Wednesday, May 04, 2005

News & Observer: "Let there be blogs." Includes an aggregator for Triangle and Eastern NC blogs. No beat-reporter sites yet, but many more blogs are promised. 3:52:50 PM   permalink   comment []

John Robinson: "After reading, talking and thinking some more about it, we've decided to require you to enter a name and e-mail address to post a comment on our blogs." That still leaves open Bledsoe's original complaint: will N&R bloggers continue to cite anonymous/pseudonymous bloggers? I hope so. 3:47:23 PM   permalink   comment []

Mickey McLean on B.C.'s critics: "Do these people really feel threatened and offended by a clever little comic strip that took a stand on creationism over evolution?" 11:14:59 AM   permalink   comment []

John McCandlish Phillips: "When Columnists Cry 'Jihad'"  Nice history lesson about the religious origins of some fancy colleges...but not much about why all these columns are being written today. No mention of Frist, Dobson, or Justice Sunday. Phillips opines against the notion that "everything that has its origin in religion must be swept out of federal, and even civil, domains," and ignores the efforts to impose specific religious views on public policy. I used the term "jihad" in a recent column, and I did so precisely because Dobson and Co. are applying the language of religious war to politics. I'm not the one who chose to define a vote in the Senate as a vote "against people of faith." Phillips tut-tuts at the columnists who use words like "frightening" to describe the actions of some religious conservatives, but avoids the stuff we actually find frightening, like having the Senate Majority Leader participate in a program that defines his political opponents as infidels. 9:10:17 AM   permalink   comment []

Lenslinger gives Bob Buckley credit for the Fox 8 blog report. Well, some credit. Seriously, they both did a good job, and the 'Slinger is looking for his next blog story...Meanwhile, Fox 8 management could earn some web cred by letting him put part of the segment up at his blog. 8:49:32 AM   permalink   comment []

Sally Greene on the Greensboro-based National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools: "Don't be fooled by a wolf in sheep's clothing." Certainly the poster she shows doesn't look like it's about understanding Biblical allusions in Western culture -- just straight up Creationist pseudoscience. Previously. 8:41:22 AM   permalink   comment []

Great comment thread at JR's -- this is exactly the kind of stuff I was talking about in Sunday's column when I said, "This is a city writing its own history and practicing a new kind of journalism." And the discussion initiated by Jerry Bledsoe at Allen's blog concerning anonymous comments has me wondering what the right answer is -- Terri Obermeyer's comment nicely sums up some of the arguments against anonymity at a newspaper site. 8:34:49 AM   permalink   comment []

Luna and I had lunch yesterday with NYT reporter Kit Seelye, who's in town to learn about the N&R's online strategy. As soon as we sat down, Undercurrent owner Ben Roberts popped his head around the corner and told me he'd seen me on TV the night before. "Hope it didn't make me look too stupid," I said. "Oh, I'm used to seeing you look stupid," said Ben. "But this was a chance to hear you sound stupid, too." Seelye and I began talking about journalism and blogs. Suddenly a garishly-colored Scout of a certain vintage stopped in the intersection so that its driver, Hoggard, could yell out the window, "Hey, Ed, Whatchu drinkin'?" Whatever Seelye finds out about Greensboro's blog scene, she got a good sense of life on South Elm Street. 8:12:27 AM   permalink   comment []