Good morning.
- ‘Little Marco,’ ‘Lyin’ Ted,’ and ‘Big Don’ square off
No sooner had the Fox GOP debate ended than Bill O’Reilly buttonholed a besieged Donald Trump and asked the debate’s piñata why he inspired such tough questions. Trump replied by saying O’Reilly was becoming “very negative.” “Me? Why? Why would I do that?” O’Reilly responded. “You’ll have to ask your psychiatrist,” Trump fired back. “You get a little carried away with yourself.” (The Washington Post)Meanwhile, Fox moderators Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace and Bret Baier were valiant in their persistence. Their attempt to be rigorous and tough-minded even drew approving tweets from liberals like The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof. (@NickKristof) The seeming consensus among post-debate analysts: Trump was Trump, albeit far more defensive amid tough questioning, shots from rivals and his own (especially gratuitous) responses. Ted Cruz did better than Marco Rubio. And John Kasich did fine (“strangely energized by the weirdness of this contest,” said Bloomberg’s John Heilemann on MSNBC), if largely because he stayed outside the rhetorical pig pen erected by Trump, Rubio and Cruz. But his odds remain very long as “Little Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted” and “Big Don” call each other names. (Gawker)
Yes, the whole thing “deteriorated into the kind of junior high school taunts that have startled many Republican elders but have done little to dent Mr. Trump’s broad appeal.” (The New York Times) There was some good and quick fact-checking — if only facts mattered in this campaign season. (The Washington Post) Ultimately, it was a presidential debate in which a frontrunner actually alluded to the size of his penis. (The Atlantic) On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning, Willie Geist called it “a literal…measuring contest on the debate stage.” Conceded Joe Scarborough, “It was just kind of depressing.”
- ‘It was disgusting and horrifying’
A witness in the Erin Andrews case, who represents the corporation that owns the hotel where she was victimized, was confronted by reporters after a bartender disclosed he and friends had been watching the video at their dinner table. “’He said it was costing him millions so he was going to show it to everyone. His friends were making fun of her body,’ the bartender wrote on Twitter, according to WSVM, ‘We had to ask him to stop. It was disgusting and horrifying.’” The witness told a Nashville TV station that his dining companions “brought up the allegations and they started viewing the video, I asked them to stop and while they did so, it was not as quickly as I had hoped.” (LawNewz) - Portland’s moment in the cable sun
Trump had a Portland, Maine speech on his schedule. It happened to follow Mitt Romney’s criticisms. Turn on TV yesterday and there it was — a rambling 50-minute campaign oration in Portland — on CNN, FOX News, MSNBC , C-SPAN, Bloomberg News, CNBC and Fox Business News. Praise the lord for DirectTV. I still could find Trump-less fare on Dog TV, NASA TV, VH1 and the Golf Channel. But wait — the golf pros were were playing at a club in Miami he owns. I was back to NASA TV and some guy floating in the space station. - You use Bit.ly, right?
The link-shortening service’s boss says, “I just want to people to understand that we are a…massive software business. We have massive scale. We’ll do 20 billion clicks this month with 5 to 6 billion uniques, truly globally. And we’ve got the biggest and best marketers in the world using our platform every single day and they go for it because they see that value underneath the hood.” Fine. But it didn’t turn a profit until last year and this year will be up to $20 million in revenue. (Business Insider) - Disclosing a hacking hypocrisy
Do sportswriters get a tad too gullible at times? Sports Illustrated’s L. Jon Wertheim recounts tales of athletes claiming they were hacked and that somebody else put out nasty, dumb tweets under their names. Really? “‘My account was hacked’ has become a modern version of the dog ate my homework,” he writes in the March 7 issue. “If so, shame on the athletes…Attributing a mistake to hacking is the digital equivalent of blaming your equipment of selling out a teammate.” He also notes the role of flacks “who traffic in this shabby alibi.” - How Medium plans to turn a few more bucks
The longform blogging platform Medium “has given the biggest hint yet as to how and when it will let publishers monetize their content.” That’s sponsored content. Its boss says “it won’t be messy banner ads; it will more likely be sponsored content — similar to the way online publishers such as BuzzFeed make money.” (VentureBeat) - Trump in full
David Von Drehle neatly captures this moment on board the candidate’s plane: “Trump walks over and perches at the end, takes up the remote and begins toggling from one all-news station to another. What happens next is simply remarkable. For the entire hour-long flight from Virginia to southern Georgia, nearly every minute of every broadcast is focused exclusively on him. Sure, he’s rich, but still: this guy, this slightly beefy macher from an outer New York City borough with a head for numbers and the gift of gab, is the only news in the world? This guy, of all people, the beauty-pageant promoter, Mr. Luxury Condo, is living a scene from a James Bond movie.” (TIME) - Wanna get published in Slate?
It’s time for the Slate Plus Pitch Slam, a semi-annual gambit that allows outsiders to come up with a story idea and potentially write it and get published. It will cost you a few bucks to get behind the paywall, but there are benefits of membership, including getting to ride on Donald Trump’s airplane and watching him watch himself on TV (not really). Anyway, good luck if you enter. (Slate) - The unceasing fascination with horoscopes
Running features sections, there was nothing more challenging than deciding what to ditch from the printed paper when you had to save on newsprint costs. Everything seemed to have a constituency. One rather durable fixture is horoscopes. What’s the deal? “For one thing, horoscopes are popular, and not only among those who believe. Polls over the last 20 years consistently show that while only about 1 in 4 Americans believe in astrology ‘to a degree,’ more than half read horoscopes.” (CJR) - A weird blast from the past
Vox offers a Nov. 21, 1922 New York Times piece that it says was the paper’s first on Adolf Hitler. It seemed to rationalize his anti-Semitism as more short-term tactics than deeply felt views: “…Several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.” (Vox) Amid that depressing historical note, have a good weekend — and turn off the TV if any unscheduled GOP debates break out. - Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin
Janice S. Gin is now assistant news director at KRON in San Francisco. Previously, she was dayside executive producer there. (TV News Check) | Paul Haven is now the all-format news director for Latin America and the Caribbean. (The Associated Press) | Amy Glennon is now publisher of vertical businesses at Cox Media Group. (Email) | Job of the day: CBS Television Stations is looking for a managing editor for digital content. Get your resumes in! (Poynter) | Send Ben your job moves: bmullin@poynter.org.
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