The much hyped media news site Inside.com had a soft launch on Wednesday. They have some interesting writers, a mix of vets from the trade and entertainment press along with some people from the web and print zine world.There is the first column by Tom Fontana who produced Homicide. A digital news section which pulls together stories from all the other sections. The first day's stories are interesting, but probably not worth $200 a year. Maybe $20 (though even Slate failed at a price nearly that low and some similar features plus free umbrellas). Though there is some free content, a free newsletter and a 30 day free trial. It is less than Variety which soft launched a redesign charges for their Extra subscription ($33 a month).
Already the reactions are flooding in to medianews.org.
posted by steve rhodes 5/11/2000 3:12:40 AM
Time and Newsweek actually have some decent articles in their May 15th, 2000 issues.Time has a special investigation of proposed changes in bankruptcy laws and how lobbyists have influenced them. Green Magazine's Ken Kurson discussed the legislation back in 1998 on Talk of the Nation. The Time piece is written by Don Barlett and Jim Steele who wrote prize winning America: What Went Wrong? and America: Who Stole the Deam? (which Dan Kennedy has pointed out didn't receive nearly as much attention) when they were at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Their latest piece for time is part of a series they are doing this year called "Big Money & Politics." The first part was a cover story in February. They did a cover story on corporate welfare in 1998. All of these stories are worth reading.
Newsweek has an investigation of the actual military results of the war with Yugoslavia, The Kosovo Cover-up:
An antiseptic war, fought by pilots flying safely three miles high. It seems almost too good to be true—and it was. In fact—as some critics suspected at the time—the air campaign against the Serb military in Kosovo was largely ineffective. NATO bombs plowed up some fields, blew up hundreds of cars, trucks and decoys, and barely dented Serb artillery and armor. According to a suppressed Air Force report obtained by NEWSWEEK, the number of targets verifiably destroyed was a tiny fraction of those claimed: 14 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450. Out of the 744 "confirmed" strikes by NATO pilots during the war, the Air Force investigators, who spent weeks combing Kosovo by helicopter and by foot, found evidence of just 58...In one sense, history is simply repeating itself. Pilots have been exaggerating their "kills" at least since the Battle of Britain in 1940. But this latest distortion could badly mislead future policymakers. Air power was effective in the Kosovo war not against military targets but against civilian ones. Military planners do not like to talk frankly about terror-bombing civilians ("strategic targeting" is the preferred euphemism), but what got Milosevic's attention was turning out the lights in downtown Belgrade. Making the Serb populace suffer by striking power stations—not "plinking" tanks in the Kosovo countryside—threatened his hold on power. The Serb dictator was not so much defeated as pushed back into his lair—for a time. The surgical strike remains a mirage...
posted by steve rhodes 5/7/2000 5:22:11 PM
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