Is this the end of the newspaper as we know it?

A lot of you may know this already, but a major Seattle newspaper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (aka the P-I), closed its print doors and exists only in a virtual sense now. A lot of newspapers are feeling the burn when it comes to maintaining a revenue stream from their print media, but it is really sad to see one of the major Seattle newspapers go down in this manner. Not only does it indicate a shift in the way that news is being accessed by the general public, and taking away the glory that is actually holding a newspaper in your hands, but it also marks the potential decline in the quality of news reporting. While it would be nice to think that the online versions of newspapers that are no longer in print will be able to keep up the kind of reporting quality of their previous print selves, this seems like a pipe dream. Besides for the fact that they are saving money by not having to actually print the paper, the P-I is also planning on drastically cutting down the amount of staff on the paper to around 20 and they are going to make their website more Huffington Post like, with mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting. With such a drastic cut down and a reworking of their news model I can't help but think that this means a potential downfall in the prevalence of fact checking and creative reporting, and thus a large issue in terms of getting good quality news from the P-I.

So dear, wonderful blog readers, what do you think about major newspapers going virtual and leaving their print past behind. Are they going to be able to survive in this way on advertising revenue alone? Is reporting really going to become much more like blogging? Are we losing an essential part of our history? I just can't help but feel a little sad seeing it go down like this.

NYT Article on the change

P-I Website

the holy see seems to be blind as a bat

for a virgin, the pope has plenty to say about how we should conduct our sex lives. i don't agree with a lot of what he and his minions say about these matters. but yesterday was a big what the fuck!!!!

during the pope's first visit to africa, he stated that condoms are not the answer to the AIDS epidemic and in fact they may be fueling the epidemic. WRONG WRONG WRONG. condoms can reduce the transmission of the AIDS virus by 80 percent. they are one of very few proven interventions and the most successful. certainly more "answers" are needed, but as of right now, condoms are the best one we have.

in the US (and in the vatican), it may be easy to forget how devastating and widespread HIV/AIDS is in africa. in 2006 within sub-saharan africa 2.1 million adults and children died of AIDS, 2.8 million were newly infected with HIV and in some countries the adult prevalence was higher than 20%.

the ignorance of the pope's statement wouldn't matter if he was just regarded as a crazy old man by the people that he is visiting, but actually catholicism is on the rise in africa.

put it all together:
(up to 20% adult prevalence of AIDS)+(40% rise in catholicism in africa in the last 2 decades) + (recommendation by the pope to stop handing out condoms, which prevent 80% of AIDS transmission)

what does that equal? a whole lot of WTF

nyt article on pope's statement
london times editorial: the pope looks ill educated or ill intentioned
the daily mash: put a bible over your penis, the popes says

An image is worth a 1000 words...

For those of you familiar with the story of Harvey Milk....this poster was being held up in front of the California Supreme Court Building in San Francisco where the Prop 8 hearing was being held on March 5th. Simply, WTF?

Thank God for the return of science being left to scientists!

This is a glorious week in science history! Obama has lifted the ban on human stem cell research and returned the US back to a state where scientists get to decide what is good and important science (and ethical for that matter) and the government doesn't get to stick their greedy hands all up in there. So kudos to you Obama and thank god for the return of science based on scientific facts instead of ideology!

NYT Article on the Stem Cell Ban being lifted

really pharma? really?

a pfizer representative photographed medical students protesting against pharma involvement in their education. really?

does this signal a shift of "big brother" from the gov't to the big corporations? what do you think?

times article
background story

Seriously? We need a birth control pill for a psychological disorder?

Ok, first off I have some seriously issues with the advertisement of drugs in the first place. But then you add in claims about the ability to treat the symptoms of a psychological disorder with a birth control pill. Seriously?

I have just recently done a report on Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (aka PMDD) and have found that there is some evidence that this is it own disorder, but not a lot. Additionally, it is one of the only psychological disorders that is gender specific. Thus, it should really give a person pause when they think about whether it is just pathologizing women's normal mood variations and their normal hormone shifts or if it is really something that is different from depression which can effect both genders. Also, it has been shown that men have the same if not more severe mood variations over the course of a month then women. So don't think that you guys are so perfect either.

I guess my major beef is that there is an advertisement on TV with an attractive woman telling us that we not only need this fancy birth control that will help our acne, but now it will also help us with a disorder that not that many women will ever have in the first place. Because of this add more women are going to think they have PMDD, they will attribute their normal mood variations to this disorder, and women's bodies will continue to be pathologized. Of course there is money to be made by pathologizing women's bodies and making women think that things are wrong with them, and thus there are the advertisements about it. (let alone the implications for the oppression of women by making them seem crazy)

So really fair blog readers, should Yaz be allowed to come onto the TV and tell us that women are crazy and they have just the pill to solve all our potentially non-disordered premenstrual issues? I mean really, WTF?

Stupid YAZ website

international women's day was march 8th. i bet you didn't know that.

women's day is celebrated in full force in some parts of the world, but not in the US... not that i noticed.

for those of you that might think that in the US women shouldn't be recognized as a group any more than men (ie in the US this type of the day is irrelevant), i'd like to point out that the first national woman's day was observed in the US in honor of the 1908 garment workers' strike in New York, where women protested against working conditions. no matter what you think of the state of women's rights in US presently, i hope that you agree that women that fought for change deserve to be commemorated, especially those that lived in times when being recognized as individuals was next to impossible.

here's more history on the day by the UN, for whom the day is a big deal

on an international level, the UN has decided to devote the day to prevention of violence against women. here are their facts about "the situation":

• Today, many women – in some countries as many as one in three – are beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in their lifetimes.
• Worldwide, one in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.
• Half of the women who die from homicides are killed by their current or former husbands or partners.
• For women aged 15 to 44 years, violence is a major cause of death and disability.
• More than 80 per cent of trafficking victims are women.
• More than 130 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation.
• On the basis of data collected from 24,000 women in 10 countries, between 55 per cent and 95 per cent of women who have been physically abused by their partners have never contacted NGOs, shelters or the police for help.

in honor of the day i encourage you to donate money and/or time to one of these organizations (if you can think of more please write a comment):
now
amnesty international
national domestic violence hotline
planned parenthood