Excuse me, but antelope are not deer, thank you very much. There’s a reason the lyric is “where the deer and the antelope play”, not “where the deer and the deer play”.
Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
Nits. Picked.
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012Random notes: March 30, 2012.
Friday, March 30th, 2012I don’t mind eels
And the way they feels.
—Ogden Nash
(One of our local restaurants has a poster of that poem hanging in the men’s room, which I’ve always found kind of odd. Personally, I’m very fond of eel sushi, and would be very happy to try elvers.)
Obit watch: Harry Crews. (NYT. A/V Club.) I haven’t read any of his work, though I had heard of him. With descriptions like “the unofficial poet laureate of bare-knuckled, white-trash culture” and “a world of hard-drinking, punch-throwing, snake-oil-selling characters whose physical, mental, social and sexual deviations render them somehow entirely normal and eminently sympathetic”, I may have to give the man a try. He almost sounds like a mainstream version of Charles Willeford.
The HouChron has apparently fired society writer Sarah Tressler for the grievous crime of…being a stripper in her spare time.
You know, I’m kind of in agreement with that. Really, what was the point, Houston Press? Page views for your dying alt-weekly?
Setting that to one side for the moment, the HouChron hasn’t had good luck with society writers recently; Douglas Britt, who covered both society and art for the paper, left after he basically went crazy (or was driven crazy by the Art Guys).
Question for the huddled masses: what is the point of having a “society” reporter any longer? I know it sounds kind of class-warfare-ish, but it seems to me that “society” is basically code for “an in-group of rich people who get together and admire each other, and occasionally raise money for their favored charities”. What is the point of continuing to give news coverage to these people? If an event is newsworthy, such as an art opening, let the writers on that beat (art, music, etc.) cover it. Why assign a writer to basically stroke the egos of the “beautiful” people?
Final note: the gun blogger who went by “Newbius” passed away suddenly this week. He wasn’t somebody I knew at all; our paths never crossed (I wish they had), though I did hear him a few times on Vicious Circle. By all accounts, he was a good man, and shall be missed. Jay G. is posting tributes here.
Random notes: March 19, 2012.
Monday, March 19th, 2012The “This American Life” retraction episode went up Friday night. You can download it or read the transcript here.
I listened to the whole thing over the weekend, and frankly I recommend listening rather than (or in addition to) reading the transcript. The transcript does not convey just how Mike Daisey comes across in Ira Glass’s discussion with him:
The Retraction episode of This American Life contains the most excruciating dead air I’ve ever heard.
— Matthew Baldwin (@matthewbaldwin) March 17, 2012
One thing that bothered me about this episode, though (and both Lawrence and Matthew Baldwin have made this same point).
Ira Glass says, “At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” when they found out that Daisey couldn’t (or wouldn’t) give them contact information for his interpreter.
Glass goes on to say “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”
That’s not good enough. Someone should have been there and asked Glass: “Why didn’t you kill the story at that point? What were your reasons for going on with it? If you felt like it was an important enough story to run with, what were your reasons for going with Daisey, rather than someone like Rob Schmitz or the NYT reporters you spoke with?”
Yankees fan (well, nobody’s perfect) John Gruber has been all over the story since it broke on Friday as well. I’d suggest just going over to Daring Fireball and scrolling down from the top, clicking on whatever Daisey links interest you.
In non-Daisey related news: I gave up on Slate a few months ago. I felt like it had reached the point Salon came to quite a while back (when I gave up on them): saying outrageous and stupid things just to get page views, increasingly dumb writing (“Dear Prudence” in particular seems to have gone nucking futs), and generally not worth the time and effort involved in paying any attention to it.
However, I did see some good word of mouth on one Slate article recently, so I decided to click over. I’m happy that I did, as I can enthusiastically recommend Annie Lowrey’s “Where’s _why?”, a long article that simultaneously covers three things:
- the culture surrounding the Ruby programming language (with a good explanation of what Ruby and Ruby on Rails are, and why they matter)
- the author’s attempts to learn programming using Ruby as her first language
- and the mystery of what happened to “Why the Lucky Stiff” a beloved figure in Ruby culture.
This week in journalism fraud.
Friday, March 16th, 2012One great story that is just now breaking, and one sad story.
The great story: remember that “This American Life” episode about Apple’s factories in China? Aired back in January, I think? “#454: Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory
More:
Excerpts are from the press release attached to the story on Jimbo’s website: the TAL website is currently inaccessible (it looks to me like they’re getting hammered).
Mike Daisey has a statement on his website, which is accessible:
ETA 3/16 1:53 PM: TAL website seems to be accessible now.
ETA 3/16 2:05 PM: Selected shorts:
The sad story, also by way of Jimbo: You may have seen the first part of this story earlier in the week. I didn’t cover it because it was well linked everywhere. Briefly, editorial editor Bob Caldwell of the Portland Oregonian died over the weekend. After some initial confusion, it came out that he hadn’t been found dead of a heart attack in his parked car, but had passed away while engaged in a sex act with a 23-year-old woman.
That’s sad, but not the sad part I want to talk about. The initial information (that he’d been found dead in a parked car) was provided by a friend of the family who also worked for the Oregonian. That friend has been fired.
I understand both sides here. From editor Peter Bhatia’s summary of what went wrong:
But I understand the fired editor’s position, too. In a moment of grief and weakness, she chose to try to shield the family from the pain that would be caused by the circumstances of her friend’s death becoming public. I think she was wrong. I think she shouldn’t have lied. But I also think the paper could have had some compassion and sympathy for the position their editor was placed in: a one or two week unpaid suspension seems more reasonable to me. It may be that I’m a wimp. It may be that I’m not a serious journalist. But I feel a great deal of compassion for the fired editor, even though I think she made a mistake.
Another go around at the rodeo.
Friday, March 2nd, 2012The HouChron is running a second story on rodeo food, complete with (Warning! Slideshow!) a 90-slide slideshow (Warning! Slideshow!) of various offerings. The slideshow in the previous rodeo food article appears to have been updated, so both articles point to the same photos.
The hook for this article is the “2012 Goldie Buckle Foodie Awards”. The fried red velvet cake sounds interesting, as does the banana split funnel cake. I don’t see any photos of the fried Kool-Aid, sauerkraut hush puppies, or fried Fruty Pebbles, and that’s probably just as well; I’m having dinner at Cajun Pizza Place tonight and would prefer to keep my appetite.
Stuff. And things.
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012Obit watch: noted British SF author John Christopher.
Here’s the latest I’ve been able to find in the HouChron on the Rangers/FBI/Harris County DA. It doesn’t add a whole lot to what was reported yesterday, alas.
Paul Farhi in the WP writes about press coverage of the Lance Armstrong probe, including his own paper’s coverage.
Weer’d beat me to this one, but: carry your damn guns, people.
The snakes try to get there around 3:30 in the afternoon…
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012People having too much fun with headlines:
1. “Burmese pythons turn Everglades into a buffet”. There’s also an interesting FARK thread based on a similar article from another source.
(As everyone who has a senior citizen in the family knows, you try to get to the buffet around 3:30 so you can pay the lunch price, but still get the stuff they put out for dinner starting around 4 PM.)
Edited to add: In the same vein, this Reason “Hit and Run” entry, which links to this Jonah Goldberg piece:
2. “USAF’s Big Penetrator Needs to Be Harder”. (Hattip: Shall Not Be Questioned.)
Making it harder sounds like a good thing, but perhaps they also need to add more thrust. Maybe a rocket assist?
TMQ watch update.
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011Mike the Musicologist pinged me while I was at dinner, and we had a pleasant conversation about a couple of items in this week’s TMQ watch.
Unfortunately, this conversation took place through text messages, which means that we had limited space to discuss our views. (MtM: “What?! There’s thoughts that can’t be contained in a tweet?! My world is shattered.”)
(There may have been some sarcasm there.)
(Also, I am starting to think that MtM is the Random Eddie to my TJIC. Except with fewer burritos, because he doesn’t come up here often enough.)
Anyway, point 1: MtM questions the “ever since” in “there’s no good New York style deli in Austin, ever since Katz’s closed”. I say: I never had a bad meal at Katz’s. MtM says: he did, where “bad” = “did not stay down”. I say: Yeah, I can understand your position. Meals that do not stay down generally put me off a restaurant for life. Also, it is probably fair to say “New York style”: Katz’s probably wasn’t a true NY deli, but more like a close approximation for Austin. (I say “probably” because I haven’t been to NYC in 20 years, and didn’t eat in any delis while I was there.)
Point the second: MtM argues that Easterbrook, in his “Golden Age of News” item, confuses “access” (or arguably “quantity”) with “quality”. Just because we have more access to news, is that a good thing, when “news” consists of “who won this year’s glorified karaoke competition”?
I think this is a fair point to bring up, but at the same time it raises some slippery questions. Was the New York Times of 1933 a higher quality newspaper than the NYT of 1958? Was the NYT of 1958 a better paper than the NYT of 2003? How do you judge the quality of a newspaper in an objective fashion?
I wouldn’t be so quick to say “Well, the people of 1933/1958 were much less obsessed with trivia like sports and entertainment than the people of today.” Are you sure of that? There was certainly a market for Confidential magazine, to take one example. How much difference do you think there is between the old Confidential and TMZ? Even if you want to go back to the 1930s, try reading Only Yesterday and Since Yesterday: one of the big things I took away from both books is that the people of the 1920s and 1930s were just as obsessed with the things we consider “trivial” today as we are now. The difference is, other than contemporary observers like Fredrick Lewis Allen who were writing things down as they happened, most folks have forgotten the trivia.
I’m rambling a bit here. I bring this up because I think it might provoke a worthwhile discussion, and MtM doesn’t really like posting in my comments section. So have at it, folks.
Who is killing the newspaper editors of Texas?
Friday, September 23rd, 2011Well, not killing, exactly. But Lawrence pointed out to me a few days ago that there’s a trend…
First, Christopher Lopez quit as editor of the El Paso Times after close to three years on the job.
Next, Fred Zipp quit the Statesman after eight years as editor.
And finally, Robert Rivard quit the San Antonio Express News after 14 years as editor.
I don’t quite know what to make of this. I don’t follow either the El Paso or San Antonio papers regularly, but I know Zipp presided over a large buyout of Statesman staff before resigning. (I also know the paper was up for sale at one point, but the owners didn’t get any offers that they liked.)
(Hattip other than Lawrence: TSFKA “Romenesko’s MediaNews”.)
Edited to add 9/25/2011: Things just got even more interesting. Brett Thacker, who was apparently the second-in-command at the Express-News, is also leaving. And two of the paper’s top columnists also resigned. The South Texas Pistolero has a very good post up over at his site covering these developments; I commend it to your attention.
As a small side note…
Monday, August 1st, 2011…to the previous post:
American McCarver: absolutely no mention of Hideki Irabu. Mike Monterio did find time to reblog an old article about Andre the Giant from Modern Drunkard.
Grantland, the heavily hyped Bill Simmons led ESPN spinoff: absolutely no mention of Hideki Irabu. Wright Thompson did find time to write about the death of William Faulkner’s niece, and Jay Caspian Kang found time to write about Amy Winehouse. (Edited to add: to be fair, Kang’s piece was published before Irabu’s death.)
Right Field, the National Review Online spin-off sports blog: absolutely no mention of Hideki Irabu.
You would think someone would acknowledge, even if just in passing, the suicide of a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees at the relatively young age of 42.
Today in journalism fraud.
Wednesday, July 27th, 2011I missed this last week: the Seattle Weekly published a story by freelance writer Rick Swart, alleging that crime writer Ann Rule misrepresented facts in her book Heart Full of Lies: A True Story of Desire and Death
Yeah. Well, I’m glad that story didn’t come to my attention until today, because it turns out things are more complicated than that. To start with, Rick Swart is engaged to Liysa Northon, the woman at the center of the case. (Ms. Northon was convicted of killing her husband, Chris Northon. Ms. Northon pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter, and received a 12-year sentence.)
Not only did Mr. Swart not divulge this relationship to the editors of the Seattle Weekly, he argues that he wasn’t under any obligation to.
What makes this particularly offensive is that Mr. Swart is an experienced journalist; you would expect both that he would know better, and that he wouldn’t have this kind of arrogant attitude. Apparently not.
(Hat tip on this to The Rap Sheet.)
A tip of the hat.
Friday, July 22nd, 2011By way of Jimbo, we’ve learned that Vincent A. Musetto has retired after 40 years at the New York Post.
Mr. Musetto was the Post film editor when he retired. But he is most famous for a headline he composed in 1982 1983. That’s right, Mr. Musetto is the man who came up with this:
As noted in the linked article, Mr. Musetto’s personal favorite of his headlines was “Granny Executed in Her Pink Pajamas”.
We wish Mr. Musetto a happy retirement, and all the best in any future endeavors he embarks upon.
Edited to add: P.S.: The happy decapitator, Charles Dingle, is apparently still in prison. Mr. Dingle denies any involvement in the rape/robbery/beheading spree for which he was convicted.
Hiliarty ensues.
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011Remember the “Gay Girl in Damascus” story we linked on Sunday?
If you clicked through to the WP link, you may have noticed, but not thought much about, the mention of Paula Brooks, editor of “Lez Get Real”, a lesbian news Web site based in Washington.
You probably see the punchline coming at this point, but we have to carry on.
“Paula Brooks” is actually a 58-year-old male construction worker from Ohio.
We’re kind of wondering if the WP is going to make outing lesbian bloggers who aren’t lesbians (or female) a trend, or if this was just, as “Paula Brooks” puts it, “a major sock-puppet hoax crash into a major sock-puppet hoax”. We kind of hope for the former, as it provides more entertainment than the WP‘s gun coverage.
“Hey! Watch it! You’re getting blood on my application!”
Monday, April 18th, 2011The Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced.
I don’t have much to say:
- I’m pleased that the LAT got a nod for their Bell coverage.
- I’m slightly sad that the LAT‘s nod came at the expense of Alan Schwarz’s coverage of football and concussions.
- I’m delighted that the WP didn’t even get a finalist nod for any of the “Hidden Lives of Guns” stories.
Other than than, meh.
Edited to add: Speaking of journalism, I know I haven’t been on the Greg Mortenson/”Three Cups of Tea” thing. I figure when the story makes 60 Minutes, there’s really nothing more I can add to it, at least for now.
“Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.”
Friday, January 28th, 2011I have a friend who hates blogs.
(That’s not the only thing he hates. Lawrence and I have been discussing the construction of a sentence designed to make his head explode. So far, we’ve got “Prominent blogger Cory Doctrow really likes Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, especially since he released it under a Creative Commons license without DRM.” I think we’re almost there, but we need to work “Rob Enderle” in somehow.)
I don’t want to go into all the reasons my friend hates blogs; I’m not even sure he knows all the reasons himself, or that his reasons are even rational. But one of his major complaints is that blogs don’t do any original reporting; they just link to other people’s work. His question is, “What will the blogs do when they kill off the newspapers, as they keep saying they want to do?”
This certainly is true of some blogs, of course. I’ve pointed out the existence of counter-examples, such as Michael Yon, but my friend really isn’t interested in Yon’s reporting; and, to some extent, his attitude is “If I’m not interested in it, it doesn’t exist, or isn’t worthy of consideration.”
(I know this makes my friend sound like a jerk. He’s really not; he’s a good guy who I’ve known since Jesus was a 2nd lieutenant. He just has very strong opinions.)
I come down more on the side of Clay Shirky. The title quote is from his excellent essay, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable“, about the possible demise of the newspaper and what it means for society. Yes, there may not be many blogs doing original reporting right now, and it is legitimate to wonder what will happen to them when the last newspaper reporter is strangled with the entrails of the last newspaper editor, but…
When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
Haiti started me thinking some more about what Shirky says here. (Yes, I’ve been working on this post for a long time.) It seems clear that we needed boots on the ground to cover that situation. Those boots needed infrastructure; they needed food and water and communications and power and security and living quarters. In a chaotic environment like Haiti, those things are nearly impossible to provide without a substantial investment of money.
Who has the resources to provide that? The NYT, the WP, the WSJ, and the TV networks. Who doesn’t have the resources to provide that? Individual bloggers.
And now Egypt is burning, and the Internet is cut off.
I think it’s very easy for Shirky to say that people who want to know “what’s next?” want to be lied to. But maybe that’s not the case. Maybe the people who want to know “what’s next?” think Haiti and Egypt and the next crisis after that are too important to be left to chance.
(Note: I’ve been working on this entry for a long, long time, and I’m still not 100% happy with the way it hangs together. But it seems like the the time to post is now, and I’m not sure picking at it much longer is going to make it any better.)