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THE MEDIA POLL	     Number 1	   	January 1, 1997
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By John Marcus

MEDIA POLL uses online news databases to measure media trends, coverage 
of current events, and the news organizations that cover them.  The Media 
Poll delves deep into the data warehouses of vast, electronic news 
archives, presses a few buttons and throws a few switches, and then steps 
back--ultimately attempting to make sense of the "findings," whether any 
sense is there to be made or not.  Sometimes, the "findings" just speak 
for themselves.

CUMULATIVE AFFLICTION

This week's poll measures column inches wasted on--er, devoted to--the 
second O.J. Simpson trial, and O.J. in general. Personally, and I don't 
think I'm alone in feeling this way, but all this O.J. coverage is, well, 
getting to me.  

No, really--it is.  

AND TO ME at least, it seems that on every page I turn or screen I 
scroll, Mr. Simpson is there waiting for me.  Either he's the most 
referred to name in public discourse these days or else the cumulative 
effect of his multi-part miniseries has made it seem that way. But 
whether or not one thinks he is guilty or irrelevant or innocent or 
fascinating, O.J. is here and he has made his presence felt. 

One of the things the Media Poll does best is to measure not just 
*coverage* of a certain person or entity, but also the extended impact 
and influence of that person or entity.  Our sampling technique, after 
all, picks up actual articles about a topic, but it also picks up every 
off-hand reference, bad joke, or throwaway line that has been inspired by 
it.  In other research situations this would be a fault, but not here, 
because the Media Poll aims to quantify the extent of O.J. as a news 
story *and* cultural influence--benchmarking the ubiquity of pop culture 
phenomena is one of our specialties, and something you'll find nowhere 
else.  

TO ILLUSTRATE, take another example: Saddam Hussein.  Although he has 
been off the front pages for several years, his "Mother of all Battles" 
epigram has entered the English language permanently and is used daily in 
variant forms by reporters and sources the world over.  Perhaps we will 
document the dictator's lingering influence in a later poll.

In this poll, we have counted the number of articles mentioning "the 
Juice" since the trial began on October 23rd in each of 20 newspapers in 
the U.S. and overseas.  Some papers are still O.J.-mad.  Others have had 
enough.  Is your regular morning read among the worst offenders--er, 
those offering the most comprehensive coverage?

L.A. HAS O.J. ON THE BRAIN

THE KING of O.J. Coverage in our sample is--not surprisingly--the Los 
Angeles Times, with 172 articles.  Seeing as this search was done on 
December 14, that's roughly 3.07 articles per day.

Every day.

GRANTED, THERE is the local angle to exploit/cover--and remember, these 
are mentions of his name, not necessarily stories about the trial. The 
172 count includes all the name-droppings, out-of-context references, 
even instances of O.J. as analogy: 

  Dateline--Bogota, Colombia:  "In the way Americans 
  have watched the O. J. Simpson trials unfold on 
  television, Colombians have tuned in to keep up with 
  a narco-political scandal that has jailed 14 members 
  of Congress and raised questions about President 
  Ernesto Samper's possible links to drug lords...."

Clearly L.A., including its reporters, has O.J. on the brain. 

What about other news organizations?  (Or is this simply a regional 
phenomenon?)

SECOND PLACE goes to USA Today, a national newspaper, with 103 mentions.  
Other papers were chosen by region, with coverage in each area led by the 
Dallas Morning News (South-96), New York Times (East-84), Chicago Tribune 
(Midwest-101), and Montreal Gazette (non-U.S.-32).  Least exploitative 
U.S. paper is another national outlet--the Wall Street Journal (8).  
Overseas, it's the Budapest Sun, which has mentioned O.J. just once since 
the second trial began, in an article about local bartenders and the 
subjects they must be prepared to discuss....

Here are the complete league standings:


Mentions of O.J. since 10/23	
--------------------------------	
Los Angeles Times            172
USA Today                    103
Chicago Tribune              101
Dallas Morning News           96
New York Times                84
Washington Post		      72	
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel    70	
Boston Globe 		      61	
New Orleans Times-Picayune    58	
Detroit News 		      51	
Seattle Post-Intelligencer    45	
Peoria Journal Star 	      42	
Tulsa World 		      39
Montreal Gazette              32	
Irish Times 		      28	
Denver Post 		      22 	
Times (London)		      15
Wall Street Journal            8	
South China Morning Post       4
Budapest Sun                   1	

WHAT DOES it tell us that some of the highest-circulating newspapers in 
the country are at the top of this list?  I don't know.  My original 
theory was that the papers with the greatest occurrence of "O.J.s" are 
the most jaded and cynical.  Not necessarily the most jaded in general, 
but rather the most cynical specifically about O.J. and his trials.  
There are only so many articles one could publish about the trial itself 
each day--I thought the higher totals above were puffed up by all the 
reporters and columnists taking easy shots with Simpson name-dropping in 
pieces totally unrelated to the trial, from the review of a book on legal 
history (Dallas Morning News) to the report announcing Billy Crystal 
would host the 1997 Academy Awards (USA Today).  After all, aren't those 
two initials now as ubiquitous as M.D., U.S., and G.E.?

But then I started looking at the actual stories--at the context in which 
all these O.J.s have been appearing--and I was surprised.  Most of the 
stories *do* have something to do with one of the trials after all, or 
with one of the many characters involved in this never-ending saga.  
Sure, there are the stories about O.J. *coverage* (like this!), the think 
pieces on race in America, and the sports section walks down memory 
lane--but gosh darn it, most of the articles in the counts above are 
indeed all about this blasted second trial:  about blood evidence, about 
witness testimony, and about courtroom strategies of the litigants.

IN FACT, further research conducted to prove the media has succumbed to a 
clinical O.J. obsession served only to set me straight:  a search of an 
equivalent period of time during the first Simpson trial in 1995 revealed 
twice as many mentions in almost all of the participating papers.  We're 
actually reading less about O.J. these days: 39,000 articles in the top 
50 U.S. newspapers mentioned O.J. Simpson in 1995, while only 14,000 
mentions occurred in 1996. (Prior to the murders of Nicole Brown and 
Ron Goldman, O.J. clocked up about 1,000 mentions a year.) 

Perhaps it's just the cumulative effect that's getting to me.

###   ###   ###   ###   ###   ###   ###   ###   ###   


YOU HEARD IT THERE FIRST

First known use (in a major newspaper) of the utterly tiresome phrase 
"been there, done that":

September 5, 1987
The Ottawa Citizen (and two other Knight-Ridder newspapers in North America)

In a profile of that perennial trend-setter Helen Reddy, the Aussie 
celebrity was quoted thus:  "In Australia we have a saying...it's, 'Been 
there, done that.'"  The "I Am Woman" singer was referring to the number 
of cities and venues she had played in her career.

Now we know who to blame.  


NOTE TO READERS

Thank you for reading this far down the page of this first edition of the 
Media Poll.  I realize this has arrived unsolicited in your newsgroup or 
email box but I thought you might be interested.  If you think I have 
taken liberties by doing so or if you are not interested in receiving 
future editions of this column, please reply by email to 
xx609@prairienet.org with the message: STOP.

If you would like to subscribe to the Media Poll, please reply by email 
to xx609@prairienet.org with the message: SUBSCRIBE.


FUTURE MEDIA POLL TOPICS

-Leno vs. Letterman: Does News Coverage Equal Ratings?
-The Bob Dole Effect
-Madonna or Homelessness: Which Has the Better Publicist?

Got an idea for a Media Poll topic?  
Email: jmarcus@prairienet.org


The Media Poll is Copyright 1997 by John Marcus

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POPULAR ARTS...IN REVIEW    Pop Music   January 1, 1997
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Popular Arts...in Review offers concise reviews of pop music, television, 
film, books, and other garish ephemera. 


OO-WEE-OO ITS WEEZER PART TWO

POWER POP is such a good concept--so why is it rarely done well?  After 
all, what rock 'n' roll partisan wouldn't approve of an approach that 
includes rough chords, sloppy drums, and ragged yet ebullient 
harmonies--all tied together with a melody so authoritative that it pulls 
all the loose ends in line? Cheap Trick invented it, the Buzzcocks and 
Undertones did the first punk versions, and Shoes was the only group to 
try to claim the sound as its own.  But twenty years after all of those 
bands made their starts, there is a whole shower of groups rehashing this 
sound that is so obvious yet so difficult to conquer.  So few have done 
so that the phrase has long been a code word for the twee (The dbs) or 
the workmanlike (The Knack) in melodic rock. 

PEGGED AS GEEKS for their unkempt, uncool (and unself-conscious?) look, 
Weezer is the L.A.-based band that has conquered not only a sound but a 
market.  In a rare example of Sophomore Triumph, the group's "Pinkerton" 
album is even better than their first, both artistically and in the net 
proceeds department.  Its second collection of "little symphonies for the 
kids," to borrow Phil Spector's phrase, is actually a "poperetta":  named 
for a Puccini character, it is a series of songs telling an extended tale 
of love and loneliness from the perspective of the perplexing Rivers 
Cuomo, Weezer autuer.

IN HIGH TREMBLES and raunchy roars, Cuomo drags us willingly through the 
depths of his pathetic relationships, both real and imaginary.  His songs 
are given deep meaning not by their generally inarticulate lyrics but by 
his unmistakably genuine delivery.  After the rather unexpected 
mainstream success of Weezer's humble first album, Cuomo fled the 
spotlight and lived for awhile as a hermit at Yale, studying music, 
growing a long beard, and walking around on crutches due to painful leg 
surgery.  In other words, this is no rock biz hack scamming a formula for 
airplay.  This is one serious and seriously jilted dude--a pop artist 
who, like Brian Wilson, can strew his pain around in the most accessible 
of cadences and the loveliest of choruses. At the same time, the boy will 
make you laugh:  "I'm dumb/she's a lesbian" is the conclusion of one of 
his many dramatized crushes. Pink Triangle, Falling For You, No Other 
One, Getchoo, and the first single, El Scorcho, all shine, gleaming with 
melodies as organically lubricated as the hair on Weezer guitarist Brian 
Bell's unwashed head.  

Copyright 1997 by John Marcus				






