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Nov
18
PD’s Brent Larkin on Dennis Kucinich and prospects in OH-10
Filed Under Campaigning, Elections, Ohio, Politics, WH2008 | 4 Comments
I liked this column – I thought it was interesting and covered some bases I hadn’t thought about before. But the one thing that elicited an outloud comment from me:
On the Republican side, it doesn’t matter who runs next year in the heavily Democratic district. If the Democrats nominate Mickey Mouse, Mickey wins. As of today, it looks as if the Republicans will sacrifice former State Rep. Jim Trakas.
What did I say?
“Don’t do it, Jim!”
I just can’t understand why anyone would allow themselves to be sacrificed. But then, that’s politics, I suppose?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:16 pm November 18th, 2007 in Campaigning, Elections, Ohio, Politics, WH2008 | 4 Comments
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Nov
18
Forward 50: Most influential American Jews, Mukasey tops all
Filed Under Jewish, Judaism, Media, Politics, Religion | Comments Off
The Forward 50 is an annual list “of the people who are making a difference in the American Jewish community”
From its own explanation (underneath which you will find the list):
The Forward 50 is not based on a scientific study or survey. The list is compiled each year by the Forward’s staff, based on what we have reported over the past year, what we have heard from community members speaking about other community members and whatever objective signposts ― rising or falling budgets, book sales, published buzz, adoption of new laws or proposals ― can be deemed to indicate public influence.
Membership in the 50 doesn’t mean that the Forward endorses what these individuals do or say. We’ve chosen them because they are doing and saying things that are making a difference in the way American Jews, for better or worse, view the world and themselves. Not all these people have put their energies into the traditional frameworks of Jewish community life, but they all have embodied the spirit of Jewish action as it is emerging in America, and all of them have left a mark.
More about Forward here. More opining on the 50 here.
Politicians include: Henry Waxman, Reva Price, Michael Bloomberg and Jimmy Jamshid Delshad – an Iranian-born Jew who is mayor of Beverly Hills. I believe he also has this in common with State Senator David Goodman: “And while Beverly Hills has had many a Jewish mayor, Delshad was the first to affix a mezuzah to the doorway of the mayor’s office.”
More on Delshad here.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:10 pm November 18th, 2007 in Jewish, Judaism, Media, Politics, Religion | Comments Off
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Nov
18
Now that we’re entering the fourth Wide Open-less week since October 31, I realize that not everyone who browses past one of these posts will know the story, so I’m going to link to the WO category on this blog for folks who want to try and get a sense of what’s been going on.
There’s also no single, definitive absent from all bias synopsis out there, but Poynter and Editor & Publisher come close. Jay Rosen’s post is also worth reading.
The focus of these roundups will most likely be ethics, blogging and journalism.
Today’s roundup:
Lauren Rich Fine, a well-established newspaper industry analyst who lives in NEO, provides an interesting comment here. However, I want to repeat on her behalf that she says she wasn’t really familiar with Wide Open itself or me being one of the bloggers. That makes her comment all the more poignant and valuable.
This interview with Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star and TV Barn includes passages that focus on his opinion as to why the MSM, or anyone, continues to push the blogger versus journalist paradigm. He nails it here:
It [print v. blogs issue] is tired. Why do you think blogs vs. print issue has such legs? Navel gazing on the part of reporters/bloggers?
That’s partly to blame, I’m sure—but I think there are deeper reasons. With bloggers, I think it’s simple. They like to see themselves as part of something big, grand and revolutionary. Many, I think, genuinely believe they are transforming the media by challenging the mainstream media (MSM), although I’m not sure there is much hard proof of that. Beyond that, that anti-MSM stance is the fire that keeps their blogs going. It informs a lot of what they write.
Many print journos, on the other hand, don’t understand blogging and see bloggers as irritants, people who criticize their work but also wouldn’t have material for their blogs if not for the MSM. Meanwhile, every newsroom in America now has top management beating the drum for their staff to “do blogs,” even though it’s clear that many journalists in print and TV haven’t the foggiest idea how or why they should “do” one. (Witness the trail of busted blogs across news organizations.)
I just spoke on blogs to a features editors’ convention so I know that interest remains high. Editors are not dumb, they know their staff should be doing them, but that many don’t want to and many staff blogs go untended.
But journalists are torn on this. They know money is flowing out the door. They know a lot of it is going to online (though not necessarily enriching the people who criticize their work so passionately). They know they need to get with the program. But many aren’t sure how to proceed, or if ultimately their expenditure of effort online will be worth the effort.
Amy Gahran on “Participatory Journalism in the USA.” The post offers up Amy’s outline of the talk she’s prepared for a conference in Spain this week. She will be presenting in conjunction with Jan Schaffer of J-Lab, whom I got to see at the Society for Professional Journalists’ conference in 2005. Schaffer was excellent – one of the originals who gets it. Amy’s sharing of her talk has inspired me to post mine from the AAPC conference and I’ll be doing that on a separate page of this blog, hopefully this evening I did it here.
The SPJ conference page includes a link to streaming video and audio of a session called, “Bloggers and Journalists: Friends or Foes” at its national conference in October. On my to-do list to watch/listen – it’s free to members, which I still am, for now.
Teaching Online Journalism appears to be a good blog to follow if you want to understand how people are being educated when it comes to online journalism, and how they distinguish, if at all, between “journalism” performed and provided online, versus whatever everything else is that they wouldn’t call journalism.
Finally, from Fame or Famine, traditional journalism is to traditional dance like the blogosphere is to improv.
Bonus: Adventures in Online-only News Sites: Introducing MinnPost a nonprofit journalism venture. It says that it’s news is reported by “professional journalists” and its goal is described this way:
Our goal is to create a sustainable business model for this kind of journalism, supported by corporate sponsors, advertisers, and members who make annual donations. High-quality journalism is a community asset that sustains democracy and quality of life, so we are asking people who believe in it to support our work.
Okay – so, high-quality journalism can only be produced by journalists? Who are defined as being…?
Yeah, I don’t know. Is the belief in what is high-quality as known a quantity as anyone thinks it is?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:33 pm November 18th, 2007 in Media, Wide Open, Writing | Comments Off
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Nov
18
About that Middle East conference/summit/meeting in Annapolis thing
Filed Under Foreign Affairs, Politics | 2 Comments
I will do the Wide Open round-up for the day, but first, an update.
In July, I posted this entry when President Bush announced that there would be
an international meeting
this fall
of representatives from nations that support a two-state solution, reject violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and commit to all previous agreements between the parties.
The key participants in this meeting will be the Israelis, the Palestinians, and their neighbors in the region.
Secretary Rice will chair the meeting.
She and her counterparts will review the progress that has been made toward building Palestinian institutions.
They will look for innovative and effective ways to support further reform.
And they will provide diplomatic support for the parties in their bilateral discussions and negotiations, so that we can move forward on a successful path to a Palestinian state.
That’s the exact content, but broken up in order to emphasize the details outlined by Bush.
This past Friday, on the Diane Rehm show, the roundtable panelists belittled what has become of those details by saying that what was to be a summit or conference seems to be turning into little more than a chat at the cash register (not their words precisely but basically their idea that something grand is now so amorphous as to be worthless).
In part, this is also because next to nothing is known about the meeting – including its date and location.
Did anyone ever promise you some unbelievably cool vacation or toy or food item that you either never went on, didn’t receive or hated eating?
This would feel a little like those situations, if it weren’t the fact that the expectations didn’t resonate much in reality when Bush originally made the announcement.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:38 pm November 18th, 2007 in Foreign Affairs, Politics | 2 Comments
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Nov
18
Remains of the Day, 10/9 – 11/18/07, Part II
Filed Under Remains of the Day | Comments Off
9. I feel your pain re: the CNN debate last Thursday. My own pain is here.
10. Ohio Employer’s Law Blog has more on the age discrimination lawsuit successes.
11. The Daily Briefing in audio re: Strickland and his school funding solutions (or lack thereof)
12. Also from The Daily Briefing: isn’t House Speaker Jon Husted running for something – or from something – or something? That’s what I remember from this piece. By the way, did anyone else note that Husted won the cable telecommunication industry’s award for working toward more charter schools??? More on the award givers here.
13. We’ve got plans, plans and more plans coming for higher education.
14. John McCain and a few intimates want to know, “How do we beat the bitch?” Oh, yeah. Them’s value voters, teaching their kids and grandkids how to talk about, treat, refer to, respect others – especially in the heat of competition. Talk about the decay of civility – no need to boo blogs when you’ve got political supporters like McCain’s.
I’ve got a batch of links related to Wide Open and ethics, etc. and will post those next.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:48 pm November 18th, 2007 in Remains of the Day | Comments Off
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Nov
18
My force-quits closed the tab permanently on probably 100s of tabs since October 9, the last day I did a Remains of the Day post. But I upgraded the memory in my computer today and am feeling that burst of energy and need to clean out the remains before a final push to finish some writing work and prepare for Thanksgiving.
So here’s a feast of links:
1. Bill Callahan and the ultimate meta of foreclosure links
2. Thanks to women like Marian Harris, the GOP’s allegedly unintentional lack of success in getting its party’s women into the Ohio statehouse may never subside.
3. Charters in trouble again. This time it’s alleged that they accepted millions of dollars to set up schools, but never did.
4. An effort to help remind President Bush about the existence and contents of the U.S. Constitution. Hattip ProgressOhio.
5. Plain Dealer editorial on Gov. Strickland and the school funding issue.
6. Must be that social worker thing in me: when I read a headline like this, Local program takes aim at online sexual predators, I expect that the article is going to talk about programs to help prevent individuals from becoming or continuing to pursue sexual offender behavior. But no – the article is about after the fact and programs that target identifying offenders and preventing further perpetration – a good thing, but where are the articles about what’s being done to address the behavior? Doesn’t anyone else find it disturbing that our society is churning out so many people who commit or seek to commit these offenses? Doesn’t anyone want to unlock the solution to stopping that production?
7. Ohio Supreme Court is taking public comment on the matter of public access to court records.
8. I didn’t read the PD’s story yet, but age discrimination lawsuits apparently are trending toward more success.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:48 pm November 18th, 2007 in Remains of the Day | 1 Comment
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Nov
18
Update: NYT/Frank Rich on Regan-Giuliani-Kerik
Filed Under Campaigning, Elections, Media, Politics, WH2008 | Comments Off
This Frank Rich column, “What ‘that Regan woman’ knows,” in today’s New York Times, provides another opinion on this matter.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:38 pm November 18th, 2007 in Campaigning, Elections, Media, Politics, WH2008 | Comments Off
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Nov
18
Or just journalism and editing?
From Deborah Solomons’ Q&A, in the NYT Magazine, with Michael Eisner:
Just last month, you put together some $385 million to acquire Topps, the manufacturer of Bazooka bubble gum and baseball cards. Topps is a brand that’s in the brain-waves of about 70 years of the American male. I can take that affinity and turn it into a sports-media company. Topps has many assets, and Bazooka has Bazooka Joe, and I could have fun making a Bazooka Joe movie.
Why is Bazooka Joe always wearing an eye patch in the mini comic strip that comes wrapped around the gum? That is what we are going to find out in the movie.
Wasn’t he a bit of a delinquent? He wasn’t faithful to his girlfriend, Zena, if I recall. He was not a delinquent. If he wasn’t faithful to his girlfriend, by the way, he wasn’t 25 years old and married with three kids. It’s O.K. She’ll survive. It’s good for her.
I think you need to update him and make him more of a feminist. Well, maybe he will be. We haven’t written it yet.
“If he wasn’t faithful to his girlfriend, by the way, he wasn’t 25 years old and married with three kids. It’s O.K. She’ll survive.” It’s good for her??????????
Okaaaaaaaaaay.
And on politics:
Do you think the presidential race has become a subdivision of the entertainment industry? I don’t see it that way. That demeans our political system.
Do you know whom you will be supporting in the race? I don’t really have a lot of insight that I can add to The New York Times about the political environment.
Are you a registered Democrat? No.
It’s public record, but I haven’t looked it up; what are you registered as? A human being.
Well. Alrighty then.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:05 am November 18th, 2007 in Culture, Media | Comments Off
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Nov
18
OSU student, Jessica Hanzlik of Pickerington, named Rhodes Scholar
Filed Under Announcements, Education, Ohio | Comments Off
The Rhodes Scholars and an example of Jessica Hanzlik’s expression on the topic of women in science and the need for women as role models, for other women and girls.
Here is a wonderful profile of Ms. Hanzlik, published just three weeks ago.
Congratulations to Ms. Hanzlik. And OSU.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:08 am November 18th, 2007 in Announcements, Education, Ohio | Comments Off
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