Journalism

When Reporters Attack

Washington Post reporter Mark Leibovich covers a raucous press conference with Sens. Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, and DNC Chair Howard Dean: The press chorus then devolved into a cacophony of competing screams. (And Dean knows screams!) After several seconds, a booming voice cut through the noise. It belonged to Brian Wilson, a Fox News correspondent who was standing in the middle of the crowd. He asked Dean "if people are focused on the other things that you've said about hating Republicans, about ... (read more)

2005/06/10

Looking Deeper into Joan Felt

The press has encamped itself outside the Santa Rosa, Calif., home where Mark Felt lives with his daughter Joan, waiting for the next move from Family Deep Throat. Joan Felt, who has said she'd like to "pay some bills" from their notoriety, is described in today's Washington Post as a Sonoma State University Spanish lecturer and former Fulbright scholar. Reporters have yet to discover her association with a spiritual group called Adidam, brought to light by members of an online discussion group ... (read more)

2005/06/03

I bought a text ad on Google yesterday for the search term Mark Felt, wondering how many people would hit the search engine for more information on the deep-throated stool pigeon: Chasing Mark Felt How a 19-Year-Old College Student Unmasked Watergate Source in 1999 cadenhead.org/workbench The result: 525 clicks on 14,260 impressions, which cost me $26.22 (5 cents per click). Though at first my ad had no competition, by the end of the day, it was joined by ads from NPR, Kentucky Fried Cruelty, ... (read more)

2005/06/02

Deep Throat Old News to Student

Now that Mark Felt has owned up to being Nixon nemesis Deep Throat, I hope the media tracks down Chase Culeman-Beckman. As recounted in Slate, Culeman-Beckman made news six years ago by claiming that he learned Deep Throat's identity 10 years earlier at summer camp. The 19-year-old college student broke one of the biggest news stories of the 20th century in a paper for his school, which Slate quotes: I was in the "Herons" group along with about fifteen other 8, 9, and 10 year olds ... One ... (read more)

2005/05/31

Paul Ford bucks the trend, complimenting the New York Times for its plan to charge $49.95 a year for archives and the op-ed section: Look at the quality of premium cable TV over the last two decades, when compared to the quality of network TV over the same timespan, to see what happens to content when advertisers are the main source of cash. Interesting comparison, but I think it's far easier for HBO to beat six broadcast networks than for the Times to beat a teeming horde of free online papers ... (read more)

2005/05/21

The online magazine Slate, now a part of the Washington Post Company, has developed an anal fixation. A line from David Edelstein's Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith review: With his lisp and his clammy little leer, he looks like an old queen keen on trading an aging butt-boy (Count Dooku) for fresh meat -- which leaves Anakin looking more and more like a 15-watt bulb. Jack Shafer: I've been called many ugly things in my life -- neo-con, without decency, Michael Kinsley's butt boy -- but school ... (read more)

2005/05/18

Take a Bite of the Apple

Michael Moore is swimming in money after Fahrenheit 9/11, according to a Slate analysis that describes how the filmmaker and Disney rode the controversy over the movie all the way to the bank: Under normal circumstances, documentaries rarely, if ever, make profits (especially if distributors charge the usual 33 percent fee). So, when Miramax made the deal for Fahrenheit 9/11, it allowed Moore a generous profit participation -- which turned out to be 27 percent of the film's net receipts. ... (read more)

2005/05/06

I've Been X'ed

I did an interview yesterday with AVNOnline, believing the "AV" stood for audiovisual, like the A.V. Club entertainment site published by The Onion. I liked the final piece, although I thought it was odd for the reporter to quote another papal domain registrant talking about "nipples and snatch." That kind of talk hasn't appeared much in the media since the end of the Clinton administration. When I showed the story to my wife, she noticed that the ads around the piece were for X-rated sites and ... (read more)

2005/04/27

Jumping Over the Lazy Dog

In another story about the no-holds-barred cage match between journalists and bloggers, Samantha Israel writes that she only has been corrected once by a reader. Let's go for two. Israel writes: More than arrogant, some old-time reporters think bloggers are plain old lazy. Former CBS news correspondent Eric Engberg made himself clear in his "Blogging as typing, not journalism" article on CBSNews.com last November. "Given their lack of expertise, standards and, yes, humility," he wrote, "the ... (read more)

2005/04/13

"When you write commentary, as we do, you are generally dependent on reasonably accurate news reporting. When the facts of a story bounce around -- which is not unusual -- you are left commenting on a moving target." Shorter PowerLine: The media has a responsibility to get the facts straight so that bloggers don't make embarrassing mistakes when we correct them. ... (read more)

2005/04/08

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