Want to strike a blow against scam agents? Link to the 20 Worst Agents list. While youre at it, link to Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors. You could even link to Everything you wanted to know about literary agents and On the getting of agents. But the 20 Worst Agents listthats the important one.
Star Wars character or Indian Cuisine?
Where does media bias come from? Via Jack Shafer:
1) If a media outlet cares about its reputation for accuracy, it will be reluctant to report anything that counters the audiences’ existing beliefs because such stories will tend to erode the company’s standing. Newspapers and news programs have a visible incentive to “distort information to make it conform with consumers’ prior beliefs.”
2) The media can’t satisfy their audiences by merely reporting what their audience wants to hear. If alternative sources of information prove that a news organization has distorted the news, the organization will suffer a loss of reputation, and hence of profit. The authors predict more bias in stories where the outcomes aren’t realized for some time (foreign war reporting, for example) and less bias where the outcomes are immediately apparent (a weather forecast or a sports score). Indeed, almost nobody accuses the New York Times or Fox News Channel of slanting their weather reports.
3) Less bias occurs when competition produces a healthy tension between a news organization’s desire to conform to audience expectations and maintaining its reputation.
And speaking of perverse economic incentives: A History of US/Iranian Relations Since 9/11. (Economic as in game-theory.)
Advice on government, business and life.
BY DONALD RUMSFELD
Monday, January 29, 2001 12:01 a.m. ESTMany of these rules, reflections and quotations came from my role as chairman of the “transition team” for President Ford and my service as White House chief of staff. Others came from experiences as a U.S. naval aviator, a member of Congress, ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, secretary of defense, presidential Middle East envoy, business executive, chairman of the U.S. Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, and other experiences.
How many of his own rules has he broken in his current job?
* Don’t accept the post or stay unless you have an understanding with the president that you’re free to tell him what you think “with the bark off” and you have the courage to do it.
* It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.
* The price of being close to the president is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don’t tell him the truth. Others won’t do it.
* Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the president and do wonders for your performance.
* Beware when any idea is promoted primarily because it is “bold, exciting, innovative and new.” There are many ideas that are “bold, exciting, innovative and new,” but also foolish.
I’m sure you can find more.
And finally, links to Madeleine Robins and Steven Barnes. (No, not this Steven Barnes, although you should be reading his stuff too.)