National Review: The New Media Copps?

Earlier this month Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps discussed requiring the media to meet certain standards of news coverage. These would include more local coverage, more resources devoted to news coverage, and certain disclosures. Matthew Shaffer of National Review argues that what constitutes "news" is something the public should debate, not something that one official should decide.

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Google Book Tool Tracks Cultural Change With Words

Perhaps the biggest collection of words ever assembled has just gone online: 500 billion of them, from 5 million books published over the past four centuries.

The words make up a searchable database that researchers at Harvard say is a new and powerful tool to study cultural change.

The words are a product of Google's book-scanning project. The company has converted approximately 15 million books so far into electronic documents. That's about 15 percent of all books ever published. It includes books published in English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Russian and Hebrew.

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From Steel To Tech, Pittsburgh Transforms Itself

Some people still call Pittsburgh the Steel City.

But with an unemployment rate nearly 2 percentage points lower than the national average, 1,600 technology companies and a growing population — the city has largely moved on from its industrial roots.

Still, during the early postwar years, it produced half the country's steel and a lot of its soot.

"It was so bad that you had to have the streetlights turned on at noon for a number of days during the winter and fall," says Joel Tarr, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

That was no way to live, and the city's future was as murky as the pollution gripping it. But in this period, a surprising coalition called the Allegheny Conference on Community Development formed to clean things up. Leaders from business, universities, nonprofits and government joined together to create smog controls and clean-water rules.

Even so, when Steve Lee came to Pittsburgh in the early 1970s to attend Carnegie Mellon, steel production was still taking a toll.

"And I'd come to school at the end of summer vacation, and for two weeks my eyes would run," he says. "I'd have a sore throat from all the junk that was in the air."

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Obama Tries Charm Offensive on Group of Top Execs

Helene Cooper, NYTForget about the sharp critiques that President Obama leveled at Wall Street and corporate America during his first two years in office.During more than four hours of meetings on Wednesday, Mr. Obama urged a group of chief executives to begin hiring and investing again as he wooed them, fed them and portrayed himself as an eager partner in the private sector’s effort to get the economy going.

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Jury Convicts 'Birther' Who Refused To Deploy

A military jury has convicted an Army doctor who disobeyed orders to deploy to Afghanistan because he questions President Barack Obama's eligibility for office.

The jury in Fort Meade, Md., on Wednesday found Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin guilty of missing a flight that would have gotten him to Fort Campbell, Ky., for his eventual deployment. He was convicted of a charge of missing movement by design.

His attorney had argued that he should be convicted of a lesser charge.

Lakin had already pleaded guilty to another charge against him. All told, he now faces up to three and a half years in prison.

In videos posted on YouTube, Lakin aligned himself with so-called "birthers'' who question whether Obama is a natural-born citizen as the Constitution requires for presidents.

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