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For everyone who has ever got into a long and ultimately pointless 'discussion' on the web.
Or is that just me?

An American author and broadcaster claims Canadian border officials questioned her about whether she would discuss the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games at a speaking engagement Wednesday evening in Vancouver.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now , a radio and television show aired by public and college broadcasters across North America, was entering Canada around 6 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday evening, set to speak at the Vancouver Public Library in an event co-ordinated by a campus radio station at Simon Fraser University.

“When I handed our passports over the border guard, they told us to pull over. We had to go over to the border facility. And they started asking me questions about what I was going to be speaking about. I was totally taken aback. They wanted to see my notes,” Ms. Goodman told the Globe Thursday, recalling the encounter.

What is going on here?

"The bigger picture is this: Yes, the 'journalism' industry will shrink. That's part of the future. Fine. But even with the wondrous world of blogs and nonprofit journalism foundations and every other new permutation of creating content, the fact remains that if people want to enjoy a fundamental baseline of serious news media in this country, they will have to pay for it, somehow."

Business Insider estimates that the Wall Street Journal, News Corp's most prized media property, would lose about $15 million by pulling out of Google—meaning that Bing could theoretically secure exclusive search engine rights for that price. The money is almost too small to matter. But this could be a trigger for much bigger things. Namely, the Great Search Engine Wars for media content.

Brian Lam argues that this move would hurt consumers. Instead of being able to go to Google to find everything, consumers would have to know which specific media outlets had exclusive deals with which search engines in order to track down their content.

And that's absolutely true! This trend, if it becomes widespread—every big media company hunting for the richest deal it can get from a search engine—would make life more inconvenient for media consumers like you and me. Which doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. The fact is that the current situation cannot stand. Have you read our #layoffs tag lately? Rupert Murdoch—and other media owners—are tired of Google making money off their content, for free. The original idea was that the traffic driven to media sites by Google would provide enough revenue, through ads, to make everyone happy. That hasn't turned out to be the case. Online ad revenue is not doing the trick.

Love the reference to the state of #layoffs tag.

What's Your News is a half-hour show hosted by a little red ant named Anthony, who talks to real-life kids about news from their lives.

The news is not the latest car crash or war story, but word that Zander has lost a slipper-sock or that Maya can play the piano with both hands.

So Friday, MinnPost took some shit for running GOP Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb's op-ed attacking DFL Sec'y O' State Mark Ritchie. Brodkorb's cudgel was a KSTP-TV report that showed Ritchie fumbling with his glasses and denying balloting problems like Martin Short's cig spokesman on the old Saturday Night Live.

Michael, who does the feral job of an attack dog well, has been milking this on Twitter for weeks. I laugh a little because this is a guy who would crawl over ground glass for Mary Kiffmeyer, by far the most partisan SOS Minnesota has had in memory. Michael's goal is to put someone as (or more) partisan in that office, and most people, watching the recount, know Ritchie was anything but a hack. But history can be re-written ... or re-edited.

So anyway, Mark Albert's KSTP report featured interviews with three election judges who said they weren't trained to doink absentee ballots if the ballots lacked signatures. I recognized two of the judges as ex-GOP candidates, which doesn't disqualify them but made me go hmm. (Albert shoulda disclosed that, for maximal fairness given the partisan consequences; don't know the third's affiliation.)

In the KSTP report, Minneapolis Interim Election Director Pat O'Connor (above) seemed to confirm Albert's thesis. But now, speaking to the dudes at The Uptake (who covered the recount far more than Albert) O'Connor calls bullshit by noting this wasn't the election judge's job. That's why they weren't trained to do it.

O'Connor - who, by the way, was NOT the city's election director during the recount (why didn't Albert use Cindy Reichert, who knew the deets but might not have advanced the attack?) - may be trying to undo some damage ... his bosses at City Hall can't have been happy with his KSTP appearance. And it does leave the question of, "OK, if not the election judges, why did the absentee ballot board fuck up?"

I didn't write about Albert's report for MinnPost, and maybe I should have. (I'm posting this here rather than there because I haven't talked to him, something I'd need to do for a professional, rather than personal, blog.)

When I was pondering whether to write about Albert's piece in the wake of his story, I did ask some Capitol reporters I know what they thought of it. The response was a collective "Meh" -- as loud as a "meh" can get. The consensus was, there was nothing new here; clearly ballot errors were made, which was acknowledged during the recount. The judges considered that quite publicly and ruled the fuck-ups not systemic or premediated. Shit happens, in other words.

Thanks to the Uptake folks for again performing journalism. Like I said, O'Connor's potential ass-covering has to be vetted (though he sounds credible here) and Albert needs to weigh in. We'll see if I want to go there post-Thanksgiving.

By the way, we're cooking the bird with the high-heat method. Highly recommended.