KathyF, on March 20th, 2008 at 12:11 am said in a comment on The Field:

Hmmm. This morning I’m inclined to step back and view the overall picture here.

We have one candidate whose pastor made outrageous remarks, with accompanying video being played non-stop a la the Dean Scream while his disavowals of the remarks are twisted and ignored.

Thanks to Chris O'Brien's challenge, serious talk of business models for journalism have come to the IdeaLab blog.

Let's pause a moment for an overarching view. Turn off the bright lights and stare into the empty studio.

Markets – selling and buying at prices set by supply and demand – don't work for news and information.

Greg Palast stepped up.

http://coanews.org/article/2008/eliot-s-mess

Just the biggest corporate criminals of our era (and that's saying a lot).

My Idealab article "The San Jose Mercury News and Gary Webb" is now posted to Helium (which promises writers democracy and money) in the Internet as a threat to newspapers thread.

It debuted at 12 of 22, which is interesting, since it of course had no ratings whatsoever.

The San Jose Mercury News' location in Silicon Valley is not the first reason it should have become the newspaper of record in the Internet age. Reading about this year's round of layoffs and cutbacks, I think about the journalist the Mercury News cut off twelve years ago during boom times.

In 1996, a series of articles by Gary Webb showed the Central Intelligence Agency's complicity in bringing crack cocaine into Los Angeles. Profits from the new, highly addictive, and illegal drug supported the U.S.-backed Contras' war of terror against the people of Nicaragua during the 1980s.

Jay Rosen asked about three vetting-the-candidate stories that went awry at the New York Times: "Obama's drug use. Hillary's marriage. McCain's lobbyist. The New York Times made weird decisions in all three. What gives?"

I think the problem started at the root why these stories received focus to begin with.

[This will be posted on Idealab soon, but as I am ahead on my blogging for a change (and behind on all my other work as usual), I'm putting this out for review and revision. First and most pertinent question: Do I say anything worth saying?]

Will Knight Ridder on its tombstone have the words "Bagdikian was Right?"

BUZZ MERRITT: As far as Knight Ridder was concerned, that die was cast in 1969 and 1974 when they went public with just one tier of stock. If you want to have somebody quoted on the tombstone, you would have to say Jack Knight was right, who said in 1969 that when you go public, you lose control of your destiny.

http://www.onthemedia.org/yore/transcripts/transcripts_031706_knightmove...

Hat tip to Narco News Bulletin.

Is the proposed pushed agreement being covered? Given the history of NAFTA, and the so-called War on Drugs, just maybe it should be considered important enough – in terms of impact on people's lives (economic opportunity, drugs, and the unprecedented policing and jailing of a population based largely on drug charges) – for full and complete coverage?

Documents Detail Narco-Paramilitary Connection to Anti-Escobar Task Force

[Cross-posted at Idealab]

At this year's SalesForce.com Foundation gathering, "Innovation for Nonprofit Success," the recurring theme was less the SalesForce software than the broader topic of the social web.  This is to SalesForce's credit; Suzanne DiBianca, cofounder and director of the Foundation, set the tone when she introduced Holly Ross, Executive Director of the Nonprofit Technology Network, as the keynote speaker.