All Blog Posts from Public Eye

If you're interested in sharpening your media criticism skills, you could do worse than running for president.

Consider Barack Obama. On Friday, in an interview with the New York Times, Obama neatly summed up the prevailing press narrative about his campaign.

“A month ago, I was an idiot,” he said, according to a story published Sunday. “This month, I’m a genius.”

The implication is that the chattering classes have reversed their opinion about Obama even though the candidate himself hasn't much changed. And while his statement may be something of an exaggeration, there's clearly some truth in it. Has Obama really become a better candidate after spending much of the campaign as a bumbler? Or does the press corps now see him that way simply because he has moved up in the polls?

The Times suggests that the press corps' change of heart is justified:

The campaign of Mr. Obama, which slogged uncertainly through a period in the late summer and fall, alarming contributors who feared that he might have missed his moment, is now brimming with confidence as he delivers a closing argument to Iowa voters. His speeches are noticeably crisper, his poise is more consistent and many supporters say they no longer must rely upon a leap of faith to envision him winning the nomination.

Perhaps – although Mr. Obama himself might beg to differ. When it comes to something as messy and difficult to measure as the performance of a presidential candidate, it's difficult to determine to what degree the media follow reality, and to what degree they creates their own. Many of the same commentators crowing about Obama's ascent are the same ones who told us Hillary Clinton was the "inevitable" democratic nominee. Now it seems she was only inevitable until she wasn't.

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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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Do looks matter in TV news story selection?

Okay, wait. That’s a no-brainer. Let’s make that question: How much do looks matter in story selection? And does that effect the criminal justice system?

That’s at the heart of Eric Deggans’ post today down in St. Petersburg, detailing how two teachers who confessed to having sex with teenage students got different sentences, with the “beauteous Debra Lafave [getting] a lighter sentence than the less pin-up-ready Jaymee Lane Wallace.”

Why did this happen? Deggans thinks it was the media, given the fact that the mother of the boy in the LaFave case didn’t want a media circus surrounding her family, and therefore accepted house arrest without a trial.

Okay, sure. But why would there have been a media circus?

Because LaFave was very attractive, and drew a lot of attention due to her looks. And in all too many newsrooms, the philosophy about news is the same one from the playground. You know, the “Made you look!” strategy.

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Hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned.

Former White House aide Dan Bartlett has drawn a MediaLand of attention for an interview he did with Texas Monthly, disputing the notion that the media wasn’t aggressive enough with pre-war reporting.

White House correspondents have been tagged, unfairly, with not being tough enough on the administration and President Bush in the run-up to the war. If you go back and look, they asked all the right questions. The problem is, they’re acting now like they have to be five times more critical, and I think they’ve gone overboard.

But what really caught this writer’s eye was Bartlett’s characterization of conservative bloggers:

I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

"Regurgitate?" Really? Coming from a former Bush aide? Oh no he din’t. That’s basically the equivalent of calling White House reporters ‘stenographers.’ (And we've learned you don’t go there.)

I figured that this wouldn’t sit well with right-wing bloggers. But I wasn’t quite sure. So I pulled a Captain Renault and e-mailed some "usual suspects.”

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Brevity is the essence of wit, Twain said.

And in Waco, the hometown Tribune-Herald is finding that simplicity pays off.

An interesting story out of Texas in the American Journalism Review, discusses how the newspaper’s publisher had a revelation about how front pages should look:

That's when it hit him: The front page should be dominated by an attractive display of the most compelling story of the day, no matter where that story took place.

After conferring with the paper's top editors, he found them willing to give it a try. Thus began a transformation of the Tribune-Herald, an end to its circulation losses and a rethinking of just about everything else the newspaper was doing.

The change to the front page began in September 2006, but only in the edition sold on the street. The impact was immediate. Instead of trailing year-earlier street sales by 7 percent to 8 percent, the numbers almost immediately rose by 7 percent, a startling improvement that has continued.

Rather than have the front page be a menu of items – stories the reader can choose according to his or her taste – this paper has taken the job of prioritizing stories out of their hands. And readers in Waco are responding.

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