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In other news…

Washington Post had a piece on investigative reporting following Mark Felt’s death last week. It asked the question could “the kind of reporting that Woodward and Carl Bernstein pulled off be done today, more than three decades later, in the age of the Internet?”
The writer, Leonard Downie Jr, was one of the newsroom editors during the Watergate scandal.

Just as it was with Mark Felt and other confidential sources used by Woodward and Bernstein in their Watergate reporting, few of these officials simply seek out journalists and spill all the beans. They usually have to be painstakingly pursued and wooed, and they often are wary of providing more than snippets of information that must be pieced together over time from numerous sources for the most explosive stories. Still, it happens every day in Washington, during every administration.

But two young local reporters chasing hunches and scraps of information about a criminal conspiracy involving the highest officials in government, including the president? Could that really happen again?

There’s no reason why not, even though so much has changed since 1972. New technology actually makes investigative reporting somewhat easier. We can now use computers and the Internet to search records and other information, and we can use pre-paid cell phones for conversations with confidential sources. Of course, an administration under siege would also have more sophisticated resources for investigating leaks and marshaling counter-attacks in the news media and the blogosphere.

Reporters working today on a story such as Watergate would be unlikely to be left relatively alone, along with their sources, for as long as Bob and Carl were. Now, from day one, the story would be all over the Internet, and hordes of reporters and bloggers would immediately join the chase. The story would become fodder for around-the-clock argument among the blowhards on cable television and the Internet. Opinion polls would be constantly stirring up and measuring the public’s reaction.

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Facts and rumours are so mixed nowadays you’d need an extra fine sifter to tell them apart. So don’t just dismiss a newsreport just because it’s mainstream, and don’t take everything your favourite ‘blogger source’ say as the whole truth also. Because we’re all human.

So lawak

I was browsing through BBC’s headlines when I saw this.

If romantic comedies spoil your so-called love life, then what about action flicks, with all those guns and stuff?

Brazillian bloggers are monkeys too?

From Boing Boing:

A Brazilian newspaper aired a commercial comparing bloggers to monkeys — as in, “if you read those stupid blog things instead of real newspapers, you’re reading junk written by monkeys.” Jose Murilo thinks the whole campaign is just linkbait: piss off bloggers, bloggers link to you, you get readers and traffic (note that this post does not contain the name of the newspaper or a link to it).

Original link here.

The video was a commercial to attract people to access a newspaper’s website. At least it was not a statement made by a politician, who has blogger friends. Still, the idea sucked IMO.

Talk TV

I just read that Michael Parkinson is ending his talk show this autumn.

The show used to be aired on Astro ch.70 on weekends, one of the better ones in my opinion. Larry King is overrated, too fascinated with glamer murahan. Heh. He’s talking to Ms. Hilton today, the first to interview her after her (very short) stint in jail. And the coverage he did on Anna Nicole Smith… endless.

Nowadays, I sometimes catch the Ellen Show in the afternoons. I had seen a few when I was in the States last month, including one shot right in Central Park. It seems that a lot of people love to see her dance. I think the DJ is really cute. 🙂

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When the kimster posted a notice about A. Samad Said’s exhibition at the Galeri Petronas, I didn’t expect to see sketches on napkins (the actual ones!) to be on display. I was quite blown away by that. And to see his writing process on a few manuscripts, it was just… wow. You see how much effort was put in producing each manuscript, from start to finish, with many, many re-writes in between.

Some people don’t need a Moleskine to do the deed. Do check it out.