Owlspotting

A self-conscious Romanian joke says we Romanians are expert in everything. When confronted with this issue-usually when guests on talk-shows give their all on topics they know nothing about–my dad loves to play on that and say things like: “I’m the best soccer player among doctors and the best doctor among soccer players.” Yesterday I […]

I have been home now for almost two weeks but have yet to really tackle Romanian news media. This post will kick off that assignment. It’s a struggle my friends, but someone has to stare the devil in the face. Let’s start with that broadcast phenomenon of the “newspaper review” or “newspaper medley” (although a […]

A journalist friend of mine recently spent a whole day answering calls from readers at her paper. She happened to be on duty on a day where readers were handed a big newspaper booboo: in a tribute to local soldiers who died in Iraq, they forgot a local army man. The newspaper knew this tribute […]

Not that long ago, the New York Times ran a self-referential (and self-reverential) meta story about the portrayal of the newspaper in movies. It was the kind of self-love you profess on the back page of your math-class notebook, where the spelling of your name is adorned with cute flowers and stars, if not smiling […]

The Bucharest bird flu quarantine was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered this afternoon, when host Mellisa Block interviewed Radu Tudor of Jurnalul National about the situation in the Romanian capital. Tudor’s performance was similar to that of other journalists NPR calls in countries or regions they don’t have their own correspondents in. Tudor sounded […]

Let me a start a chronology to build on for the next few weeks probably. March 12: Word that McClatchy made the winning bid on Knight Ridder is out. March 13: Sale is made official. McClatchy says it will put 12 of the papers it just bought up for sale. March 14: Speculations for buyers […]

This week’s European Comission meeting (the one that supposedly was going to decide Romania’s European future) was pretty poorly covered by major American newspapers. But if you want the quick and dirty without swimming through Romanian media speculation or American media ignorance, just read the first two sentences of the Economist’s coverage of the result […]

Earlier today Elle and I got caught up in a Gmail chat about Target’s new haute couture offering. Elle was wondering how this could evolve into an essay and we incidentally held a brainstorming session. I thought it’s a great example of how story ideas can come about and decide to post it despite spelling […]

President Bush delivered a nationally-televised address Monday night trying to get congress to make some progress on immigraton reform. The most talked about part of his speech was the plan to send National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border for one year–6,000 of them. This was arguably the most important piece of news in the […]

The New York Times Magazine ran a spectacular cover story yesterday discussing the future of books in the digital age. This was not at heart a debate over the fate of paper and the loss of tradition, but rather a discussion of technology, its impact on culture and the (potential) fullfilment of the human dream […]