Sunday Papers – November 9, 2008

New York Times Magazine

• After the Imperial Presidency– Jonathan Mahler
• Payday Lenders, Check Cashers – Redeemed?– Douglas McGray
• Deprogramming Jihadists– Katherine Zoepf

New York Times

• Obama team weighs what to take on first
• Harsh words about Obama? Never mind
• Citing workload public lawyers refuse new cases
• How Merrill fell
• Pelosi, Reid want aid for U.S. automakers
• Op-Ed, Frank Rich: It still felt good morning after
• Op-Ed, Al Gore: The climate for change
• Op-Ed, Thomas Friedman: Show me the money
• Op-Ed, Nicholas Kristof: Obama and the War on Brains
• Rice visits West Bank
• U.S. electricity project in Afghanistan
• Back home, Palin finds landscape changed
• After push for Obama, Unions seek new rules

Washington Post

• Preparing for the Obama era
• Reid, Pelosi urge Treasury to extend aid to automakers
• Self-sufficiency evades Iraqi security forces
• Obama positioned to reverse Bush actions
• Medvedev calls Obama; Kremlin describes call
• Congressional Democrats say economy first priority
• Op-Ed, Rich Lowry: The right needs to get centered
• Op-Ed, Joseph Stiglitz: More pain to come even if he’s perfect
• Op-Ed, Ron Suskind: U.S. has power – it could use authority
• Op-Ed, David Broder: Governors know best
• Op-Ed, George Will: Democratic ironies and Republican Afflictions

Los Angeles Times

• Democrats set sights on Texas
• Public works on the table once again
• Obama relies on a close-knit inner circle
• Op-Ed, Norman Ornstein: The GOP’s deep hole
• Op-Ed, James Rainey: Right-wing media feeds its post-election anger
• Political blogger be nimble, be quick
• Election leaves gay couple feeling isolated

Palin Bombs on Interview with Couric – Video and Story

Trying to ignore the gimmick, I’ve tuned out from Palin.  I couldn’t help but notice quite a few headlines though, over the last two days, like this one:

Palin Talks to Couric – And If She’s Lucky, Few are Listening – LA Times

This excerpt says it all.  You’ll get my drift after you watch the video of the interview, below.

Her third nationally televised interview, with CBS anchor Katie Couric, found Palin rambling, marginally responsive and even more adrift than during her network debut with ABC’s Charles Gibson.

Part I

Part II

What’s to become of the Fourth Estate?

• LA Times more cuts to pages, personnel – Associated Press

Someone please come up with the business model to keep serious journalism alive in this country. 

Several newspapers around the country have announced yet another round of budget cuts – many of which are coming right out of their newsrooms.  Foreign bureaus mostly became a thing of the past for large newspapers years ago.  The numbers of reporters assigned to state executive branches and legislatures has diminished, you can see it in our own Ohio media.  You can’t count on television.  At the local level, including cities such as Columbus, Clevleand, and Cincinnati news coverage on local tv is superficial or sensationalist.  Smaller media market tv news is downright unintelligible.  As for the networks, including cable news, one word for most of it: fluff. 

The best quality information, crafted to any ongoing standards of objectivity, facts, and ethics is now only regularly found in the news operations of daily newspapers.  I can see promise in the “new” media, but it’s still gunslinger territory and I wouldn’t stake my professional reputation at work on information gleaned from a blog.  In fact, this blog only works because of the information in the “clips” or links to stories from the media, usually respected newspapers.

With all the problems this country is facing it’s extremely unfortunate everytime a professional news organization has to scale back.  What fills the void is worse than nothing, it’s usually background noise.  It doesn’t do anything to educate or move a debate forward.

One thing we can all do is subscribe to our local paper.  I subscribe to the local paper, even though I read it online before I even take it off the porch in the morning.  (Except for Sundays, there’s still something about the Sunday paper …)