Media

Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts, who joined an upstart NPR in 1978 and left an indelible imprint on the growing network with her coverage of Washington politics before later going to ABC News, has died. She was 75. Roberts died Tuesday due to complications from breast cancer, according to a family statement.

"President Franklin Roosevelt created the VOA during World War II to broadcast behind enemy lines what its current director, Amanda Bennett, said was "truthful news about the war, in contrast with Nazi propaganda." She said that, over the years, the mission hasn't really changed that much. "Our job is to do two things," she said."One is to tell America's story objectively to places that can't see it otherwise, and the other one is to bring objective news and information to places that have no other access to it. So we say that in a large part of the world we are the free press."

"I’m a political journalist. I’ve been a political journalist for 15 years. I believe in my profession. But right now, I’m worried we’re failing. I’m worried we’re making American politics worse, not better. That’s not because journalists aren’t doing remarkable, courageous, heroic work. Look at the #MeToo movement, the investigations of Donald Trump’s finances, the remarkable reporting that journalists do every day in the midst of war zones and Ebola outbreaks and authoritarian regimes.'

'It’s because everything around us has changed — our business models, the way people read us, the way we compete with each other, the way we’re manipulated — and we’re not keeping up. Instead, we’re getting played by the outrage merchants and con artists and trolls and polarizers who understand this new world better. President Trump is the most successful media hacker out there, but he’s not the only one. We’re being used to fracture American democracy, and I don’t think we know how to stop it."

"New York is the #1 state with the most "fake news" shares on Twitter."

"Garfield is a comic created by Jim Davis. Published since 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, Garfield, the cat; Jon Arbuckle, the human; and Odie, the dog. As of 2013, it was syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals, and held the Guinness World Record for being the world's most widely syndicated comic strip."

"Though this is rarely mentioned in print, Garfield is set in Muncie, Indiana, the home of Jim Davis, according to the television special Happy Birthday, Garfield. Common themes in the strip include Garfield's laziness, obsessive eating, coffee, and disdain of Mondays and diets. The strip's focus is mostly on the interactions among Garfield, Jon, and Odie, but other recurring minor characters appear as well. Originally created with the intentions to "come up with a good, marketable character", Garfield has spawned merchandise earning $750 million to $1 billion annually. In addition to the various merchandise and commercial tie-ins, the strip has spawned several animated television specials, two animated television series, two theatrical feature-length live-action/CGI animated films, and three fully CGI animated direct-to-video movies."

"Part of the strip's broad pop cultural appeal is due to its lack of social or political commentary; though this was Davis's original intention, he also admitted that his "grasp of politics isn't strong," joking that, for many years, he thought "OPEC was a denture adhesive"."

I don't have much of an interest subscribing to a local newspaper. Local news really isn't that interesting, as it's mostly sensationalized crime stories. I do enjoy some of the newsletters from groups that I'm a dues paying member for -- like the NY Conservation Council's newsletter.

That said, I get most of my news from social media sites, which mostly link to press releases and studies by interest groups. I read both liberal and conservative blogs and interest group news websites, to learn the pros and cons of issues. I don't need a reporter filtering the story.

Mid-Atlantic English, popular for aristocrats and media personalities due to technical limitations of radios, fell out of popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.

This made me laugh.