The Texas Tribune, a new Texas-based non-profit journalism Web site, will launch tomorrow — one year before the state’s 2010 general election, which includes the gubernatorial race, among others. There has been a lot of talk about the project since longtime Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith left his day job to launch the Tribune, and even though it will cover only Texas political and policy news, we here at FishbowlNY are fascinated by the prospect of non-profit journalism no matter where its based.

The project is was founded by Texas-based venture capitalist John Thornton. Smith, who believed in Thornton’s vision from the beginning, was helping to look for a suitable editor-in-chief for the site before realizing that he would make the perfect leader. “It was sort of like Dick Cheney helping George Bush find a vice president,” Smith said. The team went on to hire a staff of eleven reporters, plucked from the top echelons of Texas’ political journalism world.

“We hired the best reporters away from for-profit journalism in Texas,” Smith said. “We put together our fantasy football list, and we got everybody we wanted.”

The Texas Tribune (www.texastribune.org) will be unlike any other non-profit journalism organization. In addition to traditional news reporting, there will be columns, blogs aggregating content from other news sources, original audio and original video content, all available for free for newspapers, radio and television stations to use. There will also be 80 gigabytes of public information, like data about Texas’ elected officials, that the Tribune assembled into databases for the public to access. “I’m kind of amazed that in just a couple of months we’ve been able to build this with a relatively small staff,” Smith said.

As he prepared to reveal The Texas Tribune to the world, Smith took a minute to talk to FBNY about his reason for leaving Texas Monthly to start the new project, how he’s worked to fund it and what the reaction from the Texas journalism community has been so far.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today’s media- bistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast featured a wrap-up of today’s biggest media headlines.

Hosts Jason Boog of GalleyCat and AgencySpy‘s Matt Van Hoven opened the show with a discussion about David Letterman‘s revelations of an extortion plot and sexual relationships with staffers.

“Letterman knows how to keep it real,” Matt said.

“He’s sort of a lightning rod,” Jason agreed.

“You can’t just blackmail a television person and not expect a full-blown story to follow,” Matt added.

Matt and Jason also discussed Dick Cheney‘s memos and interviews in connection with the Valeria Plame leak, which will soon be released by court order. “Usually Freedom of Information Acts are more successful with older FBI files,” Jason said. “Something current like this is kind of rare.”

Also discussed: Sarah Palin‘s memoir now tops Amazon’s best sellers list, even in pre-orders; Apple is planning to release large screen Tablet product that will allow readers to view magazines purchased through iTunes and TLC suspends production on “Jon & Kate Plus 8.”

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The photo in question, which appears in Newsweek‘s September 14 issue, shows former Vice President Dick Cheney cutting meat and is paired with a quote by Cheney from Fox News Sunday regarding CIA interrogators. “By linking that photo with Mr. Cheney’s comment and giving it such prominence, they implied something sinister, macabre, or even evil was going on there,” Kennerly said.

The photographer pointed out that was not the context of the photo he shot, and he claimed Newsweek — where he was formerly contributing editor — had cropped the photo in such a way that denoted darkness or evil:

“I took that photograph at his daughter Liz’s home during a two-day assignment, and was shocked by its usage. The meat on the cutting board wasn’t the only thing butchered. In fact, Newsweek chose to crop out two-thirds of the original photograph, which showed Mrs. Cheney, both of their daughters, and one of their grandchildren, who were also in the kitchen, getting ready for a simple family dinner.

However, Newsweek‘s objective in running the cropped version was to illustrate its editorial point of view, which could only have been done by shifting the content of the image so that readers just saw what the editors wanted them to see. This radical alteration is photo fakery. Newsweek‘s choice to run my picture as a political cartoon not only embarrassed and humiliated me and ridiculed the subject of the picture, but it ultimately denigrated my profession.”

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Smith joined the Texas magazine in 1992 as a senior editor, and moved his way up to deputy editor the next year. He took over as editor in 2000, and was promoted to his current position last September. In a letter to Texas Monthly staffers today, Smith recounted some of the editorial highlights of his tenure at the magazine: “two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence in the last six years and fourteen more nominations over the last nine; the most City and Regional Magazine Association awards during that period of any member publication.”

Now Smith is moving on to the Tribune, which likens itself to ProPublica. The new venture will publish non-partisan investigative journalism online and host events.

“It’s no secret that I’ve been consulting with my friend of fifteen years, the venture capitalist John Thornton, on a project very close to his heart: a nonprofit, nonpartisan public media organization whose mission is to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide interest,” Smith said to his colleagues. “As John has been telling anyone who will listen, the Texas Tribune will publish original news reporting online (much like ProPublica) and put on conferences, conversation series, and other on-the-record, open-to-the-public events (much like the Aspen Institute). For nearly a year I’ve been helping John refine his concept for the Trib, and I’ve suggested various people he might hire. At some point along the way, like Dick Cheney leading the search for George Bush‘s vice president and concluding that he was the one he was looking for, I came to believe that perhaps I should join John in a more formal capacity, and he came to believe it too.”

However, Smith said he will continue to consult with Texas Monthly and host the weekly half-hour interview show, “Texas Monthly Talks,” as editor emeritus, “for the foreseeable future.”

“So you won’t get rid of me that easily,” he told his staff.

Smith will be replaced by Elynn Russell, a longtime Texas Monthly vet who will be the first woman to lead the magazine, minOnline reported.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast, host Jason Boog welcomes AgencySpy editor Matt Van Hoven and erotic writer Rachel Kramer Bussel to talk about media headlines and some new book industry news.

The trio discussed The Virginia Quarterly Review‘s story accusing Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson of plagiarism in his new book “Free,” Dick Cheney‘s memoir, the sale of Nikki Finke‘s blog DeadlineHollywoodDaily and Rachel’s work in the independent publishing and erotica industries.

When asked how she got into erotica, Rachel revealed she started writing it while in law school, inspired by reading other books in the genre. “I was reading [the short story collection] “Best American Erotica”…and I thought ‘Hey, I can try this,’” she said. “There was a book about celebrity sex, and it was 1999, so I said ‘I’m going to write this story about Monica Lewinsky.’ So I wrote a fantasy story about Monica Lewinsky and it got published…I’ve been writing ever since.”

Rachel recently won three Ippy Awards, distributed to independent book publishers, and discussed her creation of “book trailers,” or short video advertisements for her books, for her Web site. “Does it affect sales, that’s what a lot of people ask me,” she said of her trailers. “I don’t necessarily think a million people are watching that and then rushing out to buy the book…I think it’s about building your brand as an author.”

You can listen to all the past podcasts at BlogTalkRadio.com/mediabistro and call in at 646-929-0321.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Apparently it all started back on Aug 30 (two days after the Palin announcement was made) when, after covering a McCain-Palin rally, MoDo (whose go-go boots column didn’t run until the next day) was banned(!) from the press plane. Says Dowd:

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— DIANE CLEHANE

We’re guessing that spring break with the kiddies kept more than a few bold face names we’ve become accustomed to seeing away from 55th and Fifth today. Luckily, some of our favorite regulars were on hand — along with the first ever (at least since I’ve been at my perch) Wednesday Anna Wintour sighting — kept us more than interested in the goings on in the dining room. But, we hear, the really big doings will be taking place this Sunday night when The Rolling Stones are coming to party with Martin Scorsese, who directed the documentary Shine A Light about the iconic rockers. If you haven’t gotten your invite, it probably just got lost in the mail…

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. Frank Gifford and his charming daughter Cassidy enjoying a pre-theater lunch before seeing The Little Mermaid (again!). I’d met Cassidy once before when mom Kathie Lee Gifford brought the incredibly well-mannered 14-year-old to Michael’s this summer. Today, father and daughter dined alone (she sipped a Shirley Temple while he flipped through what looked like a Tiffany’s catalog!) On the way out when they stopped by to say ‘Hello,’ I asked Frank when there would be word of Kathie Lee’s all but imminent arrival at Today. Putting his hands up in mock protest, he turned to his daughter and said, “Diane wants me to talk about things I can’t talk about.” But Frank, you know I’d never tell anyone …

2. William Morris’ Wayne Kabak and a pal.

3. “Mayor” Joe Armstrong, who was nice enough to introduce me to guest, longtime pal and fellow Texan Sarah Gray Miller. The dynamic duo worked together when Joe was the founding publisher of Garden Design and Saveur and Sarah, now editor-in-chief of Oprah’s O At Home, was a media maven in training. Mr. Mayor, who knows everyone, lunched yesterday at Michael’s (where else?) with another one of his favorite Texans Lance Armstrong. He said the two of them spent part of the afternoon dishing over the stunning reports that Dick Cheney is a “distant cousin” of Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie are branches on the same family tree. Perhaps, says Joe, he and Lance are related to jazz great Louis Armstrong. To commemorate their possible kinship, the Mayor presented Lance with a mini statue of their may be ancestor. Between bites of his burger, Lance howled with laughter. “We love to laugh,” says Joe who is off to Texas to visit his mom Dorthadele. See you when you get back!

4. Über agent Ed Victor (looking quite literary in a black turtleneck and jacket) with Alan Grubman.

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For an out-of-work White House press secretary, Tony Snow remained remarkably on-message during an interview this evening by People managing editor Larry Hackett at the keynote session that opened the 2007 American Magazine Conference here in Boca Raton, Florida.

In a conversation that lasted just under an hour, including a handful of audience queries that followed a rapidfire stream of questions from Hackett, Snow — who also worked within President George H.W. Bush’s administration as director of speechwriting — held the conversational line just as strongly as he maintained it throughout his stint as press secretary.

A magazine vet who currently heads up corporate communications at a major media conglomerate marveled to us after the interview, “I was fascinated by all the questions to which [Snow] said, ‘I don’t know.’ In communications, you’re supposed to have the answer for everything.” To us, Snow’s question marks made him seem uninformed like a fox. For all the answers Snow could and (perhaps tellingly) couldn’t — and frequently wouldn’t — provide, read on.

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That’s what Gary Brecher — a.k.a the “War Nerd” — wants to know. Brecher fired off a letter to the New York Times accusing op-ed columnist and world-weary traveler Nick Kristof of plagiarizing a March 6 column in which Brecher alleged “more or less ironically” that Dick Cheney is an Iranian mole.

On March 20, the Times published Kristof’s column, “Iran’s Operative in the White House,” with “Is Dick Cheney an Iranian mole?” as its subtitle. [For those of you without TimesSelect, here's a link to Kristof's full column.]

“Kristoff [sic] could have done the decent thing and cited my column,” Brecher wrote. “Instead he claimed the Cheney-as-Iranian-mole idea as his own.”

FishbowlNY combed through both columns and found no direct evidence of lifted text but, as Brecher points out, the mole “idea” no doubt appeared in his column first:

So far, Iran has been the big winner in this war, and they haven’t fired a shot or lost a man. Pretty incredible. Makes me dizzy to think of it, makes me wonder if Cheney isn’t actually a mole.

Kristof:

But in fact there’s an American who has provided services of incalculably greater value to Iran in recent years. So you have to wonder: Is Dick Cheney an Iranian mole?

“Dozens of my readers have written to me to call this brazen theft to my attention,” Brecher continued. “I expect the NYT to publish an acknowledgment of this plagiarism, with an apology by Kristoff [sic]. My agent informs me that he has a history of such theft, so he should be familiar with the drill.”

E-mails to the Kristof and the Times seeking a response have yet to be returned. UPDATE: New York Times spokesperson Diane McNulty denies any plagiarism:

Nick Kristof never saw the blogger’s posting before writing his column, and there plainly is no “plagiarism.” The blogger used the term “mole” in regards to Cheney once deep in a posting about the partitioning of Iraq. Nick wrote a column about how various policies of the Bush administration have benefited Iran and used the “mole” idea thematically throughout the piece. Where’s the plagiarism?

Brecher’s full memo:

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