No, not the spying and bribing. Buying the Wall St. Journal. He's going to lose what he invested. He thought he could cut out the reporters and editors, change the content to style and lifestyle, and keep subscriber at ever higher prices. It will fail slowly.
It never could have worked. There was very, very, very seldom as much as a typo in the old WSJ. Stories by very good journalists went through, never-the-less, multiple layers of editors before they got published. There must have been copy editors as far as the eye could see at that place. No more. Now the reader gets short articles, modeled on USA Today, often riddled with errors, typos, missing pieces and with scant value to the reader interested in business, the economy, or politics. On top of that the opinion writers are given free rein to say absurd stuff. (They used to write garbage but now they've gone beyond garbage.) Here;s a trivial example of a copy editing failure from today. Gene By JENNIFER LEVITZ A hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School said Monday a freezer malfunction extensively damaged one of the world's largest collections of brain samples for autism research. The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., said it is conducting an investigation into what caused the temperature in a freezer to fall without sounding two backup alarm systems. "For something of this magnitude to occur...mechanically it should have never happened," said Adriana Bobinchock, a spokeswoman at McLean, which houses the tissue center, the nation's largest and oldest federally funded bank for brain samples used for research. The failed freezer had stored 150 brain specimens, including 53 brain samples earmarked for research into the causes and treatments for autism, a condition characterized by poor social skills, difficulties with communication and repetitive behavior. The 53 brain specimens are part of a total collection of 168 brains belonging to Autism Speaks Inc., a New York-based advocacy organization that was storing part of its collection at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center. The brains are donated by bereaved families of people who had autism. "Autism Speaks is in the process of conducting its own independent investigation," Geri Dawson, chief science officer of Autism Speaks wrote in a letter on the organization's website Monday. Autism Speaks said its damaged specimens represented portions of 53 brains, and that parts of those brains were not in the freezer and may still be available for other research. Dr. Francine Benes, director of the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, said in an interview that the loss will set back autism research. "It's going to delay it, no doubt about that. The question is by how much," she said. According to Ms. Bobinchock, the McLean spokeswoman, the malfunction came to light on May 31 when a researcher went to retrieve a brain sample. The freezer's external thermometer still read normally, at minus-79 degrees Celsius, but inside the freezer had warmed and the samples had thawed. The alarms, however, hadn't been triggered. The tissue center waited several days to go public with the failure so families could be notified, she said. She said the tissue center hasn't ruled out foul play, but believes it is unlikely because the freezer is in a tightly secured room under 24-hour surveillance. "We are looking at all the video tape, taking a look at the mechanics of the freezer and alarms, and hoping to have a final reason as to why and how this occurred within the next few weeks," she said. Write to Jennifer Levitz at [email protected] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
