It’s been somewhat difficult to keep track of all the ways Portland’s been made fun of in the national media over the past couple weeks between our urine-phobic water management and twee adverts for failed insurance web sites, so don’t feel too bad if you missed the NYT‘s shot aimed at the Portland-based Kinfolk magazine: […]
Media
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Rachel Maddow Tracks Cliven Bundy’s Insanity to Its Roots
…and grills all those (FOX News, Rand Paul, the National Review) who mindlessly championed this radical racist (who did a perfectly good job of telegraphing his extreme views. The evidence will amaze you.) The moral: “Do your homework before you try to mainstream a guy like this.” Watch.
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“Welfare Queen in a Cowboy Hat”
Now that Fox News is doing a reverse 180 power slide away from former “American hero” (now just regular old hillbilly racist) Cliven Bundy, CNN has happily agreed to provide Bundy with his public 40 lashings. Here’s the network’s Bill Weir grilling the simple-minded Bundy—which admittedly is like tipping the cows Bundy was trying to […]
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A Peek into the Mercury Editorial Process
Every now and then we like to shine a light on the editorial process here at the Portland Mercury—because we think you just might be interested to see how news is made. Yesterday was our “press day” in which we were all working extremely hard, and writing furiously to get our paper off to the […]
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Exiting Stage Left: This American Life. Entering Stage Right: Live Wire! Radio
I present to you a dramatic recreation of events from two weeks ago, when Ira Glass decided to cease distributing This American Life via Public Radio International. Playing the role of Mr. Glass will be Alan Rickman, and playing the role of Public Radio International will be a table containing a cup of tea and […]
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Street Roots Goes All In for April Fools
I don’t like April Fools’ day. It’s like watching the internet collectively bomb at an open mic. Street Roots, though, went all in this year for their April Fools’ day edition, and it’s pretty fun. In addition to a big feature story about how the government is spying on Street Roots, sample headlines include: “Woman […]
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Gretchen Jones and the Neutral Territory
A suggestion for a little weekend reading: I’ve mentioned Gretchen Jones’ Neutral Territory project before, and this week I took a closer look at it in Sold Out. I know I sound a little defensive when I talk about the idea of fashion as an intellectual pursuit, but goddammit. There’s a reason why even people […]
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The Onion‘s Fred Phelps Obit Is Annoyingly Perfect
It’s so good I’m mad at it. TOPEKA, KS—Fred Phelps Sr., the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church and the man who is widely credited with forever ending the gay rights movement in America, died today at age 84. “Fred Phelps may be gone, but he will long be remembered for the countless accomplishments and […]
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Robots Write the News Now—and I Couldn’t Be Happier
The LA Times is one of the media organizatins leading the pack when it comes to making their own employees superfluous—because now they’re using robots to write their breaking news stories. From the BBC: The Los Angeles Times was the first newspaper to publish a story about an earthquake on Monday – thanks to a […]
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XRAY.FM: The Full Schedule
XRAY.FM is a go, whether you can hear them terrestrially or just via streaming. And so without further ado, here is the 24/7, complete schedule of programming. Prepare your schedule and the the device(s) of your choice(s) accordingly: XRAY.fm_Schedule.pdf XRAY.FM
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Yep… This Made That Situation Worse
TV news stations across the country are rightfully reacting with horror to this morning’s news of a Seattle KOMO 4 helicopter crashing near the Space Needle, killing two. What follows is a different type of horror: When a morning show anchor for Fox 31 in Denver is swiping through photos on his iPad (showing pictures […]
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Wild Planet Radio
In my look at the launch of XRAY.FM this week, I mentioned that the FCC was also making it possible for a number of small community stations to emerge on Portland airwaves (LPFMs), and look, here they come: The Q-Center-headquartered Wild Planet Radio, “Portland’s LGBTQ Station,” is currently streaming online and planning to launch terrestrial […]