Check out Wednesday News: Antitrust concerns for Comcast merger, China’s book banning, Publishers Weekly talks about diversity with publishers, and Walt Whitman’s advice to Oscar Wilde just posted at Dear Author. Antitrust experts slam Comcast merger plan, warn of threats to Netflix and Amazon Prime – As the FCC considers whether to green light the pending merger between Time Warner and Comcast, more than 36 antitrust experts from the fields of economics and law wrote a long objection to the merger, noting not only the obvious antitrust concerns, but also aspects such as the horrible track record for customer service Comcast has. The letter is embedded in the article. According to the 16-page submission, the merger will reduce competition by providing Comcast with over 40 percent of the market for broadband internet services, and make it easier for the incumbents to hobble “over-the-top” challengers like Netflix by congesting their internet traffic. The document, signed by antitrust experts from across the country including Columbia’s Tim Wu and Stanford’s Mark Lemley, comes as the FCC decides whether or not to approve the $45 billion merger, which was announced in February. A decision is expected in 2015. –Gigaom China detains scholar, bans books in crackdown on moderate voices – China is once again cracking down hard on pro-democracy ideas and proponents. Nationalist newspaper The Global Times includes an ominous editorial statement: “If one has positioned himself at odds to the country’s mainstream political path, he shouldn’t expect his influence to keep on rising without disruption,” China has detained a prominent scholar who helped blind dissident Chen Guangcheng flee to the United States two years ago and has banned books by eight writers in an escalating crackdown on dissent. Guo Yushan, a founder of the Transition Institute, a think-tank that researches business regulations, reform and civil society, was detained on Thursday, his wife, Pan Haixia, said. More than 10 police officers took him away along with his laptop, wireless router, mobile phone and iPad, she said. –Reuters ‘PW’ Panel Warns Industry, Lack of Diversity Threatens Publishing – I’m not quite sure why so much of the focus for the diversity issue is on children’s publishing, but I’m assuming the view is pretty much the same from every position in the industry. Publishers Weekly held a panel at Penguin Random House recently, and even publisher participation reflected the larger problem of lack of representation and interest. The panel drew a small but lively audience that, while more diverse than most industry gatherings, inadvertently highlighted one concern among many attendees: the people with the power to address the issue of diversity in the industry are not making it a priority. Only one senior publishing executive from a Big Five house attended the panel with the majority of the audience consisting of editorial staffers. There was only one person from marketing, cited during the program as a key department for providing support to a diverse list. –Publishers Weekly Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman Once Spent an Afternoon Together. Here’s What Happened. – For those who believe that author promotion is a 20th or 21st century phenomenon, check out this article about Oscar Wilde’s 1882 visit with Walt Whitman, whose desire for fame and notoriety was hardly a secret. It’s also pretty cute the way that Whitman characterized Wilde as ‘[taking] a great fancy’ to him. The real subject of Whitman’s conversation wasn’t literary form; it was how to build a career in public, with all the display that self-glorifying achievement requires. We can deduce that with confidence because the first thing Whitman did when he reached his den was to give his guest a photograph of himself. Whitman had pioneered the idea that a writer in search of fame should fashion himself as a literary artifact. When Leaves of Grass was self-published in 1855 it did not have Whitman’s name on the title page; instead, it had his portrait on the preceding page, showing the author standing tall in workman’s garb, his collar open, his left hand in one pocket of his slacks, his right resting on his hip, his bearded head topped by a hat set at a cocky angle, and his eyes meeting the reader with a stare simultaneously casual and challenging. No writer had ever presented himself to the public this way, let alone so intentionally. (Or with a visible button fly.) This frontispiece is now considered, the scholars Ed Folsom and Charles M. Price write, “the most famous in literary history.” –New Republic
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 09:11:08 +0000