Journalism

All the News That's Fit to Hide

How to make the least amount of money possible with newspaper archives: Follow the example of Canada's Sun Media Corporation. Check out this old article from the Toronto Sun, one of 20,000 archived articles from Sun newspapers that have been crawled by Google. Nestled inside an ungodly mess of navigation links, ads, and other boilerplate, the 37K page contains less than 100 words of unique content that might attract a web searcher: Digging into the boys in the band DOC DIG! FOLLOWS THE EXPLOITS ... (read more)

2005/04/04

A comment on the Drudge Retort beautifully captures the mood tonight as the world's broadcast media hovers uncomfortably between life and death: This just in. The pope is not dead. We will be reporting that the pope is not dead until he is dead, then of course, we will remove the "not" so that we will say the "pope is dead." Then we will inundate you with slick already produced stories about his life, retrospectives, montages, just as soon as we can say he is dead. There will be lots of shots ... (read more)

2005/04/01

Florida attorney Matt Conigliaro has done an unbelievable job of reporting on the state legal issues of the Terry Schiavo case. Beginning in August 2003, a month after he began his weblog, Conigliaro has covered the subject extensively, providing a reference page that manages to be both thorough and fair, though some people would consider his respect for the legal process as an attempt to pick sides: The facts of this case are terribly sad, but they are not hard to understand. There's really ... (read more)

2005/03/28

Sorry, I Broke the News

An e-mail to the Drudge Retort this afternoon revealed that Jeff Weise, the teen who allegedly shot up his Minnesota high school and killed himself Monday, was an active participant on a UFO, conspiracy, and cover-up site called AboveTopSecret.Com. The posts appear legitimate and are corroborated by several other members who participated in the discussions with Weise, so I posted a news story about the messages. Because this appears to be the first media report on these messages, I needed ... (read more)

2005/03/23

Tina Brown compared bloggers to the East German secret police in Sunday's Washington Post: We are in the Eggshell Era, in which everyone has to tiptoe around because there's a world of busybodies out there who are being paid to catch you out -- and a public that is slowly being trained to accept a culture of finks. We're always under surveillance; cameras watch us wherever we go; paparazzi make small fortunes snapping glamour goddesses picking their noses; everything is on tape, with ... (read more)

2005/03/21

All of My Distortions Lack Purpose

Dick Rogers, ombudsman of the San Francisco Chronicle, compares bloggers to the ink-stained wretches in his profession: Other [bloggers] poke at contemporary issues but toss responsibility out the window. Five minutes with an Internet directory such as www.globeofblogs.com will turn up blogs that don't even bother to guess at the truth. They traffic in falsehood, innuendo and purposeful distortion. Journalism? I sure hope not. I challenged him in e-mail to name five actual weblogs that run ... (read more)

2005/03/15

If you're not already panicked enough about the "overdue" killer flu pandemic, Guardian science editor Robin McKie offers a new periodic cause for alarm. Every 62 million years, the species of Earth suffer a mass extinction: After analysing the eradication of millions of ancient species, scientists have found that a mass extinction is due any moment now. Their research has shown that every 62 million years -- plus or minus 3m years -- creatures are wiped from the planet's surface in massive ... (read more)

2005/03/13

I Blog For Short

New York Times: On the Web log, or blog, he chronicles his daily life, his small victories, his disappointments, his liberal views on politics and the health of his pets. Washington Post: Mosteller's supervisors and co-workers at the Durham, N.C., Herald-Sun were well aware of her Weblog, or blog. ABC News (Australia): The lanky, sandy-haired writer composes a frequently updated Internet journal -- weblog, or blog for short ... Maine Today: Hands-on science experiments, creating an online ... (read more)

2005/03/10

The First Blogger Died in 1794

The patron saint of weblogging is Harbottle Dorr, a little-known figure from early America who was writing a hyperlinked daily journal on current events two centuries before the technology existed: On January 7, 1765, in the middle of the Stamp Act controversy, Boston shopkeeper Harbottle Dorr took the current issue of the Boston Evening-Post and commented on its contents in the margins. Every week thereafter, he collected one or both of the Evening-Post or the Boston Gazette, (sometimes adding ... (read more)

2005/03/08

The Meek Shall Inherit the Press

From the New York Times: The White House official who briefed reporters on the speech said Mr. Bush would take detailed positions on Social Security in coming weeks and months, but only to the extent that doing so would help Congress move forward. The official, who spoke before an auditorium full of journalists, insisted on not being quoted by name. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said the goal in not allowing the use of the official's name was to keep the focus on Mr. Bush. ... (read more)

2005/02/02

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