Author: tom

Kids and ancient video games

Nathan Cochrane describes what happens when today’s kids play the first video games. Funny stuff. The gamers thought that the 1981 hit that established Nintendo as more than a company that could print playing cards, Donkey Kong, was “gay, but…

Strunk & White greatest hits

From the page on commonly misused expressions: Compare. To compare to is to point out or imply resemblances, between objects regarded as essentially of different order; to compare with is mainly to point out differences, between objects regarded as essentially…

Detroit unions settle

They took a small beating now to avoid risking a worse beating later. Either way, they get bruised and scarred. You have to love the way big-city newspapers are the breast-beating champions of the little guy, except when it comes…

Covering the recall coverage

A Stanford professor says print media did a lousy job of covering issues that mattter to families and children. Yeah, but, you know, if Arnie is a groper, our families and children will want to be warned, right? Tim Porter…

Orwell awards nominee

You know, for trying to say war is peace, life is death, etc. The White House says we can’t cover the return of coffins from overseas. Yeah, that should make it go away.

Bob Greene…

… on the Cubs’s meltdown. Note to Bob: it is too a loss. That’s why they keep score.

N.Y. Times can’t buy a break

Even its typography decisions are being held up up for ridicule. Testy Copy Editors: Don’t waste type telling us about type. Jeff Jarvis: The media exec agrees. (Jarvis may tarnish his standing in the blogger elite, though, for having actual…

The need for feed

Over the weekend I figured out how to do RSS feeds. If you look way down on the right side of this blog you’ll see a link that says “Syndicate this site (XML).” If you click on it, it tries…

A tale of two Timesmen

…Well, former Timesmen. Seems both the New York Times news execs who stepped aside to make the Jayson hooha go away had speaking gigs in the past couple days. Gerald Boyd, speaking to a bunch of newspaper editors, says something…