton-candy financial reporting like that of Jim Cramer? Stewart tossed Cramer over his knee and gave him a good public spanking. We loved / hated to watch it, and it was a long time coming.

On the other hand (and Nichols and McChesney make this point as well), hard-hitting journalism still exists, though more often it comes at us in books, documentaries (Bowling for Columbine or Sicko, for example) or localized beat reporting in magazines or online news sites. Sometimes it's delivered to us under the guise of a satirical comedy news show. Sometimes it's delivered to us via two of this type of show in a row. Monday through Thursday, Comedy Central, 11 p.m. to midnight.

The problem--and the implications of this creep into every area of contemporary life--is that this kind of journalism is increasingly rare and, as more people choose to become their own media outlets via blogs or first-person reporting sites like, say, Orato, this rarity trickles into the everyday news that we all access. And here's where Phil's argument comes in, supported by Nichols and McChesney:

The Internet and blogosphere, too, depend in large part on "old media" to do original journalism. Web links still refer readers mostly to stories that first appeared in print. Even in more optimistic scenarios, no one has a business model to sustain digital journalism beyond a small number of self-supporting services. The attempts of newspapers to shift their operations online have been commercial failures, as they trade old media dollars for new media pennies. We are enthusiastic about Wikipedia and the potential for collaborative efforts on the web; they can help democratize our media and politics. But they do not replace skilled journalists on the ground covering the events of the day and doing investigative reporting. Indeed, the Internet cannot achieve its revolutionary potential as a citizens' forum without such journalism.

But here's how this argument gets complicated: Some of the best journalism out there is of a kind that folks like Nichols and McChesney would likely not recognize as journalism as it has traditionally been defined. Immediately after the London Transport bombings in 2005, some of the first reports about the event came from citizens who were in the tunnels. They took photos with cellphones and uploaded them to photo-sharing sites like Flickr (you can view them at Flickr's London Bomb Blast Community here.) This is one extreme example, but it's of a kind that's increasingly common--and increasingly important, in a world where governments and corporations are increasingly adept at duping, getting into bed with, or hanging out to dry traditional and mainstream journalism outlets. Citizen journalism, via blogs, cellphone pictures, text messaging, and smart mobs have led to rapid and radical cultural change. Governments have been overthrown. Protests have been organized under the noses of watchful dictators. And inaccurate or outright wrong news reports have been corrected by people with firsthand knowledge of current events and the resources to share their knowledge.

Does this kind of journalism rely on the existence and reporting work of traditional media outlets? Well, yes--at least in the sense that traditional journalism laid the groundwork for a reporting culture. But in a very real sense, information--newsworthy, important information--is increasingly being delivered to the people who can act on it without regard to, and sometimes in spite of, Big Newspaper.

If we think of journalism as a profession, one in which the onus of rigorous reportage is on the elite reporters in the most widely respected media outlets, one for which standards and a code of ethics exist and can and must be learned only through apprenticeship, then yes, journalism is in the midst of a worrisome decline. But if we think of journalism as, to appropriate the language of Clay Shirky, a temporary behavior rather than a professional identity, then we can see how journalism is thriving. Instead of a few thousand reporters stationed strategically around the world, we now have people stationed literally everywhere people are living, any one of whom might have access to and, if we do this cultural revolution thing right, the capacity for blowing the top off of the next big story.

The stunted revolution: Why I was wrong, revisited

Early on in the lifespan of this blog, I argued that the recession might be good for higher education. Clearly, I was wrong, and I admitted as much here.

Now comes more proof that I was right to say I was wrong.

According to this New York Times article, acceptance rates are down this year among Ivy League universities because application numbers have increased. Applications at schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia are up by between 2 and more than 20 percent. Top public schools, including UNC-Chapel Hill, the University of Michigan, and the University of Virginia, have also reported gains.

Don't worry, though--this trend is not universal, not even common enough to draw conclusions from. As the article points out, about half of the almost 350 colleges that accept the Common Application (a shared online application form) received more applications this year; just under half received fewer.

Fine, fine. No conclusions drawn. But add to this the increased emphasis on accepting applicants who are able to pay full tuition, and we have a social justice issue on our hands.

Clay Shirky writes that "it's not a revolution if nobody loses." It's also not a revolution if everybody loses. So who wins here, other than the wealthy who will continue to exercise their right to do whatever it takes to continue to rule?

Online universities, apparently. Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Kevin Carey points out that enrollment in online offerings from Kaplan, the University of Phoenix, and their ilk, is up, way up. Many will bemoan this trend, Carey writes. They will argue

that the best traditional college courses are superior to any online offering, and they're often right. There is no substitute for a live teacher and student, meeting minds. But remember, that's far from the experience of the lower-division undergraduate sitting in the back row of a lecture hall. All she's getting is a live version of what iTunes University offers free, minus the ability to pause, rewind, and fast forward at a time and place of her choosing.

She's also increasingly paying through the nose for the privilege. Few things are more certain in this uncertain world than tuition increasing faster than inflation, personal income, or any other measure one could name. People will pay more for better service, but only so much more. And with the economy in a free fall, more families have less money to pay. The number of low-cost online institutions and no-cost alternatives on the other side of the accreditation wall is growing. The longer the relentless drumbeat of higher tuition goes on, the greater their appeal.

Readers of sleeping alone may remember that I'm no fan of online universities. But I'm also no fan of the skyrocketing cost of higher education. I've been lucky in this respect: a scholarship covered my undergraduate costs, and I'll be fully supported as a doctoral student at Indiana University. In the middle, though...in the middle...I racked up more than $40,000 in debt earning an MFA in creative writing. (Expect a future post to elaborate upon the foolishness, self-indulgence and / or well-considered practicality of the MFA in the first decade of the 21st Century.)

Though I don't regret my MFA--it positioned me beautifully for the work I'm doing now and my future work as a doctoral student--I'll be stuck paying that debt down for decades. Indeed, that debt, coupled with a growing need for health insurance and a stable income, led me away two years ago from work I loved passionately: teaching as an adjunct instructor at a trio of Boston-area colleges. I may not regret the career shift, but I know others who made the same decision as I did, for the same reasons, and regret it deeply. These former instructors are now deeply mired in corporate work, in health care professions, in many other non-education fields.

And this is what makes a recession so agonizingly painful for higher education: Not only is access to education further stratified by socioeconomic status, but the quality of the education itself, especially at community colleges and less prestigious public universities, is compromised by the tough decisions intended to streamline and economize in hard times.

We want simple answers to solve these terrible, terrifying trends; but there are no simple answers. New resources, new technologies, enable unprecedented access to the knowledge distributed across vast networks of people and tools; but our culture continues to rely on an outdated credentialing system wherein what matters most is not what you know or what you can do but what degrees you hold and where you got them from. It's not a revolution if nobody loses. What do we call it if everybody does?

Montana is on board

Or: Why blogging is cooler than being a "real" journalist

On March 31, sleeping alone and starting out early hit a milestone: It has officially received visitors from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Montana was the last to jump on board, with a visitor from Bozeman apparently completely accidentally landing on my blog for just under one second before having his or her mind blown so completely that his or her Internet Explorer program most likely shut down unexpectedly.

I do spend a decent amount of time publicizing my blog. Most commonly, this involves reading blogs of like-minded bloggers, commenting on their writing, and asking them to visit my site. I also hound my friends and family, basically browbeating them into reading what I write. Why do I bother? Why do I care?

The simplest answer I can provide here is a quote from Clay Shirky: "Everyone is a media outlet."

In my early 20's, I spent a solid two years as a newspaper reporter, moving between three different local weekly papers. (Just to give you a sense of how long ago this was, only one of the three papers had a companion website, but the only material included on this site was a set of phone numbers to reach various staff members. This, by the way, was less than ten years ago.)

My stories were about zoning board decisions, school board meetings, and sporting events. Even if I had been skilled enough to make them interesting, I still wouldn't have captured many readers. In fact, I imagine I had fewer readers as a print reporter than I do as a blogger. This was so even though the material I wrote as a reporter was intended to link directly to the interests of its readers. This was so even though we actually delivered the news to our readers, instead of needing to draw readers to the news.

One difference between newspapers and blogs, of course, is the distance between the presenting of news and the consumption of it. In the newspaper business, the division of labor is pretty clear: A small handful of crack reporters uncover and present the material; the rest of the populace consumes it. If they want to join in on the conversation, they need (and are encouraged) to write a letter to the editor for possible publication in a future edition.

It's relatively burdensome to write a letter to the editor, all things considered, and this was even more true back when I was a reporter than it is now. Let's say you read an article that sparks something in you, such that you think: I have something to say about this. Then you have to turn on your computer or open your laptop and type the damned thing out. It needs to be short and succinct, well written, well organized and lacking any noticeable errors. Then you have to print it out (assuming your printer works and has enough ink left in its cartridge), put it in an envelope, find a stamp, and drop the letter in the mailbox. If the editor finds the letter interesting enough to print, you may see it printed up to two weeks later. Granted, this level of difficulty isn't on par with, say, building the world's largest toothpick mosaic, but still.

Compare this to the types of comments I received to my most heavily visited post to date, "Gearing up for Operation Feel Your Boobies." The founder of Feel Your Boobies, Leigh Hurst, posted a link to my post on the group's Facebook page, at which point the pro-boobies contingent began to weigh in. A few sample comments:

"Would you feel better if the name was Touch Your Titties?"

"I have boobies and I feel them at least once a month! Thank you Leigh!"

"I have to say I didn't think of a sexual connotation at all when I read this name. And I'm not post-feminist; I'm 52 and grew up in the Germaine Greer/Betty Friedan era. The purpose of the group is to get women to think about breast exams. We've heard "do a monthly breast self-exam" for so long we don't think about it anymore. This cute name catches our attention enough to remind us that we haven't done one. I do think the author is reaching for a topic here; Victoria's Secret window displays? Objectifying, fetishizing. Feel Your Boobies? Cute, harmless, purposeful."

What seems to engage people about reading and commenting on blogs is that they can, if they want to, write a thoughtful, well structured and well supported argument. If they don't want to do that, they can sling a one-liner up and have the gratification of seeing it instantly broadcast to other readers.

And now we're back to why I care about expanding my readership base: Because unlike the experience of being a newspaper reporter, my experience of blogging is one of jumping in to a conversation. The goal of print journalism is to break the story. In general, the goal of blogging is to comment on the breaking news. When I speak here on sleeping alone, I'm generally picking up on an idea or news item presented in an online paper or another blog; ideally, my ideas will get picked up by another blogger, and so on, and so on.

News passes to me and through me; as it does, I try to shade it in with a thoughtful comment or two and I do my best to pass it on. Blogging at its best is the exact opposite of that game "Telephone": Each person whispering the story to someone else clarifies, expands upon, and contributes to the story being told.

A couple-three things about standardized reading assessments

If you follow education news, you may already have seen E.D. Hirsch, Jr.,'s March 22 Op-Ed column in the New York Times. The piece, "Reading Test Dummies," makes exactly the kind of argument Hirsch's fans are by now used to: That standardized tests assessing reading skills have merit, when used appropriately. "These much maligned, fill-in-the-bubble reading tests," Hirsch writes,

are technically among the most reliable and valid tests available. The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards. Children are asked to read and then answer multiple-choice questions about such topics as taking a hike in the Appalachians even though they’ve never left the sidewalks of New York, nor studied the Appalachians in school.

Fair enough so far, right? And Hirsch goes you one further by explaining that "[f]or a student with a basic ability to decode print, a reading-comprehension test is not chiefly a test of formal techniques but a test of background knowledge." Not only that, but

Our current reading tests are especially unfair to disadvantaged students. The test passages may be random, but they aren’t knowledge-neutral. A child who knows about hiking in the Appalachians will have a better chance of getting the passage right; a child who doesn’t, won’t. Yet where outside of school is a disadvantaged student to pick up the implicit knowledge that is being probed on the reading tests?

If you know Hirsch, you know where this is going: Toward an argument for standardizing curriculum content, then aligning test materials to curriculum standards, because

[b]etter-defined standards in history, science, literature and the arts combined with knowledge-based reading tests would encourage the schools to conceive the whole course of study as a reading curriculum — exactly what a good knowledge-based curriculum should be. Schools would also begin to use classroom time more productively, which is important for all students and critically so for disadvantaged ones.

Hirsch ends with this zinger: "We do not need to abandon either the principle of accountability or the fill-in-the-bubble format. Rather we need to move from teaching to the test to tests that are worth teaching to."

For the sake of expediency, let's ignore for now the fact that "teaching to the test" and "tests that are worth teaching to" are in effect the same thing. (You can put lipstick, a bubble skirt, and high heels on a pig, but....) Let's leave aside the deeper, more concerning question: Who gets to decide what those standards are, and what evidence is there that setting these standards across subject-areas would benefit disadvantaged students any more than any previous "curriculum reform" has?

In fact, no, let's not leave that question aside--not for now, not ever. Hirsch argues for curriculum standards, presumably along the lines of the Core Knowledge he promotes in his nonprofit organization. (When I say "core knowledge," you think "western canon." Core: Western. Knowledge: Canon.) It is only in this way, he believes, that we can preserve the knowledge upon which our culture was built. In fact, this is where conservative educational thinkers show their rhetorical skill: Their arguments, as Michael Apple points out, are linked to a nostalgia for the past, for a time when the questions about what to teach and how to teach it were less thorny and easier to answer--when white men ruled and everyone else got in line or fell out. Apple points to conservatives like Hirsch, Dianne Ravitch, and William Bennett,

all of whom seem to believe that progressivism is now in the dominant position in educational policy and practice and has destroyed a valued past. All of them believe that only by tightening control over curriculum and teaching (and students, of course), restoring ‘our’ lost traditions, making education more disciplined and competitive as they are certain it was in the past—only then can we have effective schools. (p. 6)

The questions about what to teach and how to teach it get increasingly difficult as participatory technologies, and the social skills and cultural competencies linked to success at using these technologies, become increasingly valuable and valued. As culture shifts toward this participatory model, it becomes increasingly clear that memorizing a canon of information is less important than having the skills to know when and how tap into that canon. The entire body of world thought is, as always, distributed across a vast set of networks; but until very recently, it was difficult or impossible for people outside of academic institutions to access very much of those networks.

(For more responses to Hirsch's op-ed, you can read letters to the editor at the New York Times Letters page.)

Excuse me while I go all John Lennon on you

Over at Adbusters headquarters, the One Flag competition--a contest intended to present to the world a single flag for all--has resulted in a clear winner: This flag created by Marc Arroyo Ortiga from Berlin.




Adbusters, an organization that refers to itself as "culturejammer headquarters," has invested its resources in the argument that things might have been otherwise (despite an almost unbelievable misstep in the One Flag contest, about which more below). The description of the One Flag competition presents a nice example of how Adbusters goes about the work of imagining that otherwise world:

Design is at war with itself. We are taught that design is about finding solutions. But the success of these solutions is judged so narrowly – Did it ooze desire? Did it shift units? – that we find ourselves implicated in problems far greater than the ones we solve. The time has come for a radical shift in priorities. We are now faced with some of the most daunting global challenges in human history.

These are real targets, worthy of our problem-solving skills, ripe for our intervention. Yet those who have the vision to rise above national and political boundaries still have no symbol to rally under. We invite you to create a flag – free from language and well-worn clichés – that embodies the idea of global citizenship. A symbol that triggers pride and cohesion, whether worn on a backpack, displayed on a door, or flown on a flagpole. A symbol for anyone to declare membership in a growing and vital human cooperative. We invite you to prove that design has a real role to play in the fate of our world.

(You can look at the entries of the 32 finalists here.)


Now, about that "things might have been otherwise" argument:

Julia Clarke, writing about Actor-Network Theory (or ANT), examines the question "where is anemia?" to illustrate the point that "whatever story is being told, we are reminded that ‘it might have been otherwise’." As Clarke explains,

If there are plenty of iron tablets available, ‘anaemia’ is a good diagnosis. If there’s no iron, and no good food and no way to cure worms or malaria, then there is no point in using machines to measure haemoglobin levels. Anaemia is real, our bodies need iron; it is narrated, or discursively constructed in the context of different experiences and understandings; and it is social in the sense that what it means and what we do about it is something that is moved around in the fluid spaces of bodies and social relations.

The big work of ANT is to make a theoretical shift away from the assumption that humans are the source of all action and everything around them is just tools for action. Instead, Clarke explains it thus:

The most radical claim of actor-network theory is that all of social life consists of patterned networks of people, animals, machines, texts, buildings, plants – any material entity that is brought into a network. These entities have no inherent qualities but take their form and acquire their attributes through relationships in networks with other entities. This goes beyond the idea that humans behave differently or take on different roles in different social situations, or that plants wilt when the soil is too dry or that light bulbs need electricity.... It means recognising that machines, animals, micro-chips and people, as well as identities, categories, spaces and stories, all have politics and all are implicated in power relations.

In this view, the very humanity of human beings is an effect of the networks through which we derive ‘human’ attributes in relation to other human and non-human entities.

We say that humans are by nature territorial, and that notions like nations, borders, governments and flags emerged from that essentially human trait. But it might have been otherwise, as the Adbusters winning flag suggests. We can imagine a world in which a block of cloth tossed up a pole means not "this land is claimed for the American government and is subject to its government and laws" but "the swimming pool is now open" or "mitosis has occurred" or "a block of cloth has been tossed up a pole."

It might have been otherwise, and in this case the flag whose very image is that which means to us the exact opposite of "territory"--sky, the very opposite to us of land--won the contest because it helps us to imagine how it might have been otherwise. In fact, we might say the winning flag is not just the flag itself but the image of that block of cloth against a matching sky.

People drifting and gathering like clouds across the bright sky. No term to describe the notions of "borders," of "boundaries," no country or continent, no power exerted by the notion of "patriotism" and therefore no jingoisms, no xenophobia, no need for the complex of feelings and intentions exerted by patriotism as it currently exists in our networks of existence.

"You can't just pretend the notion of borders doesn't exist," said my British friend, talking about the expansion of the European Union. "When Poland joined the EU, immigrants flooded into the UK looking for jobs, and it's been bad for us. You can't just say, 'Right, let's get rid of the idea of countries and let everyone go where they want.'"

No, of course not. Not, anyway, in a culture where the notion of boundaries continues to exert its influence, regardless of shifts in law or approach. Not in a culture where there exists an us (the British) vs. them (the Polish, the Turks, the Greeks...). An us (America) vs. them (Mexicans, Canadians, the Middle East...).

No, of course not. But we can still try to imagine, as difficult as it is to do, how it might have been otherwise.


Ok, but here's how Adbusters kinda screwed the pooch on this one
Apparently, all of the judges of the One Flag contest were white men. For the love of pete. For the love of PETE.

This is further proof, though, of how hard it is to try to imagine how it might have been otherwise. And how important it is to keep trying.

NYTimes headline: When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking

I was feeling low and out of gas when I saw the above headline in the New York Times online. My hopes were high when I clicked on it. The actual article, about celebrities whose assistants manage their Twitter accounts for them, disappointed me deeply. Here's how I wish the article had read.

When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May be Lurking

By JENNA MCWILLIAMS
Published: March 28, 2009

For centuries, stargazers have been fascinated by the sight of celestial bodies twinkling and sparkling in the night sky. At various points in scientific history, astronomers have attributed the random blinking of stars to weaknesses of human vision or the shivering movements or dimming and brightening of the stars themselves. Since the early 18th Century, however, scientists have agreed that this phenomenon is the result of earthly atmospheric gases momentarily obscuring visibility.

Now one researcher is taking issue with this stance, arguing that a definitive link has been established between the seemingly random blinkings of stars and a complicated communication system, the details of which are still being worked out.

Andreu Matthiessen, a Finnish scientist whose previous research has focused on establishing a link between astrology and string theory, mapping visible stars to projected geographical formations of the European Union, and theorizing about the possibility of building a literal stairway to heaven, has now turned his attention to twinkling stars, formally known as stellar scintillation. Isaac Newton is credited with uncovering the true cause of twinkling stars when he argued that atmospheric turbulence caused the phenomenon. In 1704, Newton wrote:

"If the Theory of making Telescopes could at length be fully brought into Practice, yet there would be certain Bounds beyond which Telescopes could not perform. For the Air through which we look upon the Stars, is in a perpetual Tremor; as may be seen by the tremulous Motion of Shadows cast from high Towers, and by the twinkling of the fix’d Stars."

Yet Matthiessen, with funding from the International Federation of Astrologo-Astronomers, has spent the last two decades of his career taking issue with this widely accepted analysis. He and forty to fifty graduate students have been tracking scintillation by stationing themselves around the world and keeping at least three pairs of steady eyes on the night sky at all times. Now Matthiessen believes he has uncovered a pattern: One that indicates the stars themselves are attempting to communicate with us via short bursts of information.

"Much like in Twitter," Matthiessen, 73, said as he printed his most recent data for a reporter. "Information always comes in no more than 150 characters." (Twitter accounts are limited, in fact, to 140 characters at a time.)

Even Matthiessen admits that the data he has collected so far is largely unintelligible; he has been unable to make sense of the information streams that get sent to him from his worldwide research network. Yet he and his lead researcher, Andrea Figuero, are convinced that once they come upon the right permutation of number-letter decoding system, the reams of research will fall into place as a long communication. Asked to speculate on what the stars may be communicating to us, both Matthiessen and Figuero were eager to volunteer their opinions.

"I don't believe in God," said Figuero, an American who abandoned graduate work in astrophysics at MIT in 2003 to work with Matthiessen, "but I believe the planets, the stars, everything that's out there, makes up a single uniform body with its own level of awareness."

"It is not what you might imagine," Matthiessen agreed. "It does not communicate like this God and does not want to."

It doesn't want to direct our actions or guide humans? Then why bother trying to communicate?

"It is human, like us," Matthiessen answered.

"Not human," Figuero interjected. "But a body of awareness...maybe.... Well, I said I don't believe in God, but what if God did exist once and the stars are like the ghost of what God was?"

"Like a ghost," Matthiessen affirmed. "And when we break this code, we will know what this God was saying to his people centuries ago."