News Notes

(A Sprinkling of Things we Think You Ought to Know…)

Three “deeps” from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour: From the University of Rhode Island wesbite: “According to Christiane Amanpour, URI class of 1983, ‘URI changed my life forever and it has a deep, deep, deep place in my heart.’”

Guilty as charged! NBC’s Chuck Todd at Washington University in St. Louis spoke on the media covering “political stunts” such as the Mitt Romney etch a sketch. This quote was reported this week in the independently run student newspaper called Student Life: “Do you completely ignore it? Or [do you see it as] the campaigns are engaging on this and it’s your job to cover what the campaigns are engaging on?” Todd said. “You end up guiltily covering some of these petty things.“ Read the full story by Michelle Merlin here.

Has Ifill crossed a line? HuffPost‘s Christina Wilkie reported late Thursday that the Media Research Center, a well-established conservative outlet, is criticizing PBS’s anchor Gwen Ifill for emceeing an event last night at Whitman-Walker Health clinic where Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius will receive an award. In a nutshell, MRC thinks Ifill is crossing a line. Read the full story. Earlier in the day, just after lunch, WaPo‘s Erik Wemple reported that he asked Ifill about it. She said she won’t be endorsing Sebelius, nor did she know who she’d be honoring. “I really do try to do the arm’s-length thing,” Ifill told him. Wemple’s piece doesn’t bash Ifill. Quite the contrary. He says unless he sees an HHS puff piece he is “disinclined to grouse” about her appearance. Meanwhile, elsewhere in WaPo, the event appeared on D.C. Wellness Calendar. The way it reads sounds fishy: “’Be the Care’ Gwen Ifill hosts ceremonies honoring Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Thursday, 6:30 p.m. Whitman-Walker Health, 1701 14th St. NW. 202-797-3510. www.whitman-walker.org. $150, minimum donation.” Meanwhile, elsewhere in WaPo, around dinner time in a weird meta exercise, “The Reliable Source” gossip column reported Wemple’s news just in case readers missed it earlier in the Opinion Section, which can be found with the new online web navigation tool by scrolling to Gaithersburg and back.

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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Want to get a few things off your chest in regards to the Washington Post? Like how annoying their so-called website navigation is or the lack of actual gossip in their newspaper? Or, how about complimenting them for their political features, Carolyn Hax, Date Lab or how filthy minded Gene Weingarten can be? Well now is your chance. They’re offering readers an opportunity to be on an “Advisory Panel” who occasionally give them feedback on the newspaper, website and other features they try to sell you.

Somehow we don’t think they’re letting us on the panel.

See the introductory letter…and their big promises of never selling your email address or spamming you.

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WaPo is apparently trying to ease your navigating woes when searching the Washington behemoth’s website. But you made need an ice pack and a sick day for this one.

For our purposes, there are obvious parts of the site that are vital to our interests — namely Ezzy Klein, Reliable Sources (sometimes UnReliable Sources), Chris Cillizza‘s “Worst Week in Washington” feature, Animal Watch and Erik Wemple‘s reported opinion media blog. It’s still unclear why Klein’s blogpire (a new way of saying empire) is under the “news” section and not opinion or Democratic consulting. And finding “Animal Watch” was a complete lost cause that will perhaps require an ordinary Google search or purchasing the print version daily. But Wemple’s blog may have confused the wonky powers that be considering that it’s both opinion and a blog. So what do they do? They stick it in the “blogs” section, which seems logical enough, except you then must click on “opinions” and then scroll down through a strange and confusing series of options that includes “Jump to a Section” — huh? — business blogs and columns, car blogs and columns, kicking tires, Post User Polls, Entertainment blogs, Celebrity blogs and bizarre patches of white space. Keep holding your breath. After campus overload, class struggle and crime scene, Ask Fedcoach and For God’s Sake and Under God you ahhh…reach Opinion Blogs and Opinion Columns, which is where they stuffed him.

Before discovering this obviously easier way to reach his blog and hunting Wemple’s blog down for 15 minutes, we typed his name into their search engine and clicked on one of his pieces which led us to his space. Needless to say, this hardly fits the one-click experience they promised.

Wemple and others should raise a little holy hell about all this. Clearly they still have a few kinks to work out.

Read more on WaPo‘s efforts to improve navigation here.

We reported this week that NBC News Political Director and MSNBC “The Daily Rundown” host Chuck Todd will speak to students at Washington University in St. Louis on April 16. The topic will be the upcoming presidential election. A source at the university who wrote up the announcement informed FBDC that Todd would be paid for the speaking engagement. It should be noted that he accepted the request on condition that the payment would be in the form of an honorarium. Per NBC policy, the money will be donated to charity.

“In a rational world, it seems obvious…”

This is the promising start to an early morning memo from Politico‘s Editor-in-Chief John Harris to staff. Makes you wonder where he’s going with it. Our minds raced. 1. Mike Allen will attend Arianna Huffington‘s sleep away summer camp for insomniacs. 2. There will be an uprising during the next Politico live show in which Ginger Gibson, Juana Summers and Reid Epstein will all say f&@k on air. Or 3. National Politics Editor Charlie Mahtesian will soon begin writing a new blog called “Charlie Mahtesian on the American Political Landscape.”

Ding. Ding. Ding. If you guessed number three you’re onto something. Mahtesian will be relieved of some of his grueling line-editing duties to write the new blog but will remain Politics Editor. Harris says if anyone deserves more time in the cockpit and less in the control tower, it’s Mahtesian. On another important note, Dave Catanese will be taking “a breather” from his blogging responsibilities. Harris says news from his blog can just as easily be presented through quick news stories. What’s more, he says Catanese “excels on the road.”

See the internal memo…It’s all carefully worded to mitigate any possible bad feelings.

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

What’s Driving the Day: It’s Mike Allen‘s mom’s birthday! Who better to get a shout-out in Politico‘s Playbook that Barbara Powers Allen, Playbook’s mom. One quibble: Allen couldn’t give her a standalone item? She had to share with J-Mart (a.k.a. colleague Jonathan Martin)?  Her birthday is tomorrow.

Most jarring weekend line in an advice column…. WaPo‘s not giving up on that cringe-worthy workplace advice column. In this weekend’s installment, Karla Miller, who dispenses the advice, tries to boost a male job seeker’s ego by way of this headline: “Does a ringless finger scream ‘loser’?”. In a nutshell, a 51-year-old man says he has never had a romantic relationship “of any kind” and wants to wear a wedding ring to his next interview to make himself appear more stable. At one point in her answer, we want to seriously look away from this train wreck as she asks, “Is there no one whose company you’ve enjoyed for years, even if you haven’t seen each other naked?” Thanks Karla! Hope the poor guy doesn’t do anything rash.

Take that D.C. Cabbies! National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg points out the news that passengers will soon be able to hit a panic button if the driver acts like an ass and starts attacking. He also pays attention to the D.C. Taxi commish Ron Linton‘s hair seen on an ABC7 story. The hair is pretty spectacular, we must admit. Did he get a perm? Read here.

Weigel hangs out in Sanford, Fla. – “I’ll be in this city for a few days as the outrage and leaks about the Trayvon Martin shooting keep flowing,” writes Slate’s Dave Weigel this morning.

Human Events is getting a face lift. How drastic will it be? Depends who you talk to.

As the intrepid FBDC Contributor Eddie Scarry reported yesterday, there are changes happening at Human Events — and not all favorable ones for those involved. For instance, he reported that at least two writers are now out of jobs with more cuts expected on the horizon.

“Unfortunately, sometimes a company needs to do a bit of restructuring in order to move forward,” Joe Guerriero, Vice President and Group Publisher of Eagle Publishing, told FishbowlDC. He said the company is injecting “significant investment” into the paper.

As was reported, Eagle, which owns Human Events, will relaunch their flagship newspaper on April 16. They promise a “much broader distribution on Capitol Hill” and the addition of new writers like Hope Hodge, who comes to Human Events from the Jacksonville, N.C. Daily News where she was a military reporter, and nationally syndicated columnist David Harsanyi, which they announced this morning.

Other changes: They will add “key government agencies” to their circulation list and additional distribution points throughout DC.

The big get…In order to “breathe some life into the paper”, they’ve hired Patrick Mitchell to lead the re-design of the paper.  They hail him as “one of the top magazine and newspaper designers in the country.”  Past credits include stints as Creative Director of O, The Oprah Magazine for Hearst, Nylon, Fast Company and Kiplinger’s.  Pat has also served as Art Director and lead Designer at Billboard, 02138 (for Harvard Alumni), the Detroit Free Press, The Dallas Morning News, and Whittle Communications.

Now let’s hope they don’t go the way of Joan Rivers or Goldie Hawn when altering Human Events. Change can be good. Turning someone into a monstrous version of herself is not.

UPDATE: Roll Call Editorial Director Mike Mills Responds.

Roll Call’s former Features Editor Debra Bruno (a.k.a. Bebbie Druno) is bound to burn a few bridges today with a story in the Opinion Pages of The Christian Science Monitor about hiring practices at CQ Roll Call. As the former internship coordinator, Bruno, now a Beijing-based journo, had memories of conducting Facebook searches to better inform her about a potential intern’s race.

An excerpt:

“Ahead of the Supreme Court hearing on affirmative action, I recall how at Roll Call newspaper, I was told that one of our three interns had to be from a racial minority. Diversity is important, but giving someone an advantage beyond his experience degrades the applicant and the hirer.”

In her piece, Bruno says CQ Roll Call‘s current Editorial Director Mike Mills denies such a practice existed, but she claims it did — first in 2009 and again in 2010.

We reached out to CQ Roll Call for comment and are awaiting their response. UPDATE: At 3:30 p.m. the publication’s publicist replied with a quote from Mills. He said, “Ms. Bruno is wrong. Our policy is to strive to bring in as many candidates fromdiverse backgrounds as possible, not to tip the scale in anyone’s favor. Her allegation does a disservice to the many employees who were hired during her tenure.”

Bruno also found a way to find humor in a practice she despised… Read more

WTOP has named the Washington Regional Transplant Community its Charity of the Month for March 2012. As part of WTOP’s Charity of the Month program, Washington Regional Transplant Community will receive free air-time and in-kind contributions from the station which they hope will help raise awareness in the community.

WRTC, founded in 1987,  facilitates all deceased organ, eye and tissue donation in the Washington area and serves more than five million residents.