_______________________________________________________ THE MEDIA POLL Number 1 January 1, 1997 _______________________________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________________ POPULAR ARTS...IN REVIEW Pop Music January 1, 1997 _______________________________________________________ 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