Comments for David Newhoff

Comment on Tilting at Wordmills by elaine khosrova

elaine khosrova — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:12:29 +0000

Spot on. (What does THAT mean?) I’ve begun to wonder how they even teach English sentence structure in middle school these days, what with nouns becoming verbs and fragments all over the place. Still, as a writer/editor I find some of this freedom kind of fun.

Comment on Tilting at Wordmills by Janet

Janet — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:06:13 +0000

Fabulous!

Comment on Citizen Journalism – The Burden is on the Reader by David Newhoff

David Newhoff — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:38:28 +0000

Thank you for responding, and you’re dead right about that date, which is purely a typo (now corrected) on my part. My point is the floor speech happened prior to the vote and was repurposed by somebody well after the vote to create the illusion that Franken voted against the bill, which is simply not true. He voted Yea on 12/1. Because he voted in favor of the bill, I seriously doubt it was the senator who repurposed his own speech to make it look otherwise.

Comment on Citizen Journalism – The Burden is on the Reader by NYC Writer

NYC Writer — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:28:17 +0000

David – The original article in question is not dated 11/17. It’s dated 12/17, two days after the final vote on the defense authorization act (http://is.gd/LttHIu). These are Franken’s own words, taken from his own personal blog space at The Huffington Post (http://is.gd/3gjppc), and aggregated/re-posted at various spots around the Internet, including the site you link to. The situation is even laid out on Franken’s own blog: http://is.gd/Xxxu0N. As I see it, he’s more than entitled to re-purpose his own floor speech — which, as it happens, occurred on 11/29 — when penning a blog item for The Huffington Post. This is not to say that there isn’t plenty of hack journalism on the Internet, but I suspect you’ve chosen a poor case to highlight as an example.

Comment on Glad Tidings and Misgivings by David Newhoff

David Newhoff — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:01:46 +0000

Thank you for commenting, Elaine. And Happy Everything!

Comment on Glad Tidings and Misgivings by elaine khosrova

elaine khosrova — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:17:34 +0000

So I’m a Catholic by birth who shed that religion (mostly because of its chauvinism) and adopted reformed Judaism for ethical community but am essentially a pantheist at heart who nonetheless admires the life and teachings of Jesus and thrives on the rituals of Celtic paganism and the Jewish calendar. In other words, I’m walking my own path of spiritual coherence. And I am grateful to live in a place where I’m free to do that and talk about it.

Thanks David.

Comment on Citizen Journalism – The Burden is on the Reader by David Newhoff

David Newhoff — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:11:36 +0000

Thanks for posting, Michelle. My point is that there is so much volume in the digital age that literally nothing can be taken at face value anymore other than, perhaps, hard news from certain sources. If the NY Times says, “Obama bought a pet elephant,” odds are it’s true because that’s verifiable; and the Times hasn’t degraded to the point where it’s likely to print false data in most cases. But the sheer tonnage of OpEd material posing as news is threatening rational discourse even among rational people. Greenwald, who I mention in the post, has solid credentials and makes very good points about NDAA, for example, but one must read him carefully and recognize that even he writes from premise that Obama and Congress have the intent to foster an Orwellian state of perpetual war. If that’s the bias, then there is no other way to interpret the language in the controversial bill. Thoughtful articles like Greenwald’s multiply and mutate into incendiary headlines written by “iReporters” and other amateurs whose words get passed around the web through social media.

Comment on Glad Tidings and Misgivings by David Newhoff

David Newhoff — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:40:45 +0000

That’s true, although my point is certainly not to evangelize atheism.

Comment on Glad Tidings and Misgivings by Janet

Janet — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:21:56 +0000

I have a friend who recently lost a cousin in her early 50′s; a woman who had been devout Catholic, and apparently prayed her way through a round of cancer. she was in remission. Then it returned and her faith wavered, so that, finally at the time of her death, she had become an full-on atheist. So, yes there are even born-again atheists in foxholes.

Comment on Citizen Journalism – The Burden is on the Reader by Michelle Shy

Michelle Shy — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 07:18:22 +0000

There is certainly a lot of flinging about of unsubstantiated information, especially during the current electoral frenzy (on both sides) and certainly during times of war (seemingly always a war someplace.) And it goes deeper than that, too, to the question of bias. What stories does the media choose to present and what stories does it ignore? How much of a reporter’s information comes directly from sound bites at a press conference instead of from investigative work? Which negative or positive words are used in what context and in relation to which “sides” of an issue?