MMMM # 468 -- Death Reports, Dan Rather speaks, and Olbermann uncovered.

  

   I keep wondering if the main website of what used to be the three largest daily newspaper in Alabama is actually an entity independent from the print product now. The papers are only printed three days a week, but al.com--like all of the net--operates 24/7. And it seems to operate using methods that the newspapers would never have allowed.

     It has become standard procedure for them to quote anonymous commentators within the bodies of news stories. 

"WackedOutCalera" said such and such about it" etc.

     And now, regarding the death of a little boy by accidental hanging in North Alabama on Friday, al.com wrote:

The chief said he wasn't yet releasing the boy's name or address to make sure all of his extended family members had been notified. Family and friends, however, identified him as AJ Underwood.

     Basically an online up-yours to those "extended family

members". I guess the online folks know better than the local officials about releasing the name of a little boy. Do they actually have any editors online?

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     Keith Olbermann wrote a note to then President Bill Clinton apologizing for his part in the huge coverage of the Monica Lewinsky story. The note came to light in the release of materials form the White House response the growing scandal in 1998.
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     Last night's 60-Minutes included a segment on the N.Y. Times reporter who the Obama Administration is trying to put in jail for refusing to reveal  his sources in a groundbreaking story about the Government using the NSA to spy on U.S. Citizens. And the former NSA chief says he is "conflicted" about jailing the journalist. 
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     Stating the obvious, Dan Rather spoke before a group in Utah last week about the demise of advertising funded journalism...

“Now that is pretty much gone, and nobody has come up with a sustained model of any large size that can finance that kind of journalism,” Rather said.

     Of course the media in which he earned millions---TV---is still very much in business and making money. TV is the #1 source for news for the majority of Americans. He's mostly talking about newspapers, mortally wound by a digital arrow. Another way to saying that newspapers used to break most of the news, though that is changing.

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of TimLennox.com The first one was posted on 6/15/2008]