The Global Citizen |
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We make our friends. We make our enemies. God makes our neighbors. G.K. Chesterton
Is there a great moral nation, The Global Citizen is published in conjunction with The McGill Report, where international news is a good local story.
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5.29.20035.21.2003
SIX DEGREES TO JAYSON BLAIR: So now the story is told. In a long interview with The New York Observer, Jayson Blair makes clear what happened. He brought the story line of John Guare's play, Six Degrees of Separation, right to the newsroom of The New York Times. This guy plays on white liberal guilt like Van Cliburn plays the piano. He's a con man. End of story.
GUNS, GUNS, GUNS: My recent columns on gun control have plunged me into the issue. I'm presently working my way through a ton of material sent in by some really thoughtful people who favor of widespread private gun ownership in the United States. It's a complicated issue with roots going straight to the ideas of American exceptionalism and identity. I've yet to make up my mind completely, but doesn't this piece add weight to the argument favoring strong gun control. In a country where you are patted down for nail clippers, but can go to the corner store and buy a shotgun, don't you worry about enemies of the state finding all the weapons they need inside these borders to carry out their deadly missions?
5.20.2003
SETH MYDANS IS AMAZING: This New York Times reporter has quietly been trekking across Southeast Asia, writing about the poor and the forgotten, for several years now. Invariably his reports are close, often wrenching portraits of people in need. They are often stories of incredible bravery and dignity. Mydans is often courageous himself in pursuit of these stories, as a couple of weeks ago, when he trooped into a Cambdian village where a mysterious virus has been cutting people down for months. Here's his latest, about a small village of war amputees in Cambodia. Read and learn.
THE WORST THING ABOUT IT: Here's what bugs me the most about The New York Times' story fabrication scandal. Ordinary people who were misquoted, mischaracterized, and incorrectly described by Jayson Blair only rarely tried to correct the record. Reason: they expected to be misquoted, mischaracterized, and incorrectly described by any member of the press. Where's the "sacred bond with readers" we talk about all the time? Vamoose.
5.17.2003
ON THE ROAD: At the Poynter Institute last week I gave a keynote speech at a conference for editors and reporters trying to cover the world from small- and mid-sized towns in America. It was called "How to Increase Newspaper Readership by Improving International Coverage."
5.16.2003
THE JAYSON BLAIR AFFAIR (1): Friends have been asking me what, as a former New York Times reporter, I think about this. I haven't felt anything other than what you'd expect, which is sick. My stock e-mail answer to the question "What do you think of the Blair case?" is that I'm:
A. Not surprised. Liberal guilt is one of the Times' achilles heels, triply and quadruply exemplified in Howell Raines, an Alabama guy who prides himself on his civil rights reporting and racial magnanimity. He won a Pulitzer for his remembrance of his family's black maid.
THE JAYSON BLAIR AFFAIR (2): The above are my gut reactions. A week later, here is my stab at discerning the lessons of this episode:
1. There were two betrayals here, of the Times by Blair, and of Blair by the Times. The former is obvious. The latter is the betrayal that occurs when affirmative action and diversity initiatives get out of hand. By Raines' own admission, he gave Blair too many chances simply because of his race. That's an abuse of power and a betrayal of Blair the person and of other black journalists who are trying to compete in the profession on equal terms. 2. Hollywood values creeping into newspaper journalism are a major culprit. As Barbara Crossette points out in one of the best commentaries on the scandal, writing values increasingly take precedence over reporting values in the newsroom. That's dangerous. The older generation -- Mailer, Wolfe, all the "new journalism" masters -- at least knew the difference between fact and fiction when they started to blur the line. What's troubling is that the younger generation, as exemplified by Blair and Stephen Glass, don't appear to have the foggiest notion about this line, what it is or why it's important not to cross it. Stephen Glass is now making a smooth transition right into writing novels; and Blair is reported to have already hired a literary agent to sell his book. In their minds, they must not know what all the fuss is about as they waltz right into the next chapter of their career to sell their storytelling talents to the highest bidder. From The New York Times to Hollywood, see?
HOLY HECTOR: Check out this verse from Christopher Logue's All Day Permanent Red, his hip translation of the Iliad:
Wow. That's the most impressive poetic entrance I've seen since Tennyson's The Eagle:
I've been hearing about Logue's translation but after I read those words above, can't wait to read Red and his other Illiad translation, War Music.
 
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