inane the beautiful

monocle’s sophie arie reports on the winter military world games from valle d’aosta, italy. it is stuff like this that makes me fall so effortlessly in love with this publication, which, at times, can be pretentious and aloof.

i love learning about new things in such serendipitous ways. for instance, hearing from james that radio stations in america start with two letters and those two letters only: W and a K. and that the stations east of the mississippi begin with a W and the ones that lie west of it with a K.

such useless information can sometimes work wonders. and a very tiny tiny morsel of this possibility presented itself at work today. not sure how much i am allowed to talk about things – reading the voluminous code of ethics has made me the most paranoid person ever – but hopefully vague descriptions are considered kosher.

i was on our website doing my daily maintenance, when i came across a slideshow of rima fakih, the new miss USA. lebanese (surprise), and from dearborn michigan (surrrprise! i mean, who would have thought?), the slideshow featured fakih under the title “First Arab-American Miss USA.”

here, my eyebrows hunched up. for reasons that are unknown to me (really, don’t ask), i somehow remember there being another arab-american miss USA from the 80s (no, i do not watch miss USA religiously). and then, in quick succession: i raised the issue with one of the superiors, who alerted the visuals desk, who called miss USA, who received an inadequate response (something about insufficient information to verify), and before l unch, the caption reran excluding the qualifier “first.”

amazing.

yet, much controversy persists, since though julie hayek is purported to be the first lebanese-american, being a lebanese christian (and a half one at that – her padre was lebanese), she is not considered the first “arab-american” to win the coveted title of Miss USA.

when i checked wikipedia this morning – as a reliable source to back my claims of course – it had simply stated that rima fakih had won miss USA, but at the time of this writing, the wikipedia entry for fakih seems to be in constant transition, and now includes the bit about the controversy over the “first” title.

well anyways, enough dorky semantics. this is what rima looks like (hi rima! the libanais diaspora is so proud of you!):

and this is julie (what a hottie!):

UPDATE: fakih’s title contentious after seductive photos emerge, from yet another reliable source of information. ooops.

sex, lies, and investigative journalism

paul steiger is the new black.

after listening to him speak at a samara lecture the other day, i am convinced.

having spent over 25 years in what he playfully calls “legacy media” (wall street journal), this sixty something man has chosen to set sailing out into that brave, new media world with his ngo, propublica.

funded by a private family trust ($10 million guaranteed for the foreseeable future, steiger explains), propublica is his way at filling in the yawning voids in investigative reporting that conventional newspapers have left behind in recent decline.

it has been wildly successful, forging partnerships with the likes of times, post, large to mid-sized newspapers all across these united states.

when he mentioned the over 1400 resumes he had received for 17 reporting positions, i had to cringe. i vaguely remember naively submitting a resume once. i had a chance to cringe once more when he mentioned that of the reporters hired, 8 of them were pulitzer prize winning reporters.

right. (it is straight up badform to apply for a job that you are that horrendously unqualified for. but in my defense, i had no idea.)

so propublica. they do good stuff. they hunt down cases with abuse of power, cases where an institution has failed to uphold the public interest. and when they develop the story, in an egalitarian move unheard of in hte cut-throat journalism industry, they willingly hand over the finished form to an existing platform for exposure.

steiger argues that this is by far more effective than containing the story exclusively on the propublica website. he gives us an example of a case in california, where they found that the state government had been taking over 3 years to revoke the licenses of nurses who had been caught stealing their patient’s drugs. after what amounted to a year of research, the propublica team banded with the los angeles times to publish this as a major feature on a sunday in july. on the monday, two thirds of the board had been fired. these tales are the stuff of reporter’s wet dreams.

listening to steiger’s success stories, i got to thinking about investigative reporting, and how it is among the most expensive businesses to run – next only to overseas reporting. and in today’s rampant budget cuts and editorial compromises, i wonder whether watergate could have happened today? and the terrifying thought: that indeed watergates are myriads, they just dissipate unaccounted for.

and as night follows day, i had to pose a question. i don’t remember exactly what it was, but it was something to the effect of: whether any of his stories had benefited from social or new media such as crowdsourcing on twitter.

steiger was on top of his game and a.) not only knew what i was talking about; b.) but gave an extensive and comprehensive answer that actually answered my question, a rare occassion at these q&a sessions.

throughout the talk he, of course, had his share of wall street journal jokes.

while knee deep in tete-a-tete with latimes:
los angeles times: we have a bit of an idiosyncratic style….
paul steiger: i come from the wall street journal. we invented the idiosyncratic style.
los angeles times: …….

paul steiger: back at the journal, we used to call it “two newspapers for the price of one. we have our far-right editorials, and our cut through the middle news sections….

well anyways. after the talk i over wined myself and antagonized john godfrey, without meaning to, or knowing who he was.

so that was a good evening. n.b. never to run for office? check.