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Google Computes News Quality

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

InformationWeek - By Thomas Claburn - Nov. 16 (News Report) - A recently filed patent application suggests that Google is taking steps to promote news produced by major media companies on Google News. Whenever a newspaper dies, Google turns up on the list of suspects. The evidence of Google's involvement tends to be sketchy. A close examination of the crime scene typically points to a different villain -- the classified revenue killer known as Craigslist, parasitic news sites that siphon potential visitors, declining subscription and ad revenue, management that can't adapt, or the hyper-competition created by the Internet's ability to collapse distance and divert attention. But Google nonetheless has been forced to defend itself. In May, Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet that Google is the hand that feeds media companies, channeling over one billion clicks every month to online publishers through Google Search and Google News. She suggested that Wikipedia, with its constantly updated articles, might offer a better model for journalism in the Internet age than a series of separate articles. And she proposed that online publishers might be failing their readers by presenting them with Web pages that lack engaging social features.

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State Democrats facing revolt by labor

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Andrew Garber - Nov. 14 (News Report) - The Washington State Labor Council, the Service Employees International Union and unions representing teachers and state workers have either stopped or sharply reduced donations to Democratic caucus political-action committees that back candidates for the state House and Senate.

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Washington in race for federal education funds

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Linda Shaw - Nov. 13 (News Report) - Gregoire told U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that, while Washington does not have charter schools, the state does have many schools that are every bit as innovative and successful.

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Walls of Conflict

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Link TV - Nov. 12 (News Analysis) - Many walls stand around the world, even as Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Berlin wall coming down. As most media focused on the anniversary celebrations, others tied the plight of Koreans and Palestinians, who are still separated by walls, to the festivities. When trying to keep the peace, are walls ever a good idea?

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Pelosi tours Seattle's Swedish after health-care vote

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Kyung M. Song - Nov. 10 (News) - Just two days after shepherding a landmark health-care bill through the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Seattle today to see how one hospital is already delivering care in much the same way as the bill proposes.

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Why Keep Geithner?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

MSNBC - By Dylan Ratigan - Nov. 02 (News Analysis) - A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system was a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs paid themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with money they didn't have

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Obama administration seeks to block wiretap suit

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Devlin Barrett - Oct. 31 (News Report) - The Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege Friday to try to stop a lawsuit over Bush-era wiretapping -- the first time the Obama administration has done so under its new policy on such cases. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision in a California lawsuit challenging the warrantless wiretapping program begun after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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"Surreal" Vegetarian Spider Found -- A First

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Matt Kaplan - Oct. 12 (News Report) - A tropical jumping spider that eats mostly plant buds has been identified, a new study says--making it the only known vegetarian out of some 40,000 spider species. A tropical jumping spider that eats mostly plant buds has been identified, a new study

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California Christians worship in a big way

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Duke Helfand - Oct. 11 (Special Report) - Thanks to good weather, sprawling suburbs and a number of charismatic pastors, the Golden State has more of these megachurches -- defined as those with at least 2,000 congregants -- than any other state. California is home to 193, slightly more than Texas with 191, according to the most recent survey by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, one of the nation's leading authorities on megachurches.

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California’s Budget Suffers ‘Major Blow’ as Debt Sales Loom

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By William Selway, Michael B. Marois - Oct. 10 (News Report) - “Revenues more than $1 billion under estimates and recent adverse court rulings are dealing a major blow to a budget that is barely 10-weeks old,” Controller John Chiang said in a statement. “While there are encouraging signs that California’s economy is preparing for a comeback, the recession continues to drag state revenues down.”

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Will California become America's first failed state?

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Paul Harris - Oct. 04 (News) - California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong? California has a special place in the American psyche. It is the Golden State: a playground of the rich and famous with perfect weather. It symbolises a lifestyle of sunshine, swimming pools and the Hollywood dream factory. But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so ...

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The Republican War Against ACORN

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Jason Leopold - Sep. 27 (News Report) - In recent days, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other major news outlets have recounted the "troubled" history of the poor people's advocacy group ACORN, but left out the five-year anti-ACORN campaign led by White House adviser Karl Rove and other Republican operatives.

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ACORN and Accountability

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Christopher Hayes - Sep. 23 (News Analysis) - With the notable exception of handing over $700 billion to Wall Street last year, the United States Congress is not known for quick, decisive action. But recently, in a resounding bipartisan vote, members of both houses voted to deny federal dollars to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Over the past fifteen years, ACORN and its affiliates have received on average about $3.5 million a year from the government, or approximately one-millionth of this year's budget. The votes came just a few days after the release of a series of (now infamous) videos in which young right-wing activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles pose as a pimp and a prostitute. They take a hidden camera to a number of ACORN tax preparation offices around the country seeking tax and business advice. (Why a pimp and prostitute? Who the hell knows. Neither answered my request for an interview.) The undercover duo provoked responses from ACORN staff that ranged from the unconscionable (an employee in Baltimore reacting to O'Keefe's plan to bring in thirteen Salvadoran girls as prostitutes with the suggestion he claim some as dependents) to the obviously sketchy (a Brooklyn tax adviser suggesting the couple put their cash profits in a can and bury it in the backyard) to the praiseworthy (the ACORN offices in Philadelphia called the cops and filed a police report)--O'Keefe and Giles haven't seen fit to post that tape. Mostly, though, the tapes are a testament to what might be called the Borat Effect: human beings' intense socialization to be helpful and not rock the boat, even when confronted with someone doing something objectionable, outrageous or preposterous.

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Sam Stein Discusses Cheney 2012, Condoleeza Rice's Afghanistan Comments On Rachel Maddow Show (VIDEO)

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Huff TV - Sep. 23 (News Analysis) - Huffington Post political reporter Sam Stein weighed in on Condoleeza Rice's comments on Afghanistan during his appearance Tuesday evening on The Rachel Maddow Show.

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Metrobus Strikes Jogger in Northwest

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By James Hohmann - Sep. 03 (News) - House Staffer Critically Injured

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Massachusetts governor backs naming Kennedy successor - washingtonpost.com

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ross Kerber - Aug. 31 (News Report) - Democrats pushed Monday to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Edward Kennedy, with the Massachusetts governor throwing his support behind a proposal to name an interim successor and help Democrats retain a critical margin in the chamber.

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Flushing Blackwater

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Jeremy Scahill - Aug. 26 (Investigative Report) - Blackwater, the private mercenary company owned by Erik Prince, has been thrust back into the spotlight by a series of stunning revelations about its role in covert US programs. Since at least 2002, Blackwater has worked for the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan on "black" contracts. On August 19, the New York Times revealed that the company was, in fact, a central part of a secret CIA assassination program that Dick Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress. The paper then reported that Blackwater remains a key player in the widening air war in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where it arms drone aircraft. These disclosures follow allegations--made under oath by former Blackwater employees--that Prince murdered or facilitated the murder of potential government informants and that he "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe."

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Supreme Court Orders New Look at Death Row Case - NYTimes.com

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Adam Liptak - Aug. 18 (News Report) - A federal court in Georgia was ordered to take a fresh look at the case of Troy Davis, who is on death row for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer.

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Sidebar - Supreme Court to Hear Case on Executive Pay - Series - NYTimes.com

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Adam Liptak - Aug. 17 (News Report) - Jones v. Harris Associates may to be the court’s first big statement on a culture that contributed to the recession.

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At N.H. forum, Obama hits ‘wild’ criticism of healthcare overhaul

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By Lisa Wangsness, Nandini Jayakrishna - Aug. 12 (News Report) - President Obama traveled to a town hall meeting in a high school gymnasium here yesterday to counter what he called “wild misrepresentations’’ about his proposed healthcare overhaul - his most concerted effort yet to regain momentum in a debate recently dominated by critics’ aggressive assault.

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Protests set on Obama N.H. talk

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - Aug. 11 (News Report) - President Obama’s town hall meeting on healthcare at 1 p.m. today before about 1,800 people in Portsmouth, N.H., will almost certainly be less of a free-for-all than the raucous congressional ones, filled with shouting matches, pushing and shoving, and even some arrests.

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Lawsuits are the latest roadblock for California budget

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Evan Halper - Aug. 10 (Special Report) - Lawyers are being drafted in droves to unravel spending plans passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor. The goal of these litigators is to get back money their clients lost in the budget process. They are havingconsiderable success, winning one lawsuit after another, costing the state billions of dollars and throwing California's budget process into further tumult.

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Report: California must adapt to changing climate

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Samantha Young - Aug. 03 (News Report) - Even if the world is successful in cutting carbon emissions in the future, California needs to start preparing for rising sea levels, hotter weather and other effects of climate change, a new state report recommends.

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Can Microsoft's Bing Take a Bite out of Google?

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Tom McNichol - Aug. 01 (News Analysis) - The undisputed Sultan of Search, a company whose name has become a verb, Google currently accounts for about 65% of all online searches in the U.S, according to comScore Inc. But Google's comfortable dominance may be in for its most serious challenge in years with the debut of Bing, Microsoft's new search engine.

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California could have $15 billion shortfalls

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Richard Procter - Jul. 31 (News Report) - The plan signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week to balance the state's budget could leave California facing shortfalls in future years of more than $15 billion, according to an analysis released Thursday by a major Wall Street credit rating firm.

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