Wednesday, November 17, 2004
THE CONVERSATIONThe conversation about journalism continues at PressThink, with Jay Rosen expanding on the ideas he floated about the emergence of a new partisan U.S. medium. The latest entry is based partly on a response to Rosens' earlier musings by LA Times columnist David Shaw. (More power to the internet: Rosen links to Shaw's article; Shaw, in his newspaper article, didn't provide a link to Rosen's original piece.) Rosen is joined by Matt Welch, whose reaction to Shaw is blunt:
Shaw's response, typically for him, embodies five classic pathologies of the monopoly-newspaper media critic: Disdain for the audience, exaggerated self-regard, hostility toward competition, distrust of the audience, and a fundamentally conservative outlook toward change.
If you've been following Rosen's writings, go read. If you haven't been, this makes a good starting point. |
DIE, JOURNALIST, DIEAccording to some slack-jawed yokels in the Land of Liberty, Kevin Sites, the freelance journalist who videotaped the apparent execution of wounded Iraqis by a U.S. Marine, deserves to die. MyDD passes along these posts from the right-hand side of Blog World:
No need for anything overt. Unfortunate things happen in combat zones, and if the reporter fails to hear someone yell "Sniper!!", well, c'est la guerre.
Note that few of the "patriots" posted using a real name or anything. There are times when the internet does seem to be little more than little pools of hatred, dispensed by people who can hide behind screen names. |
AWARD-WINNING OPINIONNicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times is the well-deserved winner of the Online News Association's award for online commentary. His piece on Darfur, A Promise Unkept (link above), is a great example of his striking multimedia work, and a testament to the power of the internet to deliver great journalism.
SOURCE: Joe Weiss at Multimedia Storytelling. |
I HEART THE NEW YORKERLast week's issue was a reminder of some of the reasons I read the New Yorker; the sheer pleasure of reading good writing. Consider this lede from Caitlan Flanagan's article on modern parenting:
When Jean-Marie Maier, of Sunrise, Florida, suspected that she was pregnant with her first child, she and her husband, Ken, did what many modern parents do: they bought a home pregnancy test and, after celebrating the positive result, started a blog. That's the type of lede that promises great things, which Flanagan delivers. And it doesn't hurt a bit to have John McPhee in the same issue, writing about Illinois River towboats. McPhee is the master of the incisive, telling description:
Mel is tall and lanky, fed in the middle but lithe in the legs. He has a sincere mustache, a trig goatee, and a slow, clear, frank, and friendly Ozark voice.
On top of that, there's the journalism of Jon Lee Anderson from Iraq (Anderson and the magazine's George Packer are doing some of the best work on the war). I could teach a whole semester on how to do journalism out of this one issue. |
FOR SUSAN ORLEAN FANSOne of my favourite feature writers is the incomparable Susan Orlean, so I'm looking forward to Monday, Dec. 6, when she'll be featured on the WFMU radio show The Speakeasy. You can listen live over the Internet starting at 6 p.m. EDT (3 p.m. here on the Coast), or wait for the broadcast to show up at The Speakeasy Archive after broadcast.
(The Archive is worth bookmarking and checking out every once in a while. There are a ton of broadcasts available including a recently added session with The Daily Show's Ed Helms.) |
PRESSURING IRANPatrick Belton at Oxblog is calling on his readers to pressure Iran to release activists and bloggers who have been arrested. Belton posts information from the World Movement for Democracy about two of those who have been arrested:
The World Movement for Democracy would like to express its concern for the safety of two Iranian women leaders, Fereshteh Ghazi, an online journalist, and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, editor of a women's rights journal "Farzaneh." According to the Women's Learning Partnership, Abbasgholizadeh has contributed to the strengthening of Iranian civil society by conducting capacity building programs as Director of the NGO Training Center in Tehran, and was arrested at her home on November 2, 2004. Ghazi has used her skills to create an increased awareness of the status of women in Iran using the Internet, and was arrested in her office on October 28, 2004. Both women have been denied the right to legal counsel. Over the past two months, a string of Internet writers and civil society activists have been arrested for "propaganda against the regime, endangering national security, inciting public unrest, and insulting sacred belief," according to Jamal Karimi Rad, the judiciary's spokesman. Belton provides addresses (including email addresses) for Hojjatoleslam Sayed Mohammad Khatemi, the President of Iran, and for Louise Arbour (the former Canadian Supreme Court Justice), who is High Commissioner for Human Rights with the UN.
As he says, a worthy cause to support. |
Last update: 12/1/04; 9:37:53 AM .
