News

Touch
$43.99

Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy (Institutions of American Democracy)
$24.95
Each day I walk from my lonesome hermitage across the border to freedom in Mexico, to buy the daily El Diario published in the Ciudad Juarez, and read it over guacamole and lettuce.

This newspaper each day is as substantial, with more sections than any Sunday edition in the USA. On Sundays, in fact, it is twice as big.

And each day I find international news agencies such as Agence France Presse and Reuters giving the news, nothing but the news, and all of the news, from around the world.

Even the daily Hollywood section makes that look interesting. How does that poor Brad Pitt put up with it all? And that beard?

Today, Veteran's Day, I read in the Mexican daily a long article by a writer for El Diario, Alberto Ponce de Leon, examining in great detail the fact that one in four veterans in the USA are homeless. Did that make the news today in the USA? Citing credible sources such as the National Coalition of the Homeless and the Department of Defense, and visits to Fort Bliss, and an interview with a homeless vet El Paso, Ponce de Leon finds that at some time 400,000 are found homeless during the year. Almost half of them are Vietnam era vets, but also from the Second World War through Iraq. Two thirds served our country for three years or more, with a third in combat zones.

These statistics speak for themselves; the professional and verifiable manner in which they are nakedly reported does far more to expose the truth, the news, than any overheated rhetoric from Fox or Rupert Murdoch or Rev. Moon's Washington Times.

So why can't we have such professionalism here among our own journalists, where we require the truth to keep our republic well informed and our democracy true?

Doesn't sell advertising. Heat, not light, is required to drive profits.

The New York Times, our supposed journal of record, has as majority owner now the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who holds it almost as a charity, as a point of pride, not as a profit making enterprise. The Boston Globe, its final remaining competition in the NorthEast, is now a franchise of the Times and going under, whereas my dad as a boy sold newspapers morning and evening on Boston's mean streets, when the number of newspapers were without number.

Now they can barely survive, and go under without outside support.

What's going on?
READ THIS BOOK!

Let me share one more item from my local daily paper. On page 12A in El Diario's ample Opinion section (which normally runs well over a dozen pages) dated October 15, 2009 we find an editorial written by Attorney Sergio Conde Varela, a gentleman who in his photo appears pushing seventy years old and who writes with great insight and bite, entitled The Tsunami Against the Press.

Atty. Conde writes that in number 168 of Le Monde Diplomatique there is an article signed by Ignacio Ramonet, former director of that magazine, which reports that no less than 120 daily newspapers have fallen into bankruptcy in the USA. The article points out that The Times and the Independent of London, the Paris Le Monde, Spain's El Pais, and other such well-known newspapers are in bankruptcy. Loss of advertising is blamed in the article.

The Christian Science Monitor has ceased its paper edition. The Chicago tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle have fallen into bankruptcy, and Murdoch's Wall Street Journal is losing two and a half billion euros (imagine how much that is in REAL money!).

Attorney Conde Varela concludes his article praising El Diario de Ciudad Juarez, which I also do. I have found it true and reliable, and a great joy to read, and, as Conde points out in others, I make a fierce effort to get it every day, and as Conde writes others do, I save its articles, such as this excellent editorial which I have now saved a month. In fact about every few months, I find I need to clear out my tiny pickup truck cab (single wide) and the kitchen floor and other places of all the newspaper which has accumulated, and lamenting each leaf, I consign them to the trash, lamenting strongly still losing that all important article, e.g., on the latest length and color of Brad Pitt's new beard.

A newspaper is the backbone of democracy. Look at Tom Paine. Look at Ben Franklin. Look at what very little remains, and weep.

Through my literary tears, as an act of civil resistance, I volunteer at my local US paper as a photojournalist for these past years and have often sent by e-mail from Mexico a handful of articles a day, dozens of articles a week, ever under the proud, brave and mighty motto: Often Published; Never Paid! Sunday night in fact I went to the scene of a shooting to take photos and do interviews, and Tuesday they were published.

Yesterday my editor there left me urgent e-mails to call him, and I had to come to Mexico just to get a phone connection to his offices thirty miles from the border. He said he wanted to start paying me free-lance. I begged he not turn my greatest joy into a job. My long passed grandfather the photojournalist for the Boston Record-American might understand, and smile upon me for adding my own little grain of sand keeping American journalism alive.

READ THIS BOOK, and please, please, please, Buy a newspaper TODAY!

This award winning study is the best book I have received through amazon, and vine, the most important book any of us can read, and it is the best written book because it was written by a true newspaperman.

Much has described it here. Please let me add this as well, my personal testimony, my personal plea for our newspapers, the backbone of any real democracy.

Eforcity New 10 Ft HDMI to HDMI Digital Video Cable GOLD-PLATED
$10.82
Bought this cable for my PS3 slim and it's perfect for the price. I don't regret having bought this.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon Soundtrack
$18.98
I really like this CD. While I think the Twilight soundtrack is a bit better than this New Moon soundtrack, it's still definitely worth buying (especially for the price!). I really don't think you can buy it for any cheaper than this. When I first listened to this soundtrack, I was a bit dissappointed and thought some of the songs were REALLY weird (I think it's because I don't usually listen to this type of music). However at the same time I couldn't STOP listening to it! Now I do so every day, twice a day, since I got it a month ago! It seems odd, but once you listen to it once or twice and warm up to it, you realize how great the CD is! I would list the "highlight" songs...but I then I would be listing 11 of the them...so I guess you could say it's a great CD and it is definitely worth giving it a try! Even if you aren't a Twilight fan, it's still great and can be enjoyed by the biggest Twi-hards or by the most extreme anti-twilighters!