As Jack Shafer observes in yesterday's column, the Annie Le murder has received the sort of national coverage usually reserved for celebrity deaths and award-show gaffes. To wit, Shafer's incomplete but telling catalog:

The New York Times...has already published five articles about Le's disappearance and murder and the apprehension of suspect Raymond Clark III. The Boston Globe has published at least six stories about the case, and the Washington Post has run at least three briefs from the Associated Press. The Times of London, published five time zones away, can't seem to sate its appetite for Annie Le news. Even the proletarian New York tabloids—the Post and the Daily News—have gone ape for the story.

...besides which, a slew of well-sourced and quick-response articles in the university's paper of record, and, by my count, two cover spots in the Washington Post Express.

My problem with Shafer's piece isn't his gripe that crimes at Yale and Harvard receive undue attention. (They do; always have.) I went to Yale—graduated, even—and Shafer's points are well taken. But what the media critic misses is that, when it comes to murder, the Ivy League's disproportionate share of media attention is part of a larger, and more regrettable, trend.

Read More "The Annie Le Media Fest: It’s Not Just About the Ivies" »

Good morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to a balmy addition of Freedom Friday. Last week I wrote that police in Mississippi arrested Pete Eyre, Adam Mueller, and Jason Talley of the Motorhome Diaries for filming a traffic stop. Thanks to the support of many liberty-minded folks the country over, the boys received $2,580 in bail donations and spent $1,487. Guess what they're doing with the rest? Sending it back, via Paypal, to the people who gave it to them. (Take note Timothy Geithner, you theiving sumbitch.)

Don't Ask, Don't Tell and a teensy bit more about Maureen Dowd, after the jump.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Don’t Ask About Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" »

Colleague Mike Riggs has already noted a few wrinkles in the Maureen Dowd-Josh Marshall plagiarism incident.

Putting it bluntly, Riggs says: "Dowd stole some shit and admitted it." Fair enough.

In Slate, Jack Shafer has an uncharacteristically mellow view of the proceedings. After chiding, "Bad, Dowd, bad—deserving of hard time in a pillory!," Shafer proceeds to exonerate the columnist—Dowd "almost sets things right," he says, a conclusion the media critic arrives at through six-point reasoning:

1. She responded promptly to the charge of plagiarism when confronted by the Huffington Post and Politico. (Many plagiarists go into hiding or deny getting material from other sources.)
2. She and her paper quickly amended her column and published a correction (although the correction is a little soft for my taste).
3. Her explanation of how the plagiarism happened seems plausible—if a tad incomplete.
4. She's not yet used the explanation as an excuse, nor has she said it's "time to move on."
5. She's not yet protested that her lifting wasn't plagiarism.
6. She's taking her lumps and not whining about it.

Taking these points one by one:

Read More "Jack Shafer Throws Maureen Dowd a Bone on Plagiarism" »

I understand that every publication on the interwebs is trying to crack the whole 'monetizing' nut, but these scrollovers really take things too far.

Take Slate. This a.m., I stole three minutes from actual work to read up on the essentials—you know, my daily dose of counterintuitive rhetorical questions and columns on the best way to break one's leg. Before I could click through to a piece on "why you should let your kid suck his thumb" or a Jack Shafer column asking, "prithee, does we need newspapers?" a ginormous Volkswagen ad swooped in, flashing sleek images of a black sedan and dropping catchphrases like "ART GALLERY QUALITY INTERIOR" and "POSITIVELY OOZES CLASS." Yum! Before I knew it, I had accidentally clicked on an article asking whether socialized medicine had killed Natasha Richardson. I did not read this article.

Read More "Scroll Over, Beethoven" »

After learning that someone had posted the transcript from last weekend's prostitution sting on City Desk and the Sexist, I had to ask myself: What the fuck is our problem? Aren't we the alternative weekly in town? Aren't finger-wagging and gotcha blog items the purview of the nannying prudes at the Post and the Examiner, for chrissakes? Instead of defending this man's right to pay someone for sex--why stop at shoplifters?--we paraded him out on our blog and suggested that he was unqualified to do his duties as a police officer. A few days later, we posted a conversation that he had in a hotel room which he did not know was wired. Is it news? Sure. But where was the critical eye? Big bonuses, prison pralines, the PCP scourge, crooked Yelp, and Mark Jenkins, after the jump.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Leave the John Alone!" »

Everyone misses the Cold War.

Interesting murder trial in the Va. 'burbs: Fawn Scott stabs and kills her boyfriend, says it's self defense, but gets charged with murder nonetheless. Scott isn't a very sympathetic defendant, but it's still hard to believe she didn't act to save her life.

Banned in Beijing. No hustling! Also, math is hard.

Screw you Randy Newman. Short people are kinda awesome, even if they wear silly eye makeup.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine, which is actually cool in an old-fashioned, pre-interactivity, plastic model of the heart kind of way, is hosting an exhibit on advances in the forensic identification of U.S. war dead. Potentially fascinating, and gross. Too bad we missed their program for National Hairball Awareness Day. Our tax dollars at work!

Jack Shafer says conventions aren't worth covering. Don't think he'll sway any editors.