Photojournalism Shoulda been a tweet: Nate Gowdy 2020 (it's kind of not over yet, is it?) has sucked. I think a lot of us will be trying to make sense of this ugly year for the rest of our lives. Luckily, we're going to have the work of some incredible photojournalists to help
Consuming Journalism Houston, we have a lot of problems In my previous post I said I wasn't going to talk any more about the election or COVID's influence on the election. It's still the same day. As the owner of this obscure, quiet corner of the internet, I'm exercising my right
News October 2020 This is the last time I'm going to discuss the election or how COVID-19 relates to the election. Is there really anyone who hasn't made up their mind about who they're voting for? Anyone claiming to be undecided at this point is likely an
On the Streets On the Streets: Sirens beckon Sirens and bangs have returned to Capitol Hill. On 22 September it sounded like the police turned every siren on in the city. I was working on some stuff at home and thought there must have been a 10 alarm fire somewhere. It's always hard to tell where
Consuming Journalism Consuming Journalism: What is evidence? There are still loads of good journalists, but they're stuck in the Death Star's trash compactor. I hope we find some capable droids to free them. Tucker Carlson had Dr. Li-Meng Yan on his show recently. I haven't got cable, so recently is as
On the Streets Looks pretty, feels ugly The West is on fire. I knew about the California fires, but I somehow ignored the fires raging through Oregon and, to a lesser extent, Washington. On a walk the other day I left my apartment thinking it was a beautiful day, and then I saw that the Space Needle
Consuming Journalism Madness I didn't want to do an addendum to the previous post about Jeffrey Goldberg's collection of unnamed sources saying things, but I have to. I promise I will try to keep it short. I recommend not reading it. This is largely for my own dotting of
Consuming Journalism Consuming Journalism: Jeffrey Goldberg and the declining credibility of unnamed sources [Note: I botched this in its original form. I started writing Consuming Journalism features a couple of years ago as an exercise in reading journalism more critically. In the original post, I let my frustration with unnamed sources steal the spotlight. I want Consuming Journalism to be a clinical, dispassionate
shoulda been a tweet Shoulda been a tweet: The Marshall Project on former prisoners fighting fires Our prisons and justice system are a mess. I'm not a journalist, so I'm not going to lay out the justification for that assertion. Here are a couple of statistics to chew on from Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate]. > In
Consuming Journalism Consuming Journalism: Los Angeles sheriff's deputies shoot and kill man This post is about the preliminary coverage of a fatal shooting of a black man (some articles identify him as Dijon Kizzee) in Los Angeles by L.A. sheriff's deputies. I saw that both the L.A. Times [https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-31/man-fatally-shot-by-los-angeles-county-deputy-in-westmont] and Fox
News Shoulda been a tweet: WSJ article on lockdowns The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about the [https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdowns-economy-pandemic-recession-business-shutdown-sweden-coronavirus-11598281419?mod=hp_lead_pos6] current thinking on lockdowns. I think most of us are trying to limit our COVID-19 reading levels. I know I'm trying, not all that successfully. If your instincts
Consuming Journalism Consuming Journalism: Trump, SATs, and circular reporting Did Donald Trump pay someone to take the SAT for him? I don't know, and I'm not any closer to knowing despite the media bolstering the allegation through lazy, shoddy reporting. I don't know if there's a running history of similar allegations.
Consuming Journalism Consuming Journalism: Something's wrong at the New York Times Obviously, I cannot be trusted on my claims to have permanently retired the Consuming Journalism feature. I'd be better off (healthier, happier) if I could stick to that claim. We're back to the kompromat in a bad article by Michael S. Schmidt [https://news.yahoo.com/
Blog Shoulda been a tweet: Beirut I'm critical of CNN. If you watch them on cable, you're just becoming less-informed. It's visual twitter. A stupid game. I'm not faulting the on-air personalities. They're hard-working, and I think they want CNN to be informative. But there'
On the Streets Stasis Went for a morning walk. No destination in mind, but every few minutes the internal voice would say, "egg sandwich." Heard. It was beautiful out. Not too hot. The pandemic seemed momentarily and blissfully far away, relatively speaking. You can never get too far from it, though. When
Blog The table is set I've promised myself, unsuccessfully, to take long, meaningful breaks from the news. There's an awful pandemic, we need a vaccine, Trump's handling of it has been a disaster, X country that was doing well is now seeing new hotspots. That's going to
Daniel McCartney Procession honoring Pierce County Sheriff's Deputy Daniel McCartney On Tuesday 9 January 2018, law enforcement officers, government officials, and members of the public gathered at the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s office in Tacoma, Washington, to pay their respects to Sheriff’s Deputy Daniel McCartney as his body was taken to Mountain View Memorial. Law enforcement officers escorted
Books On the Streets: Clinton on (the other) Capitol Hill Hillary Clinton received an enthusiastic, warm welcome (and good weather) on 12 December 2017 at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company [http://www.elliottbaybook.com]. Clinton was in town to promote her book What Happened, a look back at the 2016 election. I walked over to Elliott Bay Book Company
Carlos Ballesteros Consuming Journalism: What happened to Newsweek? Do you buy and read hard copy magazines anymore? I don’t, unless I grab one at the airport. I haven’t paid close attention to the magazine industry’s health recently, but I think they have been struggling for years as people move to either online subscriptions or read
Consuming Journalism Consuming Journalism: Investigation into Death of Special Forces Soldier in Bamako, Mali On 13 November 2017, the New York Times published an article [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/us/politics/navy-seals-green-beret-death-mali.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news] indicating that two U.S. Navy SEALs named
Consuming Journalism Consuming Journalism: Shoddy work at the Huffington Post On 12 July 2017 (“06:28 pm ET”), the Huffington Post published an article by Mollie Reilly with the headline “Report Says U.S. Intelligence Agencies Heard Russian Officials Discussing Trump Team in 2015 [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russian-officials-trump-associates_us_59669790e4b0a8d46d11e247?adq&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009] .” There are a lot
Buzzfeed Consuming Journalism: Unnamed sources aren't bad, using them poorly is After the recent G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, President Trump took to Twitter [https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/884142582191849474] to make a reference to a ceasefire of some kind in Syria that he brokered in talks with President Putin. On 10 July 2017, Buzzfeed posted an article by Nancy Youssef
Bloomberg Consuming Journalism: Technically true, intentionally misleading On 9 July 2017, Bloomberg Politics revealed another embarrassing gaffe for the Trump Administration. According to a Bloomberg tweet [https://twitter.com/bpolitics/status/884255892895662080] (also included below), the Trump Administration mistakenly referred to the leader of China as the leader of Taiwan. However, if you click on the link
Click Bait Consuming Journalism: Just for Clicks I remember when Yahoo’s homepage [https://www.yahoo.com] was a decent source of news from a variety of publications. That was a long time ago. I still click on Yahoo occasionally, part Pavlovian response and also to get a quick sense of whether there are any international breaking
