'Roy Greenslade has been running a series of articles in The Guardian based on email exchanges with unnamed sources within the Daily Telegraph. A recent email that he received and writes about in his column today alleges that plagiarism is rife at the respected British newspaper.
'Greenslade quotes directly from the email, which states: "You do realise, don't you, that stuff is being lifted with hardly a word changed from the Mail website and the Metro?"' [Editors Weblog]
Visitors to Inside.com are already redirected to PaidContent.org, Rafat Ali's new media news website that was just bought by Britain's Guardian. That's because, as part of Ali's expansion into gaming and staid mediums like print, Ali is resurrecting the domain name, where he was a feature writer. Once the online home of Steven Brill's thought exercise into America's fascination with the media — after he bought it from founders Powerful Media Inc. — Inside.com quickly sputtered out in the dot-com bust (while Slate and Salon somehow survived) dismissing its editorial staff in 2001 as it rebranded itself as a portal before shutting down entirely. But our favorite memory of Inside.com, which failed to recoup its $30 million investment by asking readers to pay for three-figure subscriptions, is its editorship under Michael Hirschorn, the former Spin magazine editor who co-founded the site. When Inside.com puttered out, Hirschorn left for VH1, where he eventually became responsible for its celebreality fare, while co-founder Kurt Andersen remade himself into a standalone media critic, heading to New York (then owned by Primedia, which also had a stake in Inside.com) and Vanity Fair. In 2001, as he was exiting his editor role, Hirschhorn gave this quote to the New York Times: "I think the good news is that it is still around for me to miss. My hope is that in five years someone will say, 'This is such a hack publication — it's not as good as it was five years ago.'" Seven years later, and Ali's taking Hirschorn's challenge.
Even the blogs don't care much about the western U.S., Mexico, or southwestern Africa. As shown by these heat maps from L’Observatoire des médias, which charted editorial coverage in 2007 on a regional scale, different news outlets blanket certain parts of the world with coverage, while neglecting others.
This map of the blogosphere forms fancy lava-shaped blot patterns that show we still don't care terribly much about Africa, even with Angelina Jolie running around there.
After the jump, see who's left out by the New York Times, Slate, and The Guardian. CONTINUED »
It's not that we expect the Brits to understand everything about American culture — even if it does involve New York media. But we do sort of expect that if a reporter is writing a profile on the editor in chief of the New Yorker, David Remnick, they might spend some time looking at the magazine.
Forget the fact that nobody actually wonders why people read the New Yorker — it's obviously one of the only things separating the elitist intellectuals from the common Times readers in this city. (Plus, all those Park Slopers need something to carry on the train in order to feel justified in their existence.)
Yet it appears the Guardian didn't really feel the need to look at, let alone read, the New Yorker before profiling Remnick. From the deck of Gaby Wood's profile, which ran in yesterday's Books section of The Observer.
It's a magazine that runs 10,000-word articles on African states and the pension system, has almost no pictures and is published in black and white. So how does the New Yorker sell more than a million copies a week?
We took a photo of a couple pages in this week's New Yorker:
That sort of looks like color to us. Maybe they meant "they publish in black and white and color?" Well, even if they didn't, we just decided to pitch our first essay to the New Yorker, called "how in the hell does the Guardian sell any copies of their paper?"
The quiet American [Gaby Wood, The Guardian]
We knew that the London Times was coming to invade the United States, but we were less aware of the Guardian's plans to expand oversees. Yet, now that we know the Brit paper is coming, we guess we should announce its new editor at large (is that British for EIC?) Michael Kinsley.
Yes, you've heard of him. He's had his ink-stained hands in every fringe publication from Slate (which he launched) to the New Republic (which he helped edit). His most recent stint has been as a columnist for the Washington Post — a job we assume he won't have time for come September, when his sole duties will consist of eliminating words like "bloody" and "cheerio" from his newly Americanized edition of Guardian.
The Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, said: "Mike Kinsley is a brilliant editor, an inspired commentator and one of the smartest thinkers about the digital future.
"From his days editing the New Republic to his launch of Slate Magazine, he has constantly set trends and challenged mainstream assumptions and media.
More liberal journalism that can expand into the digital market? We bet Peter King is going into cardiac arrest as we speak.
Michael Kinsley to join Guardian as US editor at large [Steve Busfield, Media Guardian]
