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I could tell it was summer yesterday. Not because of the soup-like atmosphere that greets me on opening the door in the morning, or the sweet garbagey fragrance of New York in July, but because the political media was busily living every week like it was Shark Week. The latest example …
Or: An Explanation, and Example, of the Very Phenomenon The Author Is Discussing:
Today the Washington Post published a sprawling, two-year investigation into America’s huge, complex and hard-to-fathom system of national security and intelligence. What, as of this afternoon, was the most-read article at the Post’s website? “Palin …
Reports are busily popping about that CNN is on the verge of hiring Piers Morgan as the next host of its 9 p.m. primetime show, replacing Larry King, who is stepping down in the fall. We Yanks may be most familiar with Morgan as a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent (the network apparently cleared him to do the CNN deal, but he’d stay on …
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Use social media! But don’t get too social. Engage your audience! But don’t piss anyone off. Be authentic! But conceal any beliefs regarding anything important you cover. Know your subject! But draw no informed conclusions from anything you learn. Don’t take sides! But be sure to …
It takes 20 years to build a job, 140 characters to end it. On Tuesday, CNN senior editor for Middle Eastern Affairs Octavia Nasr posted this comment on Twitter: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot. #Lebanon.” By yesterday, with CNN under fire for Nasr’s having …
TIME’s Richard Zoglin remembers the fine career of Larry King:
The tributes may be pouring in, but the truth is that Larry King became something of a punch line in the past few years, at least among the media intelligentsia: dismissed for his softball questions, his lack of preparation (he took it as a point of pride to never read …
Talk about an ironic sign of the times: Ninety minutes before he was to go on the air Tuesday night, 76-year-old Larry King chose to announce his primetime resignation via Twitter. Yes, after thousands of shows spanning 25 years, after millions of words heard through car radios and television screens, it all came down to 72 characters …
So it’s official: Eliot Spitzer, one of America’s top ten favorite former governors forced from office by sex scandal, will be co-hosting a nightly opinion roundtable show on CNN. (His co-host: conservative political columnist Kathleen Parker.) To sum up: expressing hugely unpopular opinions about Israel = media-career-ender. Getting …
The news since yesterday has been dominated by Rolling Stone’s bombshell story about Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who (along with aides) made disparaging remarks about Obama Administration officials (i.e., his civilian bosses). There’s something quaint—and I say this as a magazine writer—about the notion of a major Washington scandal, …
MSNBC, which has for some time programmed its last hour of prime time with reruns of Countdown, has finally concluded its search for a 10 p.m. host—by hiring someone who has been on MSNBC approximately forever. (Sigh—sometimes it turns out The One has been right under your nose all along!) Lawrence O’Donnell, a former Democratic …
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When the story broke about Washington journalist Helen Thomas getting into trouble for saying Israeli Jews should “go home” to countries like Germany and Poland, I thought about Mike Wallace. My first year at the University of Michigan, there was a controversy over his being asked to …
The initial bids came in yesterday in the first round of the Washington Post company’s sale of Newsweek. I’ve held off saying much of anything about the magazine’s sale, because (1) I don’t want it to seem like Schadenfreude (as a working-today-but-tomorrow-who-knows journalist, I feel none) and (2) the last matter on which anyone is …
Gabriel Sherman at New York Magazine ‘s Daily Intel blogis reporting that CBS News and CNN are in “deep talks” about a possible partnership that would allow them to share talent, cut costs and, they hope, grow their respective audiences. I don’t want to put too much stock in it yet; such a deal has been floated, and unsuccessfully …
