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09 Feb 2012 11:19

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Politics: After three-state Tuesday sweep, checkbooks open up for Santorum

  • $1million raised in just 24 hours after Santorum’s super Tuesday  source
  • » That’s quite a haul in 24 hours. The Santorum campaign confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that, after the candidate’s sweep of Tuesday’s primary battles, over $1 million in new donations have poured into the campaign’s coffers — roughly $800,000 of which came from online donors alone. Not bad, sweater vest.
Posted by Scott Craft • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Feb 2012 14:43

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Politics: Human Rights Organization Calls Out NOM in Minnesota

  • What NOM and its allies are doing in Minnesota is shockingly bold.
  • Human Rights Campaign’s Kevin Nix • Commenting on allegations that the Minnesota branch of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) skirted campaign finance laws in a series of emails directing contributions to the Minnesota Family Council. John Helmberger, chairman of NOM, is also the acting head of the Minnesota Family Council, a non-profit organization that backs NOM and is not required to disclose its donors. source
Posted by Scott Craft • 0 Comments • Permalink

23 Jan 2012 10:10

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Biz: Associated Press leader Tom Curley to retire, leaves controversial legacy

  • The guy who guided AP into the aggregation era: You probably don’t know this guy very well, but all the organizations that give you your news know him quite well. Tom Curley, who has led the Associated Press since 2003, plans to retire later this year, after his successor is found. Curley, a former USA Today publisher, faced a not-very-enviable task as AP’s leader: As many of his member publications found it difficult to stay afloat (in some cases, trying to drop AP entirely as a cost-saving measure), Curley took a very hard stance against copyright issues, and once played a role in a protracted fight with Google over access to AP articles. (For years, the Curley-led Associated Press considered Google merely running headlines in search results to be lawsuit-worthy, before eventually backing off.) The AP’s leader will leave a somewhat-difficult legacy in its handling of the blogosphere, too: After previous stunted attempts to show control over its content, the site is moving forward with a new content-licensing initiative called NewsRight. Journalism is a difficult business to keep financially stable, and the AP has had a lot to fight against. But at times, you sometimes wonder if folks like Curley simply didn’t understand the environment. Their issues are certainly not as bad as the music industry’s. But they’re certainly not shining examples of new-media transition. (Photo by Richard Drew/AP) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

23 Dec 2011 01:09

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Politics: Reporting on the campaign trail: Harder than you might think

  • on camera A candidate like Mitt Romney, for example, fields questions day in and day out, and it’s not an easy racket. NBC’s Chuck Todd explains: “[It’s] tough to have the 75th interview in the last 72 hours. Everything’s been asked.” It’s a game where being first and asking the best questions is key.
  • off camera Members of Romney’s press bus tour have traveled since June. NBC reporter, producer and cameraman Garrett Haake explains it as such: “You’re running around. You’re on buses. You’re on planes. You don’t see your family, but you wake up in the morning and you still really want to do it.” source
Posted by samimain • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Nov 2011 21:51

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U.S.: Oakland demonstrator questions violence and vandalism

  • I didn’t destroy any property yesterday, but destruction of property is not violent.
  • Derek Winslow • A demonstrator with the “Occupy Oakland” movement who was arrested early Thursday morning after overtaking a building in downtown Oakland. Winslow admitted that the occupation of the building, along with the ensuing fires that were set around the property to deter police, “wasn’t the best reaction, but we are frustrated.” More than 80 people were arrested after police deployed tear gas in the area.  source
Posted by Matthew Keys • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Oct 2011 19:40

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Biz, U.S.: Barbara Walters interviews Bernie Madoff from jail

  • For our interview, I was permitted only to bring in pen and pad. I was also allowed to bring in $20 in quarters since there were vending machines near our meeting room, which prisoners and guests are permitted to use during the visit. As it turns out, Madoff didn’t want anything, but I did mention it during the meeting in case we were hungry.
  • Barbara Walters • Delivering a first-hand account of her jailhouse interview with convicted Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. The interview, which airs on ABC during ‘World News’ and ‘Nightline,’ comes several days after a short segment was released from an upcoming episode of ’60 Minutes’ in which Madoff’s wife Ruth admitted the pair had attempted suicide. source
Posted by Matthew Keys • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Sep 2011 08:26

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Biz: The Boston Globe starts up its own Web site — wait, didn’t they have one?

  • We’ve never had The Boston Globe have its own front door in the digital space. It’s always been integrated with Boston.com. This was an opportunity to build something brand-new and to have it front and center and really do justice to the brand promise The Boston Globe offers to its readers.
  • Boston Globe publisher Christopher M. Mayer • On the paper’s launch of its own Web site this morning — a paywall-laden one that smartly separates the company’s newspaper content from Boston.com content that might work better on the Web. Boston.com is paywall-free and still serves breaking news, blogs and the whole bit. Bostonglobe.com focuses on the newspaper itself. It’s an interesting separation and we’re curious to see how it works out for them. The Boston Globe’s parent, the New York Times Company, famously started up a successful paywall experiment for the mothership paper. (Quote from a paywall-laden article, but there’s free registration for the next couple weeks; the source article links to the free Boston.com piece.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

04 Sep 2011 16:42

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Tech: Is now the time to ditch your RSS feed? Possibly.

  • That’s what Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng suggests. “RSS was essentially created so that Internet users could stay up-to-date with every single posting made on a particular website,” she writes. “This was, of course, back in the day when every site on earth didn’t post 150 new stories per day, and your friend’s blog feed didn’t contain 60 cross-posted Twitter musings to crowd out the one real post per week.” We’re with her. Despite the fact that we follow a lot of news, keeping up with the grindy nature of an RSS feed is an exercise in force-feeding, and one a lot of people simply don’t have time for. In fact, just 6 percent of Internet users use RSS regularly, and somehow the other 94 percent don’t miss out on too much. We love our RSS readers, but if you choose to follow us on Twitter instead, we totally understand. Because we go months without actually checking into Google Reader, and days without checking into Pulse, because we already caught the important stuff on Twitter already. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Aug 2011 14:42

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U.S.: Serial killer Anthony Sowell sentenced to death by lethal injection

Sowell, from Cleveland, was convicted in the deaths of 11 women. He didn’t even look at the victims’ families during the sentencing, nor did he acknowledge the judge when asked to sign a court document. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 Aug 2011 14:31

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U.S.: President Obama tries to reassure after credit rating downgrade

  • No matter what the agencies say, we will always be a AAA country.
  • President Barack Obama • Talking about the S&P’s downgrade of the United States in a speech today. He explained that they didn’t downgrade us because they didn’t believe that we would default on our debt, but because our politics get too much in the way — and because the threat of default was used as a bargaining chip. He also talked about our real challenge — long term deficit reduction. He stuck to his guns on policies like tax  cuts for the wealthy, and also said that we need to keep unemployment benefits around to keep our recovery going. However, just from this speech it’s clear that it isn’t going to be easy. It’s evident that despite the fact that Obama has good intentions, the politics simply aren’t going to change overnight. Obama also honored the troops that died in the helicopter crash over the weekend, which was well-deserved and moving. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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