In case you missed Jon Stewart’s brilliant interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer yesterday, I’ve embedded part of the clip above. But I would go to DailyShow.com to see the and even to watch the full unedited interview, because it is a fascinating peek at what journalism sometimes is missing in financial coverage.

In case you’ve missed the news coverage this has gotten (CNN / NYT / WaPost), Stewart took Cramer to task for the fact that he and his network essentially cheered on a bubble built on working class dollars while hedge fund managers and Wall Street insiders cashed in.

If the pundits only focus on how entertaining this was (and it was entertaining), this is a missed opportunity. Stewart’s interview not only exposed the culture of CNBC’s reporting habits, which are filled with conflicts of interest, but also showed how it’s done in an era where expert pundits often are fresh off the payroll of the industry they’re covering. Read more

We’re going through free speech stuff in JOUR 1100 this week, and Hans Meyer’s recent post about a court decision regarding free speech and the Net got me thinking a little bit.

I’d recommend reading the story and Hans’ post, because the combination of the two raise serious concerns about what happens when courts force site operators to release the names of contributors in cases of libel.

The thing I’m thinking about in the wake of this decision is that it’s really time for us to step back and think about what it means to associate online. This is really the heart of my dissertation, because we don’t think enough about what it means to talk together in online formats. Read more