Meanwhile, if anybody is in the mood for a little plain talk on the subject of distressed debt — and the world is full of distressed debt today — I can offer, at no cost, “Distressed Debt Investing,” as published in “Campden FB,” (a magazine for millionaires and billionaires.)

The URL:

http://www.campdenfb.com/defau.....e.id=16459

The website may ask you to register and give them your e-mail address, before it allows you to read the whole story. Go ahead and give it them. These are perfectly fine people. They won’t do anything to annoy you. Their readers are mostly millionaires and billionaires, and the magazine, Campden FB, knows better than to annoy rich people.

– REG CROWDER

this is mine…

Thoughtful literary cricism can be wonderful. I think I’m reasonably literate but I don’t think I am required to be an expert on EVERYTHING. But I find myself reading less literary criticism because too much of it seems to be an exercise in demonstrating how clever the critic is.

I don’t need that.

It just seems to me that a critic in any field, writing, creative arts, performing arts, etc., should start out wanting the creator to succeed. So, maybe one is disappointed a lot. But I think that is where it should begin.

I’m afraid it is true that in most writing, extreme histrionics can be quite entertaining. But I wish the people who write these things would save the sharpest blades in the knife drawer for things that REALLY ARE awful. It’s not as if there is a shortage of them…

Communities are key in building websites’ advertiser support
By Robert Niles
Posted: 2009-04-21

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/robert/200904/1700/

Do we really need large organizations to do good journalism?
By Robert Niles
Posted: 2009-04-24

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/robert/200904/1703/

New grassroots life for investigative reporting?
By David Westphal
Posted: 2009-04-09

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/.....0904/1693/

And for more, a good place to start would be the Home Page for the Knight Digital Media center, at this URL:

http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/

Enjoy!

But I digress.

Funding news through a government tax would simply further isolate the news business from its audience. However, the concept is so out of touch with reality that I am confident it will disappear without a trace, in the blink of an eye. So, I’m not even going to bother arguing any further against it.

However, there are serious people in this world giving this whole thing some serious thought. I recommend: “J-Schools Play Catchup” by Brian Stelter, The New York Times, April 14, 2009.

This is the URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04.....wanted=all

Don’t be discouraged if The New York Times asks you for a little information, before they let you read it. They’re just trying to make a living. Fill out their little form, if they insist, and you can read it for free.

Does that exclude some of the tabloids because a lot of what they report isn’t serious and even less factual? What about all the opinion pages in the papers, will they be covered?

And what about bloggers who actually do write about actual events and report about them? Do they get a slice of the cake? I regularly write about factual topics and “report” some of the things happening on Islay, does that mean I qualify even though I’m “only a blogger”?