Photoshop Phunnys

While cruising through Politico.com today I came accross a post by Josh Kraushaar on his blog “The Scorecard” entitled, “Grayson says he’s the only truth-teller in DC.” –as in Florida congressman Alan Grayson (D)–the one who basically said Republicans want senior citizens to die–

In the post was this picture:

Do you get it????

It’s a joke via photo manipulation!!!
(In case you didn’t get it: it’s “a spoof of the movie ‘The Invention of Lying’ and features a picture of Ricky Gervais with Alan Grayson’s head Photoshopped on the actor’s body.” – Kraushaar)

Pretty funny ehhhh????…I didn’t get it at first either…it’s ok…kind of stupid…
I think I could have done a better photoshop job, and I’m not that good at photoshop.

It turns out Grayson is sending this picture out in e-mails for fundraising.
I don’t know, it’s kind of clever I guess. The movie reference is going to become dated real fast, so that kind of ruins the whole thing.

I think politicians should just stick to real pictures of themselves looking doofy:

Boston.com

BostonHerald.com

Blogs.redding.com

‘The Decline of American Journalism’–shut up already

In an op-ed piece on Huffingtonpost.com today, Nancy Snow, an “American culture climatologist and persuasion/propaganda expert,” said that because presidential speech writer and conservative columnist William Safire’s death didn’t get a lot of media attention, it’s a perfect example of how American journalism is declining.

She used Google News as a reference:
“Today’s Google News has the wedding of reality TV star Khloe Kardashian and Los Angeles Lakers’ forward Lamar Odom getting more hits than the passing of New York Times columnist, William Safire.”

Google News is an automatic aggregator. Google doesn’t pick the stories! “We” the Google searchers do! This doesn’t mean the media isn’t covering Safire’s death, it means that the majority of people who use Google don’t really give a shit.

(You know, there are a lot of teenagers and kids out there who use Google and have no idea who Safire is.)

Journalism isn’t declining, it’s changing. Snow should know, she has a twitter. So technically, in her opinion, she’s actually contributing to the problem.

But before I end this post, here is some Snow advice from her story:

“If you want some advice for what to pay attention to in the news, read more about the “life deets” of self-proclaimed libertarian conservative Bill Safire and not about the wedding of Khloe and Lamar. Relevant knowledge is good and powerful.”

If I want fucking read about Khloe and Lamar’s wedding, I’m gonna fucking read it.

…your advice makes you sound like an ass

My favorite part of her article was the end:

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-snow/william-safires-passing-a_b_302043.html

Blog Crazy–Politico is full of Bloggers!!!

After following Politico.com for three weeks, I’m starting to really appreciate their Blogs. They have found a way to legitimize them; make them stand out from the rest.

Though some of posts can be pretty funny. Michael Calderone

When we think of blogs we think about what Mike Huckabee said about the ‘death of journalism.’ We usually associate bloggers with laziness and plagiarism. But like I have said before!!!, there are great bloggers out there, Politico happens to have a lot of them.

On the left side of their homepage there is the Politico blog roll displaying the bloggers and the specific topics they cover.

Here’s a picture of the blog roll:

Most of their blog posts are like mini-news stories. The stories are short, the information is attributed to its source and straight to the point. Some of the blog stories are even mixed into the headlines on the homepage. It’s like they are slowly trying to convert their stories into a blog format.

It’s nice to see a news site taking full advantage of what blogs are capable of. It’s a perfect example of how blogs can deliver “real” news.

Keep it up Politico!!! And take that Huckabee!!!

…did I just discredit my own blog???

Huckabee–Journalism is dead

In an article on Politico.com,  former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was quoted from his blog saying, “I’m sad to report today a death of a good friend to all of us…..Journalism.”

“The once esteemed 4th estate of our nation and the protector of our freedoms and a watchdog of our rights has passed away after a long struggle with a crippling and debilitating disease of acute dishonesty aggravated by advanced laziness and the loss of brain function.”

He couldn’t be further from the truth! Journalism is not dead at all!

It’s just becoming harder to define what journalism is in a time where “everyone is a journalist.”

So when I read the Huckabee quote at the end of the Politico article, I realized he was confusing bloggers with journalists:

“Journalism had grown increasingly dependent on spin-doctor spoon feeding and the circular and insular quoting of other journalists instead of attempting to locate and quote actual first person sources.”

That sounds more like inexperienced bloggers than professional journalists–they aren’t idiots like he says they are.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are many great bloggers out there, who fact-check and write coherently. And then there are the inexperienced bloggers like me, who did exactly what he said is wrong with journalism in THIS blog post…but I’ll get this blogging thing down soon enough…

Here’s the original article from politico…he’s a jackass

Mike Huckabee: Journalism is dead