In a race to play the race card

A family is having a fine summer day at Valleyfair, Minnesota’s theme park extraordinaire, when the father witnesses his young daughter get groped and harassed. After trying to defend her, one of the young black men doing the harassing calls in more friends and the father is beaten. How dare he protect his daughter, you [...]

How to save journalism: Sue ‘em!

A Raleigh News & Observer subscriber has an amusing approach to saving the journalism business from itself: Sue it.
A News & Observer subscriber is suing the newspaper for cutting staff and the size of the paper.
Keith Hempstead, a Durham lawyer, filed the suit last month in Wake Superior Court. He says he renewed his subscription [...]

Participant or observer: Journalism and its impact on the subjects

This story in the Washington Post cuts to the heart of a central issue in journalism ethics: Do the people who document and retell the stories of people are the world have an impact on those lives? Should they? Are these journalists participants, observers or a combination thereof?
In the story, former photojournalist Warren Zinn tells [...]

McCain tackles one of the “third rails”

A while back, Brother Jon started a great conversation about the “third rails” of American politics, those topics that apparently only the ballsiest or the stupidest politicians will take on with any honesty or significance.
On Monday in Denver, Senator McCain (the next president of the United States? — ready…fight!) took on the third rail of [...]

How do you prove ads work? Lie and deceive!

The company that owns the Philadelphia (type that five times fast) Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News — not to mention the related Web site philly.com — subjected its readers to a smattering of ads for an airline with an innovative pricing model. Derrie-Air (get it?) charges customers based on their own bulk: “the more [...]

Pawlenty and the veepstakes

I’m pretty sure I dislike the word “veepstakes.” But anyway…
The New Republic has an interesting piece that dissects what makes Gov. Pawlenty tick and what his chances might be for becoming Sen. McCain’s running mate.
I love the lead of this article, and I learned some things about Pawlenty I didn’t know. The piece seems to [...]

Does the president need to be a computer user?

An interesting conversation has been taking place over at the Web Strategy blog, written by Jeremiah Owyang, a social computing analyst at Forrester Research. He asks if the president needs to know how to use a computer and the Web to do his or her job effectively.
The question was prompted by John McCain’s admission that [...]

Tim Russert dies at age 58

Tim Russert, host of “Meet the Press” and NBC News’ Washington, D.C., bureau chief, has died of an apparent heart attack.
Like him or not, his significance in political journalism cannot be denied.
Photo courtesy of bladerunner009 on Flickr

Strib TV debuts

As you ponder the future of journalism (and you know you do!), consider this:
The Star Tribune (the content of which was published exclusively on dead trees as recently as perhaps about 10 years ago) now features original video content front and center — literally — on startribune.com.
Photographers who have traditionally taken (gasp!) photographs are now [...]

Is Olbermann good for NBC?

Is Keith Olbermann an asset to MSNBC and its parent NBC News? That, of course, is a two-pronged question. He’s certainly an asset in the business sense, giving MSNBC a fighting chance at keeping up with the Foxes. But perhaps more importantly, and certainly of greater interest to me, is considering this question in the [...]