National Public Radio Inc.

Another day, another online album release. But this time, from a somewhat surprising artist: Bob Dylan. His two-CD album Tell Tale Signs is the eighth volume in the fascinatingly uneven 17-year-old Bootleg Series; it will be available from midnight tomorrow (Spet. 30) through at least Oct. 7 on NPR Music. The latest compilation will also be streamed fully on National Public Radio.

PaidContent reports that the full-album debut is a first for NPR Music and should provide a traffic boost to the site.

You can get a preview of Bob Dylan's album here.

 

Stephin Merritt wrote and recorded a little ditty called "A Man of a Million Faces" for NPR's Project Song... um, project.

From NPR:  read more »

Antonin Scalia is determined to make his private reputation as a hothead his public image.

The private reputation as a bully has long been whispered. (It's all through Joan Biskupic's bio of Sandra Day O'Connor (S.D.O: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice)).

But Scalia wants to play that part on the world's stage. Last month he gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1256,filter.all/event_detail.aspand when impudent students in the audience baited him about Cheney's shooting accident, the justice rose to the challenge like a bar-lout, sparring with the questioners.

Now it's a speech he gave in Switzerland, aired on NPR yesterday, in which he calls the idea of trials for prisoners at Gitmo "crazy." http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=ATC&showDate=27-Mar-2006&segNum=11&mediaPref=RM&getUnderwriting=1 Once again he does so with a red face.

One point for the intemperate justice: he understands the price of citizenship. He told the Swiss loudly that his son served in Iraq. At last-- a hawk whose own family is exposed to danger.

And another one. The NPR piece demonstrated the famous but oft-denied liberal bias in public radio. Reporter Nina Totenberg was pushing the idea that Scalia was guilty of an ethical breach for airing his views on an issue that will come before the court. There's nothing wrong with liberal bias, it's just when public radio people deny they have it that it becomes irritating. Hey, it's built in. The people who go into reporting for big blue-state institutions are liberals, almost all Democrats. They're not going on to the Supreme Court, they have to go somewhere.

NPR and Bloomberg News are reporting that a man who works with animal skins has contracted anthrax. No terrorism, apparently, but cops have quarantined his workspace in Dumbo and his residence in Greenwich Village.

No telling how this affects Dumbo's property values--but we're thinking not much.

-Matthew Grace

I was on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday over the weekend, talking about blogs and New York politics and one real element of the overstated difference between online and print reporting: how long you give the subject of a story to call you back.

You can listen to the part of the interview that aired (also the only part in which the host and I had a clue of what the other was talking about) here.

On Oct. 12, the Los Angeles Times announced a new addition to its opinion page.  read more »

I think what pushed me over the edge was the rainy night I circled the block for an hour and 20 minu  read more »

On the race-and-religion front, you'd be hard put to say things are improving.  read more »

The article was, as they said in Grandpa's day, a corker.  read more »

In a box seat above the stage of the Apollo Theater, Spike Lee enjoyed a perfect view of the Democra  read more »

I am talking on NPR, the Chris Lydon show.  read more »

As Dick Young used to say, the postman knocks and knocks:Dear Wise Guys:  read more »

News night has not yet fallen on the city.  read more »

John Lahr's cover story about Frank Sinatra in the Nov.  read more »