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Fishbowl brings word of troubles inside the International Herald Tribune. The Paris-based paper, which became fully-owned by the New York Times in 2003 after twelve years of co-ownership by the Times and the Washington Post, has faced rumors of high financial losses and possible layoffs since last spring. Besides salaries and benefits for around 35 employees, the paper's costs include printing at 34 sites around the globe and distribution to more than 180 countries. Though, unlike so many of its print companions, circulation has held steady since 2002. Nonetheless, as Fishbowl reports, staff members are growing increasingly nervous as the Times continues to exert more and more influence over the paper, and pre-Christmas talk, as well as a staff meeting yesterday, brought up concerns over compensation and the viability of the business, as well as the severe gender disparity - at present, only four out of fourteen editorial positions at the Tribune are held by women.
Update: Dorian Benkoil, editorial director of Mediabistro, has clarified that, while IHT staffers had complained before Christmas of the gender imbalance among editorial staff, there has been no confirmation as yet whether the issue was discussed at yesterday's meeting.
Gizmodo
Ladies and gentlemen, Apple went and did it. This morning (in fact it's still going on) Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, the new full-touchscreen iPod with a built-in phone.
According to tech blogs Gizmodo and TUAW, the device runs Apple's operating system, OS X, comes with a camera, takes a SIM card for GSM service, and has an accelerometer to tell when to display portrait or landscape orientation or to dim while it's used as a phone. The screen is 3.5".
Here's why this is such an important announcement:
For more details, see:
TUAW Macworld keynote liveblog
Twitter Macworld feed
Gizmodo Macworld 2007 coverage
Newsweek has an exclusive interview this week with Reade Seligmann, one of the three Duke lacrosse players embroiled in the much-rehashed rape case. It's a tear-jerker of a piece, with tales of dashed innocence, traumatized siblings and parents stretched to near breaking points after their son was identified by a North Carolina stripper as one of her attackers. We learn that the exiled Seligmann, still an undergraduate, has been permitted to finish his academic semester at home, where he's since made the athletic-conference honor roll, volunteered at a soup kitchen and coached football at his old junior high school. To deal with the stress and depression of the scandal, Seligmann, who was reportedly recognized and offered good wishes by one of the soup kitchen's homeless patrons, turns to Kipling poems and close friendships with his fellow accuseds (Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans) for solace, and plans to eventually channel the experience into a career as a criminal defense lawyer.
While journalist Susannah Meadows is careful not to make proclamations of innocence, the sympathetic profile represents a full 180-degree turn from the fire-and-brimstone declarations that dominated the scandal's early coverage. The story, which broke last April, led to a cannonade of anger over the alleged rape of a low-income black woman by three privileged white men in a town known for heavy class and race disparities. Public furor grew as witnesses recounted racist expletives hurled at the women by Duke students, and the subsequent resignation of the school's lacrosse coach and cancellation of the lacrosse season only deepened cries of outrage. The New York Times in partcular was charged with pushing an anti-Duke agenda, with articles highlighting the university's fears over its sullied reputation and columns asking hedged questions like "What happens when a school sells its soul for sports?"
Gradually, the pendulum began to swing back as reports of lack of evidence, botched investigations and prosecutorial and police misconduct hit the airwaves. Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong came under fire as his self-declared air-tight case against the three men crumbled into a soupy quagmire of inept investigations and shaky-to-nonexistent evidence. Times columnist David Brooks, who initially grabbed a pitchfork in the anti-frat-boy charge, was offering mea culpas by the end of May, and in August the Times ran a 5,600-word front page reassessment of the case. The story was quickly shredded by angry bloggers and other writers crying foul over the Times' supposed bias against the students.
October brought further redemption for the defendants in the form of Ed Bradley's "60 Minutes" interview.
For a few hours yesterday, this was the top story on MSNBC.com: "Is Male Menopause Real?" A sidebar article to Newsweek's comprehensive cover package on menopause, this was the one that went through the roof (it's still number-one at Newsweek.com). We can't say exactly what that means (only women are reading about menopause, but women and men are reading about male menopause, perhaps?), but we found it interesting. In any case, the menopause package is a really thorough and comprehensive look at the subject, excerpted from the new book by senior editor Barbara Kantrowitz and correspondent Pat Wingert called Is It Hot In Here? Or Is It Me? (by the way, science still doesn't know what causes hot flashes). Top editor Jon Meacham writes of the backstory to the cover package in his editor's letter and, to his credit, totally restrains himself from bringing it all back to the unclean tent (Genesis 31:35). Though, really, the whole Old Testament springs from the post-menopausal loins of Sarah, upon whom the Lord visited miracle-baby Isaac (with hubby Abraham); and come to think of it, arguably the current divide between Muslim nations and the West is the result of menopause since post-menopausal but pre-Isaac Sarah sent her handmaiden Hagar in to "lie down" with Abraham (Genesis 16) and later bore Ishmael, forefather to the prophet Muhammad. That, by the way, is an extremely abridged history, but the point is, menopause is important.
In other news, if it's a hot flash you want to chill try reading the cover story on Newsweek's European edition, "The Next Plague." With birds dropping dead out of the sky in Texas, it may not be a nuclear fireball that kills us, after all!
In an effort to beef up its presence in the online teen market, Hearst buys eCrush.com, a group of entertainment and social networking sites for teens. [MediaWeek]
And as well it should; according to a new study, more than half of teens between 12 and 17 use social networking sites. Girls in particular lead the charge in that age group, with 58% creating online profiles, while boys follow at 51%. [Info Week]
One of Europe's most restrictive TV marketing restrictions comes to an end in France; supermarkets, department stores and hypermarkets may now advertise freely on TV after the ban on ads expired in December, 2006. [NYT]
Philadelphia Newspapers begins more job cuts at its two papers, the Daily News and the Inquirer. This time, the layoffs include at least 34 advertising positions, 16 of them part-time. [E&P]
The Rosie/Trump media blitz drags on as O'Donnell accuses Trump of being "obsessed" with her. [AP]
from CNN.com
RadarOnline today has a Q&A with Glenn Beck, a self-proclaimed "recovering alcoholic rodeo clown with limited education, who's conservative" but also one of CNN's new rising stars on Headline News (where those seeking a nightly dose of evil can also find Nancy Grace). Beck, a controversial radio host who was hired last January and whose show debuted in May, was brought on in specifically as a countervailing conservative voice on CNN (though he stresses that he's not news, he's opinion, and Headline News isn't CNN per se). Whatever he is, his viewership incresed by 85% last month (116% in the all-important 25-54 demo), and is giving MSNBC's "Hardball" a run for its money in the 7pm timeslot.
He also created a controversy when he interviewed first-ever Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison , asking him to "prove to me that you are not working with our enemies," which was a charming welcome on par with that of Virgil Goode. Here's the Radar exchange, with interviewer John Cook:
RADAR: You¹re a Mormon. Explain to me the difference
between you asking Keith Ellison that question and me asking you to prove
you¹re not a polygamist.GLENN BECK: It was a poorly worded question, and if I could take anything
back I would take back the wording of that question.Because what the question really was is: Do you understand that there is a feeling among Americans when you are faced with a Muslim, especially a Muslim who is, in my view, soft on military action, that--okay, are you a part of the good Muslims or the bad Muslims?
Beck clarified by saying that he wasn't talking about Ellison personally here, but all muslims. His point: A few bad apples are spoiling the bunch, so how is he to know where Ellison stands unless Ellison proves it to him? (Not just tells him, proves it to him.) Here's his analogy: " If I were a Catholic, and I knew this priest for years, before I leave him with my 10-year-old son, I would at least want to say, You're one of the good priests, right?" (However in this analogy, the priest gets to go on his word).
Cook also presses Beck on his claim to have been "accepted" at and "studied" at Yale. Turns out that isn't quite the case: Beck was a "special student," took one introductory course and was never admitted for the purpose of obtaining a degree. According to Cook, Beck's bio says he "studied theology and philosophy for a semester at Yale," Beck andwered that he was "going for self-education" and had intended to stay for longer, which didn't really answer Cook's question, which was about the misrepresentation of his educational qualifications.
Nothing on how a hurricane could whip New York City into shape, however (presumably the interview occurred before that remark), but plenty of other interesting questions and answers in a remarkably frank exchange. Read the rest here.
Eric Boehlert
The Malkin-led Jamil Hussein press fiasco simply highlights the dramatic fall from grace warbloggers have suffered over the last 24 months. Following Memogate in late 2004, when warbloggers helped drive CBS's Dan Rather off the air for botching a report on Bush and the Texas Air National Guard, warbloggers, basking in the glow of mainstream media acclaim, had a real chance to grow the right-wing blogosphere into something influential and politically important. Instead, today it's...
