Juan Time Too Many

Until he was fired yesterday, Juan Williams was a News Analyst on NPR (formerly National Public Radio). Before that, he was an NPR News Correspondent, a reporting position. For the past few years, Mr. Williams has also held a second job as a Fox News commentator. His statements there are more unconstrained, more about opinion than reportage of fact.

We don’t know if Fox commentators have a code of ethics, but NPR journalists do, and it specifically instructs them to avoid public appearances in situations that “encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.” When Mr. Williams crossed that line before, in 2009, he admitted it. He had done it the previous year, too, and NPR responded by changing his job duties from “Correspondent” to “Analyst.” NPR also asked Fox to stop identifying Juan Williams as “NPR Political Analyst” on their telecasts.

Alphabet Soup

BP no longer stands for “British Petroleum.” It stands for BP.

AARP no longer stands for the American Association of Retired People. It stands for AARP.

NPR no longer stands for National Public Radio. It stands for NPR.

NPR. It stands for … NPR.

National Public Radio has announced it will now be known as NPR. The Public broadcaster joins other image-conscious nonprofits in adopting a self-referential abbreviation, chief among them AARP. “Radio” sounds so old-fashioned, just like “Colored People” and “Retired People.” The “just-call-us-NPR” network is trying to emphasize its sizeable mobile, podcast, and web presence because the NPR radio audience largely comprises … retired people.

NPR Discovers Twitter Haiku

Berkeley professor Geoff Nunberg spoke about English-language Twitter haiku on WHYY’s “Fresh Air,” distributed by National Public Radio. Like many of us, he is intrigued by the dual constraints of the poetic form’s seventeen syllables and Twitter’s 140 character limit.

Professor Nunberg cites celebrity examples, but we became aware of the trend through CopyBlogger.com’s Twitter Haiku contests.  Some full-sized blogs participate in Haiku Fridays, now on Twitter and Facebook.

 

Image (“Twittering Haiku in the Garden at Night, after Chikanobu”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine