Steve Myers
Nov. 14, 2011
9:09 am
Politico |
ABC News
Asked about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's election chances on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, syndicated columnist George Will disclosed that his wife has joined the campaign, then proceeded to say that candidates can recover from gaffes like the ones that have plagued Perry. Will's wife Mari Maseng, who's worked in politics for 30 years, is advising the Perry campaign on messaging and debate preparation. Will said on the show that some staffers for Mitt Romney had tried to make an issue about it. Politico's Dylan Byers notes
that Will has used his column to criticize Romney, including an Oct. 28 column headlined, "
The pretzel candidate." Earlier this month, NPR's Michele Norris said
she would step down as host of NPR's "All Things Considered" because her husband had taken a job with the Obama re-election campaign. "So why is it that in identical situations, Norris felt she needed to disclose and step away from her position to protect her organization from conflict of interest, yet Will didn’t feel the same action was necessary in his case?" asks Robin Marty of Care2. ||
Related: Chelsea Clinton to become special correspondent for NBC News (The New York Times)
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
Jim Romenesko
Oct. 26, 2011
12:04 pm
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Advance Digital is paying New Orleans Saints players
Drew Brees,
Lance Moore,
Tracy Porter,
Pierre Thomas and
Jonathan Vilma to tweet a plug for the Times-Picayune's
redesigned Saints site. Advance's marketing team didn't consult with editors or reporters before launching the campaign. (Advance Digital is the Internet arm of Advance Publications Inc., which owns the Times-Picayune.)
"There's no suggestion that the act of paid endorsement by a player reflects on the coverage of The Times-Picayune," says Advance Digital content veep John Hassell. He wouldn't disclose details of the agreement, including how much each player was paid.
The Times-Picayune's story on the deal notes that this "unusual arrangement" highlights the advertising potential of Twitter as well as the ethical concerns media companies face in using it as a promotional vehicle. Editor Jim Amoss says readers shouldn't question the independence of his reporters and columnists covering the Saints. "Any sponsored messages, whether on the Web or in the newspaper, are designated as such and are distinct from our editorial content," he says in a statement.
> New Orleans radio talk-show host received $250,000 from landfill owner
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
Julie Moos
Oct. 20, 2011
7:33 am
Baltimore Sun |
Roll Call |
FoxNews.com |
Washington Post
The longtime host of "World of Opera," Lisa Simeone, will continue with the program, produced by WDAV in North Carolina, says Lisa Gray, director of marketing for the public radio station.
Questions were raised about Simeone's role with the show after it was revealed that she has become a spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based "Occupy Wall Street" events.
Gray says Simeone did not violate her agreement with the station, where she works as a freelancer, and she will remain as host.
However, there are "still conversations going on around the show," related to whether NPR will continue to distribute it.
Simeone, host of "
World of Opera" since 2002, does not understand why NPR is raising questions about her involvement with the "Occupy" movement. She tells the Sun's David Zurawik:
"I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen -- the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly -- on my own time in my own life," Simeone wrote in an email response to questions from the Sun Wednesday night.
"I'm not an NPR employee," she continued. "I'm a freelancer. NPR doesn't pay me. I'm also not a news reporter. I don't cover politics. I've never brought a whiff of my political activities into the work I've done for NPR World of Opera. What is NPR afraid I'll do -- insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?"
Zurawik predicts Simeone's job as host will end as a result of the conflict, which was
revealed by Roll Call's Neda Semnani Tuesday night, then picked up by
The Daily Caller and
Fox News on Wednesday.
Simeone confirms she was fired Wednesday from "Soundprint," which does not air on NPR but airs on affiliates, including WAMU, based at American University in Washington. NPR says it had "no contact with the management of the program prior to their decision."
(more...)
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
Jim Romenesko
Oct. 17, 2011
10:07 am
Philadelphia Daily News |
FoxNews.com
Fox News recently
posted a story about Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will Bunch
"moonlighting as a Media Matters activist --
tweeting in support of the [Occupy Wall Street] protests while writing about them." He told the Fox reporter that "I’ve always written about the media, criticizing the media a lot from a progressive point of view [and] I think my editors are really proud to have someone writing with a point of view." Daily News public editor Richard Aregood says he isn't troubled by Bunch's relationship with Media Matters because "as a reader, I know where Bunch is coming from, just as I know where Sean Hannity is coming from." He adds:
There is, however, another question, one that FoxNews.com only hinted at. Can a reporter have opinions, strong ones, and still be credible on hard news? I believe that's possible, and know that Bunch knows the difference.
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
Steve Myers
Oct. 13, 2011
10:32 am
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal follows the
Guardian's story about a circulation scheme at the Journal's sister paper in Europe with its own story confirming many of the details first reported by its competitor. The Guardian's Nick Davies wrote that the Wall Street Journal Europe "had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate." The Journal describes an "alleged deal to boost the reported circulation numbers of The Wall Street Journal Europe, in which the paper sold bulk copies to a consulting firm and simultaneously directed money to the firm for separate services."
Side deals
A Dutch company called Executive Learning Partnership agreed to buy heavily discounted newspapers as part of a sponsorship arrangement with The Wall Street Journal Europe. In addition to the sponsorship, the Journal in Europe also set up a variety of "side deals" with ELP when the company said it was unhappy about the arrangement, the Journal reports.
The Journal quotes ELP partner Nick Van Heck, who says that the company did provide services in exchange for the payments from the Europe Journal. The Guardian reported on the side deals as well, but reported that when ELP threatened to end its sponsorship -- which would cause circulation to drop -- that Wall Street Journal Europe publisher Andrew Langhoff "set up a complex scheme to channel money to ELP to pay for the papers it had agreed to buy – effectively buying the papers with the Journal's own cash."
The Journal confirms the Guardian's reporting that the Europe Journal routed the money to ELP through other companies:
(more...)
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
Steve Myers
Oct. 12, 2011
2:31 pm
Guardian
Nick Davies reports that
the resignation Tuesday of Andrew Langhoff, publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe, resulted from a "panic" at Dow Jones as the Guardian was probing an alleged scam to prop up the publication's circulation. If the extensive report is correct, then the Journal's explanation, and its reporting, of
why Langhoff resigned was incomplete at best.
Starting in January 2008, The Wall Street Journal Europe began working with European companies that sponsored seminars for students with leadership potential. The Journal published the sponsors' names in the paper. "The sponsors paid for that publicity by buying copies of the Journal at a knock-down rate of no more than 5¢ each. Those papers were then distributed to university students," Davies writes. This arrangement, which was approved by the Audit Bureau of Circulation, accounted for 41 percent of the newspaper's daily sales.
(more...)
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
Steve Myers
Oct. 11, 2011
4:05 pm
Bloomberg News | The Wall Street Journal
Bloomberg's Edmund Lee reports that Andrew Langhoff, publisher of Wall Street Journal Europe, has resigned over what Lee called "a possible perception of impropriety" related to a deal between its circulation department and a company called Executive Learning Partnership, a Netherlands-based consulting firm. "Because the agreement could leave the impression that news coverage can be influenced by commercial relationships, as publisher with executive oversight, I believe that my resignation is now the most honorable course,” Langhoff wrote in an email obtained by Bloomberg News.
(more...)
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
Steve Myers
Sep. 27, 2011
10:53 am
PressThink
Jay Rosen has published VoiceofSanDiego.org's guidelines for new reporters, which show how the site's editors view their mission differently than that of a general-interest news site. The guidelines start off with this declaration: "We only do something if we can do it better than anyone or if no one else is doing it." Although the site doesn't have an ideological bent, "we do believe San Diego can and will do better. ... If anything, this is our bias." Reporters shouldn't worry about getting scooped; they should "worry about not consistently making an impact." And the guidelines state that while "there is no such thing as objectivity ... there is such thing as fairness." Rosen published the guidelines because they ban "he said, she said" journalism: "The day we write a headline that says: 'Proposal has pros, cons' is the day we start dying. ... There is no such thing as 50/50 balance. There is a truth and we work our damndest to get there." ||
Related: Rosen criticizes "he said, she said" nature of NPR story on abortion clinics in Kansas; Schumacher-Matos asks NPR readers and listeners
to weigh in on story about police practices at the Mall of America.
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
Jeremy Gilbert
Sep. 23, 2011
7:43 am
Game stories don’t shake the sporting world. Stories of forced coaching changes, player misconduct, agent malfeasance and cheating of all kinds shock sports fans, drive ratings and win the biggest headlines.
But this kind of reporting comes with different challenges … Read more
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
Jim Romenesko
Sep. 19, 2011
12:08 pm
Cleveland Plain Dealer
The columnist, who is married to
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, writes in a note to colleagues that "in recent weeks, it has become painfully clear that my independence, professionally and personally, is possible only if I'm no longer writing for the newspaper that covers my husband's senate race on a daily basis," so "it's time for me to move on." She
apologized earlier this month for "crashing" a Tea Party event and failing to mention that her husband's opponent was in attendance and that she had videotaped him. Schultz, who has been at the Plain Dealer for 18 years, writes in her farewell piece:
I leave The Plain Dealer with gratitude, and plenty to do. I'm working on my next book, and will continue to write essays for Parade magazine. I'm still a columnist with Creators Syndicate, and I'll continue to focus on issues of social and economic justice. I'm weighing other options, and look forward to what comes next.
- Tools:
- Permalink
-
![wsj-europe-for-web]](http://www.poynter.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wsj-europe-for-web.jpg "wsj-europe-for-web]")
