Before we get too far into that... here's Starbucks main page for the iTunes music downloading thing. Apparently, in response to that awesome girl who sits in one of the front rows who asked if Starbucks is charging or not, they are giving away a bunch of songs. Makes me wish we had more than one in this town.
Now, for the Times...
This article is fascinating! First, the fact that the phrase "I ran a website" is showing up as a legitimate - even highly valuable - skill/form of employment is a miracle. Secondly, the editor of a mainstream news outlet is a pretty powerful position to be in. Morgan, I don't feel, will be the last big name to make this shift from "mainstream news gate keeper" to "editor of a website that, yes, delivers news, but willingly admits and even advertises its opinion. Check out the headline on their main page. Then scroll down to the sidebar on the left, where all the blogs are. Check out who is posting, look at what they're saying, and ask yourself... is this going to be "news" from now on? This"[taking] a news story and build[ing] a community of debate around it?"
“Huffington Post has a lot of smart editors working for it,” she said. What the site does well, Ms. Morgan said, is “take a news story and build a community of debate around it.”Segue into our economics of attention discussion. I loved our group's impromptu furthering of the discussion. I promise, Sister Arts, that we'll save plenty of opinion for the second half of the presentation. We're very interested in where you're going with it. Here's what we've got so far:
- We live in an information age. Some would coin it an "information economy," however, information is not at all a scarce resource that needs allocating. The human attention required to make that information usable, accessible, productive, etc. scarce. Conclusion: we've created an "attention economy."
- Human attention isn't being fully realized by the individual. As discussed in the Television chapter, et al, a good majority of human attention is being monopolized by the TV. While good, thought-provoking programming does exist (facilitating this allocation of human attention to productive pursuits), it's definitely in the minority.
- Therefore, the problem becomes breaking this cycle of non-thinking-ness (is there a better word for that?) that's gripped America since the advent of the TV.
Back to the Times... This piece covers a number of topics. I'll pull out the freedom of speech stuff and the Op-Ed Editor's, Andrew Rosenthal, response to "is NYTimes biased?" The questions were submitted by readers/critics of the Times and all answers are from Rosenthal himself.
Then, just for Group 8:Q. Where does The New York Times stand on the Iranian president and his talk at Columbia?
— Steve Kochoff
A. I'm so glad my first question was not on a controversial topic.
Having not heard the Iranian president's speech yet, I naturally don't have anything to say about his comments. In general, I don't plan to use this forum as a space for editorializing about the issues of the day.
But, there's an easy and obvious answer to the question, "Should he be allowed to speak at Columbia?" The answer is, yes.
Free speech is one of the founding principles of our republic. How can we deny him the right to speak simply because we don't like what he has to say, or what he has already said? Isn't that one of the biggest things that sets this nation apart from nations like Iran in the first place?
The right of free speech cannot be parceled out based on whether we want to hear what the speaker has to say, or whether we agree with those views. It means, quite often, tolerating the expression of views that we find distasteful, perhaps even repugnant. There is much that the Iranian president has to say that is loathsome, about Israel, about the Holocaust, about terrorism, about the United States. Are those views going to disappear because we cover our ears? Are we better equipped to counter those views if we don't hear them? We think the answer to those questions is, "No."
There you have it. And now I'm incredibly tired. I have finished my Analysis, though, that I believe is due tomorrow. Good to know. ;)Q. Has the Bush administration pursued any policy, nominated any officeholder that you support editorially?
— Andrea and Martin Sattler
Q. It is a rare event, extremely rare, of the editorials criticizing a Democrat. Is there any policy of "balance" in your editorializing?
— Mike Young
A. The answer, Andrea and Martin Sattler is, yes.
We supported the No Child Left Behind Act and the Medicare drug benefit. We supported the invasion of Afghanistan, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Director of National Intelligence. We support the two-state approach to the Israel-Palestine dispute, and we join Mr. Bush in opposing the Iranian nuclear weapons program, as well as the North Korean program. We agree that free trade is vital to the development of the United States, as well as the rest of the world. We believe that terrorism is a dire threat to American national security and American lives.
We supported the nomination of Bob Gates as secretary of defense and Henry Paulson Jr. as treasury secretary, which we called "a master stroke."
To Mr. Young, you are of course right when you say there is more criticism of the administration and the Republican Party on our pages than of Democrats or the Democratic Party. Remember, the president is a Republican, and for most of the last six years, the Republicans had a lock on both houses of Congress. When an editorial page comments on the government, it makes a lot more sense to comment on the party in power than the party in opposition. That said, we criticize the Democrats when criticism is due. We have done so on a number of issues, including most recently their failure to restore habeas corpus rights to foreign detainees and to pass legislation that would hold the president accountable for his policies on Iraq. We criticized Democrats who voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and we have written critically of Harry Reid's conduct as majority leader of the Senate.
It would be ludicrous for me to suggest that we're equally sympathetic to Republican and Democratic values and platforms. We are not. We generally find more in the Democratic Party's policies and approach to governing that we support and are particularly critical of Republican taxation and government spending philosophies. But if you look, you will find criticisms of Bill Clinton when he was president and of Congress when it was controlled by Democrats. The focus of all newsgathering tends to be on the party in power.
No, we do not believe that the editorial page should be balanced in the way you seem to suggest — that if we write two editorials critical of Republicans, we should write two editorials critical of Democrats. Editorials in general are not about balance, they are about opinion, about the taking of positions. That's an inherently unbalanced business.
~V~
No comments:
Post a Comment