In the wake of the stunning Saints upset in the Super Bowl, how else to celebrate -- from a distance -- than with the city's leading native son, and one of the greatest Americans ever, Louis Armstrong, and his classic version of "When the Saints Go Marchin' In." Truly a...

With the Super Bowl approaching on Sunday, and the Saints in it, echoes of "Who, Dat?" are heard day and night around New Orleans. But for music fans, they might just as well be shouting, "Who, Fats?" in honor of the city's greatest living native musical son, Mr. Domino. Roll...

Amid the rocky news of the past week, it was fun to read today about the hysterical uproar over an Illinois tea party candidate for Congress named Joe Walsh using the famous "Lead the Way" song by the "other" Joe Walsh (Eagles, James Gang, etc.) in his campaign...

Since my exit from Editor & Publisher late last week, I've received thousands of messages of support via email, phone and Twitter. I'm humbled by this, of course. Since so many have asked how and why it happened, consider this a partial explanation (more later).

As many of you may...

As we've seen in other quick-breaking stories and tragedies, Twitter (and various Web sites plus Facebook) once again on Tuesday night proved to be a "hard news" godsend, with tweeters in Haiti supplying countless eyewitness accounts, images and video, ahead of most network and cable news.

Many of the...

In the past 30 years I've probably written more words about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the American reaction, than nearly anyone. So it is exciting and gratifying to learn this week that Avatar director James Cameron, who could choose just about any subject for upcoming projects,...

As I got ready to exit my office at Editor & Publisher, perhaps for the last time, this afternoon, I found myself trying to ignore this sad end to the decade by focusing on some wild and crazy stories that I've covered here this past year. Here's just a sample:

At 2 p.m. today we ship the possibly final issue of Editor & Publisher from our office here at Astor Place in NYC. For the record, it is the January 2010 issue, so we made it into our 126th year, at least.

As many may know, we got our...

Well, I've had better Christmases -- thanks to learning a few days ago that my magazine, Editor & Publisher, faces a January 1 expiration notice after publishing for only 125 years. So, to cheer myself up, I launched earlier this week the trailer for my upcoming (and first)...

My monthly posts here on the world of Web series have proven quite popular so I'm back with another edition in a year-end look around.

In the past, I've probed the growing popularity of Web comedy and dramatic series, suggesting they were a growing threat, down the road a...

No matter how you feel about the pro-choice/anti-choice issue, it's always been difficult to examine data on the number of legal abortions in the U.S. on a state-by-state level. Recently The Guardian newspaper's DataBlog performed a real service in pulling together the latest numbers (from 2005) on the number...

That's what one Web site suggested, in a list of "famous people" who had a very bad year in 2009. I came in at #18, putting me behind Tiger, Madoff and Carrie Prejean but ahead of Mark Sanford (who may be impeached) and Michael Jackson -- who died!...

When I met Bruce Springsteen on this very date back in 1972, I could not have imagined that the scrawny kid in the hooded sweatshirt from New Jersey, whose first "record" (as we used to call them) had not yet come out, would one day play the Super Bowl, let...

It's gotten remarkably little coverage so far -- perhaps because there's no "terrorist" angle -- but we're now catching up with the case of an Iraq war vet now captured and suspected of killing two of his fellow servicemen, age 20 and 23, near the army base at Fort...

In the aftermath of President Obama's important speech on the U.S. escalation in Afghanistan, I would like to update John Kerry's famous question in 1971: "How do you ask someone to be the last American soldier to die for a mistake?"

This has caused me to wonder: Well, who was...

No matter how you feel about the pro-choice/anti-choice issue, it's always been difficult to examine data on the number of legal abortions in the U.S. on a state-by-state level. Now The Guardian newspaper's DataBlog has performed a real service in pulling together the latest numbers (from 2005) on the...

To give us some perspective on this day: Beethoven in 1825, very late in his life, wrote the third movement, molto adagio, of his string quartet opus 132, offering thanks for being alive, despite having gone completely deaf, the worst possible fate for a composer and musician.

Music lovers around...

Forty-four years ago this week, I attended my first rock concert. Many others naturally followed, from Blind Faith to Springsteen, Elvis Costello, U2, Lucinda Williams, and the Swell Season, along with about eight years as the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. But that first concert remains vivid, and historic,...

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that 52% of all Republicans believe that the group ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, with another 21% saying they are not sure. And 35% of all those in the survey over the age of 65, from both parties, agreed...

It was amusing -- if appalling -- to watch David Brooks on the TV yesterday declare that Sarah Palin is a "joke" and only qualified to be a TV "talk show host." Last year, during the 2008 campaign, he believed exactly the same thing but refused to put it in...