Monthly Archives: December 2014

By Christopher B. Daly

Now comes news that a major university is throwing in the towel on big-time college football — and this is happening deep in the heart of football territory. Officials at the University of Alabama-Birmingham have declared game-over for football. It simply costs too much. (Not to mention all the other bad results of intercollegiate athletics. If you want to see more, just type NCAA in this site’s search box.)

Students working hard at entertaining others.
(Credit Eli Baylis/The Hattiesburg American, via Associated Press)

Maybe the NCAA will disappear one sport and one school at a time.

Here is the Times’ version. (Nice touch on that headline, using the verb “spiraling.”)

By Christopher B. Daly 

As a service to readers, here is a compendium of recent reporting and commentary about journalism:

–First up, Boston University Prof. David Carr’s latest Media Equation column for the NYTimes. I have to agree: the legacy media are being disrupted to their cores.

Elsewhere in the Times:

–Here is an “Editorial Observer” opinion piece by Times reporter Ernesto Londono, noting the passing (for now, anyway) of a Defense Dept policy of “embedding” journalists with military units in war zones. Well worth reading, from one who was there.

–I’m delighted to see the run-up in the valuation of Vox, a remarkably and consistently interesting online news site, run by CEO Jim Bankoff and led editorially by Ezra Klein. Apparently, investors feel they can bank on Bankoff.

IN OTHER NEWS. . .

Here is a package in the Boston Globe about the experiences three of their journalists are having now, while they are being portrayed by

Globe staffers pose with the actors who will be portraying them in a new film, to be called “Spotlight.”

Hollywood for a new feature film about the Globe “Spotlight Team” investigation into the Catholic Church’s cover-up of sexual abuse of children by priests.

Here is the latest episode of Brian Stelter’s “Reliable Sources” on CNN.

And here is the latest from NPR’s “On the Media.”