Category: Business

— David Brock claims that he went to UC Berkeley as a liberal, and had a conversion experience while writing a story on Jean Kirkpatrick’s 1983 speech there. The way Brock tells the tale, he was so appalled by the way Kirkpatrick was treated that he rejected his liberal values and went over to the Right. Like so much of what Brock has written, this story is completely false, as Will Harper discovered in the course of researching Brock’s college days for the East Bay Express:

When Kirkpatrick came to Berkeley, the byline atop the Daily Cal’s coverage was not Brock’s. It belonged to Chris Norton, a freelance writer who contributed news stories and editorials about US foreign policy. Back issues of the February 16, 1983 paper show Norton’s name beneath the lead headline “Kirkpatrick clashes with hecklers over US policy.” “Someone told me to go cover this and I said okay,” says Norton, who later became a Central American correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and Newsday. “He didn’t write the story; I wrote the story,” adds Norton, who expressed disbelief when told that Brock claims to have written that day’s main story. Indeed, Brock did not have any story in the paper that day.

Harper interviewed 19 people who worked at the Daily Cal during Brock’s tenure, and unearthed nothing but contradictions of Brock’s accounts of the Kirkpatrick visit and his alleged conversion. The only consistency to David Brock is life-long practice of dissembling, exaggerating, and self-glorification.

— This post from web elf Matt Haughey on Jarvis’ Big Idea is interesting, in a way:

I’m skeptical of paid journalists in general, and the media outlets that employ them. I’ve always tried to maintain a healthy skepticism of weblogs (especially post-Kaycee), but it’s usually easy to spot a writer’s bias, opinions, and general viewpoint on subjects that cross their site. Thowing [sic] money into the mix would no doubt spike my bullshit detectors, as the motivation to post changes from personal satisfaction to personal checking accounts.

It never ceases to amaze me that some technicians, generally of the Chomskyite school, feel that other professionals have an obligation to give their services away for free. Would this post sound at all rational if we substituted the word “programmers” for “journalists?”

But there is a segment of the blogging public that undoubtedly believes that blogging is Free Journalism, just as they believe Open Source is Free Software (incidentally, Open Source dude Eric Raymond is blogging now, as a 2A libber) But the reality of Free Software is that much of it’s written by consultants as a resume-builder, for which they’re compensated in contracts, and the rest is written by employees of service companies like Red Hat as part of an overall business plan. There’s no real difference between a programmer at VA Linux or one at Microsoft, except the Microsoft guy is better-paid. Similarly, many journalists publish blogs for the interaction with their readers, and they’re compensated by the tips they’re sent which they can turn into articles for sale.

The aversion to Filthy Lucre is characteristic of a certain privilege and a certain age; it’s quaint, but shallow and counter-productive.

Most of the commentors on this subject listed on Daypop are pretty threatened by it, objecting to money for blogging much more strongly than young Matt. Would-be blogger dominatrix Rebecca Blood sneers at paid blogging even as she flogs her “How to Blog” book, filled, no doubt, with information given to her for free by generous people.

BTW, did you need a “How to” book to get started? Did anyone you know need one? Is there anything that could be crammed into a book that you couldn’t learn better from seeing 20 or 30 good examples? I didn’t think so.

UPDATE: Matt’s post, as a whole, isn’t as bad as the bit I posted; he makes many criticisms of journos working for Old and Big Media which are correct. He errs, I believe, in placing the blame for sloppy and biased journalism on money, and not on the nature of journos and their bosses themselves. When gifted writers can make a living exploring their own interests on the web, without editorial boards and metro editors telling them what to do and when to do it, the world will be a better place.

— This Jerry Springer Show on Philosophy hasn’t made it to the tapes yet:

Tina: Louis … I’ve loved you for a long time …

Louis: I love you, too, Tina.

Tina: Louis, you know I agree with you that existence precedes essence, but … well, I just want to tell you I’ve been reading Nietzsche lately, and I don’t think I can agree with your egalitarian politics any more.

Crowd: Wooooo! Woooooo!

Louis: [shocked and disbelieving] Tina, this is crazy. You know that Sartre clarified all this way back in the 40s.

Tina: But he didn’t take into account Nietzsche’s radical critique of democratic morality, Louis. I’m sorry. I can’t ignore the contradiction any longer!

Louis: You got these ideas from Victor, didn’t you? Didn’t you?

Link courtesy of the essential Ms. Harris, for the enjoyment of Peter (Ubermensch) Pribik.

— Go on over to The Blogs of War and give Dr. Frank some cash.

— Bill Maher has been exceptionally virulent on his misnamed “Politically Incorrect” lately, more the Overlord than usual, even, and full of rage at President Bush. This (ABC to End ‘Politically Incorrect’) must be why:

ABC will announce today that “Politically Incorrect,” its late-night comedy-discussion program, will go off the air in January and be replaced by a show starring the comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

Mr. Kimmel, who has been one of the hosts of the raunchy “Man Show” on the Comedy Central cable channel, will start up a more traditional late-night show with a desk-and-guests format, an ABC executive said yesterday. The show will also explore aspects of Mr. Kimmel’s home life, the ABC executive said. The news will be announced during ABC’s introduction of a new prime-time entertainment schedule to advertisers.

Unlike Maher, a Hugh Hefner-wannabe who hangs out at the Playboy Mansion and only dates women under 20 with two-digit IQs, Jimmy’s a family man. But more important for ABC is the fact that he’s actually funny, and not the crashing PETA-phile bore than Maher has become since leaving Comedy Central too many years ago.

— Konnecticut :: voodoo coding says some nice things:

Les articles de Bennett sont les plus intéressants et les plus dr?les (lisez les commentaires…), celui que je cite le moins ici est le plus riche: Is Instapundit over ? (Le contenu de l’article n’a rien ? voir avec le titre, rassurez-vous).

It’s often been observed that Americans lack humor, generally by Europeans inadvertantly stepping on earnest, Puritan toes. They have a point.

tr: Bennett’s articles are most interesting and funniest (read the comments…), this one is rich: “Is Instapundit over?” (the contents of the article have nothing to do with the title, so don’t go freaky).

— A few days ago, I described college blog Hoosier Review as “a project of Indiana U. students who didn’t make the cut at the school newspaper” following some unethical, churlish, and generally juvenile behavior in their quarters, already described in various comment sections here.

This characterzation was unfair, as some of the HR staffers are capable of making the cut at their school’s daily paper, even if others aren’t. I’ve learned that many, many Hoosiers love their Review, and the fact that all of them use the same computer to send e-mail from their various Hotmail accounts shouldn’t bias me against them, or her, as the case may be. So while the HR is nowhere near the caliber of the blogs I’ve listed for some time under my Blog U. section, it’s generally written in gramatically correct English and tends to be free of major spelling or punctuation errors. If they would simply drop the practice of publishing their dumbest rants under feminine pseudonyms, they might get on the road to acceptable. But the Hosers are young, and time is on their side.

— In the course of commenting on a bizarre bit of analysis by one pseudonymous “Hillary Carter” of the Hoosier Review website on something I wrote, I conjectured that the Review was “a project of Indiana U. students who didn’t make the cut at the school newspaper.” While that portrayal was less than flattering, it turns out the truth is even worse: “Hillary Carter” and “Rush Reagan” are staff members of the Indiana student paper, and star writers for the Review as well.

Since the Review’s stock in trade is grading the work of the student paper, we have the specter of writers pseudonymously reviewing their own work for the Review. Review editor Joshua Claybourn seems to think it’s OK to hide this relationship from his readers, but it raises serious ethical concerns about the Review that would certainly be troubling in any adult newspaper/web site relationship.

The Review also wants a permalink. I’ll let my readers decide on that question: leave a comment if you have an opinion about my permalinking the Hoosier Review.

— Failing to state the obvious is a kind of bias, according to Thurman Faulk, who comments on the outrageous lawsuit brought by the families of illegal immigrants who died in the Arizona desert because the US government didn’t leave milk and cookies out for them:

In self-conscious attempt to be “objective”, news outlets run stories like this one without even a hint of an opinion. They don’t report it as being outrageous, silly, or preposterous, they simply state what transpired, while taking care to pose themselves as being “objective” by not saying anything about it.

I’ve got an idea – if they can sue us for not facilitating their unlawful acts, can’t we charge them with something too? How about “littering.”

Yes, that was mean.

— Sgt. Stryker rebels against his stereotyping as token Army mechanic blogger and throws off his chains:

The Daily Briefing is no more. No more geopolitical crap, no more insights into the “military lifestyle”. If you want that, go someplace else. I’m sure there’s somebody out there who’ll be more than happy to provide you with fodder for supporting whatever ideology you’re trying to peddle and perhaps they’ll be better than I was at properly portraying the caricature of a military person, since that’s all most people seem to want.

Good for you, dude – be yourself and let the hits fall where they may. I’ve already commented on those who hastened the burnout; you know who you are.