I'M BACK ... AND I'M GONE AGAIN

I'M BACK ... AND I'M GONE AGAIN: Well, I've enjoyed my month-plus blogging break so much that I'm going to make it permanent.

I'm retiring from blogging.

I know, I know. I did this once before. Last spring, I got fed up with blogging and quit, but I was eventually lured back.

That's not going to happen this time.

Why am I doing this? The main reason is that I want to get involved in life again. Blogging, even on a shorter schedule, simply took up too much time in my already busy day for me to do it as well as I would like. My morning blogging constitutional began to feel too much like work, and that's never good.

That doesn't mean I've completely soured on blogging. I still think it's a wonderfully democratic new medium, and I've discovered many interesting writers. I'll be reading all my favorites every day, several times a day, so I'll still be a part of the show.

I just won't be posting anymore.

I want to thank all of you folks who have seen fit to stop by over the past year and a half, and I'd also like to thank all the people who have linked me on their blogs and corresponded with me via e-mail. I've really treasured the experience.

That is all.

So long.

SUMMER VACATION

SUMMER VACATION: OK, I'm fed up with blogging, even with the truncated posting schedule I've been following for the past few months. I'll be logging off until sometime in July. Peace.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

FOLLOW THE MONEY: The Weekly Standard examines the hypocrisy of Bill Moyers when it comes to conflicts of interest.

This is a fairly damning piece about a beloved left-leaning media icon, but once again, it's not on Romenesko, so it officially does not exist.

WOLFOWITZ'S WORDS

WOLFOWITZ'S WORDS: Everyone's been all over this story, so just in case you haven't seen it, here's the Weekly Standard's version.

'TIMES' TROUBLES

'TIMES' TROUBLES: Howard Kurtz summarizes the New York Times' recent woes.

FCC DEREGULATION

FCC DEREGULATION: The big vote is today, and I have to say I'm a little worried. Not so much because I'm worried about the end of true press freedom. I'm more worried about the crapification of news coverage. There are many positives about corporate-owned media (they have more resources and greater reach), but they also are notorious cost-cutters. If stories you care about don't seem to get covered, I guarantee you it's not because the corporate fat cats have ordered it to be that way so they can preserve "the status quo." It's usually because the allocation of resources for doing more reporting is not in the budget.

I guess we'll have to see how this shakes out in the years ahead. And, of course, we should remember that the FCC's rules could be changed again at some future date.

THE FRIDAY FIVE

THE FRIDAY FIVE: OK, here goes:

1. What do you most want to be remembered for?
Being a good person. (I'm trying to be a good person, anyway.)

2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?
"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."
Oscar Wilde

3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?
Lowering my cholesterol more than 70 points. The only "drug" I've used is niacin.

4. What about the past ten years?
Hmm. I guess securing my current job. That, and finally meeting a woman whom I love, and who loves me.

5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?
Strive to be a good and kind person.

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING: Jonah Goldberg dissects a New York Times article on "Hipublicans," young campus conservatives who (gasp) look like all the other kids at college! As usual, it's funny and smart, often in the same sentence. Check it out.

IT'S MILLER TIME

IT'S MILLER TIME: Slate's Jack Shafer continues to excoriate the New York Times' Judith Miller for her coverage of intelligence reports on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now, I'm a little concerned that we haven't found these weapons yet (I think we will eventually) but I don't think this is cause to be overly hard on Miller. Let me explain.

Shafer makes a big deal of the fact that Miller and the Times unquestioningly reported the findings of intelligence sources, perhaps inadvertently allowing themselves to be "spun" by sinister forces who wanted a war in Iraq at any cost. Presumably, Shafer and other critics would want Miller to use some other sources that might cast reasonable doubt on what's being fed to U.S. intelligence agencies. But the key question is, what would these alternative sources be? Intelligence agencies in other countries? Some apparatchik from Saddam Hussein's regime? Scott Ritter? An "independent" body such as the U.N.? International A.N.S.W.E.R.?

And therein lies the rub. How much can you trust your sources for a blockbuster story when they're basically the only ones you have? And in our current hypermedia environment, would you really expect a newspaper to hold such a story until some alternative sources could be found?

DID YOU GET THE MEMO?

DID YOU GET THE MEMO? Check this out. It's a memo from Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll to his staffers regarding a blatantly biased story on abortion. (Link via Hoystory.)

AL-JAZEERA FOR SALE

AL-JAZEERA FOR SALE: The Weekly Standard has a potential blockbuster of a story: Evidence that Saddam Hussein paid off some Al-Jazeera staffers to ensure positive media coverage.

Nothing on Romenesko yet, though, so the story officially does not exist.

BRAGG RESIGNS

BRAGG RESIGNS: Rick Bragg, the New York Times reporter who was suspended for relying too heavily on stringers, has resigned. After Bragg made comments to the Washington Post claiming that what he did was not unusual and that he was being singled out for punishment, many of his colleagues vented their spleens Wednesday on Romenesko's Letters page (and also here), denying that the use of uncredited stringers to do the basic reporting on many stories in the Times was widespread. However, the Washington Post story cited above indicates that the practice may, indeed, be fairly common:

Lisa Suhay, a Times freelance writer who says her work on one article was badly distorted by Blair, maintained that Bragg "is being punished for what I, as a freelancer, have seen in four years as common practice.

"I have covered anthrax, plane crashes, roller-coaster disasters, interviewed the family of a local POW -- all high-profile stories, with no credit. . . . It was simply understood that I got paid to be invisible, a nonentity, entrusted to go to market to get the choicest bits for the dish being prepared."

Milton Allimadi, a Times metro stringer for two years in the mid-1990s, said he routinely filed crime stories that were "barely touched" by editors and reporters but never got a byline. "I often wondered how readers I had interviewed must have been surprised the next day. While interviewing them I identified myself as Milton Allimadi, and the next day the byline would be totally different," he said.

It certainly seems that Bragg took the reliance on stringers to ludicrous lengths. But I think the blame for this fiasco rests with the Times' stringer policy, which is pretty damn unclear. The paper needs to tell its big-shot reporters to swallow their egos and allow people who do the legwork for a story to get some credit, either in the byline or in a note at the bottom of the story.

SEGWAY COVERAGE

SEGWAY COVERAGE: The Washington City Paper has an interesting story on how journalists have hyped the Segway scooter. Apparently, few have seriously considered the implications of sidewalks full of people moving at up to 12 mph. I liked this bit:

If Segway driving moves out of the realm of the theoretical and becomes part of the traffic flow, reporters will adopt a more skeptical tone. But a few may have to get run over first.

Personally, this Segway thing seems like something for uber-geeks only. I don't think it will ever catch on with the car-driving, foot-walking public.

RACE & THE MEDIA

RACE & THE MEDIA: Using the Jayson Blair affair as a springboard, Reason's Cathy Young calls for a reasoned debate about race in America:

Racism has a terrible history in American culture, and few would deny that it still exists in many strata of society. As a result, there is a widespread attitude that to challenge or dismiss specific claims of racism is insensitive if not downright dangerous. Even blacks who stray from the party line are often accused of either unwittingly playing into the hands of racists or consciously trying to please their white "masters." Issues such as affirmative action have many complicated layers, and both sides have valid arguments. But we should be able to discuss these issues without being browbeaten by charges of bigotry. The best way to overcome racial antagonism is to lay all the cards on the table.

Amen to that.

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING: The hits just keep on coming. This time, City Journal writer Sol Stern dissects a piece celebrating the Black Panthers. Ironically, Stern wrote one of the first hagiographies of the Panthers for the Times in 1967.

HOW TO WRITE A 'NEW YORK TIMES' FEATURE STORY

HOW TO WRITE A 'NEW YORK TIMES' FEATURE STORY: James Lileks tells us. And he also addresses the Rick Bragg fiasco:

I will say this: when I was a feature writer, everything I wrote about, I saw. The idea that someone else would provide me with raw material to shape into a story from my desk would have seemed completely wrong, and would have made me feel like a fraud when anyone said they liked the piece. It’s not the writing alone that makes a good piece, it’s what you noticed, what your eye chose and your mind remembered. It’s all the stuff you leave out that makes your piece work, as much as the stuff you put in.

Yes, you can take some stringer’s notes and compose a story, but the difference between that an a piece you wrote from your own research is the difference between a Penthouse Forum letter and your recollection of your wedding night.

True.

MORE ON DIVERSITY

MORE ON DIVERSITY: Check out this excellent post on newsroom diversity by John Rosenberg at Discriminations. He raises some important questions:

And this, finally, brings us back to the Blair Affair, and a larger question: What is the relevance of ASNE's (American Society of Newspaper Editors) aggressive pro-"diversity" stance to the way its members write about "diversity"? ASNE's web site, for example, calls for "increasing minority scholarships and internships," even though one Court of Appeals has held such race-specific scholarships unconstitutional at state institutions (Podberesky v. Kirwan, 38 F.3d 147 [4th Cir. 1994], cert. denied, 115 S. Ct. 2001 [1995]).

Does membership in an organization energetically espousing such views, and impressing them upon its members, compromise the ability of the press to cover the controversy over "diversity" -- not only in its own newsrooms but also at other organizations? Does it raise the famous issue of "the appearance" of a conflict of interest, or at least of a lack of objectivity?

The short answer is of course it compromises the media's ability to cover diversity-related issues. I don't have time to go into it today, but check out Jim Sleeper's Liberal Racism for more, or William McGowan's Coloring The News.

FACT CHECKERS EXPLAINED

FACT CHECKERS EXPLAINED: Slate has a very useful story explaining why daily newspapers don't employ fact checkers. (Hint: There's no time to do it.) Check it out.

MORE 'TIMES' TROUBLES

MORE 'TIMES' TROUBLES: I'm a little late catching up to the story of Rick Bragg, the New York Times reporter who has been disciplined for not giving a stringer credit for doing grunt-work reporting. Apparently, it's a common occurrence at the Times and other papers, though I have to say I've never heard of it until now. It's always been my experience that stringers or contributors get partial credit, either in the byline or in a note at the end of the story.

Anyway, back to Bragg. He tells the Washington Post that he feels he's being singled out as a sacrificial lamb in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair affair:

But now what he calls a "poisonous atmosphere" has descended on the Times -- one that prompted the paper to suspend Bragg for two weeks for practices he considers utterly routine -- and the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter says he will quit in the next few weeks.

"Obviously, I'm taking a bullet here," he said of the suspension imposed last week. "Anyone with half a brain can see that." But, he said, "I'm too mad to whine about it."

So Bragg is a make-up call for Blair, to prove that white guys can be screw-ups, too, perhaps?