May 6, 2009

Watch: Senate Hearing on the Future of Journalism

Update, 12:13 a.m. Very thoughtful discussion. Kerry asks a crucial question around minute 180: Essentially, what type of antitrust (temporary) legislative/regulatory fix could the aggregators (Google/Huffington) live with so that newspapers could sit down, en masse, and work out a deal so that everyone wins?  (photo credit New Yorker; Steve Coll’s blog about his experience testifying.)

Update, 11:26 p.m. EST: If you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing (!), an interesting discussion breaks out around minutes 135-150 and on after that. Did I hear a politician complaining that the demise of local reporting might mean her peers (or her) won’t be investigated and watched? And that she’s worried about that? This could be the last time you hear that said in public.   

Update, 10: 45 p.m. EST:  The webcast is archived here. What do you think? In this era of the 30-second sound bite, this sucker went on for nearly four hours. I know this was about the future of journalism, but I must say I feel bad for the gals and guys who had to report on this hearing. It’s almost like having to serve drinks at your own wake.

Update, 6:00 p.m. EST:  I was going to try to post the full video and noticed the hearing is still going on. I will try to find a link to the full question-and-answer session later. 

The live webcast is accessible here. (2:45 p.m.)

Witnesses and links to testimony:

Opening Remarks

Panel 1

Senator Ben Cardin Senator United States Senate

Panel 2

Marissa Mayer
Vice President, Search Products & User Experience Google Inc.
Alberto Ibargüen
President and Chief Executive Officer John S. And James L. Knight Foundation
David Simon
Author, TV Producer and Former Newspaperman
Steve Coll
Former Managing Editor The Washington Post
James Moroney
Publisher/CEO The Dallas Morning News
Arianna Huffington
Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief The Huffington Post

New Yorker: When Effort Trumps Ability

Malcolm Gladwell’s piece in the latest New Yorker focuses on how an inferior girls’ basketball team was able to work harder than its more talented counterparts and win. He explains how other underdogs in history were able to triumph using an “insurgent” strategy, but why the conventional route to success is the more well-worn path. From the piece, Gladwell notes how the Davids overcome the Goliaths:

This is the second half of the insurgent’s creed. Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is “socially horrifying”—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought. All the things that distinguish the ideal basketball player are acts of skill and coördination. When the game becomes about effort over ability, it becomes unrecognizable—a shocking mixture of broken plays and flailing limbs and usually competent players panicking and throwing the ball out of bounds. You have to be outside the establishment—a foreigner new to the game or a skinny kid from New York at the end of the bench—to have the audacity to play it that way. George Washington couldn’t do it. His dream, before the war, was to be a British Army officer, finely turned out in a red coat and brass buttons. He found the guerrillas who had served the American Revolution so well to be “an exceeding dirty and nasty people.” He couldn’t fight the establishment, because he was the establishment.

Subscribe to the New Yorker here.

May 5, 2009

Youth Today: Supreme Court to Hear Juvenile Life-Without-Parole Cases

Matt Wagner has the scoop:

The Supreme Court agreed today to hear two Florida cases that challenge the legality of sentencing minors to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

May 4, 2009

Frank Partnoy: “The Match King”

On the Diane Rehm Show (WAMU 88.5 in Washington) today, the guest is Frank Partnoy talking about his new book, "The Match King," the state of the housing market, and other things "Great Recession"-related.

[audio: "http://wamu.org/audio/dr/09/05/r2090504-24680.asx"]

Partnoy is extremely insightful about the economy and, having worked in the Wall Street belly of the beast, knows of what he speaks.

Here’s  a conversation he had in March with Terry Gross, of Fresh Air (WHYY in Philadelphia), on "Derivative Dangers." If you want a very good primer on the topic, spelled out in layman’s terms, listen in to this as well.

May 2, 2009

Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes

We saw this exhibit yesterday; very cool. I especially liked the sculpture of the Chesapeake Bay, made out of recycled silver.

 

Preview the Exhibition from Corcoran Gallery of Art on Vimeo.