Obama Revamps White House Communications
Danny Glover reports on President Obama's total restructuring of the White House message machine in a piece ominously titled "The Cost of Controlling The Press." Barack Obama's White House is spending more than $80,000 a week to staff its old and new media offices. Add the price of speechwriters and the White House communications tab reaches nearly $100,000 a week, or ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 8, 2009 07:21
Saving Newspapers
Jim Henley: "Radley’s news reminds me that the other day I figured out that a less embarrassing business model for the newspaper business would be: puppies! You still can’t use the internet to housebreak a dog." Indeed! True story: Saturday morning, my wife bought several copies of the Washington Post to use as a weed blocker in the front garden we were ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 6, 2009 09:03
Failure of Breaking News Reporting?
Aaron Brazell argues that, with the advent of instant-reporting of rumor via Twitter and other social media, the mainstream press has fallen behind. He cites yesterday's Steve McNair murder, the false rumors that Jeff Goldblum had died, and Michael Jackson's death. He laments that, while the McNair news broke on two Nashville stations but "It was a long time (30 minutes ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 5, 2009 09:03
White House Hard on Families
NYT wants you to know that Team Obama is sacrificing mightily for you. A feature titled "‘Family Friendly’ White House Is Less So for Aides" begins: When President Obama talks up the family-friendly vibe at the White House — the nightly family dinners, the flexibility to attend school presentations and join impromptu plunges in the pool with his girls — his ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 5, 2009 07:53
Larry King Minutes
Hugh Hewitt has come up with a brilliant meme: "LKM" stands for Larry King Minutes --the number of broadcast minutes that Larry King would devote to your death if it occurred today. Michael Jackson has set a very high standard, swamping all other coverage from Larry's show and triggering hours and hours of extra programming from Larry. Conor Friedersdorf and Andrew Sullivan ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 2, 2009 14:51
Washington Post Selling Access?
It seems that WaPo has figured out a new business model. Mike Allen for Politico: For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off the record, non-confrontational access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors. The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 2, 2009 08:40
Overdosing on Michael Jackson
Ladies and gentlemen, Mike Lester: via Frank Stephenson via Robert PratherPosted in Outside The Beltway on July 1, 2009 07:59
Too Much [Internet] Bad for Marriage
Glenn Reynolds points to an incredibly thinly sourced AFP report that "Too much time spent on the Internet" is straining marriages in Ireland. One naturally extrapolates that to other countries causing the man who spends approximately 27 hours a day online to quip "Uh oh." Rather than spend time harping on the fact that professional editors let this horribly written piece ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 28, 2009 07:06
Why is ProPublica Writing Articles for the Washington Post?
My "Obama Wants Indefinite Detention Power" post was based on a widely-cited WaPo piece by Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn. I didn't want to derail the discussion there with a sidebar but there's an odd journalism angle here. The authors are bylined as "ProPublica and Washington Post Staff Writer," respectively. There's a graphic box further explicating this, which I've ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 27, 2009 07:47
Michael Jackson News Saturation - Micheal Jackson Tops Iran!
Michael Jackson died yesterday and given that his death was unexpected and that he was arguably the world's most famous entertainer, one would naturally expect a significant amount of news coverage. But methinks this is overdoing it a mite: Amusingly, a misspelled variant of his name ("Micheal Jackson") is the fourth most popular search right now, beating out Iran. Alas, "Jeff ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 26, 2009 08:15
Presidential Press Conferences, RIP?
Quite a kerfuffle has broken out in the blogs and on Twitter over President Obama's calling on HuffPo's Nico Pitney to ask a pre-screened question in yesterday's press conference. Politico's Michael Calderone broke the story: In what appeared to be a coordinated exchange, President Obama called on the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney near the start of his press conference and requested ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 24, 2009 09:02
A Secret the NYT Kept vs. Those It Did Not
Scott Johnson contrasts the NYT's silence on the David Rohde kidnapping to protect the safety of their reporter with "the Times's illegal exposure of the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program in December 2005, as well as its exposure of the Treasury Department's terrorist-finance tracking program in June 2006. Whereas the reporting of Rohde's apprehension may have endangered his life, the disclosure ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 22, 2009 08:59
Public and Private
Jeff Jarvis notes that there has been some controversy over Google's Streetview, which allows people to see videos of what's going on in the streets, including residential neighborhoods, in an ever-expanding number of locations. In a few countries around the world, we’ve seen a backlash against Google’s Streetview as somehow an invasion of privacy, even though what Google captures is the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 22, 2009 07:21
Iran Heats Up, Obama Goes for Ice Cream
On his own blog and at Hot Air, Patrick "Patterico" Frey has the surreal juxtaposition of purported Iranians Twittering the horrors of protesting an evil regime intermixed with CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller's account of President Obama taking his girls out for ice cream. As Josh Trevino tweets, "Obama going for ice cream has all the symbolism of [Cowboys quarterback ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 21, 2009 07:29
Palin Ignored Worse Jokes Than Letterman’s
Via Twitter, Jeff Jarvis links this interesting bit from WaPo's Paul Farhi: So, the strange case of Palin v. Letterman appears to be resolved with Letterman's very classy apology last night. I say "appears" because, based on my email, some people just won't let it go. They insist, despite TWO on-air explanations, that Letterman really, really was aiming his crack at ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 17, 2009 08:33
