Kurtz On Hilton, Post’s Front Page

Earlier today, Howard Kurtz held his weekly chat where he discussed such topics as political diversity in media, Paris Hilton, and the Post’s front page content. Some excerpts:

Oklahoma City: Yes, the journalist/political donation story does raise more questions about the general leftward tilt in the media (long established by many similar studies and surveys). The question is, will major media outlets finally do something about it? I suspect The Post for one has some form of formal or informal affirmative action effort to hore women and racial minorities. How about one for the one media minority that is most under-represented, conservatives?

Howard Kurtz: I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I think many young conservatives don’t apply for MSM jobs, either because they’re not interested, don’t think they’d feel comfortable or want to engage in advocacy journalism. I also don’t want editors quizzing applicants about their political views. But there are ways, short of that, that editors could move in the direction of greater political diversity as well as racial, ethnic and gender diversity.

…

San Francisco: Mr Kurtz, the only thing more boring than coverage of Paris Hilton is coverage of the coverage of Paris Hilton. You really should be ashamed — covering 2 a.m. calls to Barbara Walters!

But, since you’ve brought it up: how did Paris Hilton get phone privileges in jail at 11 p.m. at night?

Howard Kurtz: See? You can’t help yourself!

Paris was able to call her aunt, who conferenced the call to Barbara Walters’ apartment. I don’t know what the jail policies are in terms of calling relatives.

…

Fairfax, Va.: Did you notice that the front page of this Sunday’s Washington Post had no news stories at all — just four feature stories, including an extremely wasteful (space-wise) and self-serving presentation of the VP story. The first news story appeared on A7. I thought I was buying a newspaper on Sunday. What’s with this trend?

Howard Kurtz: Depends on your definition of news. I would argue that the first part of the Cheney series is news of the highest order. News isn’t always what happened yesterday; it can also be the product of sustained journalistic inquiry. All newspapers run more features than usual on their Sunday fronts because a) people have more time to read longer stories; b) they want to showcase their best enterprise work on the day with the biggest circulation; and c) not much happens on Saturday. But I do think there can be lots of news embedded in feature stories.

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