It Sucks To Be The Washington Post's Ombudsman

You write a nice little article that could be written anytime about how to get letters published in the Post. That doesn't have to run on this Sunday.

You completely ignore the biggest story in the blogosphere that week involving your pubication. This is how one of your Washington Post online bloggers compared the gentlemen who flew a plane into the IRS building in Texas to the Tea Party protesters. This set off a storm because the online manifesto left by the man included rants against big business, supportive words from Karl Marx and hatred of George Bush. Not exactly "right wing" or conservative values.

To make it worse it looks like the blogger, Jonathan Capehart, deliberately omitted the left wing parts to enhance his case. That is not good journalism practice and might be worth addressing by the Ombudsman.

Just What The Raiders Need

This is not very constructive. Reports: Cable punched Hanson

Washington Post Gets Smaller To Serve Their Readers Better

In the continuing saga of print newspapers struggling to make money the Washington Post announced it is folding the business section into the front page section. Using the argument, as reported at the Politico, "designed to signal to readers the centrality of economic news, as well as the increasing overlap of political and economic events, in today’s world." They use the argument put out by Newsweek as we discussed in this post that their audience is more exclusive now. At this rate the Post will shrink to be like the New York Post - all one large section.

Economic Turmoil In Iceland

The Scotsman reports on a protest and near riot in Iceland over the collapsing economy. Iceland had to close all three banks there and is getting a loan from the IMF to stabilize things. The problems were caused by heavy growth by Iceland's banks and the collapse of the local currency. The line of the article, though, is: "As daylight began to wane, demonstrators drifted away into the nearby coffee shops. Here, as currency tumbles, the price of a cup of coffee has shot up by about one-third since before the crisis struck." Doesn't sound like the French Revolution to me.

Stupid News Stories

You read these kind of stories and wonder if they are really true, or something out of The Onion? The gist is I think, is that Canadian men utilize old refrigerators to store their mass quantities of lager, and they are inefficient and demand too much energy generated by Global Warming creating power plants. Believe it if you will.

Study: Canadian Beer Drinkers Threaten Planet

or see:

The Onion - America's Finest News Source

One Sided Reporting

Our hometown paper, The Huntsville Times, has an article about an area that is gentrifying. This is a good thing. One of the issues there is that the city's biggest homeless shelter, which is a private, non-profit, is in the area. This does good work and we give it money and goods to sell. Our church sends people to volunteer there. The city wants it to move, and is basically forcing it by planning to build a road through it.

The article talks about it as a "problem" only, while not highlighting the other side of the issue. Yes , most people don't want to live near a homeless shelter, but if there is a homeless problem then there needs to be facilities to service them.