News Notes

What if WaPo doesn’t reach the necessary maximum number of voluntary buyouts?

Some who attended the Town Hall style meetings yesterday at the newspaper found Exec. Editor Marcus Brauchli‘s comments too vague for comfort on this point. The bottom line: They want 48 employees to agree to the buyout, 33 will do. For now, this is voluntary. He hopes it will stay that way.

Reports are growing increasingly confusing as to who is eligible and who is not. In a few tweets, Ombudsman Patrick Pexton said that the Investigative Team wasn’t eligible for the buyout. He has corrected this to explain that, in fact, they are eligible. The way it works is this: There are seven employees on the Investigative Team. Up to three can take the buyout. But no one is being forced and maybe none will volunteer. The Post Guild website explains that some are exempt from the buyout altogether: “Certain departments, departmental units, and positions have been exempt from the buyouts, including Foreign, Sports columnists, Style columnists, Outlook, National enterprise and politics teams, and others. Part-timers and recent hires are also exempt.”

See the breakdown of of 33 positions being targeted after the jump…

For up to the minute information on the buyout ordeal, visit the guild website here.

Read more

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

In an entertaining clip, NJ‘s Major Garrett and The Atlantic’s Molly Ball reminisce about their experiences as reporters on the Vegas strip long before covering this presidential election. They didn’t live and work there simultaneously. Major spoke of his big (and only) win playing the slots alongside his sister. Molly shared stories of a memorable character, a former mayor, who walked around with a showgirl on each arm.

Former TWT editorial writer and former reporter for Politico and The Hill Carrie Sheffield gives the dirt on Mormonism in today’s WaPo Opinion pages. She’s now a writer and political analyst based in Manhattan.

The highlights:

1. The church she was raised in insisted on obedience. For her, this caused “trauma and cognitive dissonance.”

2. While studying at Brigham Young University, she “spiritually imploded” after learning doctrine outside the church. A “disturbed” Sheffield met with a “high-ranking Mormon leader” who told her to stop reading historical and scientific materials because they were worse than porn.

3. Her parents shunned her from their home for five years.

4. For years, her faith was “unshakable” but she became distraught.

5. With a current public focus on Mormonism, she hopes the church will be exposed for its anti-women, homophobic beliefs.

Read the whole piece here.

In the past 24 hours we’ve been probing reporters about what they will miss most about Texas Gov. Rick Perry‘s Presidential campaign. Most knew within mere seconds. Enjoy!

MSNBC Political Analyst Karen Finney: “Rick Perry gave us some of the best debate moments of the cycle. I will miss his stammering, non-sensical, more bizarre than the thought of Newt in an ‘open’ marriage – moments.”

Politico‘s Roger Simon: “There was a Perry campaign?”

CNN Commentator Hilary Rosen: “I’ll miss the low expectations from the pundits before debates. No one is left to over-perform!”

NJ‘s White House and Congressional correspondent Major Garrett: “I will miss Perry saying ‘Luv you, brother.’ I’d never before heard a presidential campaign sound like the fraternity rush chairman right before the first Friday night keg is tapped.”

Q & A Celeb’s Colin Drummond: “Think I’ll miss his huge entourage who acted as if they were actually guarding the President.”

Informal Herman Cain advisor John Coale: “Being on the edge of my seat waiting to see what he says next.”

Reuters‘ Sam Youngman: “His debate performances, his smile and his, uh. His… uh, I’m sorry.”

Metro Weekly Co-Publisher Sean Bugg: “Since I don’t find bumbling incompetence quite as funny as everyone else seems to, not very damn much.”

BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith: “I will miss Rick Perry, a great retail pol who was a ton of fun to cover.”

TownHall.com and BigGov columnist Derek Hunter: “I would say I will miss 3 things and pretend to not remember the 3rd, but I can’t even think of the first 2 to pretend to forget the 3rd. You can’t miss flying on a plane that never really got off the ground. Perry was a great concept, but a horrible candidate who only seems ready to run when it was too late to matter.”

SiriusXM P.O.T.U.S. Channel’s Julie Mason: “I have been unabashedly keening and lamenting this departure all damn day. The presidential campaign just got 65 percent less fun with 85 percent less charisma. I will leave assessments on hair to others.”

Roll Call‘s Jonathan Strong: “Waiting for his next spectacular flub in the debates.”

Anonymous Capitol Hill reporter: “The mind numbing WTF moment that occurred every time he dove into the shallow end of foreign policy.”

Roll Call‘s HOH writer Neda Semnani: “I for one will miss his boots, Freedom and Liberty. Warren says he will miss his verbal face plants. I will just miss him in debates generally. But, let be serious, we will all miss his hair — his beautiful, beautiful hair that was obviously sculpted by angels.”

The Daily Caller‘s Jamie Weinstein: “Like everyone I think, I’ll miss his eloquence and erudition. And his hora proficiency.”

RealClearPolitics‘ Erin McPike: “The self-deprecation. And I actually got an old-school back-slap from him when he was hustling into an Iowa event last month. His demeanor made for really good color, and that makes good copy.”

TWT Senior Opinion Editor Emily Miller: “I’ll miss Rick Perry scaring the heck out of everyone on Capitol Hill with his push for a part-time Congress.”

TWT‘s Anneke Green: “All we DC insiders are mourning the lost opportunity to be ruled again by the sovereign Republic of Texas. For three long years, we’ve suffered the abolishing of beer pong, cowboy boots-n-tuxes, and … and… What was the third one?”

SHannitysHair: “First and foremost, I will miss his GREAT hair. Seriously though, I will miss his conservative voice in the campaign….even though he tends to get tongue-tied at times. Who among us didn’t chuckle inside at his “oops” moment? There was one other thing I wanted to share. I forget. #oops”

Human Events‘ Tony Lee: “His unpredictable Twitter feed, exclamation marks included. You never knew what he was going to tweet. He tweeted he was not quitting the race, a picture of himself at a shooting range, and even a challenge to CNN’s Peter Hamby to make the Perry running team.”

Yahoo! News‘ Chris Moody: “His campaign aides were always great about hanging out after events to shoot the breeze with reporters. They’ll be missed at the bar.”

From an unidentified WTOP management type, suit-wearing person: “Three things… the candor, the commercials… and… um, ahh”

Human Events‘ Jason Mattera: “The blank stares and blonde moments.”

Eddie Scarry contributed to this report.

 

(A Sprinkling of Things We Thought You Ought to Know…)

Santorum’s wife cries a lot: Karen Santorum is a pure loyalist to her husband, Rick. Earlier in the week, NJ‘s Naureen Kahn wrote about Karen’s weeping on the campaign trail as it pertains to people bashing her husband for bashing gays. “‘Rick doesn’t hate anyone,’” Karen said of gays. “‘He loves them. What he has simply said is marriage shouldn’t happen’ between them.” Mrs. Santorum broke in tears as she spoke of gay activists vilifying her hubby (who has, ahem, compared being gay to bestiality). From the story: “It was a really hard time,” she said, breaking into tears. “We weren’t expecting it. We had lost a baby so that’s all I could think about–I can’t go through his again. I was very angry. “

WaPo‘s Rubin on CNN King’s reputation: WaPo‘s Jennifer Rubin, who writes the “Right Turn” blog, says tonight’s CNN debate is a chance for John King to redeem himself. In June she called him the “worst moderator in the history of televised debates.” We’ll see if he redeems himself (in her eyes) tonight. Read here.

The Rev runs into Paparazzi at Reagan Airport: MSNBC’s Sharpton is one smooth operator when it comes to dealing with the pap. On Monday he was confronted with goofy questions while walking through the airport. “I’m back in the area and just wanted to send you this video of Al Sharpton at Reagan National Airport after leaving MLK memorial,” Colin Drummond, of Celebrity Q and A, wrote FBDC. Drummond asked if Michael Jackson ought to be memorialized. He also asked, “If Jesus were alive, what would he drive?” (Jesus would walk, says the Rev.)

There’s no doubt Politico is a monster born from the self obsessive culture of D.C. But what does that have to do with New York City?

As of Monday the Big Apple will feel the injection of 4,000 copies of the publication’s print product. Yes, Politico is expanding its reach beyond the White House and Congress and into New York’s “financial institutions, leading companies and national media organizations,” according to a press release.

The new venture coincides with a special occasion for Politico. Next week marks its fifth anniversary.

“Since our launch in 2007, we have worked tirelessly to become one of the fastest-growing and most-respected political news organizations in the country,” said Fred Ryan, CEO of POLITICO. “So it’s only fitting that we celebrate this milestone by expanding our reach to New York’s most influential leaders.”

Next: the moon.

Updating your Facebook status with your thoughts on the presidential election? Politico is paying close attention.

Starting Thursday and lasting through Jan. 21, Politico and Facebook will be gathering and analyzing all posts on the social media site about the Republican presidential candidates. Mashable appears to be the first site that reported the news from a Politico release.

The point of the partnership is to gauge the buzz around each candidate from Facebook users leading into the South Carolina primary.

Facebook’s team will actually do the gathering of data, but then they’ll pass it to Politico reporters who will write stories about it.

“Social media has forever changed the way candidates campaign for the presidency,” Big Brother Politico Editor in Chief John Harris said in a release issued by Politico. “Facebook has been instrumental in expanding the political dialogue among voters and we couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to offer our readers a look inside this very telling conversation.”

The Weekly Standard is suffering from a painful new media advertising hangover this morning after yesterday’s debacle. As we reported Thursday, the publication’s marketing department shot an email blast to subscribers with a letter from an advertiser, Public Advocate, saying gays were “deviant” and trying to “ram” pro-homosexual education through Congress. That’s mild — the letter decimating gays was long and hate-filled.

This morning The Weekly Standard‘s Publisher Terry Eastland told FishbowlDC that the incident was unprecedented. Though there were whispers of possible firings yesterday, Eastland said no one is getting canned. He called it an “anomaly” and said the mistakes were “certainly unintentional.”

Email blasts of this nature are a relatively new beast in the world of media — The Weekly Standard only began doing them in October. We’re told the publication had not used Public Advocate previously in its advertising, and won’t likely use them again. “I can’t imagine that we would if we get a message like this,” said Eastland, who has been publisher for the past decade, in a phone interview. “All I can say is, I can’t imagine it in this context. As you know from reading the magazine, we’re in the business of writing about ideas and thought. This is hardly the sort of thing we do in terms of ads. That’s why I said in the statement that it’s obviously not the sort of ad we run and I regret its distribution. It’s totally an anomaly.”

After the blast went out, angry subscribers wrote in to complain. “I took steps that one would rationally take,” said Eastland. He sent this email to the full subscriber list Thursday afternoon:

Earlier today we sent you a paid ad from a third party. We did so by
mistake — our vetting process broke down. The ad was obviously not one we
ordinarily accept, and we regret its distribution. We are taking steps to
ensure that a mistake of this kind doesn’t happen again.
Terry Eastland
Publisher, The Weekly Standard

So what really happened? As it was explained to us, a salesman of two years with a good reputation was handling the account but was out of the office. The email ad came in, but was not reviewed by proper advertising personnel. The ad was blasted out by a “marketing traffic person” before anyone with sense could read it. Eastland said it was a system breakdown and insisted steps are being taken to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. “Our process was one that had broken down,” he said. “The person who took the call doesn’t handle this area. This happened for us at the end of the year in a week that is dark when no one is working here. At any other time of the year it would have been different.”

Those inside the publication are “embarrassed” and see it as a complete breakdown of what the magazine has been trying to stand for in the past decade and beyond. They say anti-gay ramblings are not ideas they support.

But maybe most embarrassing of all is that the ads themselves are not moneymakers. “No one’s making a lot of dough off it,” an insider told us.

 

There are some things that can’t be unlearned. Like the word “santorum.” Ever since GOP Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum clumped homosexuality together with bestiality and polygamy and declared them all deviant, syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage created an alternative meaning for the politician’s surname. There’s no easy way to do this, so hide the children for a moment and don’t let them near the computer… Santorum: That frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex. (Source: Urban Dictionary).

Last night some Washington journalists couldn’t stop themselves from cracking jokes on the Santorum matter, with the former senator surging and all.

The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza remarked on Twitter, “Note to headline writers tonight: be careful with how you juxtapose the words Santorum and caucus.” And Metro Weekly‘s openly gay White House Correspondent Chris Geidner jumped right in, reminding Lizza, “You forgot ‘three-way’ and ‘from behind.’”

Bloomberg View columnist Jonathan Alter made this keen observation: “If Santorum pulls this out, he’ll dog Romney for months.” Democratic strategist and pundit Paul Begala couldn’t resist. “That would be dog-on-man, no?” he replied.

Also unable to resist the heat of the moment was HuffPost‘s political writer Sam Stein who concluded, “This is, undoubtedly, the first three-way Santorum’s been in #hadtomakethejoke.”

By Piranhamous

North Korean dictator, the Dear Leader himself, Kim Jong Il died last night and, like most things these days, the news broke on Twitter. Here is a round up of some of the reactions from the Twitterazzi:

Jonah Goldberg, National Review and AEI: “Kind of sucks that the third famous person to die along with Vaclav Havel and Christopher Hitchens is Kim Jong Il. Worse: he went last.”

WaPo‘s Ezra Klein: “It’s a shame Hitchens isn’t around to give Kim Jong Il the send off he deserves.”

AllahPundit, HotAir.com: “What a shame that Hitchens doesn’t get to write this obit #kimjongil.”

Tim Carney, Washington Examiner: “Kim Jong Il said he got 11 holes in one the first time he played golf.”

Erick Erickson, RedState: “They’d turn out the lights in North Korea to mourn, but they’re already out [saying] thanks to that monster and his dad.

Derek Hunter Townhall columnist and WMAL: “Well, now we know what God was busy doing in the 4th quarter of the Broncos/Patriots game. #KimJongIl.”

“Kim Jong Il was a real-life Dr. Evil, intent on being taken seriously and yet almost unfailingly laughed at.” — NJ‘s Michael Hirsch. Read his whole story here.

Caleb Howe, RedState: “The death of Kim Jong Il has left South Park creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone empty inside.”

Tommy Christopher, Mediaite White House Correspondent: “Which GOP candidate will be first to slam President Obama for not killing Kim Jong Il? I vote @newtgingrich.”

Josh Greenman, New York Daily News: “It’s a shame Kim Jong Il just missed being able to see his whole life in Facebook Timeline.”

And in what has become something of a tradition on Twitter of starting accounts for infamous people who die immediately after they kick the bucket, Kim Jong Il himself has weighed in – from Hell. KimJongIlinHell: “The worst part of Hell has to be the strict ban on platform shoes.”

Just for fun, and because it’s probably the last day it’s relevant, don’t forget to check out the blog “Kim Jong Il looking at things.”