Merry Xmas and a Happy 2009!

Walking to Bethlehem

BBC correspondent Aleem Maqbool is walking from Nazareth to Bethlehem, retracing a journey made by Joseph and Mary in the Christmas story told by Luke the Evangelist.

Keeping the Faith

Does a journalist have to be "religious" to cover religion?

Is it desirable to have a reporter of one faith covering stories about another?

What about atheist or agnostic reporters?

Get answers here.

In the Harbour

Sunset in the harbour:
sea goddesses and a good
sailor

Naval navels, vessel
legs, ocean-going eyes;
canvas, rope, teak...
fishy money, lips
and slips

Gossipy gulls, cargo girls -
boats for hire

A pint of love potion,
a kiss in slow motion,
a salty emotion.

(Léon Bertoletti, In the Harbour)

City Boy

Keb' Mo'...

The Wild Psalms

Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief.

(William Faulkner, The Wild Palms)

...but it could be a passage from a book I am trying to write. The working title is The Wild Psalms...

Pirates, Reporters and Dolce Vita

It seems that when Italians hunt for pirates, they hunt in style...

The officers summoned up from the oily bowels of the destroyer a banquet of homemade pasta, marinated eggplant sliced paper thin, prosciutto-wrapped dates and tiramisu, finished off with cool glasses of spumante. [NYT]

And so "there are times when being a foreign correspondent is anything but the childhood dream that lured many a dime store hero into newspapering. It's dangerous and unrelenting to work in countries where the press is under fire, only to see your dispatches shoveled deep inside the paper, cut, or spiked. But then there are times when a foreign correspondent's life is as romantic as we'd wish it to be." [CJR]

Ah, la dolce vita!

George Double-Shoe

Pictures of George Double-U Bush ducking the flying shoes which were flung at him by an Iraqi journalist during a press conference in Baghdad.

"George Double-Shoe Bush," the Sun calls him. Ahem.

Meanwhile, in Chicago...

Waiting for Christmas

Come, Lord Jesus! Come in your way, in the ways that you know. Come wherever there is injustice and violence. Come to the refugee camps, in Darfur, in North Kivu, in so many parts of the world. Come wherever drugs prevail. Come among those wealthy people who have forgotten you, who live for themselves alone. Come wherever you are unknown. Come in your way and renew today's world. And come into our hearts, come and renew our lives, come into our hearts so that we ourselves may become the light of God, your presence.

(Benedict XVI, General Audience)

Liz Donovan

Liz Donovan has died. She was 63.

As a young news researcher at The Washington Post, Elisabeth Lacey "Liz" Donovan helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein cover the Watergate scandal -- and take down a president.

As a veteran at The Miami Herald, Donovan helped lead the transition to computer-based research. A pioneering Internet user -- yet eternal flower child -- she enabled Herald writers to produce work that won Pulitzer Prizes.

Sadly enough I just removed her blog from my links list.

[The Miami Herald, E&P]

Noah's Ark

How journalism can save us all from the deluge of information...

• taking the time to step back
• supplying depth and context
• acting as an information filter

Explanatory journalism may have a promising future in the market for news. (Bree Nordenson, CJR)

Aid Addiction

Over the last 50 years Western governments have paid out more than £400bn of tax payers' money in aid to Africa, but according to figures released by the World Bank this year, half of sub-Saharan Africans still live in extreme poverty, a figure which has not changed since 1981.

And though foreign aid has helped lift millions of Africans out of poverty by helping developing economies to grow, for the poorest Africans little has changed.

In fact, the World Bank figures showed that Africa has been the least successful region of the world in reducing poverty, with the number of poor people in Africa doubling between 1981 and 2005 from 200 million to 380 million.

[BBC Panorama]

Day Exceeding Day

The king's a beggar, now the play is done:
All is well ended, if this suit be won,
That you express content; which we will pay,
With strife to please you, day exceeding day:
Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts;
Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts.

(William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, Epilogue)

The R Factor

The Rwanda factor in Congo War...

[NYT, IHT]

Ho-Ho-Ho!

A Santa and his elves have been attacked by parents furious over exorbitant entry prices and long queue times at a shoddy Christmas theme park... [The Sun]

Crisis...

cri·sis noun c.1425, from Greek krisis "turning point in a disease" (used as such by Hippocrates and Galen), literally "judgment," from krinein "to separate, decide, judge," from Proto-Indo-European base *krei- "to sieve, discriminate, distinguish."

(Cf. Greek krinesthai "to explain;" Old English hriddel "sieve;" Latin cribrum "sieve," crimen "judgment, crime," cernere (past participle cretus) "to sift, separate;" Old Irish criathar, Old Welsh cruitr "sieve;" Middle Irish crich "border, boundary.")

Transferred non-medical sense is 1627.

A German term for "mid-life crisis" is Torschlüsspanik, literally "shut-door-panic," fear of being on the wrong side of a closing gate.