Why Thomas Jefferson ditched his newspaper subscriptions in favor of Newton, Euclid, Tacitus and Thucydides

I don't use Twitter for my own commentary but maintain an account with which to follow others. One feed I enjoy immensely is "On This Day in Math," which today brought us this tidbit: "1812 Thomas Jefferson writes [to] John Adams 'I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid;...'" Oh, to be afforded such a luxury! For now, though, your correspondent regrettably must remain ensconced in daily affairs.

Still, to honor TJ's late-in-life liberation from what must have been a life-long newspaper addiction, those of you who have too long neglected your Newton and Euclid ought to add to their new year's resolutions spending spare time watching Vi Hart videos (and rewatching them, perhaps with assistance from Sal Khan, till you thoroughly understand them). I had occasion over the summer to spend time re-upping my basic geometry and trig skills and looking at the material as an adult with an eye toward utility on my own projects. That turned out to be an entirely different and far more productive experience than slogging through geometry and trig texts in high school.

If Green Bay can buy the Packers, why can't Austin purchase the Statesman?

When Green Bay, Wisconsin's beloved historic professional football team was about to be sold and moved to another locale, the local community decided they'd rather buy the team than see it auctioned off to the highest bidder. It was a smart move that's benefited the town tremendously, both economically and in terms of prestige and public satisfaction.

So upon hearing news this week that the Austin-American Statesman will be put up for sale, my first reaction, posted as a comment on The Good Life blog, was that:

I think the City of Austin should purchase it and put it in trust with professioal management the way Green Bay, Wisconsin did with their football team. Nobody else who can afford to buy it will do anything but slash it to pieces.

To me, daily newspapers are a national treasure as important to sustaining democracy and public life as water and air are to keeping us all upright and breathing. Certainly blogging would not exist as it does today if bloggers didn't have daily journalists' work to build upon. So-called "citizen journalism" is a good thing, but some projects only get done if you have a pro on the job. Despite the rise of disparate additional media that cut into ad revenues and shrunk the newshole drastically, the Statesman remains the central information source for the largest number of engaged citizens and opinion leaders in Central Texas and a critical spearpoint for public conversation .

I'd personally support a bond issue to purchase the paper and establish an independent trust with its own, dedicated board to manage the project. Public ownership would give the paper many options for distribution and synergy that are closed to a private entity. And a charter for the paper could be crafted that dedicated it to reporting in the public service, bucking the trend of treating news items as entertainment and giving the public better coverage all the way around. If the paper is sold, odds are both staff and the newshole will be further slashed and diminish overall reportage.

The main reason newspapers like the Statesman are losing money is people are accessing their content for free online. So by providing taxpayer support for journalism, purchasing the paper would overcome the "free rider problem" created for papers by web technology.

Besides convincing taxpayers it's a worthy investment, the hardest part of such a deal might be structuring the entity so it's editorially independent - boardmembers couldn't be appointed by the City Council, for example, and remain credibly separate from the city power structure. I don't have a clear idea how that might work, but I'll bet it could be done. The Green Bay City Council, after all, doesn't interfere with the Packers game plans or hiring decisions, and I'll bet there's a way a newspaper could be similarly distanced from outside interference.

Who knows how much Cox News wants for the Statesman or whether it might be possible for the city to purchase the paper? In any event it seems worth considering whether public ownership might be a viable option.

RELATED: See also "Who will buy the Statesman?" from Jeff Beckham, and the Lone Star Times has identified a prospective buyer.

Who gets to write the first draft of history?

How the "first draft of history" gets written has changed a lot in my adult lifetime.

It used to be said when I was a lad that journalism was the "first draft of history," and that conceit helped draw me into writing for The Daily Texan in college. There I learned, in fact, that the press release was the first draft of history, but even that has changed. After a while the "first draft" began to show up on blogs, and today, more often than not, it comes in a blog comment.

I'm not sure whether I think that's good or bad, but I think it's true.

It's also been said that winners write the history, but to a large extent, that has changed, too. If there's one thing you can say for the blogosphere, it's that it's definitely given losers a voice!

Note to Wall Street Journal: It's not "historic" when you predict wrong

Here's an example, to me, of the utter failure of the modern media: They've become so reliant on polling and so confident in their own predictions, they now believe it "historic" when THEY are wrong! What hubris! From Justin Wolfers at the Wall Street Journal:

Judging by the pre-vote polls and prediction markets, the Democratic primary in New Hampshire created one of the most surprising upsets in U.S. political history.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was favored in the final pre-election poll of all 12 pollsters who surveyed voters since his surprise victory in Iowa, and was the unanimous favorite among television pundits. The only real question to be resolved appeared to be the size of Mr. Obama's majority.

His loss to New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was equally embarrassing for prediction markets, such as the WSJ Political Market. Election-eve trading had suggested that Sen. Obama had a 92% chance to win in New Hampshire, while Sen. Clinton rated only a 7% chance.

Against this background, it is no exaggeration to term the result truly historic. Not that there haven't been more dramatic upsets or come-from-behind wins that carried more significance -- this was just an early primary, albeit a pivotal one. But in terms of unpredictability, or at least the failure of everyone to predict it, it may have no modern match.

The fact that he and his egghead buddies were wrong in their predictions doesn't make this primary result any more "historic" than it would otherwise have been. (It is, after all, the presidential campaign, so in some sense calling it "historic" is definitionally redundant.)

Managing expectations has officially become more important than reality. We've reached a stage when many in the media believe their own pre-election assumptions are actually more important, apparently, than the actual voters themselves. Otherwise, when the voters disagree with the media's and the pollsters' predictions, why is it such a big deal?

That's definitely a bias in media coverage, but it's not a bias toward left or right, it's an expression of narcissism and group think. Results, not expectations, are what matter, but you wouldn't know it from reading most political coverage.