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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
"The Blah is becoming a daily destination for me." - Richard Marsh, Playwright
"I like it, and I don't." - Fiona Hogg, Teacher
"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen ... lend your ears to these people. I come not to bury them, but praise them.
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My TIME articles
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Online column index
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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Why Good Stories are Getting Buried
I don't mean to keep attacking the Washington Post -- I have no particular beef against the paper, and it is one of the more Bush-critical of the major dailies. But as eagle-eyed bloggers have pointed out, they took what was going to be a major front page story on the Downing Street memo (you do know what the Downing Street memo is, don't you? If not, read this website or watch this BBC documentary), cut it severely and moved it page 26 at the very last minute. So last minute that early-bird web readers noticed the switch and did screen grabs.
Why? Did some editor get skittish in the face of the fall-out over one line in sister publication Newsweek? Has a piece of solid investigative journalism once again been buried because of lazy reporting in an unrelated story, as happened at CBS last summer?
I've long said that the biggest problem with my profession is that journalists overcompensate. By and large, they vote Democratic -- of course they do, they nearly all live in cities, and cities are Democrat strongholds -- and because it is drilled into them that they must be objective, they play up the opposing point of view and fatally diminish their own. So when the truth happens to lie within their worldview, they inherently distrust it. The miniority of Republican journalists, as Fox News viewers know, are not hamstrung by the same intellectual self-doubting. And that is why their world view is winning, and why it is so easy for an assertive White House to bully the mainstream media -- like our dear old friend, the WaPo.
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