John MacFarlane on stuff, things
An incomplete index of what John is doing right now and a little bit before right now. And possibly a little bit before that.
From Modern Art Notes. Amazing.
It isn't a race
Paul Krugman, upon reading the Washington Post Ombudsman’s review of that paper’s coverage of the US health-care debate, offers a few reasons why poor coverage of major policy issues happens – which actually go a long way to account for the poor state of most journalism.
Paul Krugman is invited to be part of some TV news panel which is then cancelled because the news org can’t find someone to represent “the other side”.
"Most of the talk at the Talk party was about the party itself. It was weird and interesting because you were sort of wandering around in the dark out there and bumping into people. There was a meta quality to the thing, a self-consciousness, that in retrospect was probably telling."
Kurt Andersen, founder of Spy magazine, quoted in David Carr’s NYT piece about Talk Magazine’s place in media history.
Neiman Journalism Lab interviews the developer who built the user-driven expenses tracker for the newspaper’s website.
The charging-for-content thing has been gaining traction (or, at the very least, a few media companies have been signalling their intention to do it, even if the usual gang of new media pundits still think it’s a dumb idea) for several weeks, and in that time I’ve started to think: You know, I probably would pay to read the NYT online. Their reporting is better, their blogs are more interesting, and the breadth of information they offer is wider than anything else out there. So, sure, that’s probably worth a few bucks.
So in this one (headline: MPs grab pay rise as Rudd warns workers), the Herald peddles controversy by juxtaposing a money increase for MPs with various politicians’ rhetoric about the tanking economy. Except if you read a bit further, you see that the money increase was handed down by the “independent Remuneration Tribunal” – which we might presume isn’t controlled directly by the government, given the independent part.
The article notes that the tribunal released their decision “quietly” – a manipulative adverb that the reporter doesn’t justify and that plays up the controversy.
Additionally, the quotes from PM Rudd and his underlings aren’t in reference to the pay raise, but rather are chosen from other press appearances – specifically to enhance the conflict the story constructs.
This isn’t to say that there’s isn’t something inappropriate about an MP pay raise in a time of economic belt-tightening. But the manipulative nature of this article is bad journalism.
4chan peeps not only push the site’s creator to the top of Time’s most influential list, they manipulate the other names so the first letters of each spell “Marblecake, also the game”.
"I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me."
Nicholas Carr quotes McLuhan. I find myself thinking of MM fairly often, and very frequently trying to decide what “the medium is the message” means, since it can be read at least two ways. Three ways if you include the possibility that he said it just to be cryptic.
The middle of the beginning of the end
Newspaper companies are going to start going bankrupt sooner than anyone thought. For example: the Tribune Co. has hired bankruptcy advisers. Although their predicament is somewhat unique, the fundamental issue is that their assets aren’t worth anything anymore.
Capitalism 1, Democracy 0
Now that that Obama guy is going to be US president, Maureen Dowd has to write about other stuff. Her usual disdain is focused this time on the outsourcing of journalism jobs to India. The arguments against having the Pasadena, CA, news reported from India aren’t exactly elusive, and the comments on the piece demonstrate a general consensus on this being bad.
This isn’t an I-told-you-so, exactly, but I will observe that the precedent was set on this long ago. Newspapers operate in a capitalist system, and in the strictly economic sense that capitalists love to invoke, the importance of journalism to democracy or community or whatever else is irrelevant.
