The Lede Blog: The Lede: In Beirut, Time Again to Feed the Meter
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A positive indicator of progress toward normalcy in Beirut are the new parking meters that go into effect on Monday, the first in decades.
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Pegah esce da centro di detenzione di Yarl's Wood
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Â· Damascus says UN move will destabilise Lebanon  Â· Last chance for parliament in Beirut to end impasse
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BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- This is a tale of two cities: the old city that was struck down and the new one that is rising in its place as fast as the tent stakes can be hammered into the ground.
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Central Beirut has acquired an eerie air of normality in the midst of the abnormal.
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Mike Tidwell's electric meter was spinning in reverse.
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Jeff Jarvis, whose mind occupies the intersection of mainstream media and the blogging world, perhaps more than any other person, is having a conference in mid-October in NYC to bring together people from both worlds to present constructive ideas for working with each other. Me, my feet are firmly planted in the blogging world, but I've spent a lifetime reading and watching MSM, starting with the NY Times at the kitchen table with my parents and brother, when growing up. Some of my fondest memories as a child were our discussions of the days events, and the Times was our common structure. Everyone in our family read the newspaper, often from cover to cover.  As Jarvis councils us, never mind the mistakes, what can we do to make things work better? And I have a couple of proposals in that direction that I will try to present at the October 11 conference. In all cases, they involve the MSM opening up more to include not only the ideas of blogging, but also the bodies of the bloggers.  1. I've said it many times before, it's worth raising again. Any newspaper or radio or TV station with a good reputation in its community could embrace the fresh ideas of the bloggers in their community by offering free blogs to members of the community, who may be new to blogging. I suggested this to the Times in 2001 -- when a person is quoted in a Times article, a few days after the piece runs, contact them, and ask if they'd like to have a NY Times hosted blog. There would be no control over what appeared on the blog. It would have a nytimes.com domain (something like bullmancuso.nytimes.com). Build an aggregator, something very much like Twitter (which is after all, a river of news, not exactly a new idea, heh) that shows all the new posts from members of the community. Encourage (but don't require) your editorial people to read the blog posts. Let whatever happens happen.  2. Here's a new idea that I haven't proposed before. Open your newsroom to bloggers. Set aside a half-dozen desks for people who blog in your community, people you've gotten to know, and provide them with wifi, a water cooler, your coffee (no matter how bad it is) and chance to work alongside your editorial people and (very important) with each other. It's an incredible thing when bloggers get together in a physical space, the sparks can really fly. Now imagine what could happen if those sparks got flying between the remaining editorial people in a professional news organization and the bloggers. I believe the secret of scaling the news is right there, you just have to open the door and see what comes in.
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Blog: The downtown SoHo location now sports a short line, but the 5th Avenue line has not gotten any longer.
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Yossi Vaknin says he's got rocket-dodging down to a science since being forced underground by Hezbollah missiles. Sitting outside public shelter 110, in a tank-top and flip-flops, he smokes a cigarette and glances at his watch. It's almost 4 p.m. "This is their time," he says.
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Time to put on those tin foil hats again
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BEIRUT, Dec. 9 -- As morning clouds hovered overhead Saturday, Fadil Ayyash wiped eyes that were bleary from just two hours of sleep over two days in the city-within-a-city that Hezbollah's protests in downtown Beirut have become.
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BEIRUT -- The radical Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah and its allies escalated Lebanon's month-long political crisis into a popular confrontation yesterday, sending hundreds of thousands of its supporters into the streets of downtown Beirut.
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By Anonymous  The announcement in Septem
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Now after a few days at Davos our correspondents, Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington, are starting to get into the groove. I'm sure much has changed there since I went, in 2000, but I can tell that some important things haven't. For a first time Davoser, the most important thing is to build your network. Until you have a way to share the experience, you're not really there yet. At first it's all about being star-struck. Look there's Henry Kissinger (in my year it was Madeline Allbright). And there's Yassir Arafat (he's dead now). Shimon Peres was there in 2000, but now he's back in power. As was the king of Jordan, but he was very young, now like me, he has more gray hair.  My year was the year of "How Do You Make Money on the Internet." So that's what I wrote about. And it was also the valedictory year for Bill Clinton. His struggles were behind him, he could now look forward to one more year in office and then a lifetime as a former President. John McCain had won New Hampshire while Davos was on, and the nastiness in South Carolina was about to start.  You could tell that Clinton had the weight off his shoulders. He still had Air Force One for a year, he could become a statesman, and he was doing a great job of it. Jet-lagged and with no American TV cameras recording the speech he said "Find a shared vision," his formula for finding peace in the Middle East. I was inspired. He can be a great speaker, almost as great as Barack Obama. I tried to take his message to Bill Gates and Steve Case, both whom are off the tech stage now, replaced by Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg. FASV is still the challenge. Seems BillC could use a dose of his own advice. Amazing that the Democrats can't find a shared vision. I always thought Clinton was a phony, I gave him the benefit of the doubt in Davos in 2000. He didn't deserve it, he's proving in 2008. When Scoble and Arrington come home let's hope they can help us find a shared vision. The great thing about Davos, imho, is the elevation and the clean mountain air can improve your vision, and inspire you to great heights. The trick is to bring that home with you, hold it and nurture it, and build something from it. I think the great leaders on stage don't get that feeling as much as the newbies do. You only go to your first Davos once, Mike and Robert, let it work its magic on you.
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In 1983, Mossad agent Eliezer Tsafrir observed Imad Mughniyeh's handiwork from a rooftop in Beirut: two rising mushrooms of smoke and wailing ambulances racing to collapsed buildings where nearly 300 American and French troops had just been killed.
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BEIRUT, Sept. 23 -- Some members of Lebanon's parliament are living in a luxury hotel with tight security. Others rarely leave their homes and frequently change their cars and cellphones to foil potential assassins. Still others are abroad, planning to return just hours ahead of a parliamentary...
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The election of a president by Lebanese members of parliament has been  postponed fro a second time.