Friday, March 20, 2009

Media Bytes - What's going on edition

Song in my head. I've been battling a little burnout this week but I've reading the news and collecting links as always, so here's a few items you may have missed.

With major metro newspapers shutting down all over the country, the legacy media is rightfully concerned about their future. Unfortunately they can't seem to see beyond their idealized vision of what they do. It's been long since "serious reporting" has been on their menu. Of course they blame the bloggers for creating a 24/7 rush for breaking news, but they're wrong. It's not that blogs didn't create a rush to publish environment, where the legacy media went wrong was trying to compete on that playing field instead of staking out their own territory for deeper and individualized analysis that only they had the resources to do.

And I agree that we need a robust and indepedent professional media for a healthy democracy but I fear it may be too late. They commited suicide when they decided to go with a business model that relies on photogenic idiots and ideologues whose only talent is delivering meaningless sound bites. And I like the occassional gossipy story as much as the next guy, but when our 'serious' journalists deliver a steady diet of such inane trivia as 1000 word stories on handkerchiefs, well, I don't know why they're surprised that they're failing.

However, having said all that, I was interested to hear there will be a White House kitchen garden. That sends a good message on a lot of levels.

Unfortunately, the White House has fallen down on framing the AIG mess. I'm no fan of lockstep, enforced consistency, but the conflicting statements on this one suggests an incoherency that won't instill confidence. It's true the bonuses are trivial, but *teh people* are seriously pissed off and they have become the focal point of their anger. Saying it's trivial, won't make it go away.

Speaking of AIG, this photo of the current head of AIG Financial Products at a cocktail party speaks a thousand words. None of them flattering.

Meanwhile, technology marches on. Via Hecate, this new computing concept thrills and scares me at the same time. On the other hand, via m. heart, the latest house on wheels just thrills me. I want one of these.

And ending with our customary picture show, the title of this gallery says it all. Detroit's beautiful horrible decline. More soothing is this shot, when galaxies collide. I'll never get over the wonder that we get pictures like this from space. And looking at the past, this is very cool. Petroglyphs in the wild.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

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