Newspapers

I may have been too harsh recently. I scoffed at the idea of a lettuce “bolting” and made merry with the New York Times leader writer who suggested that, now that summer is (allegedly) here, lettuces were prone to do this. Now, rather inconveniently, my sister, who in addition to being a very fine artist whose paintings any sensible chap of means would buy, is also a budding horticulturalist, pipes up with this: “Bolting” is the term used by all gardeners on this, and seemingly that, side of the Atlantic for a plant that is running to seed (which generally means it’s past being useful for eating). Lettuces are quite

Newspapers are comfortable places to work. True, you find yourself working with a disturbing number of misfits and socially inadequate neurotics. But there are compensations. For instance, there are few more comfortable berths in any trade than settling down to life in a newspaper leader writing office. Other pleasing stations – foreign editor, golf correspondent, restaurant critic – suddenly seem unpleasantly bustling, tarnished by contact with the great unwashed and the world outside the office. Granted, there are times when, as the old saw has it, the editorial writers wait until the battle’s over before slinking down form the hills to stab the wounded. It is not often a position

Responding to a reader’s suggestion that pop music became terrible once folk could just download (legally or not) any music they desired, Megan McArdle sensibly disputes the premise, writing: I’m not sure that musical talent is eroding so much as being dispersed. The rise of cheap distribution means there are more genres and sub-genres than there used to be–and also that acts don’t need to broaden their appeal so much as they once did. If you don’t need to get on a top forty station to make it big, you will lose the elements you once might have added to attract that audience. Conversely, the pop acts will stop trying

All the London papers’ obituary pages reward close attention, but the Daily Telegraph remains peerless in tracking the lives and, obviously, deaths, of WW2 servicemen. These accounts of remarkable derring-do and extraordinary achievement under testing circumstances naturally seem more, not less, vital as the number of survivors dwindles. Thus this charming anecdote from today’s obituary of Lieutenant ‘Polly’ Perkins, a motor torpedo boat captain who won two DSC’s: On December 18/19 1944, by which time he had been promoted to command the long-range MTB 766, Perkins was hiding in the fjords during an operation to land and recover agents in Norway. He sent a rating ashore to obtain some Christmas

The Atlantic has a very interesting, unintentionally hilarious Mark Bowden piece on Rupert Murdoch’s plans for the Wall Street Journal. Apparently the newsroom is very troubled by the new proprietor’s insistence that reporters uncover “scoops”. Heaven forbid! This also made me laugh: “I think he has enough sense not to trash what makes the newspaper so valuable,” said Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute. “He has owned The Times of London for more than 20 years, and it is still a serious newspaper.” Serious, perhaps, but few Londoners would argue that the newspaper is anything like what it once was. Robert Block, a veteran Journal reporter who now covers the

A friend in San Francisco sent me an article that, I suspect, has to be the best thing written about Barack Obama yet. Mark Morford, a San Francisco Chronicle columnist writes: Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher ina new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this

Euro 2008 starts today and happily we’re spared the agony of watching Scotland play. The BBC are doing their best to persuade us that even a tournament “without England” might be worth watching even though most sentient people appreciate that England’s failure to qualify actually enhances the tournament, especially for the TV viewer who might have an increased chance of intelligent, astute, imaginative, perceptive TV coverage. Not so fast my friends! Here’s the BBC’s Gary Lineker explaining why he thinks Spain can win the tournament: It is open, but I am going for those perennial underachievers in Spain…the feeling is that [the] team chokes, but they have done well in

As I always say, Scoop isn’t really fiction. From John Gaskell’s obituary in the Telegraph today: Plagued by ill-health, Gaskell reduced his commitments to working half a week   so that he could write a novel about obituaries. Unfortunately, he mentioned   this to a man he was interviewing, and the man then sold the idea to a   publisher as his own. The shorter hours, however, saved Gaskell’s bacon when   there was a cull of staff. Some weeks later he went to have his contract   renewed, and was told that the management had forgotten him: “We meant to   sack you.” Sadly, I suspect that these days

Good lord. Thanks (er, I think) to Kevin Drum for pointing me to today’s Maureen Dowd column. It is, as they say, a doozy. Even though people at diners kept trying to fatten up Obama — he drew the line at gravy — he looked increasingly diaphanous, like anti-matter to Hillary’s matter. She’s more appealing when she’s beaten down; he’s less imposing… Obama is like her idealistic, somewhat naïve self before the world launched 1,000 attacks against her, turning her into the hard-bitten, driven politician who has launched 1,000 attacks against Obama. As she makes a last frenzied and likely futile attempt to crush the butterfly [Obama], it’s as though

Since I’m too young to have seen Dennis Lillee in his absolute prime, Malcolm Marshall is the greatest fast bowler I’ve watched in my lifetime. He would have been 50 this month, but for the colon cancer that killed him. Pat Lynch remembers the great Barbadian here. One fine story that has just a hint of the Golden Age about it: What he said, he meant, as he did at Pontypridd when playing for Hampshire. With two days remaining, Glamorgan were 13 runs ahead in their second innings with seven wickets left. Just before the start of play in front of a full dressing room Marshall rang his Southampton golf