Last Sunday night, I read an excellent New York Times story via the Web about Steven Chu’s introduction to the ways of Washington. I cover the Department of Energy at my day job, and the DOE is a major employer in New Mexico, so I made a note of the story to include a link …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: How Important is Andy Revkin’s Blog?’ »
There is a line to be drawn, it seems to me, connecting the events of the George Will affair and my elephant diaries (the series of posts in which I try to sort out the past and future of my industry). In short summary, the affair illustrates both the way new information ecosystems have developed …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Connecting the Dots on the George Will Affair’ »
The Washington Post published Chris Mooney’s reply to George Will’s recent climate columns. I’ll cherrypick my favorite bit, but encourage you to read the whole thing: Consider a few of Will’s claims from his Feb. 15 column, “Dark Green Doomsayers”: In a long paragraph quoting press sources from the 1970s, Will suggested that widespread scientific …
Continue reading ‘Washington Post Publishes Mooney Reply to Will’ »
Between the university economics class I’m taking and the various stuff people are actually trying to pay me to do, I’ve been too busy to pay proper writerly attention here to a number of important events and discussions. Let me just dump a few things quickly, and let you click through to read what smarter …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Cleaning Out the In Box’ »
It’s not that we haven’t done The Right Thing. It’s that there is no Right Thing. The problems are fundamental: The competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed by the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then everyone gets to use it. And when Wal-Mart, and the local Maytag dealer, and the law …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Clay Shirky on Why Newspapers are Just Fucked’ »
Helene Cooper on her first ride on Air Force One: As we took off, the flight attendant motioned to the white telephone between one of my colleagues and me. “You can use the phone to make a call anywhere you want,” he said. I snatched up the phone, excitedly. “I’m going to call my sister …
As I’ve gotten older, one of my great joys as a journalist has been to watch the kids come through the newsroom, young journalists starting their careers with fire in their bellies and a naive but sincere passion for using journalism to help change the world. Which is why this was so sad to read: …
McClatchy says its 49.5 percent share of the Seattle Times is worth $0.
We’ve always been outnumbered. It’s getting worse: Packs of lobbyists fill two rooms outside the House and Senate chambers in Richmond every afternoon, watching the proceedings on big video screens, zapping legislators with e-mails the instant the lobbyists sense that one of their bills might be in trouble. The interest groups that hire lobbyists can …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: On Feeling Outnumbered’ »
When I was trying to learn the craft of writing about the earth, a geologist who was serving as my guide said I had to read Walter Sullivan’s Continents in Motion. The book was a revelation to me – for the skill with which Sullivan explained the science of plate tectonics, but more importantly for …