The Tyranny of the Click

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A 1942 War poster. Ironically, it was referring to unions

Do you even know what’s happening to your news? Media companies are tracking the hot terms that people are searching for from minute to minute, and when those terms come up on their computers, there’s a little button. Hit that button and a new rough draft is created with those search terms as the topic. That way, by focusing on coverage of what’s hot, “news” organizations catch viewers.

You don’t hear about things because that thing is necessarily important. You often hear about it because people are searching for it on Google today. This way, Nicole Richie’s wedding is covered more than Richard Holbrooke’s death.

Until a few years ago, your newspaper would send someone to cover the City Council meeting because it was an important service to the community. Not everyone would read that story about the meeting. They might flip right past it on the bus or in the coffee shop. But the City Council members watched their step because a journalist was watching. That’s what they called journalists: watchdogs.

Not anymore. Once media outlets gained the ability to actually know how many people click on each story, the temptation was too great. Rather than presenting news because it’s sometimes the best thing to do for our country and our communities, the news has been nearly completely monetized by corporations. And, as we know, pretty much every news brand is owned by a corporation.

Recently, Nikki Usher, writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, took a contrary point of view in her post “Why SEO and audience tracking won’t kill journalism as we know it.” The crux of her argument was this: “…journalists, for too long, have been writing about what they think their readers ought to know, and not enough about what their audiences want to know.”

I wonder if she’s a parent, and if she is, whether she raises her kids that way.

Let’s not paint a misty picture of that dinosaur, the old-fashioned newsroom. Even newsprint men wrote a lot of stories merely to feed the appetite of what people wanted to know. Too many. That’s been one of the pillars of the paper since the days of Yellow Journalism, when Helen Jewett’s hatchet murder was the crap du jour.

So Usher has conveniently edited her portrait of historic journalism. She also doesn’t quash any of my SEO fears; she affirms them. She merely looks down her nose at the healthy watchdog function of traditional journalism the way a 7-year-old sniffs at spinach. She also unwittingly succumbs to one of the oldest journalistic tricks in the book: Be contrary, and you’ll be read. Perhaps it’s the same impulse that makes me want to contradict her on my blog.

It’s certainly true that newsrooms are catering to clicks. Yes, journalists in even the best newsrooms craft news they feel is important. It’s a critical function of editors and writers — and merely by choosing what’s important enough to cover they reveal, by definition, a bias that cannot be removed from journalism.

I know there’s an overclass of largely educated, information-hungry people who swear Twitter is uncovering the world’s great ills and revolutionizing revolution, but I would argue that most of its successes have been at shining additional pinpoints of light on areas already in the spotlight. It’s certainly not reaching a wide enough audience to right the wrongs of the local City Council, and there’s no one behind it who can dive into a sleazy corporation’s file cabinets and come up a month later with redemption clutched in their fist.

And since Twitter posts only reach the people who have elected to follow their chosen writers, until there’s a wayward re-tweet to filter out to a new audience, posts actually serves to isolate people in their own bubbles of self-interest. I wrote about the growing intellectual dangers of “personalized” content here last fall.

When you make news too social and slavishly desperate for clicks, the watchdog stuff doesn’t get seen. Oddity wins, not boring old justice, and great stuff gets lost every day. You’d have gulp many gallons of the social media Kool-Aid to think that the much-touted “democracy” of the Web solves all ills. It doesn’t, just as unchecked capitalism can create some pretty hefty poverty problems for the lowest rungs of society.

And the City Council meeting goes uncovered, and the greedy government and corporate ravens rampage without notice. Even if a writer gets the whiff of shady back-room deals or wrongdoing masked by by a thicket of impenetrable paper, the low margins of the Web mean that no one’s paying anyone to put the time and elbow grease into an investigation. When writers get $15 a post, how could they?

Click-derived stories and social media gossip are rapidly leading us to an even larger echo chamber than the one we’re living in now, where newsrooms pump out stories on topics they see appearing on Google Trends, to masticate regurgitated topics of proven tastiness, and to chime in, not break stories. Hollywood began subsisting on recycled rehashes a half-decade ago. Now it’s the news’s turn.

American news coverage has always struggled between profit motives and watchdog service. But the Web made response measurable. Now pure capitalism rules all, and there’s no room for that do-gooder parasite, the watchdog.

Be careful, America. Darwinism is not democracy.

Left to our own devices, we're seduced by the latest ones

The 3 o’clock travel photo project

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Before I was a travel writer, I was a full-time traveler. I spent nearly two years out on the road, backpacking around the world. And for many months of that journey, I conducted with an unusual experiment.

Every day at 3 o’clock on the dot, no matter where I was or what I was doing, I took a photograph. It didn’t matter if I was doing something mundane such as traveling on a bus or resting in my hostel dorm room: I would grab whatever I was doing as the clock struck three. Why should all my travel photos be exclusive to hyper-composed shots dominated by antiquities and assiduously smiling subjects?

With my 3 o’clock pictures, I would show travel as it really was, and it would be as true as any diary — truer, even, because it the collection wouldn’t be edited for the good bits. Therefore, I forbade myself the right to take time to compose shots well, because, I reasoned headily, that would be a betrayal of truth. The only compositional rule of the project dictated that I had to take a picture with my left wrist in the shot to indicate the time.

I kept the project up for months on end. I only stopped to break my own rule. When I stopped in Cape Town and rented an apartment, I found that too often, I was always doing the same thing at 3:00, and that was usually either hanging out in my flat or sitting in the Internet cafe. Suddenly, the 3:00 project was memorializing my shame. Besides, I was on a shoestring backpacker’s budget and I was using a film camera to take my pictures, and it was getting expensive. I decided that the potential of eighty consecutive images of my hand in my apartment or in front of a word processing program wasn’t the best use of my see-the-world funds, so I stopped taking my daily shot.

It was still a good idea, though.

I’ve gone through some of the pictures from my 3 o’clock project. Doing it brought me to the brink of tears. Just as I predicted, they paint a vivid portrait of the blend of excitement and mundane movement that full-time travelers experience, and they conjure up details of my experiences that I thought had gone away. They remind me of the boring hours and travelers’ tasks as well as the sublime pleasure of having no vocational demands. They also capture some surprises.

I did something I will never do again: I took the bus from London to Paris. I was trying to save my money, so I didn’t want to pay for Channel Tunnel. But in taking the eternal trip from London Victoria to the ferry to Paris, I lost a whole day of experiences. I got this picture, the first 3:00 shot I took.

London to Paris, 3:00

A typical shot of a hostel room. This one is Barcelona. A backpacker develops an intense relationship with their backpack. It is companion, provider, and home-from-home all in one. It is also tormentor, burden, and perennially inadequate. Travelers spend a lot of their time as caretakers for their stuff. Given the symbiotic/parasitic connection travelers have with their baggage, it’s a shame we don’t take pictures of it. We record our trips by turning our momentary attentions to the sights we see, but that’s a lie because our stuff is as much a part of our journeys — if not more. We should all take more pictures of our luggage.

I called my backpack “The Boys,” because it split into a backpack and a daypack, and it warms my heart to see The Boys looking so fresh and shiny at the start of a two-year journey.

Barcelona, 3:00

A typical bus ride. This one is between Beni Mellal, a town in central Morocco, and Fes, I do believe.

Morocco, 3:00

When I arrived in Florence, all the hostels were full. There was a waiting list in the lobby of one of them. I went over to one of the other backpackers and asked if he’d like to go somewhere else and split a cheap room. We went across town and found beds at a convent (true) and by the afternoon, we were out exploring. This is Peter Szollosi from Adelaide, Australia. The next year, I visited him in South Australia, and several years after that, Peter later stayed with me for a few weeks in New York City. And it was during that stay that he met an American girl, Julie Schuck, at a party.

They are now married, live in New York City, and Peter is one of my most treasured friends. When I was going through the photos from this project, it was a shock to see Peter just hours after we met. I didn’t remember taking this. He just happened to be in the day’s shot. But if we hadn’t met on this day, his life would be much different. And so would mine, which is why this one brought me to tears.

Peter is now an extremely talented and successful director of photography and editor, and I’ve had the great pleasure of working with him in my professional life, too. When I think about the accident of our meeting, and all that came to be because of it, this picture becomes incredibly poignant to me. It was a birth of more than either of us could have predicted.

So is every moment, if we allow it.

Florence, 3:00

On my trip, I napped everywhere. Who wants to do all your sleeping in a hostel when there is a world of wonders to nap by? Besides, you’re always having to get up early when you travel. To this day, this is one of my most memorable naps: in Syntagma Square, the central square in Athens. I slept for a while right out there on the grass like the vagrant I suppose I was. I still recall this fondly, as we tend to recall our first transgressions.

Future naps would include in an ancient cliffside home in Petra, Jordan, and on grass in front of the Taj Mahal, because it was easier than braving the streets of Agra during the festival of Holi. I considered making up “Nap the World” tee-shirts. But I was too lazy.

The FedEx was from (believe it or not), The Jerry Springer Show. A friend worked for it, and she sent me a tee-shirt and Jerry’s jazz CD. True.

Athens, 3:00

A typical street in Cairo. Backpackers spend a lot of their times wandering — or at least I do. This is how I will always think of Cairo: post-colonial, pleasingly ramshackle, a little brown with desert dust.

Cairo, 3:00

In Jordan, I hired a long-distance taxi to take me between Aqaba and Wadi Mousa. Carpeting on the dashboard: It’s the little details.

Jordan, 3:00

This is the kind of thing backpackers do: Buy deck-class tickets on ferries that take two days. I slept on the deck for the journey between Haifa, Israel, and Rodos, Greece, with a stop in Limassol, Cypress. On this trip, I learned that I what I thought was my usual seasickness was actually nausea from ships’ diesel fumes — an important discovery that opened up a lot of sea travel to me.

While an interloper from the fancy indoor class takes in the view, sitting with me are my temporary companions. She’s from Norway, and he’s from Holland. His name was Sander, I believe. Both lovely. You are never alone when you’re a backpacker. Your heart is always being lit up by strangers, and then broken again when you part ways on your separate paths after a few days.

Ferry from Haifa, 3:00

Walking through Goreme, Turkey, in Cappadocia. Notice the “fairy chimney” rock formations. I stayed at a hostel burrowed into some of them. As you do there.

Goreme, 3:00

This is my birthday, I think. I’m in Sultanhamet, Istanbul.

Istanbul, 3:00

In Edinburgh now, during Festival. I spent a whole lot of time reading and writing in my journal. I wrote whole books’ worth of observations. The book is Graham Greene’s Travels with My Aunt, which is appropriate reading partly because I was traveling like its characters and partly because it’s one of the only Greene books that doesn’t make you want to slit your wrists because of endless exposition of his Catholic miseries. This was my favorite pub, which I think was called the Green Tree. It was replaced by a condo a few years later. And so it goes.

Edinburgh, 3:00

I spent several weeks living at the High Street Hostel off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. I made good friends with a very funny, very smart, very ambitious guy named Barry Ferns. As you can see as I captured our daily meal ritual in the hostel’s kitchens, he’s also very healthy. Barry Ferns, if you subscribe to Google Alerts, make yourself known to me again! I really liked you.

High Street Hostel, 3:00

Captured on the London Underground. Seeing this, those grotty old wooden Tube carriages, the ones with the grooved wooden floors, flooded back into my memory. This must have been the Northern Line. Wasn’t that one of the last ones to be modernized? I thought I missed those old cars, but looking at this, I remember just how grim they actually were.

London, 3:00

This is the last 3:00 picture I took, after it became clear that this project was exposing a failure in my activities during what was supposed to be my Isherwood-in-Berlin period. It was at a braai (barbecue) and pool party held at a house in Cape Town. Jayson Clark, who brought me to the party, was a friend I made when I arrived there. We’re still in touch, too, I love him to bits, and he is a wildly successful proprietor of a B&B empire, the Cape Dutch Quarters, in the winelands town of Tulbagh. Stay with him the next time you’re in Cape Town.

As for who that guy in the pool is, I have no recollection. I think he was puzzled about why I was taking his picture. I wasn’t, as you now know. That would simply be weird. No, I was taking a picture of my watch at 3:00 because I made a vow to do so. Not strange at all.

Cape Town, 3:00

Preserve even the most mundane moments. Go out into your neighborhood tomorrow and take pictures of things you’d never ordinarily think to capture, because it will change — usually imperceptibly and unrecorded. Ten years from now, 20 years from now, you’ll find your casual, unstaged, desultory pictures are probably the most interesting because of the unappreciated and fluid things they capture.

Transportation is life

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The government doesn’t pay much attention to making sure we can get where we need to go. Subway lines are falling apart, buses infrequent, train systems decimated, and high-speed rail has been politicized into a fantasy. The ways in which we suffer extend far beyond mere inconvenience.

In America, getting there is not considered a right, and our leaders don’t perceive it to be in the interest of the greater good to help us move about economically. Detroit carmakers got their claws into the public transportation system through National City Lines and other shell organizations designed to replace our universally helpful public transit systems with pay-through-the-hose, gas-sucking motor vehicles.

Americans have been struggling to catch up with their petroleum expenses ever since. In today’s America, you’re expected to be rich enough to pay for a car.  Movement, like health, is something that Americans may access only at signficant expense. The situation isn’t like this everywhere in the world, where governments recognize that if its population can get around cheaply, things get done, people are happier, and they can spend their money on more productive things.

I was thinking about all the bad things that have befallen our society because our transportation system is so pathetic. And I don’t just mean bridges that pancake on commuters:

  • Poverty. If you can’t get there, you can’t earn. For most Americans, who live in places that were built after the introduction of the car, not being able to cross the county often means not being able to earn a paycheck. Wheels bring food.
  • War. Not having the sort of streetcar, cable car, and rail service that we used to have until the 1940s and 1950s means we have to rely on gas-guzzling vehicles. Which means we need gas. Which means we have to get it from abroad. Which means we fight wars for access to it. The Pentagon might as well be in the shape of a radial tire.
  • Prejudice. What you don’t know, you fear. If Americans found it easier and cheaper to get around, they would do it, and they’d meet people who aren’t like them in places that are new to them. Instead, they stay at home, homogeneous home. Peering over their picket fences. Living small.

A country that limits our travels limits our freedom.

You’d expect a travel writer to say this.

How we go is who we are

Guess the little bastard

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So… have a look at this guy. Do you know who this is?

Who's this cheeky bugger?

I have this picture pinned up by my desk. It’s not hard to see what’s so captivating about it. This 21-year-old kid is smug! There’s something incredibly cocky about the little devil; he just thinks he knows all the answers, doesn’t he? The spread of his legs, the self-assured slattern eyes; he’s as modern as a teen-ager who won’t get off his cell phone.

Here are some facts to lead you to his identity:

  • He was half American. His mother was born in Brooklyn.
  • He failed three exams to gain entrance to the calvary. That was around the time this was taken, but he’s looking pretty cool because his mother is rich and he knows it’s gonna be fine.
  • He was a brilliant writer, and so his first claim to world fame was as a war correspondent.
  • Although he traveled to India, Sudan, and Cuba, he was most known for being kidnapped as a P.O.W. in South Africa during the Boer War. He escaped on a passing train, traveled 300 miles to safety, and was hidden by a mine manager before coming home. His bold tale made him famous.
  • On the back of this global fame, he decided to get into politics. He failed at that — repeatedly — until he finally secured a minor office. Pretty much failed at that, too.
  • His mentor, father figure, and role model, Bourke Cockran (I may be related), was a former lover of his mother, an Irish immigrant to America, and a five-time member of the United States House of Representatives. Cockran taught this boy how to orate.

Can you see any greatness in this kid? Or would he benefit most by being grounded? Would you let him borrow your car, let alone unsheath that saber in mixed company?

Last clues:

  • This image was taken in 1895, the year of his father’s death. This mouthy punk would live another 70 years, until 1965.
  • This kid saved England.

The answer?

It proves that you can never tell where greatness lies, and that you can never judge today what will be indispensable tomorrow. This little tough guy is Winston Churchill.

So don’t be impatient about your own life. It takes a lifetime, sometimes, to reach your destiny.

Charlie Chaplin was the immigrant America refused

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One of the fascinating things about studying American history is that it’s so full of contradictions. In order for a country of our size and variety to cohere at all, we require a group acceptance of some pretty romantic mythology. And often, the real story is a lot uglier than the prettified conventional wisdom we’re brought up to enjoy.

A Keystone of American identity

Take Charlie Chaplin, whom now we view with the warm glow of reverence. I was in London last week, and on a visit to the British Film Institute, I bought a DVD copy of restored shorts from the Keystone Studios in the late teens, when he was still in his 20s. Here’s a guy who seems to embody the American spirit. Born English, he showed up in America when he was about 21, and for the next thirty years, he helped shape and define the American spirit as no other person has.

Chaplin was a brilliant entrepreneur. He assumed control over his own movies as early as 1918, and like Walt Disney would two decades later, he took the audacious step of expanding film shorts into full-length motion pictures. He was one of four performers who founded United Artists, taking ownership of his work from distributors and money men and pretty much establishing what we know as modern Hollywood.

American spirit, born in Britain

He was, to the letter, the astounding success that all good American immigrants aspire to be, and he was adored for it. Few personalities can captivate international culture for a quarter century, but he did. He built his own studio, which today is the home of Jim Henson Studios on La Brea Boulevard in Los Angeles. Chaplin not only navigated the 1927 transition from silents to talkies, which was career homicide for many worthy performers such as Buster Keaton, but he even managed to successfully buck the dialogue trend for nearly a decade more, culminating with a mostly dialogue-free Modern Times in 1936.

Chaplin had all-American courage. In 1940, while America was still dithering about what to do about World War Two, Chaplin released his long-awaited The Great Dictator, the scathing comic indictment of Adolf Hitler (who was born four days after Chaplin). In the late 1930s, when it was shot, the world didn’t even know what Hitler was truly up to. Chaplin predicted it perfectly, and he got the message out.

Slapstick scamp or class commentary?

His richest character, The Little Tramp, was born after the spiritual devastation of the first World War. The Tramp, a low-class vagrant who struggles to keep up with the machinations the world around him, was like the pioneer American spirit personified: outsider, playful, indefatigable, high-spirited in the face of rejection and failure, and ultimately measuring up through sheer pluck and good humor. Like an immigrant, the Tramp blended into city streets without words. Like so many characters created by immigrants such as Billy Wilder and Frank Capra, the Tramp was both an outsider and an insider who saw society with a jaundiced eye.  That persona first appeared at Keystone and 1914 and was an international emblem for nearly a quarter century, appearing in its last film in 1936.

While The Little Tramp appeared for the last time, the indefatigable American spirit was being crushed by the Great Depression. Fear of communism largely eradicated the famous American pioneer spirit that had dominated for at least four generations, and World War Two had solidified the social expectation of a unified front.

It didn’t matter how famous he was

A new conformity squashed the true American individualism of the West and of the immigrant waves, and despite the fact he gave America an industry and an identity, Chaplin proudly professed liberal politics that made him a target. It was a turning point in American history, when “liberal” was painted as a dirty word, which conservatives still believe is true today. After the economic slide, any powerful person who saw things with a jaundiced eye became suspect in the eyes of the establishment.

Just as Hitler rose from the ashes of the Great War, the malaise of McCarthyism rose from the ashes of Great Depression disillusionment, and the American government discounted any contribution Charles Chaplin had made. Instantly, he was an outsider once again. One of the cherished myths of American culture is that it welcomes all with open arms, but in fact, even minor transgressions are rewarded with banishment.

In 1952, Chaplin went to London to promote his movie Limelight, and while he was gone, the FBI jockeyed to revoke his entry visa. He was 63. He had helped build Hollywood since the teens. He created an American industry.

Evidence against him crumbled, and no one would testify against him, but the damage was done. America had betrayed him. Outraged, he didn’t return to his home.

Its as if he always knew he’d be ground up in the gears

Enough is not enough anymore, and everything is ‘over’

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Today, a singer-songwriter I like, Jay Brannan, had an outburst on his Facebook page: “when an item or article of clothing wears out or breaks, i want to replace it with EXACTLY the same thing. the idea of “discontinuing” or “redesigning” ruins life.” Soon after, he tweeted the same thought, refining it: “the idea of “discontinuing” or “redesigning” ruins life,” he wrote.

I feel this way, too. I want what I want, and I want what works. But American commerce usually has other ideas.

Over the years, I have come to suspect that the tendency of American industry to incessantly reboot, reimagine, retool, and recycle is a symptom of more than petulance. It’s not even a sign of creativity, or of homage, although it’s usually sold to us that way. It’s desperation.

Don't be fooled: Grandpa liked pictures just as much as you do

Our parents and grandparents enjoyed many of the same products, more or less unchanged, for generations. My mom grew up with pretty much the same Coca-Cola in the 1960s that her mother grew up with in the 1930s. But our generation just can’t resist mucking everything up.

Coke replaced sugar with high fructose corn syrup. National Geographic went from an exploratory, heady photographic journal to a lightweight photo book that seems to be inspired by the lifestyle section of your local newspaper. The previously enigmatic Mr. Peanut and Tinker Bell spout quips like second-string sitcom characters. The affordable VW Bug that served the budget needs of surfers, hippies, and young adults fresh out of college was superseded by a luxury version more likely to suit moneyed marketing executives. What’s left unchanged? What’s actually better?

Ah... that's better!

Why do companies incessantly monkey around with stuff that was proven to work for generations? Why does Facebook change its interface every 14 months, and why do we discard the latest must-have staple of everyday life (Friendster, then MySpace, now maybe Twitter) as “over” sometimes seemingly because it’s been around for more than two years? If everything is declared “over,” what will last?

People now relish the hasty dismantling of the very things that caused the destruction of the institutions that came before them. We’re tripping over ourselves to trash the things that are most central in our lives, and praising redesigns and retoolings that have no real cause to exist except for the unsettling and hollow feeling that “it’s time.”

There is a wide, and growing, school of thought — very active on Twitter and other social media — that celebrates the science and design of every new change and new reinvention, but never stops to pragmatically wonder if any of it was really necessary.

Those Bug-buying marketing executives are partly to blame. In corporate offices across the world, people are actively justifying their jobs in order to afford those VW bugs they so unwisely changed. So is Wall Street, whose stockholders demand companies make more and more money instead of just enough money.

These days, if you’re content to merely get by with a decent living, you must be a farmer. A real business, one with investors and cubicles, is one that needs to constantly top last year. Modern business must exceed enough, and to do that, it doesn’t honor tradition so much as strip mine it.  It waters down the formula, it chases trends with no hope of social endurance, and five years later, when the public only dimly recalls the revolution, they must either do it again or pull the plug.

Someone earned a bonus for this

The threshold of profit is now so high, thanks to stockholder demand, that a candy bar with a modest following — say, a Nutrageous in America or a Fuse in Britain — has no hope of survival because it’s not a smash. A very good television show, such as My So-Called Life or Arrested Development, cannot live because it isn’t a blockbuster. Your favorite coat, your best pair of socks, the cut of your trousers — so many things that do not need to be changed must be made unavailable to you because in some boardroom somewhere, an upstart junior executive dodges the axe by justifying the eradication of the old. Like having children, destroying old things is a way to leave an imprint forever.

What has become of American tradition? I mean, besides the fact that everything we buy went from local, mom-and-pop origin to global, gotta-please-the-stockholders scale. Our grandparents lived with stuff that played unchanging roles for most of their lives, but our generation shucks off everything once it loses the whiff of trendiness and gains a well-worn groove of familiarity. We even have entire industries that celebrate this utter lack of self-identity: What do you think fashion is all about?

On a recent TCM documentary series, Moguls and Movie Stars, historian David Stein said: “We revere them. And then we destroy them. And then we revive them and make them saints.” He was talking about Clara Bow and Marilyn Monroe, but he might as well have been talking about our beloved products, which are the shadow celebrities of American culture.

I don’t think it’s just about the nature of a consumer society. It’s become systemic, making so many of the props in our lives into something rootless and rudderless, with a new expectation that nothing is allowed to age and cement.

Our society now has a subconscious expectation of a flimsy lifespan. My fear — or realization — is it’s a sign that America is in steep economic decline. We jump so rapidly from product to product, and we abandon without hesitation the few constants that have bound our wide society together. We tell ourselves that we’re improving what needs improving, but in truth, our economy has gotten so bad that businesses can no longer survive on the old, just-good-enough margins. They have to keep racing ahead. Enough is not enough anymore.

It’s been said, and I agree, that Americans have the attention span of hey what’s that–

Virgin Atlantic blames weather, dodges compensation

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I have just received my response from the “Customer Relations” representative at Virgin Atlantic, who, like the “Social Relations” rep, continues to blame the irresponsible decisions that stranded 250 of us at JFK International Airport for 32 hours on the weather. Never mind that the core of my issues were why we were forced to travel to the airport in dangerous blizzard conditions and why the airline failed to accommodate us properly once it was clear we were stranded there.

She completely evades many of my very pointed questions (see the previous post), such as why Virgin Atlantic chose to force us to the airport at the blizzard’s peak despite industry-wide cancellations, why it did not issue waivers to us to rebook without fees, and why many of us were denied even blankets. She does not address whether Upper Class passengers were brought to a hotel.

In fact, she essentially says that I should have taken myself to a hotel if I wanted one so badly. She doesn’t say how that would be possible, given all roads and rail services to the airport were closed during the 4.5 hours we were irresponsibly snowed in on the tarmac. But she does use it as an excuse of granting any compensation whatsoever.

Dear Mr Cochran

I’ve read your post on jason-cochran.com and would like to take this opportunity to respond to some of the concerns you feel Howard did not address in his earlier correspondence.

At the outset I want to offer my apologies to you and all our passengers who were caught up in the weather disruptions both in the UK and the US in December. The inconvenience and upset caused to all travellers, not only airline passengers, was extensive and in airline terms unprecedented.

As Howard has already confirmed the decision to depart VS4 was taken in accordance with advice from ground and air traffic management as well as our own operations control and the operating pilot.  Unfortunately the weather deteriorated after the aircraft pushed back and the window of opportunity passed. Many airlines were in effect ‘stuck’ on the taxiways as the conditions worsened and I have seen reports of many other airlines passengers being on board for 7 hours or more. No airline would knowingly place its customers in this type of situation if it could be avoided.

Conditions in the terminal were not good for anybody, due entirely to the high numbers of stranded passengers. The prevailing conditions meant passengers were unable to move away from the airport environment, and as a result of the high demand some food outlets ran out of supplies.

These circumstances also meant we could not secure large numbers of hotel rooms for all passengers.  Upper Class customers as well as those with special needs were accommodated in the Virgin Clubhouse but this area has limited capacity and it was not possible to accommodate all passengers there.  We advised passengers who were able to leave the terminal and find their own accommodation to send us their receipts for reimbursement, in accordance with our obligations under European regulation 261/2004.

Aviation regulation requires us to rest all operating crew under specific conditions in order to ensure they are fit to fly and accompany the passengers when the flight is subsequently cleared for take off.  A handful of rooms are reserved for crew on a permanent basis as part of the crew hotel contract and cannot be redistributed amongst passengers.

In the event of a flight cancellation Virgin Atlantic always offers passengers the opportunity to claim a full refund, or to book them on the next available flight with us or another carrier. We do not charge passengers when they are rebooked to the next available flight and if you were told otherwise by our staff I apologise, it is neither our policy or our intention. In relation to compensation, under certain conditions when European registered airlines cancel a flight within 14 days of departure the EU regulation requires them to pay compensation. However, the regulation makes it clear that airlines are not obliged to pay compensation if the cancellation is caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. Such circumstances include weather conditions incompatible with the operation of the flight concerned.

Whilst it is clear to see that you are very unhappy with the way in which you were treated I want to assure you that throughout this event everyone at Virgin Atlantic was working very hard to try and minimise the inconvenience being suffered by our customers. As with all experiences of this nature there are learning points as well as achievements and we will certainly be reviewing all our actions and processes over the next few weeks.

Yours sincerely

Caroline Lynam

Customer Relations Manager

Did you catch some of her contradictions? She admits “the prevailing conditions meant passengers were unable to move away from the airport environment” and yet denies compensation because we didn’t get ourselves to hotels and bring them receipts. She claims “no airline would knowingly place its customers in this type of situation if it could be avoided” and yet nearly every other carrier had canceled its flights, and the fact ours wasn’t canceled despite this plain industry convention (and, in fact, all of Virgin Atlantic’s other flights that same evening were–another point of mine she evaded) is what caused us to be stranded in such inhumane conditions.

How about “everyone at Virgin Atlantic was working very hard to try and minimise the inconvenience being suffered by our customers” when its gate agent, Josie, flatly told me I wasn’t allowed to have a blanket she was holding?

Ms Lynam also admits that our inability to rebook our flight to get out of the way of the blizzard was not policy: “We do not charge passengers when they are rebooked to the next available flight and if you were told otherwise by our staff I apologise, it is neither our policy or our intention.” Yet I am offered nothing in compensation for what she admits was a breach, despite the fact had this admitted mistake not occurred (despite the fact I had pleaded on two different phone calls, plus a tweet), I would have avoided this entire mess.

This is the response of an airline that’s called out in the international media for running a flight that everyone knew should not have been running? (I am still awaiting the response of the airline’s public relations arm.)

This is one of the biggest bungles of social media and customer service that I have seen out of an airline in a decade.

Updated: A Virgin Atlantic public relations representative just wrote me to say that indeed, this response was written jointly with his department, which handles media. This means the airline is now ignoring most of my queries both as a customer and as a journalist. I sent the airline my questions that it has so far refused to answer for. Here is what it is avoiding:

* Why did Virgin Atlantic, unlike nearly every other carrier operating in the Northeast of the United States, refuse to waive the change fee so that I could get out of the way of the blizzard? Your Customer Relations rep admits this was a breach of policy, and that breach put me and many others in this position. What is to be done for us about that?
* Why did Virgin Atlantic, unlike nearly every other carrier operating in the Northeast of the United States, refuse to cancel VS004? That the airline thought it could make the flight, or that the airport initially cleared it to push back, are not satisfactory answers because VA operated diametrically against clearly observable weather realities as well as industry conventions that evening.
* VA canceled all its other flights to London that night, so what made your airline think that this one would not be subject to the same weather conditions? It was scheduled to depart eight hours after the snowfall began, forcing passengers to arrive at the airport in very hazardous road conditions. Even before we pushed back from the gates, weather reports clearly warned that the blizzard was about to double in intensity; I received those reports as a passenger, and I would assume your pilots had access to the same, or better, reports. Does Virgin Atlantic officially decline to admit this was a lapse in judgment?
* Is it true that Upper Class and/or Premium Economy passengers were taken to a hotel? Your response did not deny this.
* If crew could be taken to a hotel, why were passengers not taken to one?
* Your employee Josie denied me a blanket, which she had in stock, as I tried to camp on the floor of a terminal as subfreezing winds rushed through open doors. On what grounds would that be acceptable?
* Many of us could not redeem our food vouchers because of low supplies or interminable lines. What compensation is to be expected there?
* Many of us did not receive luggage for five days despite the fact our was the only Virgin Atlantic flight to leave New York City. What was the cause and what will be done for us about that?

Virgin Atlantic responds, barely

Posted by & filed under Blog.

Isn’t it hilarious that even its e-mail response was 22 hours late? A rep from Virgin Atlantic swore he sent an e-mail to me at lunchtime on Wednesday, but of course I didn’t receive one. He resent it after I provided a second e-mail, in case he had mis-typed the first one. Finally, it arrived. It says, essentially, “We had no idea it would get that bad, and we have sympathy for you.”

Because I invoked Virgin Atlantic so many times in my tweets and my interviews, I think it’s only fair that the airline has its chance to air its version of events without me as a filter. Here it is, as I received it, with the sender’s contact details removed:

Dear Jason

Thank you for supplying us with your email address via DM on Twitter.

I am sorry to read that you were one of the disrupted passengers onboard the delayed VS4 flight. I know that this flight did not leave as planned but I assure you that when we boarded our passengers onto the aircraft and we left the gate to taxi the runway, we did so with the best intentions.

The adverse weather conditions severely affected all flights in and out of the JFK, and so we worked hard to try and get our flying programme back on schedule, especially at such an important time of the year. Not only were there major disruptions at JFK over the last couple of days, there were even more cancellations and delays out of London Heathrow and Gatwick just before Christmas.

With the need of trying to return to a normal schedule, when JFK airport cleared us to depart your flight on the 26th December we gladly took this window and went ahead to take off as planned. Unfortunately, weather – especially snow – is an inexact science and, as such, the situation changed and we were unable to operate this flight as we (and JFK) had thought possible. Matters were then certainly not helped with amount of time it took the aircraft to get back to the terminal. On the rare occasions that it takes a much longer time than usual for one of our aircraft to return to a gate, our crew will normally provide a drinks service and, if possible, a snack or meal service as well to at least try and make things more comfortable for everyone. However, this is dependent upon supplies.

Had we known, that you would then return to an overcrowded and under stocked (in terms of refreshments and food) JFK airport, then, we most certainly would have cancelled the flight in the first place. However, I am sure that you understand that it would have been in both ours and our passengers interests, for the flight to depart as we were advised was possible. I can only sympathise with the situation that you found yourself in, once back inside the terminal.

During the time that you were waiting for the revised flight, I would like to think that our airport staff pulled out all of the stops to help our passengers wherever they could. With the weather constantly changing, it was difficult to provide precise details about our flights and in turn made their jobs far more difficult than usual. Runways were cleared then became blocked; aircraft were due to land and, subsequently, diverted; flights were advised to depart and later delayed or cancelled. Had we been able to provide more specific information, we certainly would have; however, I hope you can appreciate the difficulty that this weather created.

I am not, by any means, making excuses for any lapse in service or information provided. However, I hope the above goes some way to explain the logistics of such a major disruption, especially where all airlines and airports are caught up in the same scenario.

It goes without saying that we are extremely sorry for the frustration and discomfort that you, and all our other passengers who were scheduled to fly with us, no doubt encountered.

Finally I must stress that at no time were we prepared to risk anyone’s safety. The safety of our passengers and staff, is absolutely our number one priority at every single moment that you fly with us. I cannot emphasise that point enough.

I really am sorry for how things worked out Jason and I do hope that you have a far more smoother and Virgin Atlantic like experience, for your return flight.

Kind Regards

Howard Bowden

Social Relations

I won’t spend much time guessing why so many key issues of my complaints were left untouched, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact this was sent by the airline’s social media folk and not by anyone with real authority to affect policy or issue compensation. But here is the response I immediately shot back:

Mr Bowden,

Thank you for your response.  I understand your points about the unpredictability of the weather, but as you should know from reading my tweets about the events, my objections with how this episode was handled go far beyond that.  In fact, I have always defended Virgin Atlantic’s attention to the safe operation of its flights in this weather event. But other unaddressed issues persist.

In specific:

* We did not receive the hotel, transport, or phone calls that were mandated by EU regulation 261/2004? What compensation is in order for us?
* Is it true that Upper Class and/or Premium Economy passengers were taken to a hotel?
* We already know the crew was able to get to one, so any argument that it was impossible to bring Economy passengers to a hotel will not be realistic.
* Your employee Josie denied me a blanket, which she had in stock, as I tried to camp on the floor of a terminal as subfreezing winds rushed through open doors. On what grounds would that be acceptable?
* Many of us could not redeem our food vouchers because of low supplies or interminable lines. What compensation is to be expected there?
* At this hour, many of us have still not received our luggage despite the fact our was the only Virgin Atlantic flight to leave New York City for two days. What will be done for us about that?
* Why did Virgin Atlantic, unlike nearly every other carrier operating in the Northeast of the United States, refuse to waive the change fee so that I could get out of the way of the blizzard?
* Why did Virgin Atlantic, unlike nearly every other carrier operating in the Northeast of the United States, refuse to cancel VS004? That the airline thought it could make the flight, or that the airport initially cleared it to push back, are not satisfactory answers. VA canceled all its other flights to London that night, so what made your airline think that this one would not be subject to the same weather conditions? It was scheduled to depart eight hours after the snowfall began, and even before we pushed back from the gates, weather reports clearly warned that the blizzard was about to double in intensity; even I received those reports as a passenger.

These are just eight of my immediate concerns, most of them quite serious as customer relations go, but none of which were answered by your letter of sympathy.

Please feel free to escalate my queries to higher levels beyond Social Relations. Thank you.

Jason Cochran

virgin atlantic refugees

Refugees from Virgin Atlantic Flight 004 at JFK Terminal 4, at 3 a.m. (21 hours to go)

Three videos of my 32-hour JFK debacle

Posted by & filed under Blog.

I didn’t take many videos of my little sojourn in JFK during the blizzard, partly because I was busy strategizing a way out of there, and mostly because AT&T made uploading anything except the simplest tweet or photo such an impossibility. I got one video, the McDonald’s one, out (which was good for Fox News, which played it ad nauseam as I spoke on Neil Cavuto’s show, while I tried to explain it was a flare-up and not the norm).

What I didn’t get to tell Fox News was that the McDonald’s fracas happened in part because just before I started shooting, a posse of JFK ground crew had cut the line and bought up lots of food. Mind you, JFK was closed at the time, and would be for another 8 hours or so. But passengers who had been waiting for two hours on line were summarily told to go away, and they didn’t like it.

JFK employees were part of the disaster during the snow-in. They commandeered buses — one American Airlines pilot, trying to get to his base at Terminal 8, never got there because they forced the driver to go somewhere else. They also didn’t clean anything — hours-old puddles of vomit, all paper out in the bathrooms. But they did get my plane out, although I’m not convinced that wasn’t partly because the news channels had selected me as the spokesman for all of us, and I was aboard it. This next video happened 13 hours later when the surly and uncommunicative Virgin Atlantic crew, who had never delivered on a single promise nor been plain about what the real situation was (and in fact kept hiding in closets and behind doors to talk to each other), got on the P.A. system at gate 28B and told us there would be another two-hour delay. Rather than commiserate with us, they treated What should have been simple, and perhaps even welcome news (after all, we weren’t cancelled) turned into an explosive situation. Passengers, who had felt lied to and strung along for 32 hours and who resented being dragged to the airport at all, combusted in fury. Port Authority police officers were on hand to make sure they didn’t rush the desk and hurt these stone-faced, incompetent Redcoats.

The discord went on for ten minutes. I didn’t catch it all because CBS Radio called me and wanted a live update on the air, and besides, I couldn’t upload what I already had. (And for the record, I didn’t make first contact with a single news organization; every one of them found me once I started tweeting about what was going on.) Josie, the head gate crew woman, did manage to talk in depth to one passenger, who seemed calmed, but she seemed to avoid addressing everyone with the same extensive frankness. The head of the ground crew came inside and tried his ham hand at calming us down: Obviously, after 30 hours of feeling diddled and lied to, the passengers weren’t having it anymore, and some British passengers even offered to come out and help shovel. When this grounds crewman said something I didn’t hear and fled out the door, one of the Brits threatened to burst through the door after him.

Finally, a flight attendant emerged. It was Vincent, who was in charge of first class. Vincent, as someone who lives on the front lines of customer service and crowd control, was the first airline or airport employee who knew how to talk to us. As someone who derived his interaction skills somewhere other than a training manual, he knew that what we needed was to be spoken to like equals, off the prescribed script. He put himself on our level, saying frankly that even the crew was so weary of this situation that they had volunteered to go on “minimum hours” so we could get out of there faster. He said he saw a light at the end of the tunnel and that although it was hard, we all had to be patient if we were going to reach it.

Most crucially, he told us to stop talking to Josie and her stone-faced gate crew, whom the passengers had by then nicknamed “The Rottweilers.” If we had questions, he said, we should ask him directly, and he’d be honest. I’m convinced that by not trying to pawn us off the way the robotic and mistrustful gate crew had done, Vincent defused, or at least lengthened the fuse on, this powder keg.

We did indeed leave two hours later, Vincent aboard with us. Here he is, with fellow flight attendant Tina, as we got on. He’s holding her gingerly because he’d just been coughing into his hand.

Vincent doesn't seem to want to take solo credit for saving the lives of the Rottweilers

Vincent, posing with colleague Tina, tamed the frothing mob

I recognize that 32 hours in an airport is not, in the scheme of things, a serious problem. It was reversible and ultimately, perfectly safe. I’ve been through worse in my life, and there’s worse to come. But I am a consumer reporter, and finding myself in the middle of a big unfolding story about unwise corporate decisions, I covered the story, and because of my reach as a reporter, the new channels picked up on it. Across the same airport, there were hundreds of stories that were just as messed up, but they went untold. And ultimately, very few of our stories were much more than intense annoyances. The battle to get what we paid for may be an unwinnable one, but at least it’s not grave.

‘Lord of the Flies’ snowstorm disaster at JFK, courtesy of Virgin Atlantic

Posted by & filed under Blog, Photos.

This is a new one. I’m blogging from the floor of Terminal 4 at JFK. The short version: Despite the fact that a ferocious snowstorm was approaching full gale, Virgin Atlantic refused to cancel my flight to London. Unable to change my travel without incurring a $250-plus fee, I was forced to go to the airport even as the snow poured down. You can predict what Virgin, unaccountable, could not: We ended up stranded on the tarmac — we were on the plane for 4 and a half hours. And by the time they got us back to the gate, every path out of JFK had shut down. No cars, no rail.

I’ve been here for 22 hours. So I did what any travel writer/consumer reporter would do. I started tweeting about it. Never nasty. Just how it was — which was nasty enough.

virgin atlantic snow

The flight that shouldn't have left, before it did

And the blizzard made that little snowball into an avalanche. Word spread. Virgin’s ineptitude and recklessness compounded with a larger story of thousands of people stranded here. And then then food started running out. By this morning, despite having had only an hour’s sleep (beside a pleasantly monotonously whirring baggage belt), I had talked to GMA, WNBC, CNN, CNN International, the Associated Press, and just now, CBS and the CBC. Each one called me just as soon as the one before had posted their coverage. Another snowball effect.

Only now am I seeing my first taxis outside the window, except I can’t take any of them now; we’re supposed to try again at 7:30pm, or about 28 hours since I got here.

I’m fine. Don’t worry ’bout me! Worry about Virgin Atlantic, which apparently failed to learn anything from the standstill at Heathrow last week. When I called it on Saturday begging to be allowed to rebook myself to get out of the way of the blizzard, it told me I’d have to pay up. Now I’m living in an airport, and I’ll never get the stench of KFC out of my clothes.

Last night, I asked Josie, a Virgin Atlantic worker, for a blanket from a bag her colleague was holding, and she refused to give me one. She said some passengers hadn’t gotten one. I said I was one of them. She still refused. I have a feeling they were going to “Upper Class” passengers. I rode out the subfreezing night, which kept racing through the terminal’s regularly opening doors, by layering. It was inexcusable.

For its greed before the storm, irresponsibility during it, and intractable silence afterward, 250 of us are paying the price. But this snowball of attention is making this transit Purgatory more tolerable. It’s a lot easier to get through an uncontrollable, ineptly managed situation if you feel you have a voice — whether that’s on GMA, CNN, or written as you sit on freezing cold butt cheeks on the stone floor of the Terminal 4 arrivals hall.

It’s not all right when you contract for a service and you’re treated with disrespect, and it’s not all right when companies fail to properly prepare for obvious obstacles and then demand that you shoulder the punishment.

My tweets are ongoing, so follow me here.

If you’re looking for my video of the angry mob at the McDonald’s in JFK, click here.

jason cochran gma

I guess this was me on GMA

Living at JFK

Food ran out in the middle of the night, and we've a long way to go

It totally isn't

It totally is