Talent agent James Dixon appears unflappable, which is perhaps not surprising given that he is lounging under an umbrella out by the swimming pool at his South Summer street home, every inch the Hollywood player with perfect tan, great hair and aviator shades.

It’s also part of Mr. Dixon’s job to remain unruffled — he is a professional troubleshooter for his clients who include the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, two of network television’s most prominent late night presenters.

Somewhere near the end of his latest book, Losing The News, Alex Jones offers up this unpleasant prospect:

“My nightmare scenario is one of bankrupt newspapers, news by press release that is thinly disguised advocacy, scattered and ineffectual bands of former journalists and sincere amateurs whose work is left in obscurity, and a small cadre of high priced newsletters that serve as an intelligence service for the rich and powerful.”

There are several deaths in House of Bones, Victoria Campbell’s raw, personal documentary about a final summer at her grand family home, tucked snugly into the old Bostonian world of West Chop.

There’s the house itself, the grand dame, with its nine bedrooms, five clawfoot bathtubs and wide veranda from which pre-lunch sherries were sipped in the West Chop Club heyday.

In the film’s final frames it is shown gutted to its skeleton by new owners, its garden stamped out in favor of the beginnings of a garage.

Late blight: the first part of the name given to the vicious plant disease that affects tomatoes and potatoes is somewhat misleading, at least this year.

Evidence of the fungus has never arrived so early in the season, nor has it ever been so widespread in the United States as it is now, according to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst vegetable program.

And Vineyard farmers, especially organic farmers, are on high alert.