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Bully Pulpit

The term "bully pulpit" stems from President Theodore Roosevelt's reference to the White House as a "bully pulpit," meaning a terrific platform from which to persuasively advocate an agenda. Roosevelt often used the word "bully" as an adjective meaning superb/wonderful. The Bully Pulpit features news, reasoned discourse, opinion and some humor.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Secret Bible Verse Foretells Housing Crash, Spawns New Diet Craze and Scares a Porn Star Straight

An op-ed from Joel Stein for the LA Times:

I kind of lied. About the secret Bible thing. And the housing crash. And the diet. The porn star I can probably dig up. I'm guessing a lot of Bible verses are secret to them.
It's just that these are desperate times. Newspaper ads are disappearing, people get their news online and bloggers do what I do for free. To secure my job, I had to get on the "most e-mailed" list on latimes.com. And last week's experiment with e-mailing myself 200 times was ineffectual. Though that column got funnier every time.
To find out how to create the most popular story possible, I called Richard Rushfield, a senior editor at The Times website. He told me to focus on the "most e-mailed" instead of "most viewed" list, because the latter is updated every hour and changes rapidly. A "most e-mailed" article, which is updated daily, can stay on the charts for up to three weeks and enter the national consciousness. Entering the national consciousness is the biggest dream of any columnist. Other than a deal with a Sunday morning news show.

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