One Last Look
As we polish off the old year and head into the new, let's pause for a quick palate cleansing with a glance at some of what we missed during the break.
In media circles, the biggest story continues to be The New York Times' refusal to discuss reasons for holding the domestic-spying story for a year. Like so many of these tales, this one continues to grow, not fade. Fanning the flames this week was a scathing assessment of the paper's leadership by The Times' Public Editor. Here's how Byron Calame kicked off his Sunday column:
"The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency."And it doesn't get much gentler from there. Romenesko has a great roundup of columns and blogs weighing in on the matter, which seems destined to join the ranks of Judy Miller and Jason Blair in the navel-gazing hall of shame.
A Morley Safer story that aired on "60 Minutes" Sunday night about the possibility of dramatically extended the human lifespan is getting some attention in the blogosphere. Fight Aging.org has a roundup of the chatter (hat tip to Instapundit) and says:
"Overall, it was one of the most positive mainstream pieces on healthy life extension I've seen; good job all round."Amid the crush of year-end "lists," Paul McLeary at CJR offers some of the high points of journalism in 2005:
"Anyone remember a group of dedicated reporters -- for a little paper called the New Orleans Times-Picayune -- day after relentless day slogging through the stench of muck and death to file to a Web site that not only informed the world of the horrors they had seen, but also enabled thousands of survivors to find one another? Or the scores of brave journalists risking their lives in war zones across the world, not the least of which are those who survived some harrowing situations in Iraq to report the most important story of our time? Or Nick Kristoff of the New York Times, who has been reporting tirelessly from Darfur, refusing with admirable stubbornness to let an indifferent world forget about the massive human tragedy unfolding there?"Still, the news errors continues to draw the most attention. And guess what the biggest story for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was this year? You're right, a story about a man, a horse and, well, you can read the rest. As columnist Danny Westneat observes:
"There's got to be a lesson in all this. Maybe the Web favors shorter, more emotional stories, and all you paying subscribers are happily wading through my columns on transit policy or our three-part projects.Now, on to '06.Or, maybe, some of us are not giving readers enough of what you really want."