THEY GET LETTERS: Boston Globe editor Marty Baron writes The New York Times, taking issue with David Carr‘s recent column about media owners. The New York Times Company owns The Boston Globe. “Local and regional newspapers may have lost revenue,” Baron writes, “but they haven’t lost relevance.”
Why’d Baron write publicly instead of back-channeling his thoughts to Carr? “I wrote it because his column was published for all to see, and I wanted my response to be visible to others as well,” Baron told me in an email to me. “Writing him or his editor would not have accomplished that. In fact, it would have accomplished nothing at all.”
MORE LETTERS: Times science reporter Donald G. McNeil sent an email at the end of March to colleagues complaining about publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who McNeil apparently feels is neglecting the company in favor of activities like trekking in the Himalayas with a management guru. The email ended up on Gawker Tuesday.
THEY GET FEEDS: The Washington Post sent a draft of a story with a big scoop in it to Bloomberg on Tuesday, Michael Calderone reports. Bloomberg employees began tweeting that the Post was reporting Rick Santorum was dropping out of the Republican race while the Post had nothing on its website. The paper was waiting for confirmation from Santorum; a Post spokesperson told Calderone “The draft was inadvertently sent to Bloomberg, with whom The Post has a partnership, through an automated feed.”
HE GOT EMAILS: Loop 21 reporter Wesley Lowery did a WHOIS search on George Zimmerman‘s fund-raising website and sent the administrator an email: “It was a shot in the dark,” Lowery writes. He corresponded with the admin, who said he was Zimmerman and that he had given an interview with Sean Hannity. While quitting their client, who shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin over a month ago, Zimmerman’s lawyers acknowledged the Hannity interview.
HE GOT TIPS: Brian Stelter shares a story of getting tips from Fox employees, who were upset about insecticide used at the network’s offices: “I was surprised that the employees were speaking up, since it was so rare to hear from Fox employees, even on an anonymous basis,” he writes. “I was even more surprised, a day or two later, when [Fox President Roger] Ailes addressed the newsroom about the spraying and about the leaks.”
THEY GOT A PROJECTION: A Media General regulatory filing “has provided Wall Street with a glimpse of what the company might look like financially if it didn’t have any newspaper operations,” Greg Gilligan reports. Gulp: Outlook is rosier. (Media General’s Tampa Tribune competes with the Poynter-owned Tampa Bay Times.)
DON LEMON WILL BE GETTING LETTERS: For saying journalists shouldn’t censor themselves when reporting on an ugly racial epithet.
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