Catching Tiger's tale in animated 'news report'

Welcome to the new world of Maybe Journalism -- a best guess at the news as it might well have been, rendered as a video game and built on a bed of pure surmise.

A computer-generated "news report" of the Tiger Woods SUV crash -- complete with a robotic-looking blond simulation of Woods' wife chasing him with a golf club -- has become a top global online video of the moment, perhaps offering a glimpse at the future of journalism, tabloid division.

The minute-and-a-half-long digitally animated piece was created by Next Media, a Hong Kong-based company with gossipy newspapers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The video is one of more than 20 the company releases a day, often depicting events that no journalist actually witnessed -- and that may not have even occurred.

The animation unit, which works out of the same building as the company's Taiwanese newspaper, Apple Daily, has dozens of programmers, designers, animators, even actors on its staff, said Daisy Li, who is responsible for scripting the videos.

The animated "reports" began in November and are based on information gleaned from the Web and Apple Daily's own reporting, making what the staff considers to be informed guesses about how events unfolded and giving a vividness and a sense of concrete reality to what is basically conjecture.

"I am awestruck by this," the MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who had fun with the Woods animation on his show, wrote in an e-mail message. He was both appalled by the video and convinced that it was a harbinger of the future. "Yes," he wrote, "this will be done by somebody, in this country, within six months."

The production values are not exactly Pixar-quality, and Li conceded that the designers were not so successful in capturing Woods' appearance, though she said, "We got the skin color and hairstyle right."

The ethical pitfalls in the videos are hard to miss. Ken Bode, a former national political correspondent for NBC News who is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's ombudsman, corrected a reporter who called the Woods video a "re-enactment."

"That's a creation," he said. "How does any Taiwanese journalist know what happened between Tiger Woods and his wife?"

Li said she believed that viewers understood what they were seeing. "Readers can differentiate that it is an illustration," she said. "All of it was based on what was reported on the wires, on other websites."

A Chapman University student group wanted to find a way to relieve stress during finals week, so they came up with an innovative approach: puppies.

On Wednesday, in the middle of "cram week," 10 puppies -- Malteses, Yorkshire terriers, pugs and dachshunds -- will be stationed outside the university library for students to play with.

"You can automatically see on someone's face when something happy comes to them, and little dogs are a cute way of doing that," she said. "It's a nice way to step back from reality and just be stress-free for a moment."

Active Minds, the group organizing the program, will also have pamphlets and resources available about how students can reduce stress and take care of themselves during finals, said Megan Brown, the group's adviser and a counselor for Student Psychological Counseling Services.

A letter by George Wash- ington fetched more than $3.2 million at a New York City auction, setting what auction house Christie's says is a world record price for a letter by the first president.

Washington's 1787 letter to a nephew argues for ratification of the newly drafted Constitution. The buyer at Christie's auction Friday was not identified. The previous record for a Washington letter was $834,500 in 2002.

Earlier, a handwritten poem by Edgar Allan Poe titled "For Annie" sold for $830,500, a world record for a 19th-century literary manuscript. The poem was estimated to sell for $50,000 to $70,000. A rare first edition of Poe's first book, "Tamerlane and Other Poems," sold for $662,500, the highest price ever paid for a 19th-century book of poetry.

Authorities estimated the 19 masterpieces stashed away in attics and basements were valued at some $150 million.

Parma Prosecutor Gerardo Laguardia said that, based on wiretapped phone conversations, officials believed at least one of the paintings hidden by Calisto Tanzi was about to be sold.

"We got lucky. We learned that there were negotiations under way to sell one of the paintings" and raid three apartments in the area of Parma, near Parmalat's headquarters, Laguardia said Saturday on Italy's Sky TG24 TV. He didn't identify the painting.

No arrests were announced as part of the art seizure.

Among the masterpieces was a pencil on paper portrait of a ballerina by Degas, two Van Goghs, including a depiction of a trunk of a willow tree and a still life, a watercolor by Cezanne and a pencil-work by Modigliani.