Archive for March, 2007
Converging Media-Where is it Taking Us?
Thursday, March 15th, 2007Converging media are taking us to places we’ve
never been before, and I don’t mean mere geography.
It would be easier if we had a roadmap to tell us where we’re going with the radical changes affecting virtually every old-line media organization today. I’d sure like one.
Our organization is serving several audiences and this [...]
What’s News and Who Says So?
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007The State of the News Media 2006 presents some
difficult data about newsgathering and the quality of news today.
(Correction: In rushing to connect online while traveling outside the U.S., I inadvertently mis-attributed the State of the News Media 2006. It is by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is funded by the [...]
Why Should Media Matter to People of Faith?
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007Media frame the important stories of our lives.
If people of faith don’t participate in this framing, their values are left out
of the discussion.
Mainline and progressive religious groups have a history of holding media and popular culture in low regard. Television, for example, is often viewed as corrupting, polluting and trivial.
I recall a conversation years [...]
Is Everything so Relative There is no Agreed-upon Truth?
Sunday, March 11th, 2007In the media, the spin, the scandals, the search
for miscues have eroded our ability to agree upon truth, according to Senator
Barack Obama.
When truth has a thousand faces, how do we find common ground and agree upon anything that approaches truth?
In a media-saturated environment this is the reality we live in. Media frame [...]
The Cost of the Iraq War
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007The war in Iraq is burning money at the rate of
$250,000 a minute according to Gordon Adams, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars.
Writing about the costs of the Iraq war, Gordon Adams offers a breath-taking picture of the rate of spending in the current issue of Foreign Policy. Adams writes [...]
Why is the News Mostly Junk?
Sunday, March 4th, 2007In the wake of the Anna Nicole Smith “news” it’s
a fair question to ask why the news is so laden with junk.
“What’s happened to the media in the U.S.?” a colleague from Europe recently asked me. “Why is so much fluff and junk passed off as news?”
He then recounted turning to CNN where [...]
Is Homosexuality a Proxy Issue For How We Understand God?
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007Ray Waddle, freelance religion writer, suggests
homosexuality may be a proxy issue rooted in how different people understand
God.
The conflict about homosexuality is about more than sex, according to Ray Waddle, a freelance writer on religion. In a column Saturday in Nashville’s daily newspaper, The Tennessean, Waddle lays out the differences between religious conservatives who oppose [...]
A Cheap, Effective New Treatment for Malaria
Thursday, March 1st, 2007The announcement today of a new medication to
treat malaria based on artemisinin is a
hopeful sign of the tremendous activity now being directed toward ending this
disease.
A new drug based on artemisinin and wormwood holds the promise of low-cost, easy treatment for malaria which claims a million lives a year, kills one child every thirty seconds [...]