Of special interest (a sort of Weblog):  

January 23, 2006:
Well, the past year can be characterized as the year of the Blog.  It happens to also be the year I stopped blogging here.  What's going on?  Just when this activity was getting popular, I dropped out.  In part, duties overrode my time on the computer; in part, I found myself more attracted to writing poetry; in part, I've developed an angst about blogging.  It appears to me we're running amok without editors, and no editor worth his green eyeshade is going to be a part of that.  Put more crudely, the world of bloggers appears to be a world of keyboard diarrhea.  

Nevertheless, I am torn by my compulsion to write and get an opinion in place.   However, I've convinced myself that columns are my medium not blogging.  So this babbling, often banal commentary is being shut down.  When I get the column running again, I'll drop a link to it here.  To whet your appetite, I send you to my posted columns.

February 24, 2005: 
On Sunday, Hunter S. Thompson, the originator of "Gonzo" journalism, was found dead in his apartment in Aspen, Colorado, apparently a victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  Thompson was 67. 
+++++
Phil Luciano, a columnist for the Peoria Journal-Star--and an avid Thompson fan--put things in perspective in his musing on the dead journalist:  "Despite the incessant whirlwind of hallucinogens and hyperbole, Thompson had an eye for detail and clarity - both often missing in newspapers." 
Luciano makes a cogent argument for the current boredom of newspapers.  To him, writers such as Thompson are anything but boring.  One reason, Luciano notes, is that Thompson got out of the office; in fact, it was Thompson who said he thought very little truth was ever uncovered during the hours of nine to five.

May 30, 2004 (update):
The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have been fighting the end of the 20-year-old joint operating agreement in the Washington State Courts.  (See below)  The Times lost a point in a county court, seemingly won the point back in the State Appeals Court, and is now defending the P-I's appeal to the Washington State Supreme Court.

January 27, 2004:
Happy New Year!  One of the fascinating and great things about the Internet  is that it offers journalists the world's largest library and a chance to get to resources we ordinarily wouldn't know existed.  Also, there are many academics itching to get their interests before the public.  I recall once interviewing a well-known psychologist who had just published a new, popular textbook with the help of a science journalist.  The professor said of the venture, "It was great!  I had to teach him psychology and he had to teach me journalism."

A great site for journalists trying to stay abreast of science is maintained by the anthropology department at Texas A&M University under the title, "Anthropology in the News."  Visit the site for a fascinating and important seminar in anthropology.

On a totally unrelated but fascinating item:  Fox News is selling the Los Angeles Dodgers!  That's not news.  However, Fox maintains a contract with Major League Baseball for broadcasting ball games and as a result is in an important bargaining position with the owners of baseball teams that are voting on the possible new ownership of the Dodgers.  Is this some form of special interest?  And you thought these major league teams were competititve!

December 24, 2003:

Merry Christmas!  Not so merry for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times, who are in a legal battle over their long-time joint operating agreement.  The Times wants to end the JOA and shutdown the P-I.  In January, a three-judge appeals panel will hear the case, but Bill Richards, a Seattle freelancer under special contract with the Seattle Times to cover the controversy, says any ruling by the judges is not likely to end the conflict--or the acrimony.  (Does this qualify Richards as an ombudsman?  We can certainly hope for a book when his contract ends--unless they've got some kind of JOA with him to prevent such a disclosure!)  Richards reported earlier that the Times has agreed to keep publishing the P-I through 2007 even without the JOA.

There's a history of bad blood here.  In 1983, a JOA between the papers explicitly prevented the P-I from having any presence on the World Wide Web.  That exclusion was renegotiated so I suppose lots of other details can be worked out in the current version of the conflict.  But the JOA is simply life-support for the P-I, and the plug should be pulled.

Remember when newspapers in the same city competed for readers with enterprising journalism instead of with lawyers?

Sadly for journalism, in the end it comes down to money.  The federal law that allows JOA's is designed to keep competing papers alive in the same city in the interest of readers.  In Seattle, the JOA is costing both papers money; however, the P-I may have the deeper pockets, being owned by the Hearst Corporation.  The Times, owned by the Blethen family interests, may be seeing its lifeblood drained by helping to keep the P-I operating (it recently sold land it owns in the neighborhood in an effort to  "improve the company's deteriorating financial position," according to Times' officers quoted by Richards). 

Over the long haul, and with lots of support from the respective owners, the P-I could emerge as the winner in this fight, and in the name of good journalism it doesn't deserve to win.  The Hearst Corporation has the right of first refusal should Blethen ever decide to sell the Times, which will only happen if th Times continues to bleed revenue, and the JOA is neither a Band-Aid or a tourniquet; it's a leech at best!

The federal court needs to stop looking at the fiscal records and read the two newspapers; they'd quickly discover that the P-I isn't serious about enterprising journalism, civic journalism, or any kind of journalism other than what brings in corporate bucks.

The P-I maintains a single "national correspondent," who in reality is a columnist, and a single correspondent in Washington, D.C.  Its news from the international scene is almost exclusively supplied by the Associated Press wire service. It maintains meager news gathering operations outside the city of Seattle (and relatively meager inside Seattle).

The Times, on the other hand, while not known for its international coverage, keeps at least two reporters in Washington, D.C., and is not afraid to send its reporters around the globe.  It has won national awards for stories written about AIDS in Africa and about the Middle East conflict. All this in addition to heavy coverage of every aspect of life in the Evergreen State.  In short, the Times has invested heavily in legitimate news gathering, something the P-I consistently short-changes.

That's not to say there are no good journalists at the P-I, but Hearst's reputation has never been on the side of defending and maintaining the "fourth estate."  The P-I should die because despite its professional efforts it represents everything that's bad about "corporate journalism."  It would be an almost perfect solution if the Times could merely absorb whatever (and whoever) is good at the P-I and get Hearst out of Seattle.  But don't look for that to happen soon, if ever.  It would require some savvy, newspaper-reading judges.

November 29, 2003:
The Times of London began publishng a tabloid version of its staid broadsheet this week.  Its intention apparently is to move into "tabloid" journalism as a convenience to boost circulation.  An interview with the Times' editor, Robert Thomson, by NPR's Robert Siegel of "All Things Considered," Thomson claims the Times is the most serious newspaper in Britain and that this move has little or nothing to do with content; instead, he claims, it's an attempt to put a more comfortable product in the hands of commuters.  Time will tell about the "new" London Times.

Anyone interested in Religion Journalism needs to check out the World Christian Database.  Originally published in massive volumes by Oxford Press, the database now appears online as part of a new Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.

Old stuff:

Keysites:

The following URLs take you to extensive collections of online and print news stories, many in the analytic or commentary category. Both sites also have extensive listings of columnists.

http://www.lucianne.com/

http://www.newsmax.com/

To get to my collection of columnists, click here