When the Huffington Post reported last night that David Gregory would be the next host of Meet The Press, all the other online news sites treated it as a rumor. Then today Politico ran the same story, citing anonymous sources, and everyone accepted it as a confirmed fact. Why? It's just the new rules of online sourcing at work. The outsourcing of sourcing!
We hear that Neel Shah—former Gawker intern-turned prolific (and recently laid-off) Radar writer and occasional magical berry salesman—is joining the staff of ever-grinding gossip machine Page Six next week. Thus marks the completion of Neel's whirlwind full circuit through all of the stages of the gossip-based media, leaving spinning social vortexes in his wake that scientists assure us will not create universe-eating black holes. Upon reaching P6 he will receive a banana, a bottle of water, a blanket, a winner's ribbon, and the last media paycheck in New York.
Your lovely and talented Gawker crew has a new member joining up next week. As a lad in Mystic, CT, Alex Carnevale dreamed of one day getting his MFA in fiction writing from The New School. Well, he did that last year. He's over here now. Alex is the founder of the arts and culture blog This Recording, so it's fitting that he'll be covering the high culture beat starting Monday. We're gonna have high culture! Alex notes that he's also a fan of "the lowest of the low." Why am I introducing him? Well, he's covering for me this weekend, because I'm giving up my weekend duties for a while. Allow me to overshare? I'm kind of burned out. It doesn't require a treatment facility or anything, but I do need to use the weekends as actual downtime while I concentrate a little harder on the work I do during the week itself. Also, I'd like to spend some quality time not reading any newspapers, anywhere, ever, and return to getting all my news directly from Gawker, MSNBC, and The Daily Colbert Show Report. I'm going to keep contributing to Gawker, just not on such a structured basis for the time being. Anyway, talking about the future makes me itchy, so I'll leave it at that. This is not a goodbye so I won't be doing anything mushy. Here are Drunk Monkeys, Buffy, and that Surfer Dude.
For years, one man controlled all the news: Matt Drudge, nutty conservative weather-obsessed Miami queen blogger. He "broke" the Monica Lewinsky thing, sort of, and then for nearly ten years his website drove news narratives and pushed stories to the forefront. Even as recently as the primary season, some years past his peak influence, Drudge helped destroy the Clinton campaign with relentless Obama-boosting. Then, of course, he had to switch back to being a straight-up GOP hack. We'd say he just boosted Obama because he felt McCain would beat the Illinois Senator, but the fact is, his visceral hatred for the Clintons probably drove him just as much as anything else. Since the conventions, though, he's been an embarrassment. He highlights completely misleading bullshit and can't get anyone but the dumbest of bloggers to pick up on his pet stories. As Eric Bohlert notes in Media Matters today, Drudge has become so divorced from reality that even the serious press people who've religiously trusted his instincts since the Clinton days can't square his headlines with reality. His cherry-picked poll results are plainly ridiculous, last week's Drudge-touted "McCain Comeback" never even pretended to materialize, and he's completely, completely missed, by design, the major narratives of the last month of the campaign: Palin's national meltdown, the increasingly crazed McCain rallies, and Obama's fundraising and ground advantages. Instead we get... Biden on Botox, a little ACORN, and feeble attempts at finding crazy liberals attacking McCain supporters. They all work like a charm on the Conservative Blogosphere, but back in the good old days, that was just the first step toward mainstream discussion. Now, no one gives a shit. Maybe after the election Drudge will buckle down, like Fox, and provide the voice of the embattled opposition. But a conservative crack-up and the apparent disillusion of the tacit MSM/right-wing noise machine cooperative venture is not great news for Matt. And it's a long time until the next hurricane season.
It is already October 15th! How did that happen? I guess you could say that the Earth rotated around the sun a specific number of times and that days winnowed into nights which bled into days and so on and so on in the circle game. I think that's it. So, how have we been spending these ever-marching autumn hours? Watching TV, of course! Lots and lots of TV. Some has been good (Mad Men, The Daily Show), some has been bad (90210), and some has just been puzzling (Two and a Half Men?). So as we approach the ever-important November Sweeps Week—when networks set their ad rates based on inflated, extraordinary episodes that don't actually reflect typical week-in, week-out quality—let's take a second to give a quarter term report card. How has television been faring, you know, quality-wise (because we already know that ratings are in the toilet)? We'll analyze after the jump.
BREAKING: Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden is overly concerned with his appearance! The Delaware Senator's long been famous for his terrible embarrassing hair plugs, but a story out of the Washington Post today has it that Biden might have injected terrorist biological weapons into his forehead as part of some sick stunt to not look old and tired. Botox Biden! This is important hilarious breaking news, if you just arrived via time machine from one of the last two election cycles. In 2000 no one cared about anything because there were still jobs and stuff and no war and 9/11 was just a glimmer in Osama bin Laden's eye, so the Gore versus Bush campaign was mostly about how Gore was tricked into wearing Earth Tones by some emasculating feminists. Bush proudly kept dressing like a gay cowboy hustler, damn the focus groups, so he won (except he didn't but whatever). And in 2004 even though we had a war and shitty job creation it was still for some reason all about how Bush held a bullhorn on some rubble and John Kerry went windsurfing in a gay wetsuit and he looked French and also like Lurch. So! Bush won (for real for once). And honestly you can bitch about the sad end of this magical friendly bipartisan campaign we were supposed to have with these two DIFFERENT candidates who'd be so polite to one another but so far despite an amazing number of distractions the fact that people seem determined to care about "real issues" is semi-heartening. But of course "real issues" don't make for good column fodder, so a week after the New York Post floated the Biden botox story the Washington Post's gossip columnists (both of whom, it should be noted, are absolutely wonderful people) followed up with an "lol politicians are vain" piece and Drudge linked to it because the number of credible non-killer-storm items he can allow himself to link to every day is shrinking. The End.
How much does awful celebrity gossip machine TMZ pay to get its hands on all those exclusives? A whole helluva lot more than a reasonable person might think. For example: OJ Simpson is on trial in Vegas right now for armed robbery of some sports collectibles. Clearly, OJ's time in the spotlight has passed. He's third rate. But here's how much a tape of the crime was worth:
In 2003, there were 75 news magazines in the US and Canada. Now there are 45. That's a 40% drop in five years. Why? Because magazines are generally too slow to keep up with the 24-hour news cycle, and besides, everyone is too busy reading their "Regional" magazines, of which there are 1,120. So, for example, "The Untold Tale Of Hurricane Katrina's Victims" is now 25 times less popular than "New Orleans' Best Jambalaya Restaurants Under $25." Americans, geez. [Folio]
The Newark Star-Ledger is in serious danger of going out of business, as we mentioned earlier. Its publisher yesterday threatened bluntly to close the paper on January 5 unless it gets major concessions from its drivers' union. Even if the threat is a negotiating tactic, it also reflects economic reality. Everyone knows the business is rough, but wow: are we about to see the first major American city without a newspaper? This would be historic. And not in the good way. As the industry has declined during this decade, almost every newspaper has suffered economically. Layoffs have become ubiquitous. Foreign bureaus have been shuttered across the board as a matter of policy. Large metro papers, which dominate major cities but lack a national readership, have suffered the worst. Many (if not most) of them have pulled their correspondents from Washington and brought them home, to save money and cover local news, which is believed to be the wisest area of investment. The glory days are over. Salaries are down. Older, more expensive reporters and editors are urged to take buyouts. It's harder for aspiring journalists to get first jobs, or even internships. Papers have changed physically. Their pages have shrunk. Their page count has come down. Sections which once stood alone have been combined, all to save printing and newsprint costs. Two-paper towns are becoming a rarity. Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, and, of course, New York all support at least two sizable papers. But some of them shouldn't. Particularly in smaller or declining markets, it's a war of attrition to see which paper can hang on the longest. The idea that two editorial viewpoints are a necessity in most cities has been rendered anachronistic by the internet. Recent buyers of newspapers or newspaper companies have been disappointed. Brian Tierney, an ad wizard, has been unable to restore the Philadelphia papers to their former glory. Sam Zell is being sued by his own employees for the Tribune company's declining prospects. McClatchy wishes it had never bought Knight Ridder. What we haven't seen in all this, though, is a major American city with no newspaper. Everyone believes that a paper is an essential part of a city's fabric, like city hall and the jail and the local sports team. If Newark—a town with more problems than most—is left without a paper, who will tell the world what's going on there? Who will tell Newark what its own government is up to? Even bloggers should be humble enough to pray that the Star-Ledger isn't the first in a long line of papers that disappear and leave people with no forum for the local bickering, minutiae, and moments of glory that are the real American civics lesson. Print may be dead. But it shouldn't die before something better is in place.
Finally, a place where Hollywood conservatives can have their say. Andrew Breitbart, the friendly half of the Drudge Report link machine, is about to launch what we can only describe as "Sort of the conservative mirror of the original idea for Huffington Post, the one what was quickly abandoned." His new venture will supposedly become a destination site for Hollywood conservatives (like Jean-Claude Van Damme!) to speak out, and have their musing published on the World Wide Web. And, you know, good luck with that. But why does anybody care? Who is this awesomely powerful (but liked!) online agenda-setter? It's not like the man has to start something new. His own news site, Breitbart.com, does huge traffic because it's where all of Drudge's wire report items link to. He also has a video site, and he worked on the launch of the now-successful Huffington Post (though he's since divested—he's a true conservative believer). Breitbart works the afternoon shift at the Drudge Report. The two have remarkably seamless editorial styles, though some feel Breitbart has a lighter touch. More importantly, while Matt Drudge himself rarely speaks to the press or flits about in public settings, Breitbart is actually popular, and even a bit of a real-life schmoozer:
So, remember those guys who were going to reveal their earth-shattering Bigfoot discovery at a huge press conference? Well, the huge press conference happened yesterday and the intrepid hunters revealed exactly diddly-squat. Not bothering to display the alleged Bigfoot corpse they say they've kept in a freezer since finding it in Georgia over a month ago, a couple of yokels still received several hundred journalists at a press conference in Palo Alto, CA, yesterday. The liars, a cop on medical leave from the Clayton County Poilce Department and a former corrections officer, instead plugged their website and offered Sasquatch-hunting weekends in Georgia for $499. Oh, but they did produce one bit of evidence.
CNN press release: "CNN Recruits Key Political Experts for Campaign Coverage." Exciting! "Building upon its winning coverage of the U.S. presidential campaign and other political contests, CNN has added five more top political reporters and commentators to its deep bench of political contributors and analysts." Great! So who exactly are these five new additions to the best political team on whatever? One Dem strategist, one Washington Post columnist, and these three:
Clark Rockefeller-the mystery man with no driver's license, social security number, or tax history, who kidnapped his daughter in Boston last week-has been caught, the Post is reporting. "Fugitive Clark Rockefeller was taken into police custody in Baltimore today. His kidnapped daughter is safe and sound and in police hands, law enforcement sources said. Details of his capture were not immediately clear."
Remember how the New Yorker's Barack Obama cover was supposedly going to confuse a certain class of voter over whether Barack Obama is a legitimate, Democratic candidate for U.S. president or flag-burning muslim terrorist? Everyone sort of pictured these gullible souls as poor, uneducated whites, but the joke's on us, because the caricature has pushed no less a political sophisticate than MSNBC's Chris Matthews into a pit of stuttering confusion. Talking about the cover on Hardball tonight, Matthews suffered a severe relapse of his notorious Obama/Osama condition. Symptoms include calling Obama by the name of terrorist Osama bin Laden; referring to bin Laden as "Obama" and flashing on-screen pictures of one dude when talking about the other. Click the thumb to see which one happened tonight. HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY NEW YORKER FASCISTS. [Huffington Post]
I should not have dared venture out. Lots of important stuff happened! Hellboy 2 made $35.9 million. Brad Pitt cut the umbilical chord! John McLaughlin called Barack Obama "Oreo"-sort of. The Times' public editor wondered at length about using the word "nuts" in his paper. Somebody leaked a photo of Miley Cyrus in a wet T-shirt, and then she got a manicure! And Jose Canseco got his ass kicked. Now that we're all caught up, I'm gonna look for some cute animal videos.
Recently, a famous person said things he shouldn't have said while not realizing that his microphone was turned on. We honestly can't believe people still do this! They've been doing it since the inventions of microphones though, basically. And since the invention of Interet Video, we can watch and rewatch these fuckups over and over again! Video guru Nick McGlynn put a couple of the more choice live-mic mistakes together into one great clip. Remember when Kyra Phillips bitched about her brother-in-law in the bathroom and somehow the audio interrupted a Bush speech? Remember when President Reagan rambled about nuking Russia? Remember when Jesse Jackson said he would tear Barack Obama's nuts off? Now you don't have to "remember" any of those things because they are all right here in this post.
What month is it... July? It's been weeks since someone wrote a story about how Matt Drudge is the King of All Information! Thanks, Washington Post political blogger Chris Cillizza, for stepping up to the plate. The populace must be periodically reminded that all the news they receive comes from a reclusive weather-obsessed weirdo in Florida, lest they get uppity. So this week The Original Blogger is responsible for that Jesse Jackson "cut Obama's nuts off" story that the kids are so into. Because yesterday evening he, uh... hyped the fact that it would be appearing on Fox later that night, after Sean Hannity announced it on the radio hours earlier and as Jackson himself released his apology to the wires. Follow? Matt Drudge is responsible for this story that was already everywhere by the time he picked it up. Of course, we're just being cynical—he's still ridiculously over-influential! But WHY?
From Cajun Boy's blog comes the news that journeyman local news anchor Ron Hunter-who is thought by some to be the inspiration for Ron Burgundy in Anchorman-has passed away at the age of 70. "In his long career, Ron Hunter anchored top rated local news desks in New Orleans, Miami, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and Chicago, where he shared the desk with the likes of Jane Pauley and Maury Povich." After jump, one of the late newsman's former colleagues remembers his ego-driven antics, er, fondly?
All sorts of powerful women have dealt with sexism! Some people even make incorrect assumptions about your job title because of it. Next up: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (well, that's what the newscaster meant to call her), will discuss sexism!
