MEDIA MASH: Inside.com's Mega Media Play

It's Still an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World

Adbusters Magazine's Web site recently won the Webby award for activism. This may mean that the Webby voters are way behind the times, since Adbusters is rather old hat. Or perhaps, thinking optimistically, their aggressive critique of consumer culture may be gaining new momentum, and Adbusters, by dint of their persistence, is back in the center of things again. Kalle Lasn, the Estonian turned Canadian who is the creative force behind Adbusters, has a new book out: Culture Jam, which the Masher hasn't read yet, since there already is a pile of unread books sitting on his desk. But one of these days.

Regardless of Adbuster's victory at the Webbys, it is amazing how advertisers are so disgustingly clever at figuring out ever more places to stick ads. AlterNet columnist Donella Meadows quotes Lasn in a recent Global Citizen column: "You reach down to pull your golf ball out of the hole and there, at the bottom of the cup is an ad for a brokerage firm. You fill your car with gas, there's an ad on the nozzle. Your kids watch Pepsi and Snickers ads in the classroom. You pick up a banana in the supermarket and there on a little sticker is an Ad for the summer blockbuster at the multiplex. Coca Cola strikes a six month deal with the Australian postal service for the right to cancel stamps with a Coke ad. A company called VideoCarte installs interactive screens on supermarket carts."

Lasn is a cultural jammer looking to turn the tables on the advertising culture in whatever guerrilla way possible. One of his suggestions: "When we find an unsolicited ad in our fax machine, fax back a sheet of black paper (which drains the toner of the receiving machine) with a small white window within the message that reads: 'Don't fax me ads.'" Well, the Masher guesses every small step counts.

Hersh and Anderson -- The Clash of New and Old Media

Kurt Anderson, Web media entreprenuer, and Seymour Hersh, dogged reporter, are two media celebs of the moment. They represent as stark a contrast between the new media and the old as you'll ever find.

The Hersh Story

Sy Hersh is the storied investigative reporter who received a Pulitzer for uncovering the My Lai massacre in 1968 during the Vietnam War. In the May 22 New Yorker, after six months of research, Hersh has penned a powerful and extremely comprehensive 34 page dissection and indictment of the behavior of former General Barry McCaffrey, an Army commander during the Gulf War. McCaffrey is the current drug czar of the Clinton administration who is trying hard to mobilize more than a billion dollars in military aid to Colombia. Many suggest that the proposed aid package is intended more to do battle with leftist guerillas than to halt Colombia's drug production.

Hersh's well documented charge against McCaffrey is that McCaffrey, in an attempt to produce warrior glory for himself, ordered his soldiers to attack and slaughter thousands of Iraqi troops in retreat, two days after a cease fire went into effect.

McCaffrey, predictably, went ballistic over the story, attacking Hersh long before the article even came out. McCaffrey claimed that Hersh was recycling old news and had no integrity. McCaffrey was cleared of misconduct by the military in earlier investigations. But strikingly, Hersh was able to get numerous military personnel -- many of them high ranking officers -- to support the charges against McCaffrey. Clearly McCaffrey was as disliked by many of his fellow military officers as he is despised by drug refomers today, since his take-no-prisoners drug war approach has many of the same characteristics and ramifications as his actions in the desert nine years ago.

The Hersh article is compelling investigative reporting at its best. Editor David Remnick and the New Yorker deserve huge praise for taking the story on and sticking with Hersh, despite enormous pressure. Hersh, of course, is known for his tenacity and persistence. As Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post points out, "In another New Yorker piece, Hersh interviewed more than 100 present and past government officials in questioning whether the U.S. had bombed the wrong building in a 1998 strike against Sudan, as many critics have come to believe."