The Village Idiots

Any suggestions for films that I should see with my children. I’d like to request some recommendations divided into age categories (eg. films to show five year olds.) To start things off, let’s see some recommendations for the first film they should see and how about a discussion of when do you think seeing a film is appropriate.

The Atlantic website has two articles, “Resisting Kindle” by Sven Birkerts and “In Defense of Kindle” by Matthew Battles, discussing the pros and cons of Kindle, Amazon.com’s electronic book, which recently released the 2.0 version. On the con side, Birkerts seems mainly concerned that the Kindle will obliterate, what he calls, “the context of books.” (More on that later.) On the pro-side, Battles seems to say that increased access and democratization (less control of books by elites) trump any loss of context. Here is my two cents on the subject. Read more »

This New Yorker article, “Out of Print: the Death and Life of the American Newspaper” and this Atlantic article “When No News is Bad News cover the death of the newspaper. I don’t know about anyone else, but this concerns me. And I say this as someone who mostly gets his news from the radio and internet (many of them come from online newspapers). I’m concerned because I believe a lot of good journalism comes from newspapers, and I’m not sure other news sources (internet, magazines, radio and TV) can fill the void left if newspapers die out (especially local news). What the Atlantic article makes clear is that news that can really impact our community and keep politicians and businesses accountable costs a lot of money. If newspapers disappear, who will pay for that? Right now blogs are informative because they can get good journalism free, but if newspapers die, will these blogs pick up the provide the resources to produce quality journalism?

This is why one of my main concerns is a financial mechanism that would be able sustain good journalism. The existing financial model for newspapers seems broken, as these articles indicate. Revenue from classified ads have disappeared with the advent of online sites like Craigslist. Readership is down. Printing cost are increasing. Whether we get the good journalism on thin sheets of paper or online doesn’t matter so much to me. What matter is that we have a sustainable business model that can provide resources to produce quality news. Read more »

While access to information has increased, the reliability and quality of information has decreased. It almost seems like the media has thrown in the towel to the notion of objective journalism. Is it just me, or has the shift towards a more partisan and editorialized jouranlism been increasing? I have a hard time finding sources of reliable information, meaning journalists that don’t allow (or at least minimize) the political bias from affecting their reporting. Finding sources of information that are thorough and rigorous is also very difficult.

What news sources out there meet the criteria listed above? How do you go about forming your opinions about politicians and issues?

Hey. If any of you are into Sudoku, check out the Star-Bulletin on Sundays. The Bulletin is running sudoku puzzles that I wrote, beginning yesterday.

You can see this week’s puzzle here, if you’re interested.

In the “Underrated/Overrated” thread, Kevin suggested the Oscars are overrated, and I agree with that. Well, sort of. On one hand, I question the validity of the awards process. From what I understand, the winners depend, just as much, if not more, on factors besides aesthetic values. On the other hand, the award has a way of pushing this cynicism in the back of my mind. Now I would explain that by saying that the Academy Awards have a certain prestige and aura that sometimes I confer more importance on the award than I should. I think that’s part of it, but I also think that I place a greater significance on the award (and others) out of need, a need that I think is rarely discussed. Read more »

It’s not on newstands yet, but if you want to see my name in print, take a look at the April issue of Honolulu. I entered the fiction contest and received honorable mention. I’m pleased.

Im afraid the odds favor a poorly informed citizenry rather than the opposite. The challenges to becoming a well-informed citizenry are signficant:

• There are so many different social and political issues, many of them complex. (Is it reaonable to expect that individual citizen know understand all the important issues? If not, aren’t citizens extremely vulnerable to special interest groups?)
• A deluge of information that citizens have to shift through, analyze and draw conclusions from–while having less time and energy (burnt out from making so many choices in general) to do this

These aren’t new problems, but I think it’s fair to say that more cable TV stations and the advent of the internet has excerbated the problem, and I don’t think we are aware of that! If we are, what are we doing to solve this problem? These are problems we must actively and creatively work on solving, lest our democracy become (or remain) meaningless.
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I talked about this site in another thread, but I just read their article on Kerry’s claims that new jobs are paying $9,000 less than old ones, and a email “whispering campaign” against Teresa Heinz Kerry’s contributions to other organizations. I find this site refreshing in it’s approach to news. If only this were the normal practice of the media.

Here is their mission statement:

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

They usually alternate between candidates in their criticisms. To me, this gives them credibility. Plus, their carefully worded, precise, and thorough articles also make them more trustworthy to me. They prove that “fair and balanced” journalism is still possible. It is a welcomed source of information for me.

Check out the site at Factcheck.org

I was shocked and saddened to discover a few days ago that Neil Postman passed away last year. Postman wrote a series of books–most of them having to do with the impact of media on our culture and society or education. It’s from these books that I learned about the way in which media technology–and technology, in general–has an imact, not only on our material existence, but our ideas as well. (In a way, these ideas remind me of Marx and his belief that the modes of production affect ideas more than the other way around.) Postman likes to talk about the way the printing press changed notions of individualism, community, and history. The words stay the same, but our notions and understanding of them change. He may not have been the first one to say this, but, through his writing, I learned the importance of thinking about technology more thoughtfully, to question the value of technological progress.
To get an taste of Postman’s writing and ideas, I recommend reading his speech, Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change.
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Last night I couldn’t sleep so I ended up watching a lot of programs from Democracy Now! aired on O’leo via Free Speech TV. I highly recommend watching Democracy Now to those of you who want an alternative source of news. Yes, they pull to the Left, but seeing how the station giving a truly “fair and balanced” approach, this is a good station to watch, along with the other stuff that was out there. They actually have report what I consider news–or at least more news-like compared to other media.

Check out their website at

democracynow.org

They also had a short documentary on the media’s war coverage. Amy Goodman, delivers a speech (that in a way reminds me of something Holly Hunter’s character in Broadcast News could have given) about the war coverage. There are clips of the major news coverage, as well her anecdote about talking with CNN’s Aaron Brown. You can see this at,

http://www.democracynow.org/static/IMIATOW.shtml

Is it just me or does there seem to be fewer and fewer news sources that provide “objective” journalism? I’m becoming less and less interested in reading journalists/writers that write from a particular political viewpoint, even ones whose politics I agree with.
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