Anderson Cooper is on Jeff Zucker’s CNN chopping block.
"We have a bunch of reporters in Washington dutifully transcribing the crazy ravings of various Republicans… and not coming out and saying these people are completely insane. And that is a problem, because if they did, maybe we could actually present the truth to the public."
— Felix Salmon at our panel about the global economy and the American financial press.
WFMU took a $250,000 hit as a result of the storm—no small thing for an independent community radio facility overwhelmingly funded by listener support. It was another reminder that Sandy’s impact will continue to be felt by the region’s cultural institutions long after the last FEMA truck has left.
WFMU, which runs on an annual budget of $1.8 million, lost an estimated $150,000 from the cancellation last weekend of its annual record fair at Chelsea’s Metropolitan Pavilion, said Freedman, who’s been with the station since 1985. It was the first cancellation in the 20-year history of the three-day event, which provides a much-needed cash infusion to help sustain WFMU in the months heading into its annual March fund-raising drive. Beyond that, a brownout that occurred before most of Jersey City lost power altogether last Monday caused significant electrical damage to valuable studio equipment including audio processors, computers and the fire alarm system.
When the storm hit, WFMU had $40,000 in the bank, and $25,000 of that total has since been drained in order to pay the bi-weekly salaries of its seven full-time employees, thus leaving the station in a precarious situation.
Beloved indie radio station WFMU is back on the air, but running on fumes
Tom McGeveran on today’s Newsweek news:
But instead of making her magazine better attuned to the culture, Brown has made war on it.
Over the last 12 months, the magazine has been rightly called out on several occasions for “trolling.” This is a demented cousin of “pandering” which sometimes passes for being smarter: It’s when you try to start outrage or disbelief among readers. You amass, essentially, hate-readers who can’t help but look at the spectacle you are creating.
Perhaps the best recent examples are Niall Ferguson (no longer making hash) on why Barack Obama shouldn’t be re-elected—a piece full of howlers evidently meant to provoke its own readership—that it resulted in a tremendous backlash for the magazine, one from which I don’t think it recovered psychologically. But plodding forward, its infamous “MUSLIM RAGE” cover continued the downward spiral.
There were only really two roads Brown could have taken when she took over Newsweek: the high road and the low one. I’m not saying that her magazine would have made it on the high road—the title was reportedly losing as much as $40 million for its proprietor. But taking the low road didn’t really increase the odds, and resulted in people of relative good will pronouncing Newsweek dead well before the “all-digital” announcement made it official.
Read more: Tina Brown’s Newsweek ‘takes a leap into the future,’ which is oblivion
Inside the political gaffe factory: Why Romney keeps talking about Obama’s “bumps in the road” by former presidential campaign aide to Obama, Blake Zeff.
Thomas Kaplan, the young Albany reporter for the New York Times, canoeing with Gov. Andrew Cuomo this past weekend. Read about what’s going on here here.
“For a long time, I was like, Who is that guy? - ‘Wire’ and ‘Treme’ creator David Simon on being the ‘angriest man in television’
Make no mistake about what is happening here. Tina Brown is dressing up Ferguson’s failure as a provocation and conversation-starter. The problem is that this is not the kind of conversation Brown means to start.
Brown’s theory of buzz has been expounded at such length over the years that to hear it again or describe it again would just feel like a PCP hangover. The point is that Brown wants her magazine to be talked about.
But “roundly ridiculed” is a better description of the wide reaction to the magazine yesterday. And that, whatever positioning Brown may attempt, is bad for her and worse for Newsweek.
Is Tina Brown serious about Newsweek anymore?
by Tom McGeveran | Capital New York
Here is every vibrator gag (sorry) from The New York Post’s story about Trojan’s botched vibrator giveaway, as compiled by Tom McGeveran in his The Front column:
- On the front page of the print edition, the headline was “BUZZ KILL!”
- The lead-in text read “Hundreds of New Yorkers lined up for free vibrators from promotional pushcarts yesterday—until the nanny city hit below the belt and pulled the plug.
- Inside, the caption on a photo of a line of customers at Pearl Street read: CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION.
- The headline was “CITY KOs GOOD VIBRATIONS.”
Into the article!
- They must have rubbed Mayor Bloomberg the wrong way.
- City officials pulled the plug on a vibrator giveaway by the Trojan condom company yesterday …
- Trojan sent tingles of excitement across the city …
- But instead of climaxing in a successful giveaway, the promotion was prematurely interrupted …
- A dark-suited representative … put the squeeze on Trojan’s “Pleasure Carts.”
- The decision to nix the giveaway clearly caused the mayor’s voter satisfaction ratings to plummet ….
Emphasis mine:
My basic advice to anybody who wants to be writing is to get out on the street, learn how to report, don’t be shy, and hone those reporting skills. And then work on the writing because really, really good reporting is so exciting, and there’s not enough of it. Once you nail those skills, you’ll find your way.
This is one of the most valuable things I learned from Hillary and the other editors who mentored me when I worked at The Observer:
Working at the Observer, I started under Peter Kaplan, that was the first time I really worked in a newsroom with reporters and editors with a beat structure. I took that experience and then launched a culture section when the paper went from broadsheet to tabloid. In the time I was there, I moved over to the media desk, and I was media editor, where I had four great reporters working directly with me on their stories and on their Web pieces. I loved being in that clear structure where the reporters reported to me and I reported to the higher-up editors, the executive editor and the editor-in-chief. It created a really clear chain of command.
I like a beat structure and working in that kind of environment. I think it gives reporters a clear idea of who to go to, who to lean on for advice, for direction and editing input. All of that creates a really important tie between the editor and the reporter.
The rest is here.
Excellent insight from Yahoo! News’ new editor-in-chief.
"When I came here it sort of made me crazy that we had all these great reporters being referred to as bloggers. We’re a newsroom, not a blog network."
— Yahoo! News’ new editor in chief Hillary Frey. Looks like powerful, competent women are taking over Yahoo! this week.
“‘The Newsroom’ is just not fun, and maybe that is because Sorkin is no longer having fun. Perhaps he’s too busy being angry at the world (with a hard-to-miss focus on women). Ironically, considering Sorkin’s contempt for the Internet, watching the Newsroom feels a bit like delving into the political blogosphere: either you toe the line or you leave yourself open to bucketloads of verbal hate. Just this week The Chicago Sun-Times had to turn off comments on a story about Alex Okrent, the 29-year-old Obama staffer who suddenly collapsed and died at Obama headquarters, because they were getting so nasty. On “The Newsroom” there is no room to disagree or for the characters to develop; we are basically just waiting for everyone to come to their senses or be punished.” - The television of cruelty: Aaron Sorkin thinks we’re stupid, and he’s punishing us for it
