I slept with Chris Moyles last night...



 
  Media

She'd keep her eyes closed anyway, and listen to him talk about his work, about the arbitrage engines shuttling back and forth through the world's markets like invisible dragons, fast as light, shaving fragments of advantage for traders like her father... --William Gibson, Idoru

There no such thing as too much information. As a media junkie, I always feel that I have the need to be continuously bombarded by new information and various forms of media. In fact, I admit that I'm easily bored, and I have a hopelessly short attention span. I need constant stimulation, and it would be quite difficult for me to walk only a few metres without the aid of a Walkman or some form of reading material. Because I live in generally pedestrian-respecting Berkeley, I'm able to read newspapers as I walk the busy streets, oblivious to vehicular traffic at intersections. I even leave the radio on while I sleep. I want something new all the time. Perhaps due to my attention deficiency disorder, I don't accomplish anything of significance in life; I tend to lose interest too easily.



However, I also feel that American society is overwhelmed by a relentless amount of junk, and things aren't likely to get better (especially considering the recent passage of the utterly stupid 1996 Federal telecommunications bill which not only encourages even more trash provided by even fewer corporate conglomerates, but also gives up public control of the limited broadcast spectrum by actually giving it away to private corporations). Commercial television, especially when it comes to news, is absolutely hopeless. Commercial radio is crap. It's downright scary you consider that even non-talk radio stations are filled with hate-spewing bigots who never cease to appeal to the worst instincts of an already stupid and ignorant public. Because of media consolidation, this crap is being broadcasted in market after market across America. Shit is being replicated like crazy. Furthermore, we're constantly being assaulted by "infotainment" that pass for news these days, and they probably have the potential to make our society dumber than what it already is. The utter vacuity and irresponsibleness of American media can be pretty much summed up by an innocuous quotidian excursion to the local supermarket. Even when you’re not paying much attention to what publications are on sale, somehow you’re inevitably infected by a distorted world view that has little to do with the critical changes that our planet faces at hand. The occasional quick stolen glances at what most of your neighbours are reading while waiting at a checkout queue reveal a world dominated by the likes of Bennifers, Bradgelinas, Paris Hiltons, and the endless litany of interchangeable poptarts and starlets and their interminable foibles. Never mind that thousands are dying in genocidal wars funded by their tax dollars, or that glaciers everywhere are retreating at an alarming rate; guess who had yet another disastrous plastic surgery this week.




This page contains links to media-related resources and institutions which I admire, sometimes grudgingly. There are loads of links to progressive publications and broadcast programmes. You can also find links to radio and television shows that I like. For campus media resources, consult the folks at Office of Media Resources. For links to design-related publications, check out my architecture and design page. For media resources on or in Japan, turn to my Japan-related links page. For Noam Chomsky stuff, start here. For more political and progressive links, go to my politics page. Finally, you should also remember to check out my film page as well as the literature page which contains links to libraries, publishers, and retailers. This particular page is divided into the following subcategories:



  • Broadcasting section features links about all sorts of programming on all mediums, terrestrial, online, or satellite. Radio programmes and selected podcasts are found here.
  • Television programmes. My addiction to panel shows can be found here.
  • Comic stips.
  • Periodicals. Online and print journalism.



Broadcasting

  • 625: Andrew Wiseman's Television Room is a great resource for information relating to British television broadcasting history and nostalgia. Notable features include sections on logos, themes, and idents of various channels.
  • Alternative Radio, a weekly programme heard on American public radio stations, produced and hosted by David Barsamian. It features talks by those who are still fighting for the worthy cause (e.g., Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Angela Davis, Peter Dale Scott, Michael Parenti, John Stockwell, David Brower, Edward Said, Molly Ivins, Helen Caldicott, and Pacifica's Amy Goodman).
  • BBC British Broadcasting Corporation.
    I wouldn't be Dan without the BBC. It makes me who I am. Incidentally, I like the old logo better, even if the new one is perhaps more flexible for the purpose of establishing coherence to the vast number of BBC entities. (If you're as interested in histories of corporate identities as much as I do, check out the BBC Logo Gallery.) Explore the world's most respected and illustrious broadcasting institution. (I wish American taxes would go to something this cool.)
  • BBC Radio 1
    Here's an example of the new flexible BBC logo at work. Cool, eh? Speaking of Radio 1, my favourite presenter easily is Chris Moyles, who actually has his own unofficial fan site, where all of the buzz on/buzz off, song parodies, interviews, jingles, highlights of funny highlights, and countless random bits and selections are archived. Moyles is so funny that he can get a laugh out of me merely by breathing. I simply can't live without this bloke.

    Last but not least and Moyles notwithstanding, I’d like to think that I’m listening to Radio 2 more often than Radio 1 these days has to do with the fact that they simply play quality, eclectic music (as opposed to strictly sticking to A/B/C playlists). This change in listening habits is sort of like switching from Smash Hits, NME, and TOTP to reading Uncut, Wire, or Q. Perhaps I’m getting older and a wee stodgier, but where else are you going to hear the latest from the likes of Will Young, the Streets (!), and Badly Drawn Boy, a classic from Lulu or Kate Bush, a rocker from the Stones, followed by something from R.E.M. or a contemporary American folkie singer-songwriter, all within the space of an hour or so? Where else am I going to hear Pet Shop Boys, the Scissor Sisters, or countless other first-rate pop craftsmen neglected by today's teens on the radio these days? Or blues, jazz, standards, folk, country, celtic, bluegrass sharing the same frequency as old stand-bys like Wogan and Parkie? I may be slightly delusional, but I sincerely don’t think it’s just for mums anymore.
  • BBC Parliament.
  • Canadaland Show is Jesse Brown's delicious new podcast critiquing the Canadian media and journalism landscape.
  • Canadian college and university radio listings is handy, eh?
  • CBC. Coast to coast. Canada lives here. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. First of all, you can check out what's happening right now in Canada with CBC Newsworld Online. My friend Satendra's favourite radio programme, Cross Country Checkup with Rex Murphy, has become a Sunday afternoon ritual for me. So has crazy shit like Jonathan Goldstein's WireTap.
  • Channel 4, the innovative commercial terrestrial television network.
  • CITR 101.9 FM, Vancouver's UBC-affiliated radio.
  • CKUA radio network. I found them while driving long distances across rural Alberta one summer. It was quite a welcome beacon of civilisation in a depressing cultural desert.
  • CNN. Cable News Network. They've done some pretty amazing stuff over the years, such as the as-it-happens, you-were-there-too coverage of the Gulf War, the Philippines revolution in 1986, and the Tiananmen student uprising in 1989. Ted Turner once implemented a policy where correspondents were reprimanded for using the word "foreign." Cool, eh? However, the last decade was often uninspiring; loads of horrible stuff you're forced to watch while stuck in airports. Things went really downhill after Time Warner took control of the network.
  • The Connection with Christopher Lydon is a great public affairs programme that can boast interviews with Bill Bradley, Susan Faludi, Frank Gehry, Amy Goodman, Ted Koppel, Errol Morris, Michael Palin, Robert Reich, George Saunders, Simon Schama, Nina Simone, Anna Deavere Smith, and hundreds of other interesting people. It also did programmes on Bach, Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, Bill Monroe, Vladimir Nabokov, Sylvia Plath, and hundreds of other interesting figures and issues. Shows are archived here so check it out.
  • Co-op Radio 100.5 FM Vancouver is "non-commercial, co-operatively-owned, listener-supported, community radio station." In other words, it's Pacifica-like programming for the Lower Mainland.
  • C-Span. I love the House of Commons Question Time.
  • CPB. Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
  • Current, an important clearinghouse site for public broadcasting in America, features a very useful extensive list of links.
  • Current TV is where Keith Olbermann now resides, and Al Gore is his boss.
  • Dave is brought to us by UKTV, God bless them. I feel like this channel was designed for me-- non-stop panel shows on repeat!
  • Definitely not the Opera on CBC Radio One with Sook-Yin Lee is a cool programme, but I don't really know how to describe it...
  • Design and Architecture (DNA) explores just that on KCRW 89.9 FM and is hosted by the wonderfully chic Frances Anderton.
  • Deutsche Welle.
  • Dinner Party Download is American Public Media's arts, media, and culture review programme. Think Fresh Air, but after dark. With quite an impressive guest list, fluff never sounded so good.
  • FCC. Federal Communications Commission tends to do more harm than good these days. One of the greatest mistakes made by the Clinton administration, and subsequently greatly furthered by the Bush administration, is the reform of FCC and the telecommunications act of 1996. These waves of deregulation have essentially weakened democracy, and strengthened the hegemony of media conglomerates over America. Citizens’ rights over their remaining airwaves and bandwidths have been sold to the highest bidders. In the end, where did the reforms really get us? With deregulation, access to media became concentrated in dangerously few hands. The powerful became more powerful, and Americans receive the same old viewpoints every time and everywhere across the land. The outrageousness of the current situation is chilling. Even though MaBell was broken up long ago, America is now under the monopolies of Verizon and SBC as the sole providers of local phone service; the proliferation of small voice, data, and other broadband carriers failed to materialise. The fascist Clear Channel Communications now owns more than twelve hundred local commercial radio stations. Is it any wonder that commercial radio sounds the same everywhere (often with the same on-air presenters and personalities saying the same things)? The major newspaper chains have increased their market shares, and the same ilk is being spread everywhere in America. Access to cable television is now controlled by a single company in each American home. Furthermore, the television networks (owned by the already powerful multimedia conglomerates like Disney, Viacom, and GE) now own more local stations than ever. Since the government no longer pressures networks to offer a diversity of political opinions, predictably the radio and television stations have stopped doing so. Where is anyone going to get the truth when media in America is controlled solely by the wealthy, the powerful, and backers of the establishment? Is it any wonder that Americans have essentially become blind followers of the fascist Bush administration? Americans have been left with no choices and no alternatives. They haven’t been given a chance to know the truth. Like totalitarian regimes, the government has created a state where every form of mass communication is concentrated or centralised.
  • Flashpoints.net provides reports by fearless and serious Pacifica journalist Dennis Bernstein.
  • Folk Scene. Longtime radio programme heard on L.A. Pacifica station KPFK 90.7 FM. Produced by Roz and Howard Larman, this programme changed my life. Ever since I started listening to the programme back in high school, it has introduced me to so much music (particularly Kate Wolf, Stan Rogers, Nanci Griffith, Steve Goodman, John Gorka, Richatd Thompson, and countless others) that have become a part of my life.
  • Joe Frank. Before This American Life introduced poignant, funny, and offbeat narratives to public radio, Joe Frank had been doing them for years. However, his programmes are still second to none in terms of creepiness. Many of his shows are archived here.
  • Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She's a goddess. Surprisingly, there are a lot of people with some definite opinions, whether positive or negative, about Terry Gross as an interviewer. As for me, I think she's a wonderfully intelligent interviewer who would ask quite insightful and interesting questions which I myself cannot possibly have come up with. Like Garrison Keillor, she's someone with whom I grew up, and she's still a big part of my quotidian life amazingly enough.
  • Granada is the home of Coronation Street no less.
  • Hearts of Space. Ambient, "space music" programme on public radio stations.
  • The House is the longtime CBC Radio programme covering Canadian federal politics.
  • The Ident Zone. This is an absolutely fascinating site about the history of British television graphics.
  • ITV Online.
  • KALW 91.7 FM, San Francisco. If I were a programme director, my station would sound somewhat similar to this one (I'd simply make it more eclectic music-oriented, like KALX below). In addition to being the home of great Celtic, folk, and roots music as well as Sedge Thompson, it features cool originals like Mind over Matter. Somehow, its status of NPR affiliate doesn't make it sound stale.
  • KALX 90.7 FM, Berkeley. My favourite Bay Area station. They don't discriminate against any type of music (except perhaps what's found on narrow-minded, formatted-to-death, stupidity-inducing, corporate commercial radio stations). As you might have noticed, I also work here because I'm a radio groupie who needs a radio station to hang around in. I also need radio to get up in the morning, to get me to work or school or studio, to get me through the day while at work or school or studio, and to get me to sleep (I leave the radio on at night as I go to sleep). Without radio I would be dead; it's a primal, physiological need to keep me alive. I need it to function. It's no wonder that Marshall McLuhan called it the medium of the "hot tribal drum" (as opposed to the telly's being the "cool" medium) whose constant beats pump life into my body and sustains it.
  • KBCS 91.3 FM, Bellevue, Washington. As one of the institutions which makes life in the Puget Sound area bearable, KBCS is a listener-supported public radio from Bellevue Community College with lots of folk, bluegrass, and traditional country and roots music.
  • KBOO 90.7 FM, Portland. It's one of the best listener-supported, totally independent, community radio stations around.
  • KCET/ ch. 28, Los Angeles. The upstanding PBS affiliate in LA region. Its often adventurous programming during my youth has probably shaped me into the person I am.
  • KCMU 90.3 FM, Seattle. The U-Dub associated, less grown-up and way cooler sibling of KUOW.
  • KCRW 89.9 FM, Santa Monica. Très chic, n'est pas? Whenever I'm down in So Cal during breaks, I often tune in to this cool and breathlessly upscale NPR affiliate. It feels like staying in a Ian Schrager hotel. Who would have thought a public station can be this trendy and posh. I guess what bothers me more about this station is its listeners, rather than its content. Unfortunely, a lot of old folks who still think they're young and hip (but actually just yuppie scum with serious latent middle-age issues) often listen to this as well. Then there are those clueless folks who'll tune in to any NPR affiliate. On the positive side, the station is actually really more hip than posh. (Then again, I hate the fact that every other trendy Westside fucker listens to this same station.) It still represents though, since it's also the home of the inimitable personalities like Sandra Tsing Loh and hottie Jason Bentley. Its audio archive of guest performers (the list is breathtaking) is one of the great destinations of the entire net.
  • KCSN 88.5 FM, Northridge. I'm glad that they've brought back some American roots music programming to the station. In the late 1980s, they had an incredible format which consisted of a wonderful mix of traditional country, folk, bluegrass, rockabilly, and other types of American roots music. Basically, the station was alt.country way before there was such a term for it.
  • KCTS/ ch. 9. This Seattle public television station seems to do more fund drives than any public broadcasting entity that I've ever come across.
  • KFJC 89.7 FM, Los Altos Hills, California. This station was once the home of Dave Emory, and it reminds me of a South Bay version of KALX.
  • KHNC 89.5 FM, Seattle.
    A) Yes, it’s rather unusual for a listener-supported, non-profit, non-commercial radio station to be playing non-stop Europop here in the Northwest.
    B) It's owned by Seattle Public Schools and is operated by the students of Nathan Hale High School.
    C) It’s very good aerobic exercise music.
    D) You can’t listen to it for more than 60 minutes— the resulting feeling can be likened to eating way too much sugar-loaded sweets or candy bars.
  • KKUP 91.5 FM, Cupertino, California is Dave Emory's current home.
  • The Knowledge Network is British Columbia's often forgotten public educational and cultural broadcaster.
  • KPCC 89.3 FM, Pasadena City College, now brands itself as "Southern California Public Radio." It's all talk now too, but they used to have some pretty cool jazz / pop programming. Frequently as a teen at home, I used to listen to Ann the Raven, who is the perfect companion on a lonely Saturday night when you've got no men around to keep you warm. She always feels your blues, 'cause she knows what it's like to have no men around! Anyway, it's a completely different station now, and I love the new one too. As the cornerstone of the new talk format, Larry Mantle's Air Talk is still here. It's also the new home of Sandra Tsing Loh since 2005, after she got fired from KCRW. Incidentally, in his bio, KPCC news reporter Frank Stoltze mentioned his being the former news director at KPFK, “where [he] learned who Noam Chomsky is.”
  • KPFA 94.1 FM, Berkeley. See my notes on Pacifica below. One of my default stations in Bekeley.
  • KPFK 90.7 FM, Los Angeles. Again, see my notes on Pacifica below. I grew up with the station as a teenager in the late 80s, and most of its amazing programmes and personalities, as well as its vibe and character, have now been dissipated since the upheavals of the late 90s and early 00s. Many of the troubles at Pacifica are documented by links in the Pacifica section below. However, there's also a site that is dedicated to KPFK's crisis in exhausting detail. You can spend days going through its archived material, and lament the heartbreaking list of programmes and personalities that have left.
  • KQED 88.5 FM/ ch. 9, San Francisco. The big establishment Bay Area PBS and NPR affiliate. KCRW of the north. KQED-TV has way too much cheesy programming that probably shouldn't belong on a PBS station though; sometimes it's like the tacky Broadway channel around here. However, the radio station is a fairly good NPR affiliate. It also has Michael Krasny's terrific public affairs and culture programme Forum. (Incidentally, I was a fan of Krasny ever since the mid 1980s when he was an intelligent, civilised, and eloquent talk-radio host on the commercial ABC radio affiliate KGO-AM. Somehow I was able to get the San Francisco station's signal all the way down in SoCal after dusk.)
  • KSPC 88.7 FM, Claremont is perhaps my favourite SoCal college radio station, out of many fine ones. It is operated by the community of Pomona and the Claremont Colleges.
  • KUOW 94.9 FM, Seattle. The U-Dub associated NPR affiliate.
  • KUSC 91.5 FM, Los Angeles. The USC sponsored classical station. A few years ago, it made a well-intentioned and radical effort to reflect the multi-cultural milieu of L.A. in its programming. It didn't work too well (especially to its conservative subscribers), and now it's back to hardcore classical.
  • KUSF 90.3 FM, San Francisco, brought to you by the University of San Francisco. It's another fine indie station owned by those crazy Jesuit educators.
  • KXLU 88.9 FM, Los Angeles. This station from LMU has always been quite edgy, even when I was listening to it as a kid in the mid 80s.
  • Late Junction on BBC Radio 3 seems to be a programme designed just for me. Think British version of WNYC's long-running New Sounds.
  • Marketplace. This is a rather decent radio programme which I listen to almost daily, but like NPR's All Things Considered, I have never really noticed it. It's completely integrated into my daily routines. Even though I am usually not aware that I'm listening to it, the programme is quite informative nonetheless. It's nice to have a show such as this in the background while you go about with your other business. It also features many nifty commentators like Robert Reich, Sandra Tsing Loh, and occasionally, everyone's favourite 80s male porn star, Jeff Stryker.
  • Media UK Internet Directory.
  • MHP. This big site is dedicated to various aspects of British television nostalgia. They even have sections on test cards and old schedules.
  • MSNBC. They have so many impressive journalists and on-air personalities I admire. However, its parent and affiliate, NBC, often sucks in terms of content, so I have some serious reservations about providing this link. NBC has traditionally given horrendously awful coverage of the Olympics, especially when it comes to the amount of commercials you have to sit through. (On the other hand, broadcasters such as the BBC and its Olympics coverage do not shame its nation of origin like NBC.) Besides Seinfeld and Conan, their programming reeks. This is where America's rampant free-market system seriously fails us. More specifically, NBC's Olympics coverage feels like sitting through hours of advertisements occasionally interrupted by sports coverage or utterly useless and seemingly interminable athlete profiles. I used to think ABC Sports (and its playing into Cold War era tensions) was bad when they did the Olympics in the 70s and 80s, but compared to NBC (or CBS at Nagano), that network now seemed even decent. Its faults notwithstanding, the Olympics on ABC used to be a rare opportunity to learn about foreign cultures. Now on NBC, it's just another chance for Americans to indulge in an orgy of ignorance and ugly-Americanism. NBC's shit-for-brains and bigoted programmers have given us very unprofessional and blatant bias against foreign athletes in terms of the amount of air time and attention they receive (Remember when ABC would generously give us a chance to hear what a foreign national anthem sounds like? By the end of each Olympics, you can easily hum the tune of the Soviet or East German anthem.) as well as the thoroughly ignorant and downright patronising commentary about the host country's culture given by moronic and/or insensitive commentators. Their coverage insults anyone with even a semblance of a brain. Instead of opening new horizons to its viewers, NBC treats its audiences as ignorant, bigoted, and closed-minded idiots. The Olympics are supposed to be about striving for excellence in sports and nations coming together in a spirit of cooperation (and perhaps learning about each other along the way) through competition. Responsible coverage allows Americans to discover new sports and enjoy the performances of the athletes, regardless of their nationality. (Considering that the Olympics' uniqueness derives partly from its role as a rare forum for competition of sports without wide commercial appeal, what's the point of covering the Olympics if you're going to eliminate them from your schedule?) On the other hand, NBC has turned it into a jingoistic, Nuremberg propaganda spectacle wrapped in advertisements. Sports obscure to American viewers get no coverage at all, nor sports which Americans don't excel at. Don't even get me started on how stupid, unimaginably irresponsible, and malicious they were toward Richard Jewell, the innocent man who was suspected of the bombing during the Olympics in Atlanta. In the end, NBC gives broadcasting a bad name.

  • Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills (in a wonderful Richard Meier building) and in New York.
  • NPR Online Official site of National Public Radio, the network I really love to hate. This gets personal, as I grew up with it, still live with it daily, and give money to it. I'll also concede that I have been waking up to Morning Edition for the past decade, and that All Things Considered has been the usually unobtrusive soundtrack to my afternoons for as long as I can remember. However, year after year, I get angry when they often pander to the Washington establishment. For instance, in 1994 they censored Mumia Abu-Jamal's commentaries that he had produced for the network while he was on death row. By pulling the commentaries, NPR essentially capitulated to the likes of Bob Dole, who himself had been trying to dismantle public radio for over twenty years. It always plays it safe. In another instance, this time on All Things Considered of 12 October 2000, the announcers and correspondents kept referring to the two Israeli soldiers who were killed by angry Palestinian mobs while in Palestinian police custody as having been "murdered." On the other hand, the well-over a hundred Palestinians killed by the Israelis during this latest bout of violence have just simply "died" in the conflict. Why aren't they "murdered"? While there's no doubt that the Israeli soldiers were brutally lynched and that it was an unjustifiable and reprehensible act of "murder", you get the sense that Arab lives are somehow less worthy while listening to NPR. Furthermore, most of the pundits they presented were from the Israeli or American sides, and you don't get the Palestinian point of view. While we keep hearing of "terrorist" Palestinian violence over these decades, American news organisations (as opposed to BBC or CBC) conveniently forget that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is itself a brutal terrorist act that has lasted for more than thirty years. NPR should be ashamed at its blatant bias. Anyway, on the whole, NPR's usually bland and hopelessly mainstream, to the extent that you can always leave it on in the background (even while you sleep) and never turn it off, which is not entirely a bad thing. As a matter of fact, ever since I was in grade school, I would leave it turned on at night while I go to sleep since it actually induces lucid and often interesting dreams. Sometimes this works so well that when you wake up, you would realise that you have just dreamt whatever that was on the radio, often tuned to NPR. Dream and reality would mesh perfectly. On the other hand, they've also got Two Great Women of Public Radio I Love: Nina Tottenberg and Terry Gross. A forceful and amazing reporter, Nina manages to make complicated legal issues and events comprehensible to even someone like me. As with Terry, you know as well as I do that she's a total goddess.
  • Nowness shows whatever is inetersting or beautiful, whether it comes from the mainstream or underground. You will not be bored here.
  • Radio Netherlands. Incidentally, in recent years, there has been considerable dialogue in the Dutch media about how the Netherlands can prevent the cancer of Amerikaanse toestanden, or “American conditions.” Basically, what they are referring to is the dangerously polarising income gap between the rich and the poor that threatens democracy.
  • New Dimensions Broadcasting Network.
  • NHK. Nippon Hoso Kyokai, also known as the Japan Broadcasting Corporation.
  • Open University is a wonderful British socialist institution.
  • Oregon Public Broadcasting includes a network of television and radio stations in the state.
  • Pacifica Radio Network. More specifically, Pacifica-owned stations which used to be essentially community supported and operated. The stations include Bay Area's KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley. These days, it's hard for me to recommend listening to them. There are so many issues at hand. Pacifica is a profound and complex subject for me since it became an important aspect of my childhood when I avidly listened to KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. (especially when I was sometimes tired of the trendiness of KCRW, even way back then), and it deeply affected the way I'm wired-up and put-together today. It's partly why I became a lefty. Most notably, it has introduced me to several genres of music, and more importantly, it has educated me on causes and concerns which I still care about. Like the Nation magazine, their news and public affairs programming requires a strong stomach to digest; it's important stuff that absolutely needs to be heard (but not heard elsewhere). Essentially, like medicine, it's good for you. Take it if ou know what's good for you. However, I don't financially contribute to Pacifica anymore since they, particularly KPFK, annoyingly kept referring to the L.A. riots of 1992 as an "uprising" (while everyone else, including me, called it for what it was, a vicious "riot"). Is that an editorial policy?! Whatever it is, it's just plain stupid, and I don't like it. It's downright insulting to many innocent folks who got hurt. Closed-minded and party-line progressives aren't going to get anywhere in this country if they keep upholding old, anachronistic, dogmatic, divisive, illogically-leftist ideas like that. More often than not, they're essentially preaching to the converted. However, in the end, there are still many worthwhile programmes that do more good than harm. As a matter of fact, there's an incredibly talented number of journalists and programmers who contribute to Pacifica. Listen for yourself.

    Then again, as you may have already heard, the network has been in an escalating crisis since March 1999. So many talented people and their wonderful programmes have left the stations. It all started at KPFA when the popular station manager was fired; then programmer Dennis Bernstein was dragged out of the newsroom in mid-sentence by security personnel; then protesting staffers were locked out; then protests outside of the station became increasingly frequent; then a ban was imposed on letting listeners know what the hell was going on. Even 10,000 indignant supporters of free speech subsequently demonstrated at KPFA. The police was summoned, and there were many arrests. As the crisis dragged into months, the atrocities continued, and they later spread to other stations, notably WBAI 99.5FM, New York. The increasingly grisly news at Pacifica astounds even me. I still can't believe they actually fired Larry Bensky, one of the all-time journalists whom I admire the most. Folks concerned with free speech and democracy are mad as hell and are still rebelling against Pacifica's increasingly centralised and draconian management, and for the most part, I agree with the protesters. I don't think the Pacifica management is moving toward the mainstream; it's moving toward self-destruction. Check out the Save Pacifica site for the latest. The whole history of the troubles and struggles is also covered extensively at Free Pacifica Radio.
  • PM brings current events daily coverage on BBC Radio 4, hosted by Eddie Mair.
  • A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. Amazingly enough, some things you never outgrow, and this show is certainly one of them. Currently Keillor reminds me somewhat of how David Letterman changed when he moved to CBS. Somehow the magic's not always there, but I still love him. The music's still incredible though, and his monologues are sermons I look forward to each week. It's such a fixture that it's hard to imagine life without this show.
  • PBS. Public Broadcasting Service. Like your hometown baseball team or football squad, it is something you love to hate passionately, mostly due to the fact that you ultimately believe in it and support it. Judging from what it has been able to accomplish once in awhile and what you see on public television in other countries, you also know that they are capable of doing so much better. Most importantly, they should try to extricate themselves from the overwhelming corporate interests (if they can achieve an adequate source of funding) which seriously indermine its programming today. PBS should also expand its coverage of news and local public affairs. Last but not least, they should try to include alternative and progressive viewpoints since right now (contrary to what the Republicans are telling you), PBS is dominated by conservative perspectives, so much to the extent that it feels like the television version of the National Review. According to James Ledbetter's study on American public broadcasting, Made Possible By..., you can find on PBS:
    • Firing Line, hosted by William F. Buckley, of course.
    • McLaughlin Group, hosted by John McLaughlin and whose panel once included people like Pat Buchanan, Jack Germond, Morton Kondracke, and Robert Novak.
    • Programmes produced by former CPB board member as well as National Review board member Neal Freeman, which included the documentary series Crisis in Central America, The Conservatives, Technopolis (on which he promoted the telecommunications and cable giants as great democratising forces), and the infamous weekly series American Interests. James Ledbetter writes, "Considering the varied and high-level success of Buckley, Richard Brookhiser [Reagan-appointed CPB board member, RNC consultant, National Review editor, and Bush Sr. speechwriter], McLaughlin, Freeman, and William Rushner, no single publication has had as large an impact on the management and content of American television as the National Review."
    • William Bennett's The Book of Virtues got adapted into a cartoon for PBS with CPB grant. Led by a pathological gambling addict, they're even going after our kids. No one is safe!
    • Peggy Noonan, the famous Regan and Bush Sr. speechwriter, got her series Peggy Noonan on Values on PBS with CPB grant.
    • Reverse Angle, a documentary series with Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke produced with CPB grant.
    • The New Militant Center, a documentary produced with CPB grant by Tony Snow, a Bush Sr. speechwriter and "Rush Limbaugh's favorite substitute host," according to CPB publicists.
    • Ben Wattenberg's long-running series Think Tank, as well as his other programmes and specials such as Values Matter Most, would gladly offer a platform to folks like Robert Novak, who already has a platform in way too many places.
    • While Washington Week in Review has the goddess Nina Totenberg as one of its panelists, it seems to be dominated by people from U.S. News & World Report in the 1990s.
    • The continuing refusal of PBS to run, network-wide, worthy but controversial documentaries. Among the Academy Award winners that it had rejected included Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment, The Panama Deception, a film about the 1989 U.S. invasion, and Defending Our Lives, a film about battered women who fight back against their attackers.
    • Concerts by John Tesh, Yanni, and aging rock stars, cheesy Broadway musicals, and Riverdance essentially assault everyone, left or right.
  • PublicRadioFan.com's what's on now feature is quite handy, considering we now have access to broadcasts from around the world by using the net.
  • PRI. Public Radio International distributes some of the best programmes heard on American airwaves today. Here's a bit of history and clarification, courtesy of Marshall Sella, writing in the New York Times Magazine of 11 April, 1999:

    Though many listeners refer to all public radio as 'NPR' the way soda drinkers refer to Coke to mean any cola, 'public radio' actually consists of two competing networks, NPR and Public Radio International, which is based in Minneapolis. [He left out the Pacifica network and some smaller producers and distributors, who also receive CPB funding.--Dan] They are the sibling rivals of American broadcasting -- now battling over control for a given time slot, now joining forces when the health of public radio is at stake... Most public-radio stations carry shows from both networks. Actually, PRI might not exist at all had it not been for a monumental NPR gaffe: in 1983, the network turned down the opportunity to syndicate Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. "NPR declined to pick up Keillor because there was an attitude that they had plenty of producers and plenty of talent back in Washington," says Stephen Salyer, PRI's president and C.E.O. "They didn't want to be spending resources in the hinterlands."


    So now you know.
  • Radio Lab is an entertaining, if not, at times, quite beautiful, radio programme from WNYC exploring and explaining science concepts. One of the reasons it's so awesome is that good old Robert Krulwich is involved with the show. I remember being a Robert Krulwich fan way back since junior high. I would sit through horrible morning network shows like CBS This Morning in order to watch his unconventionally entertaining, but very effective, segments explaining economic concepts.
  • Radio Open Source is Christopher Lydon’s new radio programme, and it’s even better than The Connection. Think focused intellectual discourse with dynamic net participation, and future show topics proposed and refined by the listening audience.
  • Smart City. Gee, a radio show about city planning, for people like me.
  • Soundprint. Its big collection of radio documentaries are archived here.
  • The Splendid Table. I don't know how to cook. I can barely make toast or operate the microwave. However, I like to eat, and I love this show. Lynne Rosetto Kasper's knowledge of and curiousity for food from all over the world are impressive. If she doesn't know something in particular, her great instincts for food preparation guide her and the listening audience quite well. Her enthusiasm for food is infectious. Even though she is a foodie, you somehow don't feel like slapping her silly and shutting her up permanently. She really knows her shit.
  • Talk of the Nation Science Friday with host Ira Flatow.
  • This American Life. It's kinda pathetic, but I plan my weekends around this programme; it means that much to me. Each week the show "chooses a theme-- immigrant parents, animals, people who lead double lives. [The host Ira Glass then] does a story or two. And he invites a variety of writers and performers to take a whack at the theme, with stories, monologues, short radio plays, miniature documentaries, 'found recordings,' and original work for radio." Stories written and read by writers like David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Sandra Tsing Loh, and Dan Savage are regular features of this addictive radio programme. In the end, it's pretty hit or miss since it's daring and experimental. They're not afraid to take risks. Actually, sometimes the failures are just downright embarrassing to listen to. However, when it does work, the programmes provide some of the funniest or the most poignant moments on broadcasting. It's certainly the most interesting programme on the air anywhere right now.
  • Thistle & Shamrock. I've been listening to this NPR programme for as long as I can remember, and needless to say, it has had a tremendous affect on my musical preferences over the years.
  • To the Best of Our Knowledge.
  • Transom is a wee like not-ready-for-This-American-Life, but equally compelling. It also teaches people on how to start producing your own recorded narratives.
  • The Treatment deals with the art, culture, and industry of cinema. While it's hosted by Elvis Mitchell, even though I'm a Stephen Holden (or even A.O. Scott) kinda guy, the show's roster of interview guests is just incredible. Too bad it's only half-hour long.
  • TV & Radio Bits is yet another great British broadcasting nostalgia site with logos and idents galore. It also has an archive of Radio Times covers.
  • West Coast Live. Originating from San Francisco, this radio programme is hosted by Sedge Thomson, who even has an even much sexier voice than Garrison Keillor. He also has a very cute and distinctive laugh. His show also features monologist Josh Kornbluth and writer Anne Lamott, who are always a pleasure to have around the flat on Saturday mornings.
  • Whad'ya Know? from the reliable Wisconsin Public Radio. I've been listening to this admittedly stupid show for on and off ever since high school. The show's format and unchanging components haven't changed one bit since then. I enjoy the dry but gentle cornpone Midwestern humour. It's as predictable as Three's Company, and just as funny, in a stupid kind of way of course. And yet somehow, I still love it.
  • WireTap. Jonathan Goldstein may be Canada's answer to Ira Glass, but the main reason to listen to this loopy show is the former's phone calls with Gregor.
  • Worldview provides exactly that: in-depth public affairs programming hosted by Jerome McDonnell of WBEZ Chicago with political/ social / historical analyses of current events and issues from around the world.
  • WTF with Marc Maron. The guy has managed to interview Terry fucking Gross. Nobody can touch him.



Television programmes

  • 15 Storeys High. Nobody watched this originally, as nobody watches BBC Three, but I love this type of weird humour so much, mainly because of Sean Lock and his ultra-misanthropic sensibilities.
  • 8 Out of 10 Cats. I can't get enough of this programme, so thank God that there's now also 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, which is even better.
  • Absolutely Fabulous Who doesn't love this? Everybody and their mums and nans all love this.
  • The Agenda hosted by the great Steve Paikin is TV Ontario's flagship public affairs and politics programme often with a national scope.
  • Alan Carr: Chatty Man.
  • Alan Partridge is everyone's favourite presenter, right?
  • Alexei Sayle's Stuff.
  • 'Allo 'Allo! Have you seen the fallen Madonna with the big boobies?
  • Andrew Marr Show.
  • Are You Being Served? Of all the British comedies to choose from, this unusually long-running 1970s series is inexplicably popular among Americans. It's not that great, but admittedly it's delightfully silly most of the time. I reckon I just can't get enough of hearing jokes about Mrs. Slocombe's knickers and her pussy over and over again.
  • Austin City Limits. This is perhaps the best roots music programme on American telly.
  • The Awful Truth. I love Mike Moore. This show was hilarious. However, America is so screwed up that I don't feel too good laughing about it. Its gallows humour may make you feel nauseous and angry, if not at least righteously indignant.
  • Balls of Steel on Channel 4 continues the great British tradition of so-embarrassing-it's-unwatchable comedy. By the way, mate, you fancy a bum?
  • Benny Hill Show is the funniest thing ever when you're eight years old, or fancy vaudeville. Incidentally, it actually ran on BBC between 1955(!) and 1968 before moving to ITV.
  • Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, who is a great guide and presenter.
  • Black Books doesn't really work for me, but watching Bill Bailey makes me happy.
  • Black Mirror is Charlie Brooker's great modern reboot of the old Twilight Zone series, often with a technological bent.
  • Blackadder. "I have a cunning plan, my Lord..."
  • Breaking Bad epitomises the golden age of American television. While it may not be as metaphysically profound as Mad Men, it's certainly the most thrilling scripted programme ever produced in America.
  • The Brittas Empire.
  • The Bubble has an ostensible daft concept, but it works because of the guests, and you'll never, ever go wrong spending some time with the thankfully ubiquitous David Mitchell.
  • Butterflies was one of my first exposures to sitcoms.
  • California's Gold. Ask me about my-lunch-date-with-Huell.
  • Catherine Tate Show has an unofficial fansite, but I'm not bovvered. Look at my face. Am I bovvered? Look at my face, is my face bovvered? Face? Bovvered? Site? I ain't bovvered.
  • Charlie's Angels. What happened to all the glamour on television? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to exist anymore! However, we can always look back to the golden era of the Angels. Because no-nonsense smart angel Sabrina Duncan's drove an orange Pinto, I will always fondly remember that otherwise worthless pile of metal. Last but not least, we must give proper props to one of the greatest wonders of the 1970s: Farrah Fawcett's hair. Worthy of space-age NASA technology, this structural engineering masterpiece not only defied gravity and logic, but it also transcended time to become an icon for the ages.
  • Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe is part of inimitable Charlie Brooker's -wipe empire that skewers the media landscape.
  • Colbert Report. Truth is a liberal ploy! It also has a liberal bias.
  • Curb Your Enthusiasm. "Get the fuck out of my house!"
  • Daily Poiltics and Sunday Politics.
  • The Daily Show is now hosted by Trevor Noah.
  • Dame Edna Everage. Hello Possums!
  • Father Ted.
  • Fawlty Towers, perhaps my favourite comedy of all-time. I can entertain myself for hours just reading its script.
  • French and Saunders: Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders and all their funny projects.
  • Fresh Meat. Similar to Bad Education, this Jack Whitehall vehicle is really bad. However, he is so cute and irresistible that I can't stop watching it.
  • Frontline has been around forever, but it remains provocative and compelling. The website is very well-designed and acts as a useful companion to the always engrossing programme.
  • The Good Life was perhaps my first exposure to sitcoms.
  • The Graham Norton Show.
  • Great British Bake Off.
  • Happy Valley is not happy at all. The incredible Sarah Lancashire stars in the best-scripted drama in the post-Mad Men / Breaking Bad landscape.
  • Have I Got News for You.
  • Iron Chef. Ryori no Tetsujin. I don't think I can adequately do justice to the appeal of this campy and outrageous cooking competition / food porn programme by merely describing it here. Just see it for yourself if you have the chance. If you have a choice, don't see the dubbed version on the Food Network.
  • Jeeves and Wooster, the Granada series based on the witty P.G. Wodehouse classics with the great duo of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
  • Jonathan Ross Show.
  • The Last Leg with Adam Hills.
  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is the new Jon Stewart.
  • Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Didn't think Conan could ever replace Dave when he left NBC and went just way downhill into his scary mid-life crisis un-funny drama. Fortunately, Conan really didn't replace Dave. He came up with something different and we learned, although reluctantly in the beginning, to love it gradually. Just like Dave was fifteen years ago, the mere look of Conan's face (without his having to do anything at all) is capable of inducing fits of laughter in me.
  • Later... with Jools Holland.
  • A League of Their Own may be the only reason to watch Sky other than sports.
  • Louie by Louis C.K. is sublime.
  • Mad Men is perhaps the best scripted American television programme ever. It's certainly the best looking one.
  • Mock the Week hosted by my longtime presenter crush, Dara Ó Briain. This is the kind of programme that's perfect, if you don't know what to watch on the telly. I mean that in a good way. It's right for any occasion. I thank God that this gets repeated relentlessly on Dave.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus.
  • Moonlighting. This site's webmasters managed to get great interviews with creator Glenn Gordon Caron and Cybill Shepherd. Moonlighting was my favourite TV programme while it was on. Perhaps it was the greatest TV ever. Have to give them props for a fun sense of experimentation. It was willing to take risks. Because it took daring risks, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Critic Nancy Franklin wrote in the New Yorker, "...it would be hard to match the badinage that flew between private detectives Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis. But 'Moonlighting' was tender and wistful at its core; its earliest, and best, episodes were built around the idea that neither of these two people really had what he or she wanted, which was each other."
  • Newsnight.
  • Never Mind the Buzzcocks always had great presenters and panellists. The concept is great too, but somehow, it's never as funny as it should be.
  • Newswipe is part of inimitable Charlie Brooker's -wipe empire that skewers the media landscape.
  • Now with Bill Moyers is perhaps the best programme on American television right now, and it's also programming that all Americans should watch. It's real news that matters, as opposed to what passes for news elsewhere on American television.
  • The Office. There are few blokes funnier than Ricky Gervais these days. Even though I love this show (in a wee masochistic sort of way), I think I spent more time looking away from the screen than actually straight at it. Sometimes I would forget that I'm turning away from the screen instinctively to stare at something more innocuous, like my bookshelf or some pictures hanging on the walls. It's just that painful.
  • One Foot in the Grave was another one of my first exposures to sitcoms.
  • Only Fools and Horses is a national institution.
  • Only When I Laugh. Everything (which is not much) I know about the NHS is from this old Yorkshire Television sitcom.
  • Peep Show on Channel 4 is very well-written, and it doesn't seem to have one false note, ever. However, I'm still surprised that it has lasted more than eight seasons.
  • Porridge, the 1970s comedy series with the great Ronnie Barker.
  • Power & Politics is CBC TV's prgramme covering politics, federal and sometimes provincial.
  • QI is my current favourite panel show and a relatively painless way to acquire general useless knowledge.
  • Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. She's very smart, articulate, and crucially, enunciates. Despite what she's reporting night after night, her talent gives hope for America.
  • Ricky Gervais Show.
  • Rising Damp.
  • Room 101. I really prefer the old format with the single guest instead of having panel contestants, but with Frank Skinner as presenter, it can't be all bad.
  • The Sarah Silverman Program stars Sarah Silverman, interestingly enough.
  • The inevitable and obligatory The Simpsons link. I feel kind of guilty for watching the evil Fox network, and you should too. I guess that no matter how subversive the programming may be, as long as it brings in revenues, it's alright with the network.
  • Spaced 'cause I have a man-crush on Simon Pegg.
  • Taskmaster hosted by Taskmaster Greg Davies is one of few programmes commissioned by Dave channel, but it's terrific so far.
  • TelevisionTunes.com has sound files of all your favourite shows' themes. Useful, eh?
  • The Thick of It.
  • TV Heaven Telly Hell. Channel 4 should bring this back! I love Sean Lock, and all the guests were funny.
  • Twin Peaks by David Lynch and Mark Frost is the first American scripted television programme where it becomes a sublime work of art.
  • Would I Lie to You? hosted by Rob Brydon is one of my favourite panel shows.
  • Yes, Minister. As you may have noticed, most of the programmes listed here are from long ago. They don't make good telly like they used to, and alas, I don't watch much now, except perhaps when I'm on holiday. It's usually weeks when I turn it on these days, and I only keep a telly in my flat so I can watch my old porno videos.
  • You Have Been Watching shouldn't really work, but it really does, because of how utterly amazing Charlie Brooker is. Needless to say, I hope a third series gets commissioned.



Comic strips
  • Calvin and Hobbes.
  • Dilbert Zone The Dilbert Zone. "Out, out, you demons of stupidity!" It's very much of its time, namely the 90s, for better or worse.
  • Doonesbury.
  • Natalie Dee brings a daily does of irreverence, surrealism, and sarcasm in the guise of idiosyncratic cuteness.
  • Peanuts. Pessimistic and seemingly clinically depressed most of the time, Charlie Brown is one of the few comic strip characters whom we can really identify with.
  • Pusheen.
  • Sylvia. What can I say?... I'm not a chick, but I like evil cats too.



Periodicals and information resources
  • Adbusters.
  • The Age is Melbourne's broadsheet or record.
  • AlterNet provides articles from various weeklies, progressive publications, and alternative papers as well as from its own writers.
  • American Prospect. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich is one of its founders as well as its national editor. His columns (for other publications too) can be found here.
  • Asahi Shinbum.
  • Australian Geographic is a cool glossy I grew up with.
  • Berkeley Voice. For some reason, I never got too much into this local newspaper.
  • Berkeleyside is an online local news site.
  • Berliner Morgenpost with English edition available.
  • Canadian Geographic.
  • BUTT Magazine. Think alternative queer arts, culture, and porn periodical.
  • Cascadia Times covers the Northwest from an environmentalist perspective.
  • Daedelus. As far as academic journals go, this quarterly is actually pretty fun to read.
  • Daily Californian. Cal's own student paper.
  • Le Devoir. C'est le quotidien le plus important au Québec. Someone once said that it is also one of the most aesthetically pleasing broadsheets around from a graphic design perspective.
  • East Bay Express. I miss hating Gina Arnold.
  • The Economist. It bugs the fucking hell out of me that this magazine is now being appropriated by American hipsters as a magazine of choice, like fucking KCRW or something. Nonetheless, and its relatively consistent British capitalist editorial stance notwithstanding, it's the closest thing we've got to a weekly news magazine with a global coverage. Its lack of bylines makes it seem like you are receiving the voice of God.
  • Electronic Mail and Guardian. The new South Africa is surprisingly wired, and its news are as fascination and exciting as ever. This is a good place to begin.
  • Evening Standard is not deep, but it's handy for finding out what's happening in London.
  • Financial Times is a wee bit like the daily version of the Economist.
  • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
  • Good is quite good.
  • Georgia Straight is the decent primary alt-weekly of the Vancouver region. Like most print media, its physical edition never ceases to attenuate.
  • Globe and Mail has been, alas, Canada's paper of record for as long as anybody can remember. To start, the writing is often mediocre, if not downright atrocious, with occasional grammar errors overlooked by its editors. The editorial content itself is also surprisingly lowbrow for a national newspaper of record. Written by and for the Ontario Cottage Set, it has endorsed the federal Tories in the last few general elections. Frankly, some of the story topics featured are click-baity, trashy, sensationalistic, and certainly not befitting for a publication with a national stature.
  • Granta is very good for rainy Sunday afternoons.
  • The Guardian
  • Harper's Magazine brings you the always engrossing Harper's Index online.
  • Huffington Post. Arianna's the ultimate chic wit of pundits, and glamourous Bianca Jagger (Sciences Po graduate and former Nation contributor) blogs here, so you know it’s worth checking out.
  • In These Times, progressive publication.
  • Independent has very cool columnists, epecially Alexei Sayle and bitchy Janet Street-Porter.
  • The Japan Times Online.
  • LA Observed is Kevin Roderick's always relevant blog site about media and politics in the southland.
  • LA Weekly is once again the home of Pulitzer Prize-winning Jonathan Gold and his legendary Counter Intelligence column. I absolutely love this man for his role in convincing me that LA is the greatest food city in the world, for cultivating my curiosity for the culinary cultures of the world, and for affecting how and what I eat more than any other individual besides my mum.
  • Los Angeles Times. While the New York Times usually do a fairly decent job of covering major world news items by reporting the who, what, when, and wheres, the LA Times, especially during its heydey from the 1970s through the early 1990s, does a much better job of answering the hows and whys. Despite recent upheavals in management and ownership, the draconian cutbacks in staff, costs, and certain sections, and notwithstanding the continued dreaded presence of Robert Hilburn (who has been relentlessly annoying me ever since I've been old enough to read in the English language), and despite the discontinuation of glossy stock in the Sunday magazine, and despite the recent Staples Center scandal, and despite too-frequent lapses in fact-checking, the paper may still be the best printed daily in the U.S., and it's one of the best reasons to live in L.A. However, you also get a sad sense that the paper's best days have passed. Nevertheless, in no small way, the paper has had a hand in forming my world view. Complimenting the Times's lengthy in-depth coverage of news, Joan Didion once wrote in her essay "Times Mirror Square" from her collection After Henry:

    By 1980, when Otis Chandler named Tom Johnson the publisher of the Times and created for himself the new title of "editor in chief," the Times was carrying, in the average week, more columns of news than either the New York Times or the Washington Post. It was running long, analytical background pieces from parts of the country and of the world that other papers left to the wires. Its Washington bureau, even Bob Woodward of the Washington Post conceded recently, was frequently beating the Post. Its foreign coverage, particularly from Central America and the Middle East, was, day for day, stronger than that of the national competition.
  • Maclean's. "Canada's Weekly Newsmagazine." It's not that good, but it's all we've got for mainstream, Ontario-centric, weekly Canadian news digest for now. For years they've even got a column called "American View." I'm always like, "What's the fucking point?!"
  • Mainichi. Very established Japanese daily.
  • Manchester Evening News. It's the North's Evening Standard.
  • Monocle is Wallpaper* sexyboy Tyler Brûlé's latest venture.
  • The Morning News is an online broadsheet that's a little bit artsy, a little bit fartsy, and always interesting for people of my sorry generation.
  • Mother Jones.
  • The Nation. The real mother of all leftist rags. It took them forever to get on the web, but they're finally here. Read it!
  • National Geographic. It's true that you just cannot throw these yellow suckers away. I've got quite a collection of these at home in SoCal, filling up my bedroom closet.
  • National Post. You may not like Conrad Black or the paper's faux fascist editorial politics, but at least it's a broadsheet that's slightly different in flavour from the mediocre Cottage Set Globe and Mail, and Margaret Atwood also writes here.
  • New Statesman gives voice to left of centre-ism of varying shades from Britain.
  • New York Review of books. Books are only mere points of departure for vast expanses of intellectual and historical discourse, of course-- lots of worthwhile articles to read here. Joan Didion almost lives here, so her latest stuff usually appears here first.
  • New York Times. America's own Pravda, but we mean it in a the best way possible.
  • The New Yorker. According to my former roommate Eric, it's a sign of living in a civilised household. Like the BBC, it's an essential part of my life. It's what makes me, me. If you love the Englash language, and good writing, whether fiction or non-fiction, this is the magazine for you. Its roster of staff and contributing writers have always been extraordinary, and it includes even true national heroes like Seymour Hersh. Its chief editors were all legendary. Anyway, I think here is as good a point as any for me to bitch about how much I hate the writings of David Denby. The first thing I do each time I receive my new issue of the New Yorker is to check whether it’s going to be Anthony Lane or David Denby. Believe me, Denby is going to be another Terrence Rafferty. Remember him? It’s not that I disagree with his views. Pauline Kael hated most of the movies I loved, but I was fascinated by what she has to say, and how she says it. I learn much about the arts and even life itself simply by reading her reviews. On the other hand, I don’t learn anything from Denby. Worst of all, he doesn’t make me laugh the way Anthony Lane or Kael do.
  • The Observer is claimed by some to be the world's oldest Sunday paper.
  • The Oregonian.
  • The Paris Review.
  • PolitiFact is not a periodical, but it carefully fact-checks various political stories that dominate the internet.
  • Portland Mercury. If you can't get enough of Humpy's honey-baked ham, check out this new weekly 'cause he's the fawking editor!
  • The Progressive.
  • The Quietus judiciously curates criticism of modern culture.
  • rabble.ca is an online journal of Canadian progressive politics and perspectives.
  • Salon Magazine. It's been around for awhile, and it features some talented folks like Sarah Vowell and Josh Kornbluth. However, its pathetic efforts to stay afloat eventually brought it down to something not worth your time. Here's an opinion piece about its downfall, courtesy of Shift.com. This interesting tech and media industry and lifestyle journal has a contemporary but busy eye-candy layout that may be too overwhelming.
  • San Francisco Bay Guardian. Non-corporate alternative weekly. I can't live without Dan Leone's column.
  • San Jose Mercury News. One of the better and earliest electronic dailies out there. It's also the only Bay Area daily worth reading.
  • Saturday Night is, very roughly, similar to The New Yorker, but with a Canadian perspective. Stories and features are archived here, so you can spend days here if you're a Canadaphile.
  • Seattle Post-Intelligencer is here is because the Seattle Times is not here. As much as I find the NW Classifieds as a useful resource, I'm not much of a reader of either papers. However, I think the latter paper is an insult to the people who live in Seattle, and it surely doesn't deserve its name. For starters, its editorial board endorsed George W. Bush in the 2000 election. Most of Seattle's citizens reacted with a big "huh?!" In fact, most of its editorial board's views nowhere near the progessive orientation of Seattle's citizens. In the end, it's not surprising that almost all members of the Republican editorial board do not live in Seattle, and actually live out in the Eastside or in other suburbs. Just say 'NO' to the 'Seattle' Times!
  • Slate. Michael Kinsley's long-awaited web zine on politics and culture is finally here. Check out what the hype is all about. Although still a bit too Beltway-oriented, it's pretty good thus far. If you don't like it, you can head for Stale.
  • snopes.com is not a periodical, but it carefully debunks all the lies that spread and clog the internet.
  • Der Spiegel.
  • Stop Smiling is a terrific Chicago-based print magazine with a cool name. It covers arts and culture in a layout that's quite nice to simply look at.
  • The Stranger. I love Wm.™ Steven Humphrey! He makes me damp all over my swimsuit area. Reading him makes me HO-NEE! Ho-nee for laughs, that is! I'd kiss Hump-me Humpy's sweet and fawking succulent honey-baked ham anytime! Anywhoop, after spending some time with the infamous Stranger, you inevitably get the sense that this has got to be the snidest and most irreverent paper in America, and it's almost hard to take seriously whatever this weekly has to say. Frankly, some of the stuff is just a load of ass cookies. However! While it may not be the most responsible news source for Seattle, it's always undeniably funny and never dull. Besides, can anyone possibly be bored by continuous Courtney Love gossip? It's also a better paper than the competitor Weekly, which once glorified Tim Eyman with a lengthy cover piece to spew his Republican venom. (I'll concede that the Weekly does a better job of covering restaurants and food. However, both papers suck syphilic donkey dong when it comes to reviewing film.) Ultimately, I think the Stranger should just stay far away from topical new analyses of world events and crises, particularly in the Middle East. I've read way too many stupid, misinformed, and badly-researched (if at all) pieces on the Middle East; high school students could have done better. Don't get me started with their monomaniacal for monorail editorial policies. I'm for building it, but their pathological support for the monorail ultimately blinds them with respect to other topical issues and perspectives (e.g., the stupid and dangerous endorsement of Eyman's 776). Editors should just stick with what they do best: being irreverent and funny. Again, unless they are willing to prove themselves to be resonspible to the Seattle community, the Stranger should stay away from politics. Anyway, most of its issues and their contents are archived online here, so this site's a worthwhile place to frequently come back to.
  • Stratfor.com is like a private CIA with updates and new articles and analyses every few hours.
  • Die Süddeutsche Zeitung.
  • Tikkun has been featuring great progressive Jewish writers for decades.
  • The Times. Yeah, it's Rupert Murdoch, but it's still respectable.
  • Time Out for places to eat and drink and things to see and do.
  • Toronto Star doesn't put on airs like the Globe and Mail.
  • truthdig always comes in quite handy and informative with high standards.
  • Utne Reader. Think of it as Reader's Digest for progressives.
  • Vancouver Sun. Another Postmedia rag that's way more right wing than the generally apathetic city it covers. Alas, there isn't a decent daily broadsheet up here, but then who reads print these days? Still, the point is that this illustrates the fact that the Lower Mainland still lacks the traditional cultural pillars (which also include, among other things, great art museums and galleries, formidable performing arts companies, civic dialogue and engagement societies) that uphold the older, eastern cities as bastions of culture. The can of worms that is the consolidation of print media in North America sits very fittingly here.
  • Vice. Who would have thunk that wonderfully crass and irreverent Vice Media has gone mainstream these days? Remember when you can only pick up a copy in skate shops? It is now a force to be reckon with in the new media landscape, with a presence in all platforms. Political leaders and future prime ministers are obliged to sit and be grilled at length by its staff. Not only has its media empire expanded its scope expotentially, and features important journalistic coverage that no one else is attempting, but Vice has remained subversive and politically incorrect. All the porn and hooker stuff is stronger than ever.
  • The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition. Despite its sometimes reactionary editorial board, the paper features some amazing writers among its contributors.
  • The Walrus is a high-quality Canadian general interest magazine, which is a vanishing breed in North America. Think a Canadian New Yorker, with slighty shorter articles, and not as provacative or talented contributors. Basically, it's more boring, just like Canada itself, but in a nice way of course.
  • Washington Post.
  • Willamette Week is Portland's main weekly.
  • The Daily Yomiuri.
  • ZNet, a big site brought to you by the folks from Z Magazine.



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