On January 11, the day of the massive march that followed the terrorist attacks, news networks set up shop on Place de la République, the square whose central statue became one of the unofficial memorials for the attacks. CNN was among those networks. Visiting the square in the evening as the crowd dispersed, I come across the space from where Christian Amanpour and a cohort were reporting.
My mother had been watching CNN the past few days, and she occasionally called me (or not) following the initial attack on Charlie Hebdo. So I called her from the square to ask if she was watching just then because if so she would see me standing next to Amanpour. Instead she was making Farina. “Just a minute,” she said. She switched off the stove and turned on the TV.
“OK,” she said, “I’m on CNN. They’re showing Natanyahu in a synagogue in Paris. You don’t go to synagogue now, do you?”
In front of Amanpour and her cohort (and in front of me) were a large news camera and a cameraman while slightly to the left a small screen showed what was on CNN at that moment. It showed Israeli Prime Minister Natanyahu at the Grand Synagogue in Paris.
“No,” I said. “Wait and you’ll see them cut back to Amanpour and the square where I am.”
In a moment CNN was back on the square. I could see Amanpour and her cohort on the screen. Amanpour began speaking.
“I can see her now,” my mother said. “She’s with what’s his name.”
“Can you see me behind them?”
“I see a black fellow. I haven’t seen you for a while but you aren’t black now, are you?”
Indeed, there was a black fellow standing behind to Amanpour and it wasn’t me. Amanpour and her cohort were on a slightly raised platform so one had to be directly behind the reporters and taller than me in order to be seen on the screen. I was to the side.
I moved closer to the action and raised my hand. I said to my mother, “Can you see my hand?”
“Are you wearing a black glove?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can see you. Can you do better?”
“No, they’re too high up, with people right behind them.”
The screen cut then back to Natanyahu in the synagogue.
My mother said, “That’s nice, Gary, but I can’t go around telling people that my son’s hand was on CNN.”
* * *
Over the next few days I received e-mails from relatives saying, “I hear your hand was on CNN.”
I checked the site stats for France Revisited that week, not to see the effect of my hand coup but to see if my recent posts about the attacks and their aftermath had had an effect on the number of visitors. There had indeed been a slight increase. There was naturally a lot of clicking on France titles during that period, whether revisited or not.
I didn’t return to the stats for a while because when you operate a website such as this checking site stats is like weighing yourself: you’re tempted to do it every day but doing so is unhealthy because basically you either feel good about yourself or you don’t.
I was in the U.S. in February giving lectures, visiting family and showing my mother that I had become neither black nor religious. Upon my return to Paris in early March I wanted to see if my little lecture tour and the surrounding publicity had had an effect on the number of visitors to France Revisited. I’d hoped to find a small increase for the month but what I saw was a tsunami. On one day alone in February the site had received 3.8 million hits. I figured that could only mean cyber attack. But examining the statistics further I saw that that it had in fact been direct human activity—if you can call those who willingly click on thousands of links a day human. Those hit had come thanks to a “redditor” who suggested to reddit.com readers that they might be interested in an interview I’d conducted with the author of a book-in-progress about Quentin Roosevelt. As a collateral reward, money poured in from readers clicking on Google-operated ad banners on the site (see them?). Within two days the number of hits and ad clicks had returned to their more usual happy-go-luck levels, levels that are nothing to scoff at but which, in view of the Reddit spike, made the graphs for February look like an EKG showing one final heartbeat before death.
Neverthless, In March I got another albeit softer heartbeat from Reddit along with tremors from a few others sources, and a major communications agency was interested in purchasing a photograph I’d taken.
I used to think that every little bit helps, but was beginning to think to hell with little bits I want major recognition.
* * *
Last week, more than three months after my hand appeared on CNN, I received a message from The New York Times bearing the subject heading “NYT Travel: ‘The Europe Issue.’” It was a personally addressed message that began “Hi Gary.” Scrolling to the signature I saw that it was from The Times’s communications manager.
Recognition, I thought, it’s arrived. I was flattered. I imagined that I was being contacted as a leading American expert on travel in France to provide an insightful quote for an upcoming article. I was on a roll.
I then read the message in full and discovered that I wasn’t being asked for a quote but for something possibly even more flattering. The communications manager wasn’t contacting me because of my personal expertise, but, better yet, because I’m the editor of an award-winning online travel magazine.
Well, he didn’t exactly write “award-winning” in his message, but why else would he be writing to ask for my assistance in publicizing The Times’s then upcoming (April 19th) “Europe Issue”?
Well, he wasn’t exactly “asking” either. But he concluded his description of “The Europe Issue” by saying “If you’d like to embed the 36 Hours video in any coverage, the code is below,” and that’s nearly the same as asking me to publicize The New York Times’s coverage of my backyard, just without a question mark. It’s a bit passive-aggressive but there you have it.
It’s like the time a celebrity smiled at me at a cocktail party. I thought there might be some personal connection going on until I realized that she was smiled at me because I had a bottle of champagne in my hand and she wanted me to pour her some without having to ask, since asking would be a form of subservience with possible answers including “No” or “It’ll cost you” or “Yes, if you’ll sleep with me.”
Since the communications manager didn’t put a question mark in his message I was unable to respond with any of those possible answers.
I hesitated, unsure if embedding with the NY Times would set a bad precedent for France Revisited. I wouldn’t want us to get a reputation as an easy web magazine willing to embed with just anyone simply because they’ve created a slick video about Paris with a few attractive clichés and some come-hither quotes and images. Next thing you know the Wall Street Journal and Condé Nast Traveler will be asking to embed with our savvy readers and experienced travelers, the kind they can only dream of reaching without my assistance.
Nevertheless, aware that every little bit does help, I’ve decided to give The Times the visibility they crave. I by no means endorse what’s in this video, and I suppose I should add the disclaimer that a friend of mine appears in it.
Now that I’ve had my hand on CNN and gotten embed with The New York Times, I am reminded of what I was thinking as I filled the celebrity’s glass of champagne: a relationship’s got to start somewhere, right?
Gary Lee Kraut, April 20, 2015
tres rigolo