Jack Shafer took a week off from bugging out about politics and poo-pooing the political conventions to focus his ire on another target: New York Times Sunday Styles. JackShaf minces no words in denouncing the part of the NYTs that he thinks should have been cut when the editors took a hatchet to the Metro and Sports section.
Too bad JS uses the same fuzzy logic that he's criticizing Sunday Styles pieces for in his criticism of Sunday Styles. Jack's rage comes, from all things, about a Cosmo-esque story on straight guys and cats:
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Jack Shafer has previously put his two cents in re: the giant clusterfuck that is the national conventions. But this is a man with a personal vendetta against the DNC, or rather, against networks trying to make the DNC the next Olympics, despite the fact that nothing ever happens at the conventions that wasn't totally scripted and thought out months in advance.
Not that he doesn't have a point. CONTINUED »
Between the Democratic and Republican national conventions this year, some 30,000 reporters are going to make use of their employers' travel budget to attend. Except are they really heading to Denver and St. Paul to get an Obama or McCain scoop, or just to party at network? What is this, the Beijing Olympics?
Political conventions are to the media what happy hour — or 11am — is to Don Draper. Here's JackShaf on why reporters waste their time and their media companies' dwindling budgets:
They fight their colleagues for the honor to attend because a political convention is a gas to cover. It's like a vacation, only no spouses! There's free food, plenty of booze, nice hotels, lots of pals in the press and politics dishing gossip, and the assignment is easy to report. Ferguson concludes that political conventions exist only to make the second convention—the "journalists' convention"—possible. "The parasite has consumed the host," he wrote.
So … see you there, Shafer?
"There is no bad Murdoch. There is no good Murdoch. And [Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul] Steiger knows it. There is only Murdoch." —Jack Shafer, discussing a certain somebody
Figuring out why the media love to harp on the New York Times is like figuring out, um, why the media love to harp on Katie Couric: There must be a reason, but it's sort of ambiguous.
Couric, like the Times, serves a worthwhile purpose: Delivering the news and instigating debate.
But also like Couric, the Times, once a revered institution, has become an easy punching bag when any reporter, blogger, or self-professed media critic is looking for an easy punching bag.
Why? CONTINUED »
That major newspapers even have policies regarding anonymous sourcing is, for the most part, a complete joke. Every time the rules regarding unnamed sources get revised, reporters and editors spend a week following the new game plan before resorting back to their usual way of doing things, which is: quote, quote, quote away!
Rulebooks usually state that reporters should rely on identified sources as much as possible, but on the "off chance" they must use an anonymous source, they must give readers a good reason why the source isn't being named as well as explain why a source should be trusted. This rarely happens, and instead "top level" and "knowledgeable" sources pepper newspaper copy, with explanations that include "asked not to be identified for fear of ruining relationships." Ya don't say!
So, ever the muckraker, Slate's Jack Shafer had an intern turn on Google News Alerts (with some help from Factiva) for all instances of anonymity in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal. The result? A lengthy spreadsheet that rates anonymous source usage on a scale of "OK" to "awful," as well as noting who benefits from the quotations, the reporter or source. The takeaway? There's quite a bit of evidence that reporters often use anonymous sources to state the obvious, because doing so on their own would be sacrilegious! (Maybe the Associated Press' new policy will stop this?)
Below, shining examples of "awful" vs. "OK" anonymous sourcing. CONTINUED »
Critics like Jack Shafer called out NBC and others for over-airing Tim Russert memories. Now, Shafer gets a couple servings of STFU: "I think Shafer may suffer from a related syndrome to being a 'Beltway insider,' that which afflicts people who live (or think) just outside the Beltway. He's so hyper-aware of how the D.C. syndrome can consume people's ethics and humanity that he discounts the very real connection that some of them (like the host of the No. 1-rated Sunday public affairs program) have with viewers — and not just political junkies either, but the ordinary folks who have been posting tributes to my web site and many, many others (including those who commented on the story by Tim Rutten, most of whom ignored how hard Rutten came down on Russert). Not a lot of those commenters were really that hung up with the amount of media coverage, so long as they could contribute in some small way, such as speculating on his successor or remembering his impact as an author, like the comment that began: 'I read Big Russ and Me shortly after my father passed away…'"
It must've been a bitter pill for Jack Shafer to swallow when his editor showed him the headline of his column published Friday: "Is the Journal Getting … Better?" To be sure, that's exactly what Shafer is arguing, pulling a 180 after what seems like endless columns where he railed against Rupert Murdoch from the first whispers of his trying to buy the paper from the Bancroft family to his first days as its new owner. But might the biggest foe to balanced journalism actually have made the Wall Street Journal a better paper through his stewardship? CONTINUED »
"Dim groupthink. Dim groupthink punctuated with laughter and knowing nods." That's how Jack Shafer describes Fox News' The Journal Editorial Report, the Saturday late night show hosted by WSJ editorial page editor Paul Gigot, who "draws its guest list almost exclusively from Gigot's staff and contributors to his page, making each installment an extended exercise in groupthink." It's also a show Shafer dubs "The Worst Show on a Cable News Network." CONTINUED »
Jack Shafer's one question about the Times nudist article on Sunday: "After going to such extremes to protect readers from the overtly lewd and prurient, why did the paper's editors include this image of a crouching billiards player lining up a shot as two lusciously nippled maidens in Modigliani knockoffs stare down from canvases behind him?"
FOOL'S GOLD Jack Shafer on the Webbys: About as meaningless an award as you can get. Just like the New York Times' weddings section, anyone can get in there if they grease the doorman.. [Slate]
Always-has-a-problem Jack Shafer today complains about new sites that link key words, like "Iraq" or "Hillary Clinton," to their own internal archive pages, a move to boost search engine rankings, and not provide much of a better user experience. [Slate]
With April Fool's Day coming at you tomorrow, expect erroneous publicist pitches, misleading tips, and phony Facebook friend requests. History is filled to the brim with elaborate tricks, from Discover magazine's April 1995 story on the naked ice borer to PC Computing's 1994 article on legislation aimed at banning Internet use while intoxicated. So how to sort out who's pulling the wool over your Lasik'd pair? CONTINUED »
Jack Shafer: Still pissed newspapers are writing about pharm parties that nobody has ever been too. (Next edition: The invisible swing voter!) But are these pill soirees indeed taking place here and there, but not commonplace throughout every planned development in the suburbs? Perhaps not: In the 1960s, the urban legend of pharm parties first began, except back then they were called "fruit salad parties." Cuter. [Slate]
Making no effort to hide his excitement that the New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin scooped the Wall Street Journal on a Bear Stearns story, Slate's Jack Shafer makes clear his Malcolm Gladwell beat isn't disappearing anytime soon. A March 20 item from Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici about Gladwell suddenly disappeared from the magazine's website, and Portfolio's spokeswoman isn't saying why. Might it have to do with Gladwell's New Yorker and Portfolio both being owned by Conde Nast? Silly conspiracy theories.
Editorial Director
