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I’ve snarked out NYT public editor Daniel Okrent before for his seeming tendency to focus his lens on himself rather than the newspaper. I eventually came around to Robin’s point of view. But for the most part, I always liked what he wrote, and I’ll be sad to see him go. Good show, Mr. O.

Having heard many a stricken, Webphobic news editor decry the introduction of “choice” to media consumption — “What about the delicious serendipity of discovering all the amazing articles we’ve carefully hand-selected for them?!” — this Rafat Ali quote rings of Absolute Truth:

One thing which somehow everyone lamented yesterday: the end of serendipity, as choice in news sources and methods of consumption becomes an increasing reality. My reaction: what you people call serendipity, we call links. What you people call the homepage, we call Bloglines. What you call indepth-reporting, we call blogging a story to death.

Via BM.

For the moment, The New York Times has put up an archive of coverage of the Star Wars films, from the first Vincent Canby review of A New Hope (May 26, 1977) to now. My favorite moment comes in Janet Maslin’s review of The Empire Strikes Back (written 25 years ago today!):

If George Lucas makes good on his promise to turn Star Wars into a parade of nine films and spend several years on the making of each of them, we may all be pretty long in the tooth before this story gets told.

Good Lord. Nine?! Sith was fun, but really … we’re quite sure Lucas is done with this now, right?

RELATED: The 1983 fan reactions to Return of the Jedi on USENET (via MeFi).

UPDATE: I clearly was not paying enough attention. The Washington Post has a much nicer archive. (Although they do need to do a better job of copy-editing the old articles.)

CAPSULE REVIEW: Everyone’s pretty much agreed that it’s a very fun film with awful dialogue, and I’m no different. Some would call it the apotheosis of epic; I’m going to stick with fun film. While I’m impressed by the scope of Lucas’ story and how well it tied together, the writing and acting pretty much disqualifies this from the category of great cinema. It’s a wonderful spectacle, though.

The site’s online. Previously mentioned. And also. (Via MeFi.)

Meh. Pretty much the only one I’ll miss is Kristof. Krugs, occasionally. The NYT‘s announced a decision to charge for the op-ed page online, and bloggers are already saying their sayonaras. (This will be on Every Blog in the World in 5 … 4 … )

Update: Changed the link to a more complete story. The $50 annual fee (yowza!) will also allow subscribers access to the NYT archive.

Dang. I thought I’d be the first to point to Dan Gillmor’s new project, Bayosphere, currently in beta or soft-launch or gestation or something else short of ta-da. But it looks like Tampa Bay stalwart Laura Fries (that’s Fries like French) beat me to the punch. Why you always gotta be blog-blocking, Laura? Sheez.

Anyway, Dan Gillmor, formerly of Typepad, formerly formerly of the San Jose Mercury News, has begun to unwrap his first citizen’s media venture that isn’t necessarily tied to a book. As of this moment, there isn’t much describing exactly what this new venture is about, besides citizen’s media and the SF Bay Area, but worth noting and bookmarking, if you’re interested in either of those two things.

The trailer for fashion photographer David LaChapelle’s documentary about krumping, Rize, has been released. Despite appearing a full year ago on BoingBoing, the art of krumping (a.k.a. clown dancing) remains the next hot thing in hip-hop dancing.

Most recently, krumping was featured to great effect in the Chemical Brothers’ video “Galvanize,” although Missy Elliott probably deserves the most credit for piping it into the mainstream with last year’s summer jam “I’m Really Hot.”

From the reviews collected at LaChappelle’s site, it sounds like Rize impressed the Sundance crowd. It’s been compared to Paris is Burning, a strong contender for my favorite documentary of all time.

At least superficially, the comparison makes sense. In PIB, a straight Jewish woman captures New York’s brilliant, predominantly black and Latino voguing scene at its height — and also at the height of AIDS and violence against queers and within the queer community on and around Christopher St. With Rize, a gay white photographer takes on LA’s brilliant, predominantly black krumping scene — a splash of positivity set against the violent backdrop of South Central L.A.

Here’s hoping it makes it to Fresno.

Michael Kinsley, sometimes I love you. And right now is one of those times:

Newspapers are essential to every American, and none more so than the fools and ingrates who have stopped buying them. It is up to us, as members of the last generation that experienced life before computer screens, to make sure that future generations of Americans will know what to do when it says “Continued on Page B37.” In a recent survey of Americans younger than age 30, only 26 percent said “Look in Section B,” and a pitiful 13 percent chose the correct answer, which is “Look FOR Section B. It’s around here somewhere.” As a service to humanity and because I like my job, here is a seven-point plan to save the newspaper industry.

Chad Capellman over at morph writes up this Craigslist ad, which he sees as a portent of things to come:

I need some very simple PHP/MYSQL coding done, and I need it now.

I’ll give you 100 bucks, but it has to be RIGHT NOW.

email me. I”m here.

* this is in or around TRYST COFFEESHOP

When Coldplay released their latest album with the cover at left, fans were apparently really curious about what the image meant. So they did some voodoo and discovered that the image is a graphical representation of a code invented in the 19th Century by Frenchman Emile Baudot. I wonder if Coldplay knew this. (Via The Modern Age.)