Journal of Murketing Email: What is it?

Posted by Rob Walker on April 11, 2008
Posted Under: rw

Before this site existed, I used to do an occasional email newsletter called The Journal of Murketing. It ran on no particular schedule, and usually included a short essay of some kind. Then I stopped.

Then I started this site. Then I started a second version of the Journal of Murketing email. It’s not much like the first one. The current version is weekly, and the main point is to distribute a link to Consumed, plus some other stuff. (Frequent typos, for instance.) The essayish material is far more rare, because I have this site, but it still happens from time to time, if I have something to say that for whatever reason I don’t want to say here.

I bring all this up partly to answer some questions related to early copies of Buying In: Random House generously provided advance galleys to a number of Journal of Murketing email subscribers who weighed in when I asked readers about the book’s title. (Also to answer the question posed in the headline, since the signup form in the right-hand column offers (almost) no explanation.) There are no plans that I’m aware of to give away any more copies through that channel, but if you are curious about email, I’ve put an approximate re-creation of a sample “issue,” last week’s, after the jump:

Opening theme: “Fauxhemians,” by Sonic Youth

[ 1. ] Consumed

BATTLE CRIES:
How one veteran tries to use entertainment to to convey the war experience

If you’ve seen the polls tracking American interest in the war in Iraq, you already know: If the war were a TV show, it would be cancelled.

The war, of course, is not a form of entertainment. And the apparent loss of interest is a source of frustration to current and former military personnel. One man has found a way to convert that frustration into something positive — a form of entertainment: In 2006 he founded To the Fallen Records, which has since released three compilations of songs made mostly by current military personnel or recent veterans.

Read the column in the April 6, 2008, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.

Consumed archive is here, and FAQ is here. Consumed Facebook page is here.

[ 2. ] Murketing.com

— Art, commerce, and human psychology: How to raise prices even when you’re selling garbage. Literally.

— You are invited to peruse Murketing.

[ 3. ] Elsewhere: Facebook’s Trojan Horse: “For-profit companies want to place value on our friendships and our associations with their products. They want to profit from them. Without paying us for our labor.” In the comments, Anne Elizabeth Moore and Steve Lambert offer a total of $500 and a three-foot-long check to a murketing pro if he will quit his job. Also: He declines.

— You are invited to peruse Murketing’s Del.icio.us links.

[ 4. ] Just Looking:

By Grant Hamilton, via Josh Spear.