I’ve been slow to post lately - there’s been a lot going on. The Spec is happy to welcome Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. to Low Library Saturday night for our annual Blue Pencil lecture event. Mr. Downie, long-time top dog at the Post, will speak at 8:30 p.m. He’ll describe his views on the journalism industry and talk about diversity in a newsroom, the war in Iraq, and top stories making the news cycle. Semi-formal attire is requested.
Friday, February 22, 2008
WASHINGTON POST EDITOR LEN DOWNIE, Jr. SPEAKING ON CAMPUS
By: Tom Faure at 4:21 pm
1 Comment »
Tags: Spectator, editors, famous alumni, free press, frivolity, prizes
We attended the dinner, awards, and lecture and heard many well regarded insights into the future of information. The MSM had its Golden Age but is now contending with the internet.
I asked the guest speaker why the MSM has failed to report on what Orwell described as “huge events” involving leftist genocide totaling 100 million Chinese, Ukrainians, etc in the last century. I also suggested that many, like myself, had to resort to the internet for info like this that was not available from the MSM and I further suggested that this failing by the MSM accounted for the drop in circulation.
This editor, who had earlier chided the internet for “story telling”, denied my contention and said that the Chinese Famine Genocide of nearly 60 million in the early 60’s was the subject of “…a series of articles in the 80’s I think.” and told me to check it for myself. He might be right as there is one article that meets the word search - and its available from the Washington Post archive for $89.95.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/item.html?pp_date=19860129&author=James+J.+Kilpatrick&doc_title=The+Sin+of+Textbook+Neutrality&pub_edition=&pub_page=§ion=&pptl=document
in the Washington Post
Or, there are several thousand articles available on the internet, for free, here.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=china+famine+genocide&btnG=Google+Search
Hmm.
This is not a partisan issue - President Clinton himself authorized the new monument in Wash. DC to the 100 Million Victims of Communist Genocide and yet, the MSM continues to exhibit an inability to cover the “huge events” while making much over nothing (”No weapons of mass destruction” - despite the documented genocide of many thousands of Kurd civilians).
The crippling of MSM circulation might be self inflicted.
Said RSC,
On February 22, 2008 at 3:05 pm: