Category Archives: Journalism

NOT SEEING WHAT HAPPENS IN A FOOTBALL GAME.

NOT SEEING WHAT HAPPENS IN A FOOTBALL GAME. I have wondered for over 30 years why television broadcasts of professional football games show only the part of the field near the line of scrimmage. The camera follows the ball, but … Continue reading

Posted in Football, Journalism, Sports | 1 Comment

ALBERT PUJOLS SHOWS LEADERSHIP.

ALBERT PUJOLS SHOWS LEADERSHIP. Over the years, some of the most violent criticism I have read in a newspaper results from a failure by an athlete to give an interview. The latest example followed an error in the ninth inning … Continue reading

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APOPHENIA AND SPORTS JOURNALISM.

APOPHENIA AND SPORTS JOURNALISM. In yesterday’s cartoon, the first character says: “A weighted random number generator just produced a new batch of numbers.” The other character replies: “Let’s use them to build narratives.” The caption at the bottom says: “ALL … Continue reading

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APOPHENIA—THE CARTOON.

APOPHENIA—THE CARTOON. I posted here on September 25 about apophenia, and I have since been encountering discussions of the phenomenon although they don’t use the new word. Nate Silver even linked to this cartoon which dramatizes the phenomenon. The site … Continue reading

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THE STORY OF A LONG SEASON.

THE STORY OF A LONG SEASON. The use of statistics represented by MONEYBALL changed sports journalism as much as it did baseball on the field. There was a flood of baseball writing by newcomers writing from a different point of … Continue reading

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MONEYBALL AND STORYTELLING.

MONEYBALL AND STORYTELLING. I have posted several times on MONEYBALL, the book by Michael Lewis. The movie of MONEYBALL has now opened to generally favorable reviews. The reviewers who seem to be the harshest critics are sportswriters, who point out … Continue reading

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“EYEBALL TO EYEBALL”.

“EYEBALL TO EYEBALL”. Kids, Sandy Levinson’s phrase in his post that “it was ultimately Nikita Khrushchev… who ‘blinked’…” refers to a phrase that was characteristic of the reporting on the Crisis. This BBC article by Michael Dobbs in 2008 says: … Continue reading

Posted in Economics, History, Journalism, Politics | 1 Comment

WOULD YOU REVEAL A CRIMINAL’S PAST?

WOULD YOU REVEAL A CRIMINAL’S PAST? Years ago, Mary Jane and I had dinner with a husband wife who were both journalists. They told us how they had been working in a city in the middle of the country when … Continue reading

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JOURNALISTS WHO DON’T INVESTIGATE.

JOURNALISTS WHO DON’T INVESTIGATE. One of the things I grump about, but don’t post on, is the newspaper article that is transparently a press release; I can visualize the journalist changing the heading on the press release to include his … Continue reading

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LOGICAL PUNCTUATION AND CORRECT AMERICAN PUNCTUATION.

LOGICAL PUNCTUATION AND CORRECT AMERICAN PUNCTUATION. In this article in Slate, Ben Yagoda points out the difference between the American style of placing periods and commas inside punctuation marks and the British style of placing them outside. The British style … Continue reading

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