Anya Kamenetz
Throw a lot of federal money at a problem, then say it doesn't exist. That's the conservative party line when it comes to higher education. Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institutegot Fox News.com to print a laughable retort to the Page One USA Today story last week on student debt.
McCluskey's rap? Spending on federal student aid is growing.
"Between 1994-95 and 2004-05 inflation-adjusted grant aid per student from both federal and...
Nine days after his disappearance, the body of missing publisher Phillip Merrill was found today by a boater on Chesapeake Bay.
Related: "He was very much the last Orson Wellesian, Rosebud, Hearstian publisher in the country."
Arianna Huffington
Quick, somebody get Tony Snow a compassion cocktail -- with an empathy chaser!
For years now I've been praying for public officials to start speaking their minds and not hide behind a smokescreen of mindless, focus group-tested, politically correct pabulum.
But an interesting thing is happening with Tony Snow. Since becoming press secretary he has, indeed, been speaking his mind. But the kind of mind that's being revealed...
from gabbyattic.com
TVWeek says it has learned that CBS will be sending off Dan Rather this evening on the "CBS Evening News," including an interview with the network's longtime anchorman. Apparently CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason has been assigned to the story, though neither CBS nor Rather have confirmed this report.
Intel from Gawker: "It's going to be a big afternoon on CBS News."
Longtime NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin filed his final column today after six and a half years examining NPR's content and coverage on behalf of listeners and readers. Dvorkin thanked the NPR listeners, whom he described as passionate and intelligent, and thanked them for their many contributions: "Sometimes I thought you were right. Sometimes, I thought you weren't. For the most part, I tried to act as your agent inside NPR for your best ideas and suggestions." He also thanked his colleagues and apologized to those to whom he directed criticism during his tenure. ("There are a couple of NPR journalists who still won't talk to me and I want them to know that it was never personal"). He also had some advice for future Ombuds: "Taking abuse is not in the job description." Dvorkin has been named the executive editor of the DC-based Committee of Concerned Journalists as executive director and will assume that position starting in July.
Barbara Epstein, co-editor and founder of the The New York Review of Books, died on Friday morning of lung cancer at 77. She and co-editor Robert Silvers were the only two editors the NYRB ever had, and worked together for 33 years. Prior to founding the NYRB, Epstein was an editor at Doubleday, editing Anne Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl." Epstein was called "one of the most influential editors of our time" by writer Janet Malcolm, quoted in the New York Times obituary by Charles McGrath.
Huffington Post
As reported by the New York Times, New York Post and AdWeek, the Huffington Post has partnered with JWT to present a selection of creative, shareable video ads. HuffPo will be running seven spots over the course of the week; go here to see them all, or send to others via email, IM or external links.
Raymond J. Learsy
Yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press" we were treated to a heavy dose of oil patch pablum by the likes of the chairmen of ConocoPhillips, Chevron Corp., and the president of Shell Oil. We "learned" a great deal.
Mr. John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil informed us that "If we didn't have this level of profitability, I don't think we could get supplies to where they need to get to." The clucking noise of...
On yesterday's "Reliable Sources," host and Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz once again posed leading questions to his guests suggesting that the media had an agenda to report only bad news from Iraq. To guest John Fund:
KURTZ: Fund, let me turn to you. Is this the first break the media has given the president on this war in a long, long time, at least a year?
Prior to President Bush's visit to Iraq last week, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq sent a cable to the office of the Secretary of State outlining the deteriorating conditions for its employees, including ethnic cleansing "in almost every Iraqi province," neighborhoods run by militias, women being pushed to cover their entire bodies and faces ("a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative") and attacks on men who wear shorts or jeans.Local Iraqi embassy staffers operated in secrecy; they have all planned for possible abductions. There is more in the Washington Post article here, which includes a PDF of the actual Embassy document.
from IMDB
Former NYT fashion reporter Bellafante sasy "The Devil Wears Prada" is an accurate depiction of the fashion industry, seeing in it echoes of her own experience falling in love with clothes and working with people singularly obsessed with the industry from spouting stats on hemlines and supermodels to assistants pulling all-nighters in order to advance up the chain. Bellafonte is silent, however, on specific details of her own experience and whether she had her own Miranda Priestly barking ridiculous demands in her ear at 4 am. In other news, thank goodness being a size 6 is acceptable for blogging.
Related: Tales from the beauty-mag trenches: Jolie in NYC (then and now).
Michael Eisner interviewed Pat Robertson for his show "Conversations With Michael Eisner." Robertson claims to have built his 700 Club media empire on God's advice:
"Eisner asks, "You had a vision?" Robertson replies, "Yeah." Eisner: "Why can't I get these visions?" Robertson: "Well, you did. You ran Disney." Eisner then says, "I had Roy Disney call me up, and he is not the Lord."
Update: Apparently Robertson is not happy about the interview and has complained to CNBC about Eisner's asking about sensitive topics like how Robertson called for Hugo Chavez's assassination. No word on whether Eisner got Robertson to give up the recipe to his delicious all-powerful age-defying shakes.
Also on Page Six: Britney's flacks desert her for NBC interview; Jon Friedman harshes on Jim Cramer's cooking; the New York Observer's George Gurley loves to have his head scratched. So if anyone ever asks you for "scratchy," now you know what to do.
from Gawker
Jeff Zucker, longtime booster of Katie Couric and her first producer on the "Today" show, strikes a cautious tone in praising Couric on Today ("It was a great era") and instead focuses on the strength of his current network stars, including replacement Meredith Viera ("the reception of Meredith has been phenomenal") and Couric's soon-to-be competition in nightly news, Brian Williams ("I am confident that Brian will continue to do a first-rate show and maintain his position of leadership"). Even without Couric, Today still leads GMA by a million viewers.
Time has an exclusive excerpt from Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11. In it Suskind breaks the news that Al Qaeda had planned a poison gas attack on the New York subways in 2003 that was called off at the last minute for reasons unclear. The "One Percent Doctrine" refers to Cheney's characterization of the new threat: a "low-probability, high-impact event" which would be treated by the administration as a certainty based on the gravity of the threat.
Suskind on today's Today: "The passing time since the last big attack should not give us coonfidence that we have won anything...the idea is, that the second attack should be bigger than the third to give an upward arc of terror and anticipation." He also said that Homeland Security was a "joke."
