"Why the Press can't report the campaign"

A very, very good post from Ezra Klein.

There's one thing I want to add to this: First, none of this, per se, is the media's fault. As Joan Didion wrote in "Insider Baseball" two decades ago, the fundamental audience for any campaign event is now television cameras. Reporters didn't ask for this to happen, but political strategists realized it was the best way to operate, so they started doing it.

So how do we fix this problem? I don't know. I think one way would be for news organizations to simply not cover the campaign as much, but that's unlikely to happen due to competitive pressures.

Understatements

Bob Woodward's title on this WaPo preview of his new book is merely "Staff Writer." Shouldn't it be something like "Fucking legend, God of all journalism, Conquer of Nixon, and Chronicle and Oracle of Truth"?

Newspapers vs. TV

Matt Yglesias reminds me of a point I want to make when he says this:

But that assumes that the cable networks are making some kind of good-faith attempt to inform their viewers and falling short, an assumption that I don’t think holds much water.

This is in contrast to newspapers, which (with the exception of tabloids like the New York Post, etc.) do make good-faith attempts to inform their readers and occasionally fall short. But too often, both liberals and conservatives group all TV networks and all newspapers together, when, really, each media organization should be considered separately.

Furthermore, it's important to remember that, at this point, TV networks drive news. The New York Times probably would have mentioned the Jeremiah Wright tapes twice (once in a story, once in a news analysis) if MSNBC/CNN/Fox hadn't been replaying the videos again and again and again. This is in contrast to the pre-CNN days, where newspapers (and the NYT and WaPo more specifically) drove news. Basically, a story would appear in the NYT in the morning and the nightly newscasts would follow up on it that night. However, today, this dynamic only exists locally, where newspapers break most of the news and then TV stations simply echo their reporting.

UPDATE: See Ezra Klein make this mistake. See TV. See newspaper. Also, see nifty internet.

Why Newspapers Aren't Going to Die (Yet)

This has obviously been a horrible year for the newspaper industry, but there's reason to believe that the main cause of the current cutbacks has been the economy, not the overall death of the medium. For example, look at this NYT piece on cutbacks in auto advertising:

According to the newspaper association’s own data, the share of newspaper advertising from automakers is shrinking rapidly: in the first quarter, auto advertising represented just 2.8 percent of all national advertising in newspapers. As recently as 2005, the figure was more than 10 percent each quarter.

Advertising is generally one of the first things a company cuts back on when times get rough. Right now, times are rough everywhere, so a lot of companies are cutting back. But when the economy picks back up (eventually), newspapers should start doing a little better than they are right now.

"Clark Rockefeller"

Whatever his actual name is, his story has fascinated me in a way celebrity-crime stories like this usually don't. Two things I wanted to note:

• This Dahlia Lithwick piece on father's rights. Money quote:

  Despite the fact that divorce is rarely triggered by violence or abuse, the incentives to allege that a man is abusive and out of control are undeniable. They tap into age-old stereotypes about men and ensure that Mom becomes the primary custodian. Even without abuse allegations, simple rules of physics (one child cannot be split into two and two cannot be split into four) make it likely that many good fathers will be downgraded from full-time dads to alternating-weekend-carpool dads. They will be asked to pay at least one-third of their salaries in child support for that privilege. Simple rules of modern life make it likely that an ex-wife will someday decide that a job or new husband demands a move to a faraway state. At which point the alternating-weekend-carpool dad is again demoted—to a Thanksgivings-if-you're-lucky dad.

  The rest of the piece discusses how although this may be incredibly unjust, Rockefeller really shouldn't be the poster boy Fathers looking for reform want to cite.
  
• The Boston Globe sent a reporter to Germany to talk to his brother. Really? Out of all the things the Globe could send a reporter to Germany for, they choose this? They couldn't have called the guy? Or found a Germany-based freelancer to do it? Or called up the Papa Times and asked them to send their Berlin reporter? It just seems like a poor allocation of resources. Oh yeah, they also had five reporters working the story from Boston.
  

More on ABC News/Anthrax

Bloggasm has more on whether ABC should reveal its anonymous sources, including an interview with Glenn Greenwald. It's good stuff.

The Olympics are shiny...

And are distracting the media and the public from more important news like this and this.

Should journalists give up lying sources?

From Glenn Greenwald:

They're not protecting "sources." The people who fed them the bentonite story aren't "sources." They're fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood.

More from Greenwald on this here.

My answer to this question is a resounding "Yes." The contract between a journalist and an anonymous source is something like this: Journalist gives source anonymity. Anonymous source gives journalist hard-to-get information. If the information is false, then the contract should be shattered. If the anonymous source isn't exposed, then there is no incentive for anonymous sources to tell the truth.

Jay Rosen explains it well:

But the only way that system can work is when sources know: if you lie, or mislead the reporter into a false report… you will be exposed. People who believe strongly in the need for confidential sources should be strongly in favor of their exposure in clear cases of abuse, because that is the only way a practice like this has a prayer of retaining its legitimacy.

An Open Letter to David Kuo and Bill Bennett

I was working on a much longer piece about the possibility of a conservative version of Slate, which is one of my favorite websites. The post dealt with the ideology of Slate and The Atlantic and was sort of rambling. Then I realized I have only two things to say about the possibility of a conservative version of Slate:

Dear David Kuo and Bill Bennett,

Hire the staff of The American Scene to staff LibertyWire. Also change its name from LibertyWire to something more Slate-y or Salon-y. LibertyWire sounds like the name of a Pat Robertson-sponsored competitor to the Associated Press.

You're welcome,

K.