Will Safire has released his annual office pool in which he invites readers to predict how some of the year's biggest news stories will play out in 2009.
Here are my picks:
1. In Demo-dominated D.C., post-postpartisan tension will pit:
(a) lame-duck Fed chairman Ben Bernanke against Fed chairman-in-waiting Larry Summers and Fed chairman-of-Christmas-past Paul Volcker (a k a “The G.D.P. Deflator”) over an “imperial Fed”
2. Springtime for G.M. will lead to:
(b) a “pre-pack bankruptcy” auto rescue sweetened by federal pension protection and guarantee of new-car warranties
3. Toughest foreign affairs challenge will come if:
(a) Afghanistan becomes “Obama’s War” or “Obama’s Retreat,” and
(b) Iraq backslides into chaos after too-early U.S. withdrawal
4. Oil selling below $50 a barrel will:
(c) be the equivalent of a huge U.S. tax-cut stimulus
5. Best-picture Oscar goes to:
(b) “Slumdog Millionaire”
6. The non-fiction sleeper will be:
(d) “Losing the News,” by Alex Jones, and
(e) “Ponzi Shmonzi: The Bernie Madoff Story,” crash-published by a dozen houses
7. The don’t-ask deficit at year’s end will be:
(c) $1,393,665,042,198 and no cents. (Why so specific? A billion is a thousand million, and a trillion is a thousand billion. That’s 10 to the 12th power, or 1 followed by 12 zeroes). I'm kidding about this pick, I would much rather (a) "under $1 trillion, thanks to the new administration’s cutting of waste, fraud and abuse, as well as tax-soaking of the remaining rich" be the case. —Rachel
8. In Congress:
(c) among Senate Democrats, Judiciary chairman Pat Leahy’s influence will rise because Supreme Court nominations will take center stage, while Harry Reid’s clout dissipates because of home-state weakness
9. Post-honeymoon journalists and bloody-minded bloggers will dig into:
(b) suspicion by conspiracy theorists about the unremarked lobbying that led to the expensive renaming, after 72 years, of the Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge just in time for Caroline Kennedy’s campaign for anointment to an open Senate seat
10. The Supreme Court will decide:
(e) that in al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, a legal U.S. resident cannot be held indefinitely at Guantánamo
11. Obama philosophy will be regarded as:
(a) proudly liberal on environment and regulation and
(b) determinedly centrist on health care, immigration and protectionism.
12. Year-end presidential approval rating will be:
(c) sinking but 30 points higher than that of Congress and the news media
Visit http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/opinion/29safire.html to see the options, and Safire's picks.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Righting Journalism
Regret the Error.com has come out with it's yearly round-up of 2008's most embarrassing, egregious, and regretful media mistakes. This site, edited by author Craig Silverman, is really worth checking out!
Here are a few particularly ludicrous errors: (all information is taken from regrettheerror.com)
*Spiegel Online,the website for German newspaper Der Spiege published a "wildly exaggerated" article claiming that furniture manufacturer IKEA routinely named its most inexpensive items after Danish towns, while reserving Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian names for its high-end objects.
*The Washington Post's "Kid's Post" poetry contest published a poem titled "Horrible, Just Horrible" on April 29 and credited it to a child, but it was actually written by acclaimed children's poet Shel Silverstein.
*Jody Rosen of Slate.com exposed the rampant plagiarism of the Bulletin, a weekly Texas paper that regularly reproduced content from other news outlets, such as Rolling Stone and USA Today, supposedly written by staffer Mark Williams. "Uncovering these [plagiarized] sources," Silverman commented, "is a matter of choosing the right phrases to dump into Google, not a difficult feat for anyone moderately attuned to writerly rhythms."
New Year's is as good a time as any to reflect on the harm plagiarism, sloppy reporting and sloppier editing cause, not just to the victims of misinformation or plagiarism, but to all journalists. The press cannot afford to further damage journalistic credibility at a time when internet watchdogs and the public are rightly questioning traditional news outlets.
Here are a few particularly ludicrous errors: (all information is taken from regrettheerror.com)
*Spiegel Online,the website for German newspaper Der Spiege published a "wildly exaggerated" article claiming that furniture manufacturer IKEA routinely named its most inexpensive items after Danish towns, while reserving Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian names for its high-end objects.
*The Washington Post's "Kid's Post" poetry contest published a poem titled "Horrible, Just Horrible" on April 29 and credited it to a child, but it was actually written by acclaimed children's poet Shel Silverstein.
*Jody Rosen of Slate.com exposed the rampant plagiarism of the Bulletin, a weekly Texas paper that regularly reproduced content from other news outlets, such as Rolling Stone and USA Today, supposedly written by staffer Mark Williams. "Uncovering these [plagiarized] sources," Silverman commented, "is a matter of choosing the right phrases to dump into Google, not a difficult feat for anyone moderately attuned to writerly rhythms."
New Year's is as good a time as any to reflect on the harm plagiarism, sloppy reporting and sloppier editing cause, not just to the victims of misinformation or plagiarism, but to all journalists. The press cannot afford to further damage journalistic credibility at a time when internet watchdogs and the public are rightly questioning traditional news outlets.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Sauron in Santo Domingo
What, you didn't know the U.S. occupied the Dominican Republic twice in the twentieth century? "Don't worry," says Junot Diaz, author of The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, "when you have kids they won't know the U.S. occupied Iraq either."
I just finished reading this fantastic novel about the struggles of a RPG-playing otaku Dominican adolescent from New Jersey and the family he swears was cursed during the dictator Rafael Trujillo's regime. The book was number one on Time Magazine's list of the ten best books of 2007, and the New Yorker published a 15-page version in 2000. I've owned the book since September of last year, when a class on Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Literature at UCSD left me craving post-modern works like those of Elena Poniatowska, G. G. Márquez, and Rosario Castellanos, but I hadn't started reading it until winter break. Sometimes I wonder if a college student shouldn't have the time to read more.
Fortunately, this book has exactly the right mix of history (the story is peppered with footnotes detailing the political escapades of Trujillo and his followers ), unrequited love and cheeky, know-it-all first-person narration to keep me far away from my winter quarter course syllabi. It follows the brief life of Oscar de León, "a smart bookish boy of color...weighing in at 245 (260 when he was depressed, which was often)," whom his college dorm-mates nicknamed "Oscar Wao,"( a Spanish corruption of the name Oscar Wilde) for his prodigious bouts of novel writing. The story also pieces together bits of his sister Lola's coming of age and the tragicomedic life of their mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral.
But you can expect a lot more from this book than a fierce excoriation of one Latin American dictator through the lens of a complicated and intensely likeable Dominican-American family, though Diaz does have a lot to say about "Trujillo, also known as El Jefe, the Failed Cattle Thief, and Fuckface." As Díaz describe him in a footnote characteristic of the whole book's tone: “At first glance, [Trujillo] was just your typical Latin American caudillo, but his power was terminal in ways that few historians or writers have ever truly captured or, I would argue, imagined. He was our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our Once and Future Dictator.”
What makes this novel truly delightful, and distinguishes it from other Latino novels that get their culture and color from weaving English, Spanish slang and spanglish phrases, is how it takes advantage of an even more mysterious language: the language of fanboys, role-playing gamers and Lord of the Rings buffs—essentially, the world of sexually-frustrated supernerds like Oscar who our narrator, his roommate Yunior, swears will only be getting game from fantasy characters.
What more sci-fi than Santo Domingo? What more fantasy than the Antilles? Oscar asks himself, trying to make sense of how his Dominican identity and not so hombre demeanor fit into the world. In one anecdote, Yunior recalls with sarcasm and affection the time when Oscar informed "some hot morena, 'if you were in my game I'd give you eighteen charisma!'" Qué muchacho, what a guy.
I think it's moments like this that make the novel just magic, and right in-step with the concerns of American-born, globally aware and intensely self-involved children of the twenty-first century like Oscar, Yunior and Lola. I'll add in some of my favorite quotes to this post as I find them.
*"At the end of The Return of the King, Sauron's evil was taken away by "a great wind" and neatly "blown away," with no lasting consequences to our heroes; but Trujillo was too powerful, too toxic a radiation to be dispelled so easily. Even after his death his evil lingered. Within hours of El Jefe dancing bien pegao with those twenty-seven bullets, his minions ran amok--fulfilling, as it were, his last will and vengeance. A great darkness descended on the Island and for the third time since the rise of Fidel people were being rounded up by Trujillo's son, Ramfis, and a good plenty were sacrificed in the most depraved fashion imaginable, an orgy of terror funeral goods for the father from the son."
I just finished reading this fantastic novel about the struggles of a RPG-playing otaku Dominican adolescent from New Jersey and the family he swears was cursed during the dictator Rafael Trujillo's regime. The book was number one on Time Magazine's list of the ten best books of 2007, and the New Yorker published a 15-page version in 2000. I've owned the book since September of last year, when a class on Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Literature at UCSD left me craving post-modern works like those of Elena Poniatowska, G. G. Márquez, and Rosario Castellanos, but I hadn't started reading it until winter break. Sometimes I wonder if a college student shouldn't have the time to read more.
Fortunately, this book has exactly the right mix of history (the story is peppered with footnotes detailing the political escapades of Trujillo and his followers ), unrequited love and cheeky, know-it-all first-person narration to keep me far away from my winter quarter course syllabi. It follows the brief life of Oscar de León, "a smart bookish boy of color...weighing in at 245 (260 when he was depressed, which was often)," whom his college dorm-mates nicknamed "Oscar Wao,"( a Spanish corruption of the name Oscar Wilde) for his prodigious bouts of novel writing. The story also pieces together bits of his sister Lola's coming of age and the tragicomedic life of their mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral.
But you can expect a lot more from this book than a fierce excoriation of one Latin American dictator through the lens of a complicated and intensely likeable Dominican-American family, though Diaz does have a lot to say about "Trujillo, also known as El Jefe, the Failed Cattle Thief, and Fuckface." As Díaz describe him in a footnote characteristic of the whole book's tone: “At first glance, [Trujillo] was just your typical Latin American caudillo, but his power was terminal in ways that few historians or writers have ever truly captured or, I would argue, imagined. He was our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our Once and Future Dictator.”
What makes this novel truly delightful, and distinguishes it from other Latino novels that get their culture and color from weaving English, Spanish slang and spanglish phrases, is how it takes advantage of an even more mysterious language: the language of fanboys, role-playing gamers and Lord of the Rings buffs—essentially, the world of sexually-frustrated supernerds like Oscar who our narrator, his roommate Yunior, swears will only be getting game from fantasy characters.
What more sci-fi than Santo Domingo? What more fantasy than the Antilles? Oscar asks himself, trying to make sense of how his Dominican identity and not so hombre demeanor fit into the world. In one anecdote, Yunior recalls with sarcasm and affection the time when Oscar informed "some hot morena, 'if you were in my game I'd give you eighteen charisma!'" Qué muchacho, what a guy.
I think it's moments like this that make the novel just magic, and right in-step with the concerns of American-born, globally aware and intensely self-involved children of the twenty-first century like Oscar, Yunior and Lola. I'll add in some of my favorite quotes to this post as I find them.
*"At the end of The Return of the King, Sauron's evil was taken away by "a great wind" and neatly "blown away," with no lasting consequences to our heroes; but Trujillo was too powerful, too toxic a radiation to be dispelled so easily. Even after his death his evil lingered. Within hours of El Jefe dancing bien pegao with those twenty-seven bullets, his minions ran amok--fulfilling, as it were, his last will and vengeance. A great darkness descended on the Island and for the third time since the rise of Fidel people were being rounded up by Trujillo's son, Ramfis, and a good plenty were sacrificed in the most depraved fashion imaginable, an orgy of terror funeral goods for the father from the son."
Monday, December 22, 2008
A journalist always takes good [foot]notes...
I was hoping to let this one fly past me, but after listening to On the Media's take on President Bush's shoe attack, I can't help wanting to retread this ground for a bit. (Okay, maybe that was too much even for me.)
Since deftly removing his shoes and hurling them at President Bush during a press conference in Iraq, Muntazer al-Zaidi has been branded both a symbol of Iraqi discontent over the U.S.'s occupation and a disrespectful dissident—no one should throw shoes at anyone's president, whether or not he ushered a period of sectarian violence and civil disarray into the country. Besides his major-league baseball potential, one characteristic of al-Zaidi that has at times been sidelined by the media's coverage and the resulting viral video: He is a journalist, not a terrorist, political activist or lunatic trying to get attention. Simply a journalist.
And where one might expect people in the latter category to leap to action, slinging shoelaces and curses Bush's way, the journalist is perpetually sidelined for impartiality's sake; never quite a part of the fray, even if a tape recorder or notepad is the only thing separating them. Journalists are discouraged from expressing any political opinion in public. Some political journalists choose not to vote in elections at all—especially if they've been covering the candidates involved.
I think most members of the news media will agree that it's okay, if not inevitable, for a journalist to hold opinions. The question al-Zaidi's antics raise, however, is to what extent a journalist owes it to himself to take action when he sees injustice. In other words, when should a journalist put down his pen and pick up his shoe (for lack of a better object, I suppose)? And what to do when this decision becomes a choice between the trust of his readers and his own moral compass?
Bob Garfield:
I want to become a journalist because I think there is little that is more important than the task of informing people. The story is king, even if that means digging around and reporting on the ground, whatever risks involved. But maybe there's something even more risky than reporting a story, and more important that Muntazer al-Zaidi hit on with that shoe last week.
Since deftly removing his shoes and hurling them at President Bush during a press conference in Iraq, Muntazer al-Zaidi has been branded both a symbol of Iraqi discontent over the U.S.'s occupation and a disrespectful dissident—no one should throw shoes at anyone's president, whether or not he ushered a period of sectarian violence and civil disarray into the country. Besides his major-league baseball potential, one characteristic of al-Zaidi that has at times been sidelined by the media's coverage and the resulting viral video: He is a journalist, not a terrorist, political activist or lunatic trying to get attention. Simply a journalist.
And where one might expect people in the latter category to leap to action, slinging shoelaces and curses Bush's way, the journalist is perpetually sidelined for impartiality's sake; never quite a part of the fray, even if a tape recorder or notepad is the only thing separating them. Journalists are discouraged from expressing any political opinion in public. Some political journalists choose not to vote in elections at all—especially if they've been covering the candidates involved.
I think most members of the news media will agree that it's okay, if not inevitable, for a journalist to hold opinions. The question al-Zaidi's antics raise, however, is to what extent a journalist owes it to himself to take action when he sees injustice. In other words, when should a journalist put down his pen and pick up his shoe (for lack of a better object, I suppose)? And what to do when this decision becomes a choice between the trust of his readers and his own moral compass?
Bob Garfield:
Not even the most pernicious media filter, its own triviality, could filter out the real story. The tape told it plainly.
A working journalist – not a Baathist insurgent, not a Shiite cleric, not a foreign Jihadist, but a journalist – was finally so outraged by the blood and chaos visited upon his country that Muntazer al-Zaidi lashed out at the most powerful man in the world at who knew what cost to his career and personal safety.
Maybe he guessed that he would become a hero throughout the Arab world, but he could just as easily wind up a martyr. His family has said he’s already been severely beaten in prison. What would make him risk everything?
I want to become a journalist because I think there is little that is more important than the task of informing people. The story is king, even if that means digging around and reporting on the ground, whatever risks involved. But maybe there's something even more risky than reporting a story, and more important that Muntazer al-Zaidi hit on with that shoe last week.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Journalism for the People: Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders
Good journalists always have their audience in mind, and whether they are writing to businessmen or movie-buffs, they tailor the article's content and tone accordingly.
But some journalism doesn't alert entrepreneurs to the goings on at Google, doesn't point book clubs to the 10 best books of the year or parents toward Shrek: the Musical—sometimes an article really is written for everyone, to remind us in a crisis why it is so important that we care.
This is what T. Christian Miller of the investigative non-profit Pro Publica did on December 13, in collaboration with the New York Times’ James Glanz. their article details a 513-page federal history of America's reconstruction efforts in Iraq, and how the U.S. government released inflated numbers to exaggerate the region's progress.
Like David Carr said today, it takes a scandal to remind us that investigative journalism is here to stay.
But some journalism doesn't alert entrepreneurs to the goings on at Google, doesn't point book clubs to the 10 best books of the year or parents toward Shrek: the Musical—sometimes an article really is written for everyone, to remind us in a crisis why it is so important that we care.
This is what T. Christian Miller of the investigative non-profit Pro Publica did on December 13, in collaboration with the New York Times’ James Glanz. their article details a 513-page federal history of America's reconstruction efforts in Iraq, and how the U.S. government released inflated numbers to exaggerate the region's progress.
Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.
The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed. …
… Titled "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," the new history was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here. Copies of several drafts of the history were provided to reporters at The New York Times and ProPublica by two people outside the inspector general's office who have read the draft, but are not authorized to comment publicly.
Like David Carr said today, it takes a scandal to remind us that investigative journalism is here to stay.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Finally...
I am kicking myself for leaving this blog silent for two weeks now... Finals Week and the mess of sorting out my majors has me more than bogged down with work, but I promise to resume writing with a renewed fervor as soon as the week is up.
I know life goes on outside of college; for starters, the governor of Ilinois is embroiled in an embarassing corruption scandal, and the Tribune Co. has filed for bankruptcy! It's almost a relief for me to burry myself in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling , fretting over how Abraham could be the father of faith and at the same time intend to murder Isaac, rather than face a world that seems to be breaking down around me.
My current preoccupations are "of peculiarly local concern" as Chief Justice Harlan Stone might say. I'm studying up for a Legal Reasoning final exam on constitutional law, and worrying that I might be turning into a mini Antonin Scalia (talk about fear and trembling). I just finished a 10-pager about radical feminism and violent pornography. I'm dropping one of my majors, Fundamentals: Issues and Texts. Oh, and I made a kick-ass dinner tonight with lentils, couscous and sweet potato soup.
I leave for San Diego on Saturday morning, and I will be spending the weekend of the 18th in Los Angeles with the boyfriend. I miss my friends, and I'm dying to see my little brother, who's been sick for about a month now. It's been raining all day, and my sneakers are soaked because I went running this morning. Outdoors. I hate to say it, but these things are on my mind a lot more than the thought of the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune going up in a pixelated cloud of smoke.
I don't want to make any promises, but hopefully I will be able to share more of my thoughts on some of these issues soon.
I know life goes on outside of college; for starters, the governor of Ilinois is embroiled in an embarassing corruption scandal, and the Tribune Co. has filed for bankruptcy! It's almost a relief for me to burry myself in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling , fretting over how Abraham could be the father of faith and at the same time intend to murder Isaac, rather than face a world that seems to be breaking down around me.
My current preoccupations are "of peculiarly local concern" as Chief Justice Harlan Stone might say. I'm studying up for a Legal Reasoning final exam on constitutional law, and worrying that I might be turning into a mini Antonin Scalia (talk about fear and trembling). I just finished a 10-pager about radical feminism and violent pornography. I'm dropping one of my majors, Fundamentals: Issues and Texts. Oh, and I made a kick-ass dinner tonight with lentils, couscous and sweet potato soup.
I leave for San Diego on Saturday morning, and I will be spending the weekend of the 18th in Los Angeles with the boyfriend. I miss my friends, and I'm dying to see my little brother, who's been sick for about a month now. It's been raining all day, and my sneakers are soaked because I went running this morning. Outdoors. I hate to say it, but these things are on my mind a lot more than the thought of the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune going up in a pixelated cloud of smoke.
I don't want to make any promises, but hopefully I will be able to share more of my thoughts on some of these issues soon.
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