Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist

Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Md Troopers Assoc #20 & Westminster Md Fire Dept Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Showing posts with label Media Newspapers qv Newspapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media Newspapers qv Newspapers. Show all posts

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Gannett Blog: Gannett said laying off 600 newspaper employees

20080813 Gannett Blog: Gannett said laying off 600 newspaper employees

Wednesday, August 13, 2008


According to
Gannett Blog, “An Independent Journal about Gannett Co. Inc., Gannett said laying off 600 newspaper employees; pub's memo discloses total 1,000 jobs getting axed

Updated at 11:44 a.m. ET on Aug. 14: The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., is among the first newspapers
reporting layoffs on Thursday.

Earlier: A Maryland publisher told employees late Wednesday afternoon that
Gannett is eliminating 1,000 newspaper jobs, or about 3% of the troubled newspaper division's workforce -- and that about 600 employees are being laid off, a Gannett Blog reader says.

The reader provided a copy of a memo that
Daily Times Publisher Rick Jensen e-mailed about 4 p.m. today at the paper in Salisbury. "Across Gannett’s Community Publishing division, about 1,000 positions will be eliminated -- about 3% of the workforce,'' the memo says. "Of the 1,000 positions, about 600 employees will be laid off."

Jensen would be the first Gannett executive to publicly confirm
recent speculation that GCI is cutting jobs across the company -- and the first executive to disclose details of such cuts. A broad downsizing would come as the nation's top newspaper publisher reels from its surprisingly weak second-quarter earnings. That report sent Gannett shares plunging to new lows, further raising investor pressure on CEO Craig Dubow and his senior team.

No timetable given

I've asked chief Gannett flak
Tara Connell for comment. I've e-mailed Jensen, and Daily Times Executive Editor Greg Bassett as well. Moments ago, Bassett e-mailed this reply, saying only: "Jim Hopkins is in my in box? All the way from Europe? I must be big time! Cheers!"

[…]

Earlier: Blogger says Corporate's silence on layoffs is telling

Read the rest of the post here:
Gannett said laying off 600 newspaper employees; pub's memo discloses total 1,000 jobs getting axed

Gannett Blog Labels: Buyouts, Earnings, Layoffs, Louisville, Salisbury, This Just In, USA Today

http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/memo-gci-laying-off-600-newspaper.html

20080813 Gannett Blog: Gannett said laying off 600 newspaper employees

Thursday, June 05, 2008

20080530 Mediaweek: The Top 30 Newspaper Web Sites in April

The Top 30 Newspaper Web Sites in April

A kind month for the top 30 newspaper Web sites

May 30, 2008 -By Jennifer Saba, Editor & Publisher Media Week


April was a kind month to the top 30 newspaper Web sites, when comparing traffic stats from a year ago. Only seven sites reported declines. And monthly traffic at The Dallas Morning News, Politico, and OregonLive.com (The Oregonian in Portland) rose significantly, according to new data from Nielsen Online.

The Dallas Morning News' monthly uniques surged 88% in April, compared to the same month a year ago. At OregonLive.com, which did not make the top 30 list in March, traffic advanced 63%. The Politico drew about 1.7 million uniques, up 67%.

The Washington Times surfaced on April's top 30 list, growing traffic 16% in April compared to year-over-year data. Ditto for The Sun in Baltimore, which is back on the list after an absent March, up 38% year-over-year.

The Wall Street Journal's traffic grew a hefty 37% in April compared to April 2007. However, the number of monthly visitors dropped to 4.7 million in April from 6.8 million in March.

The number of monthly unique visitors in April to the Houston Chronicle fell 38% year-over-year. AZCentral's traffic decreased 14% in April compared to April 2007.

Below is the complete custom list of the top 30 newspaper Web sites provided by Nielsen Online (owned by E&P's parent company). The percent change compares April 2008 uniques with April 2007 uniques. Also keep in mind there are several reasons why traffic fluctuates, including news events.

The top 30 newspaper Web sites for March can be found here. The Top 30 Newspaper Web Sites in April

20080530 Mediaweek: The Top 30 Newspaper Web Sites in April


Wednesday, May 28, 2008

20080528 The Tentacle: Ham Nation by Kevin Dayhoff

Ham Nation

May 28, 2008 Kevin E. Dayhoff

Newspaper junkies learned last week that Mary Katherine Ham is joining The Washington Examiner as the online editor of “the publication’s forthcoming new web site.”

The announcement came by way of an email alert from The Washington Examiner’s editorial page editor, Mark Tapscott.

The news comes as excitement grows among those in the central Maryland area, who are Washington-oriented and get much of our national news from online publications, especially The Washington Examiner. Many are looking forward to the paper’s launch of its new web site – “dcexaminer.com.”

It is also welcome news for those who have followed the career of Ms. Ham on Fox News and Townhall.com and understand that she is just what is needed to bring online publications into the new millennium.

[…]

Moreover, the fresh new approach to an online publication is more likely to be achieved with an editor with a background in Internet media. Moving an aging dinosaur print media editor over to the online world and re-labeling their job description, and the sign on the door, isn’t going to work.

This is where someone like Mary Katherine Ham, a 2002 graduate of the University of Georgia with a degree in journalism, has a running start and advantage over any print media refugee assigned to an online publication. For starters, she is 28 years old and is a second-generation journalist.

As The Examiner press release notes, she “grew up in a newspaper family, as her father was managing editor of The Durham Herald-Sun (NC) for 13 years and four as director of digital publishing.”

Furthermore, Ms. Ham is currently a blogger, columnist, and managing editor for the web site Townhall.com. Many have enjoyed her regular appearances on “The O'Reilly Factor” on Fox News, where Bill O’Reilly introduces her as an “Internet Cop.” Others have enjoyed her work in an award-winning video blog series titled “HamNation.”

[…]

It was actually no surprise that The Washington Examiner hired Ms. Ham. Mr. Tapscott has stayed on the cutting-edge of the integration of news reporting into the technological age.

Apparently he did not need a lesson in computational complexity theory, or a “qualitative, anthropological study of young media consumers,” to understand that the future of newspapers is found in the increased integration of video, interactive ability, depth – with “path to the back story,” and honest news reporting.

Mary Katherine Ham is scheduled to begin working at The Examiner’s downtown Washington newsroom on June 10.

Read the entire column here: Ham Nation

Related: Art Writing Essays and articles, Dayhoff media The Tentacle, Media journalists Ham - Mary Katherine Ham, Media journalists Mark Tapscott, Media Newspapers, Media Newspapers Washington Examiner, Media Commentary

20080528 The Tentacle: Ham Nation by Kevin Dayhoff

Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster Maryland USA.

His columns and articles appear in The Tentacle - www.thetentacle.com; Westminster Eagle Opinion; www.thewestminstereagle.com, Winchester Report and The Sunday Carroll Eagle – in the Sunday Carroll County section of the Baltimore Sun. Get Westminster Eagle RSS Feed

www.kevindayhoff.net

http://www.youtube.com/kevindayhoff

http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/

http://gizmosart.com/dayhoff.html

E-mail him at: kdayhoff AT carr.org or kevindayhoff AT gmail.com

“When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.” Tennessee Williams

Monday, May 26, 2008

20080526 Mr. Bush and the G.I. Bill – another misleading New York Times editorial

Differences of opinion based on distortions: Mr. Bush and the G.I. Bill – another misleading New York Times editorial

Differences of opinion are important in formulating the best public policies for our collective future.

Nevertheless, a serious problem rears its ugly head when a difference of opinion is based on inaccurate information or, as is too often the case with the New York Times – an outright purposeful distortion of the information or criteria that needs to be analyzed in order to make a decision.

_____

For Immediate Release

Office of the Press Secretary

May 26, 2008

Statement by the Press Secretary

White House News

Once again, the New York Times Editorial Board doesn't let the facts get in the way of expressing its vitriolic opinions - no matter how misleading they may be.

In today's editorial, "Mr. Bush and the GI Bill", the New York Times irresponsibly distorts President Bush's strong commitment to strengthening and expanding support for America's service members and their families.

This editorial could not be farther from the truth about the President's record of leadership on this issue. In his January 2008 State of the Union Address, while proposing a series of initiatives to support our military families, President Bush specifically called upon Congress to answer service members' request that they be able to transfer their GI Bill benefits to their spouses and children. In April, he sent a legislative package to the Hill that would expand access to childcare, create new authorities to appoint qualified spouses into civil service jobs, provide education opportunities and job training for military spouses, and allow our troops to transfer their unused education benefits to their spouses or children.

As Congress debates the best way to expand the existing GI Bill, Secretary Gates has laid out important guidelines to ensure that legislation meets our service members' needs and rewards military service. First, since our servicemen and women have regularly requested the ability to transfer their GI bill benefits to their family members, legislation should include transferability. Second, legislation should provide greater rewards for continued military service in the all volunteer force.

There are several GI bill proposals under consideration in both the House and Senate. The Department of Defense has specific concerns about legislation sponsored by Senator Webb because it lacks transferability and could negatively impact military retention.

The President specifically supports the GI Bill legislation expansion proposed by Senators Graham, Burr, and McCain because it allows for the transferability of education benefits and calibrates an increase in education benefits to time in the service.

Though readers of the New York Times editorial page wouldn't know it, President Bush looks forward to signing a GI bill that supports our troops and their families, and preserves the experience and skill of our forces.

# # #

Return to this article at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/05/20080526-2.html


May 26, 2008 New York Times Editorial

Mr. Bush and the G.I. Bill

President Bush opposes a new G.I. Bill of Rights. He worries that if the traditional path to college for service members since World War II is improved and expanded for the post-9/11 generation, too many people will take it.

He is wrong, but at least he is consistent. Having saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war, having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways, the commander in chief now resists giving the troops a chance at better futures out of uniform. He does this on the ground that the bill is too generous and may discourage re-enlistment, further weakening the military he has done so much to break.

So lavish with other people’s sacrifices, so reckless in pouring the national treasure into the sandy pit of Iraq, Mr. Bush remains as cheap as ever when it comes to helping people at home.

Thankfully, the new G.I. Bill has strong bipartisan support in Congress. The House passed it by a veto-proof margin this month, and last week the Senate followed suit, approving it as part of a military financing bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Senate version was drafted by two Vietnam veterans, Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, and Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska. They argue that benefits paid under the existing G.I. Bill have fallen far behind the rising costs of college.

Their bill would pay full tuition and other expenses at a four-year public university for veterans who served in the military for at least three years since 9/11.

At that level, the new G.I. Bill would be as generous as the one enacted for the veterans of World War II, which soon became known as one of the most successful benefits programs — one of the soundest investments in human potential — in the nation’s history.

Mr. Bush — and, to his great discredit, Senator John McCain — have argued against a better G.I. Bill, for the worst reasons. They would prefer that college benefits for service members remain just mediocre enough that people in uniform are more likely to stay put.

They have seized on a prediction by the Congressional Budget Office that new, better benefits would decrease re-enlistments by 16 percent, which sounds ominous if you are trying — as Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are — to defend a never-ending war at a time when extended tours of duty have sapped morale and strained recruiting to the breaking point.

Their reasoning is flawed since the C.B.O. has also predicted that the bill would offset the re-enlistment decline by increasing new recruits — by 16 percent. The chance of a real shot at a college education turns out to be as strong a lure as ever. This is good news for our punishingly overburdened volunteer army, which needs all the smart, ambitious strivers it can get.

This page strongly supports a larger, sturdier military. It opposes throwing ever more money at the Pentagon for defense programs that are wasteful and poorly conceived. But as a long-term investment in human capital, in education and job training, there is no good argument against an expanded, generous G.I. Bill.

By threatening to veto it, Mr. Bush is showing great consistency of misjudgment. Congress should forcefully show how wrong he is by overriding his opposition and spending the money — an estimated $52 billion over 10 years, a tiniest fraction of the ongoing cost of Mr. Bush’s Iraq misadventure.

As partial repayment for the sacrifice of soldiers in a time of war, a new, improved G.I. Bill is as wise now as it was in 1944.

####

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/opinion/26mon1.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

20080422 TimesWatch Tracker


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Tuesday, April 22 2008

Another Anti-McCain Bombshell Fizzles Out
Is This All They've Got?, Part II: NYT investigates McCain's ties to developer, finds nothing, runs it on the front page anyway.

Missing the Economic Glory Year of...1979?
Middle-class wages are going extinct, and the paper's gloomy economics reporter Louis Uchitelle is on the case.

Lizette Alvarez Still Supporting the Troops
The military's full of felons, says the same reporter who smeared soldiers as criminals in a front-page report in January.

Joe Lieberman's "Lurch to the Right"?
A strangely hostile John Broder claims Lieberman "could become the first person to lose the vice presidency on both major party tickets."

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

20080416 TimesWatch Tracker


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Wednesday, April 16 2008

Maureen Dowd Massacres Obama's "Elitism"
Maureen Dowd: "Behind closed doors in San Francisco, elitism's epicenter, Barack Obama showed his elitism, attributing the emotional, spiritual and cultural values of working-class, 'lunch pail' Pennsylvanians to economic woes."

NYT Smothers McCain's Conservative Tax-Cut Plan with Dem Assaults
Michael Cooper, always on the bright side: "With the address, Mr. McCain labored to overcome the impression that he does not understand the economy well, and the idea being pushed by his Democratic rivals that he does not comprehend the economic pain felt by many Americans."

Reporter Says European Health Care Far Superior to "High-Cost" U.S. "Failure"
"If your latest battle with your H.M.O. has you pounding your head with frustration, 'Sick Around the World' on PBS may spur you to more drastic action, like leaving the United States altogether."

Times Greets Bush-Supporting Berlusconi's Comeback in Italy with Raspberry
Oh no, not him again: "Silvio Berlusconi, the idiosyncratic billionaire who already dominates much of Italy's public life, snatched back political power in elections that ended Monday...the least bad choice...."


Thursday, April 03, 2008

20080402 TimesWatch Tracker: Our Latest Analysis


20080402 TimesWatch Tracker: Our Latest Analysis

TimesWatch Tracker: Our Latest Analysis

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Times Decries " Anti-Communist Witch Hunt" in Hollywood Obit

Thank goodness for that: "By the time [director Jules Dassin] wrote and directed "Never on Sunday," a comedy about a good-hearted prostitute, the anti-Communist witch hunt in the United States had been discredited, and he had been accepted again."

To Protect Illegal Immigration, NYT Goes to Bat Again for Agri-Business

Did the "new politics of immigration" really put a farmer "out of business"?

OK, What Have They Done With the Real Howard Dean?

"Democrats' Turmoil Tests Party's Low-Key Leader" -- Headline to April 2 story on Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard "I Have a Scream" Dean.

A Double Standard on the Dow: If It Soars, It Bores...

...but if it's bleeding value, it leads the front page.

####

Monday, February 18, 2008

20080218 New York Times: Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location



Celebrating the semicolon

February 18, 2008

Since the semicolon is by far, my favorite punctuation mark; I thoroughly enjoyed: “Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location ,” which appears in the New York Times today. I bet you’ll enjoy the article also.

Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location

By SAM ROBERTS February 18, 2008

It was nearly hidden on a New York City Transit public service placard exhorting subway riders not to leave their newspaper behind when they get off the train.

“Please put it in a trash can,” riders are reminded. After which Neil Neches, an erudite writer in the transit agency’s marketing and service information department, inserted a semicolon. The rest of the sentence reads, “that’s good news for everyone.”

Semicolon sightings in the city are unusual, period, much less in exhortations drafted by committees of civil servants. In literature and journalism, not to mention in advertising, the semicolon has been largely jettisoned as a pretentious anachronism.

[…]

“When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life,” Kurt Vonnegut once said. “Old age is more like a semicolon.”

In terms of punctuation, semicolons signal something New Yorkers rarely do. Frank McCourt, the writer and former English teacher at Stuyvesant High School, describes the semicolon as the yellow traffic light of a “New York sentence.” In response, most New Yorkers accelerate; they don’t pause to contemplate.

[…]

Louis Menand, an English professor at Harvard and a staff writer at The New Yorker, pronounced the subway poster’s use of the semicolon to be “impeccable.”

Lynne Truss, author of “Eats Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” called it a “lovely example” of proper punctuation.

Geoffrey Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, praised the “burgeoning of punctuational literacy in unlikely places.”

Allan M. Siegal, a longtime arbiter of New York Times style before retiring, opined, “The semicolon is correct, though I’d have used a colon, which I think would be a bit more sophisticated in that sentence.”

[…]

New York City Transit’s unintended agenda notwithstanding, e-mail messages and text-messaging may jeopardize the last vestiges of semicolons. They still live on, though, in emoticons, those graphic emblems of our grins, grimaces and other facial expressions.

The semicolon, befittingly, symbolizes a wink.

Read the entire article; what fun: Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location

Image credit: http://www.punctuationplaytime.com/images/Box-Semicolon.gif

20080218 New York Times: Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location

Thursday, January 17, 2008

20080117 Times Watch: Anger Continues Over the Times' Sleazy Story on Killer Veterans


Times Watch: Anger Continues Over the Times' Sleazy Story on Killer Veterans

Outrage over a sleazy Times story on U.S. veterans who come home and kill.

Posted by: Clay Waters 1/17/2008 11:21:07 AM

Outrage continues to boil over the Times' front-page story on veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan and committing murders and was immediately discredited by cursory research as journalistically and statistically worthless. The Times' main finding, that 121 veterans either committed a killing in this country or are charged with one, was useless without context, which the Times either couldn't or didn't provide.

Armed Liberal tackled the story on that very point the day it appeared:

"I keep asking the simple question -- well, what does it mean? How do these 121 murderers compare with the base rate of murderers in the population? And the answer appears to be damn well."

Thursday's New York Post ran a scathing editorial on the Times' "Killer Vet Lie" and called on Public Editor Clark Hoyt to respond:

"Indeed, it's impossible to take issue with the statistics cited by reporters Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez -- because their article doesn't have any.

"For most editors, that would be a red flag. Not at the Times, not in a piece that appealed to the editors' dearest prejudices."

"Is the number of killings by combat vets dramatically higher than the rate involving people of the same age who've never served in the military?

"It's a good question -- in fact, it's the key question. But the Times never asked it. Or, if it did, it never reported the answer.

"Perhaps for good reason -- because the statistics tell a far different tale than that appearing in the Times."

Indeed, those who've run the numbers on various sets of crime statistics finds that one is significantly safer around veterans than around same-aged peers. The Post's military correspondent Ralph Peters did some crunching:

"…to match the homicide rate of their [nonmilitary] peers, our troops would've had to come home and commit about 150 murders a year, for a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007" -- six times the number the Times cited."

Bob Owens has a comprehensive piece at Pajamas Media, where he dug in further into the individual cases and found that "of those 121 summaries [in a sidebar story], 40 do not show direct ties between the stresses of deploying to combat zones and the homicides for which these veterans were charged, and of those, 14 were of highly dubious nature."

The Weekly Standard has a useful roundup of the most cogent criticism of the story, which doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of defense from the left wing of the blogosphere (except for the dead-enders at the Huffington Post, naturally).

####

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

20080108 TimesWatch Tracker


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Tuesday, January 08 2008

The "Tolerant" Left Spews on Bill Kristol, the Times' Newest Columnist
Bill Kristol gets a Times column: Watch the left-wing blogosphere goes nuts.

Nossiter Finds More Appeals to Racism Among Republicans
Reporter Adam Nossiter on the GOP: "...appeals to solidarity based on race remain a potent if unspoken force for the party."

One Nation, Under Obama...
With Obama's rise, reporter Kirk Johnson sees the death penalty, global warming and gay marriage as issues that are becoming settled in the public mind -- in ways that make liberals happy.

Democrats: The Future's So Bright, They Gotta Wear Shades
Populist and pragmatist? Yeah, right: "In 1988, the populist Jesse Jackson kept stony counsel before giving his nod to the pragmatist Michael Dukakis."


Check out our website today at www.timeswatch.org!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

20071024 Editorial on Shield law by Frederick News Post

Editorial on "Shield law" by Frederick News Post

Originally published October 24, 2007

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/opinion/display_editorial.htm?StoryID=66736

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives strongly endorsed a new journalism "shield law." The House voted 398 to 21 in favor of the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007, which would extend new protections to journalists in safeguarding their confidential sources. As the vote count indicates, the bill had strong bipartisan support --easily enough to override a presidential veto. The fate of the bill in the U.S. Senate is said to be less certain, in spite of the fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee has already voted 15-2 in support of it.

This federal shield legislation is breaking new ground, as it would, for the first time, establish legal standards on the federal government's power to order journalists to testify, disclose documents or name unidentified sources critical to their work. At present, most states have their own shield law legislation, but an overarching federal law is genuinely needed.

Read the entire editorial here: Editorial on Shield law by Frederick News Post

Sunday, October 07, 2007

20071006 Scrappleface: CIA May Threaten Detainees with Senate Hearings

Scott Ott – Scrappleface: CIA May Threaten Detainees with Senate Hearings



by Scott Ott (2007-10-06)



According a newly-leaked top-secret document published in The New York Times ‘Classified’ section today, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has employed controversial methods to extract information from terror suspects, including threats to put the detainee in front of a Senate committee for further interrogation.


If true, it means that U.S. agents may be using a technique “tantamount to torture,” an unnamed source told the Times.


“I’ve seen those Senate hearings on TV,” the source said. “I’d rather be waterboarded, slapped about the head and assaulted with high-volume Britney Spears music while confined to a meat locker.




Tuesday, September 25, 2007

20070925 The Evil has landed

The Evil has landed

September 25th, 2007

I had heard about this headline and must admit - I was amused…

Then I ran across an image of the front page of The New York Daily News - - thanks to Mark Tapscott: “Tabloid truth in print.”

####

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

20070814 TimesWatch Tracker


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Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Today in TimesWatch: (Headlines link to online postings with links to cited articles & sources)

Karl Rove, Polarizing, Divisive Right-Winger

The headline to Tuesday's lead story by Jim Rutenberg and Steven Lee Myers on the impending resignation of Karl Rove, Bush's chief political advisor, included the subhead "A Bare-Knuckle Style of Politics."

Rove as ruthless partisan brawler was indeed a theme that permeated both Tuesday's lead story and chief political reporter Adam Nagourney's accompanying analysis.

From Rutenberg and Rove's lead:

"With his voice breaking at times, and with President Bush at his side on the South Lawn of the White House, Karl Rove said Monday that he would resign as a deputy White House chief of staff at the end of the month. The decision ends Mr. Rove's role as the president's longest-serving and closest aide, and the one who most personified the bare-knuckle brand of politics Mr. Bush favors."

Rutenberg and Myers did note Rove drew heat from both right and left, quoting blogger Michelle Malkin criticizing Rove's second-term policy pushes that alienated conservatives, such as what Malkin called the "illegal alien shamnesty" (Bush's amnesty program for illegal immigrants) and the Medicare prescription drug plan.

Adam Naguorney missed this nuance in his accompanying "news analysis," "Legacy Laden With Proteges."

In Nagourney's view, Rove apparently invented negative campaigning.

"Certainly, Mr. Rove has to a considerable extent changed the way presidential politics are played. Modeled on his example, campaigns have become more disciplined in driving simple, often negative messages. They begin in trying to identify the vulnerabilities of potential opponents, and they do extensive negative research as they prepare to exploit those vulnerabilities early and often."

[...]

"If some of Mr. Rove's signature achievements have been eagerly imitated, others -- including an emphasis on turning out Republican base voters by focusing on polarizing issues like same-sex marriage -- have been discredited by polls suggesting that the base is shrinking in Mr. Bush’s second term.

"Not incidentally, Mr. Rove also leaves the White House as an extraordinarily polarizing figure, as was evident on Monday in the way some conservative bloggers joined Democratic ones in expressing delight at his departure."

(Would it have killed Nagourney to say "liberal bloggers" to balance out the reference to "conservative bloggers"?)

Nagourney ended his Monday afternoon web column on Rove's resignation with a scolding.

"Many wonder if a strategy aimed entirely at methodically identifying and stoking the party's conservative base, with issues like gay marriage, abortion and terrorism, was ever a recipe for long-term political dominance, much less for governing a country."

That summary conveniently ignored other issues which angered conservatives and that had Rove's handiwork all over them, such as the failed illegal immigration amnesty program, the failed Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, and the successful Medicare drug bill. But including those in the Rove legacy would have ruined Nagourney's convenient shorthand of Rove as right-wing divider.

The Times Embraces Religious Activists -- on the Left

A Sunday Magazine story by contributing writer Daskha Slater, "Resolved: Public Corporations Shall Take Us Seriously," profiled Sister Patricia Daly of the order of the Sisters of Saint Dominic of Caldwell, N.J. The blurb on the cover: "The Nun Who Would Turn ExxonMobil Green." No surprise where this story is going, then.

Slater has written for left-wing magazines Salon and Mother Jones and is clearly comfortable with these left-wing religious activists in a way you can hardly imagine a Times writer being with, say, a vigorously anti-abortion religious group.

"The ring tone on Sister Patricia Daly's cellphone is the 'Hallelujah' chorus from Handel's 'Messiah,' which makes every call sound as if it's coming from God. On the particular May afternoon, however, David Henry, who handles investor relations for the ExxonMobil Corporation, was on the line. Henry wanted to know if Daly planned to attend the annual shareholder meeting later that month -- a rhetorical question, really, since Daly had been at every one of them for the past 10 years. At each she posed roughly the same question: What is ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, planning to do about global warming?"

Slater adopted Daly's moral fervor, casting doubters of global warming as immoral. One can't imagine a Times writer adopting the crusade of a conservative anti-porn crusader so avidly. It's a 5,000-word article, but this excerpt should give sufficient flavor of the complete article:

"For a certain kind of shareholder, particularly a religious shareholder, ExxonMobil poses a quandary. By every conventional measure, it is an exemplary investment. The company made $39.5 billion in profits in 2006, earnings that keep the value of its stock at around $85 per share and make it the most profitable American corporation, with a market value that is larger than the national budget of France. It is also the most technologically advanced of all the world's oil companies, and it has an admirable record of workplace safety and spill reduction.

"But these days, corporations are increasingly judged not only by their quarterly earnings but also by their commitment to social and environmental values, and by governance standards like openness and accountability. By these standards, ExxonMobil is a mess. The company retains a reputation for environmental skullduggery that dates from the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Its skeptical stance on global warming has earned it the disapprobation of everyone from the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, to Senators Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller. The company is known to be insular and hostile to the press (its representatives declined to be formally interviewed for this article), and its rumored and oft-denied participation in Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force did nothing to increase its popularity….Whether the company's seeming indifference to the impact its emissions have on global climate change will affect its profitability remains to be seen, but a growing number of analysts suggest that it could."


Quotes of Note

Will Affliction Melt Justice Roberts' Cold Conservative Heart?


Elsewhere on the Web

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Saturday, June 30, 2007

20070701 Why the Editor Left Town

Why the Editor Left Town

Union Bridge Pilot, July 1, 1921.

On July 1st, 1921 the Union Bridge Pilot wrote:

In a recent letter to The Breeder's Gazette, Mr. F. M. Woods, of Lancaster county, Nebraska, told how a Nebraska printer got an auction sale and an account of a wedding mixed together.

The resulting article, wrote Mr. Woods, read like this:

"Married at the home of the bride's township one mile north and two miles east of Mr. and Mrs. John Jones, highly respected residents, of Thursday, January 27, Miss Ethel Drinkwater by the Rev. 18 head of Shorthorns consisting of four bridesmaids dressed in pale blue and carrying calves by their sides. They had tulle veils . . sired by the noted Kentucky jack Bombina 3d.

Also forty-six head of hogs, including the groom's father from North Dakota where he is engaged in missionary work, and is immuned by the double process.

These shoats are thrifty and all relatives of the bride and groom. They all gathered in the spacious dining room after the ceremony and partook of 300 bushels of seed oats, 1,000 bushels of corn, 10 large stacks of millet and alfalfa.

The bride is the youngest daughter of one trusty incubator, capacity 600 eggs, one Jno. Deere five-room cottage and a trip to Omaha, after which they draw 10 per cent, interest from date. Free lunch at noon. "

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

20070626 TimesWatch Tracker


TimesWatch Tracker

Tuesday, June 26 , 2007

Today in TimesWatch: (Headlines link to online postings with links to cited articles & sources)

"Ethics" Meltdown at the Times

Randy Cohen, the Times' ethics columnist, was dropped by the Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review after an MSNBC investigation into the political giving habits of journalists revealed that in 2004 Cohen had indonated money, against NYT Co. rules, to a political group, the left-wing MoveOn.org.

James Taranto, who compiles "Best of the Web" for Opinion Journal, caught this pompous silliness from Cohen's latest column, which shows that Cohen retains his rather selective stance on exactly which rules should be obeyed.

"K.V. in Brooklyn" asked Cohen: "My nanny recently told me that she takes antipsychotic medication for a bipolar disorder. I’ve been happy with her for the past two years. She seldom spends long hours alone with my children because I am a stay-at-home mother, and she would never knowingly harm them, but people with psychosis can’t always control themselves. You don’t fire someone for a disability, and I feel a particular sense of obligation because she is a young undocumented Haitian, but should I dismiss her to protect my children?"

Cohen replied: "You are restrained not only by ethics but also by the spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act. An attorney I consulted says that if you ran a larger business, 'to fire her would be illegal.' Were she to stop taking her medication or otherwise display dangerous behavior, a business could dismiss her. Fortunately, as a stay-at-home mother, you can see if her condition deteriorates before anyone is imperiled.

"Her immigration status already restricts her other employment prospects, and her limited options, as you imply, impose an additional ethical burden on you. If she can do the job, she should be allowed to keep it."

Taranto responded:

"You've got to love this. Cohen starts by making an appeal to authority -- or, more accurately, to a penumbra of authority, namely 'the spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act.' K.V., he avers, has an ethical obligation to comply with the requirements the ADA would impose on her if she were a mighty corporation rather than a harried mom.

"But when it comes to immigration, K.V. has an ethical obligation to defy the law by knowingly employing someone who has no legal right to be here!....He simply assumes a correspondence between the demands of ethics and his own political prejudices."

Illegal Immigration Concerns in "The Whitest Congressional District in Colorado"

Western-based correspondent Kirk Johnson wondered why Colorado residents are getting so worked up over illegal immigration, given they don't even know any illegals, in Sunday's "Anxiety in the Land of the Anti-Immigration Crusader." Even the photo caption was slanted: "The skyline of Highlands Ranch, a booming suburb of Denver that is largely white." Then again, so is Boston.

(Back in February 2005, Johnson defended University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who called the victims of 9-11 "little Eichmanns," from those trying to suppress his free speech: "Many students interviewed on campus in recent days said they feared that the lines being drawn around Professor Churchill were also creating boundaries about what could be freely and safely talked about in the United States.")

Johnson began his Sunday Week in Review piece: "It's hardly news that illegal immigrants lead fitfully uncertain, insecure lives. The storm winds of capitalism, uneven immigration-law enforcement and international border politics can blow unpredictably and fiercely at any time."

Of course, the Times is against "even" immigration-law enforcement as well as the "uneven" kind.

"But very similar tones of anxiety about the universe and its curveballs can be easily found in this upper-middle-class suburb southeast of Denver -- in the home district of Representative Tom Tancredo, the man waging a one-note anti-immigration campaign for the Republican presidential nomination."

Presidential candidate Tancredo does favor reducing legal immigration, but to refer to his "one-note anti-immigration campaign" is a bit broad.

Johnson dealt out more race cards: "Mr. Tancredo’s district is the richest, best educated and most family friendly in Colorado (the latter based on numbers of children counted by the census). Housing prices are high and there are few immigrant-based industries like manufacturing, meat-packing or agriculture. Nearly 9 of every 10 residents are white, while less than 1 in 10 are Hispanic. In several dozen interviews across the district, most people said they didn’t even know an illegal immigrant."

Of course, since the Times assumes illegals live in fear in the shadows, how would people in Tancredo's district necessarily know for sure about an immigrant's legal status?

"So why would illegal immigration be a cause célèbre in a place like this, the whitest Congressional district in Colorado?

"Residents and local political leaders say the answer comes down, at least partly, to words like 'order' and 'stability.' Those concerns may mask a certain amount of bigotry or bias. But the residents say they are motivated by concerns about borders they consider broken, leaving America open and vulnerable, especially in the post-9-11 world. Government, which many people here talk about with far more scorn and rage than they do about immigrants, has become a puppet to economic forces that demand cheap and mobile labor, they say."


Quotes of Note

Times Editor Questions Timing of Terror Alerts


Elsewhere on the Web

On the immigration debate, says blogger Ace of Spades, "one picture is worth a thousand words of editorializing." : more...


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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

20070619 Iraq: Rules Change for Photos of War Casualties

Iraq: Rules Change for Photos of War Casualties

June 19th, 2007

How would you like to open up the paper and see a picture of the blood of American soldier killed by a sniper smeared all over the floor?

Or worse yet, discover that the picture is of the blood of a loved one, friend, neighbor or colleague in arms?

Apparently the New York Times thinks it is all right: "Man Down: When One Bullet Alters Everything." Warning, the New York Times has seen fit to still have the picture up on the web…

Gee, now let me think about this… No, I don’t need to think about this. It is unacceptable…

Iraq: Rules Change for Photos of War Casualties

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11193980

June 19, 2007

by Andrea Seabrook

All Things Considered, June 19, 2007 · The U.S. military recently has established new rules for embedded journalists in Iraq that require the signatures of injured soldiers before their images or voices can be used by the media.

This is a shift from the previous policy, which required that media outlets wait for next-of-kin notification before broadcast.

In January, The New York Times published "Man Down: When One Bullet Alters Everything," an article by correspondent Damien Cave that told the story of several soldiers and what happens when one is shot in the head by a sniper during an operation. Staff Sgt. Hector Leija, the man who was shot, died.

The story included a photo of one of Leija's fellow soldiers dashing to recover Leija's helmet. In it, blood smears the floor.

Cave says that he felt the picture was a "sign of how hard the military was working to save this guy's life."

The military and Leija's family didn't feel that way. The family was hurt, the military was angry. As a consequence, the military pulled journalist Damien Cave out of the unit with which he was embedded.

Read he rest here:

Iraq: Rules Change for Photos of War Casualties

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Saturday, June 02, 2007

20070601 TimesWatch Tracker

20070601 TimesWatch Tracker

TimesWatch TrackerDocumenting and Exposing the LiberalAgenda of the New York Times

TimesWatch Tracker: Our Latest AnalysisFriday, June 1 , 2007

CNN host Lou Dobbs fought back on the Wednesday edition of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" against David Leonhardt's Wednesday column, which slammed the anchor as a paranoia-spreading "nativist" for warning of the dangers of illegal immigration.

Here's an excerpt from the conclusion of Wednesday's show (transcript courtesy of the MRC's Brad Wilmouth):

Lou Dobbs: "Now, if I may, a personal note tonight that I'd like to share with you. I've been, over the years, because of our reporting on controversial issues and my strongly held beliefs on those issues, attacked -- and usually pretty vigorously -- by both the left wing and the right wing of this nation's media, both mainstream and otherwise, and of course the politicians that form the extremes of our political spectrum. As a matter of fact, I am regularly attacked by the right wing -- the biggest business lobbyists in the country, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Bush administration -- for my criticism of so-called free trade policies and outsourcing.

"I'm regularly attacked by the left wing as well -- the Southern Poverty Law Center, The New York Times, The Nation, MALDEF and MEChA -- for my opposition to illegal immigration. Today, The New York Times published a column that picks up where an advertisement, a paid advertisement in The Times, paid for by the Southern Poverty Law Center, left off two weeks ago. Today's New York Times column is primarily a personal attack on me, focuses on an ad-lib on the set of this broadcast uttered more than two years ago by Christine Romans on the number of cases of leprosy in this country. An unscripted ad-lib, not a report -- by the way, we've never done a report on leprosy until we had to set this record straight a couple of weeks ago. That's over four and a half years of reporting on that issue."

[…]

"But today's scurrilous personal attack from The New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, carrying the water of the Southern Poverty Law Center, also has the facts wrong.

"He wrote that I said, quote, that 'One-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants.' That isn't what I said. I didn't say anything close to it.

"We reported that one-third of the federal prison population three and a half years ago were non-citizens. The columnist said the number was 6 percent. The exact number of the year in question was 29.3 percent for fiscal year 2001. And by the way, we're putting up links on our Web site,
loudobbs.com, so you can check the numbers for yourself.

"I introduced that report three and a half years ago by saying the number of illegal immigrants in our prisons was increasing and the financial burden rising. Well, we had to go back and check, and because our correspondent no longer has his notes to support that statement, that the number of illegal immigrants within a prison population of non-citizens, I have to retract it here tonight, and I apologize to you for the necessity of doing so. But like I said, I do make mistakes."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal Supreme Court justice, took the unusual step of reading from the bench her dissent against the Court's recent 5-4 ruling in a case against pay disparity in the workplace. The Times' Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse celebrated Ginsburg's activism in her Thursday "Supreme Court Memo," "Oral Dissents Give Ginsburg a New Voice on Court."

"Whatever else may be said about the Supreme Court's current term, which ends in about a month, it will be remembered as the time when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found her voice, and used it.

"Both in the abortion case the court decided last month and the discrimination ruling it issued on Tuesday, Justice Ginsburg read forceful dissents from the bench. In each case, she spoke not only for herself but also for three other dissenting colleagues, Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer.

"But the words were clearly her own, and they were both passionate and pointed. In the abortion case, in which the court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act seven years after having struck down a similar state law, she noted that the court was now 'differently composed than it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation.' In the latest case, she summoned Congress to overturn what she called the majority’s 'parsimonious reading' of the federal law against discrimination in the workplace….Some might say her dissents are an expression of sour grapes over being in the minority more often than not. But there may be strategic judgment, as well as frustration, behind Justice Ginsburg’s new style. She may have concluded that quiet collegiality has proved futile and that her new colleagues, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., are not open to persuasion on the issues that matter most to her."

Whatever happened to the idea of Supreme Court justices simply interpreting the Constitution, whether or not the "issues" matter to them or not politically?

Greenhouse let Ginsburg's liberal allies play up the gender card:

“Professor Liu said that when he read the dissent on Tuesday, it occurred to him that in recounting the workplace travails of the plaintiff, Lilly M. Ledbetter, Justice Ginsburg was also telling a version of her own story. 'Here she is, the one woman of a nine-member body, describing the get-along imperative and the desire not to make waves felt by the one woman among 16 men,' Professor Liu said. 'It’s as if after 15 years on the court, she's finally voicing some complaints of her own.'

“Another of the justice’s friends, Prof. Judith Resnik of Yale Law School, noted that throughout her legal career, Justice Ginsburg has been deeply concerned about questions of access to the courts and the remedial powers of federal judges, themes she has explored in both majority and dissenting opinions.”

Ed Whelan wrote at "
Bench Memos" at National Review Online that Greenhouse's article "is quite comical, though unintentionally so…Greenhouse’s article centers on the fact that Ginsburg has twice this term read her dissents from the bench -- first in April’s partial-birth ruling, then in this past Tuesday’s Title VII ruling (in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire ). As Greenhouse puts it, 'To read a dissent aloud is an act of theater that justices use to convey their view that the majority is not only mistaken, but profoundly wrong.'

"I can imagine how a fierce partisan of abortion like Ginsburg could mistakenly regard the Court’s partial-birth ruling as 'profoundly wrong.' But can the Court’s Title VII ruling come anywhere close to meeting that standard? Not even the Washington Post thinks so. In its house editorial today, the Post agrees with Ginsburg’s policy views. But, even without taking note of the precedents on which the majority relied, it regards the statutory question in the case as 'a difficult question' and forms no opinion on who 'had the better reading of the statute.'"

And James Taranto's "Best of the Web"
mocked Greenhouse's mind-reading of former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Elsewhere on the Web

NYT staffers gripe about their new building -- Gawker has the scoop. See Article

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