Happy Leap Day

Today is Leap Day. Once every four years, an extra day is tacked on to the end of February to calibrate our human calendar to the natural world. The Earth does does not orbit the sun in an even 365 days, but in 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds.

The Experiment Known as PM

In the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review, Christopher Daly has an interesting story about PM, the ambitious experiment to publish an ad-free newspaper in New York.  The brainchild of Ralph Ingersoll, who had been one of the driving forces behind Time, Fortune and Life,  PM was meant to be a unabashedly liberal writer's newspaper when it was launched in 1840.  It lasted only eight years but during that time the newspaper published many hard-hitting exposes.  It also made innovative use of photographs, graphics and maps.  As Daly writes, today's new media start-ups will recognize in the publication the financial struggle to deliver a new kind of journalism.  But the real message for today, he argues, was PM's attempt "to produce a publication that serves the interests of people who are closer to the bottom than the top in terms of power and influence."

Person to Person Redux

Person to Person made television history 59 years ago. The pioneering interview show on CBS was a marvel of technology with its split screens that allowed Edward R. Murrow to interview a news maker in their home.  The first show aired October 9, 1853, with Murrow talking with baseball star Roy Campanella and conductor Leopold Stokowski.

Now CBS is bringing Person to Person back and the first show is airing tonight. Anchors Charlie Rose and Lara Logan are interviewing George Clooney, Jon Bon Jovi and Warren Buffet. Of course, television technology has come a long way.  But the principles of good journalistic interviewing haven't changed. Now, as then, it's a conversation with a purpose.