Technorati: Reuters Discourages Breaking News on Twitter.

“Many reporters currently use Twitter as both a reporting tool and service for getting out breaking news faster. But Reuters wants their journalists to be very clear one on thing, you shouldn’t be breaking stories before they go out on the wire.” Scoop the pay-for service ... not a sustainable concept.

Washington Post: Massa flirts with the right, but Beck isn’t tickled.

‘Explained verity’ was one of Edward R. Murrow’s philosophies. Doubt B will risk it again.  Blech.

The Atlantic: What is Rupert Murdoch Doing to Journalism?

“… his once distinctive flair — the flashy headlines, the juicy photos, the winking (or sometimes bludgeoning) partisan tilt that for years was a staple of European papers rather than American — turns out to be quite imitable, a return the yellower days of journalism. Online, the style’s genealogy winds its way through Drudge, the Huffington Post and many blogs.” Ugh, call what we do Murdochian, and I’ll close this place down tomorrow.

CNN: Topeka ‘renames’ itself ‘Google, Kansas’.

“This isn’t the first time Topeka has switched its name to mark a cultural trend. In 1998, former mayor Joan Wagnon temporarily changed the name of the city to ”ToPikachu, Kansas,” in reference to the Pikachu anime character, from the show and game called “Pokemon,” which was popular at the time, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.” Who says the Midwest doesn’t have an eye for the latest trends?

LA Times: Roger Ebert takes to Twitter to give tea party followers a thumb’s down.

I keep running into Roger Ebert everywhere. His rapid rise in the press makes me expect we’re ripe for inevitable sensational come-down revelations. Perhaps he shaved cats in his teens. It’s the old paradigm for the media - the over-buildup, then — shock! — sensational letdown(s), mass of advertising dollars made on reporting minutiae. Question is, will we all remain faithful when it turns out he’s human? 

The Independent.UK: Here’s to the small print: The past and future of compact literature.

“One of the strange by-products of the digital revolution that we are going through at the moment is that no one seems to know how big anything should be.” I know!  Just right, of course.

Miller-McCune: Will The Past Last In The Digital Age?

“Once upon a time, news stories were entombed in newspaper “morgues” and rarely saw the dusty light of day. Now the news never dies. Millions of people can search the archives online — an amazing benefit unless, perhaps, you’re someone who was actually in the news.”

CNN: H1N1: Pandemic was emotional as well as physical.

Ironic.  If the authorities took the alarm to ‘10’, the media took it to ‘11’. You couldn’t escape the 24-hour news cycle retreading the fear and panic for a few weeks there. Look inwards, CNN, before casting blame elsewhere.

Washington Post: Lindsey Vonn crashes, as Riesch takes super-combined title.

C’mon, folks ... give Julia Mancuso some respect. Enough with Vonn and her bellyaching about her shin.  Julia is now the most-decorated woman Olympic alpine skier in American history. Surely that’s worth dumping the ‘Golden Girl’ for? Or is Red Bull calling the shots for *everything* on the mountain?

Atlantic, McArdle: Did the Stimulus Save Us?

“Of course, if you listen to someone like Robert Barro, you’d use a multiplier of more like 0.6 or 0.7, implying that the administration has probably so far boosted GDP by maybe $150 billion, or about 1%.  1% is not nothing.  But it’s not the difference between us and a band of desperate Okies hoping that the old Model T will make it all the way to California.” Did a lot for highway repairs, though.  Still not enough.

KMBC, Kansas City: Cars Pile Up On Slick Highways.

Holy Hannah. Someone didn’t get the bulletin. Scratch that - *everyone* didn’t get the bulletin.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

”A young lady of 18, wealthy, pretty and agreeable, wants a husband. Not finding any one of her acquaintance who suits her, she has concluded to take this method of discovering one. The happy gentleman must be wealthy, stylish, handsome and fascinating. None other need apply.”

AE Portal News: Satellite truck in a backpack.

“They’re calling it a satellite truck in a backpack, and at $2500 a month rental ($1500 a month on the annual plan) it could just revolutionise the whole news and local event reporting business in a big way.” If you remember the impact minicam crews had on news in the late ‘70’s ("gory brains all over the road, at 10"), you’ll also look at this as ... well, both good and bad.

BBC News: Sat-nav devices face big errors as solar activity rises.

Completely ignoring the Sun when it was unpredictably quiet, the media now want us to worry about the Sun’s predictable solar maximum.

NY Times: East Coast Braces for Another Snowstorm.

Looks like you folks back East have gotten whacked with snow again. Hope you’re all doing well, staying warm - finding food at the supermarkets.

Guardian.UK: McSweeney’s inspiration dies. Books | guardian.co.uk

“Knowing that the journal bore the name of a real person who had endured years of struggle threw melancholy shadows over the enterprise. But the McSweeneys insisted that the use of the name was acceptable, even appropriate, given Timothy’s background as an artist and search for connection and meaning through the written word.”

NY Times: Iran’s Nuclear Move Prompts New Calls for Sanctions.

Seems like a game of cat and mouse. “At issue is a proposal for Iran to swap its uranium stockpile for enriched uranium processed into fuel roads outside the country. Iran was initially reported last October to have accepted the proposal, but later backed away.” I don’t know if it’s purely how the media is characterizing this, but it certainly does seem like Iran’s using parlor etiquette to buy time. I tend to make the obvious conclusion about what, exactly, they’re buying time for.

Yahoo News: 5 men, 1 woman aboard shuttle Endeavour.

I’m still waiting for NASA to send up the blind, left-handed dentist without tonsils and his Cosmonaut stamp collection.

The Nation: Journalism in 10: The Future of News and Media.

“To better understand the changes in journalism, The Nation recorded a series of video interviews throughout 2009 and early 2010 about the future of media.” Linked here so I can go back and watch them when I have a mo.

Atlantic, Business: No, More Blogs Would Not Save the New York Times.

“Blogs play an important role in journalism by stir frying the news, but it’s a derivative role. Good bloggers are like talented collage artists, clipping words and images and assembling them in a way that illuminates something original, for both the author and the audience. But in order to clip, and embellish, and illuminate, and collage, we need ... you know, the news.” Nicely put. Been saying it for years ... we’re lampreys. Amateur editorialists. We don’t generally originate news. We’d be dead without ‘traditional journalism’ to stuff our greedy little ungrateful maws.  Time for certain folks to stop talking and do some listening, for once.

NY Times: Steven Strogatz, From Fish to Infinity.

Revisit Math. From preschool to grad school, in installments.

Here it comes.

The SF New Mexican’s showing off autoplay greenscreen ‘human walk-out’ ads.

New West: The Theory Behind Obama’s Appearance with the GOP.

Excellent synopsis. Prime quote: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.”

In These Times: Our Addiction to Disaster Porn.

“Even now, as the casualty count rises, disaster pornographers barely mention the macabre history. They know that doing so would break unspoken rules against holding up a foreign policy mirror to America and against riling the politicians and business interests that contributed to Haiti’s demise.” Strong opinion, well stated.

CNN: Toyota president ‘sorry to have made customers uneasy’.

“This is a game changer for Toyota,’ said Art Spinella, head of CNW Market Research. ’They have some serious, serious work to do to repair the damage done to their image.‘“ Further investigation implicates a poor design on the part of Toyota; CTS disavows any responsibility for the design flaw. Interestingly, this is the supposed issue: “In rare cases and under ‘extreme environmental conditions,’ the pedals have been known to stick and return slowly to their idle position due to condensation.” Other articles say premature wear causes the sticking, and that it is not a sudden onset.  You’ll feel roughness in the gas pedal before it starts to stick.

Important point: it does *not* accelerate. It merely stays where you’ve set it. Some media are being misleading in their characterization of the problem (and I made a mistake yesterday calling it ‘sudden acceleration syndrome’).  So stomp the clutch and give it a kick or two. Or simply shift from D to N (usually one simple notch upwards on modern-day automatics - a child could do it with one finger), and kick the gas pedal a couple of times.  I used to have to do it in my rusty crusty old Jeep all the time. That rattletrap just needed more lube.

I don’t think less of Toyota. The media is playing this up way too much. Honda had an airbag recall last August, and that was a ‘deadly recall’ too. A misdeploying airbag has a way of getting your attention - and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. That would scare me great deal more than this recall. Did Honda lose sales over it? Probably not, because it wasn’t snatched by a hungry media and turned into the latest ‘international crisis’. 

From what I’ve read, out of 2.3 million affected vehicles, there have only been eight reports of sticking gas pedals. That’s a 1 out of 287,000-something chance of having the problem. It’s more dangerous to get out of your bed in the morning. C’mon.