Sunday Reading

Dan Barry on the Little Pee Dee River: The boat moves through the murky river waters while swallow-tailed kites stir the evening sky and a little blue heron poses beside the cypress-lined shore, as if for Audubon. But these natural wonders only distract from the expedition's purpose, which is to seek out a specific endangered species.

Shhh. There's one now.

"River shack!" Chris Crolley, the boat captain, says, his tone a mix of awe and disgust. "There you go."

John Irving on Gunter Grass: What is it with the onions? I wondered.

And what did Grass mean about the silence? "Ever since that Friday I've known what silence is. Silence sets in when gulls veer away. Nothing can make more silence than a dredger at work when the wind carries away its iron noises."

William Booth at a convention in Roswell: Attention, all aliens. Come on down. Because, seriously, this is your crowd. About 50,000 of your closest admirers are expected this weekend for the Roswell UFO Festival, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the nearby crash landing of a flying saucer -- and, naturally, the ensuing government coverup.

A weather balloon? Please. We are not fools.

Chris Goffard with some changes at the Nixon library: The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda has long been the most kicked-around of presidential libraries, and nothing invited more ridicule than the dim, narrow room purporting to describe the scandal that drove its namesake from office.

Venturing into that room, visitors learned that Watergate, which provoked a constitutional crisis and became an enduring byword for abuses of executive power, was really a "coup" engineered by Nixon enemies. The exhibit accused Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — without evidence — of "offering bribes" to further their famous coverage.

Most conspicuous was a heavily edited, innocent-seeming version of the "smoking gun" tape of June 23, 1972, the resignation-clinching piece of evidence in which Nixon and his top aide are heard conspiring to thwart the FBI probe of Watergate.

This was history as Nixon wanted it remembered, a monument to his decades-long campaign to refurbish his name. Nixon himself approved the exhibit before the library's 1990 opening.

Derek Kravitz on Dallas' newest (hot) anchor: Ms. Jones, the newest reporter and anchor at CBS affiliate KYTX-TV in Tyler, was one of Bob Barker's beauties on The Price Is Right and a ring-card girl for World Wrestling Entertainment.

For the past few weeks, the Parsons School of Design graduate traded in her placards and two-piece bathing suits for a TelePrompTer and pantsuits. She just wrapped up her monthlong stint last week.

"Some people are going to say I'm just a bimbo," said Ms. Jones, a former Miss New York who says her idol is Katie Couric. "But we're just having fun. This is also an opportunity for me to learn a new profession."

Media critics say the show – the fledgling station's latest attempt to boost ratings – flies in the face of even the most basic journalistic standards.

"It's got nothing to do with journalism. It's just a clown show," said Al Tompkins, who teaches broadcast journalism and ethics at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "It certainly does nothing to help the craft of journalism, it demeans women and it demeans every broadcast journalist who takes their job seriously."