Ghostwriting? Or a Ghost of a Chance?
I suppose this could be considered blasphemy in The Red Room. Maybe I'll be unceremoniously dumped from this site which I really do love for its diversity and its opportunity to "meet' so many authors. But I'm a little irked. Oh, it's nothing new. I remember when a fairly well-known "author" in a niche market credited a large number of people in acknowledgments. What the author didn't say was that all of those people were the ones who actually wrote the book.
I've come to expect ghostwriters for celebrity bios and books carrying "and" or "with" in the byline. Those aren't ghostwritten, they're clearly acknowledged What I really don't like is the appearance of someone doing something when I can't prove that they have, in fact, carried out the task.
If you've been reading my blog then you already know that I'm thoroughly independent. I really have a strong sense of fairness and fair play. Okay, I'll admit that I tend to joust at windmills in my efforts to achieve fairness. It might not be attainable but if I don't try, I'll never know.
Not long after I joined The Red Room it was proudly announced that Senator and author, Barak Obama, had joined. Great! Especially since it was announced that this was not a political move on The Red Room's part. I waited to see if any other candidates would appear. I'm sure that at least one other has "written" a book. Nope. No one else. I surfed over to the Senator's page and the only blog entry was part of a speech delivered on January 14th of this year. I periodically surf to the list of authors. Nope, No other politicians that I can see. I also surf back to the Senator's page. The only things added are book covers, videos, all political. No blog entries about writing. Yes, I know, he's busy campaigning.
Actually, I'd be hard pressed to believe that he had anything much to do with the page other than approve its inception. I would guess that it was his p.r. team who make any entries, and his staffers who found The Red Room. They haven't had the courtesy to publish one response to any of the 14 blog comments from people who apparently think that the Senator is reading the blog. Personally, I wouldn't bet that farm on his finding time to glance at the messages, let alone read them. Would someone like to provide proof that he is, in fact, involved in The Red Room?
Interestingly, his is one of about three authors whose larger image rotates on the home page. What has he done to deserve that? He's not James Patterson with a string of best sellers. The line for Patterson at BEA last Summer was so long that it snaked around almost the entire interior of The Jacob Javits Center. I don't see Candace Bushnell's image rotating through and she has certainly earned attention as an author. Or Clive Barker.
The journalist in me wants to know why there is only one politician featured if there is no endorsement? Is this not a tacit endorsement? Where are the others? Were they invited to participate in the interest of fairness? Does anyone else care about this but me?
It doesn't matter for whom I vote. What matters in a democratic society is democracy itself. And, for me, fair play.
About Darlene
I was born at the Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts where Jack Lemmon made his appearance in the elevator many years before. My mother managed to make it all the way to the delivery room. It seems as if I’ve always written although my first career...
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Darlene, Thank You
for writing this. I've thought the same thing but have been too stupid and lazy. You have taken the energy and time to put down your thoughts succinctly, pointedly and fluidly. It's long overdue.
I saw a Clinton blog that was quickly swept out of Redroom. (I was supporting Clinton but am beginning to feel turned off by both candidates). I had to rub my eyes because she was there one moment and gone the next.
I must tell you that when I told a dear friend in her eighties about the above incidence, (she was personal friend to Martin Luther King, Coretta King, and Vernon Jordan, campaigned for the two Kennedys, fought along side them in the 60's) regarding the "disappeared" Clinton ghost blog, I was shocked to hear her say, "That's exactly what Red Room should have done."
She is a Barack Obama supporter and is rabid with her anti-Clinton sentiments. I've always thought her fair-minded but I see even old civil rights warriors can be unjust.
Redroom, If I am wrong about what happened to the Hillary blog, please tell me so.
Belle Yang
Fairness
Go girl! And dare a republican be featured?
But speaking of fairness, it is fair, I believe, that the founder of Red Room and her team make decisions one way or another. They have put this wonderful site together and I would expect them to make some calls. My guess is that Obama is present here more for a publicity move than a political one. The Red Room is, after all, headquartered in the Bay Area. Our local newspapers, sure enough, mention right up front that Obama is one of the published authors. If Redroom featured Huckabee, for example, the papers may not have been so flattering of Red Room. I wish more for fairness in the papers!
Regarding ghostwriting, I appreciate your comments a great deal. I am presently working on a book called The Social Cause Diet: Finding A Service That Feeds Your Soul. I am passionate about this book which will be, in part, an anthology of stories about satisfying acts of service. But I had a moment of panic a few weeks back when I discovered Bill Clinton's book, Giving, and his website where he is collecting stories about volunteering. How did I miss this? My idea is already being developed by a former president! But my mother came to the rescue. She used to be a librarian and reads about 4 books a night. I thought she would read anything she got her hands on, but not so. When I told her about Clinton's book she announced, "I never read anything where there was probably a ghostwriter."
Funny, I just meant to reply here with a "go girl" and I rambled on! I guess that's the nature of a blog. It is nice to be here in the Red Room. I just joined today but have not put my page together. Cheers.
Thank you, Gail
Thanks so much for your thoughtful response. And for your comments on Ghostwriting.
I'm glad you're here on The Red Room. I'm going to surf over and look at your page. :-)
Darlene
Darlene Arden, CABC Journalist, Lecturer, Author www.darlenearden.com
Thank You, Belle and Gail
...for your thoughtful replies. This topic has been nagging at me for awhile and, finally, I found the courage to say what I needed/wanted to say. I expected to be castigated. Imagine my happy surprise when I found your responses!
Darlene
Darlene Arden, CABC Journalist, Lecturer, Author www.darlenearden.com
Thanks!!!!!!
Darlene, thanks sooo much for raising some really good points about well-known authors on Red Room!
The Red Room community is politically diverse. We have encouraged politicians whose views span the political spectrum (and who have published books) to become Red Room authors. This includes all three of the remaining candidates for President. At this point, Senator Obama is the only one of the three to have completed his Author Page, and that is the reason he is the only one you see. We are eager to see senators Clinton and McCain very soon, and many other politician/authors as well. Please encourage any you know to apply for author pages regardless of their political views; local politicians who have written books are always great, too.
We want each Author Page to be that particular author's online home. As with any community, some homes look very well "lived-in," while the residents of others don't ever seem to be at home. You've probably noticed that many Red Room authors don't blog, or if they do, they don't respond to comments. I promise that all authors on Red Room are who they say they are, because I helped verify their identities. (For example, Alice Hoffman was very grateful that we made sure that she was, in fact, the Alice Hoffman.) While we encourage every one of our members to participate extensively, once an author's page goes "live," we can't control how much or how little that author participates. That goes for Barack Obama as much as it does for less well-known authors.
About one percent of our authors are so successful that they have staff who may or may not do this kind of work for them. (Or a helpful spouse, or a teen on the premises...) I have no way of knowing whether particular authors have built or are maintaining their pages themselves. Again, these pages are like your homes.
It's probably fair to say that we look at those same half-dozen pictures at the top of the homepage more than anybody, and we'd like some variety as well. Three things are necessary for authors to have their photos in that position: they have to be recognizable to most new visitors to the site; they have to provide us with a correctly-sized photo; and they have to give us appropriate quotes to run with the photos. So far, only Khaled Hosseini, Maya Angelou, Ishmael Reed, Salman Rushdie, and Barack Obama have done so. We'd love to expand the rotation, and I encourage any authors who think they fit those requirements to submit photos and quotes. We can always help with the details.
I know we're building what will become a unique cultural institution here, one that will do a lot of good for a lot of people over time. That will happen only with the help of many, many people. I'm thrilled that you've taken your time to add the content that you have since you became a Red Room author, and I'm very grateful that you've commented so thoughtfully today. Thanks so much!!! :)
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
Ghost Politics
Hi Darlene,
Thanks for this post. I’m so glad we have politically independent authors in the Red Room, and I’m so glad we have such polite, intelligent discussions.
This discussion gives me a chance to share with you two great links. First, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/books/22book.html is a brief article from about a year ago noting the various books authored by some of the front-runners in the presidential campaign, and it touches on the sticky issue of ghostwriting, going back to JFK.
Even better: http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/01/presidential-candidates-2008-as-authors.html is a fantastic bibliography of almost ALL the candidates who pursued the highest office this time around, even those who were marginalized by the mainstream media (for example, I didn’t know that Mike Gravel, a real independent thinker, had a book, but here it is, from 1972). This really is a fascinating list, and created by a librarian.
I liked this list so much, I included it in a press release we issued to the media, to highlight the fact that all the great thought leaders are also authors. Writing and writers transform societies—that’s my big message. Not just one; all of them.
We’d love to have more candidates on the site. Please help us by contacting any authors you respect and want to see on the site and ask them to join. I will tell you that among our staff members (who can't hang around the water cooler because there's no room to stand near the water cooler, so we just talk loudly at each other from our desks), there is much healthy debate about all the candidates, and there is no monolithic opinion operating here at all. Even in San Francisco. :)
Ivory Madison
Founder and CEO, redroom.com
P.S. One more note, for Belle! :) We remove close to zero comments people post. Since your Author Page is your online home, and our guidelines respect your home, disagreements and criticism are welcome as long as they’re on-topic and not abusive. I believe we removed exactly three out of the first three thousand comments posted. I was told by other CEOs this is an extremely, almost unheard of, low percentage—which means we have super-high quality posting going on that barely needs any moderation at all, thanks to all of you!
Ivory, Thank you!
I cannot begin to tell you how surprised I was to find a post from you at my blog. Well, I did think I might be thrown out of the Red Room but nothing more. LOL
Thank you for sharing those links. And thank you, most of all, for founding The Red Room.
I'm happy to see most authors who blog here share their thoughts and not just self-promotion. There's space enough for that on each home page.
The fact that anyone found this particular blog entry (or any of my entries) is somewhat surprising since I am a midlist author in a niche market.
Warmly,
Darlene
Darlene Arden, CABC Journalist, Lecturer, Author www.darlenearden.com
Hi, Darlene--Ivory is
Hi, Darlene--Ivory is wonderful as is Huntington, Thomas and company.
Hi, Ivory--What I saw pop up was a blog (sans Clinton's author photo) at the top of the New Blogs page. It was written in Clinton's own voice, perhaps a speech. This came soon after Obama officially became a member of Redroom.com. I made a mental note, "Oh, now the Clinton camp wants equal opportunity here." It looked like whoever was ghosting for her was attempting to build a homepage for Clinton. And then 5 minutes later, the blog disappeared. There was nothing abusive in what was being ghosted.
Maybe I am seeing UFOs.
Thank You, Huntington
I love your description of each author's page as their "home." I guess mine is a little bit lived-in. And I'm delighted to learn that you do, indeed, verify that each author is who s/he claims to be when applying for membership.
Let me clarify that I didn't expect Senator Obama to respond to each blog comment but I had hoped to see, perhaps, a blog post thanking those who had commented even if that post were written by a staffer. Frankly, even the busiest authors I know, the most successful, try to spend some time responding to readers. A blog is hardly an individual letter but would have shown more interest in The Red Room and its authors (his colleagues in that sense) if a real post had been offered, not a speech, and had it not seemed like just another campaign stop on the road of life.
I don't get involved in politics other than weighing issues and voting so I cannot urge politicians to join The Red Room. I hope that The Red Room will take the initiative in asking Kinky Friedman to join. I was with friends in TX when he was running for Governor and they took me to a rally. Based on the serious things he said, following the one-liners, I'm sorry he wasn't elected. He made a lot of sense. He is certainly a well-established author.
I hope that you'll soon have more photos rotating through the home page.
And thank you for taking the time to respond.
Darlene
Darlene Arden, CABC Journalist, Lecturer, Author www.darlenearden.com
Ghost Political Correctness
Darlene -- this is a worthless response, but I lost my other one somewhere in the bowels of the system. So, briefly, you have prompted some thought and I will share our experience (Barbara and I) with the Red Room politics and censor. In the meantime, Port Angeles? Out of the blue and in 2009? I was born in Port Angeles, as was Tess Gallagher. And that's where Raymond Carver is buried. More later on ghost writing and Red Room censorship.
Ray A. March
Ah, now I understand, Belle!
Darlene and Belle,
Thank you so much for all of your positive comments about the Red Room. We're very lucky both of you are doing such an amazing job of building community and starting important conversations. :)
Belle, thanks for explaining what you were referring to, since Huntington and I didn't understand until we just saw that last note from you. What you saw was a glitch that happens sometimes when authors are in the process of building their pages. Some of the content they have uploaded, such as a blog entry, will accidentally show up on the site even though the author has not finished their Author Page. This has happened with several authors, but you happened to see that particularly exciting one.
Many authors begin their page but then don't come back to put on the finishing touches for weeks, so it stays hidden until they are finished and ready for it to go live. We're always eager to see new authors go live, presidential candidates or mid-list authors, and since there are more mid-list authors in the world, we really are more concerned with the latter. :)
Believe me, I would love to have a wide range of politicians on the site, and we will soon have a great feature where you Red Room authors can all very easily invite other authors to join us, and since most politicans provide an email on their websites, it will be easy for you to invite your favorites.
Thank you both again for all of your support. We couldn't do it without you, and are glad we've created a place online where you feel at home!
Ivory Madison
Founder and CEO, redroom.com
Hi, Ivory
That makes sense. So the Hillary-ite got lazy and did not follow through. Her ghost is now residing in limbo. Thank you for taking the time to explain. I feel better. I thought Hillary Clinton had been ushered out the way airport security does with a loud passenger.
Thank you, again, Ivory
And here I sit, thinking no one is paying attention to my blog entries! Thank you so much for making me feel as much at home as the "A" list authors. :-)
Frankly, I'm more interesting in writers than politicians but the fact that only one politician continued to appear in the Red Room certainly caught my attention.
I'm happy to see The Red Room grow and will look forward to seeing how it evolves.
Warmly,
Darlene
Darlene Arden, CABC Journalist, Lecturer, Author www.darlenearden.com
Scandal in the Red Room...
I've got to get back to work, but just a few last notes to my new friends:
1. I personally made efforts to get Clinton and McCain invited and participating for just this reason (the possible appearance of our community supporting one candidate over the others). So, we were all on the same page.
2. I can't wait to see more photos and quotes in rotation on the homepage. I hope more authors submit them soon, since it's difficult for our staff, what with copyright issues, to do this without the authors' involvement. Again, I'm with you.
3. It is my greatest hope that all authors will be active on their pages, and that they will do it themselves, even if they have family or assistants who could help, I hope they will enjoy engaging with you themselves. We all agree on this, too.
4. The secret truth about anything mysterious you might wonder about the Red Room will almost always be something utterly mundane, such as a site glitch, a lack of suitable photos submitted, a misunderstanding, someone with a large stack of papers on her desk who is behind in her work, and so on. I encourage you all to email Huntington, Thomas, and Jennifer (or even me) anytime with any questions you have, because this is your community, and you're entitled to know what's going on. Just be prepared for the inevitable: An answer totally lacking in scandal. :)
Ivory Madison
Founder and CEO, redroom.com
Ghost writers and Censors
From Ghost to Censor
As a journalist, perhaps like you, I am always looking for ways to get past the “censor” in our lives. Usually, that has been something of a figurative comment, frequently in reaction to what for me is the distasteful phenomenon of “political correctness.”
So, as you might guess, I was surprised to find that, indeed, we do have a Big Brother looking over our shoulder and he is right here in the Red Room. I’m sure the good faith founders of the Red Room would argue that they are not censoring what writers write to one another, but I have no other description for it.
Ivory Madison describes this in another way, which is quite revealing. In her blog comment to you she writes, and I quote, “I’m so glad we have politically independent authors in the Red Room, and I’m so glad we have such polite, intelligent discussions.”
There’s too much sugar on that statement for me. Heaven above help us if we are not well behaved. I find it extraordinary reasoning to think that all writers, even friends, are always going to meet Ivory’s wonderland criteria. What would she and The Censor say or do if we had (say) an exchange between Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell as in their book “A Private Correspondence”? I, for one, would not be interested in reading anything by a writer who always carries on a polite and intelligent discussion.
Which brings me to an exchange, and example of censoring by the Red Room Big Brother. The following is a response written by my writer/editor wife Barbara. She sent this to Peter Coyote, who we do not know, after trying to send something similar to me at my Red Room address. Neither effort made it past the Red Room censor. I think it is self-explanatory, if not self-incriminating.. And I quote:
“I’d like to say that when I read your entry regarding Patry’s novel, I was not aware of her health condition. So, I reacted by agreeing with you about an inert Internet while Bush burns at will -- but I questioned why you would at the same time use the Blog-method of promoting someone‘s novel. It struck me you were not being consistent, but I realize that was because of my own ignorance.
My mistake, apparently, was in not sending my comments to you, but attempting to share them with my husband, Ray A. March (another San Francisco State renegade) and Red Room houseguest. To my surprise and irritation, I discovered my comments to my husband’s blog about your comments were censured and not allowed to appear on my husband’s Red Room page. Apparently, I failed to play by the rules.
The best explanation for this is from the Red Room censor himself, and I quote:
“Dear Ms. March,
I'm writing to explain why we decided not to approve your comment dated
today on Ray A. March's blog post dated January 23, 2008. Red Room's Terms
and Conditions require that all comments be both relevant to the topic of
the post and constructive. Your comment doesn't have a connection to Mr.
March's remarks, and could be read as insulting to Peter Coyote's efforts
to help Red Room author Patry Francis promote her book. Mr. Coyote, along
with hundreds of other authors who blog (including almost one hundred on
Red Room alone), participated in an organized blog day on January 29th in
order to support Ms. Francis, who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of
cancer not long before the paperback release of her debut novel. We helped
organize the blog day, and are grateful to Mr. Coyote and all our authors
for participating.
Thank you for becoming a member of Red Room. I hope you'll read more of
our authors' writing on the site, and comment frequently keeping in mind
the guidelines I've explained.
Best regards,
Huntington W. Sharp
Editor, Homepage & Special Projects, Red Room Omnimedia Corporation
huntingtonsharp@redroom.com “
While I admit my ignorance of both Patry’s condition and Red Room’s e-policies, and I truly pray she will win her fight, I have to strongly object to even the suggested shadow of a Big Brother lurking in some computer room reading for possible censorship all the e-mail/comment exchanges between writers and approving or disapproving them based on a very scary and politically correct policy governing content.
In Ray’s first “blog entry,” he poses the question of the value of so-called blogging. I wonder now, how even something as innocuous as that managed to pass the censor. And, it makes me wonder if your blog entry would have been approved by Mr. Sharp if you had not included your support for Patry’s novel.”
From Barbara March
So, you see Darlene, you have touched on a sensitive nerve -- even though the nerve you were aiming for with the journalist’s needle was a different one then you may have anticipated. If you are reading this, thank Big Brother.