Michelle Pilecki
All the stories I've seen today about Vice President Cheney's visit to Western Pennsylvania describe it as "a hunting trip." Almost benign. Well, longer stories usually find room to mention that in the veep's last "hunting trip," the man a heartbeat away from history shot a companion in the face with buckshot. But the fiction is maintained that the warhawk/draft-dodger is actually hunting.
Uh uh.
Whether you have a comical view of...
from www.empiremovies.com
A Week before the highly-anticipated season premiere of Fox's "24," someone has — surprise! — leaked it to the internet. According to ETP fave Panopticist, the first four episodes of season six, set to air two each next Sunday, Jan. 14th and Monday, Jan. 15th, have been uploaded and seem to be available in torrent form here. Who knows how long it will be up for; like the Brazilian supermodel sex tape, unauthorized versions of otherwise protected material tends to want to remain free once it's out there. Blame pimply teenagers in their basement or a generous online culture, but it's never been easy to stuff the rabbit back in the hat. So what will this actually mean for the premiere of "24?" Probably little, in terms of viewers or ratings, because, as ETP noted last month, BitTorrent has a learning curve; this requires that the fan be web-savvy or a hard-core enough fan to wade through scary tech stuff. However, we're still at the beginning of the download revolution where video is concerned, so the implications are probably more significant going forward. But until then, go watch Kiefer flex his muscles and foil the bad guys (especially through shady means in a ticking time bomb scenario because those are TOTALLY REAL, just ask Bush) — just don't say we sent you. (We only sent you to Panopticist, where you can get all the information you need.)
See the 24 Season Premiere a Week Early [Panopticist]
Background: BitTorrent [ETP]
veritas.blogs.sapo.pt
It all started when a video depicting Brazilian supermodel Daniela Cicarelli and her boyfriend, banker Renato Malzoni having sex on a beach (in the literal sense) showed up on YouTube. The couple sued the website in September and won an injunction for the video's removal, but news of the court case only made the steamy clip all the more popular among YouTube viewers. A Brazilian judge then issued a ruling that YouTube must remove all traces of the clip, and the internet video service has since attempted to comply by stomping out copies like wildfire. But, as CNN reports, the video simply won't die, and instead keeps popping up under varying titles. Meanwhile, the judge's ban wasn't exclusive to YouTube; he also stipulated that any fixed-line telephone operators providing service to Internet providers must participate in the ban until YouTube could prove that the clip was no longer available on its site. Brasil Telecom SA, Brazil's second largest fixed-line operator, responded by prohibiting access to YouTube across a wide swath of the country from Brasilia to the Amazon, though the site still worked in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, where Internet use is reportedly heaviest. A three-judge panel is scheduled to review the case and could fine YouTube up to $119,000 a day for each day that it fails to stay Cicarelli-and-Malzoni free, according to the New York Post. That's some pretty high incentive to keep trolling those archives and hitting "Erase" at the sight of any sexy oceanside antics.
AP
The CIA's Publications Review Board has expressly forbidden Valerie Plame to reveal details of her past at the Agency in her upcoming memoir, saying that she can't even say she worked for them, according to Newsweek. This, of course, comes over three years after the White House blew her cover. The decision undermines the conservative spin that Plame's role wasn't so secret before the outing, since it reveals that the CIA still cares about the secrecy of her past work. Some derided her former position as a "desk job"; whatever it was, the CIA doesn't want her sharing it.
Plame has hired a lawyer to contest the decision, and the battle could lead to a challenge of tightening publication rules. As of 2005, the Review Board formerly only prevented publication of work containing classified information, but in 2006 it decided to also restrict works based on political "appropriateness." This looks like a reaction to memoirs and opinion pieces critical of the CIA and Bush administration (though in the case of former CIA analyst Flynt Leverett, it's only encouraged the writer to publish the CIA-censored version at the New York Times, drawing more anti-CIA criticism).
Meanwhile, former CIA director George Tenet's memoir At the Center of the Storm, due February 6, is available for pre-order. Ideally for Plame, she'll win the case and overrule the panel; barring that, perhaps she could pull an O.J.: "I didn't work for the CIA, but if I did..."
Gawker
The New York Times checks in today on The Politico, Allbritton Communications' much-discussed multimedia venture that's set to launch in two weeks. It first made waves in November, when former Washington Post political bigwigs Jim VandeHei and John Harris became prize acquisitions, announcing that they were jumping ship to the online start-up. At the time, reports told of an "impressive" budget allowance to attract yet more high-profile names, and the roster has since added Mike Allen and Roger Simon, lured from Time and Bloomberg News, respectively. The Politico's platform is a virtual smorgasbord of combined media, with The Capitol Leader, a new three-day-a week D.C. paper led by Harris and VandeHei, serving as the center course. Politico reporters will be decidedly seen and heard, with regular appearances on Allbritton's ABC affiliate station and its 24-hour cable news service, not to mention a deal for a daily segment on WTOP, Washington's all-news radio station, and national exposure on CBS News.
Since the news broke of Harris and VandeHei's defection, the discussion surrounding the new venture and its star headliners (both of whom are over 35) emerged as a generational debate about the viability of print in a web-heavy era. The press release set the tone by throwing a dig at its print competitors, stating, "While other traditional news organizations are cutting back on resources and their commitment to political journalism, Allbritton is planning to invest heavily in the next generation of journalism," while Allbritton chairman Robert Allbritton, who has agreed to finance the project "for the forseeable future," according to the Times, now predicts that it will begin to turn a profit in under five years, and has increased his staff to 50, nearly half of them reporters. Meanwhile, the so-called "VandeHarris" defection and the project itself have drawn plenty of ire from naysayers of all ages. As Jack Shafer questioned the journalists' ability to continue their star-quality reporting without their association with the Post, media bloggers like Elaine Meyer and Huffpo's Jay Rosen took umbrage with the publication's promise of "pulling back the curtain" on the insider politics of Washington reporting.
Despite the controversy, the venture, with its landmark move from old-school print to online media, has sparked plenty of valuable discussion about the future of both. Thirty-year-old Ben Smith, a New York Daily News and New York Observer alum who will blog about the 2008 presidential campaign for The Politico, observed to the Times that, in the era of changing media, "[i]t seems riskier to stay in print than to go to something new," while Slate founding editor Michael Kinsley commented that The Politico's ability to attract mainstram journalists represents quite a change from Slate's founding year in 1996, when, as he told the Times, "you couldn't get anyone from the establishment." Meanwhile, VandeHei dismissed questions of whether plum sources from the Post and other high-profile papers would still be willing to talk to an online journalist, saying, "Reporters here will transcend the organization."
That statement may be truer than he realizes; as Times reporter Katharine Q. Seelye noted, The Politico will encourage its already highly-visible reporters to further self-promote by continuing to publish elsewhere. This move, combined with the already-packed roster of PR opportunities and public appearances for staff, indicates that the "next generation of political journalism" also includes a level of unabashed self-promotion that, as Harris told the Times, would likely be "uncomfortable for a traditional journalist." Or anyone who just wants to report the news and not worry about doing non-stop TV and radio in the process.
...because when the breakup's this big, no less than giant yellow coverlines will do. NB: Technically, it's "Us! It's just like Star!" because Star's cover was out first.
Update: Gawker's pickup compels us to clarify that, yes, of course we knew these covers were about different non-couples (Kate and Owen here and Justin and Cameron here). Sorry we can't do grammar so good.
Xataka.com
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from www.myspace.com/jordancarlos
You probably know Jordan Carlos, by face if not by name, or at least by nickname: He's Stephen Colbert's Black Friend, a comedian who sounded off in this weekend's Washington Post about the dearth of black faces among the comedy crowd, and his own experience as a black comedian. Here's a telling excerpt:
Entering the comedy world as a black man means you always stand out, even during off hours, such as one Christmas evening in New York at my first holiday comedy mixer. All of Gotham's comedic glitterati were there. I cornered a "Daily Show" writer, doing my best to get the inside track on a possible actor/writer gig. We broached the subject of black correspondents. He told me that they "tried a black guy once, but it didn't work out." I nearly threw my imported beer in his face. Tried it once and it didn't work? You say that about Toyotas, not a whole race of people. But to date, comedy writing is pretty whitewashed. As of this season, "Saturday Night Live" has no black writers. "The Daily Show" also doesn't have any, and neither does "The Colbert Report," a show on which I've played Stephen Colbert's black friend "Alan," a member of the staff. That's right. "The Colbert Report" had to hire an actor to play a black person who works on the show.
Carlos, whose photo has appeared on "The Colbert Report" umpteen times as a gag, was called in for the shot with a friend and ushered out after. There has been no follow up: "I had hoped to parlay it into a job; instead I got a lot of MySpace 'friends.'" Sort of a sobering look at the reality behind the joke, and the irony of its — what was that word? — ah, yes, truthiness.
Carlos' MySpace has a video clip of him doing standup, using a few of the jokes he references in the piece. It's pretty funny, smart stuff. Hopefully someone will put it to good use one of these days.
My Shtick? Being Black [WaPo]
Series: Being A Black Man [WaPo]
online.WSJ.com from Newsatseven.com
Here's one way to cut down on salary an benefits costs during network news slumps: The Wall Street Journal Online reports that a new form of human-free video news broadcast is being developed out of Northwestern University. The project, called News At Seven, uses a mixture of 3D avatars, images, videos, alternate opinions and generated speech to locate current stories online, pair them with images from sources like Google and YouTube, and thereby deliver an entirely simulated news show, all without a single living producer, editor, network executive or anchor lifting a finger. Created by Northwestern Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Northwestern Intelligent Information Laboratory (Infolab) Kristian Hammond, as well as Nate Nichols and Sara Owsley, both Infolab graduate students, the broadcast will soon offer customization options, allowing users to receive a personalized news show based on pre-selected topics that interest them, and comes complete with a host, a virtual female anchor named "Alex." The project's mission, according to its website, is to "create[] frictionless information technologies that proactively get people the right information, at the right time and in the right form." All well and good, but the real question is, does Virtual Alex have sufficient gravitas?
The new Time.com debuts today, to a lukewarn review from David Carr. Carr also isn't impressed with the slimmed-down version of the magazine, which risks becoming little more than a pricey brochure for the website itself. [NYT/Time.com]
CNN will add a new weekend investigative series, aptly titled 'CNN: Special Investigations Unit', to air on January 20. [LAT]
Jack Shafer predicts a massive brain drain at the LAT. [Slate]
A new Gallup poll reveals that 44% of people rely on newspapers for their news — twice the number of people who get their news from the internet — as the readers' migration to the web plateaus. [E&P]
The CIA may block Valerie Plame's upcoming book, saying that she's prohibited about writing about her undercover life there. Irony: Permission was refused "to even mention that she worked for the CIA" because she had served as a "nonofficial cover" officer; it seems they've forgotten that everyone already knows that part. [Newsweek]
Disney.com also unveils its new website today; investors breathe down Disney Chief Rob Iger's neck. [LAT]
Overseas, The Economist doesn't think the BBC can continue to justify its reliance on the taxpayer's largesse — to the tune of 3 billion pounds a year — for what, in the words of one competitor, amounts to "a paternalistic exercise in adult education by the wing-collared classes". The Telegraph joins the fray. [Economist/Telegraph]
The NYT picks up the story of Jamil Hussein, the disputed Iraqi source for an AP story about the brutal Shiite murder of six Sunnis outside a mosque. For weeks, the Shiite-run Iraqi Interior Ministry had denied Hussein's existence — as did conservative bloggers back in the U.S. Hussein is now under threat of arrest for speaking to the press; the bloggers are unrepentant. [NYT]
The New York Times issues a correction after initial concerns raised by Byron Calame were ignored. Keller must love that. [E&P]
New York Cover: Warhol's Children Cuddle Puddle! [NYMag]
