Openly gay in the military

Has the time come for the military to accept openly gay soldiers? A surprising 70 percent of the readers who answered our (unscientific) online poll on Yahoo! News 60 Minutes said “yes.” That’s an amazingly lopsided response, given that the fire in the gay marriage debate appears anything but extinguished.

Our segment on gay soldiers who served openly in the military despite the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” rule, has also sparked a vigorous debate on our comments section - ranging from the historical perspective of the ancient Greeks, to health fears, to concern for military readiness.

Interestingly, some comments have suggested allowing gay soldiers to serve openly, but in special all-gay brigades. Other readers said that would pose the same ’separate but equal’ concerns as the debate between gay marriage versus civil unions.

Strange celebrity

even though many people wanted to read the story about Follieri, did it really rise to the level of news - even in the low-threshold territory of celebrity news?

Perhaps it’s no surprise that celebrity news does well, but sometimes I am surprised when news about people who aren’t celebrities, but who are connected to celebrities, also clicks very well on Yahoo! News.

Today was just such an occassion. The story of Anne Hathaway’s ex-boyfriend’s legal troubles was a high-trafficed story on Yahoo! News. One of our better performing stories for the morning. That’s amazing, considering that I had never before heard of Raffaello Follieri, and I suspect most people hadn’t either.

But even though many people wanted to read the story about Follieri, did it really rise to the level of news - even in the low-threshold territory of celebrity news? Afterall, the man is no longer even dating Hathaway. This is as far removed form a celebrity as you can relevantly get.

I wonder why the story was so irresistable to our audience. This one is a mystery to me.

The dilemma with the gay marriage story

I was in West Hollywood, Calif., at 6:00 a.m. this morning to begin the day’s coverage of the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state. Along with dozens of other media outlets, I was covering the story at the marriage line in West Hollywood Park.

We in the media ran into an interesting dilemma during our reporting: a very small group of - not even very vocal - protesters showed up, including a man wearing a Satan mask and a sign reading “Pervert weddings done here.”

. . . were we obligated to include. . . protesters in our reporting? For almost all the media there today, the answer was. . .

The dilemma was this: the story today wasn’t about the debate over gay marriage. As far as the laws of the state of California were concerned, that debate was now over. The story today was the historic start of legal gay marriages. But were we obligated to include these protesters in our reporting? For almost all the media there today, the answer was no.

NPR’s Karen Grigsby Bates, a colleague and a friend from my days at NPR who is always just a little bit more astute than other journalists and has a gift for seeing the nuance in a story, interviewed a man who first seemed to be a protester with a religious-based sign, but turned out to actually be there in support - with a message more complicated than his sign might initially suggest.

But for the most part, the media (myself included) ignored the protesters, since they appeared unorganized and only a handful at most. A few outlets did quickly interview them, but didn’t seem to spend much time with them.

When I returned to the Yahoo! News offices and began putting together the slideshow story about the day’s events, the question invariably arose: do we include images of the protesters? In a sense, to not include them, would mean sanitizing the story which would cross an editorial line. But the images of the protesters couldn’t be in balance with the images of the rest of the story, because that would be out of proportion.

Our solution was to include one image at the end, in which the protesters were part of the larger scene - mentioned, but not quoted. It seemed the fairest way to tell the story.

Here’s the finished result: the Yahoo! News photo slide show on the first day of legalization of gay marriages in California.

Sacrifice revisited

I have written before about sacrifice - the ones American soldiers and their families are making every day as we fight wars abroad, the ones that Iraqi families are making struggling under unimaginable horrors. And yet, as Memorial Day approaches, I’m compelled to write about this topic again as we publish a new segment on the Yahoo! News 60 Minutes site, in which we remember the sacrifices of wars past and current.

Our latest segment is a profoundly moving one. We hear from 60 Minutes’ Andy Rooney about why he chose to risk his life tagging along during air combats with soldiers while he was a war correspondent. We hear from soldiers who talk about their colleagues who died in battle - often while saving lives. Our stories go back anywhere from two years to 60 years.

The trial of war is evident in the stories, voices, and experiences shared. Also evident is the sad realization of how similar these stories are, how horrible the sacrifice, whether they took place two years ago or decades in the past.

Tax rebate checks

Right now as I write this, the top searched item on the Yahoo! network is ‘tax rebate checks 2008.’ No question that many people are eagerly awaiting the rebate money and thinking about how they will spend it.

But some of my colleagues and I here in the newsroom started doing the math, and
we were discouraged.

We realized that for a typical family of four, a rebate of $1,800 will likely not go very far. One of my colleagues pointed out that many people are likely to spend their rebate money on household necessities: filling up the car with gas, and other bills - not on taking a vacation, or shopping, etc. We calculated that with rising prices, groceries and gas alone could easily add up to $1,300 for a month.

So maybe $1,800 will help with a month’s worth of bills, but what happens after that? And I wonder what people will indeed be spending their rebate checks on.

Curing diabetes with stigmatized surgery

Few people face more of a stigma than highly overweight or obese people who have gastric bypass surgery in order to lose weight. Many are told that their health problems are of their own making, and that they can simply choose to lose weight and get better.

I’ve heard this argument from some very smart people.

But what happens when that argument gets turned on its head? That same stigmatized surgery - gastric bypass, which isn’t covered for patients unless they have a dire need for it - is potentially a lifesaving preventative hope for people with diabetes.

Medical researchers are finding that gastric bypass surgery may almost immediately send diabetes into longterm remission in most patients who have the procedure - well before they lose any weight (a factor commonly associated with diabetes).

That’s the story for this week’s Yahoo! News 60 Minutes segment.

Factoring in diabetes seems to change how gastric bypass surgery is perceived. In our online, unscientific poll, nearly 80 percent of our 60 Minutes readers approved of allowing anyone with diabetes to have the surgery, even if they’re not morbidly obese.

Diabetes has in the past proven to be a popular topic among Yahoo! readers in general, probably because so many people are afflicted by it or know someone who is. But perhaps fewer people are afflicted by weight problems so severe or dogged that surgery seems to be the only option. That appears to be evident from the comments on our 60 Minutes story page about this topic.

I wonder if more people were exposed to the severe weight loss problems that bypass surgery treats, if there would be as much empathy for treating obesity through surgery as there is for treating diabetes with surgery.

Journalistic shrine

LA Times building globe lobby, originally uploaded by nova_safo.

This is the LA Times’ historic “Globe Lobby” from the original building’s 1935 design. Standing in the lobby feels like you’re visiting a solemn shrine to the greatest traditions of journalism.

The lobby transports you to another time, and reminds you that a journalist comes from a noble lineage and with a solemn duty to act as the fourth estate.

The building is located at 1st and Spring streets in downtown Los Angeles. The lobby is open to the public.

Recordings of Elixir of Love

I recently received a DVD copy of my performance of Donizetti’s wonderful opera The Elixir of Love (”L’Elisir d’Amore”) with the St. Petersburg Opera in Florida this past December. I pulled audio from two sections, and I hope you’ll take a listen! First, a couple of excerpts from the first act duet scene between Adina and Nemorino that preceds the finale. Second, the beautiful arietta “Adina, credimi” - Nemorino’s plea that Adina wait one more day before marrying someone other than him.

Saddam tells all

In our latest Y! News 60 Minutes segment, we have extensive excerpts from an interview with the FBI interrogator who got into Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein’s head after his capture, and got Saddam to provide revealing information into his own thinking.

The comments on this segment page have been vociferous and lively. Saddam remains a polarizing figure even after his death. In the first half of the day when we first published this segment, we had already amassed some 2,400 comments.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story was that the interrogator had to convince Saddam that the interrogator reported directly to the president. Had Saddam known he was only a field agent, the interrogator said he would likely have thought the agent too far beneath him to talk to him.

Also interesting: Saddam seems to have predicted that a low-grade, guerrilla insurgency campaign would result from the prolonged U.S. occupation of Iraq. The agent says Saddam asked his armed forces to hold out for two weeks against American forces. After that, he reportedly said, the war would enter a different phase.

Can lack of sleep kill you?

Our new Y! News 60 Minutes segment is on research that shows that losing even a little bit of sleep can lead to overeating, fat gain, risks of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure - and worst of all for some, a decreased sex drive.

It’s fascinating how drastically our bodies suffer even from a little loss of sleep. It’s also interesting that many of the world’s worst accidents - including nuclear disasters - can be traced back to inadequate sleep.

We polled our readers, asking them how much do they sleep? Only 12% said they slept 8 hours or more, although most people likely need that much to get proper rest. So, how much is it costing you when you lose just a few hours of sleep? The science of sleep may surprise you.