Harvard Whizzes Invent Concept of 'Beats'
In your superior Monday media column: the internet fights with the old media and wins (sort of), an old man makes comical remarks about women, Bob Woodruff returns to Iraq, and the Harvard Business Review is smarter than everyone.
How is the internet fighting with the old media today? In many ways! A study found that "traditional media" typically beats blogs on news stories by about 2.5 hours, although "3.5 percent of story lines originated in the blogs and later made their way to traditional media." Although 96% of snide jokes about news items originate with blogs! And Twitter has an unbeatable edge when it comes to tools that allow J-school professors to tell fellow subway riders that Michael Jackson died. Internet traffic is also a leading excuse for canning writers. These facts brought to you by the New York Times—on the internet! What a crazy, mixed up world.
In an op-ed titled "Doing no favors for their gender," an old man named Richard Connor (pictured) writes that it's not just that Sarah Palin and WP publisher Katharine Weymouth fucked up—it's that they fucked things up for their kind: "Men make stupid decisions every day, but let's face it: For better or worse they still have the upper hand. Pressure still exists for minorities, and I include women in that group, to be better than everyone else. Yet they still have to - rightly or wrongly - prove themselves. Palin and Weymouth did otherwise last week. They set back the progress of others in their professions. Both need to leave the stage and return to the wilderness." Again, Richard Connor is an old man.
ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff is back reporting from Iraq for the first time since he was damn near killed there by an I.E.D. in 2006. He's one of the good guys.
The Harvard Business Review has put its vast business expertise to work—for itself! "A good example is the way we've recently realigned the editorial staff around 'beats'...We spent a lot of time team-building to make that happen," says the editor. "Beats"! Imagine that. Will Harvard ever stop totally revolutionizing things, for the better?