Blowin' In The Wind

Pulitzer for Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan wins a Pulitzer. He gets a special citation "for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power".

Washington Post is the biggest winner with a haul of six Pulitzers, the second-most any newspaper has won in a single year. The New York Times won seven in 2002.

The New York Times reports:

The Post won the prestigious public service award for revealing the neglect of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Pulitzer citation named two Post reporters, Dana Priest and Anne Hull, and a photographer, Michel du Cille.

Pulitzers also went to The Post’s Jo Becker and Barton Gellman, who won the national reporting award for documenting the power and secrecy wielded by Vice President Dick Cheney, and to Steve Fainaru, who won the international reporting prize for his examination of private security contractors in Iraq.

A Post economics columnist, Steven Pearlstein, won the prize for commentary, Gene Weingarten won the feature writing award for a long article in The Post’s Sunday magazine on a world-famous violinist playing incognito for subway riders, and the paper’s staff won in the breaking news category for its coverage of the mass killing at Virginia Tech.

The New York Times took two awards, including one for Amy Harmon, who won the explanatory journalism for her reporting on the mixed blessings offered by new world of genetic testing.

Bloggers beware

Bloggers beware. In web world of 24/7 stress, writers blog till they drop, says the New York Times headline. Death by blogging is the linking headline on Drudge Report. Professional technobloggers are most likely to be the victims of overwork, reports the New York Times, which quotes Michael Arrington of TechCrunch as saying he will have a nervous breakdown one day. Om Malik survived a heart attack in December. My prayers go out to the bloggers at ReadWriteWeb, Digital Inspiration, ProBlogger, Blog Herald and all other great sites. Maybe Lifehacker has already found a workaround to ease the pressure.

Dire Straits

I believe several schools in Singapore subscribe to The Straits Times, the leading local English daily. It should be used for English lessons. Take this passage, for example, about a pension scheme drawn up by a committee:

They unveiled their new scheme, which the Government has accepted, yesterday.

To be called CPF Life, the scheme will roll out in 2013.

This is not the way news agencies such as Reuters and the Associated Press write. They prefer simple sentences with as few clauses and punctuation marks as possible to avoid ambiguity.

Look at the first sentence. It is hanging on a comma. You only have to remove the comma to mangle it: 

They unveiled their new scheme, which the Government has accepted yesterday.

That, of course, is incorrect.

Let's take the next sentence:.

To be called CPF Life, the scheme will roll out in 2013.

If not dubious, it's certainly ambiguous. I guess the reporter means: "The scheme, which is to be called CPF Life, will be rolled out in 2013." But it could also mean: "The scheme will be rolled out in 2013 in order to be called CPF Life." 

Is the sentence grammatically correct? It is -- if this is correct.

To be named John, the baby will be born on February 15.

That's not how we write, do we?

I also hate the expression, "the scheme will roll out". Cars run, planes fly, ships sail, wagons roll -- but schemes are rolled out.

We could live with those sentences, but not with these -- taken from another front-page report in The Straits Times today. Two of them are incorrect.

Singapore's life expectancy for men and women of older age groups (sic) have (sic) also improved...

Living longer is not all plain sailing, and that is something Mr Chua appreciates...

To cope with the additional living and medical expenses, he is prepared to scrap dreams of seeing places like South Korea and Japan for vacations (sic). South-east Asian destinations will do.

The first sentence is wrong. The subject,"Singapore's life expectancy", is singular and does not agree with the verb, "have", which is plural. And isn't it better to say,"older men and women"?

Coming to the last sentence, I can only wonder about Mr Chua's dreams. How did he expect to see South Korea and Japan? On business trips? That is what the sentence suggests: ''... he is prepared to scrap dreams of seeing places like South Korea and Japan for vacations".

Surely, this what the writer means:

To cope with the additional living and medical expenses, he is prepared to scrap dreams of seeing distant places like South Korea and Japan for vacations nearer home, in South-east Asia.

It's not a beautiful sentence, but at least it doesn't draw a line between "dreams" and "vacations".

Errors are inevitable in any newspaper. But when The Straits Times is not tripping up on language, it is slipping up in its reporting.

Singapore, Abu Dhabi: Money in the media

Singapore Press Holdings yesterday reported 112 million Singapore dollars ($78.4 million) in first quarter profits. "Newspaper, magazine business... drive growth," crowed The Straits Times. It and other SPH publications must be doing something right to continue minting money. How have they managed to keep circulation and advertising growing when more than 66 percent of the population has internet access?

American newspaper executives, who have been downsizing because readers and advertisers have been migrating online, will no doubt be puzzled. Well, there is the reporting style. My eyes glazed over as I read the first quarter report. It was clearly meant for initiates. And that, of course, is the key to success in the newspaper business: building a loyal readership.

Reading the Straits Times report, I was reminded of another major newspaper venture.

Abu Dhabi is hiring journalists from the Daily Telegraph, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to start a quality newspaper due to be launched in March. The Times reported:

Martin Newland, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, is trying to do what nobody in the Middle East has done before: launch a quality, pan-Arab, English language newspaper, creating the print equivalent of the Al Jazeera television news channel.

“We want to be the first Middle East-based newspaper on a par with The New York Times and The Washington Post,” he said.

The new, as yet unnamed, title is the first act in a £100 billion “coming out” party for Abu Dhabi, hosted by the ruler, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

President blogs!

 

Here's a blog to keep you in stitches. David Mamet is blogging to promote his new play, November, which opens on Broadway on Thursday and it's absolutely hilarious.

Mamet is blogging as President Charles HP Smith. Running for re-election, he "must try to get a grip on such issues as lesbian marriages, Indian casinos, preposterous pardons and questionable campaign contributions without losing his grip on the Oval Office". That's according to the blog's sidebar which, under "5 Ways to support Smith", outlines the plot under the subhead, "Campaign".

On the blog, the president shares his thoughts, and he is clearly a nut. On his last posting, on January 10, he wrote:

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
WE might note that Illegal immigrants, are, as the term implies, first and foremost, immigrants, which is to say, that they forfeited any claim on our compassion even before they broke the law.

STEM CELL RESEARCH    
The best that this research could accomplish would be to prolong the lives of people who were going to die anyway. Is it worth the aggravation?

Stop chuckling. There's more.

Lee Kuan Yew: Today and The Straits Times

With news reported online, it's now possible to see how stories develop. And it can be interesting reading.

Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew's (Time photo) advice to people to continue working past the retirement age if they wished to live longer was already on the Channel NewsAsia website and The Straits Times online when I checked last night.

"Retirement means death. If you ask me, for me, retirement would have meant death," Channel NewsAsia quoted him as saying. So, the Old Man isn't about to do a Gandhi, Nelson Mandela or George Washington and quit politics, I thought to myself, glad that the Father of Singapore, now approaching his 85th birthday, is as committed as ever to the affairs of the nation, which he has led to stunning economic success, and still takes an active role in the government headed by his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

I wanted to read more, which the Straits Times website said would appear in the morning newspaper.

And what a story it was! The blunt-spoken, no-nonsense Father of Singapore was touchingly revealing, sharing the most intimate details, including how long he might be expected to live.

But did The Straits Times do justice to the story? We will compare it with the freesheet Today's report. First The Straits Times:

Read Wall Street Journal for free

Three cheers for Rupert Murdoch! Now anyone can read the Wall Street Journal's editorial page online for free unlike, say, Singapore's very own Straits Times. The Journal announced the good news with a flourish yesterday:

Everyone knows that Joseph Schumpeter's "creative destruction" is roiling the newspaper world, and today we'd like to announce something on the creative side. We're rolling out a new destination for the Journal editorial page offering free access to all of our editorials and op-eds, video interviews and commentary. It's as close as we'll get to conceding there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Wow! It reads almost like the Economist!

Murdoch's Singapore problem

But Murdoch still has a Singapore problem, reminded the Asia Sentinel yesterday. When he bought Dow Jones, he inherited a libel suit brought against the Far Eastern Economic Review by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. The lawsuit followed an interview with Singapore opposition leader Chee Soon Juan which was published in the magazine before Murdoch bought Dow Jones. The matter is yet to be resolved.

Murdoch's publications have never been sued before in Singapore, where the Lees have never lost a case, said the Sentinel.

The Sentinel drew an interesting parallel between Murdoch and the Lees:

The Lees have been the dominant political family in Singapore since the 1950s, about the same time Murdoch has been in charge of News Corp. Both have helped build institutions of about the same size; News Corp's market worth approaches US$100 billion, Singapore's GDP is bigger. Both are expert at projecting power, and neither brook any challenge to their authority, although media critics accuse Murdoch of knuckling under to Chinese authorities, for instance dropping the British Broadcasting System from Star TV’s stable of cable news programs broadcast in China, in an effort to curry favour. In addition, Andrew Neil, the feisty one-time editor of Murdoch’s Sunday Times in London, lost his job after Malaysia’s then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed took issue with the paper in 1994, just after Murdoch bought Star TV.

Murdoch has also replaced many of the old Dow Jones management which backed the Far Eastern Economic Review in its battle against the Lees, said the Sentinel. But the case is still pending.

Technorati Tags: murdoch,wall street journal,far eastern economic review,singapore

Who needs a free press?

I wonder what editors will make of this in Singapore and India. Apparently their readers are not so keen on a free press.

The majority of Singaporeans feel they don't have a free press and don't have a high opinion of the local media but are not pressing for a change.

Most Indians, on the other hand, think they have a free press which reports the news fairly accurately but that's not so important to them.

Russia is the only other country where freedom of the press is not so important to the majority, according to a BBC survey.

What matters more in all three countries is peace and stability. They don't want the truth and nothing but the truth if it disrupts peace and stability.

The BBC surveyed more than 11,000 people in 14 countries In Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  It reported:

Of those interviewed, 56 percent thought freedom of the press was very important to ensure a free society. But 40 percent said it was more important to maintain social harmony and peace, even if it meant curbing the press' freedom to report news truthfully.

Country statistics

Though the majority wanted a free press, it's significant how narrow the majority was in several countries. Only 52 percent in Brazil and 51 percent in Mexico and the United Emirates considered a free press important.

Only 43 percent in Singapore and 41 percent in India thought a free press important, which mattered least in Russia (39 percent).

A free press matters far more in the US (70 percent), Britain (67 percent), Germany (67 percent), Venezuela (64 percent), South Africa (63 percent), Kenya (62 percent), Nigeria (56 percent) and Egypt (55 percent).

Freedom of the press has always mattered in the West, no surprise there. And Venezuelans perhaps feel the same need because they are still new to socialism. Hugo Chavez has not yet completed a decade in power and so hasn't been able to stamp out all opposition, which won the recent referendum.

Singapore and India

Singapore leaders, on the other hand, will feel vindicated by the survey. Those who complain about lack of press freedom will now have to accept that it's not high on the wish list of the majority who agree with the government that it's more important to have peace and harmony.

Russia, of course, has no tradition of press freedom.

The real surprise is India. Peace and harmony matters more than a free press to the majority, and yet when Indira Gandhi clamped down on the press and the opposition during the Emergency in 1975, she lost the subsequent election in 1977 by a landslide. No subsequent leader has been able to dominate the political landscape, a clear indication of the diversity of Indian voters. They are unlikely to give any party the kind of support Indira Gandhi enjoyed before she imposed the Emergency. So the press is likely to remain free.

What makes the Indian attitude all the more surprising is the high marks Indians give to the media. The privately owned news organisations are doing a good job, according to 64 percent of the respondents, and so is the official media, according to 57 percent. That's a big leap for All India Radio, which used to be called All Indira Radio, and the national TV network, Doordarshan, which used to be pretty much Indira Darshan when she was in power.

In Singapore, the official media is trusted more than private counterparts. The official media is doing a good job, according to 42 percent, but the private media gets the thumbs up from only 32 per cent.

One question: Is there any mainstream private media in Singapore? Isn't Singapore Press Holdings enmeshed in various crossholdings with the government-linked MediaCorp?

 

Picasso: French or Spanish?

It's common to point out mistakes in Wikipedia, but is Encyclopaedia Britannica hundred percent accurate?

Pablo Picasso is described as a "Spanish-born French painter, sculptor" in Britannica Concise Encylopedia -- but not by any of the other encyclopedias cited in Answers.com. They all say he was Spanish.

I found that he was in fact denied French citizenship when he applied for it in 1940 only weeks before Germany invaded France during World War II. He was suspected to be an anarchist.

Picasso sought French citizenship because he apparently feared he might otherwise be extradited to Spain. He could expect no favours from General Franco and the Nationalists who had won the Spanish Civil War whose horrors he had famously depicted in Guernica.

The Nationalists were fascists, in his view, and he did not want to be a citizen of a fascist state, so he applied for French nationality, according to others.

The latter story appeared in the New York Times, the former in the Independent.

Other newspapers and agencies also carried similar reports between 2003 and 2004, when 30 years after his death, police files unearthed in Paris revealed his rejected application for French citizenship.

I came across those reports when I searched Google using the key words, Pablo Picasso, Spanish, French citizenship.

I searched Google to check if Encylopaedia Britannica was right. If Picasso was indeed a "Spanish-born French painter, sculptor", then why shouldn't it be mentioned in Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia? Still, the Britannica is known for its accuracy. So is it correct on Picasso? Have other records appeared since 2003 showing Picasso did indeed become French?    

Google Reader recommends ... BT

Surprise, surprise, Singapore Press Holdings is pushing its content, giving away its stories for free! And one doesn't even have to ask for the stories, they poured in like unsolicited mail!

I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened my Google Reader last night. On the home page was a new section called Top Recommendations listing feeds I hadn't subscribed to but which Google Reader thought, based on my reading habits, I might be interested in. And there with a couple of popular Singapore blogs, an Indian business newspaper, the literary blog Elegant Variation, the opinion section of  London's Daily Telegraph and Forbes magazine was Singapore's very own Business Times (BT).

I only had to click on the titles to subscribe to them or preview their latest articles first before clicking on the Subscribe button or the hyperlink, "No, thank you". Adding or deleting feeds from Google Reader is as simple as that. Subscription is just as simple on Bloglines, which has offered similar recommendations for years, but Google Reader is much faster. Rather than visit various websites to find out what they have to offer, one can simply scroll through Google Reader and call up the more interesting stories. It simply collects all the stories from the various websites one has subscribed to.

But I didn't expect stories from the Business Times to pop up on my Google Reader. I hadn't asked for them. Not that I am complaining. But it's so unusual for Singapore Press Holdings to distribute its  content free of charge. Yes, the Business Times can be read online for free after 2pm every day. But its sister paper, the much more widely circulated Straits Times, gives very little away for free; one has to pay to read most of the stories.

I don't think the Business Times (circulation 30,400,according to the SPH website) is so desperate to increase readership that it's deliberately pushing stories like unsolicited mail. But like any other newspaper, it has an RSS feed which can be picked up by Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo or any other news reader. But why send those stories to me? The Google Reader Help Centre has the answer:

"Your recommendations list is automatically generated. It takes into account the feeds you're already subscribed to, as well as information from your Web History, including your location."

And so Google Reader decided to "recommend" the Business Times stories to me.

The Business Times could restrict access to its RSS feed, like the Wall Street Journal does. But it isn't, letting Google Reader distribute it for free. That's pushing. Thank you!

Times(de)Select

This is the best news I have heard in a long time. The New York Times, my favourite newspaper, will be free again. It's dropping TimesSelect, the pay section, from tomorrow. Welcome back to the free world, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman. It's no reflection on them that readers will no longer have to pay to read them. The fact is, it's difficult for even the best writers to get people to pay to read them online.

I don't know whom to thank: The New York Times or Rupert Murdoch. After all, the New York Times is dropping the subscription model only after Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal. Murdoch, of realised, the subscription model doesn't work -- at least for a general newspaper -- and scrapped the  The Times Online fees a long time ago.

That the New York Times was able to continue TimesSelect for two years, attracting 227,000 subscribers who paid $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year to read the pay site, which generated a revenue of $10 million a year, says something about the Times' immense popularity. 

Meanwhile, in Singapore ...

The irony is, I first stumbled on the news on a partial pay site, the Straits Times online. Though in Singapore, I haven't read this Singapore newspaper for more than a week now. Usually, I head straight to the New York Times and the Guardian when I go online. But I decided to check out the Straits Times online this morning and that's where I saw the headline: New York Times to end paid Internet service. After that, of course, I ignored all the Singapore news to concentrate on this really BIG news. For if the New York Times can't operate a subscription model, almost nobody else can.

Ah yes,the Straits Times is a partial pay site. Readers have to pay to read some of its stories online. But I wonder who does -- except homesick Singaporeans languishing abroad, local nerds who don't want old newspapers piling up in their homes (and the Straits Times can be monstrously fat with all the ads it gets), and analysts and researchers who for some reason might want to know more about Singapore.

But what they get is more spin than news. The Straits Times isn't the New York Times or the Washington Post. And most of the news one can possibly expect to get about Singapore is available for free at the Channel NewsAsia site. (Unless it's something to do with maids or mistresses, when one has to read the tabloid New Paper.) But the Straits Times publishes what news and views it can, and there are people still willing to pay to read it online. I wonder, for how long?

The Straits Times praised

Singapore doesn’t have a free press, according to organizations such as Freedom House. But The Straits Times newspaper published by Singapore Press Holdings has one of the most advanced news websites in the world, according to teachers at Ball State University’s College of Communication, Information and Media (CCIM), one of the biggest media colleges in the US.

Stressing the need for “digital convergence” or multimedia news websites which update round the clock, they say:

Media companies in Southeast Asia and Scandinavia have embraced digital convergence most widely as of mid-2005. In Southeast Asia the leaders include Star Publications in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital; the Nation group in Thailand; the Singapore Press Holdings Group, which publishes the prestigious Straits Times newspaper; and the Ming Pao Group in Hong Kong.

I am quoting from the book, Convergent Journalism: An Introduction, edited by Stephen Quinn and Vincent F Filak. Filak teaches at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana, where Quinn also taught in the past.

The BBC, the Guardian and the Financial Times are among the European leaders in digital convergence, they add, along with the Aftenbladet newspaper in Sweden and the Aftenposten in Norway. Interestingly both Aftenbladet and Aftenposten are published by the same Scandinavian media company, Schibsted, with which Singapore Press Holdings will be developing a new local search engine. It will give information exclusively on Singapore.

American pioneers in digital convergence include the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune and several Florida newspapers, according to the book.

But is it possible to compare news sites from around the world? Click on the links and see.

I check the BBC and the Guardian every day, the Washington Post often, see the RSS feeds from the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune occasionally and visit the Straits Times a couple of times a week. Necessity compelled me to stop subscribing to the newspaper, which has a circulation of 388,500. Now for Singapore news I depend on Channel NewsAsia, a Singapore news channel with a free website. The Straits Times online like the New York Times includes “premium” content, available only to subscribers.

Murdoch is good news ... for some

One of the most read stories in the London Times yesterday was “The US debates Hillary’s cleavage”.Will the Times’ owner Rupert Murdoch next sex up the Wall Street Journal? That’s certainly been his style ever since he put the topless Page 3 girls in the Sun back in the 1970s, making it the world's biggest selling English daily with a circulation of more than three million -- a million more than the Journal.

His getting hold of the Journal could be good news not just for the lads. It will also remove a thorn in the flesh of some governments. Murdoch is sweet on Asia. Think of his wife who is half his age. And how he pulled BBC News from his Star TV satellite channel in China to be in the good books of Beijing.

The Far Eastern Economic Review, another Dow Jones publication like the Journal, is being sued for defamation by Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, for an article published in July last year. I can’t recall any similar run-ins with a Murdoch paper.

A Murdoch Wall Street Journal could be good news also for online news junkies. Murdoch websites tend to be free, as I wrote in an earlier post. I didn’t know then he himself had spoken about making the online Journal free. That I read later on the Chicago Tribune website. As I wrote earlier, he wants more traffic.

But not even the Journal can give him the one thing he doesn't have. He will still be No 2 in the US newspaper market, trailing the market leader USA Today.

Murdoch’s Midas touch seems to fail him when it comes to quality papers. The Times is yet to show a profit since he bought it in 1982. The Daily Telegraph is still the biggest selling quality newspaper in Britain with a circulation of more than 900,000.The Times is No 2 with more than 650,000 and the Guardian third with 380,000-plus. And the good thing about all three is we can read them online for free. Let's hope Murdoch frees the Journal as well.

Battle for the classifieds

Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper certainly carries some weight. Just pick up the bulging Saturday edition which sometimes runs to more than 100 broadsheet pages. And one gets this humongous newspaper for less than a Singapore dollar, which is about 65 or 66 cents. Yes, it costs more than the Washington Post but much less than the New York Times, and is considered affordable in Singapore. Or it would not have a circulation of more than 385,000 copies. For an English newspaper in Asia, that’s huge.

I guess the Straits Times owner, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), can give it at that price because it makes money from the ads. The SPH website says it has a 50 per cent share of the Singapore ad market through its various properties, which include two radio stations and several websites, newspapers and magazines, but the bulk of the ads appear in the Straits Times. It’s the ads which bulk up the Saturday Straits Times. The classifieds alone take up several pages.

Now a website has come up which wants to lure away those classifieds. Singapore now has its own version of Craigslist, launched by the government broadcaster, MediaCorp. It dominates television and radio and is now going after the classified ad market which has so far been the bread and butter of the Straits Times.

And the public reaction so far? I just checked Google News and Google Blogs and found nothing on it except a brief story in Channel NewsAsia, which is owned by MediaCorp. The news seems to have been greeted with a yawn of indifference. I will not speculate on the reason, but a nursery rhyme comes to mind:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
    Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
    Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
    As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
    They quite forgot their quarrel.

Both MediaCorp and the Straits Times report the same news. There was talk of competition when MediaCorp started a freesheet and the Straits Times owner, SPH, launched an English and a Chinese television channel in the early 2000s. But Singapore was found too small to support so many channels and after bleeding red ink SPH turned over its channels to MediaCorp in exchange for a 20 percent share of MediaCorp TV Holdings, which operates four free-to-air channels, and a 40 per cent share of the MediaCorp freesheet, Today. In effect, both companies became virtual monopolies again, MediaCorp in broadcasting and SPH in publishing.

The freesheet, Today, with a limited distribution, has not tried very hard to compete with the Straits Times. Today claims a readership of 584,000 as opposed to the Straits Times circulation of 385,000. But readership is not the same thing as circulation, according to Britain’s National Readership Survey which says:

Circulation is a known: the average number of copies of a publication sold over a period of time, independently audited and verified by ABC, the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Readership can never be known, it has to be estimated.

But now the comfortable arrangement between SPH and MediaCorp seems to be showing some wear and tear with the growing importance of the Internet. SPH has a job site. Now MediaCorp has one for classifieds. I had a look at the latter. The site, mocca.com, looks pretty basic at the moment. But it’s early days.

The Straits Times, on the other hand, has beaten off challengers in the past. Who knows what the future holds. Another deal?    

A free online Wall Street Journal?

Can we now expect to read the online Wall Street Journal for free? I am jumping the gun, but it’s a fair question to ask now that the Dow Jones board has voted to sell the company to Rupert Murdoch. His $5 billion takeover bid still has to be approved by the Bancroft family, which controls 64 percent of the voting stock. But if they do accept the offer, will the Journal continue to be a subscription-only site? The Murdoch websites tend to be free.

Yes, there was a time when one had to pay to read The Times online. But that was years ago: it’s free now. Murdoch may not give his editors a free hand, but he knows free sites get more traffic -- and he has always wanted the biggest share of the pie.

The Journal no doubt makes money by charging subscription fees. But I won’t be surprised if Murdoch finds other ways of making money. In any case, he will be less dependent on revenue from the Journal because he has lots of other assets.

A Murdoch takeover of the Wall Street Journal may be bad news for my favourite newspaper, the New York Times. He will be a more formidable competitor than Dow Jones.

Business rules his life. First he became an American citizen to own US television stations. Then he pulled BBC News from his Star TV satellite channel in China to placate Beijing and get more business. And he knows what sells. One may or may not like the Sun and Fox News, but they are popular.

He also owns The Times. There can be no question about its quality. I read it for the writing. For the writing and the views, I turn to the Guardian.

News alone can't sell papers

I can’t quite agree with Michael Connelly, the creator of the Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch. He writes:

People who read books also read newspapers… If you foster books, you foster reading. If you foster reading, you foster newspapers.

People who read newspapers don’t necessarily read books. Nor are all book lovers compulsive newspaper readers. With all the news media now available, one can do without printed newspapers, thank you.

I personally love newspapers and browse the Guardian and the New York Times and several other publications online. But I don’t read the local newspapers here in Singapore every day and I don’t think I am missing a lot. I check the local news channel Channel NewsAsia’s website, which usually gives me all the information I need.

It may be because I am an Indian and not terribly interested in crime stories or what’s happening in the region or the long local opinion pieces printed in the papers. The big news in Singapore anyway is what the government is thinking and planning to do next -- and that and the business news are covered adequately by Channel NewsAsia (and Reuters and Bloomberg when it comes to business news.)

I would rather read the local news in a nutshell and spend the time saved reading books and checking foreign websites.

I am sure there are Singaporeans, too, who get most of their information online.

But I can understand why Connelly as a writer feels the way he does. He is lamenting the downsizing of book reviews in American newspapers. As he freely admits in his article in the Los Angeles Times, it was favourable book reviews that established him as a writer. He adds:

I can't help but wonder how long Harry (Bosch) would have lasted had he been born in today's newspaper environment.

He may have a point there. And it’s not only the writer’s loss. Newspapers that cut back on book coverage may be cutting their own throats, he argues. Yes, indeed. I read the Guardian and the New York Times not just for the news but also for the book reviews, commentaries and articles on technology.

One can always get the news from one source or another. What gives a newspaper or a magazine distinction is the quality of writing, the analysis and reviews.

Wikipedia curb on Singapore

Who says everyone can edit Wikipedia? That's an urban legend. I discovered that while looking up the Wikipedia article on Singapore opposition leader JB Jeyaretnam yesterday.

On top of the page it says: "This article or section needs to be updated". The article doesn't seem to have been updated since early last year.

But when I pressed the edit button, a new page opened with this headline: User is blocked. Below that was this message:

Your user name or IP address has been blocked from editing. You were blocked by AmiDaniel for the following reason (see our blocking policy): vandalism.

(AmiDaniel apparently is a Wikipedia administrator.)

I was shocked because I have never even tried to edit Wikipedia before. Nor did I intend to edit the article on Jeyaretnam. The only reason I pressed the edit button was to see how articles are edited.

Apparently, Wikipedia doesn't allow articles to be edited by visitors from a Singapore Internet service provider unless they are registered Wikipedia users with their own accounts. That became clear when I again visited the site and pressed the edit button several hours later. This time I got this message:

Editing by anonymous users from your shared IP address  or address range is currently disabled. Registered users, however, are still able to edit...Please register an account if you wish to edit.

The Wikipedia  page on  blocking  policy  explained:

Blocks are used in order to prevent damage or disruption to Wikipedia, not to punish users.

I wonder what anonymous visitors from the Singapore Internet service provider did that provoked Wikipedia to block them from editing its pages. After all, the original message said I was blocked for "vandalism" !

Citizendium treats Singapore model as literature!

I just had my first look at Citizendium, which "aims to be a better Wikipedia", to quote USA Today.

"The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by adding 'gentle expert oversight' and requiring contributors to use their real names. We have over 1,000 articles and hundreds of contributors," writes Larry Sanger, the Wikipedia co-founder who started Citizendium.

"We believe this project is necessary, and justified, because the world needs a more reliable free encyclopedia.  We hope to create one by giving people a place to work under the direction of experts," he adds.

But Citizendium already has a credibility problem. How seriously can you take it as a reference site when it includes a Singapore model under Literature?

That's right. There are 21 articles listed under the Literature Workgroup including pieces on Chaucer, Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Stephen King -- and Bonny Hicks.

She was a Singaporean model who wrote a book called Excuse Me, Are You A Model? All 12,000 copies sold out in three days when the book was published in Singapore in 1990, says the article in Citizendium. But, excuse me, does that make her literature?

She died in an air crash in December 1997. The Singapore Airlines subsidiary SilkAir plane crashed off Sumatra, killing all 104 on board, says the article. That was a tragedy. And Bonny Hicks no doubt was a talented young woman.

But listing her in the Literature Workgroup with Chaucer, Shakespeare and  Dickens must be a joke. Citizendium had better get its act together or it will end up as a laughing stock.

Programmers wanted ... as journalists

Newspapers are looking for computer programmers to work as journalists in America, reports MediaShift, the PBS guide to digital media. It shows how programmers can make a difference to online reporting. For example, Adrian Holovaty created ChicagoCrime.org, a website which feeds police reports into an online database to show the level and nature of crime in each district. You can get the information from the website, on your own newsreader like My Yahoo! or Google Reader, or look it up on Google Maps. A map could be useful to a stranger wanting to know which districts to avoid. The information is updated daily.

Something like that could add value to a news website and it couldn't be created by traditional journalists. Imagine if The Straits Times or Today newspaper here in Singapore provided information like the time you could catch the last train or bus from Hougang to go to Woodlands on a weekday. It could be done with the help of transport authorities. Newspapers could provide a lot of reader services using variable data which need programming. An American newspaper, for example, created an interactive map showing all the free hotspots in a town where one could surf the Net wirelessly. Readers could update the map by adding spots missed by the newspaper staff.

But why should a newspaper provide such services? Because it's no longer enough to report what a minister said or what the BBC says. I could get all that on the Internet. And I don't even have to surf the Net. I could get all the headlines in one place, on a personal news reader like My Yahoo! or Google Reader.

Ministers' speeches delivered to home PCs

Here in Singapore you could even get ministers' speeches delivered direct to your home computer, unedited by any newspaper, radio or television journalist. Just visit the Singapore government website and click the RSS button. Or open your newsreader and type in the URL -- http://www.gov.sg/rss.xml.

The question is, do you want to? Obviously, some do. Otherwise, it wouldn't be there.

The Internet is adding so many possibilities that newspapers have to change too. It's no longer enough to cover just the day's news. By the time the newspaper comes out in print, it's already old news.

USA Today: Now a social network

Bookmark USA Today. It's broken the mould of online journalism, giving more prominence to its readers than any other newspaper I have seen.

Readers can start their own blogs and post their profiles with pictures or avatars once they subscribe to the site. Subscription is free. They can also exchange information among themselves. In other words, USA Today is no longer just a newspaper. It's also trying to become a social network. Like Flickr, YouTube, MySpace and Vox.

I have heard that some media organisations in Europe allow readers to blog, but others are deterred by various problems. One organisation in Britain was apparently worried about lawsuits should irresponsible bloggers publish libellous stories on its site.

USA Today should be praised. Not all its readers are reported to be happy with the change, but that's not unusual: We all have our comfort zones.

I remember when USA Today was launched. I first saw it at the Oxford Bookshop on Park Street in Calcutta (Kolkata). I wasn't impressed with its colour photos, blue name plate, presentation or layout. It was not at all like the Guardian and The Times which I loved to read at the British Council Library in Calcutta. But the difference got noticed. Few newspapers attracted as much attention as USA Today.

Now it wants to be different online as well. But let's hope there will be imitators. Other newspapers, too, should give more space to their readers if they want to keep them. I don't want to read a newspaper just to know what a minister or an official told the reporter. That could be easily picked up on the radio or television if it's really important.

Free The Straits Times! Not quite but...

The Straits Times today blurbed that Singapore's hottest blogger, Xiaxue, was back on its Stomp online portal. It was the pixie-faced ponytailed young woman who was caught smiling in the blurb. But the newspaper's online portal must have been humming happily, too, as the word must have gone around the Internet as to what young readers really like.

"I prefer Xiaxue to Sumiko Tan," says the sample entry at the Youth.Sg blogging festival. Sumiko Tan is The Straits Times' star columnist. But her popularity can't be measured the same way as Xiaxue's. Xiaxue ranks 89th on Technorati's list of Top 100 blogs measured by the number of links. And that's what this post is all about. Not who's more popular than whom. But how a newspaper or a star columnist you have to pay to read can face serious competition from a free site or a blog. The Straits Times is Singapore's leading newspaper, with a daily circulation of about 400,000, according to Wikipedia. But online it enjoys no such hegemony.

Let's do a Google search. Type in the words, "Straits Times", and you get 2,270,000 results. Now type, "Xiaxue", and you get 314,000 results. That's one-seventh of The Straits Times' total. But we are comparing a lone blogger with one of Asia's biggest newspapers. And some of the results for The Straits Times actually refer to the New Straits Times, a different newspaper altogether published in Malaysia.

The Straits Times, in fact, comes out second best compared with Channel NewsAsia, the local news channel. Type in "Channel News Asia" as three separate words, and you get 37,700,000 results -- nearly 18 times more than for The Straits Times. Channel NewsAsia is free unlike The Straits Times online. As Amit Agarwal blogging at Digital Inspiration wrote, bloggers don't link to pay sites.

Maybe The Straits Times started Stomp as a free site to reach out to more people. Here people can interact with The Straits Times writers and engage in citizen journalism, posting their own stuff. Started last year, it's yet to become wildly popular, though, trailing behind more than 15,000 other sites worldwide, according to Alexa's Traffic Rankings. Channel NewsAsia ranks among the top 5,000.

But maybe The Straits Times doesn't want a huge online presence. Maybe its online target is narrowcasting to a select group. I certainly got the message when I saw its bloggers' youthful faces that Stomping wasn't for me. Give me the old paper any day, it can also be used as a wrapper and a rag.

"BeebTube" means business

The BBC may be a public service broadcaster funded by the licence fees paid by people in Britain to see and listen to its programmes. But it wants to make more money just like any business. That's why it's starting channels on YouTube. The short clips shown on those channels are meant to attract more viewers and advertisers.

BBC Worldwide, a commercial service, expects to get more traffic through its YouTube channel and see its advertising revenue go up, said the Telegraph. BBC Worldwide will carry ads on YouTube, and so will the yet-to-be-launched BBC News YouTube channel, it added.

A plan to run ads on the BBC News international website was put on hold by the BBC Trust, the governing body, after protests by the staff and others.

But a BBC official denied the YouTube news channel was being started  to get around this problem, said the Telegraph.

The YouTube channel may be even be more lucrative than website ads.

"Richard Sambrook, the director of BBC global news, said that there was no comparison between being able to run banner ads on a text-based website on the one hand, and being able to offer commercially funded video clips on the other,'' said the Telegraph.

BBC channels on YouTube

I just saw clips of two BBC shows -- Top Gear and David Attenborough's wildlife documentaries -- on YouTube. Posted by the BBC itself.The BBC website announced today:

"The BBC has struck a content deal with YouTube, the web's most popular video sharing website, owned by Google. Three YouTube channels - one for news and two for entertainment - will showcase short clips of BBC content.

"The BBC hopes that the deal will help it reach YouTube's monthly audience of more than 70 million users and drive extra traffic to its own website."

Already two of the three channels can be seen on YouTube: BBC and BBC Worldwide. Most of the clips are less than five minutes long.

YouTube is the world's fourth most popular website in Alexa's Traffic Rankings. The BBC ranks 29th. Yahoo is first, Microsoft Network (MSN) second and Google third.

The good Times

My son is attending a liberal arts college in America where on top of his science courses he has to take other subjects as well. This semester he is reading political science for which he has to subscribe to the New York Times. He has to read the political news, he said.

That may wind up a lot of people. The newspaper has its critics not only in America. I recall a CNN interview with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The interviewer referred to a survey by Reporters Without Borders which claimed Singapore had one of the least free media in the world. Lee, a Cambridge man and a brilliant scholar, promptly asked the woman a counter question: Was there anything she couldn't report about Singapore? No, she said. Lee laughed. How could the media then complain of lack of freedom? Singapore welcomed the media, he said, but expected journalists to be careful when dealing with sensitive issues such as race and religion. And, he added, they should not play an "adversarial role" like the New York Times or the Washington Post.

There could be no New York Times or Washington Post in Singapore -- not because of any lack of freedom. The country is simply too small to support institutions like those. How much diversity of views can you find in a city state of 4.5 million people? There's good government, things work fine, the leadership just doesn't lend itself to the kind of caricature one sees in American and British political cartoons or the kind of personality cult that's encouraged in communist countries. Yes, the media supports official policies. But can you argue with good leadership?

But the situation may be different in other countries.

Personally, I love the New York Times and try to read it online every day.

British journalists and even some Americans say American newspapers are dull compared with their British counterparts. The American newspapers' emphasis on balance, objectivity and political correctness is said to have made them blander than British newspapers. I beg to differ. I regularly read two British newspapers online -- the Guardian and The Times. They are good. But give me the New York Times any day. It has the advantage of geography and geopolitics. America is a more "happening" place -- and how interesting is British politics to a foreigner?

It's true the Guardian and the Times have a lot more to offer besides politics. But so does the New York Times. Its book reviews and technology reports are in no way inferior to those in the Times or the Guardian. And what about the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times? They are just as readable.

In fact, the Americans produce the kind of long, in-depth stories one hardly sees in British newspapers. The  Los Angeles Times recently ran a story about kindergarten teachers having problems teaching English to immigrant -- mostly Hispanic -- children. The New York Times had a memorable story about evangelical churches springing up among blacks and Hispanics. The Christian Science Monitor runs some of the most interesting foreign stories I have seen.

The British newspapers, in comparison, tend to be much more focused on the news of the day. That may be due to the fact there's more competition among London newspapers. But that doesn't make them better.

What's wrong with Times Online newsfeeds?

Ha ha, Times Online published my comments on its bold new look to attract the MySpace Generation.

But now there's a problem: I can no longer read The Times on Bloglines or my desktop news aggregator. What happened to the RSS feeds?

Scrolling to the bottom of the Times Online website did get me to a  blue icon labelled Newsfeeds. Click on it and you find links to newsfeeds about Britain and the world and sports and technology. I clicked on the world news feed and up popped this dialogue box: "Internet Explorer can't download. Unspecified error." Nor could I subscribe to the feed with Bloglines. I also tried the tech and web newsfeed with the same result.

What's wrong? It's hard to believe something's gone wrong with the newsfeeds of a publication like The Times. But why else can't they be read on an online news aggegator like Bloglines or, for that matter, on Internet Explorer Feeds?

More on Times Online's new look

I wrote last night that I don't like Times Online's new look introduced this week. The display is too brassy and bold, too in-your-face, more like a giant billboard. The headlines and pictures hit you squarely in the eyes, there is little unused white space to give your eyes a rest. Gone are the elegant old black nameplate, generous white space and restrained display that gave the website a touch of class. Times Online was one of the best looking websites in my view. But I am an old fogey. Any product has to appeal to a younger market.

I may not like the new look, but this is the boldest redesign I have seen online. Times Online has been completely tranformed, no other new site has been through a makeover as radical as this. The black and lime green nameplate -- which I don't like -- the blue headlines, the sans serif typeface, the new navigation tabs below the nameplate, and the pictures and text running across the whole page with hardly any margin left give the website a busy, colourful look. Maybe this is what you need to attract the MySpace Generation.

We old fogeys will still browse The Times and get used to the new look. But our days are numbered. No publication can survive without younger readers.

The new-look Times Online

I was shocked when I checked Times Online last night. It looked absolutely different. It changed to a new look four days ago, says Times Online editor in chief Anne Spackman, to be more accessible and easily navigable. But as a result it looks like a WordPress blog, and not a well-designed one at that. The black and lime green nameplate looked dreadful at first sight. The old design with the elegant black nameplate had a touch of class. It suggested quality journalism. The new design with its liberal use of red and blue and green sheds the old image completely.

Rupert Murdoch obviously doesn't go for looks. The Times today looks like any other tabloid, what sets it apart is the content. But while the makeover to a tabloid might have made sense, why redesign the website? It was already running blogs and interacting with readers. One unstated reason may be advertising. The new design looks like a giant billboard with plenty of display space on the right.

There's been one improvement, though. I could search for articles faster. "Sponsored by Windows Live" says the text next to the search box. What's the bottom line?

mr brown on the BBC

I heard mr brown on the BBC yesterday and wanted to hear the programme again. After all, he is Singapore's most popular blogger and podcaster, and with good reason too. He is funny and irreverent, unlike the mainstream media. Not that I have heard his podcasts before, being more partial to blogs. But he sounded good on the BBC, and so I searched for the programme again on the Internet. A Google search led me to his blog where he linked to the programme.

And I really enjoyed listening to the BBC programme again where mr brown is introduced as a "cutting-edge podcaster from Singapore". He covers the "dysfunctional aspect of life in Singapore", he says in his podcasts, which according to him have an average audience of 20,000 but sometimes reach 100,000 or more.

On his podcasts, he says, "We speak a very colloquial version of English called Singlish which is very, very frowned upon by the Government or the Gahmen as they are called here. The Gahmen -- g-a-h-m-e-n. So the Gahmen are not happy with Singlish. You are not allowed to speak in Singlish because it's broken English, and if you speak the broken English on the national radio or the TV, then all the little children would hear this English and society would collapse."

The programme is not just about mr brown. It also presents a film-maker from Shanghai, a photographer cum performance artist from Iceland and vodcasters Jerry and Orrin Zucker with "a Woody Allen sense of humour" from Boston. It's the second part of a programme called Citizen Creators Online and talks about how the Internet has unleashed a new wave of creativity which is changing ideas about art. Charles Gere, who lectures on new media at Lancaster University in Britain, says: "We will cease to have Leonardo da Vincis or even Andy Warhols or Jackson Pollocks and instead we will have a much more widely spread, diffused notion of creativity..."

It's an excellent, thought-provoking programme which made the Internet sound as exciting as the history of rock music in Charlie Gillette's ground-breaking book, The Sound of the City, published way back in 1970. Anyone who wants to download the programme should do so now. For it's part of the BBC arts programme, Close Up, which the BBC website says is updated every Friday.

Do we need a daily newspaper?

Writing in the sixth anniversary issue of Today this weekend, PN Balji says: "Six years ago we knew the competition." That was when Today was started as an alternative to Singapore's main newspaper, The Straits Times. But The Straits Times' publishers, Singapore Press Holdings, have since bought a stake in the freesheet, Today. "Now, we don't know what it (the competition) looks like," says Balji. "It could be blogs, podcasts, emails, SMSes and even lifestyle changes that demand narrowcasting or a combination of all these." He is right.

I was surprised when I read last month that The Straits Times had gained 30,000 new readers this year. It crowed it was gaining readers when newspapers elsewhere were losing them.

But there's no alternative to The Straits Times if one wants to read an English newspaper in Singapore. The New Paper is too downmarket, the Business Times mainly business, and the freesheet Today available only at selected spots at certain hours. And they are all linked to Singapore Press Holdings.

The Straits Times' gains are due to one simple reason. More Singaporeans are switching over from Chinese newspapers, which are also published by the same group. The Straits Times itself said so.

It could also be due to the rise in the number of foreigners living and working in Singapore. Indians, for example, have a newspaper reading habit -- and what else can they read in Singapore but The Straits Times?

My wife, when she visits Singapore, checks The Straits Times for the shopping coupons and ads. But when she is not here, there are days when my copy of the paper remains unread.

I can't stop subscribing to The Straits Times because one has to look it up sometimes for official news, about new laws and policies.

But it's not something I read for pleasure.

For that I depend on the Internet, where I can read the Guardian and The Times and the New York Times. Even many of the blogs are more interesting to read. And from time to time, I look up The Telegraph, published from my hometown Calcutta (Kolkata), and other Indian newspapers.

Coming from India, naturally I am interested in Indian news. And I got into the habit of reading British and American periodicals back in Calcutta where I could read them at the British Council and the American Center. Selected articles from The Times and the New York Times also used to appear in the local newspapers. I still enjoy reading all that.

Maybe I would have enjoyed reading The Straits Times, too, if I had seen it since my schooldays. But I didn't. So it's still not part of my daily reading.

But one doesn't have to start young to like something. I had never read The Economist or Wired magazine when I was young. So why do I like them?

Lynne Truss.com

Eats, Shoots & Leaves author Lynne Truss now has her own website! So what? Every writer has a website now. Hello! This is big news, reported by Reuters.

However, after visiting http://www.lynnetruss.com. I don't think any punctuation mark can do it justice. It deserves an emoticon. Like this: :(

Truss may well riposte, "Talk to my hand!" A thumbs down from a nobody like me can hardly matter to a bestselling minder of other people's periods and manners like her.

And, besides, the site can only get only better -- it's got so little now.

The content's decidedly skimpy. I guess Truss hasn't had time to fully dress up her site (if she can dare to come out with such a bare site, I can split an infinitive). The site was launched only five days ago.

I do hope she will be posting her tips on punctuation there -- then I won't have to buy her next book. As for her advice on proper etiquette, it should be clear by now I have no use for it.

Just for the record, I do have a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves but never got beyond the first few chapters. I love my Fowler, as revised by Gowers -- not the latest version revised by Burchfield. He took the fun out of it.

I know Eats, Shoots & Leaves is good fun too. But you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

And even Truss admits her approach takes the fun out of reading.

"Having been a sub-editor and a proof reader, I do proof-read everything I read and often find I am reading books to check them rather than read them. Any error just sits there and hurts you," she told Reuters.

Not everyone likes the Queen of the Commas' (that's what the Guardian called Truss) "zero tolerance approach to punctuation".

David Crystal, the author of The Story of English, condemns her for joining the ranks of 'linguistic fundamentalists", says the Guardian.

Crystal, who once told her a book on punctuation would never sell, admits: "'I made the stupidest remark of my life." Eats, Shoots & Leaves has sold three million copies worldwide, reports the Guardian, and an illustrated children's version has just been published.

Even Crystal says," 'Her book is humorous, clever, clear, pretty accurate, well crafted", but he adds, it's "deeply unnerving".

"Zero tolerance does not allow for flexibility,'' he says. "It suggests that language is in a state where all the rules are established with 100 per cent certainty. The suggestion is false. We do not know what all the rules of punctuation are. And no rule of punctuation is followed by all of the people all of the time."

He is right.

I needed an emoticon -- not a punctuation mark -- to sum up my feeings about www.lynnetruss.com.

Crystal has a website, too, with a lot more stuff.

Singapore's Stomp not yet on Google

Singapore's The Straits Times newspaper launched a free website, Stomp, with loads of publicity seven weeks ago. But it has not yet been noticed by Google.

To visit the site, I had to go through the Asia One portal maintained by The Straits Times publishers, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH).

Searching for "Stomp" on Google took me to a different site. And when I searched for "Stomp, Singapore", Google pointed to an SPH press release about the new site and stories about it on the Channel NewsAsia site and local blogs. But the site itself has not yet been listed and indexed by Google.

Maybe the Google "spiders" will find the site as they crawl the web. I am sure SPH doesn't need to be told how to design a site that's automatically indexed by Google. But useful tips can be found on Google's Webmaster Help Centre.

Maybe it's only a matter of time before Stomp gets noticed too. The Straits Times and Singapore's two other newspapers, Today and The New Paper, can be easily found on Google. No reason why it should be blind or deaf to Stomp.

Stomp can already be found on Yahoo. Apparently, the site was bookmarked or "saved" by someone on de.licio.us or Yahoo's My Web personal search engine. Because Yahoo! search listed it as "saved by 1 person".

Singaporeans, of course, don't have to search for Stomp on Google. They get enough reminders of the website address. But it does help to have a unique name and clever metatags/metadata whatever -- and traffic too -- to be picked up by the search engines.

"The Straits Times" name is enough, I guess, for it to be easily found by Google. I have never heard of any other newspaper by that name. Today is easily found when combined with Singapore. But how The New Paper comes up second only to the New York Times when anyone searches for "new paper" on Google beats me. Somebody was clever! Maybe it's because of the traffic it gets. I have no idea how these things work. All I know is I found my blog on Google but not Stomp. Heh heh:)

Don't expect to find The New Paper as The New Paper online or on Google, though. Online it takes the name, The Electric New Paper. I rather like the name.

It reminds me of the Electric Flag, the band guitarist Mike Bloomfield formed in 1967 after leaving the Butterfield Blues Band. I only read about the band in the Rolling Stone, never actually heard its records in India. But I always liked the name. And I have listened to the Butterfield Blues Band. So as an old fogey who still digs the Sixties Sound, here's my chance to link to a gig by Mike Bloomfield and his Electric Flag.