Saturday, December 19, 2009
2009 and the decade in pictures
The Big Picture blog has put together another excellent photo compilition - this a three part set of 2009 in pictures. 1 2 3
They also have a compilation of the decade in news photos. It was a tumultuous ten years and the pictures reflect that.
They also have a compilation of the decade in news photos. It was a tumultuous ten years and the pictures reflect that.
Labels: history, news, photography
Friday, October 16, 2009
World Press Photo 2009 contest
Every year, the World Press Photo Foundation has an exhibition of the best news and scientific photography of the year. The exhibition is current on display at the Galleria in Brookfield Place (formerly BCE place) in downtown Toronto and it's well worth a visit. You can view the photos online, but it won't have the impact of seeing the full-size (some are 20" x 30" or more) prints. As always, the photos of war and disaster have the most impact, but there are many quieter scenes and strikingly beautiful portraits.
Labels: news, photography
Friday, March 27, 2009
Red River Flooding
The Boston Globe's Big Picture Blog has a photo essay on the Red River flooding currently happening in Manitoba and North Dakota. I hope the efforts of the people there are enough to hold back the flood - the scale of the flood and the relief effort are both impressive.
Labels: environment, news, places
Saturday, January 10, 2009
End Times?
It's been quite a while since I regularly read the print edition of the New York Times, but I do read the web version, at least parts of it, regularly. However, as this article from The Atlantic points out, the Times is in serious financial trouble and could either go out of business or be forced to go to a completely web-based format. That would be a major shake-up for the world of print journalism, but it might not necessarily be a bad thing.
What would a post-print Times look like? Forced to make a Web-based strategy profitable, a reconstructed Web site could start mixing original reportage with Times-endorsed reporting from other outlets with straight-up aggregation. This would allow The Times to continue to impose its live-from-the-Upper-West-Side brand on the world without having to literally cover every inch of it. In an optimistic scenario, the remaining reporters—now reporters-cum-bloggers, in many cases—could use their considerable savvy to mix their own reporting with that of others, giving us a more integrative, real-time view of the world unencumbered by the inefficiencies of the traditional journalistic form. Times readers might actually end up getting more exposure than they currently do to reporting resources scattered around the globe, and to areas and issues that are difficult to cover in a general-interest publication.
Labels: Internet, news, society
Friday, November 21, 2008
World record base jump
Two Frenchmen recently set the world record for base jumping (parachuting from a structure) by jumping 650 metres from the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai. And they videotaped it. Amazing.
Monday, June 23, 2008
George Carlin, RIP
Comedian George Carlin has died of heart failure at the age of 71. Carlin was a hero of the counterculture for his edgy comedy that focused on drugs, politics, and the abusrdities of things like words you can't say on television. He will be missed.
His comedic sensibility revolved around a central theme: humanity is a cursed, doomed species.
"I don't have any beliefs or allegiances. I don't believe in this country, I don't believe in religion, or a god, and I don't believe in all these man-made institutional ideas," he told Reuters in a 2001 interview.
Carlin told Playboy in 2005 that he looked forward to an afterlife where he could watch the decline of civilization on a "heavenly CNN."
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Why network news is so bad
As a kid, I watched a lot of network news, primarily Walter Cronkite on CBS. Cronkite was more than an anchor; he was journalist and you felt that you could trust what he said. But things have changed since then, and not for the better. The TV networks are now giant entertainment conglomerates and news is just a sideline.
Technology Review has published a long article by John Hockenberry, who worked on NBC's Dateline for several years, which looks at what's happened to network news and why it's so bad.
Technology Review has published a long article by John Hockenberry, who worked on NBC's Dateline for several years, which looks at what's happened to network news and why it's so bad.
One might have thought that the television industry, with its history of rapid adaptation to technological change, would have become a center of innovation for the next radical transformation in communication. It did not. Nor did the ability to transmit pictures, voices, and stories from around the world to living rooms in the U.S. heartland produce a nation that is more sophisticated about global affairs. Instead, the United States is arguably more isolated and less educated about the world than it was a half-century ago. In a time of such broad technological change, how can this possibly be the case?
In the spring of 2005, after working in television news for 12 years, I was jettisoned from NBC News in one of the company's downsizings. The work that I and others at Dateline NBC had done--to explore how the Internet might create new opportunities for storytelling, new audiences, and exciting new mechanisms for the creation of journalism--had come to naught. After years of timid experiments, NBC News tacitly declared that it wasn't interested. The culmination of Dateline's Internet journalism strategy was the highly rated pile of programming debris called To Catch a Predator. The TCAP formula is to post offers of sex with minors on the Internet and see whether anybody responds. Dateline's notion of New Media was the technological equivalent of etching "For a good time call Sally" on a men's room stall and waiting with cameras to see if anybody copied down the number.
Monday, October 01, 2007
28 turkeys off the road
Ontario police impounded 28 vehicles yesterday, on the first day that a new law came into effect that lets them impound the vehicles and suspend the licenses of drivers who are driving more than 50 km/hour over the speed limit. This is a good thing, and I hope it will help to cut down on the incidents of speeding and aggressive driving that I see almost every day. Just because you own a car doesn't mean that you own the road.
I'd also like to see a ban on car commercials that emphasize horsepower and speed. We don't allow commercials showing smoking or drinking; why do we allow car companies to promote illegal activity?
Police aren't apologizing for embracing the law and its stiff penalties.
"We're trying to make aggressive driving as socially unacceptable as drinking and driving," Woolley said.
One reason for the tough stance is the mounting cost of speeding. According to OPP statistics, 340 people have been killed on Ontario roads so far this year, compared with 329 at the same time last year; 87 of this year's cases involved speed and aggressive driving.
To curb that kind of behaviour, the new law also imposes the tough penalties on any kind of risky driving behaviour.
"There's a lot of room for the officer to use their own judgment," Woolley noted, such as "anyone driving in a risky manner, driving an unsafe vehicle, driving double the speed limit on wet or icy roads.''
I'd also like to see a ban on car commercials that emphasize horsepower and speed. We don't allow commercials showing smoking or drinking; why do we allow car companies to promote illegal activity?
