Media

Imagine the Potential 2

Catholic Vote is back with another great pro-life TV commercial, “Imagine the Potential 2”, a follow on to their earlier ad that showed a child who had everything going against him before he was born but grew up to be our current president.

[Thanks to Amy Welborn.]

The trouble with the Boston Globe

Speaking of Boston newspapers, the blog The Liberty Papers writes about the recent and ongoing troubles of the Boston Globe and opines that it’s not just another victim of the general decline of the newspaper industry and the economy, specifically, advertising revenues. No, the author of the piece, says the Globe’s problems go much deeper than that.

In fact, he says, the newspaper’s advertising revenues have been declining much faster than other newspapers in the region, including it’s sister publication with The New York Times Co., the Worcester Telegram. And the same thing goes with a decline in the subscriber base.

In 2008 the Globe’s average weekday circulation fell to 350,605, down from 382,503, or 8.3 percent [since 1992 when it was purchased by the NYT]. Sunday circulation fell 6.5 percent to 525,959. The competing newspapers for the Boston Area, the Boston Herald, and the Patriot Ledger (and to a lesser extent, a smaller local paper, “The Enterprise”), are doing alright… as much as any newspaper is anyway. Both are down about 4%, HALF the decline of the Globe; and counter to the general trend in the newspaper business (actually in most any business) of the second and third papers in a market (which they are) losing more circulation in a downturn than the market leader.

Then the question becomes, Why is the Globe doing so much worse? His conclusion may surprise you. In fact, he says, the Boston Herald and Patriot Ledger remains somewhat conservative newspapers (or as he describes them, “moderate center left” and “moderate center right”, which is pretty conservative in Massachusetts), even as the Globe has gone more and more hard left ever since being purchased by The New York Times Co. Well, that matches the liberal population in Massachusetts, right? Not quite, he says.

Massachusetts has a reputation as a very liberal state, and Boston a very liberal city; and to an extent that’s true. Certainly it is reflected in the states voting record, and much of it’s congressional contingent.

However, regarding Massachusetts as a liberal stronghold, fails to take into account the true nature of the states liberalism.

The vast majority of the Boston area is blue collar, and low level white collar, union, catholic, old line northeast democrats; with a significant minority of what we used to call Boston Brahmin democrats (rich, socially and politically conservative on a personal basis; but they support liberal politicians to seem “progressive”, to make sure “the right people” run things, and because democrats are easier to buy off).

Outside of the immediate Boston area, Massachusetts is basically politically identical to western Pennsylvania. It’s union Democrats, and center right Republicans; pro gun, pro hunting, pro business, and anti-leftist. Hell, still today, Western Massachusetts, and the adjoining parts of Connecticut and New York, are the firearms manufacturing capital of the western world.

It’s a very interesting perspective and probably not far off. I’ve found in one-on-one conversations with folks, especially older folks, that it’s not that they support very liberal social engineering and wealth re-distribution, but that they’re still stuck in the idea that the Democrats are the party of the average guy versus the fat-cat elite Republicans. But the fact is that you’re as likely to find liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats hobnobbing in the cities, while more conservative Democrats and Republicans find common ground outside the cities. This is why the liberal elites on Beacon Hill couldn’t possibly allow same-sex marriage to come to a general vote of the populace: Because they knew that they’d lose the vote before they had the chance to indoctrinate the populace sufficiently that two men or two women can be married and to think otherwise is bigoted. They needed time to let the Kennedys and their ilk indoctrinate the those one-time Reagan Democrats into the new reality.

Yet, perhaps the Globe outpaced the populace and went further left faster than the people could be brought along. Oh sure, the glitterati and the politicians that the Globe is supposed to cover have all come out of the woodwork to lament the possible loss of the newspaper. But the people have been voting with their pocketbooks for years, dropping their subscriptions to the newspaper with every bizarre anti-Bush screed or anti-Catholic editorial cartoon. Herald columnist Howie Carr has gleefully filled up not one but two recent columns full of the Globe’s follies, including some shoddy reporting in which the desire to advance a liberal cause resulted in retractions because they just didn’t get the story right. After a while, the people began to notice.

Will it be the end of the world if the Globe shutters its doors? Competition is always better for the consumer, so I’d prefer two healthy competitors in this market to one, even if the one I prefer was the winner. On the other hand, if the business can’t offer a product that the consumer wants, then let another take his place.

Photo credit: Flickr.com user gwbstr. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Boston Herald hunts Craigslist

Many analysts say one of the causes of the decline of the newspaper industry has been Craigslist, which has co-opted what once one of the most profitable parts of the newspaper business, classified advertising.

Well, some time ago the Boston Herald decided it wasn’t going to take this lying down. Every time there’s a crime story with any kind of hook to Craigslist, the Herald plays it up. If someone sells something online and they get robbed by the buyer, the headline will scream, “Craigslist!” If police clean out a nest of prostitutes using a local hotel to meet johns, the Herald headline will note that the trysts were arranged through Craigslist.

Of course, before the ‘List was a gleam in Craig Newmark’s eye, criminals were setting up dupes with fake offers to buy through newspaper classified and ladies of the evening were peddling themselves through ads in “alternative” newspapers and magazines, so this isn’t a problem unique to Craigslist. But that doesn’t matter to the Herald, which is fighting tooth and nail for its very survival. It doesn’t mind getting into the gutter with its rival, unlike the well-coiffed and oh-so-proper other newspaper in town, the Globe.

Thus it didn’t surprise me this morning to see the front page of today’s Herald blasting in huge type: “Cops hunt Craigslist killer”. The “Craigslist killer.” Oh, you know that the paper’s editors are hoping that the sobriquet sticks. And they offer not one, but four articles in the paper today about the heinous crime, including one profiling “escorts” advertising on Craigslist who are now in fear for their lives.

This is indeed a tragic crime, but apparently the Herald isn’t above making sure its mortal enemy gets shackled to the criminal who committed it.

N.B. Don’t get me wrong. I much prefer the Herald to its pretentious rival on Morrissey Boulevard. It’s the one newspaper I subscribe to and I find its editorial focus much more compatible with my own outlook. I’m just pointing out that the Herald doesn’t have pure motives here.

Photo credit: Flickr.com user AntyDiluvian. Used under a Creative Commons license.

When the GOP has diversity, it’s cynicism

While the Boston Globe offers the expected simpering praise of President Obama’s speech to Congress last night—for example, the reporter speaks of his 60% approval rating as a strength against Republicans when the rating really has seen a precipitous decline since his inauguration; a Republican would not get the benefit of that doubt—the coverage of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Republican response ended with an astonishingly biased attack on Republicans with no concomitant alternative view. This is how the article ends:

“What makes him so appealing to Republicans is he’s an Indian-American representing a Southern state,” said Louisiana State University professor Robert Mann, who evoked the party’s recent election of its first African-American leader. “A lot of it is the same reason they elected Michael Steele their chair: They’re looking to push out in front any bit of diversity they can dredge up.”

Because, of course, non-white people are just figureheads in our party, pushed forward by those fat cat, white men in backrooms to hide the real ugly bigotry of the GOP. Could you imagine a Republican academic getting away with saying that Obama was dredged up by the Democrats to burnish their claims of being the party of diversity? No, there would at least be another sentence offering a rebuttal from the sympathetic point of view.

We’re 36 days into the official transformation of the Fourth Estate into an arm of the White House press office. And the umpteenth day of the mainstream media being unabashedly biased toward liberalism.

The Glory, the Beauty, and the Truth of Catholicism

This is the trailer for a new 10-part television series on Catholicism by Fr. Robert Barron, of Chicago, filmed in high-definition and soon to be available on TV and on DVD.

Catholicism Trailer from Nancy Ross on Vimeo.

I suggest you click on the HD button and watch it in hi-def if you can. Also, do you recognize the soundtrack music?

[Thanks to Cardinal Sean.]

A government with newspapers or of newspapers?

A couple of op-ed contributors to the New York Times warn of a dire future:

Today, we are dangerously close to having a government without newspapers.

I think we’re already past that point, especially as you watch the press fawning over their new president and becoming a virtual extension of the White House and the Democratic Party.

This is the heart of the problem faced by the mainstream media. While the investment gurus from Yale write in their essay about the business challenges faced by newspapers, they miss the very real point that for many Americans newspapers have become more and more irrelevant. The readers turn to non-newspaper online sources not just to have their biases confirmed but to get the other half of the story that a biased media so often don’t— or won’t— present.

The authors’ even make the revealing error of juxtaposing newspapers vs the Internet, missing the point that the Internet is just a new medium to replace newsprint, not an actual competitor. Of course, the beauty of the Internet is that it no longer takes a millionaire to own a printing press and reach a mass audience and for the first time the old guard have to compete against those with a zeal they have lost.

So are newspapers failing because Craigslist is eating up their classified ad dollars? In part. But just as equally, they’re dying because they fail to recognize that epic shift happening around them and they continue to become more irrelevant as shills and not objective sources of news.

Photo credit: Flickr.com user just.Luc. Used under a Creative Commons license.

A glimpse at a media slam on the Church

The Associated Press writes about the effort by the Vatican to re-focus attention on the sacrament of Confession by having some sort of public event at the Apostolic Penitentiary, a kind of ecclesiastical court in which petitions for absolution for reserved sins are heard. It’s a generally okay article, as well as the secular media usually handles such things, and highlights how the sacrament has fallen into disuse. But at the end, the reporter describes the Roman building that houses the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Roman Rota, and the Apostolic Signatura and ends with the usual weird dig at the Church:

Taking up nearly an entire city block, it is just steps away from one of Rome’s most profane piazzas — Campo dei Fiori, filled with bars catering to tourists and college-age Americans studying abroad.

Is that supposed to be humorously ironic? What we’re supposed to walk away with is the impression that despite the best efforts of the old fossils in the Catholic Church, young people are still partying and sinning right under their noses. This is journalism today.

Presidential fitness and the changing standards of the MSM

Here’s some more media double-standards. When Barack Obama’s now-famous pecs showed up on the wires (conveniently so, considering no photo is shot of the president or president-elect without express permission of his security cordon), Michelle Malkin points out how we heard paeans to Obama’s fitness regimen shows his fitness for office, yet when Bush was shown to be dedicated to physical fitness it was a sign of misplaced priorities.

For adoring journalists, you see, Obama’s workout fanaticism demonstrates his discipline and balance in his life. Apparently, what’s good for Obama’s glistening pecs is good for the country. Zaslow quoted Obama Chicago crony Marty Nesbitt, who offered this diagnosis: “He doesn’t think of it as something he has to do — it’s his time for himself, a chance for him to reflect. It’s his break. He feels better and more revved up after he gets in his workout.”

[…]

Former Washington Post writer Jonathan Chait famously attacked Bush three years ago in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times headlined, “The (over)exercise of power.” Recounting how President Bush ran 3 1/2 miles a day and preached more cross-training to a federal judge, Chait fumed: “Am I the only person who finds this disturbing?…What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy.”

Obama doesn’t need a White House Office of Communications or a press spokesman. He’s got the whole MSM ready to pour propaganda into our morning cup of Joe every day. And to regale us with the perfection of all things Obama. Like his pecs.

MSM can’t resist taking potshots at Palin

While it’s always a strong contest every year one of the biggest contenders for “most slanted coverage of a person in the news” would go to the MSM’s coverage of Sarah Palin. And the end of her vice-presidential candidacy didn’t stop it either. This week, the governor received the happy news of the birth of her grandson. So how did the Associated Press cover this happy news? With a constantly evolving wire story that kept re-phrasing a non-objective slam on her candidacy.

Here’s the first version of the story that ran over the wires:

ANCHORAGE — The teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose quest for the vice presidency began to go downhill the day she announced the pregnancy, has given birth to a son, a magazine reported Monday. Bristol Palin, 18, gave birth to Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston on Sunday, People magazine reported online. He weighed 7 pounds, 4 ounces. Colleen Jones, the sister of Bristol’s grandmother, told the magazine that “the baby is fine and Bristol is doing well.”

This is an analytical judgment that doesn’t belong in a straight news story. In fact, it’s a slam that’s made so high up in the lede that it comes before the actual news event being covered! In addition, the remark itself demonstrably false because Palin’s popularity continued to rise after the announcement of the pregnancy. Someone at the AP must have thought that this was just a little too blatant partisanship, even for them so they re-wrote the lede later that morning.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - The teenage daughter of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has given birth to a son months after the announcement of her pregnancy became one of the first dark clouds to swirl over the Alaska governor’s candidacy.

That was no better and still as obvious, so finally they gave up and re-wrote it the way they should have written it in the first place:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The daughter of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has given birth to a son, a magazine reported Monday.

This is just the latest example. In fact, one could argue that the controversy over Bristol Palin’s pregnancy was relatively unimportant—from a political standpoint—except for the constant insistence of the MSM that it was not unimportant, but in fact was alienating social conservatives. While there were some so-cons who questioned her fitness for higher office because of her daughter’s indiscretion, in general most social conservative leaders—and most of the conservative bloggers I read—said it did not affect their assessment.

Another example of the MSM’s distorted coverage of Palin was the way that the impression of Palin by Tina Fey on “Saturday Night Live” became Palin to every liberal blogger and pundit and, through the media, the voting public. Most people still think Palin said she could see Russia from her front porch. She did not. Fey-Palin did. It was a parody of an accurate comment she made that as governor of Alaska she has Russia as a neighbor. No controversy in that. Yet SNL didn’t seem find Obama a worthy target of parody, even with actual whoppers from his mouth, like saying there are 57 states or accusing “bitter” voters of clinging to guns and religion. And so by constant misrepresentation, parody of Palin became “fact.” Nice to see they plan to continue into the new year.

Sarah Palin rocks Saturday Night Live

She was so natural and at ease and relaxed. Good to see her having fun with it.

Yet another old media article on Catholic blogs misses it

All you need to know about the National Catholic Reporter article entitled “No blog is an island — A guide to the Catholic blogosphere” is that it refers to Amy Welborn as a “traditionalist”.

Really? To quote “The Princess Bride”, I’m not sure that word means what you think it means.

‘Nuff said.

JFK lone-gunman theory NOT debunked

The headline says “New JFK findings debunk single-gunman theory”, but that’s not what the story says.

Cliff Spiegelman, a professor of statistics at Texas A&M University, said that five bullet fragments taken from JFK’s body could have come from more than the two bullets which are said to have cut down the president in Dallas in November 1963.

“The claim was made that those five fragments could only have come from two bullets,” Spiegelman said. “Our research showed it could have been two or more.

[…]

The study does not say there were two or more gunmen, only that the single-gunman theory can’t be supported by science. [emphasis added]

To debunk something is to prove it false. If you prove false the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman, then you must be saying there were two or more gunmen. There is a big difference between “could” and “must”. As the italicized words in the quote show, Spiegelman was saying “could”.

Seems like a case of an oversensationalizing headline writer. After all, if it seems to say that there was definitively more than one gunman, that’s a huge story. But that’s not the story here.

The man behind great cinema

Today marks the launch of yet another George Lucas Star Wars film, this time an animated feature called Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and I’m disappointed to say that most of the reviews I’ve seen, from both professional film critics and average Joes, report that the Star Wars dynasty has sunk yet another step. One such negative review comes from TJ who recounts the decline of the Star Wars brand over time. (Warning: Strong language and a minor spoiler. And I don’t buy into everything he writes, but then I haven’t see the latest movie yet.)

TJ points out what was so good about Star Wars: A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, compared to the other four (and now, five) movies in the saga. What was wrong with the Prequels, he posits, is that they were written for six-year-olds, as witnessed by the silly droid army which was given lines like “Roger, roger,” not to mention, Jar-Jar Binks, the most hated sci-fi character since Wesley Crusher strode the bridge of the Enterprise.

And what did Lucas did well in his movies? Battle scenes.

The good parts of the second-trilogy is quite simply the battle scenes. Lucas does them well. It’s why the Death Star invasion at the end of the 1977 movie was so good, why the Hoth battle and Luke-vs-Vader in Empire was so good, and why the best parts of ROTJ were the battle scenes.

In the second-trilogy, we get a multitude of light-saber battles, including Darth Maul, whose lightsaber battle with Qui Gon and Obi-Wan is by far the best part of The Phantom Menace, and why the Jedi battles are the best parts of the next two.

And yet, I think there’s something more that made Star Wars so good. Something that made that aforementioned lightsaber duel in The Phantom Menace so thrilling: John Williams’ score. In fact, it’s hard to imagine Star Wars without the rising crescendo. Go to the StarWars.com site and listen to it and tell me it doesn’t bring it all back. When I first saw Star Wars in 1977 as a 9-year-old boy, all I could articulate as we drove away from theater and I tried to process what I’d just experienced was the (inaccurate) statement: “I love classical music,” (by which I meant, orchestral music, of course. Cut me some slack; I was nine.)

It was the music that defined the sensory experience more than anything. What was the defining emotional moment in The Phantom Menace? That battle between Darth Maul and the Jedi, but it was Williams’ “Duel of the Fates” that got your heart pumping and brought all your senses to bear.

And if you think about it, John Williams’ music has probably done more to define the great cinematic experiences of the past forty years than any one individual. When you look at the the most popular and the highest-grossing movies in that time period, you consistently see one name attached to all of them: Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter.

When he wasn’t composing the scores, Williams was there as the unseen influence on the composers’ shoulder. You can hear echoes of Williams’ work in movies like The Lord of the Rings (James Horner Howard Shore), Titanic (James Horner), the Pirates of the Caribbean, and so on.

I wonder if, hundreds of years from now as historians look back, they will see this as the John Williams era as far as the performing arts go: movies and TV. Perhaps he and Steven Spielberg will be held up as the exemplars of the coming of age of the motion picture arts. I hope so.

But I also wish there was more appreciation of the man and his influence on the cinema today. I’m surprised I don’t see this discussed more often in fact.

Photo of John Williams used under Creative Commons license via Wikimedia. Poster art from StarWars.com.

Catholic World News enters a new era

Catholic World News is dead. Long live Catholic World News… as the all new Catholic Culture project! A couple of years ago Trinity Communications, the company behind Catholic Culture—and longtime provider of CWN’s technical infrastructure—purchased Catholic World News from Philip Lawler, editor and publisher. And now, they’re taking CWN to the next level by incorporating it into Catholic Culture.

This has particular significance for me since I was there at the beginning of CWN and worked alongside Phil for 9 years. I even created the first iteration of CWN’s web site back in 1997! But now CWN is no more, except as a header for a section on the Catholic Culture site.

But that’s okay, because the new Catholic Culture site is great! Phil and Trinity have taken the best part of CWN—the insightful and knowledgeable commentary—and expanded it while preserving the parts no one else was doing as well, including breaking Catholic news and providing links to the breadth and depth of coverage of issues and news of interest to Catholics.

Under the News section are Feature Stories, which is the original reporting CWN is known for, and NewsPlus Stories (the old “NewsBytes”), now with added commentary to give context for other media outlets’ coverage. Under Commentary, you’ll find commentary and analysis by Phil, Jeff Mirus, and others; the Catholic Culture blog, where Phil and Jeff write brief bits; Off the Record, where our old friend Diogenes continues to hold court; Catholic Culture Insights, the archives of Jeff’s weekly email newsletter; Letters to the Editor; and Sound Off, which is the combox for the various articles. The Culture section holds most of what was the old Catholic Culture site, including reviews, information on the liturgical year, the text of the Catechism, the Catholic dictionary, and so on. Best of all there are a bunch of new RSS feeds for keeping track of all this great information.

Keep in mind that the site is still in beta, so there will be occasional glitches, but I’m excited by the promise we see here. Oh, and did I mention that the former pay service is now free, although they are now donor supported. Which means you better feel a moral obligation to support this excellent apostolate if you receive benefit from it, just as much as you would if it were still a mandatory subscription.

I’m happy to see CWN grow and expand into a whole new and promising form of Catholic news and analysis site. Bravo to Phil, Jeff, Peter, and the whole gang at Trinity!

Faithful Traveler introduces you to Catholic shrines

In the breezy, hip style of travel shows on PBS and the Travel Channel, a new Catholic DVD series, The Faithful Traveler, takes you on a visit to Catholic shrines and places of pilgrimage. Well, so far they take you to the Miraculous Medal Shrine in Philadelphia, but they promise to introduce us to more. (They also have video about St. Katharine Drexel Shrine and the National Shrines of St. Rita of Cascia, also in the Philly area, in the works.)

The show is edited, written, and hosted by Diana von Glahn—an attractive and engaging young woman—and directed and shot by her husband David. (I’d compliment him too, but he never appears on-screen.) With Diana’s youth and energy complemented by a soundtrack of both contemporary Catholic music and classic chant, the DVD is an interesting and engaging introduction to a treasure of devotion and Catholic art in our own backyard. In fact, the United States is overflowing with such shrines and pilgrimage sites. Here in the Archdiocese of Boston, there’s at least a half-dozen, probably more, all beautiful locations where you can pray in peace and experience natural and man-made beauty.

I’ve seen guidebooks to America’s Catholic holy places, but a video is much more interesting, because it reveals a lot more than a couple of pages and tiny photos in a book. And it would only be good for more Catholics to discover shrines and visit them.

For the moment, if you’re in Philadelphia, plan to visit, or just want to learn more about some Catholic shrines and devotions (great for families!), check our their site and DVDs.You’ll find that they’re not just travelogues because they take the time to inform you of the saints and devotions behind the shrines themselves.

Incidentally, a nice feature of their site is the “Locations” page, an interactive map of the US that gives you links and information about Catholic shrines throughout the country. Nice.