By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a six-day, 50-mile backpacking trip in the Berkshires with the Boy Scout troop I help lead. I would ask that you not try to post any comments during this time, since I’m keeping moderation on and won’t be able to approve them until I get back late next Thursday.
I did consider quietly turning moderation off. But the last time I went away, Blogger got hit with a bot attack, and I was glad I had kept the gates up.
I’m putting this out to my ever-helpful readers: Do you know of any worthwhile efforts on the part of news organizations, either mainstream or alternative, to get young people engaged with the news? I’m talking about hard news and public-service journalism. Any and all leads and suggestions will be appreciated it.
A couple of items for those of you who are interested:
I don’t think this is a stupid question, but even if it is, I’ll ask it anyway. I’m trying to find an article by Zephyr Teachout titled “Come Together Now: The Internet’s Unlit Fuse.” Supposedly it’s here, but when I tried, I got an “Access Denied” message — even after I registered. Any ideas?
David Halberstam died with his boots on. The 73-year-old legend was killed in a car accident near San Francisco yesterday while he on his way to interview former NFL star Y.A. Tittle for his next book.
May I make a confession? I’ve never read his best-known book, “The Best and the Brightest,” his exposé of the American policy failures that led to the quagmire in Vietnam.
I do, however, vividly recall plowing through “The Powers That Be,” his four-way biography of media giants Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine; Donald and Katharine Graham, publishers of the Washington Post; Otis Chandler, who inherited the Los Angeles Times and made it great; and William Paley, the CBS founder who made its news division a paragon of excellence but never quite seemed comfortable with it. I read it in the summer of 1979, right after I’d graduated from college. “The Powers That Be” was — and is — and astounding piece of reportage and historical research, and it made an indelible impression on the way I think about the media.
In November 2001 I interviewed Halberstam for a piece I was writing on liberalism after 9/11. I remember his being somewhat gruff and abrupt, especially when he realized I had not read his then-new book “War in a Time of Peace.” I think I broke into a sweat. The story I was reporting was not about Halberstam or his book; I was just looking for a few insights from someone I greatly admired. As I recall, he warmed up a bit, but I was relieved when the interview came to its rather uncomfortable end.
Somewhere in my house, unread, is a copy of Halberstam’s “The Teammates,” about Red Sox players Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky. I will soon rectify that. It goes without saying that Halberstam will be misssed. But for him to be cut down in his prime — at an age when most people are retired — seems especially unfair, not just to him, but to us.
Of course, the human dimension is what’s paramount in the news that Tony Snow, like Elizabeth Edwards before him, has suffered a serious recurrence of cancer.
What’s especially depressing, though, is that the two announcements conjure up the bad old days, when a cancer diagnosis was inevitably seen as a death sentence. Snow and Edwards are high-profile cancer survivors. So it is likely that they’ll now be seen by many people as examples of the limits of medicine.
Or maybe not. Maybe each will lead unexpectedly long lives, managing their disease like a chronic rather than a terminal illness.
It hardly seems relevant at this point, but I can’t help but note that Elizabeth Edwards is the best thing about the Edwards campaign, and that Tony Snow is not only a huge upgrade over his predecessors as White House spokesman but also seems like one of the few genuine human beings in the Bush administration.
Best wishes to both.
The most inadvertently (I think) funny line of the day appears in Steve Bailey’s Boston Globe column:
“He is not going to give you a fish; he is going to teach you how to fish,” says John Fish, president of Suffolk Construction Co.
John Fish knows fish.
Sorry for the light posting. I have been busy upgrading the official vehicle of Media Nation from a 1993 Volvo 960 to a 2007 Toyota Corolla LE. The Volvo went to its reward in engine-smoking glory on the back roads of Middleborough recently despite having just 163,000 miles on it. Media Nation Jr. has his permit, so the Corolla has been equipped with every safety feature known to humankind.
If you read nothing else today, you must read this New York Times story on the parents of infants with fatal conditions. It is riveting and heartbreaking. If you can get through it without tearing up, you’re not paying attention. Watch the video, too.