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Showing posts with label Michael Kinsley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Kinsley. Show all posts
Saw this fascinating column in the LA Times this afternoon while making my way to their online Entertainment page to look at some film reviews, and knew I had to share it with you all ASAP, since it concerns the thoughts of someone I've long liked and admired even when I disagreed with him on an issue, Michael Kinsley.
Los Angeles Times
Op-Ed
Journalism and the art of betrayal
The explanations newspapers give for why anonymity was granted can be hilarious. But they tend to prove what was famously asserted by New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm: Journalism is about betrayal.
By Michael Kinsley
November 4, 2011, 8:34 a.m.
In 1989, New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm published her famous essay, "The Journalist and the Murderer," with its notoriously overheated opening sentence: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."
I used to talk to media personality Michael Kinsley fairly frequently back in the days when he was one of the co-hosts for CNN'sCrossfire, and he'd be over at the Army-Navy Club office bldg. on Eye Street where the New York Times' DC bureau was located -usually waiting for his close friend, Maureen Dowd, to come down from her office after 5:30 or so. The Army-Navy Building was a place where I spent LOTS of time the last ten years I was in D.C, as I mentioned here previously back on April 6th, 2011, in a post I titled, Memories of D.C. bureau of N.Y. Times; Cool stuff from NYT Graphics: Key states for Obama in 2012; 2010 Census interactive map
People were often split on their opinions about Michael depending upon their politics, ideology or subject, of course, but in my many experiences, I found him to be one of THE friendliest media personalities out of many I ever met or knew in Washington, with a good sense of humor.
On his TV show, given their confrontational format, that humor often came across as sarcastic I suppose, but in person, he was was often amusing and engaging in ways that were truly remarkable.
And he's got that amazing memory for details, so...
Somewhere in storage, up in the D.C. area, I think i still have a few great photos of the two of them posing in front of the bldg. lobby's Christmas tree and decorations, which were always one of the nicest in all of downtown and K Street, the same way that the NY Times' March Madness basketball pool was one of the best and most lucrative to get in on, since you had Times employees not just from the DC bureau participating, but their employees from all over the world (and their spouses) also putting their money where their mouth and brackets (or heart) was.
(To this day, I still find it amusing that so many people who would say so many vituperative or sarcastic things about her at the time at social events I attended in the DC area had no idea how truly sweet and concerned with people's feelings she could be, even when she didn't have to be. Also, of course, famously, most people who knocked her had no idea how petite Maureen is. In a winter parka with a lined hood, walking by in a crowd, she'd look like a kid counting their days until she could leave Junior High.)
I still think it's pretty amazing that in the year 2011, a guy who is as clearly smart and curious as Michael about both people and ideas and trends, and who has his ability to draw people out in interesting ways, doesn't have a national TV show now.
IF I was a media mogul... I'd rectify that.
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Bill Geist interviews Maureen Dowd on CBS News' "Sunday Morning"
On September 18, 2009, I wrote a post about my observations about Newsweek magazine's future, and as you can tell from the title I gave that post, Obamacare Death Panels have bad news for Newsweek: Doctors will pull the plug on mag at $75 a year; Newsweek R.I.P. http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/obamacare-death-panels-have-bad-news.html I suggested that the reality was that there wasn't much of a future for them, because they had become increasingly irrelevant to the larger public discourse going on in America, in large part, due to their own insular liberal, hipper-than-thou parochialism and dis-connectedness to the country west and south of the Hudson River, and some rather uninspired editorial choices. It was a mess.
Not that I was alone in my observations, given Michael Kinsley's spot-on take in The New Republic, Backwards Runs Newsweek, which could've easily been made the year before it ran last May and been just as accurate. http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/backward-runs-newsweek
It's hardly breaking news that Newsweek had never been relevant in the first place in longstanding public policy backwaters like South Florida, since as far as I can remember, it was never ever cited by anyone at any time at any public policy gathering I or any of my civic-minded friends ever attended from the mid-'70's on.
But in certain places throughout the country where ideas, especially new ideas, still really matter and have not just currency but urgency, and are argued about and discussed at length -and I don't mean that in a pejorative fashion but simply as a descriptive- it actually was relevant as recently as ten years ago.
I know because I've been to places where that really was true, at least among a certain sub-group of the local population that I knew, which is to say, friends of mine whom reporters and columnists call for quotes.
Places with serious, smart and well-educated people who read voraciously and who consume multiple hard news sources and trade/specialty journals weekly by the barrel and mega-bite.
Cities like Boston, New York, New Haven, Washington, D.C. , The Research Triangle in North Carolina, Atlanta, Nashville, Louisville, Austin, Chicago and Evanston, Champaign/Urbana, Milwaukee, Madison, Ann Arbor, Columbus, Lawrence (KS), Albuquerque, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto and Silicon Alley, Sacramento, certain parts of Los Angeles and Orange County, and yes, Bloomington.
See http://www.theatlantic.com/richard-florida/ for more on why it is certain U.S. cities are incubators of ideas, public policy amd innovation, while other places, like South Florida, aren't.
To its own dismay, Newsweek had become the proverbial boyfriend who hadn't gotten the hint that he was about to be tossed overboard in favor of the new, more-interesting boyfriend, who was lurking discreetly off-camera, who doesn't take her for granted.
Boyfriend #1 is blindsided, of course, but to anyone actually paying any attention, it had seemed self-evident and rather inevitable since it was clear that there were no longer any sparks in the relationship, just a drab, mundane sameness and shallow me-too-ism.Loser. Well today, or rather yesterday, we learned that you, too, could have become a media mogul for the low introductory price of exactly $1.
But the fact that one American dollar was more than hundreds of people and entities thought Newsweek magazine was worth as a going concern is perhaps the most salient fact of all, and a real warning to those who currently take their dwindling readership for granted, like the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun-Sentinel, who are barely relevant or trusted in their very own neighborhoods, as they continue to dangerously list. Man the lifeboats!
----------- The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100606096_pf.html Post Co. discloses Newsweek's price tag: $1
The Associated Press Wednesday, October 6, 2010; 7:11 PM
NEW YORK -- The Washington Post Co. has revealed exactly how much cash that audio equipment magnate Sidney Harman paid for Newsweek magazine this summer: $1.
The Post Co. also agreed to cover up to $10 million of Newsweek's existing bills. And it will hold on to certain employee pension liabilities, though it did not spell out a dollar figure in a regulatory filing Wednesday.
No one thought Harman paid much for Newsweek, which lost almost $30 million last year amid circulation and advertising declines.
But the magazine's sale for less than its $5.95-per-issue price on newsstands is still a grim milestone for a brand that was once a prized asset at the Post Co., which bought Newsweek in 1961.
The filing comes as speculation builds that Harman's Newsweek will form some kind of partnership with The Daily Beast, a news and opinion site owned by Barry Diller's media conglomerate, IAC/InterActiveCorp, and run by former New Yorker magazine editor Tina Brown.
In a piece commemorating the site's second anniversary on Wednesday, Brown answered the buzz about a deal with Newsweek by saying, "Yes, there have been some interesting discussions going on, as we have with potential partners large and small all the time."
Calls to The Daily Beast and Newsweek seeking further comment were not immediately returned. The Post Co. also declined to elaborate on its filing.
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The Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/
Media and investigative reporter Howard Kurtz joins The Daily Beast as Washington Bureau Chief. By Tina Brown October 5, 2010 12:40pm http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-05/howard-kurtz-joins-the-daily-beast/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsR4
----- New York magazine's Daily Intel blog What Would a Tina Brown–Helmed Daily Beast–Newsweek Hybrid Look Like? By Chris Rovzar 10/6/10 at 3:20 PM http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/so_what_would_a_tina_brown-hel.html
New York magazine's Daily Intel blog Michael Kinsley Attacks the New Newsweek, and We Feel Bad About It By Jessica Pressler 5/22/09 at 10:11 AM http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/05/michael_kinsley_hates_the_new.html
New York magazine's Daily Intel blog http://nymag.com/daily/intel/
Obamacare Death Panels have bad news for Newsweek: Doctors will pull the plug on mag at $75 a year; Newsweek R.I.P.
Well, it's not like we didn't get a well-informed head's-up from South Beach Hoosier favorite Michael Kinsleyabout fivemonths ago on what was to come from the magazine side of the Post-Newsweek family, of which Local10 (WPLG) is a blood-relative.
(I discussed the positive side of this family relationship in my March 31, 2007 post about my 1982 summer internship at Channel 10 that fell by the waysidebecause of some very silly and trulyanti-competitive rules at the IUTelecommunications Dept.) http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/hbs-national-moment-in-news-proves.html )
In case you already forgot or never ever heard about Kinsley's all-too-true LIVE autopsy on Newsweek and traditional news magazines in general, i.e The shot that was heard around... well, The Beltwayand certain media-centric zip codes in New York City, here it is:
The New Republic Backward Runs 'Newsweek'
Blah blah newsmag remake blah blah.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/backward-runs-newsweek --------------------- Two takes on what Kinsley wrote:
New Yorkmagazine Daily Intel Michael Kinsley Attacks the New Newsweek, andWe Feel Bad About It May 22, 2009 http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/05/michael_kinsley_hates_the_new.html Lisa Takeuchi Cullen: Michael Kinsley, don’t be hating on Newsweek http://trueslant.com/lisacullen/2009/05/22/michael-kinsley-dont-be-hating-on-newsweek/ -------------- As toNewsweek Editor Jon Meacham? Very, very bright guy, obviously, but he seems almost blind to the factthat in the eyes of many, including other journalists I know in Washington and elsewhere whose names you'd recognize, he is, quite literally, the placeholder for all the journalism blandness that stretches from coast-to-coast.
The sort of too-clever-by-half editorial commentary -hello,Miami Herald- on illegal immigration that routinely takes place in news articles, and not just on the editorial page.
Supposed news articles where some basic journalistic questions are never asked or even hinted at, perhaps for fear of queering readers about what are undoubtedly intended by the editors to be sympathetic heart-wrenching stories about American-born kids of illegals.
Illegal aliens who routinely ignored court orders and ICE for years and finally got deported back to Colombia, El Salvador or fill-in-the-blank.
Meacham is also emblematic of the very high self-regard of many in the MSM, as well as their cozy relationshipswith powerful corporate elites, whom they are generally loathe to criticize by name, even while they joke together with the likes of a Jeff Immelt, GE's Chairman and CEO, about their latest appearance on The Charlie Rose Show at the afterparty at an Aspen Institute event or over in Davos, hanging out with Bono.. (I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before in this regard, but whether in Davos for the World Economic Forum and chatting with Tom Friedman, or in New York for some Clinton GlobalInitiative meeting, any place where Queen Rania is, by default, almost always THE place to be! See http://www.queenrania.jo/ and http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/2009_March_Queen_Rania/ and http://www.youtube.com/QueenRania)
As Michael Kinsley coyly notes in his excellent New Republicessay:
In his editor's letter--one of many traditional newsmagazine features that have survived the scythe of change--Jon Meacham says, "We are not pretending to be your guide through the chaos of the Information Age," which concedes a lot of ground from the get-go. Why not at least pretend? Why else would people pick it up, let alone subscribe?
Later, he writes with disdain:
And so we progress to "Features," which seems to be longer articles on myriad subjects, many written by outsiders (Michael Bloomberg, Tina Brown…), who are prized because they bring an independent luster. Also, you don't have to give them health care. But the section's lead story is the magazine's cover story: an essay about and interview with President Obama by Meacham himself. This kind of thing was a staple of the old newsmagazine, and it follows strict rules. It always opens with an anecdote or telling detail that flaunts the magazine's access to the great, and illustrates whatever the point of the piece was supposed to be. Disappointingly, Meacham's reinvented Newsweek has not abandoned this stale formula.
Then comes a deft and well-delivered Kinsley punchto the jaw of D.C-dom.:
Another piece in the issue--I guess it's supposed to be a "reported narrative … grounded in original observation and freshly discovered fact"--is about curing autism. "It's spring in Washington," the piece begins, "and Ari Ne'eman, with his navy suit and leather briefcase on wheels, is in between his usual flurry of meetings." It's spring in Washington. That doesn't seem to qualify as either an "original observation" or a "freshly discovered fact." Nor does it have any apparent relevance to the story that follows. Could it be a "provocative (but not partisan) argument"? And what about that blue suit? I have news for Newsweek: Washington is the blue suit capital of the world. Let's give them the leather briefcase on wheels.
Killing with kindness!
The current purge of reporters across the country for bottom-line economic reasons is a particularly tough pill to swallow for many journalistsin D.C., New York and other hipper-than-thou urban hubs, particularlyamong those who were in J-School in the early to mid-90's, during the golden era of reporter as highly-paid and sought-after social commentator.
That's because they imagined that they'd be the natural inheritors of the self-aggrandizing corporate and college speaking tours of Cokie Roberts and her husband Steve Roberts, before and after their various books came out.
The culture which so aggravated longtime South Beach Hoosier favorite (and Asia expert) James Fallows when he tookover the reins at U.S. News & World Report, that he engaged in addition-by-subtraction by dumping Steve Robertsto show he was deadly serious about ending that kind of behavior at any magazine he was at. http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/
In fact, if you listen rather carefully when Jon Meacham is on a TV chat show, you might even say that it's apparent that Meacham has fallen under the spell of the sound of his own voice, pontificating thru 18th-century historical allusions, something that was never true of the late Robert Novak
It's my personal belief that we need more journos digging for facts and examples of hypocrisy in Washington and among the powerful, like Bob Novak, not more Jon Meachams drawing imprecise comparisons to matters little remembered by most Americans, as if he was channeling Shelby Foote's powerful and pithy anecdotes in Ken Burns' masterpiece, The Civil War.
Please leave the grandiloquent American historical allusions to George F. Will. He's already got it covered. In a media universe that actually made sense and reflected current and future economic and social realities, one of the things we'd have in this country is a weekly one-hour network TV program starring Fallows or Kinsley -or both.
They'd one-up Charles Kuralt, John Madden and the C-SPANBus by going on the road, interviewing and interacting with some of the dynamic people who are changing the face of our country with their thinking, acumen and boldness. Despite what Congress and the president say or do to screw with that effort.
A variation of this theme was tried with Tom's excellent foreign policy/economic specials a few years ago, on what was then called the Times-Discovery Channel but is now called ID: Investigation Discovery. http://investigation.discovery.com/
Below, Tom'sThe Other Side of Outsourcing
Hm-m-m... how about calling their series on business and technological innovation, The Road to Innovation. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. LOL!
That title has only been used a million times over the past 20 years, based on my last 1.001 trips to the Business section of Borders or Barnes & Noble.
Who are the leading thinkers, engineers and managers at Google, Microsoft, Intel or JPL, and what sorts of problems are they routinely running into in trying to continue their research and innovation? What sorts of things/solutions might be possible if those roadblocks didn't exist?
Who are the brilliant former NASA engineers and technicians who've been so thoroughly burned-out and exhausted by the myopic space policy in Washington of the past twenty years that they've left the Feds, Cape Canaveral and Houston in the rear-view mirror, and are now using their natural curiosity, enthusiasm, brains and network of smart, savvy friends, to create their own innovative companies?
Companies that will help make the country more economically competitive internationally, to get the country closer towards the sort of smart, adaptive and energy-efficient technology that made them decide to apply to grad school in the first place? Curiosity. The sort of firms that ought to be all over the place in Central Florida if Tallahassee was paying any kind of serious attention. (But do you really think such non-serious pols like Sansom, Geller, Gelber andCrist did any critical thinking along those lines? Could their collective neglect and failure to seize self-evident opportunities here be any more patently obvious?)
What's going on these days in a chastened Silicon Valley among the smart set who didn't put all their eggs in one basket? What areas are successful VCs putting their money into so they can put their money where their mouth and hearts are -and why?
Are so-called innovative Foundation-funded 'strategies' in local communities really producing practical and tangible results that will have staying power after the initial round of grants and media hoopla have run their course? Why or why not?
That leads to an important related question. Who are the decision-makers at the well-known national Foundations like Ford, MacArthur, Eli Lilly, et al, i.e., the groups that bankroll the only PBS programming that most Americans actually watch.
What are the common characteristics of successful applicants, whether individuals, government agencies, cities or counties? What do they do to prevent their personal or institutional biases and daily exposure to corporate cronyism from impeding their funding decisions?
Or from clouding the necessary empirical fact-finding that takes place afterwards to determine whether the grantee was successful or not?
Do they have a pronounced tendency to only give money to those groups or individuals who will produce most positive publicity for the Foundation versus those who actually need it the most?
And name some names the way that Sixty Minutes did in the mid-70's when it was earning its stripes, not doing fawning celeb profiles on over-exposed Tiger Woods. who bores me silly.
That the particular subjects I've just highlighted here are all ones that I'd also like to see in a smart weekly newsmagazine like Newsweek, but won't, is precisely the point. Buh-bye Newsweek.
----------------------- Washington Post Newsweek Changes Subscription Strategy
By Frank Ahrens Washington Post Staff Writer September 12, 2009
Money-losing Newsweek hopes to break even by 2011 and plans to as much as double its subscription rate over the next two years, the magazine's top executive said Friday.
Ann McDaniel, managing director of Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., said the magazine will aim for a "smaller base of very committed subscribers and get more money from each of them," while speaking at The Post Co.'s annual shareholders meeting at the company's D.C. headquarters.
