THEY LIKE US

June Thomas, writing in Slate, slags NBC and lauds CBC over Olympic coverage, in an article titled Living in Seattle means never having to watch Bob Costas.

For two weeks in August, cable customers in the Pacific Northwest can thank the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. for preserving our collective sanity.

Although, some of the complements are decidedly backhanded:

Canadian mediocrity has freed the CBC from the strictures of American coverage. When it celebrates Canadian successes, often in the novelty events that are forgotten between Olympiads -- synchronized diving, judo, mountain biking -- the CBC demonstrates sporting diversity. And when they televise blue-chip events like swimming, track, and gymnastics, they can't possibly be homers because there's not a maple leaf in sight.

Fun piece.

I found the link at Phillipe Roy's blog, photojournaliste.ca.
11:58:27 PM    


photo by Dan Frazier

PHOTOGRAPHY'S A BLAST

This has pretty much turned into an ad for SanDisk, but it's such a good story.

Photographer Don Frazier set up three cameras on tripods to capture the demolition of a bridge and got the shot (above) just before the blast destroyed his camera. Amid the debris, he discovered the CompactFlash card, popped it into a card reader and found it had survived.

The full story, and more pictures (including a shot from a second camera of the camera being blown apart) is at the SanDisk site in the form of a press release.

Original link from A Photo a Day.

11:20:14 PM    

DUMB HEADLINES

From Hoffmania, via Atrios:

CNN: Home of the Dumb Headline

Terror Suspected in 2 Russian Jet Crashes

Yes, we agree that terror is always involved when a plane crashes. But we also wouldn't rule out terrorism in this case, either.

10:51:18 PM    

UN-NEW NEWS

If timeliness really is one of the prime elements of newsworthiness (and, seeing as that's what we teach you, it must be), then the Vancouver Sun's B1 story today fails miserably.

The story is about developers who are seeking provincial approval to construct a gondola up the face of The Chief just outside of Squamish. It may be news to The Sun, but not to a whole lot of other people.

I first read about this at The Tyee almost two weeks ago. And an article from the recent issue of the Squamish Chief (accessed through the newspaper's Web site), says they first wrote about the proposal in May.

10:23:41 PM    

NOW BROUGHT TO YOU BY...

The conflict between advertising and editorial isn't limited to world of traditional journalism. J.D. Lasica reports on a Wired magazine report on a new service that seeks to link bloggers with sponsors.

The service is called Blogversations. Lasica quotes Rafat Ali of Paidcontent.org:

It's difficult to control the line between editorial and advertorials. If someone's paying you, it's very difficult to be objective about the whole thing.

And Jeff Jarvis:

In "my judgment, this goes over the line," Jarvis wrote on his site. "It calls into question the blogger's credibility (would she be talking about this if she weren't paid to talk about this?). And it is contrary to the essence and appeal of blogs: I talk about what I want to talk about. Love it or leave it, read it or not, sponsor it or not, that's what bloggers do."

Yep.

9:54:27 PM