Journalism happens, often online

Yesterday a group of online journalists were slated to testify before the Minnesota House rules committee. Their aim is to bring about a change of policy with regard to how the House defines a journalist and what types of media outlets could or should have access to the House floor.
I understand the need to make [...]

Reuters EiC: I ain’t scared

Reuters editor in chief David Schlesinger has spent the week scooping his own news service with on-the-spot reports from World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
And he knows it. And it excites him. “Bring it on,” he exclaims.
Schlesinger has been twittering, blazing fearlessly into the future, I suppose. Sure, some of it’s not exactly breaking news, but [...]

‘I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting’

Really, Joe?
Joe the Plumber, it seems, insists on extracting far more than his allotted 15 minutes of fame (and each additional minute wears greatly on my sanity). The folks at the online media outlet Pajamas TV have recruited everyone’s favorite human punchline to do some, uh, reporting from Israel.
I’m not making this up. He’s bypassed [...]

Unfavorable politics begets unfavorable coverage

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has published findings from a study that examines the tone of coverage of the presidential campaign between Sept. 8 and Oct. 16.
Perhaps the most significant finding is that the coverage of Sen. McCain has been, by a pretty fair margin, largely negative. Coverage of Sen. Obama, [...]

The Media Grow a (Tiny) Pair…

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a rant about how the media was an unindicted co-conspirator with the McCain campaign by not pushing the candidate and his veepmate to respond to questions from the media.
Today, there are signs of life from the traveling press corp. As ABC reports, the media staged a little [...]

Oops…the Palin Foreign Policy Photo Op Backfires

Governor Palin’s trip to New York …where she is posing for “grip-and-grins” with a group of world leaders (all of whom are somewhat beholden to the continued goodwill of the U.S.) plus Henry Kissinger…. has always struck me as a mistake by Team McCain as it simply highlights her foreign policy inexperience.
In the last few [...]

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 [...]

Product Placement in News Shows; Now There’s a Great Idea!

Just when you think we’ve plumbed the depths, we sail off another shelf into deeper waters…
According to today’s New York Times, there’s a growing trend of product placement on morning news shows at local television stations.  The report leads with the Las Vegas Fox affiliate that places McDonald’s breakfast drinks in front of its anchors [...]

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 [...]

The Powerless Puppeteer

I had to wait until Governor Jesse Ventura’s sidekick Dean Barkley formally filed his papers to run for the Senate before I could post this, lest I be the one accused of prompting Jesse to enter Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.
Well, it now [...]