Page One ads

Via Romenesko, Business Week asks: Do readers really care if there are ads on the front page?

Jon Fine suspects only the most navel-gazing of journalists care about a small ad appearing on Page One. “I would prefer that an ad not break up the elegance of the [Wall Street Journal's] front page, that pleasing expanse of print and pixel portraits. But I don’t pretend that argument carries much weight, especially in stingy times like these. This isn’t art. It’s business.”

Priceless

Crooks and Liars stays up late so you don’t have to: Colbert

Who’s a good boy?

Jack’s a good boy.

Undo the damage

Scientific American asks voters in Kansas to redeem their state by going to the polls August 1 and turning out the Board of Ed members who “inflicted embarassing creationist nonsense on your home’s science curriculum.”

The National Center for Science Education is watching next week’s primary, too.

All too true

Great song, which shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with this guy’s music.

Quote of the Day

“Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”

Lying Liars

This phenomenom seems to be growing: Global-warming deniers using major news publications to intentionally misrepresent scientific research. From the Los Angeles Times:

An Op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal a month ago claimed that a
published study affirming the existence of a scientific consensus on
the reality of global warming had been refuted. This charge was
repeated again last week, in a hearing of the House Committee on Energy
and Commerce.

I am the author of that study, which appeared two years ago in the
journal Science, and I’m here to tell you that the consensus stands.

My study demonstrated that there is no significant disagreement within
the scientific community that the Earth is warming and that human
activities are the principal cause.

The strategy for this apparently dates back to 2000:

Good question. Bad answer

Eric Alterman: Slate’s editor, Jacob Weisberg, took an AIPAC sponsored junket with a group of other journalists to listen to Israeli propaganda about their invasion of Lebanon. He disclosed this fact in this defense of George Bush. I wonder, can’t the Washington Post company, owner of Slate, afford to pay for its own reporting trips? And who else is getting their “news” from AIPAC without disclosing it? Would they also accept a Hezbollah-sponsored trip? Doesn’t this kind of demonstrate the Walt/Mearsheimer argument?

Jacob Weisberg: FYI, Slate’s policy is that we disclose any relevant interests, so that morons like you can claim we’ve been bought. Has Eric Alterman never accepted free travel or meals from people with a point of view? Or do the rules you think Slate should follow not apply to Microsoft and NBC?

Alterman: While I have no idea what the rules are here at MSNBC.com…. “Eric Alterman never accepted free travel or meals from people with a point of view” on any political matter about which he was writing. Ever. No Washington Post or Newsweek employee would ever be allowed to accept the largesse of an organization like AIPAC, and then write about it, with or without disclosure. So what’s the deal with Slate? Personal invective notwithstanding, my question stands.

McKinley Morganfield

He’s a man.

Quote of the Day

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”