not sure how much time y´all afford to reading online, but down here there are not many options as magazines from the states and abroad are rather expensive. about a month ago i began reading the economist, for numerous reasons, but mainly because i was looking for information about rupert murdoch´s Newscorp (that´s his company) takeover of Dow Jones & Co. essentially, he bought the rights to the Wall Street Journal. you are probably aware that Newscorp is the parent company of Fox. putting this all together, Fox now has the WSJ on its side, which if nothing else lends incredible amounts of credibility to a station known for its opinionated commentaries. i won t go into my own views of Fox or murdoch, but this news that he bought the WSJ back in july was rather astounding.

first, how many people are actually buying up newspapers? the answer is not many. why not? well, see how i found out about this takeover. online has become, to many, more important than print media. lots of people do not go online to read because they buy the paper instead. however for me down here, and for my students, we simply access the New York Times online because it is far cheaper (read: free) than buying the publication at a store. plus, it saves time and allows for convenient searches. downside? after about a month all content expires for non-subscribers (you pay an online fee to view all content).

in order to avoid this problem, i simply print the articles from these online sites and then have access to them. i will not even go into to how many copyright laws i break on a daily basis here (my students have never actually purchased an actual book: i create ¨readers¨ from online texts and photocopies of books from the library or my own collection (my sister amy bought me some great anthologies this summer when she and i went to bookstores in c-ville).

now that al gore is your nobel prize winner (although not a surprise to many, i was rather shocked), i feel a little bad about the trees i waste printing so many pages of online text. i make myself feel better by telling myself that buying the whole paper or magazine would waste more paper (living by pretexts). on the other hand, i have no real regrets about the copyright infringement part. authors works are, to an extent, public domain. that is, in the majority of the cases, the reason they write: to share with others an idea or experience. the internet has made this sharing all the easier. bravo.

there should be a point here, and maybe i will get to it.

the economist is by all estimations a rather conservative publication. this is why i enjoy it so much. not that i am completely conservative by an stretch, but i appreciate a publication that manages to print the news with no frills and with a clear objective. of course you could argue almost all publications direct themselves to a specific audience and it is almost always obvious. however, the economist, as the name suggests, is concerned with money. money, power´s cousin, makes for interesting reading when it comes to world affairs. what is going on in bahrain? let´s look at the financial implications. i find it refreshing that they manage to make the complex so simple in many ways. this does not mean i always agree with their perspective or even how they report the news, but i know what i am getting.

my dad used to listen to a lot of talk radio when he was on the combine or in the tractor (maybe still does in the truck also), and i thought he was just getting biased information (for a great article, read ¨i agree with me¨ by p j o´rourke http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200407/orourke ). of course he was. so am i. maybe he knew more than i was giving him credit for. hopefully i know more than you might be giving me credit for right now. either way, i am now for biased reporting because it is obvious. very little is hidden or tucked away from the reader/listener/viewer. sure, you may think the side given is insane, but you know where the author/publication stands. i appreciate that.

after feeling sorry myself about the price of international shipping rates for The New Yorker, i finally starting going to the website and printing articles to read. in the end the physical copy is preferred, but why spend all that money when i can get the same articles for free. when i go back to the states, which seems a certainty at any rate, i will order the physical copy of it. until then, i go to www.newyorker.com and read away.

if any of the previously mentioned publications would like to pay me for the above statements (whose bias should be obvious), i take cash and direct deposits.