All Blog Posts from Public Eye

File this under “Why stop there?”

The esteemed and established 150 year-old Atlantic Monthly magazine is no longer.

Nonono, it’s not going anywhere. It’s just changing its name. You know, like Cat Stevens. Or Jack Napier. Or Cher.

According to the New York Post, the magazine – since it comes out ten times a year – is dropping the word ‘Monthly’ from its title. Very literal people there:

THE Atlantic Monthly already had cut back to a publishing frequency of 10 times a year, but only now is the magazine getting around to dropping the word "monthly" from its corporate identity and officially changing its name to The Atlantic.

Which got me thinking, why shouldn’t other news outlets follow suit?

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Tick, tick, tick … the clock is ticking down to tomorrow’s bombshell report on performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball. And the drumbeat of the narrative keeps getting louder, day by day.

Tick … Last week’s report of baseball suspending Baltimore Oriole Jay Gibbons and Kansas City Royal Jose Guillen.

Tick … Barry Bonds pleads not guilty to perjury and obstruction charges in a federal investigation of performance-enhancing drugs.

Tick … American Olympic track and field star Marion Jones is stripped of her 5 medals from the 2000 Olympics.

Tick .. Today’s New York Times reports that over fifty baseball players are going to get fingered by the report.

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"In an article in Monday’s newspaper, there may have been a misperception about why a Woodstock man is going to Afghanistan on a voluntary mission. Kevin DeClark is going to Afghanistan to gain life experience to become a police officer when he returns, not to shoot guns and blow things up.

"The Sentinel-Review apologizes for any embarrassment this may have caused."

-- From the Woodstock Sentinel-Review earlier this year, one of the great contenders in Regret the Error’s list of 2007’s best errors and corrections. (Emphasis in the quote? Mine.)

Whenever you make a product and it becomes shorthand for all its competitors – like “Kleenex” or “Coke” or “Xerox” – you figure the company is making money hand over fist, right?

Well, one of the most popular media products in years, TiVo – which had the added bonus of becoming a verb as well – finds themselves in the red and is now apparently trying to patch up its relationship with the networks and advertisers it used to antagonize.

How did the 'stickin' it to the man' company change its approach?

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“Afternoon Delight” is a catchy tune and all. But afternoon debates? That baffles me.

Why are more and more presidential debates taking place in the afternoon? When the audience is a fraction of their prime-time lineups?

To refresh your memory ...

There was a CNBC debate back in October at 4pm.

There was that NPR debate last week at 2 in the afternoon.

And now, the next two days, we’re going to have two debates broadcast on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel -- at 2pm.

What’s up with that?

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The reports from Iraq and Afghanistan come to us stateside with a troubling monotony of body counts and acronyms, like “IED,” that we’d rather not know.

It’s difficult to report over there, and it’s also extremely difficult to find “good news” stories that can compete with the harrowing tales for news merit.

But who knew the military was actually making the search for “good news” more difficult?

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It’s getting bumpy out there for Mike Huckabee.

After weeks of glowing coverage over his aw-shucksiness, the honeymoon for the Baptist minister is over – as predicted in this space.

And how is he dealing with the rise in critical coverage? Opening up the first page out of the political playbook and attacking the messenger.

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“Decider” is so 2006.

Nowadays it’s all about the “Influencers.”

And contrary to the ‘decider’ where you couldn’t really pass yourself off as The One, the bonus about ‘Influencers’ is that you may be one and not even know it.

According to Editor and Publisher, there’s a new Newspaper National Network study out today:

Newspaper Web site users, who also read the print editions, are 52% more likely to shape opinions about new products, technologies, and issues than those who use the Web without consulting newspapers, according to a new study from the Newspaper National Network (NNN).

This inspired me to ask a very basic question: What the heck is an influencer?

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Is the campaign trail getting a tad easier with the absence of the “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report?”

In my listening to the “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” replay on XM radio yesterday, I heard one of his panelists making that observation. Her argument being basically that ‘if Jon Stewart had been around, the Clinton campaign wouldn’t have gotten away with the Barack/kindergarten letter story.’

For a moment it sounded silly, like a child saying ‘Ooooh, it’s a good thing mom didn’t see you,’ but then I realized that the panelist’s observation had the added quality of being … true.

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You probably don’t know this, but there was yet another presidential debate the other day.

You didn’t see it. But don’t feel bad – not that you would – but nobody saw it. It was on National Public Radio.

And the reviews have been positive, save for the little “it put me to sleep” factor. But all the plaudits got this writer thinking how you could repackage the debate, draw a crowd and inform a potentially large size of the electorate.

First off, the reviews. Columbia Journalism Review observed:

Yesterday’s debate was no exception: when the radio stars kill the video, it seems, good things happen. The talk’s moderators—Steve Inskeep, Michele Norris, and Robert Siegel—selected three general topics for discussion: Iran and the Lessons of Iraq, Relations with China, and Immigration. The goal wasn’t breadth, but depth: “By covering a little less, we hope to go deeper,” Siegel noted. “We will try to have some real discussion here today.”

For the most part, it worked.

And Salon’s Walter Shapiro wrote:

In politics, radio can be the great leveler. According to legend, the 5 o'clock-shadowed Richard Nixon won the first 1960 presidential debate against matinee idol John Kennedy among voters who only listened on radio.

And for two hours on Tuesday afternoon on National Public Radio, those veteran foreign-policy experts Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dominated the penultimate Democratic debate before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.

Even Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson had to give the debate format some some props:

The NPR debate was a good one this afternoon. Not that it was a great debate, per se, but it was a lively intelligent discussion. And the NPR moderators could all teach Wolf Blitzer a lesson or two on how to rein in blabbering candidates and steer a discussion.

The debate dealt with just three topics — Iran, China and Immigration — a long-form format that served the Iran topic best.

The unfortunate truth about this debate? As great and stimulating and (yawn) engrossing as the NPR debate may have been, we all know that if you tried it on prime-time TV it would inevitably revert back to the sound bite contest we have come to know and love. Okay, maybe just the ‘know’ part.

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