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As every reader in Blogland already knows, newspapers and democracy are both at risk in Bush's America.
And there is a war going on besides the one's in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a war for the trust of the American people.
As we finish off the last of the morning coffee over here in Locust Forkland, we have a few thoughts on this war for the hearts and minds...
For starters, the editorial page editor at the Seattle Times got the lead story at the number one online outlet for media news this morning, Jim Romenesko's links section at the Poynter Institute down in sunny Florida.
(BTW: I heard a great joke about Florida on cable this weekend. Can't remember who said it, but looking at the state of Florida on a map, doesn't it look like a giant penis ready to spray all over Cuba? Sorry. Back to the column.)
So anyway, the Seattle Times editorial page editor James Vesely wrote, among other silly and print defensive things in this column: The Handoff: Newspapers in the Digital Age.
"I see Craigslist as a negative-editorial product. Why? Because it claims the profits normally shifted to the newsroom. Without the obligations of journalism, e-commerce becomes the anti-newspaper."
My reply to him in e-mail?
"So get innovative and do it better. The people are not going to save print for that reason."
Then, he says: "Media companies, especially newspapers, are by default nearly the lone agents of the democratic form of government."
My reply:
"Not in my part of the world. They are hand and glove with Bush and the GOP destroying democracy and complicit in trying to turn America into a Christian nation with no separation of church and state. The same is true of local TV news stations, corporate monopolies all.
"You are just being defensive trying to save your job. It’s understandable.
"But so is the public’s antipathy toward your print product. I defend more democracy around here than all the Newhouse papers combined."
Then on another subject designed to save another newspaper, Editor and Publisher editor Greg Mitchell wrote an interesting column the other day about a Columnist War at The New York Times.
"The New York Times Op-Ed page hasn’t been this hot in a long time. Now we are experiencing Columnist Wars, with Bob Herbert this week joining in a rapidly escalating battle between Paul Krugman and David Brooks - largely over an incident involving Ronald Reagan at a local fair over 27 years ago."
The "war" continues today with a missive from Paul Krugman headlined: Republicans and Race.
"Over the past few weeks there have been a number of commentaries about Ronald Reagan’s legacy, specifically about whether he exploited the white backlash against the civil rights movement," Krugman writes. "The controversy unfortunately obscures the larger point, which should be undeniable: the central role of this backlash in the rise of the modern conservative movement. The centrality of race - and, in particular, of the switch of Southern whites from overwhelming support of Democrats to overwhelming support of Republicans - is obvious from voting data."
As my regular readers know, we were against the dumb idea to charge for New York Times columnist's posts online from the outset two years ago, but they created the now defunct Times Select anyway. Since most of our readers would not be able to afford to pay for that service, and even the one's who could afford it were not likely to join in that endeaver, we stopped linking to the Times for the most part.
Now that someone up there in Manhattan has seen the light about the FREE free Web Press, we are willing to reconsider and take them under consideration. Also, an editorial writer there who I know personally has done a great job of writing editorials on the Bush Justice Department's political manipulation of justice, especially in the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
You can follow more on this columnist war from the newly free New York Times Op/Ed section.
All I have to say about it is this. Of course the Republican Party figured out how to use the politics of race to turn the South into a GOP stronghold, just as they used the wedge gay marriage issue in the 2004 election cycle to turn the tide. The very idea that columnist David Brooks would argue with that point just shows it is true what I said about him when he was first hired to replace conservative columnist William Safire. He doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about.
I have written about race and the Republicans many times before. We are glad some of the columnists at the Times have finally figured this out.
I guess with former Times editor and Alabama native Howell Raines gone from the Old Grey Lady, it takes a Princeton economist to point this out in the Internet Age.
Will it rescue the Times and get people reading it online again? We will see...
"Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing."
- Edward Abbey
Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson
Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy for the Democratic Party's nomination for president is doomed before it ever has a real chance of getting started.
Here's why.
Two New York Times columnists made the rounds of television news shows Sunday morning and both pushed Obama's candidacy. That's like the kiss of death these days.
On NBC's "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert, Thomas Friedman and David Brooks both said Obama is the "exciting" new candidate who can really, really rally the country in a bipartisan way.
Friedman has been wrong about so many things I quit reading him three years ago well before I quit reading the rest of the New York Times, so he's not even worth listening to at all.
I've never thought David Brooks was qualified to be a New York Times columnist anyway, so why is anyone on TV listening to him?
The Times had a chance to get it right before the Iraq war, as I've written in the past, because I tried to get them the information about the secret think tank dream plan on the Democratization of Iraq and the Middle East, the play book Rumsfeld and Cheney were working on well before 9/11.
But they didn't listen to me. They listened to Judith Miller, who reported over and over again in acquiescence to the Bush administration that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction and plans to aim them at New York.
Putting all that aside, however, there are two other things neither Freidman nor Brooks know anything about. One is the American South, where Obama couldn't carry a single state simply because of his race. Sorry to say it is still true in the year 2006, but...
And let's say that's not even in play.
Apparently they forgot to read the Washington Post today, which carried this story showing Obama's past dealings with Mafioso Antoin "Tony" Rezko in land deals reminiscent of White Water, which is another reason people in the South won't vote for Hillary either.
Obama On Defensive Over Land Deal
I will bet anyone from the New York Times right now a 12-pack of Yuengling that Obama will not be the next president of the United States. I will bet a six pack he won't be the Democratic Party's nominee. And I'll bet one beer that when all is said and done, he won't even run this time.
That will destroy the entire punditry's argument that Obama and Hillary are the two front runners.
When Edwards makes his announcement in New Orleans and goes onto win the Iowa caucus, remember you heard it here first and that the Locust Fork Journal got it right when all the TV pundits - and the New York Times' highly paid columnists - got it wrong.
Edwards to Announce Run in New Orleans
Then maybe you will understand why Time magazine named us, collectively, the person of the year for 2006. The New York Times didn't know this was coming either, apparently. The Washington Post did have a story about it Saturday night.
Time Magazine Person of the Year? We Who Create Online!
The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species.
"That theory took a serious beating this year," according to Time.
The big story of 2006 was about community and collaboration on a scale "never seen before."
"It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."
The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web.
"It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter . . . it's really a revolution."
"This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It's a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who's out there looking back at them."
Thank you Time magazine for finally being the first big media outlet to recognize this. You are forgiven for stealing my Bush AWOL story.
Now will you listen to me when I try to tell you that the Cumberland Mountains are not part of Appalachia?
Will the New York Times begin to listen? Will the Newhouse newspapers, which control most of the media in Alabama?
Don't hold your breath. Just keep reading the Locust Fork News and Journal.
If you missed the first column on the subject, here's the permalink . . . dot dot dot.
Krystal Ball: Who Looks Presidential For 2008? Presidential Tip Sheet: Early Bet on Edwards
New York Times foreign policy analyst Thomas L. Friedman has finally admitted that his enthusiasm for invading Iraq was misguided, but his limited mea culpa hasn't stopped him from insulting Americans who opposed the war before the killing began.
Now the questions are: Why should Americans listen to an "expert" who got the biggest post-Cold War foreign policy story wrong? And why doesn't Friedman have the decency to resign?
For the full story on why commentators who went along with an unprovoked invasion should share in the blame, go to the independent ConsortiumNews.Com.
New York Times reporter James Risen illustrates in his new book how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, according to the Associated Press.
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration describes secret operations of the Bush administration's war on terrorism. The major revelation in the book, according to the AP, has already been the subject of SOME reporting by the New York Times: The so-called revelation that the National Security Agency eavesdropped on Americans' conversations without obtaining warrants from a special court - at the behest of President George W. Bush.
In October 2002, the U.S intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, according to the book. Quoting extensively from anonymous sources, Risen says the NSA spying program was launched in 2002 after the CIA began to capture high-ranking al-Qaida operatives overseas and took their computers, cell phones and personal phone directories.
Full AP story
But the relevant story doesn't stop there.
Byron Calame, the New York Times public editor, a recruit from the conservative Wall Street Journal, wrote a column on Sunday taking issue with the stony silence on the issue by Times Executive Editor Bill Keller and Publisher Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger Jr.
"For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making," Calame wrote.
Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence
As we have reported here before, as a free-lance reporter for the New York Times national desk out of New Orleans in 2002, I personally tried to tell the New York Times their reporting leading up to the war in Iraq was on the wrong track. They listened to Judith Miller instead, and now the paper's reputation has suffered yet another blow.
One of the things I learned about journalism in the first of four communications programs I have participated in over the past 25 years is that a reputation for accuracy is very important. These days, critics on the right and the left are attacking the credibility of the press like never before.
Of course it seems to be a fact about the world we live in today that everyone is a critic - whether or not they have any qualifications or facts to back up their attacks.
But it seems to me that the managers of major newspapers especially should seek out experienced help on stories such as these rather than hiding behind their office walls in New York and attacking bloggers.
Someone will eventually unearth and publish the truth, whether it is on newsprint or book paper or a Weblog online.
But as George Orwell once said, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
The revolution has already begun . . . whether or not they like it or admit it in New York or Washington.
Twice in the last three years, the New York Times newsroom has suffered the equivalent of a nervous breakdown, and critics say that Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., has managed the latest crisis as poorly as he did the episode involving the fabrications of the reporter Jayson Blair, which led, in 2003, to the firing of Howell Raines, the executive editor from Alabama. These newsroom crises have come when the Times can least afford them - during a period of technological and economic uncertainty that has affected the entire industry. The Times' stock price fell 33.2 percent between December 31, 2004, and October 31, 2005 - 60 percent more than the industry average.
Can Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., save the Times - and himself?
It's been a couple of weeks now since TimesSelect came online, and Jeff Alworth of Low on the Hog blog has this observation about the approaches of the New York Times and Washing Post to Web publishing.
It has been a huge boon for the Washington Post. While the Times has restricted its most read online content and restricted other internet-only content to its subscribers, the WaPo has gone the other direction. They've given print space to bloggers, covered bloggers in their media coverage, created their own blogs, and most alluring (to bloggers), they now have a little box on each page powered by Technorati that searches the net for blogs linking to the page.
I know my own behavior has shifted pretty dramatically. Back when I was writing Notes, the Times tended to be my go-to paper. Because about half the content in any given paper will be found in most other papers, bloggers have one or two they depend on to capture the big news (like say if DeLay gets indicted). Most of the liberals went to the Times because they have a massive news department and cover more news than any other single paper. (The conservatives went there too, but they resented having to.)
No more. The WaPo has made several moves that make it the bloggers' fave. Most newspapers still offer a fairly static online presence, updating only major breaking news; they usually have a section that picks stuff of the AP wire as well. The WaPo, though, has gotten more bloggy and created more interaction. (Actually, whether it is the bloggers' fave is, I suppose, an open question. I haven't done a statistical analysis of even dubious measure, so I'm flying on observation and what I see at Memeorandum, an automated site that tracks the most-linked stories.)
In addition to the blogs, they have a thing called the "Post Politics Hour," where readers can pose questions to political journalists. Unlike the Times, which posts all its regular print content sometime around midnight eastern time, the WaPo posts columns throughout the day (Kurtz at ten am, Froomkin at noon, etc.). This gives them time to respond to the news of the day and gives readers a reason to check in. It feels far more interactive. The Times, perpetually stuck on a once-a-day reporting cycle, gets stale by midafternoon--and worse, they never have the chance for interactive reportage. It's strictly old-school, voice-of-God didactism.
Of course, both have made their calculations with the bottom line in mind. The Post thinks driving traffic to its site will give advertisers a reason to pay a premium, while the Times has decided to try to get readers to pay for popular content. Hard to say which approach will have the better effect on the balance sheet. But for bloggers, the choice seems clear: WaPo is the far more useful internet source.
Ditto from The Locust Fork. Get signed up for the Post, because we are going to be linking to that paper more than the New York Times.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has issued an Action Alert against New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for his July 22 column: "Giving the Hatemongers No Place to Hide."
Friedman says the federal government, in the form of the State Department, should "produce a quarterly War of Ideas Report," to "focus on those religious leaders and writers who are inciting violence against others." He also wants the government to include "excuse makers," which, according to FAIR, includes "a majority of Americans, according to recent polls."
I must say I used to love reading The New York Times and admit that I have reported and written for that once great newspaper. Perhaps this entire episode can be chalked up to post-9/11/Jayson Blair stress syndrome, but I stopped reading Mr. Friedman's columns a couple of years ago when he flip-flopped on the war in Iraq. You see he was for it and against it, sort of like Sen. John Kerry on the funding for the war, about the time I was trying to tell the national desk that something was fishy in Bush's D.C.
The Times plans to start charging for editorial columns in September, so Mr. Friedman's audience will no doubt shrink considerably at that time. Somehow I doubt the FAIR action alert will do any good anyway, since all the activist's e-mails will just go unread by the management at the paper. And besides, the State Department will ignore Friedman. Why shouldn't we?
I'm sure there were newspaper columnists all over the land who stood with McCarthy and his blacklist during the Red Scare in the 1950s. Luckily, they are long forgotten.
The New York Times announced yesterday that it would offer a new subscription-based service on its Web site, charging users an annual fee to read its Op-Ed and news columnists, as the newspaper seeks ways to capitalize on the site's popularity, according to this news story about it.
Most material on the Web site, NYTimes.com, will remain free to users, The Times said, but columnists from The Times and The International Herald Tribune will be available only to users who sign up for TimesSelect, which will cost $49.95 a year. The service will also include access to The Times's online archives, as well as other features.
The service, which is scheduled to start in September, will be provided free to home-delivery subscribers of the newspaper.
A decision by The Times about charging users for portions of its Web site had been expected for months in the media industry. While some efforts by other newspapers to charge for content online have worked, others have been withdrawn, including most recently one by The Los Angeles Times, which decided last week to stop charging users a fee for its online entertainment listings, reviews and criticism.
Though advertising on Web sites accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the revenues of most newspapers, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. Still, many newspaper Web sites fear that charging money for Internet content may send readers to free sites, with advertisers following close behind.
The New York Times's decision to charge a fee came after about a year of study, said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the Times Company and publisher of the newspaper.
Mr. Sulzberger said that while some Internet users accustomed to free content might not be willing to pay, many others would be attracted by the online package of columnists, archives and other material.
***
In April, The Times's Web site had 1.7 million unique daily visitors. Its daily newspaper circulation in March 2005, the most recent month available, was 1,136,433.
An interesting experiment. Maybe they can afford to pay free-lancers to get the story right now and avoid Newsweek-style pitfalls.
At least access to the site will remain free. You would have to pay to read Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, presumably. So no great loss.
What about breaking investigative news on public affairs, the stuff Democracy's made of? What about the Science Times? It this content will be part of the premium, there goes the online neighborhood.
Looks like the Washington Post will soon be in a position to take over as the national newspaper of record - if only they had a budget to pay free-lancers.
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