Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Follow-ups to earlier posts

Re: SawPalm: It's my understanding that SawPalm will become a print journal, if a source of funding can be found. So anyone wanting to provide $ for a good cause, contact the English department at USF.

Re: The error regarding the correct name of IAJE: A fact checker wasn't even necessary, in this case: The New York Times reporter simply could have looked at Nate Chinen's earlier story, published a week ago or so, on the first concert in the same series at the Knitting Factory. Chinen correctly identified IAJE as the International Association for Jazz Education. As any seasoned journalist will tell you, fact errors are the first stumble on a slippery slope that eventually leads to loss of credibility

(Then again, the NY Times, the Washington Post, The New Republic and other major news outlets have already experienced major credibility crises, thanks to instances of bogus stories. Can you say Jayson Blair, Janet Cook, Stephen Glass?

By the way, Shattered Glass is one of the truly underappreciated films of the last few years, with an evocative re-creation of the time/place surrounding Glass's rise and fall, and first-rate performances by Peter Sarsgaard, Chloe Sevigny and others; the cast also includes Hayden Christensen as Glass, Steve Zahn and Hank Azaria. Directed and written by Billy Ray, whose new Breach will be out Feb. 16, it was released in 2003. After seeing Shattered Glass, I tried to read The Fabulist, Glass's novel/memoir recounting his woes, but it was far too indulgent and self-serving for me to stomach.)

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