Category: Media & Journalism

I just received this email

. . . and thought to share.

Greetings,

ProPublica reporters Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein have been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their stories on how some Wall Street bankers, seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of their clients and sometimes even their own firms, at first delayed but then worsened the financial crisis. We at ProPublica are delighted by this award, and deeply honored.

This is ProPublica’s second Pulitzer Prize in as many years. Last year, ProPublica reporter Sheri Fink won a Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting for her article “The Deadly Choices at Memorial,” on euthanasia at a New Orleans hospital in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, published in partnership with The New York Times Magazine. This was the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to an online news organization. This year’s Prize is the first for a body of work not published in print.

. . .

But while we poked fun at the ironies in this story, and by so doing tried to make it more accessible, its central point is quite serious, and critically important: that the mores of Wall Street, at least in the period 2006-2008, were not consistent with the public interest or the national interest, and that greater oversight (and perhaps enforcement actions) may be in order. Our ultimate test for our work at ProPublica is impact, and we believe this reporting has helped spur activity by the SEC and the Congress—activity we continue to cover, as recently as twice this past week.

. . .

These awards mean a lot to our staff, especially as all of them reflect the judgment of our peers in journalism. But they are not why we are in business. Instead, as I indicated above, ProPublica was created to spur reform through journalistic means—and to do this by reporting and writing stories with “moral force,” that is, stories about abuse of power or failure to uphold the public trust. That is our mission, and today’s award encourages us to continue it with increased vigor.

One last point: to do this, it takes money. ProPublica is a non-profit, and contributions are tax deductible. We had more than 1300 donors last year and almost 500 so far this year. The median donation is $50, but whatever you can give will be greatly appreciated, and will truly help us make a difference. I invite you to celebrate with us by making a contribution.

Imagine that, two people who disagree

. . . on many things, but discuss it with intelligence and respect — Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow.

Well worth watching even if you dislike one or the other or both. Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon.com has a lengthy review, which includes this:

It was riveting, at times utterly thrilling stuff, with both sides gracefully doing the dance of abundant, obvious admiration while firmly maintaining their own convictions. This is what happens when people don’t scream and hurl nonsense invective at each other. Watch and learn, America.

A wan looking Stewart — who admitted he was battling a vicious stomach flu and bragged near the end that this was the longest he’d gone without throwing up in some time — clearly chose Maddow because he had a few things to get off his chest. On “Maddow,” he was free to be something other than the brilliant satirist we know and love on Comedy Central. He was simply Jon Stewart, lamenting to his hostess that “You’re in the playing field; I’m in the stands yelling things.” But he seemed nonetheless grateful for the opportunity to explain the motivation for the Rally because “People should have a chance to say what they thought it was … I just want a chance to say what it was, because I made it.”

This is the full, uncut interview, which is slow at times, though is still interesting throughout. Click here to go to the site and select excerpts.

Best line of the day

“But what makes the Post still worth reading is its news pages. They are separate from the editorial page operation, which is a notably weak part of the overall product. If you took an equal number of random Washington, D.C., citizens off the street and gave them the job of running the newspaper’s editorial and op-ed pages, you could hardly do worse. You might well do better.”

Dan Gillmor – Salon.com

Best line of the day

If you read and write about politics full-time and are thus forced to subject yourself to the political media — as I am — what’s most striking aren’t the outrages and corruptions, but the overwhelming, suffocating, numbing stream of stupidity and triviality that floods the brain.  One has to battle the temptation to just turn away and ignore it all.

Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

Line of the day about The Worldwide Leader in Bullshit

CNN yesterday ended the 20-year career of Octavia Nasr, its Atlanta-based Senior Middle East News Editor, because of a now-deleted tweet she wrote on Sunday upon learning of the death of one of the Shiite world’s most beloved religious figures: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah  . . . . One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”  That message spawned an intense fit of protest from Far Right outlets, Thought Crime enforcers, and other neocon precincts, and CNN quickly (and characteristically) capitulated to that pressure by firing her. 

Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

Go read the whole Greenwald essay. It’ll get your blood circulating.

And try and name one mainstream journalist fired for expressing right-wing views.

Best line of the day

“Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn’t mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here’s CBS’s chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that’s killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag. And the part that really gets me is Logan bitching about how Hastings was dishonest to use human warmth and charm to build up enough of a rapport with his sources that they felt comfortable running their mouths off in front of him.”

Matt Taibbi — RollingStone.com

Line of the day

“Look, I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising. My views are critical but that shouldn’t be mistaken for hostile – I’m just not a stenographer. There is a body of work that shows how I view these issues but that was hard-earned through experience, not something I learned going to a cocktail party on fucking K Street. That’s what reporters are supposed to do, report the story.”

Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone’s McChrystal Profiler

The Stringer and the Snake-eater

From David J. Morris at The Virginia Quarterly Review Blog, as good a summary as you’ll find about what they were thinking and why. A key excerpt:

It is still a little difficult to believe that an accomplished fifty-five-year-old officer would say and allow his staff to say the outrageous things in the Rolling Stone article. You can just hear the chorus in Washington: “What was he thinking?” But then, I think McChrystal and his buddies didn’t expect that Hastings would actually write down everything they said and put it into print. It’s an unfortunate staple of Beltway journalism that has bled over into war reporting that most reporters are loathe to burn their sources by writing derogatory things about them. To be blunt, most reporters are as career-obsessed as the officers they’re interviewing and they don’t want to poison the well. This is doubly true if the officer being interviewed is a four-star general. There is a simple reciprocity involved: if you want to be invited back to ride on The Boss’s helicopter, if you want continued access, you’d better not write about his soft spot for strippers and gin. That said, it’s a naturally antagonistic relationship and most officers hate reporters because they represent a threat to their reputations. There are no medals awarded for conspicuous gallantry in a press conference. . . .

Enter into this mix Michael Hastings, a reporter who apparently had made a decision at some point to not play by the normal rules; who can be friendly, interested, and reasonably non-threatening in-person; whose brother is an army officer; and who was writing for what is primarily a pop culture magazine. McChrystal and his staff, jangled and beat-down after literally years of being in and out of various combat zones, probably thought they were coming across as hip and irreverent in front of the Rolling Stone guy, knowing that there was a far better chance their teenage daughters were going to read about them there than in the back pages of the National Review. Of course, many of those staff officers are now dealing with what amounts to the final mistake of their careers within an organization that doesn’t forgive much in the way of media fiascos.

Link via Andrew Sullivan.

Loneliness

A fascinating piece on Loneliness and the Culture of ‘No’. Highly recommended.

In a way, Steuver says, they’re not dissimilar from the folks who camp out in front of Best Buy on Black Friday, shoppers who say they’re there for Christmas bargains but likely are on scene simply to be part of a happening event – feeling a need to connect with fellow Americans in ways our culture discourages because of technology and the fragmentation of media.

Ernie Pyle

The great war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by gunfire on the island of Ie Shima 65 years ago today. This is often regarded his best column.

The Death of Captain Waskow

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 – In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.

Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

“After my own father, he came next,” a sergeant told me.

“He always looked after us,” a soldier said. “He’d go to bat for us every time.”

“I’ve never knowed him to do anything unfair,” another one said.

I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow’s body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.

Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help.

The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road.

I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don’t ask silly questions.

We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.

Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more. The dead man lay all alone outside in the shadow of the low stone wall.

Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. “This one is Captain Waskow,” one of them said quietly.

Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, alongside the road. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.

The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, “God damn it.” That’s all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, “God damn it to hell anyway.” He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain’s face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: “I’m sorry, old man.”

Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:

“I sure am sorry, sir.”

Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

Mind Games

At CJR Todd Gitlin takes a look at What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism by Jack Fuller. An excerpt:

So he starts by identifying “four separate forces that came together at the close of the twentieth century to reshape the way people take in news.” There is, first of all, popular suspicion of experts who claim to be objective. There is, second, the even deeper suspicion of whether it is possible to know anything about the world. There is, third, the emergence of information technology that “presented the human mind with unprecedented cognitive and attention challenges.”

But the force that most deeply engages the author—the one that absorbs the plurality of his pages—predates modernist skepticism, postmodernist cynicism, and Craigslist by hundreds of thousands of years. It traces back, he insists, to “Homo sapiens’ prehistoric origins on the African savannah.” What Fuller is talking about is the fact that human beings are simultaneously emotional as well as rational creatures. Thanks to natural selection, our brains are hard-wired to pay attention to novelty . . . Moreover, the more information flies at our brains, the more we are aroused by emotions, including emotions triggered by the sheer energy it takes to navigate through a torrent of information. The more aroused we are by emotions, the more emotions it takes to drive our attention. Meanwhile, the brain gets skewed by all these efforts and the emotions they generate.

Consider the previous paragraph a set of factual dots that Fuller is trying to connect to a second set of dots, as follows: Distracted Americans are turning away from dead-tree newspapers in droves. They are now in possession of electronic devices that are better at gaining attention than newspapers.

State of the News Media

The numbers for 2009 reveal just how urgent these questions are becoming. Newspapers, including online, saw ad revenue fall 26% during the year, which brings the total loss over the last three years to 43%.

Local television ad revenue fell 22% in 2009; triple the decline the year before. Radio also was off 22%. Magazine ad revenue dropped 17%, network TV 8% (and news alone probably more). Online ad revenue overall fell about 5%, and revenue to news sites most likely also fared much worse.

Only cable news among the commercial news sectors did not suffer declining revenue last year.

The estimates for what happens after the economy rebounds vary and even then are only guesses. The market research and investment banking firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson projects that by 2013, after the economic recovery, three elements of old media — newspapers, radio and magazines — will take in 41% less in ad revenues than they did in 2006.

State of the News Media 2010 – Pew Research Center