Chris Nolan has an update on the proposed San Francisco board of supervisors campaign finance measure which included a provision calling for bloggers to register and report blog-related costs that exceed $1,000. The upshot is, according to Nolan, that the general campaign finance bill passed, but specifically exempted bloggers from proposed rule changes. Exhale, guys.
Parke Wilde takes a long look at a Washington Post story about school lunch programs. It seems that many cash-starved school districts rely on sales of junk food to students in order to supplement their budgets — something that sends nutritionists into a calorie-burning tizzy. As a result, nutritionists have begun pressuring school districts to cut down on the amount of junk food they offer to students, but administrators, who see junk food (or “competitive foods” in the industry jargon) as a big money maker in tough budgetary times, are resisting.
Wilde, a “food economist,” has a couple of problems with the article, commenting that “It may be hard for administrators to believe that their students would buy fresh fruit, if today they eat only potato chips and never touch fruit. But, without potato chips, increased sales of fresh fruit are an economic certainty.”
He continues, “Given the seriousness of the nutrition challenge facing young people in this country, the article should have described a ban on high-fat high-sugar high-salt competitive foods as a serious policy option even in a tight fiscal environment.”
In other food-related news, Confined Space takes a look at Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser’s New York Times op-ed concerning a recent victory for migrant farm workers in Florida. The workers, operating as “The Coalition of Immokalee Workers” were “asking for a pay raise of one penny for every pound of tomatoes picked” from Yum Brands, owner of Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, A&W All American Food Restaurants and Long John Silver. Confined Space notes that the penny per pound “which may cost the $9 billion corporation several hundred thousand dollars a year — doubles the take-home pay of the migrant workers.”
Speaking of Florida, lit blogger Maud Newton has a kind of follow up to Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times yesterday looking at charges of liberal bias on college campuses. She blogs about a proposal put forth by Florida House Education Chairman Dennis Baxley to introduce a “student academic freedom” bill in the state. The bill is similar to that being shopped around college campuses nationwide by David Horowitz to “enable conservative students to sue professors who teach controversial matter.” Furthermore, writes Newton, “Beyond the bill, Representative Baxley has suggested that he might withhold funding from the University of Florida and other state universities if their policies fail to conform to his views.”
Oh Florida; we wish you were cute when you were angry.
As members of the ever-expanding world of bloggers who blog about blogging, we were going to do a roundup of blog aggregators, but the Online Journalism Review beat us to the punch, so we’re reduced to blogging about blogs about blogs. At the risk of gazing so deeply into our own navel that we go blind, CJR Daily gets a mention in the piece as a “smart read on chatter in the blogosphere.”
Finally, in more blog-grading news, Reporters Without Borders is calling on readers to vote for the blogs that best defend freedom of expression. The group has narrowed the list down to 60 entries, divided into six categories: Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Iran, and International. The group writes, “These awards will be in tribute to webloggers who defend free expression and sometimes pay heavily for it. Two of them are, for example, still in prison in Iran.” Vote early and often.
–Paul McLeary
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.