Posts by Matt Nippert
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And, look at me, back on the blog comments, after more than a decade away.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Russell Brown,
Russell,
I found the same thing. That Dagestan wedding report, and the hilarious Qadhafi dissection featuring Ukranian blonds and flamenco dancing show real insight crunched into a short space.
There's a parallel here with the Reserve Banks' info dump regarding South Canterbury Finance. I've followed the falling of that company for the last couple of months, but the best piece of writing on how Hubbard managed the firm came from a banker following an May 2009 visit.
It's genius stuff, and if anyone's wanting the inside juice on a finance story that's still doing my head in, you'll could do worse than tip your had to Bollard's man Andy Wood.
Who'd have thought bankers and diplomats produced such good copy? A pity their readership usually probably numbers, literally, only a handful.
Looking ahead, academics are going to feast on this for years- usually you're only able to do diplomatic post-mortems decades after the fact when secrecy legislation reaches its horizon.
Cheers,
Matt -
Graeme just delivered a masterclass in why you shouldn't spend a few minutes to edit posts.
Dang.
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For a true masterclass in swearing and scriptwriting, check out this gem from The Wire. There's precious little dialogue, exempting prefixes and suffixes, outside glorious f-bombs.
cheers,
Matt -
Ahem. Jolisa actually linked to the closure of the Tuscon Citizen . It's a double tragedy, really: the obituary pages are getting swamped, and there's hardly anyone left writing for them.
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Getting back to the start of Jolisa's post, noting the decline of Seattle's Post-Intelligencer , there's a column from Dave Barry on the same subject that gives - perhaps - cryptic reference to the state of the media in this part of the world.
Atop the Post-Intelligencer building is a rotating 10m diameter globe. It's rusted, to be sure, but still spinning. Metaphors aplenty for journalism perhaps - but P-I managing editor Dave McCumber notes some parts of his neon world have fared worse than others:
“There’s a hole in New Zealand,” Mr. McCumber said.
Cheers,
Matt -
Nerds have always had the last laugh in sports - they write the history. While sports writing in New Zealand has almost always been of the jock match-report variety, overseas there are some masterful depictions of beautiful games by outright nerds.
Ben Thomas mentioned David Foster Wallace. Check out his ode to Roger Federer - an adaptation of the lovingly-titled Roger Federer as Religious Experience: How One Player's Grace, Speed, Power, Precision, Kinesthetic Virtuosity and Seriously Wicked Topspin Are Transfiguring Men's Tennis .
Michael Lewis is also great. I'm no fan of College Football, but this piece got me interested in an eccentric coach and plays known as "shotguns", and Lewis' writing on schoolyard giant Michael Oher is compelling blend of sociology, biography and the evolution of the NFL power game.
And, dude, last years' Faulkner-winning novel was about cricket .
Cheers,
Matt -
The accompanying interactive Homicide Map is also cool, in a grisly, black stat, kind of way.
If Keith Ng met David Simon in an LA bar, this map could settle arguments over how many killings with knives there are on Tuesdays, or what the preferred killing method for victims aged over 50.
Cheers,
Matt -
Stewart: A club of one is the most exclusive club of all.
Paul: The best commentary I've seen on murder reporting is in the LA Times . Or, rather, their murder blog. With 1000 killings a year in LA (cf 50 in New Zealand), it's one of the busier corners of the web.
And in a brilliant case blending of web and print, the one-year anniversary saw this column published in the main paper:
Choice excerpts:
The more the killings stacked up on the blog, the more absurd the old media criteria for selecting one homicide over another seemed. Thirteen-year-old boys nearly always made the headlines of The Times' print edition, but 14-year-olds were a tossup. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds were more likely to make the cut if they were girls.
And:
Media coverage matters. In September, news broke that a 23-day-old baby had been killed by a stray bullet in the LAPD's Rampart Division. More than twice as many detectives were assigned to work that one case than to the division's 15 other 2007 homicide cases combined. Arrests were quickly made in the baby's killing. But as of January, some three-quarters of those other Rampart cases remained open.
Cheers,
Matt -
Hell, I work (or rather worked, until I was credit crunched) in the media - and even I don't buy paper copies. I personally administered one of the thousand cuts that is seeing the industry - and myself - bleed dry.
Of course there is one exception. I do fork out hard currency for the Economist.. Apart from fantastic Latin headline puns, that mag also buys you into a strange, but highly-educated, club. You'd be surprised at who gives you knowing glances when on the bus or in parks while reading the bible of classical liberalism.
cheers,
Matt