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but for now, check out the new (to me, at least) Economist blogs, Democracy in America, whose name is self-explanatory, and Free exchange, their economics blog. Rockin’.

Also: nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah, heh heh heh heh heh heh. Lieberman won the Connecticut Senate race. Decisively.

According to this Wired News article, Austin-based Pluck Corporation is launching a for-pay blog syndication service with an editorial staff, with the aim of getting the resulting vetted blog content onto news sites:

A syndication service that delivers commentary from 600 bloggers for use by newspaper publishers is set to launch on Tuesday, further blurring the lines that divide blogs and mainstream media.

BlogBurst, as the service from blog technology company Pluck Corp. is known, includes headlines and articles for use by newspaper publishers in the news or feature sections of their online services, as well as print editions.

Pluck initially has signed up Gannett Co., Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman and San Antonio Express. Eventually, the Austin, Texas-based company will offer BlogBurst editorial materials to niche business and overseas publications.

Newspapers are looking to BlogBurst to provide expert blog commentary on travel, women’s issues, technology, food, entertainment and local stories, areas where publishers may not have dedicated staff, said Pluck’s chief executive, Dave Panos.

In return, a select group of popular bloggers are offered wider distribution for their writings, he said. The online syndicate drives traffic to blog sites, allowing featured bloggers to make money from resulting online advertising fees.

As Jeff Jarvis says later on in the article, the feasibility of a for-pay syndication service has yet to be determined, but the fact that newspapers are willing to feature (independent and generally unbiased) blog content at all is a step in the right direction, and a refreshing change from the knee-jerk reaction we’ve been seeing from many in the MSM towards blogs and bloggers.

as many when I saw the Gillette Fusion razor ad during the SuperBowl: to wit, “five razors? Oh, come on. This is just a gimmick.” And: “Does anybody really believe that adding another razor will actually help?” And, in my defense, the ad was stupid. I mean, really. Helicopters? Someone should fire that ad agency.

But since then, I’ve seen a few objective reviews of the razor, for the most part positive, to the effect that, yes, the extra blade does indeed make for a smoother shave. Now, according to Shaverama, I learn that bloggers are the only ones who actually tried the product and reviewed it objectively. The MSM, apparently, saw it as easy target practice and wrote mostly snarky articles about the thing—not that I can really blame them in this case. And it is a powerful temptation, but taken along with the press’ (generally) extraordinarily poor execution of its duties within the past few years, their giving into the temptation is a symptom of a larger problem. But I digress.

My razor of choice is the Gillette Mach 3^*. If it weren’t for that exorbitant $10 price tag, I would go try the Fusion myself. And maybe someday I will. (Via InstaPundit)

^* Not, mind you, the Venus, the razor “specially designed” for women. I find that the Mach 3 does a better job; the Venus is poorly suited for frequent shaving. What’s that about?

that the MSM has dropped the ball, again:

There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by the First Amendment.

The mass media that backed the plaintiffs in these cases understood that not only did a free press have a right to report on critical issues and people of the day but that citizens had a right to know about those issues and people. The mass media understood another thing: They had more than a right; they had a duty to report.

We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities.

You know the drill: read the whole thing. (Via InstaPundit)

The editors of the University of Illinois’ (my alma mater) student newspaper, the Daily Illini, have been suspended for running the Danish cartoons. (Via InstaPundit)

According to TVNewser, CNN International, shortly to be followed by CNN/US, is getting a new look. Sharp, clean, and without any of the needless gradients, drop shadows and fancy graphics so in vogue on other TV news networks/programs. Very nice indeed. (Via What do I know)

about a year and a half now (an eon in internet time), having been so immersed in it, it seems strange to me to think that everybody doesn’t know about it. Indeed, I would say that most people still don’t know or understand much about blogs and their history, even technically savvy people like some of my family members and friends.

But what’s even more surprising to me is the extent to which people who really should know about blogs, people who have a vested interest in what’s being said on the blogs, often about them—the mainstream media, that is—are still ignorant of citizen journalism and, moreover, think it’s okay to be.

Which is why I felt a mixture of relief and alarm when I read this article on bloggers by the BBC’s Paul Reynolds. Relief because he actually seems to get, mostly, why blogs are so important and why the MSM can’t afford to ignore them any longer. And alarm because, (a) it’s taken him so long to get there, and (b) he still speaks of them as a new and strange phenomenon:

For many in the “mainstream media”, as bloggers call us, weblogs are at best a nuisance and at worst dangerous.

They are seen as the rantings and ravings either of the unbalanced or the tedious.

My experience over the past few months has led me to an opposite conclusion.

I regard the blogosphere as a source of criticism that must be listened to and as a source of information that can be used.

The mainstream media (MSM in the jargon) has to sit up and take notice and develop some policies to meet this challenge.

Most big organisations, whether in news or in business, have no policy towards blogs.

They might, as the BBC has, develop a policy towards their own employees setting up such sites (no political opinions etc), but they have nobody monitoring the main blogs and have little idea how to respond to any criticism on them.

Some in the MSM do, of course, get it, the best example IMO being the Washington Post. Every one of their articles online contains links (obtained via Technorati) to blog posts about the article. Moreover, they’re also one of the journalistic organizations that’s most open to discussion from and with their readers. But, and this is important, they’re in the minority. More news organizations need to be like them, but right now they aren’t. (Via InstaPundit)

writing about the “Cartoon Wars” that have been raging in the blogosphere and the press the last few months, mostly because most of what has been said, from either side, has had a bit of a hysterical tinge to it. Now, Amir Taheri writes one of the most clear-headed editorials I’ve seen on what has been going on, at the WSJ’s OpinionJournal:

“The Muslim Fury,” one newspaper headline screamed. “The Rage of Islam Sweeps Europe,” said another. “The clash of civilizations is coming,” warned one commentator. All this refers to the row provoked by the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper four months ago. Since then a number of demonstrations have been held, mostly–though not exclusively–in the West, and Scandinavian embassies and consulates have been besieged.

But how representative of Islam are all those demonstrators? The “rage machine” was set in motion when the Muslim Brotherhood–a political, not a religious, organization–called on sympathizers in the Middle East and Europe to take the field. A fatwa was issued by Yussuf al-Qaradawi, a Brotherhood sheikh with his own program on al-Jazeera. Not to be left behind, the Brotherhood’s rivals, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and the Movement of the Exiles (Ghuraba), joined the fray. Believing that there might be something in it for themselves, the Syrian Baathist leaders abandoned their party’s 60-year-old secular pretensions and organized attacks on the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus and Beirut.

[...]

Islamic ethics is based on “limits and proportions,” which means that the answer to an offensive cartoon is a cartoon, not the burning of embassies or the kidnapping of people designated as the enemy. Islam rejects guilt by association. Just as Muslims should not blame all Westerners for the poor taste of a cartoonist who wanted to be offensive, those horrified by the spectacle of rent-a-mob sackings of embassies in the name of Islam should not blame all Muslims for what is an outburst of fascist energy.

Read the whole thing. (Via InstaPundit)

Oh, so funny. (Via VodkaPundit)

so funny?

Potty-mouthed jerks have been part of Internet discourse since they hooked two UNIVACs together and the second accused the first of being a !$&(\;? John Bircher. Great swaths of the blogosphere are rich and smart and civil, yes. Other areas are infested with people whose hatred for George W. Bush is so intense they keep a squeegee by the TV to wipe the spittle off the screen.

Ever since Bush imposed martial law and shot the cast of “The View” — sorry, since Bush won the last election, hard-left nuttery seems more mainstream. Bob Dole did not post on bulletin boards that claimed Bill Clinton would soon use FEMA to herd everyone into U.N.-run camps where everyone would get Mark of the Beast bar codes on their necks. John Kerry, on the other hand, has posted at the Daily Kos, whose neck-vein-popping contributors seem to think Bush spends his nights getting hammered and ordering Halliburton to poison Iraqi water so he can get kickbacks from the Pepto-Bismol Crime Syndicate.

(Via InstaPundit)