Digest – March 7 2010

You knows how this goes…

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Splintered Sunrise; debating feminism in the 21st century.

Nyder O’Leary is class. When I’m editing GreatNewsWebsite.ie in 25 years he’ll be my lead opinion writer, whether he likes it or not. What he says about the idea that ministers should have experience running companies is on-the-ball here

If anything, the role of the politician is to sift through all the weighted advice, and make a decision that’s best for everyone from a social, economic, legal and cultural point of view. The only overriding passion needs to be a broad social vision, coupled with pragmatism about putting it into place. That’s a hell of a job description. The bunch we have now clearly aren’t up to it, but you’re certainly not going to get any social vision by embracing The Cult of The Entrepeneur.

Gerry Adams blogs from the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis.

Dear Irish editors, please read this Reuters’ piece before making moves towards online in the next few years. (CC it to your journalists too.)

Big mainstream-media publications, when they hire people to write their blogs, generally hire people with no blogging experience at all — something which is both ill-conceived and dangerous. Some journalists make good bloggers; most don’t. So rather than gamble that you’ve found one of the rare exceptions, why not make prior blogging experience a prerequisite for such positions?

The fundamental problem with Kouwe was that when he saw good stories elsewhere, he felt the need to re-report them himself, rather than simply linking to what he had found, as any real blogger would do as a matter of course.

John McHale; “resolution regime“.

The Sunday Independent parodies itself. Niamh Horan gets 1,800 words – a whole page – to cover the story that’s supposedly “gripping the nation”, something to do with Rosanna Davison, Glenda Gilson and Johnny Ronan. Read it for the hilarity. Brendan O’Connor (!) gets another few hundred words in with a comment piece also.

The Sunday Independent, Serious Newspaper.

Meanwhile, during a separate encounter minutes later with Ronan, eye-witnesses say Gilson kicked her ex-lover twice. Once in the groin and once in his upper-thigh, leaving the property developer bent in two and wincing in pain.

As an onlooker explained: “He buckled over the minute she kicked him, and he was shouting ‘my fucking balls’. It was madness. As she turned to leave, Johnny then took a swing at her and made contact with her backside.”

“Eye-wtinesses”, “sources close to…”, “her inner circle”… the story is so SIndo it’s funny. It’s like the time the Guardian had an offer of free gift-wrapping paper designed by Nelson Mandela with every copy, you couldn’t make it up.

Really though… what am I doing reading such nonsense. And blogging about it. Shame on me. Back to the usual…

– WORLD

London correspondent for Rúv (the Icelandic RTÉ), Sigrún Davíðsdóttir on the IceSave referendum.

Matt Yglesias on healthcare (again), this time focusing on how it should or could be priced.

The son of the founder of Hamas embraces Christianity and spies for Israel. Ouchies. The Wall Street Journal has an interview.

Michael Yon, Green Beret turned independent war reporter; “how hundreds of military personnel, millions of pounds and an experimental ‘lung’ saved the life of a British soldier… shot by accident in his own camp“.

Better prostehtics coming to a person with a limb blown off in a war without basis near you, soon. Good.

Fallows brings two pieces of clear-minded journalism.

– OTHER

I’m so envious of David Attenborough’s delivery. These Symphony of Science videos are top-notch. Click through for more. Oddly touching.