The Kicker

Remember when ex-Gawker employee Emily Gould overshared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine? When she, in the course of 8,000 words, pondered Questions She’s Faced In Life such as: But how could I convey to Henry — who sometimes, onstage with his band, played entire shows with his back to the audience […]

I’m no economist, but I think I have an answer to the question Erin Burnett, the 32-year-old CNBC anchor whom the channel regards as its “ultimate growth stock,” asked just now on MSNBC. After talking about yesterday’s front page New York Times piece (“Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt,” which begins: “The collection […]

We may have a winner in the contest for the most distressing op-ed ever run by The New York Times. Benny Morris, a revered left-leaning Israeli historian, explains, in a certain tone, how upcoming Israel-Iran brinkmanship will play out. First, Israel will launch a conventional air strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, probably before the U.S. […]

Hard-hitting coverage of Obama’s gym time

Read all about “Boogyin’ With Barack.”

As a quasi-follow up to this post I made yesterday, here’s an enjoyable reflection on the differences between the U.K. and American presses, from a British journalist who has worked in both countries. My first encounter with the very different culture of US journalism came when I was working as a freelance in Washington about […]

From the I’d-be-cringing-in-horror-if-I-weren’t-laughing-so-hard department: footage of noted nuance-lover Barack Obama submitting to free-association game-playing while being interviewed about the economy. (Keep it snappy, Barack. No nuance allowed!) The whole thing, be warned, is incredibly, almost painfully awkward to watch. And just to clarify, it isn’t from Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show. It’s from […]

Wikipedia, aid and scourge of journalists the world over, is considering adding a layer of monitoring to protect the site and its readers against vandalism. The update to the Wiki hierarchy, currently in a kind of pilot phase in German Wikipedia, would require an editor to sign off on each update users make before those […]

Good news for all you tired, you poor, you huddled bloggers yearning not to work for free: you might be getting paid! Well, someday! Down the road! Maybe! In an interview with Colby College’s alumni magazine (h/t: Jeff Bercovici), Huffington Post CEO Betsy Morgan allowed the possibility that the “newspaper of the future” might eventually—gasp!—compensate […]

God bless Lou Dobbs, America’s only working home-security system. If it weren’t for him, you’d never know what to be scared of. And this time, the threat is real, people. Forget Spanish lessons and salmonella: there are troglodytes on the loose. Yes, troglodytes. Last night, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Dobbs what he thought of Al […]

So, in addition to his many other otherworldly qualities—the leg-thrilling oratory, the generation-uniting charisma, the Halo of Hope that bathes him in a glow of light—it looks like we’ve got one more to add to the list: Barack Obama, apparently, doesn’t sweat. No, seriously. Dry as a bone. The Dems’ nominee presumptive does aspiration, yeah. […]

The New York Times’s Jeff Zeleny makes a tiny flub in writing up Obama June fundraising numbers, writing that: ..,the magnitude of [Obama’s] fundraising challenge—reaching a goal of $300 million—was underscored by Mr. Plouffe’s pitch for each of the donors to give $25 more. In the print issue, the $25 number is even highlighted in […]

Earlier this week, we praised the outlets that are keeping the story of Myanmar’s devastation in both the news and the American consciousness. Among the pieces we mentioned was CNN’s on-the-ground report on the bleak situation in the Irrawaddy Delta, which depicted, in ways a print story simply cannot, the deplorable conditions so many of […]

In the wake of McCain’s and Obama’s appearances at the National Council of La Raza conference earlier this week, Jon Stewart institutes a new method of measuring their success in charming hispanic voters. (Who needs opinion polls?) “The best way to measure success in wooing the Latino community,” Stewart says, “is by using the Dobbs-O-Meter: […]

Good lord. The Washington Post, in the midst of rolling out its big, bold, incredibly odd Chandra Levy inquiry, fronts today’s paper with another searing investigation: into the danger of DC’s double decker tour buses. Seriously. Here’s the lede: Passengers riding in a double-decker sightseeing bus ducked and brushed aside low-hanging branches yesterday as they […]