The New York Times has an interesting article about the “news weekly” (think Time, Newsweek, Economist, etc). As with most printed news sources they are finding themselves changing… not failing mind you, but changing (in fact Time made a huge profit last year). They mention that these magazines offer more opinion than news and that is where their success is, but that doesn’t really fit entirely with my impression of them. I’d love to find more analysis of these publication’s supposed success actually.
Nonetheless, what really catches my eye is that Newsweek is starting to hint that they want to compete more with The Economist instead of mirroring every cover and every story Time publishes. This news doesn’t convince me to become a Newsweek subscriber by any means but it makes me wonder if we are going to enter into a new phase of wanting “harder” news. Perhaps the exit of the Bush style of “just keep shopping and we’ll be OK” has been driven into the ground? I certainly hope so. Further, it seems to me that if this is the case and we are entering into a new phase of what we want from our publishers, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope for newspapers.
The financial crisis is a tough one. Its so hard to wrap one’s head around it. I can understand any news organization having a hard time with explaining to their audiences exactly what the hell is going on. But it is interesting to me that there has been very little coverage on two points.
First is that our Federal Reserve has been dishing out loans to other National Banks around the globe to the running total (so far) of $600Billion+. It took me a while searching Google News to even find a direct note that the money was going to foreign banks :
Meanwhile, the Fed has been furiously pumping liquidity into the global banking system, extending massive amounts of credit to U.S. institutions and sharply increasing the so-called swap lines with foreign central banks to $630 billion. These provide dollars to foreign banks that desperately need them.
Think about that. It took almost two weeks and $150billion in extra pork to get enough votes to get congress to approve giving $700billion to US banks. Please, please nobody tell Sarah Palin that we are currently handing out cash to more foreigners!
The second item that is missing on the 24 channels is what’s going on in the EU. This World financial crisis is the first real one the EU has had to deal with and as such is a real test to the unification. Recently Ireland decided that it was going to insure its banks during this crisis and for future transactions. This announcement sent loads of cash into the Irish banks… out of other European ones. This morning Germany started to hint at a similar deal for its banks.
So all of a sudden these countries are making these protections but they are not consulting their EU partners to ensure that the moves protect the Union. Of course the US media doesn’t really care too much about this, but up until this morning I had not seen much on it anywhere. Today, however, the BBC did a good job questioning the unity.
I guess my point is that this crisis is truly global even if the cable news hides that. What’s truly scary is the further missing news relating to the smaller national banks from smaller countries. Especially those countries who have their own currencies but depend on US Dollars for all of their trading. The crisis is certainly hitting them now, but it is bound to ravage them in the future. As my neighbor Adam and I discussed over dinner last night, when those countries banks fail people literally starve to death.
Holy crap! I have a blog??
Ever since twitter came along (to me) I’ve been writing in 140 characters. Makes for lame blog posts. Oh yeah… there was also those weeks where my gall bladder went renegade, doubling me over in pain, and then the removal of said gall bladder. That kinda took me out of every action.
Last night’s VP debate gave me that itch again though. I think it was when my friend Shannon somehow transcribed this line from Sarah Palin when asked about Iran & Pakistan:
Nu-cu-ler is the be-all end-all of too many people, too many parts of our planet.
I could have heard it 100 times and still not been able to write it down – it confuses my weak brain far too much to even record. Good job Shannon.
So here’s the deal. Our debate process is very broken. We don’t watch debates for debating, we watch it to measure the perceived performance of each candidate. Sure, occasionally a candidate will spill some policy (thanks Joe) but mostly they are just being judged on what we expect as the worst from them.
Today the headlines and articles are all about the fact that Palin didn’t drop any amazing bombshells of idiocy and Biden didn’t take a giant crap on the stage and call it John McCain while using the N word and pissing on a flag. Were it a smarter world I would think that there would be some real analysis of what the candidates said in terms of shedding light on their policies and if the journalist wants more sensationalism they could do some fact checking on things like what the Commander of forces in Afghanistan really said (hint: Palin got it wrong.)
But I guess that’s just not who we are. A shame really.
Hang on… I thought it was the “Liberal Media”
I am sure I have passed this on before, but it bears repeating: when I was working on the Clark campaign at one point we found CNN standing outside a political rally. While trying to get Clark signs up behind the camera we were told “we aren’t even talking about politics”. Of course, we didn’t believe them – why stand out in the snow in front of a political rally to talk about something else? When the light went on and the correspondent got her cue, she launched into a discussion of Janet Jackson’s tit. It was an attempt to at least seem like they were working on more serious topics, but for now they would cover the fluff story. That was a day that sealed my opinions.
I don’t know who this particular journalist, Andrew Romano, is, but I love this article he wrote yesterday about how when Obama talks about very substantive things, big media reporters yawn. Describing a small meeting with some Pennsylvanians Romano writes:
For me, the best part of today’s event was watching the national press corps squirm. While Obama chatted about things that, you know, actually matter to people–like how to solve the nurse shortage crisis with a woman recently paralyzed from the waist down–the media types in attendance did everything and anything but listen. A cable-news embed yawned. Two reporters discussed their injured dogs. Several well-known newsniks barked into their cell phones, while others chewed the cud with David Axelrod. No one took notes. In fact, the only time the press poo-bahs perked up was when Obama detoured to say hello to a gaggle of fans who were barred from participating; hoping to catch an unscripted slip, photographers and reporters ran across the courtyard and closed in on the candidate like a pack of wolves. Sadly, nothing happened, and by the end of the event, the decision was unanimous. “What are you writing?” one embed asked another. “‘Cause I don’t know what to say.” “Today’s so lame, there’s just nothing,”
He goes on to say that the local press was taking notes so perhaps the strategy is solid from Obama and that if you can actually vote in PA you might have heard real policy. Its hard to say, but the disrespect the larger media outlets show us on a daily basis is insulting at best.
Yes I watched the debate last night between Clinton and Obama. I had no intention to watch – I find them mostly useless. You see, the thing is… when I worked on the Clark campaign I came away from the experience with more distrust of the national political press than I did going in… and I didn’t have much going in. So this is why I haven’t watched the debates, the national political press is in charge of them… even those “Youtube debates”.
I don’t know what made me turn it on last night but at least it reaffirmed the above opinion. I really think its time to bring back the old League of Women Voters debates, etc. What is heartening to me is that so many other folks today seem to agree.
One of my favorite criticisms (out of MANY) is an open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos written by Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News.
…you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes.
Of course, he is right and I have to remind myself that there are folks out there (mostly writing) about politics in a very sane, and professional manner. The problem, of course, is finding them as they tend not to be associated with the organizations who sacrifice everything for ratings (read: network television).
By the way – is it just me or is there not a conflict of interest having George Stephanopoulos moderating a debate which includes a candidate who is married to the man he once served in a political role? I take issue with it personally, but maybe I’m an idiot.
Update I was happy to see that Colbert also noticed Stephanopoulos’ conflict of interest… although, he was happy about it in that Colbert way.
Brad, the Hog Magnate, told me yesterday that a local news station actually said the other day “When are we going to finally dry out? find out at….”
Dry out?? Dry out? They must have only one script written for rain.
For what its worth, we have had a right-good soaking. We probably need about 10 more days of this though. Can’t take long showers yet.
Very local coverage here
My apologies to Paul and my good friends at ibiblio for not having seen this page earlier, but it is the ibiblio speaker series which includes a schedule of upcoming talks and videos of previous talks. Wow, there is some good stuff here! I got this from Paul reminding folks that Bob Young is due to speak on the 30th. I can’t remember the last time I saw Bob, it will be great to reconnect. If you are local and are going, let me know – I’ll be there!
Check out some of the older talks – a lot of goodness: My main man Fred talks about Facebook, Dan Gillmor on grassroots journalism, Jimmy Wales on wikipedia, etc etc. I knew most of these happened – but seeing them all in one place I am really impressed with Paul’s speaker booking abilities. Kudos Paul!
The Burmese military Junta are now using all those citizen and professional photos against the people who are portrayed in them. They are basing new arrests on identifying people from those photos, while at the same time “praising” the way China did the same thing after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
Yeah… so this brings up a load of new questions regarding the coverage of the protests. Its an interesting debate I’m sure, but far to sad to engage in now.
I am glad Fred mentioned that his observations (which I referenced the other day) were not an indictment of traditional journalism as it seems that the traditional outlets are now the best resources for news out of Burma. Jim Sciutto’s cellphone video methods may not be traditional, but his outlet is. And then there is the BBC, which is where I have mostly followed the events from Burma.
I keep waiting for some good news from the Burmese people – I’m still hopeful.
