Category Archives: Uncategorized

February 26, 2012 · 5:48 pm

Don’t miss

this wonderful review by Jennifer McDonald in today’s Times of a what sounds like a marvelous book. The review provides a nuanced, informed discussion of the relationship between Facts and Truth. The book is called The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D’Agata (a fabulist, who, mercifully, makes no claims to be a journalist) and Jim Fingal (a fact-checker who takes that specialty to new heights).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to say that I side with those who say that it is possible to stick to non-fiction and still create great works. I sure hope so.

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February 11, 2012 · 12:59 pm

Fight Fiercely, Jeremy!

I know that I have called for the abolition of the NCAA, which provided the “sporting green” for Jeremy Lin to develop his hoop skills while an undergraduate at Harvard. But what’s done is done. He graduated, scrapped his way into the NBA, rode some pine, and now he is TEARING THE JOINT APART!

38 POINTS!

Last night, he out-played Kobe Bryant. How good can he get?

IT’S LIN-SANITY!

I am now officially on the bandwagon.

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February 11, 2012 · 12:53 pm

TAKE THAT!

By Chris Daly

I know that I have declared my intention not to take overtly partisan or ideological positions here (and not to spike the football, either). But this just had to be said.

Thanks to Tom Keane in today’s Globe for pointing out that the decisions made by generations of crazy liberals here in Massachusetts have produced unambiguously good results. No reason why Mitt Romney should run away from success, but that’s up to him.

The takeaway:

By almost every important factual measure — economic, educational, and socioeconomic — Massachusetts is vastly better off than the nation’s most right-wing states.

For details, see the rest of his piece.

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February 10, 2012 · 3:48 pm

Why I left the Catholic Church

Because of guys like this:

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February 6, 2012 · 11:02 am

Good point

Nick Bilton asks: Where is his share of the value he has helped to create in Facebook by using it?

The essential value of the company is users. No users = no Facebook. So, in that sense the users are both the employees and the shareholders, no?

Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News.

Mark Zuckerberg speaking at a Facebook conference last September.

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February 3, 2012 · 10:51 am

Good news/ bad news

By Chris Daly

The latest financial results from the New York Times Co. present another mixed bag. Overall, the company continues to struggle, for familiar reasons: advertising from printing the newspaper continues to decline.

On the bright side, though, the company is making headway in figuring out how to make money on the Web. Today’s Boston Globe carries a story — never an easy or welcome assignment, to write about the owners.

The key parts:

Digital advertising revenues at the News Media Group increased 5.3 percent to $71.1 million due to growth in national and retail display advertising.

And this:

Subscribers to digital packages and e-reader versions of The Times and the International Herald Tribune totaled approximately 390,000 as of the end of the fourth quarter, an increase of 20 percent from the third quarter.

So, the trends are good, but the scale of online advertising is still not enough to float a company that had total revenues of $2.3 billion last year. Look for the Times Co. to sell off more of its assets in order to protect the flagship.

Latest stock price: $7.70 a share

All-time high:       $51.88 a share (July 2002)

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January 25, 2012 · 6:19 pm

A great experiment

by Chris Daly 

For years, I had heard about a newspaper that once existed in New York City that carried no advertising.

How could this be? I wondered.

Years later, I had the chance to explore the history of that newspaper, which was called PM. For eight madcap years during the 1940s, PM defied many of the assumptions about the news media and offered New Yorkers a daily paper that was smart, funny, and avowedly left-wing.

As it turned out, the paper’s founding editor was Ralph Ingersoll — one of the most important journalists of the 20th Century whom no one has ever heard of. To my great good fortune, it also turned out that Ingersoll decided to donate all his papers to Boston University. That’s where I caught up with them and discovered that Ingersoll was a great keeper of records and a serial drafter of his own memoir.

The result is an article that I wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review, which posted it to the CJR website today. Enjoy.

(BTW: In the CJR piece, I did not write the headline!)

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January 23, 2012 · 3:45 pm

Hooray for Esquire

From David Carr comes welcome news to all of us who care about the magazine trade, long-form journalism, etc.: Esquire magazine is thriving.

Way to go, David Granger!

 

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January 23, 2012 · 3:38 pm

G.P.S. and Y-O-U

By Chris Daly

Phew! 

The Supreme Court (finally) got one right today. Ruling in a critical case that involves (among other things) your freedom to control who knows what about you, the Court said the police do not have the right to sneak into (or under) your car to plant a secret GPS device so they can track your every move, for as long as they want. It was a unanimous ruling, no less, which is a rarity these days.

Here is the ruling.

Here, for the record, is the Fourth Amendment (always worth brushing up on), plus the Wiki page.

 

 

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January 21, 2012 · 11:12 am

Ban the NCAA (cont.)

Can this happen fast enough?

 

Look here and here.

My only quarrel with Joe Nocera, who is doing some good reporting on this issue, is that I think he just wants to reform the NCAA, when the real answer is staring him in the face: Ban intercollegiate sports.

Here’s my question: What educational goal does the NCAA advance?

Answer: ______________?

 

 

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