It Appears Only the Good Journalists Die Young.

33-year old journalist, Michael Hastings, winner of a Polk Award,  author of the article "The Runaway General" in Rolling Stone Magazine, as well as the book, "The Operators ", and who will most likely be remembered for taking down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, died yesterday in a fiery car crash.




One witness to the crash said it "sounded like a bomb went off. " Hollywood producer, Gary Grossman, described the scene by saying, "I couldn't have written a scene like this for a movie where the engine flies from the car which was about 60 yards up right down here to this telephone pole." While single car accidents are certainly not uncommon, a car exploding and throwing the engine almost the length of a football field certainly is uncommon. Especially a brand new Mercedes.



Hastings was about to start work on an article about Barrett Brown, the investigative journalist (Salon, Vanity Fair amongst others), author and alleged mastermind behind Anonymous who is currently awaiting trial in prison for allegedly sharing data hacked from Stratfor. Hastings also had harsh words for President Obama's drone speech.

“Besides Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, most Democrats abandoned their civil liberty positions during the age of Obama. With a new leak investigation looming, the Democrat leadership are now being forced to confront all the secrets they’ve tried to hide." -- Michael Hastings

A few other relatively young journalists who died before their time:

Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was a Pulitzer prize-winning American investigative journalist. Webb was best known for his 1996 "Dark Alliance" series of articles written for the San Jose Mercury News and later published as a book. In the three-part series, Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly smuggled coc aine into the U.S. Their smuggled coc aine was distributed as crack coc aine in Los Angeles, with the profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied coc aine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespread crack coc aine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the coc aine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by Contra personnel.

On December 10, 2004, Gary Webb was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head.[25] Sacramento County coroner Robert Lyons ruled that it was suicide, noting that a suicide note was found at the scene.

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White House Tells MSNBC Host They Don't Like His Tone.

Cenk Uyger, that is. Who, in addition to his job at MSNBC, started The Young Turks, the largest online news show in the world.

Anyway, MSNBC offered him double the money for half the work. Uyger didn't take the money (sounds like hush money to me). He quit.

Is it too much to hope that others in the mainstream media follow his lead?

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Is Gay Media Dead?

Window Media, the nation’s largest publisher of LGBTQ media has closed its doors and with it, The Washington Blade, America’s oldest gay newspaper.

“The bottom line was they filed for Chapter 7, which means liquidation. I think a lot of us expected a Chapter 11 reorganization … but they didn’t go that route and I guess the creditors wanted out.” -- Kevin Nass, editor for Washington Blade

While the death of print media seems inevitable, and everyone in the print industry is struggling, the loss of The Blade is significant because it caters to a niche market, with no alternatives to turn. With the exception of big national news such as Prop 8, the mainstream media does not report on issues or stories relevant to the gay community, and even less so since the recession.

So, does this mean gay media is dead?

The New Gay: for everyone over the rainbow or TNG thinks it is, and it may not be such a bad thing, or at least it opens the windows of opportunity. TNG is a website/forum that encourages gay people to choose to "define ourselves instead of letting a narrowly defined mainstream gay culture do it for us".

While the creators of TNG all agree that being "gay" is not just about sexual orientation, and they reject the stereotypical, yet embraced idea, that gay is a "white male culture defined by consumerism, superficiality and anti-intellectualism", they don't subscribe to any one way of "being gay". TNG wants to start a "truly representative, broad new gay community based on diversity, compassion and self-reflection".

The Blade's coverage of gay culture, according to Zach Rosen, provided a very narrow view of gay life

"Gay media should reflect the world around it, not the other way around. The Blade’s insistence on only covering the most vapid, the most A-list, the most anti-intellectual, camp-at-all-costs, male dominated aspects of our life have done real and lasting damage to the 90% of us who don’t fit so narrow a rubric." - Zach Rosen

Whatever your opinion of The Washington Blade, it was the official gay paper in the US for the last 40 years, and no other newspaper covers or has the resources to cover American gay issues in the same way.

However, there will be at least one more edition as the former staff of the Blade plans to publish a "revived edition this week, investigating who killed the gay weekly newspaper...and why two offers by prospective publishers to buy the Blade were not accepted earlier this year".

In other news:

Court Upholds Recognition of Gay Marriages in Narrow Ruling

Gay Couple Awarded Benefits Compensation

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Know the "Agenda" of Your" Proxy Representation"

The representation of people through professionals whose whole career is based on the knowledge of a certain subject or field is sometimes absolutely necessary, but that doesn't mean you (the one being represented) is required to passively accept everything your representative or "expert" says and/or does. Quite the contrary, if you can speak for yourself, then you should do so, but if you must seek representation, you should speak up as well because no one knows "you" as well as you.

After reading Gore After Gore in Vanity Fair Magazine, it occurred to me that letting someone else represent or stand or act in place of you, as a substitute, proxy, or agent is a very risky enterprise considering everyone has a personal and professional "agenda." Not only that, the representative’s organized plan for matters to be attended, or things to be done on your behalf, may be based on one or a combination of many different reasons that range from selflessness, empathy, compassion, love, altruism, idealism to ambition, greed or the desire to gain financially, anger, hatred, revenge, sexual and the list goes on indefinitely, but usually falls under one or many of the categories I mentioned above. The scariest part of "agenda" is that the person serving as a representative may not be conscious that his "agenda" exists, or cognizant that it is completely at odds with the "agenda" he is aware of.

Journalism and law are perfect examples of professions that demand a certain level of objectivity.

Take for example an attorney who works for a firm. Above and beyond all else, he must zealously represent his or her client to the best of his ability, defending the rule of law our Justice system has established and he must also be mindful of the deficiencies in the administration of justice concerning the ability to afford legal representation. This attorney must also establish a career and a reputation amongst the judges and his or her peers that he will be associating with now and in the future. And then of course, there is one's personal "agenda"...conscious or subconscious, one's personal "agenda" is not supposed to play a part in representing his client, but it most certainly does for better or worse.

The problem is that many "professionals" do not admit to having a bias or that their view is somewhat limited depending on the prism of popular culture, personal experience and significant others have had on influencing the construction of their reality and belief system. Therefore, it's best that the person "representing" is as aware as he can be of his personal bias and acknowledge it so that he can recognize when it starts to interfere with his duties.

Unfortunately, many "professionals" do not admit to or are not aware of their personal bias. It's up to "us" as consumers, clients, citizens to know the person representing "us" is indeed human, and that his past, present and what he hopes for the future all will affect the quality of his representation or in a journalist's case, reporting.

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How can journalists pierce the truth, Edward R. Murrow-style

Journalism should be more than reporting news. It should also be concerned with pursuing the truth and publishing it without fear of ramifications from coporations who only care about the bottom line.

"The truth itself doesn't respect point of view. The truth is never balanced... We have to not give in to an atmosphere that's become so partisan that we're afraid of what we say every single time we say something."

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