Feral Beast: The Economist: spit-shining the NY news

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The Economist: spit-shining the NY news

Here's the headline of the week, from the Economist:

Spitzer swallows?

HIS pride, at any rate: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has been caught on tape arranging a rendezvous with a high-class prostitute. Mr Spitzer today issued an apology to his family and staff, saying he was "disappointed that I failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself". Those with a taste for irony can read the then–attorney general waxing indignant in the wake of a 2004 prostitution bust here.

Global empathy for the wife and three teenage daughters, who may be a tad po'd about the $80,000 blown on callgirls by Dad.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: I prefer the NY Post for tabloid brevity and talkin to the folks in the hood:

"Ho No!!"; March 13, 2008 at 6:08 AM

Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.