The hard part is figuring out what your story is…Some of it’s about imagination; finding where the beads go on this necklace; trying to tell a story that has not yet been told.
I particularly liked this quote from David Remnick interviewed in Metro today.
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This is a topless photograph of an 18-year-old A-Level student from London called Amir Massoud Tofangsaza who, if this blog is true, sold a broken laptop on eBay.
I have this photograph of Mr Tofangsaza because the man who bought the laptop for £375, Thomas Sawyer, tired of demanding his money back. So he removed the hard disk and posted its contents on the Internet.
Those contents included photographs of Mr Tofangsaza’s friends and family, about 90 pictures of women’s legs that had apparently been taken with a camera phone, and a selection of gay and straight pornography.
The website entitled The Broken Laptop I Sold on eBay zoomed around the Web. Mr Tofangsaza has of course denied that the laptop was broken or that any of the incriminating photographs posted on the blog were his. Well he would wouldn’t he. He’s received abusive phone calls. And at some point Scotland Yard was called in.
Mr Sawyer’s response? “The site is genuine but I would be happy to take it down after a refund and apology from Amir himself.”
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After the Parade’s Gone By (NYT, May 28, 2006),
Ethics Crisis (Metro, May 26, 2006),
Brownstoner (Metro, May 12, 2006),
Living in Brooklyn one of our greatest sources of pride is Prospect Park, generally regarded among friends as the superior cousin to Central Park.
Not only was Prospect Park designed after Central Park—and is therefore devoid of all the deficiencies inherent in an earlier model—it is also predominantly a local park for local people.
It takes a lot to make us Brooklynites hop on the subway on a holiday weekend when the temperature has hit 80F and head to Central Park. But the other week, while working on a story, I met one of New York’s earliest freestyle Frisbee players who invited me and William to join him in Central Park for some jamming lessons.
More on that at a later date but my thanks to him. And my Memorial Day gift to you, this video of some freestyle players jamming in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park on Saturday.
Central Park, Freestyle Frisbee
PRESIDENT BUSH: Sounds like kind of a familiar refrain here — saying “bring it on,” kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner — you know, “wanted dead or alive,” that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so I learned from that. And I think the biggest mistake that’s happened so far, at least from our country’s involvement in Iraq is Abu Ghraib. We’ve been paying for that for a long period of time. And it’s — unlike Iraq, however, under Saddam, the people who committed those acts were brought to justice. They’ve been given a fair trial and tried and convicted.
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Thanks to Michael for sending this one in. I note that Galloway is already denying it on his webshite.
Since the interviewer in question was Piers Morgan, lovingly referred to as Piers “Morgan” Moron by Private Eye, one could argue the whole thing is a waste of time and not worth more than a mention. Duly noted.
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So we’re back to where we started. I thought I needed a change but I have learned that the grass is not greener in another theme.
Sorry for all the changes. And thank you for your patience and advice.
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And then I go back to the old theme…
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I don’t normally watch the television news but every now and again I like to take some headphones to the gym and channel hop while I’m on an exercise bike. Yesterday I was dumbstruck by a report on ABC7 News.
The report, which lasted a good 60 seconds, was about the cheap price of gas in Iran and consisted of the correspondent telling us that gas only cost 3 or 4 cents a gallon there. It then cut to vox pops with motorists at gas stations in Tehran to find out their thoughts on what it would be like if gas cost 40 cents a gallon.
Amazingly, almost all of them thought it would be a terrible thing if gas cost 40 cents a gallon.
I wonder what would have happened if he had gone to a pump in Washington and asked drivers how they would feel if gas prices were ten times more expensive than they were now? I wonder why the correspondent never gave us an idea how much 4 cents a gallon was in comparison to the average wage or the cost of living in Tehran? And I wonder why twice on the bottom of the screen, we were told that he was reporting from “Tehran, Iraq.”
My guess is that the answer to all of those questions is the same.
PS To be fair we were told that gas cost more than water. But we never found out how much water cost or why water could be relatively expensive.
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It took a good few months, possibly a year to get used to the New York Times style of slowly coming around to the nub of a story. One of yesterday’s front page items completely perplexed Felix Salmon:
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David Carr’s story in the Times yesterday about the uncertainty of life on US newspapers made grim reading:
“I think that quality newspapers could go on for years and attract a very solid readership, but you have an industry with problems that is still struggling to be among the most profitable in the country,” said Mr. Roberts, the former editor of The Inquirer (and a former managing editor at The New York Times). He mentioned John Carroll, who left the Tribune Company after tiring of spending all of his time on the cost side of the business. “John said there used to be a dozen ways to measure success in our business and now there is only one.”
In Print, Staring Down a Daily Worry - New York Times.
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