Archive for June, 2008
« Previous EntriesHow has the Web Altered Your Brain?
Monday, June 30th, 2008That’s the question that I cull from an article by Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic.
Carr writes that he becomes fidgety after reading a couple of book pages. He struggles to do the “deep reading” that once came naturally. He attributes this short attention span to the immediacy of the web and the rewiring of our [...]
A Day at the Newseum
Monday, June 30th, 2008We just spent a wonderful day at the Newseum, the interactive museum of news that opened April 11 in Washington, D.C.
It’s a remarkable repository of mainstream media newsgathering techniques, artifacts and interpretive documentation. The one-to-many model of newsgathering–the old one-way information flow–is the foundation for the Newseum. Much of this is news as it used [...]
Jim Wallis Takes On James Dobson
Friday, June 27th, 2008Thanks to Jim Wallis of Sojourner’s for taking on the disingenuous attack of Barack Obama by James Dobson. Dobson’s claim that he is not a theologian was accurate. Absent solid theological grounding he is reduced to a right-wing political operative pushing his agenda under cover of religious rhetoric.
My concern for a long time has been [...]
Detecting Image Manipulation
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008I’ve commented a couple of times about image manipulation and today I happened upon the website of Dr. Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth, through the StumbleUpon web browsing social network. It presents examples of image manipulation, some of which pre-date by many years digital photo manipulation that’s possible today.
Dr. Farid and his associates have [...]
White-guy Methodists
Thursday, June 19th, 2008A letter to the editor in the Friday New York Times comments on the “white-guy Methodist” self characterization by President Bush while visiting in the UK last week. It is the subject of this commentary. The letter was posted after I wrote the commentary.
If my email is any indication, President Bush’s use of the [...]
How Mainstream Media Hype Health Care
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008A post on the Health Beat Blog provides a clear assessment about mainstream media coverage of health care. It isn’t a critique based on ideological grounds, it describes an editorial review process by health practitioners who read articles and watch television reports and assess them against a set of pertinent questions. A response is sent [...]
Pres. Bush–white guy Methodist?
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008Maureen Dowd quotes remarks President Bush made in the UK about his legacy. He said he will leave behind “multilateralism in dealing with tyrants,” according to Dowd’s column today. And he’s afflicted by “hopeless idealism” about Iraq and Iran.
But the most curious remark Dowd quotes is his reference to his “Methodist” (the complete name of [...]
Malawi Adventure
Saturday, June 14th, 2008Christine Gorman is writing about her first few days in Malawi in the Global Health Report blog. She is a Nieman Fellow in Global Health Reporting and will be doing work there for the next several weeks.
Her first post is about arriving and going about Lilongwe, the capital in the central region.
She comments on a [...]
Spam is the New Steak
Thursday, June 12th, 2008The depression is already here.
Item 1: The young man in line ahead of us at the discount store had about fifty cans of generic pressed meat with an awful yellow label. He ducked his head. He was embarrassed. It wasn’t even brand-name Spam, but as we stepped forward the cashier said with an ironic twist, [...]
Media Reform, The Religious Right and Progressive Dialogue
Monday, June 9th, 2008Attending the National Conference on Media Reform 2008 was, in some ways, like attending a revival meeting. Some in this meeting would cringe at the comparison, however, because great damage has been done by the marriage of right wing politics with evangelical faith claims. The alienating nature of the national conversation the past decade (or [...]
« Previous Entries