After a lack-luster showing in Music School, I applied to IBM for a software programming position as they were hiring music majors, math majors, and sundry other odd-balls. They hired me. I bounced between technical jobs and sales/marketing jobs for 25 years. I put in a couple of years on the TRINTEX (pre-Prodigy) team doing targeted advertising, "applets" and generally prototyping stuff that was done better when the Internet and the Web came along. That ended in 1991 after 24 years.
Since then, I've worked for Locus Computing, a boutique technology consultancy, a couple of start-ups, and Symas, which we founded to do one thing and ended up doing another to stay alive.
TRINTEX/Prodigy was where I started to wrestle with "The News". We had a very aggressive plan to use the News as a source of page-views. That put us into the space and forced me to read what was coming into the "editorial department" as we worked on tools and technologies to help them fit it onto our small screens. I've been involved on the sidelines ever since.
On the other hand, I admit to a stongly leftist bias. I hate being told by those in power that logic and deceny don't matter. I'm HAPPY to talk finance and economic net present value. I hate being told that spending on bad ethics will return good value in the future. ... as if doing evil can be justified by fantasies of future benefit that make no ethical sense ...
Just my silly idealistic values, I guess.
This is too derivative and fails to provide the foundation necessary to support its strong conclusion. There is nothing particularly wrong with the logic or even most of the facts but its sourcing is weak and it comes off as flat.
This is a good tight report on a complicated subject. It conveys the sense of the report without providing very much detail. These controversial economic valuations come at a time when the public is sceptical and one suspects the paper should have gone into a bit more depth.
This is a good collection of anecdotal information from many of the McClatchy papers. It is terse, to the point, and makes few statements beyond the facts presented.
As far as it goes, it brings statements from supporters unhappy with the proposal. It would have been much stronger if it had counterbalanced this with some supporters of the proposal and some willing to explain the differences in viewpoint.
This is neither a very good story on Bush's visit nor on African opinions about the election. It is too shallow, too lacking in meaningful informatiion. It dutifully pounds on Bush's talking points on Abstinence in regards to HIV funding with a feather-weight counter comment and fails to put the highlighted aid in any meaningful context.
Not one mention of media consolidation. Not one mention of privatization of public assets (this is an asset of a public University). Weak support for the paper as educational asset. It's all about advertising and reach and commercialization. And, the elephant in the story, it's all about the administration selling off public assets for "funding". The NY Times Corp. is all for Media Consolidation and commercialization of the press, apparently..
The story doesn't tell us much. The US and the World Bank are going to "donate" bed nets (a good thing) but we aren't told how much money that means or where it's really coming from. it's not tied here to the $700M in aid from other Tanzania storis (either linked or separate initiative). We aren't told how much of this goes to the local bed net production facilities and how much to US or other out-of-country produceers (will this help or kill the local industry?). The paragraphs on Kenya and Rice have nothing to do with this story and kill space that would have been more valuably filled with real information.
There is a lot of good information, reasonably well presented. The story skirts the issues of which Iranian behaviors the FATF is concerned about versus those the US is concerned about as they are likely different. The fact that they are different is not mentioned. The US talking points are featured to the relative exclusion of alternate views. An OK story if a bit shallow. Contrast it to the Int'l Herald Trib. article which provides so much more perspective. That story is at least a 1/2 point better story if not more.
The story focuses on a facet of the question while posing as a discussion of the question. The question is "Did the surge help the US stabilize Iraq and improve reconciliation and rehabilitation of the nation's government and infrastructure?" The story focuses on a view of the political / public safety / military situation and ignores public health, government effectiveness, or infrastructure repairs. It's a form of following the talking points and ignoring the other aspects of the US's responsibilities.
This Op-Ed damns McCain with faint praise and takes a fairly blatant shot at Hillary Clinton. I'm not sure I got the point but then I suspect the piece was supposed to be an atmospheric thing and not a real hard-hitting opinion. It raises all the questions of integrity and trustworthiness and fails to draw a direct conclusion other than worrying about GW Bush's endorsement. <sighs>.
There are a lot of simple and clear points made including a reasonable summary of the candidate's position over time. The summary of recent actions and interpretation is clear and open to discussion but avoids too much alignment with specific interests in the climate debate. There is quite a bit of emphasis on Cap-and-trade because that's where McCain's actions are most visible but the piece has only the Senator's actions to work from.
It is unusual to get the Hamas side of the story. This is a credible exposition of a predictable Hamas reaction to key points of Bush's statements.
This is a week story leaning on the "popularity poll of great people" narrative and ignoring (other than the Israeli position) the candidates positions or predelictions. Not quite as maddeningly irrelevant as the narrative about who can amass more campaign financing, this popularity poll among foreign nationals is less useful than an analysis of popularity with foreign sovereign leaders, for example.
As analysis goes, it focuses on the mainstream media's candidate lists and fails to mention or analyze the threat to the GOP and the Democrats of Ron Paul's cash-generation capability if not his showing in Iowa. Giuliani is also essentially dismissed without comment why.
Simple, if long, personal witness and analysis of mainstream (television) news. One wonders how different editorial policy for print media really is, if at all. Excellent piece.
This short piece recounts many "facts" without much context. It mentions most of the larger issues without really exploring any (pro or con). Large numbers are provided for potential extraction without the information of whether, in fact, they are really large or merely large sounding. For a topic about which so much is known, this is disappointingly thin.
Given the media's conviction that TV exposure is critical to candidate success, this is a big deal. The exclusion of candidates still campaigning is a story to be covered and this is a relatively flat recounting of the situation with a fair amount of comments from parties involved.
An interesting set of views in first person from the Left. More than a little transparent flag-waving for predictable causes. Whether you agree with all the characterizations, it's useful to think about who is advising whom and what you feel about that.
This piece talks about broad issues but focuses narrowly. Five groups send letters but the piece only names one of them. Three manufacturers' machines are mentioned but information is provided about problems on just one of the three. We get the impression the author has more information to tell us but is holding/held back. What's here is good but what's missing is troubling.
Ignoring any positions taken, endorsed, or bashed, this is a refreshing, positive, and worthwhile piece. Personal testimony from a volunteer new to the process, thoughtfully written and clearly expressed is quite useful.
A brief and clearly constrained interview with Petraeus is a set piece for the message of the Administration. It is an interview with an ambitious and political military leader and utterly predictable.
Novak's simplification of Clinton's potential collapse as de-facto candidate to "triangulation" ... as strategy of a consultant is very one-dimensional. The campaigns have been under constant "triangulation" and each such position taken has been calculated to demonstrate some perceived advantage over others in the race(s). The slipperiness of repositioning when measured against actual actions on the job (Congress) is not the consultant's fault. It is the lack of an actual position of the candidate that sets the consultant's framework.
Analysis from numbers, always crystal ball stuff. It's also a reflection from the pool formed by the pollsters.
It is a decent article that contains many non-controversial facts. It rather rambles and abruptly ends with a factoid that is quite a bit more troubling than much of the rest of the otherwise bland copy. If those opposed to rapid deployment of nano-tech are right, the effects will be hard to reverse or overcome. The sequence of facts in the story tends to bury that under all the optimism of many of the following examples.
This rambling analysis piece hangs on a couple of quotes from Democratic candidates, the confusing information coming from Pakistan, and the relative quiet on the situation from the Administration. However, the analysis doesn't really come to a convincing set of conclusions. While suggesting dealing with first order problems first, the piece concludes, rightly it seems, that confusion reigns and offers little in the way of a suggestion forward.
Sticking just to economics is an interesting twist for an opinion recap of the year. It is clearly a device and the author laughs at himself and it but it works pretty well. The writing is clear and resists academics or polemics pretty well.
This is a strongly constructed opinion piece. The piece drifts a bit around the central theme but the drifting is to matters tightly linked to the premise/basis.
If a bit ponderously expressed, a real opinion and an honest assessment. It is statements like this that show the potential for non-corporate "media".
Biting and angry but rather well founded and corroborated. A good opinion piece ... scored high as much because it seems to think black is black as for its biases.
This is a commercial announcement for a new feature in the paper. It says very little new or useful.
Peter Goodman is not quite as uncritical cheerleader as Thomas Friedman but he's close here. This is the Corporatist apology for another market gone stupid and ugly. The article casts it as a speed-bump and ultimately calls for resumption of the same deregulation and "free market" behavior with little thought to any of the real issues. There is no thought to what it means that Arab and Chinese capital has purchased significant portions of key US financial institutions nor to the macro-economic significance of the "capital infusions". It is an attempt to recast disaster as a momentary glitch. This is a forgettable bit of feel-good filler that will never be remembered as useful after the mess sorts itself out. People should read ... More »
This piece relies on reporting from other media and anonymous sources for the "facts" supporting its argument. The piece works hard to appear objective but repeats an unsupported allegation of a single sinister organization guiding violent opposition to the situation in Pakistan. It also strongly supports the theory that the Bhutto assasination was a terrorist act in spite of the failure of the government to provide in-depth security support for the candidate(s). Between the weakness of the material and the obvious pro-government (US and Pakistani) bias, it is not very good journalism.
One needs to go see the author's full essay (linked). Its bias is more evident. Whoever did the "rewrite" took much of the edge off while leaving the core message largely intact. The story only hints at the advantages of activism and the benefits it brings other than exploitation of notoriety. It also fails to mention the corporate and media support afforded many of these campaigns which generate substantial profitable revenue streams for corporate media "participants". Corporations with "interests" in these celebrities benefit without association with the causes and from the ability to sell advertising around the soft-news time they generate. The image issues for the celebrities is, itself, soft news, something the National ... More »
An interesting and tightly written critique. We are offered too many forgetful views of the famous dead that overlook their less savory historical acts to give the impression of fairness and contrition. Mrs. Bhutto's history is hard to sugar coat. It is good to see a clear reminder.
It's an opinion piece. It calls us all on human rights issues and on taking care of those we've interfered with. Well put.
Comments on the story immediately below the story lend a degree of credibility. It is hard to comprehend 8,000% annual inflation and to put it in perspective and the story gives few real clues. However, it does give us a sense of the impact and that makes it worth pondering.
There are a few too many anonymous sources. I felt there was a great deal of reason to comment on the DOD's claims that it is less expesnsive to have contractors provide security services than US military troops. Finally, it fails to state the obvious ... the situation would be fine with the US powers that be if only there weren't these annoying complaints. A good summary, otherwise.
A well stated opinion with a reasonable collection of specific examples of the behavior of interest.
