here's my byline

feeBay

This is my convo with feeBay:

Irina: Can you tell me about the fee increases on eBay?

Durzy: Let's not characterize this as a fee increase accross the
board. Some fees were lowered and some were increased.

Irina: Oh, can we talk about which ones were lowered and which ones
were raised?

Durzy: I can't go into every detail! That information is on our
website. You really need to look over that. In fact, it's
unprofessional of you to call me before you have familiarized yourself
with the infor.....

Irina: Mr. Durzy. I HAVE read the information and I'm asking you
anyway. That's how I usually conduct interviews.

Durzy: Well. So let's not call it an accross-the-board increase.

Irina: OK. Can we talk about the eBay members who are frustrated with
the fees? The ones that were increased, not the ones that were
decreased.

Durzy: I think most ebay users are evaluating the price changes to see
how they will impact their businesses.

Irina: Um, OK. Um. [debating if I should follow up on that "answer"]
How did eBay decide on the increase.

Durzy: We carefully valuate our pricing structure from time to time.
We believe these price changes are the right thing to do for the
vibrancy of the market place.

Irina: How do you define vibrancy?

Durzy: The market place is an organic ever-changing thing and it works
best when sellers are selling and buyers are buying.

Irina: OK. How do you define "vibrancy" and how will the price
changes affect the "vibrancy?"

Durzy: Fee changes create changes by affecting certain behaviors in
the market place to create the effect of more items selling more
often. We believe these price changes are what is needed to continue
that vibrancy.

Irina: How do fee changes create the effect of more items selling more often?

Durzy: Listen, I'm not going into details here. In general, we believe
that the changes we have made will help the continued success of the
market place -- for the community.

Tsunami and Tsnoop!

i love this photo from the Hot 97 protest that took place in front of radio station studios to show outrage at the racism and hatred broadcast on the morning show by miss jones and her crew (minus miss info, who, i hope, will make her position known soon)

Tsunami Tsensorship?

several people have brought up the issue of censorship as it relates to the Hot 97 debaucle. i haven't seen much mention of it, but i agree that it needs to be discussed on a broad scale.

without any research on my part, i will say that this is a radio station that -- like most radio stations -- makes money by giving advertisers access to its listeners. if the listeners of the station are offended by what they hear on the radio, then it is up to them to make that known. if the advertisers believe what they heard on the radio is not acceptable to them, then it is up to them to take their money elsewhere.

so in terms of censorship, it appears that the radio station can continue to broadcast whatever they want, including the Tsunami song, and live with the consequences.

the consequences are not squelching of the station's right to broadcast what they see fit, but losing those listeners opposed to the content of the broadcast.

there are stations that broadcast hate messages, but they do not have many sponsors or listeners. they are not censored, but their programming is not appealing to people who are not interested in hateful, racist or homphobic information or entertainment.

Hot 97. Hot 97 II. Return of Hot 97.

everything ventured, nothing lost.

business as usual at the morning show. don't stop.

another weako PR response from "Tiffany" at McDonald's.

clearly no one at mickey d's paid attention to what is really going on since they call us "viewers" and not "listeners."

let's do our job to get this off the air. please continue to write sponsors.

i'll be calling Tiffany's boss:

Our customers are at the heart of every decision we make, and we would never do anything to INTENTIONALLY offend any of our customers.

We regularly review programming where our advertising messages appear, and strive to associate our messages with programming that is relevant and entertaining and that speaks to our customers in POSITIVE ENVIRONMENTS.

That said, it's important to understand that McDonald's is not directly involved with network programming decisions. As an advertiser, our role is not to determine what broadcasters should or should not air. That decision belongs to the broadcaster and, ultimately, to the INDIVIDUAL viewer. Whenever we have the opportunity, we talk about the core values of McDonald's that make our brand what it is today.

Please be assured that we will continue to search for entertaining, RESPONSIBLE programming for the placement of our commercials. Again, thank you for contacting McDonald's.
Tiffany
McDonald's Customer Satisfaction Department
ref#:2567010

tsunami hot 97 continues

i spent part of the weekend getting emails for hot 97 advertisers for people to send emails. sent quite a few emails myself. i'm still in shock that something like that can get on the air.

i'm sure the big wigs at the radio station and the parent company are deep in meetings, trying to figure out what to do next. that dinky apology was ridiculous. and nothing on missjones.net -- she actually had the nerve to post a news section for today, not mentioning the song.

there's a part of me that thinks this will just be nothing. another part wants to believe something will change. the most important thing is that i ACT like i believe all the way. the rest doesnt matter.

i sent out a few emails to hot 97 staff and i'm getting some responses! so let's see what they say. one of the questions is why miss info has to pay a week's salary if she didnt participate in the tsunami song and was insulted by miss jones repeatedly for being asian.

Me and Miss Jones, too HOT97 for tv

wow, this is not going away, thank god

i saw a petition had been started to fire Miss Jones, Todd Lyon and all the offensive players in the horrendous "skit."

http://www.petitiononline.com/endhate/petition.html

if you havent heard the Tsunami song played for a week on Hot 97, this is the segment that started the outrage (song is at the end of clip)

http://www.thesilent1.com/longer_hot97_tsunami.mp3

HOT97 .......................

http://www.hiphopmusic.com/archives/000759.html

For the last week Hot 97 has been running a hideously unfunny and offensive skit named "Tsunami Song," that ridicules the victims of the Tsunami as "ch*nks" whose children will now be sold into child slavery. It's being played on the station's morning show, hosted by Miss Jones.

Here are some choice lyrics:

..All at once you could hear the screaming ch*nks and no one was safe from the wave there were africans drowning, little chinamen swept away you could hear god laughing, "swim you b*tches swim"

So now you're screwed, it's the Tsunami
you better run or kiss your ass away, go find your mommy
I just saw her float by, a tree went through her head
and now the children will be sold to child slavery...

Uhh, yeah. Har de har har.

You may know that one of that show's other hosts, Miss Info, is Asian. She voiced her displeasure with the skit and got into a heated on-air argument with Miss Jones about it. But so far Hot 97 hasn't acknowledged that there's anything wrong with it, and they continue to air it everyday.

Please sent your complaints here:

[email protected]

HOT 97
395 Hudson St. 7th Fl.
New York, NY 10014

(212) 229-9797

she's not heavy, she's my sister!

my little sister, vera, lives in moscow and doesnt own a computer. just two days ago she asked me, "what's a blog?" and look at her now!

on this post at hiphopmusic, she tells us "what they call black people in russia"

http://www.hiphopmusic.com/archives/000753.html#comments

say it, brother!

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

-- James Bovard (1994)

give us minus 10 degrees

you gotta love my former countrymen -- russians are complainging that the weather is too warm. i called my sister in moscow, who whined that the warm weather is turning the city into a slush pile, ruining her alexander mcqueen pants.

my favorite quote from the story exhibits the hypochondriacal leanings of the russians:

Weather like this only increases your chances of getting the flu.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-melt14jan14.story