Signs of the Times

With Smaller Newsrooms, Conservatives Have Most To Lose

Because of longstanding feelings that newspapers have a liberal bias, conservatives do a happy dance every time a new round of newsroom layoffs are announced.
It’s an awfully short-sighted happy dance.
Newspaper reporters do more to hold government accountable than any group in America. Sometimes they hold government accountable by pointing and wagging [...]

The Seven Words You Now CAN Say On New Media

The shape of the media is obviously changing. Old media is adapting and sometimes expiring. New media is experimenting, evolving, dying and sometimes flourishing. Where it all will land is anyone’s guess.
But one interesting implication of all these changes is that much of the content is now outside the control of the [...]

Senseless Censorship

I worry about our democracy when networks refuse to air ads expressing political or policy views. Though the logic and factual basis of this ad are ridiculous, how can NBC and ABC refuse to run it?

Sure, it’s inaccurate, hollow, tedious and poorly produced. But those aren’t good enough reasons [...]

Censored News Network (CNN)

CNN is labeled a liberal network by conservatives who prefer Fox, a conservative network by liberals who prefer MSNBC, and an inane network by tripartisan wonks who prefer PBS or C-Span.
But now there is a CNN descriptor that can unify us all. Gutless.
In the last few days, CNN has refused [...]

Clinton/Obama Give Away U.S. Soul to Evil Empire

You know it’s going to happen. The Republicans are going to say Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have prostrated the United States before the puppetmaster of North Korea. Apologists. Secret deals. Bowing to a dictator. Selling out the SuperPower.
Clinton, with lots of people behind the scenes, was able to spring two journalists from the troglodyte [...]

Satire Choir

One of the best things to happen to political satire in the last century is wide availability of video editing software and YouTube distribution. For instance, this was just posted by the Strib, and promptly shared by a loyal participant:

What a great country. Free speech gets more fun [...]

I Tweet, Therefore I’m Unemployable

How far should we go in censoring ourselves? What we put up on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, all that jazz, lives forever and can make potential employers, maybe potential dates or friends, steer clear of us. If we worry too much about that, will we be misrepresenting ourselves as boring, vanilla people with no brains and [...]

Welcome Back, Ms. Saberi, and Keep Filing

Journalist Roxana Saberi, a North Dakota native, was freed in Iran yesterday. At last, and thank God. We forget sometimes, those of us who’ve studied in the genteel rooms of Murphy Hall or St. Thomas or Mankato, those of us who’ve been members of the Newspaper Guild, who’ve gone home comfortably at night after filing [...]

Sarah Unplugged

‘Lo and behold, Governor Palin apparently discovered on Tuesday that there is an entire plane full of reporters in the back of her campaign plane and – being the outgoing type – went right back there to introduce herself.  The verbatim transcript of the conversation is well worth the head-scratching effort it takes to parse [...]