Sunday, December 16, 2007

A Note to Our Readers

Hey --

Another Sunday. Here's who participated on this edition:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
and Wally of The Daily Jot

We thank all of them, we thank Dallas for his tremendous help as well. Next week will be the holiday weekend. An edition will post. Confirmed to be working on it will be Jess, Ava and C.I. (who will be steering it), Mike, Elaine, Wally and Cedric. Ruth has already said count her in. Others may work on it as well; however, Ty will be home for Christmas and not working on that edition. Dona and I (Jim) will be celebrating the holiday with Dona's family and also not taking part. No one should worry, Ava and C.I. steered last year's edition and ended up with one of the strongest of the year. They will be revisting at least one topic from that edition next week. They have a number of planned features and, as Dona pointed out, I kept trying to raid their list this weekend.

They are planning a roundtable and or a book discussion. (Both are currently on the list, time will dictate what they get to.)

What did we get to this weekend?

Truest statement of the week -- Bruce Dixon was the clear choice. It's also true that last week wasn't a good one for independent media. (By contrast, ABC News had a great week last week.) Even in a strong week, Dixon would have been the choice.

Truest statement of the week II -- After the note went up, Brenda e-mailed C.I. and asked that we please add this by Ruth which we will gladly do. Brenda is one of the many disturbed by the left and 'left' voices jumping on the nuclear energy bandwagon. She stated that section spoke to her more than anything else all last week and that she was surprised we hadn't noted it. It does deserve noting and there was no offense intended to Ruth. We hadn't read it. Ruth posted that after nine PST and we were already working on the edition. We knew her latest report had gone up but we hadn't yet read it because we were focused on getting this edition out. Mike and the Highlights gang read it when they were hunting down highlights and Rebecca and Mike both noted it was a hard hitting one. Thank you to Brenda for bringing it to C.I.'s attention and for making such a strong case for it being included. Let's add one more thing to the note (under TV).

Editorial: We keep giving them money, they keep funding the illegal war -- This was written by Dona, Kat, Jess, Ty, Ava, C.I. and myself. Another feature was the editorial in the print version.

TV: ABC's Cesspool -- Ava and C.I. tackle 20/20. It's a strong piece and probably one of the two strongest ones this week. They have no idea what they're going to tackle next week. Added: Ty saw Brian's e-mail and Brian thinks Ava and C.I.'s TV commentary got short shift in this note. He thinks this is one of their strongest and can't believe it got "only three, short sentences in Jim's note!" Brian, we were dead tired and the note was rushed to be done finally. It is noted that the two strongest pieces this week are both by Ava and C.I. Brian notes that he laughed out at three points while reading and that it pulled together "things that I didn't know and I watched the show Friday. They are right, the story on the female contractors being assaulted should have been paired up with one on the US service members being assaulted. I knew about Swift but the others were new to me." I'm not adding to that because I think Brian noted everything that needed to be noted.

Mailbag -- As is noted here, everyone wanted to go straight through. That didn't happen. We finished the print edition and told ourselves we could take a thirty minute nap and do a few quick tweaks. We (Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, C.I. and myself) ended up asleep for much longer than 30 minutes. After two hours, C.I. woke up and discovered everyone else was asleep. C.I. woke me and asked, "Do we want to get back up now and wake up everyone?" I said no (but should have said yes, ended up watching TV for two hours by which point everyone else was up). One thing we realized is we wanted a different editorial.

"I love my drug buddy . . ." -- This was the original editorial. It's strong as a feature but it didn't make it as an editorial (even in prior versions, we rewrote it after we decided it wasn't the editorial). The title is from a Lemonheads song.

Best war song you may not have heard -- "I Hate The War" is really a great song. If you haven't heard it, please check it out immediately.

Dope of the week -- This ended up causing a delay. Ginger wrote late and Ty was checking the e-mails this morning when he found it. We had to wait a bit for a 'normal' time for C.I. to call two friends with The Nation and ask them what was up? This issue may come up next week or may wait until the week after. It's 'cute' how Katrina vanden Heuvel uses interns to clean up her Wikipedia entry online, isn't it?

Ike Turner (Ava and C.I. feature) -- We blew it, as Dona notes in the mailbag. I begged Ava and C.I. for this feature and showed them the e-mail of a reader who was also asking the topic be addressed. After they read the e-mail, they were on board but thought it should be a group piece. I argued that if they'd do it themselves, the rest of us could knock out another feature during the same time. Instead, the rest of us (with a few exceptions -- which doesn't include me) b.s.ed the entire time and produced nothing. This is one of the two strongest pieces this edition, both of them were written by Ava and C.I. only.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Betty, Wally, Rebecca, Elaine and Cedric wrote this and selected the highlights unless otherwise noted.

So that's what we've got. To those celebrating now, next week or later, happy holidays. Remember, you're in good hands next week with Jess, Ava and C.I. and they'll probably have the entire edition done early, early in the morning.


-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
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