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NPR Dismisses an Ombudsman Report (CJR / Behind The News)
This past Friday, NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos released an 80-page report reviewing an October 2011 Peabody-winning investigation into the South Dakota foster care system’s treatment of Native American children. The ombudsman’s review concluded that the investigation as aired violated NPR’s Code of Ethics. NPR management has vehemently disagreed with the ombudsman’s findings. In an “Editor’s Note” posted that same night as the report, chief content officer and executive vice president Kinsey Wilson and Margaret Low Smith, the senior vice president of news, stood by the substance of the reports. NPR The network stands by the thrust of NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan’s reporting. A number of media figures, such as former Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor William Grueskin, took to Twitter to comment that Schumacher-Matos’ approach was laudable and an unusual instance of rigor and transparency. Poynter / MediaWire Wilson and Smith write that they’ve “spent weeks with our team, re-examining the hundreds of interviews and documents that formed the basis of the series” and say “Overall, the process surrounding the ombudsman’s inquiry was unorthodox, the sourcing selective, the fact-gathering uneven and many of the conclusions, in our judgment, subjective or without foundation. For that reason, we’ve concluded there is little to be gained from a point-by-point response to his claims.” Read more

Here’s how Bon Appétit magazine frames their choice of Ari Taymor‘s 39-seat downtown Los Angeles eatery Alma as this year’s best new USA restaurant:

To put it in sports terms, [it's] like a minor league baseball player who goes from batting .200 one year to hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth with two outs to win the World Series the next. Yes, it’s that unexpected.

In nearby local baseball terms, another way to think of Taymor is as Yasiel Puig – squared. Rounding out the top three new American eateries is San Francisco’s very pricey Saison (#2) and Nashville’s Rolf & Daughters (#3).

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SocialTimes: There’s a service that uses Twitter to predict where food poisoning is likely to hit. This could be helpful, but the term “food poisoning” is so vague. Are we talking vomiting after a meal? Or just the way you feel after you eat McDonald’s?

GalleyCat: Coldplay has recorded an original song for the new Hunger Games movie, just in case you needed another reason not to see it.

TVSpy: Amelia Earhart is not related to Amelia Earhart. Carry on.

There is today nothing more from St. Martin’s Press than a resolute “no comment.”

FishbowlNY had been inquiring about how the recent Lianne MacDougall (a.k.a. Lianne Spiderbaby) plagiarism scandal has impacted the publisher’s plans for the North American release later this year or in early 2014 of the embattled writer’s first book, Grindhouse Girls: Cinema’s Hardest Working Women. In a Twitter reply posted late last month, St. Martin’s stated that MacDougall had ended the book project from her end. But that tweet has since been deleted.

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When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, a popular theory that emerged was Michael Bloomberg purchasing The New York Times (if it ever went up for sale). However, David Remnick, editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, says that’s not going to happen. Why? Because Bloomy hates the Times.

Remnick, appearing on This Week, explained “Mike Bloomberg is a great innovator, but I have to say, I’ve heard straight from the horse’s mouth that he detests the New York Times… Mike Bloomberg thinks that the New York Times has an opinion page on the front page and he loathes it.”

That probably settles that issue, but still, you have to wonder Bloomberg could end up buying the paper simply because he hates it so much.

If Bloomberg did, then he could change the Times to fit his vision. Which we imagine would feature plenty of articles praising Bloomberg.

“Who is Nick Beef?” For years, that question – relating to the mysterious, capitalized ground-gravestone next to the one in Fort Worth, Texas that reads OSWALD – has mystified both the media and JFK historians. No longer.

Dan Barry, who writes the “This Land” column for the New York Times, laid it all out over the weekend. His findings are deservedly being picked up left, right and center, although he frames it somewhat more modestly:

This scoop may not definitively link Castro, the mob and the Central Intelligence Agency to the Kennedy assassination, but, hey, it’s something. And to prove that he is who he says he is, Mr. Beef reaches into a small satchel and pulls out a contract from 1975 for Burial Plot 258 in the Fairlawn section of Rose Hill ($175), as well as a receipt from 1996 for the purchase and installation of a granite stone to be engraved NICK BEEF ($987.19).

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Jennifer Lawrence is your Vogue September 2013 cover girl. In the accompanying profile by Jonathan Van Meter, Lawrence says that she doesn’t like goat cheese or people who forget to wring out sponges. She’s so real!

The September issue of Vogue hits newsstands August 20.

The Financial Times has named Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson its US news editor. Edgecliffe-Johnson has been with the paper for 16 years, most recently as global media editor.

Martin Dickson, FT’s US managing editor, said of the move, “Andrew has been a superb media editor, who has won great respect across the industries he covers. With his history of excellence in reporting, editing and team leadership, he will be a strong and dynamic US news editor.”

Edgecliffe-Johnson is succeeding Gary Silverman. Silverman will remain US deputy managing editor and add US national editor to his role.

It’s not every day that a radio station executive cries on the air while relaying the details of a major staff shake-up. But that was indeed the case Friday afternoon at WBAI-FM in New York as Pacifica Foundation interim executive director Summer Reese confirmed a huge downsizing at the public radio station.

Although she said on the air that 75% of WBAI 99.5 FM staff was being dismissed, she later clarified in an interview with the New York Times that starting today, it is in fact 66% – or 19 of the station’s 29 employees – that are gone. Radiosurvivor.com columnist Matthew Lasar was struck by another aspect of the drastic WBAI cutbacks:

What I found most surprising about this impromptu [on-air] press conference was that Reese announced that she has tapped into former interim KPFA general manager Andrew Leslie Phillips as WBAI’s new interim program director. Last we checked, the Pacifica National Office had put Phillips under “paid administrative leave” at Pacifica station KPFA pending an investigation of complaints against him. According to Phillips, the probe involved charges of racism at the Berkeley signal.

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