November 20th Show

On today's show I commented on the press coverage of Obama's ongoing efforts to staff his administration, the potential government bailout of the "big three" American auto makers, and the practice of "burrowing," which is the transfer of political appointees to civil service status prior to the start of a new administration to protect them from being fired my the new administration.

In addition, I reflected on the impact of "narrowcasting" in the mass media. I considered the potential pitfalls of an electorate that has no shared source of civic information and analysis as well as the implications of more and more narrowcasting on the profession of journalism.

Finally, I introduced listeners to the Longmeadow forum, an internet community forum, briefly and discussed the type of characters and conversations such fora tend to produce. In this segment I also recommended a web site to listeners that had a very well written essay about debating "charitably" called metablog, and admitted that my own conduct on the Longmeadow forum sometimes fails to meet my standards of civil and productive dialogue.

Thanks for listening and please feel free to email me with questions, comments or suggestions.