Katie Couric’s interview with hero pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger will air on 60 Minutes tonight, and like many people, I’m pretty excited to see what the captain has to say. However, I’m also disappointed with the way Couric and CBS handled their exclusive with Sully. I have nothing against news organizations getting exclusive stories. That’s how the business works. However, I do have a bit of a problem with the way CBS has successfully blocked even the tiniest bit of media attention to Sullenberger from occuring before the show airs. CBS’s control reached its apotheosis last night, when the network basically forbade anyone from getting near enough to speak to or snap a pic of the pilot—other than AP, which had struck an agreement with CBS —when he went to the hit “South Pacific” at Lincoln Center. I had hoped that some daring audience or cast member would have grabbed something with a cameraphone, but no such luck. (Where’s the guy who snuck the pic of Michael Phelps when you need him?) So, congrats on the exclusive, CBS. But as far as I’m concerned, your heavy-handed approach to the Sully interview is a big fail.

Yes, it’s an awful bit of crass commercialism sullying John Lennon’s memory. But I laughed anyhow.

It drives me crazy when people use a tragedy or natural disaster to try to hawk a product. Yes, I know it’s done all the time—even by those who consider the Iraq war a “product”—but that doesn’t make it right. Here’s an example that just landed in my inbox:

Hurricane Gustav chased an estimated two million people from their homes. Fires in Southern California and Yosemite Park areas destroyed thousands of acres and burnt hundreds of homes. Floods in the Midwest swept into homes despite residents’ best efforts. Every day natural disasters take their financial and emotional toll.

So far, so fair, right? I mean, this is tug-at-the-heartstrings stuff, and if it’s part of an effort to help out the Red Cross or send help to stranded Texans, fine. But it’s not. What’s being sold here? The pitch comes a little later:

Katrina was a wake-up call for Donna to convert her old family film into digital files…just in case. Scanning 20 years of photos wasn’t something Donna found fun but she’s glad the task was done. ... Having invested so much time in digitizing her photos, Donna wanted to create a fail safe backup and archiving plan. “I found a website, [redacted] that highlighted the benefits of different archiving and backup solutions…”

That’s right. This is a press release for a backup service. Sure, backing up your photos is important; I do it all the time. But come on! It’s just a few days after Ike, and people are still trapped and dying in Galveston. And, this guy is using storms and other tragedies to pitch a backup service! It’s just loopy. No, I’m not going to post the flak’s name, or the name of his client, here. But I’m definitely adding a spam filter to my mailbox, so I can avoid seeing any more of this lunacy. And I’m going to send the Red Cross a few bucks right now, just to feel clean again after having read this stuff!

When I worked for Sondhi Limthongkul in the early 90s, everyone thought he was well on his way to becoming the Asian Rupert Murdoch. However, Sondhi’s media empire largely collapsed in the Asian economic downturn of the mid-90s, and it turned out that Asia’s Rupert Murdoch was … Rupert Murdoch.

But Sondhi’s place in history is more than secure now that he has, quite spectacularly, played a major role in the overthrow of not one, but two, prime ministers in his native Thailand. As Asia Times Online—the web-only spinoff of a newspaper Sondhi founded—put it today, “whether one is for him or against him, media mogul and anti-government protest leader Sondhi Limthongkul has indelibly changed the course of Thai history.”

Will Sondhi’s next step be to move from angry protest leader to conventional politician? “I’m not running for office, I’m not interested,” he told Asia Times, before adding that, if he was “invited and had the power to change things,” he’d be willing to work on a panel “to reform and supervise the country” as his “final act for the country.” Something tells me Sondhi’s real final act is likely to be a long way off.

When NPR recently announced it was dropping The Bryant Park Project after less than a year on the air, it marked the second time in recent months that a youth-targeted public radio program was cancelled. Fair Game, a PRI evening show, was shelved at the end of May, also after just a few months. The two cancellations would seem to indicate the public radio, long seen as a medium for middle-aged liberal commuters to listen to while driving their Priuses to work, has thrown in the towel when it comes to attracting younger listeners. However, I think it may actually indicate that NPR and PRI, rather than giving up on the next generation, has merely given up on pandering to it. After all, by at least one major indication—iTunes podcast downloads—public radio already has a solid following among young listeners. The iTunes list of top podcasts routinely contains several public radio programs, including "This American Life," "Fresh Air" and "Car Talk." At this moment, in fact, seven of the top 10 (and all of the top four) audio podcasts on iTunes come from the world of public radio. And, according to eMarketer, 70% of iTunes podcast downloaders are under 44; 29% are under 24. So, it looks like NPR and PRI have discovered belatedly that, instead of creating shows specifically for young listeners, they should stick to their core business of producing intelligent, thoughtful, well-produced programming, and audiences looking for such media—young and old—will find it. That said, I must admit that I enjoyed both "the BPP" and Fair Game. I found their mix of news, talk and Daily Show-style humor a refreshing alternative to Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Of course, I’m not in either show’s target demo, and the iTunes numbers show that those who are seem to be content with public radio’s standard offerings. For the rest of us middle-aged commuters, there’s always The Sound of Young America.

Back when I was at Engadget, we did a mega-post called Engadget 1985, in which we imagined what the site would have been like had it been created 20 years earlier. We filled it with ASCII art, a BBS-style UI, and our picks among hot products like th NTT Shoulder Phone, Windows 1.0, and Apple’s Lisa. Sure, it was a little precious, but it was great fun tracing today’s hot products back to their roots and casting knowing glances forward in the process (my fave among my own writeups: “We still think this Macintosh thing is an overrated, underpowered poor stepchild to the Lisa, and that Jobs and Sculley will eventually come to their senses and scrap it. At least they’ve stuck with the Apple II line-without the Lisa, it looks like that’s the only real hope for the future of this company.”)

New York magazine has just done its version of this exercise, with the ambitious Strategist 1968 package (best appreciated on dead trees, a popular medium back then). The package, which simulates the magazine’s actual layout of 40 years ago, includes a Best Bets section, a Look Book fashion spread, a restaurant review, and more. It’s a great effort, though at times it seems like the editors tried a litle too hard to squeeze the best of the 60s into 15 pages that could never have existed in the real Febriuary 1968 (nightlife picks include both Hendrix and Warhol; the dude in the fashion spread complains that his old man doesn’t get his hair). Still, the winking time-warped references are a kick (Times Square’s “eternal seediness seems destined to outlive us all”), and the Best Bets layout is a gorgeous collection featuring everything from a shiny red Royal typewriter (manual, natch) to a totally sleek Garrard 301 turntable ($500 in 1968!). Of course, the layout also takes liberties with the space-time continuum ( Douglas Engelbart’s big show-and-tell with his mouse took place in December 1968; mass-market Ouija boards were popular as far back as the turn of the 20th century) and has a couple of examples that are just way off base (would anyone have commented that a Zippo serves as a way to “remember we’re still in Vietnam” during the Tet Offensive?). Still, Strategiest 68 is, for the most part, a kick; a fun, silly, precious reminder of a New York that barely exists today, and even in 1968, didn’t truly exist except in the pages of glossy magazines.

Since everyone else has already compiled their “Best of 2007” lists, here’s mine, in no particular order:

The beauty of the Kindle isn’t its readability; its screen is basically the same as that of the Sony Reader. Amazon’s acheivement is solving the chicken-and-egg conundrum that ebook readers have faced for over a decade. With wireless access, tens of thousands of available books (including many that people might actually want to read) and even daily newspapers, the Kindle is the first ebook reader designed for readers. Now if they could just do something about that price.

Gore’s Nobel
Without Karl, Ralph or the Supremes in his way, the winner of the 2000 presidential race sailed to a well-deserved victory in Sweden. Of course, it remains to be seen whether his prize helps influence policy on climate change.

The Consumerist
Nick Denton will never be confused with Colston Warne, but as the force behind The Consumerist, he’s shown that he’s capable of actually helping people other than gossip-hungry New Yorkers and Valleyites. Featuring everything from recall news to guerilla support tips, Consumerist is the new face of consumer advocacy for Gen Y.

Alas, I didn’t make it to this show, the group’s first in over 25 years. But the YouTube clips confirm that my boyhood idols still sound great—but are now bald, fat and middle-aged … just like their fans.

Zoho Writer
Google Docs may get all the glory, but Zoho feels a lot more like a real word processor, and includes such niceties as a tabbed interface, ad-free environment, and, most impressive of all, a seamless offline mode—powered by Google Gears, which has yet to make an appearance in its parent’s online editor.
 
Forever Stamp
I buy stamps. I lose them. I find them five years later and have to buy extra pennyweight stamps if I want to use them. Not anymore. I can buy as many stamps as I want, lose them for decades, and still be able to use them to mail my pleas for cash to the Social Security Administration.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Alt-history, Chandleresque suspense and the “frozen chosen.” What’s not to like?

OLPC XO GOGO
I’ll leave the hardware reviews to the experts. But Nicholas Negroponte’s “Give One Get One” ploy was pure genius, and managed to change the public perception of the XO from a well-intentioned failure to a cool way to be philantropic and get a free gadget at the same time (or even make a profit, as some eBay merchants have managed to do.

Yahoo Pipes
Plug-and-play RSS mashups for the masses. Users have created pipes that do everything from add a category-specific price-watch service to craigslist to the most recent “interesting” flickr photos, except for those that feature flowers. And, of course, all scripts can be copied, merged, altered and further mashed as needed.

WGA Strike
The union movement in the U.S. may be a shadow of its former self, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely toothless. The ongoing strike has brought one of the country’s most powerful industries to its knees and, like the Tasini lawsuit a half-decade ago, serves as a reminder that companies that control content don’t have a unilateral right to use it “in any medium yet to be invented” without compensating its creators.

When I saw the cover of the latest issue of Wired, with the tagline “Manga Conquers America,” my first thought was, great, yet another tired retelling of the growth of manga in America. Fortunately, the actual article, by veteran journalist Daniel Pink, tells a very different story, about the growing market for underground fanfic manga mashups, and how Japanese publishers are willing to turn a blind eye to the amateur editions as long as they help mainstream titles—and don’t get too successful on their own.

The accompanying manga-style comic, however, does tell the full history of the business, from its humble origins in the 1940s through today’s global industry. And it reminded me of something—something familiar. Sure enough, a trip down to the basement confirmed that I wasn’t afflicted with a false memory. I managed to dig up a copy of the February 1991 issue of Business Tokyo, a magazine that included a story I wrote on the growth of the manga business, which was accompanied by, you guessed it, a manga-style comic telling the history of the business. No, I don’t think Wired got the idea from me. For one thing, Business Tokyo wasn’t exactly a mainstream publication. For another, Wired’s comic is much better. Still, it was fun to reread my old article, and I’ve gone ahead and scanned it for anyone else who might like to take a look. As I recall, I had to convince my editors that a story on manga was worth doing; at the time, it wasn’t considered a serious business subject. Of course, times have changed, and I somehow suspect that Pink had no such trouble with his editors at Wired.

(And, yes, the title of the article, “Middle Aged Psychic Samurai Beancakes” is a homage to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” And, yes, I know TMNT wasn’t directly inspired by manga. But it clearly owed a debt to Japanese pop culture—or at least to that culture as filtered through American versions like Frank Miller’s “Ronin.” So, I felt the title was fitting at the time—and still do today.)

Click on thumbnail at the left to view full-size scans on Flickr.

One spring day during my junior year of high school, a friend came up to me and said, “Did you hear? Ian Curtis killed himself.” Dumbfounded, I replied, “Who?” At the time, my musical tastes were evolving, and this friend, who was always a step ahead of me, briefed me about Joy Division’s history, and lamented that he wouldn’t get to see them at Hurrah as he had planned (if memory serves correctly, he kept his tickets to the canceled show as a memento mori, rather than turning them in for a refund). Over the next few months, I would come to fully embrace Joy Division’s small, powerful ouevre, along with that of New Order, which rose almost too rapidly from the band’s ashes.

I’ve been thinking about those days a lot lately, as the Joy Division revival launches into high gear. In the past three days alone, The New York Times has had three articles about the group, culminating in today’s glowing review of the biopic “Control,” which is, of course, the driving force behind the newfound interest in Joy Division. And, not to let an opportunity pass it by, Apple has released its “iTunes Originals” New Order album, which includes mostly interview clips, along with versions of “Transmission” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

The most striking thing about the New Order versions of these songs is how ordinary they sound. When Ian Curtis sang, “Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio,” each “dance” was a sharply punctuated, like a hammer hitting a nail. Curtis wasn’t singing about dancing; he was singing about using music as a blunt instrument to blot out painful memories. When Bernard Sumner sings the same lyrics, he’s, well, singing about dancing. That’s not exactly surprising. New Order, has, after all, always been a dance band, focused more on finding the perfect beat than a meaningful turn of phrase. Even the group’s best song, the Curtis tribute “The Perfect Kiss,” features such inane, wince-worth lyrics as “I have always thought about/staying here or going out.” That doesn’t mean I don’t like New Order. The group’s early singles sound as fresh to me today as they did over 25 years ago, and I certainly listen to “Temptation” more often than, say, “Komakino.” But when I want more substance, I’ll return to Joy Division, as I suspect many fans, old and new, will do in the coming weeks.

I have to admit I’m pretty impressed with Popular Photography’s ongoing coverage of “the war on photographers.” After all, it’s a magazine better known for reviews of lenses and curmudgeonly columns about glorious old pre-war cameras. So, the magazine’s (and its website) continued focus on the issue of photographers’ rights is something of a fundamental rethinking of its historic mission. And, as far as I’m concerned, it works. At a time when you can find photography tips just about anywhere, it’s important for established players like PopPhoto to be able to show how they’re different and better. Higher-quality reviews can help, of course. But taking up the cause of embattled photographers is even better. You can bet I’m going to review my subscription. And keep PopPhoto’s blog in my OPML.