Under Orders, Under Fire

Matt says,

Forgot where it was linked, but some blogger recently referred to a famous 1996 essay on the media by James Fallows that I had never read. The essay begins with a description of a public television broadcast called "Under Orders, Under Fire":

Most of the panelists were former soldiers talking about the ethical dilemmas of their work. The moderator was Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School, who moved from panelist to panelist asking increasingly difficult questions in the law school's famous Socratic style.

During the first half of the show Ogletree made the soldiers squirm about ethical tangles on the battlefield. The man getting the roughest treatment was Frederick Downs, a writer who as a young Army lieutenant in Vietnam had lost his left arm in a mine explosion. ...

Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening's panel, better known even than Westmoreland. These were two star TV journalists: Peter Jennings, of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace, of 60 Minutes and CBS.

Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Kosanese government. After much pleading Jennings and his news crew got permission from the North Kosanese to enter their country and film behind the lines. Would Jennings be willing to go? Of course, he replied. Any reporter would—and in real wars reporters from his network often had.

But while Jennings and his crew were traveling with a North Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by U.S. and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly crossed the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst the Northern soldiers set up an ambush that would let them gun down the Americans and Southerners.

What would Jennings do? Would he tell his cameramen to "Roll tape!" as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to fire?

These Scenes Are Too Familiar

Robin says,

Crazy scenes from Tibet. Is that fog or smoke in the background?

EveryBlock Confidential

Robin says,

Rex continues his recent run of awesome, kinda-sorta-long-form original content: Here's a nuanced interview with Adrian Holovaty about EveryBlock. (Matt, note the mention of machine-readable metadata for "news blobs"! EPICBlock, yo!)

The Forbidden Fantasy of Utter Upeaval

Robin says,

This WaPo story by Hank Stuever is terrific, and weird, and a good example of that ripped-from-its-context thing the web does so well: I started reading it and had no idea what was going on. You'll see what I mean.

Even when do you figure out what you're reading, it never quite becomes normal. The story is totally fractured, almost impressionist -- but to good effect. Steuver is a terrific writer, and his subject matter is sublime: American culture as it's experienced in places other than New York and San Francisco. His book Off Ramp is terrific, and its subtitle says it all: "Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere."

EveryBlock

Matt says,

Adrian, Wilson and co. have launched Everyblock, a mashup of several information sources down to the block level for different cities (currently Chicago, New York and San Francisco). The site is very pretty, especially the maps, and as you would expect, there's fun data hidden beneath every click. But it's otherwise hard for me to evaluate how cool it is, since I don't live in any of the included cities. How about it, residents?

Update: One surprise ... no RSS feeds? (Except this one.)

Update 2: Rex reminds me ... Poynter Online interview w/ Adrian (which is how I found out it launched).

The Atlantic Rides Again

Robin says,

The Atlantic, favorite magazine of my middle youth, was kinda lame for a while there, but it's been getting good again -- a fact that had been bumming me out because, of course, I couldn't link to the subscriber-only stories.

Until today.

So let us celebrate the magazine's resurgence and web-savvy with a couple of pointers:

• The new James Fallows piece on China is exactly what got me into the Atlantic in the first place: Themes of politics and economics, hugely abstract ideas, giant global actors and their dilemmas, etc. I love it that there's none of the usual attempt to concrete-ize and personalize here: No narrative intro with a factory worker in China, for instance. The only narrative in the piece involves the voyage of a U.S. dollar to China and back. I could not love it more.
• Caitlin Flanagan's piece about Katie Couric was the last one I read in this issue, and I almost didn't read it at all. Thank goodness my train was slow, because it was a revelation, in large part because it's as much about Caitlin Flanagan as it is about Katie Couric. Beautifully written, too: Flanagan is a great storyteller and has perfect "tone control," if you know what I mean.
Comments (4) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:44 PM

Inside the Black Box

Robin says,

The best thing about it only being January 10 is that I can say, without reservation, that this is the best thing I've read all year: n+1's interview with a hedge fund manager. It includes a useful window into a little-known, but super-interesting, component of modern markets: quantitative trading driven by computer programs!

n+1: And so the computers themselves are making these trades?

HFM: You build the models and the computer does the trading. You actually do all the analysis. But it’s too many stocks for a human brain to handle, so it’s really just guys with a lot of physics and hardcore statistics backgrounds who come up with ideas about models that might lead to excess return and then they test them and then basically all these models get incorporated into a bigger system that trades stocks in an automated way.

n+1: So the computers are running the...

HFM: Yeah, the computer is sending out the orders and doing the trading.

n+1: It’s just a couple steps from that to the computers enslaving --

HFM: Yes, but I for one welcome our computer trading masters.

People actually call it "black box trading," because sometimes you don’t even know why the black box is doing what it's doing, because the whole idea is that if you could, you should be doing it yourself. But it's something that's done on such a big scale, a universe of several thousand stocks, that a human brain can’t do it in real time. The problem is that the DNA of a lot of these models is very, very similar, it's like an ecosystem with no biodiversity because most of the people who do stat-arb can trace their lineage, their intellectual lineage, back to four or five guys who really started the whole black box trading discipline in the '70s and '80s.

If you read on from that point in the article you'll learn about "ten-sigma events" -- if that doesn't sound like something from a dystopian anime series, I don't know what does.

There's also some really great discussion -- and explication -- of the whole sub-prime thing. It's long, but the conversational style makes it pretty digestible.

(Thanks to PoN for the link.)

Pundits: The Eyeball Monster

Matt says,

There's a giant eyeball monster in Super Paper Mario that tracks you in every direction as you move around a room and shoots laser beams at you. To defeat it, Mario has to flip into 3D mode and run around and around it until it tries to shoot, gets confused, and implodes.

Eyeball monster = media pundits. Mario = '08 Presidential candidates. It's fun to watch.

Oh, and btw: Speaking of life imitating Mario, Andy Towle's right. The video for Janet Jackson's new single "Feedback" is so Super Mario Galaxy.

Bernanke and the Fed

Robin says,

Absolutely terrific piece of financial journalism by Greg Ip in the WSJ. He renders the Fed and its work as it truly is: super-interesting, super-important... and dramatic!

The Lost Columnist

Robin says,

So, this Washington Monthly piece is nowhere near as glib as its title makes it seem: Why Is Bob Herbert Boring?

In fact it turns out to be a sophisticated, sensitive exploration of the paradox of NYT columnist Bob Herbert (and, by extension: informative, well-meaning journalism in general): This is important stuff. It's largely correct. Why doesn't it... grab me?

It's a good reminder for journalists of all stripes, and maybe bloggers, too: You have to do more than just report and present. Truth and clarity, difficult as they are to achieve on their own, aren't enough.

Ya gotta have style, too.

Primary Sources

Robin says,

Current citizen journalism covers the fires in Southern California.

Drudge

Robin says,

So, see if you can guess which two words I love in this graf:

His status was solidified after the 2004 election at a steakhouse dinner in Miami with Mr. Drudge, who for all his renown in politics is a somewhat spectral presence who rarely agrees to meet with political operatives or journalists and who did not respond to requests for an interview for this article.

"Spectral presence"! Somehow that just bowled me over.

And, somewhat more seriously, wow:

The Democrats have come to believe, Mr. Dyke said, what Republicans have always thought: “No single person is more relevant to shaping the media environment in a political campaign.”

This, from a webpage still rocking a 1994-era design. Pretty amazing.

Megacities

Robin says,

We have talked about cities lots (!) here on Snarkmarket. Now two of my favorite Current colleagues, Darren Foster and Mariana van Zeller, are doing a pod about our planet's urban future. Chime in if you've got thoughts. Open-source TV production whaaat!

(P.S. I know I know, it's all Current links all of a sudden. I'll backfill with nerdy journal articles as soon as I have time to dig back into Bloglines, promise.)

Density

Robin says,

I've mentioned Radio Lab before, but Tim just posted about an episode I hadn't heard and I downloaded it and IT BLEW MY MIND.

You've got to give it a listen if you haven't already. Immediately, you'll hear a huge difference from the boring march of words that characterizes every other radio show, ever. On Radio Lab, the words and sonic interjections are fragmented, tiled, cross-cut, layered. There's just so much more to absorb; it lights your brain up. Radio Lab is DENSE.

This is how all explanatory media should feel. We're ready for it.

P.S. I don't want to focus entirely on the meta-method stuff, though, 'cause the ideas and the reporting are also sublime. This is a must-listen.

Burma on Flickr

Robin says,

Unit Structures points to a Flickr photostream out of Rangoon. Some of the pro photography coming out of Burma has been mind-boggling, but I like this stuff even better because it feels like it's actually... real.

Am obsessed with what's going on over there, by the way. This Telegraph article has some amazing details:

At the front of the procession a monk carried an upturned begging bowl, the symbol of this movement, representing the clergy's refusal to accept alms from members of the regime.

Who's got the best coverage of this? Any tips?

Maximum Mumbai

Robin says,

Enjoyed this NYT slideshow about Mumbai. Want to visit. Bad.

Look On My Works, Ye Mighty

Matt says,

If you weren't paying attention, Kottke's begun excavating the archival treats freed by the demise of TimesSelect.

No Words

Robin says,

The NYT's Chang W. Lee in China. Bump it up to full screen and just watch. What a brilliant piece of journalism.

A Database of Facts

Robin says,

PolitiFact from the St. Pete Times and CQ. Backstory.

Great power can flow from default reference link status; think Wikipedia, IMDB, etc. Can PolitiFact achieve default reference link status for political claims? Would be very cool if it did. Snarkmarket will assist with link love whenever possible.

As an aside: It's totally rad to see the St. Pete Times stepping up in a national way like this. More, more!

Snapshot from Baghdad

Robin says,

Leila Fadel renders a scene from Baghdad today:

Now she lives inside the hotel where she has a small shop. It is always brimming with Iraqi politicians and American military, embassy officials and contractors searching for an authentic Iraqi experience. It's easy to spend a year in the Green Zone and never taste Mazqouf, the salty carp split open and grilled, hot Iraqi flat bread, Iraqi stews and stuffed grapeleaves.

"Ask Bush to come here and spend one night in the 55 to 60 degree (celsius) summer heat," she said. "Would he do it? Could he do it? I don't think so."

It is to hot for mattresses and they lay on the tiles inside the home to cool their bodies. Her daughters have burns on their back and stomach from the heat, she said.

"All we want is electricity and some clean water," she said. "Do you think if you give Iraqis relief they won't pick themselves up and work so hard?"

Her rant was interrupted.

Two Kellog Brown and Root contractors with sunglasses propped on their heads, walked in and picked up an antique dagger.

"What is this?" they asked.

(It continues, obviously.)

Not a news story in an conventional or even unconventional sense -- but (or maybe therefore) a pleasure to read.

Favorite Voices, New Mediums

Robin says,

Hendrik Hertzberg has a blog and the first word, against all odds, is: "Bam."

Breaking News on Wikipedia

Robin says,

Someone pointed out today that Wikipedia has, very quietly, become an excellent synthesizer of big breaking news stories. For instance: the I-35 collapse.

With Great Power Comes...

Robin says,

James Fallows on two-tiered stock structure in media ownership:

The only justification for "Class B" shares giving special voting power to the Sulzberger family at the Times, the Graham family at the Post, and the Bancroft family at the Journal is the assumption that the families will weigh other factors in deciding how the news operation should be run.

That is: other potentially non-economic factors.

Of course, Class B shares aren't just an old-school thing. Guess which other company uses them to give super-votes -- and, potentially, the power to defy the market -- to founders and top executives?

Google.

Update: James Fallows notes the Google gambit too.

Prisoner of Conscience

Robin says,

Snarkmarket favorite Rachel Leow reports on the politically-motivated imprisonment of a Malaysian blogger:

Nathaniel Tan, a prominent political blogger, activist and staff member of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) was detained incommunicado and was not given any grounds for his arrest, according to Malaysiakini. He was detained by three plainclothed policemen at 4:30 p.m. on 13 July in his office at Phileo Damansara.

According to Malaysiakini, police seized Nat's laptop, CDs, personal computer, and oddly enough, his computer monitor.

Ng Eng Kiat, a colleague and part-time journalist who had been present at the time of arrest, said police had not given a clear reason for Nat's arrest. Even when asked directly, the policemen had assured them that it was not an arrest. They "hanya nak siasat sedikit" (just wanted to chat). Upon complying, however, Nat was, as Jeff Ooi dryly puts it, "spirited away" (that is to say, categorically not arrested).

Tan is still in custody. It's interesting to see an earlier version of the story on Rachel's blog -- in some ways I prefer it.

Because I cannot resist going meta on these things: I like Rachel's work on this a lot because it is citizen journalism in a deeper than usual sense -- not just snapshots from a scene, mutely presented, but a smart, independent analysis of an important story in a situation where the pro media, such as it is, just isn't cutting it.

See also (though less urgently): Off the Bus.

Incidentally: I am reminded of my days writing letters in MSU's chapter of Amnesty International. It's been a while since I checked in with Amnesty... I wonder if they are doing anything new or Web 2.0-y?

The Rule of Reason

Robin says,

Bill Moyers talks to Bruce Fein, a lawyer, and John Nichols, a journalist, about impeachment. Every time Moyers puts something on air it reminds me what "discourse" is actually supposed to look like.

If you didn't see it, the first episode of his new show, about the lead-up to the Iraq war, is gut-wrenching. It's all stuff you know and remember, of course, but it's still pretty terrible to see it all laid out so starkly.

The Assassin's Blog

Robin says,

Wow. Speaking of morally serious reporters who write about Iraq, did you know George Packer had a blog on the New Yorker site? Yeah, neither did anybody else. CJR clues us in.

Packer's book The Assassin's Gate was more deserving of a WMYW warning than anything I've read in a long time. I am totally looking forward to a steadier stream of his thoughts and observations.

Baghdad Observer

Robin says,

Leila Fadel is McClatchy's bureau chief in Baghdad; her blog is riveting. I'd tuned out a lot of the news out of Iraq 'til I subscribed.

I almost want to put some tag on it, though, like NSFW, except somehow warning you how just utterly harrowing and beyond the pale it is:

Back at the office the reports started to come in. Five Sunni mosques attacked in Basra, three set on fire or bombed in Baghdad, three south of Baghdad. Muted compared to last years attacks. I sent everyone home before the three-day-curfew began, save two of our guys.

Sahar, one of our Iraqi reporters, called and told me about a woman in Adhamiya. Her husband, her protector, could not get home before the curfew started. As darkness fell upon Baghdad the cancer-ridden woman shook with fear, her three children around her, as mortars fell nearby. She would be alone tonight and two more nights.

I called downstairs for stress-relievers -- chocolate and coffee. One of my favorite hotel staffers brought them up from the cafeteria.

"What do you think about this?" I asked.

"Just drop two nuclear bombs on us and finish this," Dhia said wiping his hands together as if to wash his hands of Iraq.

"But we'd die," I replied.

"So what. I just want to finish from this," he said. With a sad laugh he walked away toting his metal tray.

Here's Fadel's intro to the blog.

Families and Their Food

Robin says,

The best part of TIME's website is the photo essays, hands-down. Here's a new one: portraits of families around the world, along with the food they eat. They're by Peter Menzel -- they're from his book -- and they're beautiful.

Via the excellent Eyeteeth.

P.S. For some reason I was particularly charmed by the Melander family of Bargteheide.

Gray Lady Gaming

Robin says,

All right. All right. I think I might finally have to break down and get TimesSelect. The NYT is running Flash games as editorials.

(Actually, I think it's a huge mistake to put these games -- especially the first few! -- behind the pay wall. They are viral material. So maybe capitulation would send the wrong signal?)

Talking Points TV

Robin says,

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is doing a videoblog. It's pretty lo-fi, but I like it, especially because I totally cannot keep up with TPM for the life of me -- just way too much detail -- and this provides a nice distillation. Worth a peek.

The Atlantic Rides Again

Robin says,

The Atlantic Monthly, along with Wired, was basically my introduction to the awesome interestingness of the world. So I am happy to see it making some smart new moves on the web:

With the exception of Sullivan, who I never really got into, this is the beginning of my ideal blog lineup. Yglesias, Douthat, and Fallows are all well worth your time.

Virginia Tech, and Taking Control of Your Representation

Robin says,

A Virginia Tech student named Jason Piatt just looks into his webcam and talks:

I guess the internet's a pretty powerful thing... I didn't realize how many people are really on Facebook and MySpace and all that, but all day long people have been sending me emails, messages, and everything... "I wanna do this interview, I wanna do this interview."

At first it was kinda exciting because I felt like people really care about what I have to say out there... I'm doing somebody some good, I'm making a difference. And then after a while I realized, like, no matter how many times I told the same story, that I just told you... people still wanted to hear it.

And I would tell 'em, I'd say, I don't have anything, you watch CNN right? You see these other things... that's all I got.

Fix an image of the standard cable news presentation in your mind -- helicopter shot, yammering voices, text crawl -- and then watch this. It's riveting.

Update: This is on Current TV now. Here's the broadcast version (a little tighter).

Related: This Ypulse post is fascinating. A Facebook group created as a memorial to one of the VA Tech victims leads with this warning:

**ATTENTION NEWS MEDIA**

NEWS MEDIA DO NOT have permission to use photographs, quotes, or any information from the site, AND you do not have permission to contact group members.

Wow. There's something important going on here.

The Wisdom... or Something... of Crowds

Robin says,

An interesting thing happened at Jim Romenesko's Starbucks Gossip site recently: Somebody slipped Romenesko what appeared to be an internal email from Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz. Romenesko posted it, with the caveat: I have no idea if this is real.

Soon after, its legitimacy was confirmed, and now it's been covered by the big guys. (It's actually a pretty interesting story -- Schultz is warning that Starbucks has lost its way.)

But before that happened, Starbucks Gossip readers were hashing out the likely legitimacy of the email on their own. If you read some of the long comment thread, you get an awfully good snapshot of web-ified group discussion today: smart; informed (most of the commenters are Starbucks baristas!); opinionated; and, er, often wrong.

No specific conclusions from me (maybe you have some?) but I just thought it was a data point interesting enough to share.

(Starbucks Gossip is great, by the way -- I think I might read it with more excitement than I do the other one these days.)

Usemonopolies

Matt says,

Jonathan Lethem has plagiarized together an entrancing paean to intellectual theft:

Artists, or their heirs, who fall into the trap of attacking the collagists and satirists and digital samplers of their work are attacking the next generation of creators for the crime of being influenced, for the crime of responding with the same mixture of intoxication, resentment, lust, and glee that characterizes all artistic successors. By doing so they make the world smaller, betraying what seems to me the primary motivation for participating in the world of culture in the first place: to make the world larger.

The effort of preserving another's distinctive phrases as I worked on this essay was sometimes beyond my capacities; this form of plagiarism was oddly hard work.

Cf. this beautiful Slate photo-essay on visual plagiarism.

Now Let's Turn to Someone Much Younger

Robin says,

Steve Outing asked me about the future of news for a column in Editor and Publisher. Here's what I said:

"I think 'news' just becomes a less distinct category. You don't sit down with a newspaper, or even a news website, or even a super wireless e-paper device, for 10 minutes in the morning to very formally 'get your news.' Rather, you get all sorts of news and information -- from the personal to the professional to the political -- throughout the day, in little bits and bursts, via many different media. With any luck, in 5-10 years the word 'news' will be sort of confusing: Don't you just mean 'life'?"

Honestly though, the idea that I'm most excited about...

Sloan elaborates: "A key point is that news will continue to be delivered on many media -- websites, blogs, TV, phones, pamphlet-y things, those little java jackets they have at coffee shops, whatever. It's not about everything going digital and never seeing a molecule of real matter again. But it IS about the death of the monolithic news experience."

...is the Starbucks News Service!

You think I'm kidding, but I'm not!

Afghanistan 1997-2007

Robin says,

My Current colleague Mitch Koss has some amazing notes on Afghanistan up over on the Current blog.

P.S. An updated Current home page launched today -- it's dope.

The Muckraker's Life

Robin says,

This is really fun: A former print reporter, Justin Rood, reflects on the switch to blogging. His description of the steady influx of tips and feedback from readers is pretty excellent. (Via Romenesko!)

The Question Is Posed

Matt says,

What are the benefits of following the news?

Boxing Day Surprise

Matt says,

Heeeeey, my paper just got sold. Howard, does this mean I don't get to post on Etaoin Shrdlu anymore?

The Best Journalist in America

Robin says,

I used to say it was Nick Kristof, but ever since he went behind TimesSelect I haven't been reading/watching his stuff. So in his stead I nominate the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran for the title.

Since returning from Iraq and writing a book about his experiences there, he's been working on the WaPo website. Now he'll shift over to report on the debate over what to do about Iraq.

I predict his stories are going to get mad links.

A Story, a Lost Pet, a Garage Sale, an Event

Robin says,

I kind of love the submission taxonomy presented on Pegasus News's neighborhood pages. Yo, that's what it's all about.

Kill Me Now

Robin says,

Michael Hirschorn leads his whither-newspapers story with EPIC. And this is, honestly, one of the best lines written about it, ever:

As a piece of pop futurism, EPIC 2014 is both brilliant and brilliantly self-subverting (at once inevitable and preposterous).

Oh yeah, by the way, IT'S IN THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Update: Jon Fine mentions Hirschorn's story and points to some pretty interesting news: Two big-time WaPo reporters are striking out on their own to start a political news site.

Frontline Does Kiva

Robin says,

You know I love Kiva; now there's a mini-doc about it posted on Frontline World. The piece has a great opening sequence, cross-cutting between a Ugandan with a peanut butter business and a San Franciscan with, um, a nice kitchen.

Globalization!

The Wit and Wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld

Robin says,

This is a pretty snarky photo essay for TIME! Familiar with the meme, of course, but have never seen it so well-executed.

Slide four sorta sums it all up, doesn't it?

Also: a somewhat less-snarky photo essay on China. You can get 'em in a feed, you know!

Was Media Ever About Content?

Robin says,

An old colleague at Poynter used to hate it when people used the words "media" and "news" interchangeably. Not the same thing, he'd say. News means standards, values, a mission; media just means... eyeballs.

Now, over at Publishing 2.0, talking about Google and YouTube, Scott Karp cites this bit of reflection from Andy Kessler:

Who are the next media moguls and to whom do they have to sell their souls for the priviledge? The $165 billion question left unanswered by this deal is: What is media anymore? Can you just slap videos up on the Web and become a younger and more vibrant Rupert Murdoch or Sumner Redstone?

And then Karp adds:

Does media have anything to do with content anymore, or is it all about aggregating people's attention by any means? Was media ever really about content?

I can't say I fully understand it, but I feel like this might be an interesting and illusion-piercing insight.

Lately, Al Gore likes to use the word "thrall" when talking about climate change. For example:

Our biggest challenge, our biggest foe, is thrall. The word sounds ancient, but it means anything that imprisons our thinking and prevents us from seeing the reality of our situation.

And I wonder if there aren't some ideas about media, content, and journalism that we are still in thrall to, and haven't realized it yet...

(The dots mean I don't know what they are either, not that I do and am not telling you.)

Daily Show vs. Broadcast News?

Matt says,

Which has more substantive political coverage?

Would you believe neither? That's what a telecommunications professor at Indiana U. found when she analyzed the content of The Daily Show and put it up next to a network newscast. (Card-ial.)

Law & Order: Special Ethics Unit

Robin says,

Oh man, this is hot: Joe Strupp profiles our Poynter peeps (Kelly McBride, Bob Steele, Kenny Irby and more) and dubs them the "Special Ethics Unit." Like Poynter itself, the whole thing unapologetically mixes the super-serious and the somewhat silly:

Steele's colleagues at Poynter understand that because ethical questions can pop up suddenly, often at inconvenient hours, they'll continue to be called on at odd times to provide help to journalists. Kelly McBride, for example, is realistic about the on-call nature of her job.

Many such tales abound, often involving her children in tow. "I remember standing in Target shopping for a birthday present with one of my daughter's friends and doing a consultation on the coverage surrounding [rape accusations against] Kobe Bryant," says the mother of three. "I was a little self-conscious."

So, so cool!

Activate

Robin says,

By the way, do you guys subscribe to Activate? It's a weekly world news filter from Flavorpill. I really really like it.

The newsletter very diligently ignores the conventional wisdom and consensus news judgment; its story choice is almost brazen in its divergence from the AP/NYT agenda.

Pretty great preamble to their mission statement, too:

News is personal. We think it always was.

Lately, though, that conviction has been lost in a sea of impersonal, politically correct news sources that have volume, but no point of view or larger context. We miss finding smart connections between front-page stories and the important -- but often neglected -- ones. Meanwhile, links to "1,339 related" articles on massive news sites don't activate your mind, but rather, overload it.

I think that last line is actually quite profound. Mega-scale algorithms are great for searching, but horrible for meaning.

The Art of Verification

Robin says,

This is, by a wide margin, the coolest use of EPIC I have yet seen: A professor at Lehigh Carbon Community College in Pennsylvania sets it up as the subject of an exercise in critical media consumption and information verification. Nice use of a wiki, too. Note the contribution of student sleuth Jennifer Jones midway down.

This Democracy Thing, It Just Might Work Out

Robin says,

The Sunlight Foundation seems to be the hub of some of the coolest things bubbling up in citizen journalism these days. Over on the Sunlight Network blog, written by Zephyr Teachout, I love the subtext of this line:

We are experimental, irreverent, and especially (but not exclusively) interested in the ways that technology and the networked public sphere can nurture the already developing democratic movement in our country.

I actually don't think it's intentional, but even so, it casts democracy as this still rather fresh idea, still struggling. I like that vibe.

Sunlight just announced a round of grants to a bunch of interesting projects.

We've Been Liveblogged

Robin says,

Matt and I gave the opening talk at SND Orlando this morning and, in what I think is a first for us, we got liveblogged. With a cameraphone no less!

Buy This Book

Robin says,

Buy this book!

Okay I'm biased. I used to work at the Poynter Institute, where Roy Peter Clark hangs his hat, and I learned lots from him. Much of it was stuff that's now encoded in this book, actually. But even so, I am so glad to have it all in one place. Even better, the volume is a wonder to behold: simple, slim, elegant.

And, you know, I can tell just from the feel of it that this is the kind of book that will age like good leather shoes: One day it will be totally worn out and beaten up from overuse, but somehow handsomer for it.

Dude, I have a question though -- even when you're Roy Peter Clark, how do you score blurbs from Mark Bowden, Sister Helen Prejean, Eugene Patterson, Howell Raines, Tom French, and David Von Drehle?

Indeed, Von Drehle writes: "Roy is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of writing teachers..." Just for the record, if one of his Snarkmarket students is Anakin Skywalker (i.e. initially promising but ultimately a force for total evil) it is definitely Matt.

This Blogpost Automatically Generated in 0.03 Seconds

Robin says,

Thomson and Reuters run stories written by computers! COMPUTERS I say! Will Sullivan with the deets and the awesomely appropriate frame-grab.

It's Inevitable

Robin says,

I was just checking out Google Video's new ad system and happened to click on this video, a Charlie Rose episode featuring Thomas Friedman.

And it struck me: This man is going to run for political office.

Maybe not soon, but some day. Just listen to the way he talks! And come on, he's rich!

When it happens, just remember: Snarkmarket called it.

Generation Debt

Robin says,

Correction: THIS is my new favorite blog. Anya Kamenetz writes about finance from a 25-year-old's perspective. She just wrote a book, too.

My New Favorite Blog

Robin says,

OMG! Muckraking Mom! Raison d'etre:

I think there’s a need for a website exclusively devoted to muckraking moms -- moms who discover the political machinery behind the politics of our every day lives and expose it. Eventually, I hope this site will grow to include the contributions of a veritable army of muckraking moms, and dads too.

Lesson 2: The Proper Use of Plasma Grenades

Robin says,

Sooo, yeah, this is probably my favorite paragraph in any news story so far this year:

Gaming-lessons.com says its youngest "Halo 2" instructor is 8-year-old New Yorker Victor De Leon III -- better known by his online gamer name, Lil Poison -- who has given several lessons a month since late last year, fitting the classes in after he has done his homework. His father, also named Victor, says his son has used some of the money he earns from lessons (hourly rate: $25) to buy a hamster, named Cortana after a character in the game.

Evolution, Not Revolution

Robin says,

I believe the argument that Matt's McClatchy colleague Howard Weaver makes in this post can be generalized beyond the news business:

But our change will be more lasting and better constructed if we apply the time-tested lessons of evolution and eschew the flashier but less productive posture of revolution. As we apply lessons learned from the changing climate to adapt our sturdy, battle-hardened structures, we'll end up with operations that meet changed conditions without abandoning valuable lessons from our past.

He talks about punctuated equilibrium -- the theory that evolution is not the gradual, continuous process we sometimes imagine, but actually a really fast survival response to a changed environment (e.g. meteor strike, Google).

Personally I am waiting for the equilibrium of American government to get punctuated. Viva la evolution!

P.S. Howard also links to Amazon in a way I haven't seen before; it's pretty cool and probably more useful than the normal book listing page.

An API for Political Influence

Robin says,

Programmerjournalists take note! The Sunlight Foundation is putting together an API for state-level campaign finance data. Seems like you could craft a pretty cool localized EPIC-style political story with this kind of resource, yeah? The data could display inline... pulled into the story via API calls... and would always be up-to-date... *drool*

Summer in St. Pete

Robin says,

Poynter Summer Fellowship in effect!

Subscribe to the feed.

Ambush in Iraq

Robin says,

WaPo journalist Nelson Hernandez, traveling with a convoy of water trucks in Iraq, gets ambushed by insurgents -- and gets it on tape. It's scary, in part because it's so chaotic and confusing. Definitely not a movie, and definitely not a video game. (Via.)

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Robin says,

Roy Peter Clark quotes James Carey in a remembrance on poynter.org:

"Listen: You don't feel well, so you go to see the psychiatrist. And the doctor listens to your story. And, if he's a good doctor, he's listening for the parts of the story that are making you feel sick. His job is then to help you tell a new story about yourself, especially one that will make you well. Newspapers are the same way. Journalists are telling each other stories about themselves that are making them sick. So the remedy is to tell a new story about journalism that will help make journalism healthy again."

Facebook Was Before My Time, Too

Robin says,

Holovaty rocks Missouri's j-school commencement! As you know, I am a huge fan of both Adrian and commencement speeches, so this is pretty much an excellent way to start the week.

Nice shout-out to the PR-flacks-to-be in the audience, too.

Public Editor #2

Matt says,

I agree with Jack Shafer, the new NYT public editor puts the lame in Calame. (BuzzMachinetic.)

Good Point

Matt says,

News sites have been all abuzz about the agreement by soft-drink distributors to pull fizzy lifting drinks out of schools. The AP article about this draws a nice observation from Fine Young Journalist:

Four reporters worked on the story. Six people are quoted, all of whom are either happy observers or proud of themselves. ... A very significant change in behaviour is about to be imposed on students. Yet nobody appears to have talked to a kid, or anybody who works in a school. One of the four journalists could have located a student council president or student newspaper editor or somebody.

The Outlaw Ombud

Matt says,

I have big love for the fact that Dan Okrent's book is titled "Public Editor #1":

I didn’t mention this in the book, but when I had my troubles with [business reporter David Cay] Johnston, one of the senior editors said to me, “There are three things you must understand about Johnston: He’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, he’s a unique talent, and he’s an asshole.” I’m convinced that at least two of those are correct.

End-of-Week Notes

Matt says,

• Oh my God! They killed Nnenna! Bastards!
• Chris Daughtry's performance of "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman" on American Idol this week was incredible. It a) made me not hate that song, and b) made me push Chris to the top of my favorites list, even ahead of my beloved Paris.
• Check it: Journerdism.com, from '05 Poynter summer fellow Will Sullivan.
• So you wanna blog? LaFry breaks it down.
• Why didn't anyone tell me Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson's blog is really awesome?

Someone on the Scene

Robin says,

Quite unintentionally, Ted Koppel explains the logic of citizen journalism:

If something happens in [a foreign country], I heard a former network news president say other day, we can always jet someone in. That is a profoundly telling statement. Instead of investing in someone on the scene who is familiar with the political and cultural landscape, who can give us all a sense of what's going to happen, and who can provide us with a sense of context when it does, news is being re-defined as "that which has happened most recently" and which may pique the interest of a particular demographic group.

I'm talking CJ-of-the-far-future, of course. We're not there yet, not by a long shot.

Broadcast News

Matt says,

Horrible segues, with anchorman Clive Rutledge:

"... Experts say speed dating's popularity continues to rise. After seeing that clip featuring the hottie in the halter-top, something else is rising, too, heh-heh, if you catch my drift—that's right: interest rates. Today the Federal Reserve recommended they be upped by half a percent."

I Think I Dig This

Matt says,

Philips Electronics bought the first page of Time and four other magazines (space usually reserved for ads) and will put the mags' table of contents there. Taking off the journalistic umbrage hat for a moment, purely as a reader, I would love this. And the whole Philips "Simplicity" campaign is kind of genius.

Blood and Treasure Just Blood

Robin says,

God. The LAT series by David Zucchino and Rick Loomis on battlefield medicine in Iraq (part 1, part 2, part 3) is riveting.

It's a revealing exercise to first read the articles and then watch the Flash features (part 1, part 2, part 3).

There's just sooo much wiggle room in prose -- even smart, sharp prose. More than enough for you to fill in some blanks and imagine the characters as you want them to be. Images and sounds are different; there's still wiggle room, of course, but not nearly as much.

What's interesting, though, is that wiggle room isn't always a bad thing: I found myself connecting with the wounded soldiers a lot more in the written stories. The other-ness of their gruesome injuries and their accents in the Flash pieces only made them seem more distant.

Bride of RomenRSSko

Matt says,

If you've been following my efforts to scrape together an RSS feed for the Romenesko sidebar, you might have thought I'd have either given up, learned regular expressions, or convinced Robin it was every bit as cool as Charlie Rose. Since the Wotzwot RSS tool I'd been using to make the feed introduced a couple ridiculous measures to prevent folks from ever using it, I've been without my Romenesko link-loggy goodness.

But now I've found another, much better tool for scraping together feeds. The new Romenesko sidebar feed is not only much more functional, but it also has a URL that makes sense.

Go Gray Lady Go

Robin says,

Scope the hott NYT.com redesign. Very clean, in no way trendy.

I'm curious to see what they do with the section currently used to promo the new design; it's a pretty excellent piece of screen real estate.

New favorite page.

Not sold on NYT video yet. Though I did watch three "Vows" segments last weekend. Um.

I am not sure I fully understand the import of Times Topics but it bodes well. News building upon itself to construct an ever-more-useful framework, vs. flapping silently away into the ether every morning... I vote yes.

Also: The promise fulfilled!

Michael Pollan and the Modern Hunt

Robin says,

Absolutely great story about hunting and a "first-person feast" by Michael Pollan in the NYT Mag. (But of course we love MP here at the 'Market.)

State of the News Media 2006

Robin says,

Best-yet journalism biz infoporn.

What Is Journalism?

Matt says,

A post on MicroPersuasion this morning reminded me of something I ran across a few months ago I thought was amusing and revealing. It's the definition of "journalism," from the 2000 American Heritage Dictionary:

1. The collecting, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles in newspapers and magazines and in radio and television broadcasts.
2. Material written for publication in a newspaper or magazine or for broadcast.
3. The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines, consisting of direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation.
4. Newspapers and magazines.
5. An academic course training students in journalism.
6. Written material of current interest or wide popular appeal.

Hype-itorial

Matt says,

Bah. Don't believe Joe Strupp. The South Dakota Argus Leader's "brave" resurrection of the wikitorial isn't a wiki at all. It's a plain old blog that allows moderated comments.

Le Média Citoyen

Robin says,

AgoraVox is a French citizen journalism site. It at least has the appearance of being somewhat hoppin'. There's also a newer English version. Related: I'm still not as jazzed about Newsvine as I feel like I ought to be.

Look Out, Blogosphere

Matt says,

Malcolm Gladwell has a blog. I am already edified. (MetaFilterrific.)

Motown Ghost Town

Robin says,

Friend of the Snark (and, oh yeah, Michigan Radio reporter) Dustin Dwyer goes exploring in the old, abandoned Motown Records building in Detroit and finds a vinyl record that's been sitting there for decades in the dark.

He plays it for the first time.

Dustin says:

Anyway, this is what journalism is like in Michigan: plants closing, buildings being torn down. Contrast that, say, with Florida, where the big problems of the day are building enough schools to keep up with growing populations, or widening roads, or using smart planning to prevent everything from becoming one big suburb.

Everything there is growth, everything here is decline.

And yet, I'd much rather be covering these stories than those ones.

Non-Profit Journalism

Robin says,

Non-profit-ness often gets a bad rap for being wishy-washy and, like, not as serious and dynamic as for-profit-ness -- so I'm glad to see a former business reporter, banker, and lawyer talking it up.

Now That's a Beat

Robin says,

Lucy Morgan, possibly the most revered newspaper reporter in all of Florida, just retired. In commemoration, Poynter.org (holla!) has her original job description memo. Check it out even (especially?) if you're not super-interested in journalism -- it is both charming and shocking.

All Journalism, All the Time!

Matt says,

Sorry, one more j-related post: a blog entry by Google's recently-departed director of consumer marketing comparing Google to another former employer, the San Jose Mercury News. Interesting. As are many of the other posts on Doug Edwards' new blog. Checkitout.

Microchunks

Matt says,

More on bloggers being the best editors, from Chris Anderson. (Cf.)

Post Remix

Matt says,

Adrian H. announces the launch of Post Remix, the WaPo's version of BBC Backstage. Yexcellent.

Local Gal Makes Good

Matt says,

Awesome.

Yes, that's Jarah Euston on the front page of Sunday's L.A. Times, standing in front of the building that gave her super-hott website its banner.

Aside from p