- Helen Thomas, and the Awkward Transfer From "Straight" Reporting to Opinioneering (Matt Welch, Reason)
- Boston Globe Tailors Print Edition For Three Remaining Subscribers (Onion News Network) Hilarious.
- Tax Hikes and the 2011 Economic Collapse (Art Laffer, WSJ)
- The predictable Euro crisis (Martin Feldstein, Weekly Standard)
- Reagan’s Secure Line (Richard V. Allen, NY Times)
- Why has Israel disarmed itself in the battle for world opinion? (Charles Moor, Telegraph)
- Labor unrest in China reflects changing demographics, more awareness of rights (Keith Richburg, WaPo) Uh oh, there goes the competitive advantage!
- Turkey's foreign policy moves raise concern in West and at home (Mary Beth Sheridan, WaPo)
- Black Flight is the New Worry for Detroit (Alex Kellog, WSJ)
- Democrats Skip Town Halls to Avoid Voter Rage (Jeff Zeleny, NY Times) If only the reporter read certain LibDem partyblogs, he would know it’s not really voter rage, but just something manufactured by one pollster. LOL
- The dangers of success (Robert Samuelson, RCP)
- A Houston restaurant original: Kanomwan's beloved "Thai Nazi" dies (Sarah Rufca, CultureMap)
- Rosés, With All Due Respect (Eric Asimov, NY Times) The Margui rose that Asimov lists for $20 is available for a whopping 30% less at French Country Wines here in town, and is far from the best rose that they currently have on offer. Not that most Houston wine drinkers probably know or care. *shrug*
- OK, Coog fans, let's try to make some sense out of the conference realignment chaos (Chron Cougars Blog)
Straight reporters have been taught for six decades to submerge or even smother their political and philosophical views in the workplace. Like all varieties of censorship, this process creates resentment and distortion. Whatever it is that you feel prevented from saying, you will be more likely to scream once given the chance. This is why, for example, some of the most politically opinionated people you’ll ever meet are newspaper reporters a couple drinks in out yakking with their colleagues.
Degrading the quality of that discussion still further is the likelihood that the partisanship-averse journos haven’t bothered to construct their own self-conscious political philosophy, beyond identifying Bad Guys and wanting to Fix Problems. Show me the world’s most intractable problems–the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the inability to produce mass amounts of energy without negatively impacting the environment, the search for a beer that tastes great and is less filling–and I’ll show you reporters in bars having conversations worthy of the Alex Jones show. It’s not that they’re all Helen Thomases–she is truly one of a kind–but that in the absence of subjecting their own beliefs to journalistic rigor, they are more likely than many would expect to quietly nurture beliefs that outsiders would find surprisingly slanted and even extreme.
