Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr., surprised his staff today with a long memo announcing a broad range of changes to the newspaper meant to address the costs of producing a printed paper and the opportunities afforded by the Internet. Calling it "the opportunity to transform journalism for a new era," Downie announced numerous changes Among the changes put forth:
While acknowledging "shifting advertising revenues" (recall that WaPo's circulation declined by 3.3% in the six-month period ending in September 2006), Downie promised to remain faithful to "high quality, compelling journalism" and "our public service mission," proclaiming it "the most important change that I will lead as executive editor," saying: "It reminds me of my early days in the newsroom, when Ben Bradlee began boldly transforming the paper during the 1960s and 1970s."
Downie's memo has been reproduced in full after the jump.
— ML & RS
Drudgereport.com
Marie Claire has had a bumpy road in the past few months since new editor Joanna Coles was brought in to give the magazine an overhaul: Ashlee Simpson's nose job, disappointing cover choices, plummeting circulation. Disappointing for a magazine with such high hopes and great early buzz — but when you start doing things like, say, photoshopping pictures of current 20/20 co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas breastfeeding at a news desk, well, it's hard to muster much sympathy. Drudge has the scoop as well as Vargas' reaction to the doctored photo, which accompanies an interview with her in the December issue. According to Drudge's source, Vargas was "more than happy to sit for the interview but was disturbed that the magazine would set aside basic journalistic standards to photoshop her head onto a fake image. Vargas did joke that her real baby is cuter, that she is proud to breastfeed her newborn but wouldn't do it at the anchor desk and that she wouldn't be caught dead in that ugly gold blouse!"
Drudge then offers reactions from a magazine spokesperson, who brushed off questions of journalistic integrity with the following statement: "We do not believe anyone seriously thought she would nurse and report the news the same time! This is an image illustration and is stated so with the byline of this story." While these are fair points (the fake Vargas appears to be at a schoolroom desk, not on set at ABC), running this picture still shows a serious lack of judgment and foresight, particularly in the wake of fury surrounding altered photos of certain other female anchors. The media furor surrounding Katie Couric's photoshopped-slimdown suggests that that running a doctored photo with "illustration" listed under it in fine print, all without consulting the photo's subject, is unadvisable, to say the least (not to mention potentially offensive in this case, given that Vargas' sudden departure from the anchor chair of ABC World News Tonight raised heated speculation that she was forced out because of her pregnancy, which Vargas denied).
Coles, who has already been battling rumors of her imminent departure, is no doubt feeling the heat to attract readers among her newly-targeted "elite," and a story on juggling a TV career with motherhood is certainly relevant to this demographic. But give your sophisticated female readers a little credit — they can tell the difference between eye-grabbing versus poor taste and bad judgment -- not to mention bad fashion choices.
— Melissa Lafsky
""(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it's repeated as fact."
Indeed. We wouldn't want that to happen, would we?
(Major hat tip to ThinkProgress for this one.)
The New York Post reports that three packages containing white powder were found yesterday in the mail at Air America headquarters — one of which was addressed to Al Franken. The white powdery substance in the package turned out to be harmless.
The tactic, obviously meant to evoke the anthrax-mail scare of 2001, has suddenly become a popular way of sending a poisonous message: Yesterday, a man named Chad Conrad Castagana was charged after mailing letters with white powder to people like Nancy Pelosi, David Letterman and Jon Stewart. Earlier this month, Chuck Schumer received white powder in the mail, and in September, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann received white powder at his home address. The renewed "threatening white-powder letter" trend was kicked off this July after the New York Times bank records story controversy, when an envelope with white powder was sent to the New York Times building, causing it to be evacuated.
from panopticist.com
Op-ed contributor John Tierney has published his final column on the op-ed page, lamenting that the election's Dem sweep will result in a Do-Nothing Congress even though they were partially a reaction to the already-existing Do-Nothing Congress. Though he contradicts himself at the end and the premise doesn't make much sense (the Democrats can do plenty in Congress, like issue subpoenas!), we'll let it go because of the little announcement he makes at the end:
This is my last column on the Op-Ed page. I've enjoyed the past couple of years in Washington, but one election cycle is enough... I hate to abandon my libertarian comrades here fighting in the belly of the beast, but this is the right moment to leave. After six years of libertarians reluctantly electing Republicans as the lesser of two evils, we've finally had enough. We've voted out big-government conservatism, and the result is the happy state of gridlock. For now, our work is done.
Er, right. At any rate, Tierney will be returning to the science beat (which means, hopefully, less Valentine's Day advice and more tuna) and — yes! blogging! — for the Science section.
In the meantime, no word on who will be filling his slot on the op-ed page; New York Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis said that there is no replacement scheduled "at this time." It's still quite some time before former Op-Ed page editor Gail Collins is scheduled to return to the page in July 2007, but editor Andrew Rosenthal did say that they were trying to do more with less space, so maybe they won't hire anyone at all. If they do, no doubt they'll choose someone who will be exactly what women want.
UPDATE: Rebecca Traister bids Tierney good riddance, and enumerates the reasons why. [Broadsheet]
(Hat tip: Penguins.)
