Dream of the Dragon

May 6, 2010

Newsweak.

by Justin

It should come as no surprise that declining readership for newsweeklies has driven one of the principle three to put itself up for auction. Many news sites and a number of bloggers I read paid special attention to what it portents for the field of journalism that Newsweek may become no more. The newsweekly launched in 1933, in what was a remarkable era for news in general. In the midst of Depression and in the wake of a world war the United States could boast a more concerned citizenship than many chapters in history. Local newspapers covered what they could, and the giants like the New York Times hadn’t begun to circulate nationally. Radio was rising in popularity but not yet a significant source of international news, and broadcast television didn’t find any momentum until after World War II. Someone had to cover national and international stories and spread the word throughout the country. Read the rest of this entry »

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May 4, 2010

Watchdog Wonder

by Justin

I love this. In a time when journalism is on its deathbed and simultaneously in its infancy on emerging medias, MoJo’s Twitter alerted me to this little watchdog wonder.

People generally get less analysis, they spend less time consuming information, partisanship and propaganda are rising almost as high as during the days of Yellow Journalism. To combat this decline in depth and understanding jobs are being lost and papers fold under the pressure of the internet. Everybody knows how strange these days are. But what I appreciate most about the evolution of the blogosphere is the heightened degree of accountability. A number of sources, not just ProPublica, drew attention to the questionable allegiance of a source in this NY Times article. Read the rest of this entry »

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May 1, 2010

Silver Lining

by Justin

New tradition. The onslaught of terrible news, certainly not a new trend but one into which I’m newly tuned, started to murder my morale. So Saturday will feature a unique weekend-review mission: to identify the bright side of the darker stories of the week. These are specific headliners that dragged me down with their revelations of dishonesty and general badness. The weather’s doing its summer dance, people are generally happier, and why should the news do its best to battle that? Answer: because the world is full of reckless, ignorant, and greedy people. But I’ll do what I can to tread the air above the din for at least one day of the week. Here we go.

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