Journalism

Tim Russert Presses Aaron Broussard

Tim Russert used Meet the Press this weekend to teach Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard a lesson -- the next time New Orleans is destroyed by flood, he should be more factual during his emotional breakdowns. Russert played back Broussard's last interview on the show, in which he related a gut-wrenching story about the death of a colleague's mother in a nursing home after the storm. True to form, Russert didn't have the spine to accuse Broussard directly of being wrong. He quoted ... (read more)

2005/09/26

Breaking News Coverage on Wikipedia Takes Flight

As I write this, a JetBlue Airways plane carrying 140 passengers is preparing for an emergency landing in Los Angeles. The incident has been in the JetBlue entry of Wikipedia for more than an hour: On 21 September 2005 at 7:55 PM Eastern Standard Time, the New York Times reported that JetBlue Airways Flight 292 was in the process of dumping fuel in preparation for an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport following a failure of the front landing gear during retraction. When I ... (read more)

2005/09/21

C-Span has begun podcasting on a trial basis, offering three weekly programs: The current events interview shows American Perspective and Q&A and the Book TV interview show After Words. The copyright notice for the podcasts makes note of something that's often misunderstood about C-Span -- the programs are not in the public domain: Except as specifically permitted by this policy, C-SPAN's RSS feeds and audio files may not be used for any political, commercial or otherwise unauthorized purpose. ... (read more)

2005/09/12

The Andrew Breitbart Report

After leaving the Huffington Post, Andrew Breitbart has been getting huge traffic on his weeks-old news portal, Breitbart.Com. The Drudge Report links to his copies of AP and Reuters news stories, making his site more popular than Slashdot overnight. Developing ... WorldNewsDaily calls Breitbart a former employee of the Drudge Report, but my impression is that he's currently working as Matt Drudge's double super-secret coauthor. Drudge has been coy about Breitbart's work for years, probably ... (read more)

2005/09/08

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superuser

The Detroit Free Times covers Michael Barnett, the network admin barricaded in downtown New Orleans who's been publishing a post-hurricane journal called The Interdictor. Barnett, an unabashed libertarian with a military background, has covered the disaster with his blog and streaming webcam while remaining online, which is both a journalistic and technological feat. To my knowledge, his connection never went down. Last night, some of the troops stationed in the city found them: Sometime around ... (read more)

2005/09/07

Kaye Trammell, an assistant professor of communication at LSU, began a Hurricane Katrina weblog as she rode out the approaching storm last weekend in Baton Rouge. She writes in this morning's Washington Post about the experience: We on-the-scene citizens don't mean to replace journalism. We don't have the resources. But we can provide first-person accounts in our own voices of what is happening. Because blogs are so easy to create, they will only grow in number, and many will be covering crises ... (read more)

2005/09/03

Reading this Katrina weblog entry reminded me that Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was one of only three category 5 hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S. in the last century. My wife M.C. Moewe covered that monster storm for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She interrupted a Disney World vacation with her parents, driving to South Florida in time to experience the eyewall passing overhead in the company of local police. For most of the three-hour trip, her car was the only one heading south. Covering ... (read more)

2005/08/29

It seems a little dumb to care about such things, but I'd like to see Elizabeth Vargas or another talented female newscaster replace Peter Jennings on World News Tonight. We've ventured far enough into the 21st century to retire the idea that the voice of authority in this country comes in only one octave. ... (read more)

2005/08/09

Catching Up with the Five of Hearts

I've begun reading How America Lost Iraq, a book by Aaron Glantz, a war correspondent for the liberal Pacifica radio network. Glantz's premise is that the Iraqi people were extremely receptive to the U.S. after Saddam Hussein's overthrow, but their support has been lost because of the imprisonment of innocent people, an inability to restore basic services like water and electricity, and widespread anarchy. The first chapter takes satisfaction in the downfall of Huda Amash, a Saddam loyalist who ... (read more)

2005/07/27

The defenders of Bush's leaky brain are getting desperate: My only comfort is that probably about 80% or more of the American people don't know who Karl Rove is. And probably 90% or even more don't know who Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are. Remember, only about 20-25% can name even one Supreme Court [justice]. This was written by Betsy Newmark, an Advanced Placement teacher of U.S. government and politics at a North Carolina high school. How many Americans knew Archibald Cox's name in 1973, ... (read more)

2005/07/12

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