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I learned today that Tim Russert died. This is sad news. I have loved his political coverage and of course sunday morning talk on Meet the Press. In such a critical year in politics, he will be missed in a new land of talking heads without facts. Mr. Russert always had the facts.

Yesterday a feature report was done by Ted Koppel on NPR about the number of deaths US troops sustained in Iraq. Koppel made the comparison of the number of U.S. Troops killed in Iraq to the number of people killed in car wrecks every year in America. The numbers alone are damning. 791 US Troops were killed in Iraq in 2006, in comparison, 44,027 people were killed in car accidents during the same time frame. Koppel uses these numbers to prove the death rate in Iraq is not why people want the U.S. to pull out of Iraq, rather there is another, more political reason. On the surface, these numbers appear to be a stark contrast, but these numbers are without base, and therefore mean absolutely nothing.

The death rate in Iraq is nearly 20 times that of the rate of people killed in car wrecks every year. According to GlobalSecurity.org, the number of troops killed in 2006 was 791. Seattle PI reports there were 162,000 troops in Iraq before the surge. With these two numbers, we can deduce there is on average a 0.4% death rate. In comparison, the U.S. averages 44,027 people killed in car accidents every year according to the American Academy of Neurology. For the last piece of information, the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency reports (PDF) there are a total of 194.3 million licensed drivers in the US. This gives us a 0.022% death rate. (This number should actually be a lot lower if taken from the total population of the United States, for consistency we will assume only people killed in car wrecks are licensed drivers.)

Once we take both of those rates and place them next to each other, the damning numbers before now show the same thing, but in the opposite direction. With these rates, a soldier is 18 times more likely to be killed in Iraq than driving a car in the US. This just goes to show how there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. You can make statistics work to your advantage in almost any situation. Before giving numbers out, and expecting people to digest them, take a second and look at what they really mean. While I believe the movement to have the US pull out of Iraq is fueled politically, the number of deaths is also staggering.

I picked up on this story after reading this entry on Valleywag. The rumor, published by Engadget, originated in an email sent to them anonymously. According to Engadget, their source supplied them with a legitimate internal Apple email. As it turns out, this email was a spoof, and of course, all the information contained in it was false.

The real story here is not why Engadget published the email, but why they didn’t check sources, and maybe do a little background investigation of their own. It wouldn’t have been a hard task because the email gave enough information to validate on it’s own. Below is the email given to Engadget:

Apple issued a press release today announcing that iPhone which was scheduled to ship in June, has been moved to October and the release date for Mac OS X Leopard has been moved to January next year. A beta version of Mac OS X Leopard will be given to developers at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

The first line, Apple issued a press release today, should have been more than enough information to tip off the journalist bloggers at Engadget. You may ask yourself why this matters, and why a retraction can’t just fix the situation. People make mistakes all the time. People don’t make mistakes that cause the price of a stock to drop $3 within a 10 minute period. This relates to about $4 billion in loss.

Does this drop in stock mean something more sinister? Was this planned? Of course, none of this can be answered right now, and may never be answered if the SEC doesn’t investigate. Chances are they may not investigate as speculations and rumors fuel stocks all the time, they are just normally more of a form of gossip and not published on the Internet for all to see as fact.

I have noticed recently the ability of technology journalist in local papers, magazines and even national papers, has made high tech and tech culture easier to digest than ever before. The technical aspects of the trade, however; have been lost to this “dumbing down” of the heavier terminology used by professionals, and enthusiasts alike. Creating an article that speaks to both without alienating the other has become an increasingly difficult endeavor from which journalist shy away. I have taken this challenge to heart, and intend to practice my writing at the same time by publishing one or two articles a week pertaining to technology, or tech culture as a means to bring the casual reader, and professional/enthusiast together.

This post is less of a manifesto, and more of a personal challenge. Tech journalism has been a dream of mine for a long time, but I have also realized that I haven’t placed much effort into making that job a reality. I have never wanted to be a beat reporter, but more of feature writer. I would like to take stories as they happen, and let them mature while I am following them to give a comprehensive view of the subject. Make small biographies of the events, rather than 300 word stubs thrown into a newspaper or magazine simply to fill space because an ad fell through.

Although I have written and been published in the past (I used to work for my college paper as a technology writer and have submitted articles to a local magazine). I would like to take this on as a full time gig, and in doing so have realized a valuable lesson before fruition. I have the time, and means now to practice my craft before I dive in head first. I may also call up the newspaper to see about writing for them again. This blog, on the other hand, is the perfect sandbox to allow my writing and personality to come out. I would like to look back on some of these articles in a year or so to see how far I have come. I only hope it is a measurable distance. When one looks back on their writing and are embarrassed isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it shows growth. I want to be embarrassed!

Blogging isn’t just a fad anymore; it is a method millions of readers use to gain more insight into a subject. Many find the candid writing style, and personal opinion to be a nice touch in keeping themselves interested in the subject. I respect that part of blogging, but would also like to keep it professional without delving into personal opinion as much. Some items require opinion, for instance, how a product or service works is based entirely on opinion, however; other commentary is not needed to provide more information on a subject.

This is going against some of the writers I read most often. Writers such as Robert X. Cringely, Walt Mossberg and Xeni Jardin often place their own opinion into their articles. Their bias comes from that of a seasoned professional, working with their knowledge and previous notions of technology to provide great information on the subjects they cover. This isn�t to say it doesn�t have its place; this is really me placing a limit on myself to make my writing better.

Taking everything I have said before, I may want to restate my purpose. This is a manifesto! This is a call for writers to take a look at their craft and improve. Build upon your past articles and make them better. Look at what you changed to make them better, and take that direction toward articles on which you are currently working. Make your writing better, and your readers will approve. I only ask that you don�t do this until I have finished my own self training session because I would really like to have a job doing this myself.

I am calling these posts The Journalism Series, I hope I can receive some good feedback from my attempt at improving my writing skills.

If you haven’t read the times today, it has an interesting article about somebody we may have never met, but Im sure most of you have at least heard of, Daniel Moore. This is what happens when intellectual copyright law is taken too far. How can a university do this, let alone anybody else?

I have copied the whole article from the Times’ website, because I know before long, it will not be available without a subscription. The entrie article is behind the cut.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala., Nov. 7 — In the solemn cathedral of college football devotion and instruction that is the Paul W. Bryant Museum here, a large painting dominates the main chamber. It is called “The Sack,” and it shows an encounter between a Notre Dame quarterback and a human locomotive in crimson and white.

“I’ve never been hit like that before,” the quarterback, Steve Beuerlein, said after his near-lethal sack by Cornelius Bennett in 1986, in the University of Alabama’s first victory ever over his team.

Daniel A. Moore, who painted “The Sack” and scores of other renditions of signal moments in Alabama football history, said he felt something similar last year, when his fax machine began to spit out a lawsuit from the university.

Mr. Moore’s paintings, reproduced in prints and on merchandise, violated the university’s trademark rights, the suit said. It asked a federal judge to forbid him to, among other things, use the university’s “famous crimson and white color scheme.”

Athletes, sports leagues and universities around the nation have become increasingly aggressive in protecting what they say is their intellectual property, and their claims have met with a mixed response from judges and fans. But almost no one here thinks the suit against Mr. Moore is a good idea.

“This lawsuit is the equivalent of the Catholic Church suing Michelangelo for painting the Sistine Chapel,” said Keith Dunnavant, an Alabama alumnus and the author of “Coach: The Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”

A university spokeswoman, Cathy Andreen, declined repeated requests for interviews with university officials and lawyers, on what she said was the advice of counsel.

James Glen Stovall, who taught journalism at the university for 25 years, said only one sort of person would support the suit.

“I can see why, if you’re sitting in a roomful of lawyers, you might come to that conclusion,” Mr. Stovall said. “But no one outside of that room would say: ‘Hey, that’s a good idea. Let’s sue Daniel Moore.’ ”

At his gallery in Birmingham, surrounded by prints and paintings reflecting his more than 25 years as a sports artist, Mr. Moore said he remained a loyal Alabama alumnus. He graduated from the university with an art degree in 1976; two of his daughters go there now, and a third is a recent graduate.

“I still love Alabama,” he said. “I still love Alabama football. Obviously, I haven’t yanked my daughters out of school.”

But there is bitterness, too. For two decades, the university gave him sideline passes. Now he is not welcome on game day.

“As an artist,” he said, “it helps to be there, to feel the emotion and excitement and strategy from an on-field perspective.”

He said he did not understand why his work, copies of which have a place of pride in the dens of thousands of Alabama football fans, should not receive the same First Amendment protection that newspaper photographs do. “Artists,” he said, “were the first journalists.”

In its legal papers, the university’s lawyers are grudging in their assessment of Mr. Moore’s talent. “Though skillfully prepared,” the lawyers wrote, Mr. Moore’s art conveys nothing beyond the raw facts of football. Mr. Moore, the suit says, “literally replicates even the expression on the players’ faces in his prints and he adds no message whatever not conveyed by the play itself.”

That is not fair, Mr. Moore said. Though he uses photographs for reference, he said that his compositions and his style were his own. He calls his approach “photofuturism,” which he describes as “five parts realism to one part motion.”

Over the years, Mr. Moore said, his paintings and prints have cumulatively sold “in the low millions.” An 8-by-10 reproduction sells for $25 retail, or $35 if it is signed. An original watercolor might go for $22,000, an oil for $65,000.

The university’s lawyers seemed to take particular offense at Mr. Moore’s use of his paintings on merchandise like coffee mugs and calendars.

In response, Mr. Moore did not hesitate to invoke his own intellectual property rights. “Because I own the copyright,” he said, “it’s my opinion that I can put it on anything I want to. I can put it on a tattoo on someone’s backside.”

Mr. Moore has asked Judge R. David Proctor of the Federal District Court in Birmingham to dismiss the case on First Amendment grounds. His brief cited a decision of the federal appeals court in California ruling that a trademark owner “does not have the right to control public discourse” if “the public imbues his mark with a meaning.”

After the citation, Mr. Moore’s lawyer, Stephen D. Heninger, added a parenthetical aside. “Who could argue with a straight face,” he asked, “that the cultural significance of Alabama football has not assumed such a role?”

A ruling on the motion is expected in the next few months.

Other courts have also tried to balance the rights of the owners of intellectual property against that of free expression. The cases, which involve a variety of legal theories, generally turn on whether consumers are apt to be confused about who produced the works in question and on whether artists managed to add something meaningful to the bare facts.

At one end of the legal spectrum, a federal judge in Louisiana had no difficulty in July in enjoining a company that sold shirts bearing the school colors and initials of four football powerhouses.

At the other, the federal appeals court in Cincinnati in 2003 rejected an effort by the golfer Tiger Woods to stop an artist named Rick Rush from using Mr. Woods’s image in a painting commemorating his victory at the 1997 Masters in Augusta, Ga.

That painting, a panorama that included likenesses of six past winners, “communicates and celebrates the value our culture attaches to such events,” the majority in the divided three-judge panel decision found. “It would be ironic indeed if the presence of the image of the victorious athlete would deny the work First Amendment protection.”

In the middle of the spectrum is a 2001 decision of the California Supreme Court. It expressed great solicitude for the rights of artists under the First Amendment. But it ruled against an artist who had created a simple charcoal drawing of the Three Stooges and sold it on T-shirts.

The court attached no significance to the fact that the artist, Gary Saderup, reproduced his art on clothing. “First Amendment doctrine,” Justice Stanley Mosk wrote for a unanimous court, “does not disfavor nontraditional media of expression.”

But Justice Mosk found that the image itself contained “no significant transformative or creative contribution” and derived its worth mostly from the Stooges’ celebrity rather than Mr. Saderup’s talent. Andy Warhol’s celebrity portraits, by contrast, Justice Mosk wrote, “may well be entitled to First Amendment protection” as “ironic social commentary.”

These decisions, Mr. Moore said, make courts into critics, a role that may not suit them.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., in a 1903 decision holding that circus posters may be copyrighted, appeared to agree.

“It would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law,” he wrote, “to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of pictorial illustrations.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/us/12artist.html?ref=us

1941 - 2006