• The backstory behind the addictive game Qrank. We can quit anytime we want.
• A screening of Carnival Magic is happening in the ATX. It’s a film that was made for children, but really shouldn’t be seen by them!
• GQ magazine says the chow at Uchiko is really, really good! Good enough to be one of the best new restaurants in America.

Fresh off its wall-to-wall coverage of the 2010 statewide elections, political online news site The Texas Tribune has announced the hiring of former Newsweek editorial director Mark Miller. more ›

In the most recent Sports Illustrated, Frank Deford turns in the elegiac "Confessions of a Sportswriter", vividly portraying his life and career over the past 50 years. This week, Deford will share some of those same thoughts with an audience at the University of Texas. more ›

CBS journalists must appreciate the University of Texas; the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History already holds papers from the careers of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, and today it was announced that Morley Safer is donating his papers to the same Center. Safer says the Center's journalism archive "has no equal. It is a gateway to learning the eyewitness history of who we are, who we were and how we perceived ourselves as a nation." more ›

The Texas Tribune, a high-profile journalism startup, has received $750,000 in grant money from a pair of foundations. more ›

Evan Smith, president and editor in chief of Texas Monthly, is leaving the magazine to join the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public media organization aimed at politics, government, and other matters of statewide interest. Smith will become CEO of the new venture, which also claims Austin Ventures general partner John Thornton as the chairman and former Austin Technology Council president Alisha Ring as general manager. Smith spent nearly 18 years at Texas Monthly, serving as editor for eight years before becoming president and editor in chief last year. In his farewell letter to the staff, Smith said that Texas Monthly "without question, gave me my life, gave me the most wonderful and unbelievable and exciting career that anyone could ask for." [NYT] more ›

It was announced yesterday that ABC will set up multimedia bureaus at five different college campuses, and the UT School of Journalism is one of them (the other bureaus will be at Arizona State, Syracuse, UNC at Chapel Hill, and the University of Florida). This new program will allow students the opportunity to create stories on local issues and produce content for "Nightline", "World News with Charles Gibson", mtvU, abcnews.com and more under the ABC News umbrella. more ›

The music community loves lists. Everywhere you turn, someone else who may or may not have a valuable opinion is offering their top 2007 countdown, and here at Austinist we're no different. We've spent the last twelve months listening to records, going to live performances and reading music journalism like deprived little gollums, trying to share some of what we've experienced with you along the way. Throughout the year, though we find ourselves drunk with opinions and eager to share, our ultimate goal is to somehow reflect you, the reader when we write. It is with this in mind that we offer our Top 15 Albums of 2007 to you, with a hope that some of you nod along the way. Next week, New Release Tuesday will return with a list of our favorite dark horse records of the year, covering some of 2007's best records in the experimental, ambient and instrumental genres. As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to link us to your top album lists! more ›

Image from www.kut.orgBefore you get too bogged down with finals, papers, end-of-the-semester projects, etc., you might consider this for next semester: KUT is currently taking applications for their Spring Break/SxSW Intern Program. Interns in this program will undergo an intensive week-long audio journalism training program under guidance from KUT and NPR staff. KUT is looking for two student journalists to cover Film and three to cover Music during the SxSW Festival. You must be at... more ›

Photo courtesy Sunyong ChungWorld-class porcelain artist Sunyong Chung will be participating in this weekend's E.A.S.T.. Enamored with her work, we conducted an interview with her last fall, but, er, neglected to publish it. (Journalism, shmurnalism.) Now, however, bear witness to all she reveals about the intricate nerikome technique used to ornament her plates and bowls. Also: some call/response regarding Sunyong's beliefs about continuity of form, and her experiences connecting with artists from other eras! Testify!... more ›

Former Westlake High teacher resigns to teach at a lower-income school; less than pleased, Eanes school district attempts to get him suspended A UT journalism student has a nice chat with Dan Rather during a morning Jet Blue flight from Austin to New York City A routine traffic stop in Hunt County turns up two dozen embalmed human heads in the back of a tractor-trailer A woman in the Dallas/Fort Worth area comes forward with... more ›

The notion that ‘It's not a conspiracy theory if it's actually true,’ is about as spot-on and useful as ‘Golly, she ain’t a witch if she done drown.’ more ›

University of Florida journalism student provokes John Kerry, gets Tasered by campus cops. A 10-year-old boy has woken up with a posh English accent after undergoing life-saving brain surgery. Betty Perry is charged with resisting arrest and failing to maintain her landscaping, both misdemeanors. Fed up with the threats, tired of natural disasters, Nebraska's longest-serving state senator is using his legal muscle against who he says is the culprit - God. State Sen. Ernie... more ›

Eat More Anchovies: Ten Solutions to Save the Ocean. Breaking Taco News: Al Pastor (the truck and the restaurant) reviewed by Taco Journalism. You can 100%-unlock the iPhone using a Turbo SIM card, without depending on the version of your current carrier card. The Washington Post discusses salary, gender and the cost of social haggling. Houston Community Radio station KPFT 90.1 received a single bullet through a window this week, missing a DJ by... more ›

Providing intricate details on creating a pretty simple food item, Austin director Robert Rodriguez takes the viewer through a ten-minute tutorial on making the perfect breakfast taco. While working on DVD material for Sin City, late nights created mean cravings, and what does every Austinite crave when it's not quite dinner, not quite breakfast? That's right. Using a recipe borrowed from his grandmother, Rodriquez doesn't just throw eggs on a tortilla with one measly... more ›

*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors It was supposed to end by now. We’re supposed to already be past this. Many believe they saw it coming before it hit, and many more than that read through the lines to see the “conspiracy” for what they believed it was. Have you heard that Del Monte or Chiquita or some... more ›

Dan Rather delivered a keynote address yesterday to a packed ballroom in the Hilton downtown. Among other things, Rather suggested that modern journalism needs "a spine transplant." He also had some interesting things to say about the nature of journalism in general and why he thinks it is the way it is. One important point he made was that the term "investigative journalism" is redundant because journalism, when done correctly, is inherently investigative. Having... more ›

As you make those New Year's resolutions, you may wonder how to get more involved in the Austin community for 2007. January is National Mentoring Month, and one way to mentor here in Austin is through a volunteer teaching position at Citizen Schools. The Boston-based nonprofit arrived in Austin last year, and helps children in lower-income middle schools to prepare for the rigors of high school and college. They've already won 2006 and 2007 Fast... more ›

Long a bastion of hilarious pseudo-journalism veiling insightful and viscous social commentary, The Onion was once relegated to small hamlets like Madison, Chicago and New York City. Over the years, it has published compendiums of articles in book format and expanded its coverage to include non-pseudo-reporting with the Onion A.V. club. Now, It has taken itself one step further, reaching out to us smaller urban communities to promulgate its singular wackiness and educate the... more ›

The folks over at Pluck have hit the big time, signing a major deal with Reuters that will allow the news giant to carry syndicated content from Pluck's BlogBurst. BlogBurst streams syndicated content to mainstream media from over 2,800 blogs. In addition to agreeing to carry BlogBurst’s contents, Reuters made a financial investment in Pluck. The deal allows Reuters to use BlogBurst’s content alongside its stories, which will then get picked up by thousands of... more ›

THURSDAY [16] wine • Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! at Various music • Peter and the Wolf, The Interest Kills at The Mohawk music • The Elected (Members of Rilo Kiley), Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos, Whispertown 2000 at Emo's Lounge music • Jack Ingram & Reckless Kelly at Stubb's music • The Pretenders, Operation:Awesome at Austin Music Hall music • White Ghost Shivers, Dewayn Bros at Beerland music • St. Lawrence... more ›

If you haven't been watching Moyers on America on PBS, you're missing out. Last week's episode on Evangelicals and the environment was both disturbing and refreshing at the same time. This week's episode focuses on net neutrality, whether corporations should charge us for the internet, media ownership, etc. If the government passes a bill giving corporations (such as AT&T) the right to regulate the speed at which sites are accessed, then what's to stop... more ›

If you miss the old Woody Allen, the incredibly witty one with highly-developed (neurotic) characters experiencing genuine personal conflict supported by crisp dialogue, we suggest you hit up the mini Woody retrospective at the Paramount Theatre this weekend, featuring Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters. If you want to see the aging, trite Woody Allen and his desperate attempts at comedy with his most recent muse, Scarlett Johannson, then you may want to check... more ›

Favorite posts for the week: Is this really journalism? comments that telling your weekend events over radio airwaves is not blogging. Why she was listening to KISS FM in the first place is beyond us . . . Miss Adventure dines alone in a booth next to some faux-Federlines. Casual Soapbox attended the Pride Festival. Veggie chorizo breakfast tacos at Elsi's? BigYELLOWbowl says they're addictive. Tim downloads a Boston album after all these years.... more ›

The 2006 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today, with UT's David M. Oshinsky, George Littlefield Professor of American History, garnering the prestigious History prize for "a distinguished book upon the history of the United States." Said book was Polio: An American Story, what Publishers Weekly hailed as "an edifying description of one of the most significant public health successes" in our country's time. Congrats, Professor! Other winners included Geraldine Brooks for March (Fiction), the Staff... more ›

This Friday at the Velvet Spade, quite possibly the greatest literary rock star on the planet returns for a one-off reunion show with his Neal Pollack Invasion. Pollack, author of the seminal piece of satirical literary journalism, the Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature (an Austinist favorite), left our fare shores last year to move to the moral abyss that is Hollywood. But he is back this week to help celebrate the launch of... more ›

As some things wind down, others are winding up in Frontera land. The Long Fringe and Bring Your Own Venue are over. Only one week of regular shows remains for the Short Fringe, with the fabulous Best of Fest thereafter. The very intriguing Mi Casa Es Su Teatro is this coming Saturday. Frontera is a little more than halfway through, with some of the best nights yet to come. We were sad to miss... more ›

The very smart and very sexy columnist for the New York Times - Maureen Dowd, not Bill Saffire - is coming to Austin in November. Dowd will deliver the Mary Alice Davis Distinguished Lecture in Journalism at 6 p.m. on Wednesday the 16th at the LBJ Library Auditorium, at 2313 Red River. The lecture is free and open to the public. No tickets are required. Free parking is available at the library, which is... more ›

The director of the Tour de France has launched a serious allegation against Lance Armstrong, seven-time winner of the prestigious race. In the French sports daily, L’Equipe, Jean-Marie Leblanc says that Armstrong has "fooled" the sports world and owes his fan an explanation. The allegation? That Lance’s urine sample recently tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug known as erythropoietin, or EPO. EPO is a red blood cell booster, thus allowing the user’s muscles... more ›