March 28, 2024 / by 

 

The Stealing Wars: What’s Good for Gawker Is Good for WaPo’s Slate

While a number of bloggers think Ian Shapira is a big baby, I think he’s got a point. He shows how Gawker took a story he worked eight hours on and–with 30 to 60 minutes of work–used much of his story for a post.

Sharpira’s got a point for two reasons. First, the Gawker post in question practiced god-awful linking etiquette–taking big chunks of Shapria’s story and only at the end posting a link to the WaPo. And it didn’t add much to the story. Gawker did do what it does best–wrapping the appropriate layer of snark around the abursdities or the world otherwise presented as serious. But it did use a whole lot of Shapira’s interview in the process.

But what Shapira is complaining–rightly–about is that Gawker, a creature of the internet world, did not use good etiquette according to the internet world’s rules. Curiously, though, while he did note that bloggers, too, make news,

And that wild world is killing real reporting — the kind of work practiced not just by newspapers but by nonprofits, some blogs and other news outlets.

… He didn’t acknowledge that the WaPo at times does not itself always credit those it steals stories from (not even after Nick Denton pointed out that even when newspapers lift Gawker’s stories and credit them, they never give hot links). In other words, this bad etiquette thing is a two-way street, and newspapers have their own share of bad etiquette. (Incidentally, Eric Lieberman, WaPo’s General Counsel quoted in the story, admitted to me several years ago that his office followed FDL’s liveblog religiously during the Scooter Libby trial, and not the work of the three WaPo reporters also reporting full time from the court house. We didn’t get paid for prepping WaPo to represent its five reporters testifying at the trial. But that’s because FDL hadn’t figured out how to monetize the best coverage from the trial. But that’s sort of the point, isn’t it–what comes around goes around?) 

But Shapira absolutely does not make the case when he glibly says Gawker is hurting the WaPo, when his evidence actually shows it is possible to make money online, but that for some reason WaPo can’t monetize the links others give it.

Even if I owe Nolan for a significant uptick in traffic, are those extra eyeballs helping The Post’s bottom line?

More readers are better than fewer, of course. But those referring links — while essential to our current business model — aren’t doing much, ultimately, to stop our potential slide into layoffs and further contraction. Worse, some media experts believe that Gawker and its ilk, with their relatively low overhead, might be depressing online ad revenue across the board. That makes it harder for news-gathering operations to recoup their expenses.

The Post just completed its fourth round of buyouts since 2003; and although the company reported on Friday that it had returned to profitability in the second quarter, the newspaper division, which is pretty much us, continues losing money. Standard & Poor’s expects that the company’s gross earnings will drop by 30 percent this year. Gawker Media, on the other hand, reported last week that its revenues in the first two quarters of 2009 were up 45 percent from the first two quarters of last year.

There are a number of things that contribute to the difference: As I said, Gawker treats things that should be treated with snark with snark, whereas WaPo all too often refuses to piss in the Village. WaPo has five levels of so-called fact checkers and editors who–often as not–contribute nothing to the quality of the work. WaPo is apt to send three reporters out on a story that might merit one. WaPo wastes money producing videos no one finds funny so it can extend the focus on trivia rather than news (note to WaPo: this is not what I meant by pissing in the Village!). WaPo has a nice big building in downtown DC.

There are a lot of reasons why WaPo’s newspaper is losing revenue while Gawker is increasing revenue, and Gawker’s use of others’ content is just one factor in it. The other factors sure would make an interesting discussion, but Shapira doesn’t seem interested in having it.

But the most amusing part of Shapira’s column is this part:

Gawker was the second-biggest referrer of visitors to my story online. (No. 1 was the "Today’s Papers" feature on Slate, which is owned by The Post.) 

Here’s the original work Slate wrapped around its limited quote from Shapira’s story:

Feel like getting mad this morning? Then head on over to the WP‘s Style page to once again see how there’s never a shortage of people finding, um, creative ways to make money. And people gullible enough to hand over their hard-earned cash.

Totally fair use, good etiquette–proof the WaPo Corporation can exercise good internet etiquette when it puts its mind to it. What’s amusing, though, is that (by my count) 756 words out of 1136 in that column derive from other newspapers: NYT, LAT, WSJ, and USA Today. Surely, Daniel Politi, who wrote the column, spent only 30 minutes or so per source appropriating the work of each of the other reporters, just as Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan did. And yet there Slate-owned-by-the-WaPo is, doing precisely what Shapira complains Gawker is doing, placing ads right next to content it appropriated from other reporters: A ginormous Economist ad and what appears to be an ad for an ABC station.

Shapira has a point about this particular instance of Gawker’s abuse of etiquette. But he misses all the ways that this information economy is a multiple-directional exchange, one the WaPo is as happy to engage in as Gawker.

Update: Gender corrected! Thanks to Civilibertarian for setting me straight. And apologies to Shapira.


Marcy On MSNBC To Explain Secret Program Background

ATTENTION all Wheelhouse and FDL members, Ms. Marcy Wheeler will be on MSNBC TeeVee with David Shuster during the 3:00-4:00 pm Eastern time hour. She is at the studio now and will be helping to explain details behind the much discussed "secret program". For more background, see these recent posts here and, to a lesser extent, here.

Watch along with us and comment away! I will graft in the video when it is available.


Froomkin Hired by HuffPo

wapo_quantcasttrendcomparison_20jun09.jpg

So the WaPo wanted to silence Dan Froomkin. And instead, their stupid decision has led to Dan Froomkin getting hired by an outlet with greater online circulation than them.

From Glenn Greenwald:

In yet another sign of how online media outlets are strengthening as their older establishment predecessors are struggling to survive, The Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin to be its Washington Bureau Chief and regular columnist/blogger.  Froomkin will oversee a staff of four reporters and an Assistant Editor, guide The Huffington Post’s Washington reporting, and write at least two posts per week to be featured on its main page and Politics page.  I learned last night of the hiring and spoke to both Arianna Huffington and Froomkin this morning.

[snip]

Huffington says that it is Froomkin’s views on the media that, for her, is his primary appeal.  The key to vibrant, successful journalism, she said, is "getting away from the notion that truth is found by splitting the difference between the two sides, that there is always truth to both sides."  Huffington argues that establishment journalism is failing due to "the idea that good journalism is about presenting both side without a voice — without any passion."  The outlets that continue to adhere to that "obsolete" model "are paying a price."  Froomkin — who has written extensively about how passion-free, "both-sides-are-right" journalism is the primary affliction of the profession — echoes that view:  "The key challenge is to present an alternative to the ‘splitting the difference’ culture that has infested traditional media."  

I guess Arianna has none of the fears of criticism that the WaPo has–and knows how to bring in the page views.

Congrats to both the HuffPo and to Froomkin. 


Froomkin and Rosen on Accountability Journalism

Personal Democracy Forum ended up being perfectly timed to get the newly de-WaPoed Dan Froomkin together with Jay Rosen to talk about accountability journalism. And since we’ve been harping this story, I thought I’d do a real liveblog. With David Corn in the room and Froomkin around, it feels like old times!!

Jay: Why we’re here, then some questions for 25 minutes. Froomkin was WH Watch for WP.com. Circumstances of departure subject of controversy in blogosphere and newsosphere. The Old Guard won at the WaPo. The print guys. The people from the WaPo newspaper, Political reporters on national staff. When Dan came on WaPo.com, run by Brady. Post lived by divided sovereignty. People worked for website, people worked for newspaper.  In my view, served Post well, bc Brady didn’t need permission to put comments on stories, put feature on post on who was blogging story. Now, different era.

Jay: Why no longer under contract.

Froomkin: Some of you represent some of the people who responded with outpouring at my departure. Jay mostly right. Specifics are least interesting part of the story. What is interesting is it has elements of morality play. They told me not working any more. Traffic down. Down compared to what? During last year or two, column most popular feature on website. It was down from that, but still pretty good. Switch from column format to blog format, readers were furious. Bush Obama, different presence, different themes. Some disagreements about format and content. Not exciting with possible exception of pressure to stop doing media criticism. I’ve always felt media criticism integral part of what I was doing. For me to not talk about coverage of White House. Money issue. As a contractor I was a particularly easy line item to scratch out.

Dan: None would have happened or mattered if WaPo thought it had value. What explains delta between readers who thought it was valuable and WaPo who thought it didn’t. I was contractor. Little contact with Post institutionally. When Debbie HOwell thing happened, I only found out an hour and half before deadline. Tensions Jay and I have been writing about. 

Jay: Last column, wrote, when I look back, I think of the lies. But lies not a theme of coverage of Bush years. Hard to get reporters in WH press corps to talk about lies. Why so hard to register lies?

Dan:  [nods to Corn’s Lies of George Bush] TradMed so averse to that word. Can’t call someone a liar unless you know intention to deceive. Unless you have proof, editors will take it out. My wife, federal prosecutor, laughs that our standard of proof was a confession. So obvious that no one can argue with is not the standard of evidence in newsroom. Saw this firsthand and the Deborah Howell incident. Fervor in newsroom to not take sides, to not appear to have taken sides. Triangulation. Take a position in the middle. IRE Convention. Reminds me a lot of people care about accountability. Choice for keynote: Downie and Woodward. [someone laughs] Downie not that weird, Post has done some extraordinary investigative journalist. Len chief priest of impartial center. That’s the Holy Grail. 

Jay: Overwhelming agenda to stay in middle, why is that? Blogosphere says: cocktail weenies and access.

Dan: Any beat reporter has to do source maintenance. Access journalism. Journalists see themselves as part of establishment. Want to preserve that. [smoking jackets] Lots don’t do those things. Pincus says it’s a myth to say you’ll be cut off. [Audience member interrupts to ask] What’s the point of having access who lie to you. I wasn’t interested in access. A lot of people smarter better journalists than I, why didn’t they call it. In the Bush years, terrible tradeoff. We should have rules that if a source goes on background and lies, you burn them.

Jay: Innocence agenda in the press, you have to advertise that you’re not on one side or another.

Dan: Why?

Jay: Demand for objectivity. In press coverage of Froomkin kiss-off, City said, turns on everything but ideology. Ombud said not about ideology. I say firing was political act that could not take place until conditions were such that it could be claimed that it was not ideological. What is the actual ideology of the Washington press corps.

Dan: I don’t know. Sociology of press corps. I was part of filthy hippy blogger world according to them. I don’t think I told him, I don’t think ideology had a role. I don’t think Krauthammer had me fired. Hard to look at in vacuum of what has happened on ed board. What a lot of people were saying, NeoCon turn of ed board. I had anti-NeoCon position.

Jay: Two more questions. Is it possible to reinvent WH press corps? Or junk it? 

Dan: Took part in documentary by IFC. They came down, goal of hatchet job of WH press corps, grew to like them. Said, They’re trying their best. Made out of terrific people. THey work hard, under hard conditions. You don’t have to junk the system. Free the people from strictures.  Corn telling the story of covering RNC in 2004, in same bar with a lot of Post reporters and editors. He said he overheard them talking about what a bunch of crap speech was, not credible. So David went to bed, curious to see how much appeared in paper. None of it appeared in paper. THey weren’t entirely wrong when they said I wasn’t qualified to write about WH. They know a lot. Corporate structure ruin beat reporters. What you’re seeing is incredible growth of people who speak passionately. Newsrooms could do better than anybody.

Jay: Safety first terrible principle for journalism. Especially in era of escalating danger in govt. Nick Denton, founder of Gawker, makes this very point, he noticed as a journalist, far more compelling when you talk them then when you read them the next day. THomas Boswell,covered baseball, because he didn’t have to hold back.

Dan: Fox more authentic. They don’t hold back. 

Jay: Transparency, more information coming from parts of the govt. Assessment of transparency? What’s it gonna take for professional journalism to convert transparency to acccountability.

Dan: Parts spectacular. Absolute floored by amount of info that will be out there. Dazzled. Beth Novack doing astonishing work with open govt. Baking it into system, if the next guy doesn’t feel this way, tough. On the other hand, the closer you get to the oval, national security issues. Obama’s participation in coverup of Bush years. Surprisingly poor. Just on transparency w/in WH, not at all what we expected, at least not yet. Robert Gibbs doesn’t really explain what’s happening to Press corps, reminiscent of what we saw in Bush years. How many WH allowed to speak to press on the record. Press hasn’t been hounding them on this. THere needs to be downside to secrecy. Press hasn’t made them suffer.

Jay: Bushies, went into their press releations with hypothesis that if they rolled press out of frame, there wouldn’t be penalty. Wanted to test whether political penalty for dissing the press.

Dan: Obama dynamic, he’s covered like a celebrity, press corps, the big guys, Brian Williams, want to watch him order a burger, they don’t care if he doesn’t tell them how he makes decisions about the bank bailout. Still no understanding of why it is that Obama trusts Larry Summers. 

Q: Obsession about neutrality. How to reconcile that position with ed page getting righter and righter. Weren’t you there to balance them?

Dan: Chinese wall between ed page and reporters. I got kicked off the news page, but not opinionated enough. People ask what page I’d be on, but there wouldn’t be one.

Q: Couldn’t trust web journalists because they’d be looking at traffic numbers. My jaw dropped that one reason fired. Are there other people dropping people on traffic numbers?

Dan: I cannot answer it. To be honest, I think that newspaper websites not sensitive enough to traffic, realizing what people are reading. Not reacting reflexively. Considering that it’s a reflection of what we’re interested in. Could put up naughty pictures on the webspost. Didn’t want to promote it on home page, already getting traffic. HuffPo and Drudge, how you respond to what readers interested in (not perfect example).

Q: Attempt to cover up Bush’s interrogation tactics. But photos, would put American photos in danger. NYT decision not to report on journalist not to report on Rhode taken hostage.

Dan: I’m an absolutist. Never appropriate to not release info bc of information. You’re on a slippery slope to not telling people about blowing up house with 60 women and children in Afghanistan, especially about things that are embarrassing. Obama once said not keep secrets that are embarrassing, but he’s got an asterisk, "unless they’re really really embarrassing." Photos would have shown result that abuse was systemic. Not a national interest in knowing about Rhode.

Q: Torture issues. To what extent fearful of Cheney’s gaming this?

Dan: An element? They’re going to overcompensate so they can’t be accused of being slack. Whole Obama has turned out to be corrective to Bush years. All these issues unresolved or made worse by Bush, I don’t understand why this part of it is somehow different. 

Q: What lessons have you learned that you could follow if you could own your own newspaper.

Dan: Enormous value in beat reporters, even after X rounds of layoffs. You need to let journalists do their job. What editors can do–you don’t want journalists, I never espoused partisan positions. Having them call truth as they see it. Tremendously qualified to do that.

Jay: Collaborating with networks of readers who also know lots of things?

Dan: Wave of future. A beat reporter can look on the center of community of people and that community creates news.

Jay: Every beat should be thousand people.

Q: You didn’t fit into print paper. Will the beat reporters work out of their bedroom?

Dan: I was a lot more confident before my contract wasn’t extended. Beat reporters in that role, and others from outside the traditional media.

Q: Perfect center.  What will break them out of that?

Dan: I trace origin to newspaper monopolies. Over time they realize if they don’t offend anyone, they can maximize their market. Info climate vastly different now. Not a competitive model.  IF Stone, speak passionately to truth, create community around trusted voice. As to blogs, one would have hoped that, blogs playing important role in holding media accountable. Response has been hardening of center: "See I get criticized from both sides, I’m doing it right!"

Jay: They had the way to start getting out of it. They had Dan.  They were starting to change their model. Started from coverage. An insitution changing. 

Dan: Heartbreaking, people reading Post 20-30 years. Wanted more of what I was doing. I thought that was what Post should be doing. 

Jay: Would have waited to see if hold Obama accountable. 

Q: Involved in much smaller project with Plain Dealer. Four bloggers. Come and write and paid minimal amount of money. Two of four had made contributions could have been covering. Whole thing fell apart. Most people thought fear factor. What controlled atmosphere. What is the source of fear? It can’t just be money or concept of journalism. What is driving these decision-makers to turn your work away or turn readers want away?

Dan: If you have raised notion of impartial center, and that’s how you define yourself, risk of losing who you are. Lost touch of value you do have. 

Jay: Newsroom, about devoicing reporters. If you transform that where reporters have indiv relationships with readers, managers have to give up ton of control. 

Dan: And scary, bc what if someone walks away with brand?

Jay: Prof journalists get moral rightness by not being bloggers, by not being believer. Biggest term of contempt than "true believer."

Dan: Liberal is bad too.

Jay: So would be evangelical. Fear of giving up what you’ve known for so long. 

Dan: Principles that journalists hold dear. Accountability, fair play. Nothing wrong with journalists holding those values on sleeve.

Q: Do you vote?

Jay: Downie famous for not voting.

Dan: Sense that if you have a belief then you can no longer be fair. Reporters have beliefs and values, key is to not let their values affect news gathering. Len’s wanted people to disenfranchise themselves.

Jay: Such a test to go into a voting booth and look at choices citizens have, he could compare his coverage to what he found in ballot box. Very convinced of that. 

Q: Best thing to have a thousand people talking about it. What do you do in WH or smaller group where there’s a smaller group, where there’s a large group of people trying to manipulate media.

Jay: Has to be resisted.

Dan: Great place where trad journalists can fight back, can say, "we’re being manipulated." Ask the White House, no followup. Greatest tragedy, sitdown with President, and rather than demanding an answer to first question, used it like press conference. There are ways we can demand accountability. 

Q: Theme has come up is power of access. Citizen journalism, citizen doesn’t have same access. What role will access continue to play?

Dan: With that power comes great responsibility. I’m still a big fan of people in trad media, most agree with everything I’ve been saying.

Jay: When we have citizen journalists digging through that data, questions are going to come up, journalists are empowered to ask those questions.


Hayden Throwing Mudd at Bloggers

Jeff Stein chronicles former CIA columnist Stephen Lee’s woes with the CIA’s pre-publication process.

Stephen Lee, a former CIA operations manager who blogs for The Washington Examiner, suspects the spy agency’s censors are trying to sabotage his new career.

Lee recently launched the critical "Examiner Spy" column for the Examiner newspaper chain, which has a D.C. daily edition.  He also pens a biting cartoon for his own Web site, NationalSecurityDrone.com, under the name Frank Naif."

I believe I am being subjected to a campaign of low-level harrassment," Lee said Wednesday.

Most interesting, though, Stein describes the problems Lee had getting a piece blaming Michael Hayden–rather than the bloggers that Hayden himself blamed–for the withdrawal of Phil Mudd’s nomination to the top DHS intelligence post.

The first was a critical piece on former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, acidly headlined, "CIA ex-chief Hayden blames bloggers for damage caused by his policies."

Lee says he submitted the piece for clearance on Friday, June 19. The weekend passed. Finally, at mid-morning on Tuesday, June 23, he learned the PRB had "lost" it.

He resubmitted the piece, and around 4 p.m. Tuesday, he got an answer: It was cleared.

 Here’s some of what the CIA tried to "lose."

Ex CIA chief Michael Hayden’s opinion piece in the Washington Post on Friday, 19 June 2009, decried how “today’s atmosphere” of mistrust in Washington caused former senior CIA analyst Phil Mudd to withdraw his nomination as Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence. 

Predictably, Hayden did not take responsibility for his own role in “today’s atmosphere”—in particular Hayden’s own policies of excessive secrecy and shirking command responsibility for specific programs and policy on his watch. 

Hayden nonetheless excoriated “the blogosphere” and chicken-hearted congressional aides for hyping up Mudd’s association with discredited torture and detention practices. 

[snip] 

I count myself as one of those intelligence officers who has reason for pause about future service inside US intelligence. But it’s not cheeto-eating bloggers or opportunistic congressional staffers that I fear.  

[snip] 

Mudd was a CIA analyst, and probably was aware of the torture and detention programs.  But he was almost certainly not instrumentally involved in managing or participating in actual torture or extra-judicial detentions. Unfortunately, journalists, bloggers, congressional staffers, and ordinary Americans (all belittled as “internal threats” by Hayden in his Post essay) are not able to precisely discern Mudd’s involvement, if any, with that secret black box of terrorist detention and torture. Even though Americans are entitled to have a say in what CIA is doing in the Republic’s name, Hayden and other CIA directors’ disdain for transparency kept Mudd’s record out of view.

Gosh, are you telling me the former top spook is hiding beind attacks on us cheeto-eating Yirgacheffe-sipping bloggers?


They Planted a Gay Whore in His News Conferences!!!

picture-111.pngI’m going to get to what it means that the AP–purportedly the most neutral source of "news" out there–is harping on the Nico Pitney question. But first, check out what this "news" entity claims in paragraph nine of their story–presumably to meet the AP’s requirement for false equivalency.

Grumblings about favored reporters are not unique to the Obama White House. There were suspicions — never proved — that President George W. Bush’s press operations often planted friendly questions in his news conferences.

Never proved?!?!

They not only planted friendly questions in their news conferences, they brought in their very own gay prostitute to ask those questions. Not to mention paying people like Armstrong Williams to push their policies and flying their favorite Generals around so they’d pitch the Administration line on teevee.

But in the false equivalency moral universe of the AP, allowing a reporter who has announced he’s going to solicit questions from Iranians directly to pose one of those questions is the big scandal.

White House officials phoned a blogger from a popular left-leaning Web site on Monday evening to tell him that President Barack Obama had been impressed with his online reporting about Iran. Could the writer pass along a question from an Iranian during the president’s news conference on Tuesday?

Of course. The next day, The Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney got a prime location in the White House Briefing Room and was the second reporter Obama picked for a question.

And so the supposedly hyper-neutral arbiter of what is news joins the pout-rage that the journalist doing the best work on a story gets to pose a question on that topic.

It’s bad enough that Fox and Politico are–predictably–bitching about this. For the AP to consider this "news" at all just shows how far gone the press is in protecting their privilege over embracing the spirit of journalism. Once again, the White House took this question because:

  1. Nico’s reporting and the role of Twitter in the Iranian crisis are signature moments showing how technology can foster democracy (which is pretty much Obama’s schtick, anyway)
  2. That same technology offered average people on the other side of the world–the people actually involved in this historic event–a way to pose the President of the United States a question about their actions

And you know what? Those average people actually engaged in history asked one of the toughest questions of the press conference!

If the AP cared any more about democracy and reporting and free speech, the lede of the story would be: "President Obama answers historic question from democracy activists in Iran and in doing so embodies the principles of democracy."

But instead, we get still more pout-rage from a dying press.


Politico: “Oh Noes! The Best Reporter on a Subject Got Called on!!!”

Michael Calderone is way out of line with his article bitching that Nico Pitney got called on at Obama’s press conference today.

In what appeared to be a coordinated exchange, President Obama called on the Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney near the start of his press conference and requested a question directly about Iran.

“Nico, I know you and all across the Internet, we’ve been seeing a lot of reports coming out of Iran,” Obama said, addressing Pitney. “I know there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?”

Pitney, as if ignoring what Obama had just said, said: “I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian.”

[snip]

According to POLITICO’s Carol Lee, The Huffington Post reporter was brought out of lower press by deputy press secretary Josh Earnest and placed just inside the barricade for reporters a few minutes before the start of the press conference.

When I heard, before the presser, that Nico was hoping to pose a question from an Iranian, I knew some beltway idiot would bitch if the HuffPo got a question. I just thought the bitching would come from someone with a more consistent record of being a complete idiot than Calderone.

As to Calderone’s bitching, it’s out of line for several reasons. First, if I knew that Nico was hoping to ask a question from an Iranian, then chances are the people paid to know these things at the White House knew. What better tribute to democracy and free speech could the White House make than to allow this question to be posed to the President?

And, after all, one primary focus of the presser was Iran. There are few who would argue but that Nico’s reporting–his tireless compilation of news coming in from both traditional and citizen media–has been far and away the best minute-to-minute news on the Iranian crisis (to take nothing away from the people offering superb commentary and expertise, which I consider something different). Maybe the Politico’s media reporter has missed it, but Nico’s doing something pretty historic with his reporting on Iran. So even assuming the White House isn’t as up-to-speed as I am, how hard do you think it would have been for them to guess that Nico, who has been living and breathing the Iranian crisis since it started, would ask a question about Iran?

I mean, c’mon. To try to turn this into a scandal is to assume that both the White House and Politico itself are a lot stupider than I think they are.

Update: Calderone has updated his post–and, in fact, the folks paid to know this stuff at the White House did know this stuff!!

Deputy press secretary Bill Burton responds: "We did reach out to him prior to press conference to tell him that we had been paying attention to what he had been doing on Iran and there was a chance that he’d be called on. And, he ended up asking the toughest question that the President took on Iran. In the absence of an Iranian press corps in Washington, it was an innovative way to get a question directly from an Iranian."

Which means Calderone’s pout-rage amounts to a journalist complaining about free speech and those in power getting asked tough questions.


The New Journalism

Sometimes tectonic shifts are underfoot and society fails to recognize the acts and effects. Such is the case with journalism and its daily outlets, newspapers and television. Newspapers are dying left and right, those that are not are struggling to stay alive and relevant. The most recent glaring example is the Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe has been published for over 137 years and, over that period, became one of the grand ladies of the news press. You would think that the purchase of, and partnership with, the Globe in 1993 by the New York Times would place the Globe in a position of strength in even these perilous times. Not so. From Eugene Robinson in today’s Washington Post:

Despite the whole Red Sox vs. Yankees thing, employees of the Boston Globe were mostly relieved in 1993 when the paper was bought by the New York Times Co. for an astounding $1.1 billion. If the era of local family ownership had to end, nestling beneath the wing of one of the world’s great newspapers seemed the best alternative. And if the Times was willing to pay so much, it must have been serious about putting quality ahead of the bottom line.

That was then. Now, after several rounds of painful cutbacks and layoffs at the Globe, the Times is squeezing a further $20 million in savings from the Boston newspaper’s unions — and threatening to shut down the paper if the demand is not fully met. The economics of our industry are cruel and remorseless, but still it’s alarming to witness what looks like an act of cannibalism.

To be fair, the Globe is reportedly on pace to lose about $85 million this year. The New York Times Co. is hardly in a position to swallow a loss of that magnitude, given that the company’s flagship newspaper is waging its own fight against a rising tide of red ink.

So that is the background for the discussion I want to have. My proposition is that it is not just the financial status of the major newspapers in decline, it is also, and even more significantly, the quality of content. Quite frankly, the traditional press has become deficient in both content and quality. I am not sure that it has ever been so apparent as in the last two to three weeks on the issue of the complicity of the United States government in a demented torture regime.

We started this discussion in earnest a little over two weeks ago when Marcy Wheeler scooped the world by revealing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month and Abu-Zubaydah 83 times. Marcy didn’t get handed the information by a governmental press flack and she didn’t print it as a result of a leak from some coddled and conflicted secret source with an agenda. Nope, she did it the old fashioned way, she earned it by doing the tedious grunt work of reading the memos and documents. The very work the traditional press shirked. Perhaps they couldn’t fit it in between their martinis and cocktail weenies.

Marcy’s scoop out in front of the rest of the media world was not isolated; she did it again yesterday in relation to John Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee, along with Jerry Nadler, Howard Berman and Bill Delahunt writing to the National Archives to demand Zelikow’s dissenting memoranda and related material. In fact, the only two news sources even close to Emptywheel on the story were Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent and Zach Roth at TPM Muckraker, two other internet based sources. And Emptywheel not only reported the letter and contents, she was spot on with the legal analysis of what it really meant:

That’s because if the memo isn’t there, then not only is it suggestive of criminal intent, but it also violates the Presidential Records Act.

That is precisely right, and precisely what wasn’t reported by our old friends the traditional press, who were late on the story and lame on the analysis. The first main paper to hit the story, the Washington Post, finally got something up on their website last night and datelined for today, May 5. The Post came in long after Ms. Wheeler had posted, and published an article containing no cogent analysis and rehashed from months ago tidbits that the coming OPR report may make discipinary referrals for Yoo and Bybee. Thanks for nothing WaPo, we already knew that. This is the same sugar coated type of nothing I commented on in relation to the secret source love poem Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane wrote Sunday to assist the Condi Rice/Porter Goss rehabilitation tour:

I am a little disturbed by the sanitary descriptions and deference Mazzetti gives it even now. The stories of “the dispute and concern” in the Bush administration are left standing as some kind of reasonable discourse. It wasn’t. It was the discussion of a group of children that murdered the neighbor’s dog for kicks and didn’t want to admit it. It should be treated as what it is, not sugar coated and given the patina of reasonable discourse.

The reporters have become the village they were designed to report on. Self puffed on their own importance and place. The working press is a critical part of society and a necessary hedge on government. The fourth estate is important; they better wake up and get their butt in gear, because right now they are just getting it kicked.

So the new paradigm involves dedicated and dogged blogger journalists competing head to head with the biggest, best and brightest of the traditional press. It is not an unusual occurrence when a blogger like Marcy Wheeler takes the old newsers to the cleaners, it is now such an everyday event that we no longer even notice. Pretty soon they will even be winning the Pulitzers and other lofty prizes of journalism, and rightly so.

All of the foregoing having been said, I want to remind people of the effort we have underway to gear up the work, effectiveness and exposure of Marcy Wheeler. Two weeks ago, Jane Hamsher started the Organic Blogging Project to do just that. The folks that read here have been nothing short of remarkable in their response, having raised in excess of $64,000 to date. But I want to renew the call to action at this point and make sure that everybody knows this is not just another standard (even if laudable) "pledge week" effort to help pitch in for a blogger. This effort has as its goal to create a new working investigative dynamic to pick up where the normal pros have dropped off.

Marcy Wheeler, Emptywheel and Firedoglake are The New Journalism. Support the future and start something new. This is an opportunity to invest in the startup and be a part of something transformational. As Muhammed Ali would say, shock the world!

Get in on the action here.


RIP Tanta

Tanta was an example of what is best about the blogosphere: someone with real expertise–expertise (on mortgage finance) that at one point seemed obscure, until it became utterly critical to all of our lives–who contributed pseudonymously and humorously to the great enlightening conversation we conduct in the blogosphere.

Tanta passed away this morning of ovarian cancer.

Calculated Risk has a long post reflecting on her contributions. Here’s my favorite paragraph:

Tanta liked to ferret out the details. She was inquisitive and had a passion for getting the story right. Sometimes she wouldn’t post for a few days, not because she wasn’t feeling well, but because she was reading through volumes of court rulings, or industry data, to get the facts correct. She respected her readers, and people noticed.

I never met Tanta in person, though I remember the joy I had one day when I mentioned her in a post and she emailed me and I discovered she was reading me and I was reading her. It so happens that that exchange came about because she was kicking the NYT’s ass on their inadequate coverage of the mortgage crisis. 

Today, the NYT honored her with an obituary.

My condolences to her family and loved ones. I am thankful that she shared her expertise at a time when we were all so frantically trying to learn about it.


The YouTube Nielsens

When I discovered that CBS had put out an embeddable clip of the exchange they used for the teaser advertising yesterday’s installment of the Couric-Palin comedy hour (effectively pre-empting their own broadcast), I wrote this in an email:

I actually wonder if they haven’t gotten as much traffic as they expected.

AFAIK, they treated today’s clip differently than they did the last ones–they made the clip available for embed at the same time as they released the teaser of that clip (which is the one I put up on a post).

In other words, I suspect that they didn’t get the traffic they wanted, because people were watching the fun bits on YouTube the next day. So they pre-empted those YouTubes and have the embed up with two ads.

I guess the proper word is "viewership"–meaning I suspected that CBS’s ratings for their Couric-Palin interviews weren’t all that great.

Turns out I was right.

Katie Couric’s newsmaking interviews with the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, last week had only a slight impact on the ratings for her CBS newscast. But if the network could have added up all the other viewers the interviews (and its spoof) racked up, on places like CNN, YouTube and “Saturday Night Live,” Ms. Couric would surely have been more seen and talked about than in any week since she began her tenure as anchor.

Ms. Couric received a rush of attention for the two interviews, in which Ms. Palin, governor of Alaska, spoke haltingly on, among other topics, her state’s “narrow maritime border” with Russia. Clips turned up across the spectrum of television and Web sites.

The first interview last Wednesday, for example, has been viewed more than 1.4 million times on YouTube, while the parody of the interview on “SNL” was streamed more than 4 million times on NBC.com, viewed in full more than 600,000 times on YouTube and in shorter clips many more hundreds of thousands of times.

Still, the “CBS Evening News” gained only about 10 percent in audience from the previous week — and it was actually down from the same week the year before. The newscast averaged just under 6 million viewers for the week, up from 5.44 million the previous week. A year ago Ms. Couric’s program drew about 6.2 million viewers. (CBS was also a distant third last week behind ABC, which won with 8.07 million viewers, and NBC, with 7.98 million.)

The CBS newscast didn’t even record its highest audience totals last Wednesday and Thursday, when the interviews were broadcast. Monday was the network’s best-rated night of the week.

Mind you, I’m not sure what to make of this data. The CBS executives interviewed in the article seem happy with the attention anyway, because it has boosted Couric’s brand. (Note to all women reporters who have credibility problems tied to the impression you’re a lightweight: interview Sarah Palin while you still can, because she will, by comparison, make you look like a fricking genius.)

And obviously, CBS tried to adjust to this new reality. After having lost ad revenue for last week’s interviews, they finally figured out they should release their own embeddable videos, so they can attach an ad before and after the clip, though a number of blogs simply made a new YouTube from that clip by stripping out the ads. I expect we’ll see more of the early release of content, with some way to prevent people from stripping the ads.

Still, I find the phenomenon an important milestone. One of the most important events of the campaign, thus far–Palin’s disastrous performance on CBS–has happened in the dispersed world of YouTube rather than on the broadcast network that created that event. That will have a range of effects, I suspect, not least in giving broadcasters an incentive to create content that bloggers will respond to. But what other effects it will have, I’m not sure.

Copyright © 2024 emptywheel. All rights reserved.
Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/blogs-internet-and-new-media/page/12/