Literally minutes after I posted my take on Gerald Posner's admission of plagiarizing, and what I saw as his boss's apparent soft-peddling of Posner's admitted offense, I came across this story written by Slate's Jack Shafer:

Apparently, Shafer has discovered many more alleged cases of pilfering copy from other sources by Posner. Lots more ...

It looks like Shafer has gotten the attention of The Daily Beast's Executive Editor Edward Felsenthal, who sent along this e-mail to Shafer yesterday:

"We obviously take what's happened very seriously. We will be suspending Gerald Posner while we review his articles, to return if we are satisfied that he has taken the necessary steps to avoid this in the future."

Continue reading "Update: Shame on Posner and His Boss; Kudos to Slate" »

Getting to this one a bit late. Tardy or not, though, it is worth at least 50 lashes with a pica pole ...

A Slate story last Friday reports Daily Beast reporter Gerald Posner admitted to plagiarizing.

At the time, Posner, who is listed as the Beast's chief investigative reporter, said he lifted five sentences from this Miami Herald story and used them in a piece he was typing for the Beast -- though he is not sure how it happened.

When we went to Posner's story today to get the lowdown, confirmation, and any updates, this note was posted atop the story:

Editor's Note: In an earlier version of this article, five sentences were inadvertently copied from a Miami Herald report without attribution. The Daily Beast has removed the sentences and regrets the error. Two additional such sentences have also been removed.

Continue reading "Beast Owes Readers Better Plagiarism Explanation" »

The horses bolted the stable a long time ago, and it is now just plain fact that political partisanship is the well-oiled cog that makes two of the largest cable news networks spin these days.

I find it impossible to come to any other conclusion than Fox News is playing to viewers that lean to the right side of the political spectrum, and that MSNBC is catering to viewers on the left.

And now, I suppose, you are waiting for me to break it to you that the world is round.

But, please, bear with me on my naive stroll -- if only for a minute.

Continue reading "FOX Is Right, MSNBC Left, and You're Shocked" »

All politics might be local, but sometimes, sadly, media coverage of politics isn't.

The inaugural National Tea Party Convention got under way in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday, and world media of all stripes and political colors poured into the city to cover the three-day event.

That is mostly good news, because only a month ago, the event organizers were cherry-picking who would cover their event and, not surprisingly, most of those cherries were Republican Red.

After rethinking that one-way strategy, the Party bosses announced Thursday that they had, in fact, credentialed 111 members of the working press -- some from as far away as Japan.

"We desire transparency at this convention and have worked with media that are friendly to the Tea Party movement as well as those that have not been seen to be supportive of our efforts," convention spokesman Mark A. Skoda said.

Bravo for that, except in this case, transparency seems to work only if you are viewing the convention with a telescope.

Continue reading "Local Media Don't Get Tea Party Invite" »

Look, politicians have been using the press for their own devices since George Washington's administration, so to start getting too bent out of shape about it now, would be like throwing buckets of water at a five-alarm neighborhood fire.

Today, anyway, that's not going to stop me from opening up the spigot, and pouring cold water all over the hot air coming from no-names in Washington regarding the failed Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner.

Most of the water, however, will be reserved for the working press that is carelessly repeating this shoddily sourced drivel, and presenting it as news.

Hopefully, I won't come off all wet ...

Continue reading "For the Record, Unnamed Sources Don't Cut It" »

Fair warning to the print people out there:

More bad news has just fallen from the sky and landed in this space -- among other places ...

In his "The Biz Blog" Poynter's Rick Edmonds is the latest to amplify chilly tidings on the newspaper advertising (cold) front.

Edmonds notes that classified advertising at newspapers has dropped a whopping 70 percent over the past 10 years. In 2000, newspapers collectively counted on classified ads to make them $19.6 billion annually. In 2009, that figure had plummeted to $6 billion.

This really is a startling decline. (see chart below)

There was a time when classified advertising was actually the bread-and-butter of a newspaper's operating budget. In 2000, it is estimated that classifieds accounted for approximately 40 percent of overall profits.

Classifieds were also a hit with readers, and helped to drive single-copy sales. Many folks used to take the paper for just the classified section alone. Those days are probably just about over, and along with them the added circulation revenue.

Continue reading "Classified Ad Revenue Takes a 10-Year Dive" »

If we needed more evidence that in 2010 television news-consumers shop for fare that favors their individual political palates, we needn't look any further than an eye-opening poll conducted Jan. 18-19, by Public Policy Polling.

In its questionnaire, the professional polling company based in Raleigh, N.C., simply asked Americans whether they trusted the five major networks' news operations.

When the results of the poll were released last week, Fox News was the clear winner in a race that, it can be argued, ended up fielding five losers.

It turns out 49 percent of the respondents said they trusted Fox News. Thirty-seven percent said they didn't, and another 15 percent said they weren't sure.

ABC News brought up the rear, with only 31 percent saying they trusted that operation. CNN (39 percent); NBC (35) and CBS (32) ran two, three, and four respectively.

Continue reading "That FOX Is Most Trusted Is All Right" »

In "The Battle for Bay Area Readers," The New York Times has allegedly fired the latest significant shot.

The Times announced Friday that it has added 1,100 subscribers in the region since launching its San Francisco Bay Edition in September.

"Single-copy sales are up too," senior Times executive Jim Schachter said Thursday. "We're delighted at the reception we're getting from Bay Area readers for the pages that Felicity Barringer is editing, and for our Bay Area blog," he said.

The modest edition is actually an additional two pages each of Bay Area news running in the Friday and Sunday editions of the paper. Before the section hit the streets, The Times had 40,080 daily subscribers in the San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland market and 57,514 on Sundays.

Also looking to cash in on a region that houses notoriously favorable readership demographics, The Wall Street Journal launched its own Bay Area edition in November. Its edition also includes extra pages filled with area news and runs each Thursday.

Continue reading "Newspapers Eat Their Own in Bay Area" »

Not bad for the cable network the White House believes is "not really a news organization."

Among those faring the worst in the poll were CBS and ABC, which were not trusted by 46%.

That makes last week's declaration by White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer even more ironic: "We don't feel the obligation to treat [Fox] like we would treat a CNN, or an ABC, or an NBC, or a traditional news organization, but there are times when we believe it makes sense to communicate with them."