Brad Rourke’s Blog
-
Bailing Out Newspapers?
All across America, newspapers are faltering, cutting corners, cutting circulation. But healthy journalism is important to our public life. What to do? One Connecticut lawmaker sees a way to help. In these days of bailout after bailout (steel is getting into the act now), why shouldn’t we help newspapers? According to Reuters: Connecticut lawmaker Frank…
-
The NFL's Panopticon
The NFL has built a perfect version of the Panopticon. What is that, you ask? I have long been fascinated with the Panopticon. In an essay about four years ago I described it: In 1787, one of the great thinkers of English history, Jeremy Bentham, proposed a new design for a prison. He called the…
-
The NFL’s Panopticon
The NFL has built a perfect version of the Panopticon. What is that, you ask? I have long been fascinated with the Panopticon. In an essay about four years ago I described it: In 1787, one of the great thinkers of English history, Jeremy Bentham, proposed a new design for a prison. He called the…
-
Does Politics Understand Engagement?
Yesterday I wrote about misgivings I have in connecting civic engagement too closely with the formal workings of government. My main concern is that citizen-generated activity could tend to be stifled and bureaucratized by creating some kind of “office of civic engagement” or an “engagement czar” (this is akin to President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based…
-
Should The Government Be Involved In Civic Engagement?
Many friends and colleagues have worked hard on something called the Agenda For Strengthening America’s Democracy. Put simply, this is an effort by an broad array of people in the “civic participation” field to lay out a set of principles that could guide the Obama administration moving forward. They see this as a reasonable thing…
-
The Myth Of "Procedure"
I laughed out loud when I read that, last Monday, The New York Times (which may be the most overvalued brand out there in news — but that’s another post) had egg on its face when it admitted that it had published a fake letter to the editor. A big boo-boo in the newspaper world,…
-
The Myth Of "Procedure"
I laughed out loud when I read that, last Monday, The New York Times (which may be the most overvalued brand out there in news — but that’s another post) had egg on its face when it admitted that it had published a fake letter to the editor. A big boo-boo in the newspaper world,…
-
Inauguration Day Should Not Be A Holiday
The other day I got a letter from my daughter’s school describing a dilemma that the headmaster had faced, one that his counterparts in many other schools faced too: Whether to close up shop on the day Senator Barack Obama takes office as president of the United States. The school has not in the past…
-
My Posts Are Too Long
My posts have been getting longer and longer. Must. Stop. Why? Because people want things in bites! Half the time, my ideas are only worth a bite anyway. More to the point, blogging traffics in speed, snark, and brevity. I can do two out of three (I’m not into snark). So I need to get…
Brad Rourke 