(Source: CNN)
Stephen Colbert on North Carolina’s vote to ban gay marriage with Amendment 1.
Next week’s cover, up online now. Get the story from the artist who created it.
Great cover.
GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich cuts interview short with UNC student
At my other job at a grocery store, my hardest-hitting question is usually, “Paper or plastic?”
This is a great article about a frustrating and pathetic event. On the one hand, yay college journalists! On the other hand, shame on you, Newt Gingrich.
The New Yorker caption contest meets current events.
![templesmith:
I copped a little flak ( & a lot of support ) about not caring Whitney Houston died & the rampant over saturation of coverage on her.
For me though, someone like this? This is someone to mourn. & I didn’t know her, or the impact she had on many people’s lives, even apart from her media career. She had guts and made a difference. Were that that was lauded more in the vacuous, short attention span society obsessed with beauty & appearances over substance & intellect we currently live in.
A squid can dream.
Vale Marie Colvin, a hero in the true sense of the word.
rufusdayglo:
“Marie sometimes did more than merely write. In 1999, in East Timor, she was credited with saving the lives of 1,500 women and children who were besieged in a compound by Indonesian-backed forces. She refused to leave them, waving goodbye to 22 journalist colleagues as she stayed on with an unarmed UN force in order to help highlight their plight by reporting to the world, in her paper and on global television. The publicity was rewarded when they were evacuated to safety after four tense days.
This was the essence of Marie’s approach to reporting. She was not interested in the politics, strategy or weaponry; only the effects on the people she regarded as innocents. ‘These are people who have no voice,’ she said. ‘I feel I have a moral responsibility towards them, that it would be cowardly to ignore them. If journalists have a chance to save their lives, they should do so.’
The people of East Timor did not forget their saviour. At the end of her Sunday Times report about her Sri Lankan experience, she wrote: ‘What I want most, as soon as I get out of hospital, is a vodka martini and a cigarette.’ Later that week, having moved briefly to a New York hotel, she was woken by a room-service waiter bearing a tray with a huge bottle of vodka and all the ingredients for her drink of choice. She discovered it had been ‘fixed, God knows how, by the East Timor crowd, the people in the compound’.” - The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade, on journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed by shelling in Syria Wednesday.
[Photo: Marie Colvin in the A&E documentary “Bearing Witness,” on women in war zones. Credit: A&E Indie Films via NY Times]
RIP Marie Colvin, a hero.xxxx](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzt4u3P1nE1qzr73ro1_1280.jpg)
I copped a little flak ( & a lot of support ) about not caring Whitney Houston died & the rampant over saturation of coverage on her.
For me though, someone like this? This is someone to mourn. & I didn’t know her, or the impact she had on many people’s lives, even apart from her media career. She had guts and made a difference. Were that that was lauded more in the vacuous, short attention span society obsessed with beauty & appearances over substance & intellect we currently live in.
A squid can dream.
Vale Marie Colvin, a hero in the true sense of the word.
“Marie sometimes did more than merely write. In 1999, in East Timor, she was credited with saving the lives of 1,500 women and children who were besieged in a compound by Indonesian-backed forces. She refused to leave them, waving goodbye to 22 journalist colleagues as she stayed on with an unarmed UN force in order to help highlight their plight by reporting to the world, in her paper and on global television. The publicity was rewarded when they were evacuated to safety after four tense days.
This was the essence of Marie’s approach to reporting. She was not interested in the politics, strategy or weaponry; only the effects on the people she regarded as innocents. ‘These are people who have no voice,’ she said. ‘I feel I have a moral responsibility towards them, that it would be cowardly to ignore them. If journalists have a chance to save their lives, they should do so.’
The people of East Timor did not forget their saviour. At the end of her Sunday Times report about her Sri Lankan experience, she wrote: ‘What I want most, as soon as I get out of hospital, is a vodka martini and a cigarette.’ Later that week, having moved briefly to a New York hotel, she was woken by a room-service waiter bearing a tray with a huge bottle of vodka and all the ingredients for her drink of choice. She discovered it had been ‘fixed, God knows how, by the East Timor crowd, the people in the compound’.” - The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade, on journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed by shelling in Syria Wednesday.
[Photo: Marie Colvin in the A&E documentary “Bearing Witness,” on women in war zones. Credit: A&E Indie Films via NY Times]
RIP Marie Colvin, a hero.xxxx
(Source: pantslessprogressive)
A great report out yesterday from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that cable leads the pack as the campaign news source, and Facebook and Twitter play only modest roles. Fewer Americans are closely following news about the presidential campaign than four years ago.
Also of note: 68% say they prefer to get political news from sources that do not have a political point of view, compared with just 23% who prefer news from sources that share their point of view. (via)
Three years ago today, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. Where were you on Inauguration Day?
I was watching on a giant screen in the Newseum just down the street from the Capitol!
In lampooning Republican outrage over President Obama’s 2009 Halloween party for children of veterans, Stephen Colbert took particular faux umbrage at the fact that Chewbacca was in attendance at the White House on that fateful evening. What followed was a truly geektastic monologue that had me wondering, “Was that the first time his staff had to read Wookieepedia?” This is from The Colbert Report, January 10th, 2012.
(Source: colbertnation.com)
NPR’s Robert Smith, I salute you. This is an edited version of his report on Ron Paul’s second-place finish in the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary. It contains the bits relevant to my interests — namely, Star Wars references. Kudos to you, sir, for the A New Hope reference at the end.
Why #CNNAfterDark was great television
In the early hours of January 4th, after hours of covering Iowa’s presidential caucuses, CNN went a little crazy. It seemed to start at 1:30am with a technical mishap on two of their giant electoral analysis screens. While they waited for the final caucus results to settle a dead heat between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, CNN anchor Erin Burnett tried to “flick” a graphic from one screen to another. After several failed attempts, she finally got it, but the minor glitch, combined with the exhaustion of six hours on live TV, led to a bout of hysterical laughter. Anderson Cooper and Ali Velshi contributed to the increasingly jovial atmosphere by sparring over the value of Velshi’s “Social Media Screen.” Soon the entire set was sent into fits of laughter.
But it didn’t stop there. There was more laughter during what Anderson Cooper described as the “best live phone call ever.” The call was with Edith Pfeffer, the chairwoman of Clinton County’s Republican Central Committee, and Carolyn Tallet, the president of the Clinton County Republican Women’s Club. They were so great on the air during the first call, where they gave CNN the results from Iowa’s final caucus precinct, that the network called them back after the results were fully reported to congratulate them for their hard work and for being part of the American political process. You can watch both of those calls here, which I recommend doing if you want to hear two precious older ladies talking about their long histories of political involvement.
The fun continued with excellent news from the Twittersphere which proved that CNN was doing quite well among Internet-savvy TV viewers:
“Edith and Carolyn” and #CNNAfterDark now trending!
— Brittany Kaplan (@BrittKaplanCNN) January 4, 2012
That was pretty great. But it got better when #CNNAfterDark took over the network’s on-air coverage, featuring a logo (seen below) and some theme music.
These two videos sum up the fun that CNN’s political team was having at the end of their coverage.
CNN contributor Roland Martin accurately summed up my feelings on #CNNAfterDark with this tweet:
Folks, @CNN execs really need to capitalize on #cnnafterdark & launch an irreverent, off the rails show. I’ll do it! #cnnelections
— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) January 4, 2012
I completely agree with Roland. CNN often gets criticized for using too many gimmicks in its news coverage, but I think that experimenting with technology on-air (such as holograms) is a great way to lead the cable TV field in this new era of digital news coverage. Accusations that CNN is preoccupied with this technology to the detriment of “real journalism” are unfounded. The cable network gets its best ratings during these huge political events, and this success follows from their commitment to serious news coverage. There’s a reason CNN goes all-out during these events: people want the comprehensive view of the situation that they provide, and their 2008 campaign ratings reflect this.
So why was CNN After Dark such a great thing? It comes down to the fact that CNN’s political team is made up of human beings. After being on television for over eight hours, they needed a release. They had a little bit of fun at the end of a long night of hard work, and in my opinion, that fun was well-deserved. A good portion of their audience clearly enjoyed #CNNAfterDark, based on the fact that it, and those two Iowa GOP women who appeared on CNN, were Twitter Trending Topics last night.
CNN should do more of this light-hearted content at the end of long political news nights. Viewers who have stuck with them for eight hours will be just as tense as the on-air personalities. Realizing this, CNN’s producers didn’t crack down on the joking and banter — they even whipped up a logo and some theme music for the proposed after-dark show. If those producers continue to encourage end-of-night humorous moments like this…
…they will demonstrate that they understand the evolving nature of a news network’s relationship with its audience. CNN’s viewers deserved to see Anderson Cooper and other on-air personalities unwinding at the end of a long night of serious work. There’s nothing wrong with a little fun, and CNN stands to gain a lot from “humanizing” its on-air talent like this. Two-anchor morning shows are often known for their forced banter, but #CNNAfterDark was organic and genuine, which made it all the more amusing.
Of course, there’s one person out there in TV land who’s even more pleased with #CNNAfterDark than I am:
#CNNAfterDark just made Jon Stewart a very happy man. Vote Edith and Caroline 2012!
— Aaron Segal (@aar0nak) January 4, 2012
UPDATE: CNN’s “This Just In” blog has its own recap of “what happens when news anchors and political pundits get punchy after watching caucus results until the wee hours of the morning.”
And here’s the Fox News card. Notice Fox ahead of the ABC, NBC and CBS sleighs; MSNBC and CNN aren’t even racing.
How can that fox work for Fox if he’s so brown?
