Baaa-ck
to the menuWhat do you make of the article "Big Matt Attack" published in Pitch Weekly on March 10, 2005? First of all, what is this article? From a quick reading, I find out that Matt Bartle is a Missouri State Senator and a staunch anti-cloning activist. (He's also a friend of mine.) He had introduced anti-cloning legislation into the system in Jefferson City and took considerable heat for it. Let's look at the pro's and con's of this article:
Pro: This article focuses not on the big picture but on a more manageable but still related smaller picture.
Con: I have no idea who David Martin is. Looking at the publication, I can assume that he's not a highly paid, highly professional journalist, but that doesn't mean that he's some useless hack.
Pro: Whoever David Martin is, he seems reasonably fair-minded in his treatment of Senator Bartle.
Con: I have no idea what the Pitch Weekly is. Actually that's not true. I've seen the Pitch for years. It is a free newspaper, distributed in various places around Kansas City. It's the place to go for live music promos and--how shall we say--alternative entertainment ads. But its journalism is very much uneven. Sometimes they produce very shoddy work. Sometimes their work is fine.
Pro: Most of what Martin says here seems uncontroversial and not terribly technical. I don't get any sense that the guy is in over his head or that he has an axe to grind, so I'll probably take his word for what he says.
Con: It's still quite possible that, like many newspaper articles, he simply got his facts mixed up. Here's a simple test. Have you ever been involved in any event that got written up in the newspaper? Did the reporter get the facts right? My experience is that they usually bungle something, which is not surprising since they're working with unfamiliar material and in a hurry.
Judgment: Like a lighted candle, I'll handle David Martin's article with care. I'll probably use it, but I'll want confirmation if he makes more arguable claims.