Steve Coll Reads the Stimulus So You Don't Have To
The New Yorker writer is reading and blogging the entire stimulus package. Coll says "I don’t intend to censor my skepticism about the federal bureaucracy," but he says he might need some help interpreting the programs that are getting funding. Email him, if you're up for lending a hand.
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Government Executive Staff Correspondent Alyssa Rosenberg takes a look at news affecting the management and operations of the massive federal bureaucracy.
RE: Mr. Coll blogging on the New Yorker: "...but he says he might need some help interpreting the programs that are getting funding. Email him, if you're up for lending a hand." With all due respect -- Mr. Coll is a prize winning journalist – two Pulitzers--best selling author on current political, military and foreign policy issues, former Managing Editor, Washington Post, President of the New American Foundation (DC think tank, center left), contributing editor to the New Yorker and an increasingly common visitor to TV discussion fora on politics and foreign affairs -- that said -- it is a bit disconcerting that Mr. Coll would "need some help" on "interpreting" the stimulus via mysteriously sourced emails to a public blog (Ms. Rosenberg’s or Mr. Coll's). Besides Mr. Coll, who doesn't need "help" with this gargantuan package - including the best economic minds in the U.S. - the crux here is that Mr. Coll as primo journalist (or Ms. Rosenberg) are apparently confident enough or foolish enough to believe that panning in a random stream of invited emails will capture insight gold – hark! are those the wise monkeys typing in the next room, maybe they can take a breather from War and Peace to type a page on the TARP. I’m discounting the pro forma flattery from blog authors touting the “insights” to be harvested from their routine invitations for emailed wisdom – Mr. C. say it ain’t so, please! Meantime, I and all readers can ingest reams of text from the greatest minds that even lazy journalists can capture on the web – the best of breed reform formulas and cogitations retailed by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Washington Post, NY Times, policy think tanks, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, LeMonde, Times of London, Goldman Sachs Market Letter, Warren Buffett-Berkshire Hathaway Letter, even the New Yorker web pages -- the edited ones, minus Mr. Coll's blog. Can it be that my online reading of the great and near great deconstructing bail out legislation is just sea catch from journalists trolling in the blogosphere? Please, remove the scales from my innocent eyes, and, in the future, let’s open a new Pulitzer category –blog composted reporting and commentary. Oh how the presumptions of front line journalists have fallen and, more to the point, what’s the new break-out on shared book royalties? Can it be that we -- readers, journalists and their editors, book packagers, foreign rights marketers, media agents, book fair producers, J-School deans, copy write lawyers, New American brainiacs, Pew survey moguls and, of course, Bill Moyers – now share a common pool and drink deep the common waters? Thank the Lord (or for agnostics, the Benign Chemical Reactions) that Mr. Coll is not writing a medical blog -- got grandma's cure for the common cold, how about multiple myloma, or a suspicious pancreas? Please, send your e-mails and FedEx your magic herbs to Doctor Coll, pronto! Plus ca change.
Concerned Retiree Posted Tuesday, March 3, 2009 4:09 PMYou could call Dan Ketter, I'm sure he would be glad to help. He knows it all.
W D Jackson Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009 8:02 PM