America’s Got Talent. And, Wednesday night, America is getting yet another President Obama press conference, this one focused on the President’s pitch for health-coverage legislation. Can it get both?
It will on NBC, which agreed to carry the press conference after the White House moved it an hour earlier, guaranteeing that David …
My column in TIME this week is about the various plans media outlets are considering to float their operations as their old business model is suffering. On the heels of this comes a report that the New York Times is considering—but only considering—getting foundations to support its reporting, as public broadcasting does. In an …
My current TIME column combines some themes I’ve written about in a few Tuned In posts lately, looking at the lengths journalists are going to to fund their work, and pointing out that even “free” news is paid for by somebody:
Will ___ save journalism? Lately it seems easier to find ruminations on that subject than to find
…
Because of a disconnected cable box (unhooked for TIME’s office move) and a desktop Mac that has a hard time with streaming video, I’m not watching the Sotomayor hearings today. But having watched some of the first three days, and having read much of the commentary, it strikes me that you could replace “judges” with “journalists,” and …
A couple of reports dribbling out indicate that the New York Times is serious about gearing up to charge people, in some way, for online access. Poynter got its hands on an NYT survey asking subscribers how willing they’d be to pay to read the paper online. Meanwhile, Britain’s Telegraph quotes an NYT exec saying that the paper will …
Is the news media overcovering Michael Jackson’s continuing death at the expense of news that matters? In the New York Daily News, David Hinckley argues that the media is “just responding to Michael Jackson’s fans demands,” with coverage that audiences have ratified with ratings.
I agree with him to an extent. It would be silly to …
If for no other reason than a mild validation of my own career, I have to be happy whenever someone else decides that there is a business plan, even in this economic climate, to a website devoted entirely to news and opinion about the media. Mediaite launched today, a combination of Mediabistro and Gawker that promises not to be …
You know you’ve beaten people on a story when your direct competition does stories on your having beaten them. The Los Angeles Times has a piece today headlined “TV misses out as gossip website TMZ reports Michael Jackson’s death first”—which is all true, but by posting news of Jackson’s death at 5:20 p.m. E.T., the Hollywood-news site …
Suppose two men committed separate acts of extremist murder in the United States within a month. Suppose the gunmen attacked a church and a national landmark, motivated by politics and religious prejudice, targeting a nationally controversial figure and innocent civilians. Suppose there was a history of attacks by similarly motivated men …
If there’s one bright side to the increasingly dispiriting story about two American journalists being sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea, it’s that it actually brings attention to TV journalists doing overseas reporting, which has increasingly been cut back by networks (and budget-slashing print outlets too). It also—if …
You can’t open a newspaper—or read a newsmagazine website—these days without seeing a report wondering if X, Y or Z “can save journalism.” Maybe that’s the wrong question.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that nothing saves journalism. “Journalism,” that is, as a profession and as currently constructed: a full-time job paid …
Yesterday President Obama announced that he would oppose the court-ordered release of photos depicting abuse of prisoners by U.S. authorities overseas. As I did when the Bush Administration opposed similar photo releases, or fought the depiction of caskets of war dead returning from Iraq, I believe this is the wrong move. (Among the …
One of the issues facing traditional media in the online-media age is not just losing their status as gatekeepers for their readers; it’s how to remain the gatekeepers for their own staff. In other words, when anyone can post anything online, immediately, in chatrooms, blogs, Facebook or Twitter, what limits do you put on your …
