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Big, sad news in the world of big (sad) journalism. One of Rupert Murdoch’s most senior European executives has resigned following Guardian inquiries about a circulation scam at News Corporation’s flagship newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy…
Before you start answering questions from a telephone solicitor, you must “qualify” the company as a potential prospect for a law suit. If, during the introductory pitch, the telemarketer indicates that they are working for a non-profit firm, or a survey company, hang up immediately. They are not subject to the law and are a…
As a print journalist, I’d always thought programming was a task undertaken done by awkward guys in loose-fitting T-shirts who rarely saw the sun. (I wasn’t altogether wrong about that.) With a little reluctance, I said yes. In the time since, I’ve learnt a lot about programming. I’m not a great programmer, I’m almost certainly…
I touched up an older handout on citing quotations in MLA style. The MLA-style in-text citation is a highly compressed format, designed to preserve the smooth flow of your own ideas (without letting the outside material take over your whole paper). See also: Academic Writing; Using Quotations Effectively; Thesis Statements One engineer who figures prominently in all accounts…
All of Apple’s iDevices — the iPod, iPhone and iPad — use operating systems that deny the user access to their workings. Users cannot install programs themselves; they are downloaded from Apple’s servers, which Apple controls and curates, choosing at its whim what can and can’t be distributed, and where anything can be censored with…
While I was in Egypt this summer, citizens explained why they flocked to protests early this year. Their stories focused on hardship and grievances; admiration of the Tunisian revolution; and the power of “street networks,” or the techniques used by mosques, unions and community organisers to rally people in the working class, almost none of…
I have rarely been satisfied with spending a whole class on MLA style. The format is so precise, the textbook chapters so detailed, and the material is so important, but it makes for a very dry lecture. Over the years, I have pushed more and more of my MLA style material out of the classroom…
As my news writing students work on several drafts ahead of a mid-term revision date, I found myself thinking of ways to remind them of the inverted pyramid. This BNKR Arquitectura concept for an “Earthscraper” (underground skyscraper) proposes to create a huge amount of prime downtown space, without sacrificing a central square. (The space is…
Even when I mentally adjust for the alarmist rhetoric, I find this truly frightenting. What a pathetic use of resources… what a painful sign that our public schools are failiing, when they circle the wagons like this and villify their neighbnors, in an attempt to keep their local systems afloat. Other school districts use services…
The blog format relieves publishers from the tiresome duty of producing covers and front pages and things to make their content more attractive and make readers want it. In some cases, it enables publishers to surrender any responsibility for making content attractive in the first place. There is a prophetic scene in the magnificent movie…
Great story capturing the quirky, lonely brilliance of a man who raptured all the pixellated cows right out of their cute little pastures. This is the story of a person whose joke project became more successful than the one on which he lavished love and intellect, the climate that caused that to happen and how…
Thanks to my colleague, Josh Sasmor. The badly-indented long quotation is close enough now that the stink of its hot, fetid breath hits you like a wave. >hint You’re a postgraduate student. >make lasso out of tough fibres of pure cynicism You quickly knot a lasso together. >lasso quotation The badly-indented long quotation grunts as…
Dr. McCarver calls herself a doctor because she returned to school to earn a doctorate last year, one of thousands of nurses doing the same recently. Doctorates are popping up all over the health professions, and the result is a quiet battle over not only the title “doctor,” but also the money, power and prestige…
My first semester as a freshman writing instructor, I jotted the word “redundant” several different places in the margins of a student’s paper, and gave her the opportunity to revise. She returned the paper, having faithfully inserted the word “redundant” wherever I had written it. Clearly, I should have first taught this student about the…
Over the past few weeks, I spent several hours trying to help keep the little Oompa-Loompas quiet between their rehearsal numbers. The kids seemed amused when I started drawing characters from the show. Here’s Veruca, holding the golden ticket. Some of the younger kids asked for copies they could color. More are on the Art/Architecture…
Kismet is set in ancient Baghdad, a time historians call “The Islamic Golden Age.” Johnstown is in western Pennsylvania. “Flight 93 flew right over our heads,” school Superintendent Thomas Fleming Jr. explains. United Airlines Flight 93, of course, plowed into the ground nearby on Sept. 11, 2001, after the hijackers were overpowered by the passengers…
From a recent IFDB review by Peter Pears: Who else who write such a good game, with such engaging characters, such pleasant puzzles, such lovely writing, and then proceed to first release it in a buggy and incomplete fashion? Even today it’s not complete, though vastly superior to its first release – the last sections…
And this is, apparently, the best they could come up with? FUD works when you have the advantage of power, or numbers… or, apparently, a still-hefty taxpayer-backed budget. “A refrigerator has never been hacked,” an announcer says in the first message as an actress pins a paper bill to her fridge. In the other ad,…
Since President Barack Obama announced last month that he would sign an executive order allowing states to request waivers from mandatory participation in the program, at least 27 have signaled that they will ask to opt out, and most others are reviewing their options. — States line up to ditch No Child Left Behind –…