There are two things I’ve learned from reading and talking about the decline of modern newspapers: The average consumer doesn’t give a damn, and a key survival strategy of those who remain in mainstream newspapers is denying the self-inflicted wounds of compromised news judgment. To the first, there isn’t much I or any other ex-newspaper … Read more
The question I’ve always had about George Tenet — seen this evening on “60 Minutes” getting feisty with Scott Pelley — is this: How exactly did he, a Clinton-appointee running the goddam CIA, pass muster with Dick Cheney and hang on into the Bush 43 administration? I mean, here was a crowd gone obsessional with … Read more
One of the mustier traditions of newspaper writing is the amount of group-think involved in crafting the first paragraph of a story — in journalism jargon known as “the lede”. Tradition says that the first paragraph should contain the essence of all the information to follow. Tradition also implies that that first paragraph represent the … Read more
Glenn Greenwald talks with the Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage about his reporting that won him a Pulitzer for National Reporting a couple weeks back. Savage got into and continued writing on President Bush’s use of “signing statements”, an arcane and complicated issue with no sex appeal and very little in the way of guaranteed instant … Read more
I confess to having paid very little attention to Katie Couric. Maybe it really is because I am at heart a digusting, unrepentant misogynist. Or maybe — just maybe — I like a certain gravity of bona fides in my network news readers. Knowing a bit about CBS president, Les Moonves, from having observed his … Read more
It came as no surprise that the Star Tribune’s new ownership, Avista Capital Partners, dismissed a call from its Guild for an independent investigation into the rather serious charges asserted against publisher, Par Ridder. The presumption is that it did do knowing full well that the legal process is both glacial and unlikely to produce … Read more
As of June 4, the ubiquitous Andrew Zimmern will settle into a regular weekday gig at Hubbard Broadcasting’s FM 107. Zimmern will take the 1 to 3 pm slot, with The Satellite Sisters cut back an hour, 11 to 1, and Kevyn Burger also losing one hour, 9 to 11 am. GM Dan Seeman concedes … Read more
It was close, but “Mary Ellen”, one of the most ferocious leg-rasslers in Twin Cities history, beat out reader “Tom”, by 14 minutes in posting the Scarlett Johansson/Bob Dylan video of, “When the Deal Goes Down”. My thanks to both, and if we can coordinate a gathering at say Robin Marty’s every other week “Drinking … Read more
THREE quick mini media reviews: ONE: I caught most of Alberto Gonzales’ “testimony” on NPR while driving north last Thursday. As a product of the Watergate era and more televised Nixon press conferences than I care to remember, (the ones with the sweaty upper lip were the best), plus a few impromptu Spiro Agnew vs. … Read more
I’ve been waiting months for this one. By agreeing to publicly discuss and examine their culpability in so profound a failure/lapse should be an acid test for any editor … and publisher, certainly those who have ever nattered about journalistic “transparency”. Sometimes your credibility rests on your ability to say you were wrong.