Nothing to see here at all. New Orleans didn't
The electronic newspaper, a large portable screen that is constantly updated with the latest news, has been a prop in science fiction for ages. It also figures in the dreams of newspaper publishers struggling with rising production and delivery costs, lower circulation and decreased ad revenue from their paper product.
While the dream device remains on the drawing board, Plastic Logic will introduce publicly on Monday its version of an electronic newspaper reader: a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look — but not the feel — of a printed newspaper.
The device, which is unnamed, uses the same technology as the Sony eReader and Amazon.com’s Kindle, a highly legible black-and-white display developed by the E Ink Corporation. While both of those devices are intended primarily as book readers, Plastic Logic’s device, which will be shown at an emerging technology trade show in San Diego, has a screen more than twice as large. The size of a piece of copier paper, it can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents.
Richard Archuleta, the chief executive of Plastic Logic, said the display was big enough to provide a newspaperlike layout. “Even though we have positioned this for business documents, newspapers is what everyone asks for,” Mr. Archuleta said.
The reader will go on sale in the first half of next year. Plastic Logic will not announce which news organization will display its articles on it until the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, when it will also reveal the price.
Kenneth A. Bronfin, president of Hearst Interactive Media, said, “We are hopeful that we will be able to distribute our newspaper content on a new generation of larger devices sometime next year.” While he would not say what device the company’s papers would use, he said, “we have a very strong interest in e-newspapers. We’re very anxious to get involved.”
If e-newspapers take off, the savings could be hefty. At the The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, print and delivery amount to 65 percent of the paper’s fixed expenses, Mr. Bronfin said.
(snip)
Papers face a tough competitor: their own Web sites, where the information is free. And they have trained a generation of new readers to expect free news. In Holland, the iLiad comes with a one-year subscription for 599 euros ($855). The cost of each additional year of the paper is 189 euros ($270). NRC offers just one electronic edition of the paper a day, while Les Echos updates its iRex version 10 times a day.
A number of newspapers, including The New York Times, offer electronic versions through the Kindle device; The Times on the Kindle costs $14 a month, similar to the cost of other papers. “The New York Times Web site started as a replica of print, but it has now evolved,” said Michael Zimbalist, vice president for research and development operations at The New York Times Company. “We expect to experiment on all of these platforms. When devices start approximating the look and feel of a newspaper, we’ll be there as well,” Mr. Zimbalist said.
LET'S SEE. If I have a laptop -- some of which you can buy for not much more than a Kindle -- I would want to pay money to get an inferior version of what I already get online for free. . . .The folks behind the best ad campaign ever give us perhaps the best Web ad ever.
If Internet advertising were this consistently clever and entertaining, I don't think newspapers would have a big problem in monetizing their Internet editions. I want to go out and buy a Mac right now, don't you?
Well, actually, I've wanted to for a while now. There's just this little issue called money standing in the way.
HAT TIP: The NECreative blog, via Twitter.
For the first time ever, the 2008 Republican Convention celebrated unwed teenage motherhood by seating Sarah Palin's reportedly 5-months' pregnant daughter with her teenage lover, proudly in the VIP row. As the swollen, 17-year-old Bristol Palin complacently gripped her swarthy impregnator's hand, Alaska's governor and the prospective mother's mother sternly lectured on family values and accused "the media" of persecuting her family.
Has the Republican Party gone mad?
No. But perhaps it's watched "The Da Vinci Code" too many times.
Are the Republicans returning to the cult of the goddess?
Maybe. Anything to win the election, right?The Republican wanna-be First and Second Families made a fascinating tableau, with fertility being unabashedly the message. Sarah wore a tight choker of fat pearls, the luminous gift of oysters, enhancers of libido and mimics of male anatomy. Her plain, silvery tunic fit like Joan of Arc's breastplate and set her apart as the GOP's new high priestess. Cindy McCain, swathed in pearls, wore a bright green outfit—highlighting the Republicans' odd claim to now be champions of global warming. And green is also the color of fertility, of shimmering, budding springtime woods, of leafy glens and grassy fields where fertility rites took place until authoritarian Christianity wiped it out. With her tightly-pinched face and platinum hair hanging loose, her older children gathered around her, Cindy stood for fertility well-preserved.
But the frisky Palins are fertility real and present. Bristol showed us her tummy, her breasts, her pregnant fulsomeness. Sarah's husband, whom she calls "The First Dude," a crow's caw of sexual prowess and desirability, exhibited his softer side by cuddling the infant rumored to actually be his grandchild (by the voluptuous Bristol and her lover), although Sarah claims to be the mother.
If there weren't tricolor flags and people wearing elephant hats, one might think we were at Stonehenge.
How will bright green outfits, bouncy boobies, big bellies, sleeping babies, beehive hairdos, and fecund boyfriends help McCain win the presidency?
Because sex sells; sex wins votes; sex seals the deal.
NO, THIS IS a down-home, whacked-out, "there's no eccentric like a Louisiana eccentric" freak-out. This is the crazy aunt you might find in Anne Rice's attic.
Alana Taylor sits in a classroom at the NYU journalism school, looks at her clueless professor and finds the whole experience wholly outdated and totally lacking.Back in class, Quigley tells us we have to remember to bring in the hard copy of the New York Times every week. I take a deep sigh. Every single journalism class at NYU has required me to bring the bulky newspaper. I don’t understand why they don’t let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NYTimes app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it’s the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it’s a big waste of trees.AND YOU MAY ask yourself, well . . . how did we get here?At least I had hoped that this class would be more advanced. I hoped that perhaps my teacher would be open to the idea of investigating other sources of news from the Internet and discussing how they are reliable or not. I hoped that she wouldn’t refer to podcasts as “being a pain to download” and that being aware of and involved in the digital era wasn’t just a “generational” thing.
I am convinced that I am taking the only old-but-new-but-still-old media class in the country. At this point I may not learn too much I don’t already know about my generation and where it’s taking journalism. But one thing’s for sure — I’m certainly going to gain some insight into what exactly they mean by generation gap.
Equipment and facilities of the University's School of Journalism were criticized as being "antiquated" by Chancellor James Wharton in Thursday's edition of The Daily Reveille.SAME AS IT EVER WAS. And yes, Alana, we Young Turks who somewhere along the way turned into journalism fossils feel your pain.
However, a recent sampling of journalism students say the school's facilities are only part of the problem there.
The students said they faced problems in dealing with typewriters and other equipment in bad repair, but said a far larger problem they faced was a curriculum short on practical experience in their fields.
Most of the sampling also said they felt the absence of video display terminals and other state-of-the-art equipment in the school hampered the students in preparing for future work experiences.
"I feel that (the lack of new equipment) is hurting the students' education. We have manual typewriters in our journalism typing room -- out in the field, not only are people not using manual typewriters, they're not even using electric typewriters. They're using VDTs," said junior news-editorial major Eleanor Ransburg.
"It's not keeping you up to date with what's going on now. We're learning the old ways. We should learn the old ways and the new ways.
"One of our guest speakers in class said he hadn't been in the building since he graduated and the chairs looked like the same ones that were here when he was here in the 1950s," she said.
(snip)
[Junior advertising major Cindy] Blanchard also said the advertising curriculum of the journalism school was deficient. "I think a lot of the teachers are good but I think a lot of the structuring is at fault.
"I think the structuring of the class is really kind of deficient. I think we learn more theory and not enough practical application. We don't get to put into practice what we learn in the book. What I've had so far is not too much of what I can use (in the field)," she said.
An associate managing editor for the student paper also criticized the school for not having enough equipment for its students, as well as School of Journalism Director John C. Merrill.LORD. Somebody at that journalism school ought to have said something to that intrepid Reveille reporter (again, with whom I'm well acquainted) about unloading every last jot out of his Stationers' Reporter's Note Book and dumping it into his story. Talk about making a point, rehashing it and then rehashing the rehash. . . .
Lisa Schelp said Merrill is trying to "isolate" the school and train its students to be "academicians" instead of reporters and editors.
"Only having one video display terminal for 25 people in the reporting class is ridiculous, almost every newspaper has terminals," she said. "We don't even have newspapers in the journalism reading room. It doesn't make sense. What we need is exposure to many kinds of newspapers.
"I don't know what his (Merrill's) point is in trying to isolate the journalism school and make us all academicians. We're trying to communicate. We have to communicate with everybody, not just academicians," Schelp said.
We never knew what hit us. But we're learning.
I suspect Alana Taylor, today's frustrated NYU student, will be doing the same in a couple of decades -- dealing with the unknowable curveball the future throws you while you're deeply engrossed in the World That Just Was.
The old Boyd oak is falling in the storm
All the huge, green branches blowing down. . . .
Gustav took our tree out in the gale
I don't think that we can take it
'Cause God took so long to make it
And we'll never have that live oak tree again(with apologies to Jimmy Webb)
A tree that had seen more than 250 years of history at the State Capitol — the last of three historic live oaks remaining in the Formal Gardens — was downed by Hurricane Gustav.
The Thomas Boyd oak, with its large branches held off the ground by cables just high enough for passers-by to bend under, was uprooted by the winds that swept through Baton Rouge.
“That was our major loss,” said Mathilde Myers, assistant horticulture manager for the Office of State Buildings.
Back in the 1700s, Myers’ ancestors, the Cabo de Gonzales family, owned land that ran through the Pentagon Barracks to the Arsenal Garden area, she said.
“It was a horticultural garden back then as well,” Myers said. “It wasn’t just for growing row crops or sugar cane. It was more aesthetic-type gardens. It was more for the love of plants.”
The Thomas Boyd oak was once part of a tree trio in the Capitol garden, accompanied by the Annie Boyd oak and Nicholson oak.
The Boyd oaks were named for Col. Thomas Duckett Boyd, president of LSU from 1896 to 1927, and his wife, Anna Fuqua Boyd.
The Annie Boyd oak was uprooted during Hurricane Betsy in 1965.
The Nicholson oak, named for LSU math professor and two-time LSU President James S. Nicholson, was already declining after it was struck by lightning and had to be taken down in 2000.
A story in the 1961 Morning Advocate quotes the first grounds superintendent, Euberne Eckert, saying he took borings of the tree in 1941.
Based upon his estimate, the oak’s age in 2008 could be 252 years.
“It will make a real impact, as far as a feeling of loss,” Myers said.
“It was the centerpiece of the garden,” said Louis Wolff, horticulture manager for the Office of State Buildings. “It’s really going to change the overall look of the garden.”
Translation:"60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP."
More than $1 billion worth of oil and gas per day is not reaching U.S. markets because of damage done by Hurricane Gustav, the director of one of the largest Gulf of Mexico industry supply ports said.WELL, I GUESS if the press isn't covering it, maybe the billion-dollar-a-day shortfall of oil and gas didn't really happen.Channels leading to the Gulf of Mexico oilfield clogged by storm debris and lack of electricity at Port Fourchon are the leading problems, said Ted Falgout, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which operates the Fourchon site.
Channels leading to the Gulf of Mexico oilfield clogged by storm debris and lack of electricity at Port Fourchon are the leading problems, said Ted Falgout, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which operates the Fourchon site.
Progress toward recovery was made Friday when the port’s Belle Pass Entrance Channel opened to vessels.
Falgout and other officials said losses would have been greater if the storm, which made landfall at Cocodrie Monday morning as a Category 3 with 110 mph winds, had stayed true to initial projections and ramped up to a Category 4.
Port Fourchon officials worried that the storm would cause the catastrophic consequences predicted in an April report, which details the economic impact of a three-week work stoppage.
The report said a storm like Gustav could cause billions of dollars in lost oil revenue and tens of thousands of lost jobs across the country.
Those scenarios did not materialize, officials and economists agreed. So far, no official estimates have been made concerning the overall effect Gustav will have on oil.
The port continued operating after the storm, and remains on track through generator power, as officials wait for traditional electric service to be restored.
“Clearly right now, there’s probably a billion dollars per day of oil and gas unavailable to the American public that this port plays some role in furnishing,” Falgout said, noting that damage to rigs several miles offshore could play a role in the overall equation.
The oil-speculation markets do not appear to be responding to such predictions, however.
“Apparently what the market is telling us is the damage to the Gulf was not bad at all because oil prices have actually fallen in the face of this,” said Baton Rouge-based economist Loren Scott. “My understanding is 2.3 million barrels of oil were not processed because refineries were down. Maybe we will still seek a spike in oil prices when it becomes clear power is out.”
Oh yi yi, ma pouvre Louisiane! Could it be that your inherent joie de vivre leaves you somehow susceptible to unending mal de gouvernement?Terrebonne’s response to Hurricane Gustav has been hampered by poor communication from parish officials, and most of the responsibility rests with Parish President Michel Claudet.
Problems started long before Claudet ceded his leadership of the parish’s hurricane efforts Tuesday to Sheriff Vernon Bourgeois — something no one got around to announcing to residents until a day later. They started before the storm, as Claudet and his emergency-preparedness director, Jerry Richard, refused to answer even the most basic questions from reporters and the public about what the parish was doing to prepare.
One of the greatest examples is an e-mail received by The Courier and various Louisiana TV stations and newspapers Aug. 29, as Gustav strengthened and forecasters projected with increasing certainty that the hurricane would hit here or somewhere dangerously close.
Neither the name associated with the e-mail, nor the subject line, includes anything that would indicate it is an important notification or that it even came from Terrebonne Parish government. The subject line reads, simply, “press release.” Open it, and here is exactly what it says, in its entirety:PRESS RELEASEThat was it?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 29, 2008
6:00 A.M. or 0600 hrs. (8/30/08) the EOC will be fully operational.
Mandatory evacuation 4 pm (1600) Saturday, August 30th by declaration of Parish President Michel Claudet.
You would think an announcement of that magnitude would have warranted elaboration from the parish president – not a minion or spokesman but the man charged with the wellbeing of 110,000 residents whose lives and property were threatened by a powerful hurricane. And not just to the media but to the people he represents.
(snip)
Throughout this storm, our questions to Claudet and Richard have mostly been met by vague answers, unreturned phone calls, evasiveness or a parish president and emergency director who say they are too busy to tell the people what they are doing to protect them. Sometimes, they simply hang up.
Claudet told the Parish Council, whose members questioned at a meeting Thursday why they, too, have been left out of the loop, that knocked out cell phones and other technological problems impeded communication during the storm.
Once the phones came back on, he said, “all hell broke loose” as officials worked to respond to myriad callers.
“No one can prepare for something like this,” Claudet told the council. “It’s impossible.”
Three days after Hurricane Gustav made landfall, more than 95 percent of Gulf of Mexico oil production is still shuttered and a key hub for the offshore petroleum industry remains without power.DOESN'T THIS MEAN that the United States has just lost a pretty big slice of its oil supply for the foreseeable future? And isn't that a big deal?Gustav slammed into Port Fourchon, a hub used by more than 60 companies to service Gulf rigs and platforms, before coming ashore in Cocodrie on Monday. Port Fourchon also houses the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, a facility that receives about 12 percent of the nation's oil imports.
Director Ted Falgout said Thursday that Port Fourchon may not be able to receive power for four to six weeks. He also said storm sediment and stones displaced from a jetty may leave one of the port's channels impassable for as long as a week.
Meanwhile, the energy sector is beginning to reoccupy its facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, although the bulk of oil and gas production remains shut down. More than 87 percent of the Gulf's natural gas production remained shut down on Thursday, down from 92 percent on Wednesday. More than 95 percent of Gulf oil production remained shut down on Thursday, the same amount as Wednesday.
As of Thursday, 73 percent of the platforms in the Gulf and 52 percent of the rigs in the Gulf remained evacuated. Platforms are the offshore structures from which oil and natural gas are produced. Rigs are offshore drilling facilities.
I cannot and will not vote for Barack Obama. I cannot and will not vote for a candidate as devoted to abortion -- indeed, infanticide -- as the junior senator from Illinois and his "nutroot" enthusiasts.If Sarah Palin crashes and burns this campaign season, it will be a pity for many reasons, not least because we will no longer have the opportunity to read clarifying missives like the one Mark Steyn received today from a reader in Washington state:AND THE SOLE REASON I would vote for a party I otherwise loathe would be to spite Nazi monsters like Mark Steyn's correspondent in Washington state.This abortion prohibitionist hag won't cut it among women with brains. And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed.
Mrs. Favog and I love September.
LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva made the official announcement Wednesday that Saturday’s game between No. 7-ranked LSU and Troy has been postponed to Nov. 15. Tickets already purchased for the Troy game will be honored Nov. 15.AND RIGHT NOW, "hopefully" is up for grabs:
Alleva, LSU System President John Lombardi and Chancellor Michael Martin met Tuesday to discuss options after Gustav ripped through the area Monday.
Moving the game to Monday was not an option and the thought of playing the game in the Superdome or anywhere in the state was also turned down.
“This decision was a university decision and really wasn’t made until earlier (Wednesday) morning when we were sure that we had to postpone the game,” Alleva said.
The determining factors for the postponement were the condition of Tiger Stadium and the LSU campus, as well as the city’s current predicament.
LSU’s campus incurred several pockets of major damage and the venerable football stadium was not spared.
While there isn’t apparent structural damage to the 84-year-old “Death Valley,” the interior absorbed a notable series of blows.
Several seats on the west side of the stadium were damaged and the 200- and 300-level club seats were particularly hard hit, with several awnings ripped away.
Associate athletic director for facilities and grounds Ronnie Haliburton said several team bleachers from the sidelines apparently blew into both sides of the stadium.
The natural grass surface was also victimized with several gashes and divots from debris. Haliburton and his staff spent much of Tuesday removing debris.
The overriding problem with the stadium, though, was as of Wednesday there was no power and no guarantee it would be restored by Saturday and be reliable for a game.
When all factors were weighed, the bottom line was a stadium that wouldn’t have been playable.
“There were a lot of factors why we had to do it,” Alleva said. “The first is safety. Our stadium suffered a lot of damage. There are windows blown out. We don’t know the condition of the scoreboard and the lighting system. … There’s no power and we don’t know when power is going to come back on.
“The city of Baton Rouge is in too bad a shape to take resources away to play a football game. We’ve got to worry about the citizens of Baton Rouge and getting them power and food and water that they need. We’ll reschedule this game and hopefully the city of Baton Rouge will back on its feet shortly.”
The focus shifts to a Sept. 13 home game against North Texas, but even that may need to be done tentatively.
With crews scattered around the greater Baton Rouge area trying to restore power, there’s no guarantee LSU’s campus will get immediate attention.
“My biggest concern is to make sure the stadium is ready to go next weekend,” Alleva said. “And we’re going to make sure it is, but that’s still a concern. We have to get contractors in here, and obviously contractors are very busy. We have to make sure we get the stadium safe for next weekend.”
UNDERSTANDABLY, folks in Baton Rouge -- and Houma, Plaquemine and West Feliciana Parish -- are wondering what up with that?
You know the old saying, "When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME"?Capital City Press did not publish a newsprint edition of The Advocate on Tuesday because it did not rent a backup generator to power the presses halted by Hurricane Gustav.UNREAL. That paper has a new printing plant, and you'd have to wonder why The Advocate's powers that be didn't just eat that cost upfront as part of the build-out. Especially in hurricane country.
Instead, it posted the 48-page product it put together the night before in a format that retains the layout the newspaper would have had in print and distributed 200 office-paper copies Tuesday afternoon to agencies providing recovery services.
Beginning today, the paper is being printed by The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette until power is restored to Capital City Press’s Rieger Road printing facility, which could take several days or longer, Publisher David Manship said.
The newspaper’s content is produced at the editorial and administrative offices on Bluebonnet Boulevard, which have backup power.
Manship said Entergy Corp. told the paper before the storm that the printing facility could have power back by Thursday, but Manship pointed out the paper will be in line behind hospitals and other emergency service providers and that it could take longer.Thursday’s paper and subsequent editions will be larger than today’s 16-page paper.
It also will begin running advertising again, though ads will be contained to recovery-related services.
Manship said the paper will be delivered to parts of the metro area where carriers have access. He also said carriers will make papers available at points close to those areas they cannot reach because of downed trees and power lines.
The Daily Advertiser printed 50,000 copies of today’s paper when it finished printing its own, at 3:30 a.m.
Manship said the goal is to have papers delivered by noon.
“We’ll … distribute them as best we can,” he said, noting traffic and fuel availability will be major factors.
Executive Editor Carl Redman said today’s edition seeks to balance much-needed information about the storm with other elements — comics, puzzles and some national sports news — that offer a sense of normality.
He said the main challenge so far is getting reports in from the field because of the lack of power and the unreliable communications infrastructure.
He added the newsroom is using the Web site to get information out as quickly as possible and is posting more photographs than usual.
(snip)
Manship said he had to decide last week whether to pay $20,000 for a back-up generator by Thursday and decided against it because he didn’t think the printing facility would lose power.
“We made the decision that we didn’t want one,” he said, “and it was obviously a bad call on our part.”
While he conferred with a couple of department heads, Manship said the call was his.
“I was the ultimate decision-maker on that,” he said.
Newspapers generally pride themselves on performing their civic function regardless of — and especially during — difficult circumstances.
Tuesday was the first time in memory that The Advocate wasn’t published on a day it was supposed to.
