Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Friday, June 13, 2008

Some thoughts on Tim Russert

By Ron Beasley



As a 62 year old who has lost five friends to sudden death in the last three years I was distressed to hear of Tim Russert's death today.  I like many on the left and the right have been critical of Russert the last few years.  There was a time a time when he was a decent journalist.  What used to pass a TV news has morphed into infotainment.  I see Russert as a victim of this change.  Entertainment requires stars and Tim Russert went from a journalist to a millionaire news super star - hardly something a man who's father drove a garbage truck could pass up.  But he could no longer be an effective journalist.  He could no longer demand the truth from those in power because he lived next to those same people, went to the same cocktail parties and saw them at his son's school.  One of the reasons this country is in such trouble is that is was not just Tim but all of what we used to think of as journalism.



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4 comments:

  1. geoffJune 13, 2008 at 4:43 PM

    Though I don't follow the US weekend "news" shows much, I had thought that based on the revelations during the Scooter Libby trial about the Russert being in the VPs pocket, a push-over interviewer, a patsy, etc. etc. the guy was a joke as a "journalist". Wasn't that what was being noted and written about at the time? Only glowing praise about his stellar journalist talents, now. Maybe sudden death can result in a bit of temporary amnesia. Someone should ask Gore Vidal his opinion of Russert, in his new bitchier than ever mood, he doesn't care about calling spades spades even if the guy hasn't finished being embalmed yet. Course I don't know whether GV knew him or about him but I'd bet he have a refreshing opinion.

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  2. whomever1June 13, 2008 at 5:28 PM

    Give the guy a break. I mean, if I thought he had any integrity, I could fantasize he was just about to break a hard-hitting story on administrative corruption before he suddenly and unexpectedly died.

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  3. LibbyJune 14, 2008 at 1:58 AM

    Geoff, there's a tradition here that people don't speak ill of the dead, at least not immediately. I'd be surprised if you don't see some more critical eulogies in the next couple of days, at least in Blogtopia.

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  4. EJune 15, 2008 at 4:19 PM

    Was I the only one who thought the nonstop coverage of his death was a wee bit overwrought? I mean no disrespect, but I thought the length and depth of the coverage bordered on that of an assassinated president or something.

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