How To Fail at New Media - A Case Study in Dinosaur Journalism

UPDATE: The idiots FINALLY just put it up.

Rolling Stone is at this very minute failing in a grand and sad way. While the whole world is talking about the article that could blow the Afghanistan War for Obama, Rolling Stone is too busy applying pressure to Politico to take the article down instead of bothering to put it up on their own website. I suppose Jan Wenner, with his ancient ideas of selling copies of a magazine, thinks he can drag us all back with him to the Stone Age. (Pun not intended, but left there because I'm cheesy that way.) The meat of the article isn't so much that General McChrystal is a renegade, that part is actually entertaining, but that he and his aides expose the fallacy of the counterinsurgency strategy.

Meanwhile, until they make him take it down as well, Mark Halperin of Time magazine has the article right here.

Way to screw it up, RS. You missed out on huge traffic numbers today and Time got them off of YOUR article.

By the time your stupid magazine hits the "newsstands" (how quaint) we all will have read the article somewhere else. Pure and utter fail.

Rolling Stone's political blog has been dormant for a month. UPDATE Their Twitter account failed to mention it until just 11 minutes ago. They say, get this: "Read the full Gen. McChrystal article that everyone is discussing now:" In today's journalism, when you waste an entire morning, you've lost.

And here is an up-to-the-minute screenshot of the RS homepage. Lady f-ing Gaga. 

Cue Angelic Choir

Northrup Grumman has released this image of their new airship they call a Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, being built for the U.S. Army. It's a football field in size and will be built and deployed within 18 months. Northrup has a contract to build "up to 3" of these for $517 million. It will fly at 20,000 feet and enable troops on the ground to pretty much see everything. A very wordy press release full of business speak/military jargon is here.

Given that they went with such a ridiculous artist's rendering, conveying glory, dominion, power and majesty, both now and forever, Amen, I've helped them turn this into an ad.(Click image for the huge.)

Hummers Suck

Just finished reading Robert Kaplan's latest book, "Imperial Grunts," in which Kaplan reveals that Special Forces troops in Afghanistan prefer Toyota's Land Cruiser to the HUMVEE. More manueverable, lest prone to breakdown and just plain more reliable. (Click that link above to read my review of the book.)

I am SICK of seeing H2s all over the place, which are nothing more than glorified Chevy Tahoes, WITHOUT the bed. In addition to thinking they are somehow now associated with the tough image of the military, this ad for the H3 sums up nicely why people keep buying these pieces of crap: "More Chrome. More Luxury." Ho-hum.

Yeah - tell that to the troops in Afghanistan, Hummer. "More Luxury! More chrome! Yeah!" Why don't you concentrate on your initial mission of providing reliable, safe transportation for our troops rather than how cool MC AndreDanger is going to look cruising down the streets of Inner City America or how on-the-prowl divorced Soccer Mom from Suburbia USA will look buying groceries?

Hey, Toyota, isn't it about time we get this information out to the SUV buying masses? Hummers suck.