1SG Troy Steward: It was a new day, and time for more village patrols, where we pull in, talk to the locals and elders, and let them know about the upcoming Shura. We press them on Taliban presence and safety in the village, blah, blah, blah — all the same stuff. The adults may or may not tell you anything. Kids are still the best source of information. They…
One of the television shows I watched when I was little was Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion. One of the cool things about it was that my grandfather always told me that he knew Fuzzy (Al) Knight who played Pvt. Fuzzy Knight; they both grew up in Fairmount, WVa., although my grandfather was older by four years.
When I was watching the show I, like Robert Petersen, used to dream of living the adventures of 11-year-old Cullen Crabbe who played Cuffey Sanders in the show. But Petersen did something about his dreams.
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
Yesterday’s WCPN Sound of Ideas didn’t dwell on the silly are-bloggers-journalists question. That was a good thing because in real-time we got a lesson of why bloggers are journalists on steroids. As the Elizabeth Edwards story morphed yesterday it was blogged with an extraordinary level of transparency that the rococo media is incapable of.
From (HT Daily Dish) Politico:
A little after 10 a.m., I put out feelers to people in Edwards” circle who weren”t holed up in Chapel Hill, people I thought might be willing to speak freely. I instant-messaged one source, who didn”t respond, and called another, who pled ignorance. I sent a chatty, half-hearted e-mail to a third, someone who speaks to Edwards, and who e-mailed me back instantly with a phone number.
I called, and the source spoke with authority and detail about the recurrence of Elizabeth”s cancer, which would require aggressive and debilitating treatment. The source said Edwards had said he would be forced to suspend his campaign, though there was some discussion of how exactly to describe that hiatus publicly, and that he might drop out of the race.
At 11:08, I e-mailed my editor, Bill Nichols, that I had the story.
“How solid is this?” he e-mailed back, and I called him to say that it was from a good source, who was confident and had details.
With that level of confidence, I posted the item to my blog. The Politico put it on our front page, Matt Drudge headlined it with a siren, and I almost instantly spoke to reporters from three radio shows, telling them what I knew: that a source had told me Edwards would suspend his campaign.
Meanwhile, Edwards aides were, as I immediately wrote in an update to the original item, “pushing back very hard.”
At 11:28, Edwards spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield e-mailed me, under the heading, “Just so you know.”
“Anything you are getting from someone claiming to know right now is not true,” she wrote. “Anyone claiming to know something right now is making it up. There is no information from this campaign until John and Elizabeth speak at noon.”
I added her e-mail to my original blog item, but I didn”t change the headline, which read, “Edwards to Suspend Campaign.”
Though I”ve spent the last several years at major newspapers – the New York Observer and the New York Daily News most recently – I”ve done much of my reporting on blogs, and have developed an instinct to let my readers know whatever I know, as soon as I know it. The medium typically allows you to refine and update a story as it changes – including saying, “Well, my original source had it wrong.”
But the scale of this story was simply too big to report that way, to share information with high but imperfect confidence – and without making that level of confidence crystal clear. I should have waited for a second source, or hedged the item much more fully. Or simply waited for the news conference like everybody else.
As Politico editor John Harris e-mailed me this afternoon, “I believe a blog item is different than a story — not in standards of accuracy or fairness — but in the ability to report and reveal a breaking story in real time: You write what you know when you know it.
“BUT, and here’s where you went wrong and we let you go wrong, you can not write more than you know.
Has Ben Smith now lost the confidence of his readers? Did he cry wolf once too many times? Or was Ben Smith transparent about not only the process but what information he had, when he had it, and made changes in real-time as they occurred?
My bet is that Smith’s readers feel more confident this morning knowing that in a real-time world, they have a real-time source.
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from The Story of O by Dominique Aury writing as Pauline Réage.
Story of O is the work of an original writer, who has dared to present us with certain truths, or intimations of truth, rarely found in literature. However much one may disagree with, or even profoundly dislike, these truths (or if you will, these ideas), Pauline Réage has done what all good artists aim for and, when they are successful, accomplish; to arouse us from the lethargy of our set ways and routine lives, prick us into consciousness, provoke a reaction (whether positive or negative, it matters little) within us; in short, to make us think. p. xii
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Re-Versioning Your Life
CAPT Lee Kelley: The following is a very short work of fiction. I wrote it through the eyes of a local Iraqi man, who is a figment of my imagination. Much of the information and actual events I am privy to here in Iraq are classified, but in this fashion I can share some of the realities about the Iraqi people that many Americans may not think much about or realize…,
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from A Strategy For Daily Living by Ari Kiev.
The strongest relationships develop from pursuit of a common objective or activity. This shared experience increases tolerance for differences in attitudes and values and reduces efforts to try to change others for the sake of the relationship.
Relationships that focus on simply “having a relationship,” as such, can prove taxing and frustrating. Similarly, guard against a willingness to be so accommodating that you compromise my own identity.
Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.
Eighteen minutes was good enough President Richard Nixon, but our fratboy-in-chief needs 18 days to cover his butt. Yesterday I wrote that I was joining the hunt through the 3,000 pages of documentation released. Well it looks like a blogger in the collective has found an 18-day gap — 15 November to 4 December — in the document dump.
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Advice for students: If you”d like help, ask.
Teflon Don: There’s a rush that comes on the heels of a significant event here. After the IED explodes, or the RPG whistles overhead, or the shot cracks past, there’s a moment of panic as you process the fact that you are still alive — that this time, they missed you. After that second’s hesitation, the rush hits. No one really knows what it is, exactly, but we all….
It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman, Peter Sayles and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.
EXPLAINING OUR CHEAP PLASTIC CRAP NEED… Economist, lawyer, actor, game show-host, writer Ben Stein games an answer to a man from a slick, new magazine about business that wasn”t what the man expected from the former speech writer for Republican presidents, and Wall Street Journal columnist. Keep reading…
WELL… SOMEONE HAS TO BE… Citing a 5 March Wall Street Journal article, blogger Tom Barnett makes the case that Wal-Mart best serves the bottom of the economic pyramid and that it only fails when it tries to drag itself higher. It”s easier to sell to the desperate than those able to make real choices. Keep reading…
A PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE FROM ILLINOIS… Yesterday Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-Ohio) dropped a political hand gernade in the Office Of Future Banking Services at Wal-Mart. Other lawmakers are reacting quickly to the news and Illinois lawmakers want to ensure that it doesn”t happen in their state. Keep reading…
AT THE WALLY PLEX… There are sound stages on Hollywood”s back lots smaller than Bentonvile”s behemoths, so it”s no surprise that budding video talent has been sneaking cameras in at odd hours. And now for the midnight show at the Wally Plex featuring constipatedelf. Keep reading…
TWEET… TWEET… GASP… TWEET…? Goldman Sachs announced today that it has lowered its rating on Wal-Mart from buy to neutral based on weak sales performance. Given that Wal-Mart caters to the base of the economic pyramid, is this is a canary-in-the-mine moment for the U.S. economy? Keep reading…
BE CAREFUL WHAT WE WISH FOR…? That”s the warning from blogger Tom Blumer. He thinks that Wal-Mart”s decision to withdraw from the banking arena and re-focus it”s attention on making the Walton family wealthier was a bad one. Blumer points to what he calls the company”s Plan B. Keep reading…
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
I routinely communicate with some of my students via email and sometimes I get behind on my responses. One of my students, who is currently working on a series of comixs featuring Troll (at left), called me on my tardiness.
Education is such a tricky thing and one of the unfortunate aspects of our Industrial Age model of education is that we really do attempt to make one size fit all. Students like this one are all too often relegated to problem status when they refuse to play nicely.
I am so lucky to have my students.
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from A Strategy For Daily Living by Ari Kiev.
Acting in terms of your goals will give you strength in dealing with the most complex situations and will minimize the psychological threats of specific situations.
Ultimately, what I accomplish results from my willingness to be true to myself. Stick to what I find most rewarding. This will make my life more rewarding and will minimize my conflicts.
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