Uncategorized

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Should Stephen Glass Get a Second Chance?

Stephen Glass was a journalist who fabricated a wealth of materials for features that he wrote for publications such as The New Republic and Rolling Stone. His crimes were dramatized in the solid journalistic thriller, Shattered Glass. Glass is now trying to become a lawyer in California, but the Bar association there is…reluctant. Jack Shafer explores whether or not Glass has learned his lesson:

Glass ‘s legal struggle to join the bar goes back almost a decade. According to court filings, Glass passed the New York Bar Examination in 2000 and applied for admission to the bar in July 2002. But he withdrew his application on Sept. 22, 2004 after the bar notified him he would not likely be approved on moral character grounds. He moved to California that fall and passed its bar exam in 2007, but the Committee of Bar Examiners rejected Glass on moral character grounds in 2009. The committee holds that Glass has not rehabilitated himself, waiting more than 11 years to fully list and identify all of the fabrications in his journalism.

A Network Called The Internet

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a letter from 83 engineers who helped to create the internet. Their mission: stop SOPA.

To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

Having Your Hand on the Brass Ring

New York magazine has an interview with Suzanne Sena, who plays fictional news anchor Brooke Alvarez on The Onion News Network. Suzanne was a finalist in the audition to replace Kathie Lee Giffords as Regis Philbin’s co-host. She expounds on her biggest regret of the situation:

The $40 million paycheck I didn’t receive. It was an absolute highlight of my career, but I’ve had many more highlights since then, and the Onion is definitely one of them. To me, it was having my hand on the brass ring and then losing it, but it taught me so much.

I can’t imagine being so tantalizing close to a $40 million payday, then having it slip away. Would I be able to psychologically bounce back from that? Not sure, but the fact that Suzanne has is certainly encouraging.

The Problem with Mitt’s $10,000 Bet

Last night at the Republican debate, Mitt Romney bet Rick Perry $10,000 that Romney’s book did NOT state that the Massachusetts health care mandate was a wise choice for the rest of the company. Romney, who is worth somewhere in the range of $150 million, wanted to let everyone know that he was SERIOUS about his position.

Democrats are already rejoicing at this apparent gaffe, which even spawned a Twitter hashtag last night. One analyst made the point that weeks from now, voters may not remember WHY Romney made the $10,000 bet. But they’ll almost definitely remember that number. In Iowa, where the first caucus will be held in January, it’s predicted that this won’t go over well.

In my opinion, Romney went wrong by making the bet too believable. Even though the bet was kind of meant to be a joke, it was entirely plausible that a man of Romney’s wealth could in fact make such a bet. He needed to go big or go home. Bet $5 billion, or bet $5. $10,000 sounds like an impressive amount to many Americans, where the median income is roughly $40,000, but Romney made it sound like he makes that much money in a day and could easily part with it. Not terribly presidential.

Errol Morris’ Recent Book Tour

Errol Morris just signed my copy of THE THIN BLUE LINE (Morris in background). COULD THIS DAY GET ANY BETTER?
Errol Morris recently signed my DVD copy of The Thin Blue Line. Morris is in the background in the orange coat.

One of my favorite filmmakers, Errol Morris, recently stopped by his hometown of Cambridge, MA as part of a tour to promote his newest book, Believing Is Seeing. Morris is basically all the things I endeavor to be: an incredibly talented person at his craft, who is concerned with the nature of truth and the mysteries of the mind (especially as they relate to photography). For a brief taste of what his book is like, check out his series of essays for the NYTimes on the Fenton cannonball photographs.

I managed to see Morris when he spoke at the Harvard School of Design, but Morris just posted on his site a full transcript of his talk at the Brattle Theatre (a place near and dear to my heart) and it’s well-worth the read. I enjoyed his answer to a question about why the book is titled “Believing Is Seeing”:

Why the title is Believing is Seeing instead of Seeing is Believing? Well, one seems to be far more clever than the other, although much to my chagrin it’s been used by several other writers. I felt I should read their books. One is a romance novel about a ménage à trois, which was satisfying for a short while, but quickly got kind of tedious. The other is just a straight ahead art book, not to disparage art books, but it did not seem to be terribly interesting. And the third, of course, is my effort. Why Believing is Seeing? Because we somehow think that vision comes to us in some pure native state, as if we don’t bring anything to it. It’s a reminder that what we see is often based on our preconceptions, misconceptions, we don’t come to the world as neutral observers. We come filled with bias, prejudice, vested interests of every kind. Why not occasionally be reminded of that fact?

Who Are The “Most-Read” Authors on the Internet?

Read It Later, a “save it to read later offline” app for Android and iOS, has compiled usage data to synthesize a report on the most frequently read authors on the service. Obviously, this comes with a bunch of caveats; the report itself identifies some of them:

Read It Later has a unique dataset to explore these kinds of questions. Nearly 4 million users rely on Read It Later when they click the “read later” in their browser, tablet or smartphone—and they come back to our app to dig deeper into the stories they’ve saved, recipes they’ve discovered, or videos their friends have recommended. That means Read It Later users aren’t just drive-by visitors to a piece of content—they’re passionate about it. The content is important enough that they added it to their queue so they wouldn’t miss it.

Overall, though, this provides an interesting view on who and what people are reading, and what types of content are most popular on these types of services. The above chart shows authors who have the highest “rate of return,” where people actually returned to check on their stories repeatedly. No surprise: previous /Filmcast guest Alan Sepinwall, an erudite, articulate, insightful television writer, scores right near the top.

[New life goal: making this list one day.]

[Side note: Read It Later is a pretty great app for $3.]

Announcing the Launch of Davechensphotos.com

I’d like to make this official: as of this moment, my new photography website, Dave Chen’s Photos, is online!

It’s been a long journey to get to this point. I’ve spent the past year amassing thousands upon thousands of photographs from a wide variety of events and situations. I’ve studied with master photographer Jerry Ghionis and read up on the techniques of flash photographer David Hobby. My hope is that the new site will reflect the breadth and quality of my work through an elegant, simple, classy design.

Shortly, I’ll be writing a blog post about the two photo website services I’ve tried this year: 4ormat and Bigfolio (which hosts the current version of the site). I know many of us dislike flash but there are reasons why I chose to use a service that only hosts flash websites. I will get into those later, but iPad and iPhone users are not left out, as there’s a fully functional mobile version of the site as well.

In the meantime, check out the new site! Put it through its paces. And ask yourself: would you hire this photographer if he was local? Why or why not? Your answers and feedback are welcome in the comments below.