Comments Posted By shaun
Displaying 21 To 30 Of 93 Comments
Good for you and Zu-Au. All three of our cats are rescues and yours will work out with lots of patience and love.
Comment Posted By shaun On 28.09.2009 @ 07:52
And may you celebrate many years more.
Comment Posted By shaun On 23.09.2009 @ 13:07
SHOULD NEWSPAPERS GO NON-PROFIT?
It pains me no end to once again have to agree with Rick regarding journalism as art vs. craft. The art is very far and very few between.
I have mentored many young reporters and taught many journalism classes and long ago refined my role into that of a bad cop.
What I tell these kids is that if they don't have a hair-on-fire enthusiasm, limitless curiosity and can't show why readers should care about what they write then they need to find some other kind of work.
It is the rare creative writer who can excel at deadline journalism, and as Rick notes it is best left to the editor to pump up the prose. Trouble is, more and more newspapers follow the Bloomberg news service model wherein the reporters file directly to the wire. It shows.
If I may be so bold, I have excelled as a writer because I have done so damned much of it over the last 40-plus years and at some point found "my voice." That is writing punchy and to-the-point prose that has some stylistic depth.
About half of all the visitors to my blog, which is a small one, arrive via Google, Yahoo or other portals. The robots at these search engines "love" my writing because that to-the-point prose is packed with key words that will take readers interested in, say, Duane Allman to my blog.
Comment Posted By shaun On 22.09.2009 @ 08:48
Good post on a topic about which I can speak with some authority since I worked for daily newspapers for 35 years until taking an early retirement and turned to book writing and blogging.
The biggest reason that newspapers are failing is a hubristic resistance to change, specifically changing their business models until it was way too late for many of them. That has had a ripple effect, including the loss of advertisers.
A close second is the consolidation of the industry into a few large media companies for whom their stock prices became more important than the quality of their products.
Checking in at third is changing reading habits, although there is something to the notion that some papers may be able to surprise in online specialty niches.
Bias -- perceived or real -- is way down the list, Rasmussen's push polling notwithstanding.
I oppose any federal bailout of failing newspapers, but I fervently support finding new approaches to cost sharing such as the several organizations that recently helped the NYTimes underwrite Sherri Fink's terrific investigative piece on the Katrina hospital disaster.
I didn't hit the consolidation angle at all. Paddock (now CNH) and Gannett own 75% of all community daily newspapers. They all look alike and sound alike. Diversity is a thing of the past. There is very little in those newspapers that you can't find somewhere else.
ed.
Comment Posted By shaun On 21.09.2009 @ 12:26
WHEREVER JACKIE PAPER IS TODAY, HE IS WEEPING
Lovely, Rick, just lovely.
I saw Peter, Paul and Mary for the first time at the Carter Barron amphitheater in Washington, D.C. when I was 15 -- my first big live concert -- and it was a transforming experience. I collected and sang along to all of their Sixties albums and while my parents weren't into folk, as civil-rights activists they adored PP&M because of their own role in the struggle for equality and, as the NYTimes noted, the urgency they brought to their music.
And like you, my imagination and historic interest was fired by the tales that their songs (and the songs they covered) told.
Comment Posted By shaun On 17.09.2009 @ 12:54
RUSH AND RACE: THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
I more or less agree, Rick, especially the cheapening part. Thank you.
Comment Posted By shaun On 16.09.2009 @ 14:36
Could you amplify a bit on the difference between a "racist" and a "race agitator?"
Thank you in advance.
I don't think Limbaugh is a hater - or I lack the ability to read his mind. Rather, in the same vein as Al Sharpton, he is a calculating race agitator - stirring the pot for his own aggrandizement.
Racially insensitive? Perhaps. Racist - don't think so. I think its time for thoughtful people to reclaim the strict meaning of that word and apply it where it is truly deserved. The way it is being tossed about today cheapens it and causes it to lose its sting.
ed.
Comment Posted By shaun On 16.09.2009 @ 14:19
NO WONDER BUSH WAS A FAILURE AS PRESIDENT
I will not tell you so, Rick, but you nevertheless give Bush too much credit.
In 2001, he was pretty much an empty vessel into which neocons and right-wingers poured their wish lists. It did indeed take about five years to figure out that behind that willing receptacle was a guy who merely took after Bush père: A crony loving, big government elitist.
Comment Posted By shaun On 15.09.2009 @ 14:50
MY PROBLEM WITH 'FALSE' EQUIVALENCE
Of all the things that give me the gripes about the blogosphere, the number of talented bloggers who are more interested in engaging in pissing matches instead of commentating on the affairs of the day, let alone actually doing some spade work themselves, is depressing.
You usually fall well outside that realm as a blogger who does do his spadework, and in my book certainly get a pass if John Cole tries to rain on your parade and you rain back.
The more important point, which Cole should be taken to the woodshed for, is that while you do occasionally slide down the slippery slope of false equivalency, I don't think of you as a partisan blogger, let alone a party hack.
That is why I keep coming back here.
When smaller bloggers attack, I rarely respond on my blog. But Cole has a big enough voice that when he questions my integrity, I think I have little choice but to respond. I agree that it is largely a waste of time and effort. I may have had a half dozen of these blogger dust ups over the last 5 years of blogging and in the end, no one's mind is changed, and everybody forgets what all the fuss was about to begin with
ed.
Comment Posted By shaun On 8.09.2009 @ 12:13
THE FORMERLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG KNOWN AS REDSTATE
Rick, you need Red State like a case of the shingles. Because it is a case of the shingles.
Comment Posted By Shaun On 2.09.2009 @ 10:21
