Don't you wish there was a magic pill you could take when you go to bed that would make you wake up on time, feeling refreshed, without an alarm clock? Well according to medical science, there is no such thing. Sorry. But according to 37 year-old mom of three Cathy Beggan from New Jersey, her special time-release blend of herbs and vitamins can do just that. And a Daily News reporter says they really work, science be damned!
This is a news report from an Arizona TV station with actual footage of Village Voice media CEO and asshole-in-charge Mike Lacey at an awards dinner last week, where he called a white journalist friend "my nigger" during an acceptance speech (the word is bleeped, but YOU know what he says). This report nicely juxtaposes Lacey's comment with the other item of business at the awards dinner: the 82-year-old mother of recently deceased black journalist Bob Moran accepting an award on his behalf. Classy. At least Lacey prefaces his comment with "if you don't mind the expression...," which is always a bad sign. Click to watch the clip.
The Los Angeles Daily Journal—a legal paper, apparently—has just fired its entire copy desk. Like, all of them. Writers writing their own headlines! And, uh, copy-editing themselves! It sounds positively hellish. Don't the bosses know that reporters can't spell? Or come up with pithy photo captions? [LAObserved]
Sam Zell is a crazy old man who bought Tribune Company a little while back. Since then, he's laid hundreds off, hired a bunch of nutty radio people, and done a LOT OF SHOUTING. It's refreshing! He says whatever's on his mind! He's irascible! No-nonsense! A breath of fresh air, telling it like it is! And we're fucking sick of it. Here he is shouting about things on NPR. He hasn't turned anything around yet, but he certainly yells a lot! Sam Zell says the YouTube was started in a garage and you don't know your ass from your elbow! Colorful vulgarisms will save journalism! [NPR]
Many months ago, top Washington Post political reporters Jim VandeHei and John Harris left their real newspaper to go be partners in a multimedia cross-platform Web 2.0 venture called Politico, which is actually a tiny little newspaper in Washington, DC. And a website. They lured a bunch of other top reporters over there too, with promises of lots and lots of Internet money, just like the Huffington Post gets, and promises of expansion and fame. It's been a huge success! Maybe! The Observer reports today that Politico is now turning into a TV show, which makes sense, because they are owned by a company that owns TV stations, but there's still not any word on whether this venture is actually making any money, for anyone. Which we're kinda curious about! Is it, as it appears to be, a big vanity project?
MTV, having covered every other aspect of the high school experience including the marching band, has finally made a reality series about a high school newspaper [NYO]. That hotbed of intrigue and sexual tension! As once-professional journalists as well as high school graduates, we have some bad news: the high school paper is simply not that exciting. Neither is the grown-up paper, for that matter. Newspapers are a prime example of things that produce a somewhat glamorous final product, but whose inner workings are drearily workmanlike. It's like visiting the Nike factory and being disappointed that it's populated by silent, sweating Vietnamese peasants, rather than by Lebron James. MTV's trailer for "The Paper" features kissing teens, violent arguments, pool parties, and a battle for editorship of the Cypress Bay High School student paper that "could change their lives(!)." Asdfjklasdfjkl. Sorry kids, nobody has time to read your resume anways! After the jump, the full trailer. The over-under on the number of these students who actually go into journalism: one. Probably the young Laurel Touby doppelganger
Should we be worried that The New York Times, Newsweek and The Washington Post are buying out their old seasoned writers and leaving behind a bunch of young reporters who possibly don't know what they're doing? "No!" says Jack Shafer. According to Slate, these voluntary buyouts (also known as "If we pay you a large sum of money, would you please leave already?") are going to end up revitalizing journalism.
Mike Lacey, the pugnacious chief of Village Voice Media and overlord of alt-weeklies across America, is known to be a man not afraid to speak his mind. In fact, he's the self-proclaimed "asshole in charge." So attendees at a Phoenix Society of Professional Journalists awards dinner last Friday might have expected Lacey to say something interesting when he accepted an award on behalf of one of his papers [East Valley Tribune]. But they were less than amused when (the white man) Lacey referred to his deceased friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning [UPDATE: also white] journalist Tom Fitzpatrick, as "my nigger."
A full list of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners follows. A few surprises in there: did we know that Bob Dylan got a Special Citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power"? And that the Editorial Writing award went to... no one?
"The Gawker is the modern day version of Playgirl, a 'straight' publication gay men feel good about buying because they're tired of low quality faggy stuff the pink media puts out." That's former gay porn star and current conservative blogger Matt Sanchez's take, and no facts will get in the way of his analysis! We asked Sanchez, who believes all contributors to Gawker are homosexual, to comment on today's post about all the gays working at the New York Times. And the former Freshmen magazine cover model blows the doors off liberal media lies such as "the Gawker's stance that it is a non-gay website"!
America's newsrooms are in a state of excitement: the Pulitzer prizes for excellence in journalism have been awarded. Washington Post, winner in six categories, is said to be particularly febrile. "It's a pretty amazing atmosphere over here right now," one reporter told Media Mob. "The big editors are roaming around with big smiles." (Update: this is what counts as jubilation.) Too bad the payout is only $10,000 per prize: the Pulitzers aren't going to finance American journalism; in fact, one can make the argument that these self-congratulating awards, and the attention devoted to them, are symptomatic of the decline of the newspaper industry.
Brooklyn's Bushwick Courier warns of a scary prospect for the neighborhood in its cover story: "SQUATTERS AND ADDICTS." Oh no! But it was a false alarm: although the story promises to jump to page 21, it actually just disappears! April fools? Or just April community-paper-operating-at-normal-quality-levels? [Animal NY]
Richard Martin, the crazy sign-posting super in Bay Ridge who enjoys insulting tenants and watching his little dog ride the mechanical pony, is back in his proper place: the newspaper. The Daily News, determined to win the Martin-related tabloid war, reports today that the crazy old coot has finally moved the garbage cans out of his lobby, where he had placed them to piss off his tenants. He clarifies that those tenants are still, however, "disgusting slobs." But one anonymous tenant has struck back by lighting one of Martin's crazy signs on fire "and scorching the wall behind it." War! Could this be the end for our hero's reign of textual terror? Heaven forbid. In remembrance, a photo of our all time favorite Richard Martin sign [via BeehiveHairdresser] after the jump. We call it "Irish Fucking Christmas."
Here's one way America's dying newspapers can boost their internet audiences: The Sun News of Myrtle Beach has ordered its editorial staff to make the paper's website their home page. Of course this strategy has one drawback: the newspaper's owner, The McClatchy Company, is cutting staff so rapidly there will be nobody left to click.
Lehman Brothers' Japan office is under scrutiny for making a little mistake: it lost a $350 million investment in a fraud. They thought the project they were investing in was backed by a reputable Japanese trading house, but it really wasn't. How did the scammers pull off their master plan? With fake stationery and business cards. Yes: somebody showed them some documents with an "official" company seal, handed over that genuine-looking business card, and next thing you know, $350 million! When things like this—or, say, a low-level trader at Societe General losing $7 billion by himself— happen at some of the world's top financial institutions, the impulse is to call those involved idiots or crooks. And sometimes they are. But guess what: getting scammed can be way easier than you think. And that especially goes for journalists!
Newspapers, now suffering a technological inferiority complex, weren't always so apologetic. The New York Public Library has a wonderful collection of confident posters, promoting newspapers such as the Sunday Herald and the New York Times, from the turn of the century. The issue of the Times here featured offers a selection of stories with a definite air of its current Sunday Styles section-except for a fascination with British aristocracy now superseded by Hamptons plutocrats. The pitch for a story about the market for heiresses in Britain-A Matrimonial Slave Mart-is more lascivious than the uptight Times would now allow. After the coverlines comes an awesomely cocky pitch: "Many Other Features Equally Good."
Every year, on April Fool's Day, the Vail Daily of Vail, CO, prints some funny fake stories in the paper, because no news happens in Vail anyway so no one really minds. This year, they printed an eight-page supplement of made-up bullshit. "It was also a money-maker, boasting numerous advertisements, including two full-pagers inside," according to Editor & Publisher. Printing entire sections of lies have long been profitable for newspapers, which is why so many of them have "Health" sections. But sometimes, truth slips through. After the jump, the UK Telegraph's list of April 1 stories that were actually true, no matter how much we wished they weren't.
The New York Observer, the fancypants pink paper read by the city's liberal elite, is about to roll out some changes. The two major ones: its cover price is going up to $2, and it's starting a full-on book review section, called the "Observer Review of Books," or "ORB." Recently laid off book reviewers of America, rejoice! This represents a big bet by the paper that its rarefied audience will be willing to pay more money for more literary coverage—and that the publishing industry, skittish as it is, will be willing to pour enough ad dollars into the Observer to make the new section viable. The NYO is no exception to every other print media outlet these days, in that it's trying to find a way to make its (vital) print product financially viable in the long term. Given all the papers across the country that have slashed their book review sections in the past year or two, it's not a bad niche to try to fill. This info courtesy of Observer President Bob Sommer. Contacted for reaction, former Gawker chief and current NYO gadfly Choire Sicha said—direct quote— "!!!."
On March 23, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an uplifting story about "Virginia Gillis," who had lost her perfect life when her husband started using methamphetamines, burned down their house, and attacked her with a straight razor, cutting her throat "almost all the way through." After a stint of homelessness, she slowly rebuilt her life, and now works as a chef at a homeless program, feeding hundreds of people a week who are stuck in the position that she once was. The paper compares her story to the resurrection of Jesus Christ—this was an Easter-themed feature. But further investigation revealed that, like Jesus, Virginia Gillis' story had a bit of mythology in it. Such as: her name, her age, her location, her outstanding warrants, and everything else about her story! It might have been easier if they just told us what was true in the original, rather than false. The entire, and truly epic, editor's note from page one of yesterday's paper [via Romenesko], after the jump.
Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz takes on Rupert Murdoch and his Wall Street Journal today, in Kurtz's inimitable "not actually taking anything on" style. Some say Murdoch will push the paper to the right or destroy its essential character! Others say he won't! What's indisputable, though, is that Murdoch's Journal is trying to establish (or re-establish) itself as a national paper, maybe a tough sell in a media landscape where only the New York Times really holds that title. But Murdoch's got lots and lots and lots of money! Fun facts: the newsroom staff is up to 750, from 600 two years ago. They are adding Washington and foreign reporters. Madness! It's almost as if no one told Rupert that print is dead. But the irreparable damage to the paper's character! What about that?
