In the wake of the smoking ban in Ireland, many pubs in Dublin now feature outdoor ashtrays, shaped like boxes and clamped to a wall. Advertisers, aware of the eyes of a captive market, have started putting small posters on the front of these ashtrays. (This painful exposition is for readers outside Ireland–that vast horde). […]
With all the enthusiasm (you suspect) of a child swallowing boiled broccoli, Sunday’s New York Times Book Review presented a high-minded Poetry Symposium* in which various poets handled the unenviable task of picking a “book of poetry, published in the last 25 years, [that] has meant the most to you personally–the book you have found […]
I came across this site via the splinters blog: espressostories. According to the text on the somewhat rebarbatively designed site, it provides stories that follow the “basic rule…that they’re just a sentence or two, totalling 25 words or less.” The project is inspired by Augusto Monterroso’s “famous” story, ‘The Dinosaur’”:When he woke up, the dinosaur […]
After poring over the kilos of newsprint lugged into the house over the weekend, I think I could draw a graph that proves the equation that the number of newspapers you buy is inversely proportional to the articles you actually want to read. At first glance, most of the supplements’ pages seem like unashamed celebrations […]
Let’s be clear: it was out of wounded national pride, the most motivating of human/simian emotions, that I watched the final of Italy’s terrible ‘reality’ show L’isola dei famosi* (that’s not to suggest that it’s any more terrible than similar anglophone versions)last Friday night. It was less out of a desire to see who would […]
This month’s issue of threemonkeysonline should make some professional journos tug their collars with unease. After all, with an interview with one of the filmmakers behind the documentary The Corporation, a discussion with Greg Palast on American politics, and a talk with Sarah Hall, a rising author recently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the online […]
A report (registration required) in the LA Times from November 15 provides details on the destruction wrought in Falluja (the LA Times spells it ‘FALLOUJA’–if the insurgency lasts much longer the Chicago Manual of Style might have to start listing the standardized spelling of major Iraqi cities) during the bizarrely named ‘Operation Phantom Fury.’ (Presumably […]
RTE is promoting the snappily titled “Fair City Civil Action Special” on its website. Always slow to jump on the bandwagon, our indigenous soap opera has finally decided to exploit the issue of child abuse undertaken by Catholic priests. No doubt there will be the usual fig leaf of public service education when a concerned […]
It’s scarcely mentioned outside of Italy that there are actually some fine journalists working for Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset. Under the directorship of Enrico Mentana, the news broadcasts of Canale Cinque, have by and large maintained an impartial and professional stance when reporting the news (in comparison with one of Berlusconi’s other channels Retequattro, and its laughable ‘news’ broadcasts, panegyrics to the selfless leadership of Berlusconi*).
On thursday night, during the closing remarks on the main evening news, Mentana announced with much regret that the board that controls Mediaset (of which PierSilvio Berlusconi, Silvio’s son, is a prominent member) had decided to replace him with the current director of weekly current affairs magazine Panorama, Carlo Rossella.