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March 14, 2005

Turn it off

: I wish sites using blogrolling.com would just turn it off. Some glitch there is causing some of my favorite blogs (Rex, are you listening) not to load.

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State of the art

: The Project for Excellence in Journalism has its new report on the state of media, 2005. It is, once again, big and will take time to digest. So start chewing. Its five ubertrends:
1. There are now several models of journalism, and the trajectory increasingly is toward those that are faster, looser, and cheaper.
2. The rise in partisanship of news consumption and the notion that people have retreated to their ideological corners for news has been widely exaggerated.
3. To adapt, journalism may have to move in the direction of making its work more transparent and more expert, and of widening the scope of its searchlight.
4. Despite the new demands, there is more evidence than ever that the mainstream media are investing only cautiously in building new audiences.
5. The three broadcast network news divisions face their most important moment of transition in decades.
There's this, too:

The problem is that the traditional media are leaving it to technology companies - like Google - and to individuals and entrepreneurs - like bloggers - to explore and innovate on the Internet. The risk is that traditional journalism will cede to such competitors both the new technology and the audience that is building there.

: Howie Kurtz highlights this:

In covering the Iraq war last year, 73 percent of the stories on Fox News included the opinions of the anchors and journalists reporting them, a new study says.

By contrast, 29 percent of the war reports on MSNBC and 2 percent of those on CNN included the journalists' own views.

And when you combine those stats with the ratings, what do we conclude? Perhaps that the priesthood doesn't approve of opinions, but the audience does.

And, by the way, as I was listening to Lou Dobbs on CNN (via Sirius) tonight -- returning from an on-air visit with the opinonated Larry Kudlow -- I heard him give clear opinions and you know what? It's a welcome change. At the too-oft-afore-mentioned Harvard confab, we said it's time to call bullshit bullshit.

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Post-post-feminism

: On Kudlow's show tonight, talk turned to the apparently ever-more-scant possibility of a Hillary-v-Condi presidential race.

I said that the important thing about this talk is that we're not in the token feminist era of Geraldine Ferraro: Wow, a woman can run for vice-president!

Nope. These are two strong, smart, capable, powerful women and no one is looking at them as the products of quotas or tokenism or condescension. They are politicians in their own right.

We've come a long way, baby.

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The Purpose-Driven Hostage Negotiator

: The amazing woman who soothed the homicidal soul of the Atlanta judge-killer read him The Purpose-Driven Life. No surprise: The self-home tome is now No. 3 on Amazon.

Boy, I bet Dr. Phil is jealous!

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Your government censors at work

: The FCC rules that the Desperate Housewives promo was not indecent and illegal.

Well, duh.

But it took all kinds of lawyers and tax dollars to conclude:

We conclude that the material in question is not patently offensive, and thus, not indecent. In particular, the “Monday Night Football” segment, although sexually suggestive, is not graphic or explicit. wens is fully dressed throughout the segment, and, with the exception of a moment when her bare back is exposed to the audience, Sheridan is at all times fully covered with a towel. No sexual or excretory organs are shown or described, and no sexual activities are explicitly depicted or described. Furthermore, the scene where Sheridan drops her towel and jumps into Owens’s arms is brief. Although the scene apparently is intended to be titillating, it simply is not graphic or explicit enough to be indecent under our standard.

And what damned business is it of the goverment's if something is sexually suggestive or intended to be titillating? They seem disappointed it was not explicit enough to get a slap. How much is enough? Only your FCC knows for sure.

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Media on media

: Supposed to be on Larry Kudlow's show tonight at 5p ET with Roger L. Simon. I really enjoyed my last visit and conversation with him. Hell, he's a blogger, of course I would.

: UPDATES: I do like doing Kudlow's show. He is genuinely enthusiastic about blogs; he reads them and likes them and appreciates them.

Here's a transcript of the show. Considering how fast I talk sometimes, I don't want to read it....

LINK | Comments (3)

What liberal media?

: There's a most curious story in The Times today about Democrats.com's efforts to have media join a conference call to hear their side of things. They have no idea whether media actually called in. I've not seen any stories about the call. So there's no way to know whether this is a success. Yet The Times devotes considerable attention to it on the front of the business section.

The larger story is a good and interesting one: Are conservatives doing a better job than liberals at using the blogosphere to investigate and spread stories and get them into mainstream media?

But this conference call thing is just a blip.

I called into one of them -- subject: Jeff Gannon -- because MSNBC was going to have a discussion mentioning it with Bob Cox and Ameriblog Americablog and I was to join in via blogcast. It all got preempted when the Pope burped. I got into the call a bit late and also hung around after the official part was over and I heard the participants asking with great anticipation whether any reporters had actually called in. None showed themselves.

So it just seems odd to me that this odd venture gets so much attention in The Times. That's all I'm saying: It's odd.

: By the way, I never did compliment The Times for its story last week on the Apple-v-blogger case: It was a good and blogsmart story that went to great sources, including Susan Crawford and Jack Balkin (quoted again today).

: Joe Gandleman comments on the conference-call story.

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Take that, terrorist rats!

: The scene in Lebanon today is miraculous. I'm watching it on Alhurra right now. I don't understand the words. Don't have to. The camera is filled with Lebanese celebrating a free future. PubliusPundit has all the details: "A human 'tsunami' covers Beirut."

Between 800,000 and 1.3 million people have jammed Martyr Square and roads leading to it to answer Hizbullah's pro-Syria rally, which was half the size (and filled with Syrians, by many reports). When Hizbullah had its rally, various eeyores said, see, that's bigger than the pro-freedom opposition rallies that have filled Beirut. Well, take that. And as one speaker says, quoted at Publius:

From Nayla speech:
“we are here 100% lebanese..
is there any one non-lebanese between us?…… people: NOO!
I say to Hizbullah that they do not exist to defend this regime..
I call upon them to complete the liberation of the south..

Beirut Spring quotes a friend's report from Tripoli:

Lebanese Flags on all houses, people desperate to go to the Beirut Demo and not finding places on the hundreds of buses lined up. Loud speakers in every street blarring nationalistic music. Some gas stations offering Benzine for free for cars going to beirut... such a lively bee-hive Tripoli has become (bye bye lethargy), i never felt so proud i am from there...

: Here's a blogger covering the creation of a gigantic human Lebanese flag this weekend.

Publius sums it up so eloquently: "Assad must be shitting in his pants."

: The Lebanese Blogger Forum (slogan: "we heart lebanon") quotes Rampurple:

I am watching the masses of people in Lebanon on their way to the Martyr's Square. There must already be over a million people at the square already. The square is full, and the masses have reach Riad Al Solh Square.

People are still on their way to the square and are having difficulty getting there because of the traffic of people heading towards the square. It just took my brother 2 hours to get from nahr il kalb until the forum (he really hasn't even reached the forum). Usually this path does not even take 10 minutes....

Today's event is to mark 4 weeks since the death of former PM Hariri along with 16 other people. The truth of the explosion has not been covered yet. No one knows how the explosion took place and who created the explosion. We need our answers, and we won't let go this time. It's time assassinations stop being part of our society and daily lives.

I am tingling all over...

: Read Angry Arab to see the pathetic sputterings of a Syrian ally: They call the creating of a human flag "North Korean."

: SaveLebanon.org is posting videos.

: Lebanese Bloggers shouts:

OH MY GOD!!!

I AM IN DISBELIEF!

THE ENTIRE LEBANESE POPULATION IS IN BEIRUT!!!!

ROADS INTO THE CITY ARE STILL CLOGED WITH TRAFFIC...

SOME HAVE DECIDED TO USE BOATS INSTEAD OF THEIR CARS...

I HEARD THAT THERE IS A CONVOY OF 70 BOATS THAT LAUNCHED FROM BYBLOS...

THE MEDITERANEAN IS MIRRORED BY A SEA OF RED WHITE AND GREEN!!!

I AM SO PROUD!!!

HEY... PLANET EARTH: DO YOU SEE???? DO YOU SEE???

: See this eloquent post from Renatoobleidsworld:>blockquote>THE QUIET STORM ACROSS THE NATION
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy
-HL Mencken

Hundreds of thousands of people are gathering in central Beirut for an opposition rally one month to the day since Prime Minister Hariri was assassinated.
Although it has been erroneously called a counter-demonstration to last week's loyalist rally (CNN), it is in fact a counter counter-demonstration as last week’s rally (which it has dwarfed) was itself the irrelevant counter-demonstration to daily opposition rallies (a quite intifada) that have been occurring since February 14th.
As to the view from Harisa today, Arlo Guthrie’s famous “The New York Thruway is closed man!” exclamation at Woodstock 36 years ago comes to mind – the Beirut bound lane of the Beirut to Damascus Highway is packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic as far as the eye can see (and has been since around 10.am this morning). With the rally set to culminate in about fifteen minutes, they might not all make it, but they don’t need to – today the whole country is the protest venue.