Morning Reading List, 06.04.08

Good morning Washington. Hotline's "On Call" blog notes how last night was a loong night. What a slob. Who's got a cubicle photo (or one of their colleague's) they want to send us? A year ago today, we learned that Eric Alterman was arrested (all charges were later dropped)! Also, it was Amy Walter's first day replacing Chuck Todd at The Hotline and Howard Kurtz joined Facebook. 116 years ago, the Sierra Club was incorporated. 91 years ago, the first Pulitzers were handed out. 66 years ago, the Battle of Midway began. 24 years ago, Bruce Springsteen released "Born in the USA." 5 years, Martha Stewart stepped down from her media empire. It's the birthday of Angelina Jolie, Horatio Sanz and Noah Wyle. Hillary's death watch has its own death watch and Gawker provides "The Visual History of the Longest Primaries Ever." TVNewser reported, "Tonight may be the last of the primaries, but the discussion of the cable news coverage will no doubt continue for months to come. MSNBC has bore the brunt of much of the criticism, from a candidate, a competitor, and many voices in between. Now, TVNewser speaks with a high level source inside MSNBC, who sheds light on some of the inside rumblings." "Martha Raddatz's Italian Advice: No Jokes." Howard Kurtz looks at all things yesterday. DCist Goes Sailing! And, The Corner busts Jeffrey Toobin for violating the Matt Labash Rules. Speaking of potential plagiarism, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., editor-in-chief of The American Spectator magazine, yesterday charged Todd Purdum with plagiarism over his recently published Vanity Fair article, "The Comeback Id" on former President Bill Clinton. Seventeen anecdotes and ideas are clearly lifted from my book, The Clinton Crack-Up. Mr. Purdum's article did not make reference to the book once. In reference to our post, "McClellan is Writing A What?!?", one reader says "this also is what happens after cutting the staff." Robert Schlesinger says that big plans are in store for U.S. News & World Report's Opinion section. NPR reports: "High gasoline prices are driving sales of motor scooters. They get much better mileage than cars -- up to 100 mpg." Not that we said so or anything. FamousDC warns us all, "It looks like more DC political reporters are using Social Networking sites to track down sources, look-up background information on staffers, and investigate ex-girlfriends. We know what you're thinking -- and yes, you need to log onto Facebook and take down that drunken beer bong picture of you at Dewey Beach." Support this cause, check out a favorite t-shirt from www.iliketotallyloveit.com and, of course, play The Andy Rooney Game. Most of you will not read Scott McClellan's book. Today's "Angry Journalist" rant of the day: "I am angry because no one at this once great paper seems to give a flip about good journalism. They are all too busy complaining." We've got your morning mix of media Muesli after the jump... Quickly navigate Morning Reading List: NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | RADIO | NEWS NOTES | JOBS NEWSPAPERS Bloomberg reports, "Metro International SA, the publisher of free newspapers in 21 countries, said it will focus on consolidation in Western Europe and North America in coming years and target growth in Russia, Latin America and Asia." AJR reports, "Minneapolis' Star Tribune and the Baltimore Sun reassigned their ombudsmen to editorial positions to cut costs. Kate Parry has been the Star Tribune's health editor since her contract as ombudsman ran out in October. In January, Paul Moore gave up his duties as public editor to become a deputy managing editor for the Sun. The Orlando Sentinel simply didn't replace longtime Ombudsman Manning Pynn when he retired in March. Ombudsmen are vulnerable targets for cost-conscious publishers. Since so few news organizations employ them, they can be perceived as luxury items." The Politico is still loving its lists. 24/7 Wall St. rated "The Online Financial Sections At The Top 25 Newspapers" Dean Starkman asks if Bloomberg's "Winkler Way -- Okay?" FishbowlLA's Mayrav Saar reports, "LAT reporter James Rainey coins the term 'discordulum,' an invented region of the brain of any presidential campaign reporter which is devoted to recognizing conflict." FishbowlNY's Noah Davis reports, "We spoke with New York Times staff writer Amy Harmon, who just won a Pulitzer-prize for her series, The DNA Age. She helped us settle the dispute about whether Times reporters check the most-emailed list: 'We all watch the most emailed list,' she told us." Gawker presents, "The Complete Guide To Stealing News Stories" WWD.com reports, "The New York Times' Sunday Styles will launch an etiquette column later this month, and though Philip Galanes, its writer, may not be a household name, it is difficult to imagine someone more primed to write about social mores alongside the sociological trivia, careerist self-revelation and spectator-sport consumption of that section. Galanes is twice graduated from Yale, was an entertainment lawyer at white-shoe firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, has two novels to his name and dabbles as an interior designer." Top of post TV An ABC release announced, "For the week of May 26-30, ABC's 'World News with Charles Gibson' was the #1 evening newscast among Total Viewers and Households, averaging 7.66 million and a 5.4/12. Among key demo viewers, 'World News' took second by just a tenth of a rating point and 60,000 Adults 25-54 (1.8/8 and 2.23 million to NBC's 1.9/8 and 2.29 million). " TVNewser's Chris Ariens tells us what it takes to be Larry King's supervising producer. DCist reports, "Reporter Hassled By Union Station Security While Reporting a Story on Photographers Being Hassled at Union Station" TVNewser's Chris Ariens reports, "Fareed Zakaria's CNN Show Debuts at No. 1" Chicago Sun-Times reports, "Sounds like Jay Leno will have all kinds of opportunities offered him when he hands over the reins to 'The Tonight Show' to Conan O'Brien next year. Along with interest quietly being proffered by the Fox and ABC networks, I'm hearing that Leno may be courted by CNN -- perhaps being given a late-night chatfest that could morph into Leno replacing Larry King." TVNewser's Chris Ariens reports, "Normally third-place MSNBC is celebrating a double win for their weekend political coverage. The network came in first in the ad friendly A25-54 demo during coverage of the DNC rules committee meeting Saturday and again Sunday during Puerto Rico primary results. CNN won in Total Viewers Saturday while FNC won on Sunday." TVNewser's Steve Krakauer reports, "Sure to change multiple times throughout the course of the day, the number of delegates Sen. Barack Obama needs to win the Democratic nomination has been a prevalent stat in the lower thirds on the cable networks. Just before a commercial break on all three networks around 1:35pmET, the three had very different figures. CNN had the number at 35 needed, MSNBC has been reporting 30.5 delegates, while FNC cited an AP story declaring Obama the nominee" Also from TVNewser: "A year ago today CNN aired its first presidential debate. 365 days later, CNN's senior VP and Washington Bureau chief David Bohrman thinks 'the most remarkable day' of this long primary season was Saturday's DNC rules committee meeting." Gawker reports, "Hillary Un-Concedes Election on 'The View'" Top of post ONLINE MEDIA Washington Post reports, "Chris McGill, the founder of a new McLean start-up called Mixx, is hoping to change the way Web surfers access news. Mixx, launched in October, aims to let users filter through all the online clutter and get the specific fresh content they want. Users submit interesting items they've spotted online, vote on the news they like and post their comments." FamousDC reports, "Politico Gives Drudge Another Free Ad" Splice Today reports, "The mainstream dailies have been dropping the ball when it comes to online video technology, but (surprisingly) the Times is leading the way." Politico reports, "MSNBC.com jumps the gun on Montana" New Republic's Dana Goldstein writes, "Will the fight between Daily Kos and MyDD have longer lasting implications than its founders realize?" Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar writes, "Today is June 2nd, which must mean that the issue of BusinessWeek with that date on the cover is a week out of date. Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of print, where that is just one of the counter-intuitive oddities of newsstand practice, similar to why everyone is now all abuzz with that Vanity Fair article on Bill Clinton, hot off the presses for July 2008. BusinessWeek figured out in April 2005 that print wasn't the only story -- there were blogs, too -- hence the super-big word 'BLOGS' on its cover, as in 'BLOGS WILL CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS.' Revolutionary!" Gawker reports, "Instapaper adds a 'read later' button to your browser, effectively allowing you to put off interesting but too-long articles while still giving a hazy sense of accomplishment. So Give Me Something To Read, a feed of the articles most often saved with Instapaper, isn't just a guide to the web's most popular pieces. It's a least-read best-seller list: The stories everyone intends to read but will never finish" vnunet.com reports, "Experts predict that internet advertising in the US will continue to 'grow fast' in the face of an economic downturn that will force a reduction in overall ad spending. IDC forecasts that current economic conditions will accelerate the transfer of marketing budgets from traditional to new media." E&P reports, "According to new data from Nielsen Online (owned by E&P's parent company), in April slightly more than one-third of the top 30 newspaper Web sites grew the average time spent per person. The same amount of Web sites reported similar gains in March. Many top sites, however, showed declines. Politico.com experienced the largest gain, up an average 18 minutes in April compared with an average three minutes in April 2007." The AP reports, "As readership and revenues shift onto the Internet, experts said on Tuesday that top news media executives must seek new digital opportunities without neglecting their traditional print publications by rushing headlong into cyberspace. The second annual World Digital Media Trends report, released at a meeting of the World Association of Newspapers, said the digital platforms of newspapers are growing at a double-digit rate worldwide, as the world increasingly goes on line." B&C reports, "CBS plans to upgrade the video player found on CBS.com and the CBS Audience Network, adding additional viewing options and functionality. The announcement came just a few weeks after ABC announced plans of its own to revamp its Web-video player. Among the new features will be the ability to embed clips on outside Web sites, true HD picture quality, full-screen viewing and a redesigned user interface." Beet.TV reports, "On Friday, msnbc.com quietly launched a mini-site dedicated to 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann.' The company will make an announcement shortly, but Beet has been checking it out. Mighty convenient to find Keith's show and related clips like world's 'worst' and 'best' persons and one of our favorites, Oddball." MinOnline reports, "Only the 20-something Silicon Valley dweebs really believe that the Web invented anything radically new in publishing. Aggregating the best content from multiple sources into an accessible package? Creating bite-sized helpings of drive-by content for our amusement? Passing around interesting articles to family and friends? Sounds a lot like the Reader's Digest that generations of us read in snatches and circulated endlessly. And so, RD.COM executives have some right to claim that the Reader's Digest brand has been Web 2.0 all along. They just didn't know it themselves. Until now, with the very attractive relaunch of RD.COM this week in synch with the June print-issue 'debut' of editor-in-chief Peggy Northrop" Arianna Huffington writes, "It's suddenly become fashionable to critique the role the media played in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Six years after it could have made a real difference. Are we seeing history repeat itself in the run-up to Election Day? The same journalists rendered 'too deferential' by George Bush's soaring post-9/11 approval ratings, now seem intent on providing cover for John McCain, whose election would mean a perpetuation of Bush's disastrous policies. The last thing we need is another round of media hand wringing four years down the road, with the 2013 version of Katie Couric bemoaning yet another 'embarrassing chapter' in American journalism." Bloomberg reports, "Liberty Media Corp. may emerge as a buyer for Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet-access business, said Citigroup Global Markets Inc. analyst Jason Bazinet." Top of post MAGAZINES The Telegraph reports, "Reed Elsevier is organising a consortium of banks to lend more than Â£750m to the eventual buyer of its Â£1.25bn trade magazine division, in an effort to ensure the business is sold in one piece, despite the credit crisis. UBS, BNP Paribas, JP Morgan, GE, Bank of Ireland and Lloyds TSB are among those expected to join the consortium to provide so-called 'stapled finance' for the sale of Reed Business Information, whose titles include the New Scientist and film industry bible Variety." Jeffrey Goldberg has a "Memo To Todd Purdum" MediaWeek reports, "Continuing an effort to modernize its 150-year-old brand, The Atlantic has devoted its July/August issue to 'ideas,' the first of three new themed issues this year. Vp, publisher Jay Lauf, who was hired from CondÃ© Nast's Wired to revitalize the magazine, said other new themed issues would focus on politics and people shaping the future, in addition to the State of the Union special issue that's already published. Through the new special issues, Lauf hopes to attract luxury, auto, travel and other new ad categories to the magazine, heavily dependent on corporate brand advertising. Thomson Reuters, JPMorgan and Booz Allen Hamilton were among new advertisers signed on for the July/August issue." Folio reports, "The Atlantic's May cover story was classic Atlantic: a provocative think piece with the coverline, 'Is Israel Finished?' that explores the future of Israel. But the story wasn't over in print. During the weekend of May 12, author Jeffrey Goldberg snagged an exclusive interview with Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama, who wished to express his stance on Israel, after the potential campaign killer of receiving an unsolicited endorsement from Palestinian terror group Hamas." Huffington Post's Eat The Press reports, "Frank Rich Defends Former Colleague Todd Purdum: 'Not Every Reporter For The Times Is Great, But This Guy Is A Great Reporter'" Top of post RADIO A release announced, "WAMU 88.5 will add The Story, a show that features conversations about people whose lives embody what is happening in the news, to its schedule. The Story will air on WAMU 88.5 at 1 a.m., Tuesdays through Saturdays; and on WAMU-3, WAMU's HD Channel 3, at 11 p.m., Mondays-Fridays." Also from a WAMU release, "Youth Voices, the WAMU 88.5 youth journalism outreach program, has been selected to receive a 2008 Silver Communicator Award from the International Academy of the Visual Arts. The award honors ten radio news features produced by Washington, D.C., -- area high school students in the past year with an 'Award of Distinction' in the category of 'Radio: Student Produced.' The Youth Voices program teaches high school students how to create a radio feature story about an issue that affects their lives and the larger community in which they live. The workshops are held weekly for up to 16 weeks at WAMU 88.5 and allow students to interact with professional radio journalists and producers." Matthew T. Felling is hosting "The Kojo Nnamdi Show" today and Thursday on NPR. Wall Street Journal reports, "While XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. await final regulatory approval of their proposed merger, the already difficult task of persuading consumers to pay for premium radio service could be growing tougher." Top of post NEWS NOTES "The World Affairs Council of Washington, DC Presents an Author Series Event with: Philip Pan as he discusses his new book Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China" The event will be held Tuesday, June 17th 2008 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM at 1800 K Street NW. To sign up, click here. The Deal reports, "A joke sustained by generations of Persian rug traders has a father asking his son, 'What's two plus two?' Ever-so-knowingly, the boy responds, 'What am I, Daddy, the buyer or the seller?' The same dilemma now defines media and entertainment companies as they try to reconfigure themselves in a world transformed by convergence, credit restrictions and major rethinks about economies of scale. But it's not just the moguls in charge who are wondering whether they're buyers or sellers. Investors are wondering, too." Bloomberg reports, "Dividends may be in jeopardy at almost three dozen of the biggest U.S. companies where annual payouts exceed cash flow from selling everything from cars to mobile telephones to newspapers. General Motors Corp., the biggest U.S. automaker, produced 33 cents a share in so-called free cash flow last year while maintaining a $1 dividend. Motorola Inc. took in 8 cents a share from operations after capital expenses, and paid a 20-cent dividend. New York Times Co. pays investors 92 cents per share a year and spent $1.87 a share more on operations than it made in cash." San Francisco Chronicle's Bronstein at Large reports, "The Media Is Back" Top of post JOBS A Public Affairs Firm is looking for a Communications Writer/Editor. Government Executive of Atlantic Media Company is looking for a Editor/Producer. American Gastroenterological Association Institute is looking for a Communications Manager. Top of post Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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Morning Reading List, 06.04.08

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