from cathyseipp.journalspace.com
The irascible, opinionated, prolific and uncompromising Cathy Seipp is very ill in LA, and we at ETP send our thoughts and prayers her way.
Related:
Cathy's World [Cathy Seipp]
It's Cathy's World — We Just Blog in It [NPR]
from MSNBC
It was Saturday morning, we were idly watching MSNBC, and at first we just sort of found the commercial below amusing. Then we realized that, while Microsoft was explaining to us why its CRM system was flawless and wonderful and somehow thinking we wouldn't notice that they were trying to pass off danishes and cheese buns as blintzes, we were reading about how Sinbad wasn't really dead and about some trucker convicted of murder at the bottom of the screen. The crawl was still on! Weird. And weirdly fascinating. We followed the trucker story into the next commercial, which featured Lance Armstrong running, all intense and breathy and sweaty. We would have enjoyed it had the crawl not informed us that the trucker, Wayne Ford, had been arrested in 1998 when he'd walked into a police station holding a severed breast. He was convicted of the murder of four women. Mmm, blintzes are delicious! Watch it here:
So what was the deal? Was that an accident or did they intentionally marry Microsoft with news of the grody and horrific? Well, both: "We started running the crawl during commercials last week," confirmed MSNBC spokesperson Leslie Schwartz, who said they were "trying it out." Both Schwartz and her colleague, MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines, declined to comment further on the reason behind the initiative (since it's new), though Schwartz confirmed that it was the regular newscrawl, unedited as it scrolled into commercial (which means that Microsoft and Lance Armstrong came by their association with Wayne Ford by chance — can you imagine, though, if that story had crawled during a commercial for the brand Ford? Synergies!).
Keeping the crawl on during commercials is an unusual move, but not unheard of — crawls have been used to that effect during times of big news/crisis, and at CNBC and Bloomberg, the tickers run straight through the commercials (and recently, networks have taken to running promos along the bottom of the screen while the action is going on — we're thinking of a promo for "The Closer" featuring Kyra Sedgwick and a distracting flashlight). In this case, MSNBC has hit on a formula that works for advertisers (keep viewers watching during the commercial, to see whether Sinbad is still alive or what the trucker did) but, unwittingly, on a pitfall of the system as well (what if the crawl underneath the Microsoft ad had been about how iPods sales were going through the roof?). Commercial time is expensive and advertisers have the right to be picky, but either way it's too soon to tell which way this crawl will crwumble. Yes, we know that makes no sense. But did you try the blintzes?
Check out what Jon Stewart once had to say about CNN's crawl to Wolf Blitzer after the jump! Yeah, we know what makes you click, tough guy.
www.sf-radio.net
from YouTube.com via IraqSlogger.com
ETP is pleased to bring you the first post from our Global Correspondent, Iñigo Saenz de Ugarte, who runs the terrific Guerra Eterna from the heart of Madrid, and Europe, if by "Europe" we mean "Spain, and places around Spain." His blog is in Spanish, but we have it on the highest authority that it's muy caliente! Ay, caramba!; but at any rate, when we correspond it is in English and it's always interesting to see how his perspective differs based on his varied and more globally-themed news diet (for example, his Newsweek is about Europe at 50; our Newsweek is about why you should go to the gym). Today Iñigo looks at the military's expanded presence on YouTube and how that might shape public perception of the war, now going into its fifth year.
Call it War 2.0. — the U.S. military has decided it cannot ignore what is happening on YouTube, and has surged into cyberspace with its own specially-produced video content. The online video world is not a bloody battlefield, but you leave it to your enemy at your own peril. They know how to take advantage of it.
Welcome to the new Multi-National Force - Iraq channel on YouTube, brought to you by the same guys who are vetting carefully what the enlisted men and women write in their blogs. There's always room in war for press conferences and guide visits for anchormen and politicians. But you don't win this one with Five o'clock Follies. Even Rumsfeld knew it.
The channel promises "an unfiltered vantage point," and promises only to edit for "time, security reasons, and/or overly disturbing or offensive images" — but if you are looking for a different face of war, something you didn't see on TV, take a rest. The main video shows the well-known pictures of American and Iraq soldiers shooting from a house in Ramadi (those were the pictures that had to prove how well they fight together without killing each other). Also, you have the chance of watching the usual 'green pictures'. Insurgents fire mortars near Baghdad and flee in a car (below). Minutes later, the story ends when a missile blows them to pieces. You see how quickly the insurgents get hit and you wonder: war is so easy, why is it not over yet?
(Ed. From an MNFIRAQ comment on the top video: "This video has been edited for time. The original clip was about 15 minutes long. If this were staged for video you would have seen a)Hostiles, and b) many more explosions. Apologies to anybody who thinks it was staged. It was not.")
The "combat action" and "interesting, eye-catching footage" MNFIRAQ promises to give us could be, like the surge itself, too little and too late. The user knows where to find the "overly graphic, disturbing or offensive material" --banned in this channel-- that defines the real side of this war, of any war in fact. Is there a way for war not to be disturbing?
Video is a terrific tool on the Internet... only if you are familiar with its rules. Like in network TV, everything depends on programming. As the presidential candidates are discovering, people like to find in these videos the unexpected, bizarre or funny side of reality, not the usual diet they receive from big media.
That's one of the reasons for the military blogs' success. It was a view of front line soldiers' work about which the audience was not aware. At first, the Army wasn't concerned or curious, and embraced them (soldiers know if the Army doesn't forbid something, that's all you need. Don't expect an official green light, because you will never see it). The party was over when soldiers realized a small unit in Virgina was checking those blogs, just in case the bad guys were scanning them for intel ("Loose lips sink ships"). When new policies on these "milblogs" (military blogs) were established &mdash including being "reviewed for security concerns and approved in accordance with Deputy Secretary of Defense Memorandum web site policies and procedures" — many of this online warriors decided to close the shop.
The sword is definitely stronger than the post, but its fight against video is going to be much harder. Will the new MNFIRAQ channel on YouTube keep surging, or will it be another undermanned weapon thrown to the battle?
US Dominates New Front in Iraq War: YouTube [IraqSlogger]
MNF-IRAQ [YouTube]
Newsbusters.org
Editor & Publisher has a report on the state of the media on this fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq - and, like most of the news honoring the landmark date, it isn't good. Newspapers that have been covering the war firsthand since the beginning say the pool of reporters willing and able to go to Iraq is dwindling, budget constraints were and continue to be a problem (no surprise, given the recent report on the short-changing of Iraq freelancers), and the dangers for foreign correspondents continue to escalate. New York Times foreign editor Susan Chira notes that the safety factor for reporters is the worst it's ever been, while LA Times foreign editor Marjorie Miller says that 25% of her paper's foreign budget has gone to Iraq reporting, with at least 40 reporters doing rotations in Iraq and still more needing to be hired when their predecessors burn out. Meanwhile McClatchy, which took over Knight Ridder's Baghdad bureau after last year's sale, has lost much of its Baghdad local staff, made up of Iraqi citizens who've been forced to flee the country, according to managing editor/international Mark Seibel.
Over at the AP, we have more accounts of reporters seeing things go from bad to worse, with a piece on NBC and ABC Iraq correspondents Richard Engel and Terry McCarthy, both of whom have been covering the war since the beginning. This week their respective networks will be showcasing their work, which has included dodging bullets and escaping carjackings while trying to hold onto a personal life at home. While the AP delves into the threats both men have faced during their four-year stint, most telling is Engel's money quote: "Sometimes, what's most frightening is the down time, when you think, 'It's been four years now; how often can you press your luck?'" Sounds like our senior military is starting to wonder the same thing.
MySpace.com
The New York Times reports that MySpace is launching the Impact channel, an online "town square" containing links to the MySpace pages of the 2008 presidential candidates, which will contain campaign blogs, personal videos and snapshots and link to concurrent sites discussing pet issues. The goal, of course, is viral use of the country's most popular means of online networking to reach a reported 60 million potential voters, including plenty of the "traditionally elusive and apathetic youth demographic" (though just how many is debatable, given that only 30% of MySpace users are under 25).
Still, it's a logical move based on an already well-tested principle - as the Times notes, Howard Dean was all over the online campaigning trend in 2003, shattering online campaign contribution records, offering the first campaign blog and laying the groundwork for how to use the Internet to engage voters in the political process. Meanwhile, John Kerry also tapped into the burgeoning social networking craze during his 2004 run, creating hip and well-publicized personal profiles on sites like Friendster, Tribe and Ryze (which were gaining popularity until MySpace swallowed them whole). On Friendster, in particular, he attracted over two thousand friends, and was able to successfully (in a short-term sense, at least) get the "Regular Guy" message across to younger voters through professing his love for Springsteen and Hostess cupcakes and posting sporty action shots (Look! He windsurfs!). While the online campaigning didn't spell victories in 2004, it did illustrate how useful a tool the web could be in attracting and immersing voters in your "personal" message, a trend that's only gotten bigger this time around. So 2008 candidates, start your profiles! We'll be waiting to see who's the first to be friends with Tila Tequila.
Wow — The Simpsons writers really aren't fans of Fox News; that is to say, they are huge fans of Fox News for mocking repeatedly on the show. This was posted to YouTube last week and could easily have been based on the kerfuffle in Nevada wherein the Nevada Democratic Party pulled out of the Fox-hosted candidates debate.* The Simpsons writers imagined what such a debate might look like, to rather hilarious (and extreme, but not always so extreme) effect. A little more YouTube digging revealed The Simpsons's version of how and why Fox News came into existence
(now, now, Bart, don't blame yourself) and an especially-funny clip which has the added bonus of being in German (we think). There's also an extenda- sequence mocking The O.C. but that's just mocking regular Fox. Over at blog Welcome To Pottersville, blogger 'JurassicPork' pulls together an impressive collection of Fox News screengrabs suggesting that they may, er, tilt in a certain direction. Worth the browse.
*It could have been, as we had originally surmised, but it wasn't, as a helpful Simpsons-watching tipster quickly informed us. Apparently it's from 2003 and an episode called "Mr. Spritz Goes To Washington." ETP regrets the error, and whatever else we spent 2003 doing.
from galleycat.com
Radar reports today that a settlement talks between News Corp, which owns HarperCollins, and its ousted schlock publisher Judith Regan have broken down, after very nearly coming to an agreement. Here's the meat of it, according to Radar's Jeff Bercovici:
Earlier this year, according to sources, the two parties reached a tentative agreement in principle, whereby Regan would forego a suit and avoid disparaging her former employers in exchange for around $6 million. (According to one source, News Corp. wanted to space the payments out over time to keep Regan on a leash.)But the deal fell apart nearly three weeks ago for reasons that are unclear. The source close to Regan said one sticking point was control over books in development at Regan Books, which has been temporarily renamed HC.
Regan was ousted last December after the spectacular failure of her doubly-packaged O.J. Simpson memoir, "If I Did It," which was to have been published in tandem with a special two-hour interview of Simpson on Fox, conducted by Regan. Lawsuits were heavily anticipated after Regan hired L.A. pitbull defense attorney Bert Fields (presumably for a breach of contract action, as well as a possible defamation suit after word leaked from HaperCollins that Regan's dismissal also stemmed from alleged anti-Semitic comments). According to Radar, a News Corp. spokesperson declined to comment and Fields did not respond to a query.
Regan-News Corp. Talks Tank [Radar]
Related on ETP:
Big Camel, Many Straws In Regan Firing
Regan-Gate Continued: Bring On The Lawsuits!
That Regan Woman! The Round-Up
swarthmore.edu
It's been two weeks since the New York Times' March 7 retraction admitting that former staff investigative journalist Kurt Eichenwald supplied the subject of his much-lauded piece on child pornography with a check for $2,000, and the fallout is still unfolding. Gas on the fire was provided two days later by the reporter's strident (to put it mildly) letter in Romenesko, which included heavy indictments of the media industry with statements like, "It is now abundantly clear to me why our profession has such an ungodly reputation among the public." Eichenwald also had scathing words for reporter Debbie Nathan, discounting her as a "'journalist' who has publicly stated she engaged in 'libel per se' against me in the past, and who has been nursing a deep and public anger against me following a ugly confrontation in the fall." The confrontation he references took place in August of 2006, when Nathan wrote a piece for Salon titled, "Why I Need to See Child Porn." The editorial argued that researchers and journalists should have the right to legally view child pornography in order to draw conclusions about it, using Eichenwald's piece as an example of a reporter viewing illegal websites in order to report on them. The Times scribe immediately responded with threats of lawsuits, leading Salon editor Joan Walsh to pull the piece entirely and run a correction stating it was "inaccurate" that journalists and other researchers have "no protection from prosecution if they viewed visual depictions of child pornography."
Skip to several months later, when Nathan covered Eichenwald's testimony in a Michigan child-porn prosecution, during which he mentioned the $2,000 check. Writing (albeit harshly) about his court appearance in New York Magazine, she said, "he knew the payment was 'a little bizarre,' and that in issuing it, he'd 'gone off the deep end.'" Eichenwald's subsequent denunciation of her quotes (not to mention the reported filing of a $10 million lawsuit against her) prompted plenty of angry responses in Nathan's defense, just as the letter won him little love from the media community. Arkansas Democrat Gazette reporter Cathy Frye even called out yet-unaddressed inconsistencies in his March 9 letter versus his Dec. 19, 2005 Times reporter's essay, noting that, "Per his letter to Romenesko, he acted as a 'private citizen.' Per his essay, however, it sure sounds as though he thought and acted as a reporter from the beginning. So which is it?"
Also hanging in the air has been the question: What does Eichenwald's current (and decidedly high profile) employer think of the scandal? Last year he was among the heavy list of talent acquisitions for Portfolio, Conde Nast's reported $100 million project which is due to release its first issue next month. Today, Jon Friedman quotes the litigious journalist as saying the magazine "fully supports him," while a Conde Nast spokeswoman backed him publicly in an earlier Friedman column - pointing to the conclusion that, for now anyway, the magazine is standing behind its writer despite the scandal. Good news for Eichenwald, particularly since, assuming the suit against Nathan is filed (as of March 14th it hadn't been), he'll have more than a little to pony up in legal fees.
from YouTube.com
Worth elaborating on: We mentioned the grassroots Hillary video in today's Need To Know, about the unauthorized campaign ad for Barack Obama depicting Hillary as Big Brother in a powerful, powerful spot that inserts Hillary into Ridley Scott's famous Apple Ad from the 1984 Superbowl, announcing the Macintosh computer (see the original here). This version uses a clip of Hillary from her announcement video, synthing the voice and adding a garish electro-cast to the video. The result is unbelievably powerful, and then delivers the sucker punch — lest you miss the point — with a bright and individualized runner bursting in and huling a sledgehammer at Hillary's omniscient image, shattering it in a burst of light, and then this message:
On Jan. 14, the Democratic primary will begin. And you'll see why 2008 won't be like 1984.
And then the Apple symbol comes onscreen, reconfigured as an "O," followed by "BarackObama.com." And no one even had to pay for airtime!
This is powerful evidence (as if you needed any more, Macaca) that YouTube is a huge game-changer in political campaigns. The San Francisco Chronicle, tongue firmly in cheek, calls it a "brave new world in which passionate activists outside the structure of traditional campaigns have the power to shape the message." It quotes an influential Democratic advocacy group head Simon Rosenberg, with an interesting observation: "It will no longer be a top-down candidate message; that's a 20th century broadcast model."
He also notes that grassroots advocates "don't have to wait for permission" to engage the process — which means every candidate has reason to fear citizens with an iMac and an excess of political fervor — and time — on their hands. Even more meta, candidates are engaging right back: Witness the example of college kid James Kotecki, whose own videos critiquing the online presence of candidate are themselves getting impressive play. Not only that, they're taking his advice: Dennis Kuchinich posted a video in response (in a close-up, as per Kotecki's suggestion), the Edwards campaign has contacted him, and the Romeny campaign glowed pink with pleasure after receiving half a "YouTube Savvy" award. Kotecki is 21, but the candidates are listening.
And so are the voters: So far, this version of the Hillary vid has had 333,004 views; two others have each had 20,610 and 88,105 respectively. Brave New World, indeed. Barack Obama had better hope that people stay in love with him.
Hillary 1984 [YouTube]
Political video smackdown [SFChron]
Candidates Try Web Video, And Reviews Are Mixed [WaPo]
