Ed Bradley (1941-2006)

November 9, 2006

Sad news today of the passing of veteran journalist Ed Bradley. I was fortunate enough to hear Bradley speak at UNLV in the early 90's. Though I had not yet chosen to study journalism he was an absolutely inspirational person. "When it gets to the point where it's not fun anymore, I've always hoped that I would have the courage to say goodbye and walk away from it," Bradley said. Sadly leukemia caught up with Bradley and we are left with memories of this great journalist.

Bradley said of himself "I had had no training as a journalist and I used to listen to the CBS News hourly reports. That was my classroom." A great reminder to all the citizen journalists of the world that it doesn't take a degree and a lot of experience to get into the field. Instead it takes hard work and persistence.

The conservative media

October 22, 2006

Sixteen days. That's how long it's been since the search function on the Las Vegas Review Journal website stopped working. Could it be that the recent spate of downturns in fortune for GOP candidates have caused the conservative paper to keep these stories from being so easily found? Or could it just be that there's a group of people who are supposed to be watching the online store who need to be looking for other jobs?

The future of news

October 5, 2006

From time to time when I'm traveling I'll catch a bit of TV news here or there. For the most part it's horrible. There seems to be about 40 minutes of sports and 30 seconds of everything else. There are self-promoting pieces about the latest Breaking News story from last week. All and all it is worse than watching a high school football game on ESPN Classic.

Given that it seems the same everywhere I figured I must be in the minority when it comes to what's important in TV news. Well the 2006 Future of News report seems to suggest that far from being alone my preferences register with the majority of the population.

Poor OLN journalism

July 10, 2006

Viewers of the Tour de France have been seeing the ads that later this year the Outdoor Life Network will change it's name to VERSUS. Seems like a silly change but it also seems their goal is to be yet another ESPN knock-off.

Tonight, however, they mentioned "tune in tomorrow for a big announcement from Floyd Landis' team". Wondering what the big news will be tomorrow? Head over to Google or any newspaper and you'll soon learn that Landis will have hip replacement after the Tour.

Changing the language

February 19, 2006

The 2006 Winter Olympics brings a new little quirk we'll have to deal with for years to come. NBC decided to call Turin by its Italian name Torino. In the years to come will the next company to have the Olympics broadcast refer back to the games by their English name or their Italian? At the end of the day it is far from anything that makes much difference, but is a sign of the arrogance of the mainstream media when one communications company takes it on itself to change the language.

Two years later and not much has changed

February 11, 2006

Two years after the debacle of the Athens Games we're on the first day of competition of the 20th Winter Games. It seems, however, many of the old disappointments persist. Athletes cannot blog their experiences from the games and the Olympic website is devoid of any web feed. No RSS. No Atom. Nada.

At least the inane commentators of NBC aren't quite as annoying during the opening ceremonies as their counterparts were in Athens a couple of years ago. Who knows, by the end of the games they might even learn how to pronounce Torino.

Journalism