What a great sentence in a somewhat odd story.
Category: Journalism
Sarah Palin, on Journalism
Sarah Palin (who has a journalism degree), in an interview with MSNBC:
I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree. I studied journalism, who, what, where, when, and why of reporting. I will speak to reporters who still understand that cornerstone of our democracy, that expectation that the public has for truth to be reported. And then we get to decide our own opinion based on the facts reported.
Ted Koppel on the ‘Death of Real News’
We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly - individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.
The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.
On Journalism, the iPad and Good Writing
Ben Brooks, in a discussion about iPad news apps:
Again I ask, would it not be more helpful to have a summary of the story on the front page, instead of the industry standard ‘we put as much of the stories text that we can fit even though it provides no value’?
Without a doubt, most iPad news (and magazine) apps are crappy. Without a doubt, the news industry really doesn’t get the Internet, let alone mobile devices.
Fox News and the Ohio Gubernatorial Race
The Columbus Dispatch, on Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich:
It was one of 16 appearances that Kasich has made on Fox television or radio programs since he formally entered the governor’s race on June 1, 2009, according to a count by the Strickland campaign.
Going back to March 2008, when Kasich said he was seriously considering entering the race, there were 42 other appearances, including several times that Kasich was guest host for The O’Reilly Factor.
Dear Media, Please Stop Reporting Verizon iPhone Rumors as Factual News Stories
Take a look at these headlines:
- Wall Street Journal: Apple Readies Verizon iPhone
- Forbes: With iPhone in the Works, Verizon Stock Takes Advantage
- All Things D Apple Prepping Verizon-Ready CDMA iPhone for 2011 Launch
- Huffington Post: Verizon iPhone Release Set For Early 2011, WSJ Reports
- IT World: Apple, Verizon Wireless make (inevitable) iPhone deal
- UPI: Report: Apple plans Verizon smartphone
Looking at that list, you would think Apple announced something regarding the iPhone today.
Thing is, they didn’t.
On Macworld
What a joke Macworld has become over the past few years. When I can find Mac Developer websites with Google faster than I can by clicking a link in an the article talking about said developer, then I think as a publisher you should be damned ashamed of yourself.
On MarsEdit
The biggest selling point for the new version: an improved WYSIWYG interface for post composition. You now have the option to compose posts in either Rich Text or HTML format, and as you type, a separate preview pane pops up and lets you see how your post is going to look. It would be nice if you could edit in the preview pane—for example, in one test post, a subject-verb disagreement eluded me in the composition window but popped into plain relief in the preview window, and it would have been easier to correct it the minute I saw it—but this feature is not a vital must-have.
Newspaper Subscriptions Coming to iPad?
John Boudreau at Mercury News:
Apple is expected to announce soon a new subscription plan for newspapers, which hope tablets like the iPad will eventually provide a new source of profits as media companies struggle with declining print circulation and advertising revenue.
In short, Apple may do to newspapers what they did to the music industry. I don’t see a lot of newspapers being willing to give Apple 30% of their profits from this, but do they really have much of a choice?
University Of Colorado May Close J School
Dramatic changes in the media industry – as evidenced by last year’s closing of the nearby Rocky Mountain News in Denver – have prompted the University of Colorado at Boulder to review the future of its journalism program.
CU said Wednesday that on Sept. 1 a committee will start the process of “program discontinuance” for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. A separate exploratory committee will determine what a new interdisciplinary “information and communication technology” program could look like.
Pakistan
A series of satellite photographs conveys the epic scale of the floods sweeping through Pakistan, leaving millions homeless and the world aghast at an extreme weather disaster that experts consider the new normal.
The images are haunting.
A Different Kind of Checkbook Journalism
Media Matters has confirmed Bloomberg’s report using publicly available IRS filings. We also found no evidence of corresponding donations to the Democratic Governors Association in the current political cycle. News Corp. wants Republicans elected to office, and they’re willing to spend money to make it happen.
According to the article, News Corp. is actually the RGA’s “biggest corporate donor.” Bloomberg suggests that News Corp. has made these donations due to their opposition to “proposed federal rule changes that would weaken the position of its Fox network in negotiations with cable companies,” stating that “Governors may have a stake in the issue.”