Newspaper Front Pages from Across the World

in Media | February 26th, 2009

What’s the main news sto­ry of the day? It depends on where you live.

New­se­um has a handy web page that let’s you visu­al­ly scan the front page of over 700 news­pa­pers across 80 coun­tries. Open this web page, click on a con­ti­nent, then click on a dot with­in a par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­ic area, and you’ll see what an indi­vid­ual paper thinks mat­ters most today, tomor­row and the next day. It’s a pret­ty handy tool.

Sad­ly, as I looked at these maps, I could­n’t help but won­der (giv­en the state of news­pa­per busi­ness) how many of these dots will dis­ap­pear over time. Or, as my col­league put it, how long is it before the news­pa­per, as we know it, becomes an actu­al rel­ic of a muse­um. “New­se­um” may real­ly become a new­se­um.

If you want to track the grim demise of the print indus­try, you can fol­low The Media is Dying on Twit­ter. On an hour-to-hour basis, it records the grim unwind­ing of var­i­ous news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. And, while you’re at it, you can fol­low our Twit­ter feed here, too. It’s a hap­pi­er feed, I promise.

Thanks Denise for the heads up on this one. Got a cool piece of cul­tur­al media? Send it our way.

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The American Future

in Current Affairs, History | February 25th, 2009

Through his books and doc­u­men­taries, Simon Schama, a British born his­to­ri­an, has cov­ered a lot of fer­tile ground. The French Rev­o­lu­tion, the slave trade, the pow­er of art, Rem­brandt, ear­ly mod­ern Dutch cul­ture, the his­to­ry of Britain — Schama has cov­ered it all. And now he has pulled a Toc­queville on us. He spent the bet­ter part of a year trav­el­ing across Amer­i­ca, siz­ing it up, and pro­duc­ing a lengthy TV doc­u­men­tary (now avail­able on DVD) and a relat­ed book (not avail­able in the US yet) called The Amer­i­can Future: A His­to­ry. His analy­sis of Amer­i­ca, of its past and its future, takes into account sev­er­al major themes: reli­gion, immi­gra­tion, land and resources, and war. In this recent con­ver­sa­tion with Bill Moy­ers, Schama talks at length about Amer­i­ca and where it finds itself today. The first 15 min­utes focus on Oba­ma and the chal­lenges he faces. The remain­ing part gets into themes dis­cussed in The Amer­i­can Future. You can access it here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site.

P.S. I am real­ly sor­ry about the frus­trat­ing down­time this morn­ing. My host­ing ser­vice — Dreamhost — had some “issues.” Hope­ful­ly this was an excep­tion.

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If Life Were Only Like This …

in Comedy, Film | February 24th, 2009

Some­how my mind turned back today to this clas­sic scene from Annie Hall — Woody Allen’s 1977 Acad­e­my Award­ing-win­ning film. The scene fea­tures Woody, Diane Keaton, and a cameo by Mar­shall McLuhan, who gave us media the­o­ry and the expres­sion “the medi­um is the mes­sage.” The bit is always good for a laugh.

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Stanford Online Writing Courses — The Spring Lineup

in Uncategorized | February 23rd, 2009

A quick fyi: This morn­ing, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies opened up reg­is­tra­tion for its spring line­up of online writ­ing cours­es. Offered in part­ner­ship with the Stan­ford Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram (one of the most dis­tin­guished writ­ing pro­grams in the coun­try), these online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors.

As you will see, there are a cou­ple of cours­es offered in con­junc­tion with The New York Times. The idea here is that you’ll learn writ­ing from a Stan­ford  writ­ing instruc­tor and then get your work reviewed by a Times book crit­ic. Quite a perk, I must say.

For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ.

Caveat emp­tor: These class­es are not free, and I helped set them up. So while I whole­heart­ed­ly believe in these cours­es, you can take my views with a grain of salt.

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The Unrepentant Terrorist? A Conversation with Bill Ayers

in Current Affairs | February 21st, 2009

Bill Ayers, founder of the Weath­er Under­ground and favorite whip­ping boy of the failed McCain cam­paign, gives a primer on the sum­mer of ’68, dis­cuss­es his favorite tat­too, and explains how the Chica­go Police Depart­ment now loves him. The inter­view was con­duct­ed by a col­league of mine, Scott Hutchins, and you have to like the iron­ic way it begins:

…our inter­view [start­ed] with a bomb scare. We sat down on the couch in a busy hotel lob­by and a wor­ried secu­ri­ty guard approached. “Is that your bag?” she asked, point­ing to a back­pack and coat that were def­i­nite­ly not ours. “Nope,” we said. “Oh boy,” she said. She asked a few oth­er peo­ple. The own­er was not there. She radioed in. I con­sid­ered the irony of being blown up while inter­view­ing Bill Ayers. I fig­ured it would at least get me a wikipedia entry.

Get the full inter­view over at The Rum­pus.

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Stream the New U2 Album

in Music | February 20th, 2009

U2’s next album, No Line on the Hori­zon, will be released inter­na­tion­al­ly in ear­ly March. But not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing­ly the album is already being cir­cu­lat­ed (not legal­ly) on Bit­Tor­rent. And this has moti­vat­ed the band to give fans free access to a streamed ver­sion on MySpace. To lis­ten, just click here, scroll down to the music play­er, and tog­gle the “Fea­ture Playlist” to No Line on the Hori­zon. You should be able to access the album in its entire­ty.

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Dylan and Baez Sing Blowin’ in the Wind

in Music | February 19th, 2009

Some­where back in the 1970s, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez teamed up again to sing Blowin’ in the Wind. Quite the duet, which we’ve added to our YouTube Favorites.  As men­tioned a few weeks back, Dylan recent­ly agreed to lend this clas­sic song to a TV com­mer­cial for an eth­i­cal bank­ing and retail group in the UK. You can now see this rare com­mer­cial­iza­tion of a Dylan song over at the Guardian. Thanks Stephen for flag­ging that.

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Hitchens & D’Souza Go Mano-a-Mano on Faith

in Religion | February 18th, 2009

I did­n’t think it would be pos­si­ble, but it hap­pened. I found my two least favorite intel­lec­tu­als togeth­er on the same stage, and King’s Col­lege in NYC made it all pos­si­ble. So, to mark the occa­sion, I bring you Dinesh D’Souza, the acad­e­my’s dressed up ver­sion of Ann Coul­ter, debat­ing the ever surly Christo­pher Hitchens. The top­ic is faith and athe­ism. The debate is heat­ed. And as you watch, you’ll see the charm­ing per­son­al­i­ties come out. The video con­tin­ues with Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10. 90 min­utes in total.

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