Networks

ABC News is launching a Fellowship program to attract and develop aspiring journalists from diverse backgrounds for a “rigorous” and “rewarding” year-long opportunity.   Starting this July, future news leaders will rotate through several ABC News departments and broadcasts while mastering editorial, production, and newsgathering skills.  Participants from a variety of racial, ethnic, socio-economic and geographic backgrounds will work closely with an experienced ABC News mentor.

ABC is now accepting applications for a July 2, 2012 start date. Candidates must have a Bachelor’s degree, solid writing skills, shooting and editing experience and a minimum of two years of journalism experience to be considered.  Positions are offered on a rolling basis and participants will be employed by ABC News for a full year.

Apply here.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews is never short on feisty. He appeared on a panel at NCTA’s Cable Show Tuesday in Boston alongside CNN’s John King and Univision’s Maria Salenas and moderated by C-SPAN’s Steve Scully. The event is a three-day annual convention that attracts upwards of 20,000 attendees. When Scully brought up Matthews’ infamous “thrill up his leg” line about President Obama, Matthews bristled and referred to Scully as one of the “jackasses” who always asks this question.

“Is the thrill still there today?” Scully asked Matthews.

Matthews’ answer wasn’t brief: “If you had done your reporting over at C-SPAN,” he said, dripping with sarcasm, “you would have checked that I said the exact same thing in 2004 after I heard his address up in Boston. …the thrill was real. …I do have physical reactions when people are talking about my country. …I’m an untraditional person but I have traditional values and I love the country and I said so. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said so because I’ve given a lot of jackasses the chance to talk about it.”

With a smile, Scully replied, “Thank you, Chris.”

But Matthews wasn’t finished. “So I hope you feel satisfied that you raised the most obvious question that is raised by every horses ass right winger that I ever bump into,” he said. He then put the knife in and twisted it: “Thank you Steve for serving up that little soufflé you have been working on since last night sometime when your brain exploded with this idea that you were going to ask me about it.”

Scully replied, “We are just about out of time.”

Before they signed off, Scully said, “Come back to C-SPAN tomorrow morning.” Matthews cracked, “I’d be thrilled to be there.”

Watch the exchange here.

Nothing says I hate you like a package of poop. A former CNN executive, Bob Furnad, left dog feces in his neighbor’s mailbox in Covington, Ga., calling it a prank. Funny, police aren’t laughing. CBS Atlanta broke the story late this morning. Authorities have video of Furnad putting the shit in the mailbox.

CBS Atlanta reported: “Mr. Furnad stated that he did place a bag containing dog feces in the victim’s mail box,” Covington Police Capt. Ken Malcom told WGCL-TV.

Furnad faces a fine, but really not all that much considering. Read the full story here. And no, this isn’t Washington media news, but we figure it’ll give people ideas if they need a creative way to seek revenge on their enemies.

This afternoon we reported that CNN has been actively pursuing ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper.

Here’s what ABC had to say:

Tapper: “Being the White House correspondent for ABC News is a dream job, one I’m focused on 100%. I couldn’t be happier where I am right now.”

ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said: “Hardly surprised to read about all kinds of poachers being interested in Jake Tapper – that’s what happens when you are at the top of your profession.  We are thrilled Jake works for ABC News and expect him to have a leadership role here for a long time to come. “

Spotted in the CNN building in New York just moments ago: Former ABC news President David Westin.

Westin is the President and CEO of NewsRight. He worked at ABC from 1997 to 2010. His book, Exit Interview, about his experiences working at ABC, is expected to be released on May 22.

Correction: Looks like our tipster was hallucinating yesterday when seeing Westin in the CNN lobby. According to Westin’s office,  he was there on Thursday, May 10 taping “Reliable Sources” with Howard Kurtz. But yesterday, a spokeswoman says he left his office once to go for lunch with a NewsRight board member and it was not at CNN or the Time Warner building.

File this under Washington at its finest.

On Saturday, ABC Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper and and his wife, Jennifer, as well as ABC “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos and wife, Ali Wentworth, were at the Tudor House for the second annual BabyLove DC carnival.  ABC’s Claire Shipman and Wentworth founded the organization which donates baby gear and clothing to needy families.

Tapper read Caps for Sale. He avoided any talk of prostitutes in Cartagena as well as gay marriage. Maybe when they’re a  little older.

If you were watching MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning, you were bound to feel minor bouts of anxiety as things grew more than a little awkward when National Journal‘s Major Garrett came on the set. Major isn’t an incessant regular on the morning program, so what could have been an intriguing exchange instead of the typical Mark Halperin-John Heilemann Game Change punditry turned into Mika Brzezinksi leading the pack against Major.

All over the word “forward” he wrote about in a Tuesday column.

Mika bristled over the column in which Major dismissed President Obama‘s “forward” campaign slogan. According to the reporter’s sources, Democrats aren’t necessarily thrilled about the one-word slogan. Major found it lacking to say the least. He’s the President, he can say whatever he wants, he argued. Outsiders can have one-word slogans. But the President? He should have more. “Does the Obama campaign feel trapped in the branding of the 2008 campaign?” Major asked on “Morning Joe.”

Though it seemed to be an odd thing to get so incensed over, Mika stood her ground (we’re not sure what planet the ground was on, but nonetheless, her ground) and flat out disagreed with Major, who thought using the word “forward” was pretty pointless if not “vacuous” when what he said Obama needs to do is reassure voters in the present tense. “What are Republicans supposed to do, clap?” asked Mika with a bite in her voice. “No,” replied Major. Mika soon replied, “I’m not trying to be mean, but I don’t get it.”

Could it be that Major hit too close to the nerve center of MSNBC’s pollyanna “Lean Forward” campaign? Whatever he said, she disagreed with it. So did HalperHeile, who said it saves printing costs for the add campaign. HalperHeile dismissed Major’s point, saying all slogans are one to three words.

Watch the awkward exchange here. See the pictures above and notice the growing non-smile spread across Major’s face.

Major declined to comment on this morning’s “Morning Joe” appearance.

 

It’s one thing to whore yourself out to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner year after year because you star in the hit ABC series “Modern Family.” It’s quite another to come here and not flaunt your whoring capabilities to their fullest.

But Jesse Tyler Ferguson managed just that over the weekend when he attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and attended the parties surrounding it. On Friday night he was spotted mingling by the bar at the TIME-People party at the St. Regis. But when approached for even a single question from a reporter, he declined, saying he was not allowed to do any interviews that did not involve ABC.

Not allowed? Partygoers, especially those from competing networks, found this odd. Nonetheless, he did permit himself to wave and say “hi.”

Thanks Jesse!

 

On May 10 ABC’s Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper will speak at Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley, Pa. at a “Patrons Event” where congregants can sign up to contribute at varying price points. For example, $2500 gets you four preferred seats in the reserved section, reception and your name prominently displayed whereas $1000 lands you two preferred seats in the reserved section, reception and your name prominently displayed and $360 gets you two seats in the reserved section, reception and your name prominently displayed . Seats are $36 in advance and $45 at the door.

All sounds kosher, right?

Well, not entirely. The temple, which practices Conservative Judaism, is using Tapper and ABC in its advertising to raise cash. Though Tapper has never made a secret of his religion — in his Twitter bio, he tells visitors that “dissecting my tweets with Talmudic meticulousness will result in wrong conclusions” — this sounds like straight up whoring of a news network to us. Well-known TV correspondents generally speak at universities and college graduations. A network raising money for a temple? Not so commonplace. Can you imagine a national news network raising funds for a megachurch?

“Jake has a personal connection with the synagogue in his hometown of Philadelphia and its scholarship fund,” ABC spokeswoman Michelle Levi told us in an email. “This is not in conflict with his daily duties and he is donating all personal proceeds to charity.  Speaking engagements are evaluated on a case by case basis and this one was approved in advance by ABC News.” Update: We wondered what ABC meant by “scholarship fund.” Apparently this means “The Levitties Fund is associated with the religious school and they do adult education.”

In the meantime, have a look.

 

 

The owner of a STD reporting site that allegedly dedicates itself to revealing those with sexually transmitted diseases, is publicly thanking CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Ashleigh Banfield for helping him forge ahead with his entrepreneurial endeavors.

Of course, sarcastically so.

“Anderson was a big jerk,” said Cyrus Sullivan, owner of STDReporting.com, who went on Cooper’s daytime talk show about a month ago. Both Cooper and Banfield, who came on as a guest commentator, ripped into him on air for running a site that publishes information he can’t verify. Sullivan spoke to FishbowlDC by phone this afternoon from Portland, Ore. where he resides. “I’ve never been treated by anyone so rudely in the media in my whole life and I’ve been on TV several times,” Sullivan said. “It just really sucked. He basically sat me down and accused me of being a sleazeball.”

Cooper said after the show, “I just think what he’s doing is really pathetic and inappropriate.”

Speaking of sleaze, Sullivan contracted Herpes more than three years ago, at which point he decided to create the site to, at least in part, expose the woman who gave it to him. He says he has been soul-searching his reasons for creating it. He says he takes Valtrex. His symptoms sprout up only rarely. “It’s not a big deal, a lot of people have it,” he said. “I wouldn’t even know that I had it if I hadn’t gotten tested. I don’t have symptoms, [or] very rarely.” Asked if having Herpes affects his sex life, he replied, “It can be a cock block. That’s what’s so frustrating.”

On Cooper’s program, Banfield said online laws should be changed and publishers shouldn’t be able to blame authors, as Sullivan does in his defense. “By that logic she shouldn’t be able to quote anyone on air,” Sullivan said, offering his two cents on journalism ethics.

Sullivan insists he’s not doing anything different than what is already happening online. “I don’t see why people freak out over a site dedicated to this niche topic, especially when people are doing this on Twitter and Facebook all the time,” he said. “I felt I was unfairly being singled out.” He reasons that people need to be educated about how to read the Internet, as opposed to say, his site being axed. “There’s no way to tell if someone is telling the truth or not,” he added. “The only real way to deal with issues of internet liable or slander is to educate people who use the internet to scrutinize what you read.”

See what Sullivan looks like after the jump…In addition, in a release today that Sullivan issued from Portland, Ore., where he lives, he wrote:

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