Observer » The Schmear

Morning Links: Good Old Fashioned Booking Wars

Kat Stoeffel — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 08:09:27 -0400

Sarah Palin hosting Today on Tuesday, to go up against Katie Couric's week on GMA. [CNN]

You gotta keep 'em separated: Bloomberg journalists spat with Bloomberg analysts. [Adweek]

Josh Tyrangiel is his own target audience. [WWD]

Do the expanded duties of editors-as-brand-managers compromise magazine quality? [WWD]

NBC investigating its over-edited Trayvon Martin bit. [Washington Post]

Toure vs. Piers Morgan. [Yahoo Cutline]

Emails prove Current TV really was pretty dysfunctional. [Daily Beast]

NY Mag gets linguistics-y. [NY mag]

Morning Links: Martha Stewart has the Biggest House in CastleVille

Kat Stoeffel — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:49:47 -0400

Martha Stewart is hosting an Easter Egg hunt inside Zynga's social game CastleVille. (Also did you guys catch her live-tweeting her dentist's appointment the other day?) [VentureBeat]

Oprah boosts OWN ratings by putting herself on it. Duh. [Reuters]

At an anti-Backpage.com rally outside the Village Voice, sex workers handed out literature in favor of the online classifieds site. [Capital NY]

Ars Technica, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed wrote about a hoax Kanye West site with varying degrees of skepticism. [Poynter]

Comcast is hiring 1,000 vets. They could really turn around that spineless NBC page program, no? [MSNBC]

Bill Carter thinks Katie Couric's appearance on GMA could give ABC the ratings advantage over NBC's Today for once. [NY Times]

Awww Rachel Maddow and Howard Stern having a really sincere talk about the importance of journalism. [Romenesko]

News Corp. lusts after an ESPN of its own. [WSJ]

Philadelphia newspaper group bought by consortium of rich dudes that does not include Ed Rendell. [NY Times]

Layoffs at Maxim. :( [TechCrunch]

Morning Links: If Only Journalism Paid Like Opposition Research

Kat Stoeffel — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:28:31 -0400

New York Times and Politico report that a rival campaign leaked them the plans for Mitt Romney's summer home. [Huffington Post]

Rupert Murdoch is preparing to "hit back hard" against enemies libeling him, according to Twitter. [Guardian]

WWD is in "collective denial" over Etta Froio's retirement. [WWD]

$1 m. book deal for "Why I'm Leaving Goldman Sachs" op-ed writer? Maybe? [NYPost]

Former Rocky Mountain News editor John Temple offered managing editor spot at Washington Post. [Politico]

Journalists, technicians, and graphic designers who work at Wisconsin newspapers are being chastised for signing "Recall Walker" petitions. [Romenesko]

Artists hold fundraiser sale to pay for Believer contributor Derek McCormack's appendix cancer surgery. [Art for Derek]

New Republic is dropping paywall for recent articles. Such a Chris Hughes move. [The Atlantic Wire]

Katie Couric is subbing for a week on Good Morning America, which isn't even that far behind Today in ratings. Exciting. [NY Times]

Morning Links: Times Public Editor is Team Rachael and Gwyneth

Kat Stoeffel — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:41:40 -0400

Arthur Brisbane sided with Gwyneth Paltrow and Rachael Ray in the disagreement over the Julia Moskin's "I Was a Cookbook Ghostwriter" story, concluding it was "misleading." Look at how worked up he got:

I do know who Rachael Ray is because I’ve seen her on TV and on the covers of some of her 18 books. What always struck me about her was her overwhelmingly buoyant personality, always on display as she whips things up in her kitchen on the tube. The Rachael Ray who called me last week, though, was a very unhappy, annoyed Rachael Ray. The object of her upset: The New York Times. [NYT]

Former White House Correspondents Association president Helen Thomas was denied a table at the WHCA dinner next month. She wanted to celebrate the 50th anniversary of women being invited, which she secured. [Huffington Post]

Luxury titles are back. We're feeling richer already. [WWD]

Mad Men pulled its biggest audience ever. Full credit to Tina Brown's Newsweek. [NY Times]

Former Vice editor launches lit mag. [Capital NY]

FX wired Louis C.K. $200,000 and voila, Louie. [NY Times]

Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed an empty chair. [Gawker]

WSJ uses Pinterest for pullquotes, which are sometimes inspirational and/or aspirational and therefore pinnable. [Mediabistro]

Morning Links: Girls Robs Journalist of Critical Faculties

Kat Stoeffel — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:22:27 -0400

Emily Nussbaum on Girls: "When a TV critic reports on a new show, it’s okay to say the series is promising, even the next big thing, but ideally, one shouldn’t go native. One should probably also talk in the third person. In this case, however, I’ll have to make an exception. Because from the moment I saw the pilot of Girls (which airs on April 15), I was a goner, a convert." By the end of the piece Ms. Nussbaum and Lena Dunham are shopping for nail stickers. [NY Mag]

#Komen, #Kony2012, #TrayvonMartin... do people actually care or are they just trying to appear well informed before their friends and followers? [NY Times]

Matt Lauer and NBC have begun the contract negotiation at Today. [NY Mag]

Jason Binn had Gilt CEO Kevin Ryan's tech team fix the service black hole at Michael's. [Page Six]

New York Times dog coverage has increased 45% since Puppy Diaries author Jill Abramson took over has editor in chief. Blame Gail Collins and Mitt Romney. [CJR]

Mike Daisey apologizes for exaggerating in interviews: "In my drive to tell this story and have it be heard, I lost my grounding. Things came out of my mouth that just weren’t true, and over time, I couldn’t even hear the difference myself." Next: Journalists should thank Mike Daisey for giving them an excuse to pontificate about their own truthfulness. [Mike Daisey]

Politico and C-SPAN partnership is heaven for wannabe wonks. [Washington Post]

Newspapers are dying and bringing Democracy down with them. [Eric Alterman]

Lauren Collins on the Daily Mail. [New Yorker]

Morning Links: TV Layoffs, Tidbit Journalism, Gender at GQ

Kat Stoeffel — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 07:02:23 -0400

After Chuck Todd railed against "tidbit journalism," DC media types explain why the Etch a Sketch story is important. [Fishbowl DC]

Bloomberg TV laid off 30 in "overdue" strategic repositioning. [WSJ]

CNN laid off some employees as well, will start acquiring the documentaries they would have produced. [TV Newser]

Carine Roitfeld's magazine launches in September, looks like a book, has no front of book. [WWD]

Salman Rushdie went out with model/philanthropist Topaz Page-Green. [Page Six]

That thing where GQ's cover boys aren't interesting unless they're play-seducing its female reporters. [Gawker]

Did Gawker misread a WSJ article or did the commenters misread Gawker? [CJR]

Former Post music critic bought ad in the Post for his new venture, was pulled by Col Allan. [Capital NY]

Breitbart memorial held at--not hosted by--the Newseum. [Romenesko]

Morning Links: While Oprah Shakes up OWN, Gayle Parties With Cory Booker

Kat Stoeffel — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:23:28 -0400

SNL Kagan says Oprah Winfrey's OWN lost $107 million last year. This month the network laid off 30 people, brought in a new COO/CFO from Discovery, and canceled Rosie O'Donnell's show, which we were really looking forward to. [Bloomberg]

Gayle King went to the Hunger Games premiere with Newark Mayor Cory Booker. We hope this means they're dating, but then, what an awful date. [NY Post]

How unethical is it for financial journalists to take speaking fees? [CJR]

A look at the niche fact-checking industry. [Poynter]

The New Yorker iPad app for the new iPad is not very user friendly. [Pixel Peeps]

Huffington Post founder Kenneth Lerer and Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman went in on a share of the Mets. [WSJ]

Gawker mocks fluffy New York Times piece. Just like old times. [Gawker]

Gary Pruitt from McClatchy Company named CEO of the Associated Press. [NY Times]

Morning Links: Self-Plagiarism is Plagiarism Too

Kat Stoeffel — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 08:20:53 -0400

Baltimore Sun columnist admits to recycling old columns. [Poynter]

Gallagher's paper collectibles re-opened! [WWD]

Lay offs, but also openings, at LA Times. [LA Observed]

Dave Weigel on reporting on stupid voters. [Slate]

What did they serve for lunch at American Society of Magazine Editors digital awards? [Capital]

ProPublica posting the political ad data TV broadcasters don't want to put online. [ProPublica]

More than 100 journalists have signed up for Sebastian Junger's life saving skills course for reporters. [Huffington Post]

You're not allowed to write about the Malia Obama going to Mexico. [Politico]

But she's totally fine after that earthquake. [Yahoo]

The New York Times is using executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart to find a new CEO, looking at external candidates. [Bloomberg]

Michael Wolff on his competitors:

Howard Kurtz, while a diligent and reasonably fair-minded reporter, is – and I doubt even he would argue – a leaden writer of dead-on-arrival prose, with limited skills for expressing nuance and subtlety or gradation.

Jack Shafer is among the best journalism critics working today, but, still, as a writer, only a mere programmer – whereas Truman Capote is Steve Jobs. [Guardian]

Morning Links: Times Conservative Wunderkind or Prudish Whit Stillman Character?

Kat Stoeffel — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 08:12:25 -0400

From New York magazine's 140 Minutes With Ross Douthat: "We live in an era where the sexual—” Douthat begins, before a slinky waitress interrupts: “Are you guys okay?” “Yes,” Douthat shoots back, then pivots. “Where the sexual revolution happened, where liberals have won across a variety of fronts, and it’s important to see places where some form of corrective would be useful. The attitudes that you get in New York Magazine’s ‘Sex Diaries’ are only going to work for people with large amounts of social capital.” [NY Mag]

Founder of C-Span stepping down. [NY Times]

In this hagiographic look at The Hunger Games marketing team, the bestselling books are practically a footnote. [NY Times]

File under: meta-media news; Observer alumni newsletter. John Koblin to Deadspin! [Capital NY]

Clint Eastwood's reality show, Mrs. Eastwood & Co., comes to E! [WSJ]

White House and Ambassador to Yemen explain why Yemeni journalist Abd al-Ilah Haydar Al-Sha’i remains locked up. [ABC News]

British journalists released from Libya. [Huffington Post]

MSNBC contributor Megan McCain supports gay marriage without being gay. Radical. "I'm strickly dickly....It might simplify my life if I were gay, but no. ... For me, it's an issue of civil rights. Who people want to sleep with and who they want to love should not have anything to do with government politics at all. And if you see me in a gay bar, it's only because they play the best music and my gay friends like to dance. Gay guys love me. It's the big boobs and blond hair." [Cutline]

Morning Links: Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Magic Johnson

Kat Stoeffel — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:16:17 -0400

Saks Fifth Avenue sold out of the $350 skirt designed on Fashion Star by 9:30 a.m. [WWD]

Meet Magic Johnson, CEO of Aspire Network. [Fortune]

Google engineer gives up the news, newspapers ask if they can have it back. [Poynter]

Yemeni journalist imprisoned on President Obama's orders. [The Nation]

Glenn Beck has 300,000 subscribers online, which is more viewers than CNBC has. [WSJ]

Rush Limbaugh joined Twitter. [Yahoo!]

That Microsoft-AOL-Yahoo display advertising deal finally went live. [AdWeek]

Conde Nast will provide advertisers better metrics for iPad editions. [AdAge]

Social media dominance does not equal TV ratings dominance, obviously. [Wrap]