July 2, 2008No wonder he's smiling
Amazingly, Rush has proven every bit as valuable in the marketplace as he thinks he is. I'm not a Dittohead by any means, but I find Rush's bluster entertaining in very small doses. I think he's a serious conservative, but I think all the stuff about "talent on loan from God" is meant as comedy. I think. I mean, these quotes from one of his first books could not be the words of someone taking himself seriously: "People respond to what I say because it is right. My wit and wisdom are like a lifeline of reason tossed to a culture nearly drowning in confusion and murkiness. No wonder more people are clinging to my hopeful and incisive words every day." "Like everything I touch, this book is on the cutting edge of societal evolution. It is loaded with insight, brimming with profundity. It sets the agenda for conservative thought through the remainder of what historians will someday refer to as the Era of Limbaugh." Could they? Of course, the joke may end up being that he was taken seriously by everyone else. July 1, 2008This is a new oneOver at Raising Kaine, they're accusing The Roanoke Times of having a pro-McCain bias because we ran an Associated Press article on Page One about a former captor from McCain's days as a POW saying he'd vote for him for president. The funny thing is, a letter writer used the exact same article to accuse us of an anti-McCain bias (the letter hasn't been published yet) because the captor also said McCain made up claims of being tortured in order to win votes. June 19, 2008Who hired this guy?So it turns out the "chief innovation officer" for one of the major newspaper chains in the nation didn't realize that newspaper reporters actually go to the places they're covering to report the news. That, at least, is the gist of a memo by Lee Abrams, who holds that title for Tribune Media Co., published by Romenesko. Abrams wrote: I met a reporter who spent 4 years in Baghdad. Dodging bullets...staying in Hotels protected by the Marines. Yet, I'll bet NO-one outside of the building knew this person was risking their life in Iraq to get YOU the news. If it were CNN, you'd see rockets and RPG's in the background as the reporter ducks shrapnel. In the paper, it's usually a small byline. Hell, papers should have photos of the reporter with Iraqi kids...be writing diaries. Before I joined Tribune, I had NO idea that reporters were around the globe reporting the news...Because the paper "assumed" I knew. Then I saw an article on Broadway shows. Again a small byline with no mention of "Reporting from New York". These are assumptions that are shooting ourselves in the foot. People DON'T know that you have REAL people exclusively reporting, because we ASSUME they do. My question? How many REAL reporters could Tribune hire if they weren't wasting money on this guy's salary? May 20, 2008Toward better television newsThe New Yorker has a piece on Katie Couric's imminent departure from CBS News. I haven't bothered with network (or cable news, for that matter) for a very long time, so I read over most of the article. But I was struck by a suggestion by the writer, Nancy Franklin:
I hope my conservative friends aren't put off by the Michael Moore reference (Moore's hardly my favorite leftist provocateur; I think he tends to play nearly as fast and loose with the facts as those he criticizes). But the notion that television news ought to expose public officials for not telling the truth shouldn't be revolutionary. Once upon a time, that was one of the media's main jobs, or so I thought. Citizens shouldn't have to go to a comedy show to see blatant lies by the president or vice president - or by the Speaker of the House or any other elected official) exposed. April 17, 2008An embarrassing performance"In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia." -- Greg Mitchell, author of "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq." Wednesday's Democratic debate moderators ignored serious policy issues such as the occupation of Iraq, health care reform and the economy for the first 50 minutes. March 27, 2008The young don't just read news, they pass it onThe New York Times has an interesting story about young news readers, and how they serve as both consumers and conduits of interesting stories: According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one. March 26, 2008Anonymous speech onlineAn interesting article looking at blogs and online posts from a legal perspective. Should bloggers and other online material incorporate more accountability? What about in light of the controversy over the gossip website juicycampus.com? March 17, 2008UVa's student newspaper censors for christMaybe it's the annual turnover of staff, but the editors at the Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Virginia, seem to have forgotten what happened last year. Once again, the paper is under fire for running a couple of comic strips that Christians deemed offensive to their faith. The editors pulled them from their Web site over the weekend and issued an apology. Self-censorship of unpopular ideas isn't the lesson the editors of tomorrow should be learning. See the comics for yourself on this blog. How far must a newspaper go to satisfy religious righteousness? Those who criticized zealots for condemning Danish comics that portrayed Muhammad are oddly quiet now. Granted this one didn't involve violence and public death threats, but the cause of censorship is hardly the ideal on which America was founded. March 14, 2008Newspapers and profitsFrom FollowTheMedia.com: Frank Bennack Jr., immediate past president of Hearst for some 23 years and now board vice chairman, told a California audience this week it’s about time newspaper publishers got real and understood print margins will never again see 30% plus and it’s time for publishers to accept new lower goals. And by coincidence it was a similar message this week, too, from Rupert Murdoch in a presentation he made in New York. The message from both seemed to be that severe newsroom cutting will come back to haunt publishers. “If newspapers don’t cover the news and do it with detail and context, someone else will,” Bennack warned his audience at the 40th annual Hays-Press Enterprise Lecture sponsored by the University of California Riverside. March 10, 2008Tucker Carlson and the state of America mediaTucker Carlson, whose MSNBC show was recently canceled because so few people watch it, recently scolded a Scottish reporter who didn't allow an Obama adviser to take her comment that Hillary Clinton is a "monster" off the record after the fact. The reporter's reply, quoted at length here, is classic: "If this is the first time that candid remarks have been published about what one campaign team thinks of the other candidate, then I would argue that your journalists aren't doing a very good job of getting to the truth." Amen. This episode reminds me of Jon Stewart's blistering critique of the kind of journalism Carlson engages in when Stewart appeared on Crossfire: I have to agree with Stewart's rude but accurate assessment of Carlson, whichcame after Carlson said Stewart was funnier on his own show: "You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a d**k on your show as you are on any show." |
.....Advertisement.....
|
...Advertisement...
...Advertisement...
Rush Limbaugh just signed 
