The Curse of Newspapers, Conveniently Summarized

Let's play fair here - (4.00 / 1)

That column is by a "reader advocate" - not the editorial staff of the Telegraph and not a Telegraph employee.

In blogging terms, I suppose it is the equivalent of a user diary that BH chose to promote to the front page.

It reflects more on the Telegraph's "open access" philosophy than anything else.

---

by: elwood @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 05:35:38 AM CDT

Oh, I'm not holding the blockquote up (0.00 / 0)

as the voice of "the Nashua Telegraph". I left the name out on purpose.

To me it encapsulated the spirit of so many of the eulogies I've been reading and hearing lately on the Demise of Newspapers by longtime and/or former newspapermen (and women).  But because it came out of New Hampshire and not NYT or WaPo or NPR I chose it.

And yes, here:

It reflects more on the Telegraph's "open access" philosophy than anything else.

birch, finch, beech

---

by: Dean Barker @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 05:47:56 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Speaking of curses (4.00 / 1)

A pox on MoDo. How hard would it have been to credit Josh Marshall?

I'm really done with Dowd. I like pop culture metaphors (and damn, they are useful sometimes), but I'm a hack who has to keep down another job, whereas she has one of the most desirable jobs in the entire industry.

A couple of years ago, she was on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. She used two different references to movies to explain Washington, and then a female panelist (Amy Dickinson, maybe), asked, "Aren't those movies?" After a laugh from the crowd that signaled agreement, Dowd paused but was then unable to shift gears.  She got nothin'.

But, to be fair and balanced here, Tom Friedman doesn't have anything either. He knows more about the Middle East than the average reporter. A lot of people fit that description.

---

by: JimC @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 05:42:48 AM CDT

actually rumored to be an ancient Chinese curse ? (0.00 / 0)

no direct citation in ancient Roman or Chinese for that matter, but even RFK used it in a speech in South Africa and credited the usual Chinese wisdom, if erroneoulsy.

Before I left England for China in 1936 a friend told me that there exists a Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times". If so, our generation has certainly witnessed that curse's fulfilment.

- Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War, 1949

May you live in interesting times.
May you come to the attention of those in authority
May you find what you are looking for

for transparency sake ~I represent Union print shops

---

by: JonnyBBad @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 06:30:40 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I've heard it referred to as Chinese (0.00 / 0)

It could have multiple origins, I suppose.

---

by: JimC @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 07:59:07 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I just don't envision (4.00 / 3)

the Romans saying something like that.

---

by: Jennifer Daler @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 08:04:19 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Good point (0.00 / 0)

Roman times were always interesting.

---

by: JimC @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 08:22:23 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Well, they got their whole pantheon (4.00 / 1)

as hand-me-downs from the Greeks, so putting their own claim on a Chinese proverb wouldn't have surprised me...

---

by: elwood @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 16:54:31 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Most concise expression (4.00 / 2)

for all the things Greek lifted by the Romans is from Horace's Epistles:

Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit.

or something like

Captured Greece captured its untamed capturer.

birch, finch, beech

---

by: Dean Barker @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 17:11:21 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Funny (0.00 / 0)

Perhaps the original incarnation of "This is good news for John McCain."

---

by: JimC @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 19:04:32 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Unless it's a significant (0.00 / 0)

re-phrasing of the Latin, I don't either.

"interesting" not an adjective I would normally see modifying a noun like "times."

But I could be wrong.

The oddity of it in Latin is what in fact led me to check out the source.

birch, finch, beech

---

by: Dean Barker @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 17:13:18 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Early newspapers were kind of like blogs (4.00 / 2)

It's pretty interesting to go spelunking through Google Books and read about the New Hampshire newspapers of bygone eras - the Independent Statesman, the Manchester Union Democrat (original name of the Union Leader!), still-extant The New Hampshire Gazette, and hundreds of others.  It appears to me that the original motivation was often that the publisher wanted to have a venue to comment on politics.

So I wonder if it's just going to be a cyclical thing and as the centuries wear on you're going to have more journalistic periods and less journalistic periods, but there will always be journalism.

---

by: Vis Unita Fortior @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 09:08:33 AM CDT

My Pret Peeve: (0.00 / 0)

Websites.

My local Newspaper, the Conway Daily Sun, has a ridiculous online edition in the form of a download able PDF that is only available on the say the paper is released.  

Certain sections are unreadable because they insert them as an image intot he paper and put an extremely low resolution in the web version.

You mean i have to  schlep into town every day to get a newspaper?  Whats the big deal? its free anyway.  Think of all the added ad revenue for posting locak articles on the website

---

by: Nicholas Gunn @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 18:39:38 PM CDT

Fail. Fail. Fail (0.00 / 0)

Wow.  i SOOOO apologize for my typing.

Or, at least try to catch the little red squiggleys...

---

by: Nicholas Gunn @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 18:52:43 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Your eyes are going bad (4.00 / 1)

from trying to read the words from a bad pdf scan job!

birch, finch, beech

---

by: Dean Barker @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 19:06:30 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

strangely enough (0.00 / 0)

If find i do need glasses, recently.

---

by: Nicholas Gunn @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 19:25:39 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

all the best (4.00 / 3)

blog geeks wear glasses!  

sanctimonious purist/professional lefty

---

by: susanthe @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 20:38:07 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The NYT sees no problem (4.00 / 1)

Personally, I'm adopting a new approach to blog postings that may [Maureen Dowd is a craven hack] reduce the likelihood of having my words simply lifted.

---

by: elwood @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 19:12:38 PM CDT

I'm wondering (0.00 / 0)

what my life would be like today I decided to cut and paste a paragraph from DiStaso and put it on BH as my own yesterday.

If I worked for the NYT, apparently, today would be just fine!

birch, finch, beech

---

by: Dean Barker @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 19:16:09 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Funny, I don't remember (0.00 / 0)

The rash of film industry bankruptcies after the dawn of television.

There's quite a lot of good thought out there on where we might go from here, but none of it begins with analogizing the relationship of two late industrial age technologies with the relationship between an industrial age technology and a network age technology.

"You know, people talk about this meteor flying towards earth, but a couple years back there was supposed to be this huge hailstorm, and that never happened, so..."

---

by: Mike Caulfield @ Mon May 18, 2009 at 23:20:23 PM CDT