By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
In my latest for the Guardian (whose technical difficulties prevented this from being posted earlier), I write that the only surprising aspect of the U.S. Senate race to succeed the late Ted Kennedy was how little interest the voters demonstrated.
That’s not likely to change with state Attorney General Martha Coakley now slated to face off against state Sen. Scott Brown in the final election.
I’m writing about the Massachusetts Senate race for tomorrow’s Guardian, so I’ll be heading over to Martha Coakley headquarters in a bit. If I get a chance, I may try to hit Michael Capuano’s event as well.
I may also try to post a few field reports to my Twitter feed, complete with blurry cell-phone photos. You won’t want to miss those!
In my latest for the Guardian, I round up day-after commentary on President Obama’s speech about the war in Afghanistan. And I find that no one — not his liberal base, not those farther out on the left and certainly not conservatives — is entirely happy with his decision.
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a closer look at Rupert Murdoch’s dalliance with Microsoft, whose search engine, Bing, is emerging as the main competitor to Google.
The Murdoch-Microsoft story, which I first wrote about last week, got a huge boost yesterday in the Financial Times. Today the New York Times follows up.
In my latest for the Guardian, I look back at several notorious killings inspired by religion (including the 1994 abortion-clinic attacks in Boston) — and wonder why such incidents receive so much more attention when the murderer is a Muslim.
My piece for the Guardian on the Fake AP Stylebook has now been posted. Here is my earlier interview with the co-founders, Mark Hale and Ken Lowery.
The Guardian has put together a package of commentary on the first anniversary of President Obama’s election. Mine is here.
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that the long-predicted newspaper-circulation death spiral now under way wouldn’t be such a big deal if online advertisers weren’t fleeing newspaper Web sites as well.
On a cheerier note, Jonathan Knee writes in Barron’s that recession and crushing debt are masking the fundamental soundness of many newspapers — especially monopoly papers with a circulation of 100,000 or less.
Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli emerged from the salon debacle unscathed. But now that he’s admitted he knew all along that the salons were intended as off-the-record fundraisers, it’s time to demand that he and publisher Katharine Weymouth come clean on what they knew and when they knew it.
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at Pavlov’s media and how they reacted to President Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize — channeling Republican talking points before they’d even been articulated. Good dog!