One design is flower brooches. These are perfect for flower lovers. They are available in various colors and some of the designs available are floral wreaths and bouquets. They are also extremely fashionable regardless of the season. Flower brooches are perfect for different events, especially weddings. They are also very cute and appropriate for church.
Everyone likes to accessorize. One of the best ways to do that is to go with brooches as your jewelry or an added fashion piece. They never go out of style and there are so many flower brooches to choose from that there will always be a fresh piece for every occasion. If someone is in the mood for something whimsical and cute, there are various flower brooches to select from.
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Monday, July 22, 2013
Friday, July 12, 2013
Street protests spread chaos across Brazil
RIO DE JANEIRO, July 11 (UPI) -- Protesters brought Brazil's main highways nearly to a standstill amid persistent public anger over alleged misuse of public funds and neglect of basic services.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff faces a sharp drop in her approval ratings amid allegations the government has lavished funds on controversial prestige projects that should go toward poverty reduction and improving public services.
The prestige projects include multibillion-dollar sprucing up of the country's exterior image before next year's FIFA World Cup tournament and the Olympics in 2016. Critics accuse the government of turning a blind eye to mass-scale misappropriations, delays in projects and cronyism.
The government says the expenditure is necessary to prepare Brazil for the two international events. Media reports cite shortfalls in necessary infrastructural renewal, including hotel room shortages.
Rousseff launched a major anti-corruption drive last year amid charges of misrule by her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and his alleged cronies, but the campaign has been derailed as renewed allegations emerge of widespread graft under her own presidency.
Tens of thousands of protesters turned out for Thursday's demonstrations, with protesters and traffic clogging major highways in at least seven states, officials said.
Protest leaders called the turnout a "national struggle day." Although the main protests were orchestrated by trade unions, many other organizations joined in.
Access to the Santos port, the largest in South America, was blocked by protesters for a second day.
The country's heavily congested ports suffered more setbacks in authorities' desperate bid to clear a backlog that has spread panic among traders. Exporters fear they face huge losses as merchandise remains unshipped.
Disruptions were reported in hospitals and some schools remained shut. Public transport systems in many areas outside Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo were hit, leaving thousands more who didn't join the protests stranded in roads and at railway stations.
As the protests spread, demands have widened, too. Protesters want specific action on improving infrastructure, reducing income disparities and agricultural reforms that can lift farmers out of chronic poverty.
Analysts say income disparities have worsened with rising inflation.
IMF data show emerging markets including Brazil face slowing growth. The IMF cut its global growth forecast for 2013 to a "subdued" 3.1 percent and for emerging economies to 5 percent from 5.3 percent.
The outlook for Brazil has gone down to 2.5 percent from 3.4 percent.
Critics say the slow growth forecast is another reason for the Rousseff administration to be more cautious with public spending.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff faces a sharp drop in her approval ratings amid allegations the government has lavished funds on controversial prestige projects that should go toward poverty reduction and improving public services.
The prestige projects include multibillion-dollar sprucing up of the country's exterior image before next year's FIFA World Cup tournament and the Olympics in 2016. Critics accuse the government of turning a blind eye to mass-scale misappropriations, delays in projects and cronyism.
The government says the expenditure is necessary to prepare Brazil for the two international events. Media reports cite shortfalls in necessary infrastructural renewal, including hotel room shortages.
Rousseff launched a major anti-corruption drive last year amid charges of misrule by her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and his alleged cronies, but the campaign has been derailed as renewed allegations emerge of widespread graft under her own presidency.
Tens of thousands of protesters turned out for Thursday's demonstrations, with protesters and traffic clogging major highways in at least seven states, officials said.
Protest leaders called the turnout a "national struggle day." Although the main protests were orchestrated by trade unions, many other organizations joined in.
Access to the Santos port, the largest in South America, was blocked by protesters for a second day.
The country's heavily congested ports suffered more setbacks in authorities' desperate bid to clear a backlog that has spread panic among traders. Exporters fear they face huge losses as merchandise remains unshipped.
Disruptions were reported in hospitals and some schools remained shut. Public transport systems in many areas outside Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo were hit, leaving thousands more who didn't join the protests stranded in roads and at railway stations.
As the protests spread, demands have widened, too. Protesters want specific action on improving infrastructure, reducing income disparities and agricultural reforms that can lift farmers out of chronic poverty.
Analysts say income disparities have worsened with rising inflation.
IMF data show emerging markets including Brazil face slowing growth. The IMF cut its global growth forecast for 2013 to a "subdued" 3.1 percent and for emerging economies to 5 percent from 5.3 percent.
The outlook for Brazil has gone down to 2.5 percent from 3.4 percent.
Critics say the slow growth forecast is another reason for the Rousseff administration to be more cautious with public spending.
Fashion Crystal Necklace Are Ready For You
Necklace is also a very common jewelry worn since ancient time. This kind of jewelry is often worn on the neck. Crystal necklace is often worn by the royal class in the ancient world. Men as well as women wear earrings as an ornament. The quality and cost of a given jewelry depend largely on the material used in manufacturing it. Some earrings are unisex; that is to say that they can be worn by men and women alike. Some other earrings are either designed for men or for women.
The necklace is a piece of jewelry that you should choose according to your hobby. Whether you want them for daily wear or for some special occasion, the fashion jewelries are vital for you to complete you personality. Today handmade design crystal necklace is in great demand read more. There is a new style of circle blue crystal flowers rhinestone necklace, it is made by crystal and rhinestones. The blue crystal at the center is highlighted by surrounding colorful rhinestones, which make the crystal necklace become more beautiful. That is the reason why most women like this style necklace.
Crystal necklace is also a special kind of jewelry worn on the neck. Necklaces could be manufactured with precious stones and metals. Princes, princesses, queens and kings are decorated with different forms of necklaces in order to improve their look and also as a sign of nobility. Some metals and precious stones such as gold, silver, diamond copper, and lots more can be used to manufacture jewelries.
The necklace is a piece of jewelry that you should choose according to your hobby. Whether you want them for daily wear or for some special occasion, the fashion jewelries are vital for you to complete you personality. Today handmade design crystal necklace is in great demand read more. There is a new style of circle blue crystal flowers rhinestone necklace, it is made by crystal and rhinestones. The blue crystal at the center is highlighted by surrounding colorful rhinestones, which make the crystal necklace become more beautiful. That is the reason why most women like this style necklace.
Crystal necklace is also a special kind of jewelry worn on the neck. Necklaces could be manufactured with precious stones and metals. Princes, princesses, queens and kings are decorated with different forms of necklaces in order to improve their look and also as a sign of nobility. Some metals and precious stones such as gold, silver, diamond copper, and lots more can be used to manufacture jewelries.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Crew tried to abort landing before San Francisco air crash
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 that crashed at San Francisco's airport on Saturday was flying "significantly below" its intended speed and its crew tried to abort the landing less than two seconds before it hit a seawall in front of the runway, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Sunday.
Asiana Airlines said the pilot in charge of landing the Boeing 777 on Saturday, Lee Kang-kook, was training for the long-range plane and it was his first flight to that airport with the jet. Asiana Airlines said he had previously flown to San Francisco on different planes and was being assisted by another pilot more experienced with the Boeing 777.
Information collected from the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder indicated that there were no signs of trouble until seven seconds before impact, when the crew tried to accelerate, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said at a news conference at the airport.
A stall warning in which the cockpit controls begin to shake activated four seconds before impact, and the crew tried to abort the landing and initiate what is known as a "go around" maneuver 1.5 seconds before crashing, Hersman said.
"Air speed was significantly below the target air speed" of 137 knots, she said. The throttle was set at idle as the plane approached the airport and the "engines appear to respond normally" when the crew tried to gain speed in the seconds before the crash, Hersman said.
Two Chinese teenagers died in the incident and more than 180 people were injured, local officials said. In a tragic new twist, the San Francisco Fire Department said that one of the teenagers may have been run over by an emergency vehicle as first responders scrambled to the scene.
"One of the deceased did have injuries consistent with those of having been run over by a vehicle," fire department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said. "Many agencies were on the field yesterday."
Autopsies to determine the cause of death will be conducted by the San Mateo County coroner's office, officials said.
More than 30 people remained hospitalized late on Sunday. Eight were listed in critical condition, including two with paralysis from spinal injuries, according to hospital officials.
The charred hulk of the aircraft remained on the airport tarmac as flight operations gradually returned to normal. Three of the four runways were operating by Sunday afternoon.
Hersman said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash. The data recorders corroborated witness accounts and an amateur video, shown by CNN, that indicated the plane came in too low, lifted its nose in an attempt to gain altitude, and then bounced violently along the tarmac after the rear of the aircraft clipped a seawall at the approach to the runway.
Asked whether the information reviewed by the NTSB showed pilot error in the crash, Hersman did not answer directly.
"What I will tell you is that the NTSB conducts very thorough investigations. We will not reach a determination of probable cause in the first few days that we're on an accident scene," she told reporters.
Asiana said mechanical failure did not appear to be a factor in the crash. Hersman confirmed that a part of the airport's instrument-landing system was offline on Saturday as part of a scheduled runway construction project, but cautioned against drawing conclusions from that.
"You do not need instruments to get into the airport," she said, noting that the weather was good at the time of the crash and that the plane had been cleared for a visual approach.
The Asiana flight originated in Shanghai and was flying to San Francisco from Seoul with 291 passengers and 16 crew members on board. Several large groups of Chinese students were among the passengers.
SERIOUS INTERIOR DAMAGE
People on the flight said nothing seemed amiss until moments before the plane hit the ground. Pictures taken by survivors showed passengers hurrying out of the wrecked plane, some on evacuation slides. Thick smoke billowed from the fuselage and TV footage showed the aircraft gutted and blackened by fire. Much of its roof was gone.
Interior damage to the plane also was extreme, Hersman said on CNN earlier on Sunday.
"You can see the devastation from the outside of the aircraft, the burn-through, the damage to the external fuselage," she said. "But what you can't see is the damage internally. That is really striking."
The NTSB released photos showing the wrecked interior cabin oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling.
The dead were identified as Ye Meng Yuan and Wang Lin Jia, both 16-year-old girls and described as Chinese nationals who are students, Asiana Airlines said. They had been seated at the rear of the aircraft, according to government officials in Seoul and Asiana, and were found outside the airplane.
Hersman said the first crew of emergency workers to arrive at the scene included 23 people in nine vehicles. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said a total of 225 first responders were involved.
"As chaotic as the site was yesterday, I think a number of miracles occurred to save many more lives," Lee said at the airport news conference. Appearing later at San Francisco General Hospital, he declined to address whether one of the Chinese teenagers may have been run over.
The crash was the first fatal accident involving the Boeing 777, a popular long-range jet that has been in service since 1995. It was the first fatal commercial airline accident in the United States since a regional plane operated by Colgan Air crashed in New York in 2009.
"For now, we acknowledge that there were no problems caused by the 777-200 plane or (its) engines," Yoon Young-doo, the president and CEO of the airline, told reporters on Sunday at the company headquarters on the outskirts of Seoul.
Asiana said passengers included 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 64 Americans, three Indians, three Canadians, one French, one Vietnamese and one Japanese citizen.
Asiana, South Korea's junior carrier, has had two other fatal crashes in its 25-year history.
(Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin, Alistain Barr, Sarah McBride, Ronnie Cohen, Poornima Gupta, Laila Kearney, Dan Levine, Jonathan Weber, Peter Henderson, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Jonathan Allen and Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Will Dunham)
Asiana Airlines said the pilot in charge of landing the Boeing 777 on Saturday, Lee Kang-kook, was training for the long-range plane and it was his first flight to that airport with the jet. Asiana Airlines said he had previously flown to San Francisco on different planes and was being assisted by another pilot more experienced with the Boeing 777.
Information collected from the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder indicated that there were no signs of trouble until seven seconds before impact, when the crew tried to accelerate, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said at a news conference at the airport.
A stall warning in which the cockpit controls begin to shake activated four seconds before impact, and the crew tried to abort the landing and initiate what is known as a "go around" maneuver 1.5 seconds before crashing, Hersman said.
"Air speed was significantly below the target air speed" of 137 knots, she said. The throttle was set at idle as the plane approached the airport and the "engines appear to respond normally" when the crew tried to gain speed in the seconds before the crash, Hersman said.
Two Chinese teenagers died in the incident and more than 180 people were injured, local officials said. In a tragic new twist, the San Francisco Fire Department said that one of the teenagers may have been run over by an emergency vehicle as first responders scrambled to the scene.
"One of the deceased did have injuries consistent with those of having been run over by a vehicle," fire department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said. "Many agencies were on the field yesterday."
Autopsies to determine the cause of death will be conducted by the San Mateo County coroner's office, officials said.
More than 30 people remained hospitalized late on Sunday. Eight were listed in critical condition, including two with paralysis from spinal injuries, according to hospital officials.
The charred hulk of the aircraft remained on the airport tarmac as flight operations gradually returned to normal. Three of the four runways were operating by Sunday afternoon.
Hersman said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash. The data recorders corroborated witness accounts and an amateur video, shown by CNN, that indicated the plane came in too low, lifted its nose in an attempt to gain altitude, and then bounced violently along the tarmac after the rear of the aircraft clipped a seawall at the approach to the runway.
Asked whether the information reviewed by the NTSB showed pilot error in the crash, Hersman did not answer directly.
"What I will tell you is that the NTSB conducts very thorough investigations. We will not reach a determination of probable cause in the first few days that we're on an accident scene," she told reporters.
Asiana said mechanical failure did not appear to be a factor in the crash. Hersman confirmed that a part of the airport's instrument-landing system was offline on Saturday as part of a scheduled runway construction project, but cautioned against drawing conclusions from that.
"You do not need instruments to get into the airport," she said, noting that the weather was good at the time of the crash and that the plane had been cleared for a visual approach.
The Asiana flight originated in Shanghai and was flying to San Francisco from Seoul with 291 passengers and 16 crew members on board. Several large groups of Chinese students were among the passengers.
SERIOUS INTERIOR DAMAGE
People on the flight said nothing seemed amiss until moments before the plane hit the ground. Pictures taken by survivors showed passengers hurrying out of the wrecked plane, some on evacuation slides. Thick smoke billowed from the fuselage and TV footage showed the aircraft gutted and blackened by fire. Much of its roof was gone.
Interior damage to the plane also was extreme, Hersman said on CNN earlier on Sunday.
"You can see the devastation from the outside of the aircraft, the burn-through, the damage to the external fuselage," she said. "But what you can't see is the damage internally. That is really striking."
The NTSB released photos showing the wrecked interior cabin oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling.
The dead were identified as Ye Meng Yuan and Wang Lin Jia, both 16-year-old girls and described as Chinese nationals who are students, Asiana Airlines said. They had been seated at the rear of the aircraft, according to government officials in Seoul and Asiana, and were found outside the airplane.
Hersman said the first crew of emergency workers to arrive at the scene included 23 people in nine vehicles. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said a total of 225 first responders were involved.
"As chaotic as the site was yesterday, I think a number of miracles occurred to save many more lives," Lee said at the airport news conference. Appearing later at San Francisco General Hospital, he declined to address whether one of the Chinese teenagers may have been run over.
The crash was the first fatal accident involving the Boeing 777, a popular long-range jet that has been in service since 1995. It was the first fatal commercial airline accident in the United States since a regional plane operated by Colgan Air crashed in New York in 2009.
"For now, we acknowledge that there were no problems caused by the 777-200 plane or (its) engines," Yoon Young-doo, the president and CEO of the airline, told reporters on Sunday at the company headquarters on the outskirts of Seoul.
Asiana said passengers included 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 64 Americans, three Indians, three Canadians, one French, one Vietnamese and one Japanese citizen.
Asiana, South Korea's junior carrier, has had two other fatal crashes in its 25-year history.
(Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin, Alistain Barr, Sarah McBride, Ronnie Cohen, Poornima Gupta, Laila Kearney, Dan Levine, Jonathan Weber, Peter Henderson, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Jonathan Allen and Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Will Dunham)
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Women accessories are essential for every woman, who desires to stay stylish and trendy. Acquire a graceful look by wearing branded pendants and rings for women. Look chic by wearing cool butterfly brooch. Necklaces and some other women accessories for women will make heads turn in your direction. So, get these cool accessories in order to look amazing. The classy add-ons will add more charm to your exclusive style.
Women believe accessories complete outfits, refine beauty and personality and attract men. Fashion accessories are complementary to women's fashion apparels that give a complete looks to a woman or in other words, complete a woman. Women love to wear articles and this practice has been going on since ancient times. However there have been a lot of changes since ancient Greek style bangle to today's bangle style.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Turning the morning news into soap opera
Ann Curry, the second fiddle on NBC’s Today show, is apparently being shown the door. That news was broken yesterday afternoon by Brian Stelter, the prolific media reporter of the New York Times on the newspaper’s website, and that 1,100-word story earned prominent placement on Page One of the business section of this morning’s paper.
I’ll forgive you in advance if you don’t care whether Curry continues on Today or if you don’t care whether she finds a slot elsewhere in the NBC empire, just as long as you forgive me for not giving a fig either. It’s not that I dislike Ann Curry or Today‘s first fiddle, Matt Lauer, or even Today‘s morning-show competition. It’s just that I dislike the shows for being dulled-down messes of news, entertainment and talk. If I watch any of them, it’s by accident.
My lack of interest in the morning-show mix puts me in the majority. Today, which is usually the number-one-rated program, and ABC’s Good Morning America, which took that position a couple of times this spring, draw an average of fewer than 5 million viewers. The third-ranked show, CBS’s This Morning, pulls in a little more than 2 million viewers. In a country of 311 million, that’s minimal interest.
The length and placement of Stelter’s piece, on the other hand, conveys a level of importance to Curry’s rumored departure that’s hard to justify. Stripped to its essence, the Curry saga might justify a 300-word short about Today‘s recent ratings volatility, Lauer’s alleged estrangement from Curry, and NBC’s judgment that she wasn’t as good a co-host as predecessor Meredith Vieira, all leading to her impending exit.
Instead, Stelter serves an extended story packed with anonymous sources – ”some at NBC,” “some staff members,” “people with knowledge of the negotiations, who insisted on anonymity because the matter was confidential,” “several people who know Ms. Curry,” “one of the people” who know Curry, “friends” of Meredith Vieira, and “one of the people with knowledge of the negotiations” between Curry and NBC – that makes the departure of a TV co-host sound like the final days of Richard Nixon. How much of the anonymous dancing is Curry’s people spinning her story and how much of it is NBC framing the ouster as necessary strategy to save the show is anybody’s guess.
Overdramatizing the comings and goings of on-air talent and the hirings and firings of network executives is a traditional part of the TV beat. The People Who Cover Television never have to worry about material: The TV industry defines itself by ratings, ratings produce winners and losers, and from winners and losers flow an endless river of copy to bottle and sell. The People Who Cover Sports have been doing a similar thing for more than a century. The toughest choice in covering the TV industry (or sports) is to decide whether to make the loser or the winner the day’s story. It’s not that difficult a choice. If you cover the loser today, just remember to put the winner in your calendar for coverage in the future.
A case can be made that the fate of Ann Curry constitutes big news because Today is a $300 million profit machine dependent on ratings for its ad revenues. If ratings drop and she’s to blame, the network’s stockholders must know! But Stelter spends little time there. In the worst tradition of TV coverage, he’s writing a soap opera about a TV show.
I pick on Stelter, but he’s only one of the several dramatizers working the TV beat. His Times colleague Bill Carter has been known to indulge this tendency, and a couple of years ago, critic Bill Wyman took pleasure in hosing Howard Kurtz (Washington Post and the Daily Beast) for his inappropriately thorough pieces on the fading of Katie Couric’s nightly news lights. The extreme coverage of Curry echoes Politico’s coverage of the Washington beat: While the outlet routinely breaks legitimate news, it also tends to inflate whatever political lint it collects into giant mainsails.
At least one newspaper reporter on the TV beat keeps a sense of perspective about her work: Lisa de Moraes of the Washington Post. (Here’s my 2003 appreciation of her work.) With her oeuvre more resembling that of a sports columnist than a sports reporter, de Moraes still delivers as much news about the industry as the writers at the Times – only she doesn’t weigh the beat down with high word counts and Timesian puff. And she’s funny. When CNN’s Lou Dobbs Moneyline was renamed Lou Dobbs Tonight, de Moraes explained that it was “because CNN would not let him rename it “I’m Lou Dobbs, Not Some Darn Islamist.”
With no disrespect to Curry, who is an accomplished reporter, if her impending exit from Today is big news, so is every segment on Entertainment Tonight.
I’ll forgive you in advance if you don’t care whether Curry continues on Today or if you don’t care whether she finds a slot elsewhere in the NBC empire, just as long as you forgive me for not giving a fig either. It’s not that I dislike Ann Curry or Today‘s first fiddle, Matt Lauer, or even Today‘s morning-show competition. It’s just that I dislike the shows for being dulled-down messes of news, entertainment and talk. If I watch any of them, it’s by accident.
My lack of interest in the morning-show mix puts me in the majority. Today, which is usually the number-one-rated program, and ABC’s Good Morning America, which took that position a couple of times this spring, draw an average of fewer than 5 million viewers. The third-ranked show, CBS’s This Morning, pulls in a little more than 2 million viewers. In a country of 311 million, that’s minimal interest.
The length and placement of Stelter’s piece, on the other hand, conveys a level of importance to Curry’s rumored departure that’s hard to justify. Stripped to its essence, the Curry saga might justify a 300-word short about Today‘s recent ratings volatility, Lauer’s alleged estrangement from Curry, and NBC’s judgment that she wasn’t as good a co-host as predecessor Meredith Vieira, all leading to her impending exit.
Instead, Stelter serves an extended story packed with anonymous sources – ”some at NBC,” “some staff members,” “people with knowledge of the negotiations, who insisted on anonymity because the matter was confidential,” “several people who know Ms. Curry,” “one of the people” who know Curry, “friends” of Meredith Vieira, and “one of the people with knowledge of the negotiations” between Curry and NBC – that makes the departure of a TV co-host sound like the final days of Richard Nixon. How much of the anonymous dancing is Curry’s people spinning her story and how much of it is NBC framing the ouster as necessary strategy to save the show is anybody’s guess.
Overdramatizing the comings and goings of on-air talent and the hirings and firings of network executives is a traditional part of the TV beat. The People Who Cover Television never have to worry about material: The TV industry defines itself by ratings, ratings produce winners and losers, and from winners and losers flow an endless river of copy to bottle and sell. The People Who Cover Sports have been doing a similar thing for more than a century. The toughest choice in covering the TV industry (or sports) is to decide whether to make the loser or the winner the day’s story. It’s not that difficult a choice. If you cover the loser today, just remember to put the winner in your calendar for coverage in the future.
A case can be made that the fate of Ann Curry constitutes big news because Today is a $300 million profit machine dependent on ratings for its ad revenues. If ratings drop and she’s to blame, the network’s stockholders must know! But Stelter spends little time there. In the worst tradition of TV coverage, he’s writing a soap opera about a TV show.
I pick on Stelter, but he’s only one of the several dramatizers working the TV beat. His Times colleague Bill Carter has been known to indulge this tendency, and a couple of years ago, critic Bill Wyman took pleasure in hosing Howard Kurtz (Washington Post and the Daily Beast) for his inappropriately thorough pieces on the fading of Katie Couric’s nightly news lights. The extreme coverage of Curry echoes Politico’s coverage of the Washington beat: While the outlet routinely breaks legitimate news, it also tends to inflate whatever political lint it collects into giant mainsails.
At least one newspaper reporter on the TV beat keeps a sense of perspective about her work: Lisa de Moraes of the Washington Post. (Here’s my 2003 appreciation of her work.) With her oeuvre more resembling that of a sports columnist than a sports reporter, de Moraes still delivers as much news about the industry as the writers at the Times – only she doesn’t weigh the beat down with high word counts and Timesian puff. And she’s funny. When CNN’s Lou Dobbs Moneyline was renamed Lou Dobbs Tonight, de Moraes explained that it was “because CNN would not let him rename it “I’m Lou Dobbs, Not Some Darn Islamist.”
With no disrespect to Curry, who is an accomplished reporter, if her impending exit from Today is big news, so is every segment on Entertainment Tonight.
Beat sweetener The Benjamin J. Rhodes edition
If you’ve ever wanted to see a White House staffer dressed in frosting and candy sprinkles like a gourmet cupcake, pull your Saturday, March 16, New York Times out of the recycling pile and read Mark Landler’s adulating “beat sweetener” about Deputy National Security Adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes, “Worldly at 35, and Shaping Obama’s Voice.”
A beat sweetener, as press-watchers know, is an over-the-top slab of journalistic flattery of a potential source calculated to earn a reporter access or continued access. They’re most frequently composed on the White House beat when a new administration arrives in Washington and every Executive Office job turns over, but they can appear any time a reporter is prepared to demean himself by toadying up to a source in exchange for material.
As a beat sweetener, the Rhodes piece excels on so many levels that I’ll bet the subject’s parents have framed and hung the clipping over the family mantel. Landler portrays Rhodes as a young fella with “old man” wisdom; as possessing a “soft voice” that delivers “strong opinions”; as one whose “influence extends beyond what either his title or speechwriting duties suggest”; and as someone who “cares” to the point of “anguish” but is “very realistic.”
The information content of these testimonials, made by both Landler and his sources, is just about zero. We learn that he “channels Mr. Obama on foreign policy,” as if a 35-year-old deputy who writes speeches for the president would have his boss on a leash. His unnamed friends and colleagues attest that he’s “deeply frustrated by a policy [in Syria] that is not working,” as if anyone could be anything but frustrated by a policy that isn’t working. Indeed, in the article’s next sentence, we learn from anonymous “administration officials” that Rhodes “is not alone in his frustration over Syria.”
Drawing liberally from the reporter’s big book of clichés, we learn that Rhodes wrote Obama’s “landmark address” given in Cairo in 2009 and that the upcoming Israel speech he has composed for Obama will assert America’s “unshakable support” for that nation. The salient fact about Rhodes’s landmark address — unmentioned by Landler here — was that it flopped, at least among the locals. According to a Pew survey, confidence in Obama in Muslim countries dropped from 33 percent in 2009 to 24 percent in 2012.
According to Landler, in “many ways” Rhodes was “an improbable choice for his current job at the heart of the national security apparatus.” Improbable? How so? After a couple of paragraphs of biography, in which we learn that Rhodes has an unfinished novel in his drawer (show me a speechwriter who doesn’t have at least one), that he grew up in Manhattan and that he worked briefly on Rudy Giuliani’s 1997 re-election campaign, we’re told that Rhodes toiled for former Representative Lee Hamilton, a “Democratic foreign-policy elder,” and helped him draft the 9/11 Commission report and the Iraq Study Group report. The latter document was “a template for the anti-Iraq war positions taken” by Obama when he was a senator.
Hiring Rhodes — or somebody with his resume — wasn’t an improbable choice. It was entirely predestined. Unnoted in the Times profile are the facts that Rhodes also wrote policy speeches for former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, that other Hamilton aides joined the Obama campaign, and that Rhodes’s wife, Ann Norris, works for Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on foreign policy and defense issues. For more Rhodes details, see this PR sketch published by his alma mater, Rice University: He studied there with novelist Max Apple, double-majoring in English and political science, and later got an MFA in fiction at New York University, where he also taught writing.
Why pretend Rhodes was an outside shot for the job? Did the Times decide the piece lacked sufficient tension to hold reader interest, and inflated the story with the bogus notion that he’s an accidental West Winger? Your guess is as good as mine.
Sucking up to Rhodes won’t necessarily earn Landler or other journalists covering the White House an automatic scoop. But beat sweeteners aren’t written with anything so crass in mind as scoops. They’re designed to keep the information conveyor lubricated (“source greaser” is another term for the practice) with journalistic goodwill. As someone who is inside the White House decision loop, Rhodes is a much better friend than an enemy.
That said, there was no reason for the Times to serve its readers a giant vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting and vanilla jimmies. As your mom used to tell you, too much of anything will give you a stomach ache.
A beat sweetener, as press-watchers know, is an over-the-top slab of journalistic flattery of a potential source calculated to earn a reporter access or continued access. They’re most frequently composed on the White House beat when a new administration arrives in Washington and every Executive Office job turns over, but they can appear any time a reporter is prepared to demean himself by toadying up to a source in exchange for material.
As a beat sweetener, the Rhodes piece excels on so many levels that I’ll bet the subject’s parents have framed and hung the clipping over the family mantel. Landler portrays Rhodes as a young fella with “old man” wisdom; as possessing a “soft voice” that delivers “strong opinions”; as one whose “influence extends beyond what either his title or speechwriting duties suggest”; and as someone who “cares” to the point of “anguish” but is “very realistic.”
The information content of these testimonials, made by both Landler and his sources, is just about zero. We learn that he “channels Mr. Obama on foreign policy,” as if a 35-year-old deputy who writes speeches for the president would have his boss on a leash. His unnamed friends and colleagues attest that he’s “deeply frustrated by a policy [in Syria] that is not working,” as if anyone could be anything but frustrated by a policy that isn’t working. Indeed, in the article’s next sentence, we learn from anonymous “administration officials” that Rhodes “is not alone in his frustration over Syria.”
Drawing liberally from the reporter’s big book of clichés, we learn that Rhodes wrote Obama’s “landmark address” given in Cairo in 2009 and that the upcoming Israel speech he has composed for Obama will assert America’s “unshakable support” for that nation. The salient fact about Rhodes’s landmark address — unmentioned by Landler here — was that it flopped, at least among the locals. According to a Pew survey, confidence in Obama in Muslim countries dropped from 33 percent in 2009 to 24 percent in 2012.
According to Landler, in “many ways” Rhodes was “an improbable choice for his current job at the heart of the national security apparatus.” Improbable? How so? After a couple of paragraphs of biography, in which we learn that Rhodes has an unfinished novel in his drawer (show me a speechwriter who doesn’t have at least one), that he grew up in Manhattan and that he worked briefly on Rudy Giuliani’s 1997 re-election campaign, we’re told that Rhodes toiled for former Representative Lee Hamilton, a “Democratic foreign-policy elder,” and helped him draft the 9/11 Commission report and the Iraq Study Group report. The latter document was “a template for the anti-Iraq war positions taken” by Obama when he was a senator.
Hiring Rhodes — or somebody with his resume — wasn’t an improbable choice. It was entirely predestined. Unnoted in the Times profile are the facts that Rhodes also wrote policy speeches for former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, that other Hamilton aides joined the Obama campaign, and that Rhodes’s wife, Ann Norris, works for Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on foreign policy and defense issues. For more Rhodes details, see this PR sketch published by his alma mater, Rice University: He studied there with novelist Max Apple, double-majoring in English and political science, and later got an MFA in fiction at New York University, where he also taught writing.
Why pretend Rhodes was an outside shot for the job? Did the Times decide the piece lacked sufficient tension to hold reader interest, and inflated the story with the bogus notion that he’s an accidental West Winger? Your guess is as good as mine.
Sucking up to Rhodes won’t necessarily earn Landler or other journalists covering the White House an automatic scoop. But beat sweeteners aren’t written with anything so crass in mind as scoops. They’re designed to keep the information conveyor lubricated (“source greaser” is another term for the practice) with journalistic goodwill. As someone who is inside the White House decision loop, Rhodes is a much better friend than an enemy.
That said, there was no reason for the Times to serve its readers a giant vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting and vanilla jimmies. As your mom used to tell you, too much of anything will give you a stomach ache.
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