... to deadlines amuse me. Please re-arrange your perception of reality ... or at least your bookmarks or toolbars.

Last week, as Robert Plante of Led Zeppelin sang solo in the nearby Dodge Theatre, 750 million gallons of water from the 16-foot-deep Tempe Town Lake near Phoenix roared through a burst dam at up to 15,000 cubic feet per second. Fortunately, no one died; no significant property damage occurred.

Eight dam sections made of inflatable rubber ( Read more... )

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Editor & Publisher reported this today:
The San Diego Union-Tribune laid off more than 30 staffers on Thursday in what Editor Jeff Light called in an editor’s note an effort to build “a lean, creative, multi-platform team that can lead the industry.” [emphasis added]

E&P reports that this is the U-T's seventh round of staff cuts since 2006 ( Read more... )

So, you're a blogger. You gettin' paid for what you write?

Nada? Thought so. Me, too. Nada. But don't worry: Corporate types who run content businesses have big plans for us. They're gonna make us stars of online local news.

Here's an example: In the latest edition of American Journalism Review, writer Karen Carmichael outlines the plan for ( Read more... )

Be objective.That’s the credo my newsroom presented to me, the young cub, four decades ago. But it did not require much time for me to realize that objectivity was merely an ideal, a sales pitch that proclaimed “we are professional and unbiased; thus believe us.” As the Grey Lady claims, it does its job “without fear or favor”: no bias affects the ( Read more... )

The media-reform activist organization, Free Press, has set up a press-bashing site called mediaFail, offering minimal instruction about what constitutes a bad news story versus a good news story. Thus we must assume those all-knowing Internet media critics who nominate bad news stories at mediaFail have a disciplined, instructive sense of what's ( Read more... )

Read a news story you didn't like? See a news story you think really sucked? See any news product you believe represents a failure of the American news media (no matter what your standards are and whether they're valid)?

Well, get your dander up and head on over to mediaFail and vote against that mediocrity. There, the site says, you can "Expose ( Read more... )

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