First, I want to apologize for the recent letup in Media Log postings as the time draws nearer to my July 5 start date as the associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington D.C. (For the record, my last official day at the Phoenix was Friday, June 23.)

For me, blogging was an acquired interest and skill that didn't come all that naturally to a longtime and middle-aged print journalist. From reading some of the postings on this blog, I'd say that became readily apparent to some of you. But I appreciate everyone who bothered to read and contribute to Media Log -- even the occasional Herald die-hard for whom no praise of the tabloid was enthusiastic enough and no crticism of the Globe was nasty enough. At its best, the blog was a forum for smart, engaging dialogue that pushed the ball down the field. At its worst, it reminded me a bit of of one of my less distinguished days as a WHDH talk radio host.

I'm sure my successor as Phoenix media critic will keep some form of this blog going. So please keep reading and keep the conversation alive..

6/26/2006 4:10:59 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [10] |  

As an addendum to the previous item on Seth Gitell resigning as Mayor Menino's press secretary, Gitell tells Media Log that the mayor will in fact, be available to comment to Globe reporter Donovan Slack on the subject, "as soon as [he] gets back from an event."

6/21/2006 3:01:18 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [0] |  

Good luck to Seth Gitell, a former Phoenician and good guy who had at times a testing job working as press secretary for Tom Menino. But you've got to love the last line in this Globe online piece  today breaking the news that Gitell is resigning.

Gitell's last day will be June 30. He said the mayor was unavailable for comment.

Even in announcing his own resignation Gitell was dutifully manning his post, letting the media know that his boss would remain mum on the matter.

6/21/2006 1:26:28 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [4] |  

1) Last summer, this was New York Times executive editor Bill Keller's message to the staff as he described the integration of the online and newspaper operations.

Over the past ten years the newsroom of Nytimes.com and the newsroom on 43rd Street have been partners at a distance -- separated administratively, culturally, geographically and financially. We have built bridges -- most notably the Continuous News Desk -- and we have admired each other's work, but we have not been full collaborators. This was probably a healthy arrangement in the formative years, because it allowed our digital operation to flourish, to experiment, to move at its own quick rhythm and focus on the competitive new digital world. The result is, unassailably, the best and most widely read newspaper website in the world, one that consistently wins every award in the field and that continues to attract new readers in droves.

But in those ten years, the world has changed. The digital news operation is now grown up and strong, ready to enlarge its ambitions. The reporting and editing staff at the original newsroom is much more at ease with the Web, more eager to embrace it both as an opportunity for invention and an alternative way to reach our demanding audience. We have a burgeoning video unit that is eager to be a larger presence on the website, at a time when most users of Nytimes.com have graduated to the kind of high-speed delivery that makes video appealing. And all of us appreciate that one of the biggest long-term challenges facing our craft is to invent a digital journalism and new services for our readers that both live up to our high standards and help carry the cost of a great news-gathering organization.

We have concluded that our best chance of meeting that challenge is to integrate the two newsrooms into one. This will enable us to fully tap the creative energy of this organization and thus raise digital journalism to  the next level. In the coming weeks, we will be working with editors and staff in both places to work out details and accomplish a smooth transition.

2) Today's short brief in the Globe's business section is considerably less lyrical.

The Boston Globe will integrate its news-gathering operations with the Boston.com website as part of its strategy of making its content more readily accessible on various media. Globe editor Martin Baron will oversee editorial operations for both operations and will coordinate how news and features are reported, edited, and presented online and in print. Boston.com general manager Richard Gair will continue to oversee technology functions. No layoffs will result from the move. Globe publisher Richard Gilman said the integration ``will help us to expand our reach and influence, gain revenue and market share, and fiercely compete with a host of rapidly changing and expanding media options for readers and advertisers." Both the Globe and Boston.com are owned by The New York Times Co.

3) The Herald had its own spin on the move today and it was -- not surprisingly -- not flattering.

Globe Web site loses autonomy
By Jerry Kronenberg

Just call it the Boring Broadsheet.com.
The Boston Globe is putting its Boston.com online unit more directly under the print publication’s control.
 “When we launched Boston.com, autonomy and absolute focus were essential for success,” Globe Publisher Richard Gilman wrote his staff in a memo, a copy of which the Herald has obtained. “Now, we are in a new phase of heightened competition . . . (and) to flourish in this new environment, we need a more integrated approach.”
Gilman wrote that the Globe plans to merge the two operations’ editorial staffs under Globe Editor Martin Baron’s control. Plans also call for Globe executives to oversee Boston.com’s marketing, design, finance and human resources.
Additionally, the paper intends to move some 35 Boston.com sales and editorial staffers from their current downtown locale to the Globe’s Morrissey Boulevard headquarters.

Despite the Globe's soft-peddling of the news, the merging of the online and print operations under Baron's control is a major -- and definitely overdue -- move for a paper that had been too slow to create a working relationship between its dead tree and cyber journalists and whose web operation, while successful, was often treated as a dangling appendage. (There was a detrimental psychological impact on the rank-and-file as well with many talented veteran journalists feeling alienated from the online effort.) That's been changing recently with the introduction of more blogging and the creation of web editors. And the announcement today would seem to be a belated acknowledgement that everyone on Morrissey Boulevard should be pulling in the same direction.

6/21/2006 11:23:36 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [2] |  

Good for Dan Rather for not going gentle into that good night and taking a deserved shot at his treatment by CBS. (Excerpt from his statement below via Romenesko.)

My departure before the term of my contract represents CBS's final acknowledgement, after a protracted struggle, that they had not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there. As for their offers of a future with only an office but no assignments, it just isn't in me to sit around doing nothing. So I will do the work I love elsewhere, and I look forward to sharing details about that soon.

6/20/2006 5:05:06 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [0] |  

More anti-consortium freelancing on the gubernatorial debate front. First, CBS4 struck by grabbing what it says will be the "final" Democratic gubernatorial and general election gubernatorial debates of this election season. And today, the Herald and Channnel 25 have announced what they say will be the "first" post-primary gubernatorial debate -- to be hosted by the station's anchor Maria Stephanos and Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace.

I admit to being a tad confused by this part of the Channel 25 release, which talks about questions from Wallace but doesn't mention anything being asked by Stephanos.

The leadoff debate will be moderated by Chris Wallace of FOX News Sunday and Maria Stephanos of FOX25 News in front of a live studio audience. The format calls for candidates to answer questions raised by Wallace, voters, and rival candidates.

Anyway, the debate dance card is rapidly filling up.

6/20/2006 3:31:43 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [1] |  

This release is good news for Channel 4 and its political analyst Jon Keller, who will moderate the debates. And it puts another nail in the coffin of the so-called "media consortium" that was just beginning to organize to plan gubernatorial debates and their coverage. Instead, Channel 4 freelanced with its own debate schedule, whiich is certain to provoke sniping from the city's other media outlets.

"We felt we wanted to start something different," Keller told Media Log. "We're in a mode, as a station, where we are putting a lot of emphasis on campaign coverage...and have the freedom to experiment that you don't necessarily have as a member of a consortium." Translation: We don't need no stinkin' consortium.

Boston - June 15, 2006 - Today, CBS4 News announced plans for an extensive series of political debates as candidates approach the final stretch of Campaign 2006.  Continuing to provide the region’s top political coverage, CBS4 will produce the final scheduled debate in the Democratic primary race for governor on Wednesday, September 13 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Then in November, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, the Republican party's unopposed candidate for governor, has agreed to participate in the final pre-election debate on Wednesday, November 1, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., to be broadcast live from the CBS4 studios.  All candidates legally qualified for the ballot will be included in the debate, which will be made available statewide on TV and radio.

Debates are also planned in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor and the Republican US Senate primary, along with final election debates for lieutenant governor and attorney general.

"Viewers and voters consistently tell us that televised debates are one of the most important ways they learn information about the candidates running for public office," said Jennifer Street, CBS4 News Director.  "CBS4 News has a long history of producing some of the most memorable local political debates, and we are proud to continue that tradition during this crucial campaign season."

The debates are part of comprehensive Campaign Team coverage at CBS4, which includes in-depth coverage of daily political news, reporting and one-on-one interviews by political analyst Jon Keller, expert analysis from senior correspondent John Henning, truth-testing of political ads and skeptical review of campaign statements by Keller's "Spin-O-Meter."

6/16/2006 4:43:05 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [3] |  

Wow. Talk about your short tenures. New Village Voice editor Erik Wemple, whose selection was announced on May 31, has decided the job's not for him even before he starts. If you're looking for clues as to what happened, there may be one embedded in this note from Michael Lacey, the executive editor of the new company put together when New Times Media bought Village Voice Media, and despite a stated disdain for the Voice's kind of journalism, renamed the organization Village Voice Media.

"Erik's concerns are not unreasonable," said Michael Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media. "The Voice is an enormous and complex horse race. We asked Erik to mount several ponies mid-stride, and he was alarmed to find us still in several of those saddles."

It sounds a little like a struggle, as they say in Hollywood, over "creative control."

I have no reason to think or know that Wemple was a bad choice for the Voice job. But there is something weird about the idea of the Washington-based journalist not even coming to New York for an interview before accepting the Voice job. And I can't help but think Lacey's selection of a non-New Yorker was, in part, his way of dissing the Voice culture -- something he seems eager to do.

Anyway, back to square one and an embarassing and rocky start for the New Times crew at the Voice.

6/16/2006 10:11:33 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [1] |  

I can't account for the quality of the science behind this new study reported in the Washington Post contending that media coverage of terrorist attacks leads to more terrorist attacks which leads to more coverage of terrorist attacks which leads to...well you get the picture. Apparently paraphrasing the study authors, the story characterizes this pattern as a "mutually beneficial spiral of death." (That's grossly unfair to the media in my view.)

I've heard this theory before. But the bottom line is -- so what? While it's certainly important to keep terrorist attacks in perspective, it's not the media's job to censor important news because of a fear of the consequences of doing our job. That's utter nonsense.

I'm a firm believer in not writing about Ann Coulter in the hope that a widespread media blackout might cause her to go away. But that's not an option when it comes to covering acts of terrorist violence.

6/15/2006 1:33:07 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [0] |  

Re: today's Herald page 1 splash about the misadventures of  "Sgt. Smirnoff."  Personally, I'm shocked that Wade Boggs would be involved in something like this. (Check out this "Staff Photo Illustration" -- whatever that is.)

6/15/2006 11:48:03 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [0] |  

The beleaguered news ombudsmen -- often unappreciated, sometimes scorned, and usually under considerable pressure -- is having something of a renaissance in this era of increasing newsroom transparency. Read "Your Ombuddy" in the "Don't Quote Me" column in this week's Phoenix.

6/15/2006 11:30:15 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [2] |  

I know Rather bashers out there aren't about to shed a tear, but I think this is shabby treatment of a man who was for many years the face of CBS News.

Here's an excerpt from Howard Kurtz's piece:

Rather has said several times that "my best work is still ahead of me." He is described by friends as hurt and puzzled by the attitude of CBS management.

Now in an ideal world, it would be nice if these guys had a little more self-awareness and could envision themselves --at an advanced age -- doing something else in life as opposed to insisting that they haven't lost an inch of their professional fastball. When I interviewed Rather right before his exit as anchor last year, I was taken aback at how unwilling he was to even contemplate retirement or relaxation as an option. That's sad in many ways, but it doesn't merit an unceremonious boot out of your life's work.

Some CBS staffers are sad about the turn of events, viewing it as a difficult moment for a man who once interviewed world leaders and went into war zones for the network. They question why the network can't find a suitable place for Rather in light of his long service to CBS.

I agree.

6/15/2006 11:25:12 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [3] |  

A little more from Globe sports editor Joe Sullivan on the Chris Snow decision to take a hockey job. "Yes, it was unexpected, but I did know that Chris was close to the management of the [Minnnesota] Wild" from his days covering the team. "Just knowing Chris, I wouldn't be surprised if he becomes the Theo Epstein of the NHL.''

Sullivan also says that baseball writer and former Sox beat man Gordon Edes will cover the team when Snow departs, which is expected to be about a month from now.

6/14/2006 11:57:29 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [8] |  

Here's a stunner. Chris Snow -- the Globe's 24-year-old Sox beat man who landed one of sports journalism's best jobs at a very tender age -- is leaving this summer to take a job as director of hockey operations for the Minnesota Wild. (Snow was profiled last year in the Phoenix as one of the young upcoming stars of the media biz.)

I'm going to refrain at this point from assuming that this job switch is just one more vote of no confidence in the future of the news industry. For one thing, Snow used to cover hockey for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and for another, it seems like a pretty major coup to become a top NHL executive in your early 20's. We have a call into sports editor Joe Sullivan to see if he has a successor in mind.

6/14/2006 11:15:51 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [2] |  

This New York Observer piece has the fullest accounting yet of life at the much celebrated, but still unpublished 02138 magazine being bankrolled by Atlantic Monthly and National Journal boss David Bradley. You've certainly gotta give these guys credit for creating pre-launch buzz. But frankly, some of the infighting between the young 02138 upstarts sharing quarters with a few dispirited stragglers left after the Atlantic moved to D.C. is pretty sad. Here's an example from the piece: (P.S. -- Mr Kim is the magazine's founder and president.)

6/14/2006 10:51:06 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [2] |  

Here's an interesting little item from the New York Post on Times media writer David Carr's apparently successful foray into authorship.

New York Times media columnist David Carr has sold his memoirs of drug addiction and redemption to Simon & Schuster. "David is doing a book about the nature of memory and storytelling told through his own personal history," said Philippa "Flip" Brophy, his agent at Sterling Lord.

One industry source said that the heated auction had fetched a price north of $300,000.

"We're thrilled to have a chance to publish a book from one of the finest non-fiction journalists of our time," David Rosenthal, publisher of industry giant Simon & Schuster said.

Carr was the editor of Washington City Paper, worked at the defunct Powerful Media and was a contributor to Atlantic Monthly when he was hired by Howell Raines as a media reporter at the New York Times. But Rosenthal said the book was not expected to delve into his days at the Gray Lady.

This isn't a knock against Carr -- whose work I like --  but isn't drug-addiction-and-recovery getting to be a tired topic? (If that's the criteria for literary glory, my old BU dorm was just chock full of potential bestselling writers.)

But my favorite part of the item is the publisher's quote that Carr is "one of the finest non-fiction journalists of our time." OK. I realize the industry's had its share of fabrication scandals in recent years. But isn't all journalism supposed to be non-fiction?

6/9/2006 11:15:24 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [2] |  

This is the item from Wonkette today parsing the implications of recent events in Iraq.

You know who the real winner is now that al-Zarqawi’s gone? The people of Iraq? No, they’re pretty much still screwed. It’s the editors of The Atlantic, who have a huge Zarqawi profile in their July/August issue, conveniently added to the website yesterday. Abu Musab al-Zarqari: Terrorist mastermind, total idiot.

I just took time out to read the extensive and impressive Atlantic profile by Mary Anne Weaver and several points are hammered home.

1) There is no love lost between al-Zarqawi and bin Laden and never has been. Here's a tidbit from the piece.

In December 1999, al-Zarqawi crossed the border into Afghanistan, and later that month he and bin Laden met at the Government Guest House in the southern city of Kandahar, the de facto capital of the ruling Taliban. As they sat facing each other across the receiving room, a former Israeli intelligence official told me, “it was loathing at first sight.”

2) A life-long thug, al-Zarqawi's image as omnipotent leader of the Iraqi insurgency was something of a U.S. creation. Here's what a former Jordanian intelligence official told Weaver.

“The Americans have been patently stupid in all of this. They’ve blown Zarqawi so out of proportion that, of course, his prestige has grown. And as a result, sleeper cells from all over Europe are coming to join him now.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Your government is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Western and Israeli diplomats to whom I spoke share this view—and this past April, The Washington Post reported on Pentagon documents that detailed a U.S. military propaganda campaign to inflate al-Zarqawi’s importance. Then, the following month, the military appeared to attempt to reverse field and portray al-Zarqawi as an incompetent who could not even handle a gun. But by then his image in the Muslim world was set.

3) It would perhaps be a mistake to over-inflate the impact of his death on the insurgency. Here's another excerpt from the Atlantic.

Before leaving Amman, I had asked the high-level Jordanian intelligence official with whom I met whether al-Zarqawi, in his view, was a potential challenger to Osama bin Laden.

“Not at all,” he replied. “Zarqawi had the ambition to become what he has, but whatever happens, even if he becomes the most popular figure in Iraq, he can never go against the symbolism that bin Laden represents. If Zarqawi is captured or killed tomorrow, the Iraqi insurgency will go on. There is no such thing as ‘Zarqawism.’ What Zarqawi is will die with him.

6/8/2006 2:13:06 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [1] |  

To show you how things have changed in the Boston newspaper market, five years ago, today's lead story on the Globe front page would have probably been relegated to somewhere inside the broadsheet's Metro section and might have been a likely selection as the Herald's top page 1 splash (no pun intended). But the recalibrating Globe has clearly adopted a strategy of going much more local on page 1, and the revamped Herald needs more sex or crime or outrage to catch readers' eyes.

The bottom line is that a story about a rainy spring day in Boston now dominates the front page of the most influential media outlet in New England.

6/8/2006 10:42:46 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [2] |  

Well, this knocks the gay marriage debate out of the headlines. And it's certainly the best news for the US since the Saddam capture. Here's the media-related question? Will there be several days of stories speculating on whether the al-Zarqawi hit is a turning point toward stability in Iraq, as the administration would love to see? Or will the follow-ups focus on the theme that the insurgency is far bigger, broader and more dangerous than one man? Public opinion, in a crucial mid-term election season, could hang in the balance.

---

6/8/2006 10:15:20 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [6] |  

Slate's Jack Shafer is pretty much on the money in yesterday's column about the media's decision to pay "walk away money" to resolve the Wen Ho Lee mess. It's a Pyrrhic victory at best -- one with long-term implications for the newsgathering biz. Last August, I wrote this Phoenix piece warning that the this Lee case could be more worrisome to First Amendment advocates than the Judy Miller-Scooter Libby drama. (Of course, the common theme in both cases -- involving confidential sources -- is that the neither of these episodes exactly represented the news media's finest hour, reportorially speaking.)

6/8/2006 10:05:58 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [0] |  

OK. The Herald is back at it today with more lumber puns on page one.
 I give.

6/7/2006 1:16:21 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [1] |  

Somewhere in the middle of all this, there's a moral to the story. Monday's New York Post gossip piece tells of a soon-to-be-released book on ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather in which colleague Morley Safer and others unload on the man who was once the brightest star in the network's news firmament.

According to the Post piece, here are a few choice quotes:

Rather is also raked over the coals by co-workers for the dubious handling of his report on President George W. Bush's alleged lousy Air National Guard service record. Rather continued to defend the story even after it was found to be based on forged documents. "It's the same thing he did over and over again. You know, 'Don't tell me I'm wrong," former CBS News president Ed Joyce told Weisman, who himself was a CBS newswriter and producer.

"In my opinion he was guilty of journalistic malpractice," Joyce says. "To go out on a limb with that sort of thin sourcing and then, when you get caught, go on the 'CBS Evening News' defending it in such an arrogant fashion was wrong."

Producer Richard Cohen said, "This is the story of Macbeth. It's about someone who was so seized by his own ambition that he forgot everything else. All he wanted to do was anchor the 'Evening News' - in fact, he wanted to be the 'Evening News.' "

Today's  Post follow up  states what may be the obvious --  that Rather won't be working in any capacity at the network when his contract ends later this year. Here's a seemingly knowing quote from an anonymous source.

"But it doesn't seem like [CBS] wants him there" now, says an industry insider.

Now let's transit over to today's Huffington Post, where Mary Mapes -- the producer who lost her job in the wake of that ill-fated Sept. 8 2004 "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on George Bush's military record --  is vigorously defending that story and Rather despite the growing ranks of critics. I don't plan on revisiting the issue of how CBS reported that Bush story, but I am interested in her take on her former boss. Here are two relevant excerpts:

My own theory about why Dan seems to drive some of his colleagues so crazy is pretty mundane. I think he is a hard-working, ambitious, driven individual who committed the great sin of reaching the peak of his profession. Dan wielded his influence and made decisions in ways that some didn't like, but then that happens in every workplace in America. Only at CBS do high profile employees turn up constantly in public openly attacking someone who has for years had the grace to keep from answering in kind. You never see this kind of internal fighting explode at ABC or NBC or even FOX. It's a shame that no one in leadership at CBS has ever had the guts to tell these guys to grow up and shut up.

I have never seen Dan Rather behave in a cruel way. I have never heard him trash a fellow reporter at CBS in anything approaching the way he has been talked about publicly. I have seen him work his butt off in terrible conditions, stay up all night to get the facts right, and help younger, greener reporters struggling with tough stories. I have seen him give away his coat in freezing weather to someone whose teeth were chattering. He is a good guy and a great reporter, simply one of the best, as tireless and true blue as this country has ever seen.

I have had my own limited experience with Rather -- including two lengthy interviews with him in his New York office, the second under very trying conditions as he was about to prematurely exit his "CBS Evening News" anchor post. I found him decent, responsive and warm -- a guy you'd want to have a beer with. But that's neither here nor there. Whatever one thinks about Rather, whether you're a conservative who considers him a liberal bogeyman or a viewer who found his volatile on-air personality to be too unsettling or a big fan, his treatment by colleagues and bosses at the network news operation that he once led is appalling. Dan Rather was a big part of the franchise, and to turn him into a pinata now and kick him unceremoniously to the curb (to mix metaphors) is inexcusable on the most basic human level.

Thinks about it. You spend your whole career at one company, becoming one of its most important and top producers. You get old, you're eventually replaced, and booted out of the big office. Not only don't you get a dignified resting spot somewhere else in the company, not only don't you get a gold watch and a vacation in Hawaii, but at the next splashy corporate dinner, you're the butt of the emcee's jokes. In my view, that's basically what's happening to Rather.

I haven't seen anyone fall out of favor so completely with his old employer since Johnny Damon put on the pinstripes.

6/7/2006 10:50:36 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [3] |  

You don't have to believe her, but in an interview with the Philly Inquirer's hard-working TV reporter Gail Shister, ABC's Elizabeth Vargas insists she's responsible for her decision to leave the anchor desk on the network's nightly newscast -- and is not a poster child for network sexism and anti-mommyism as some have insisted. Here's her best quote:

"I am not a pregnant working mother wronged," she says. "I played a crucial and active role in this decision. It's the best thing for me and my family and my career right now... . I have no complaints."

That doesn't mean she isn't doing a hell of a job of taking one for the team. On the other, hand, can we at least entertain the possibility that she's telling the truth?

6/6/2006 5:56:25 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [0] |  

And now, at the risk of antagonizing all those Herald supporters who take deep umbrage at any form of criticism, let's conduct a "painful pun alert" on today's front page splash, which is a story about someone stealing wood at a Revere Church that was being used to build a handicapped ramp. (We won't even bother discussing the news judgment issue of whether this belonged on page 1 or not.)
 
1) Painful pun #1 -- "WHO WOOD BE SO MEAN?" (With all due respect, did a fourth grader write this one?)
2) Painful pun #2 -- "ANOTHER LUMBER JERK" (This can almost produce a guilty giggle.)
3) Painful pun  #3 (inside headline on the actual page 2 story) "Lumber thief ramps up parishioners' outrage" ("Ramps up outrage?" Pass the Ben Gay, someone just popped a tendon.)
4) Special award for using a word in the page 1 subhead that hasn't been used since the Snidely Whiplash cartoons went off the air. "Fiend steals supplies for handicap ramp at Revere church." (Fiend? Fiend? Are you kidding? Is this the comics page?)

Philosophically, I understand the Herald's new populist/enterprise approach, although I'm still not sure that's what Pat Purcell wants in the wake of his latest play to save his paper. But in that formulation, execution is everything. I understand that you can't have HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR every day, but today's front page is just nutty and nonsensical. Somebody should have pulled the plug.

6/6/2006 12:23:32 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [1] |  

While perusing the usual pile of dailies today, I noticed a kind of harmonic convergence of news judgment. First, check out this photo in the lower right hand corner of today's Boston Globe front page. Then this shot in the lower left hand corner of page 1 in the Boston Herald. And now, perhaps most surprising of all, how about this lead photo on the front page of the New York Times.  (click to enlarge.) I mean 16-year-old Michelle Wie's unsuccessful bid to qualify for the U.S. Open could be considered high drama in a sport that rarely makes page 1. But doesn't the front page placement have something to do with Ms. Wie's -- shall we say -- visceral appeal. Wonder if any female editors were making the page 1 calls?

6/6/2006 11:59:29 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [0] |  

The Herald is quick off the mark with a piece about CBS4's new miracle worker, uh general manager, Ed Piette. Here's an excerpt:
 
Though Piette is focused on boosting CBS4’s ratings, he isn’t ready to outline a strategy yet, except to study the region and talk with staffers.
But some sources inside the station smell more change in the air.
“There are going to have to be changes,” said one Channel 4 employee. “There’s going to have to be staff changes. There’s going have to be philosophy changes.”

Talk about change at the beleaguered CBS O&O has become perfunctory, pro forma, and routine. And frankly, no one talked a better game than Piette's predecessor Julio Marenghi, who just went back to the mother ship after failing to turn the station's fortunes around. Generally, viewer habits change at a glacial pace so no one can expect a quick transformation at CBS4. But it'd be nice to see someone stick around and try.

6/1/2006 12:10:03 PM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [3] |  

Maybe I'm reading to much into this appointment, but there's certainly an irony -- if not a stronger message -- in selecting a Washington journalist to edit the Village Voice. In any event, good luck to Erik Wemple as he goes about trying to transform an aging journalistic icon into a more vital and immediate publication while still retaining its core appeal.

One thing's for sure. Wemple is saying the right things, given the Voice's new owners' clear preference for long narrative and investigative pieces and professed disdain for commentary and punditry. To wit:

Reached by phone in Washington, D.C., Wemple said management's editorial approach just felt right. "It seems that what they were looking for was the same thing I'd been trying to do here," he said. "We like news. We like magazine-style narratives. We like to do investigative. We like to get very low to the ground, reporting street stories. I'm not going to say that I ever perfected the model, but that’s the altar I worship at for alt-weekly newspapering."

And this excerpt from the New York Times story reinforces my sense that the Wemple pick was -- in part -- new Voice owner Mike Lacey's way of taking New York down a peg.

Given The Voice's devotion to the New York political and cultural scene, Mr. Wemple is an unorthodox choice. A native of Schenectady, N.Y., he has spent his entire journalistic career in Washington, where he has worked as a writer and political columnist for Washington City Paper and for short stints as Washington correspondent for Inside.com, an online media magazine, now defunct, and at Cable World Magazine, a trade publication. He never even set foot in New York for his interview for the Voice job.

Mr. Wemple acknowledged the challenge he faces, having never lived or worked in New York. "It's a huge place I know very little about, and it's important for me to be very upfront about that," he said in a telephone interview. Nor has he been a lifelong Voice reader. Until earlier this year, the editor's job at The Voice "wasn't even on my radar screen because I've been so deliriously happy at the Washington City Paper," he said. "I could barely see beyond the Potomac."

Michael Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media, said Mr. Wemple had been chosen from a slate of a dozen serious candidates. "He's just a really smart guy," said Mr. Lacey, speaking by phone from Phoenix. "So many journalists have interests that are fairly narrowly defined: they're either a hard news person or a Web person or a feature or a culture person, and Erik really is across the board."

As for Mr. Wemple's outsider status, Mr. Lacey said, "That's just a thing that New Yorkers are going to have to get over.

6/1/2006 11:15:37 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [0] |