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An interesting discussion of the role of "traditional media" in the wikileaks Afghanistan journal

That WikiLeaks went to the press with the Afghanistan war logs shows old-fashioned news organisations still have a role to play

Of all the questions raised by the Afghanistan war logs, perhaps the most intriguing is this: why would an organisation as independent-minded and disdainful of the traditional media as WikiLeaks seek out those very media as partners rather than going it alone?

My necessarily speculative answer is that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who's made a speciality of revealing embarrassing governmental secrets, learned something important earlier this year. That's when he briefly caused a sensation by releasing video of a US Apache helicopter firing on Iraqi civilians, killing (among others) a Reuters photographer and his driver.

The lesson: shocking material and a flair for public relations may be enough to get you noticed. But if it's credibility you want, then old-fashioned news organisations still have something to offer.

WikiLeaks made some 92,000 documents about the war in Afghanistan available to the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel a month ago, giving professional journalists time to sort, vet and craft narratives from jargon-laden field reports compiled by US officials.

The documents add sickening details to the broad outlines of what we already knew: that major elements of Pakistan's intelligence forces are in bed with the Taliban; that chaos and confusion in Afghanistan has led to civilian casualties; and that among the burdens the Afghan people must bear is a corrupt and ineffective government.

The Obama administration has lambasted WikiLeaks for releasing the documents, arguing that the situation has improved since 2009, when the most recent of the official reports were compiled. But no one has questioned the authenticity of the documents themselves, even if the reliability of the information contained therein appears to be of variable quality.

In effect, Assange chose to act as Daniel Ellsberg, the insider who leaked the Pentagon Papers the US government's own secret history of the Vietnam war to the Washington Post and the New York Times. But it was just a few months ago that Assange tried out the role of Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post executive editor who published those papers.

In April, you may recall, WikiLeaks uploaded two versions of the Apache helicopter video. One was an edited, 18-minute version that it titled Collateral Murder, which begins with a quote from George Orwell: "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." The other, 39 minutes long, was raw footage with no commentary.

The American secretary of defence, Robert Gates, denounced the video as having been taken out of context. No surprise there. But as Raffi Khatchadourian notes in a profile of Assange published in the New Yorker, the media turned Gates's way within days of the release. And in fact, when you watch the video and listen to the Americans on board the helicopter, you can see that the crew members believed, rightly or wrongly, that they were firing on a legitimate target.

Even the comedian Stephen Colbert, in an interview with Assange, dropped his rightwing-blowhard persona momentarily to make a serious point, calling the edited version "emotional manipulation" and telling his guest: "There are armed men in the group. They did find a rocket-propelled grenade among the group. The Reuters photographers who were regrettably killed were not identified as photographers. And you have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called Collateral Murder. That's not leaking. That's a pure editorial."

(An aside for British readers not familiar with Colbert and thus puzzled at my quoting a comedian: it is a sad but undeniable reality that the two most incisive American media critics today may well be Colbert and his fellow fake anchorman Jon Stewart.)

Around the time that the video was released, hubris among the WikiLeakers was thick. In the New Yorker piece, we hear from a friend and supporter of Assange's, a Dutch hacker named Rop Gonggrijp, who smugly says that "we are not the press" and "the source is no longer dependent on finding a journalist who may or may not do something good with his document".

Yet here we are, several months later, and Assange is acting very much like an old-fashioned source, seeking out journalists even as he uploads the raw source documents to the web.

In the felicitous phrase of New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, WikiLeaks is "a stateless news organisation". But as the New Yorker piece makes clear, Assange and his fellow activists are less interested in news than in making a political impact. And it is an organisation only in the loosest sense of the term. Given those realities, it makes sense for them to work with journalists rather than to posit themselves in opposition to the media.

"WikiLeaks was soaking, drowning in data," Rosen's NYU colleague Clay Shirky tells David Carr of the New York Times. "What they needed was someone who could tell a story. They needed someone who could bring accuracy and political context to what was being revealed."

What I am suggesting is not that old media have triumphed over the new. Rather, I'm simply pointing out that each has its place in the media ecosystem.

WikiLeaks, with its singleminded focus on casting about for whistleblowers and protecting their identity through encryption and secrecy, can obtain material that eludes established news organisations. And professional journalists can vet, make sense of and impart credibility to that material in ways that not all new-media ventures (at least not WikiLeaks) can.

The result is a powerful indictment of the war in Afghanistan and a major challenge to Barack Obama.

Back in character, Colbert asked Assange: "What is the purpose of letting the public know? It's like you're saying it's better to know than not to know. Have you not heard ignorance is bliss?"

It's way too late for that now.

This morning I had the chance to get a tour of The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI, along with Dale Dougherty, creator of Make: and Makerfaire, and Marc Greuther, the chief curator of the museum. I had expected a museum dedicated to the auto industry, but it's so much more than that. As I wrote in my first stunned tweet, "it's the Louvre of the Industrial Age."

When we first entered, Marc took us to what he said he said may be his favorite artifact in the museum, a block of concrete that contains Luther Burbank's shovel, and Thomas Edison's signature and footprints. Luther Burbank was, of course, the great agricultural inventor who created such treasures as the nectarine and the Santa Rosa plum. Ford was a farm boy who became an industrialist; Thomas Edison was his friend and mentor. The museum, opened in 1929, was Ford's personal homage to the transformation of the world that he was so much a part of. This museum chronicles that transformation.

The machines are astonishing - steam engines and coal fired electric generators as big as houses, the first lathes capable of making other precision lathes (the makerbot of the 19th century), a ribbon glass machine that is one of five that in the 1970s made virtually all of the incandescent lightbulbs in the world, combine harvesters, railroad locomotives, cars, airplanes, even motels, gas stations, an early McDonalds' restaurant and other epiphenomena of the automobile era.

Under Marc's eye, we also saw the transformation of the machines from purely functional objects to things of beauty. We saw the advances in engineering - the materials, the workmanship, the design, over a hundred years of innovation. Visiting The Henry Ford, as they call it, is a truly humbling experience. I would never in a hundred years have thought of making a visit to Detroit just to visit this museum, but knowing what I know now, I will tell you confidently that it is as worth your while as a visit to Paris just to see the Louvre, to Rome for the Vatican Museum, to Florence for the Uffizi Gallery, to St. Petersburg for the Hermitage, or to Berlin for the Pergamon Museum. This is truly one of the world's great museums, and the world that it chronicles is our own.

I am truly humbled that the Museum has partnered with us to hold Makerfaire Detroit on their grounds. If you are anywhere in reach of Detroit this weekend, I heartily recommend that you plan to spend both days there. You can easily spend a day at Makerfaire, and you could easily spend a day at The Henry Ford.

P.S. Here are some of my photos from my visit. (More to come soon. Can't upload many as I'm currently on a plane.)

It's the first Post-San Diego installment of my weekly Q&A column, and this time out, I shockingly write a thousand words about the purity of Batman's origin story and how small changes affect the metaphor.

I also recommend a handful of manga series to interested parties, and if you happen to be among them, here's a handy way to pick up the ones I talk about:

You may notice that while it gets a mention in the article, there's no link to purchase Love Hina. And that is because I don't hate you all.

Well, most of you.

It's the first Post-San Diego installment of my weekly Q&A column, and this time out, I shockingly write a thousand words about the purity of Batman's origin story and how small changes affect the metaphor.

I also recommend a handful of manga series to interested parties, and if you happen to be among them, here's a handy way to pick up the ones I talk about:

You may notice that while it gets a mention in the article, there's no link to purchase Love Hina. And that is because I don't hate you all.

Well, most of you.

Ramon Nuez / The Huffington Post:
The Revolution of Content Fueled by the Birth of Mobile The World Wide Web is one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. At its inception the Internet was simply a library of static web sites. These static pages were created and maintained by an elite few.

Newspapers are now less important than the Internet as a source of information, yet the majority of online users say most online information is not reliable, according to the 10th annual study of the impact of the Internet on Americans by the Center for the Digital Future.

The study also found that 70 percent of online users believe that Internet advertising is annoying, yet 55 percent of users said they would rather see Web advertising than pay for content.

Among the study's findings:

• Americans on the Internet For the first time, the Internet is used by more than 80 percent of Americans now 82 percent. Weekly hours online The average time online has now reached 19 hours per week. Although more than two-thirds of Americans have gone online for a decade, the largest year-to-year increases in weekly online use have been reported in the two most recent Digital Future studies.
• Gaps in Internet use in age groups Not surprisingly, Internet use continues to increase as age decreases, with 100 percent of those under age 24 going online. However, a surprisingly high percentage of Americans between 36 and 55 are not Internet users: among respondents age 46 to 55, 19 percent are non-users; among those 36 to 45, 15 percent are non-users.
• Low adoption of new media Although new media is used by large percentages of Internet users age 24 and under, overall large percentages of Internet users never go online to do instant messaging (50 percent), work on a blog (79 percent), participate in chat rooms (80 percent), or make or receive phone calls (85 percent).
• Does technology make the world a better place The percentage of users age 16 and older who said that communication technology makes the world a better place has declined to 56 percent of users from its peak of 66 percent in 2002.
• Internet and Political Campaigns although more than 70 percent of users agree that the Internet is important for political campaigns, only 27 percent of users said that by using the Internet public officials will care more about what people think, and 29 percent said that the Internet can give people more of a say in what government does.
• Buying online 65 percent of adult Internet users buy online (the same as in 2008), and make an average of 35.2 purchases per year (up from 34.1 per year in 2008).
• Internet impact on traditional retail declines 61 percent of Internet users said that online purchasing has reduced their buying in traditional retail stores down from 69 percent in 2008.
• Top 10 online purchases 59 percent of Internet users said they purchase books or clothes online, followed by gifts (55 percent), travel (53 percent), electronics/appliances (47 percent), videos (46 percent), computers or peripherals (41 percent), software or games (40 percent), CDs (40 percent), and products for hobbies (38 percent).
• The study found that as sources of information their primary function newspapers rank below the Internet or television. Only 56 percent of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them a decrease from 60 percent in 2008 and below the Internet (78 percent), and television (68 percent).
• Even lower are the percentages of users who consider newspapers important as sources of entertainment for them, now considered important by 29 percent of Internet users, and down from 32 percent in 2008 also last among principal media.
• Eighteen percent of Internet users said they stopped a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online down slightly from 22 percent in 2008, but nevertheless a strong indication that print newspapers can be sacrificed by a significant percentage of Internet users.
• Internet users were asked where they would go for information provided by their newspaper if the print edition ceased, 59 percent said they would read the online edition of the publication; only 37 percent said they would instead read the print edition of another newspaper.
• Twenty-two percent of users who read newspapers said they would not miss the print edition of their newspaper.
• Sixty-one percent of users said that only half or less of online information is reliable a new low level for the Digital Future Project.
• Even more disturbing is that 14 percent of Internet users said that only a small portion or none of the information online is reliable a percentage that has grown for the past three years and is now at the highest level thus far in the Digital Future Project.
• Also revealing is the percentage of users who have limited trust even in the Web sites they visit regularly: although 78 percent said that most or all of the information on the sites they visit regularly is reliable (a decline from the previous two years), 22 percent of users say that only one half or less of information on sites they visit regularly is reliable.
• Even search engines such as Google and Yahoo traditional stalwarts of online credibility have lost some of their luster. While 53 percent of Internet users said that most or all of the information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, that percentage declined slightly in the current Digital Future Study and is well below the peak of 64 percent in 2006.
• 36 percent of users said only about half of information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, and 12 percent said only a small portion or none of it was reliable.
• Only 46 percent of users said they have some trust or a lot of trust in the Internet in general. Nine percent of users have no trust in the Internet.

Among the study's findings:

• Americans on the Internet For the first time, the Internet is used by more than 80 percent of Americans now 82 percent. Weekly hours online The average time online has now reached 19 hours per week. Although more than two-thirds of Americans have gone online for a decade, the largest year-to-year increases in weekly online use have been reported in the two most recent Digital Future studies.
• Gaps in Internet use in age groups Not surprisingly, Internet use continues to increase as age decreases, with 100 percent of those under age 24 going online. However, a surprisingly high percentage of Americans between 36 and 55 are not Internet users: among respondents age 46 to 55, 19 percent are non-users; among those 36 to 45, 15 percent are non-users.
• Low adoption of new media Although new media is used by large percentages of Internet users age 24 and under, overall large percentages of Internet users never go online to do instant messaging (50 percent), work on a blog (79 percent), participate in chat rooms (80 percent), or make or receive phone calls (85 percent).
• Does technology make the world a better place The percentage of users age 16 and older who said that communication technology makes the world a better place has declined to 56 percent of users from its peak of 66 percent in 2002.
• Internet and Political Campaigns although more than 70 percent of users agree that the Internet is important for political campaigns, only 27 percent of users said that by using the Internet public officials will care more about what people think, and 29 percent said that the Internet can give people more of a say in what government does.
• Buying online 65 percent of adult Internet users buy online (the same as in 2008), and make an average of 35.2 purchases per year (up from 34.1 per year in 2008).
• Internet impact on traditional retail declines 61 percent of Internet users said that online purchasing has reduced their buying in traditional retail stores down from 69 percent in 2008.
• Top 10 online purchases 59 percent of Internet users said they purchase books or clothes online, followed by gifts (55 percent), travel (53 percent), electronics/appliances (47 percent), videos (46 percent), computers or peripherals (41 percent), software or games (40 percent), CDs (40 percent), and products for hobbies (38 percent).
• The study found that as sources of information their primary function newspapers rank below the Internet or television. Only 56 percent of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them a decrease from 60 percent in 2008 and below the Internet (78 percent), and television (68 percent).
• Even lower are the percentages of users who consider newspapers important as sources of entertainment for them, now considered important by 29 percent of Internet users, and down from 32 percent in 2008 also last among principal media.
• Eighteen percent of Internet users said they stopped a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online down slightly from 22 percent in 2008, but nevertheless a strong indication that print newspapers can be sacrificed by a significant percentage of Internet users.
• Internet users were asked where they would go for information provided by their newspaper if the print edition ceased, 59 percent said they would read the online edition of the publication; only 37 percent said they would instead read the print edition of another newspaper.
• Twenty-two percent of users who read newspapers said they would not miss the print edition of their newspaper.
• Sixty-one percent of users said that only half or less of online information is reliable a new low level for the Digital Future Project.
• Even more disturbing is that 14 percent of Internet users said that only a small portion or none of the information online is reliable a percentage that has grown for the past three years and is now at the highest level thus far in the Digital Future Project.
• Also revealing is the percentage of users who have limited trust even in the Web sites they visit regularly: although 78 percent said that most or all of the information on the sites they visit regularly is reliable (a decline from the previous two years), 22 percent of users say that only one half or less of information on sites they visit regularly is reliable.
• Even search engines such as Google and Yahoo traditional stalwarts of online credibility have lost some of their luster. While 53 percent of Internet users said that most or all of the information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, that percentage declined slightly in the current Digital Future Study and is well below the peak of 64 percent in 2006.
• 36 percent of users said only about half of information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, and 12 percent said only a small portion or none of it was reliable.
• Only 46 percent of users said they have some trust or a lot of trust in the Internet in general. Nine percent of users have no trust in the Internet.

Newspapers are now less important than the Internet as a source of information, yet the majority of online users say most online information is not reliable, according to the 10th annual study of the impact of the Internet on Americans by the Center for the Digital Future.

The study also found that 70 percent of online users believe that Internet advertising is annoying, yet 55 percent of users said they would rather see Web advertising than pay for content.

Among the study's findings:

• Americans on the Internet For the first time, the Internet is used by more than 80 percent of Americans now 82 percent. Weekly hours online The average time online has now reached 19 hours per week. Although more than two-thirds of Americans have gone online for a decade, the largest year-to-year increases in weekly online use have been reported in the two most recent Digital Future studies.
• Gaps in Internet use in age groups Not surprisingly, Internet use continues to increase as age decreases, with 100 percent of those under age 24 going online. However, a surprisingly high percentage of Americans between 36 and 55 are not Internet users: among respondents age 46 to 55, 19 percent are non-users; among those 36 to 45, 15 percent are non-users.
• Low adoption of new media Although new media is used by large percentages of Internet users age 24 and under, overall large percentages of Internet users never go online to do instant messaging (50 percent), work on a blog (79 percent), participate in chat rooms (80 percent), or make or receive phone calls (85 percent).
• Does technology make the world a better place The percentage of users age 16 and older who said that communication technology makes the world a better place has declined to 56 percent of users from its peak of 66 percent in 2002.
• Internet and Political Campaigns although more than 70 percent of users agree that the Internet is important for political campaigns, only 27 percent of users said that by using the Internet public officials will care more about what people think, and 29 percent said that the Internet can give people more of a say in what government does.
• Buying online 65 percent of adult Internet users buy online (the same as in 2008), and make an average of 35.2 purchases per year (up from 34.1 per year in 2008).
• Internet impact on traditional retail declines 61 percent of Internet users said that online purchasing has reduced their buying in traditional retail stores down from 69 percent in 2008.
• Top 10 online purchases 59 percent of Internet users said they purchase books or clothes online, followed by gifts (55 percent), travel (53 percent), electronics/appliances (47 percent), videos (46 percent), computers or peripherals (41 percent), software or games (40 percent), CDs (40 percent), and products for hobbies (38 percent).
• The study found that as sources of information their primary function newspapers rank below the Internet or television. Only 56 percent of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them a decrease from 60 percent in 2008 and below the Internet (78 percent), and television (68 percent).
• Even lower are the percentages of users who consider newspapers important as sources of entertainment for them, now considered important by 29 percent of Internet users, and down from 32 percent in 2008 also last among principal media.
• Eighteen percent of Internet users said they stopped a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online down slightly from 22 percent in 2008, but nevertheless a strong indication that print newspapers can be sacrificed by a significant percentage of Internet users.
• Internet users were asked where they would go for information provided by their newspaper if the print edition ceased, 59 percent said they would read the online edition of the publication; only 37 percent said they would instead read the print edition of another newspaper.
• Twenty-two percent of users who read newspapers said they would not miss the print edition of their newspaper.
• Sixty-one percent of users said that only half or less of online information is reliable a new low level for the Digital Future Project.
• Even more disturbing is that 14 percent of Internet users said that only a small portion or none of the information online is reliable a percentage that has grown for the past three years and is now at the highest level thus far in the Digital Future Project.
• Also revealing is the percentage of users who have limited trust even in the Web sites they visit regularly: although 78 percent said that most or all of the information on the sites they visit regularly is reliable (a decline from the previous two years), 22 percent of users say that only one half or less of information on sites they visit regularly is reliable.
• Even search engines such as Google and Yahoo traditional stalwarts of online credibility have lost some of their luster. While 53 percent of Internet users said that most or all of the information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, that percentage declined slightly in the current Digital Future Study and is well below the peak of 64 percent in 2006.
• 36 percent of users said only about half of information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, and 12 percent said only a small portion or none of it was reliable.
• Only 46 percent of users said they have some trust or a lot of trust in the Internet in general. Nine percent of users have no trust in the Internet.

Sumo stable in Tokyo, Japan: you don't need to be a superstar to use the Superstar Effect.

The following is a guest post by Cal Newport, MIT Ph.D and all-around whiz on competing against the odds.

His discussion and suggested uses of the superstar effect and corollary are mirrored in what I tell first-time start-up founders:

Most of the time, it's not enough to be better. You need to be different.

Enter Cal Newport

###

Earlier this year, just 2,300 of 32,000 applicants to Stanford University were accepted a rate of 7.2%, the lowest in the school's history.

The students who survived this screening are phenomenally accomplished. A quarter had SAT math scores higher than 780, and over 90% had high school G.P.A.'s above 3.75, which works out, more or less, to straight A's over four years of schooling. And these weren't easy A's: the average applicant to a top-tier university takes an overwhelming volume of demanding AP or IB-level courses. (Not surprising, considering that the Stanford admissions departments ranks the "rigor of secondary school record" as "very important" in their decision.)

If you eliminate recruited athletes and the children of the rich and famous from this pool categories that receive special consideration these numbers become even starker. In short, for the average, middle-class American high school senior, applying to Stanford is like playing the lottery.

Which is why Michael Silverman proves baffling.

When Michael, a student from Paradise Valley, Arizona, applied to Stanford, his G.P.A. put him in the bottom 10% of accepted students. His SAT scores fell similarly short. "Standardized testing isn't my strong point," he told me. Perhaps more surprising, Michael avoided the crushing course load that diminishes the will of so many college hopefuls, instead taking only a single AP course during the dreaded junior year. He kept his extracurricular schedule equally clean joining no clubs or sports and dedicating his attention to no more than one outside project at any given time.

Michael's rejection of the no pain, no gain ethos surrounding American college admissions is perhaps best summarized by his habit of ending each school day with a 1 2 hour hike to the summit of nearby Camelback Mountain. While his peers worked slavishly at their killer schedules, Michael took in the view, using his ritual as a time to "chill out and relax."

Despite this heretical behavior, Michael was still accepted at Stanford. To understand why, I will turn your attention to a little-known economics theory that changes the way we think about impressiveness. To get there, however, we'll start at an unlikely location: the competitive world of professional opera singers.

The Opera Singer and the Valedictorian

Juan Diego Florez cemented his reputation as a top operatic tenor during a 2008 performance of Gaetano Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment. Among professional singers, Donizetti's masterpiece is known as "the Mount Everest of opera"; a reputation due, almost entirely, to a devilishly tricky aria, "Ah! Mes amis, quel jour de fete," that arrives early in the first act. The aria demands the tenor to hit nine high C's in a row a supremely difficult feat. To avoid embarrassment, most performers resort to the far easier natural C.

Not Florez.

In his 2008 performance of Donizetti, at the Metropolitan Opera House, Florez hit all nine notes. The acclaim was so overwhelming that he was summoned back to the stage for an encore, overturning the Met's long-standing ban on the practice.

As a top opera singer, we can assume that Florez does well for himself financially (likely on the order of 5-digit paydays per performance), but not lavishly well. Put another way: he's well-off but not wealthy.

Then there are the superstars.

In 1972, a young tenor by the name of Luciano Pavarotti also made a name for himself performing Donizetti at the Met. Like Florez, he too hit the high C's. But there was something extra in Pavarotti's voice. The audience at the Met in 1972 did more than demand an encore from Pavarotti, they weren't content until he had returned to the stage seventeen times! In writing about Florez's 2008 performance, the New York Times noted: "If truth be told, it's not as hard as it sounds for a tenor with a light lyric voice like Mr. Florez to toss off those high C's[I]n the early 1970's, when Luciano Pavarottilet those high Cs ring out, that was truly astonishing."

In other words, both Florez and Pavarotti are exceptional tenors, but Pavarotti was slightly better the best among an elite class. The impact of this small difference, however, was huge. Whereas we estimated that Florez was well off but not wealthy, when Pavoratti died in 2007, sources estimated his estate to be worth $275 to 475 million.

In a 1981 paper published in the American Economics Review, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked through the mathematics that explains why superstars, like Pavarotti, reap so many more rewards than peers who are only slightly less talented. He called the phenomenon, The Superstar Effect.

Though the details of Rosen's formulas are complex, the intuition is simple: Imagine a million opera fans who each have $10 to spend on an opera album. They're trying to decide whether to buy an album by Florez or Pavarotti. Rosen's theory predicts that the bulk of the consumers will purchase the Pavarotti album, thinking, roughly: "although both singers are great, Pavarotti is the best, and if I can only get one album I might as well get the best one available." The result is that the vast majority of the $10 million goes to Pavarotti, even though his talent advantage over Florez is small.

Once identified, The Superstar Effect turned up in a variety of unexpected settings, from the sales of books to CEO salaries. It was found to apply even in settings that have nothing to do with financial transactions. In a particularly compelling example, a researcher named Paul Atwell, publishing in the journal Sociology of Education in 2001, studied the Superstar Effect for high school valedictorians.

Atwell imagined two students both with 700s on their various SAT tests. The first student was the valedictorian and the second student was ranked number five in the class. Rationally speaking, these two students are near identical the difference in G.P.A. between the number one and number five rank is vanishingly small. But using statistics from Dartmouth College, Atwell showed that the valedictorian has a 75% of acceptance at this Ivy League institution while the near identical fifth-ranked student has only a 25% chance.

In other words, in many fields, it pays disproportionately well to be not just very good, but the best.

Hacking the Superstar Effect

Taking a step back, we likely agree that it's an interesting finding that being the best has a hidden advantage. If reaping this advantage, however, requires becoming class valedictorian or honing a brilliant singing voice both staggeringly difficult feats it's doesn't seem all that applicable.

This is where Michael Silverman reenters the picture.

The details of his story reveal a crucial addendum that makes the power of the Superstar Effect available to most people. I call this addendum The Superstar Corollary, and it's here I turn your attention next.

I discovered The Superstar Corollary in an unlikely setting: the extracurricular lives of high school students. I was researching a book on students, like Michael, who get accepted to outstanding colleges while still living low-stress and interesting lives. During this research, I kept noticing the same trait in these teen-aged lifehackers: they had accomplishments that triggered The Superstar Effect, but which revealed on closer examination to not require a rare natural talent or years and years of grinding work.

For example, consider the details Michael's story. Starting as a freshman, he focused all of his extracurricular energies on a serial string of environmental sustainability projects. He started by submitting a model of a green house to a competition. This led him to discover that a local energy company offered a grant program for local high school students. He won a modest grant, and used it, with the help of a retired engineer from his hometown, to retrofit a golf cart to run on biofuels. Leveraging this success, he earned another grant which he used to install solar panels on his school's maintenance shed. This earned him press coverage, and the resulting Superstar Effect helped wow the Stanford admissions department into overlooking his borderline scores.

Notice that nothing about Michael's rise to stardom required a rare natural talent or overwhelming work load. His projects required, on average, less daily time investment than participating in a varsity sport. Yet, he was the best at what he did among all applicants to Stanford, and the resulting Superstar Effect earned him a disproportionate reward.

Michael wasn't alone in his success at hacking The Superstar Effect. Consider, for example, Maneesh Sethi (featured recently inTim's lifestyle design case study competition), who got into Stanford on the strength of having written a popular computer programming book, or Steve Schwartz, who got into Columbia by taking on the role of press officer for a student-run environment advocacy group. Both found uncontested niches that required only a reasonable amount of effort investment to conquer, but still triggered the full impact of The Superstar Effect.

I formalize this idea with the following corollary:

The Superstar Corollary
Being the best in a field makes you disproportionately impressive to the outside world. This effect holds even if the field is not crowded, competitive, or well-known.

In other words, becoming valedictorian or a sustainability guru both generate the same Superstar Effect, but the former is much harder than the latter.

The Superstar Corollary and Lifestyle Design

Let's move beyond high school students and broaden the applicability of this powerful idea. The Superstar Corollary hacks the neural circuity responsible for producing feelings of respect and impressiveness, yielding a huge return on effort invested. As detailed below, this makes it a perfect tool for lifestyle design.

For the employee seeking liberation

Triggering The Superstar Effect in your employer provides a valuable bargaining chip when trying to inject mobility and flexibility into your work schedule. Employers don't mind upsetting hard workers, but they fear losing stars. The Superstar Corollary gives you an efficient route to this workplace stardom.

Imagine, for example, a programmer in a web development shop. The Corollary might inspire her to become a top contributor to some new, up and coming, open source technology. Becoming known as a world expert yields more impressiveness than if she had invested the same hours into simply working overtime on her existing projects.

To give another example, imagine an entry-level employee at a non-profit. By taking on responsibility for tracking the organization's web site visitors, and then mastering enough Google Analytics to present beautiful analyses to the board, the employee will be seen as the technology guru of the organization a star who is helping them understand their audience in new ways. This aura of stardom outstrips what's achievable if he had instead invested his efforts only into being a conscientious, efficient, hardworking, and replaceable employee.

For the owner of a muse looking to increase his rewards-to-effort ratio...

For the post-liberation, muse-owning lifestyle entrepreneur, The Superstar Corollary provides a powerful tool for ramping up returns without ramping up the work invested.

Writer Chris Guillebeau, from The Art of Non-Conformity blog, provides a perfect example of the Corollary at work in a lifestyle business. Instead of starting yet another site offering generic lifehacking hints, Chris found an uncontested corner of his field to conquer. Specifically, he set out on a mission to visit every country in the world. The scope of this quest transformed him into a star among travel/lifehacking bloggers, and his site quickly become a lucrative success.

Applying The Superstar Corollary

Applying The Superstar Corollary in your own life can be tricky. Here are some ideas to facilitate this effort.

Idea #1: Sloganize.

To sloganize is to transform your conquest into an easy-to-describe and immediately interesting quest. For example, Chris Guillebeau, mentioned above, sloganized his conquest of the adventure travel writing by focusing on the catchy goal of visiting every country in the world. Similarly, in my above example of a web programmer mastering a new open source technology, she might sloganize her efforts by writing a definitive eBook on the subject. To say that she literally "wrote the book" on the technology gives the expertise extra power.

The power of sloganizing is clear: it maximizes the superstar impact of your conquest.

Idea #2: Apply the $1000 Wager Test.

Two years ago, I had a series of conversations with my friend Ben Casnocha about the possibility of writing an eBook. Both Ben and I had written and published successful books on the side, and we were exploring the idea of a guide on how successful part-time authors manage to juggle their full time job with their writing. Ultimately, we abandoned the idea. The problem: there wasn't enough to say. The part-time authors who have the easiest time writing books tend to be those who know enough about the industry to be confident in the success of their project. This confidence is what allows them to keep finding time in their schedules to write; fancy scheduling rules and productivity systems prove irrelevant.

This same observation carries over to the quest to conquer an uncontested niche in your field. To follow through you need confidence in your success; otherwise, your efforts will diminish over time, regardless of the complexity of your productivity systems or the fervor of the inspirational quotes you read. Here's a simple rule: If you're not willing to bet $1000 on your success within 6 to 12 months, then either your goal is quixotic or you don't know enough about the field yet. In both cases, you're not ready for the project. A blind adherence to the flawed idea that getting started is the most important step is best left to cheesy motivational speakers winners make plays with confidence.

Idea #3 Follow Steve Martin's Brand of Diligence

In his memoir, Born Standing Up, the comedy superstar Steve Martin provides insight into his rise to prominence. I've written in-depth about his method, but perhaps the most important concept is Martin's redefinition of "diligence." He notes that diligence was crucial in his rise to comedic fame, but he's quick to redefine the term away from it's standard definition of "hard work applied consistently over time." To Martin, the key to diligence isn't the work applied to your pursuit, but instead the work you don't apply to other pursuits. He succeeded in reinventing comedy because he kept his focus on comedy, even when other, more shiny and interesting side projects presented themselves.

The same concept applies to The Superstar Corollary. When conquering your uncontested niche, it can be tempting to divide your attention. Here is where Martin's diligence is key. The bonus reward you get for being the best far outweighs any small benefit that a shiny new side project can provide. On the large scale, therefore, maintaining a relentless focus on your conquest maximizes your total overall reward.

Concluding Summary

We're wired to be disproportionately impressed with someone who is the best at what they do. This effect, however, is blind to the competitiveness of the pursuit. The writer who is traveling to every country in the world, for example, can earn as much attention as the Rhodes Scholar with a PhD in international relations.

Is there's an uncontested corner in your own working life where you could apply the Superstar Corollary to gain a huge return on investment?

About the Author:
Calvin Newport is author of How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 2004 and earned a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2009. Newport's work and findings on student success have been featured on ABC, NBC, and CBS.

###

Odds and Ends: Birthday Give-Back Results and Winners

You all are amazing human beings and should be so, so proud. The birthday give-back experiment raised more than $45,000 in a little over three days, which means $90,000+ to schoolkids in need, since I'm matching. This means you impacted more than 9,300 kids, and together we will impact closer to 20,000.

Check this image out to put things in perspective, that's about 20,000 people. Holy $#%&!

If you donated by midnight on Sunday, you should have received the following e-mail from Donorschoose.org:

Subject line: Gift from Tim Ferriss

Wow!

Thank you so much for celebrating Tim Ferriss's birthday by supporting a classroom on DonorsChoose.org. This short email contains a gift, so please read all the way through.

Thanks to you, students will have the opportunity to take interesting field trips to amazing places, including sea research vessels and Shakespearean plays! The students you helped will have access to reading activities, word games, listening centers and most important books for improving literacy skills. Through the Great Give-Back Birthday, you have brought valuable resources to more than 8,600 kids [Tim note: this has since increased] incredible!

Not only are you passionate supporters, but, as you know, Tim Ferriss has agreed to match your donations, bringing even more supplies to high need schools. But here's the cool part: he wants to give it back to you! You get to decide where to put Tim's money, whether in your hometown elementary school or into music programs across the country.

So please use the below $50 gift code from Tim Ferriss to select a classroom project of your choice on DonorsChoose.org. Just find a project that speaks to your heart and enter the code when you checkout. Your gift code expires on September 30, 2010, so don't forget to fund a great classroom!

[UNIQUE CODE]

On behalf of all the students and teachers you have touched with this gift, thank you very much!

Your friends at DonorsChoose.org

P.S. Here is a note from Tim:

You rock!!!

It's hard to describe how amazed, overjoyed, and touched I've been by you all, and your selfless contributions to kids who need it most in our schools. PLEASE use your gift code! I suggest you either use it today (it just takes a few minutes), or put it in your calendar for this week so you don't forget. It makes an incredible gift as well.

Just don't forget to use it! Chances are, if you don't use it this week, you will forget. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed this incredible experiment. Wow.

All the best to you and yours thank you, thank you, thank you,

Tim

And that's the damn truth.

But let's not forget out prize winners (though I hope you all feel awesome after the experience, which you should):

The lucky winner of the round-trip ticket is Brian Brereton. Please contact amy-at-fourhourworkweekdotcom when you know your timing for the trip!

For the Maui Jim gift card and glasses, the winners are Ty Kroll (VIP gift card), Douglass Lodmell, and Jesse Walters. Please allow a week or so for them to arrive.

This has been the most wonderful birthday I could ask for. Thank you all.

Amazon launched a new integration with Facebook today allowing users who link their accounts to receive purchase suggestions based on their Facebook interests, see gift recommendations for friends with upcoming birthdays, and browse items popular among your social network.

The integration pulls data about movie, music, and book preferences from you and your friends' profiles and uses Amazon's recommendation to suggest similar products. Curiously, there are not currently any additional sharing elements to communicate the social shopping experience back to Facebook.

Once a user signs into their Amazon account, or creates a new one, and allows Amazon access to basic, profile, lists, contact and friends' information at any time, they are brought to Your Amazon Facebook Page. Their own profile interests are listed down the left side of the screen, including a direct link back to Facebook's profile editor, making it easy to update one's likes. In the center of the screen, three types of social content are available: Birthday and Gift Suggestions for Your Facebook Friends, Recommendations Based on Your Favorite [interest type] on Facebook, and Popular Among Your Friends.

Birthday and Gift Suggestions shows icons for your friends, default ordered by nearest birthday. It might be too late to send today's birthday boys and girls gifts, but Amazon still shows them first. Clicking See gift suggestions brings up that person's Amazon Facebook profile and lists items Amazon's recommendation engine says are similar to items listed in their interests. For instance, if someone likes T.I. on their Facebook profile, Amazon will suggest you give them the latest Lil Wayne CD as a birthday gift. Clicking Why is this suggested brings up the stated preferences that generated the suggestion.

Recommendations Based on Your Favorite [interest type] on Facebook shows separate lists for favorite music, books, and movies. It feeds your own likes into the recommendation engine to give you Amazon's quality suggestions without ever having used the site. Utilizing existing stated preferences instead of making you list and rate products you own on each shopping site you use is a huge step forward for e-commerce.

Popular Among Your Friends lists the items liked by the most of your friends. Each item has the number of likes in your network below it, along with mini-thumbnails of these people's profile pictures. This feature makes it easy to determine what products are trending in your network and ensure you aren't missing out.

These lists are reminiscent of Facebook Pulse, a early and now deactivated feature of Facebook which showed you the most popular items in different interest categories within your network. Even if one isn't interested in purchasing anything, this data is entertaining and could use a way to be shared back to Facebook.

Overall, the social shopping experience still has a long way to go. The ability to aggregate interest data not just from one's own profile, but from across all the social spheres represented in your friends creates recommendations that are hard to ignore. The fact that these preference summaries aren't readily available on Facebook also indicates a gap. Yet, never before has it been so easy to ask all of your friends to suggest an album to buy and purchase it, without directly interacting with anyone.

On Thursday, July 23rd 2010, Entertainment Weekly held a panel at Comic-Con entitled The Visionaries, which was basically a discussion with geek gods J. J. Abrams (Star Trek) and Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) on the future of pop culture conducted by EW's Jeff Doc Jensen.

EW presents an in-depth conversation with these two creative geniuses about how technology, gaming, and global culture are reshaping how we tell and consume stories on television, film and the web. Plus: Is the superhero movie waning, or is it on the cusp of reinvention? And what do they think the pop culture universe will look like a decade from now?

We transcribed the entire hour-long discussion for those of you who couldn't make it to the Con, and posted the first part on Friday (click here to read it now). Hit the jump for the second (and final) part of the discussion. We've also included video of the whole panel.

Moderator: Joss, with all that said, is there a Dr. Horrible sequel in the works, or is that just like a question of time availability of your talent?

Joss: You know, works is a strong word. It's in turnaround; the studio of me. You know, it's me and Jed, Marissa and Zack going, Man! I've written a couple of songs. We've got to get together! Yeah, we totally gotta do that. That's going really well.

[laughter]

You know, if we had the time, we really do feel like we know what the movie is, and we really want to do it, and we want to do it on our terms. But our terms seem to be interminable.

Moderator: You guys have your own production companies and we know their names very well: Bad Robot, Mutant Enemy.

JJ: They should fight!

Moderator: Who would win?

JJ: Or kiss!

[laughter]

Moderator: In the new media future, could these be like channels on the Internet? Like will there be sort of like a bad robot channel in the future that is programmed with material, or a Mutant Enemy Channel that is programmed with material?

JJ: For me, the problem with a channel is, to actually keep up with the amount of material that you need the one day, which would be like day two, if someone goes there and they are like, Oh, nothing new. It's like, you are over. So in theory it is great.

I would rather do Bad Robot buttons that appear in various places on the Internet, and when there is something new you click on it and you go there.

Joss: I always dream of a channel. I go, Ooh! I've got all these ideas! And then I realize, But then I'd have to write them. And yeah, day two, you are like, It's coming any minute now! Stay tuned! You'd have to basically build your entire product long before you showed anything.

But I think the idea of a channelI mean you just devolved it into a buttonit's changing. It's going to be something very different. I do think if I saw something that said Bad Robot, I would push that button, or hit that widget, or touch that 3D holographic knobwhatever in the hell you are supposed to do to get to it. I would kiss that robot.

[laughter]

Moderator: In about 10 minutes, little less, we are going to open it up to questions. So where's the microphone? Well anyway, just start lining up. I know you have a lot of questions.

Joss, you just got done; Dollhouse has come to an end, unfortunately.

Joss: What?!

Moderator: And you produced Dollhouse after being away from television for a while. Now that Dollhouse is over, how are you feeling about television? Kind of like, what lessons have you learned about sort of what television wants and supports right now?

Joss: I don't know this question sounds a little bit like, Well are you proud of what you did? Maybe you should sit in the corner and think about it!

[laughter]

Joss: That might just be me projecting.

[laughter]

Joss: You know, it must have been the wrong place, and it must have been the wrong time! I definitely was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And we, I think, both benefited from the great square hole of television, the WB, where they were just interested in people like us who had a story we knew how to tell, and they let us do that. That is very rare. It doesn't exist anymore, literally; the WB doesn't exist anymore.

And my experiences at FOX have not been successful. And ultimately, it is just because there is just a certain kind of incompatibility that is very easy to miss. Because I like genre stuff, that's what they wantedyou know, you say the word sex, they think that's sexy, but, Can you not mention sex?

I clearly have more of a cable mentality that I realized. And I've been away from television and I didn't know that. I didn't know how much things had changed. I didn't look at Janet Jackson's nipple, and I didn't know how much trouble it caused!

[laughter]

Joss: What I learned was know your audience. And your first audience are the people who are paying you to make the thing. Which is why right now, you know, I'm at Marvel, I'm extremely happy working with Kevin FeigeIt's a very different experience. Kevin and Jeremy, the two people I work with, the executives, they are the studio. They are the producers. It's the same entity, and they know what they want. They're upfront. They are very clear when they don't get it. They know what they want and that's a great experience. The other one is doing stuff on the Internet, the smaller stuff, where I am the boss, but I have to call my friend to see if he has any outfits. And both of those are great for different reasons.

Television I love. I love serialized storytelling. But yeah, I didn't quite think that one through.

Moderator: You love serialized storytelling. Is there still a market right now for, like, intensely serialized stories? I mean Lost is over now, unfortunately. And it seems that as it kind of went out, it seems that the TV landscape kind of turned against intensely serialized stories. Do you sense that TV networks are not interested in that kind of format right now?

JJ: I think typically they are not. They want shows that can repeat. They want shows that will syndicate, and serialized shows. I'm just personally less interested, naturally interested, in non-serialized shows. I enjoy the investment and the anticipation in the characters and what's going to happen, and what conditions are really going on.

To me, that's the thing that always grabs you. And I think they want it too, they just don't know it. When they talk about stories, stories imply time. Stories imply inevitability in some kind of progress. And so I think that the trick isAnd I know that the show runners on Fringe have been working really hard to kind of maintain an ongoing story as well as keeping every episode feeling as much as a self-contained thing as possible. But I'm personally drawn to that.

This new show that we are doing on NBC, Undercover, is a show that is much more self-contained, but it naturally will have, and as we've been working on the episodes, developed a story that is being told over time. You don't need to watch one through five to get what's happening in six. But to me, that's the story that, for whatever reason, I am naturally drawn to that kind of story.

Moderator: Joss, did you want to take that question at all?

Joss: I think the networks will never ever ask for that. They will never admit that people want that, because they do see the easy cash cow of, The Mentalist! Let's all make The Mentalist! And when Lost first hit and was just blowing up huge, and everybody was loving it, we were all so into it, they were still like, We don't want that. That successful Emmy winning thing? No, we don't want that. I mean they would speak against serialized storytelling while it was the only thing people were watching on television, because they are just thinking bottom line. It's very weird.

Because ultimately, the serial is always going to be the thing people are going to remember. What do they remember about Cheers? Sam and Diane, not a great joke from cheers. They remember that.

I like both. I like to have some sort of resolve so I don't feel like I justI'm still angry about The Empire Strikes Back, OK? That movie doesn't have an ending.

[laughter]

Joss: So, you know, I like to spit the diff. But yeah, the progression is what it's all about. Well it doesn't! He's frozen in carbonite!

[laughter]

Moderator: Before we open it up to questions, I'd love to know, what's inspiring you guys right now? We talk a lot about your influences. We talk a lot about relationships in your past. But like right now, who is doing things that are like, you know, inspiring you visually? Who's doing things that are inspiring you in storytelling?

JJ: I love Edgar Wright. I just saw Scott Pilgrim. Scott Pilgrim is awesome, and I loved it. There are a lot of different people who are doing stuff. You know, Chris Ware, who is an amazing comic artist. There is stuff he does with time and kind of stopping time and taking you on these tangentsThere are certain people who just blow my mind.

But usually I just feel likeThere are a lot of people. I could go down this huge list, but I would be even more boring.

Joss: I'm just going to say I'm making The Avengers. That's cool, so I must be awesome.

[laughter]

Joss: But I'm also watching a lot of stuff; just sort of looking for moods and things. You end up watching a lot of films. And I will say not inspiring, but I have had actual moments of sheer fucking panic because I love Star Trek so much.

[applause]

Joss: I just keep watching it and going, No, I'm sorry. You have to hear this. It's time the children knew!

[laughter]

Joss: I honestly watch it and I go, This is the gold standard for a teen movie, for a summer movie, for any movie that has come out in the last 10 years. Gold standard.

[applause]

Joss: And it makes me throw up with fear.

[laughter]

Joss: So I have to stop watching it.

Moderator: OK. We have some questions.

Audience Question: JJ, Joss, it's good to see you here again. My question is, as directors and people who are involved in the entertainment field, how important is it to you to be here and have this fan interaction with what you do in future projects? How does that affect what you do?

Joss: Well, have you got a pitch? What did you call it?

[laughter]

Joss: Really? I thought I heard something else. Sorry. We're here all week.

[laughter]

Joss: Apart from the fact that it's really nice to find out that people still care about the stories that you are telling, it's just a little of an unreality check. It's a little bit of sort of reminding myself of that bizarre world that I come from. And you do get a sense of what people are responding to and what they are not, when they say things like, I hated that thing or that character, and everybody claps.

[laughter]

Joss: And we drink, and cry, alonethe mini-bar. But mostly it's good. It's totally good. You know, it's like just returning to ground zero, to home base.

JJ: I was very excited and honored when Entertainment Weekly asked us to come to do this. I was excited just to hear Joss and to come and be here. But I'd be here anyway. I love it here. It feels like the place that you want to go because you see like-minded people doing things that they love. And genre is my favorite thing. So to be at this place

It's a logical question, but the truth is I just love being here because I love the stuff here. The people here are great in sprit and passionate, so it feels like, you know, an odd second home.

[applause]

Audience Question: Hi. My name is Ben. I'm a young filmmaker and writer. So I was wondering, which do you like to do better, TV shows or movies, and what unique element do you bring to each?

Moderator: Did you ask do they prefer film or television, and what unique quality do they bring to each?

Audience Question: Yes.

Moderator: Let's start with film or television. Like in terms of storytelling, like you guys are definitely known for long form storytelling. Does that come more naturally to you?

Joss: I don't think there is a better. I think it's apples, oranges. What you can do in a movie, what you can accomplish is so extraordinary and so fulfilling, and you get to be done. Which, believe me, is a huge relief.

But being able to tell a story over, say, seven years, or even just 15 episodes, 11 of which they are out of order, is so

[applause]

Joss: Until now! But that's a different kind of fulfillment that isit's kind of a slow burning thing. But to me, it may, gun to my head, be the greater of the two. And then, what quality do I bring? Gah, I can't answer that!

Moderator: Well, you know, one quality that we associate with you, Joss, is just your dialogue. At what point does that come into your creative process? I mean is it something that you find over countless drafts, or is it something that just comes very naturally?

Joss: No, that's just people talking. I don't write second drafts, really. I mean obviously you have to, but to an extent, I don't put anything down until it's right. Unfortunately, sometimes I write before I come up with a plot, and then I have to search and figure out how to get to it. Which is a little awkward; I gotta work on that.

JJ: You don't do second drafts? Bastard!

[laughter]

Joss: I can name at least six episodes where it shows.

[laughter]

Moderator: Next question.

Audience Question: Bad Robot! Nah, just kiddingMy question is obviously for JJ. With Lost, just the way that it ended, was it everything that you expected from the beginning? Without giving everything away, obviously, with spiritually, science-wise, everything. I mean was it everything, now looking back on it, is it what you wanted? And it's awesome, by the way. I love it.

JJ: Well, thank you very much. And awesome impersonation at the outset.

[laughter]

JJ: First of all, Damon Lindelof, with whom I created the show, and Carlton Cuse ran the show for the six seasons. It was an amazing thing. When we first started, before Carlton was even there, it was like Damon and I were in this sort of crazy panic, and we wrote this bible of what it would be. And we wrote a whole bunch of ideas. And you sort of throw out the best ideas, and it's very optimistic, and it's a huge leap of faith, and you think, This is what this show could be. And a lot of those things ended up being in the series, most of them did not.

And over the course of time, thank God Carlton came on board and started to work with Damon. The two of them, I can't describe how great they are. They and the writers and directors, Jack Bender, they all started working on making this thing what it became.

There were ideas that I know, in the first season, we thought, Oh, this would be cool, and this is what it will mean, but you must be fluid and flexible. Even if you have a ton of time to write every episode of every season for six seasons, you'd be doing yourself a disservice. Because you would not anticipate, and could not, Michael Emerson coming on board for what was supposed to be a couple episodes. And you just realize, Oh my God, Ben is critical to this story, as Damon and Carlton did and wrote to it.

So you have to be sort of dogmatic and know what you want to do, but you also need to be entirely flexible and listen to the show, and go where it tells you. And I've personally, even though I know there are a lot of people who have dissenting opinions, I personally believe that Damon and Carlton kicked incredible ass and wrote an amazingly emotional episode for the finale that wrapped it up very well.

[applause]

Moderator: Next question.

Audience Question: Hi. I just wanted to thank you on behalf of the audience for actually giving us content that makes us think and challenges us. My question is, did any of you get to keep any paraphernalia from your movies and series, specifically, any Rambaldi items?

JJ: It's from Alias, Joss. It's a show. It was on NBC for five season. Five glorious seasons. I have page 47I have the box, the Rambaldi box. I have a bunch of cool Rambaldi things. And I was lucky from Star Trek to get some phasers and some cool gear. And Mission Impossible, the mask machine.

So I do love that stuff. I don't want to hoard it and be a scary person that is on the show hoarders. Have you seen hoarders, by the way? Who in the shit? How can that be a show? How many hoarders? It's unbelievable!

[laughter]

JJ: AnywayI'm scared of becoming a hoarder!

Joss: No Rambaldi stuff. It's weird, because I ordered some online and it didn't come.

[laughter]

Joss: I do have all the props and costumes from Dr. Horrible, which I was planning to sell at some point to help fund the next one. I don't get terribly attached to things, or people.

[laughter]

Moderator: Next question.

Audience Question: My question is for Joss Whedon. You are taking on the Avengers movie that has an established tone, an established back-story and mythology, and you have one of the most unique voices in Hollywood yourself. So how are you going to reconcile those two sort of established style?

Joss: [in funny voice] I'm going to sound like me! No problem!

[laughter]

Joss: The fact is, the first job I had outside of television was a script doctor. And what you have to do in that situation is blend in. I also, a lot of the way that I speak and write comes from reading these comics. I think it's very easy to fall into the aesthetic of something that you love. Obviously I am going to bring something of myself to it. I am an artist who wishes to create something that comes from within. But at the same time, yes, they do have an established tone. I am going to be very respectful of that. I am going to try and find ways to work

I mean the thing is, they not only have an established tone, they about seven, because I'm culling things from all these different movies. I have to blend all of that. I think ultimately that would result in something unique anyway.

So that doesn't really seem like a challenge to me at all. When I write Tony Stark, or Steve Rogers, or any of these people, they sound like them, particularly because I already know who's playing them.

Audience Question: I have kind of a general question about comic books. The last few decades they've really swung back and forth between light and silly and dark and gritty, while these days it's kind of balanced. Do you see the pendulum starting to switch back and forth in the future or do you think they will stay balanced for the time being?

JJ: Wait, are they light and gritty now, or are they dark andwhich one are they now?

Audience Question: Well, there are elements of both. They are more dark, but the lighter stuff is starting to come back.

Joss: I will say this, that I do feel like there was an element of nihilism that started to eat itself; where things got so dark that they couldn't maintain, except, for some reason that I still can't quite understand, the walking dead, which never gets old, never gets tired.

But I did feel like even in some of the mainstream comics, they were getting really cavalier about killing lots of people, and everybody dark. I think, ultimately, that does have to swing back a little bit, too. They are heroes, right? They are a better version of us in some way. That's mainstream. The indiesI don't know if Chris Ware has gotten to gritty lately.

JJ: Gritty but very, very clean. Very clean lines.

Moderator: Next question.

Audience Question: Hi guys. I was wondering what you thought about film school. Do you think it's worth the time and the money, or do you think you should just go your own way?

Joss: Just go your own way.

JJ: Do film school.

[laughter]

JJ: I think that now, given the technology that exists, the resources, the fact that you can watch movies and then make them sort of at home all day, it feels like there is less of a need for it, but it is certainly nice. The best thing about it is the community that can develop, I think, being at film school. Having said that, I did not go to one, so I personally feel like

My father gave me advice when I was going off to college, which was, Go learn what to make movies about, not how to make movies. And it was sort of the best advice I ever got.

Joss: Where did you get that father? That's awesome!

[laughter]

Joss: My dad just said, Don't be a writer. It's too much work.

[laughter]

Joss: He said many very sage things. I just want to say I did go to film school, or studied in undergraduate, and I happened to study with the greatest teachers imaginable. It's kind of a crapshoot, though. It's very easy to, like drama or any other creative subject, have just one teacher who can suck the joy out of the medium forever.

So it's dicey. And I think what I remember about it was not just what I learned in film school, but the fact that it was in me all the time. That after a day of watching movies all day, which we couldn't do then. There was no home video back when I was a lad and hamburgers were a nickel.

[laughter]

I would go home and watch Beastmaster at 3 o'clock in the morning because I just needed more film. So it was the internalization of the thing that really mattered, and that is something you can do without the school. If you love it, if you need it, if you are obsessive about it, the school is where you find it.

Moderator: OK, we have time for one more question.

Joss: It better be the best one. The best.

[laughter]

Audience Member: OK. I'm asking a question on behalf of my brother who couldn't be here. He's a writer and he just started. And he lets me read his stuff up until about a month ago where I gave him advice he didn't like. And so I was just wondering on his behalf if any advice is better than no advice when it comes to writing.

Joss: Definitely the best, by the way. Definitely the best. You guys are pikers. That's a question!

[laughter]

Joss: You know, what's more fun than getting notes? It's really the joy for a writer.

[laughter]

Joss: I think ultimately, you have to walk a razor's edge of being able to hear what other people think, to really listen to them, and know when to shut them out. But shutting them out doesn't mean never showing it to anyone, because then the film doesn'tthey don't see it.

So I mean you categorically will have to listen to people. And in your career you will have to listen to some people who don't know a damn thing, but who have the big pockets full of gold. But even that person can tell you something that is necessary for your story, as long as you are listening. If you feel confident about the story yourself, if you feel you understand where it's coming from and what it's trying to accomplish, and how it's doing that, then you should be able to withstand what other people think and incorporate what's good about what other people think. And I don't just mean compliments; I mean criticism as well.

If you can't withstand that, then maybe there is something wrong with what you are making. I think your brother needs to chill.

[laughter]

JJ: He gave you the script to read?

Audience Question: Yes.

JJ: And he asked you for notes.

Audience Question: Yes he did.

JJ: And you gave them to him.

Audience Question: Yes.

JJ: And he yelled at you?

Audience Question: Well, he stopped talking

JJ: What's his number?

[laughter]

JJ: No, here's the thing. Joss is right, that when you have an idea and it's faulty, and someone gives you a note and it can't' defend itself, then there's something that's wrong with it. So I think what you said is right, that he's probably in defensive because he's unable to defend the very thing that he gave you to read.

But he gave it to you and asked for notes, and you gave it to him. You didn't steal the script and read it, you did your job.

[applause]

Moderator: I guess that's the end of our time. On behalf of Joss and JJ, thank you.

Here is video of the whole panel from Buffyfestblog:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

• Comic-Con: JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon [Part 1]
• The /Filmcast: Bonus Ep. - Lost Series Finale and Wrap-Up (GUESTS: Katey Rich and Myles McNutt)
• Comic Con: Marvel Assembles The Avengers in Hall H
• Joss Whedon Officially Directing The Avengers
• Joaquin Phoenix in talks to play The Incredible Hulk in The Avengers?
• Edward Norton's Agent Says Marvel's Statement About Hulk Recasting is Misleading, Inappropriate