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06 Sep 2010 23:46

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Politics: Why our boy Adam Penenberg is a man amongst journalists

  • 1998Penenberg catches Stephen Glass, then a hotshot at The New Republic, fabricating a story. He legitimizes online journalism in the process.
  • 2003Penenberg’s unprecedented catch gets new appreciation in the wake of the Jayson Blair saga. Steve Zahn plays him in the excellent movie about Glass.
  • 2010 Frustrated that nobody is covering it, Penenberg takes to Twitter and tweets about a $131 million judgment against Ford. He’s hailed as an innovator again. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 Sep 2010 11:28

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Biz: The Washington Times, the victim of a family disagreement?

  • one day, the money stopped flowing. The Washington Times, the once-prominent conservative newspaper funded by the Unification Church, lost a key money flow one week in July 2009, leading to massive layoffs and a precipitous decline of the paper. It turns out that it was caught in the middle of a huge family struggle between its owners, the Moonies. Some numbers:
  • $2billion lost by the Moonie-run paper since it was founded
  • 87,000 the newspaper’s already-declining circulation two years ago
  • 40,000 the newspaper’s circulation now; it’s had major cutbacks of late
  • » The family strife: The Washington Times is at the center of a power struggle between the family of Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who’s 89 years old and isn’t long for this world. Other Moon-run businesses aren’t doing so hot either. Moon’s son, Preston, who isn’t as doggedly conservative as his dad was (he was, for example, against the Iraq War), apparently steered the paper in a direction one of his brothers didn’t like, causing the church’s money to stop flowing to the paper. They couldn’t pay key bills, including those for internet access and staffer health insurance. Now the paper may return to into the senior Moon’s hands in a $1-plus-debt buyback, but the final result isn’t so clear. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Aug 2010 11:25

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U.S.: CNN posts vaguest story in the history of journalism

  • A bunch of people were booted off a flight after “a comment” was made. What was the comment? Who said it? And why was it alarming enough that they had to be booted off a flight at Dulles International Airport? Why is this story the most read item on CNN.com right now? There’s like no information here and it says basically nothing at all. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Aug 2010 12:30

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Culture: Could Michael Eisner bring some Disney magic to Tribune Corp.?

  • Why he’s a good choiceRemember, this is the company owned by Sam Zell, who immediately ran it into bankruptcy after buying it and came up with a series of terrible business decisions – dramatic redesigns followed by dramatic layoffs. Hard to be much worse than that.

    Why he’s a terrible choiceThis. Is. The. Guy. Who. Nearly. Rebuffed. Pixar. When. They. Were. Disney’s. Biggest. Cash. Cow. That’s probably worse than that. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

23 Jul 2010 23:42

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Politics: Rick Sanchez’s journalistic high horse rings hollow to South Florida

  • One thing you may not know about Rick Sanchez is, before he became the iconic anchor who obsessed over finding interesting tweets, he was a longtime if-it-bleeds-it-leads-style anchor in South Florida, often focusing on the most lurid, ratings-grab stories he could find – which reportedly hit a peak during the overblown Elian Gonzalez era. At least thats how Broward-Palm Beach New Times puts it. So, the irony of him talking about journalistic integrity, as he does in the Fox News-chiding clip above, is a little striking to folks in the Miami area. (Thanks Billy Wachsberger) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

23 Jul 2010 14:00

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U.S.: RIP Daniel Schorr: They don’t build journalists like him anymore

Dude is IN CONGRESS smoking a cigar while at a hearing about whether Nixon tried to give him a job. He worked for both CBS and NPR in his lengthy career. He died today at 93. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Jul 2010 16:15

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Politics: Thanks SEO: Gene Weingarten laments the lost art of headlines

  • Newspapers still have headlines, of course, but they don’t seem to strive for greatness or to risk flopping anymore, because editors know that when the stories arrive on the Web, even the best headlines will be changed to something dull but utilitarian.
  • Washington Post supercolumnist Gene Weingarten • Explaining how newspapers have had to suck the life out of their headlines in pursuit of eyeballs. “Putting well-known names in headlines is considered shrewd, even if creativity suffers,” he writes. Personally, we write our headlines with some focus on SEO, but we’re totally willing to get out of the way of a good joke. One paper that does a good job of mixing SEO and classic headline art is The New York Times, probably because they can afford to. And SEO doesn’t mean you can’t be clever. See the headline Weingarten put on his story: “Gene Weingarten column mentions Lady Gaga.” source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

14 Jul 2010 01:38

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Politics: Columbia University president: Give journalism government backing

  • This system needs to be revised and its resources consolidated and augmented with those of NPR and PBS to create an American World Service that can compete with the BBC and other global broadcasters.
  • Columbia University President Lee Bollinger • Making the argument that journalism needs to find a happy medium between “freedom of the press” and “ability to survive capitalism.” Bollinger admits that the idea makes people uncomfortable, but notes that in the academic field, the most likely counterpart to a potential government-driven press, “there have been strikingly few instances of government abuse.” He even argues that corporate interests may prove even more dangerous than the government. Interesting take. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Jul 2010 21:46

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Politics: A big up to our buddy Charles Apple, and his spiffy new site

  • Dear Daniel Hunt: Sorry we cut off your head. But seriously, folks, we’d like to congratulate our friend Charles Apple, who runs an awesome visual journalism blog, for his move to the American Copy Editors Society‘s site. Apple, a good friend of ours who’s offered tons of advice in the past, recently made a move from the warm confines of his VisualEditors.com home to a new home with ACES. It’s a meeting of the journalistic minds – the word people and the visual people are getting together for the first time ever. Ooh, scary. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

05 Jul 2010 10:37

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Politics: Is ABC blowing a golden opportunity with Jake Tapper?

  • He topped “Meet the Press” in the ratings on Sunday. Months ago, ABC decided to take their political roundtable show, “This Week,” and give it to Christiane Amanpour, a solid international journalist who might be a questionable choice for hosting a national political show. In that time, Jake Tapper, the interim host, has grown ever-more popular thanks to his fresh, social-media-friendly approach to the program. Now, his show, which ends in August, is topping even “Meet the Press” among political shows. Mediaite says they should just give him his own show. We agree. It seems like he could do a lot with it. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink
 
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