CanCulture man about town Justin Beach would like to get such a conversation started. Here's the text of an email he sent me:

Javed "Jojo" Yazamy was only 23 years old when a drive-by gunman speeding shot him to death on the streets of Kandahar city in Afghanistan. The loss is to both Afghan and Canadian journalism, said CTV News president Robert Hurst.

Reporters sans frontieres is calling on Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai to pardon a young Afghan journalist after that country's Supreme Court upheld a 20-year sentence for blasphemy.

You can help Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh. Please sign this petition.

Soul singer Bettye LaVette on becoming a performer at a young age:

“I don’t know what else I could’ve been. I’m not scholastic and I never wanted to be a student. I always wanted to dress up and hang out with adults. I was born to be in dark places, drinking and smoking and doing all kinds of seedy stuff. This is the perfect business for me.”

From Now Toronto.

Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir is finishing up a biography about Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. How he came to meet him so many times is an interesting yarn in itself.

Heritage Minister James Moore says the federal Conservative government won't be ponying up any new money to help CBC cope with at $65-million revenue drop.

In addition, changes to other media funding programs mean the CBC will have to fight harder for its share of those dollars.

Just think: A website for banker's molls, where they dish on the various recession-related problems emanating from the reduced earning capacity of their men. What a story!

The NYT wrote such a story on Jan. 28.

And it penned the following Editor's Note on Feb. 25:

An article on Jan. 28 about women who commiserated over dating Wall Street bankers caught in the financial crisis described a group they had formed, Dating a Banker Anonymous, as a support group. That is the name of their blog. Its creators originally told The Times that about 30 women had participated, but since publication, they have said that all involved were friends. Laney Crowell, one of the women who started the blog, said in the article that it was “very tongue in cheek;” she has since described it as a satire that embellishes true experiences for effect. Had the nature of the blog been made clear at the outset, the article would have described it accordingly, not as a support group.

• It’s the Economy, Girlfriend(January 28, 2009)

Oopsie.

Exxon Mobil has reduced its funding to climate "skeptic" groups such as the Heartland Institute, which is holding a conference on the climate issue.

And to add to that, the conference will hear from some skeptical scientists that many of the skeptics are getting the science very, very wrong.

NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman, author of Hot, Flat and Crowded, tackles the disquieting possibility our economic system can't work over the long term and tries to publicize a new term for our times.

From the NYT commentary by Liquat Ahamed, author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World:

THE 1931 collapse of the Austrian bank Creditanstalt provoked financial panic across Europe and almost single-handedly turned a bad downturn into the Great Depression. Last week, when I read about the brewing European banking crisis, I suddenly began to dread that history might be repeating itself.

You might think that my worries are a bit late. After all, losses on subprime mortgages in the United States have already caused a Depression-like banking collapse. Well, believe it or not, Europe’s current crisis is scarier. For while losses on Eastern European debts may be only a small fraction of those on subprime mortgages, the continent’s problems are politically harder to solve, and their consequences may prove to be much worse.

Craig Silverman dishes in The Globe and Mail.

From a media person's perspective, his thoughts seemed useful and pragmatic to me.

John Tory is done as leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party. At his post-byelection-loss news conference on Friday, he struggled to regain his composure after thanking his family, then said this:

I don't know if I'll be as emotional about this last one, which to say thank you to the media.

I want to say thank you to you because I 'll tell you this much: With very, very rare exceptions, I've been treated fairly, I've been treated professionally, I've been treated courteously -- I even like you.

And I can tell you that going forward, I can and will be a voice telling people two things: First, those who are considering public office need not consider the media to be a problem for them if they are prepared to be honest. AndI'll be telling those in the media business that covering the big government in this province is not a frill but a necessity.

Full video of the news conference is available in the attached story.

From YouTube (thanks, Josh!):

Of course, this remains the ne plus ultra of amusing Downfall mashups (although left a bit dated by subsequent events):

More on the nastiness in commenting theme. A nasty blast against the gossip website Gawker.

From the League of Ordinary Gentlemen:

my blog post titles demonstrate my ironic detachment and caustic verve

by Freddie

You really do have to wonder, at this point, if there’s ever a time when the average Gawker blogger says to himself, you know, I really am just a whiny, angry bitch, who just delights in inflicting verbal cruelty, and I appreciate the fun in being feted by other whiny, bitchy nothings who are so filled with bitterness over their utter failure to accomplish anything of meaning and value that they sit around and laugh along. Haha! That cop is choking that kid with his knee! Truly, you have spoken truth to the power of people who don’t like getting choked out unnecessarily by the cops. See it’s not just humor– there’s a moral here, people. And like every moral from Gawker, it’s “I’m better than you!”

The funniest part, of course, is what’s always the funniest part of Gawker, where a posse of white, overprivileged graduates of second-choice colleges heap derision on people for being white, overprivileged graduates of second-choice colleges. I mean, seriously, “Nilla”? Look, friend, the only thing whiter than commenting on  Gawker is writing for Gawker.

Globe and Mail columnist Judith Timson observes that civil disagreement seems to be impossible online. She also refers to David Denby's Snark, an extended treatment of the topic.

Richard Edelman of Edelman public relations thinks business leaders need to reconnect with the larger public by talking about more than enhancing shareholder value and acknowledge business has broader responsibilities -- especially when those businesses accept public help.

Liz Smith, 86, has penned her last Page Six column for the New York Post. But in the era of TMZ, Perez Hilton and Gawker, who needs her gentle name-dropping?

Way back when, David Simon was a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun. He wrote a book called Homicide: A year on the killing streets of Baltimore, which should be read by any aspiring police reporter.

That book formed the basis for a TV series, Homicide: Life on the Street, which was one of my favourite shows in the 1990s.

But Simon -- best known these days as the creator of The Wire -- now laments the state of police reporting in his home town.

Toronto Star public editor Kathy English is aghast at the nastiness that percolates in the online comments of TheStar.com -- those would be the moderated comments.

They raise some questions for her.

This is a very sobering cautionary tale of the hidden human cost of the U.S. recession -- probably the Canadian one too.