Rodent Regatta

Dan Benjamin has fired that second person.

It’s time for Super Bowl XL, and today’s the day for CSP LII.

Life is good.

* * * UPDATE * * * Do meetings happen within the deep recesses of the NFL where referrees and “league officials” discuss the upcoming outcome of games? Wait…that’s wrestling. Sorry.

After the towers collapsed and the news coverage of the event subsided, I found a need to change some things. I wasn’t sure what needed to change, and there were some false starts.

This weblog became part of the answer and has lasted. January 13, 2002 marked the date of the first post. By some quirk of Userland hosting, you can even visit that first post by clicking here. The home page of that site is here. In case ties back to the old beginnings get severed, here’s how that post appears under today’s design.

Thanks to all of you who read here!

Newsvine is a place to get, write and comment on the news. Here’s how the company describes itself:

Seattle-based Newsvine, Inc. was founded in 2005 by a small team of like-minded colleagues with one purpose: to build a perfectly different, perfectly efficient way to read, write, and interact with the news. Founded by veterans of Disney, ESPN, and other media organizations, the mission of Newsvine is to bring together big and little media in a way which respects established journalism and empowers the individual at the same time.

The “private beta” of Newsvine is under way. I have fifteen invitations available. Leave a comment below and I’ll get an invitation on the way to you.

Journalism is fact. It’s not your thoughts about fact—that’s opinion. It’s not presenting the facts with your findings—that’s editorial.

Journalism is fact. It exists when someone writes or reports fact. Fact comes from someone who knows. The journalist’s job is to determine who knows the facts, collect them and report them to the rest of us. Telling us what some other reporter or network might have reported isn’t journalism. That’s called a grapevine.

TV infobabes emotionally chatting with others about what either of them thinks they might have overhead—well, that’s just chit-chat. It’s not reporting. It’s not journalism. It’s hardly entertainment. It’s a poll. It’s a man-on-the-street discussion. It’s not journalism. It’s simply an airing of opinions.

When reporters go crazy like this, it’s colossally cruel and the furthest thing from journalism. Hey, news people, stop playing telephone with each other!

You need a break. There’s simply too much to absorb channel surfing amongst the 24×7 news crowd. Here’s how to leave the funk and see a way out:

Michael Medved came over to Jasperwood tonight to sit out in the Target Gazebo for a couple of hours and chat over beers. Brilliant fellow. I mean, if there’s a lacuna in his intellectual database, it’s probably something like the Latin names of flora in pre-Cambrian reptile digestive systems. Conversation was a brisk gallop over 1,829 topics, and if you’re starved for Real Adult Conversation as I am, it’s like ending up at the Old Country Buffet after six years in Ethiopian desert. What a joy.

Read the rest.

[Note: Lacuna is here.]