Now we have arrived at our annual feature called, "Pundita coddles lazy readers," whereupon we answer questions that have piled up from people who want to swallow a pill every evening and know all the important news of the day.
1) In what might be a nod to blogosphere denizens who have only eyes and not ears, John Batchelor now writes what seems to be a weekly column for The New York Sun.
2) The New York Sun no longer demands a subscription before its pages are available to the Internet reader. Because this decision might be revoked at any time, make use of the freebie while you can in order to get great daily war reporting and access to Batchelor's weekly column. In honor of the Sun's graciousness, Pundita is graciously posting a link to their newspaper on her blog's sidebar.
3) For the reader who pleaded that I bring Ouija out of mothballs, I venture that John Batchelor's July 28 New York Sun piece titled Green Light is the clearest insight about how the enemy is thinking at this time. John's advantage over Ouija is that he doesn't cost a fortune in repairs, lapse into archaic Romanian, or channel a Hungarian resistance fighter whose English consists of ve mik goulash from dead KGB.
4) No, I should think that if you had a headache that night or had to grade papers that is not an excuse to miss Batchelor's show. The only valid excuse is if the night ICU nurse wrestles your portable radio and earphones away from you.
But in that case you might consider emulating the tactic of a friend of mine, who has hired a Batchelor Show Minder. (Not to be confused with a Puffy Head Minder.) The minder dutifully listens to every segment and summarizes for his clients.
In this way the clients manage to sound halfway intelligent every morning around the water cooler.
5) The reason you can't read the John Loftus report on the John Batchelor Show website is because Loftus delivers the report on John's radio show.
6) The reason you missed the Loftus report that night is because he reported during the first half hour of the show. The time of 10:35 PM ET is approximate for the report's airing. Sometimes the report is earlier and sometimes after 11:00 PM or even later.
The varying time slot of the reports seems to depend on the war -- whether it's in a very hot phase, as it is now -- and Loftus' schedule. During hot phases, Loftus almost always reports during the first hour of the show or right after the 11:00 PM ABC news break.
7) A rule of thumb is that during a hot phase listen to the show's opening segment (right after the ABC news report at approximately 10:05 PM ET) to hear whether Batchelor mentions when Loftus and Aaron Klein will present their reports.
8) No, it is not false advertising for the website to put Loftus' name or the name of Batchelor's other guests over a link to a newspaper article not written by the guests. The guest name over the link simply signifies that Loftus will be discussing a topic that evening which relates to the article.
9) You will stop having these types of complaints if you remember that John Batchelor's radio show, with millions of daily listeners, is part of the mediasphere and not the blogosphere.
Batchelor and his researchers cull excellent news articles and post them to the website but the site is not the radio show. The site does carry some audio transcripts of 'special' conversations; e.g., interviews with terrorists, but the Current Intelligence section is simply a guide to topics that will be covered during a show.
10) For those who want Batchelor's website to post transcripts of every guest interview -- well, you can write Batchelor with the request (his email address is posted on the site). But if you don't have time to listen to the show, when will you find time to read the transcripts?
John's segments fall into two categories: timely and timeless. The segments that deal with history and 'social' themes will be just as informative years from now. The other category reflects fast-changing daily events, which often build on each other. If you don't keep up, you'll fall behind the news curve very quickly during war time.
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