LIGHTENING THE MOOD

Worst makeout songs ever
11:47:59 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

GIVING LOVE

Issue nine of Blueeyes, the online photo magazine, is out with a focus on the U.S. election, under the heading Love. There are three photo essays: I Love You/I Hate You, I Love Politics, and I Love America. Great stuff.

SOURCE: The APAD blog.
9:24:52 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

THE DEBATE CONTINUES

Over at Jay Rosen's PressThink, the attempt to come to grips with the reality of media in 2004 is continuing. Rosen has published an essay by Daniel Weintraub of the Sacremento Bee that includes this:

If our world is changing, we simply have to change with it. We have to write stories that are more compelling, more stories about what the politicians and the government are doing and fewer, perhaps, about what they are saying, or why they are saying it. We have to engage more with our readers, become more a part of the conversation and less of a lecturer at the front of a great hall. We have to reconsider the way we think about scoops and competition, and think more about "open-source" journalism that truly seeks answers through cooperative information gathering, and not just gotchas that we can spring on the politician in a kind of gameboard journalism.

The first part (tell better stories and concentrate more on what's being done than what's being said) is an oldish debate. It was one we used to have in the newsroom as we sought to break away from giving more prominence to the process (the city council meeting) than the decisions and what they meant.

The second part, looking at the collaborative possibilities brought about by the Internet, is new. It's the sexy part right now — wikis, blogs, RSS and all the rest. Maybe the sexiness of it will drive the fundamental change that's needed to stop the steady downward slide of journalism into irrelevance.
9:09:17 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

CREATING MORAL COWARDS

James Wolcott has a cutting indictment, not only of the media, but of the community at large. At the end of a trenchant pre-election piece, Wolcott writes:

The truth is, as Scott Ritter writes in an important article linked to by Antiwar.com, the war in Iraq has made moral cowards of us all. To focus on whether or not the Bin Laden tape would give Bush a boost while thousands upon thousands of Iraqis die and Fallujah is about to pulverized without the slightest debate in this country is an indictment of our media, our political class, and the phony Christianity that so many of our dumpling patriots profess.

In a a few words, Wolcott has touched on one of the grievous sins of media: ignoring what is important in favour of what is merely entertaining.
8:28:22 PM  LINK TO THIS POST