Morning Reading List, 07.30.08

Got a blind item, interesting link, funny note, comment, birthday, anniversary or anything of the sort for Morning Reading List? Drop us a line or let us know in the tips box below. We've got your morning mix of media Muesli after the jump... Most of you never read ABC's "The Note". Jade Floyd from Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates, Ashley Prime from Quinn Gillespie & Associates and Kate Michael all correctly guessed that Monday's picture was from Hudson. BLIND ITEM: What Capitol Hill reporter was overheard last night saying "That's bullshit that I didn't make The Hill's 50 most beautiful list"? It's the birthday of Jim Rutenberg. Michael Scherer would like everyone to know that for a few weeks in college he subscribed to the Worker's Vanguard. He found it poorly written. On this day in 1792, Baltimore was founded. Oh no! The National Press Club's Fourth Estate restaurant is closing for a month. One journo tells us "There are two types of DC pundits: those who lamely use the command 'Look!' in the.imperative mode (i.e., Look, the McCain campaign has got to....), and those who don't. Once you become aware of this insidious habit, you'll wince whenever you hear it invoked. I'm pretty sure it started a couple of decades ago with the McLaughlin Group and has since become the most hackneyed cliche of the punditocracy. Among the most egregious abusers: Mara Liasson, Chuck Todd, Mort Kondracke, Bob Beckel, Bill Kristol, etc. As far as I can tell, this expression is used only by talking heads. I pretty much NEVER hear anyone in normal life begin a sentence with "Look!" But pundits think it makes them look authoritative." Today's "Angry Journalist" rant of the day: "A publisher who has no business rubbing two words together should not be telling me how to assemble a newspaper." Check out today's White House Photo of the Day from Time. Quickly navigate Morning Reading List: NEWSPAPERS | TV | ONLINE MEDIA | MAGAZINES | RADIO | NEWS NOTES | JOBS NEWSPAPERS Washingtonian's Harry Jaffe reports, "Profits may be down, but don't cry for the ink-stained wretches at the Washington Post: According to figures released by the newspaper guild in preparation for upcoming contract talks, 157 of the paper's 490 salaried, full-time newsroom employees make more than $100,000. The bulk of the staffersâ€”250â€”take in between $60,000 and $100,000. The union did not attach names to salaries, so the Post newsroom was left guessing about the three of their brethren making more than $230,000, listed only as 'reporter, bureau chief or columnist.'" Washington Post reports, "Charles Steele Jr. is the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a very prominent fellow. ... This week, the SCLC is celebrating its 50th anniversary at a convention in New Orleans. Steele is upset about something that happened before the celebration. A handful of Southern newspapers published an op-ed article under Steele's name on July 18 that his lawyer and the SCLC say he did not write or authorize." AJR reports, "Newhouse decides to shutter its Washington bureau." New York Times reports, "Marc Frons, chief technology officer, digital operations, is answering questions July 28-Aug. 1, 2008. Questions may be sent to askthetimes@nytimes.com." For the latest Q&A, click here. Newsday reports, "Cablevision Systems Corp., which finalized its $650 million purchase of 97 percent of Newsday Tuesday, will quickly embark on initiatives aimed at expanding the paper's circulation over the digital cable network while exploiting access to Newsday's subscribers and portfolio of advertisers." Check out the online chat with the reporting team behind The Washington Post's Chandra Levy series. The New York Observer reports, "Two and a half weeks ago Chris Hine, who this fall will enter his senior year at The University of Notre Dame, was saying his goodbyes to staffers he'd met at the beginning of his summer internship at the sports desk of The Los Angeles Times. They'd been around at the beginning to help him out with stories, give him pointers, and occasionally have him make a call for a fresh take on a bit of news. And then, with one of the recent rounds of layoffs at the newspaper, they were gone, leaving the intern behind. The firing of these mostly younger reporters -- people practically straight out of college -- hit home for Mr. Hine, who is the current editor-in-chief at The Observer, Notre Dame's campus daily." "One of Fournier's job options: McCain" Washington Post tells readers, "Mr. Novak Takes Leave" House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) issued the following statement regarding Robert Novak's announcement regarding his brain tumor: "Bob Novak doesn't read stories in the paper, he breaks them. And over the last 25 election seasons, his track record of reporting and commenting on the American political landscape has never failed to demonstrate keen insight and a peerless political acumen. I want to join the many wishing Bob all the best as he confronts this challenge and a speedy recovery as he looks to resume his work." House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) had this to say: "This is stunning news for anyone who follows American politics, and my thoughts and prayers go out to Bob and his family. I know Bob will confront this challenge with the same courage with which he has taken on the political establishment in Washington for decades. And with God's help, he will prevail in this fight." McClatchy reports, "Chandra Levy series proves who did it not only controversy" The Star-Exponent reports, "A cartoon by Jim Hope that appeared on Saturday's commentary page was similar to a cartoon published five days earlier by Nate Beeler of the Washington Examiner. ... Both depicted robust caricatures of banking giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about to fall on a skinny taxpayer; the captions were also nearly identical. ... Hope's work will no longer appear in the Star-Exponent." NewsBusters asks, "How Does Politico Justify This Photo Choice?" TNR's The Stump reports, "It would seem to be simple Campaign 101: If you are running for President, do not, under any circumstances, give a long, casual, rambling interview to a reporter you suspect is likely to, in the resulting story, analogize your latest diplomatic meeting to a homoerotic tryst and, like a randy sex therapist, suggest in print that you 'must want a cigarette.' And yet, Obama did just that, chatting with Maureen Dowd for her column today about his chemistry with Sarkozy and his campaign staff's crush on Carla Bruni." NPR's On The Media reports, "There's been a bit of a backlash recently against the angry commenter on newspaper websites. Some are calling for newspapers to stop allowing comments sections all together. But what about democracy on the web? Bob, with the help of 'This American Life''s Ira Glass, ruminates on the dark side of the comments section." DCRTV reports, "The Potomac News and Manassas Journal Messenger, both Media General daily newspapers in Prince William County, will combine to become the News And Messenger in October. The two already produce a combined edition on weekends and holidays. The new paper will assign reporters to cover specific areas of the county. The new combined organization will also control Media General's free county weekly, the PW Pulse. The News And Messenger will have a projected circulation of more than 24,000 paid daily readers. The PW Pulse is delivered to more than 88,000 homes. The Potomac News was founded in 1957; the Manassas Journal Messenger in 1869" A reader says, "Funny that both NYT and WaPo did front-page stories mixing kind of mundane process issue with a profile of obscure Sen. Tom Coburn. Eerie timing." "Barack Obama's overseas visit dominated the media narrative during the week of July 21-27. Attention to his trip accounted for more than half of the overall campaign newshole, according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism study." Top of post TV DCRTV reports, "DC's Channel 9/WUSA kicked off the new high-def version of 'The CBS Evening News With Katie Couric' at 6:30 PM tonight. But it had no audio. After a silent 20 seconds or so, they flipped back to old standard-def version. The HD was re-instated, with audio, at about halfway into the newscast. DCRTV hears that it was a CBS screw-up. 'There was no audio coming in on the HD feed. (WUSA) switched back to SD right away. They finally got it straightened out about 14 minutes into the newscast,' we're told. And, we hear that Couric's HD debut didn't go much better in Baltimore, where Channel 13/ WJZ takes the 7 PM feed of the newscast. After a few seconds of black screen, the SD version came on in the middle of a news report, we're told." "Media Matters released an update to our report on Gender and Ethnic Diversity in Prime-Time Cable News. Media Matters for America examined four programs on each of the three cable news networks during prime time, and recorded the gender and ethnicity of every guest who appeared during the month of May 2008 -- nearly 1,700 guest appearances in all. The results demonstrate that, at least in prime time, whatever effort the networks have made to increase the diversity of their guests have borne little fruit. Although there may be more African-American political analysts appearing during the daytime hours (particularly on CNN and MSNBC) in prime time -- when the audiences are largest -- white men continue to dominate." Read more here. B&C reports, "Couric to Lead CBS News' Convention Coverage" TVNewser has a round-up of the latest ratings report. "Greta Regains Demo Lead", "Countdown Continues Count Up in Viewers" and "CNN's Growth in Prime Demo" TVNewser's Steve Krakauer is "Tracing the 'Talking Points' Comment" and is "Bringing the Talking Points Story Full Circle", and then "Scratch That -- McClellan Says O'Reilly Didn't Receive Talking Points" NewsBusters reports, "May he live to be 120, but when Bob Shrum eventually goes to his reward, his epitaph could read 'Here lies Shrum. He thought he was great. But his presidential record ... was 0-8.' After Shrum taunted Pat Buchanan on today's Morning Joe as 'living on Mars' for supposedly overestimating the power of affirmative action as an issue, Pat fired back, reminding Shrum of his dubious lifetime achievement of having consulted on eight losing Dem presidential campaigns with nary a win." Huffington Post's Raymond Leon Roker writes, "No matter how strong their resume on race discussions was, there was no way CNN was going to broadcast a show called Black in America without causing a stir. And according to the network, they received more than 1000 bursts of feedback before the show had its final weekend encore." TVNewser columnist Gail Shister reports, "Mark Whitaker was attending a cousin's wedding outside Provence, France, when NBC News boss Steve Capus called to offer him the Washington bureau chief job." Huffington Post reports, "Andrea Mitchell Leads Media Pushback On McCain Ad" A release announced, "CN8, The Comcast Network will offer live, on-site nightly coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, with availability on-air, online at www.CN8.tv and through Comcast Digital Cable's ON DEMAND service." TVNewser reports, "Four minutes into MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning, host Joe Scarborough was sounding lonely. One of the top stories of the day read by co-host Mika Brzezinski was the New York Times' article about the Justice Department favoring conservative hires. As Newsbusters notes, this lead Scarborough to say, 'I don't think there's a single Republican on my staff. I'm a strange man in a strange land. And I am strange.'" Top of post ONLINE MEDIA AJR reports, "News organizations are embracing content aimed at cell phones and other mobile devices as part of their survival strategy in the digital age." Top of post MAGAZINES TNR's Leon Wieseltier argues that the controversy surrounding the recent New Yorker cover has overshadowed the greater offense: the Newsweek cover. Top of post RADIO The AP reports, "Clear Channel unveils online radio network" A release announced, "The Parents Television Council praised the FCC decision to approve the XM and Sirius satellite radio merger because it will provide meaningful entertainment choices for families. Previously, XM and Sirius announced their commitment to provide consumers and families the ability to choose their audio programming channels. In addition to offering their traditional bundles of programming, XM and Sirius said they will offer more affordable a la carte packages, including an option for families to block adult-themed channels and receive a price credit for the unwanted programming." Top of post NEWS NOTES A Media Matters release announced, "Following a week of coverage focused on unfounded complaints of media bias by Sen. John McCain and his surrogates, Media Matters Action Network today launched an ad campaign highlighting the media's long-held affection for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and seeking public support to hold the media accountable." To view the ad, click here. StopBigMedia.com announced, "Two weeks ago we sent you the message below to announce our 100 cosponsors in 100 days initiative to stop media consolidation. We're only two weeks into this summer campaign, and already more than 40 members of Congress have signed on to this important legislation. We're almost halfway there, but we need your help." To sign the petition, click here. Top of post JOBS The Gazette/Comprint Military Publications is looking for a Graphic Designer. Pew Research Center is looking for a Communications Manager, Pew Research Center. Conservation International is looking for an International News Media Director. Urban Land Institute is looking for a Designer. National Assn for the Education of Young Children is looking for an Editorial Assistant. Top of post Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext, Mic Check Radio, New York Times' On This Day

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Morning Reading List, 07.30.08

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