I am not a Journalist

Jay Rosen, chair of the Journalism Institute at NYU, recalls the auld tale of how and why he didn’t end up working as a journalist:

In April I was supposed to contact [Buffalo Courier-Express editor] Doug Turner about a starting date. I did so by calling his office. He wasn’t in and didn’t return my call. I called him again. No call back. I called him a third time. Nothing. Thinking he was too busy to answer his phone, I wrote him a note. He didn’t reply to my note. I wrote him a second note. Again, no reply. Now it’s mid-May and I have graduated from college. Turner ignored my third note, too. But why? In my desperation and confusion I went down to the newspaper and headed straight to his office.

“Do you remember me? You wanted me to quit school and come to work for you. You promised me a job after graduation. Now you won’t even talk to me… What is going on here?”

Turner wouldn’t look directly at me. He said, “There’s an explanation, but you’ll have to sue me to find out.” Then he picked up the phone and had the security guard escort me from the building.

[…]

A few years later, through a friend who had a friend who worked at the Courier-Express, the mystery was solved. My case was a newsroom legend. It turns out that the job I had [separately] applied for, “Northeast Daily: General Assignment Reporter…” was for an opening at the Courier-Express. Yes. But I didn’t know this because in the standard format for those ads the newspaper was never named. You applied to a box number. The employer was described vaguely. What you were supposed to do is write on the envelope, “Do not forward to the Dayton Daily News” if you worked at the Dayton Daily News and didn’t want your boss to know you were on the prowl for something better. But I didn’t know any of that.

Not only had I stupidly applied to the newspaper that had already offered me a job, but it was my job they were advertising in Editor and Publisher! Yes. Turner had to post the opening to fulfill legal requirements; in reality he had reserved that slot for me [based on a prior verbal agreement]. When he got my application he obviously considered it an act of disloyalty, and that’s why he ceased all communication. So I lost my job by applying for my job.

and then, as if that’s not enough of a story, he gets this quote from the editor in question, whose memory of these long-ago events is spotty:

We’re both aware fortunately that the events you describe happened more than 30 years ago. I wish that my recollection of my conversations with interns such as yourself was as firm as those with whom I worked closely for a year or two. Yet “sue me for it” does sound like me in those days.

Priceless.
And I have to disagree, Jay: you are one hell of a journalist. You just don’t play one professionally.

I am not a Journalist

File under: graphs you will never see a Democrat use, talk about, reference, admit the existence of, or in any way shape or form build an electoral strategy around.
Quite the opposite. They’ll wholeheartedly adopt the goddamned “Pledge to America” come November 3, 2010.

And yes, I know when new members of Congress take office. I also know that President DeMint can be very impatient.

Amateur re-processes Voyager images of Jupiter to great effect:

The images I used were obtained on March 4, 1979 at a distance of about 1.85 million kilometers. The first image (C1635314.IMQ) was obtained at 07:08:36 and the last one (C1635400.IMQ) at 07:45:24. The resolution is roughly 18 km/pixel.

The detail present in the full-size version is amazing.

I support tax increases that will reduce my own after-tax income; I worry greatly about unemployment, even though my own living is secure; I warn about growing inequality, even though I’m of the class that has gained from rising disparities; I’m upset about the direction this country is going, even though my own life is comfortable. And this is supposed to cast doubt on my motives?

Paul Krugman

This is a news article about a scientific paper

This is the descriptive tag for my excerpt that I include such that you will (hopefully) click on through:

To pad out this section I will include a variety of inane facts about the subject of the research that I gathered by Googling the topic and reading the Wikipedia article that appeared as the first link.

I will preface them with “it is believed” or “scientists think” to avoid giving the impression of passing any sort of personal judgement on even the most inane facts.

This fragment will be put on its own line for no obvious reason.

This is a news article about a scientific paper

The Sound of Silence

Earlier this summer, when Helen Thomas said Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and return to Germany, among other places, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz appeared to share the widespread outrage. The nation’s most prominent media writer noted Thomas’s history of “spewing bias and bile,” and asked, “why wasn’t she reined in earlier?”

So you might have expected that Kurtz would again have been on the case when Martin Peretz, the editor in chief and long-time owner of The New Republic, blogged earlier this month that “Muslim life is cheap.” Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”

After all, with the country awash in ugly anti-Muslim sentiment, calling out this kind of bigotry is more important now than ever. And yesterday, Peretz, a former Harvard professor, was removed from the list of speakers at an upcoming university event. But, as far as we can tell, Kurtz hasn’t said a word about Peretz’s comments.

Do yourself a favor and click through.

The Sound of Silence

Be Like Ike

jonathan-cunningham:

Eisenhower, and I’d venture to say most of today’s liberals, don’t believe that we should have no guns, no police and no military force.  Instead, they recognize that since WWII we’ve been building the largest, most advanced military complex in the history of the world and we’re not even slowing down.  Yes, we need police.  Yes, we need the military.  Yes, we even need guns.  What Eisenhower is pointing out, is that when he left office we had enough to last us the rest of his natural life and we haven’t even begun to slow down our production.

Please, please don’t take my word for it.  I could never come close to Eisenhower in terms of experience, knowledge or rhetoric.  Everything you need to know about our military industrial complex is laid out, plain for everyone to see (or hear) in his farewell address.  If you haven’t heard or read it, I can’t recommend that you do enough.

Agreed. This quote in particular rings true, maybe even more so today than when he said it:

We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

And I furthermore suspect that the vast majority of Americans today have absolutely no idea that this is (and was) the case:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.

This unplanned and definitely not-voted-on change to a continuous war-footing post WWII, coupled with a nuclear-powered Presidency, in which the power to end the world was vested into that office (as opposed to, say, with Congress, or only as a part and parcel of a declared war, or defined and time-limited emergency powers, or any other way you could imagine we might have handled it) with essentially no real planning and little to no oversight has fundamentally changed our system of governance (almost all for the bad) in ways we haven’t even begun to deal with, much less even discuss. And may never start to deal with if current events and recent history are any guide.

At any rate: One of the great speeches by a President.