Media Beat

In the final installment of this week’s Media Beat interview, Frank Rich, New York magazine columnist and executive producer of HBO’s Veep, discusses the meshing of politics and pop culture. Having covered Broadway for years, he says the nonstop spectacles, gaffes and minutiae that become “news” just make his job more fun.

“To watch [President Obama and Mitt Romney] grapple on the one hand with the changes in the news media [and] on one hand with the world of The Voice and American Idol, The Daily Show, and SNL, it’s fascinating,” Rich explained. “But people forget this didn’t used to be the case. It was considered a huge deal when Bill Clinton played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show 20 years ago. It’s a development that’s spiraling; it’s developing. It’s interesting to watch. It’s great theater.”

Watch the full video for Rich’s take on that supposed liberal media bias and to find out what he thinks the “real danger” in today’s news reporting is.

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Part 1: Veep Executive Producer on DC: ‘Young People Jockeying for Power in Offices that Look Crummy’
Part 2: Frank Rich Compares New York Times and New York Magazine

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“People outside of Washington, you know they come on high school trips, they think it’s all like movie sets.  They think it’s all like ‘The West Wing,” longtime political columnist Frank Rich, who is an executive producer on the new HBO series “Veep,” said in the first part of our “Media Beat” interview with him, talking about DC.

“In fact, it’s a lot of oftentimes young people jockeying for power, doing mundane jobs, trying to stab each other in the back… and often in offices that look crummy” (video below).

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Part 2: Frank Rich Compares New York Times and New York Magazine
Part 3: Frank Rich on the ‘Great Theater’ of Politics and Pop Culture

Erik Wemple, media blogger for WaPo, was called out last night on the “O’Reilly Factor” by author and media critic Bernie Goldberg. The topic: media bias. Goldberg was responding to a short post by Wemple questioning the conclusion reached by FNC’s Bill O’Reilly and Goldberg that “media bias doesn’t matter.”

“Last week Bernie and I were talking about media bias and organizations that are in business not to inform anymore, they’re just pushing an agenda,” O’Reilly said on last night’s show. “The Washington Post weighed in on their blog and you [Goldberg] want to say something about that?”

Goldberg cocked his gun.

“Erik Wemple… this fella ended his piece by saying ‘if the impact of media bias is so trivial, why do these guys’– you and me– ‘why do these guys harp on it each week?’ Well first of all, we don’t harp on it. We talk about it.”

Aim.

“Secondly there are many smart, thoughtful, serious people who write about the media,” Goldberg continued, “but Erik Wemple, sadly, is not one of them.”

Fire!

Goldberg went on to lecture Wemple and “everybody else” why media bias does matter.

“Those words really hurt,” Wemple told FBDC in an email last night shortly after the segment ended. “After all, not long ago I’d credited Bernie for raising an interesting point about the NYT, one that I had followed up with my own reporting. In the case of the media-bias thing, I do believe that both Goldberg and O’Reilly on that [previous] program glibly dismissed the impact of alleged media bias and I am glad that Goldberg finished out his argument [in tonight's edition].”

In a follow-up post this morning Wemple wrote:

“It’s fine that Goldberg thinks something I wrote was dumb, less fine that his rebuttal rests on insulting my intelligence. Though I have criticized Goldberg in the past, I have also credited him. What I hope is consistent across all my mentions of Goldberg is an unwillingness to reach conclusions about where his opinions situate him along the continuum of media-critic IQs. That doesn’t seem relevant to anything.”

If nothing else, Wemple can be grateful that Fox News producers used a photo of him looking kind of bad ass. Maybe even a little dangerous.

In the final part of our three-part “Media Beat” interview with Jonah Peretti, the internet entrepreneur talks about launching The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed.

“I wasn’t sure if it would be a big success,” Peretti admits, remembering the days leading up to the launch of The Huffington Post. “A friend of mine asked me if he should invest, and I was like ‘I’m not sure’… I didn’t really want to risk my friend’s money.”

He also offers advice for those wanting to launch their own startup, explaining that entrepreneurs shouldn’t worry about what tech blogs are covering.

Part 1: BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti: ‘Our Reporters Are Doing the Kind of Work Reporters Love to Do’

Part 2: Jonah Peretti On What It Means To Go Viral

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BuzzFeed is all about the social web, and taking advantage of the viral nature of news. In part two of our “Media Beat” interview with Jonah Peretti, the BuzzFeed co-founder talks about how his company looks at “viral” content.

“If you get a million views by buying the homepage of YouTube, and you paid a million dollars for a million views, that is very different than if you are a kid who made some funny video in your basement and shared it with a few friends, and that spread through word of mouth to millions of people,” Peretti says.

Part 1: BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti: ‘Our Reporters Are Doing the Kind of Work Reporters Love to Do’

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

In the first part of our three-part “Media Beat” interview with Jonah Peretti, the BuzzFeed founder discusses how his company is becoming a full-scale news organization following a flurry of recent hires and breaks down how social media drives news online.

“We have reporters who have beats and sources, and can do original work,” Peretti says, “the kind of work that reporters love to do, where they dig in on a story. They’re not just aggregating, they’re not summarizing what’s happening elsewhere, they’re creating something new and original.”

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

In her new book Commander in Chic, Essence editor-at-large Mikki Taylor doles out fashion and beauty tips for the everyday woman based on examples from Michelle Obama.

“I love her clear cut assurance, the way she owns her style from within,” she explained in our Media Beat interview.

And one thing FLOTUS has done, according to Taylor, is inject a much needed sophistication into America’s dress code. Casual Fridays? No, thank you, she says.

“I think that we’re a little too relaxed. I think a relaxed nation creates other kinds of flexibilities that shouldn’t exist. Let’s treat each other with the respect and the honor that we are due, and so the subliminal things play into that. If we’re coming to work in sneakers, if we’re coming to work in ripped jeans and plaid shirts, who are we representing?”

Part 1:Mikki Taylor on Her 30 Years at Essence
Part 3: Mikki Taylor’s Advice for Magazine Editors: ‘Take the Leap Forward’