March 31, 2008
The bottom of today's ProJo carries a notice indicating how the daily newsstand price of Rhode Island's dominant daily has climbed to 75 cents, the first such increase in 18 years. Considering the woes of the newspaper industry, this decision was certainly not made lightly.
The problem for newspapers is not that fewer people are reading them. Combined print-Web readership figures are impressive, but newspapers' Web-based advertising is far less profitable than the vanishing amount of dead-tree advertising.
Writing at RI's Future, Forsanri attributes the growth in readership of that site to dissatisfaction with, and distrust of, the MSM. I don't think that's entirely right. While blogs can make a stir with original reporting and commentary, such as Matt's recent post on RI's housing mafia, the blogosphere's growth is more a byproduct of a changing media landscape.
This can be seen in the explosive growth of HuffPost, as today's NYT reports:
When Ms. Huffington, the 57-year-old author and former conservative pundit, announced her plans for The Huffington Post three years ago, many critics dismissed the idea as a digital dinner party for her new liberal friends. But it has grown in ways that few, except perhaps Ms. Huffington herself, expected.
In February, The Huffington Post drew 3.7 million unique visitors, according to Nielsen Online, for the first time beating out The Drudge Report, the conservative tip sheet with which The Post is often compared. On Technorati, a blog search tool, The Huffington Post is the second-most-linked-to blog, behind only the technology site TechCrunch. As Roy Sekoff, the site’s editor, said, “We’ve always wanted to be part of the national conversation.”
When Barack Obama made his first public remarks about his controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., he did so in a post on the site. “It was immediately picked up everywhere,” Ms. Huffington recalled. “It helps to be bookmarked by the mainstream media.” ....
According to one person who was briefed on discussions but was not permitted to speak for attribution, the company has at least looked at the value of the site if it were put up for sale, and a figure around $200 million was used. That would put the price at more than $50 for each visitor, a high valuation. Using the site’s internal figures, 14 million unique visitors for the most recent month, the price would be closer to $15 for each user.
This is well and good. In crisis, there is opportunity, and more Facebook and YouTube-style new media darlings will emerge in the months and years to come.
The danger, at least for now, is how very few blogs come remotely close to producing as much original reporting as dead-tree newspapers -- which are steadily downsizing and shrinking their commitments. Maybe TPM will serve as a model for a new way.
Yet even if Governor Carcieri and some of his supporters don't much like the ProJo these days, we should agree that the paper has long played an important role in rooting out corruption and wrongdoing. The shame will be if this tradition fades over time.
March 31, 2008
My most memorable baseball memory -- as with many enthusiasts -- is that of attending my first professional game. Dad and I sat way in the upper deck at Shea Stadium, not long after the Miracle season of 1969, and it was incredibly exciting. We seemed to be up in the stratosphere, yet the grass, far below, had that lustrous green that signifies baseball, and the whole experience was enthralling. It might be a bit of apocrypha, yet I recall Tommie Agee stealing home.
That's why I will always retain some fond feelings for Shea, not the most beautiful venue for baseball, which is due to be taken apart after this season. Yesterday's New York Times had a succinct eight-page baseball preview (Murray Chass picks the Sox to win the AL East) focused mostly on how this will mark the last seasons for Shea and for Yankee Stadium.
At Shea Stadium, five dollars sometimes covers the cost of a seat way at the top of the upper deck but not the Sherpa to lug the oxygen tanks. The view is comparable to that from the ubiquitous low-flying planes, whose passengers, if so inclined, could reach out the window and take a bite from your Italian sausage. Buying another one would involve navigating a concourse roughly the width of a coffee table and sidestepping the bathroom line that started forming five innings earlier.
By any objective standard, Shea is bleak and outdated. It has not aged, shall we say, gracefully, its imperfections and architectural shortcomings growing more prominent over the years, particularly as glorious baseball-only parks have sprouted around the country. Those flaws are now magnified by Citi Field, the Mets’ new home in 2009, whose beatific presence beyond Shea’s right-center-field fence prompted Ron Darling, the SportsNet New York analyst and former Met, to make this comparison: “It’s like driving a VW bus with a Maserati in the lot.”
Yankee Stadium, of course, has a much richer history, even if the dopes at Sons of Sam Horn call it "the toilet," because of its large and somewhat bland quality. I've seen a few games there over the years. The best was when Tim Wakefield and Randy Johnson squared off in a pitchers' duel on September 11, 2005, when Wakefield, I believe, set a career high in Ks, but got beat (the Sox lost, 1-0), when Jason Giambi hit a homer over the short porch in right.
Building a new stadium, and a more lucrative revenue stream, seems in keeping with the character of the Yankees. I'll take Fenway any day.
And even Rich Gossage can't help himself in memorializing the House that Ruth Built:
Gossage pitched there before and after the [ 1974-75] renovation, and in retirement he has seen games from the stands. Gossage is a big man — 6 feet 3 inches, 217 pounds — but the corridors and leg room are limiting for all sizes.
“There’s lines a mile long for bathrooms and everything,” Gossage said. “You’re going to get to see a lot more baseball and see it a lot better way.”
Yet whenever Gossage starts to sound like a pitchman for the new Yankee Stadium, he softens and betrays some nostalgia for the old place. It may be that way all season for fans who have watched history — and players who have made it — for so many golden summers.
“It’s something they had to do,” Gossage said. “It’s necessary, it’s just a shame. It’s not going to be the same, I can tell you that.”
March 31, 2008
To the surprise of no one, some of the angry white men of Rhode Island are using the ongoing immigration debate to drop more of the insightful bon mots for which they have become known.
Fellows with a bit more panache know that the velvet glove is stronger than the rhetorical hammer.
Yesterday's New York Times profiled one such individual, illustrator Al Jaffee, who, at 87, continues to draw Mad magazine's signature back inside cover fold-ins -- a role he has performed since 1964.
[T]he second thing that strikes you upon meeting Mr. Jaffee is that the Mad wiseguy one expects is nowhere to be found. Mr. Jaffee is a genteel, unassuming fellow whose demeanor instantly suggests “gentleman.”
That is especially surprising because in addition to the fold-in, he is well known for Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, another longstanding Mad feature that is basically a running clinic on how to insult someone. No insults here. But plenty of quick wit. When he was told that this article was intended for the Arts & Leisure section, where high culture is often documented, he tossed this off: “It’ll be Arts & Seizure when people see Mad in there.”
Mad is, incongruously, a publication that seems to cultivate longevity, as evident from artists like Mort Drucker (first appearance, 1957) and Sergio Aragonés (1963). No current contributor, though, goes back further than Mr. Jaffee. And while other Mad features, like Spy vs. Spy, have changed artists over the years, only Mr. Jaffee has drawn the fold-in. Since the first appeared in April 1964 all but a handful of specialty issues of the magazine have had one.
“A number of months ago I counted, and I came up with something like 396,” Mr. Jaffee said. “I must have done No. 400 by now.”
March 31, 2008
You've got to love how Chafee's new book, Against the Tide, is being released tomorrow -- on April Fool's Day.
Darrell West had a review in yesterday's Sunday ProJo:
In meetings with the administration, Chafee describes Bush as being “ruled by emotion” and having a “juvenile streak” that he found unpresidential. When Chafee in an Oval Office meeting questioned Bush’s abortion policies by interjecting, “even Laura is pro-choice,” Bush snapped back, “Don’t you bring my wife into this.” Cheney fares no better. He is prone to long monologues that betray little interest in listening to anyone else’s points of view. These were personal traits at the very top of the administration, Chafee says, that led the country into a disastrous foreign policy.
With little respect for the national Republican or Democratic parties, Chafee now concludes that the nation needs a “third way.” In his final chapter, he expresses hope for a centrist third party that will resurrect moderation in American politics and end the polarizing excesses of the past decade. Practicing what he preaches, Chafee has left the Republican Party, but leaves us wondering about his next step in public service.
March 31, 2008
Early on during the war in Iraq, there was talk of how Americans officers were checking out The Battle of Algiers, a movie about the Algerian insurgency against the French in the 1950s, for clues about the politics of insurgency and counter-insurgency. Not that it seems to have helped much. Anyway, the Watson Institute at Brown is screening the movie tomorrow.
April 1, TUESDAY 6:30pm
FILM: The Battle of Algiers. This film reenacts the story of the urban insurgency against French rule in Algeria in the 1950s. Released in 1967, it attracted student audiences who, in a time of leftist activism, shared the director’s sympathies with the Algerian guerrillas. In 2003, the film was screened at the Pentagon, and advertised with the following: “How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.” What was all the fuss about? See the film and hear from Brown faculty. Presented by the Occupation/Liberation/Collaboration Film Series and the Global Media Project. Location: Joukowsky Forum.
March 28, 2008
Immigration is fast becoming the latest incarnation of the casino story -- the kind of thing that's going to wind up on the front of the ProJo more days than not.
Speaking today while taping Newsmakers, Joe Trillo said Governor Carcieri's immigration crackdown could save the state a lot of money. Guest panelist Jen Lawless disagreed, contending that the state shouldn't tackle a complicated situation that has, thus far, eluded a new federal approach.
RI Democrats have put out a release ripping the governor:
Sadly, the governor has been in office for five years and he has yet to grasp how to solve complicated problems. No matter the issue, you begin by bringing people together from diverse backgrounds to discuss the issues and how they can be solved. Instead, once again we witnessed another meaningless media orchestration by the Carcieri administration that was closer to a hate rally than a press conference,” said Tim Grilo, a first-generation American, whose parents emigrated from Portugal. Grilo serves as executive director of the Rhode Island Democratic Party.
“Doesn’t the governor understand that hundreds of thousand of immigrants have legally come to Rhode Island’s borders for the past two centuries and have greatly contributed to our society? The tone Governor Carcieri set yesterday was deplorable. Instead of hosting a meeting and inviting respected leaders of the minority community to the table, he chose the low road and took another cheap political shot,” Grilo said. “Given his plummeting public approval numbers, this looks like little more than a desperate attempt to throw a little red meat to his withering right-wing base.”
“There are ramifications to Governor Carcieri’s actions that he clearly does not understand. His spiteful tone not only encourages racial profiling but it encourages outright discrimination against legal citizens of our state. I think it might be time to remind Governor Carcieri that he represents all Rhode Islanders, not just those that share his narrow points of view,” said State Representative Grace Diaz (D-Dist. 11), vice chair of the Rhode Island Democratic Party.
March 28, 2008
With much attention devoted to Governor Caricieri's immigration plan, not to mention the budget, it's easy to forget about some of the other big issues facing us. One such case is global warming.
According to a report issued earlier this week by Environment Rhode Island and Clean Water Action:
The authors found that global warming emissions in Rhode Island are still drastically far from reaching the voluntary reduction goals set in 2001 when the New England governors agreed to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2010, 10% below by 2020, and 75-85% below 2001 levels by 2050. The report shows the state’s global warming emissions are still exceeding 1990 levels by 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2E), or almost 32%.
Furthermore, the report points out that recently Rhode Island’s energy production has dropped, which may seem to indicate energy use has declined in the state. In fact, consumption has risen and the state is meeting its need for energy by importing more of its fossil fuel based energy from other states in the region, inaccurately depicting a drop in local emissions.
“If Rhode Island is serious about protecting our environment and cutting global warming pollution, we need to take strong action now by passing enforceable limits on statewide emissions,” said Agatha Wein, Global Warming Associate for Environment Rhode Island. “The voluntary agreements are not cutting it. We are falling behind, and now is the time to make the reductions necessary.”
In order to achieve more substantial reductions in global warming pollution the groups are advocating for the development of a statewide plan to reduce global warming pollution at the rates insisted upon by scientists: 20% reductions by 2020 and 80% reductions by 2050. The Global Warming Solutions Act, a bill that has already been introduced in the General Assembly (H7884 and S2629), will require these reductions across all sectors, while also focusing on clean energy solutions.
Treasurer Frank Caprio has a program planned for Monday evening, at the Save the Bay Center in Providence, to look at the fiscal impact of climate change.
March 28, 2008
Besides Frank J. Williams, Representatives Art Handy (D-Cranston) and Joe Trillo (R-Warwick) also appear on Newsmakers this weekend (Sunday, 5:30 am on Channel 12, 10 am on Fox 64), for a discussion of the state budget and Handy's much-discussed proposal.
You can expect where this comes down: Handy says his plan would benefit most Rhode Islanders and slightly diminish the bite of property taxes, while Trillo says Rhode Islanders are already overtaxed and that any further tax hikes should be avoided.
March 28, 2008
This is tonight:
We invite you to join with Ocean State Action Fund as we celebrate 20 years of coalition building, organizing and leading for change!
6:00 - 8:00 pm at Local 121
Washington Street Providence
Keynote by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
and honoring
founding board members
Roberta Hazen-Aaronson
Executive Director, Childhood Lead Action Project
Stan Israel
Executive Vice President,
NEHCEU, District 1199 SEIU
long-term & new allies
RI Foster Parents Association
community ally
RI Jobs with Justice
labor ally
George Zainyeh
For leadership in health care & consumer advocacy as District Director for Congressman Kennedy & as former member of the RI House of Representatives
with special recognition of
graduates & facilitators of the New Voices Leadership Institute
March 28, 2008
While Rhode Island sometimes seems like a horror show -- what with the budget meltdown, high property taxes, big hair, and any number of other problems -- the Ocean State has a historic link to two great horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. "I am Providence" Lovecraft.
Lovecraft will be celebrated this weekend, and Bill Rodriguez offers a preview in this week's Phoenix:
[T]he annual H. P. Lovecraft Tribute Service is being held for the 10th consecutive year, on Sunday, March 30 at 3 pm, on the front grounds of the Ladd Observatory, 210 Doyle Avenue, Providence Afterward, the group will reconvene to pay respects at the author’s Swan Point Cemetery grave. As a boy, Lovecraft enjoyed gazing up at the stars through the Ladd telescope, and his ghost has reportedly been sighted there.
Born in 1890 in the house now at 454 Angell Street, Lovecraft died in Providence 46 years later, eventually admired as the pioneering writer of the fantasy-horror genre.
If some of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, who died four decades before Lovecraft’s birth, were dark and macabre, most of Lovecraft’s were pitch-black and filled with what he called “cosmic horror.” His characters typically ended up facing not only unearthly frights, from such things as evil, ancient creatures among us, but they also feared a nihilistic universe of ultimate despair.
Like a couple clinging to each other during a slasher film, shrieking in guilty relief because their troubles are nothing compared to those depicted on-screen, modern-day escapist readers of Lovecraft can smile as their ordinary travails are put in perspective.
March 28, 2008
Frank J. Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who wields enormous power and has a lifetime appointment, maintains that sufficient measures are in place to hold him accountable. He made the statement during a taping this morning of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers.
I noted that electing judges, as is the case in some other states, seems like a flawed process, but that two of the most powerful men in state government -- House Speaker William J. Murphy and Senate President Joseph Montalbano -- face election in their districts every two years. So is there a sufficient counterpoint to his authority, I wondered.
Williams responded by agreeing that electing judges is a bad concept, since it injects fundraising into the process. He said the current setup, such as the opportunity for complaints to be examined by the Rhode Island Commission on Judicial Tenure and Discipline, is adequate and that he is held accountable.
Of course, it was adverse publicity that led Williams a few years ago to scrap his personal Web site, which had promoted his availability for speaking engagements and listed a court employee as his point of contact.
Asked about the controversial and costly bird sounds at the Kent County Courthouse, the chief justice said he would have preferred to seen the money spent on technology or security. In calling the courts a small part of the state budget, he defended plans for an eventual $71 million Blackstone Valley courthouse and the opposition of judges to pension cuts.
Williams said he would like to see more court interpreters, rather than fewer. While newcomers to the US should learn English, democracy is diminished, he said, when the access to the courts of recent immigrants is hindered by a lack of interpreters.
March 28, 2008
Governor Carcieri entered a long-running debate about the value of the early-education program Head Start this week. Here's what he said in a story yesterday by the ProJo's Steve Peoples:
“Show me empirical evidence that Head Start has done anything,” he said. “I think it’s been the biggest waste of money, frankly.”
I took a quick look via Google to seek indications of Head Start's impact. There are a lot of positive reviews, but also some more critical ones. At minimum, considering the research, the governor engaged in a rhetorical over-reach. (The US Department of Health and Human Services has a detailed look at the research here.)
Here's one of the positive reviews that I found:
The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) is a longitudinal study, meaning the same group of children (cohort) is folowed over several years. FACES provides key findings related to children’s outcomes and program quality. FACES proves Head Start’s ability to help narrow the gap between disadvantaged children and other children in the areas of education and social behavior. According to the survey, most children entering Head Start had early academic skills that were below national norms. However, by the end of the program, Head Start children showed gains in vocabulary, early math, writing skills, and other literacy-related areas. Head Start children also showed growth in their social skills which better prepares them for cooperative classroom learning.
Not only has Head Start proven to help children early in their schooling, it also has an effect on their later schooling as well. According to an issue brief (pdf) drafted by the National Head Start Association, “Reliable studies have found that Head Start children have increased achievement test scores and that they experience favorable long-term effects on grade repetition, special education, and graduation rates.”
Here's another:
A recent rigorous national evaluation of the impact of Head Start on three- and four-year-olds, the Head Start Impact Study, found gains for Head Start children in pre-reading, pre-writing, vocabulary and literacy skills.1 Children assigned to participate in Head Start also had fewer behavior problems, better overall physical health, less hyperactivity, and more access to dental care. More positive effects were found for children who entered the program as three-year olds than as four-year olds.2 Another study found that four-year olds participating in Head Start did better in receptive language and phonemic awareness than four-year olds of similar backgrounds who were wait-listed for the Head Start program.3 Other studies find that children who attended Head Start are more likely to stay in school, and have lower rates of grade retention in early elementary school.4 Head Start participants were also more likely to have been fully immunized5 and to have better access to health care.6
Head Start programs may also have benefits for the parents of the children attending. In comparison to a group of families with similar backgrounds, parents of children attending such programs are more likely to report good health and safety practices than are parents of children not attending.7 First-year findings from the National Head Start Impact study also found that parents of children attending Head Start were more likely to read to their children frequently, less likely to use physical punishment, and more likely to engage in educational activities with their children. However, in this study, parents were not significantly more likely to use better safety practices.8
The Heritage Foundation says this:
Since its inception, there has been controversy over Head Start's effectiveness. Early research from the Westinghouse Learning Corporation in 1969 showed cognitive gains of the program's participants faded away within a few grades, at which point the cognitive abilities of Head Start participants are indistinguishable from their nonparticipating peers.
In 1985, the Head Start Synthesis Project, a meta-analysis of over 210 studies and reports, found:
Children enrolled in Head Start enjoy significant, immediate gains in cognitive test scores, socioemotional test scores, and health status. In the long run, cognitive and socio-emotional test scores of former Head Start students do not remain superior to those of disadvantaged children who did not attend Head Start.
A few studies indicated that Head Start participants were less likely to be enrolled in special education or to be held back a grade. Head Start students also received more dental and health screenings.
The Goldwater Institute says:
[T]he Head Start Impact Study—in which children who attended the program are being compared with those who did not—began in 2002 and is continuing. Its control group is made up of children who could not get into the program because all the slots were filled after a lottery, explained Nicholas Zill, the director of the Child and Family Study Area at Westat, a Rockville, Md.-based research organization.
Initial results released in 2005 showed “modest” gains for the Head Start children in pre-reading, pre-writing, and vocabulary skills. But improvements were not found in oral-comprehension or math skills. Results after the children’s kindergarten year are being analyzed and will be released later this year.
Officials with the Bush administration noted that the preliminary findings showed that children in the program still lag behind their peers, while Head Start advocates used the results to boast that the children are making progress.
March 27, 2008
Another black eye for the press, this time the Los Angeles Times, via The Smoking Gun:
MARCH 26--Last week's bombshell Los Angeles Times report claiming that the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio was carried out by associates of Sean "Diddy" Combs and that the rap impresario knew of the plot beforehand was based largely on fabricated FBI reports, The Smoking Gun has learned.
The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs's trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion "Suge" Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.
The con man, James Sabatino, 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur's shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as "a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug."
March 27, 2008
John McCain's key to cultivating positive press? His sense of detatched irony, of course, writes Neal Gabler in yesterday's NYT:
The candidates who are dead serious about politics, even wonkish, get abused by the press for it. Mr. McCain the ironist gets heaps of affection. In this race, though, it has forced some press contortions. While John McCain 2000 was praised for being the same straight talker off the bus as he was on it, John McCain 2008 is praised precisely because he isn’t the same man. Off the bus he plays to the rubes (us) by reciting the conservative catechism; on the bus he plays to the press by giving the impression that his talk is all just a ploy to capture the Republican nomination.
Yet the reporters, so quick in general to jump on hypocrisy, seem to find his insincerity a virtue. When an old sobersides like Mitt Romney flip-flops, he is called a panderer. When Mr. McCain suddenly supports the tax cuts he once excoriated, or embraces the religious right, or emphasizes border security over a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, we are told by his press acolytes that he doesn’t really mean it, that his liberal cosmology will ultimately best his conservative rhetoric. “Discount his repositioning a bit,” Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, wrote two years ago, “and McCain looks like the same unconventional character who emerged during the Clinton years.” The article was subtitled “Psst ... He’s Not Really a Conservative.”
This suggests that love is blind. It also suggests that seducing the press with ironic detachment, the press’s soft spot, may be the best political strategy of all — one that Mr. McCain may walk on water right into the White House.
March 27, 2008
Matt takes a look at the front of today's ProJo's State House tax-issue coverage and sees a not-so-subtle division:
Anyone notice the stark contrast on the front page of today's BeloJo?
In one corner we have MEN IN SUITS who are longtime advocates for lowering taxes on the richest millionaires and corporate tycoons at the expense of health care and child care!
In the other corner we have WOMEN & CHILDREN who desperately want to save a program that helps poor kids have equal opportunities for early childhood development.
Who will win this historic battle?
Analysts say that even though the WOMEN & CHILDREN turned out many more supporters, the MEN IN SUITS have connections where it counts: at the top (and they're not afraid of paying off the refs!).
Stay tuned!
