Saturday, February 9, 2008

The maharishi and the general The news of Marharishi Mahesh Yogi's death reminded me of one of the first pictures I took as a newspaper reporter... one that I don't think was ever published, possibly for lack of today's Internet technology. So I dug through some boxes and dusted off the scanner I didn't have back then, and here it is... The story was in Amherst, Mass., where a conference on Transcendental Meditation had attracted researchers and meditators, including Maj. Gen Franklin Davis, then commandant of the Army War College, who said his blood pressure had benefited from the Maharishi's "Science of Creative Intelligence." This struck my editor as unusual, so I was dispatched from The Hartford Courant to get the story. I did, and also got this picture, using an old twin-lens-reflex Yashica Mat, which I'd brought along just in case a Courant photographer wasn't on hand. In those days I could dictate a story to the state desk over the phone to file it by deadline, but I couldn't do the same with a photograph. I don't remember for sure, but driving back to Connecticut and developing the film probably would have put me over deadline, and the Courant probably was more interested in having the story right away than waiting a day for a photo feature. We still had competition then from The Hartford Times (RIP). (A couple of years later a study of New England newspapers described the Courant, the nation's oldest continuously published newspaper, as still treating photography as an innovation that might prove useful someday.) In any case, I missed "the shot" -- the Maharishi handing the general a flower on a long thin stem. It was an unfortunate blur. Even this one, the best on the roll, was a bit on the thin and unfocused side. So was my story, as I recall... but I made my deadline. 4:24:48 PM    comment [] Heading toward Googlezon, Yacrosoft or Microhoo... The man who put pictures in your browser deconstructs The New York Times board of directors and concludes that the newspaper of record's days are numbered, but that... ...if you want to issue bonds to pay for FCC-approved snack cake manufacturing in a submarine on display at a national park by a sundress-wearing cigarette-puffing Levitra-popping Judy Miller, you're pretty much set. What is he talking about? Check out Marc Andreesen's New York Times Death Watch. (Thanks to ace private eye Larry Lopez for pointing me to Marc's blog.) Speaking of transitions... Here's some browser-history for folks not familiar with the fate of Mosaic's successor, Netscape, and its heir, Firefox. And here are a dozen links, some from or about the Times, others loosely related to this post, its enigmatic headline, or my Media & Society class assignment to find a "popular media" article about a media-and-society issue, in order to launch a reseearch project in traditional academic research journals: An Industry Imperiled by Falling Profits and Shrinking Ads (2008) More readers trading newspapers for Web sites (2007) Why big newspapers applaud some declines in circulation (2007) Newspaper circulation drops not so bad? (2006) Newspaper circulation continues overall decline (2004) Facing free software, Microsoft looks to Yahoo Yahoo's directors discuss how to face Microsoft bid A tight grip can choke creativity (book publishing) Academia enters the world of frames, bubbles and bad color schemes (comicbook, textbook) Open access is the future (academic journal publishing) Video game industry picks a war game as its best Epic 2015 on the birth of Googlezon and the sad end of The New York Times (Those links are two copies of a single Flash movie, in case one version isn't working) Footnote: This isn't me, no matter what my home page looks like. But what a great Radford Highlander mascot sidekick he'd make! We could change the team slogan to "Dread the Plaid!" Rhyming isn't everything. 12:55:15 PM    comment []

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