Posts

Showing posts from August, 2007

Google Special Comments

Image
T here has been a fair amount of discussion about Google's new news experiment by which they will publish comments on stories they aggregate from "those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question." The chatter has mostly been about Google's criteria: whether it is undermining journalism and/or giving a PR gift to disgruntled subjects. But I haven't seen any discussion of what I'd say is the fundamental issue: Does Google know what it is getting into? I agree with those who say that in not going far enough with the initiative -- open it up to everyone -- Google is choosing to empower a class that is already empowered, and which journalism exists to check. But why curtail comments and create a clunky infrastructure for authenticating "legitimate" comments that only seems to invite charges of favoritism? Does Google really want to take a position on publishing or not publishing pushback from entities which have not

Denial is a River in Vietnam

Image
E ven if there weren't so few platitudes left in the White House manual to engulf and devour public opinion on the Iraq War, a comparison -- any comparison -- by President Bush to Vietnam would seem loopy. Especially since Bush himself rejected that comparison not so long ago. Especially since books about the Vietnam War have titles like " The Making of a Quagmire ." Especially since, in a mere couple of generations, the country from which we cut and ran and left to be overrun by our enemy has emerged as a stable nation and trusted trading partner. Especially since when we stopped fighting over there the only people who followed us here were peace-seeking war refugees who have coalesced into one of the most quickly assimilated ethnic groups in this nation's history. Especially since someone so well versed in history might be expected not to start a war that could be compared to Vietnam. There is nothing left except desperate, mangled Vietnam War history lessons and h

Fear vs. Hope

Image
Times Square Hustle & Bustle, 2005 Y ou can't dismiss fear out of hand, because bad things do happen. I think New York Mayor Bloomberg has it exactly right: he quantifies terror threats to more common disasters and tells people to get over it. It's real, but get real, according to "I'm not a candidate" Mike. I also happen to think that Obama did make a genuine bad mistake in the uTube debate by saying he'd be willing to meet without precondition with a host of America adversaries. He fell into a trap, period. Does that disqualify him? No. But it is a demerit. On Pakistan, Obama wasn't bold, and was foolish. We all expect, no matter what our political stripe, that the president will do anything to protect us (including torturing people). Who has ever been impeached for propping up a dictator -- or taking down an elected Commie? And as Biden has pointed out, the president has the explicit authority to do what Obama threatened. But floating the balloon ha

The Incredible Shrinking New York Times

Image
T he New York Times, starting with today's edition, has slashed 1-1/2 inches from the width of the paper "to the national newspaper 12-inch standard," it says on a front-page box. The move save on newsprint and "in some printing press locations, makes special configurations unnecessary." The paper has retained a six-col layout and the cramped feeling of narrower columns is felt immediately; it seems as though their width is about the same as when the paper was 8-col. Fewer Letters Fit To Print The change appears most dramatic on the editorial page: editorials are the same width, which means that letters to the editor have lost an entire column. A special explanation is made here: "As you can plainly see, the available space for letters has been reduced by about one-third. There's no question that the smaller paper is easier to wield, though I suspect that the ancient technique of folding opened pages in half and reading it in quarters -- the better to t

The Citizen Journalist Arrives in Full

Image
R emember the name Mark LaCroix. Lacroix, a guy who lives in Minneapolis, carried CNN and blew away local coverage for the first crucial 20 minutes of today's collapsed bridge story , proving compelling, articulate live accounts after sending about five pictures of the destroyed span -- about what a pro's first dump would be. He even had the presence of mind to send CNN a filer, only a week old, of the intact bridge. CNN's producers didn't think to immediately make use of that image until LaCroix mentioned it in passing to a surprised Wolf Blitzer, who asked on the air that it be broadcast immediately. Because of LaCroix, CNN's coverage was superior to that of their local affiliate, whose on-air anchors were reduced to time-killing babble over the ambiguous video of a fixed-position (likely security) camera somewhere off in the distance, which did not even cleraly show the collapse as well as it did a nearby intact span. LaCroix's work is on the CNN online story