links for 2008-07-22

“Com­ments are thought to be an added value to a newspaper’s site… You come for the art­icle, and stay for the inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion. The only prob­lem is, there is no inter­est­ing discussion.”

CBS com­mis­sioned a study show­ing that watch­ing full-length shows online won’t des­troy tele­vi­sion view­er­ship, and it will attract a younger audience.

“A man at the front of the res­taur­ant is scream­ing at a waiter and ges­tic­u­lat­ing wildly. The snacks on the bar aren’t a four-course meal!”

Middle East dip­lomacy: “A UK-based Arabic news­pa­per has apo­lo­gised to the prime min­is­ter of the Gulf state of Qatar after it admit­ted print­ing three “wholly untrue” art­icles about him secretly vis­it­ing Israel.”

“The obit­u­ar­ies, still found in the local sec­tion, will run in big­ger type…” Read about your dead friends — only easier!

“Spot.Us believes that journ­al­ists should pitch the pub­lic and that if mem­bers of the pub­lic band together they too can have a freel­ance budget.”

Ofcom’s logic is that “the link between human activ­ity and global warm­ing… became settled before March 2007″. This being so, it says, cli­mate sci­ence was not “con­tro­ver­sial” at the time of broadcast…

This is the first mass mar­ket­ing medium ever that isn’t sup­por­ted by ads… It wasn’t inven­ted by busi­ness people, and it doesn’t exist to help your com­pany make money.

’”Half the sins of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion were com­mit­ted because they were so suc­cess­ful at hid­ing their actions from the media.” Wrong. Half the sins of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion were com­mit­ted because of a pro­foundly warped sense of what was and is good for the nation.’

“In recent weeks, anchors on the Fox affil­i­ate in Las Vegas, KVVU, sit with cups of McDonald’s iced cof­fee on their desks dur­ing the news-and-lifestyle por­tion of their morn­ing show. The anchors rarely touch the cups.”

Not nearly enough, but…

I’ve given Face­book long enough to demon­strate any kind of tan­gible pro­fes­sional value for me. And, together, we have failed.