Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Wishing you and yours a reflective and cleansing Yom Kippur, even if it's not part of what we these days so correctly call your faith tradition. I'm all for making it a national holiday, as I wrote a couple of years back. "I'd like to invite the rest of the country to join right in with your Jewish neighbors in marking the Day of Atonement. Pull up a chair and have a little nothing to eat, and let's all get started." Read the whole thing. 4:17:05 PM   permalink   comment []

The N&R calls the Jefferson-Pilot acquisition a merger. JP calls it a "merger of equals." Lincoln calls it a merger. But Lincoln is buying JP. Lincoln is buying all of the shares in JP. Lincoln will control the board of the combined company. Lincoln gets the headquarters. Lincoln's boss is the boss of the company. It's not a hostile acquisition. It's a negotiated transaction, and JP seems to have negotiated pretty well on behalf of its people and the ole hometown. But JP sold itself to Lincoln. The companies have agreed to call it what they want to call it, but the press should call it what it is. 2:12:12 PM   permalink   comment []

John Robinson has some interesting thoughts on blogging, journalism, and credibility: "We published a JP merger story online Monday morning based on a New York Times story that had no named sources or attribution....Why would we give the Times, which has had credibility issues of late, a pass but not local bloggers we trust?" 2:00:36 PM   permalink   comment []

More selective than Craig's List or Monster, but a real find for the right job-seekers. 1:51:42 PM   permalink   comment []

"Is this a circular firing squad, or what?," asks Instapundit. "What possible benefit could Bush get from the Miers nomination that makes it worth sowing this much dissension within the ranks of his supporters?"   1:42:57 PM   permalink   comment []

DarkTimes: Friedman says that the lack of condemnation by Sunni leaders of suicide attacks on Shiite mosques during Ramadan "means there is no controlling moral authority in the Sunni Muslim community anymore...there are no boundaries anymore. No one is safe. Anything goes, against anyone, anywhere. If the Sunni Muslim world does not act to halt this genocidal ethnic-cleansing campaign against the Shiites of Iraq...the Sunni world will eventually be consumed by this very violence. A civilization that tolerates suicide bombing is itself committing suicide." More: "Inexplicably to me, the Bush team...is equally silent. Instead of going to the U.N. and seeking a resolution declaring the Sunni terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his ilk war criminals, it sends Karen Hughes around the Arab world to get flagellated by Sunni Muslim women for how awful we are...I call it losing a public relations war to mass murderers." MoDo's headline: "To Sir, With Love." She ledes: "'You are the best Governor ever - deserving of great respect!' gushed Harriet Miers, then the Texas Lottery chief, to George W. Bush in 1997.'" I believe kids today spell the word "evar." But anyway. Dowd's online column links to what she calls a "cache of mash notes" from Miers to W. The rest of the column is a bunch of made-up correspondence in that vein, which while amusing enough ("I await your instructions, Master") just can't compete with the real thing. 9:16:29 AM   permalink   comment []

WFMY bungles election reporting. 9:06:38 AM   permalink   comment []

A 50-to-70-pound cat in Fisher Park. That's a lot of cat. The owner will not get it back, says the N&R, if it's "determined to be exotic." I would say that a 70-pound feline in Fisher Park is the very definition of exotic. Update: Lenslinger says a mere 40 lbs or so, and has all the details. 9:03:38 AM   permalink   comment []

A conversation about vid-blog quality after this post. For me, the issue at this point is less about the production standards than the existence of the medium itself. As Dr. Johnson said of a dog walking on its hind legs, you are surprised to find it done at all. Lenslinger says that shaky handheld is fine for capturing Bigfoot emerging from the woods -- well, I think that's what the video in question is all about. Just because it's a sit-down Q&A doesn't make it any less of a found moment. That's not to say production values don't matter, or that they won't improve over time with the equipment and the experience of users...Glenn Reynolds has some notes here on the subject. There was discussion during Amanda's vid-blog session about the distaste of web audiences for slick, mediated voices, a preference for authenticity over production values. Of course it's not an either/or, but I'd go for the dimly-lit relaxed after-dinner interview over the bright lights and formal style any day. Boost the sound, sure, but the moment was not about boom mics and staging, and introducing that stuff would have changed the moment. 8:41:16 AM   permalink   comment []

Wall Street Journal: "Focus of CIA Leak Probe Appears to Widen" The Plame case is nearing its endgame, and it could be a big damn deal after all. "Mr. Fitzgerald's pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent's name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy." The C-word. Zoinks! 8:23:10 AM   permalink   comment []

In a second comment at Melanie Sill's N&O blog, Jay Rosen explains what he means by a newspaper being a "filter." Ironic: one of the quotes from Jay cited by the N&O was about blogger standards on things like corrections and dialog with readers... 7:11:41 AM   permalink   comment []