We in the respectable media are not interested in Tiger Woods’ car crash for prurient reasons. Oh, no. We don’t care about what a celebrity, but a private citizen, may or may not have been doing with his extracurricular time. Nor do we care about the rush of viewers and readers—like you there, who came to this article by Googling …
News Media
This Was CNN: Where Have Its Viewers Gone?
CNN is a sister company to TIME within Time Warner, so let me be unambiguous and without corporate favor when I say that its latest round of primetime ratings are in the dumpster. Bill Carter of the New York Times reports that for the first time, CNN will finish October in fourth place among cable-news networks in the advertiser-followed …
Dept. of Bad Ideas: Government News
New York Times media columnist David Carr has an intriguing piece today about a wonky but potentially influential Columbia Journalism School report on how to how to save newspapers—or, more specifically, the newsgathering that those papers do—as it becomes more apparent that their advertising-based business model is threatened.
A …
Balloon Boy on Larry King: "We Did It for the Show"
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI6UONWCq7A]
For a few horrifying hours yesterday, TV news and its audience thought they might be witnessing the death of a child in real time. Instead, it turned out we were literally distracted by a shiny object. The silvery experimental balloon hurtling through the air over Colorado did not, it …
Fox News Awards Nobel for Pumpkin Throwing
After getting to my desk and seeing word that Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I turned on cable news to see the reaction. In particular, Fox News, the #1 cable news network and recent White House bete noire, whose reaction and coverage you might think would be interesting.
It was, mainly because—in the 9:00 ET …
Gourmet: A Magazine TV Show Sans Magazine
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Imus Debuts on Fox Business; Talks TIME, Drinking With Beck
Fans of cowboy-hatted angry scarecrows doing radio shows on TV had reason to rejoice this morning, as Don Imus returned to the air on Fox Business Network, after having left MSNBC following his “nappy-headed hos” scandal. (In the meantime, his show was carried for a period on RFD-TV.)
I’m not among those fans, so I don’t see myself …
The Washington Post Slaps the Twitter Handcuffs on Its Staff
Here’s something everybody should understand about journalism. The reporters, columnists and news anchors you follow almost all have opinions about the subjects they cover. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, it is a good thing, because any person who immersed him or herself in a vital, contentious subject all day and formed no …
Murder Suspect Dead; Reality TV Continues to Roam Free
Ryan Jenkins, the reality-dating-show contestant suspected in the murder of his model ex-wife, turned up dead of an apparent suicide in a Canadian motel. I’d been loath to write about the story, because while Jenkins’ appearance on VH1’s Megan Wants a Millionaire (hands up, who heard of it before the murder case?) provided a news hook …
Tell Us What You Really Think! Except, Don't.
Exhibit A: A Washington Post reporter accuses Gawker of ripping off his story in a blog post. Gawker editor Gabriel Snyder’s rebuttal says the Gawker post was better (and thus better read) because the original was boring, while Gawker’s post gave the subject (a so-called “generational guru”) the kind of snide, uncensored treatment …
The Morning After: Olbermann-O'Reilly Feud Back On, If It Was Ever Off
So this weekend, Brian Stelter of the New York Times reported that the long-running feud between MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly had reached a truce, through the influence of the two hosts’ corporate bosses. Citing four sources at both networks, Stelter wrote that the increasingly venomous back-and-forth had been …
The Post Vs. Gawker: When Does Linking Become Larceny?
Washington Post writer Ian Shapira recently reported a feature on a business guru who consults executives on how to deal with twentysomething employees and clients. When Gawker wrote a snarky post based on (and linking to) his article, he was thrilled at first. Then, prodded by an editor, he looked more closely at the Gawker post and …
Birthers of a Nation
And speaking of hot-button issues involving the President… there is suddenly renewed media attention to the claim that Obama was not born in the United States and thus is not eligible to be President. This theory has been around for years, was hot on the Internet during the election, has been thoroughly debunked, and at this point, …