David Carr writes an interesting article on Fox News’ PR tactics, inspired by Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade attack on New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe that featured doctored photos. Carr:
At Fox News, media relations is a kind of rolling opposition research operation intended to keep reporters in line by feeding and sometimes maiming them. Shooting the occasional messenger is baked right into the process.
As crude as that sounds, it works. By blacklisting reporters it does not like, planting stories with friendlies at every turn, Fox News has been living a life beyond consequence for years.
Its interesting but one wonders, why don’t the people Fox is going after fight back? Why not stand up for yourselves?
The oddly moving, and very much amusing, Garfield minus Garfield, got written up in the Times today:
Mr. Walsh does nothing to the panels except strip away Garfield and other characters — like Odie the dog and Nermal the kitten — to create a new, even lonelier atmosphere for Jon Arbuckle, the main human. Without the cutesy thought-bubbles of his lasagna-loving cat, Jon’s observations seem to teeter between existential crisis and deep despair.
Props to Garfield creator Jim Davis for being a good sport about it:
Jim Davis, the cartoonist who created “Garfield,” calls himself an occasional reader of the site, which he calls “fascinating.” He says he is flattered rather than peeved by the imitation.
“Some of them really work, and some of them work better,” Mr. Davis said in a telephone interview.
It is a bit odd though that the Times, in writing about this site, neglect to actually, you know, link to it.
Four words you don’t want to hear in space: “The toilet is broken.”
– NY Times article on the International Space Station’s toilet problems. via
xkcd got a write-up in the NY Times:
The Internet has also created a bond between Mr. Munroe and his readers that is exceptional. They re-enact in real life the odd ideas he puts forward in his strip. A case in point was the strip called “Dream Girl.” It recounted a dream in which a girl (stick figure with flowing hair) recites a bunch of numbers into the narrator’s ear.
“The xkcd person is the kind of person who would take that and run with it,” he said. The numbers were coordinates and a date months in the future.
The strip’s narrator says he went there and no one came. “It turns out that wanting something doesn’t make it real,” the strip concludes.
But on that day in real life, hundreds of fans met in a park in Cambridge.
And then they all ordered sandwiches.
I think the author over-simplifies xkcd’s audience as mostly tech or IT people when its really probably broader then that. Young, internet-savvy people with little to no programming skills can and do love the strip, myself among them.
via
The NY Times issues two corrections for Kristol’s latest column and two for David Brooks as well. I have a feeling that this pattern will only continue: Kristol writes dumb/unoriginal/wrong column, NY Times issues a correction a few days later. via
Thank you New York Times for continuing to bring us Bill Kristol’s column on a weekly basis. In this week’s column Kristol writes:
On Tuesday night, while the G.O.P. Congressional candidate was losing in a Mississippi district George Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points, Barack Obama was being trounced in the West Virginia Democratic primary — by 41 points. I can’t find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party’s nominee losing a primary by this kind of margin.
This would be somewhat interesting….if it were even remotely accurate. As Steve Benen points out:
John McCain, for example, won the Republican nomination this year after losing Kansas by 36 points, Arkansas by 40 points, Colorado by 42 points, and Utah by 83 points. I
Exactly how hard was Kristol looking? And where were the Times’ fact-checkers or editors? How does something this stupid make it on to one of the most valuable pieces of newspaper real estate? Seriously, how?
Think Progress points out that this is Kristol’s third “strike”. Unfortunately for readers of the Times, that doesn’t seem to matter to Kristol’s bosses.
Delightful destruction of the awful Maureen Dowd.
The military contracting business is quite depressing at times. To wit: AEY Inc., a company run out of a Miami beach office and headed by a 22-year-old, got a $300 million contract to become the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces. How’d that work out?
Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.
Many more infuriating details in the linked article, including ammunition made in China…in 1966.
Wow, that Bill Kristol hiring is really working out for the NY Times. Marc Ambinder points out that Kristol makes a rather significant factual area in Kristol’s column today regarding Senator Obama and his attendance at a church service during which Rev. Wright made some controversial remarks. Kristol, apparently getting his material from Newsmax of all places, says Obama was in the church that day. This, of course, is not true as Ambinder explains.
As of 11 am Eastern the Times had yet to make a correction on the online version of Kristol’s piece. It’s super awesome that the Times has decided, through Kristol, to bring the kind of trash usually found on Powerline or Malkin’s site to a wider audience.