Journalism

AP Rethinking Policy After Drudge Retort DMCA Takedowns

I'm gratified by the ginormous amount of support coming in from around the blogosphere after the Associated Press issued DMCA takedowns last week to Drudge Retort bloggers for excerpting short snippets of its articles. AP is rethinking its policy towards bloggers in the wake of this disagreement, according to a story by Saul Hansell in today's New York Times: Last week, The AP took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to ... (read more)

2008/06/16

AP Files 7 DMCA Takedowns Against Drudge Retort

I'm currently engaged in a legal disagreement with the Associated Press, which claims that Drudge Retort users linking to its stories are violating its copyright and committing "'hot news' misappropriation under New York state law." An AP attorney filed six Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment. The Retort is a community site comparable in function to Digg, Reddit and Mixx. The 8,500 users of the site ... (read more)

2008/06/12

Any Reason Why These Two Should Not Be Wed?

Today's New York Times has an amazing sequence of photos taken by a wedding photographer in Bailu, China, during the May 12 earthquake. Five impeccably dressed Chinese couples were getting their photos taken at an abandoned French missionary church as the disaster struck. There are more photos on a Chinese-language media site. Photographer Wang Qiang's caption for one photo, which he posted on his blog: "What is happiness, happiness is safe and sound. Having gone through a life-and-death test, ... (read more)

2008/05/23

Boston Herald Should Name Its SpyGate Source

On Wednesday, the Boston Herald apologized for a Feb. 2 story by John Tomase that reported the New England Patriots surreptitiously videotaped the St. Louis Rams' walkthrough practice before Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002. While the Boston Herald based its Feb. 2, 2008, report on sources that it believed to be credible, we now know that this report was false, and that no tape of the walkthrough ever existed. Prior to the publication of its Feb. 2, 2008, article, the Boston Herald neither possessed ... (read more)

2008/05/16

Washington Post Wins Another Phony Pulitzer

Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten, one of the funniest journalists I've ever read, won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing yesterday, honored for a piece in which world-class violinist Joshua Bell played incognito at a DC Metro station and drew little reaction among most of the philistine passers-by. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, ... (read more)

2008/04/08

Tay Zonday Rains on Reporter's Questions

In an interview with MSP Magazine published in January, Tay Zonday, the deep-voiced singer whose "Chocolate Rain" became a YouTube sensation, challenges every premise of the reporter questioning him. Q: Let's talk about the art. What percentage of your success do you attribute to the William Hung factor? A: I don't really follow William Hung. But the blunt question is, "Do I suck, and do people laugh at me because of it?" I don't know. How does any artist know that? Why would any artist worry ... (read more)

2008/03/24

Matt Drudge Flamed for Blowing Prince Harry's Cover

Matt Drudge reported yesterday that Prince Harry was fighting in Afghanistan, news that was being kept secret by the British media to prevent him from being targeted by the Taliban. I awoke this morning to a bunch of misdirected hate mail intended for Drudge, sent to me using the news tip box on the Drudge Retort. If my inbox is any indication, Drudge must be getting hammered this morning for breaking the news: You suck! Reporting on his service is well within you rights. It is also sleazeball ... (read more)

2008/02/29

Vicki Iseman Misses Chance to Rebut Story

The top Google result for the name Vicki Iseman is currently her biography page on Alcalde & Fay, the lobbying firm she serves as a partner. The page was erased today but can be viewed on Huffington Post. Alcalde & Fay has issued a statement denouncing the New York Times story suggesting an inappropriate and possibly romantic relationship between Iseman and Sen. John McCain during his 2000 presidential campaign: The allegations and malicious innuendo reported by the New York Times yesterday are ... (read more)

2008/02/21

Lisa Schiffren: Obama's a Secret Commie Baby

Even though it's a product of the conservative National Review, I read The Corner because it's a great format for political blogging -- a bunch of writers of similar politics sharing links and exchanging ideas with each other. I wish there was a liberal counterpart that took the same conversational approach. (There's also nothing better than watching them suffer in real time on election night when the vote doesn't go their way.) Sometimes, all that like-mindedness draws out ugly sentiments a ... (read more)

2008/02/20

Weblogs Win Long Bet with New York Times

The Long Bet Foundation, the group that sponsored a five-year wager between blogging evangelist Dave Winer and New York Times executive Martin Nisenholtz over the journalistic value of weblogs vs. the media, announced today that it has declared a winner. The foundation used the same source I did to pick the top five news stories of 2007 -- a vote by Associated Press editors and news directors -- and reached the same conclusion: Weblogs won. Adding up page rank winners blogs win 4 to 1. Adding ... (read more)

2008/02/01

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