Category: Uncategorized

Marketplace fans, it’s time for mourning: David Brancaccio is leaving the show.
I’m not a business junkie, but I’m a huge Marketplace fan. I was thinking the other day that I couldn’t think of another media outlet that was more consistently surprising, engaging, and intelligent. You can learn more in a half hour of Marketplace than you can in two hours of All Things Considered.
It looks like the so-so David Brown will replace Brancaccio. My dream replacement: the brilliant Steve Inskeep. (Mainly because I don’t often get to hear Steve at his main job, host of weekend All Things Considered.)

The California recall election of Gov. Gray Davis is such, such fun for news junkies like myself. On October 7, there’ll be a statewide election with two issues: 1. Should Gov. Davis be recalled? and 2. If he is recalled, who should replace him?
Some of the potential craziness:
– There will likely be several Republican candidates for Issue No. 2. The state’s leading Democrats have said they plan on supporting the incumbent by not putting any candidates up for the race. (Someone like Dianne Feinstein would easily win Issue No. 2 if she ran — but she’d also essentially guarantee that the unpopular Davis gets recalled, since a majority of Californians would almost certainly consider her a better option.) So you could have a governor’s race in California — an overwhelmingly Democratic state — with only Republicans on the ballot!
– There will be at least one left-of-center candidate on the ballot: Peter Camejo, a Green Party candidate. If everyone else on the ballot is GOP, could this be the time for a Green candidate to break through?
– The election’s rules are quite clear: There’s no runoff if no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote. Whomever gets the most votes wins — even if he/she only gets 10 or 15 percent of the vote! This is the path Arnold Schwarzenegger will expect to follow if he runs — he’s got the name recognition to guarantee 10 or 15 percent of the vote, and if there are enough candidates splitting the electorate, that could be enough to win.
– That possibility grows more likely when you consider how ridiculously easy it will be to get on the ballot. All you need to do to be a candidate for governor is get 65 signatures on a petition and pay $3,500! That’s it! So, will there be some local Dem who says screw the state party, I’m getting my signatures and getting on the ballot? If so, and he’s the only D on a ballot with 15 Rs, he’s your next governor!
So here the big question: shouldn’t the Left Coast blogosphere unite behind someone — a fellow blogger, perhaps — and get them on the ballot? You can get 65 signatures in a weekend party, and $3,500 wouldn’t be that hard to raise in a PayPal account. There could be a virtual campaign! I’m serious — depending on how this shakes out, if the candidate in question is a Democrat, he/she stands a decent chance of being a contender. Any blog-based candidate is guaranteed media attention. (And is there a better resume line than “sixth place, governor’s race, California, 2003”?)
I’m serious here. Who’s going to step up to the plate?

For those who haven’t seen it, my newspaper’s editorial writers have a blog. They’re even talking about it over at Movable Type HQ.
I played a tiny, tiny role in setting it up — we’re talking tiny, but not so tiny I won’t mention it here. Unsurprisingly — given that the editorial board’s a conservative bunch and its main poster, Rod Dreher, is a National Review alum — it has a tone similar to National Review Online’s The Corner.
(On a related note, if you haven’t seen our print editorial page recently, check it out some time. It’s miles better than it was even a year ago — the opinions are much crisper, and the new boss is very open to trying new things with what’s traditionally been the most staid page of any newspaper. There’s a lot less of the traditional “on the one hand…on the other hand” mushiness of old.)

An addendum to my George Stephanopoulos post yesterday. In June 1993, when I was a freshly minted high school graduate, I had to attend a ceremony at the White House with a bunch of other kids. We stood on an East Lawn stage while Bill Clinton, himself freshly minted as president, gave a nice speech. When he was done, he moved through the crowd, shaking hands with everyone.
(This was a pretty ambitious bunch of kids, so this was a big deal. We all remembered how well Clinton had used that video of the young Bill shaking hands with JFK in his campaign. I in particular felt a certain kinship with Bill back then, as a fellow up-from-poverty Southern boy headed for the Ivy League. I was even contemplating a future political career back then. It was a heady moment.)
Anyway, before he reached me, he came up to a girl who had a simple request:
“Mr. President, I love George Stephanopoulos. Can you bring him out here?”
I don’t remember the girl’s name, but in the days preceding this ceremony, she’d mentioned her plan to find George somehow. This being years before combining the phrases “Clinton administration” and “love with college-aged girls” became taboo, Clinton whispered something to an aide and went on with his handshaking.
A few minutes later, out bounds George Stephanopoulos — the 32-year-old puppy dog George, not the 42-year-old grizzled vet we see on Sunday morning TV today. There were a few squeals from the females in the crowd, along with some appreciative applause from the boys. (Oh, the optimism we had back then!)
George walked up to the girl and shook her hand. She wouldn’t have that and demanded a kiss. He shyly planted one on her cheek. I doubt she ever washed her face again.

I’m actually kind of excited about CafePress getting into the print-on-demand business. Unlike other p-o-d companies like iUniverse (which charges at least $199 per book — and has a lame dot-com name anyway), CafePress charges no setup fees upfront, the same business model as with their t-shirts and mugs.
So as long as you’ve got software that generates PDFs (which includes anyone running OS X or anyone with a recent vintage Adobe product), you can publish short-run books at a reasonable (although not cheap) price. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of bloggers printing up their best posts. I might pull together a few collections of my better newspaper articles. Power to the people!

Newsflash! George Stephanopoulos has sex twice a day!

Gotta love this season preview of the New Orleans Saints. On the squad’s wide-receiving corps, offensive coordinator Mike McCarthy says:
“This is dummy text to use as a gauge for length. Will sub out with real quotes on Monday. This is dummy text to use as a gauge for length. Will sub out with real quotes on Monday. This is dummy text to use as a gauge for length. Will sub out with real quotes on Monday. This is dummy text to use as a gauge for length. Will sub out with real quotes on Monday.”
Strangely, he has similar things to say about the tight ends, the o-line, the quarterbacks, and the running backs.

Very, very sad news: Three members of the Exploding Hearts dead in a van crash. If you hadn’t heard of the Hearts, they were a great Portland pop-punk band — sort of a geeky Ramones with a power-pop heart. I read an interview with them a few weeks ago — they came across as so endearingly young (and a little immature, but hey, they’re all like 20).
Their first and only album, Guitar Romantic, is available on eMusic. Download away.

Giant four-year-olds!
Fake Irish!
Damned dams!
In other news, you should read this book. I want to be Ryszard Kapuscinski when I grow up. What a terrific writer.

Attention web gurus: I have a (small) budget to hire someone for a (small) project.
On my hard drive sits a 8,000-record data file (currently in Excel) with about 10 fields in each record. I want to create a web interface to that data file so it would be searchable (by the first and second fields in each record). Said interface will need to plug into the web site of a major metropolitan newspaper (I’m sure regular readers have no idea which one that might be).
Email me (jbenton at dallasnews dot com) if you’re interested. Note: You will not get rich off this — we’re talking loooow three digits. In all likelihood, the lowest of all three-digit numbers. But if I’m thinking about this correctly, it also shouldn’t take very long. Email me if you’re interested.