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Thursday, Jun 03, 2004

ad monishment

"A similar dynamic has shaped political advertising. Last year William Benoit, a professor of communications at the University of Missouri, published a paper in the journal Advertising & Society in which he traced the emergence of the major themes in political advertising. After enduring some 2,027 presidential-campaign spots dating back to their earliest use, in the 1952 race, Benoit established that most of the formats used by today's campaigns originated in the 1950s. Even the snide tone that is now de rigueur dates back decades. A 1968 Hubert Humphrey ad titled "Weathervane" is a fine example. "Ever noticed what happens to Nixon when the political winds blow?" asks the narrator, as a weathervane in Nixon's image (with elongated nose) spins wildly in the breeze. "Which way will he blow next?" Switch "Nixon" to "Kerry" and the ad could easily feature in the current campaign."

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Wednesday, Jun 02, 2004

ad out

fucking espn. i was going to give them props the other day for all the live coverage of the french open but in the last couple of days they dropped the ball. yesterday they held a serena williams - jennifer capriati match back until three o'clock while the match had been finished by eleven am. venus williams match was broadcast live and ran concurrent with serenas match so there were mitigating factors, except espn has at least three stations on which to broadcast. had espn wanted to, they could have broadcast it live and then rebroadcast it in the afternoon. as it turned out, i found the results on the net and was less inclined to watch when it was on. plus its shameful that a sports network has to pretend that something hasnt happened. all afternoon the matched was hyped as if it hadnt yet been played. ive come to expect that kind of crap from nbc with the olympics but i thought espn would have higher standards. obviously i was wrong.

so today i checked the scores online. seemingly exciting match being played at the moment with arguably the best story attached - three time champ battles back from serious injury - and its preempted by another match which has already been completed and was a boring straight set victory.

boggles the mind.


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Monday, May 31, 2004

less filling

"Miller is a star, a diva. She wrote big stories, won big prizes. Long before her WMD articles ran, Miller had become a newsroom legend—and for reasons that had little to do with the stories that appeared beneath her byline. With her seemingly bottomless ambition—a pair of big feet that would stomp on colleagues in her way and even crunch a few bystanders—she cut a larger-than-life figure that lent itself to Paul Bunyan–esque retellings. Most of these stories aren’t kind. Of course, nobody said journalism was a country club. And her personality was immaterial while she was succeeding, winning a Pulitzer, warning the world about terrorism, bio-weapons, and Iraq’s war machine. But now, who she is, and why she prospered, makes for a revealing cautionary tale about the culture of American journalism."

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Sunday, May 30, 2004

mayer weiner

jane mayer/new yorker/chalabi

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this weak

zinni v. perle on stephanopoulos

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Friday, May 28, 2004

making a dent

wired article about nick denton.

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so thats what you do

turns out my neighbor isnt just the long haired guy i smirk at in the hallway, he directs theatre, in this case, childrens theatre, and in minnesota. last time i checked, minneapolis was not the last stop on the L. but look how its paid off -- thirty seconds of airtime on the news hour. and theres probably some residual benefits from working with kids and being a positive influence on society, but i cant think of any offhand.

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Wednesday, May 26, 2004

hopelessly tivo-ted

another tivo success story today. was able to watch andy roddick fall apart on the clay at the french open and lose to a short freedom-hating frenchman. i believe it is because he dumped his anamatronic barbiedoll girlfriend mandy moore. all 10 american men have been eliminated in the first two rounds. interesting factoid. serves coming off the clay are 20% slower upon reaching the baseline than on grass.

also recorded fmr general zinni with tom clancy as escort on charlie rose. he rocked. should rumsfeld resign -- yes, wolfowitz --yes, feith -- yes. stopped short at cheney.

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out of the way

"The political split in the US over outsourcing notwithstanding, till very recently the fund-raising and vote-seeking campaign for the Republican Party was done partly out of India. And this was handled by two call centres located in our own friendly neighbourhood in Noida and Gurgaon."

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Monday, May 24, 2004

youve blogged a long way, baby

"Two years from now—give or take—Elizabeth Spiers, the founding editor of the gossip Web sites Gawker and The Kicker, will publish her first novel. Around the same time, Glenn Reynolds, who writes the political Web log Instapundit, will also have a book in stores. So, too, may writers from the blogs Hit & Run, The Black Table, Dong Resin, Zulkey, Low Culture, Lindsayism, Megnut, Maud Newton, MemeFirst, Old Hag, PressThink, I Keep a Diary, Buzz Machine, Engadget, and Eurotrash. Suddenly, books by bloggers will be a trend, a cultural phenomenon. You will probably read about it in the Sunday Times. And when that happens the person to thank—or blame—will be Kate Lee, who is currently a twenty-seven-year-old assistant at International Creative Management."

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