How was WaPo “lost” to Jeff Bezos?

The NYT‘s Ross Douthat wrote in his column this weekend that it was because the paper missed its opportunity to seize the internet by the throat. What’s fascinating is Douthat knows exactly when this happened. The moment was “in 2006 when John Harris and Jim VendeHei left … to found Politico.”

He argues that Politico created the political-journalism juggernaut WaPo should’ve and could’ve been, a daily must-read that dominates “the D.C. conversation … that matches the metabolism of the Internet.” There can be only one, and according to Douthat, it’s Politico.

It still gets better. Despite the ass kissing you might think this is at first glance, Douthat doesn’t think so highly of Politico.

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Politico‘s Patrick Gavin has a story out this afternoon with splintering views on what effect a Hillary Clinton documentary will have on the news divisions of CNN and NBC.

CNN’s Candy Crowley tells him the network’s decision to commission a doc, even by an outside group, will still make things tough in terms of perception that they are somehow in Clinton’s pocket. Crowley told Politico:

“You can say all you want, this is a commissioned documentary from people who are not in the employ of CNN. It’s not me. It’s not Wolf Blitzer. It’s not John King. It’s an outside documentary group. But we’re with CNN and so this is not a story where the nuances are well-received, particularly by Republicans.”

Probably not a shocker that FNC’s Chris Wallace takes an opposing view from Crowley and thinks Republicans have a point.

Read the story.

HuffPost’s Jason Linkins, National Journal’s Ron Fournier and WaPo’s Greg Sargent are locked in some kind of epic battle rumbling across the internet like a bar fight that’s blown through a window and out onto the sidewalk.

Nowhere is safe.

Just take a look at Linkins’ post from last night, titled “What if Ron Fournier Can’t Read?”—it’s more than 2,000 words devoted to explaining to Ron Fournier why Ron Fournier is wrong about all presidents, everywhere (especially Obama). Linkins followed that up with 11 tweets this morning to further make his case.

Here’s the weird thing. Fournier was arguing that Obama actually can be a great leader and accomplish great things, if only he’d just step up and do it already. Seems okay, right? Well the undercurrent here is that government’s failure to actually fix any of the country’s problems of recent are all traced back to Obama’s failure to lead (he could do it if he’d just… do it!). So, yes, Fournier was almost giving Obama a compliment, but kind of the same way a slap in the face can be considered a hello. No matter what obstacles political opponents put in Obama’s path, it will always be the President’s fault for failing to just leap over them like Superman.

Linkins and Sargent, though, saw right through all this with their apparently laser vision and now they’ve both stepped in to explain why even real great leaders can’t actually move mountains out of their way, as much as we’d like to think they can. Sargent’s post is here, but Linkins seems to be the one wearing the brass knuckles.

Some highlights:

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Fox News contributor Richard Grenell, number 1 on our list of journalists to not battle with on Twitter, was in a Twitter fight with Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher, number 8 on the list, last night that just stretched on and on and on.

Christopher posted a recent column on race, President Obama and Trayvon Martin. Grenell chimed in with what he surely thought was a good fact-check, albeit one filtered through his own political view (as was Christopher’s liberal-eyed column).

The conversation quickly devolved into a back and forth notable as much for its focus on minute matters of semantics as it is just two people each going, “you said this, I said that,” over and over again—as if they expected the other would suddenly just be all like, ‘Oh yeah, my bad, you’re right.’

It got weird though when Grenell accused Christopher of playing the gay card.

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After Politico wrote a story highlighting a 16-year-old intern from The Daily Caller posing a question at a White House briefing to White House Spokesman Jay Carney, the Washington Twittersphere went wild. And oh, the outrage that followed. Politico reporters, in particular, had condescending reactions and couldn’t fathom why The Daily Caller would allow a 16-year-old kid preposterously named Gabe Finger to be its White House reporter for the day.

In a story by Politico‘s Jennifer Epstein, she wrote that it’s “rare” for interns attending the White House briefings to ask questions and rarer still for them to be called on. Finger, who had been standing in a reserved area in the briefing room where he was not supposed to be standing, asked about George Zimmerman receiving death threats and then followed up by asking if the family was on their own. Carney snapped, “You can editorialize all you want, and I’m sure that you will, but that’s a ridiculous statement.”

Pissing off the White House Press Secretary. Score?!

“The conservative blog Daily Caller sent a high school junior to the White House briefing today,” cracked Politico congressional reporter Jake Sherman on Twitter. The Daily Caller is not a “blog” any more than Politico is a “a liberal blog based in Virginia,” which is what Daily Caller‘s Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson calls it. Politico‘s White House Correspondent Glenn Thrush also reacted to the teen’s question, writing on Twitter, “Daily Caller guy who asked @PressSec adolescent question about Zimmerman? He’s a junior in high school.” Politico‘s Ben White replied facetiously, “Yeah, but they have more traffic than us so you know.” Earlier in the week, The Daily Caller put out a statement and story declaring that they had surpassed Politico in traffic.

FishbowlDC spoke with Carlson Wednesday afternoon by phone. He referred to Politico as “the rich kids camp in Meatballs” and explained,  “They’ve spent tens of millions of dollars, they have hundreds of employees and they’re still losing. They’re looking down their noses at us and chortling, but in the end we’re going to crush them in the hot dog eating contest.”

Finger stepped in for The Daily Caller‘s usual White House reporter Neil Munro, who had someplace else to be this afternoon. “We had a good question,” said Carlson. “Here’s our journalism strategy: We try to ask questions, that’s kind of what we do. That’s our top secret strategy for reporting.” Taking a stab at Politico‘s Playbook by Mike Allen, he continued, “It’s not just about chronicling the birthdays of West Wing employees.” Read more

Is Attorney General Eric Holder really this mean? Does he regularly scowl like this?

Tough to say. But in continuing with our “Photo Wars” feature, in which partisan news outlets purposefully depict their political foes in the worst of ways, here is yet another example.

Congratulations to Breitbart.com! There’s more where this came from.

We feel the need to put a rattle in this post because that epitomizes NYT reporter John Schwartz — rattled by a post we did about something dumb he wrote on Twitter that wound up on Newsbusters. To recap what happened, Schwartz wrote a pretty nasty tweet involving the wedding of the son of a Newsbusters‘ writer. Sure, Schwartz apologized, and we all say, do and write dumb things sometimes. But naturally Newsbusters covered it anyhow.

To be sure, children of reporters are largely kept out of mocking, sarcastic Twitter battles.

But clearly not always.

Ultimately Newsbusters‘ Noel Sheppard said he forgave Schwartz and instructed readers to move on. How fast was everyone else supposed to move on? Well, apparently in Schwartz’s opinion, at the speed of light would be nice.

On the evening of the day FBDC wrote a story on it, Schwartz sent FishbowlDC an email. And then he followed up with another. Read more

The Daily Caller sent out a breathless press release Sunday night proclaiming that it had surpassed Politico in web traffic.

Well, it has — kind of and maybe just briefly.

Yes, for the last 30 days, The Daily Caller has edged out Politico by about 240,000 unique visitors. What they don’t mention is that the ranking changes at least day-to-day. For the month ending June 30, for example, Politico beat The Daily Caller by more than 400,000 unique visitors. Just a week earlier, July 7, Politico was ahead by almost 400,000 uniques and early this morning, the rankings showed The Daily Caller had already slipped a few spots on the list to 281 (Politico slipped a few as well, to 318). An update a few hours later showed a jump for The Daily Caller of about 13 spots. The point is, these rankings fluctuate — they’re relative based on how all the other sites Quantcast measured are doing.

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Fox News media contributor Richard Grenell is gnawing away at the liberal minded ThinkProgress this afternoon like they were the last drumstick at the weekend barbecue. And he’s famished. As observers know, when Grenell sets his mind to a cause there’s no turning back. And today’s charge against the liberal biased media was: Why aren’t Democratic news outlets covering the blockbuster story of San Diego Mayor Bob Filner‘s admitted sexual harassment?

fair to say if the San Diego Mayor were Republican, there’d be a national media meltdown. A Democrat is admitting to sexual harassment!

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) July 12, 2013

Some nine minutes later — yes, NINE — ThinkProgress tweeted out a story on Filner and his sexually wayward admission this week — and Grenell revealed his incisors and well, went nuts.

To be fair, Grenell also attacked MSNBC.

Dear MSNBC, the Mayor of San Diego has admitted to sexually harassing women, including subordinates. I know, I know…he’s a Democrat.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) July 12, 2013

Annie-Rose Strasser, ThinkProgresses‘ Deputy Managing Editor took issue with Grenell’s charge and unleashed the dogs on him. You don’t even want to know what happened next. Well, yes, you do. Read on. Let’s just say things sometimes have to get worse before they get better. Read more

NYT’s national correspondent John Schwartz has apologized for a bizarre joke he tweeted about the son of Newsbusters Associate Editor Noel Sheppard.

Sheppard wrote on Twitter last night that, “My son wants me not to cry at his wedding Saturday. I’ll be crying more than bride’s father…but for different reasons.”

To which Schwartz replied: “because you’ve been renting him out to workhouses all these years and you’re sorry to be losing the income?”

We’re not even sure what that’s supposed to mean.

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