Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Today’s left and their whining about successful Israeli rescue missions No military anywhere strives for a 'fair fight'

My good friend William Teach noted that NBC News decided to take its cue from all of the pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas Twitter bots out there, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth that some poor, poor Palestinians were killed during the rescue, blaming a “failure of negotiations.”

“What we saw yesterday is actually failure of the negotiations,” Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, said in a phone interview with NBC News.

“Had there been a cease-fire, these hostages would already have been at home, and the civilians that were killed yesterday would be alive,” Mekelberg said.

There was a ceasefire in place, right up through October 6th. Had Hamas not broken that, those hostages would have always been at home, and the civilians killed in the rescue missions would still be alive. Continue reading →

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Whenever there is a truth you cannot tell, that is a truth you must tell!

The Tennessean is Nashville, Tennessee’s premier newspaper, at least if anyone can call anything owned by USA Today premier anything. In my fairly frequent attention to what passes for journalism these days, I have coined the word journolism, based on JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. And it seems that there has been some real journolism happening at Nashville’s newspaper. A site search for Audrey Hale, the Covenant School transgender mass murderer, turned up relatively little recent news, and nothing on Miss Hale’s ‘writings’ prior to the shootings. But there was this: Continue reading →

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If journalists are not producing material for which people are willing to pay, they’ve no one but themselves to blame.

This site covered the Vanity Fair article about the shake-up at The Washington Post last Tuesday, so The Philadelphia Inquirer’s hard-left, #TrumpDerangementSyndrome consumed columnist, Will Bunch, is a little bit late to the party. The problem is that you peasants just haven’t been willing to shell out your hard-earned dollars to pay for Mr Bunch and his writing!

Can America save democracy when no one is even reading about it?

After mass layoffs, U.S. journalism is about to be flattened by AI. When democracy falls, will the public even know about it?

by Will Bunch | D-Day + 80, June 6, 2024 | 3:18 PM EDT

“Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” Continue reading →

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Unsubscribe, huh?

It was just a month ago that the NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia criticized The Philadelphia Inquirer’s “Unsubscribe” ad campaign, after the newspaper laid off yet another five employees. I’ve mostly ignored that campaign, but this one caught my eye this afternoon. If by “Unsubscribe from ‘I (heart) NYC'” actually means “Unsubscribe from The New York Times,” I’d point out that my subscription to the Times is $20.00 every four weeks, or $260.  a year is less expensive than my subscription to the Inquirer, $5.49 per week, billed at $21.96 every four weeks, or $285.48 per year.

Yeah, I have reasons to subscribe to both, primarily for my blog supporting documentation, but if it’s a simple economic decision, and the better newspaper costs less than the poorer one, . . . .

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#Hamas leaders don’t really care about #Palestinian lives, and see the sacrifice of them as politically useful.

Ismail Haniyeh is the ‘Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau,” and as such is supposedly the chief officer of that terrorist group. On October 7, 2023, he gave a televised speech from Istanbul, telling the world that the October 7th attack was fully justified, which he “highlighted threats to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, the continuation of the blockade on Gaza and Israeli normalization with countries in the region.” Safely living in Qatar, Mr Haniyeh is once again rejecting a ceasefire proposal which does not give Hamas complete victory. Continue reading →

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Imposing California standards on a central Kentucky newspaper is not the way to keep the Lexington Herald-Leader from failing Executive Editor Richard Green has an impossible job!

This site has recently reported on the problems print newspapers, which are, in the end, simply updated 18th century technology, competing in the 21st century. We have noted how the Lexington Herald-Leader, once two newspapers, morning and afternoon, produced newspapers distributed widely over most of central and eastern Kentucky, is now being reduced to three print editions a week, to be delivered by mail.

Well, perhaps censoring the news isn’t the best way to build up your brand! Continue reading →

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I know how to save The Washington Post! Find a new billionaire owner who doesn't care if the paper is losing money!

I know how to save The Washington Post! Just have Jeff Bezos, net worth $196 billion as of June 4, 2024, owner of the newspaper, give it to MacKenzie Scott, net worth $33.3 billion as of June 4, 2024, Mr Bezos’ ex-wife and a noted philanthropist who has no problem in giving away her money. Just a straight-up reassignment! Mr Bezos stops losing $77 to $100 million a year on the Post, and Miss Scott, with five times as much money as Patrick Soon-Shiong, net worth $6.3 billion as of June 4, 2024, and who is finding the Los Angeles Times’ losses too much to bear, can easily handle losing money, because she doesn’t seem to care if she makes money or not. Continue reading →

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The inclusion of bias in news articles is subtle, but you have to be aware of it

This site has expressed some amusement at The Philadelphia Inquirer referring to gangs as “street groups.” It began when we were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“. Continue reading →

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The Lexington Herald-Leader has not died, but it has definitely been moved into a nursing home. One foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peel?

On Tuesday, April 30th, I attended a meet-and-greet seminar held by the Lexington Herald-Leader at the Marksbury Family Branch Library off Versailles Road. Executive Editor Richard Green was there, as was Managing Editor Lauren Gorla, who did most of the presentation work. I was standing next to Austin Horn — it was standing room only! — the Frankfort politics reporter.

There were several issues discussed, including from one seventies-looking gentleman from Mt. Sterling, who noted that there was very little coverage from his town and other places outside of Lexington. I paid special attention to him, because I grew up there, being graduated from Mt. Sterling High School shortly after we ceased using quill pens and ink bottles. A point a couple of other people, and I, made was that delivery of the newspaper outside of Lexington was spotty at best. Now living in Estill County, home delivery is not available. This is an important issue to me, because, in the late 1960s, I delivered the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in my hometown.

I have to wonder: I was not the only paperboy in Mt. Sterling, but do the fewer than 100 customers I had outnumber the total number of subscribers in Montgomery County today?

While the newspaper does have “Lexington” in the name, it was the newspaper for much of central and eastern Kentucky for years and years.

And now? Instead of taking action to make the newspaper more valuable, the Herald-Leader is making it less so:

Herald-Leader to change print publication days, delivery method in next step of digital push

Continue reading →