When we talk about the dangers of the degradation of newspapers, and the rise of "journalism products," such as the execrable Metro free subway rags, this is what we mean. (Here is the text of the State of the Union, in case you were too busy playing videogames and having a life last night.) It's not like the State of the Union is much more than political theater, sure, but next-level cynicism does some serious eroding of a citizen's ability to think and respond constructively. Lazy advertising-vehicle "news" products engineered by demonic Swedes and thrown together by a warren of garbage-crunchers and distributed to harried subway commuters are actively undermining of democracy. (It's not all bad news: at least on the inside of the paper, they're still performing some journalism, such as their recently fairly substantial look at the NYPD's "issues.")

Here's a phrase you never, ever want to hear from the person in charge of a country, in this case Egypt's interim prime minister Essam Sharaf, appointed by the governing military council: "The only beneficiary of these events and acts of violence are the enemies of the January revolution and the enemies of the Egyptian people, both Muslim and Christian." READ MORE

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E and Vince climbed up over the rim of the hill, and there they stopped to gaze down upon the ruins of the city below. Thirteen years since the SAG/AFTRA split-up and the city was still burning. Vast sections of the canvas below were nothing but charred smoldering dirt. And higher up, by the shell of the old Hollywood sign, they could make out the screams of anguish, the clatter of swords, the unholy battle cries of the Test Audiences as they stampeded down toward the deserted boulevards in search of fresh hot blood. A decade after they had fled, the marauders looked more zombie than human; more creatures infected with an untested serum than zombies. READ MORE

Have you caught up on the terrible story of Christopher Ryan Smith? The Internet entrepreneur was traveling in Africa all throughout the second half of last year, according to the emails he was sending his family. Unfortunately, he was dead the whole time, having been killed by his terribly secretly shady business partner. Horrible story! Also, how stupid: you buy yourself six months to get away with a murder by posing as the poor dead fellow, and you don't even flee the country? Moron. Still, gives one ideas.

Last week, 50-some people were murdered in the torching of a building in Mexico, in Monterrey. (People were trapped in the casino after gunmen stormed the building; they were ordered out but many panicked and ran to the second floor.) Here's a look at the amount of front-page web real estate given to the event by English-speaking news organizations, as expressed in the formula of pixel-per-victim. (What the analysis doesn't take into account is the depth or complexity of coverage, and also the amount of play, as measured in time, of that coverage.) For instance, the Times gave up 0.27% of its digital "front page," though it should be noted that even that small amount of real estate has lots of value in itself and also that's multiplied if it was up for several hours, as opposed to several minutes. The tools by which we measure news "attention" online are very much still in development. (via)

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