… Words become very important in the power relations between individuals and groups, in the exercise of law and democratic ideals. They help define the other: a member of a group with other religious, racial, gender, or biological affiliations.

A good example is the use of the five-letter English word tribe. The Western media’s analysis of events in Africa reveals the word as the main obstacle in the way of a meaningful illumination of dynamics in modern Africa. Tribe — with its clearly pejorative connotation of the primitive and the premodern — is contrasted with nation, which connotes a more positive sense of arrival at the modern. Every African community is a tribe, and every African a tribesman. We can see the absurdity of the current usages, where thirty million Yorubas are referred to as a tribe, but four million Danes as a nation. A group of 250,000 Icelanders constitutes a nation, while 10 million Ibos make up a tribe. And yet, what’s commonly described as a tribe, when looked at through objective lenses, fulfills all the criteria of shared history, geography, economic life, language, and culture that are used to define a nation. These critical attributes are clearly social and historical, not biological.

So says Kenyan writer, academic, and activist Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his Transition Magazine essay, The Myth of Tribe in African Politics. My own minor quibble: he uses Western rather than the less-popular, but in, my opinion, more accurate Northern (is South America not, geographically-speaking, ‘the west’?). But his essay drops all kinds of knowledge on language, the concomitant rise of racism and colonialism, and our post-colonial perceptions of Africa that are only slightly more evolved.

In many ways this story is far field from our contemporary debates about network management, file sharing, and the perils of protocol discrimination. But the main questions seem to remain the same—to what degree will we let Western Union then and ISPs now pick winners and losers on our communications backbone? And when do government regulations grow so onerous that they discourage network investment and innovation?

These are tough questions, but the horrific problems of the “Victorian Internet” suggest that government overreach isn’t the only thing to fear. In 1876, laissez-faire “freedom for all” meant (in practice) the freedom for Henry Nash Smith to read your telegrams if he didn’t like who you supported for President. It meant freedom for Associated Press to block criticism of Western Union, and even to put potential critics and competitors out of business. And it meant freedom for a scoundrel to hijack the system at his leisure.

From How Robber Barons hijacked the “Victorian Internet”. (Via Mutate → Social Physicist)

We all know too much debt is at the root of the economic crisis. And we’ve seen lots of step-back pieces on the conditions that created the environment for that debt creation—monetary policy, of course, but also the advent of securitization, the credit-default swap, etc.

But we haven’t seen much in the news pages on another 30,000-foot-view reason: The tax code preference for debt over equity. Commentators like Felix Salmon and Steve Waldman have been talking about this for months.

So, uh, why have news companies by and large ignored this? Lots of good links and quotes in that post. Go read.

I ask this question after seeing the screen grab (posted above) of this headline from CNN.com (posted on Friendfeed).

That headline is a rare triple-entendre. There’s the first meaning: “juggling balls” as in “attending ten inaugural balls.” There’s the second reading: “juggling balls” as in “throwing actual balls in the air.” Then there’s the pubescent child’s reading: “balls” as in “testicles.”

I found it giggle-worthy and kind of brilliant, precisely because of its three ways of word play. Then I took a closer at the screen shot. See that little t-shirt icon to the right? Yep. This headline was also available on a t-shirt.

This isn’t a new feature for CNN.com. Headline t-shirts have been available since last spring. One of my coworkers, a CNN.com alumnus, purchased one last fall. I bought one myself after Obama’s election victory.

But that particular headline made me wonder: Are CNN.com’s headline writers trying to write t-shirt worthy headlines? And if so is that a bad thing?

Before I continue, I must add this disclaimer: I AM NOT SAYING THAT CNN.com EDITORS TRY TO WRITE T-SHIRT-WORTHY HEADLINES. I DO NOT KNOW HOW OR WHY SOME HEADLINES ARE CHOSEN AS T-SHIRT OPTIONS, though I certainly would like to. Surprisingly, this is not a frequently asked question.

I’ll also add that when I checked CNN’s headline t-shirt store, this headline was no longer for sale.

People being people, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if headline writers didn’t think — at least some times — “Oh man, this would be teh awesome on a t-shirt!” I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

The point of a good headline, after all, is to sell the story. “Sell” in this sense usually means “entice to read or click.” But good headlines — and by “good” I mean “appropriate in tone, reflective of the story, and either emotionally moving, clever, witty, or humorous” — also have the less obvious goal of selling papers and generating ad impressions.

Though sales (of ads and of copies) in the literal sense may not be top of mind for headline writers, I think it’s less than honest to say that “selling” of some kind isn’t a consideration. That’s precisely why I think it’s okay if the folks at CNN.com strive to write t-shirt worthy headlines.

Web site editors will often write or rewrite headlines to generate page views from readers and search engines. In the online world, good headlines = more page views. More page views = more revenue. Selling headlines on t-shirts just removes a step and makes for a shorter equation.

• Lea Donosky, interactivity manager, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Jeremy C. Garlington, publisher of The Garlington Report
• Greg Lisby, professor of journalism, Georgia State University
• David Rubinger, VP, Corporate Communications, Equifax

This panel will be moderated by Dr. John Knapp, Director of GSU Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility

I encourage all bloggers to go and be vocal about what journalists and businesspeople do and (sadly) don’t get about online.