The article that had Scarborough all riled up — “The Centrist Cop-Out” — was published yesterday and attempts to deconstruct what Krugman views as misleading rhetoric promoting balance and avoiding to lay blame, in this case, on Republicans involved in ongoing debt discussions. Writes Krugman:

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

Scarborough, after joking that “I am shocked Paul Krugman would write that editorial” and ignoring co-host Mika Brzezinski’s insistence that “this is not about Paul,” opined that the columnist is basically a broken record:

If you write the same column for a decade and blame everything including earthquakes halfway across the world on Republican extremism, at some point, somebody could look at an op-ed and go, “Eh. Perhaps there’s a seed of truth to that.”

Then, because it is a universal truth that bloggers are pajama-clad mutants writhing in their own filth and discarded Cheeto packets (all true), he took a jab at Krugman’s possible fanbase:

Let me just say, he is influential because if you’re a blogger, and you’re still living in your mom’s basement, and you got Cheetos all over the keyboard, you type in your underwear, unlike Alex Trebek, then yes…

Brush the Cheeto dust off your Star Wars action figures, virgin, and have a look at the segment, via MSNBC:

The Huffington Post has always defended its pay model by noting that its contributors are paid – in exposure and increased opportunities. But how do the bloggers themselves feel about their lack of monetary payment? One company providing content to the Huffington Post, Visual Arts Source, announced its plans to seek payment, and urged other unpaid contributors to strike in solidarity. Our own Dan Abrams even weighed in on the Newspaper Guild’s support of the strike.

Researchers from U.C. Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center developed a survey to find out just how individual bloggers feel about the site’s payment system. One of the researchers working on the survey explains why they decided to conduct it at this particular time:

We have been planning this survey from the time we heard about the merger.

The merger provides an opportunity to focus on the conditions of digital labor (e.g., bloggers), and who is responsible for value creation (contributors v. distributors) in the digital environment.

Researchers searched out the email addresses for various HuffPost contributors, and contacted them directly. Questions on the survey include the following:

- Do you feel you should receive part of the $315 million AOL used to purchase the Huffington Post?

- Do you feel that the Huffington Post’s brand has changed since the merger with AOL?

- How would you compare the conditions at the Huffington Post to other sites you have blogged for?

- Some have raised concerns about the labor arrangement bloggers have with The Huffington Post. In your opinion, what do you think is the best way for bloggers to address the issue of compensation for digital labor?

Survey results are due out next month.

h/t Forbes‘ Mixed Media

You likely already know that Aol recently laid off hundreds of its employees, leaving several of its blogs without any staff whatsoever. Then, yesterday, it was revealed that Aol was shutting down 30 of its blogs, with some being absorbed into HuffPost blogs and others existing as subheadings within the Huffington Post.

Now, TechCrunch has revealed what is to become of the freelancers who worked at those 30 blogs. An anonymous freelancer who happened to be on a conference call with the Huffington Post’s editor for business and technology news, Peter Goodman, told TechCrunch (Double agent!) that Aol / HuffPost wants freelancers with professional journalism backgrounds to come on board as staffers. According to TechCrunch, the company does not view the ability to blog – not even about adorable kitten antics – as synonymous with journalism. Who’da thunk?

Here’s the money quote, from Goodman:

We can’t replace professional journalism with an adhoc blogging arrangement… we don’t want to confuse professional journalists with bloggers.

That’s an interesting position to take given the Huffington Post’s reliance on contributions from non-journalists like Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin. Then again: These bloggers (Apologies, Alec. We say it with some modicum of love.) aren’t on Aol / HuffPost’s payroll as staffers. And, despite the growing hubbub around the fact that the Huffington Post does not pay contributors to what it refers to as its “group blog,” it does have a roster of paid staffers – a roster that, by the way, continues to grow as the company hires people with extensive reporting backgrounds.

Aol / HuffPost is, in fact, adamant about bulking up its reporting staff and creating a large newsroom:

AOL also wants to staff up its main offices in New York, LA and Dulles, and create large newsrooms of these professional journalists. If you don’t want to move to these locales, AOL is bullish on these freelancers joining hyperlocal news platform Patch. The HuffPost business desk will move into the AOL 770 Broadway offices on Monday, and staffers have already been notified that they should be packing up their belongings for the move to the new office. Goodman says AOL HuffPost wants to create a large newsroom where all staffers are sitting in one area.

TechCrunch notes that, while this may sound great in theory, the reality is that several freelancers who have applied for jobs within this expanding newsroom have yet to hear a response.

In any case: We’re all for it. With big names like Michael Calderone joining its ranks, Aol / HuffPost seems to have the luxury of being able to select the pick of the litter from the online reporting community (and, yes, those are different from bloggers, although it stands to reason that a person can be both a blogger and a journalist), and has the resources in place to create great content. Whether readers are going to flock to that content, of course, remains to be seen.

h/t TechCrunch

Image via CrunchGear

Here’s what apparently happened (WARNING: For those of you who are older, employed, or never read an article over at Geekosystem, many of the following words and phrases will mean nothing to you). A few weeks ago at Comic Con, Universal Studios had planned secret sneak screening of the upcoming movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World which featured appearances by the director, Edgar Wright, members of the cast, as well as a post-screening performance by the band Metric. A number of media members were invited but Billington was not. He found out about the screening and threatened Universal that he would release the information about the screening to the public which would have ruined the studio’s plans of having Wright triumphantly reveal it after the Comic Con Scott Pilgrim panel. So Universal relented and Billington got into the screening.

Good for him, right? Well, maybe not so much. It turns out that some of Billington’s professional rivals didn’t like this too much. They then banded together and wrote a harsh letter to every big studio in the city.

From The Wrap:

“The letter, sent Tuesday to Universal and all the major Hollywood film studio publicity departments, calls Billington’s actions ‘the most clear-cut case of blackmail that I have ever seen.’ It calls upon the studios to ‘sever professional ties to Alex Billington and First Showing. There is no other way to impress upon him that professional adults do not blackmail one another to get what they want.’

The letter was signed by Harry Knowles of Aintitcoolnews.com, Devin Faraci of Chud.com, Steven Weintraub of Collider.com, Erik Davis at Cinematical.com, and several other prominent online movie webmasters, many of whom participated in or moderated panels at Comic-Con 2010.”

To put this in perspective, this would kind of be as if a bunch of other media sites called up MSNBC, Fox News, and all the rest, told them Mediaite was a bunch of jerks, and persuaded them to somehow cancel our cable service. We’d be kind of screwed.

The Wrap interviewed Billington and, while he does admit he acted poorly, he claims much of the story in the letter was false. So, is this a story about a man getting justly punished for acting unethically or the story of a powerful group seeking to snuff out a rival? Either way, it’s pretty clear who’s not getting invited to the Cool Kid Movie Blogger Parties anymore.

All of them. They’re all not getting invited. These are movie bloggers. They don’t have Cool Kid Parties.

…aw, who am I kidding? I’m just jealous I haven’t seen Scott Pilgrim yet. I love those books!

Initially addressing the case of Lt. Dan Choi, who was recently discharged from the military under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, he promised to work towards a future where “there are less Dan Chois who are humiliated by the system,” and about the greater struggle against inequality, noted that “the powerful and the rich continue to have a tremendous influence on our country.” He gave an extensive history of the media, from newspapers to radio to television, finally arriving at the internet: “and then you came along. You brought back the voice of real Americans,” he told the audience.

In one of the more humorous (and awkward) parts of his speech, Reid acknowledge the tension he has experienced with progressive writers in the past, telling the audience, “I know there are times, I’m told, that I get on your nerves. And I’m here to tell you, you get on my nerves sometimes. But let’s all understand this country would be in a lot more trouble if we weren’t around.” He also thanked them for their work against “the Tea Party and other myth machines, and especially the Republican Party.”

Watch Sen. Reid’s speech below– interestingly, Fox News was the only cable channel to broadcast the speech:

Yes, in the middle of an interview about the “lamestream media’s” new distortion of Sarah Palin’s image from that of a Mama Grizzly to that of a “saint,” van Susteren abruptly changes the subject: “Here it is. Breast implants: Did you have them or not?” Palin– reporting live from the lobby of a New Jersey mall, apparently– thanks Greta for the question because “boobgate is all over the internet” and she wanted a chance to clarify (and tell off the speculating reporters, who she called “bored, idle bloggers and reporters with nothing else to talk about”):

“I think some of those folks, too, they need to perhaps grab a shovel, go down to the Gulf, voluneer to help, clean up and save a whale or something instead of reporting on such stupid things like that. Um, no, I have not had implants… I think a report like that is about as real and truthful as those reports that Todd and I are divorcing, or that I bought a place in the Hamptons, or that Trig is not my own child”

She also admitted that “it makes me wear layers, it makes me have to waste time figuring out what am I going to wear so that nobody will look in an area that I don’t need them to look at.”

Again, credit goes to van Susteren for asking the question– it’s not one most reporters would have been brave enough to bring up. Video below:

The comment came during a Q&A after he spoke at the All Things Digital technology conference yesterday, where his responses to technological competitors were much tamer than those to the new media. Regarding Google’s efforts to “compete with us,” Jobs asserted that his company had no interest in competing with Google in the realm of search engines, and as for Adobe, he stated that he had more faith in the future HTML 5 technology than in Flash. His comments on AT&T, which has exclusive rights to iPhone service, were also positive despite some complaints that the network’s service was not up to par.

When asked about the iPad, however, and the possibility that the new technology would help the increasingly frail print media business, his tone changed, giving his full support to newspapers and magazines and coming out against the less regulated new media. From the Wall Street Journal:

Asked about whether the iPad will be a savior for content creators, Mr. Jobs said: “I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers…I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for.”

It seems a bit strange to see the head of one of the most innovative technology corporations turn against a fair number of the people that make the internet worth following– after all, some may argue (and they’d make a good point) that the entire point of the Internet is to create a world where journalism is not the art of an elite class, but the work of anyone with the foresight to record events as they happen around them. Without bloggers (and tweeters, at this point in history), accurately reporting news would be more difficult based on the lower number of facts to sift through alone.

Others will argue– and there is a good point to make here, too– that Jobs’ nightmare scenario of internet personalities running amok reporting things without the mainstream media’s blessing is already here, and his attempts to revive companies that Apple’s technology had a part in taking down may be futile. Either way, one increasingly gets the sense that human consumption on the internet did not turn out the way Jobs seems to have intended it.

Famous young internet journalist Michael Calderone has penned an in-depth analysis of famous young internet journalists and their newfound relevance in the media market– and what it means for the older, established class of print reporters. Needless to say, the people who spent most of their twenties reporting on lost puppies and local fires are not too happy about the success of people like Ezra Klein and Chris Cillizza.

Calderone reports the rise of the young blogger with little “real news” experience is concerning to some who view the influence people like Klein, Cillizza, new Washington Post hire David Weigel as a threat to the ailing body of old-school, objective newspaper and network programming news. This crop of twenty- and thrity-somethings, Calderone writes, are simply no longer averse to bias and see no benefits to making a name for themselves on unwanted news beats:

They offer an edgy style and expertise in a particular field, but have never spent a day covering cops or courts or county boards — traditionally the rungs of the ladder all reporters had to climb… While still in their twenties and thirties, this new breed is winning TV time and book contracts, and, in many cases, newsroom salaries that reporters in their forties or fifties can only dream about.

Nonetheless, elder statesmen like Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman take issue with the fact that “many [new writers] lack journalism experience outside the Beltway.” It is the chasing after hurricanes and interviewing county sherriffs that gives a journalist their seasoned experience, he argues.

But deeper than that, there is a key generational difference in attitudes towards bias. Subjectivity was a dirty word for many of the more established writers; young bloggers are open about their beliefs, and often more open to discussion with the other side for it. Klein, for example, is a former Prospect writer and admitted lefty who, despite being on an angry rampage lately since politely disagreeing with the Wall Street Journal‘s Shelby Steele and railing against grilled vegetables, is usually mild-mannered enough to make for intelligent discussion with the other side. His colleague Weigel, a former Reason correspondent, is so open-minded he shot a segment for Keith Olbermann the other night.

Needless to say, not everyone in the industry is particularly upset that the new breed of journalist is an opinionated blogger that can only be trusted to adhere to their bias. A cheerful Andrew Sullivan tells Politico that “trust in the old media brands is largely over. Everything has an individual character or dies,” and he doesn’t sound particularly upset about it. Then again, Sullivan was one of the first to acknowledge the power of the internet and get on the blogging bandwagon.

In the end, it’s not entirely the bloggers’ fault that their stock is rising. After all, Klein wouldn’t have assistants do research for him if the Post didn’t give him that privilege, nor would Weigel hop from a libertarian magazine to a Beltway blog to a major newspaper without some seasoned reporter giving an ok along the way. But the fear of being outdone by “pipsqueaks” with laptops is only going to rise as the panic to “save” old media increases.

Congratulations to Mediaite TV Editor Steve Krakauer on being profiled in this week’s New York Times Thursday Styles section as a rising blogger, even though we raised a wee brow at the notion that Steve’s reporting on ratings, personalities, trends and news on the TV beat counted as “gossip” any more than, say, MediaDecoder does. Steve was featured along with the Village Voice’s Foster Kamer, Media Takeout’s Fred Mwangaguhunga, Crushable’s Erin Carlson, Gawker’s Maureen O’Connor (whose shoes beat out Foster’s jaunty bag, it must be said), Fashionologie’s Tommye Fitzpatrick, The Gloss’ Lilit Marcus, Curbed’s Sara Polsky and Dealbreaker’s Bess Levin.

Read all about Steve here — but we’ve got some exclusive material you didn’t see in the article. Featured bloggers were sent a questionnaire by reporter Alex Williams, and we have exclusively obtained part of Steve’s to share with you here.

************

Age: 25

Hometown: Westfield, NJ

Educational background (including major): Syracuse University, Broadcast Journalism major

Personal journalistic hero/model/inspiration: Woodward and Bernstein? But really, Cal Ripken Jr.

Current blog traffic (and, rate of traffic increase, if it applies): Approximately one million unique visitors and more than four million page views per month. (Ed: Steve cited Feb numbers here; our March numbers improved on this rather significantly.)

Number of posts a week: 35-40

Biggest scoop/hit (describe, including measure of impact): We were the first blog to notice and write about the NBC Cafeteria Black History Month “fried chicken” menu. The post translated to a lot of page views, but bigger was the impact – that night Wanda Sykes was joking about it on Jay Leno, and it was covered throughout TV news. (See here.)

Personal favorite line/phrase in any recent post of yours: Headline to the John Mayer/Playboy interview post: “John Mayer’s Penis Is A Racist Wonderland”

Biggest rival in blog world: Oh we’re all about the love at Mediaite! Well we enjoy some friendly competition with Gawker, the Huffington Post and more.

First blog other than your own you check every morning (feel free to elaborate): Well of course there’s the rest of the Abrams Media family – Geekosystem, Styleite (launching Monday!) – and right now, keeping an eye on Twitter is the best way to stay up on the day’s biggest stories.

Favorite sparring partner (subject you’ve written about and gotten into a tangle with; please describe): For whatever reason, MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann has taken to bashing Mediaite a few times on his prime time show. We can take it though. (See here and here.)

How do you stay sane/decompress after 12/16/whatever-hour days (or whatever) staring at a computer: Although I write about TV for a living, I wish I could say I did something other than watch TV to decompress. Instead, there’s a lot of bad TV I watch (and occasionally write about) like Jersey Shore and Real World, go to the gym, and grab the occasional drink or six.

Ultimate career goal: To be the next Conan O’Brien (so…unemployed?). No, I would love to have a role in getting young people excited about news, politics and current events.

Yesterday, Eric Turkewitz, writer of New York Personal Injury Law Blog, wrote that he had been appointed as “official White House law blogger”. A few hours later, the Times published a reference to the appointment in their article “When Lawyers Blog“. The prank wasn’t pulled alone. Turkewitz employed a bunch of fellow bloggers to write posts and Twitter updates throughout the day, either commending or denouncing the news. On his blog today, Turkewitz has a fun run down of how they pulled it off and the aftermath once the NYT fell for it.

“The basic idea was this: A bunch of law bloggers would try to punk the political bloggers, whose reputation is to grab any old rumor and run with it. Fact checking hasn’t always been the strong suit of this community.

But the political bloggers, to their collective credit, didn’t bite, despite wide dissemination of the story. Not on the right or the left. Instead it was the vaunted New York Times that ran with the story without bothering to check its facts. The Times, of course, had no sense of humor about it when the angry phone call came to me a couple of hours later.”

So, to summarize the story, we’re going to steal the structure that the New York Times used in their write up of Gossip Bloggers the other day (in which they mentioned our own “gossip” writer Steve Krakauer):

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Newspaper, NYTimes.com
NOTABLE SCOOP: That time World War II ended.

MEMORABLE GAFFE: Yesterday, reported that Eric Turkewitz had been appointed the White House’s official law blogger — a juicy scoop, except that the story was a hoax.

Via Gawker

The “blog swarm” was coordinated by John Aravosis and Joe Subday of Americablog and include LGBT bloggers and activists Pam Spaulding (Pam’s House Blend), Michelangelo Signorile (Sirius OutQ & the Gist), Andy Towle (TowleRoad), Joe Jervis (Joe My God), Bil Browning (Bilerico) and Dan Savage (Slog). Also joining in are two big names in progressive blogging, Markos Moulitsas at DailyKos and Taylor Marsh at TaylorMarsh.com.

Aravosis told Mediaite that the idea for the “blog swarm” was hatched over the weekend in a conversation between Aravosis, Subday and Signorile where they were lamenting the “vacuum of leadership” and lack of momentum in Washington over the ban on gay and lesbian servicemembers.  They decided to focus on HRC because they “are the only group in town that has the power to snap their fingers and get the White House’s attention.  And they clearly haven’t snapped nearly enough.”

In their posts, the bloggers launch a direct attack on the White House over concerns that President Obama’s State of the Union pledge to eliminate the ban on gay servicemembers appears to be surrounded by chaos on Capitol Hill and the White House.  “Unfortunately, too many D.C.-based progressive groups have not challenged the Obama administration’s failure to follow through on campaign promises,” the bloggers say today. “They’ve enabled the inaction in order to maintain access. But, we’ve started to reach a point where allies are publicly demanding action, or promises are never kept.”

Aravosis cut his activist teeth on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and has become a leading voice in using social media and the Internet for political action.  His career has included StopDrLaura.com, the first-ever successful boycott of a TV show and the outing of John Gannon–a conservative activist with White House press credentials–who allegedly worked as a gay escort.

In an email, Aravosis told Mediaite that the idea of a coordinated blog effort came from a desire for “a positive result, our civil rights” but that it also required placing “a little negative pressure on both HRC and the White House.” While “blog swarms” often have a negative connotation, Aravosis said he thought the image was unfair but that he believed “successful advocacy involves a mixed bag of tactics, including carrots and sticks.  The problem is that HRC has been using a lot of carrots and not enough sticks.  We’re hoping our blog swarm helps to convince them to even things out a bit.”

While the LGBT community is among the most wired and has been on the forefront of using social media advocacy, Aravosis said it was important to include “honorary gays” Moulitsas and Marsh in this effort. He said many of the netroots object to the idea that only the “gay community” is concerned about LGBT civil rights and so “we wanted to involve them to recognize that this isn’t a “gay” battle.  It’s something we all believe in, care about, and want.”

UPDATE:  The Human Rights Campaign sent Mediaite a statement in response to the “blog swarm.” The statement is largely pro-forma and doesn’t specifically mention the coordinated effort.  They do say, however, that they “have been lobbying the White House relentlessly and we’ve seen more movement in recent weeks than in the previous 16 years.   Our nation’s top defense officials testified, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be repealed.  That did not happen in a vacuum. These events are just the start.  There is a clear path to repeal, and that’s the one we’re on.”

A local HRC chapter in Orange County and Palm Springs responded more directly to the blog swarm.

Knowing people were clamoring to see expert testimony by economic experts and anti-gay ministers, John Ireland and John Ainsworth are giving the trial the “let’s put on a show” treatment and reenacting the trial in a University of Southern California law school courtroom with actors filling in for the judge, lawyers, and witnesses.

“There is a huge buzz on the web about this trial,” USC law professor and video consultant David B. Cruz said in a statement announcing the project. “I think a lot of people across our country were poised to watch the opening statements on the first day.  When access was blocked, the thirst for information just grew exponentially.”

When Ireland and Ainsworth first announced they were going to re-enact the trial, they said they were basing their scripts on liveblogging by progressive blogger Firedoglake, gay rights grassroots activists Courage Campaignand other bloggers.  That plan has been altered, according to their website, by the release of actual transcripts provided by the attorneys challenging Proposition 8.

In the just-released preview, the men have done a great job of getting an actor who looks a lot like Judge Vaughn Walker. The preview reel is pretty dry, which means they are likely being very accurate about what is going on inside the courtroom. The video project’s creators–who both opposed Proposition 8–have vowed to keep things neutral and it will be interesting to see how the re-enactment gets edited and produced as the project advances.

The decision to block broadcasts has put a chill on same-sex marriage advocates’ desire to get their message out via video.  What was expected to be a public relations and legal coup has meant that same-sex marriage supporters–who have been very successful at using social media and viral video in their losing efforts to win marriage battles–have turned to other ways to get information out about the trial.

With the judge overseeing the case opening up the courtroom to laptop and texting, citizen journalists (and activists groups) have used the opportunity to tweet and liveblog the trial in ways rarely seen before in a federal court case.  Using the hashtag #Prop8, tweeters inside the courtroom have been giving a play-by-play of the trial. Some of the best have included Dan Levine (@fedcourtjunkie) of The Recorder, The Advocate (@TheAdvocateMag), two tweeters with the National Center for Lesbian Rights (@NCLRights and @Chris_Stoll) and the tweets by the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the folks funding the lawsuit ( @AmerEqualRights).

Opponents have been late to the social media game and are not doing much coverage of the trial. The Alliance Defense Fund ( @ADFMedia) has been tweeting the trial and ProtectMarriage has been doing limited blogging.

Despite the wall-to-wall coverage by the progressive and LGBT blogosphere, the trial has not exactly been full of legal revelations.  The expert testimony has been cathartic for same-sex marriage supporters, but unsurprising. Until late this week, there have been few fireworks in the courtroom with none of the bombshells which are likely to get people tuned-in to the trial.

That changed when there was finally a heated dispute over admitting evidence of religious groups’ involvement in pushing Prop 8 and some fascinating testimony by a defendant who wanted to be dropped from the case because he feared attacks from Prop 8 opponents and said he relied on the Internet for evidence that homosexuality was bad for marriage.

With the trial about to end, the producers need to start releasing the videos or interest in the trial could wain.  Still, who doesn’t want to kick back and watch a little expert evidence cross-examination on YouTube.

When looking ahead at the next year, pundits turn into prognosticators. Bloggers covering all sorts of topics and industries are now giving their predictions for what’s to come in 2010. Conventional wisdom says to go the conservative route with these choices in order to avoid looking foolish when none of your projections pan out. At the same time, there’s a key difference between picking things that are realistically possible and those that are already on the road to happening. I’ve assembled my favorite predictions covering a variety of fields and what’s supposedly in store for the near future:

Recovering Economy: “Starting in Q1, unemployment will slip a half percentage point per quarter…We’re already seeing average work-week hours go up and number of temp workers go up. This is always the precursor to employers ultimately hiring new full-time employees,” says James Altucher at the Wall Street Journal. Once the jobs become available, though, the question could turn to how big a learning curve should be granted to employees adjusting back to the workforce.

Social Media Business: “Facebook will go public…Registrations are still growing nicely but showing signs of deceleration. Friendster’s remains and the slow fade at MySpace are warning signs of what can happen to a social-networking site after it peaks,”says Rick Aristotle Munarrizat at the Motley Fool. Each year, Mark Zuckerberg grows another year removed from his original college-aged audience and from the excitement of having his own venture.

Sarah Palin Politics: “The only thing Sarah Palin will be president of in 2012 will be TV ratings. Palin will get a talk show as early as next year. We’re betting a startup like Lifetime or Bravo will make an offer she can’t refuse,” says Daniel Stone at Newsweek. It’ll remind America how likable the lady from Alaska was when she first arrived on the scene in September 2008, and viewers will find comfort in her television persona and presence.

Housing Decisions: “The threat of nuclear terrorism renews interest in living outside of large urban areas, further depressing housing prices in the larger metropolitan areas,” says a blogger at SeekingAlpha. This will re-define what real estate agents mean by “Location, location, location” as homebuyers put their safety at the top of their lists.

Foreign Affairs: “There will be many strikes in the coming months, and many demonstrations on the streets of Athens,” says Barnaby Phillips at al Jazeera. Some Middle-Eastern countries are already hosts to protests against corruption, but Greece will emerge as a nation that demands international attention due to its financial crisis.

Presidential Liability: “Michelle Obama will slip by her minders and say something outrageous. The MSM will not report it. Persons who refer to it will be denounced as racists,” says John Derbyshire in the National Review. The first lady has been relatively quiet throughout Obama’s first year in office, and she’s going to be used more going forward – with both parties bracing for it.

Internet Accessibility: “A little known technology company emerges to extend wireless across unlicensed bandwidths, with dramatic impact on the VoIP market,” says Rayne at FireDogLake. With Americans’ ever-increasing need for and reliance on wireless Internet, this service seems like a logical next step, and someone will make a major splash in the market when they figure out how to do it.

Television Technology: “TV goes 3D…The television industry is looking for the next big thing to sell us. 3D TV will be the next big push. 3D will also begin to creep into PC and console games. It might not be ready for primetime on any of these platforms, but 2010 will be the year that 3D starts to make serious headway,” says Tim Bajarin at PC Magazine. If Avatar is truly the “future of filmmaking,” then people will expect similar technology at home.

Sports Pardon: “I predict [Tiger] Woods will survive this self-created mess and the public will forgive him. What he did was a disgrace, but he remains the greatest golfer in the game and maybe the greatest ever,” says Cal Thomas at USA Today. If Tiger can get going again on the green, fans will disassociate Woods’ personal failings from the golfer’s professional prowess.

Music Listens: “It’s been coming for more than a decade, but major labels are starting to grasp the digital opportunity…Expect 2010 to be the year that the bad press on the major labels starts becoming more favorable,” says Nick Crocker at Mashable. As all other industries are now following the lead of the consumers, the music business will have to adapt in order to survive, despite whatever growing pains and financial losses they endure at the beginning of the transition.

Ian Kelly
Department Spokesman

Washington, DC

November 9, 2009

The U.S. government strongly deplores the assault on bloggers Yoani Sanchez, Orlando Luis Pardo, and Claudia Cadelo. On November 6, these three activists were forcibly detained by plain clothes security personnel and beaten while en route to a peaceful demonstration in Havana.

The President has proclaimed November 9 World Freedom Day. It is precisely this sort of repression and violence against the voices of freedom and reconciliation that World Freedom Day is meant to expose. We call on the Government of Cuba to ensure the full respect of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all its citizens.

We have expressed to the Cuban government our deep concern with the assaults, and we are following up with inquiries to Yoani Sanchez, Orlando Luis Pardo, and Claudia Cadelo regarding their personal well-being and access to medical care.

Meanwhile, news of this statement and of the attack are predictably absent from the Cuban press. The websites of the Cuban News Agency, as well as those of official newspapers Granma and Juventud Rebelde, have no reports on Yoani Sánchez’s story.

Yoani Sánchez has resumed her activities. Her Twitter feed today reported she attended the meeting of the “Blogger Academy,” an independent center of teaching that gathers some 30 students. A post said she was recovering from her back injury, and that the Academy was “the best balm”:

We spoke to Yoani on Sunday night.

###

How are you, Yoani?

Well, I can’t say I’m fine, but I’m here.

I read the post where you narrate how you were kidnapped and beaten. Is there anything you want to add to it?

Well, a few hours ago I dictated a post through the phone — I imagine it’s already online. It’s a reflection on being a victim and the things that I didn’t say earlier.

One of the things that strikes me the most about this attack is that your blog is mainly about daily life in Cuba. You are not criticizing anybody in particular or making incendiary denouncements. Your posts are about simple things. It is shocking that the Cuban government can be afraid of that.

I don’t think they are afraid of me, because I’m just a little person that they can easily eliminate. What they are afraid of is the phenomenon of the alternative blogosphere, the phenomenon that more and more young people are projecting their voices: that is tremendously contagious. This is why they may be attempting to make a sort of ‘prevention,’ applying some sort of vaccine, so the blogger virus, the virus of opinions, does not spread. I don’t think their attack is against the person of Yoani Sánchez, but rather against the blogger phenomenon, a phenomenon of different opinions that is taking place in Cuba. They want to paralyze as many people as possible with a preventive strike.

“They don’t understand that these new phenomena can’t be fought with the old weapons of repression. They still haven’t understood the potential of the web.”

Has anything like this happened to you before? Were you followed or attacked?

In the two years I’ve been writing my blog, I’ve been living as if in one of those Saturday night films: people following me wherever I go. But until now they hadn’t interacted in a physical or violent way with me.

There was one precedent, however. During a rock concert, where some friends and I demanded the liberation of a musician, there was some sort of organized violence. But it was covered by the loud music and everything else going on at the concert. What happened [on Friday] was more direct, more aimed at the blogosphere. Those affected by this action were blogger Claudia Cadelo, blogger Orlando Luis Pardo and me. This shows that [those in the Government] are particularly stricken by the potential our words have through the Internet.

But that reasoning is flawed, too. Your work has received recognition outside of Cuba and it’s impossible to cut your access to the web. By attacking you, they might make you a greater figure than if they just ignored you.

Of course, but they are dunces. Their main problem is that they don’t understand that these new phenomena can’t be fought with the old weapons of repression. They still haven’t understood the potential of the web, and that these repressive measures do nothing but increase the number of hits on my blog. They haven’t understood very well what is it that the new technologies do, nor the different effects that repression causes when a blogger is attacked. So they are just employing the old methods of restraint, intimidation, and attempting to isolate you. But they actually produce the opposite effect.

In the post you wrote about the attack, you state that the actions of your kidnappers were motivated by the “the blustering terror of he who knows that his days are numbered.”

Yes, because when the arguments and the faith in a system are over, when the people stop believing in a certain political discourse, those who are in charge can only resort to violence and restraint. This is what we are seeing in Cuba now: the absence of any sort of argument, handling people through violence and fear. This is all we have left. There is no symbolical legacy, none the things that existed in the first years of the [revolutionary] process. Terror is the only thing that remains.

>>>NEXT: “I run towards the place where fear is born.”

Yoani Sanchez

An update today on her site includes a dramatic, descriptive report of what happened yesterday:

At one point I felt I would never leave that car. “This is as far as you’re going, Yoani,” “I’ve had enough of your antics,” said the one sitting beside the driver who was pulling my hair. In the back seat a rare spectacle was taking place: my legs were pointing up, my face reddened by the pressure and my aching body, on the other side Orlando brought down by a professional at beating people up. I just managed to grab, through his trousers, one’s testicles, in an act of desperation. I dug my nails in, thinking he was going to crush my chest until the last breath. “Kill me now,” I screamed, with the last inhalation I had left in me, and the one in front warned the younger one, “Let her breathe.”

She then laments about explaining the events to her son:

How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street.

It’s all highly graphic and emotional, but as CNN notes, “There was no immediate comment from the Cuban government on Sanchez’s claims, which CNN could not independently verify.”

You can read Sanchez’s whole account here.

(via CNN)