http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/blogs-1-1-1-13.html Sadly, Google users finding out-of-date Tribune stories nearly did. An old, no longer remotely correct report of United Airline's demise caused a sell off on Wall Street. Oops! This much is true – today Bloomberg cited a web-based Tribune reports to that United Airlines was going bankrupt. Their stock plunged nearly 75% before sales were halted. Also true? The report was six years old and United Airlines is not going ba]]> Prime Minister Vladimir Putin saved a Russian camera crew from a Siberian tiger attack yesterday. Sorta makes up for killing that dissident journalist the day before.]]> Russia is a scary place. Two days ago, Magomed Yevloyev, owner of a news site critical of Russia’s handling of the Ingushetiya region, was fatally shot in the temple while detained by police. The police have confirmed that the proprietor of www.ingushetiya.com was killed by a bullet from an officer's gun while he was being driven into custody – and have claimed it to be an accident. Reuters has compiled a fairly compelling]]> As a display of national unity, China marched out children from its 56 ethnic groups as part of the increasingly fabricated opening ceremonies. Surprise! The children were all from the Han majority (90% of the population). To be fair, replacing all the ethnic groups with the majority would be a great way to create national unity. This marks the third instance of the opening ceremonies punking its world audience, including NBC. Previously retra]]> The Olympics are on! And if you saw the opening ceremonies on TV, well, no you didn’t. The fireworks were digitally added and Viewers weren’t warned. Which makes sense, it all happened without NBC’s knowledge. China’s high-concept sequence showing firework footprints across the sky wasn’t being faked live on your television as it was being faked on screens for people attending the indoor festivities in Beijing. T]]> A high-five to Glen Mabie out in Eau Claire, who has won the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics in Journalism Award. It’s a great honor – and one that’s going to someone no longer in the industry. Mabie won the award for resigning his post as news director of WEAU in protest when the station’s leaders granted Sacred Heart Hospital employees exclusivity as on air experts for health stories. There are other hosp]]> If you have heard about this Barack Obama fellow, it might be because the news talks about him a whole lot. National network news gave him 166 minutes of coverage in the first seven weeks after the primary, more than double John McCain’s 67 minutes. But don’t go complaining about the liberal media bias just yet – a George Mason University study shows that Obama’s coverage was overwhelmingly negative, much more so than his ]]> If you thought that the New Yorker Obama cover was offensive, well, you sure didn’t show it. The magazine is having trouble keeping up with the demand for issues with the controversial cover. The New York Post reports that the typical 43,000 newsstand sales jumped to 75,000. Though the Post notes that most of the issues go to subscribers, and not newsstanders, it doesn’t point out that this was the first New Yorker cover in qu]]> If you have never heard of Mainichi Shimbun, you are (a) unaware that the Japanese Newspaper is the fourth largest in the world and (b) not a big fan of stories about odd Japanese sex practices. The English site, called the Mainichi Daily News, was until recently the home of WaiWai, the western world’s primary news source for stories about the hippest new trends in prostitution, restaurants that allowed bestiality and the secret goings on o]]> I write this at my own peril. I plan on flying out to Boston in August to visit my family. The Transportation Security Agency has put CNN reporter Drew Griffin on the terrorist watch list. Why him and not, say, the more sinister sounding Wolf Blitzer? Well, Blitzer hasn’t been filing stories about the lack of air marshals on airline flights. I’m sure that Griffin suddenly being deemed a terrorist threat was an accident, even if it o]]> Those paying particularly close attention to the sports news of the past week might have noticed one Brett Favre attempting to come out of retirement. It has been bad news for most people involved. To Brett’s dismay, the Packers want to move forward. To the  Packers dismay, Packer fans don’t want to move forward. And to the Vikings dismay, tampering with contract renegotiations is still very much against the rules. Not even the G]]> What's more iffy than a major web site editing the historical record by "unpublishing" all the posts that refer to their one-time friend? Me, using this blog to link to my Columbia Journalism Review story about it.]]> It’s the Forth of July, and in honor of that great American tradition – the National Pastime – here’s a clip of Fox’s Baseball announcer Joe Buck saying he hates baseball. Buck_0001by bsap11   Enjoy your Independence Day.        ]]> To say that the suicide of model Ruslana Korshunova has been sensationalized might be an understatement. Like soldiers on the battlefield, the model was given a posthumous field promotion to “supermodel” by many headlines. But while upping Korshunova’s status was a very complementary way to sexy up a cover story, what happened last night on TV was not. If you were to guess whose television news program would be so sensationalist]]> Pretend for a moment that you don't remember Don Imus calling the Rutgers women's basketball team a bunch of "nappy headed hoes." Pretend he didn't tell 60 Minutes that he hired a producer to make "nigger jokes." Pretend you don't know who he is. Listen to this. Judge for yourself what un-Imus means to say. You catch that? Here's a transcript: Warner Wolf: Defensive back Adam 'Pacman' Jones, recently signed by the Cowboys. Here's a guy s]]> Every week or so, bloggers very publicly complain that they aren't being taken seriously. Usually it's because they aren't.  Legally, blogs don't receive the same protections. Professionally, agencies don't provide even the most prominent of websites the same level of access as low circulation newspapers. And socially (perhaps Buzz Bissinger-ly), they are viewed with the esteem of a red light district. This week, the Associated Press announc]]> Tim Russert has died of unknown causes. He was the political reporter that every reporter wanted to be. There was no reporter with a broader base of knowledge; no television moderator with a better grasp on when a guest was lying, contradicting himself, or just plain wrong. Russert produced some of the great gotcha moments of our time. From this election cycle alone: But despite near-universal acclaim and a level of influence usually]]> Mea culpa Monday’s sibling, Tua culpa Tuesday tracks the best accusation of the media that doesn’t result in a correction. Who is the most not JT LeRoy? The JT LeRoy saga was a high-brow version of the James Frey scandal. Both unfolded within days of each-other; while most of America mourned having A Million Little Pieces exposed as a fake memoir, the intelligentsia had their wake for their own fraudulent junkie. At his height, JT L]]> Ted Stefaniak and John Burton, sportscasters for Green Bay’s WGBA, were laid off after Journal Communications consolidated Green Bay’s athletics coverage to WTMJ, Milwaukee. Journal Communications, owners of the Journal-Sentinel, are smart people: We’re number one! In a report to stockholders in April, Steven Smith, chairman and CEO of Journal Communications, said the weak economy continued to affect the company’s adverti]]> When presidential hopeful Barack Obama told Oregon, “We can’t…eat as much as we want…anymore,” most rational people understood it as a consequence of energy conservation. After all, it was in the easy-to-understand context of “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in a desert, or living in the tundra, and then just ex]]>