Watch this octopus open a jar from the inside:

Octopuses are wicked smart. I like how, after he gets the lid off, he's content to just hang out in there. (via @tylercowen)

Yesterday’s post with the 1965 Newsweek cover story, “What’s Wrong With Newspapers?”, brought in some emails (they’re after the jump) and the David Horsey cartoon below.

Emails from readers are after the jump.

From KEN GOLDSTEIN — Subject: “What was wrong with newspapers in 1965.” An interesting bit of history. But the prediction by Marshall McLuhan from the year before (1964) has proved to be prescient:

The classified ads (and stock-market quotations) are the bedrock of the press. Should an alternative source of easy access to such diverse daily information be found, the press will fold.

You may be interested in the discussion papers at the links listed below …

In 2011, we published a discussion paper titled “Sixty Years of Daily Newspaper Circulation Trends”.

We now have published an update, titled “Daily Newspaper Circulation Trends, 2000-2013″.

Both discussion papers track trends for daily newspapers in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

The new discussion paper is available at this link.

The 2011 discussion paper may be found here.

———

From BILL STEIGERWALD: I put a rant up in a comment about Newsweek’s newspaper article of 1965 that praises the great Jon Katz’s “Eight-step Cure for Old-Fartism.”

You should grab and post the whole thing.

It was great in 1998. True stuff. I remember showing it to all the bosses at the [Pittsburgh] Post-Gazette and they of course thought he and I were crazy. We were, but they were stupid.

The rant I posted:

It’s too late for newspapers.

It was already too late in 1998, when the great (and prescient and unlistened to) Jon Katz wrote his famed Eight Cures for Raging Old Fartism.

He was seen by the captains of the Daily Titanics as a crazyman, a crank, but everything he said about the dull, primitive, stupid state of newspaper was true then and is truer now — from his call for throwing out the tired, boring, no-longer newsy front page news sections and the predictable and tepid op-ed pages to shutting down Washington Bureaus. pushing great writing and pretending to be objective.

Here’s a link:

Here’s a sample: No 6–

6. Shut down those Washington bureaus. There are more reporters in Washington than any place on Earth estimates range from between 5,000 and 10,000, depending on how you count them. These people are mostly both useless and out-of-control. It’s hard to imagine, from reading and watching their output, what they even think they’re doing down there. More than 1,600 are accredited to cover the White House alone.

We don’t need them. Washington and political coverage is awful. Nobody likes it. There is little useful coverage of government policies or agencies, especially given the army of reporters assembled in the city. This mob sheds heat, not light. It promotes discord, confrontation, and confusion. Thousands of reporters attract thousands of lobbyists, spokespeople, and professional ideological mercenaries.

The result is one hideous incestuous mess that everyone hates, even the people in the middle of it. Attention cheap publishers: Here’s your chance to save money and do your country some good. Four or five reporters in the White House pressroom are plenty for getting Mike McCurry’s handouts and statements and the president’s self-serving, unrevealing photo ops. In the unlikely event real news should break out, somebody from New York City can get down there on the Metroliner in a couple of hours, or fly in from the West Coast in a morning.

And think of the investigative and other specialized reporting teams you could form with all those bodies, once you got them home. Don’t take my word for it. Just shut them down for one week. See if a single reader complains, or even notices.

* Jon Katz: Blame the decline of papers on Raging Old Fartism (thefreelibrary.com)
* Dear Clark Kent: You don’t have what it takes to work for our paper (jimromenesko.com)

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The Tampa Bay Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting spent a year investigating bad charities and this is what they found.

The worst charity in America operates from a metal warehouse behind a gas station in Holiday.

Every year, Kids Wish Network raises millions of dollars in donations in the name of dying children and their families.

Every year, it spends less than 3 cents on the dollar helping kids.

Most of the rest gets diverted to enrich the charity's operators and the for-profit companies Kids Wish hires to drum up donations.

In the past decade alone, Kids Wish has channeled nearly $110 million donated for sick children to its corporate solicitors. An additional $4.8 million has gone to pay the charity's founder and his own consulting firms.

No charity in the nation has siphoned more money away from the needy over a longer period of time.

But Kids Wish is not an isolated case, a yearlong investigation by the Tampa Bay Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

Using state and federal records, the Times and CIR identified nearly 6,000 charities that have chosen to pay for-profit companies to raise their donations.

Then reporters took an unprecedented look back to zero in on the 50 worst -- based on the money they diverted to boiler room operators and other solicitors over a decade.

These nonprofits adopt popular causes or mimic well-known charity names that fool donors. Then they rake in cash, year after year.

The nation's 50 worst charities have paid their solicitors nearly $1 billion over the past 10 years that could have gone to charitable works.

Despicable. And a reminder that before you give, you should check on a site like Charity Navigator or GiveWell for organizations where a sizable portion of your contribution is going to the actual cause. For instance, the aforementioned Kids Wish charity currently has a "donor advisory" notice on their Charity Navigator page. (via @ptak)

What the heck is going on? New recent albums after long hiatuses from Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Justin Timberlake, Daft Punk, and Boards of Canada and now Neutral Milk Hotel is reuniting for a tour? Jesus H Musical Christmas.