First I inexplicably woke up at 3:51 a.m., Hawaii Standard Time. Then the Honolulu Star-Bulletin announced that it’s sacking 17 people, closing its neighbor island bureaus, ditching its broadsheet in favor of tabloid size and, in general, just disappearing from the state’s media world.
That led to increased fears that I’ll probably never work for a newspaper again because the whole industry is doing everything it can to slash its own wrists and, even if I could find a paper I wanted to work for, the dedicated, sprawling investigative news projects I’d want to work on probably wouldn’t be their top priority.
Then I found this story in, of all places, Straits Times, which publishes out of Singapore. It is probably the strangest–and most fascinating–story I’ve read in the last year. Like all great and dramatic stories, it contains intrigue, a powerful Russian leader and a secret concert held by the ABBA cover band Bjorn Again.
Guess there’s hope for journalism after all.
Anthony Pignataro 
Dang! I tried to put the Putin article on Facebook, but there was no title to it. Definitely a podcast story, though.Uh…and you found this, because?????
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…Because I recently put the Straits Times app on my iPod Touch. That’s all there is to it.
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