Thinking Jiang
USA
Today leads with the season's first winter storm. The Los Angeles
Times goes with a questionable loan to the Democrats. The New York Times
leads with the vanishing budget deficit. The Washington Post leads with Jiang Zemin's visit.
The Marlins win in the World Series gets plenty of front-page play, even at
the NYT , which just a few months ago would have missed the story, but
now doesn't because its new printing set-up allows for later deadlines.
USAT 's game wrap-up has good details on the presence at the game of the
mother of Marlins pitcher and Series MVP Livan Hernandez. It seems that her
visit, too late for seeing any of her son's stellar pitching, was the fruit of
three weeks of negotiations, including a written plea to Cuban officials signed
by the Marlin players.
The WP does some good deconstruction of the Jiang visit, pointing out
that his laying of a wreath at Pearl Harbor's Arizona memorial was designed to
remind Americans that China was once a military ally, and noting that the full
military honors Jiang received upon his arrival in Hawaii were one of China's
requirements for agreeing to a U.S. summit. Both the WP and NYT
observe that the summit won't produce as many substantive agreements as was
once hoped--the main result will be China's agreement to stop exporting nuclear
technology in return for access to U.S. nuclear power equipment, but probably
neither trade issues, nor human rights issues, nor the status of Taiwan will
get resolved.
The NYT says President Clinton will announce today that the federal
budget deficit has fallen to $22.6 billion, the lowest since the early 1970s,
and far below any other major industrialized nation. So low, says the
Times , that "it almost does not matter whether it is eliminated." The
paper says most of the credit goes not to government planning but to a healthy
economy and a surging stock market.
The Wall Street Journal says that a look at the current economy
also shows that the alleged bad consequence of raising the minimum
wage--increased unemployment in the low end of the service sector--just did not
happen, turning the minimum wage increase into "one of the nonevents of
1997."
A good test of the coherence of a news story is how much sense could you
make of it if you could only read the first few paragraphs or at most only to
the "jump" to the inside. (Indeed, the pyramid style of newswriting came about
because 19th century reporters were often interrupted in their filings by down
telegraph lines.) Today's LAT lead is a good example. The story is
supposed to be that the celebrated Indonesian gardener and his wife told Senate
investigators this summer how they really came to donate $450,000 to the DNC.
The headline says, "Indonesians Contradict Democrats on Donations." But
unfortunately, neither the DNC explanation nor the nature of the contradiction
makes an appearance until after the "jump," a full ten paragraphs in. Ditto for
any explanation of the law that would explain why the DNC would opt for its
story rather than the couple's. (And "Today's Paper's" can't answer those
questions because, as of filing time, this column doesn't have access to the
end of the story.)
The LAT front page has news sure to add to the medical marijuana
controversy: the discovery by researchers of chemicals in marijuana that could
serve as an effective remedy for serious pain, without morphine-style side
effects. The WP also has a fresh new brain research result: scientists
at Cal Tech have created silicon chips that interface directly with brain
cells. The advent of such neurochips is probably the biggest human science
story ever. And fraught with trouble: imagine what will happen when rich people
can pay to instantly smarten themselves but poor people can't.
