If journalism is the “First draft of history”, as Phillip Graham of the Washington Post is credited with saying, what happens when they get it completely wrong? How does that first draft get crumbled up in the minds of the readers and who gets to write the second draft? I’ve been chatting with a lot of people in an attempt to understand how our opinions of the ongoing economic crisis has gone down as we hear different stories over time. The answer, I have come to believe, is the second draft is written by the readers and consumers of journalism. If true, this may give us some insight as to the future of journalism, interaction, and how a whole culture arrives at “The Truth”™.
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Yearly Archives: 2010
Clouds Forming
When something bad goes down, there is one thing we can all be sure of – someone, somewhere is to blame. A dark cloud of blame gathers and the people with big sticks do their best to bat it away towards someone else, anyone else who is just not them. The thunder and hail eventually has to fall on those who don’t have the big sticks, the people who can do little else but run for cover. In particularly bad periods of history, however, people who start to like swinging their clubs develop a taste for it. That’s when things get nasty.
The Check (will be) in the Mail
The good news is that the State of Minnesota has a budget for the current biennium, ending in July of 2011. The bad news is that the State of Minnesota has a budget for the biennium – but not one second beyond. A lot has been written about this budget for the news, much of it about as imprecise as we can expect in the flurry of nooze that accompanies the end of a session (and the encore “special” session, make of the quotes what you want). Yet in all that has been written little attention has been paid to what it means, especially to the recipient of the largest hit, education.
I’m going to do my best to summarize. Please, if I get anything wrong, wail on me.
Wanna Bet?
Suppose something happens in your neighborhood, such as a new family moving in next door or a new business opening up in the vacant restaurant space on the strip. You look them over and become convinced that there is no way that they are going to make it – they can’t possibly cover that huge new mortgage or the business seems likely to fail. There are three things you can do, economically, to take advantage of your assessment – shake your head and wonder who loaned them the money, make a bet with a friend that they don’t make it to the end of the year, or you can go around with a notebook betting everyone in the neighborhood and keeping track of the money put down and the odds that you were given for each bet like any good bookie.
Context versus (CowPuckey)
Students sent home for wearing the American flag on Cinco de Mayo! Is this another sign of the terrible decline of the USofA? The short answer is “No”, but the long version is “Yes”.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 