Links for 2011-12-11

The buzz about how bloggers and citizen journalists will save the day, once almost deafening, has died down to a murmur, although the buzz about Twitter, Facebook, and cellphone video cameras saving the day has picked up thanks to their powerful contributions to coverage of major breaking stories, from the Arab spring to Occupy Wall Street. But the triumphant march to the digital future, at least when measured in terms of original reporting, has yet to lead anywhere near triumph. Yet the picture is not entirely bleak.

Weingarten may also be the best writer in American journalism. He's the only person to have won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing twice, once for the violinist story and once for a story about parents who accidentally leave their children in hot cars. And as amazing as those articles are, neither is generally considered his finest. That story, about a children's entertainer, is as good a piece of writing as you'll ever find tossed on your front lawn. You might wonder why the best writer in American journalism would have fake poop as his Twitter icon. Or spend an inordinate amount of time making prank phone calls. Or concern himself with monkey sex, fake sneezes, or bacon taped to cats. As he once put it in a column, "I mostly write about underpants." Weingarten is not a horrible person, but there may be something wrong with him.

If you're at a loss for what to buy the little ones in your life this holiday season, consider my recs, below. And then read to them. If you find a kid that has too many books, please send me your data. I've yet to discover one, and am sure that I have discovered a new law of physics, and will be shocked to find my hypothesis disproven. If you don't have any little ones in your life, please consider buying a couple of these and tossing them in a toy drive bin or donating to your local school's library.