BuzzMachine

New sheriff in town
: Dan Okrent gets off to a good start as public editor of The Times.

45 minutes
: An Iraqi colonel now says he was behind the infamous British intelligence claim that Iraqis could launch a deadly attack in 45 minutes.

When shown the information about the 45-minute claim in the Iraq WMD dossier issued by the Government in September 2002, he said: “I am the one responsible for providing this. Forget 45 minutes, we could have fired these within half an hour.”

The Telegraph, which broke the story, says:

The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam. “The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight,” he said.

“If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences.”

Le Carre’s screed
: John le Carre’s new novel is about out and the Observer goes gaga over this too-timely screed in the book:

‘That war on Iraq was illegitimate… it was a criminal and immoral conspiracy. No provocation, no link with al-Qaeda, no weapons of Armageddon. Tales of complicity and Osama were self-serving bullshit. It was an old colonial war dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty, and it was launched by a clique of war-hungry Judaeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America’s post-Nine Eleven psychopathy.’

Colonial war? No, mate, you should know better: That assumes we want to move into Iraq. That was how you Brits ran the world. We want only to get back home (if too soon).

When he wrote about Communism and the cold war, le Carre understood and expressed the subtlety of it. Judging from this there’s no subtlety left in his weltanschauung or his writing.

Davos on blogs
: Just found this session on blogs — “Will Mainstream Media Co-opt Blogs and the Internet?” — on the World Economic Forum agenda for its January meeting in Davos:

Traditional media sources are still the primary source of information; however, Internet news sites, especially non-mainstream outlets like blogs, are challenging journalism’s traditional rules. 1) How is the media landscape evolving? 2) What are the implications of this revolution for traditional media suppliers, producers and viewers? 3) How should the mainstream media make competitive use of these new outlets?

Hmmm. Wonder who’s on that panel. (Update: I now see that, of course, Joi is; I should have looked at Joi’s site first. Any preview, Joi?) As a big media-little media guy, I’ll volunteer…

And I think the title has it exactly backwards: Will little media coopt big media is a better way to look at the question….

And don’t just think in big-country big-media terms. Look at the Iranian weblog revolution for the true potential of this new medium. Talk about globalization!

: I added my 2 cents into the comments here. And see Doc’s 10 cents here. Dave Winer agrees: They asked the question quite backwards.

: This one looks intriguing, too:

The different approaches to reporting the War in Iraq and its continuing aftermath have illustrated the lack of consensus on journalistic and editorial norms. With states, media owners and audiences demanding reporting, which mirrors individual beliefs as opposed to impartiality and objectivity, the legitimacy of media is challenged and threatened. 1) Do the divergent styles of reporting on television and in the press represent a healthy plurality? Or are they a disturbing new trend away from objectivity? 2) Is there a ‘correct’ way to report issues — certain journalistic norms — or are all approaches equally valid? 3) Will future reporting become more partial as news organizations try to satisfy target audiences?

(more…)

The wrong memorial
: In tomorrow’s Times’ Arts & Leisure section Michael Kimmelman identifies the right problem and the wrong solution for the World Trade Center memorial.

…now that everyone agrees that the ground zero memorial finalists are a disappointment, there’s only one thing to do.

Throw them all out.

You have the power to do so. Use it. This is in part a memorial to extreme bravery in the face of overwhelming force. Here’s a chance to be brave.

OK, fine. That is becoming the quiet consensus of New York.

But Kimmelman’s solution is all too much of The Times: He argues that the solution is elitism.

He wants to name a bunch of high-reputation architects to take it over.

But it is architects who created this mess.

Architects gave us a mess of a World Trade Center design and set impossible conditions for the memorial.

Architects dominated the jury.

Architects designed the finalists.

Architects speaking to architects, that’s where we are now.

But Kimmelman thinks that the process was just too populist, too banal, too common.

Forget vapid populism. Limit the competition to participants of the jury’s expert choosing. Then let the jury select the best plan, if and when there is one. If that’s elitism, so be it….

The jurors should put together a group of the most serious artists and architects, so many of whom declined to participate in the original omnium gatherum, and see where their specialized talents could lead us.

That would be antipopulist–and perhaps a political fiasco. But it would be the right thing to do.

How very Times.

No, it’s elitism that got us this far.

Don’t judge the process on the results thus far; don’t judge the entrants on those selected; judge the jury.

I don’t necessarily trust this jury to find the right memorial. They certainly haven’t done it so far. And thus I certainly don’t trust them to find elite architects to start over.

Why don’t we first look at the 5,201 submissions; why don’t we judge their heart and soul and vision; why don’t we find an essential idea — instead of the overbaked muddles we ended up with out of this juried process?

A truly wise jury would look at all those submissions and find one essential idea that speaks for this memorial and for the memory and for the future. And if it is not there in those 5,201 heartfelt submissions, then they would seek more ideas and seek more time to make this decision properly.

But this, I fear, is not that jury.

Weblogs with halo
: Internet pioneer Jacques Vallee tells Om Malik that weblogs are the salvation of the Internet.

Op-ed scandal?
: Josh Marshall says there’s an op-ed payola scandal brewing.

Al Franken, liberal host
: Well, I’m hurt I wasn’t invited.

Eric Alterman reports that he and “about a dozen and a half journalists, writers and the odd historian, poet and cartoonist” were invited to Al Franken’s livingroom to talk with John Kerry. He also namedrops that Rick Hertzberg and Art Spiegelman were there. Wouldn’t you love to see the rest of that guest list? La creme de la Upper West Side.

Eric says he doesn’t endorse candidates but this sure smells like an endorsement:

Let