The year of the Post
By Chindu Sreedharan on April 8, 2008 10:46 am
In which we watch Obama muscling in on Osama, hear Sir Peregrine Worsthorne tell on Matthew d’Ancona, chuck a few expletives at Kiyoshi Martinez, listen to Martin Luther King, and applaud the Big P-winners… Buzz from the web.
At the 2008 Pulitzer Prizes, The Washington Post’s Dana Priest, Anne Hull and Michel du Cille bagged the Public Service award for exposing the mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital…
Steve Fainaru the International Reporting for his work on Blackwater and other private security firms accused of abuses in Iraq…
Jo Becker and Barton Gellman the National Reporting for “their lucid exploration” of Vice President Dick Cheney…
Gene Weingarten the Feature Writing for “chronicling a world-class violinist who, as an experiment, played beautiful music in a subway station filled with unheeding commuters”…
Steven Pearlstein the Commentary “for his insightful columns that explore the nation’s complex economic ills with masterful clarity”…
And Post staff the Breaking News with their coverage of the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.
My fav from the lot? At the risk of comparing apples and whatnots, it’s gotta be the Weingarten piece. It’s so offbeat and cool.
Well, vent your frustration at AngryJournalist.com.
Launched in early February by 23-year-old web editor Kiyoshi Martinez, the site’s doing just great, reports breitbart.com.
For “underpaid, overworked, frustrated, pissed off and ignored media professionals to publicly and anonymously vent their anger”, AngryJournalist.com is a message board with a single, no-frills question: Why are you angry today?
And boy, are there angry journalists! Sample some ire:
Angry Journalist #2570: “Our executive editor, the man who’s supposed to be leading our newsroom, wanders around the building like he forgot where he left his coffee cup.”
Angry Journalist #2559: “Whatever I write ultimately either ends up as cage lining or as blankets for bums.”
Angry Journalist #241: “Just like the rest of the industry, [my company] wants me to do more with less. They’ve said, ‘To hell with quality. Let’s just fill the website with as much **** as possible.’”
Flipside aside, AngryJournalist.com is an insightful resource.
Sir Peregrine Worsthorne is mad. At Spectator boss Matthew d’Ancona.
So what got the ex-Sunday Telegraph editor’s goat?
d’Ancona‘s blue pencil, that’s what.
Seems Worsthorne reviewed the biography of Daily Telegraph editor Bill Deedes. Which appeared in Spectator not quite the way it was written.
Worsthorne described the change — there was only one, it would appear, but it was a critical comment about the Spectator proprietors — a “blatant piece of blue penciling” that “totally stands on its head what Bill was really like”.
Worsthorne has now gone and told on the Spectator to the Press Complaints Commission, reports Guardian Press Correspondent Stephen Brook.
Beware, all itchy-fingered eds.
Academics are famous for being slow off the mark. But not this time.
Out already is a call for papers on ‘the Obama Effect’. From the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
The conference, scheduled October 23-25, invites papers on Senator Barack Obama‘s political career. To reach Dr Catherine R Squires, Cowles Chair for Journalism, Diversity & Equality, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Murphy Hall 111, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0418 by June 6.
The goal, writes organiser Squires, is “to showcase interdisciplinary approaches to the Obama Effect” to provide “a multi-faceted view of the past year’s campaign and its potential effects”.
Good luck, Squires. Sure good to see someone muscling in on Osama.
Here’s one reason why it is worth your while to bookmark The Atlantic Monthly:
This voice, of Martin Luther King Jr from August 1963, on the 40th anniversary of his assassination last week.
The famous Letter from Birmingham Jail is resurrected from the enormously rich archives of the magazine, founded in a Boston hotel on a bright April day in 1857 to “be the organ of no party or clique” but promote the “the American idea”.
Since January, The Atlantic is free online.
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