from Yentl! Yeah, Yentl. Papa, watch me fly!
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rachelmarsden.com
Fox News contributor Rachel Marsden — uber-right wing pundit in the grand style of Ann Coulter — is the subject of a thorough and minutely-researched takedown by Salon's Rebecca Traister. Marsden, who started out as the "Canadian Correspondent" for the O'Reilly Factor (a title that, we must admit, elicits chuckles even from us, a fellow Canadian), is a nightly contributor at Fox 's late, late "bawdy gabfest" Red Eye where she has quickly become known for her in-your-face, right-wing invective (she's been known to refer to the House Speaker as "President Pelosivic" and does not exactly evince a loving attitude toward liberals).* Marsden's hotheaded cable stylings aren't exactly what one might expect from a Canadian, though they are what one might find on the Fox Network, and Traister speculates that Marsden is being groomed by the network for "brand-name pundit stardom" (RedEye's producer, Shelley Stevenson, confirmed the being-groomed hypothesis to Traister).
But is Fox in over its head? According to Traister's piece, Marsden has arrived at her new position with a whole lot of baggage - none of which has been disclosed by the network, who may or may not have been fully aware of it upon hiring her. During a discussion on last week's show regarding the Duke rape case, Marsden demurred regarding whether charges should be pressed against the accuser ( "Charges are laid, charges are dropped...It happens all the time. Unless she can get charged with mischief and they can prove she lied, then no, [she shouldn't be punished]. That's the process and the process works"). Turns out Marsden knows from which she speaks: Traister reveals that she is an "oft-accused and once-admitted stalker who made questionable rape charges of her own 10 years ago." All the tawdry details — of which there are many — are in the piece, but the short version is that Marsden's accusations of sexual harassment from a professor at Canada's Simon Fraser University resulted in him being fired, and then re-hired when her credibility was called into question. Marsden was in the center of a scandal that tapped into ideological wars at the time, and the mobilization of various feminist and social-justice groups in her favor added to the swirling attention around the case as it was built up - and deflated. Subsequent to all of this, Traister documents a number of other episodes in which Marsden was accused/accused someone of stalking/inappropriate behaviour; in one case she pleaded guilty to criminal harassment charges. It is a colorful backstory, to say the least.
So: Is this lack of disclosure a reflection on Marsden (who makes no reference to her past entanglements with the law on her website bio), or on the network which hired her? Or perhaps on the state of the news establishment in general? Traister points out that Marsden's quick ascension through the Fox ranks is testament to the fact that someone at Fox "really wanted" her, and that it may even be that, along with the addition of Marsden to the right-wing's ever-increasing "army of attractive fire-starters" the network may actually be banking on her controversial past to generate "scandalous coverage" and "secure her a nightly perch" (not an altogether shocking conclusion, all things considered). Traister reveals that Stevenson was unaware of the extent of Marsden's past behaviour but came out in favor of second chances and benefits of the doubt, and notes that she has been nothing but professional thus far.
Marsden would not speak to Traister for this piece, and Traister notes that her past is not exactly a secret ("Nexis her name, there are hundreds of articles") and her behavior pretty much invites this level of examination ("When you make it clear that you are dying to be noticed and now make a living attacking the kinds of ideological groups and institutions that were once your defenders: Well, that's downright impossible to ignore").
As for what it all means, we'll leave the last word to Traister:
[W]hatever prompted Fox's willingness, or eagerness, to take a chance on her -- for her brains, or her legs, or perhaps even for the scandalous coverage they knew perfectly well she would eventually generate -- speaks to the kind of shifts in political coverage that these post-Coulter years have brought.
Fox's Ann Coulter 2.0 [Salon]
*Disclosure: Rachel Sklar, another fellow Canadian, has also appearedon RedEye. No Canadian conspiracy, we promise.
Via Jossip, vid from the RTCA dinner that isn't Karl Rove busting a move. Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood are terrific and Brian Williams and Cheryl Gould are great as well (Williams is hilarious, but that's not exactly breaking news). Worth the watch. Notable for a subtle joke, as well: When the comics asked for ssuggestions from the audience as to "dangerous" professions, someone suggested "lawyer." For this White House, indeed. Also notable at about 4:07: Laura Bush not even cracking a smile. Oh, relax, this is a far cry from Stephen Colbert.
Courtesy of Seventeen
It's been a little under two months since Ann Shoket was named the new editor of Seventeen, ending speculation over who would fill the spot following the highly-publicized departure of Atoosa Rubinstein. The 34-year-old Shoket wasn't exactly a shocking choice, given her background: A former senior editor at teen news magazine React, she'd spent the last seven-and-a-half years as a staff member and then as executive editor of CosmoGirl, developing a laundry list of the mag's most popular features (including teen leadership campaign Project 2024 and an interview with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to name a few) and overseeing its rise from a startup to a 1.4 million-circulation title. A self-proclaimed Internet addict and tech geek, she's also demonstrated her chops on the Web, founding pioneer New York City web guide GoldenNYC.com (later renamed TagMag) in 1996 and serving as editorial director of Cosmogirl.com in 2000, during which time the site's page views doubled. Editorial-wise, Shoket hasn't been afraid to challenge convention in the often-rigid formula of women's magazines; under her watch, CosmoGirl became one of the first mainstream titles to include editorial content for lesbian and bisexual teens.
After a few extended rounds of emails with Hearst PR flaks, we managed to nab the closely-guarded but surprisingly-down-to-earth Shoket for an interview. Easygoing and cheerful despite the pre-coffee hour on a Monday morning, she spoke with us about teenage life, body issues, conquering still greater Internet territory and the joys of retail therapy.
You have a pretty extensive background in dot-coms and tech, including online video games. We'll admit, we didn't know what Zork was until we read your quote in 2000 about it.
That GirlGeek of the Week article that comes up as the first article when you Google me? That was from 1998, 1999 something like that. That article will never go away. It's gone with me forever. And the Zork comment, someone said something to me about it and I was like "What?" It was third grade or something that I was talking about. That was the very first time we'd all gathered around the Commodore 64 in the library in elementary school to play a game. There were no graphics. The funniest thing about the Internet is that you say something once and it goes with you forever and ever and ever.
We've heard about the website expansion, including the Editor's Assistant game, where readers get to simulate being your assistant. How important is beefing up your Internet presence?
The relaunch of the website happened last week, and we are still slowly rolling out pieces of it. It was a relaunch that was in the works before I got here, but obviously I worked on the relaunch of CosmoGirl before I got here, and Seventeen and CosmoGirl relaunched at the same time. I mean, I think that what is exciting is that Hearst is really putting a lot of effort and energy and resources behind the Internet, making these really rich media properties online, I think we were first of all the websites at Hearst to launch. 
And the web is such an important thing in particular for our audience. This generation of girls is fearless when it comes to technology and the Internet. I mean, I think there was never a time when these girls did not have the Internet. When you think about when we first started to use - I'm going to date myself again - but when we first accessed the Internet with a non-graphic browser that was connected through an outlet. What was that, twelve years ago, more maybe? But my audience, my girls are maybe fifteen or sixteen, so by the time they were three years old, they had the Internet. And so it's such an important piece of the puzzle now, for us to have a really strong online presence and to use the power of the Internet to its best ability, its best purpose. I mean, like, how do you make it interactive - I mean like deeply and profoundly interactive, so that you really can squeeze your brand into the reader's life?
The future of newspapers is...a lot of talk: At a breakfast yesterday regarding, you guessed it, the future of newspapers, Dean Baquet, looking a lot like "the next executive editor of the New York Times" expressed both caution and optimism about the industry's future, "If I were a multibillionaire, I'd [buy] the Tribune Co. right now." [FishbowlNY] Meanwhile, Jon Friedman says Baquet has become print journalism's "reigning shining star" radiating "optimism and a can-do spirit". [Marketwatch via Romenesko] And Ken Auletta remembers what he couldn't do. [Gawker]
Courtesy of Newsweek
At the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference yesterday, Washington Post Co. chair Don Graham held up the current issue of Newsweek titled "Voices of the Fallen" featuring the words of troops killed in Iraq — their letters, journals and emails sent to wives, sons, daughters, siblings, parents, sweethearts, friends. Said Graham: "I'm holding what I think might be the best issue of Newsweek in the 75 years of the magazine." Four years into the Iraq war, with more American dead now than perished on September 11th and no end to the violence in sight, with "Support our Troops" bumper stickers across the country and new presidential candidates debating how and when to get the hell out, the issue is timely and urgent, the stories every bit as heartbreaking, and even more so in multiple, increasing daily.
So where's the pickup? Technorati shows 76 links to the story — barely a blip, especially after almost a week in. Meanwhile, the blogs that did pick it up are hardly big shakers — this one has one inbound link, as does this one, by a woman whose nephew had a poem in the issue. He was killed in Iraq this past summer. This one's got nine, this one's got 25. There's no Little Green Footballs, no Instapundit, no Atrios, no Malkin, no Daily Kos, no ThinkProgress, no Crooks & Liars, no Captain's Quarters, no Power Line, and, yes, no Huffington Post (though the package hit #1 on MSNBC.com, which meant it showed up on ETP via the "Top Stories" widget to the left). All of these blogs have spent plenty of bandwidth arguing for and against the Iraq war, debating what the best move is for the country and for the troops. Bring them home, say some. Honor them and their mission, say others. They don't agree on much, but they do agree that the men and women serving in Iraq are important, and heroic, and should be respected and appreciated. Yet, they gave this issue a miss.
Is it Iraq fatigue? Is it the absence of a political slant either way? (Noted by a family member in editor Jon Meachem's editor's letter as well as on a few blogs). Is it just that it's too real, too heartbreaking? (I defy anyone to get through this issue — hell, through the introduction — without choking up. But if you think you're tough you can skip straight through to the collection of "If You're Reading This" letters written by soldiers to be sent in the event of death which, needless to say, were mailed. For an extra dose of reality, Newsweek.com includes PDFs of the actual letter so you can read it in the soldier's own handwriting; above is a screenshot of the first page of the letter from Pfc. Jesse A. Givens. The handwriting on the cover is that of Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Travis L. Youngblood, who died on July 21, 2005, at age 26.
The amount of work that would have had to have gone into an issue like this is significant, with the extra time required to do justice to the material, and to work with surviving family members, also adding to it (there is no calling for a quick quote here). The West Hartford blog calls it "a gift from Newsweek to America...it leaves an unmistakable impression that we've lost far too much." (Never mind that this issue is just about those who have died — still thousands more live, with horrible injuries and, we now know, horrible care.) Newsweek deserves praise for putting this together, and we're glad we were on hand to have Don Graham draw it to our attention. Perhaps eventually the blogosphere will catch on.
The War in the Words of the Dead [Newsweek]
"If You're Reading This..." U.S. Troops Last Letters From Iraq [Newsweek]
A Soldier's Journey: Stephen M. McGowan (Unedited Email Excerpts) [Newsweek]
He's not a troop, he's my little brother [JustDreadful.com]
You just never know [Life As Laura]
"Long Overdue" [Buttermilk & Molasses]
Technorati: "Voices of the Fallen" [Technorati]
