Good morning.
- Brain drain continues
Rob Barrett, who’d been Yahoo’s chief of media strategy and operation, has split as the Yahoo exodus resembles an executive suite version of the Syrian evacuation. (Re/code) OK, OK there are a lot fewer Yahoo departures. But a ton of talent is exiting despite embattled chief executive Marissa Mayer sweetening the pot with lucrative pay deals. (Re/code) There is a sense she’s at sea and what’s claimed as an abiding strategy isn’t really working. The talent drain has been underway for months. I asked Kara Swisher, a founder of Re/code and former longtime Wall Street Journal tech guru, to explain this to me. “Essentially, she had tried a turnaround that is not working for a variety of reasons, some secular, some her misguided strategy. With no clear wins in close to 4 years, people are getting tired and leaving.” You probably don’t know the name, but Barrett is an interactive media heavyweight and has had top positions at ABC, Time Inc. and The Los Angeles Times. He arrived at Yahoo in 2011 and early on headed its news and finance unit. One of the many newspaper or TV companies with lightweight digital executives could do worse than beckon him for at least a Hail Mary.
- Rezaian sentenced, which means…?
The Washington Post reporter convicted at a secret trial on bogus espionage charges has now been sentenced, though the Iranians didn’t specify publicly the duration of the sentence. They might still be hoping for a prisoner swap with the U.S. The conventional wisdom on when and how this would be resolved has been rather wrong for a year. And the speculations are surely not helped by factional dueling within the Iranian hierarchy. (Poynter)
- Trump’s latest lie
Give George Stephanopoulos credit for trying to confront Donald Trump over his crazy claim of “thousands and thousands” of Arabs in Jersey City, New Jersey cheering as the World Trade Center came down. He had Trump on the phone yesterday, asked about it and made clear that the cops say it never happened. Trump responded, “It did happen. I saw it.” At some point, the public’s and candidates’ bashing of the media perhaps should give away to some well deserved derision toward the astonishing ignorance of Americans who buy this unadulterated crap. (Media Matters)
- Fact-checking Trump (part 2)
Will any of this sink in with Trump’s many seemingly blind adherents? Probably not. On Sunday, he retweeted a graphic claiming that blacks were largely responsible for most killings of blacks and most killings of whites. Thank you, Washington Post, for quickly noting, “That is not true. According to data from the FBI, most whites are killed by whites, as most blacks are killed by blacks.” (The Washington Post) Meanwhile, news media officials will meet Monday to ponder Trump’s ongoing restrictions on access to his campaign. (The Washington Post) You might wonder why there’s any concern about losing access to getting lied to. But that’s very much a Washington craving.
- Medieval reality show
The Washington Post did a nice job talking to more than a dozen ISIS defectors about their knowledge of “the most potent propaganda machine ever assembled by a terrorist group. What they described resembles a medieval reality show. Camera crews fan out across the caliphate every day, their ubiquitous presence distorting the events they purportedly document. Battle scenes and public beheadings are so scripted and staged that fighters and executioners often perform multiple takes and read their lines from cue cards.” There’s no sympathy in this analysis for the State Department, which contends ISIS’s positive social media impact is exaggerated and its anti-ISIS impact understated, as the Post concludes, “The United States and its allies have found no meaningful answer to this propaganda avalanche.” (The Washington Post)
- You’re so vain, you probably thought that song was about you, right?
A scoop for People magazine as Carly Simon confirms to whom she alluded in at least one verse of “You’re So Vain.” I assume that few of the winners at (or viewers of) last night’s American Music Awards on ABC (you missed Jennifer Lopez’s revealing outfits and Sam Hunt winning new musician of the year?!!) have heard of Carly Simon. But an older generation will recall these dandy lines: “You had me several years ago when I was still quite naive / Well you said that we made such a pretty pair / And that you would never leave / But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me.” The guy was a legendary Lothario, Warren Beatty, Simon now confirms. Who were the others? (The Los Angeles Times)
- Buckeyes, don’t totally fret, says Nate Silver
There was a large cadre of journalists who felt compelled to tweet as soon as Michigan State upset Ohio State on Saturday, as if the world really cares much about about their take on the game. More interesting was Silver with his quickie, statistics-driven claim as to how Ohio State could still somehow survive the upset and make it to the national championship playoffs. “How’s OSU still make it? 1) Beat UM, MSU loses to PSU, beat Iowa. 2) Crush UM to finish 11-1 & impress committee, hope for chaos elsewhere.” (@NateSilver538)
- David Frum an Agent of ISIS?!
The conservative commentator concedes he slightly screwed up with this tweet: “We must accept these peace-loving refugees from ISIS or else they will get very angry and try to kill us.” A Toronto Globe and Mail columnist called him on it, chiding him in “David Frum: Unpaid Intern of The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.” (Globe and Mail) She called it the worst joke ever. Frum concedes error. “I must hold myself somewhat to blame. My tweet attempted to satirize a threat often heard from migration advocates: a threat that the West will face even more Islamic terrorism tomorrow if it does not rapidly admit huge numbers of Middle Eastern refugees today.” It obviously didn’t work as he hoped. (The Atlantic)
- Smuggling in news from Raqqa
New Yorker Editor David Remnick sat down in a New York bar Saturday night with members of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (R.B.S.S), “a kind of underground journalistic-activist enterprise that, under the threat of grisly execution, smuggles images and reports on ISIS from Raqqa to its allies abroad.” Along with details of ISIS horrors, they also noted this interesting parenthetical: “The R.B.S.S. members said the American fighter planes have dropped most of their bombs on targets on the outskirts of the city or they use drones to target leaders of ISIS. They claim that Russian planes, however, have hit a hospital, two critical bridges, and a university. ‘The problem we have with the air strikes,’ one said, ‘is that their planes are very stupid. They’re not smart bombs.'” (The New Yorker) They also underscore the persecution of women, a theme echoed by The New York Times in tracking down former female ISIS members who escaped to Turkey. (The New York Times)
- Wenner Media layoffs
So let’s take a day off from detailing the latest newspaper downsizing and note the latest magazine industry downsizing, at problem-plagued Wenner Media, where flagship Rolling Stone likely will be drowning in legal bills defending its University of Virginia rape story debacle. (POLITICO Media)
- Internet tycoon set to buy paper
First there was Jeff Bezos grabbing the The Washington Post. Now Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s founder Jack Ma is on the verge of buying Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. It’s the city’s top broadsheet that was largely sold in 1993 by Rupert Murdoch to Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok. (Bloomberg) If you haven’t followed Ma, who’s said to be worth $25 billion, “He grew up poor in communist China, failed his college entrance exam twice, and was rejected from dozens of jobs, including one at KFC, before finding success with his third internet company, Alibaba.” (Business Insider) Meanwhile, Murdoch’s Dow Jones is taking a minority stake in l’Opinion, a leading French business publisher founded by journalist Nicolas Beytout. This is said to help both l’Opinion and The Wall Street Journal market digital subscriptions. (Morningstar)
- Sticking it to a digital matchmaker
Sean Rad, founder of Tinder, whose parent Match Group just went public, has a big mouth. But he’s brought down several pegs in an open letter from Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales, who calls him on baloney claims of Tinder’s size and in disparaging Sales’ own integrity. (Vanity Fair) He might consider a bit more rhetorical discipline now that he’s part of a publicly held entity.
- Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin
Jeremy Barr will be a digital media reporter at Ad Age. He is an assistant editor at POLITICO Media. (@jeremymbarr) | Melissa Varner is now news director for WCSC in Charleston, South Carolina. Previously, she was assistant news director there. (Rick Gevers) | Brendan Monaghan is now publisher of Condé Nast Traveler. Previously, he was publisher of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. (Email) | Job of the day: The Dallas Morning News is looking for a director of photography. Get your resumes in (Journalism Jobs) | Send Ben your job moves: bmullin@poynter.org.
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