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Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’s’

Taking Out The Trash

Morning Reading List, 03.27.08

By Patrick on March 27, 2008 8:43 AM

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Good morning Washington. Dana Bash and John King will get married on Cape Cod over Memorial Day weekend.

Quickly navigate Morning Reading List:

REVOLVING DOOR | NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | RADIO | BOOKS | JOBS

  • You would rather hang out with Barack Obama over Michelle.

    REVOLVING DOOR

  • “Atlantic Names New Publisher Jay Lauf”

  • “More Changes to ABC News Executive Ranks”

  • Andrea Jones is leaving her position as Executive Director of ABC News and Emily Lenzner is taking her place.

  • “Linda Greenhouse Returning To Yale Law School in 2009 as Journalist-in-Residence”

  • A release announced, “Michael Flagg, a veteran business reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and the Washington Post, has joined the Washington, D.C. office of Manning Selvage & Lee (MS&L) as senior vice president. His appointment is effective immediately.”

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    NEWSPAPERS

  • The Washington Times won seven awards in the 2007 Virginia Press Association’s annual competition for writing, photography, artwork and news design.

  • A reader asks, “Why was McCain off limits with the media? Is it because of his advanced years or because he’s a war hero or both? everything was coming up roses for McCain with the Media. Guess that was good for him, since his senior moments crop up every once in awhile.”

  • “Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On”

  • Huffington Post’s Thomas Edsall presents, “Interview With Walter Pincus On The State Of The Press”

  • Romenesko has “Tribune innovation chief Lee Abrams’ e-mail to staff”

  • AJR asks, “Why is the media consensus so often wrong about political campaigns? And isn’t there a better way to cover elections?”

  • The AP reports, “New York Times Co. President and Chief Executive Janet Robinson received total compensation valued at $2.1 million in 2007 but got no stock options, reducing her pay 38 percent from a year ago, according to calculations by The Associated Press.”

  • AJR reports, “Why news organizations have to act much more boldly if they are to survive”

  • Check out Green Room Girl’s latest pictures featuring Howard Wolfson and David Brooks.

  • “Nielsen Online Names Top 30 News Sites”

  • Portfolio’s Mixed Media reports, “The New York Times has been around for 156 years. For all that time, it has trusted its readers, more or less, to find what they’re looking for. Not anymore. Today saw the introduction of ‘Inside the Times,’ a new multi-page index of that day’s highlights, in print and online, which runs on pages 2, 3 and 4 of section A. The purpose is ‘to help readers navigate and mine the paper and its Web site,’ according to an editor’s note.”

  • Politico, Viacom, Paramount Vantage are teaming up to present a private screening of the new Rolling Stones, Scorsese Shine a Light film on the eve of the White House Correspondent’s dinner, April 25th at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

  • Kelly Flynn writes, “No news is bad news for Kearsley journalism students”

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    TV

  • Mark your calendars! On April 2, nine women will speak at the “Women on the World” at the Chamber of Commerce, including Daryn Kagan, Jenna Bush, Andrea Koppel, Kelly O’Donnell and Donna Brazile. For more on what Kagan has been up to, click here.

  • A CNN release announced, “Following a campaign coverage strategy of creating mini-bureaus in key political battleground states, CNN has parked the CNN Election Express in Philadelphia this week to create a full-time reporting presence for the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.”

  • TVNewser reports, “This morning marked new NBC/MSNBC analyst Harold Ford, Jr.’s first appearance on Morning Joe. Co-anchor Joe Scarborough brought up his time in congress with Ford, and how the pair ‘transcended politics,’ as they sat on opposite sides of the aisle.”

  • Bloomberg reports, “U.S. advertising spending was little changed in the fourth quarter as a weakening economy prompted marketers to cut newspaper and radio ads, according to TNS Media Intelligence.”

  • USA Today reports, “Advertisers and marketers, struggling to keep up with changing consumer habits, are about to make massive investments in new digital and out-of-home media platforms, according to a forecast out today from research firm PQ Media.”

  • A release announced, “FOX 5 finishes the March 2008 news race as the #1 choice for late news in key adult demographics, announced Duffy Dyer, the station’s Vice President and General Manager. ‘FOX 5 News Edge at 11′ and ‘FOX 5 News at 10′ rank #1 in their respective time periods.”

  • JackMeyers.com reports, “Assuming this week’s release of fourth quarter GDP data confirms an official recessionary economy, marketers, media companies, economists and unofficial economic pundits will weigh in with appropriately reactionary forecasts of ad industry doom and gloom.”

  • The Wall Street Journal reports, “Over the past two years, Lynda Clarizio has helped build Advertising.com, AOL’s ad network, into one of the hottest properties in online advertising. Her reward: She gets to try to clean up one of the Internet company’s messiest divisions.”

  • The Wall Street Journal reports, “The two biggest U.S. cable providers, Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc., are discussing a plan to provide funding for a new wireless company that would be operated by Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp., people familiar with the talks say.”

  • The New York Observer reports, “On the morning of Friday, March 21, Chris Wallace woke up at his home in Washington, D.C., grabbed some fruit and yogurt, and turned on the Fox News early show, Fox & Friends. Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson and Brian Kilmeade were talking about Barack Obama’s recent characterization of his grandmother on a Philadelphia radio show: She was a ‘typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes comes out in the wrong way.’ ‘Can you say ‘typical white person’ if you’re white?’ asked Mr. Doocy. Of course not, noted Ms. Carlson. There’s no way that Senator Hillary Clinton could use the phrase ‘typical black person,’ they noted. ‘So there is a certain double standard in society,’ said Ms. Carlson. And also: ‘I sort of take offense at that line: ‘typical white.” Mr. Wallace was getting a little bit annoyed. ‘I didn’t think it was fair. I didn’t think it allowed Obama to make his point,’ Mr. Wallace later told The Observer in a telephone interview.”

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    ONLINE MEDIA

  • 24/7 Wall St. presents, “The Twenty-Five Most Valuable Blogs”

  • Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert writes, “How dreadful was the news coverage last week surrounding the official release of Hillary Clinton’s public White House schedule from her eight years as first lady? So bad that I found myself in rare (unprecedented?) agreement with at least two prominent conservative bloggers who noticed the same thing I did: The Beltway press corps is, at times, a national embarrassment.”

  • Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar reports, “Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia Story A Hit On YouTube!”

  • Gangrey.com presents the winner of the 2008 Goat Awards.

  • Media Week reports, “Time Inc., which has been hit by sweeping layoffs in recent years, has continued to pare its head count in its quest for cost-savings, albeit in smaller ways. This Old House shed four people in the past few weeks in communications, production and TV production, while at Sports Illustrated, a handful of people were laid off from the title’s Picture Collection archive. (Some of the SI staffers were to be assigned to other positions in the company, a Time Inc. spokesperson said.)”

  • Mesh Media Strategies reports, “I was privileged to join a group of bloggers, along with TV news executives and personnel from the Washington DC area, Monday night for a reception and private tour of the soon-to-open Newseum in the nation’s capital. In a word, it is spectacular.”

  • The Annenberg School for Communication at USC Online Journalism Review reports, “J-schools need to encourage and develop, not inhibit, students’ passion — not only for the favorite topics, but for the craft of journalism itself.”

  • MinOnline reports, “Tribune Media Services (TMS), the content syndication and licensing division of Chicago-based Tribune Company, will launch a new weekly political commentary magazine called Opinionated: Voices and Viewpoints on America and the World.”

  • The San Jose Business Journal reports, “Yahoo Inc.’s HotJobs feature on Tuesday launched a search ranking algorithm called REAL — Relevance, Engagement, Availability and Location. Sunnyvale-based Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) said the system is part of an overall strategic initiative designed to ‘make the recruiting process more efficient using Yahoo technology and to provide recruiters with unique insights into job seeker behavior.’”

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    MAGAZINES

  • Reader’s Digest’s Carl Cannon was interviewed on C-SPAN by Bob Schieffer this past weekend. Check out the interview here.

  • What you missed last night: Atlantic Media’s Journalism on Tap, a panel discussion on the upcoming election.

  • WWD.com reports, “Financial market turbulence, housing bubble bursts, Bear Stearns collapses — no wonder advertising isn’t looking rosy (or that most publishers don’t want to go on the record and talk about it). As the end of the first half draws near for magazines, business looks soft. Through April, the latest Media Industry Newsletter numbers show ad pages declined for most fashion titles and the unpredictable economy makes it impossible to predict how things will end up by June, much less the entire year.”

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    RADIO

  • A release announced, “Beginning Wednesday, April 2, at 9 p.m., the National Symphony Orchestra will return to the airwaves of Classical WETA 90.9 FM. Performances are being drawn from NSO archives, and most broadcast programs will feature repertoire from multiple NSO concerts. These two-hour broadcasts will take place on the first Wednesday of each month for the next year. WETA’s John Chester will host. The series is made possible by WETA’s Friends of Classical Music, including Patricia Sagon.”

  • The Wall Street Journal writes, “The Justice Department’s approval this week of the XM-Sirius satellite radio merger was a long time coming — maybe too long given that the deal was announced more than a year ago. Still, credit Antitrust Division chief Thomas Barnett for making the right call in the end.”

  • The Wall Street Journal reports, “One of the marquee deals of the now-faded corporate buyout boom was close to collapse Tuesday night, a victim of the credit-market turmoil that began last summer. The planned $19 billion privatization of the nation’s largest radio broadcaster, Clear Channel Communications Inc., looked increasingly likely to fall through as the private-equity firms and banks backing the transaction failed to resolve their differences over final financing terms, people familiar with the matter said. It would be one of the biggest leveraged buyouts yet to implode as the upheaval in global credit markets has made it nearly impossible for banks that financed such deals to spread their risk by packaging their loans for sale to other investors. That’s left many banks exposed to massive losses they have been trying to avoid.”

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    BOOKS

  • GalleyCat answers the question, “How’s Book Publishing Handling the Election?”

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    JOBS

  • Politico is looking for a Weekend Editor.

  • Human Events is hiring a Manager Editor.

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    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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    Taking Out The Trash

    Morning Reading List, 03.26.08

    By Patrick on March 26, 2008 9:41 AM

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    Good morning Washington. It’s Nancy Pelosi’s birthday!

    Quickly navigate Morning Reading List:

    REVOLVING DOOR | NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | RADIO | JOBS

  • This election cycle has changed how you view Bill Clinton — in a bad way.

    REVOLVING DOOR

  • Crain’s Chicago Business reports, “Tribune Co. named Chandler Bigelow as chief financial officer, effectively immediately, to succeed Don Grenesko, who retired Monday.”

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    NEWSPAPERS

  • “Barack Obama’s 37-minute March 18 address on race relations was the major event in a week in which he easily dominated the battle for media exposure, according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism study of campaign coverage from March 17-23.”

  • “Just How Did John McCain Obtain What He Has in the Bank with the Press?” And “The Maverick and the Media”

  • Modern Art Notes reports, “Washington Post, Pollack revisit an old stereotype”

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    TV

  • “Behind in the Ratings, CBS News Hopes for Help From a Debate”

  • ABC announced, “ABC News’ Jeremy Hubbard has been named co-anchor of ABC News’ early morning news programs ‘World News Now’ and ‘America This Morning,’ News President David Westin announced today. In addition to this role, Mr. Hubbard will contribute reports to all other ABC News’ broadcasts and platforms.”

  • An ABC release announced, “ABC’s ‘World News with Charles Gibson’ was the number one evening newscast among Adults 25-54 for the week of March 17-21. The ABC News broadcast averaged a 2.2/9 and 2.65 million among Adults 25-54, outperforming NBC’s “Nightly News” by 80,000. Week-to-week, ‘World News” advantage over NBC increased 33% in the key demo. Additionally, this marks the thirteenth time this season the ABC broadcast has finished first among Adults 25-54.”

  • A NBC release announced, “According to Nielsen Media Research
    data, ‘NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams’ was the most-watched network evening newscast, winning the week of March 17, 2008. The Williams-led newscast averaged 8.920 million total viewers, +456,000 more than ABC ‘World News” 8.464 million, and +2.302 million more than CBS ‘Evening News” 6.618 million. Season-to-date ‘Nightly’ leads ABC by +227K viewers. CBS ‘Evening News’ numbers are based on a three-day average for the week due to the NCAA tournament.”

  • WWD.com reports, “As shareholders prepare to gather for Time Warner Inc.’s annual meeting on May 16, 12 stockholding organizations have a proposal up for a vote that the post of chairman and chief executive officer be split. The proposal states that it is often in shareholders’ best interests to separate the positions, as conflicts of interest arise when one person holds both posts.”

  • The Hollywood Reporter reports, “Economic slowdown hits Hollywood”

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    ONLINE MEDIA

  • Rob Goodspeed asks, “Is PostPoints Worth It?” and discovered, “A quick look at the rewards dampened my enthusiasm. A $10 CVS gift card looked like a useful prize. However, at 3,385 points it would take me 677 days of Express reading or almost one year of reading both a print publication and the website to earn enough points to earn it.”

  • Reuters reports, “Virtual beer and vampires may no longer be enough to keep members of social networks like Facebook and News Corp’s MySpace riveted to their computers. Instead, the key to the future of these Web sites may lie in more practical functions, such as making plans, booking tickets or checking stock quotes.”

  • Dallas Business Journal reports, “American Airlines Inc. is hoping to win customers by becoming the first major airline to launch an application for users of the social networking Web site Facebook. American, owned by Fort Worth-based AMR Corp. (NYSE: AMR), said its application, called Travel Bag, lets Facebook users share travel experiences with friends, offer and read reviews on restaurants and shops, and create countdowns for upcoming events or trips.”

  • FastCompany.com reports, “On the verge of a revival last year, AOL suddenly imploded. The inside story of a journey to nowhere.”

  • The Independent reports, “Apax has cooled its interest in the £1.25bn auction for Reed Business Information (RBI), the publisher. Rivals United Business Media and Informa have already indicated that they are not interested in the auction.”

  • Jupiter Research reports, “Big Trend for 2008 Online Media: Re-Inventing the Network”

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    MAGAZINES

  • Tonight, join Reason for a happy hour at The Fab Lounge (1805 Connecticut Ave., NW 2nd floor), at 6.30PM. Reason’s Radley Balko, Nick Gillespie, Dan Hayes, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Michael C. Moynihan, Jesse Walker, David Weigel and Matt Welch will all be there to celebrate the publication of the magazine’s April issue, as well as the “advent of spring, with its attendant flowers and sunshiney days.”

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    RADIO

  • “DCRTV hears that recently-yanked MSNBC show host Tucker Carlson will be filling-in for David Burd on 3WT from 5:30 AM to 8 AM on Wednesday. He’ll be joining Jessica Doyle and Victoria Jones.”

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    JOBS

  • National Geographic Society is looking for a Producer, Web Franchise Programming.

  • Center For Independent Media is looking for a Deputy National Editorial Director.

  • Al Jazeera is looking for an Output Producer and a Planning Editor.

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    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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    Taking Out The Trash

    Morning Reading List, 03.25.08

    By Patrick on March 25, 2008 9:32 AM

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    Good morning Washington. It’s Emily Lawrimore’s birthday (Hat Tip: Playbook), the 2008 Dart Award Winners have been announced, Dana Priest and Anne Hull have won yet another award, yesterday was Monica Lewinsky’s 34th birthday and on this day in 1634, the first colonists to Maryland found the settlement of St. Mary’s (Hat Tip: MicCheckRadio).

    Quickly navigate Morning Reading List:

    REVOLVING DOOR | NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | RADIO | WEST WING REPORTAGE | JOBS

  • We asked how your NCAA tourney bracket is doing and you said, “What bracket?”

    REVOLVING DOOR

  • Mary Shaffrey of The Hill and Winston-Salem Journal fame is the new communications director at BIPAC.

  • Mike Allen’s Playbook reports, “Katie Levinson has joined Edelman as senior vice president and political director in its New York Public Affairs practice. Levinson’s background includes serving as communications director and spokeswoman for the RNC, Bush-Cheney ’04, President Bush, Governor Schwarzenegger’s reelection and Mayor Giuliani’s presidential campaign.”

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    NEWSPAPERS

  • New York Times’ Clark Hoyt asks, “So Much Sex, but What’s Fit to Print?”

  • AdAge.com reports, “Five Reasons Why Having a ‘Public Editor’ at the Times and Other Papers No Longer Makes Much Sense”

  • The New York Times’ David Carr reports, “Newspapers’ New Owners Turn Grim”

  • This “Washington Post Moment Of Zen” is brought to you by His Extreme-ness.

  • Variety reports, “Tribune owner hopes to revive embattled Times”

  • One reader wonders why this AP story never mentions Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s party (Democrat).

  • The Huffington Post asks, “Did Only Two Papers Feature 4,000 Iraq Deaths Across Their Front Pages?”

  • Politico’s Michael Calderone reports, “For days, the Obama campaign refused to confirm where the senator and his family were heading on a short Easter vacation, even as rumors spread among the press corps that they were bound for the Virgin Islands. So that presented a conundrum for news organizations: Should they send a correspondent on the — presumably enjoyable — assignment to the Caribbean, to investigate the white sand beaches and clear blue waters? As it turns out, CNN was the lone cable network to play a game of ‘Where in the World is Barack Obama?’ Chris Welch, an off-air producer covering the Obama campaign since the Iowa caucuses, headed out to the islands.”

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    TV

  • TVNewser has a round-up of cable news coverage in “The 2008 Cable Watch”

  • “Jake Tapper: ABC’s Man of the Hours”

  • Politico: “Despite criticism, Fox’s Wallace keeps ‘Obama Watch’ ticking”

  • The Huffington Post reports, “Fox Hosts Claim Friday’s Walk-Off Was A Joke”

  • New York Times’ Brian Stelter reports, “Chris Wallace took some of his Fox colleagues to task, claiming that they took Senator Barack Obama’s comments about race out of context.”

  • MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman writes, “One of the mysteries of television is why PBS’ Tavis Smiley continues to fly below the radar. He has an easy charm and a keen curiosity, and deserves to be better known.”

  • Variety reports, “While preparing to take Fox Television to the Supreme Court over a handful of expletives, the Federal Communications Commission let expire a separate indecency fine against the network for airing a movie with multiple repetitions of one of the same expletives. The FCC blamed a recent federal appeals court decision, saying it has created confusion over how the agency can enforce its indecency rules.”

  • The Kalb Report has the video of “Covering the World: A Conversation with Christiane Amanpour”

  • New York Times reports, “Bob Schieffer, right, the host of the CBS News Sunday morning program ‘Face the Nation’ since 1982, has agreed to postpone his planned retirement. ‘Yes, I’m going to remain with the show after the inauguration,’ Mr. Schieffer, 71, said Friday.”

  • A GWU release announced, “The George Washington University’s Prime Movers Program recently received a gift of $1,500 from the Washington, D.C.-area chapter of the Radio-Television News Directors Association to help purchase broadcast equipment and train students producing local high school radio and television programs. The Prime Movers Program is a partnership between Washington-area news media and local high schools in collaboration with GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs. Its goal is to provide journalism education and hands-on training in minority and diverse high schools.”

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    ONLINE MEDIA

  • “Nielsen Online Names Top 30 News Sites”

  • “Why are Web and Print STILL So Separate?”

  • A release announced, “Government Executive Media Group, a division of Atlantic Media Company, today launched NextGov, an interactive online platform serving the complete federal technology community. Breaking the traditional media model of one-way reporting by journalists toward readers, NextGov is designed to foster a multilayered dialogue between and among federal IT officials, program managers, private sector officials and outside observers about building the high-performance, results-driven federal agencies of the future. NextGov.com is designed specifically to support the needs of federal IT decision-makers, delivering three essential components to the decision-making process.”

  • All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher reports, “In February, for the first time ever, Arianna Huffington’s liberal political mega-blog and news site, the Huffington Post, has apparently surpassed the longtime mighty blog leader, Matt Drudge of the conservative/populist-leaning Drudge Report, according to recent traffic data reports from both comScore (SCOR) and Nielsen Online.”

  • Machinist reports, “The Wall Street Journal’s Web site is already (secretly) free”

  • The AP reports, “Details on Some of the Online Ad Networks Formed by Traditional Media Companies.”

  • BeetTV reports, “The Washington Post, long an innovator in expanding its online presence, has created a popular application on Facebook with some 350,000 downloads, Jim Brady, Executive Editor of the washingtonpost.com tells Beet.TV. The application is a kind of political badge which members put on their Facebook pages, showing their political leanings from liberal to conservative.”

  • Billboard reports, “Search for an artist on any of the popular search engines, and the top three results are practically guaranteed: the artist’s official Web site, Wikipedia entry and MySpace page — often in that order. But while artists and their handlers devote massive attention to the Web site and MySpace, the Wikipedia page is often overlooked. Recent data suggests they may want to reconsider their priorities.”

  • The AP reports, “Traditional media companies trying to stem the flow of advertising dollars to Google and other large Internet companies are increasingly building ad networks of their own, anchored by their brands. The latest, Forbes Inc., announced Monday that it will start selling ads this spring for about 400 financial blogs. In recent months, Conde Nast, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. and other major media companies also have unveiled topic-specific ad networks to lure advertisers that want to buy more ads than any single site can sell.”

  • Fortune reports, “As the United States slips into recession, advertising spending is set to fall — spelling trouble for traditional media companies already battered by Internet upstarts.”

  • Media Daily News reports, “A full-blown recession would probably take a substantial bite out of traditional media, according to a survey of industry analysts and independent researchers. But digital media will benefit from these draw-downs as financially strapped marketing executives shift dollars online, seeking more transparent measures of ROI. In many cases, a recession would simply accelerate a long-term trend that is already underway.”

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    MAGAZINES

  • In Washington Post Magazine, Gene Weingarten writes, “One man with more courage than brains sacrifices himself on the altar of punditry, and, in so doing, fails to redeem us all”

  • His Extreme-ness reports, “During Sunday’s ‘This Week With George Stephanopoulos’ roundtable on Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright, Clarie Shipman offered some thoughts. Then came her husband, Jay Carney. He said, ‘I will agree with my wife.’ Good move. Probably smart to maintain peace in that household. But hardly unique for Jay Carney.”

  • CNet News.com has a Q&A with Wired founder John Battelle talking “blog roll-ups, Google, and Federated Media’s future”

  • “Monocle: Mr. Magazine’s Notable International Launch of the Year + An interview with Tyler Brule“

  • MinOnline reports, “min has put together a one-day program that’s all about the magazine brand and its relationship with new media, from improving your Web play to making the right call on mobile opportunities; from appealing to clients who want to see more than a banner/print bundle to engaging your customers with meaningful content offerings. Don’t miss out on the publishing event of the year! Go to www.minday2008.com for registration and Early Bird Rate details”

  • The New Yorker’s Eric Alterman chronicles “The death and life of the American newspaper.”

  • New York Daily News reports, “Gore Vidal is wasting no time sticking knives in the corpse of his old foe William F. Buckley Jr. In an attack brutal even by Vidal standards, Gore writes on TruthDig.com that the National Review founder was ‘a hysterical queen’ and ‘a world-class American liar. … Buckley was often drunk and out of control.’ Vidal blames the ‘tired hacks’ at Newsweek for letting Buckley’s ‘creepy,’ ‘brain-dead’ son, Christopher, talk them into a reverential cover story on his father. Vidal concludes, ‘RIP WFB — in hell.’ We asked Christopher and Newsweek if they’d care to fire back. They declined.”

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    RADIO

  • Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz writes, “With BlogTalkRadio, the Commentary Universe Expands”

  • Washington Post reports, “As the audience for AM and FM radio declines, start-up entrepreneurs and giant media companies alike search for the ‘next radio’ — a way to make money by helping listeners discover new music. Online music providers such as Pandora, Imeem and Last.fm provide an early glance at that next chapter in radio history.”

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    JOBS

  • National Journal Group is looking for a Staff Writer/Online Producer.

  • The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is looking for a Desk Assistant.

  • The CATO Institute is looking for a Director, Communications.

  • The Hill Newspaper is looking for an Advertising Executive.

  • Widmeyer Communications is looking for a Senior Associate.

  • Roll Call TV is looking for an Intern.

  • AARP is looking for a Senior Manager, Media Relations.

  • Politico is looking for a National Account Executive.

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    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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    Taking Out The Trash

    Morning Reading List, 03.21.08

    By Patrick on March 21, 2008 9:58 AM

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    Good morning Washington.

    Quickly navigate Morning Reading List:

    REVOLVING DOOR | NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | WEST WING REPORTAGE | JOBS

  • Most of you will watch NCAA basketball this weekend.

    REVOLVING DOOR

  • A release announced, “Science News, the weekly magazine of the Society for Science & the Public, has named Judy Lewis its new advertising manager. The announcement was made by Elizabeth Marincola, president and publisher of Science News.”

  • An AARP release announced, “AARP, the largest membership organization for people 50+, today announced that renowned travel expert Peter Greenberg has signed on to become AARP’s new travel editor at large.”

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    NEWSPAPERS

  • “My Ten Point Plan to Reinvent The Newspaper Business.” By Ted Leonsis.

  • We’ve been asked a few Politico-related questions lately, so here are the answers: Although their chats have basically disappeared lately, the have not been permanently cancelled and may resume some day in the future. As for why some of the columns have disappeared from the home page as a result of the redesign, it’s not because they’re cancelled but rather they’ve been moved to different parts of the website because they aren’t updated as frequently.

  • “Before the Chronicle’s Editor at Large, Phil Bronstein, interviewed noted journalist Carl Bernstein, at San Francisco’s Jewish Community Center they hooked up backstage for a lively conversation about current events.”

  • The Pew Weekly News Interest Index shows, “On the eve of Barack Obama’s major speech on race and politics, most Americans said they had heard at least a little about the videos showing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright making racially-charged statements to his Chicago congregation. At the time of the survey, however, there was greater public awareness of other recent campaign events. More Americans said they had heard a lot about Geraldine Ferraro’s statements asserting that Obama’s race has been a major advantage in his campaign than had heard about videos of Wright preaching to his congregation.”

  • The Wall Street Journal reports, “As newspapers across America shrink in readership, page count and format, the price of the paper they are printed on has been rising, piling yet another worry onto the industry.”

  • Reuters reports, “Several top U.S. newspaper publishers said on Thursday they will devote online advertising space to a new network that wants to make it easier to place ads on hundreds of newspapers’ Web sites at a time.”

  • Reuters reports, “Media General Inc urged shareholders on Wednesday to reject board candidates proposed by dissident investor Harbinger Capital Partners, saying the nominees are not good enough to guide the newspaper and television company.”

  • The Washington Independent reports, “How Two Leading Journalists Played the Public to Help Bush Sell His War”

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    TV

  • “Schieffer to Face the Nation a Bit Longer”

  • Some readers didn’t like Gwen Ifill’s interview with Sen. Obama.

  • An ABC release announced, “According to Nielsen Media Research for Sunday, March 16, 2008, ABC News’ ‘This Week with George Stephanopoulos’ outperformed CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ among both Total Viewers and Adults 25-54. This is the 15th time this season ‘This Week’ beat ‘Face’ in Total Viewers and the 13th time beating CBS among the key Adults 25-54 demo”

  • An NBC release announced, “According to Nielsen Media Research data, ‘Meet the Press with Tim Russert’ was the most-watched Sunday morning public affairs program, winning the week ending Sunday, March 16, 2008 in all categories. On Sunday, the Russert-moderated program was No. 1, averaging 4.218 million total viewers”

  • A NBC release announced, “NBC News Middle East Correspondent and
    Beirut Bureau Chief Richard Engel has been named the 2007 winner of the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism. Engel was chosen for this outstanding work in MSNBC’s ‘War Zone Diary.’ The one-hour documentary, which was compiled from Engel’s video diary, gives a rare and intimate account of the everyday realties of covering the war in Iraq.”

  • Portfolio reports, “The commission schedules a second public hearing on network neutrality after a cable company stacked the first one.”

  • An ABC release announced, “ABC News, the National Constitution Center and WPVI-TV will host a Democratic Presidential Candidate debate in Philadelphia on Wednesday, April 16th. The live 90-minute debate, moderated by ABC News anchors Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, will air from 8-10 PM ET/PT on the ABC Television Network. The debate between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The format of the debate and information about media credentialing will be announced at a later date.”

  • The Huffington Post reports, “During Barack Obama’s media blitz last Friday, in which he started here on the Huffington Post and continued to hit the three cable news stations, he spoke with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann about the controversial statements of his former paster, Jeremiah Wright. Last night, David Letterman presented the ‘Barack Obama ‘Uh’ Count,’ in which they parsed his appearance with Olbermann and counted the verbal pauses of the candidate often praised for his eloquence.” Watch it here.

  • AdAge.com reports, “Broadcast-network TV’s place in the media landscape is changing, acknowledged NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker this morning, and as such, consumers can probably expect less scripted fare, but more shows aimed at reaching broad swaths of audience.”

  • MarketWatch reports, “NBC Universal plans to sell owned-and-operated television stations in Miami and Hartford, Conn. to place more emphasis on its outlets in the top 10 U.S. markets, according to an internal memo sent to employees Wednesday.”

  • Bloomberg reports, “The Sundance Channel, the cable network built around Robert Redford’s annual film festival, is for sale and Cablevision Systems Corp. may be the eventual buyer, according to Pali Research.”

  • The Wall Street Journal reports, “Confusion surrounded the buyout of Clear Channel Communications Inc. yesterday amid escalating tensions between the private-equity companies behind the deal and the banks that have agreed to finance it. As a key deadline approached, it was unclear whether the deal would close, some 16 months after it was announced. These doubts prompted a nearly 9% drop in Clear Channel’s shares to $32.60, below the $39.20 per share Thomas H. Lee and Bain Capital LLC agreed to pay for the company in May, suggesting the market is betting the transaction won’t close. If the deal isn’t completed by the end of a so-called marketing period, which ends next week, Clear Channel could turn to the courts to force the private-equity concerns and the banks to finish the deal.”

  • TVNewser reports, “Okay, rule #1 for cable news anchors, don’t talk to the press, even blogs, especially blogs, unless your boss or PR knows about it. Or, if you’re gonna do it, don’t use your name! FNC’s Ainsley Earhardt learned that the hard way. We hear she was given a talking to this morning after she talked to a blogger, on more than one occasion, about her fill-in gig on Fox & Friends Weekend. A TVNewser reader tipped us off to the existence of the blog Carpe Diem late yesterday.”

  • A reader tells us, “Marvin Kalb, still very much alive, was the last network news hire of Edward R. Murrow. (At least so he said at one of his Newseum sit-downs).”

  • Hotline’s On Call reports, “ABC News sent out its official announcement for the 4/16 Dem debate in Philly. However, 4/16 has another meaning for a lot of Washingtonians — it’s the night of the annual Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner. The dinner is considered the secondest biggest event of the Washington ‘prom season’ — right after the White House Correspondents Dinner — and typically features all the big-name DC media types. An ABC spokesperson said that date was chosen because it was the night that worked in the candidates’ schedules. No word yet on how much of ABC presence there will be at the dinner. George Stephanopoulos is listed as co-moderator of the debate, along with Charles Gibson.”

  • Huffington Post presents, “Richard Engel’s Emotional Return To The Palestine Hotel: ‘This Is Where My Colleagues Were Killed’”

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    ONLINE MEDIA

  • The Economist reports, “Social networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it is a business”

  • Venture Beat reports, “Online ad network Federated Media, which serves Web sites like VentureBeat and hundreds of others with ads it gets from large companies, is close to raising a $30 million round at a $200 million pre-money valuation, according to a well-placed source.”

  • DCist reports, “The literary Web site Hitotoki (pronounced hee toe toe key) is looking to launch a D.C. edition, but the editorial staff is facing a small problem — they need content. … If you’re interested in writing for Hitotoki, download a submission form or check out the site’s temporary D.C. page. Stories should be 200-500 words long, focus on a single moment in a specific place and authored by someone who either lives in or has visited the city.”

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    MAGAZINES

  • “Why the National Magazine Awards are a crock”

  • The Press Gazette reports, “The Financial Times is to give its FT Wealth supplement an upmarket relaunch to target the interests of the ‘very wealthy’ global citizens. Published quarterly, the tabloid will now appear as a magazine in a ‘unique’ format.”

  • Mr. Magazine names “the 30 most notable launches of 2007″

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    WEST WING REPORTAGE

  • Jezebel reports, “Remember Bush Administration spokespretty Dana Perino and that tough time she had remembering just what the Cuban missile crisis was? Well the other day she had another little missile crisis on Fox News Sunday, which is to say, she explained, she doesn’t really know what a missile is sorta, because, um, totes, kthanxbai, she was born a girl.”

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    JOBS

  • The Gazette is looking for a Reporter, a Business Writer and a Copy Editor.

  • The Catholic Review is looking for a Seasoned Staff Writer.

  • The Free Lance-Star Publishing Companies are looking for a Photojournalist.

  • The Army Times Publishing Company is looking for a News Editor for Marine Corps Times.

  • Condé Nast Publications is looking for a Brides.com Online & Local Print Account Executive.

  • National Public Radio is looking for a Supervising Senior Editor.

  • Stars and Stripes is looking for an Editor-Page layout/design.

  • Dow Jones & Company is looking for a Reporting Assistant.

  • Need To Know News is looking for a Broadcast Reporter.

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    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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    Taking Out The Trash

    Morning Reading List, 02.27.08

    By Patrick on February 27, 2008 9:51 AM

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    Good morning Washington. It’s the birthday of Ralph Nader and Chelsea Clinton.

    Quickly navigate Morning Reading List:

    REVOLVING DOOR | NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | RADIO | JOBS

  • It is close, but most of you think that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski do like each other off camera.

    REVOLVING DOOR

  • A tipster tells us that The Washington Times’ Greg Lopes has joined PhRMA’s press shop.

  • Ed Morrissey writes on Captain’s Quarters, “Today brings exciting news and an end to a time in my life that has proven far more successful than I ever dreamed. Beginning on March 1, I will begin working for Michelle Malkin, a friend, mentor, and writer I have long admired. She has offered me a position as writer at Hot Air, and my blogging will appear exclusively there.”

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    NEWSPAPERS

  • Rachel Sklar looks into the media’s “Drumbeat For A Hillary Exit” (and fact checks Richard Cohen while she’s at it).

  • TheStreet.com reports, “The Ochs-Sulzberger family managed to cling to their control over the New York Times last year, but they may not be able to keep dissidents off the publisher’s board of directors this time around. Scott Galloway of investment firm Firebrand Partners, with financial backing from activist hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, has hired D.F. King, a proxy solicitation firm, to press its case with New York Times shareholders in the lead-up to the company’s annual meeting on April 22, according to a source familiar with the matter.”

  • E&P reports, “As Pulitzer Prize jurors prepare to gather next week in New York to sift through hundreds of submissions and find three finalists in each of the 14 journalism categories to nominate for the full board to consider in a month, speculation is mounting over which entries have the best chance. … Some news events, such as the Virginia Tech massacre and the Minnesota bridge collapse, give a clear breaking news advantage to papers near those stories. A handful of investigative and in-depth projects, including several China-related probes, are also top contenders, based on interviews with a few jurors and a look at the other major awards already announced.”

  • The Horses Mouth reports, “John Solomon’s Washington Times Presents The Next Obama Smear: Military ‘Fears’ Him”

  • Slate’s Michael Kinsley writes about his “apparent concern about the appearance of the possibility of the appearance of a possible affair.”

  • Cox’s Ken Herman reports, “Today’s installment in one of Washington’s best long-running shows: Hearst Newspapers’ Helen Thomas vs. whoever happens to be in the White House. The topic was President Bush’s insistence on lawsuit immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated in the federal government’s program to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists. Ms. Thomas, as she has for several weeks, wanted White House Press Secretary Dana Perino to explain why immunity is needed. If the companies did nothing wrong, Ms. Thomas argued, they have nothing to fear in a court of law.”

  • The Nation reports, “Evidently the editors of the New York Times have taken leave of their senses. There can be no other explanation for putting a story on the front page of their newspaper speculating about Barack Obama’s being assassinated. The Times is beginning to make it a practice of running news-free stories on its front page. Most of them are harmless, but this one is sickening.”

  • Huffington Post reports, “Clinton Campaign Response To New York Times Rejected”

  • Washington Post’s Deborah Howell writes, “A Veterans Charity Cries Foul”

  • U.S. News’ Paul Bedard shows us a little local activism goes a long way.

  • Politico reports, “Obama stiffs, stifles national press”

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    TV

  • “Tucker vs. Clinton Campaign Again on MSNBC”

  • “FCC ready to intervene on Web access”

  • An ABC release announced, “‘World News with Charles Gibson’ averaged 9.21 million Total Viewers and a 2.4/8 among Adults 25-54 during the week of February 18-22. For the week, ‘World News’ placed first in the Adult 25-54 rating (2.4), tying NBC’s ‘Nightly News.’ For the seventh consecutive week, “World News” won among Women 25-54 (2.7/9).”

  • A NBC release announced, “According to Nielsen Media Research
    data, ‘NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams’ was the most-watched network evening newscast, winning the week of February 18, 2008. The Williams-led newscast averaged 9.627 million total viewers”

  • Check out Green Room Girl’s new pictures!

  • CJR reports, “Which of Tim Russert’s expert roundtablers did he turn to first on yesterday’s Meet the Press to discuss PlagiarismGate (the Clinton campaign’s making hay of Barack Obama borrowing phrases from Gov. Deval Patrick)? Russert turned first to Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential historian and Meet the Press regular. And it should have made for awkward television — asking someone with a plagiarism scandal in her past to weigh in on charges of plagiarism from the campaign trail. I mean, what does that disclosure look like — ‘You’re no stranger to charges of plagiarism, Doris, how does Obama battle this? Does this stick?’”

  • TVNewser reports, “Helped by strong ratings from three debates, CNN beat Fox News Channel for first place in prime time (8-11pmET) in the A25-54 demo.”

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    ONLINE MEDIA

  • Poynter Online reports, “Remember when newspaper editors thought it was impressive to have a virtual version of their newspaper, turning pages and all? Remember how no one read them? Well it seems the same mistakes are being made all over again by the Arabic-language daily An-Nahar.”

  • Slate looks at “The environmental pros and cons of reading online.”

  • “Due to an overwhelming amount of requests, the final EPpy Awards entry deadline has been extended to Friday, February 29th.” Enter here!

  • Reuters reports, “Newspaper and television company Media General Inc said it agreed to acquire DealTaker.com, a coupon and shopping Web site, from Plano, Texas-based NARAE Enterprises Inc, to expand its portfolio of interactive advertising and marketing solutions.”

  • The AP reports, “Online advertising revenues exceeded $21 billion for the first time in 2007, although preliminary data compiled by an industry trade group also suggest growth is slowing. The Interactive Advertising Bureau said its estimates show ad revenues grew 25 percent last year from nearly $17 billion in 2006. In dollar amounts, the estimated gain was $4.2 billion — less than the 35 percent and $4.3 billion growth seen in 2006 over 2005.”

  • Omnivoracious.com is “reviewing the reviewers”

  • washingtonpost.com’s Ben Pershing reports, “Amid the titanic fight last week over the expiration of the terrorist surveillance law, there was another, less intense debate brewing below the surface. This wasn’t your standard Republican vs. Democrat debate. It cut across all lines, pitting executive branch agencies against each other, prompting disagreements among lawmakers of the same party, even (gasp!) dividing reporters. This fight wasn’t over whether the expiration of the Protect America Act put the country in danger. It was over when the thing actually expired.”

  • The Boston Globe reports, “Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin warned yesterday that Internet service providers can’t block consumers from using lawful Internet activities in the name of providing better service.”

  • AdAge.com reports, “Chris Anderson Explains How ‘Freeconomics’ Will Change the Media World”

  • “PRNewser Enters Top 100 PR Blog List at #55”

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    RADIO

  • “Sirius Says It Could Do Without XM”

  • A release announced, “Diane Rehm, host of WAMU 88.5 and National Public Radio’s The Diane Rehm Show, will receive The Distinguished Washingtonian Award in Literature and the Arts from The University Club of Washington, D.C. The club’s Board of Governors will present the award at a dinner to be held in Diane Rehm’s honor on Thursday, May 1, 2008.”

  • Reuters reports, “Sirius Satellite Radio Inc, whose proposed purchase of rival XM Satellite Radio is still awaiting regulatory approval, reported a smaller quarterly loss on Tuesday as subscribers to its pay-radio service increased.”

  • Dan Steinberg reports, “Kornheiser Names His Blogging Enemy”

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    JOBS

  • Spectrum Science Communications is looking for a Creative Director/Web & Graphic Design.

  • The Associated Press is looking for a Multimedia Investigative Team Editor and an ENPS Project Manager.

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    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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    Taking Out The Trash

    Morning Reading List, 02.19.08

    By Patrick on February 19, 2008 9:50 AM

    4345057.jpg
    Good morning Washington.

    Quickly navigate Morning Reading List:

    REVOLVING DOOR | NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | RADIO | BOOKS | JOBS

  • The Oscars are your favorite awards show.

    REVOLVING DOOR

  • A release announced, “Science News, the weekly magazine of the Society for Science & the Public, has named Jonathan Oleisky its new associate publisher.”

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    NEWSPAPERS

  • Washington Post’s Deborah Howell writes, “Readers are super-sensitive to any perceived slight to their favorite candidate — from Page 1 display to photos to the details of graphics. And they want guidance from The Post in issues coverage and editorial endorsements before they vote. Several readers were unhappy that on last Sunday’s front page, Sen. Barack Obama’s Feb. 9 primary victories were played below a story on the Washington Redskins naming Jim Zorn as head coach.”

  • William McGurn on “Press Corps Quagmire”

  • Reflections of a Newsosaur reports, “Now that pending layoffs at the New York Times and Los Angeles Times have made newsroom cutbacks all but unanimous, some managers eager to maximize the feet on the street at their newspapers are wondering if they really need all those editors.”

  • A release announced, “The International Center for Journalists, the Washington-based nonprofit organization, is seeking nominations for the 2008 Knight International Journalism Awards. The Awards recognize international journalists who demonstrate an extraordinary devotion to the craft by upholding the highest journalistic standards despite overwhelming challenges.”

  • Crains New York reports, “On the heels of a 13% plunge in December’s advertising revenue, The New York Times said last week that it would cut 100 newsroom jobs over the course of this year. The paper isn’t the only suffering media business. Radio ad revenue for the New York marketplace took a slide in January, and television insiders predict a low-single-digit ad revenue drop in the first quarter for the local marketplace. Add magazines to the mix: Some are seeing the bottom fall out of their ad page counts.”

  • “Pundit Police Watch News Talkers”

  • Stephen Hunter talks about his heart attack.

  • Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson asks, “Are the news media being beastly to Hillary Clinton? Are political reporters and commentators — as Bill Clinton suggested but didn’t quite come out and say in a radio interview Tuesday — basically in the tank for Barack Obama?” In response, Terence Smith writes, “Gene’s answer: no and no. My view: yes and yes.”

  • The New York Times’ Clark Hoyt writes, “Three articles in The Times last month raised an intriguing question: When does fairness demand that a newspaper walk down the middle in a scientific dispute, and when does responsibility demand that it take sides? It is hardly a new question, and The Times, historically, has been slow to declare victors.”

  • A release announced, “The American Society of Newspaper Editors has selected the winners of its annual awards for distinguished writing and photography.” Among the winners are Anne Hull and Dana Priest, The Washington Post for their stories “exposing the deep and widespread problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.”

  • Edward Wasserman, the Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, writes, “Beneath the somber tales of shrinking revenues and staff cuts is an even more somber reality about the news business: The nearly two-century-old marriage between consumer advertising and journalism is on the rocks.”

  • Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz writes, “Coverage Adds to Clinton’s Steep Climb”

  • The New Yorker reports, “few days before Senator Barack Obama swept the Democratic primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, people across the country, picking up their favorite newspaper, were greeted with the following headline: Old Friends Say Drugs Played Big Part In Obama’s Young Life. In any event, that’s what some readers thought they read. On second glance, they realized their mistake. The headline actually said this: Old Friends Say Drugs Played Bit Part In Obama’s Young Life. Maybe, though, the mistake wasn’t just the readers’, especially the bleary-eyed among them who hadn’t yet had their morning coffee. After all, it wasn’t exactly news that ‘drugs’ had played a part (and only a ‘bit part’ at that) in the adolescence of the junior senator from Illinois. That particular factoid had been on the public record for more than twelve years. And if it wasn’t news, what was it doing on the front page of the New York Times?”

  • Washington Business Journal reports, “The Washington Post Co. has acquired $60 million worth of shares of Corinthian Colleges Inc. over the past three weeks as part of its push to grow its education business.”

  • Market Watch reports, “A pair of hedge funds seeking representation on the board of directors of New York Times Co. disclosed on Thursday that they have raised their stake in the media company above 10%. Firebrand Partners and Harbinger Capital Partners reported holding 15.1 million New York Times shares, or a 10.54% stake, after a Harbinger fund bought 441,100 Class A shares for $17.62 a share on Tuesday. The funds had previously reported holding 14.25 million shares for a 9.96% stake.”

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    TV

  • Do we have too many pundits? Paul Farhi looks into it.

  • A CNN release announced, “This Week in Politics will move to the 6 p.m. (ET) time slot on Saturdays beginning this weekend. The one-hour program, anchored by Tom Foreman, previously aired at 7 p.m. on Saturdays.”

  • TVNewser reports, “Some Shuster Defense on Rival Networks”

  • The Los Angeles Times reports, “It’s official: The strike drove writers nuts. No, not TV and film writers. Journalists. Fourteen weeks of covering bitter trench warfare between the Writers Guild of America and the studios, and the ink-stained wretches are feeling wretched. It’s not just that covering a complex, polarizing news story for more than three months left them fried. The worst part has been the blowback. And we don’t mean from the studios and networks, either. No, friends, it’s the ugliest kind of warfare: writer on writer.”

  • TVNewser reported this weekend, “This morning on Fox & Friends Weekend, an entirely new group of anchors graced the FNC screen. Ainsley Earhardt, Adam Housley and Clayton Morris greeted viewers at 7amET. Johnny Dollar has some clips of the trio’s first day.”

  • From Playbook: “ABC’s Ann Compton e-mails that when President Bush landed today in rural Arusha, Tanzania, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, he was greeted by Masai tribal dancers, hundreds of cheering Africans lining the — and three people, standing apart, waving OBAMA signs. ‘Not certain whether Bush saw them,’ Ann writes. ‘Just bought Mike Allen a ZEBRA — bringing it home on press plane. Really!’”

  • Washington Post reports, “In Washington, politics and the press always manage to inject themselves into the proceedings, even at a music awards show honoring the best and brightest on the local music scene. So at a long-standing music awards ceremony like the Wammies, you pretty much expect that at some point, CBS newsman Bob Schieffer is going to take to the stage. After all, there is no moment more quintessential D.C., more inside-the-Beltway, than the sight of Schieffer — who won a Spotlight Award last night — rocking at the mike with the local band Honky Tonk Confidential, speak-singing with a country-western twang a little ditty called ‘TV Anchorman.’ He also extolled the wonders of the ‘American dream’ — and promised that after the presidential inauguration next year he’ll forswear TV life for a full-time music career.”

  • Washington Whispers reports, “ABC newsman Bob Woodruff’s long recovery from a brain injury suffered in an IED attack in 2006 in Iraq is turning a new page. Literally. He tells us that in the upcoming paperback version of his hit book, In an Instant, his kids will write of how they dealt with their father’s injury, coma, and recovery.”

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    ONLINE MEDIA

  • Washington Post reports, “Barry Schuler moved to Washington from Silicon Valley to join AOL during its golden days, one of the many top technology professionals the Internet giant recruited to the region. But when the former chief executive left in 2003, he returned to California to become an investor and start a technology company, following other executives who have drifted away from the region. … Departures like Schuler’s are one reason Washington’s technology industry is still struggling to mature a decade after Dulles-based AOL became a magnet for talent.”

  • AdAge.com reports, “Media Work Force Sinks to 15-Year Low”

  • The Guardian reports, “Media companies including the BBC, Channel 4, Google, Yahoo and social-networking site Bebo have signed up to a new code of conduct … designed to give parents more information about the suitability for children of audiovisual content available on the internet and mobile phones.”

  • Ad Age.com reports, “With recession talk in the air, marketers are scrutinizing their spending. But old, reliable tricks such as counting on coupons to goose sales might not work this time around. Luckily, cheaper options abound in emerging media such as mobile, e-mail and search.”

  • Variety reports, “Amid all the recent headlines about tie-ups and acquisitions involving Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Facebook, one player continues to look more like a perpetual bridesmaid than bride. Few could dispute that AOL, the onetime buyer of Time Warner, has become a burr under its parent company’s saddle financially. Q4 2007 results released Feb. 6 showed an array of less-than-scintillating numbers. Division revenue slipped below 10% of the conglom’s total for the first quarter since 2000. Fiscal-year operating profit was just 14% of the total. Display ad revenue gained just 3% for the quarter, to $252 million, and paid search rose only 1%.”

  • Arianna Huffington writes, “The Right Strengthens its Hold on McCain, the Media Refuse to Notice”

  • The Telegraph reports, “Reed Elsevier, the Anglo-Dutch media group, is drawing up plans to axe more than 1,000 jobs as part of a continuing efficiency drive, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. The company, which owns the LexisNexis information service and the medical journal, The Lancet, is understood to be preparing to cut the jobs over the next couple of years as it centralises functions such as procurement, human resources and IT across the group. Analysts expect the job cuts — the majority of which will take place outside Britain — to contribute to a restructuring that will shed as much as £100m from Reed’s annual costs bill. It is unclear whether the cuts will be acknowledged formally in its annual results announcement on Wednesday.”

  • Kiplinger.com’s Business Resource Center launched a new Politics blog. Check it out here.

  • The Telegraph reports, “AOL, the American internet company, is attempting to piece together a deal with Yahoo! designed to help the Silicon Valley-based search engine evade the clutches of Microsoft, the world’s biggest software group”

  • New York Times reports, “In the middle of a media-saturated political season, Jared Kushner, publisher of The New York Observer, has been quietly nurturing an ambitious political journalism venture. The plan is to pull together 50 Web sites, one for each state, into a political hub called Politicker.com. Each site will serve as an intensely local source for political articles, speculation and scandal, Mr. Kushner said.”

  • Huffington Post’s Eat The Press reports, “Illinois Shooting Tragedy Pushes Election Off The Top, Mostly”

  • Chris Cillizza admits, “The Fix is a non-voter — for a few reasons”

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    MAGAZINES

  • Washington Monthly may team up with Common Cause.

  • “In the press, Hillary has been trapped by her own story, whereas Obama has been freed by his,” writes John Heilemann.

  • New York Post reports, “While magazine circulation inched up an average of just 1.1 percent in the second half of 2007, a few magazines with innovative approaches and partnerships managed to beat the odds.”

  • The Feed reports, “Time magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin joined a small, yet growing club this week, when he issued an apology for saying John Edwards considered Barack Obama ‘kind of a pussy’ on a satellite radio talk show.”

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    RADIO

  • FMQB reports, “Clear Channel Communications released its 2007 and Q4 fiscal results, with the company’s quarterly profit up 51.7 percent. Earnings in the quarter jumped from $211 in 2006 to $320 million in 2007. Revenue was up four percent to $1.84 billion. For the entire year, revenue was up six percent to $6.82 billion. Net income increased by 37 percent to $938.5 million.”

  • Canadian Business reports, “XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. spent roughly $1.2 million in 2007 to lobby for approval of its proposed $5 billion acquisition by rival Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., among other issues. The satellite radio operator spent $580,000 in the second half of 2007 to lobby Congress and the Department of Justice about the pending merger, according to a disclosure form posted online Tuesday by the Senate’s public records office.”

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    BOOKS

  • Newsweek asks, “What to make of ‘Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks From the Wild Web’? The new book, edited by Sarah Boxer, the New York Times’s first (now former) ‘Web critic,’ endeavors to compile an anthology of the best posts from the best Web logs. ‘W,’ you might ask, ‘TF?’ To what end this dead-tree blogroll? Is this a sincere attempt to explain the blogging phenomenon-which some estimate is, in its current form, more than 15 years old to off-the-grid grandmas across America? Or is this compilation a cynical ploy to cash in on free content?”

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    JOBS

  • The McLaughlin Group is looking for a Television Producer-Writer.

  • Kiplinger Washington Editors is looking for a Financial Services Reporter.

  • Roll Call, Inc. is looking for a Web Producer and a Web Editor.

  • Summit Business Media is looking for a DC Reporter for Credit Union Times Magazine.

  • BNA is looking for a Reporter.

  • SmartBrief, Inc. is looking for a Copy Editor.

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    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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    Taking Out The Trash

    Morning Reading List, 01.29.08

    By Patrick on January 28, 2008 7:22 PM

    4345057.jpg
    Good morning Washington.

    Quickly navigate Morning Reading List:

    REVOLVING DOOR | NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | RADIO | WEST WING REPORTAGE | JOBS

  • Most of you did plan on watching the SOTU last night.

    REVOLVING DOOR

  • A release announced, “Joe Peyronnin has joined Gibraltar Associates as Senior Advisor for Global Communications and New Media. Based in New York City, Mr. Peyronnin brings over 35 years of broadcast news experience to Gibraltar, including as head of news for Telemundo/NBC and Fox News, and as the number two executive at CBS News from 1989 to 1995. He is also the former Washington bureau chief for CBS News and an award winning news producer. Most recently he has worked as a full time corporate advisor to VFinity, creators of innovative digital content management software.”

  • Jossip reports, “Reuters media reporter Robert MacMillan is leaving the wire service for what we’re assuming is a bigger payday at Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.”

  • John Fialka is joining the E&E staff on Feb. 6. “He will be leading development of — and then managing — our planned climate publication. John is a superior reporter who has led the Wall Street Journal’s environmental coverage for many years.”

  • CQ announced that Jon Weinstein “has been promoted to senior marketing manager. In this new role, Jon will oversee the circulation marketing team”

  • A release announced, “A Stanford graduate student has been chosen as the 2008 Daniel Pearl Memorial Journalism Intern. Jennifer Martinez is working toward a master’s degree in communication, specializing in journalism, after earning a bachelor’s degree with honors in international relations at Stanford in 2007. She will work in the London bureau of the Wall Street Journal this summer.”

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    NEWSPAPERS

  • The AP reports, “U.S. newspapers’ online audiences grew about 6 percent last year, an industry group reported Thursday, a rare bit of good news for an industry struggling to adapt as readers and advertising dollars continue to migrate online.”

  • The WSJ may get a sports section?!?

  • “Is journalist burnout on the rise?”

  • Bloomberg reports, “Harbinger Capital Partners plans to nominate directors for New York Times Co. and Media General Inc., both family-controlled newspaper companies. Harbinger will try to place four directors on the board of New York Times and three on Media General’s, according to statements and regulatory filings yesterday.”

  • The Press Gazette reports, “Metro International has announced 27 redundancies at its free newspapers in the US. It has been reported that Metro was planning to put the titles up for sales. But Metro announced today it was embarking on a restructuring plan to move the titles into profit — in agreement with joint venture partner The New York Times Company.”

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    TV

  • The New York Post reports, “The $27 billion leveraged buyout of radio giant Clear Channel Communications appears to be on solid footing despite scores of jittery investors who feared the deal could fall apart.”

  • The AP reports, “Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable operator, said Friday it is pulling the plug on AZN Television, its Asian American channel.”

  • TVNewser reports, “All three cable networks are taking the announcement of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama.” How packed was the rally? Metroblogging DC tell us just how big.

  • The Washington Post reports, “More than 4,000 of the office building’s incandescent light bulbs were changed to fluorescent. Three large water tanks were installed in an underground parking garage to collect rainwater to irrigate a one-acre patch of lawn. Workers held contests to see who could save the most energy by turning off computers and lights. Those efforts were part of a year-long initiative at Discovery Communications’ headquarters in downtown Silver Spring to save energy, and reduce water usage and pollution. Last month, the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council recognized Discovery’s efforts by certifying its 540,000-square-foot building as “platinum,” the highest designation under the council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.”

  • The Tampa Tribune reports, “If you’ve been watching Fox News Channel’s election coverage of the primary season, you have seen the beginning of a new era in televised live shots. The live streaming image of chief political correspondent Carl Cameron as he cruises along the nation’s highways in a colorful Ford Expedition may look a little primitive, but it is revolutionary. ‘This is going to change the way breaking news is covered in the future,’ says Brian Wilson, Fox’s Washington bureau chief. After tinkering with various new technologies and video equipment, he says the network has converted a couple of sport utility vehicles into roaming live news centers.”

  • National Journal reports, “Psst! ‘They just spin you up on this and you happily go along,’ fumed Bill Clinton as he glared at CNN reporter Jessica Yellin. She had asked him to respond to Barack Obama and former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian, who likened the former president to the late bare-knuckle GOP operative Lee Atwater and charged that his wife’s campaign was engaging in ‘the politics of deception.’ Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaigner-in-chief accused Yellin and other reporters of stoking the controversy. ‘This is what you live for,’ Clinton huffed. Not always. Back in 1994, Yellin worked for Bill Clinton in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.”

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    ONLINE MEDIA

  • “Chris Cillizza will be a co-moderator for MySpace, MTV and the Associated Press’ ‘Closing Arguments: A Presidential Super Dialogue’ with Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee and other presidential frontrunners that will be presented on-air, online, and on mobile phones, Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 6:00 pm ET.”

  • Check out Tammy Haddad’s video with Hayden Panettiere on Newsweek.com

  • Instapundit points to “an unfortunate turn of phrase at Time Magazine”

  • Bloomberg reports, “Peter Thiel, the first outside investor in closely held Facebook Inc., said Sarbanes-Oxley rules make it difficult for technology companies in the U.S. to go public.”

  • Check out The Baltimore Sun’s new military blog.

  • The Local Onliner reports, “Former AOL President and MTV founder Bob Pittman has lately focused on investments as head of the Pilot Group (he is a pilot). In an interview with broadband consultant Will Richmond’s VideoNuze on the eve of the NATPE show in Las Vegas, Pittman says he is bullish on small market TV stations — and their online prospects.”

  • Check out the Facebook Group, “Make Top Reporters Stop Ignoring the Top Issue”

  • The AP reports, “Nigel Eccles, a news junkie and former online betting site employee, wanted to try pursuing both interests at once. Thus was born Hubdub — a new Web site Eccles and three colleagues in Edinburgh, Scotland, assembled — where customers will bet for fun, not money, on the outcomes of real news stories.”

  • News and Tech.com reports, “The 13th annual Digital Awards, to be handed out later this month at the Newspaper Association of America’s Marketing Conference, reflects the breadth and depth of video now available on newspaper Web sites.”

  • On Media reports, “Media, tech and Internet companies, and the Wall Street analysts who cover them, are looking beyond the current tumult to the rest of this year and into 2009. Unfortunately, many don’t like what they see.”

  • Dow Jones reports, “Gannett Co. (GCI) acquired Banquet, which operates an action sports Web site and advertisement network. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.”

  • The Independent reports, “What has been the greatest shock so far in the American election? Barack Obama’s meteoric Iowan rise? Hillary Clinton’s tearful comeback in New Hampshire? John McCain’s resurrection in South Carolina? No. The biggest surprise thus far has been the relative insignificance of the internet in determining the outcome of the election.”

  • A release announced, “For its first recent foray into longer-format video, Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc. has won a 2007 Aegis Award for ‘Who Cares? Kiplinger’s No-Nonsense Look at Long-Term Care.’ The 22-minute educational video offers an informative, consumer-friendly review of long-term care—explaining what it is, what it costs, and how to pay for it.”

  • A release announced, “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce today announced the launch of its blog, ChamberPost. The Chamber’s blog provides a real time public platform for issues of importance to the business community.”

  • Reuters reports, “Google-DoubleClick deal likely to win EU go-ahead”

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    MAGAZINES

  • PR Week reports, “A new survey suggests that trust in business is higher than trust in government in the US and other countries. The results of the ninth annual Edelman Trust Barometer show that the trust gap was greatest in the US, where 58% of respondents said they trust business to do the right thing versus 39% for government.”

  • Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick reports, “European companies like Germany’s Burda are driving toward a software-powered future of blended professional and amateur content.”

  • The New York Times reports, “Evan G. Galbraith Jr., a former ambassador to France and a Republican contender for governor of New York in 1994, died Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 79. The cause was cancer, said his wife, the former Marie Rockwell. For 15 years before accepting the ambassadorship in 1981, Mr. Galbraith, who was also an international banker, had been chairman of National Review”

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    RADIO

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    WEST WING REPORTAGE

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    JOBS

  • Business Financial Publishing is looking for an Advertising Copywriter.

  • Washington Examiner is looking for freelance Real Estate Reporters.

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    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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    Taking Out The Trash

    Morning Reading List, 12.21.07

    By Patrick on December 20, 2007 7:29 PM

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    Good morning Washington. You don’t plan on watching any college football games on New Years Day. And, this morning, Kiefer Sutherland celebrates his 41st birthday sober, and in jail.

    Quickly navigate Morning Reading List:

    NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | RADIO | WEST WING REPORTAGE | REVOLVING DOOR | JOBS

  • NEWSPAPERS

  • E&P reports, “The Washington Post put together a quick audio slideshow that deconstructs Barack Obama’s fashion choices. Surfacely it seems that Obama is almost always wearing the same dark suit, and often without a tie. Robin Givhan and Nancy Donaldson look closer to see what these vestments signify. According to them, it shows that Obama is a modern leader, echoing the relaxed but still professional mindset of the American workforce.”

  • John Boehner is a fashion cop for reporters.

  • Bloomberg reports, “The chief executives of Gannett Co. and Media General Inc. personally lobbied top U.S. regulators before winning exceptions to rules that limit newspaper and broadcast ownership in the same markets.”

  • New York Times’ David Pogue explores, “The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality”

  • Chicago Tribune reports, “A new era at Tribune Co. began taking shape Wednesday with the departure of Chairman and Chief Executive Dennis FitzSimons and the expected arrival of new leadership under Chicago billionaire Sam Zell. The changing of the guard represents a make-or-break proposition for the 160-year-old media concern, struggling to transform itself for the Internet age by going private in a daring, debt-laden $8.2 billion deal.”

  • We hear the Washington Times tree is back up. The first one had its needles fall off.

  • Washington City Paper reports, “To this day, the Washington Post lives by the guiding principles of fabled publisher Eugene Meyer, who decreed, among other things, the following: ‘As a disseminator of news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.’ And these days that means not publishing the word ‘dick’ in the Style section.”

  • DCist reports, “Metro fares aren’t the only thing going up in price in D.C. If you’re in the habit of purchasing a copy of the Washington Post from a vending machine or a sidewalk hawker on your way to work in the morning, take note: the cost of the daily paper is about to go up by 15 cents. The Post’s newsstand price will become 50 cents beginning on Dec. 31. The company cited a decline in the paper’s circulation and advertising revenue as the reason for the increase.”

  • The AP reports, “The National Press Foundation will honor half a dozen journalists at its 25th anniversary dinner in February.”

  • The New York Times reports, “Claudia Payne, special sections editor, is answering reader questions Dec. 18-21. Questions may be e-mailed to askthetimes@nytimes.com.”

  • Wonkette reports, “Editors at the Associated Press have picked the year’s top 10 stories, and we expected the presidential campaign to be like, you know, top five or something, right? Well, it lands in at #8 — coincidentally one spot ahead of the immigration debate.”

  • Drudge reports, “McCain Pleads with NY Times to Spike Story”

  • The AP reports, “Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. said Thursday revenue fell 9.2 percent in November, primarily from a sharp drop in classified ads as jobs and real estate listings continue to migrate online.”

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    TV

  • An ABC release announced, “According to Nielsen Media Research for Sunday, December 16, 2007, ABC News ‘This Week with George Stephanopoulos’ posted 3.12 million total viewers, the program’s best total viewer delivery since the week of February 4, 2007. In addition, ‘This Week’ increased the most of the Sunday discussion programs among Total Viewers compared to last year, a significant 28%.”

  • Also from ABC: “According to Nielsen Media Research for the week of December 10, ABC News’ ‘Nightline’ beat CBS’ ‘Late Show with David Letterman’ and NBC’s ‘Leno’ among Adults 25-54 for the third week in a row. The last time ‘Nightline’ beat ‘Letterman’ and ‘Leno’ three weeks in a row in the demo was May 1995.”

  • A NBC release announced, “According to Nielsen Media Research
    data, ‘Meet the Press with Tim Russert’ was the most-watched Sunday morning public affairs program, winning the week ending Sunday, December 16, 2007. On Sunday, the Russert-moderated program was No. 1, averaging 4.205 million total viewers.”

  • “CNN and NBC/MSNBC have released their coverage plans for the Iowa Caucus, Thursday Jan. 3.” Check out the full details at TVNewser.

  • A C-SPAN release announced, “C-SPAN will air a Special **LIVE** ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE, Sunday, December 23rd at Noon (ET), and will re-air in the normal Road to the White House timeslots of 6:30 & 9:30 pm”

  • TVNewser reports, “CBS News Sunday Morning continues as the #1 Sunday morning news program, and it’s growing. Last Sunday the Charles Osgood program drew 5.34M Total Viewers, up 12% year-to-year.”

  • An ABC insider tells us, “Hilarity has ensued at our bureau after a widely attended ‘facebook seminar’ earlier this month. It’s now commonplace to see highly regarded producers and correspondents asking interns about ‘poking’.”

  • USAToday reports, “If you plan to dance at your New Year’s Eve party, you might want to pick up some moves from White House correspondent David Gregory, who boogied this morning to Mary J. Blige music.” Check out the video here.

  • One year after her departure, Kathleen Matthews’ picture has finally been removed from the banner welcoming visitors to WJLA in Rosslyn.

  • Forbes reports, “Despite a growing cadre of viewing alternatives like the Web and repeat-heavy schedules on the broadcast networks, people are still watching television, a new survey finds.”

  • B&C reports, “Hearst-Argyle is taking participatory democracy into the newsroom. The broadcaster is asking viewers and Web surfers to submit videos about the upcoming New Hampshire primary to the station Web sites of its WMUR-TV Manchester, N.H., and WCVB-TV Boston as well as the stations’ YouTube channels.”

  • Check out the latest installment from Green Room Girl.

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    ONLINE MEDIA

  • Beet TV reported yesterday, “Earlier today I interviewed Cynthia Farrar, the CEO and producer of PurpleStates.TV. Tomorrow, the first of nearly a dozen video segments produced by her new company and reported by non-professional citizen journalists, go up on the Op-Ed pages of the NYTimes.com The videos will be uploaded through February 5, ‘Super Tuesday.’”

  • PolitiFact is a finalist in the prestigious DigitalEdge awards by the Newspaper Association of America for best overall news site along with the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis and washingtonpost.com. You can find out more here.

  • WebProNews reports, “Bloggers from the left, center, and right sides of the political spectrum opened a group blog on Newsweek.com called The Ruckus.”

  • The LCV just launched a new website “calling the Sunday talk show hosts to task for ignoring the issue of global warming.” Check it out here.

  • Hotline’s On Call announced, “check in often between Christmas and New Year’s for On Call’s up-to-date coverage of the presidential contest.”

  • The AP reports, “Antitrust regulators approved Google Inc.’s $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick Inc., clearing the way for a formidable combination in the burgeoning online advertising sector. Microsoft Corp. and AT&T Inc. have lobbied heavily against the deal, but the Federal Trade Commission gave it the go-ahead Thursday.”

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    MAGAZINES

  • In the first edition of The Atlantic’s politics roundtable, Marc Ambinder, Ross Douthat, and Matthew Yglesias predict which candidates will win the primaries and debate whether Hillary’s slide is a media fabrication. Check it out here.

  • A reader points out “a notable first for DC: NYMag.com suggests that the DC food scene has something that New York doesn’t. ha.”

  • Starting this week, much of CQ content is now accessible and easy to read on your handheld device. “The new handheld-optimized pages include news stories from CQ Weekly and CQ Today, CQ Transcripts, CQ BillAnalysis and many other services.”

  • Popular Mechanics has published its first ever Geek the Vote — an online guide to all the candidates’ stances on issues related to science and technology including energy policy and climate change, gun control, science education and infrastructure investment. Check it out here.

  • The New Republic reports, “Max Brantley, the editor of the alternative weekly Arkansas Times, has feuded with Mike Huckabee since the presidential candidate first appeared on the political stage during his failed 1992 Senate run. A liberal columnist married to a circuit judge appointed by Bill Clinton, Brantley penned weekly columns antagonizing Huckabee for his staunchly conservative social views, opaque campaign finance disclosures, and acceptance of gifts during his time in office. ‘Huckabee would believe I covered him obsessively, and he’d be right about that,’ Brantley says.”

  • The New Republic’s Sean Wilentz writes, “Opinion-slingers are mooning over Barack Obama’s instincts. Don’t they remember how badly that worked out last time?”

  • The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle writes, “the wild, drunken office Christmas party used to be a staple of television, books, and movies. Now I feel as if it’s dropped pretty thoroughly out of the popular imagination; the only example I can think of recently is a fleeting scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary. Were office holiday parties really that much wilder in the past? Or have we just stopped noticing, literarily?”

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    RADIO

  • A NPR release announced, “NPR News and South Carolina ETV Radio (the state’s public radio network) will present an audio-only Republican Presidential Debate, to be broadcast on NPR Member stations and webcast live from 2:00-4:00PM (EST) on Wednesday, January 16. NPR News journalists and hosts Steve Inskeep, Michele Norris and Robert Siegel will act as moderators.”

  • So far, there has been over 3000 comments in response to Bryant Park Project blog post asking Ron Paul supporters to identify themselves.

    WEST WING REPORTAGE

  • Potomac Flacks reports, “Preparing your boss for a MTP appearance isn’t an easy assignment (especially when it’s the full hour)! Many a guest has recruited high-priced talent to do their best Russert in hopes of better preparing for the grilling they will receive on Sunday. Word on the street was that former Bush Administration flack, Adam Levine did the best Russert impersonation in town. Looks as though he has some serious competition after Romney’s appearance last Sunday.”

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    REVOLVING DOOR

  • A tipster tells us that Steve Valentini, the circulation director for Politico, is jumping ship and going over to the Examiner.

  • On Jan. 2, Quin Hillyer is leaving Citizens United to begin work at the editorial page of the Washington Examiner as Associate Editor.

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    JOBS

  • National Public Radio is looking for a Director of Business Development, an Editor for Morning Rundown and an Editor for the
    Afternoon Rundown    .

  • The Daily Progress is looking for an Assistant City Editor.

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    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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    Taking Out The Trash

    Morning Reading List, 12.10.07

    By Patrick on December 10, 2007 9:33 AM

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    Good morning Washington.

    For those of you wondering why we’re not including the Politico, Roll Call and The Hill in our “Pictures of Morning Papers” feature — which we’d love to do — it’s because a.) Politico and Roll Call are usually a day behind in posting theres and b.) The Hill hasn’t put one up since Nov. 28.

    Quickly navigate Morning Reading List:

    NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | RADIO | WEST WING REPORTAGE | REVOLVING DOOR | JOBS

  • You don’t think the Hillary Clinton campaign is sitting on some big story on Obama.

    NEWSPAPERS

  • Washington Post’s Deborah Howell writes, “Stories about rumors are tricky and easily misconstrued. A Nov. 29 story and headline that explored Barack Obama’s ‘connections to the Muslim world’ and rumors that he is Muslim were met with a swift Internet reaction that left some staffers stunned at its ferocity. Even Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles was ‘so upset’ that he took the unusual step of taking potshots at the story in an editorial page cartoon.”

  • AP reports, “Newspaper publishers, entering 2008 with some of the worst economic conditions in many years, said Wednesday they hope to bring even more readers — and ad spending — to their Web sites with expanded offerings of news, advertising and video.”

  • New York Times’ Clark Hoyt writes, “On Oct. 12, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top military commander of American forces in Iraq, delivered a scathing denunciation of the Bush administration’s ‘incompetent’ management of the war — and an equally blistering denunciation of the news media.”

  • Bloomberg reports, “Tribune Co., the newspaper publisher being taken private by real estate billionaire Sam Zell, plans to reduce borrowings by $500 million and confirmed the deal will close this year, sending the stock up nearly 8 percent.”

  • Page Six reports, “There’s a reason why it took so long for Ben Bradlee, 86, to receive the Legion of Honor from France, as the legendary Washington Post editor did last week. In the 1950s, when Bradlee was Newsweek’s Paris-based European bureau chief, he was expelled from the country for trying to interview leaders of Algeria’s revolutionary rebel army. His expulsion was repealed many years later, but the French are slow to forgive.”

  • Forbes.com reports, “You know what ails The New York Times Co.–eroding circulation, falling advertising revenue through the first three quarters of the year and the looming threat of stronger competition from The Wall Street Journal and its soon-to-be-owner Rupert Murdoch.”

  • Poynter Online reports, “Adapting to a changing news, information, and advertising economy means that newspapers must adapt the technology they use — not just online, but for print editions too.”

  • “Four veteran black sports journalists are taking a voluntary buyout offered at USA Today, wiping out its NBA coverage team, the USA Today staffers told Journal-isms on Saturday.”

  • SND Update Blog reports, “J. Ford Huffman, deputy managing editor of design at USA TODAY, one of the paper’s original architects and a 25-year veteran, has accepted a buyout — one of as many as 43 rumored to be pending (management sought 45 according to recent media reports).”

  • Slate’s Jack Shafer reports, “The World Health Organization publicly spanked the New York Times last week for breaking an embargoed study about measles. The offending article was a 60-word news brief by Celia W. Dugger in the paper’s Nov. 29 edition. No matter that the Times broke the embargo accidentally and apologized to WHO. The organization issued an e-mail announcing to the press corps the punishment—a two-week suspension of all Times reporters from the WHO media distribution list.”

  • The Center for American Progress reports, “Think Again: Reporting Iraq Is a Lot Harder than it Looks”

  • Bill Walsh, “national copy desk chief at The Washington Post and proprietor of The Slot: A Spot for Copy Editors, offers up the next set of well-edited bites” for Metrocurean.

  • Jeff Gannon writes, “The Old Media barely missed a toe-tapping beat in their relentless coverage of the Larry Craig ‘scandal’ to mention that a staffer for Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell was arrested last week by the FBI after showing up for a sexual rendezvous with someone he believed to be a 13 year-old boy. The handling of the ‘incident’ by the Old Media provides a textbook example of pervasive liberal media bias I discuss in my book, ‘The Great Media War, A Battlefield Report’.”

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    TV

  • “NBC Now Will Air Freedom’s Watch Ad”

  • “Satellite TV on the Move, at Fox News” (and more from TVNewser)

  • An ABC release announced, “ABC News Nightline will air original programming next week. Shows for the week include: a story about Oprah Winfrey campaigning with Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama, an interview with Kay Warren, wife of famous evangelist Pastor Rick Warren and a profile of Francis Ford Coppola.”

  • BusinessWeek reports, “Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin has suffered a number of setbacks in his increasingly lonely fight against the cable companies. Martin, of course, is determined to place tighter regulations on the industry by restricting the reach of companies and allowing subscribers to pay only for the channels they want. Now, Democratic and Republican lawmakers—as well as Martin’s fellow commissioners—are questioning his selective use of data to support his campaign.”

  • USA Today reports, “Here’s a bit of cheery news for media executives concerned about the softening economy. Political campaigns likely will spend more than $4.5 billion on ads and marketing in the 2008 election season, a 64% leap from 2004 — the last cycle with a presidential race — research and consulting firm PQ Media says in a report out Thursday.”

  • Times Online reports, “James Murdoch, the chief executive of BSkyB, is expected to step down today to take on the job of running News Corporation’s European and Asian operations. Mr Murdoch will be replaced by Jeremy Darroch, who is the chief financial officer of BSkyB. Sky is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corp, parent company of The Times.”

  • TVNewser reports, “Last week’s CNN/YouTube debate propelled the CNN program into the top 10 in all of cable news programs, the first time in more than two years that a single CNN program has cracked the top 10. The ranking is compiled by total viewers, Live +SD.”

  • B&C reports, “Some 1,500 communications attorneys, lobbyists and their guests, including a few ink-stained scribes, took refuge from the picture-postcard snow to gather at Washington, D.C.’s Hilton hotel Wednesday night for the annual Federal Communications Commission chairman’s dinner.”

  • Reuters reports, “According to the New York Post, the most recent rumblings rise from NBC, which is expected top make cuts in its news division, particularly at NBC News and MSNBC.”

  • A release announced, “MSNBC’s Decision 2008 coverage continues
    with a ‘Super Tuesday,’ Dec. 11, highlighted by in-depth analysis of the latest local and national poll numbers as the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary approach and the races heat up.”

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    ONLINE MEDIA

  • Washington City Paper’s Black Plastic Bag reports, “In response to the broken neck suffered by CNN anchor John Roberts, the media-insider blog FishbowlDC went with a Busta Rhymes reference. For the record, we here at BPB would’ve gone Shaolin-style with ‘Protect Ya Neck.’”

  • Slate launched its first portable widget: the official Bushisms Generator. You can read random Bushisms, hand-picked by Slate’s editor Jacob Weisberg by embedding the widget on your site. To embed the widget, visit this URL and hit “code” to copy and paste the HTML code directly on your site: http://www.clearspring.com/widgets/471f80ec102ef440

  • James Brady “is raising the question of just how much help you are allowed to have in putting your own name on the title page of a serious book. Am I nitpicking here or raising a legitimate question?”

  • Arianna Huffington writes, “Huckabee Tries to Shoot the Messenger, But Wounds His Campaign Instead”

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    MAGAZINES

  • A reader says, “scherer worked at salon, mother jones and the nation. hmm, i wonder what his political inclinations are? and yet, if time hired someone who had worked at the weekly standard, national review and wash times, there would be an uproar.”

  • TVNewser reports, “Macrovision, a California-based distributer of digital content, is buying TVGuide in a $2.8 billion deal.”

  • National Journal’s Bill Powers writes, “According to the media, we’re supposed to have learned all kinds of things from the rise of Mike Huckabee. … What I’ve taken away from the Huckabee phenomenon is that we should stop worrying so much about horse race journalism.”

  • NewsBusters reports, “Try to remember a time in September when it was reported that the Hillary Clinton campaign showed its ‘hard-nosed media strategy’ by getting GQ magazine to spike a piece on Clinton team in-fighting by threatening to pull access to Bill Clinton for GQ’s planned December ‘Man of the Year’ cover package. Well, that ‘Man of the Year’ issue is out, and there was no bucking, only fawning.”

  • Can you answer CQ’s Political Trivia for Dec. 7?

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    RADIO

  • “Fenty offers part of budget surplus for Radio One development”

  • From DCRTV:

      WAMU’s Diane Rehm picks up a CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield Palliative Care Award from the Greater Washington Partnership For Palliative And End-of-Life Care. For a January 2007 interview with author Calvin Trillin concerning “About Alice.” The award will be presented tonight during a reception at DC’s Sibley Hospital…..

  • In a recent online chat, Going Out Gurus took “a moment to remember Tom Terrell, the critic, promoter and DJ, who passed away last week after a long battle with prostate cancer.”

  • Public Eye reports, “You probably don’t know this, but there was yet another presidential debate the other day. You didn’t see it. But don’t feel bad — not that you would — but nobody saw it. It was on National Public Radio. And the reviews have been positive, save for the little ‘it put me to sleep’ factor. But all the plaudits got this writer thinking how you could repackage the debate, draw a crowd and inform a potentially large size of the electorate.”

    WEST WING REPORTAGE

  • Texas Monthly interviews Dan Bartlett.

  • The New York Post reports, “Karl Rove, the controversial and long-time senior adviser to President George W. Bush, is shopping a memoir in an auction that will kick off today and likely result in a seven-figure payday.”

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    REVOLVING DOOR

  • A tipster tells us that the new Communications Director for Rep. Brian Baird is Rachel Irwin, former Maine Press Secretary for Senator Olympia Snowe.

  • Maura Judkis is the newest addition to U.S. News as a web producer. “She will be working closely with Ben Harder on the new Science site and with Sara Clarke on the Money & Business site.”

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    JOBS

  • Nationaly Syndicated Radio is looking for Top level support staff.

  • National Journal is looking for a Staff Correspondent.

  • Regent University is seeking a Journalism Professor for Interactive Journalism program.

  • AARP is looking for a Multimedia Producer and a Daily News Editor.

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    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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    Taking Out The Trash

    Morning Reading List, 11.06.07

    By Patrick on November 6, 2007 9:19 AM

    morningsun.gifGood morning Washington.

  • Eventually, you want to have kids.

  • News University is hosting, The Electronic Election: Covering the 2008 Vote: A NewsU/Poynter Webinar on November 14. Register here.

  • Poynter Online reports, “NewAssignment.Net, the professional-amateur (pro-am) journalism effort spearheaded by NYU prof Jay Rosen, has a new project underway — and they need beat reporters to help”

  • TVNewser reports, “A cable insider tells TVNewser HOT (the largest cable operator in Israel) took CNN off the air from both their digital and analog platforms at 11:30am local time (5:30amET) this morning. It was replaced with FOX News Channel.”

  • Inside Cable News looks into the “Anatomy of a misquote…”

  • The Huffington Post reports, “Mariane Pearl, the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, spoke out against the media establishment Thursday evening at a party hosted by Glamour to toast the book debut of her collected reporting for the magazine, In Search of Hope.”

  • Wonkette points out the latest snafu from MSNBC.

  • Check out the latest Washington Social Diary.

  • Check out NPR Music, ‘a new, free, comprehensive multimedia music discovery Web site. Featuring on-air and online content aggregated from NPR and the participating stations as well as original-to-NPR Music materials such as interviews, reviews, blogs and live performances.” It launched yesterday.
  • Politico’s Mike Allen writes, “MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, coming off a textbook interview with Michael Gerson, introduces a new feature exclusive to the show’s 7 p.m. edition: ‘The Hardball Power Rankings,’ showing who’s winning at that moment.”
  • TVNewser reports, “Bob and Lee Woodruff, both now working for ABC News, are, it turns out, the namesakes for two new characters on ABC’s Desperate Housewives. Marc Cherry, the program’s creator, says in a USA Today interview that the characters, gay partners Bob and Lee, were named for the Woodruffs after Cherry met them at a dinner”
  • B&C reports, “As executive vice president of Fox Business Network, Kevin Magee oversees the channel’s day-to-day operations. Like many people at the just-launched channel, Magee is a veteran of CNBC, cable’s business-news leader in distribution, ratings and revenue. But Magee was not daunted by his former employers’ competitive advantage. ‘Everyone loves a good fistfight,” he said.’”

  • Howard Kurtz reports, “It sounded like a great gotcha story: the Hill newspaper accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of failing to show up for a Senate hearing on nuclear waste disposal that she herself had requested. And Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) was quoted as criticizing the Democratic presidential candidate. But it turned out that Clinton was there — and Inhofe’s quotes were taken from a July press release — prompting an embarrassing correction. ‘Any mistake is regrettable,’ says Hugo Gurdon, the Hill’s editor, ‘but it’s more painful when it negates the story entirely.’”

  • The New York Times reports, “Journalists often call publicists ‘flacks’ and publicists call journalists ‘hacks,’ though rarely in earshot of one another. But the gloves came off last week after Chris Anderson, the executive editor of Wired magazine, chided ‘lazy flacks’ who deluge him with news releases ‘because they can’t be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they’re pitching.’”

  • National Journal hosted a panel discussion featuring National Journal’s Ronald Brownstein and Linda Douglass, The Hotline’s Amy Walter, and moderated by XM’s Rebecca Roberts. Click here to hear the broadcast of the event.
  • What are your favorite political reporters doing for New Year’s Eve? Top of the Ticket takes His Extreme-ness’ story one step further.

  • A reader writes in, “Someone needs to note somewhere that that ’60 Minutes’ piece last night, Sunday, Nov. 4, on the revelation of the con man known as ‘Curve Ball’ who duped the entire United States government, military and 16 intelligence agencies into forging ahead into an unnecessary war that has cost the U.S. about 3,800 lives, was one of the best investigative pieces aired on the show in many, many years. The piece was well-researched and well-produced, and the story produced actual, revelatory, groundbreaking real news on a real, relevant story. The scoop, with worldwide implications, was the type of piece that the show used to do all of the time. Then, two pieces later, the show aired a completely inane, juvenile, non-relevant dog-and-pony show by a flustered, somewhat confused Lesley Stahl about some billionaire who decided to buy a yacht. The piece was worse than some of the newsbreaking pieces in the current issue of ‘National Enquirer.’ In an odd juxtaposition, ’60 Minutes’ revealed a flash of what used to make the show great and displayed a waste of time that showed why the show has tanked for many people.”

  • E&P has “some of the top daily gainers for the six-month period ending September 2007, based on today’s FAS-FAX. The daily average is based on Monday-Friday.”

  • Riehl World View reports, “A few dots to connect here, but it looks like a journalist, John Cheeves of the Lexington-Herald-Leader, with current and previous ties to McClatchy and Knight-Ridder respectively, has been involved in one dubious scheme that at least suggested pay for play journalism. And given where his name also turns up, he might not be the most objective journalist to be leading a witch hunt against current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.”

  • The Associated Press reports, “The PC’s role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced Internet-connected game consoles, digital video recorders with terabytes of memory.”

  • The Los Angeles Times launched, “The Strike Zone: The Latest on WGA Strike”

  • The Associated Press reports, “An influential advisory firm for institutional shareholders recommended its clients vote in favor of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.’s planned acquisition of rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc.”

  • The New York Times reports, “The broadcast networks are clearly adopting more of an ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ philosophy toward the Internet. Harnessing a natural human inclination toward gossip, complaint, prediction and obsession, they are using TV show Web sites to offer clips, outtakes, interviews, games, message boards and blogs — not to mention entire episodes.”

  • Don Surber reports, “Blaming the media for victory”

  • A release announced, “Gibraltar Associates, LLC, a consultancy specializing in risk and reputation management, public affairs and business development, today announced that Tarah Donoghue has joined the company as an Associate in the Washington, DC office. Ms. Donoghue will focus on client communications strategy, policy and strategic messaging. Ms. Donoghue joins Gibraltar Associates from the White House, where she served as Deputy Press Secretary to First Lady Laura Bush from May 2006 to August 2007.”

  • William Powers writes, “To truly understand high-end political journalism requires a secret decoder ring. The actual message of a story is often embedded between the lines or in a passing descriptive detail far down in the text. In this case, the operative moment came well after the jump, at paragraph 18: ‘In a 53-minute interview over a breakfast of boiled eggs (he ate only the egg whites), aboard a chartered jet that brought him here from Chicago, Mr. Obama said Mrs. Clinton had been untruthful or misleading in describing her positions on problems facing the nation.’”

  • AdAge.com reports, “Newsweek’s new management plans to chop its guaranteed paid circulation by 500,000 copies, dropping its promise to advertisers down to 2.6 million paying readers from 3.1 million, those with knowledge of the move said today.”

  • PR People: Are you on this list?

  • Beltway Blogroll reports, “A weekend journalism discussion at the Phillips Foundation has sparked a mini-debate about whether ‘backpack journalism,’ where reporters carry more than pen and pad, is a good development.”

  • Associated Press reports, “Tom Curley, CEO of The Associated Press, called on news executives Thursday to “stop pining” for the past and adapt to the new ways that news is being distributed and consumed.”

  • New York Times reports, “Copyrighted work like a news article or a picture can hop between Web sites as easily as a cut-and-paste command. But more than ever, as that material finds new audiences, the original sources might not get the direct financial benefit — in fact, they might have little idea where their work has spread.”

  • The Deal reports, “And now for something completely different: ‘The long-term outlook for the [newspaper] industry appears to be healthier than that implied by current share prices.’ So Joe Arns of Banc of America Securities LLC reports on initiating coverage of the newspaper sector. Although he may be new to the beat, that doesn’t mean he’s Pollyannaish. In fact, Arns’ forecast for a 5% decline in newspaper ad revenues next year is more bearish than the Street consensus of a 3% decline.”

  • Reuters reports, “The Wall Street Journal said on Sunday that its Web site now has 1 million subscribers, a milestone for a site that charges for access even as other sites are throwing themselves open for free.”

  • “Daily News TV critic David Bianculli says ‘So long & thanks’”

  • FT.com reports, “Tribune Company and the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission are locking horns over the proposed $8.2bn buy-out of the media group by Sam Zell, the real estate entrepreneur, in a stand-off that threatens to derail the deal.”

  • Heard On The Hill reports, “Sen. Patrick Leahy tried out the time-honored strategy of turning the tables in an effort to fend off an aggressive press corps on Wednesday. Cornered by a pack of scribes anxious to query the Vermont Democrat about the troubled nomination of Michael Mukasey to be attorney general, Leahy was attempting to exit the Capitol through a second-floor exit.”

  • Media Matters reports, “In a November 5 post on his campaign news website The Page, Time magazine editor-at-large and senior political analyst Mark Halperin claimed that a Chicago Sun-Times column raising questions about the transparency of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) presidential bid was the product of opposition research provided by the campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY).”

  • MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman writes, “The digital revolution has given journalists some fantastic tools. Web sites like Google and Wikipedia give us instant access to voluminous research on virtually any subject. Cell phones enable us to become news photographers. Sparked by blogs and YouTube, the Citizen Journalism boom has taken shape.”

  • The Guardian reports, “Rupert Murdoch plans to install Times editor Robert Thomson as publisher of the Wall Street Journal next year, according to a senior US media executive.”

  • CJR reports, “The Rhetoric Beat: Why journalism needs one”

  • Whoops. CNBC should know by now how to spell Karl Rove.

    Jobs

  • Politico is hiring a Special Projects Assistant.

  • The Hill is seeking a Political Journalist.

  • USATODAY.com is looking for a Producer, Design Dept. and a digital storyteller.

  • SmartBrief, Inc. is looking for a freelance travel writer, a
    Health Editor and a Copy Editor.

  • Publishing Services LLC is looking for an Associate Publisher.

  • The Montgomery County Sentinel is looking for an Entry Level Reporter.

  • Patuxent Publishing Co. is looking for a General Assignment Reporter.

  • Elsevier is looking for a Reporter.

    Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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