I caught this image earlier today on Market Street.
The poster reads:
These are times for real change and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we all must protest.
Martin Luther King
We contine to adopt his messages today. Happy MLK Day.
Whoa. Missed this at first: Matt DeVeau ceremoniously honors me in his first blog post. Read here. I'm an omnipresent force at PRWeb.
Like Pele before him, 31-year-old David Beckham is going to play soccer for an American team to try and invigorate the sport's popularity here. The former England captain is leaving Real Madrid to join the L.A. Galaxy for a reported 5-year, $250 million contract, according to SkySports.
"I am proud to have played for two of the biggest clubs in football,'' Beckham said. "I look forward to the new challenge of growing the world's most popular game in a country that is as passionate about its sport as my own.''
Prior to joining Real Madrid, Beckham played for Manchester United, winning 10 trophies including the 1999 Champions League and scoring 86 goals in 387 matches for the club. He didn't fare as well at Real Madrid. He joined the club a year after it won a record-extending ninth European Cup, but the team failed to win a single cup after his arrival.
Beckham's definitely L.A. material. He's now more famous for his lavish celebrity lifestyle and marriage to former Spice Girl singer Victoria Adams than he is for his abilities on the field. The women in the office are going crazy about the idea of him coming to America. Two have them have already decided to fly down to L.A. to watch him play -- and that's exactly why he's getting paid so much.
Just a couple years ago in college, I took a new class called "Online Journalism." The class was long overdue to enter the curriculum. We primarily talked about how print articles needed to be written so that they could easily be transferred to a publication's Web version. I took "Ethics" that quarter as well, taught by infamous professor John Harris. There we debated about whether or not bloggers could be considered journalists, or if we should categorize them as something new entirely.
Fast forward. Days before the iPhone announcement, major daily papers shaped their news stories around blogger speculation. Times are a'changin', and now journalists at this nation's biggest newspapers are jumping ship to a mostly-online publication focusing only on national politics, The Politico.
The New York Times reports "The Politico is finding younger journalists and some veterans — including John F. Harris [not my professor] and Jim VandeHei from The Washington Post, Mike Allen from Time magazine and Roger Simon from Bloomberg News — who are willing to leave the once-secure confines of traditional print to join a start-up."
While this may seem risky, most newspapers nationwide are facing budget constraints, declining circulation and are cutting employees. The Politico is hiring.
“It seems riskier to stay in print than to go to something new,” said Ben Smith, 30, a reporter for The Daily News in New York, who will be writing a blog for The Politico about the 2008 presidential campaign.
It's not all goodwill. Prominent journalists will only leave their posts for the right price, and Allbritton Communications is writing the checks. According to the Times, "[The Politico] publisher, Robert L. Allbritton, 37, scion of the banking and media family that once owned the defunct Washington Star, said in an interview that he would finance The Politico for 'the foreseeable future' and has committed to paying for expensive campaign travel. He has hired a staff of about 50 people, almost half of them journalists."
The Politico will appear in limited print circulation and occasional broadcast, but the primarily online publication will be free in all forms, and Allbritton believes it will turn profits in fewer than five years.
We'll see. Thanks to Wes for flagging this article to me.
Dear friends,
I checked the blog today and found that it's reached the 20,000 hits milestone. Thanks for your support and enthusiasm. I keep this caged monster alive for two reasons:
We'll agree and disagree at times, but we all benefit from feedback that elevates or even changes our ideas.
- Paolo