Journalism

Deployment Details Put Sarah Palin's Son in Jeopardy

Back in February, the British press ripped Matt Drudge for revealing a secret they'd been keeping: Prince Harry was stationed in Afghanistan, deployed with the British Army in Helmand Province. The secret had gotten out in an obscure Australian magazine and German's Bild newspaper, and Drudge passed the news along to his audience of millions. Brits were so outraged that they mistakenly started sending me a flood of hate mail. Given this, it's worth noting that the British press is now putting ... (read more)

AP Settles Dispute with Drudge Retort

Late Thursday night, AP issued the following statement after a day-long discussion of the DMCA takedowns issued to the Drudge Retort that reached all the way up to the company's top management: In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site ... (read more)

How Digg Handles DMCA Takedowns

Jay Adelson, the chief executive of Digg, told Saul Hansell of the New York Times how the social news site responds to DMCA takedowns: From time to time, Digg has received a request, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take down a post, or a comment, that contains copyrighted material. Mr. Adelson said the company complies without complaint. But he said that often isn't necessary. ... But many of the items on the front page used headlines and descriptions lifted directly from the site ... (read more)

How the Media Bloggers Association Got Involved

As I spend the morning reading stories about myself, a highly pleasurable activity that makes Rogers Cadenhead want to start referring to Rogers Cadenhead in the third person like Bob Dole, I have one question: Why is the Media Bloggers Association getting its ass kicked all over the Internet for attempting to have a dialogue with AP about the Drudge Retort's DMCA takedown dispute? On Daily Kos yesterday, Markos Moulitsas wrote about the association with his typical subdued restraint: The ... (read more)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)