Tonight at 7:30 PM Central time, those of you who get KNCT, the PBS station in Central Texas, can see me on your TV - once again in a suit and tie - as a guest on Mary Beth Harrell's talk show Insight Texas. The good news - or bad news, depending on your perspective - is that even those of you who don't get KNCT can still watch me do my talking head act, as the show will be shown on the Insight website - look here for that; it may not be there immediately, but I presume it will be there eventually. In addition to that, there's a behind the scenes webcast, which now has a brief discussion on how the lighting for the show is done but will later show us panelists eating donuts and answering more questions.
The other panelists on this episode were Lynn Woolley, who played the Evil Conservative to my Bearded Liberal, and the fabulous Karen Brooks of the Dallas Morning News. It was fun, and as it was filmed several weeks ago, before my local PBS appearance, technically would count as my first TV gig. So tune and say that you knew me when.
Here's what my co-blogger Ree-C Murphy had to say (corssposted here) about the Houston Have Your Say event that I blogged about last week. I'm very much in sync with her about what we experienced, and what we hope everyone got out of it. It was a pleasure and a privilege to be involved, and my thanks again to the folks at KUHT and Ree-C for making it so. Lisa Falkenberg also comments.
If you tuned in to Houston Have Your Say last night expecting to see me on the TV, you would have been either annoyed or relieved to learn that I was on the sidelines with a laptop, liveblogging it instead. That was a somewhat daunting prospect for me, as my initial foray into that form of media wasn't terribly successful. You can read my efforts as well as those of my co-liveblogger Ree-C Murphy here and see how I did. At the very least, I think we got a lot more detail than the Chron story includes.
I'm still kind of taking it all in, as is Ree-C, who posted some pix from our vantage point here. I'm going to give a few thoughts here now, then think about it some more and see if I can come up with a coherent narrative.
- I don't know what I expected of this going into it, but I do know that I expected a fair amount of acrimony, and I was pleasantly surprised to see things remain mostly civil. There were a few jabs thrown by UH/HCCS Professor Luis Salinas and Sen. Dan Patrick at each other, but the funny thing is that in between the two segments, and again after the send half, the two of them were talking to each other, in a fairly calm manner. Here's Ree-C's observation from last night:
During the break, I noticed that people were getting together and talking with each other without animous. It was outstanding. It is the way is should be.Solutions are made person to person. Kuffner said that Patrick and Salinas should be put in a room together and the door locked until they come up with workable solutions. I would agree in principle on that. These people in this room could be the key to working out solutions. It will depend on how far they carry it later...
(Hey, if I can talk to Kuffner with cheer and humor, anything is possible. Right? ;)
- On a more serious note, I have to say that Sen. Patrick was one of the more pleasant surprises for me from this event. He got his talking points in, and he's way too fixated on "sealing the border" for my taste, but I do believe he really wants to find a solution, which is not something I would have said 24 hours ago. This dropped my jaw:
Dan Patrick: "We have to remove the fear from all sides." Calls "amnesty" a buzzword, and says a small group of people in this room with 30 days to come up with a solution would be able to do so. I must say I agree with him. There may be hope yet. Ree-C is with me on this.
- I wish I could say the same thing about some of Sen. Patrick's ideological colleagues, but the others who there representing a nativist perspective gave no indication of budging or listening. The Border Watch guy, who sat next to Patrick, and another fellow whose name and organization I've forgotten (somewhat stupidly, I failed to bring a copy of the guest list home, so I can't look it up), were prime examples of the "extremists" that Patrick said were in the way and inciting fear. Part of the dilemma here is that the nativists have a lot of "facts" that they like to cite that just aren't true. If you can't agree on what the problems are, then you can't even begin to talk about solutions. The fearmongers and xenophobes have to be marginalized in the discussion so that the legitimate concerns can be honestly discussed and dealt with.
- Still, in the end I came away feeling hopeful about this, and I think Ree-C would agree with me on that. Getting these people into the same room and getting them to talk to each other instead of at each other was a good thing, which we need a lot more of. There's still a lot of fear and ignorance out there - sadly, this came through very clearly in the video clips, call-ins to the show, emails that were read, and blog comments we've gotten - and that must be overcome, but for the first time in awhile, I feel like that can be done. It'll take a lot of work, and a willingness for people who agree on some but not all of the fundamentals to speak with one voice about the things they do agree on, but it can be done. Some leadership from our elected officials would help, but this is going to take all of us.
- Finally, I'd like to thank Patricia Gras for doing a fine job as moderator, Julie Coan with KUHT for inviting me to participate, the staff of KUHT for providing us with laptops and Internet connectivity, the panelists for their time and efforts, and my co-bloggers Ree-C and Mizanur Rahman for their camaraderie and for making liveblogging a lot more fun than I thought it could be. Having Ree-C to bounce stuff off of before and while this was going on was a big help for me, and she's right: if we can get along, so can the rest of y'all. Let me know what you think.
UPDATE: I see that Michelle, who's been a stalwart in the HHYS blog comments, saw Sen. Patrick in a considerably more negative light than I did. That's fair, and had he not made his comment at the end about amnesty being a buzzword and extremists hindering the debate, I'd be fully in sync with her assessment. Maybe I'm being naive, but I agreed with that sentiment, and I want to build on it. Doesn't mean we should forget what else he's had to say, of course, and she did a good job highlighting that aspect of it.
I'm at the KUHT studio for Houston Have Your Say along with Ree-C Murphy and Mizanur Rahman from the Chron. We will not actually be on camera - we're off on the side at the "bloggers table", which suits us all just fine. There's a number of distinguished-looking guests, fifty or so, and they are now being told what to expect. There will be three sections - economy and security issues, health care, and education. There will be a short video clip to start, then questions will be asked of the guests. Everyone has been told to play nice. We'll see how long that lasts. Oh, and no mike-grabbing.
The blog for this event is here. I'm going to post what I can as I can, given the limits of my attention span and comprehension skills.
UPDATE: Among the distinguished and distinguished-looking guests: Harris County Treasurer Orlando Sanchez, and State Sen. Dan Patrick. No Democratic politicians that I have seen as yet.
UPDATE: Just got our hands on the guest list. Other recognizable names: Former City Coucil Member Gordon Quan, Massey Villareal with the Greater Houston Partnership, Rice University's Dr. Stephen Klineberg, Sonny Messiah Jiles from the Houston Defender, Richard Shaw with the AFL-CIO, and our consensus favorite name on the list, Lura Lovestar, who is listed as a Concerned Citizen. Mike Fjetland, former canidate for CD22, is also here but not part of the on-camera audience.
UPDATE: My first post after the start of the show is here.
Apparently, my initial foray on KUHT wasn't enough to scare them off, so I'll be back on Channel 8 this Thursday at 7 PM as part of a live broadcast called Houston Have Your Say:
The first show will take a closer look at the impact of immigration on Houston's economy, security, health care and education while also searching for solutions.
Oh, the one thing I do know is that we were asked to "dress in business or business casual style clothing", so I'm afraid that if you missed me in a suit and tie last time, you won't get another chance for that, at least not this soon. Sorry about that.
I have often said that I have a face for radio and a voice for blogging. Tonight you will have the chance to judge that for yourself, as I make my debut appearance on The Connection: Red, White, and Blue. It airs tonight at 8 PM and tomorrow at 5 PM on KUHT channel 8 in Houston. We had a discussion of the recent primary results and other matters political, with David Jones, Gary Polland (who for some reason reminded me of Ryan Chappelle from 24), and Edd Hendee of KSEV. As an extra special bonus, you get to see what I look like in a jacket and tie. What more could you want? So set your TiVos and check it out.
So the February issue of Texas Monthly is on the newsstands, and they've got a feature story called 35 People Who Will Shape Our Future, one of whom is their cover boy, Lance Armstrong. And one of whom, amazingly enough, is me.
It's quite humbling, and very flattering, to see my name along with people like Armstrong, Rafael Anchia, Cat Osterman, Will Harrell, and Chamillionaire. I wouldn't have included me, had I been the listmaker. But the good folks at Texas Monthly saw it differently, and I'm thrilled that they did. At the very least, the next time someone says to me "Your parents must be so proud", I can reply "As a matter of fact, they are". My sincere thanks to Texas Monthly for the honor.
Interesting op-ed from the weekend by Barbara Radnofsky.
Now, in many urban high schools and particularly in Houston, policy debate is gone. Private and suburban public high schools are still actively involved in debate, but predominantly low-income minority students lack the opportunity.Houston needs an Urban Debate League to bring competitive debate back to the inner city, and to involve minority and low income students. By public-private participation, we can also aid both sides in the HISD bond controversy and litigation.
Urban Debate League (UDL) structures partnerships between the urban public school district and a private partner, a local not-for-profit organization (the UDL Advisory Board) composed of civic-minded leaders in business, law, academia, government and the nonprofit community.
Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Kansas City and Baltimore all have successful Urban Debate Leagues. Now, Dallas has stepped forward.
The programs succeed. Here's the evidence from the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues: UDLs increase literacy scores by 25 percent, improve grade-point averages by 8 percent to 10 percent, achieve high school graduation rates of nearly 100 percent and produce college matriculation rates of 71 percent to 91 percent.
We are University of Houston debater alumni seeking resurrection of urban policy debate programs in Houston.
We've pledged our service in Houston's UDL Advisory Board if the NAUDL will sanction a League. We call on Houstonians to contact NAUDL (312-427-0175, info@UrbanDebate.org and www.naudl.org) to join us.
You know, I never thought I'd see a day where it would be necessary for Pete to come to the defense of Mister Rogers, but that day has apparently come. And just in time, it seems. Check it out.
Damn shame. Fort Bend Now is a terrific publication, a go-to source for all things CD22, and a unique resource for local news junkies. Plus, Bob Dunn is a peach of a guy. Nonetheless, as another old dad (though not as old as Bob) with young kids, I totally understand his decision. Good luck with whatever comes next, dude. You've earned it.
I confess to being somewhat ambivalent about Stace's call to action regarding the comic strip La Cucaracha, which has disappeared from the dead-tree edition of the Chron, though it's still online. It was never a regular read for me, though I was enjoying its recent focus on immigration. On the other hand, the strip that replaced it - I can't even remember the name - has pretty much nothing to recommend it. Generic art, lame gags, indistinguishable characters - at least La Cucaracha was distinctive and had something to say. Frankly, on those grounds alone, it's worth your time to visit Lalo Alcaraz's MySpace page and help him lobby the Chron for reinstatement. I generally think the Chron's comic pages are very good, but more effluvia like the penguin strip they don't need.
Oh, and in case you're wondering where the post title comes from, it's from the song.
Publisher American Media Inc. said on Tuesday it will stop printing the Weekly World News, which for 28 years gleefully chronicled the exploits of alien babies, animal-human hybrids and dead celebrities.The company said in a brief statement it would end the print version of the tabloid newspaper next month but would maintain the online version (www.weeklyworldnews.com).
"Due to the challenges in the retail and wholesale magazine marketplace that have impacted the newsstand, American Media, Inc. today announced it will close the print version of the Weekly World News, effective with the August 27 issue. Weekly World News was AMI's smallest weekly publication," the company said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.
Filling in for conservative talk-show host Michael Berry Tuesday morning, Houston lawyer Geoff Berg was direct with KPRC radio's listeners."I am a moderate," he announced. "Michael is a right-wing fanatic. We are going to disagree."
He was on point.
Listeners -- and apparently advertisers -- disagreed so much that KPRC/950 AM fired Berg after one day on the job, ending his brief stint as a talk-radio host.
"Right after the show, the producers told me that I'd done a great job as host," Berg said Wednesday.
"(But) later in the day, they said don't come back."
[...]
Berry, when asked for comment, sent the following reply via e-mail: "Geoff is a personal friend. I also think he can develop into a good talk-show host. He is quite to the left of me, but I think there is an audience for him. 950 is not that place."
Berg said he does not have any ill will toward Berry or KPRC, joking that the station fired him after "one day of diverse opinion."
Looks like the Chron is going to need another DC-based columnist.
FishbowlDC has learned that Houston Chronicle Washington columnist (and former Houston Chronicle D.C. Bureau Chief) Cragg Hines is retiring after 35 years with the paper. A Gridiron fixture, Hines has become one of the great Washington monuments in the journalism community. He is leaving at the end of July.
(And feel free to keep blogging afterwards. You'll be able to say stuff you might've felt uncomfortable about before. Believe me, that would be a good thing.)
Via Eye on Williamson comes the news that Mary Beth Harrell, who ran against Rep. John Carter in CD31 last year, has a new gig:
KNCT-TV, the local public broadcasting station located on the campus of Central Texas College, recently announced the addition of a new show to premiere this summer. "Insight," hosted by local attorney Mary Beth Harrell, will premiere Thursday, July 12 at 7:30 p.m. on KNCT (channel four on the local cable system or channel 46 for non-cable subscribers). A re-broadcast will air the following Sunday at 10 a.m."Insight" is a half-hour roundtable discussion featuring prominent, successful women who help shape the issues affecting Central Texas. These leaders come from numerous sectors of the community including education, healthcare, banking, economic development, city management, the courtroom, charitable giving and the news media. "The guests on 'Insight' understand the challenges confronting us today in many areas of our everyday lives," said Harrell. "They will not only identify these challenges but also talk about their plans and goals to meet those challenges now and in the future."
Some of Harrell's guests on "Insight" will be Ann Harder, Channel 25 news anchor; Martha Tyrock, Temple city councilwoman; Judge Diane Henson, Judge Martha Trudo, Colonel Diane Sutton and Colonel Victoria Bruzese of Fort Hood; Reverend Mary Wilson, Dr. Rose Cameron, Diane Connell, Colleen Beck and Brenda Coley.
One segment of the show will feature Harrell on location at area restaurants seeking public opinions from Central Texans on an array of topics. "We want to bring our community into the studio so our guests can hear the opinions and concerns of its citizens," noted Harrell. "We hope the viewers, as well as our guests, find the exchange enlightening and entertaining."
Following its July 12 premiere, "Insight" can be seen Thursday evenings at 7:30 p.m. and once monthly on Sunday at 10 a.m.
Who said this?
"When Paris Hilton was going to jail last week, more people knew about that than knew that we were sending people into space that day. It has replaced what is real news. There was always a place for it, but it was [gossip writer] Rona Barrett. Now it is the equivalent of Edward R. Murrow reporting it today."
There really are days when I feel like I've seen it all.
Believe it or not, there actually does exist a magazine called Blogger & Podcaster. And yes, the tagline is: "For Aspiring New Media Titans." And yes, you won't even come close to being the first to mock the effort. Nevertheless, Troy McCullough of the Baltimore Sun says "the concept of a blogging trade publication isn't as crazy as some have made it out to be" and insists that the magazine "has shown it has some early potential."
I have three things to say about this story regarding Houston's freeway bloggers.
1. How you can write such a story while never mentioning the original Freeway Blogger is beside me. (His blog site is now here.) I mean, FreewayBlogger.com was the first freaking result in a Google search for "freeway blogging". Saying that it's "a term that emerged out of California, where protesters hung signs on overpasses and then took pictures to be posted on the Web" doesn't really explain what it has to do with blogging.
2. Hanging a sign may be illegal in Houston, but that sure didn't stop Orlando Sanchez last year. I swear, every freeway overpass I drove under had a Sanchez sign hanging on it.
3. The bridges over 59 between Montrose and Shepherd really are cool.
That is all.
I don't often do a post that just says "What he said", but every once in a while circumstances dictate it. So, without further ado: What he said. That is all.
(Thanks to Greg for the pointer.)
UPDATE: Jack Cafferty is my hero.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Is Anna Nicole Smith still dead, Wolf?BLITZER: Yes, we're going to -- updating our viewers coming up shortly on...
CAFFERTY: I can't wait for that.
BLITZER: ... the mysterious circumstances surrounding that, Jack. Thank you.
It's ABC13's Miya Shay versus KTRH talker Chris Baker in a storm coverage smackdown! Place your bets, place your bets...
I received an email last week from Charlotte Aguilar of the Examiner telling me that former CD07 candidate Jim Henley will be filling in as a guest columnist while Molly Ivins takes a sabbatical. His first effort is here, on the topic of Iraq. I look forward to seeing more of his efforts while he fills in for Molly. Check it out.
I'll be on the radio tonight, proving once again that I've got a voice for blogging, as a guest on Agonist Radio out of San Antonio. Tonight's lineup is here, which puts me on the air at about 9 PM. Sean-Paul doesn't give a hint of what we'll be discussing, but at a guess I'd say it's not going to be Analytic and Algebraic Topology of Locally Euclidean Metrization of Infinitely Differentiable Riemannian Manifolds. But you never know, so you better tune in. You can hear it online here, or on 550 AM in San Antonio. And feel free to call in and stump me with a question - the numbers are (512) 599-5555 and (toll free) 800-299-KTSA.
Lots of stuff I've been meaning to link to lately. Indulge me here for a minute while I link around.
Vince gets in the candidate interview game with Q&As featuring Sherrie Matula and Kathi Thomas.
Speaking of Matula, her opponent John Davis has had ethics charges filed against him for failure to properly report credit card expenses. Muse has the scoop here and here.
Tory gives his thoughts on Midtown urbanism.
Do you think that red light cameras will be a cash cow for Houston? DallasBlog asked a council member there about its expenditures on them. They've got video of his answer.
More video: Juan Garcia and Shane Sklar.
Bob Dunn speaks to the mystery man of the CD22 write-in brigade, Joe Reasbeck (scroll down to see it).
The original tough grandma. Accept no substitutes. More here, including an ironic ad beneath it and to the right.
Scott is leaving his job with the ACLU of Texas. Best of luck in your new pursuit, dude. And thanks for linking to the smartest thing I've read about immigration so far this year.
Three words: Bubble wrap contest. Need I say more?
Mary Beth Harrell attended the Round Rock town hall meeting on Monday. Do I need to tell you who didn't? Read Mary Beth's latest Kos diary, about a soldier from her district that was killed in Iraq, here.
Is YouTube doomed? (Thanks, Dwight!)
Do you hate college football's new clock rules? If so, you're not alone.
The PerryVsWorld blog has part one of an interview with former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes up, and it's some interesting reading. So far, they've mostly covered redistricting and redistricting reform. I hope the question of Carole Keeton Strayhorn comes up in a subsequent segment. Check it out.
When I read that the Washington Post's new Republican activist blogger was once a speechwriter for Sen. John Cornyn, I wondered if he had a hand in some of the more, er, colorful things that our junior senator has said lately. Via Atrios, it turns out that young Ben was, at least indirectly, responsible for the infamous box turtle statement that was in a prepared speech Cornyn gave to the Heritage Foundation. (Cornyn, in a rare moment of restraint, skipped that remark when actually delivering the speech. But someone wrote it for him, and it would seem that someone was Ben Domenech. I'm sure his new colleagues at the Post are so proud.)
Next question: Did Domenech have a hand in this embarrassing chapter of Cornyn's career?
Things which are supposedly imminent, on the grand scale of things:
My friend Ellen sent me a link to this WSJ article about quantifying political prognostication.
As 2006 approached, pundits performed the annual rite of making predictions for the year ahead. Scripps Howard's prognosticator expects the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to begin. The Christian Science Monitor published a forecast that North Korea or Iran will acquire nuclear weaponry. On Fox News, Bill Kristol predicted another Supreme Court vacancy, while Brit Hume's crystal ball saw an acquittal for Lewis "Scooter" Libby. (The Wall Street Journal's New Year's Eve look-ahead to 2006 couched most of its political forecasts with the word "likely.")Such predictions are good fun. But in general, the prognostications of political pundits are about as accurate as a chimp throwing darts. At least that's the finding of "Expert Political Judgment," a new book by University of California, Berkeley, political psychologist Philip Tetlock. From 1987 to 2003, Prof. Tetlock coaxed 284 political experts of all stripes -- academics, journalists and think-tankers from across the political spectrum -- to make specific, verifiable forecasts. He looked at more than 27,000 predictions in all.
Prof. Tetlock's innovation was to elicit numerical predictions. As he noted in an interview with me, political punditry tends toward the oracular: statements vague enough to encompass all eventualities. But by promising confidentiality and relying on the "curiosity value of the project," he was able to get pundits to provide probability estimates for such questions as whether certain countries' legislatures would see shifts in their ruling parties, whether inflation or unemployment would rise and whether nations would go to war.
Without numerical predictions, "it's much easier to fudge," Prof. Tetlock told me. "When you move from words to numbers, it's a really critical transition." What he found is that people with expertise in explaining events that have happened aren't very successful at predicting what will happen.
He demonstrated this by checking their predictions against reality, and then comparing the humans' performance with that of several automated prediction schemes. The simplest type was chimp-like. No chimps were harmed in the experiment; Prof. Tetlock essentially used random numbers. More complex sets of predictions were based on the frequency of similar events in the past. The virtual chimps did about as well as humans, while several of the more-complex schemes exceeded the best human forecasters.
Prof. Tetlock wants to see elevated debate and improved punditry, and he has several ideas for how to make it happen. One is for pundits to hone their skill by playing predictions markets -- betting pools that assign values to future events such as a Republican victory in a gubernatorial election. These markets, like Prof. Tetlock's study, force prognosticators to make quantifiable bets and provide feedback in the form of monetary gains or losses -- if you back a losing outcome, you lose money (see more on this at Wikipedia). He found that the best forecasters operate in fields like meteorology "in which they get quick, unequivocal feedback on predictions."The recommendation with which he ends the book is the most far-reaching: Prof. Tetlock urges independent monitoring of experts' predictions. In the interview, he suggested either two media organizations -- he named The Wall Street Journal and New York Times -- or two respected think tanks join forces to get experts on the record with numerical predictions, and then regularly report the results.
"It would be a good thing" to do political punditry better, Prof. Tetlock told me. "It would be good for society, and it would be good for science."
I can't seem to find it now, but I distinctly recall Slate magazine publishing a list of Election 2000 predictions by a wide array of media types. It asked how many electoral votes Bush and Gore would get, whether Hillary Clinton or Rick Lazio would win the NY Senate race, and one extra prediction of the pundit's choosing. Someone - I think it may have been Peggy Noonan, but I can't swear to it - picked Bush to win over 400 EVs while carrying California. Whoever it was, I think it should be a part of their byline with every op-ed piece they write.
During the NFL season, the Chronicle sports section features a full-page ad by an auto dealership, which lists each of its salespersons' picks in that week's games, ordered by their record so far. I presume the winner gets some kind of award at the end of the year, while the poor sap who finishes last has to wash everyone else's car or something like that. If that kind of accountability is good enough for football fans, isn't it good enough for pundits?
I will be a guest on Sean-Paul "The Agonist" Kelly's radio show tonight from 7:30 to 8:00 PM. The broadcast is on San Antonio's KTSA, which is 550 on the AM dial, or you can click the link and listen to a live stream. You can call in to the show at (512) 599-5555, or toll-free at (800) 299-KTSA. Tune in and remind yourself what "a face made for radio, a voice made for blogging" really means.
Sean-Paul Kelly will be guest-hosting the Jack Riccardi show on 550 KTSA Talk Radio from 7-10 pm in San Antonio tonight. Here's the lineup:
7-730 Intro segment, introduce the night's guests, main topic etc . . .
730-800 Comedienne Margaret Cho.
800-830 Congressman Chris Bell (and candidate for Texas governor) to talk about Senator John Cornyn's links with Abramoff and Scanlon.
830-915 Don Henry Ford Jr. Author of Contrabando, Confessions of a Drug Smuggling Texas Cowboy
915-1000 Elaine Wolff, Culture Editor of the San Antonio Current, to talk about the media, Judy Miller, Bob Woodward and the role alt weekley's can play in politics.
If only I had such sway over the Chronicle's editorial page! Thanks for the egoboo and all, but I've never even gotten them to print one of my letters to the editor. Believe me, if they were taking orders from me they'd have finished all of their endorsements by now.
Sedosi's complaint here is that the Chron doesn't have an op-ed on the passing of Rosa Parks. Far as I can tell, the editorials there generally lag the news cycle by a day or two. While I agree that it would be nice to see them be more on top of things, I think it's a little unfair to single them out without at least a cursory check of what the other major papers are opining on. With that in mind:
- The top editorial at the Morning News has to do with sanctions on Syria, with secondary pieces on Ben Bernanke and teaching kids about the evils of drugs.
- At the Star-Telegram, they're weighing in on cancelling proms, a tax increment financing district, and more kudos for Ben Bernanke.
- The Express News tells us to support the McCain anti-torture bill and to vote for Prop 7, while also counseling NBA players to accept a dress code.
- Last but not least we have the Statesman, which turns out to be the only paper eulogizing Rosa Parks on its editorial page. (They also lionize Ben Bernanke, which makes me wonder who all these papers have been listening to and why the Chron didn't get that particular memo. I will admit, though, that "Bush hires competent non-crony for important job" is a topic worth remarking on.)
So five major papers, and one editorial obit for Rosa Parks, with many other pieces commenting on older stories. I feel certain that by Thursday, at least four of the five will have said something about Ms. Parks. As well they should remember a true American hero, who deserves to be commemorated from coast to coast. All I'm saying is that if it's a crime for the Chron not to have done it today, they had their share of accomplices.
Wonder what Berkeley Breathed had on his mind while doing those Opus-in-jail-for-protecting-his-source comics? Find out in this brief interview. Via The Stakeholder.
Following up on Julia Sisyphus's post, a new poll shows patriotism remains near an all-time high in America:
Whether or not “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” as the British writer Samuel Johnson observed more than 200 years ago, it may be the first refuge of a broad cross-section of modern-day Americans, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or political affiliation...
The poll, conducted by the Roper Reports unit of NOP World, is based on personal and telephone interviews over several years. It found that 81 percent of Americans believed patriotism is “in,” meaning it is an important factor in their individual identities, compared with 14 percent of Americans who believed patriotism is “out.”
I wasn't aware that patriotism could be "in" or "out" like a fashion trend; one is reminded of Thomas Paine's thoughts on "sunshine patriots."
Nonetheless, it's always affirming to see an outpouring of positive feelings for my country. On the other hand, it's still refreshing to know that one may feel differently about Independence Day, as this week's editorial from AAN&I does. Dissent challenges us towards being a greater nation, ever-more deserving of adulation, because we can hope that Americans will never condemn our country to being a wasteland of broken promises and shattered dreams.
I've never really been down there before tonight; a friend of mine decided he wanted a picnic for his birthday. I highly recommend doing that. In the winter, when it's not so derned hot. Good times. Especially the "playing chicken with the Hermann Park kiddie train" times.
I knew I'd have to go easy on making jokes at Arianna Huffington's expense once she signed up some quality like Harry Shearer. But not being content to merely lure one of my own faves, Andrei Cherny, out of a relative recluse of writing, she can now add Harris County's own Congressman Ted Poe to her list of guest bloggers. So, is it time to take the Huffington Post seriously?
I guess so. At least, if you see fit to draw favorable parallels between Gitmo and a Carribean resort the way Congressman Poe does. Yessiree Bob ... er, Ted. It's a terrorists paradise down there. Nothing but the politest of interrogations he witnessed. Funny, I could have sworn they'd want to give a former judge with the reputation of Ted Poe a little bit of insight into their own creative justice at Gitmo. Guess not. So based on Poe's word, I guess we should just ignore the actual documented evidence of mistreatment? And why not one word out of Poe about prisoners being held in the pokey without a single charge filed against them? I guess that was off the beaten path for his little sightseeing adventure.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to dive into the deep end that suggest we shut up shop, close our eyes, and wish these predominantly evil people away. But I think there's something to be said for maintaining a high standard of American justice. After all, that is something that we pretend to be fighting for, right? Not a word out of Poe on any of that nonsense, though. He's too busy taking in a little beach volleyball, no doubt.
The Houston Democratic Forum meeting that I attended last night turned out to be a standing room only affair, as almost 70 people packed into the reserved room at Ziggy's Grill on Alabama to hear Dr. Richard Murray and Keir Murray talk about the new Texas Research Foundation they're setting up. Marguerite Reed has a detailed overview of the talk, so I'll point you to her instead of duplicating her effort. I will have more to say about this in the near future, but for now read her writeup and check out the TRF site.
Greg Wythe gets to burn a few minutes off of his fame clock tonight as he appears on "Texas Politics-The Real Deal", a talk show hosted by liberal Democrat attorney David Jones and former Harris County GOP chair Gary Polland. It's on Time Warner channel 17 in Harris County from 6:30 to 7:30, and you can call in and heckle him at 713-807-1794. I need to tell the TiVo that this channel exists so I can record it. Knock 'em dead, Greg!
So there were a couple of op-eds in Sunday's Chron that had blog themes to them. One was by Cragg Hines in which he chided bloggers on the right for their role in the case of the "Schiavo memo" that emanated from Sen. Mel Martinez's office. All I really want to do here is offer some advice to Hines: Next time you do this sort of thing, name names and quote excerpts. Not only will it help the sizable portion of your audience which isn't up to its eyeballs in blog stuff on a regular basis know what it is you're talking about, but it's what other bloggers (myself included in times past) will do to you. Arguing with unnamed and unknown opponents is not a winning strategy.
Elsewhere there was this piece by Scott Henson on the demise of the federal drug task force in Harris County (more background on that here). I can't help but note that the byline they ran did not include Scott's blog URL, which seems to me to be a pertinent omission. I've commented before about the Chron's inconsistent byline policies, and this is another example to add to my collection. But don't let that keep you from reading Scott's piece - it's a good one.
This editorial, which takes Roy Moore and the Alabama Christian Coalition to task for their stance that public education is a gift and not a right, is outstanding.
Take their stance on whether or not Alabama's children should have the right to an education, which they espouse in a lengthy position paper available on the Coalition website. They spend 4,228 words arguing that education is a "gift" to be given by the state, rather than a right Alabama's children can demand.Of those 4,228 words, not one of them is "Jesus." Not one of them is "Christ." Not one of them is "God." Not one of them is quoted from Scripture.
Evidently, what the Christian point-of-view on the topic might be and what the Bible has to say about it is beside-the-point to the Coalition. Quote Christ? Nah. But the paper does quote any number of other sources, from the United Nations to the AEA to something called Education International, in its effort to prove that the "right to an education" is a liberal fabrication to justify out-of-control spending. The guidance our Lord and Savior could offer in a decision that affects thousands and thousands of Alabamian lives is irrelevant; what a foreign education official named "Mr. van Leeuwen" has to say is critical, though. This is Christian leadership?
Adina writes about the death of the scoop in newspaper journalism and notes how the assumptions are different when blogs cover the news.
Early reporting on the big Texas House telecom bill involves bloggers sharing information, puzzling out the intricacies of a debate with nearly 40 amendments, and the meaning of the bill that came out of the sausage machine.The enemy isn't other bloggers -- it's the indifference of the mainstream media to stories that are less dramatic than an oil refinery explosion. The Statesman covered the telecom story. The Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle apparently didn't.
In a world of online peer production, facts aren't the scarce resource. Attention is the scarce resource. We're not limited by the front page, news-hour spatial constraint where an oil refinery explosion crowds out other news. We're limited by social dynamics that focus attention on the day's cause celebre.
The scarce resource is attention. Collaboration multiplies links and attracts attention. Thus bloggers swarm to assemble the facts.
Clearly, though, there was and is an audience for narrow-interest stuff, and that brings us to where blogs stepped in. I think the effect that the proliferation of blogs has had on news coverage is akin to the effect that the proliferation of cable channels has had on broadcast TV. Think back, if you're old enough, to the dark days of the Big Three networks, PBS, and UHF. How many shark documentaries were there back then? How about shows about home design? Celebrity poker? Fashion faux pas? They didn't exist because the audience for them wasn't big enough. But cable channels, who took to specialization as a means of competing, gladly went after those audiences. Though the overall numbers they got were small in comparison, the people who did tune in tended to fit a niche that was attractive to advertisers. The smaller audience was still a very desireable one.
I think that's the role that blogs play now. Just as there's only so much room in the weekly network schedule for niche programming, there's only so much room in the dailies for stories that don't have broad appeal. Bloggers, who do have the time and inclination to follow stories like the lifecycle of an otherwise dry telecom bill, step in to fill the void. Speaking as a voracious consumer of news, I couldn't be happier. The (generally) collaborative nature of blogging is a big asset here, since no one person can stay on top of all developments all the time, and most of us aren't usually heavily invested in publishing first. We just want to make sure that thing we're obsessing about gets the coverage we think it deserves. On busy days especially, we're happy to be able to throw a link that says "my colleague so-and-so has the goods today on that story we're following" and know that the interested readers are still being served.
The interesting question, of course, is whether the mainstream news producers will attempt to leverage these efforts as a way of boosting their own product line, much as NBC, Viacom, and Disney have snapped up various cable channels. That seems to be the direction that the Greensboro News & Record is taking, and if this story is any indication, others are beginning to follow their lead.
The News & Record's Web site features 11 staff-written Web journals, or blogs, including one by the editor that answers readers' questions, addresses their criticisms and discusses how the paper is run.That puts the paper way ahead of even much larger news organizations. The News & Record's blogs range from "just-the-facts, ma'am," to slightly spicy.
There's a page for reader-submitted articles, another for letters to the editor and an online tips' form. The Web site hosts online forums on 23 topics, including safety at a local high school, FedEx Corp.'s move to the area and cameras at local stoplights. Traffic cams monitor local road conditions.
The site posts up-to-date public records on property ownership, marriages and divorce.
[...]
Other papers are watching. The Houston Chronicle, The (Portland) Oregonian, (Raleigh) News & Observer and USA Today have all called News & Record editor John Robinson to discuss what his paper is doing.
UPDATE: More from Grits, including some good comments.
1.) More blog-style journalism done by the News & Record staff. This is not exactly a surprise, since it was the blogging boss who asked the blogger Lex to compile the report.2.) More participatory or open source journalism where readers or "affiliated" bloggers from the community are the knowledge engine or the agenda setter.
3.) A new and strikingly different Web philosophy for www.news-record.com, stressing open standards, transparency, interaction, dialogue, linking widely-- in a word, a different kind of site. Including a permanent, free archive, in itself a mini-revolution if enacted.
Newspaper industry consultant John Morton, who heads Morton Research Inc., said he thinks many newspapers want to wean readers off free online content and transform their Web sites into paid-only publications.Free editions of newspapers on the Web are "quickly falling out of favor," he said. "I think you will see newspapers selling electronic subscriptions or print subscriptions, or a combination of both, which is what the Wall Street Journal does, and has been very successful at."
As for the former option, I think it has more promise than Greg does. Recruiting blogger types to cover low-volume but high-interest-for-those-who-care things like high school sporting events and neighborhood issues is a great idea, as are open archives and the "must link out" policy. Having comments on news stories, however, is something that I think would fail - I'd bet they very quickly become the kind of unreadable wankfest that would make Usenet's signal-to-noise ratio look good. I'd have more faith in comments on things like restaurant reviews and feature columns, but even those would be no sure thing. Still, there are lots of good ideas there, and almost all of them would be worth considering.
Which way are we more likely to go? Beats me. What do you think?
A Top Ten List of Top Ten Lists. Why didn't I think of that? Via Kimberly.
Dave Barry is signing off for a year or more as the Miami Herald's weekly humor columnist. Whether you think he "used to be funnier" or not - personally, I think his material is a bit familiar, but he himself is about as funny as ever - he has certainly earned the break. I hope he'll pop up from time to time during his sabbatical when the muse strikes him - it appears that his blog is still active - because he really is one of the best writers around. But if this is his swan song, then all I can say is "We who laugh at exploding toilets and falling cows salute you". Thanks to Matt for the reminder.
Kevin and Anne have been asking questions about the Chron's policy regarding bylines on submitted op-ed pieces, a subject I've ranted about in the past. What I think the op-ed page editor of the Chron - or any newspaper - owes us is what Anne did: a quick Google search on the author's name to see if he or she is being disingenuous about self-identification. What they do from there is something we can argue about, but anything that cuts down on the number of misleading bylines - asking for an edit from the author, amending the byline as they see fit, adding an editor's note with additional information - would be an improvement in my opinion. I think we have a right to know when an op-ed writer is more than just a disinterested observer, and I think they have an obligation to tell us. And that goes for letters to the editor, too.
Sometimes it just isn't possible to respond to a public statement in a calm, rational, and serious manner. With that in mind, let me direct you to Pete and to Norbizness, who have what I think are the proper rejoinders to the Texas State Board of Ed sex-ed kerfuffle and the Vice President's amazing remarks about eBay, respectively. Thank you.
UPDATE: How could I forget The Poor Man and his expose on the Kitty Kelly book?
There are many things about the Houston Chronicle that I'd change if I were given the freedom to do so. If I were limited to just one thing, I'd see to it that they never printed anything by Michelle Malkin ever again. If you want to know why, read this and follow the links. As far as I'm concerned, any publication which uncritically prints Michelle Malkin is not worthy of being called "respectable".
Last week, Jonathan Ichikawa and Ted Barlow noted that Focus on the Family included Michael Moore's home address in an email to their members which they exhorted their supporters to "let Moore know exactly what they think about his new movie". Jonathan sent an email to FOTF to ask them why they did this, and he got a response. Check it out, and check out this post by an actual evangelical minister who understands the difference between an "anti-Christian agenda" and an "anti-Bush agenda", and recognizes the proper Christian response to the former.
Who knew that Dick Effin' Cheney was partaking in such a hallowed national tradition? Via Mark Evanier.
I'm not sure where the Chron found new bidness columnist Loren Steffy, but so far I've generally enjoyed his work. I particularly like today's column about the lottery, written as the record jackpot is luring suckers hopefuls from out of state.
I want to thank all of you who helped pay my taxes during the past week.
Last Friday alone, more than 400,000 of you were chipping in each hour, and I really appreciate it.You probably didn't realize the favor you were doing me, of course. You were out buying up lottery tickets, chasing a jackpot that, with no winner last weekend, has hit $120 million.
There's another drawing tonight, and if no one claims a prize, I win again.
We feed the beast in the name of public service. The lottery, after all, is a strange animal. It's administered by a state agency, which takes 7 cents of every dollar you spend on the lottery to pay for itself. It gives 5 more cents to the retailers who sell the tickets.Fifty-eight cents goes to fund prizes, the carrot used to keep everyone lining up at the convenience store. And 30 cents goes to the state.
If the lottery were simply "raising money" for schools, 30 cents on the dollar would be a lousy margin.
The Better Business Bureau, for example, says fund-raisers should keep their administrative expenses to less than 35 percent of total revenue. Counting prize money and administrative costs, the lottery's operating costs run at 70 percent.
I'm with Ted here. I see nothing good, politically or morally, coming out of an attack on Jenna and Barbara Bush. Yes, I know, they're adults now, and they've done a few things to make themselves inviting targets. They're also in the spotlight by the circumstances of their birth, not by anything over which they had control. Cut them some slack.
Now, anything they say on the campaign trail can be legitimately attacked, and if it turns out they have the same reverence for truth as every other member of the Bush team, that can be discussed as well. Just do yourself a favor and review the definition of ad hominem before you fire up your blog editor if you feel such a post coming on.
Lots of good stuff out there...
Al Gore's speech. 'Nuff said.
Kash mentions a scary word from the late 70s.
Dwight Meredith pokes a hole in the Governator's proposal to tax punitive damage awards.
Ryan Lizza discovers that those 4 million evangelicals whom Karl Rove said didn't vote in 2000 may be a myth (via).
Pete eulogizes Phish.
I just knew this was going to happen. Via Oliver, who needs a little help with his Google ranking.
Have I mentioned recently that Slacktivist is a national treasure? Just read his most recent "Left Behind" posts and see for yourself why.
This is not to say that The Poor Man isn't also a treasure.
Archpundit has the last word on the story of Barack Obama's stalker.
Mark Evanier gets the last word on "Andy Kaufman's" blog.
In the end, though, nobody dumps links like Julia.
This re-interpretation of Office Space is pretty damn funny. Long, but funny. Check it out. Via The Gadflyer.
Kevin Drum points to this WaPo piece by William Adler, in which he shows how he fingered a UT prof for signing his name to an op-ed which had been entirely written by someone else, and as it embarrassingly turned out for the prof, printed under a different prof's name in a different newspaper in the past. A longer and more detailed version of this story is here, which Julia had noted.
It's pretty good reading, and I agree with Adler's suggested questions for op-ed page editors: 1) Did you write this piece? 2) Are you a consultant, paid or not, to an organization or interest group with a vested interest in your column? I find it disturbing that this kind of punditry fraud has been going on for so long, but at least now with Google, Lexis/Nexis, and watchdogs like Adler, it ought to be harder to go undetected. Really, though, it'd be much better if op-ed page editors themselves Googled authors and the occasional catchphrase before running a piece in their own paper. In addition to this sort of fraud, they'd also catch writers with intentionally misleading bylines.
What I don't understand is why UT is not planning any disciplinary action against Sheldon Landsberger, its errant professor.
The college is not planning any disciplinary action against Landsberger, said Dean Ben Streetman.[...]
The University considers plagiarism "any use of the content or style of another's intellectual product without proper attribution" when regarding student work. Disciplinary action for "scholastic dishonesty" ranges from failing the specific class to permanent expulsion and is administered by Student Judicial Services.
[...]
Streetman, who has been dean for eight years, said he has never dealt with a similar experience.
"We believe that when faculty write articles, that it should be original," he said.
Kriston Capps is made of sterner stuff than I am, let me tell you.
Last night I attended a panel discussion hosted by a conservative/libertarian social club, and the topic of discussion was gay marriage. Panelists included former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga), some total dick who looks like Ed Helms from the Daily show, some guy with extremely small, soft-looking hands from AEI, and Andrew Sullivan; the panel was moderated by Grover Norquist.Let me start by saying that you are in a bad way if the most reasonable person in the room is Grover Norquist.
Kevin writes that Rick Casey printed a clarification in his column today regarding his usage of WaPo reporter Dan Morgan's story on Monday. Kevin's not too happy with Casey's explanation, and notes that he never got any kind of response from the Chron's ombudsman, so this seems to be pretty much the end of it from an official perspective.
For what it's worth, my experience with a complaint to the Chron about an author (in this case an op-ed piece writer) misrepresenting himself was no more satisfying. There's no good reason for this, and it's a big part of the reason why our hometown paper is held in such contempt. I'm not saying the Chron needed to agree with Kevin - I still don't fully agree with him - but he's 100% right when he asks "Why have a reader representative if he's not going to act as a real ombudsman who works as a reader's advocate (not to mention defender of journalistic standards)?"
Ever wonder what kind of fact-checking the major opinion journals have in place? Ted Barlow did, and so he, um, checked it out. The result was a bit unflattering for one particular magazine. Normally, this is where I'd say "check it out", but I think I've beaten that phrase to death here, so let's try "take a look" instead.
From yesterday's Chron: a profile of Chuck D, one of the stars of Air America's lineup. I haven't written about Air America so far because I've not listened to it, something which distinguishes me from William Raspberry. If I don't listen to music in my wall-less cubicle, I'm surely not going to listen to a talk show, and the last time I loaded RealPlayer on my computer at home it installed some other program that hogged up the CPU, so until it comes to an actual by-God radio station here in Houston (and I'm not holding my breath for that), I'll have to rely on what others are saying about it. (Verdict so far: Some people like it, and some people don't. Where else are you gonna go for that kind of incisive analysis?)
Ahem. Shame I won't get to hear what Chuck D is saying, but at least I can read about it. Check it out.
Kevin makes a detailed case that hotshot Chron columnist Rick Casey plagiarized this WaPo piece when he wrote this column. It's clear, as Kevin demonstrates, that Casey basically just rewrote the WaPo article. Kevin is also clear that making a charge of plagiarism is a big deal and shouldn't be done lightly. He's certainly persuasive in stating his case.
Still, I'm uncomfortable with it. Casey did say up front that he was taking his column from that story. I think one could reasonably infer that he meant that as a blanket footnote, in which case I'd call him guilty of egregious laziness, which I must say is still a sin for a guy with a three-day-a-week gig on the front page of the Metro section of a major daily. I think what distinguishes him from Mickey Herskowitz, who was suspended for recycling one of his own old columns, was that Herskowitz never mentioned that he was taking the day off. A fine distinction, perhaps, but enough for me to acquit on the first count of the indictment.
Perhaps in some sense, this is a fault of formatting. Had Casey been a blogger, he could've simply given his link, used the "blockquote" tag or somesuch to clearly quote the stuff he wanted, and interjected whatever snarky comments he had in mind when he first read the WaPo piece. All that pretty much gets lost in print.
Again, this doesn't excuse Casey of his slothfulness. Maybe if he did have a daily blog, like Bill Bishop of the Statesman, we'd be fine overlooking the occasional (or even the regular) link-and-quote post, which (let's face it) all of us amateurs do whenever we feel like it. Until then, I do think he at least owes us an explanation why he didn't add a little content to the original piece - surely he could've picked up the phone and asked Phil Gramm what kind of minority he is, or asked Joe Barton for a list of Texans Against Gerrymandering's members. How hard would that have been?