The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Sarah:

Perhaps one major difficulty of e-slush is that it would limit the number of slush readers to the number of computers available. It was many moons ago that I interned at a Major Skiffy Publishing House in NYC, but, if I recall correctly and extrapolate from that experience to the experience of other offices that accept slush, those treasured employees who read slush probably don't have individual computers, and those they do have (that, the one they do have) are used for things other than slogging through slush.

Quoting Owlmirror at #87: "It would be nice if there were some other algorithm that "what pulls public eyeballs" to determine what media focuses on. Some way to determine that some particular event will actually have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people, and media outlets would focus only on the highest ranking events."

Yes, and as a working reporter, trust me, most people in the non-TMZ/Gawker/Murdoch world feel the same way. But have you read about the struggles of the Tribune Co., the Dow Jones Co. and the death of Knight Ridder? It's not that the media focuses on what pulls eyeballs because we find that fascinating -- it's that pulling those eyeballs, those ratings or audited circulation numbers lets newspapers sell the advertising that bankrolls the cost of operating foreign bureaus or the salary of the reporter who writes about community water board meetings.

Fewer and fewer people each day read the Times' coverage of Iraq, and yet that paper spends millions each year paying for its own secure office in the country. Why? Because they think it's important. Writing about things like Paris Hilton lets smaller papers like the Rocky Mountain News spend a huge amount of money printing up a special full-color section to print Jim Sheeler's Pulitzer-winning piece on the Marines who alert families to the death of their relatives in Iraq.

I don't know if the situation in TV news is as financially dire, but I don't think local news channels are raking it in. Why Americans care about celebrity, I can't imagine, but the media covers it because it sells, and because, somewhere, there are editors that want to be able to afford the salaries of their City Hall staff.

I work as a reporter for a metro paper and nearly every week we write up some tragic story about someone who was killed by a drunk driver. Last week, it was about the trial of a college student who killed a 30 year old woman. Her father testified. Apparently, the woman's older brother -- her only sibling -- had been killed 10 years prior by another drunk driver.

And yet, 50% of each night's arrests are for DUI, many of them habitual offenders driving on suspended or revoked licenses. I only wish those people (and, yes, Paris) would have to spend their time in jail reading through a book of the obituaries written each year for those killed by drunk drivers.

I'm curious - what is Patrick referring to when he says that dodging to Canada won't work this time? Is there a specific law which allows for, say, extradition? Or is it just that customs will tighten the border so people simply can't get across easily?

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