Category: Uncategorized

Catching up with the tubes

New York Times reporter Brian Stelter today offers a smart take on the increasing willingness of commercial news outlets to link to outside content — except that there’s not a single outside link in his piece. (Not his fault, I’m sure.) What few links you’ll find direct you to past Times coverage.

As a public service, Media Nation offers the following outside links mentioned in Stetler’s article:

  • Publish2. Online software, which, though still not quite ready for public use, lets you add a widget to your site consisting of pages to which you’ve linked. I’ve tested it, and it’s pretty cool. Stetler, by the way, credits Publish2 CEO Scott Karp with coining the phrase “link journalism.”
  • Political Browser. The Washington Post’s page of links to political stories from around the mediasphere.
  • WMAQ-TV. The Chicago NBC affiliate’s Web site is being transformed into a city guide with lots of outside links.
  • “The ethic of the link layer on news.” Jeff Jarvis’ post on link journalism, published on his blog, Buzz Machine, in June.
  • Breaking on the Web. ProPublica’s guide to online investigative journalism.

Still unanswered: Who at the Times thought it was a good idea to publish a story on link journalism without actually doing any.

Don’t read this on a full stomach

The best (that is, the most nausea-inducing) part of this New York Times report on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan to intervene directly in the banking system comes near the end:

Industry executives quickly told Mr. Paulson that they liked the idea, though they warned that the Treasury should not try to squeeze out existing shareholders. They also begged Mr. Paulson not to impose tough restrictions on executive pay and golden-parachute deals for executives who are fired.

Mr. Paulson heeded those pleas.

I know I should end here with some sort of zinger. But words fail me.

David Brooks tries candor

David Brooks presumably has an idea of what his New York Times column should be about. Apparently telling us what he really thinks is not high on his list of priorities.

In the Times, Brooks has expressed — well, reservations about Sarah Palin. At a public event on Monday, he described her as “a fatal cancer to the Republican Party.” In the Times, Brooks has been skeptical about Barack Obama. On Monday, he said he’s “dazzled.”

Well, at least he’s straight with us when he’s not writing.

The great pumpkin

Mrs. Media Nation and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Topsfield Fair last night. Both of us were struggling with hacking coughs, but we stayed long enough for our traditional meal served by the Second Congregational Church of Topsfield, and for a look at the art exhibit, the poultry show and, of course, the giant pumpkin.

This year’s winner, at 1,464 pounds, was grown by Wes Dwelly, according to the Salem News, which has posted a video that shows the weighing of the gourds. That’s not close to the record. But it’s big.

Open thread for tonight’s debate

Let’s try something different tonight. I’m not going to live-blog the latest Obama-McCain debate. I’ve been under the weather the last couple of days, and I just want to watch, more or less uninterrupted.

But feel free to post comments while the debate is taking place. I’ll try to check in a few times during the course of the evening.

More good news for casino opponents

The premise of this Kyle Alspach article in the Brockton Enterprise is odd: the economic crisis makes the Middleborough casino proposed by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe less likely, and the construction of commercial, non-Indian casinos more likely.

Alspach bases his reporting mainly on pro-casino sources — the Rev. Richard McGowan of Boston College and Clyde Barrow of UMass Dartmouth — and that makes this hard to parse as well.

Nevertheless, the story stands as further evidence that a casino will never be built in Middleborough. As if you had any doubts.