Afghanistan journalist Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh (there are other spellings; this is the Globe's version) speaks to the Globe and Mail's Jessica Leeder about the twists his life has taken since Oct. 27, 2007, when he stood accused of blaspheming Islam -- something punishable by death in his country.

PS

Kudos to the Globe for putting this on the front page this morning.

From the BBC:

Rights groups want all charges against Mr Kambakhsh dropped

Media rights groups have condemned the 20-year jail term given to an Afghan journalism student for blasphemy.

Reporters Without Borders branded as "shameful" the ruling by an Afghan appeals court, which commuted an earlier death sentence.

The group said the trial of 24-year-old Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh was marred by what it called ideological distortion, a lack of evidence and delays.

Another watchdog called for all charges to be dropped.

The business imperative of a private, for-profit news organization has always clashed with the mission imperative of the journalists employed there.

Geneva Overholser, director of the School of Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, relays some thoughts from Adlai Wertman of USC's Marshall School of Business on a different model.

The Poynter Institute's writing guru Roy Peter Clark has an interesting column about finding one's voice as a blogger.

The quick version: Palin's now more accessible than Biden, and McCain gets more negative press than Obama.

From CP via Canoe:

Sami al-Haj, an Al-Jazeera reporter who was held at Guantanamo Bay for six years without being formally charged or facing trial, will receive one of two International Press Freedom awards.

The second recipient, Shakeman Mugari, is a reporter for the Zimbabwe Independent and a Globe and Mail stringer who has openly criticized Zimbabwe's government for abuse of power and human rights policies.

Jim Poling, managing editor of news of the Hamilton Spectator, will receive the 2008 Vox Libera award, a distinction reserved for a Canadian who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the principles of free expression.

Poling created a pair of year-long internships for foreign-trained journalists living in Canada.

I note this in the mini-bio of Globe and Mail politics contributor Andrew Steele:

Described by the National Post as a "hard-nosed political veteran," ...

I'm left wondering if the N-P cites flattering descriptions of its political commentators by the Globe and Mail in its mini-bios.

Log-rolling, anyone? :^)

Globeandmail.com's Mathew Ingram offers some morsels on The Daily Show's Adam Chodikoff, who was recently profiled in Women's Wear Daily:

Explaining why he prefers print over the Web, (Chodikoff) cites a scene from the movie Back to School, when Rodney Dangerfield asks his son why he's buying used books. "He says, 'Because they're already underlined, see?' And Rodney says, 'But that guy could have been a maniac.' And that's the problem with the Internet."

Instead of relying on Web sources, Chodikoff watches C-SPAN, reads the transcripts from White House press conferences and briefings, calls the Joint Committee on Taxation when he has a question and otherwise engages in hard-nosed, reporterly research. He just happens to do it in the service of humour rather than outright journalism - which is a good thing, given how large a proportion of young TV viewers say they rely on The Daily Show for their news.

From Globe and Mail Update (posted Oct. 20):

With advertising down at its newspapers and contributions from its Australian television holdings fading, TD Newcrest says CanWest Global Communications Inc.'s shares aren't worth the risk.

From Reuters:

Afghanistan's appeal court sentenced an Afghan journalist to 20 years in jail, commuting an earlier death sentence, for distributing an Internet article that said the Prophet Mohammad had ignored the rights of women.

Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, a reporter with the Jahan-e Now daily, was sentenced to death in January by a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The arrest and sentencing of Kambakhsh, also a university student, drew criticism from a number of Western nations, the Afghan media and rights groups. Kambakhsh downloaded an Iranian article from the Internet and distributed it to friends.

"The court has sentenced Mr. Perwiz Kambakhsh to 20 years jail for the crime he has committed. But this is not the final hearing, he has the right to appeal," judge Abdul Salaam Qazizada told the court.

Another shot at the media and its role in the political process, this time by the Globe and Mail's Adam Radwanski as part of a wider column on why Canadian politics have become so viciously partisan:

A confluence of factors has helped turn our election races into schoolyard tussles. The anything-goes nature of online debate — on blogs and even on parties' official websites — has spilled over into mainstream discourse much the way talk radio infected it south of the border. The media's obsession with "war rooms" has left their occupants trying to outdo one another with gratuitous attacks. And the clutter of five parties competing in a 24-hour news cycle has left them making increasingly shrill noises in the hope of being heard.

The Scud Stud has turned into The Great Litigator.

I speak, of course, of Mr. Blackwell, creator of the legendary worst-dressed list. He passed away Sunday at age 86.

Globe and Mail national affairs columnist Jeffrey Simpson held an online Q-and-A with readers today. He was asked the following about the news media's coverage of the election:

Catherine Wilkie: It would be worthwhile to know what journalists, specifically Mr. Simpson, think of the state of journalism these days? Were Canadians well-informed in the past campaign?

Jeffrey Simpson: The state of journalism? That, dear Catherine, would take the rest of the week.

All I will observe is this: The Web is now, it would appear, the increasing focus of our efforts, money, time and attention -- witness to my doing this today.

The Web has many virtues: immediacy, elasticity, variety. It is limited less by space than by the literal ability of people to manage that space and people to provide something to fill it.

It is also nigh inexhaustible in its demand for material. Just about anything will suffice, as long as it fills space. Hence, although with a lot of timely, interesting and occasionally insightful pieces, drivel abounds, bloggers proliferate, instant "analyses" are offered, and the time for reflection is reduced literally to zero.

It was surreal in recent months for me to watch a "reporter" sitting in front of a television set offering comments every two minutes or so on what the "reporter" was observing on the screen.

It gave new meaning to the depths of superficiality encouraged by the least attractive features of the Web — that is, contemporary journalism.

Globeandmail.com will continue its election hub as a politics hub.

Editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon unveiled the not-surprising development today in an editor's note to readers:

This new section of our site will provide a blend of news, opinion and features about the federal political scene.

We're keeping some of the staples of our election effort. You'll see strategists, web discussions, polling, outside commentators and blogs. Just at a slightly less hectic pace than in the past six weeks.

And, of course, we'll have the news from our team in Ottawa and reporters and columnists across the country, as well as a more interactive, community-based experience.

Reader-submitted political cartoons and politically-themed photos will still be welcome.

Navigationally, the hub doesn't seem to rate a top-rank navigational pointer. It doesn't rank with national, world or opinion, for example, to find the politics hub, you must first click on national.

Globeandmail.com has a three-column layout. In the centre column, there's no section yet for politics stories.

Having a hub that you can't easily find from anywhere in the site isn't a good thing.  Perhaps the site's navigation will be tweaked in the coming days.

PS

I'm still finding this pointer on politics blog postings:

I would think that should be passé by now.

Paul Gross's film Passchendaele opened this weekend, but when the 90th anniversary of the battle was marked in 2007, Canada had a limited presence at the ceremonies -- especially compared to the attention lavished on Vimy several months earlier.

The Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders offered this perspective on Passchendaele -- to me, a synonym for "senseless slaughter;"  Canada would suffer 16,000 casualties -- in a July 12, 2007 article:

A catch-up post, as I am still in a state of post-election torpor.

From the Oct. 16 Globe and Mail:

Ending months of speculation, CBC management has confirmed that it is not renewing the contracts of two of its star, veteran foreign correspondents, Don Murray in London and Patrick Brown in Beijing.

I caught the tail end of Zombie Walk 2007 last year (see this post  for deets).

Zombie Walk 2008 starts at 3 p.m. today at the pit in Trinity Bellwoods Park and works its way south to Queen, east to Bathurst and then north to Bloor.

At the tail end of my post from last year, I wrote this:

PPS

An extremely visual event like this, and the only place I can a photo gallery is on Flickr (TheStar.com only had one picture). Score one for user-generated content.

I note the following in the Globe and Mail from Saturday:

To see more pictures of Greg Dalgetty's zombie transformation and to submit your own pictures of the Toronto Zombie Walk, visit globeandmail.com/arts.

Actually, the transformation photos are worth checking out.

Some people do an amazing job on their look and costumes for this event. Bravo!

As a further aside, the Toronto After Dark film festival kicked off on Friday night  at the Bloor Cinema and goes to Oct. 24:

Undead Tales
There’s plenty for zombie and vampire fans to sink their teeth into with these five unique tales of the undead causing mayhem for the living:

• Let the Right One In (Opening Gala)
• I Sell The Dead (Closing Gala)
• Kevin Tenney’s Brain Dead (6:30 p.m. Sunday)
• Trailer Park of Terror (9:15 p.m. Sunday)
• Netherbeast Incorporated

Marx's Das Kapital makes a comeback

From the AP story on globeandmail.com:

Some Germans seem to be seeking solace in the words of their countryman Karl Marx amid the global financial crisis - to the delight of a small academic publisher.

The Karl-Dietz Verlag has sold 1,500 copies of Marx's Das Kapital this year, making the annotated edition of the dense text an unlikely hit for the Berlin publisher. It moved 200 in September, as many as it used to sell in a year.

"It's definitely in vogue right now," said Joern Schuetrumpf, the publisher's director. "The financial crisis brought us a huge bump."

There is something of a triumphalist tone in Toronto Star public editor Kathy English's column today that anonymous web comments will no longer be printed on the Star's letters page.

From the BBC:

Human rights campaigners have welcomed an announcement by Iran that appears to end the execution of juveniles.

Iran is believed to be the country that executes the largest number of juvenile offenders - defined as those aged under 18 - in the world.

At least six youths have been executed in Iran this year alone.

You may also wish to see this post: Iran takes a step away from going medieval on peoples' asses

Russell Smith on Tina Brown's The Daily Beast, the latest in a series of websites that originates nothing and collates everything.