By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
I just noticed that the banner ad at the top of Media Nation is promoting a screening of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” the 2005 film about Edward R. Murrow, which will be shown this Saturday at the Boston Athenaeum in conjunction with Suffolk University. (You might have to hit “reset.”)
As it turns out, I’ll be introducing the film. Hope to see you there.
“Last Lion,” the book version of the Boston Globe’s series on Ted Kennedy, edited by Washington bureau chief Peter Canellos, will be number seven on the New York Times’ bestseller list next week. I never cease to be amazed at how much appetite there is out there for material about the Kennedy family.
The Boston Globe’s sports weekly, OT, might have had a chance if it had been given away at sporting events. A good-quality sports tabloid would have been attractive to advertisers if it could have actually been put into the hands of sports fans.
Instead, the Globe decided to charge 50 cents — a trivial amount, but it made distribution a hassle. (I think I’ve seen it once.) OT never attained lift-off, and, as David Scott reports, it’s now been canceled.
Success would have been difficult under any circumstances, but this was an opportunity lost. (Via Universal Hub.)
When politicians and good-government types talk about campaign-finance reform, what they often mean is censorship. Of course, they’ll say they oppose censorship because censorship is bad, and what they propose is good. But it’s censorship nonetheless.
As a purely symbolic protest, Media Nation today presents the trailer for “Hillary: The Movie,” a right-wing, hateful documentary about Hillary Clinton that was making the rounds last year.
As Adam Liptak reports in the New York Times, the film was banned from television — banned! — because it ran afoul of the campaign-finance laws promulgated a few years ago by Sen. John McCain, Sen. Russell Feingold and former congressmen Marty Meehan and Chris Shays.
The Reports Committee for Freedom of the Press recently filed an amicus brief urging that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the ban, instituted by the Federal Elections Commission and upheld by a lower court.
The First Amendment says in part, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” What part of “no law” don’t these people understand?
I think this column speaks incredibly well of both Team Obama and David Brooks.
Earlier in the week, Brooks went off on President Obama, characterizing his budget and spending priorities as “a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs,” and calling for an alliance between moderate conservatives (such as himself) and moderate liberals to stop Obama’s runaway ambitions.
The White House responded to Brooks by laying out its case, arguing that the president hasn’t abandoned his preference for a cautious, incremental approach to problem-solving, but had to respond to an unprecedented financial crisis. Given a few years and a little luck, Obama’s aides say, and things will be back on track.
Brooks writes:
I didn’t finish these conversations feeling chastened exactly….
Nonetheless, the White House made a case that was sophisticated and fact-based. These people know how to lead a discussion and set a tone of friendly cooperation.
I’m guessing that Brooks doesn’t think Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. Or, if he does, he’s horrified.
The spambots usually attack at night. Since I’m going to be on the road, I’ll remove moderation for the day and see what happens.
I’m heading to Hartford, Conn., later this morning to interview and follow around Christine Stuart, the editor of CT News Junkie, which covers the Connecticut politics at a time when mainstream news organizations are cutting back. Her site is affiliated with a better-known community site, the New Haven Independent.
Stuart is not waiting for a new business model — she’s just doing it.
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at George Will’s error-riddled column on global warming — and at how his arrogance, combined with the Washington Post’s defensiveness, succeeded in turning a one-day story into a two-week (and counting) siege.
I have turned on comment moderation, as Media Nation was hit with comment spam overnight. Unfortunately, I’m going to be offline a good part of the day. Will try to approve comments later, as well as take down the spam.
Friend of Media Nation Catherine Tumber, with whom I worked at the Boston Phoenix, recently published an important essay in the Boston Review on how revitalizing smaller cities — think New Bedford, Lowell, Lawrence, Holyoke — could help lead to a more sustainable future. She writes:
When it comes to the urban-rural divide, small-to-intermediate-size cities may offer the best of both worlds. For all the rural romanticism of the ’70s-era homesteading movement — or for that matter, the vaunted folksiness of “small-town values,” — urban life has its allure. Smaller cities are large enough to offer the diversity, anonymity, and vibrancy of urban culture, as well as levels of density that offer efficiencies of scale. They are also small enough to maintain proximity to sustainable food production and renewable energy resources.
Well worth reading in full.