Archive for Newsweek

A political columnist submits to 60 hours of hell

Posted in Journalism, TV with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2010 by macmystery

Last week, PoliticsDaily.com columnist Walter Shapiro, who is recovering from surgery on his leg, decided to commit to watching nothing but cable news networks for 12 hours a day for five straight days.

To some, that may sound not all that abnormal. But Shapiro, something of a dinosaur, gets his news from print media, and therefore is in no way acclimated to what he found on the boob tube.

Shapiro blogged each day for five days about his new experience with cable TV news. It’s pretty interesting.

Here are the five parts of his series:

Day 1: A New Survivor Show: Watching a Week of Cable News and Living to Tell

Day 2: The Cable News Patrol: Rounding Up the Usual Suspects and Subjects

Day 3: The Cable News Patrol: Sound Bite Skirmishing Silenced (Mostly) by Real Life Tragedy

Day 4: The Cable News Patrol: Glenn and Rachel Become My New Best Friends

Day 5: The Cable News Patrol: My Long National Nightmare Is Over!

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Hurry up and die, newspapers

Posted in Journalism with tags , , , , , on September 29, 2009 by macmystery

That’s the sentiment of Newsweek blogger Daniel Lyons in his Sunday blog post, a reaction to the proposed Newspaper Revitalization Act.

I’m not disputing that newspapers are dying, or that they should be, or even the reasons why Lyons asserts they are. But I find it interesting that Lyons ignores the fact that virtually every successful Internet journalism venture requires capital from somewhere else … another medium.

In fact, it would be interesting to see how Lyons feels about newsmagazines.

Like newspapers, they are dying a slow (albeit, a little slower, yet just as certain) death. Both Time and Newsweek, the nation’s foremost mainstream news mags, have shrunk in recent years. And they’ve certainly tinkered with their formats to try and keep readers or bring in new ones.

That being said, it’s Newsweek’s print sales, not advertising on a Web site — or even more specifically Lyons’ blog — paying Lyons’ bills.

But it’s OK if Newsweek goes under. Like Lyons says, journalists will get other jobs, right?

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