UPDATED It’s hardly surprising when someone fires back at a harsh critic of his or her employer’s competence and/or ethics. But when that someone is superstar New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, and the return fire takes the form, in part, of “Fuck you,” it raises a few eyebrows — and makes you wonder […]
Posts from ‘March, 2009’
Reporting on the Phantom Financial Economy
Accompanying Simon Johnson’s remarkable, must-read Atlantic article, “The Quiet Coup,” is this chart: What’s not noted here — or in most traditional media coverage of the meltdown — is something that everyone should understand. These profits were an illusion in the end. They existed just long enough, purely on paper but not in any long-term […]
New Investigative Project
Jay Rosen: Introducing the new Huffington Post Investigative Fund (And My Own Role in It) The announcement of its birth, along with the $1.75 million starter budget, is really the launch of a new Internet-based news organization with a focus on original reporting. You might say the Fund’s operating principle is: report once, run anywhere. […]
Google Power
Google is pointing from its home page today to a page about World Tuberculosis Day and that, in turn, points to the Stop TB Partnership, a nonprofit organization. A worthy cause, and good for Google for pointing to it. Consider the power of this endorsement. I suspect that with this single link, Google is channeling […]
Guest Blogging Elsewhere Next 2 Weeks
I’ll cross-post the media related items here, but for the next 14 days you’ll find me over at BoingBoing.
Saving Local Journalism, One Step at a Time
Chris Anderson (Columbia University): What’s So Hard About Local? Where should our foundation dollars go? Perhaps they should go towards assuring that the so-called “lowly” (and yet, so oddly difficult to fund either a peer-produced or market based substitute for!! so much for lowly!) beat reporter, police bureau chief, crime reporter, city hall reporter, can […]
Tracking Simulus Spending: Hire Some Unemployed Reporters
The Obama administration promises it will be accountable in how it spends our (children’s) money in the new stimulus legislation. On the Recovery.Gov site you’ll see, under the heading “Accountability and Transparency,” some strong rhetoric: This is your money. You have a right to know where it’s going and how it’s being spent. So far […]
NY Times Goes Hyperlocal
New York Times: Hey Kids, Let’s Put on a Blog! Starting today, The Local is an online news site for these communities. But if we build it right together, The Local will be something much more: a glorious if cacophonous chorus of your voices singing the song of life itself in these astoundingly varied and […]