I subscribe to the Society of Professional Journalists Internet listserv. Why? I'm not sure exactly. It long ago stopped being a forum for discussing journalism issues. It's now mostly a right-bashing club, with a lone conservative (who's not even a journalist) presenting himself as a whipping boy for a bunch of leftists, from America and […]
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's latest anti-Bush screed can be found here. It should come as no surprise that in his latest piece, Krugman reveals to us that President Bush is arrogant, a compulsive liar and completely nuts. No surprise there really, but Krugman does dig up a bit of news that I wasn't […]
The Italian journalist has a piece in Thursday's Wall Street Journal. My favorite part: For Christ's sake, in 1991 the Iraqi army deflated like a pricked balloon. It disintegrated so quickly, so easily, that even I captured four of its soldiers. I was behind a dune in the Saudi desert, all alone. Four skeletal creatures […]
Over at MediaMinded there's a summary of the feud between media critics William McGowan, author of "Coloring the News" and Eric Alterman, author of "What Liberal Media." To make a long story short, Alterman apparently (I haven't gotten that far yet) slams McGowan's book based on a negative review in the Washington Monthly magazine. (The […]
From Rod Dreher over at National Review: "[T]he French are going to go proctological on America in the Security Council this week, leading to a fresh round of pop-cult French-bashing." "Go proctological!" How apt.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I recently received a review copy of Alterman's new book and began reading it. I got through about 2 1/2 chapters when I realized that I should be reading with a pencil in hand. Every few sentences, Alterman would make some claim that I would find unfounded […]
I've been in the journalism business for more than a decade (if I count my student-journalism days at Cal Poly SLO) and I've always been happy to help student journalists, aspiring writers and even talk about journalism to schoolkids. So, when asked, I often volunteer to share what I've learned. It usually comes down to […]
If you've watched presidential press conferences any time in the past couple dozen years, it's become tradition for the first question to be asked by the "elder stateswoman" of the White House press corps, Helen Thomas. For many decades, Thomas worked for UPI, but when the ownership changed, she quit and was hired by Hearst […]
I don't always agree with the guy, but I think he's doing a pretty good job. He's got Gore Vidal on right now. Vidal, if you didn't think he was before, is officially a nut. In less than 10 minutes into the interview (Colmes is doing an admirable job -- not great -- but not […]
Is the Union-Tribune's James O. Goldsborough. Jim's a smart enough guy, who sometimes just likes to be a pain in the butt. In Goldsborough's latest column, he takes up what is perhaps the lamest, most inane and ludicrous of the extreme anti-war left's claims -- that the war on Iraq is a modern-day crusade. George […]