The Kicker : CJR

November 30, 2012 03:00 PM

Must-reads of the week

Culled from CJR’s frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week:

Saudi Arabia implements electronic tracking system for women — Saudi women's male guardians now receive text messages informing them when women under their custody leave the country.

A day without violence — Monday in New York City was a day without a single report of a person being shot, stabbed, or subject to other sorts of violent crime for the first time in recent memory, police said.

Problems with a reporter's Facebook posts — The Times assigns an editor for their Jerusalem bureau chief's social media posts.

Can a jellyfish unlock the secret of immortality? — "Once we determine how the jellyfish rejuvenates itself, we should achieve very great things. My opinion is that we will evolve and become immortal ourselves."

'I am a brand,' pathetic guy says — "It's sort of like I'm the CEO of the company called 'Me,'" continued the sad excuse for a man.

The bookstore strikes back — Two years ago, when Nashville lost its only in-town bookstores, the novelist Ann Patchett decided to step into the breach. Parnassus Books, which Patchett and two veteran booksellers envisioned, designed, financed, and manage, is now open for business.

The long goodbye — The 1963 NYC newspaper strike and how New York was never the same again.

November 29, 2012 12:30 PM

The media news cycle is bananas

We seem to be in the thick of a media news maelstrom right now:

—Jeff Zucker was officially named the new head of CNN.

—The Leveson Report on media ethics in the UK was published, and reporters have been frantically digesting its 2,000 pages.

—Syria has cut Internet access as violence continues to engulf the country.

—The New York Times arranged for Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren to have social media monitoring so she stops offending people.

Update, 1:40 p.m.

—National Journal's editor is stepping down and 10 positions are being eliminated in a reorganization.

What did we miss? Tell us in the comments.

November 28, 2012 06:08 PM

Pass the #popcorn

According to a recent Pew study, 15 percent of adults online use Twitter — 8 percent daily. I’m pretty sure most of that 8 percent are journalists. Journalists love Twitter, whether using it for writing, conversation, or fighting. And I love to watch—and judge—the sparring.
If you see a #JournoTweetFight that you think merits inclusion, please give me a heads up @saramorrison.

It all started on Monday, when a press release that claimed Google was buying a company for $400 million made its way onto PRWeb. Several organizations reported it. If reporters from the AP, Business Insider, Forbes, and TechCrunch (among others) had bothered to call the companies mentioned and wait for confirmation before publishing, they would have discovered that the release was fake. Oops!

AllThingsD’s Arik Hesseldahl did check before publishing, resulting in this article and much egg on the faces of those who couldn’t be bothered to do actual journalism. TechCrunch bore the brunt of the criticism, probably because it has a history of questionable journalistic ethics and its co-editor Alexia Tsotsis writes things like this.

Safe to say, TechCrunch is not well-loved by the rest of the tech journalism world … so you can imagine the gleeful Twitter reaction to its fake press release coverage!

DECISION: Maybe it’s the “old-timer” in me, but I think journalism is more than just regurgitating a press release without doing any kind of verification. If people are going to take the time to read what I write, I will take the time to ensure that what they’re reading is accurate. Clearly there are plenty of readers out there who don’t care about this, and more power to TechCrunch for that. Supply the demand.

But when you get caught cutting corners, it’s best to just take the inevitable criticism as gracefully as possible and wait for it to die down. @karaswisher could’ve framed her argument more diplomatically, but AllThingsD didn’t screw up this time. TechCrunch did.

Anyway, the win goes to the brand new parody account that criticizes both sides: @alexiaswisher!

November 21, 2012 12:15 PM

Must-reads of the week

Culled from CJR’s frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week, the turkey coma edition:

In Conversation: Tina Brown — She talks with Michael Kinsley shortly before the end of Newsweek's print edition

How the Conservative Media Lost the Election — Buzzfeed's McKay Coppins on the failure of the GOP narrative

The Quiet Ones — An ode to Amtrak's quiet car, a remaining bastion of tranquility in an ever-louder world

Kill the Password — Why a string of characters can't protect us anymore

November 19, 2012 06:13 PM

Tom Rosenstiel leaving Pew

More changes are in store for the Pew Research Center. As Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor and online executive editor Alan Murray prepares to begin his presidential duties there, Tom Rosenstiel, founder and director of Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism, is leaving PEJ for an executive director position at American Press Institute. Rosenstiel’s departure was announced on Monday.

Rosenstiel founded PEJ in 1997. He told CJR that he's "very proud" of the work the organization has done. "At a time when the news business was about to undergo real change, I was able, with colleagues, to create a source of authoritative research that people could trust and that journalists could understand," he said. Rosenstiel listed PEJ's "Baltimore Study," the annual State of the Media report, and The Elements of Journalism as being some of the highlights of his time with PEJ, which he'll leave in the hands of a "strong team" led by acting director Amy S. Mitchell.

Rosenstiel will continue to do the kind of research at API that he did at PEJ, but he is looking forward to come up with solutions as well. "At the Pew Research Center we're quite fastidious about saying we don't get engaged in solutions, we just engage in research," he said. "Now that the business is in a moment of real crisis from an economic standpoint, I feel a pull to work on solutions."

With the API merging with the Newspaper Association of America last January, Rosenstiel says, "we have a bigger endowment than we've ever had. Given the enormous changes in news and technology, it makes sense that API adapt and refocus its energies to be useful in new ways."

November 16, 2012 04:00 PM

Must-reads of the week

Culled from CJR's frequently updated "Must-reads from around the Web," our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can't-miss must-reads of the past week:

How I was drawn into the cult of David Petraeus — One journalist on the role he played in the mythmaking surrounding Petraeus

After Sandy — "The narrative taking shape in the rest of the city, of a gradual return to normalcy, is not universal. For many neighborhoods Sandy's effects are like outward rippling waves of despair"

Light entertainment — Child abuse and the British public

Stray penises and politicos — David Simon has had enough of Petraeus coverage and the media's fixation on the sex lives of public figures

A Mormon reporter on the Romney bus — McKay Coppins's coda to the 2012 campaign, during which Mitt Romney succeeded in mainstreaming the Church of Latter-day Saints

Questions for Guy Fieri — Deliciously searing review of a Times Square restaurant

Being a content creator is a wonderful job — Thoughts and musings on making things for the Web

November 16, 2012 03:37 PM

Overholser leaving USC j-school

Geneva Overholser, the director of The University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is stepping down at the end of this academic year, the school announced on Friday. She has held the position since 2008.

“My time as director of this school has been enormously rewarding, and it is gratifying to see the results of our efforts in the success of our students,” Overholser said in a USC press release. Under her leadership, the school overhauled its curriculum, expanded its faculty, and broke ground on a new 88,000 square foot building.

Overholser, a former editor of the Des Moines Register, was named one of CJR’s 40 women who changed the media business in our July/August issue.

November 15, 2012 07:37 AM

Boo wins National Book Award

New Yorker staff writer Katherine Boo has won a National Book Award for her debut nonfiction work Behind the Beautiful Forevers, the National Book Foundation announced on Wednesday night.

CJR profiled Boo in our July/August issue, where she spoke about her development as a writer of slow, careful, descriptive journalism. Read it here, and check out our review of Behind the Beautiful Forevers from the March/April issue here.

November 14, 2012 04:23 PM

Marcus the unlucky

Scott Sherman, in "A Rocket's Trajectory," his fine profile of Marcus Brauchli in the September/October 2010 issue of CJR, noted that the man is ambitious but unlucky. Good luck is followed by misfortune, which is followed by good luck, and then again, bad.

He started in the basement of Dow Jones, and, twenty-three years later, clawed his way to the managing editor’s job at The Wall Street Journal, only to then find himself face to face with Rupert Murdoch.
He lasted eight months under Murdoch, who pushed him out in April 2008. Brauchli rebounded with impressive speed: three months later he was named executive editor of the Post—a job that, for forty years, had been held by only two men: Ben Bradlee and Leonard Downie Jr.

But of course, it was not your grandfather’s Washington Post anymore. As Sherman put it in that 2010 piece:

It’s a news organization that has lost a staggering amount of money in recent years; that has endured four waves of buyouts; that was unnerved by a scandal unleashed by its forty-four-year-old publisher, Katharine Weymouth; and that, like many journalism outfits, is enduring an existential crisis about its future.

Things didn’t get markedly better at the paper under Brauchli, as Jack Shafer points out in his Reuters column today:

It’s not his fault, of course, that the bottom was dropping out of the newspaper business just as he took over the Post. But right-sizing the Post to fit the new economic realities was part of the job description when Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth was shopping for an editor to replace Downie. It’s the Post‘s transition from fat to slim that will be Brauchli’s legacy, not the journalistic accomplishments during his watch that he briefly tallies in his statement to the Post staff.

As The New York Times noted in its report on Brauchli's exit today, and on the arrival of the new editor, Marty Baron:

The company’s industrywide problems have been made worse by internal tension between Mr. Brauchli and Ms. Weymouth. At the announcement on Tuesday, Ms. Weymouth, the granddaughter of the Post’s publisher Katharine Graham, would not directly address a pointed question from the newsroom about why she made the change, according to someone at the meeting.

But in recent months, she had shared her frustrations with friends in Washington that Mr. Brauchli wasn’t willing to make more cuts in the newsroom….

Apparently, Brauchli, after years of cuts, was trying to hold the line. The Times reported that he received a “prolonged ovation” in the newsroom when he announced that he would leave the job. Baron, meanwhile, will have his hands full. We wish him good luck, followed by more good luck.

November 14, 2012 11:00 AM

Two music journos plan a longform site

Two music journalists from Los Angeles have launched a Kickstarter to fund a reader-supported, ad-free longform site. David Greenwald (Billboard, GQ) and Daniel Siegal (Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times) are behind UNCOOL, which landed on Kickstarter on November 8 and is seeking $54,000 by January to make the project happen.

“This is more about the fact that there is just not enough outlets that can pay writers a fair wage,” Siegal said. “We’re trying to find a model for sustaining that that’s not based on clickbait.”

If they are successful, Siegal and Greenwald will put the majority of the funding towards their editorial budget of $3,300 a month, which allows them to pay contributors a rate that Siegal said is comparable to legacy music publications. UNCOOL, he said, will largely consist of one big story every week, one of which will be the main feature for the month. Siegal said a writer has already pitched a comprehensive look at the small Brooklyn record label Captured Tracks that they are considering.

Rather than using a paywall, all of the content will be free for anyone to view on UNCOOL. But a $12 pledge gets readers a “subscription” that includes extra features in a monthly roundup email. The funding model is comparable to public radio stations that rely on pledges, or other community-based news sites like Voice Of San Diego, which confer member benefits to those who make financial donations. The model relies on audience support. “Part of the logic behind doing a Kickstarter is to see if the audience is there,” Siegal said.

The decision to go ad free would make UNCOOL something of a pioneer in its field. Most music sites — from Web-based ones like Pitchfork to websites belonging to legacy media like Rolling Stone — feature ads, while sites like Billboard have made a business of galleries, lists, and other click-through fodder.

UNCOOL is also a reaction against a write-for-free culture that music journalists regularly encounter. Music has long been a breeding ground for bloggers who used to trade on their passion alone. Some of the earliest music blogs (Gorilla vs. Bear, Pitchfork) have since become revenue-generating websites. But in the current landscape, the lines are blurred, and many sites pay their writers in concert tickets and exposure rather than hard cash. When there is cash available, it often comes in tiny amounts — recently, Prefix, an online music magazine, suffered from backlash when a job ad revealed that they offer writers $2 a blog post.

“I think there’s recognition among people out there that there’s got to be another way,” said Siegal. “And I hope that we can be at least one of the ways forward.”

November 13, 2012 12:49 PM

Learn about Marty Baron

The Washington Post announced on Tuesday that editor Marcus Brauchli is stepping down and will be succeeded by Boston Globe editor Martin Baron.

Last year, Baron came to the Columbia Journalism School to speak to students about the changing newspaper industry, and he sat down with former CJR assistant editor Alysia Santo for an interview. "Our aim is to be at the leading edge of what’s happening in the digital transformation, while putting out a very high quality print product," Baron told her. "We have made video a very big part of our operation, and we’re actually a finalist for an Emmy award for online video. Three years ago I would never have anticipated anything like that."

Read the complete Q&A here.

~~If we can track down a video of Baron's remarks to the student body, we'll add it.~~ There isn't one.

November 13, 2012 06:50 AM

Who really holds leverage on Bush tax cuts?

My Friday post about how reporters are missing a big part of the “fiscal cliff” story—the leverage President Obama and congressional Democrats can gain in the debate over rich people’s taxes by not doing anything until after the New Year—opened by approvingly citing a blog post by Slate’s Matt Yglesias. And I added an update at the end flagging a new Yglesias column that declared, “the Bush tax cuts are toast.”

So I should also flag a Monday post by Bloomberg’s Josh Barro, who delivered some of the sharpest commentary on economic policy over the course of the campaign, and who says that Yglesias is “wrong, wrong, wrong”:

If the fiscal cliff isn’t resolved before the end of the year, House Republicans will pass a tax cut in January—a tax cut that extends the Bush tax cuts in their entirety, including the part for people with high incomes. The Senate will pass one that excludes the high income tax cuts. Then both parties will say they have passed a tax cut bill and are just waiting for the other side to agree to it.

Democrats cannot force Republicans’ hand unless they are more willing than Republicans to let all the Bush tax cuts expire. And they won’t be. A full expiration might well cause a new recession, which would be even more politically damaging for the Barack Obama administration than for congressional Republicans. Congress is already about as unpopular as it can become, and Republicans know they are not going to get their legislative agenda enacted in the next two years anyway. But a new recession would greatly interfere with Obama’s second-term plans.

Democrats will eventually win this fight, Barro says—but only once the economy has improved enough that they can credibly threaten to let all the Bush tax cuts expire. Until then, the GOP has the edge in this game of chicken.

I don’t know who’s right about what which side will prevail in the tax debate if we go over the not-really-a-cliff, though I suspect there’s more uncertainty at play than either Yglesias or Barro acknowledges. And with GOP media elites like Bill Kristol now entertaining the idea of a millionaire’s tax—a proposal that some Democratic senators prefer on the merits to higher rates on households earning $250,000—some sort of post-“cliff” compromise doesn’t seem out of the question. (Yglesias, for his part, responds that "Barro, uncharacteristically, has this all wrong"; his follow-up notes that the so-called “middle-class” portion of the Bush tax cuts—which Democrats want to preserve—delivers substantial benefits to rich people, so it would be perverse for Republicans not to take it.*)

But to bring this back to media criticism—it is, of course, not the job of news reporters on the budget beat to predict the future. Coverage of the fiscal debate on TV and in newspapers, though, has seemed oblivious to the considerations Yglesias and Barro are arguing about. And that makes it very hard to explain what’s really happening.

The “fiscal cliff” is being pitched to readers and viewers as a looming catastrophe, which our elected representatives must confront by putting aside their partisan differences, “showing leadership,” and embracing a long-term budget plan that nobody likes. And who knows? Maybe something like that will happen. But nothing about the objective fiscal situation means it “has” to happen, and the cliff/slope/curb/metaphor of choice doesn’t change that. So it seems more likely this will be the latest inflection point in a running battle over taxes and spending, which won’t be joined in earnest until after Jan. 1.

If that’s the case the next six weeks is mostly posturing, which is kind of a downer from a media perspective—but it means we’re headed for a standoff that could be a pretty fascinating political story. And the sooner reporters start focusing on that story, the better they’ll be able to cover it.

* This sentence has been updated with a new link.

November 9, 2012 03:24 PM

Pass the #popcorn

According to a recent Pew study, 15 percent of adults online use Twitter — 8 percent daily. I’m pretty sure most of that 8 percent are journalists. Journalists love Twitter, whether using it for writing, conversation, or fighting. And I love to watch—and judge—the sparring.

If you see a #JournoTweetFight that you think merits inclusion, please give me a heads up @saramorrison.

Jonah Hill isn’t a journalist, but I’m sure he’s played one once. And if he hasn’t yet, he probably will—hopefully a dogged investigative reporter who uncovers a scandal that goes all the way to the top, putting himself and his loved ones in mortal danger. That seems to be how most of these things go.

Anyway, Hill merits inclusion in this column because his Twitter spat is with a journalist: CNN’s Don Lemon, who took the feud off the Internets and onto the airwaves, appearing on this morning’s edition of Starting Point to discuss the following “incident”:

Gawker has a nice, short summary of the incident, including video of Lemon's CNN appearance this morning, which he begins by blaming a celeb-happy cab driver for making him miss his flight before accusing Hill of "treating me like the help.”

DECISION: @JonahHill loses points for resorting to "insulting" @DonLemonCNN by calling him a "12 year old girl" and deleting his tweets the day after, but he still wins. Maybe he didn't recognize Lemon or maybe he just didn't want to do a meet and greet after coming out of a hotel bathroom. That seems pretty reasonable to me. Lemon’s (over)reaction isn’t.

November 9, 2012 07:05 AM

And the award for sexist pig goes to…

The Women's Media Center celebrated the end of election season on Thursday by giving out awards for sexist coverage of female politicians through WMC's "Name It. Change It." project. Sadly, there was no red carpet for the awards ceremony (which happened during a webinar presented by WMC president Julie Burton, That She Should Run foundation CEO and president Siobhan “Sam” Bennett, WMC communications manager Rachel Larris, and Lake Research Partners president Celinda Lake) so I can’t dish on how pretty everyone looked in their awards show get-ups:

Most sexist insult: Goes to Fox News's The Five anchors Greg Gutfeld and Kimberly Guilfoyle for repeatedly calling Florida congresswoman/DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz "Frizzilla." Clips were shown of both anchors using the term and then smiling in a way that would suggest that they thought they were very clever to criticize a woman's hairstyle.

Most sexist debate question: Moderator and Capital Tonight host Liz Benjamin, noticing that both New York senate candidates happened to be female, just had to ask them if they'd read 50 Shades of Grey yet. They said no. Candidate Wendy Long later said the question was “out of left field, out of touch, and outlandishly sexist.” She forgot to say “ridiculous” and “totally irrelevant to the candidates’ abilities to do the job.”

Most sexist opinion columnist: Boston Herald's Howie Carr, who repeatedly called US senate candidate Elizabeth Warren "Granny." The Herald is still doing this. According to her official website, Warren is a grandmother of three. She is also, now, a Senator.

Most sexist interview question: This honor is shared by Chicago Sun-Times's Dave McKinney, Fran Spielman, and Natasha Korecki, who co-wrote this interview with Illinois governor candidate Lisa Madigan where she was asked if she could handle the job of governor while being a mother to her two young children. Her response: "Wow. Does anybody ever ask that question?" Apparently, the Sun-Times does. Repeatedly.

Award for creating sexist standards for women in politics: The Huffington Post seems like an odd choice here, as it was founded by a woman, has a “Women’s Rights” vertical, and its political editor, Sam Stein, has defended women’s health issues in the past.

But Name It. Change It. gave HuffPo the prize based on its reports on female politicians' dress styles in its "Fashion Whip" column, co-written by Christina Wilkie and Lauren A. Rothman. (It now appears to be written by just Rothman, who recently wrote about the male presidential candidates' sartorial choices.) Singled out for non-praise was a clip of the women discussing then-candidate Michele Bachmann's wardrobe and saying she should lower the neckline to attract more voters. HuffPo was also criticized for reporting on Hillary Clinton’s scrunchies and holding a caption contest for a photo of the Secretary of State with her mouth open, which allowed “several blow-job jokes to be curated together in a slideshow.”

A spokesperson for the Huffington Post gave CJR this acceptance speech/official statement: “Are we seriously being criticized for an off-hand comment by a fashion blogger on our style section?”

Update, November 10: On Friday evening, WMC sent a press release noting that HuffPo is too large a site a buttonhole as sexist and calling out specific reporters for problematic coverage. Here's the release, in relevant part:

Some commentators expressed concern that one of our awards was given to The Huffington Post, not to specific individuals or sections of The Huffington Post.

The Huffington Post indeed is a large organization with many different journalists and departments. We acknowledge that there is not media sexism directed at women candidates and politicians across all of The Huffington Post’s channels.

In fact, there are journalists with sterling credentials who cover issues of importance both to women and women in politics. Reporters Amanda Terkel and Laura Bassett bring sophistication to their work and have a deep understanding of sexist media culture. Every outlet would benefit from reporters of their caliber [...]

Upon further consideration, Name It. Change It. is giving our Award For Creating Sexist Standards For Women In Politics to five “winners” at The Huffington Post. The award will now be shared by Ethan Klapper, politics social media editor at The Huffington Post Politics and Lauren Rothman, Christina Wilkie, Ellie Krupnick and Jessica Misener of Huffington Post Style for the cumulative sexist impact of their work in The Huffington Post that focused on the appearance of women in politics, rather than their policies.

The Kicker

Must-reads of the week

The media news cycle is bananas

Pass the #popcorn

Must-reads of the week

Tom Rosenstiel leaving Pew

Must-reads of the week

Overholser leaving USC j-school

Boo wins National Book Award

Marcus the unlucky

Two music journos plan a longform site

Learn about Marty Baron

Who really holds leverage on Bush tax cuts?

Pass the #popcorn

And the award for sexist pig goes to…

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