On Gawker

This is an edited version of a segment of a recent newsletter.

Did you read Gawker? It was a website, part of an eponymous media group, of which I had no real understanding before moving to New York. Its riches took me by surprise.

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U.S. presidential election: 12 weeks out, an evening with Trump

On Saturday night I attended a Donald Trump rally in Fairfield, Connecticut. 

At a modest, 19-year-old gymnasium at Sacred Heart University, I watched fat droplets of sweat build at the ends of a nearby mullet, fall to the floor, and build again. I despaired at the rivulets coursing down my own shins, and at the elderly man who I watched produce a large glass cloth to scrape his wet face with. 

The National Weather Service had issued an “excessive heat warning” for the region, the hall was not air-conditioned, the doors were sealed, the available water was sparse, and Trump was late. 

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It is wrong to subscribe to "chipper, but probably inept"

The sum-up by Kevin Rafter, in yesterday's Irish Times, of the results of a recent survey of Irish journalists, was housed under "Opinion". Good thing, given the headline: "Journalists are getting younger but loss of experience brings problems".

Twice, though, I read this piece without realizing its denomination. It might had been better for Rafter's opinion not to be couched in the findings, or the findings couched in Rafter's opinion. But it can be difficult to get survey findings published in national newspapers, and here we are.

"First," Rafter writes, "journalists are relatively young. The overwhelming majority (68 per cent) are in the 25-44 age category. The comparable figure in 1997 was 55 per cent."

There "must", the academic says, borrowing this line directly from his report on the findings, "be concern about the ability of younger journalists to offer serious editorial context when reporting and contextualising major news stories".

I disagree.

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After Nice

I was reminded of some of what Simon Kuper had to say after Paris last November.

"...it was one of very many signs in Paris that, actually, almost all of us just want to get along. We just want to live our lives. Like people everywhere, living your own personal life with your friends and your family, is difficult enough, and good enough, that for most people, that's all there is. They're not engaged in some global clash of civilization or some great religious ideology. Very few people have the time or interest for that."