In my latest for the Guardian, I salute the U.S. Supreme Court for virtually overturning the federal “honest services” law, beloved of prosecutors who are more interested in targeting an individual than in solving a crime.
At the Phoenix, new roles for Gantz, Garelick
The Boston Phoenix has announced more changes to the top of its masthead, as associate arts editor Jon Garelick has been named arts editor, and arts editor Jeffrey Gantz will become managing editor for arts.
The titles are more than semantic, according to an internal memo from new editor Carly Carioli. Jon will be in charge of the paper’s arts coverage, while Jeffrey’s role — a three-month assignment — will consist of easing the transition.
I had the privilege of working with both Jeffrey and Jon during my years at the Phoenix. In fact, Jeffrey was one of several people responsible for hiring me in 1991, as it was he who determined I had performed somewhat less miserably on the Phoenix’s notorious copy-editing test than other candidates.
In addition to being an admirably meticulous copy editor, Jeffrey was an expert on an eclectic variety of subjects that caught his interest — from soccer (I still remember my son, Tim, kicking a ball around with him at a company picnic on Georges Island), to espresso, to which varieties of cheese should be uppercased and which ones lowercased.
Jon, like Jeffrey, is a journalist with a daunting intellect. He has a deep background in music, especially jazz, and is highly regarded in the local arts community. He is also married to well-known local writer Clea Simon.
Jon is originally from Woonsocket, where I spent a couple of years as a student-reporter for the Woonsocket Call in the mid-1970s. Jon, a keen observer of his surroundings, once provided me with a hilarious example of the fractured syntax used by many old-time residents, who speak English that is heavily inflected with the French they learned growing up in Quebec: “Please throw me down the stairs my keys.”
Carly, in his memo, referred to Jeffrey as “a tireless editor, critic, protector of style, and keeper of institutional wisdom,” and to Jon as “a fantastic judge and incubator of raw writing talent.” Best of luck to both of them.
Boston in red and blue
Robert David Sullivan has a fascinating piece in the Boston Globe today on Eric Fischer, who has plotted on maps of Boston (left) and other cities where tourists (red) and residents (blue) take photos in their hometowns, based on what they post to the social-networking photo site Flickr.
As you might expect, Fenway Park and Faneuil Hall are heavily red, whereas blue predominates in the neighborhoods. Sullivan observes that neither captures the true Boston — it’s the tourist spots and the neighborhood joints together that form the most complete picture.
And it’s a great example of how coming up with new ways to visualize data help us tell stories we might not have even known existed.
Our new, customer-friendly RMV
From the Department of You Can’t Make This Up: I had to clear up a matter with the Registry for Motor Vehicles this morning, and decided to do it online. Other than taking care of it in person, I figured it was my best bet to get print-outable confirmation that could be produced in case of a side-of-the-highway misunderstanding.
So I did. But before I logged off, I was informed that even though the transaction had been processed, it could take up to three days to clear. Sounded to me like the Registry’s website was little more than a front end to an old-fashioned hand-processing operation.
It gets better. Within minutes, I received an e-mail confirmation. All was forgiven — until I actually read it:
Citation Number xxx has been paid in the amount of xxx. To ensure the Citation is fully cleared and your license remains active, immediate action is required. Please contact the Phone Center or visit a Branch to confirm this matter is now resolved.
Yes, you read that correctly. I paid up online. I got an e-mail confirming that I paid. Yet now I have to call the Registry just to make really, really sure. Amazing. And remember, we’re all paying for this.
On David Weigel’s forced departure
For the time being, I’m going to take a pass on writing a full item about David Weigel’s firing/forced-resignation/whatever-you-want-to-call-it from the Washington Post. I recommend this round-up at Salon by Alex Pareene and a blog post by John McQuaid. And you must read Post ombudsman Andy Alexander’s commentary, as loathsome an example of the genre as I’ve seen in many years.
More: Conor Friedersdorf tells Alexander, “Rather than encouraging reporters and opinion writers to be fair, accurate, and intellectually honest, you’re creating incentives whereby reporters are encouraged to conceal their true opinions, opinion writers are encouraged to be movement hacks, and between the two there is no overlap.”
Another dumb move by CNN
Why would anyone at CNN think it was a good idea to give a prime-time talk show to former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker? There is only one reason anyone thinks Spitzer will be a ratings winner, and it’s not his non-existent journalism background or even his sharp analytical mind.
I’m not going to rehash what I’ve said before about CNN; you can read it here if you like.
Briefly, though, CNN touts itself as a profitable, news-driven alternative to the ideological talk shows on Fox and MSNBC. So why act as though your every programming decision is based on ratings? If CNN is truly in a different business from Fox and MSNBC, then what does it mean to say CNN comes in “third”?
Given that there is almost no way CNN can have an impact at 8 p.m. against the O’Reilly-Olbermann juggernaut, Jon Klein and company should have tried something radical. Like news. How about an hour of CNN International, which everyone who has traveled overseas tells me is exponentially better than what’s on the three U.S. cable nets?
Talk is cheap
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at the latest talk about how subscription apps and microtransactions will usher in a new era of paid content. And I conclude that it is just that: talk.
Talking about Google and privacy on “Greater Boston”
I’ll be on “Greater Boston” today at 7 p.m., talking with host Emily Rooney about Google’s mounting privacy problems. On Monday, Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal announced that he would lead an effort comprising about 30 states to investigate how Google came to intercept e-mail, passwords and other confidential information when collecting data for its Street View feature.
Names, faces and anonymous comments
Have we reached the final days for anonymous news-site commenters? Probably not — that’s more hope than reality. But there’s no doubt the tide is shifting away from the anonymous and pseudonymous insults, libel and hate speech that comprise the majority of comments at news sites.
This past Sunday, the Boston Globe Magazine posted a feature by Neil Swidey on the anonymous commenters who waste electrons on the Globe’s website, Boston.com. Except that Swidey didn’t quite succeed. The truly anonymous whackos with whom he hoped to connect refused to crawl out from under their rocks. Instead, he ended up with a highly entertaining profile of two men who didn’t mind revealing their identities and to a female Red Sox fan who all but identified herself. Swidey writes of his quest to interview the worst of the worst:
[H]ere are the people I didn’t hear back from: the screamers, troublemakers, and trolls (Internet slang for people behind inflammatory posts). Not a single one. The loudest, most aggressive voices grew mum when asked to explain themselves, to engage in an actual discussion. The trolls appear to prize their anonymity more than anyone else.
The story is accompanied by a video starring the two men. Also, last night Swidey talked about the story with “Greater Boston” host Emily Rooney on WGBH-TV (Channel 2). I couldn’t find a direct link, but you’ll find it easily enough if you click here or on the image above.
For much of the year, the news business has been growing increasingly uneasy over anonymous comments. Swidey himself discusses some of the problems — legal challenges that could force news organizations to help potential libel plaintiffs expose commenters they want to sue, and the bizarre situation at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which outed a judge who had apparently been commenting on her own cases under a pseudonym. (For what it’s worth, Media Nation started requiring real names earlier this year.)
As Rooney points out in her interview with Swidey, just yesterday the Buffalo News announced that it would soon banish anonymous comments. And American Journalism Review editor Rem Rieder has called for an end to anonymity, pointing out that the same newspapers that allow them customarily ban anonymous letters to the editor and do not allow unnamed sources to level personal attacks. Rieder writes:
Comments sections are often packed with profanity and vicious personal attacks. The opportunity to launch brutal assaults from the safety of a computer without attaching a name does wonders for the bravery levels of the angry.
One alternative, which I’ve mentioned before, is to use Facebook as a commenting system. Nearly everyone on Facebook uses his or her real name, usually accompanied by a photo. The Globe itself is among newspapers that posts links to some of its stories on Facebook, where you will find a far more civil conversation than what’s on Boston.com.
Anonymous commenting is an idea whose time has come and gone. Whatever hopes early Internet visionaries had that anonymity could be compatible with community have long since proven to be wrong. I hope Swidey’s story serves as an inadvertent spur to the Globe — and to other news organizations — to end this failed experiment.
Sarah Palin’s disgraceful tweet
The last thing I thought I’d be writing about this morning was Sarah Palin. But there are times that the former Alaska governor is so out of touch with reality, and so self-righteously obnoxious about it, that she needs to be called out.
Here’s why. On Sunday, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel appeared on ABC News’ “This Week.” As you might expect, Emanuel had some fun at the expense of U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who had apologized to BP chief executive Tony Hayward for the $20 billion “shakedown” to which President Obama had subjected his poor, suffering company. Republican leaders later forced Barton to apologize for his apology.
Emanuel told “This Week” host Jake Tapper that Barton, far from being an outlier, was expressing mainstream Republican thought:
That’s not a political gaffe, those are prepared remarks. That is a philosophy. That is an approach to what they see. They see the aggrieved party here as BP, not the fishermen.
Fair? Good lord, yes. Because even before Barton planted his foot firmly in his mouth, the Republican Study Committee, comprising 115 House members (about two-thirds of all House Republicans), had referred to the fund as “Chicago-style shakedown politics,” as Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and many others have pointed out. (Here is the committee’s full statement.)
In other words, you will not find a stronger case of a politician’s nutty utterance being tied to the clearly expressed views of his party.
Which is where Sarah Palin comes in. Here is what she wrote on her Twitter feed:
RahmEmanuel= as shallow/narrowminded/political/irresponsible as they come,to falsely claim Barton’s BP comment is “GOP philosophy”Rahm,u lie
What Emanuel said on Sunday, based on anyone’s reading of the evidence, was as fair and as true as anything he has ever said. And Sarah Palin is a disgrace.