Good morning.
- An ego-driven primer on dealing with a slippery frontrunner
As Green Bay, Wisconsin history goes, it fell short of the iconic “Ice Bowl” in 1967 between the Packers and Dallas Cowboys. But MSNBC’s Chris Matthews-moderated “town hall” with Donald Trump in Green Bay last night (taped earlier in the day) was riveting as political theater and served as a possible primer on journalists dealing with Trump. It got tons of publicity for how Matthews pinned down a shaky, potentially politically destructive Trump position on penalizing women who get abortions, which the candidate later changed. (NBC) But its real lesson was methodological, in suggesting how reporters may have to shuck reflexive notions of even-tempered, fair-minded inquisition in dealing with Trump.Typically, Trump had started his day by steamrolling “Today” hosts Savannah Guthrie and Matt Lauer on the issue of whether a top aide manhandled a female reporter. (NBC) In Green Bay, Matthews simply wouldn’t let Trump commandeer the faux town hall. The very traits that can make Matthews exhausting and even a bit infuriating — snappish self-indulgence, tendency to cut-off guests in mid-answer, invoking history to exhibit instant intellectual disdain — were both the perfect antidote for Trump’s reflexive bloviating and a vehicle to confirm Trump’s seemingly tenuous, even incoherent understanding of many issues.
Nearly knee-to-knee on a university stage were two guys who think they’re usually the smartest in the room. And Matthews was, well, Matthews in his disbelieving, staccato interrogation of the campaign’s pacesetter. “How about the Middle East?…You don’t think we need NATO?…We don’t need Jordan, or the Saudis or the Emirates?…But you’re the only one who can cut a deal? And you’re willing to walk on these deals? How do you walk from NATO, the Middle East, North Asia, China, all these relations, just drop them all?!!”
At some points, Trump’s eyes suggested a certain insecurity, even mild fear; as if a bully was being bullied and was indeed a bit at sea. “This is your strategy in every case: we can walk,” boomed Matthews, repeating his theme that Trump’s basic answers to a raft of problems are grossly naive, even ludicrous, in always analogizing to business negotiations. “The bottom line is always that we walk.” Knock on wood that Trump didn’t do that with Matthews. The cable host, who on some nights now evinces a certain professional languor after plying his trade for so long, succeeded in revealing how there is so much less to Trump than meets the eyes of his many supporters. On this day at least, Trump confronted rhetorical hardball and lost.
- Susan Page’s relevant recollection
When it came to the Trump abortion flap yesterday, past proved prologue, as noted by USA TODAY’s Susan Page. She displayed how experience can sometimes count in connecting dots and reminding us that not everything before us is new and shiny, no matter the Internet’s penchant for hype. “Sound familiar?” she tweeted. “In 1988 debate with Dukakis, (George H.W) Bush said he ‘hadn’t sorted out’ whether women who had illegal abortions should go to jail.” (Page) “The next day, campaign chairman James Baker told reporters the elder Bush had sorted it out and decided the answer was no.” Meanwhile, as Trump continued to tortuously spin the dispute over his campaign manager manhandling a female reporter, conservative media was generally parroting his side. (Slate) Oh, former Bloomberg and Chicago Tribune political journalist Mark Silva did a nifty opus on “How the media lost control of campaign coverage.” (Huffington Post) - For whom a Bell tolls
Wendy Bell, a longtime anchor at the Hearst-owned ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh, was let go after a Facebook posting in which she offered this take on likely responsibility for a recent mass shooting: “They are young black men, likely teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They’ve grown up there. They know the police. They’ve been arrested. They’ve made the circuit and nothing has scared them enough. Now they are lost. Once you kill a neighbor’s three children, two nieces and her unborn grandson, there’s no coming back. There’s nothing nice to say about that.” (Adweek) The station general manager had previously apologized to viewers. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) - The Times throws the NFL for a loss
The New York Times made clear it won’t retract a story about the National Football League’s research into player concussions and its intimation of clear ties between the NFL and the tobacco industry. (POLITICO) On Monday, the NFL had demanded a retraction, called a front-page piece “false and defamatory” and hinted at the prospect of legal action. The latter is a pig in a poke. (Poynter) The newspaper’s Wednesday response to the league verges on the devastating. (POLITICO Media) It wipes the floor with the NFL claims and concludes with panache. It notes how the league’s letter asserted the tobacco industry was “perhaps the most odious industry in American history” but didn’t disclose that its law firm has represented Philip Morris. - A graphic worth 1,000 words
The Wall Street Journal succinctly showed the dramatic change in the black vote Hillary Clinton has taken in the states that have voted so far, compared to her 2008 primary race against Barack Obama. (@randyyeip) “Incredible graph,” tweeted Dartmouth’s Brendan Nyhan. (@BrendanNyhan) - Nate Silver explains our campaign mess
He offers a self-deprecating analysis that’s so long, it was apparently edited by steam shovel but is worth scrutiny. The conclusion: Trump’s candidacy was largely lacking in precedent and that’s screwed up everybody. Old-codger political reporters and new wave data crunchers have all stumbled, including Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. “Put another way,” he writes, after putting it many ways, “Trump has hacked the system and exposed the weaknesses in American political institutions. He’s uncovered profound flaws in the Republican Party. He’s demonstrated that third-rail issues like racism and nationalism can still be a potent political force. He’s exploited the media’s goodwill and taken advantage of the lack of trust the American public has in journalism. Trump may go away — he’s not yet assured of winning the GOP nomination, and he’ll be an underdog in November if he does — but the problems he’s exposed were years in the making, and they’ll take years to sort out.” (FiveThirtyEight) - You want great writing?
“The Mets don’t give a crap about their history,” declared a New York Daily News lede. Not exactly Hemingwayesque. But it does top a fairly funny tale about belated word that the team privately sold Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza’s jersey from the first game played post-9/11. The paper then suggests other things the team should hawk. Those include the then-manager’s “return ticket from L.A. in 2008 after the Mets fired the skipper in the middle of the night in hopes of messing with our deadlines” and “Hall of Famer Tom Glavine’s tooth which he lost in 2004 when his cab from LaGuardia slammed into the back of an SUV.” (Daily News) - The AP and the Nazis
“The Associated Press is fighting back claims that it cooperated with the Nazis and even ceded editorial control to Hitler’s regime in exchange for access.” (CNN Money) Historian Harriet Scharnberg makes that case in an academic journal, and they’re also broached by The Guardian. (The Guardian) A wire service spokesman denied collaboration with the Nazis. “An accurate characterization is that the AP and other foreign news organizations were subjected to intense pressure from the Nazi regime from the year of Hitler’s coming to power in 1932 until the AP’s expulsion from Germany in 1941,” he said. No surprise, this generated lots of attention worldwide, including in Israel. (Haaretz) - $2 million post-purchase discount
A federal bankruptcy court judge “approved a final purchase price of $49.8 million for the assets of bankrupt Santa Ana publishing company Freedom Communications,” owner of the Orange County Register and Riverside Press-Enterprise. “That’s $2 million less than Digital First, which owns the Los Angeles Daily News and other local daily papers, had been set to pay last week.” (The Los Angeles Times) It stems from “certain newly discovered facts” about Freedom’s business operations. Hmmm. Well, maybe the judge will throw in a decade of free Wi-Fi, too. And maybe a Mike Trout bobblehead with every digital subscription purchased by Angels fans. - Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin
Ronen Shapiro is now chief revenue officer at Genius. Previously, he was vice president of sales at VICE Media. (Wall Street Journal) | John McCormick is now editorial page editor at the Chicago Tribune. Previously, he was deputy editorial page editor there. (Chicago Tribune) | Mario Ruiz is now senior vice president of communications at Business Insider. Previously, he led his own public relations agency. (Email) | Job of the day: The San Francisco Chronicle is looking for an investigative reporter. Get your resumes in! (San Francisco Chronicle) | Send Ben your job moves: bmullin@poynter.org.
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