The death of actor Ben Gazzara today. He always seemed way too cool on that NBC show Run for your Life (click to see the open and the premise “…squeeze 30 years of living into one..or two..”).

It was always a treat to see him — in a Cassavetes’ film, popping up in The Big Lebowski. Tight, a bit scary, in control.

Darn.

(photo: Carl van Vechten, 1955)

It pains me to say that Marketplace has stumbled.

As the founding producer and editor of the show, a factual mistake is one big fear…but finding oneself duped or used is the biggest fear of all.

When it comes to a segment called My Life is True that they recently aired, it sounds like they got taken to the factual cleaners by one Leo Webb (true name, who knows?) and by what sounds like eh-editing. Most of the claims Mr. Webb made in the commentary don’t check out.

The Washington Post uncovered it and took Marketplace to task. Boy, did they ever.

Marketplace has issued an on-air retraction but, a no-no in this age of transparency, now also removed the offending commentary, copy and comments from its website.

To be totally open about all this, there are some My Life is True segments on PRX. Not this one in question, mercifully. As with all 30,000 programs on PRX, the claims and integrity of the work rest with the producers until a question arises. One has. I have queried the producers.

The segments are absolutely compelling and moving and very well done. We have liked them, promoted them and aired them on our Remix service. But if the title makes a claim to them being ‘true’ stories, I would like think they are (as much as human memory can recall a truth). And, that the producers have done some checking to make certain.

Journalism can be a real pain in the ass. If only we could believe what people tell us, our mics and notebooks at the ready. But, you have to ask the hard question. Check things out. Even when it is hard and it is a bad day. Today, I have to ask, too.

Some people forget. Some get mixed up. Some make things up because they don’t want to say ‘I don’t know…’ And some just lie through their teeth to get on the air.

It’s a bummer to admit, but you have to possess something of a bullshit meter to be an editor; I’ve caught a number of bogus stories because a claim or an account just didn’t sound right. “Really?”, you ask. Or a little poking reveals something to not be entirely up to snuff.

No editor catches everything. A good liar can get by the best editors. (Hello, New York TImes and Washington Post.) I like to think that is what happened to the good, earnest people at Marketplace.

When I move to Cambridge, SubZero..only a five minute walk away..will be dearly missed.

James Fallows of The Atlantic is one of the smartest guys writing today.

His blog is always worth cruising. And, as a former presidential speech writer, his take on President Obama’s latest State of the Reunion is full of original analysis — Fallows looks at a variety of facets of the speech; the political, the policy, the rhetorical, the partisan.

Few are better at sifting through these teas leaves and coming up with nuanced and clever observations. And, Fallows is unusually open about sharing other points of view.

What he does with this speech is especially good: he has highlighted key passages and when you scroll over, you get text boxes of his notes and insights. Simple use of the web. Great for us politics geeks. Just click on the title for this post to see what I mean.

Confession: Jim and I worked briefly together when I was at Audible. He, Karen Breslau (then at Newsweek) and I created an audio download that distilled the week’s political news (Jim took the DC perspective; Karen the interpretation from SF and Silicon Valley). Today, we would have called it a podcast. It was an utter failure with listeners but I learned a lot from both of them.

WTOP dismisses commentator Plotkin after dust-up with colleague

“During his employment at the station, he engaged in at least a dozen shouting matches with colleagues, precipitating his enrollment in anger-management classes at one point, said one former colleague, who described Plotkin as ‘a super impatient man.’ “

I really like Flickr but this site of great promise has just stopped…growing. Makes me sad. Do I have to repost all of my great photos somewhere else?

No curation. No community building. No tools for helping sell your shots. Terrible editing tools. Sharing is a challenge. Crappy iPhone app.

Oh, but they did figure out how to boost rates and ding my credit card.

Let’s see how this looks…glad you came by.