Okay. After 85 days, Judith Miller is now a free woman, released from custody yesterday after agreeing to testify before a grand jury after getting what she said was an unequivocal waiver from her source, who's been identified as Dick Cheney's chief of staff "Scooter" Libby.

I guess the journalism world's official response is pretty much encompassed in this statement from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Unofficially, the number of questions that remained unanswered about l'affaire Miller are probably best summed up in this piece by Editor& Publisher.


Personally, I find the episode too confusing to make much sense of. It was interesting to see clips today of Miller walking arm-in-arm with New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. I guess after the recent announcement of 500 impending job cuts at the Times Co., Sulzberger thought his image could be burnished by hanging around with his recently imprisoned employee.

After this anti-climactic ending --in which Miller stuck to her principles, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald stuck to his guns, and Libby stuck to his earlier waiver freeing reporters from protecting his identity -- the big question is...why did this all take so long?

If First Amendment and journalistic advocates were hoping Miller's dramatic incarceration would create enough public momentum for something like a federal shield law, they may be sorely disappointed. This thing has ended with a fizzle rather than a bang -- and I doubt there'll be much watercooler conversation in the days to come about the crying need to protect journalists who protect their sources.

9/30/2005 5:42:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Even with all the time that people are supposedly spending online, the Nielsen folks tell us this:

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Nielsen Reports Americans Watch TV at Record Levels



NEW YORK, September 29, 2005: Nielsen Media Research reported today that the average American home watched more television the past TV season vs. any previous season. During the 2004-05 TV season (which started September 20, 2004 and just ended September 18, 2005), the average household in the U.S. tuned into television an average of 8 hours and 11 minutes per day. This is 2.7% higher than the previous season, 12.5% higher than 10 years ago, and the highest levels ever reported since television viewing was first measured by Nielsen Media Research in the 1950’s. During the Sept 2004-Sept 2005 season, the average person watched television 4 hours and 32 minutes each day, the highest level in 15 years.

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I know I'll never be accused of bringing down the national average.

9/29/2005 3:02:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Ever since New York Times public editor Byron Calame wrote this Sunday column calling on the Times to print a correction about a Sept. 5 column concerning Geraldo Rivera, a little media parlor game has sprung up. (The Times this week did print a grudging Editors' Note).

In the opening line of Calame's column, he characterized Rivera as "someone who might be best described by a four-letter word." So here's the letter that NPR host Peter Sagal sent to the Poynter Web site:

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From PETER SAGAL, host, "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me": For once, I find myself in agreement with Geraldo Rivera. He expresses confusion in regard to the New York Times Public Editor Byron Calame's dig at him, "One of the real tests of journalistic integrity is being fair to someone who might best be described by a four-letter word."

"What four letter word did he have in mind?" asks Geraldo.

That's what I wondered, too, when I read the item. There are a lot of commonly used epithets that come to mind when describing Mr. Rivera, and some of them have four letters, and some of them are sufficiently obscene to require euphemizing, but I couldn't think of any that were both four letters and dirty. Seven letters, sure. Twelve letters -- a little extreme, but I can see it.

There is the common scatalogical noun, but used by itself, as metonymy for a person, it seems vague and insufficient when describing someone of Geraldo's grandeur.

There's the Yiddish putz, which fits the subject -- particularly considering his background -- but it strikes me as a bit too obscure, even for Times readers, to require this kind of polite mouth-covering.

Mr. Rivera had his own suggestion: "Hero." I ask the learned readers of Romenesko: What's yours? Especially evocative ideas will be considered for our radio show this week.

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My guess is that Calame is not big on vulgar profanity so my nominee is the rather bland, generic and disappointing "jerk."

9/29/2005 10:26:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

For those of you who recall Control Room, last year's excellent documentary about Al Jazeera's coverage of the war in Iraq by Egyptian-born, Harvard-educated filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, the surprise protagonist proved to be a U.S. military press officer named Josh Rushing.

In the course of dealing with all sorts of war time media, the young and earnest Rushing learns a great deal about perspective and bias, admitting that he is learning to "hate war," and coming to understand that the flag-waving Fox News Channel and the slogan-spouting Al Jazeera are mirror images of each other -- playing to the constituents on the home front.

"It benefits Al Jazeera to play to Arab nationalism because that's their audience, just like Fox plays to American patriotism for the exact same reason," Rushing says in "Control Room." Clearly, he was't destined for a big career at the Pentagon.

So maybe it should come as no suprise that USA Today is reporting that
Rushing has taken a job as a reporter for Al Jazeera's English-language channel that will be launched next year.

In the article, Rushing says "What the Marines trained me to do was to represent the best of what American stands for to a foreign audience. That's exactly what I'm going to do."

No doubt Rushing will become a target-rich environment for all sorts of conservative pundits who are sure to portray him as a Benedict Arnold. In reading the piece, of course, you see that Rushing is nothing if not a patriot and a proud American.

And someone who was smart enough to figure out an awful lot about the media during his stint in Iraq.

9/29/2005 9:50:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

On one hand, this story in today's New York Post -- quoting Dan Rather saying that his CBS bosses won't let him re-open the discredited September 2004 "60 Minutes Wednesday" story on George Bush's service record -- may be a sure sign that Dan's future at the network is rather (no pun intended) limited.

In this interview, Rather says he believes the story alleging Bush got preferential treatment in the military is true and suggests the network might have been set up -- two theories that have certainly been aired before.

When I interviewed Rather in March -- right before he signed off as "CBS Evening News" anchor -- he was far more circumspect, saying that he took "seriously" the findings of the independent panel that had reviewed the "60 Minutes" segment and found it badly flawed. "I think CBS News is looking forward," he added.

Now, it's understandable that Rather might want to look back at the story that is likely to forever taint his legacy. And he may be right that a) the essence of the piece was accurate and even b) that CBS was set up, although I've always found that to be farfetched, even in the dirty worlds of media and politics.

But the legitimate journalistic criticism aimed at CBS was not really about the conclusion reached by its piece on Bush's service record, it was the network's failure to "show the work" properly. Relying on tainted or dubious documents, even if they point to the right answer, is not acceptable reporting. CBS's failure to verify the authenticity of the documents is, on its face, an admission of guilt.

But Rather's rant raises another interesting point. Whatever happens to stories that are officially discredited or formally retracted, but whose authors continue to insist that truth was on their side?

Take for example,the 1998 CNN Operation Tailwind story alleging that the U.S. used nerve gas in Laos in 1970 on a mission to kill American defectors that was memorably retracted by CNN amidst a firestorm of public criticism.

When I interviewed her several years later, April Oliver, the CNN producer fired for her role in that piece, continued to insist she had aired "an accurate story...that is supportable."

Or the late Gary Webb, who along with supporters, stood behind the reporting in his 1996 "Dark Alliance" series in the San Jose Mercury News alleging CIA complicity in L.A.'s crack cocaine epidemic -- after it had been formally repudiated by the paper.

Of course, these are complicated cases. Some essentially accurate stories can be marred by flawed reporting, by sloppy editing, and by overreaching in the presentation. Like everything else in life, many big investigative efforts are not 100% right or 100% wrong, although journalistic standards hold that you'd better be a lot more right than wrong.

In any event, maybe Rather's comments call for a solution for such lingering controversies. Journalism could have its own "Cold Case" team of independent investigators -- paid for by grants or J-schools -- that could reopen these officially closed media investigations a few years later when passions have cooled and the interested parties have moved on to something else. Then they could render truly independent verdicts.

9/28/2005 9:46:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

After getting pressure from the paper's public editor Byron Calame and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, The New York Times today published this Editors' Note about Alessandra Stanley's Sept. 5 column stating that Geraldo Rivera had "nudged" a Hurricane Katrina rescue worker out of the way in New Orleans:

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The TV Watch column on Sept. 5 discussed broadcast journalists' undisguised outrage at the failings of Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts. It said reporters had helped stranded victims because no police officers or rescue workers were around, and added, "Fox's Geraldo Rivera did his rivals one better: yesterday, he nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety."

The editors understood the "nudge" comment as the television critic's figurative reference to Mr. Rivera's flamboyant intervention. Mr. Rivera complained, but after reviewing a tape of his broadcast, The Times declined to publish a correction.

Numerous readers, however - now including Byron Calame, the newspaper's public editor, who also scrutinized the tape - read the comment as a factual assertion. The Times acknowledges that no nudge was visible on the broadcast.

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If this isn't the most reluctant correction in newspaper history, I'm not sure what is. But Calame gets credit for at least a partial victory.

9/27/2005 12:49:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Good for The Boston Globe's Bob Hohler for getting today's fascinating story in which Sox ace Curt Schilling laments what has been the "very, very painful" and "hardest" year of his career and his wife Shonda says "he's not the same person and I don't know how to help him."

But from the Sox point of view, isn't there something pretty weird about the timing? Here's a tired, nicked up team trying to charge to the finish line of a difficult season locked in a life-and-death battle with the Yankees that probably won't be resolved until this weekend and one of its biggest stars picks this moment to:

1) make it clear he's thinking about life past baseball by saying "when I'm done in the game, I'll be done with the game."

2) attack a teammate who criticized him by noting that his detractor is "not wired right."

3) lament that whatever happens for the rest of this season, "it will still never be like last year."

We all know that Schilling never met a microphone he didn't like. And the smart money is on him being a Republican senator from Arizona one day. But wouldn't the team have been better off if he had waited another week -- or until the playoffs end -- before unburdening himself, if he felt a compelling need to do so, about his own personal hell?

In the immortal words of Tony Soprano, "Whatever happened to Gary Cooper, the strong, silent type?"

9/27/2005 10:34:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

To no one's surprise -- at least among that small segment of the population that was paying attention -- GOP money lady Cheryl Halpern was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting yesterday succeeding cultural warrior Kenneth Tomlinson, who conducted his own jihad against alleged liberal bias in public broadcasting, with particular focus on former "Now" host Bill Moyers.

As Paul Farhi's Post story today indicates, conservatives now have unfettered control over the CPB, which distributes about $400 million annually to public broadcasters.

This statement from Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, laments Halperin's ascension and calls for reform of the the CPB. He's right.


It isn't likely that Big Bird will soon be teaching kids to say the word "creationism" or preaching about the evils of gay marriage. But public broadcasting has now become a full-fledged political football with the right in control of the line of scrimmage.

Which leads to the logical conclusion that the best route for the public broadcasting service is to tell the government to keep its money -- and thus, its heavy-handed "oversight" of PBS -- and figure out some other way to make up the funding without airing too many more Roy Orbison concerts.

9/27/2005 9:45:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Aside from the New York Times public editor Byron Calame's column yesterday calling for the paper to correct Alessandra Stanley's column about Geraldo Rivera, (see previous Media Log post) the National Association of Hispanic Journalists has sent a letter to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. also asking for a mea culpa.

The plot thickens and the pressure on the Times mounts. One poster to this blog is probably right. A formal correction from the paper would probably provide enough Times-bashing fodder for Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity to dine out on for a year. But that's what taking the moral high road is all about.

9/26/2005 6:02:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

New New York Times public editor Byron (Barney) Calame has weighed in on the dispute between the Fox News Channel's Geraldo Rivera and Times critic Alessandra Stanley. And as much as I root against Rivera in any showdown, Calame's verdict ain't good news for the paper.

9/26/2005 1:19:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

At least it wasn't Ben Affleck. It's bad enough that Boston magazine and newcomer Boston Common (yes, the Web site still has photo of Affleck on the dummy cover for the first issue) will be battling over high end advertisers.

In what appears to be quite a coincidence, both publications also feature the same celeb -- Aerosmith's Steven Tyler -- on their current covers. Boston Common might have technically gotten there first since the magazine was officially released at a party last Wednesday and Boston didn't hit the newsstands before this past weekend. But Boston editor Jon Marcus says the cover was months in the making, explaining that the oil painting of Tyler for the Boston cover was commissioned in July. And he says that by the time he read about Boston Common's Tyler cover choice in local gossip columns, "we were already at the press."

Still, a larger questions looms. Doesn't Boston have a fresher music icon than someone born the same year that Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain were leading the Boston Braves to the World Series?

9/26/2005 12:08:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

A friend just emailed me a Washington Post story about HappyNews.com, a Web site on which never is heard a discouraging word and the news is not cloudy all day.

It's no secret that the journalism profession kind of scoffs at the idea of good news. (Would you read the story accompanying the headline "All Planes Land Safely at Logan Airport" is how one old media chestnut goes.) Yet the public often tells pollsters that the media focus too extensively and relentlessly on the negative.

When it comes to Iraq, the issue of whether the media are spending too much time on the carnage and not enough on the positive things happening in the country is a real debating point between pro-war and anti-war forces. See Globe hawk Jeff Jacoby's recent piece on "Iraq's Good News Chronicle."


There was a time, particularly in the 90's, when good news was kind of trendy. The American News Service in Vermont regularly cranked out solutions-oriented stories focusing on how communities were coming together to solve problems. In 1995, the San Diego Union-Tribune started its regular "Solutions" feature that initially focused on folks making a difference in their communities.

In 1996, a boat builder named Jon Wilson started a magazine called "Hope" with the idea of providing "upliftment" and shedding light on "aspects of humanity not commonly illustrated." This story I found by googling, however, suggests that maybe "Hope" shuffled off this mortal coil. In 1998, a woman in British Columbia started a monthly paper called "Know News" with the motto, "Know News is Good News." The daily Tribune in Scottsdale Arizona even published a one-day "Good News Tribune" chock full of page-one stories about a reduction in drunk driving arrests and the success of a recycling program.

Yes, some of these things were awfully gimmicky, and I don't know how many survived and for how long. Perhaps the good news boomlet died after 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But there ought to be room for HappyNews.com somewhere in the online news universe. So cheer up.

9/26/2005 11:13:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

There are doubtless a lot of emotions, few of them pleasant, swirling through The Boston Globe as staffers and management digest the potential impact of the New York Times. Co. announcement this week that it would be cutting 500 jobs company wide, including about three dozen in the Globe newsroom.

Asked to describe the mood inside the paper, Steve Richards, vice president of the union the represents about 1100 Globe staffers, said "the two words I would use would be 'anxious'...and 'frustrated.'"

I wonder if "nostalgic" would fit as well. Nostalgic for the days when the Globe was an independent family-owned newspaper operated by the Taylors. Sure, people used words like "plantation" and "the velvet coffin" to jokingly -- and somewhat mockingly -- describe the relatively comfortable life at the Globe under the benign stewardship of the Taylors. (There are still, according to Richards, more than 300 unionized staffers hired before 1994 on a layoff-protected list.) No one uses those terms now.

Richards acknowledges that part of the concern inside the Globe is a sense of detachment from corporate headquarters in New York -- "the sense that we've got kind of an absentee landlord in New York...The feeling we're Triple A. We're numbers and not faces." It goes without saying that there's a much different feeling when your bosses communicate via email from 200 miles away instead of simply walking into the newsroom.

When the Taylors sold the paper to The New York Times Co. for an estimated $1.1 billion a dozen years ago, it was widely viewed as a smart move with the family proactively seeking a white knight owner before the expiration of family trusts exposed the Globe to potential buyers with a far less honorable journalistic pedigree than the Times.

At the time of that sale, I'm not sure anyone could have foreseen the full impact of the Internet, the vagaries of the economy, and the continued erosion of readership, particularly among the young, that have newspaper companies cutting jobs and budgets on a regular basis. And who's to say the Globe would have fared any better had the Taylors somehow managed to hang on to the property all these years?

But six summers ago, on the day when the Times Co. formally ended 126 years of Taylor leadership at the Globe by replacing publisher Ben Taylor with Richard Gilman, William O. Taylor -- who had spent 20 years as publisher before retiring in 1997 -- spoke to a meeting of Globe department heads.

"This is a very sad day for both Ben and myself as our family winds up a long career managing this newspaper," he said. "I hope the history books will be kind to both of us."

They probably will be.

9/23/2005 10:30:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

From what I caught last night, it sure looked like that old snowy-haired liberal daytime yakker Phil Donahue cleaned Bill O'Reilly's clock during their heated Fox News Channel faceoff this week over war mom Cindy Sheehan and the mess in Iraq. (The transcript speaks for itself.)

O'Reilly, as befits a classic bully of the microphone, usually knows when he's got a guest too formidable to mess with and backs off a bit. That doesn't happen often, but he was understandably wary during a show with Michael Moore during last year's Democratic National Convention.

But proving he innately understands how to dominate the airwaves, Donahue pretty much pounded O'Reilly into submission, compounding his assault by repeatedly referring to the host as "Billy." By the end of segment, Billy looked like he had inhaled about a half dozen lemons.

If you need a refresher course on Jeremy Glick's infamous encounter with O'Reilly, read this.

9/23/2005 9:09:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Bill Koch, the multimillioinaire businessman who demanded a retraction and apology for an Aug. 9 Alex Beam column in The Boston Globe, said in an interview late today that he considers today's Editor's note in Beam's column "half a loaf."

Howard Cooper, Koch's attorney, had written a Sept 9. letter to Beam about the column -- which revisited some of Koch's legal entanglements -- asking for an apology and retraction and describing the column as nothing short of "libel."

Today's Editor's note acknowledges some of the concerns highlighted in Cooper's letter. But Koch and his lawyer said they were not prepared to say the dispute was resolved. They indicated they would wait before determining how to proceed.

"There are broader implications here for what's going on," said Cooper. "Obviously, the press has the ability to impact greatly on the reputation of anyone about who it reports. It's almost impossible for the subject matter of the story to know whether his reputation's been repaired. Only time will tell."

Koch added that "I've been branded and it's awfully hard to remove a brand even though the brand's been unjustified. The decision to bring a lawsuit is a very, very difficult one...but you weigh that against what you expect to get on the one hand, and on the other hand, how much you can correct."

9/22/2005 6:16:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Today's Boston Herald tried to deal with it in a joke, or more accurately, a riddle.

But it's a big deal when a paper breaks with tradition to sell its first ad (a Sovereign Bank spot) on the previously sacrosanct turf of page 1. There are a few telltale signs in today's Herald story on that milestone that the paper is a bit defensive about the move.

a) There is no reporter's byline on the story, just a generic "Herald staff" notation.
b) A healthy chunk of the eight-paragraph story is devoted to how many other papers do the same or similar things.

Given the Herald's precarious financial position -- and the lingering speculation that Pat Purcell may be preparing to either sell it or make it a freebie -- it's hard to get in a moralistic huff about this. If this helps keep the paper alive and in local hands, so be it.

9/22/2005 5:25:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

The editor's note in today's Alex Beam column in the Globe would seem to go pretty far toward meeting Bill Koch's demand for an apology and retraction for Beam's Aug. 9 column that prompted a barely disguised threat of a libel suit.

To recap our story, Koch, the multimillionare whose collection of art adorns the MFA's "Things I Love" show, was angered by the unflattering Aug. 9 column revisiting some of his previous legal entanglements. On Sept. 9, Koch's lawyer, Howard Cooper, wrote a lengthy letter to Beam demanding the retraction and raising the specter of litigation if that demand was not met.

Whatever the merits of a possible libel suit, the prospect of a long and expensive legal battle with the uber-wealthy Koch can't be appetizing for the Globe.

Today's editor's note officially acknowledges that some of Cooper's points were well taken. It's up to Koch to decide whether it was sufficient to end the dispute.

9/22/2005 4:05:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

If you want to know why Boston Common magazine -- the glitzy chronicler of Boston's rich and moderately famous that finally arrived yesterday after much hype -- probably won't win any awards from the Columbia School of Journalism, this Alex Beam column in Tuesday's Globe will explain.

Now that the fat and happy 352-page debut edition is here, let's review some numbers from the issue.

* Number of ad pages (including the inside front cover and the back cover) -- 172
* Number of ad pages before the first Contents page -- 37
* Number of ad pages before the first "story" -- a brief interview with Tom Menino -- 61
* Page on which the cover story -- Q&A with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler -- starts -- 212
* Number of stories or profiles that are no longer than one page -- 40 (This doesn't count the service-oriented pieces)
* Number of paragraphs in Alan Dershowitz's piece about Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts and Harvard -- 9
* Number of paragraphs in Danny Ainge's preview of the upcoming Celtic basketball season -- 3
* Number of paragraphs in BSO director James Levine's summary of the new season -- 4
* Number of paragraphs in the interview with Menino -- 4
* Number of pages filled with party-style photos of local folks and celebs (including portraits from photographer Bill Brett's new book on Boston's movers and shakers) -- 41
* Number of names on the cryptically headlined feature, "The List." (The line describing "The List" on the Contents page says simply: "Are you on it?") -- 200

9/22/2005 12:58:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Amid some serious hoopla, including a press conference, Boston's Viacom TV duopoly of CBS4 and UPN38 announced today that former Patriot linebacker Ted Johnson will be coming aboard as a sports analyst.

His official duties are described in the press release thusly: "As CBS4/UPN 38 Sports Analyst, Johnson will be a regular contributor to CBS4 Sports' "New England Ford Dealers Patriots Game Day" which airs Sundays at 11:30AM on CBS4, as well as "New England Ford Dealers Patriots Fifth Quarter" which airs either on CBS4 or UPN 38 depending on game schedules (times TBA), and "Sports Final" on CBS4 Sundays at 11:30PM."
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Everybody else on the set will sure look like they have a small neck.

9/21/2005 1:12:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Without actually seeing the first issue, we already know something about the imminent arrival -- officially today I guess -- of Boston Common, the glossy luxury lifestyle magazine published by Jason Binn and his Niche Media company.

It's been good for lawyers and gossip columnists.

Lawyers, because on his way into town, Binn had two notable legal dustups. First, in initially planning to call his magazine Boston Commonwealth, he ran afoul of CommonWealth magazine, the nine-year-old policy quarterly published by the nonprofit think tank MassINC. After MassINC filed a trademark infringment suit, Niche Media resolved matters by changing its name to Boston Common.

Next, Niche found itself being sued by the parent company of soon-to-be competitor Boston magazine, which alleged that three former Boston staffers who went to work for Boston Common stole a protected database with the names of thousands of advertisers.

That dispute was also settled later in what a Boston magazine statement called an "amicable resolution" that included a Binn acknowledgement that the use of the advertising contacts, "took place without his knowledge and in violation of Niche Media policies and procedures."

Boston Common is also good for gossip columnists because Niche Media and Binn love celebrites and parties and are kicking off the Boston launch with a soiree tonight featuring the first issue cover boy and ubiquitous Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler.

It'd be nice to describe what the inaugural 352-page issue of the magazine is like. But strangely enough, Niche has declined to let anyone (or at least Media Log) see the magazine before its official release, although it was happy to share the names of its many celebrity contributors -- including Jay Leno, Alan Dershowitz and Danny Ainge.


If it follows the pattern of Niche's other glossies -- Aspen Peak, Hamptons, Gotham and Los Angeles Confidential -- Boston Common will be very slick, incredibly pretty, chock full of advertising dollars and largely devoid of meaningful content. But God knows, Boston isn't Aspen -- so let's wait and see.

In the meantime, litigators and paparazzi already owe Boston Common a debt of gratitude.

9/21/2005 11:37:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Wikipedia defines schadenfreude as "pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune" and you can detect some of that in today's Boston Herald story reporting on The New York Times Co. cutbacks that will end up costing about three dozen jobs in The Boston Globe newsroom.

In vivid prose, reporter Jay Fitzgerald writes about the loss of a "staggering 500 jobs companywide," a "planned bloodletting," that "cast a pall over the Globe's newsroom" and worried Globe journalists gathering "in clusters throughout the sprawling newsroom." Frankly, the schadenfreude is somewhat understandable.

The Herald recently went through its own wrenching cuts (proportionately deeper than what the Globe is facing) that reduced its newsroom by somewhere around 40-50 staffers, including some of its best known names. And the Globe covered that quite extensively. I know because I wrote a number of those stories at the Globe.

Today's Globe story on the Times Co. reductions, written by Christopher Rowland, includes the salient facts and information. But obviously it doesn't feature the same tone as the Herald's account. It's damn hard to write about your own news organization. I know because I also had to write the Globe story in May when the Times announced its reduction of about 200 jobs

(As an aside, the Globe does a markedly better job of airing its own dirty linen than the Herald does.)

Moral of the story: This is another reason why we need a two newspaper town. So you can read a story like this in the Globe and the Herald and then split the difference.

P.S. -- As one Media Log poster pointed out, it's worth checking out Dan Kennedy's blog on this subject, particularly his analysis of the many faces of newspaper consultant John Morton as revealed through his quotes to three different newspapers.
Moral of that story: With no disrespect intended to the always accessible Morton, media reporters, this one included, need to find other experts to quote sometimes.

9/21/2005 10:22:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

More bad news from the corporate headquarters of the NY Times Co., which today announced impending "staff reductions" that will affect about 500 employees, including about three dozen people who work in The Boston Globe newsroom.

When the Times Co. announced back in May that it was eliminating nearly 200 positions -- with about 130 cuts at the New York Times itself and the rest spread between the Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette -- the Globe newsroom escaped nearly unscathed, losing only a handful of student support staff positions and being told not to fill three vacant editorial jobs.

This time, the Globe doesn't appear to have been as fortunate.

Will 500 job cuts sound like sweet enough music to Wall Street to provide any kind of boost to sluggish Times stock, which is hovering around 32?

Here's the release:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY ANNOUNCES STAFF REDUCTIONS

NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 2005: The New York Times Company announced today that
it plans to undertake staff reductions that will affect approximately 500
employees, about four percent of its total workforce. It plans to begin
the staff reductions in October and implement them over the course of the
next six to nine months.

The Company expects that about 250 positions at The New York Times Media
Group will be affected, including approximately 45 newsroom positions at
The Times newspaper. At The New England Media Group approximately 160
positions, including about 35 newsroom positions at the Boston Globe, will
be affected. The Company's regional newspapers, its broadcast properties
and its corporate staff will also be affected.

This represents a continuation of the initiatives the Company began earlier
this year to find ways to operate more efficiently. As a result of these
efforts, the Company identified areas where it could function effectively
with fewer people. Earlier this year the Company reduced its staff by
approximately 200 positions or about two percent.

The Company plans to manage the staff reductions in such a way that it
continues to provide journalism of the highest quality, to function
smoothly on a day-to-day basis and to achieve its long-term strategic
goals.

Because the details of the staff reductions have not yet been determined,
the Company is not able to provide the estimated cost at this time. It
plans to provide an update in the fourth quarter.

The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), a leading media company with 2004
revenues of $3.3 billion, includes The New York Times, the International
Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers, eight
network-affiliated television stations, two New York City radio stations
and 35 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com. For the
fifth consecutive year, the Company was ranked No. 1 in the publishing
industry in Fortune's 2005 list of America's Most Admired Companies. The
Company's core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and
distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

9/20/2005 4:46:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Well, somebody at The Boston Globe likes Bill Koch's exhbit at the Museum of Fine Arts and it turns out to be the paper's versatile critic Ed Siegel.

As you may know, Koch, the multi-millionaire (or billionaire) businessman, America's Cup winner and art collector, is demanding an apology and retraction for an Aug. 9 Alex Beam column in the Globe and making noise like he's going to sue if he doesn't get satisfaction. Although the Beam column is the focus of his ire, he clearly wasn't happy with two pieces on the exhibit written by Geoff Edgers and a review by Cate McQuaid.

Asked about yesterday's Siegel column, Koch spokesman Brad Goldstein said "I think Bill liked it." Asked if it might impact Koch's legal/negotiating posture toward the Globe, Goldstein replied: "Not one bit."


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First, the good news about yesterday's James Spader profile in the Globe's Sunday magazine. Given that Spader won an Emmy last night for his work in "Boston Legal" it was really well timed.


Now, the bad news. It's true that every profile of a famous figure has that paragraph or two in which the writer desperately tries to convey the "essence" of that celebrity to the public and create a sense of intimiacy. But these two graphs by Nelson Handel just try way too hard to push that "eureka" moment way too far. I don't think Spader's shrink (if he has one) would talk this way about him after 10 years of therapy. Take a gander:


"As we sit there, the comparison resonates. His hands flourish in a surprisingly effeminate way. His words spin out like colored scarves, beautiful to look at, but you sense something that isn't being said. He steers your attention to what he wants you to see - the philosophical and abstract - and away from what he does not, namely his private life and his acting process. It's been a long and winding road for this Boston native to the stardom that many will argue he has always deserved. It required something more like serendipity - an offer out of nowhere, arriving at a particularly vulnerable personal moment, the end of a long marriage that produced two beautiful boys.

As I sit across from him in the nondescript greenroom of the studio outside Los Angeles where Boston Legal is filmed, fixed in his slightly cockeyed gaze, and try to imagine what's going on inside that head of his, what becomes perfectly clear is that James Todd Spader is not an actor lost in just any moment. This moment belongs to him."

9/19/2005 10:13:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Okay, this isn't really about the media. But since this sex survey was so widely reported today, I can't help myself.

Given the evidence that young people don't appear to view oral sex in the same way as intercourse, does Bill Clinton's infamous line -- "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" -- now seem prescient?

9/16/2005 12:26:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

You might want Tom Friedman to be the next U.S. Secretary of State. And the idea of meeting Maureen Dowd for a few drinks and some gossip swapping sounds like fun. But would you pay to read them -- and others -- online?

That's the gamble The New York Times takes starting Monday with its TimesSelect service that will cost $50 bucks a year to folks who aren't Times home subscribers. (There are other features available through the service as well.)

Opinion seems mixed on this latest effort to extract revenue out of cyberspace. Frankly, I'd like to see something work. (I can remember being at journalism seminars a decade ago at which people talked about the inevitable explosion of online news and veteran print journalists put their heads in their hands and shuddered at the thought that their medium would simply be obliterated by this new technology. But here it is 2005 and media companies are still paying a lot of smart people a lot of money to try and figure out effective online business models.)

Anyway, Media Log would be curious to find out how many of you would be willing to shell out the dough for the Times stars.

9/16/2005 11:39:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Of course, no bad deed goes unrewarded. The resume- embellishing Mr. Severin is about to go national according to this Globe story. (See previous Media Log post.)

9/16/2005 11:29:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Boston Globe op-ed columnist Scot Lehigh (in the interests of full disclosure, a friend) and WTKK-FM "Extreme Games" talker/ranter Jay Severin just plain don't like each other.

And their heated public battles have quite a history to them.

Now I've got a dog in this fight. Given a faceoff between an intelligent newspaper columnist and a ratings-driven radio shouter, I'll take the former 99 times out of 100. So here's Lehigh today doing a little old-fashioned digging into Severin's rather astounding claim that he won a Pulitzer Prize.

It's true that words are a cheap and plentiful commodity on talk radio -- and there seems to be a sense that once uttered, they simply vanish into the stratosphere. But it's nice to see someone held to account for them every once in a while. And if Severin won a Pulitzer, I was the American League MVP last year.

9/16/2005 10:18:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

This was all too predictable. Jillian Bandes, the student journalist (gulp!) fired after penning an infantile column calling for "all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport," may be on her way to becoming a celebrated conservative poster girl for the evils of so-called "poltical correctness."

Bandes's editor says he fired her for the journalistic sin of grossly misleading her sources. But in this story she claims she was fired as a result of reaction to her piece.

In any event, she's already being talked about by Ann Coulter and other conservative kibitzers. Next stop -- a visit with Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly or maybe an internship with Rush Limbaugh? This'll probably turn out to be a good career move for Jillian.

9/16/2005 9:43:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Boy, don't we long for those bygone days when college students got in trouble for swallowing goldfish, conducting panty raids and cramming too many people into a phone booth? Or even for those later days when they wreaked havoc by taking over university buildings, battling with ROTC recruiters and rioting at Dead concerts?

Well here's a story on Jim Romenekso's site about another college journalist running amok and raising hell, this time by writing a column in the North Carolina Daily Tar Heel calling for, among others things, "all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport."

Not surprisingly, she was fired after that piece of nuanced political commentary with the paper's opinion editor explaining she was canned not for her views, but for misleading her sources.

Now every year, a few overzealous college paper pundits get cashiered for writing things that reflect the reality that some of their ilk are immature, uninformed, and far too eager to get noticed on campus. If Ms. Bandes's real sin was voicing bigoted and child-like opinions, the appropriate response is not to fire her, but to make her stick around, absorb the backlash she has generated and come to grips with her own shortcomings and the power of words. (Or, she may just be a ambitious young attack dog auditioning to be Ann Coulter's understudy.)

If in fact, as the opinion editor contends, she doesn't know the difference between
an honest interview and the complete manipulation of her sources, then please, please, please -- let's get some faculty or media advisors in a room with these budding Maureen Dowds and Michael Kinsleys to teach them a few fundamentals of fair and decent journalism before they start racking up the bylines

9/15/2005 2:27:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Sharp-eyed media observers may have noticed a new-but-familiar name writing an Urban Diary column in last weekend's Boston Globe's Sunday regional editions -- Beverly Beckham.

For years a fixture on the Herald's op-ed page, Beckham's style of homey and very personal (some would say schmaltzy) writing is designed to get readers to break out the Kleenex -- and may or may not be your cup of tea. She joins a group of other Herald journalists who recently left that paper amid big budget cuts and staff reductions -- including Tom Farmer and Jennifer Rosinski -- who are now writing for the Globe Weekly sections.

The real moral of that story is that for journalists, Boston is a small town. If you're a veteran Herald journalist suddenly out of a job, there's really nowhere else to go -- unless the Globe will take you or you decide to get into some form of public relations. This ain't New York where a media type can make any number of lateral moves if his or her current situation goes south.

9/15/2005 9:58:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Bob Giles was expected to be a status quo-style placeholder when he got the prestigious job of running the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University five years ago. Instead, his tenure has been marked by changes, controversy, and his unshakeable self-confidence. Read "Surprise at Harvard" in this week's Boston Phoenix.

9/15/2005 9:54:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

This release from the respected Committee to Protect Journalists speaks for itself. There is a much-more detailed analysis of the report on its web site. It is very important to state that the group, according to a spokeswoman, does not believe that any of the killings of journalists were deliberate.

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New York, September 14, 2005: The U.S. military has failed to fully investigate the killing of journalists by its forces in Iraq and to implement its own recommendations to improve media safety, an analysis published today by the Committee to Protect Journalists shows.

U.S. troops have killed 13 journalists since the U.S. led war began in March 2003. At least 40 other journalists have been killed covering the conflict. Several of the 13 deaths suggest indifference by U.S. soldiers to the presence of civilians, including members of the press, according to the CPJ analysis. Another 21 media support staff have been killed in Iraq, two by U.S. forces.

In most cases, the U.S. military has either failed to investigate journalists' deaths or it has not made its inquiries public. The findings from the few investigations that have been released have not credibly addressed questions of accountability for shooting deaths, and whether U.S. forces are taking necessary measures to differentiate between combatants and civilians in conflict areas.

In the latest case, the August 28, 2005 shooting death of Reuters soundman Waleed Khaled, the U.S. military has completed a report but not yet published the findings. On September 1, chief military spokesman in Baghdad Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said soldiers had followed "established rules of engagement" and acted in an "appropriate" manner when they opened fire.

"By failing to account for all shooting deaths and demonstrate that it is taking steps to avoid future tragedies, the U.S. military shows an alarming disregard for the safety of civilians, including journalists covering this conflict," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "As far as we know the military has conducted full investigations into only a handful of incidents and made public its reports on just two of them. With such a record the Pentagon needs to address its own serious credibility problem by showing some accountability and by providing real answers to outstanding questions about these shocking deaths."

9/14/2005 2:57:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Bill Brett, the longtime Boston Globe photographer, is one of the genuine good guys, a throwback to an era when the news business was less corporate, more intimate, and certainly more human. (At least I think there was such an era because I've heard about it.)

So even if his new book of 240 black and white photos of Boston's bigshots was lousy, in all honesty, I would probably plug it. The good news is that Boston, All One Family is must-see coffee table material for anyone with an innate love of the city and the people who help define it. By the way, Brett is one of those people.


My personal favorites include a stunning portrait of Bay State Banner publisher Mel Miller and the three conductors -- Keith Lockhart, John Williams and Seiji Ozawa -- huddled around a Steinway piano. Still, nothing beats the cover shot of former mayors Ray Flynn and Kevin White flanking their successor, Tom Menino, in a wet walk through the Public Garden.

Nice going, Bill.

9/14/2005 11:58:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

This new study from the Center for Media and Public Affairs states what should by now be obvious. The majority of media coverage about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has been positive.(Even the New York Times was nice.)

This can be attributed to any one or more of these factors. Take your pick.

1) The idea of liberal bias in the media is a myth peddled by the right.

2) The media were genuinely relieved that Bush didn't pick someone more overtly conservative than Roberts.

3) Roberts is truly a well-liked, decent and praise-worthy nominee.

4) The media quoted too many conservatives and Republicans who were out there spinning for Roberts.

9/14/2005 11:24:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Here's some rare good news concerning public opinion about the news media, according Editor & Publisher.

According to a new survey, 77% of Americans say journalists have acted "responsibly" in covering Katrina. This is in keeping with the verdict of many media observers that the press -- assertive, aggressive and even confrontational in its coverage of the killer hurricane and its aftermath -- was both brave and credible in doing its job under very adverse conditions.

In another finding, however, and one that will comfort the White House, 49 percent of the respondents said the media were too buy trying to figure out who was to blame for the disaster. My guess is there will be more of an appetite for sorting through that later.

There's another major question about the media performance raised by Jon Friedman that bears asking.

Why were journalists so accepting and willing to parrot the estimates -- that now seem dramatically overblown -- of as many as 10,000 dead? Friedman posits that reporters were simply too accepting of official pronouncements. My own feeling is that they were also inclined to believe the grave casualty estimates because they were deeply shocked and emotionally affected by the carnage they did witness.

That may be understandable, but it was also sloppy.

9/14/2005 10:40:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

There's a major media storm brewing between ultra-wealthy businessman and America's Cup winner Bill Koch and The Boston Globe, specifically, it's smart and sharp-elbowed Living/Arts columnist Alex Beam.

Fighting mad over an unflattering Aug 9. Beam column (sorry, this one is already in the Globe archives) that recounted some of Koch's past legal battles, Koch -- whose art, guns and racing boats are now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts -- has demanded a retraction and correction and is certainly hinting at litigation if he doesn't get them. Read more about the entire episode -- including Koch's lawyer's letter to Beam -- on the Phoenix web site

Now, in an effort to rachet up the pressure on a bit, starting tomorrow, Koch will be running ads on four billboards -- including one on the Southeast Expressway near the Globe's Dorchester home -- of a censored Modigliani nude advertising the exhibit at the MFA. The headline: "Brilliance Concealed." (A similar campaign will be launched on buses next month.)

Koch, unhappy about the Beam column and other less-than-laudatory Globe stories about the exhibit, felt the need to counteract the paper's bad press, his spokesman Brad Goldstein told Media Log.

"We feel the Globe tried to stick a pin in the balloon," says Goldstein. "We felt we were obligated to do that because the Globe has been so unbalanced in its coverage of the exhibit."

9/14/2005 10:03:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

How about this exchange between President Bush and the media over the resignation of FEMA director Mike ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job") Brown reported in today's New York Times? Now that's accountability.

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Asked about Mr. Brown's resignation after he toured a school in Mississippi on Monday afternoon, Mr. Bush declined to comment. He told reporters, "Maybe you know something we don't know."

He pointedly brushed off questions about how Mr. Brown and the administration had handled the storm, saying "don't ask me again" about the subject.

9/13/2005 10:00:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Media Log is knee deep in two deadline assigments today. Will return as soon as possible.

9/12/2005 4:39:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Channel 5 (WCVB-TV) is announcing today that Heather Unruh, co-anchor of the early morning "EyeOpener" newscast and the station's chief medical reporter, will now join Anthony Everett at anchor desk of the 5 pm newscast, replacing Natalie Jacobson in that time slot.

9/9/2005 1:41:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

As television journalism, this won't remind anyone of Edward R. Murrow at his best. But NBC's documentary "Tom Brokaw Reports: In God They Trust", which airs tonight at 8 o'clock offers at least a telling glimpse into the growing political power and politicization of the nation's mushrooming Evangelical Christian movement. And it helps explain why George Bush can get re-elected despite a sluggish economy and a bloody war.

The undisputed star of the hour-long special (for his part, Brokaw seems to be aging rather rapidly) is Ted Haggard, pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals. An affable man with a toothy grin and a folksy vocabulary, Haggard repeatedly assures America that he doesn't want a "theocracy" but he makes no apologies for pushing energetically for the Evangelicals' largely conservative social policy agenda.

Truth is, Evangelicals have every right to organize, lobby, vote and influence the nation's politics. But no one should minimize their determination impact or willingness to mesh politics and theology. And by the way, Haggard is thinking about running for Congress.

9/9/2005 9:00:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Mike Barnicle's traumatic departure from The Boston Globe seven summers ago amidst a swirl of allegations of fabrication and plagiarism left permanent scars on both the columnist and the paper. So it was interesting to listen today as Globe editor Marty Baron showed up on Barnicle's WTKK-FM talkshow to exchange some yuks and talk about the challenges facing the newspaper business.

The two men are something of a professional odd couple. Barnicle, not a big fan of media watchdogs, made a comment on the show suggesting nostalgia for the newspaper era before the "age of ombudsmen and correction boxes." Baron is an absolute stickler for accountability and accuracy and has made that a hallmark of his tenure at the Globe.

The Globe editor seemed reasonably comfortable bantering with Barnicle and sidekick -- and Globe sportswriter -- Dan Shaughnessy. Although he was a bit off balance when Barnicle asked him for his favorite number, in order to decide what musical cut to play heading into a commercial break. Baron eventually decided his favorite number was 10, which meant listeners were treated to Light My Fire by the Doors.

9/8/2005 11:33:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

This Salt Lake Tribune story about what happened to firefighters who rushed to the Gulf Coast region -- and coming from a newspaper in the reddest of red states -- is FEMA's and Mike Brown's worst nightmare. Make sure you check out the last graph.

I found a link to this on Andrew Sullivan's blog, which is collecting a lot of Katrina material.


And here's a thoughtful Denver Post piece on why we need to see the dead bodies being recovered from this disaster, despite our innate squeaminshness and FEMA's desire to sanitize the situation.

9/8/2005 10:23:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Richard Bergenheim, the new editor of The Christian Science Monitor has an unenviable task. He must try and reverse the fortunes of a newspaper that is widely admired but little read, one that is laying off staff, bleeding red ink and hemorrhaging circulation. A Christian Science practitioner and teacher in New York, Bergenheim was asked to abruptly change career paths and take charge of the Monitor in May. He candidly admits the choice even suprised him.

"I'd still like to know why," he says. "Was it totally out of the blue? Absolutely. Could I imagine it? No. Do I have a career path that would lead anybody else to imagine it? No."


But there may be at least one reason why Bergenheim -- the son of former Monitor staffer, Boston Herald publisher and Boston Business Journal founder Bob Bergenheim --- was selected. A self-described Web junkie, Bergenheim is clearly planning to refocus the company's editorial energies to the paper's online product, which is attracting almost 2 million visitors a month and is currently undergoing a major revamping.

Bergenheim insists that the print version of the Monitor will continue to exist in "the foreseeable future," and the paper just underwent a redesign to convey "a little more immediacy, a little more urgency." But he is also clear about where that future lies.

Explaining that he has about 50,000 newspaper subscribers and 1.9 monthly online visitors, Bergenheim says "Who do I pay attention to if I have common sense? How dumb do you have to be?...There are opportunities [online] that we haven't begun to grapple with. As an entire newsroom, we start thinking through 'how do we take advantage of this.'"


Sounds like a man with a plan -- or at least a broad vision.

9/8/2005 9:18:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Hurricane Katrina not only destroyed life as we knew it along America's Gulf Coast. It changed the nation's political calculus by highlighting the country's racial and class chasms, unleashing a torrent of bipartisan criticism of the Bush White House and awakening a timid and kowtowing mainstream media. Read "Katrina Rips Bush a New One" in this week's Phoenix.

9/8/2005 9:13:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Now it's official. In what has to be considered a surprise choice, WBUR-FM has selected longtime Channel 5 general manager Paul La Camera to become the public radio outlet's new general manager. Below are excerpts from the release put out by station owner Boston University:

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(Boston) Respected broadcast professional Paul A. La Camera, a 33-year veteran of Boston's WCVB-TV, today was appointed general manager of WBUR-FM, the award-winning National Public Radio station owned and operated by Boston University (BU).

Selected after a five-month search, La Camera, a Boston native and BU alumnus, takes over on October 3 from BU Assistant Vice President Peter Fiedler, who has served as interim GM since last October.

"Our search committee selected Paul based on his professional track record, his overriding commitment to editorial quality, and the fact that he has the reputation and credibility which will enable him to reach out to audiences and underwriters who are important to the station's future," said Boston University President Robert A. Brown.

Said La Camera, "I'm stepping into a great public radio station that has an outstanding and respected staff. I am keenly aware of the station's heritage and the bond it has with its listeners, and I intend to honor that. I also know that I share a passion with the people who work at WBUR covering issues of substance and consequence - and as general manager, I am going to make that our continuing and overriding goal.

La Camera stressed that he is going to spend a great deal of his time at the outset listening and finding ways to support the station's most important constituencies: Its listeners and employees, and the Greater Boston area.

"Our job is to make the station, its diverse editorial content, and its presence in the community stronger," he added.

Until this month, La Camera was president and general manager of WCVB-TV, a post he assumed in February 1994. Prior to that, he served as vice president and station manager of the Boston ABC Network affiliate. Before joining WCVB, he was the director of communications for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and worked as a reporter for the Boston Record American and Sunday Advertiser.

He attended The College of the Holy Cross and went on to earn three Master's degrees including a Masters in Journalism and Urban Studies from Boston University.

He is also deeply involved in local charities such as Catholic Charities, the Boston Public Library Foundation and the United Way of Massachusetts Bay.

He and his wife, Mimi, who is president of the Freedom Trail Foundation, reside in Boston, and they have three adult sons.

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Well, another national search that ends up selecting the boy next door. The most striking thing about the La Camera choice is that he has no radio or public broadcasting experience. But given that WBUR just made a series of programming changes -- most notably cancelling "The Connnection" -- it's not likely that La Camera will have to worry about becoming a programmer first as he learns the ins and outs of public radio. And in a Media Log interview, La Camera acknowledges "there's no minimizing the learning curve I have to be on."

La Camera, who earned a reputation as a thoughtful and well-liked TV exec, announced he was leaving WCVB several months ago. He said he "had talked to some folks about" the WBUR job before that announcement, but added that leaving Channel 5 and coming to WBUR "were totally independent actions."


His broad connections in the community should help with the station's fundraising efforts and La Camera said he believes he can instantly give a boost to "the business operations of the station, the fundraising, the underwriting." And there's every reason to believe his appointment sits well with the BU bosses who were both tarnished and embarassed by the allegations of mismanagement at WBUR that generated ugly headlines and drove former general manager Jane Christo to resign last fall.

Still, it's pretty stunning that someone outside of the public radio industry got the big job at one of the biggest stations in the NPR firmament.

9/7/2005 3:43:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Since the media's fascination with the political fallout from Katrina has now officially begun, here's today's take from The Note, ABC News's smart and smarmy daily compendium and analysis of the political chatter:

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Although much of the politics of Katrina is taking place behind the scenes, with strategists constrained by the societal pledge to "keep politics out of this," senior strategists in both parties are now fully engaged on what all this might eventually mean in the short and medium term for American politics.

Democrats are still disorganized. Republicans are all still standing strongly with the President.

So in that sense, things haven't changed.

But Katrina is such a big, swirling, all-consuming story, that the President's life IS changed for the foreseeable future.

He can't pass Social Security. He can't be seen doing any other work. He can't go biking (we think).

Even in the first half of 2001, even when the press wouldn't fully acknowledge him as President of the United States, the White House wasn't in a hole like this.

Much of his agenda is incongruous with the pictures we are seeing behind Oprah in the Astrodome. The political advice of the Wall Street Journal ed board notwithstanding, this is not a politically smart time to talk tax cuts for the wealthiest.

9/7/2005 12:18:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

The official announcement isn't expected until this afternoon, so take this with a grain or three of salt. The hot rumor is that the new general manager at WBUR-FM will be Paul La Camera, the longtime general manager of WCVB-TV (Channel 5) who stepped down from that post this year after more than three decades at the station.

LaCamera is not a radio guy, but he is a very well-known and well-connected local figure with plenty of broadcast experience. Whoever gets named as new head of WBUR will succeed interim general manager Peter Fiedler, who was called in last year to replace longtime GM Jane Christo, who resigned amid a management scandal at the public radio station.

9/7/2005 11:28:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

In one of his more candid utterances since Katrina made landfall nine days ago, Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff told the gang at "Fox News Sunday" that "we need to prepare the country for what's coming. It is going to be about as ugly a scene as you can imagine." He was talking, of course, about the sight of countless (maybe thousands) of dead bodies that will be unearthed as the waters slowly drain from New Orleans.

Now that the Bush administration is heading into full damage control mode, one potentially serious problem it faces is a fresh wave of public revulsion and anger at the sight of dead bodies being discovered. That's why this story from Reuters that FEMA doesn't want the media taking pictures of the victims is so telling -- and alarming.

Two thoughts here. Let's see if FEMA is more effective at censoring journalists than saving civilians. And two, this sounds an awfully lot like the administration's tactic when it comes to Iraq -- don't let the public see the dead.


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Meanwhile a brand new Gallup Poll out today, suggests that althought the public is displeased with Bush's performance during and after the flood, it has not turned on him in full force. When asked to rate his response to Katrina, 35 percent characterized it as "great" or "good" while 42 percent called it "bad" or "terrible." Not surprisingly, the ratings break down along party lines with 69 percent of Republicans lauding his performance and 66 percent of Democrats criticizing it.

With the country split in such a fashion, control over the images of the recovered corpses of those who were not able or willing to get out of Katrina's way may become very politically important.

9/7/2005 10:22:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Media Log is on deadline today, trying to make sense of the Katrina Katastrophe for this week's paper. My next post will feature some of the highlights -- and a few lowlights -- of the media's coverage of an event that may end up dwarfing 9/11 when it comes not only to the death toll, but to the political and social implications.

9/6/2005 9:30:00 AM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

The Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group, is complaining that the liberal media can't wait to blame Bush for the Katrina disaster. That's its job of course. I hold the view that overall, the psychological aftermath of 9/11, the administration's skillful chokehold on the flow of information and ability to stay on message, and some basic press timidity have combined to give this White House a pretty easy ride from the so-called Fourth Estate until now.

What's different now, in New Orleans, is that journalists chronicling the horrific suffering and inadequate response have become, understandably, more emotional and distraught over what they've seen. And they are less likely to treat administration spin with the respectful hearing it usually gets. That, plus the sense that the Bush is politically vulnerable on Iraq. The press does get fiestier when its smells blood.

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Media Log will be monitoring events, but traveling over the long holiday weekend, assuming that the price of a gallon of gas stays lower than a box seat at Fenway. Will return Tuesday.

9/2/2005 5:32:00 PM by MJ | Comments [0] |  

Just as the 9/11 attacks both literally and figuratively vaporized the Gary Condit-Chandra Levy soap opera, Katrina has certainly put an quick end to the media's -- particularly the cable news networks' -- morbid fascination with the Natalee Holloway story. Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to knock some news judgment back into people's heads.


Today is George Bush's day to try and get back in the game and undo the considerable political damage done to his administration by the images all of us have seen the last few days. If I were to guess, I'd say the biggest shock to the nation's collective nervous system comes from the televised pictures of the sick, starving and dying in New Orleans that conjure up those familiar charitable appeals asking Americans to send a few dollars to save Africans suffering from famine, disease and crushing poverty. Right now, one of America's great cities eerily resembles a third world nation.

Asked about that point last night, CNN's David Mattingly admitted: "This is not the America I've grown up in." NBC's Brian Williams relayed a telling anecdote when he said he had just talked to a colleague about "when we get back to the states"-- before of course, realizing that that's exactly where he was.


The media's coverage of the inadequate federal response to Katrina is generating problems for the administration on several fronts.

Exhibit A is this tough exchange today between CNN's usually mild-mannered Soledad O'Brien -- who suddenly turned into Mike Wallace -- and FEMA director Mike Brown:

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S. O'BRIEN: You were unaware of the situation at the Convention Center until yesterday. When yesterday did you become aware?
BROWN: I think it was yesterday morning when we first found out about it. We were just as surprised as everybody else. We didn't know that the city had used that as a staging area. That shows how difficult communications are. And that is why we moved the USS Bataan, so that we could give the mayor a place to actually be able to communicate on a regular basis, to give us good intel about what he needs.
S. O'BRIEN: How is it possible that we're getting better intel than you're getting? We had a crew in the air. We were showing live pictures of the people outside of the Convention Center. We had a National Guardsman who was talking to us, who was telling us he estimated the crowd at 50,000 people. That was at 8:00 in the morning yesterday. And also, we've been reporting that officials have been telling people to go to the Convention Center if they want any hope of relief. I don't understand how FEMA cannot have this information.
BROWN: Well, we're busy doing life-saving and life-rescue efforts. We rely upon the state to give us that information. And, Soledad, I learned about it listening to the news reports.
S. O'BRIEN: FEMA has been on the ground for four da