The Source Diverse

The internet information revolution

2008-02-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

http://blog.daylife.com/?p=1876

featuring all of us.

The Source Diverse scarcity: We need you

2008-02-25T19:52:00.004-07:00

1. My passion in analyzing differences in news reporting is satiated by the Daylife Blog.
2. Time is not on my side, no it's not.
3. But the Source Diverse will not die, it will live in peace and scarcity.
4. In the meantime, non-Daylife-able posts will go here, but realize the Daylife platform is > a single blog, even one as wide-reaching and great as the Source Diverse.
5. You tell me.

What's going on?

2007-12-31T16:53:00.000-07:00

With so much news of late dominated by the unfortunate tiger mauling and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto (and the resulting events) what's going on in your neck of the woods?

My neck of the woods is primarily seeing snow, with a healthy dose of Cabinet secretary Mike Leavitt (potential) impropriety.

This is a Major News Source: CNN

2007-11-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

YouTube at its most useful

2007-10-17T10:07:00.001-06:00

Here

pwnage Illustrated, Pamplona edition

2007-09-15T15:12:00.000-06:00

Leave bulls alone.

All photos, AP.

Debbie Schlussel's Embarrassing Moment

2007-09-14T12:23:00.001-06:00

Here's where Debbie Schlussel tries to have it both ways.

She starts her tirade by calling out a reporter for being judgemental:

"USA Today 'reporter' Andrea Stone, for instance, must think she doubles as an editorialist. Her report in today's edition features loaded, biased opinions with words like 'erroneous' (regarding most Americans' belief) and 'scariest' regarding other numbers in the poll."

And goes on to do the same things herself. For example when she writes

"As one who sees the growing threat of Islam within our borders, I'm glad most Americans see us as a Christian nation. That means that, likely, most still believe strongly in Christianity. And that's why our country is not yet in the position of Europe a/k/a Eurabia (a term coined by Bat Ye'or)"

she is both making a judgement and exhibiting a strong bias (in this case against Islam, elsewhere in her post she shows prejudice against atheism).

Her entire point is summed up when she says "Freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from religion," and what's most interesting here is that this also sums up her biases as well. Which is to say, it's OK to choose a religion, as long as you have religion....unless this religion doesn't believe in a Christian God.

Listen folks, being subjective has it's place. And I don't particularly care about anyone's religion, but if you are going to write a diatribe against being an "editorialist," you best not be doing the same things you rail against. It's an embarrassment. And that's my opinion, and I will not pretend it's fact. And that's OK with me. Thanks for your time; enjoy the rest of your day.

The Source Diverse Rises

2007-09-13T11:20:00.001-06:00

...stay tuned. We're coming back, and we're coming back big.

The Sand vs. Shark Study

2007-06-21T09:57:00.000-06:00

Many outlets have picked up the story about sand being more deadly than sharks. For example, see the Daylife pages about it. Just about all of the headlines, and most of the stories themselves, focus on the fact that sand holes have killed more people than sharks over the same period of time.
Admittedly, this whole topic is silly.

However, focusing on sand being more deadly than sharks makes it even sillier.

More people are around sand, during more times of the year, than are ever around sharks.
Fine, sand is dangerous -- why not make that the focus of the story? If you don't think that the danger of sand is a big enough story on it's own, then comparing it to shark attacks barely masks that fact.
The study being used as the foundation of the story is about the dangers of sand holes, not about the nondanger of shark attacks.

Note: Here's a link to an extract of the actual study, subscribers to the New England Journal of Medicine can see it in full here.

Reuters' Quirk

2007-06-13T20:04:00.000-06:00

On the Reuters landing page, the following subcategories/subheadings are provided to ease navigation of their vast news collection:

1. Investing
2. Business
3. News

Number three really narrows it down...

not.

French Socialists undone by family sparring

2007-06-11T11:49:00.000-06:00

Says the London Times Online:

"The latest spat between Ms Royal, who lost the presidency to Mr Sarkozy last month, and Mr Hollande, her party leader and father of their four children, was too much for some Socialists who blamed them both for the party’s electoral misery."

The New York Times chose to focus more on fact, and little on backstory, offering this summary:

"The main opposition, the Socialist Party, received 24.73 percent, meaning that it could lose more than half of its 149 seats, pollsters projected. The result reinforced the disarray on the left since its presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, lost to Mr. Sarkozy last month."

Daylife has photos.

Jobless Claims: Fox vs. USA Today vs. Readers

2007-06-08T12:45:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, the department of labor released their latest Unemployment Claims weekly report. This gives us a great opportunity to compare media coverage to direct source material.

From the report itself:

"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 261,509 in the week ending June 2, a decrease of 12,407 from the previous week. There were 260,263 initial claims in the comparable week in 2006."

Fox News leads by saying:

"The number of U.S. workers signing up for unemployment aid edged down slightly last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday in a report underscoring stability in the labor market despite sluggish growth."

The USA Today also accentuated the positive by stating "the report suggest[ed] that the labor market remains healthy despite a slowdown in economic growth." Basically, the argument in both cases is that with fewer people filing claims, more people must be working, YAY!

So, who out there wants to take on the negative? Well, for one, the claim drop did not happen across the board, as "[t]he largest increases in initial claims for the week ending May 26 were in Texas, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Indiana." Caveat: this list is based on the seasonally unadjusted data. The report also points out that more states had an increase of 1000 people filing claims, than did states having a decrease of 1000 people filing claims.

While it is true that the report basically paints a pretty picture, at least on a state-by-state basis, someone must highlight the negative.

I'm asking for your help. The Source Diverse readers generally have great suggestions. Can you dig up some articles which take the report and slant or highlight the negative? Hint: Try local papers. Double hint: Try local papers in Texas, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Indiana.

Or, can you form your own opinions of the report? In this day and age, where the public gets direct access, via the web, to this kind of source material there is no reason to just take what is written about the material as gospel. Dig in, get your hands dirty.

Enjoy your day.

Oil, Nigeria, CNN, Reuters

2007-05-21T14:55:00.000-06:00

Reuter's says:

Oil roars past $70 on Nigeria concerns

CNN says:

Oil settles above $66 on Nigeria concern

Source Diverse Blocked in China

2007-05-21T12:54:00.001-06:00

USA Today vs. NY Times

2007-05-11T14:06:00.000-06:00

Both the USA Today and the New York Times allow users to search the news by their most popular news of the day, broken down in various categories, e.g., most emailed.

Top 3 New York Times most emailed, last 24 hours:

Top 3 USA Today most emailed:

Right away, it's easier to tell that people are not emailing each other the big stories, because, presumably anyone that cares can already find those easily enough. I'd assume people are emailing their friends stories they may not otherwise read. Looking further, and I honestly don't have a real idea about this, but I would assume (small sample size to be sure) that readers of the NYT are probably, on average, a little older than those of USAT, judging by the content of the stories. Now, one problem with that assumption is the selection bias inherent in the comparison. People who read the NYT may be older, or maybe it's just that the news at the NYT is more sophisticated.

Headline comparison

2007-05-10T15:03:00.000-06:00

Source Diverse reader Chris H. points out:

Fox News headline: Bush Warns Democrats to Give Troops Funding or Face Disaster
CNN headline about the same story: Bush says he's OK with Iraq benchmarks

Interesting Daylife searches

2007-05-10T13:09:00.000-06:00

Here's one way to approach the news from a different perspective. Obviously, you can always just search for things that interest you and generally get good results, but sometimes being a little more vague can be just as rewarding.

For example, if you take pleasure in other's misfortune try these searches:

"Mistake" - appears to give consistently solid results and a good mixture of opinions (e.g., Spider-Man 3 - most mistake filled movie of the year) and facts (e.g., mistake at Great Salt Lake).
"Oops" - you may be amazed at how often this makes it into a headline.
"Negative" - like "mistake," this also gives a good mix of results, and not all of them are bad.

For less emotional slanting, aim for the random:

"Dog" - seems like it could be as good as anything, although perhaps it's a tad specific with too narrow a scope of results.
"Sandwich" - surprisingly, this actually provides some decent range.
"General" - right now, you get a mixture of war coverage and election coverage.

These are just a starting point, try your own. Be sure to also check out Daylife's blog, where you can learn other neat search tricks.

Republican Debate Media Comparison

2007-05-04T08:18:00.000-06:00

Reuters focuses on the republicans as a collective unit, saying:

"Republican White House contenders offered strong support for the military effort in Iraq but voiced qualms about the Bush administration's management of the war during a quiet first debate on Thursday. The Republican debate at the California presidential library of conservative Republican hero Ronald Reagan produced few confrontations or memorable moments but exposed some differences among the 10 candidates on social issues like abortion."

It was CNN that decided to focus on the abortion differences, which as a result gave Guiliani the headline space ("Guiliani bucks GOP field"). CNN led by stating: "Rudy Giuliani broke with the other nine Republicans in the party's first debate of the presidential campaign, saying that it would be OK if the Supreme Court overturned its ruling on abortion rights but that he respected a woman's right to choose."

Of course the Republican Debate features prominently on most source's landing pages this morning, however I utilized the Daylife search function to get a little more depth on the matter. The EvolutionBlog, for example, offers "[o]ther tidbits from" the debate. Jason Rosenhouse, wrote:

"Next came an amusing segment where the candidates were asked whether they felt the day that Roe v. Wade was overturned would be a good day in American history. Judging from the responses, it might as well have been Stephen Colbert asking, 'Great day? Or, our greatest day?'"

Rosenhouse included the candidate's responses:

"MR. ROMNEY: Absolutely.
SEN. BROWNBACK: Be a glorious day of human liberty and freedom.
MR. GILMORE: Yes, it was wrongly decided.
MR. HUCKABEE: Most certainly.
REP. HUNTER: Yes.
MR. THOMPSON: Yes.
SEN. MCCAIN: Repeal.
[MODERATOR ]MR. MATTHEWS: Mayor...
MR. GIULIANI: It would be okay.
MR. MATTHEWS: Okay to repeal?
MR. GIULIANI: It would be okay to repeal. Or it would be okay also if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as precedent, and I think a judge has to make that decision.
MR. MATTHEWS: Would it be okay if they didn't repeal it?MR. GIULIANI: I think that -- I think the court has to make that decision, and then the country can deal with it. We're a federalist system of government, and states could make their own decisions. "

Luckily for us, Rosenhouse also translated Giuliani's response to "Can we please stop talking about abortion and talk instead about how heroic I was on 9/11?"

BlogCritics Magazine wants to make sure we know who does not believe in evolution, and described the situation like this:

"I just have to say - did you see that three Republicans raised their hands to signify that they did not believe in evolution? And, once again, the camera did not move in close enough. From what I could see, it wasn't Giuliani or McCain and I'm pretty sure it wasn't Romney at the other end. But three others Republican candidates did raise their hands. (They have been identified as Sen. Sam Brownback, Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Rep. Tom Tancredo.) The mind boggles - I thought for a second I was watching The Tudors, except then it would have been more entertaining."

Daylife also culls some pertinent quotes here .

"(Adjective) (Subject) (Verb)" (says Source)

2007-05-01T14:05:00.000-06:00

News ad-libs, taken from headlines:

"Embattled Bush to veto" (says AFP)
"Secular Turks vow" (says International Herald Tribune)
"Murdoch's New's Corp makes" (from African News Dimension)
"Female voters set" (says CNN)
"Prototype toy reads" (says KGTV, San Diego)

Cheney's plane hits bird; plane lands safely

2007-04-16T07:08:00.000-06:00

CNN.com has been giving prominent space to this story, which is about as newsworthy as the new golf video games, also given prominence on CNN.com.

Here are the story highlights (AS POINTED OUT BY CNN):

"• Plane carrying VP hits bird on approach to Chicago's O'Hare Airport
• Mechanics check plane, find it OK to take Cheney back to Washington
• In Chicago speech, Cheney attacks Democrats on Iraq war funding bills
• After speech, Cheney shops for birthday gift for his granddaughter"

So, how is this news? Using the old saw that it's not news when dog bites man, but it is when man bites dog....here we see Cheney's plane hitting a bird and, gasp, having no damage to the plane as a result. If the plane was damaged by the bird, maybe this would be worthy of my attention. Or, if Cheney shot at the bird through the cabin window, maybe that would be interesting. Or not.

Carry on. Thanks for your time.

Lazy travel writing

2006-12-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

CNN is featuring a piece about Alta ski resort on its home page. In a single two-sentence paragraph, the writer, Sara Kugler, manages to make at least four mistakes.

"We felt a tug of nostalgia as we inched up the mountain on the main chair lift, which was then a slow-moving double-seater that felt very 1970s and took nearly 20 minutes to reach the top. The trip takes you from a base of about 8,350 feet above sea level to about 10,400. Alta's highest point is 10,550."

Kugler is almost certainly describing the Wildcat lift here, but she has created a composite of two lifts and mangled details of both lifts.

First mistake: Alta's base is 8,530' not 8,350'.
Second mistake: The Wildcat lift takes skiers to 9,780' not 10,400'.
Third mistake: "Nearly twenty minutes" is more like 35% less than twenty minutes, or otherwise known as 13 minutes.
Fourth mistake: she calls this Alta's "main chair lift" which is subjective at best, and arbitrary and/or incorrect at worst.

Alta has since opened a new lift, which now takes skiers from the base to 10,400 feet, and Kugler does, to her credit, point this out (although she says this lift replaced the old lift which is not true if she was writing about the Wildcat lift).

What Kugler has done is morphed the Wildcat and Germania lifts into a composite lift, which she decribes as a double chair lift going from base to 10,400 feet. The reality is she really rode the double-seater Wildcat then skied down to the triple-seater Germania lift.

In her defense, her mind-created composite lift does now in fact exist at Alta, but it did not when she skied there, so it would be easy to look at a current trail map, online even, and combine that with a fuzzy memory and spit out some lazy, inaccurate, obsolete travelogue without much effort or thought.

Great Sports Journalism: Gordon Edes

2006-12-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

In depth, little speculation, solid story, trusted sources, direct quoting: Thank you Gordon Edes.

Nancy Pelosi

2006-11-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

Nancy Pelosi has been elected Speaker of the House. As speaker, she is second in line for the presidency.

Speaker-elect Pelosi used her new-found power to support Rep. John Murtha for House majority leader, however Pelosi's backing failed to help Murtha and Rep. Steny Hoyer was elected instead.

CNN is currently featuring this story prominently online, and is using the solid headline "Pelosi wins then loses." What I find interesting about the CNN article is that it provides a substantial amount of space discussing why Murtha was a bad choice for majority leader and offers little insight about Hoyer.

This prompted me to examine other sources.

The Reuters story linked above (primarily about Pelosi's victory) says only that Murtha "helped lead the charge against the Iraq war that helped Democrats win control Congress, drawing the appreciation of virtually all members. Yet some Democrats were concerned about his record on congressional ethics and opposition to proposed reforms."

The Reuters story about the majority leader race regurgitated the Pelosi story: "Pelosi, a California liberal, had endorsed Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, who helped lead the charge against the Iraq war that was a key factor in races for the House of Representatives and the Senate."

So, both Reuters and CNN are using the angle that Pelosi's support was ineffective and her own party went against her wishes. The AP feed has a similar view, saying "The balloting marked a personal triumph for [Hoyer], but also a snub to Pelosi, moments after the rank and file selected her unanimously to become speaker when the House convenes in January."

Closure: The Matsuzaka Sweepstakes

2006-11-14T18:41:00.000-07:00

This is officially over.

"The highest bid amount was submitted by the Boston Red Sox...they should have negotiating rights for 30 continuous days." -- Opening line from the Major League Baseball Official Matsuzaka Press Conference.

"We are pleased and excited to acquire the rights to Mr. Matsuzaka." - Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein

So, let's review my recently one-dimensional blog. Who had the best sources and who had the worst?

Buster Olney, part journalist, part analyst, for ESPN is the clear "winner" as he scooped everyone and broke the story, as I wrote last Friday: "Buster Olney blogged (subscriber-only) on ESPN about a 'bit of speculation heard yesterday -- and it was nothing more than speculation -- was that maybe Boston had made an enormous bid, in the range of $45 million.'"

ESPN gets credit for trusting Olney enough to use his blog as source material for their news release later that day. Clearly Olney was hedging his bets and protecting his sources by qualifying his blog report with double doses of "speculation."

So, Olney gets extra credit for breaking the story with the correct information, and his employer gets credit for recognizing the strength of Olney's moles enough to turn it into an actual news story, which was later picked up by most other outlets.

Who lost? Earlier last week Source Diverse compared a video news segment alongside message board fodder alongside speculation from a blog (not Olney's). In the video Boston Globe sportswriter Jackie MacMullan nonchalantly offered that Matsuzaka "is going to go out west to the Angels...they've got the sealed bid that's going to put them over the top."

In the future, I'll read MacMullan's work with more of a skeptical eye.

The blog, Matsuzaka Watch, was careful not to opine as matter-of-factly as MacMullan, but did posit that the Yankees will win the bidding, saying "rumors abound...the Yankees at $27 million, the Rangers at $25 million, but nothing concrete or from a remotely reliable source."

It's hard to "score" the blog anything more than neutral (which I'd say is quite valuable).

Now to the much-maligned, oft-deemed-unreliable message board: One poster, while he did qualify his declaration with some insecurity, stated "I have a source telling me that the Yankees won with 27 million. He is reliable but I still have some doubts as that seems a little low."

In sum, Buster Olney gained my trust this week. Jackie MacMullen lost some credibility, but nothing major. If you followed along on the Matsuzaka Watch blog, you know the blog was at least decent, and updated frequently. Rumors and speculation were disclosed as such. And one poster on a message board had a chance to shine, but instead came up empty.

I'd also like to draw attention to how relatively leak-proof this whole process ended up. Kudos to Major League Baseball, the teams thereof, and the officials and entities of Nippon Professional Baseball.

I will now refrain from writing about sports for at least 7 days.

Matsuzaka redux: rumor turned speculation turned news

2006-11-10T12:08:00.000-07:00

An insight into news-making:
Buster Olney blogged (subscriber-only) on ESPN about a "bit of speculation heard yesterday -- and it was nothing more than speculation -- was that maybe Boston had made an enormous bid, in the range of $45 million."

Note that Olney wrote this in his blog and twice used the word "speculation" and further qualified the information with "maybe."

Well this speculative maybe turned into a good ol' fashioned news article, also on ESPN:

"The Boston Red Sox may have posted the top bid for the right to negotiate with Japanese right-hander Daisuke Matsuzaka, ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney reported, citing Major League Baseball sources...But Olney is reporting that the Red Sox may have posted the top bid with a figure between $38 million and $45 million, according to Major League Baseball officials who are monitoring the bidding. "

Note the repeated use of the word "may." We are now witnessing a rumor being parlayed into news. The ESPN article, to its credit, does point out that "[t]here has been no official announcement, and the Seibu Lions, Matsuzaka's team in Japan, have until Tuesday to accept or reject the high bid."

Is this responsible reporting? I'd say the blog post is responsible, although borderline comical, but taking the blog post and converting it into news (from "ESPN News Services") is questionable at best.