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I love this column in HuffPost by Peggy Drexler: The High Cost of Low Information . With so much information out there, sometimes it's easier to stick with the sources we're comfortable with. How do we fight the lethargy? The From the Editors column in the latest AARP Bulletin ( You Be the Reporter ) encourages voters to get informed. Among the tips: 2. Differentiate among news, opinion and advertising. As Stony Brook professor Jim Klurfeld says, “Evaluate sources. Evaluate sources. Evaluate sources.” There’s a difference, for example, among the Congressional Budget Office, the Heritage Foundation, the White House Office of Management and Budget, and the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities. 3. Be aggressive. Being a good news consumer today is hard work. On the Internet, rank and popularity of a story do not necessarily mean reliability. This is hard work, even for professional journalists. But our future depends on it.

New video game lets players kill Woodward and Bernstein . Is this part of the anti-media conspiracy, or what? In New Yorker. Top 25 Web 2.0 Search Engines . From the Online Education Database. Have heard of only a few of these.... 15 journalists' outstanding personal sites , from 10,000 Words. Not one here I'd seen before. Good stuff. 10,000 Words . Hadn't seen this before, but it's "Where journalism and technology meet". Looks useful, with guides to online tools, shooting video, recording audio, lots more. Including one explaining that text is the foundation of journalism: ...good text will always be the foundation of any website, news or otherwise. Text is what pulls in search engines and, in turn, visitors. If they don't like what they are reading, whether it be a story, blog post, or caption, they won't return. On that note, over at Web 2...Oh really , from Craig Stoltz: five lessons from a year of blogging . Last recommendation: Write short and u...

When things aren't going well, Americans need to find a bogeyman to blame it on. The 'communists' were an easy target in the 1950s and 1960s, with a real menacing country to blame. After the end of the Cold War, things got murky. There were always hippies and left-wingers, race baiters and internationalists. Lately, though, the focus on 'Liberals' has been becoming toxic. All someone has to do is suggest Obama has a liberal, left-wing record and it becomes exaggerated to 'extreme left-wing, socialist'. The 'greens' are responsible for gas prices because they've destroyed America's ability to extract all the oil we want. 'Liberal' has become an offensive political charge. How in the world did this happen? The fruit of this hatred: the man who went into a church in Knoxville yesterday firing a shotgun, killing two and wounding seven more. Why? The police reported this morning it was 'hatred of the liberal movement'. (Knox Views...

I've been out of town and hoped to update the blog during my trip but didn't see anything to blog anyway. I've been avoiding politics and there hasn't been much research news, but now that the political season is heating up even more, I expect it's time to start doing some politics links here. Watch for those. Some things I've noticed, though: In some really bad news, Genie Tyburski has announced she's shutting down The Virtual Chase . The website and weekly newsletter are incredibly helpful for legal researchers as well as news researchers, and it will be missed. Tyburski will keep the website open for several months, but is willing to hand it over to another legal librarian/researcher. Any takers? New from Google, a website/blog/wiki blend called Knol (for unit of knowledge). This site makes it easy for writers to post long articles on subjects they have expertise in. So far the articles have a heavy medical lean, such as this excellent guide to Type 2...

For lovers (and seekers) of statistics, Shirl Kennedy has put together a nice list at Resourceshelf of Niche Statistics . Among the unusual stats collected here, links to lots of the Department of Defense's personnel stats, a great resource that isn't easily found by searching (and plagued by occasional URL changes). But I'm most impressed by the great list of sports business statistics posted by an Econ professor at U.Mich: Sports Business Data . Directories of this sort of thing have come and gone over the years and sometimes the only things you can find are pay services, so this should be really welcome to any researcher needing sports data. Also linked on Resourceshelf today, the National Archives' collection of historical documents being shared with the new World Digital Library . Included, images of the Declaration, Constitution, and other major docs, as well as photographs by great American photographers like Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange....and, well, Nixon mee...

Ocean Conservancy Releases Report On Reef Management: How Florida and National Park Service Marine Reserve Policies Undermine Efforts to Protect Coral Reef Ecosystems . Turns out that Biscayne National Park is in worse shape now than it was when it was created in 1980. FWC and NPS have taken no action to fulfill their obligations to protect coral reef ecosystems in Biscayne National Park since they began reviewing their management plans in 2002. "Biscayne National Park once had some of the most spectacular coral reefs in Florida. The native communities they support desperately need our immediate action"... During our years boating and snorkeling southern Biscayne Bay and the offshore reefs, we watched this happening. By the time we left Florida, it wasn't fun to look at the ruined reefs any more, here or in the Keys. And this: NOAA Report States Half of U.S. Coral Reefs In "Poor" or "Fair" Condition . So sad. And, from Public Employees for Environment...

That's what this MSNBC report calls librarians, specifically librarian (and former newspaper reporter) Carol Kreck, who was ticketed for holding a "McCain=Bush" sign outside a town hall meeting. ProgressNow has the video , plus an appeal for Kreck's defense fund. ( Updated: ) but wait! the wingers have found out that, yes, she is a former reporter! and may be connected to Progress Now! So obviously she's a bad person and deserves whatever she gets (one commenter here wondered why she wasn't tased). Arghhh. More bad press for the McCain campaign: MojoBlog's shocked reaction to McCain's calling Social Security a 'disgrace'. This is not the first time that McCain has hinted that he will follow in Bush's Social-Security-dismantling footsteps. More here and here (McCain's Ignorance about Social Security Is the Real "Disgrace") .

Great discussion by Jay Rosen on the Jessica DaSilva flap (yesterday's post) at Pressthink: Big Daddy Newspaper Has Gone and Left Journalism . Lots of links to reaction to her blog and the story of dying newspapers in general here. Most of all, a link to a new site that is an antidote to the 'curmudgeon class': Tree House Media Project . Check out the blog , too. You gotta love a site that proclaims: Fuck Craig's List. Fuck Wall Street. Yes, we have ample reason to be bitter. Times have never been worse for newspaper journalists. And Da Silva? The girl's got a future in some sort of journalism. Here's her comment on the Pressthink posting: I admit I'm young, but I like to think of myself as optimistic and hopeful about journalism. And I attribute that to having an open mind in describing the role of journalist; it's not just paper anymore. Another problem I (and my peers) have encountered in internships is an eagerness to turn us away from journalism or ...

On the journalism front, there's a little flurry of discussion over how news organizations need to rebuild themselves, leading to this memo from Tampa Tribune editor Janet Coats on the plans for an 'interactive newsroom' joining the newspaper, online and television news processes. Last week, lots of bloggers and commenters reacted to a posting by Tampa intern Jessica DaSilva, "It's worth fighting for" , quoting Coats' talk with newsroom staffers. Lots of the comments here were negative (sample:) Wow, you really are young and naive, aren’t you? Someone sent me the link to your blog, and I almost had to laugh, it was so ridiculous. I’m truly amazed that in one of your other posts, you can tell reporters to stop whining and do something about their situation. What, praytell, young lady, would you like them to do? This lead to Ryan Sholin's posting, Declare your independence from the curmudgeon tribe . Hmm. It's hard all around, and on some of these ...

Swiss Army Librarian , a nice blog from a Mass. reference librarian (now on my bloglist ), compiles a good set of links to sites about gas economy myths, driving tips, and cheap gas finders. Included, a link to a Snopes debunking of a persistent email about boycotting gas companies that buy gas from the middle east. Why does anyone read, let alone pass on, these things? In Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens gets waterboarded , somewhere in western North Carolina, and says, guess what? It is torture. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture. (For those who would find this educational -- or amusing, there's a video.)

Joel Achenbach is watching the blogs who claim to get the news the 'mainstream media' don't: News we remembered to report . And, in a later posting, down near the bottom of this roundup , Joel links to a Blogoland comment on blogger Glenn Reynolds' brag about 'better than mainstream media' reporting on Iraq, which links to: A New York Times story expanded upon by a blog A straight ABC News report (twice) A straight Reuters story A straight Knight-Ridder story The New Republic’s Iraq’d blog A link to USAid’s website A link to Iraq the Model commenting on some local newspaper accounts an L.A. Times story examined by a blog a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story examined by a blog A straight AP report a New Zealand newspaper story examined by a blog A link to a round-up of Iraq blogs A link to the WMD- Intelligence Commission report A link to some sort of ID bracelet/donation site A link on “ways to support the troops” A link to an Iraq toy drive Blogoland's comm...

A couple of these may have been posted before, but worth a reminder: The Mike Wallace Interview , from the 1957-58 TV program, archived at UTexas. WTO Trade and Labor Issues , a guide to resources on the Web from a Cornell librarian. Health News Review , rates news stories on health issues. New ResourceShelf Collection: Media Guides, Factbooks, Backgrounders, and Press Kits Policy Archive search or browse for public policy research including topics from agriculture to transportation. VINcheck lets you find out if a vehicle is stolen or has been totaled. Free for 5 searches a day, from National Insurance Crime Bureau.

This memo has been forwarded, I suppose, to lots of people, but luckily, one of them was Bob Norman, who posted it on his Daily Pulp blog: the list of 42 newsroom staffers who are leaving the Miami Herald, with commentary on several of the long-timers from Manny Garcia. Included, three of the few remaining library staff. Not needed, now that archiving's being offshored to India..... So sad. (Oh, and speaking of the Pulp and layoffs, it is just stunning to read the comments on the post about layoffs at the Palm Beach Post from last week. Apparently it was linked on Drudge, and neanderthals from around the country decided to use the post as a vehicle to proclaim their hatred of 'liberal, left-wing, commie socialist' journalists. How depressing.)

Haven't posting anything here for a few days. Just haven't seen anything I wanted to link to. But if you'd like some pictures from the mountains to cool off your hot summer holiday, I've been posting some things to my other blog, Southern Highlands Cam . Including pictures from today's small-town Fourth from this morning.