Can America Survive the Rule of a “Stupified Plutocracy”?

Lewis Lapham, who as editor of Harper's magazine made it essential reading, is without doubt our greatest living satirist, sardonic, erudite, righteous in the tradition of Twain, Mencken, Vidal and Hitchens. As the Times put it, "Lapham's portraits of his country are astute and his dry wit as sharp as a knife."

The occasion for this interview is the 30th anniversary reissue of his book of essays, Money and Class in America (with a new introduction by Thomas Frank), as essential a deconstruction of American political culture today as it was the moment it was first published in the decade that sent us spiraling down our current path.

Incidentally, Lapham Quarterly, the project of his "retirement," is out with a Special Issue: A History of Fake News.

Lester "Red" Rodney (1911-2009)

"It didn't make SportsCenter, but one of history's most influential sportswriters died this week at the age of 98. His name was Lester Rodney. Lester was one of the first people to write about a young Negro League prospect named Jackie Robinson. He was the last living journalist to cover the famous 1938 fight at Yankee Stadium between 'The Brown Bomber' Joe Louis and Hitler favorite, Max Schmeling. He crusaded against baseball's color line when almost every other journalist pretended it didn't exist. He edited a political sports page that engaged his audience in how to fight for a more just sports world. His writing, which could describe the beauty of a well-turned double play in one sentence and blast injustice in the next, is still bracing and ahead of its time. He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead he was largely erased from the books."

The rest of the story: More Than a Sportswriter: Lester "Red" Rodney: 1911-2009 by Dave Zirin (Huffington Post 2009-12-23)

Reading list: Interview with Lester Rodney (Political Affairs magazine)
Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports by Irwin Silber (Temple University Press 2003)

Community: Future of News and Civic Media

The “Future of News and Civic Media” conference in mid-June, sponsored by Center for Future Civic Media and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, showcased some of the work being done as a part of the Knight News Challenge (slogan: "You invent it. We fund it.") on creative ways to provide people with the news and information needed to manage their communities effectively.

Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics: The truth is out there (or the facts, anyway)

Ask FactCheck is a page on the Annenberg Public Policy Center's Political Fact Check site where a team of journalistic watchdogs responds to frequently asked and general interest questions from the public. Here are some recent queries:

Is it true that persons older than 59 can't get heart surgery in England? There's no such prohibition on heart operations in England, as a chain e-mail claims.

Is the ACLU suing to have cross-shaped headstones removed from military cemeteries? The ACLU has filed no such suit, and it hasn't sued to "end prayer from the military" either.

Was Obama rude to wounded veterans during a visit to the National Naval Medical Center? A chain e-mail that makes such a claim gets several facts wrong and is disputed by an official who was present at the meeting.

Is ACORN providing workers for the 2010 census? No. ACORN employees will not be taking the census. The group is one of more than 30,000 "partners" that will help publicize the event.

Go. Ask FactCheck.

Media Watch: Non-Profit Investigative News Effort

ProPublica, whose slogan is "Journalism in the public interest," is a non-profit undertaking focusing on investigative reporting. The organization has 24 full time reporters and editors, the largest staff in American media devoted solely to investigative journalism. Its activities are supported entirely by philanthropy and the articles it produces are provided, free of charge, both through its own website and via leading news outlets selected with an eye toward maximizing the impact of its work.

Commenting on the new organization last December, editor in chief Paul E. Steiger, formerly managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, said that

"ProPublica will focus exclusively on journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them. We will be non-partisan and non-ideological, adhering to the strictest standards of journalistic impartiality and fairness. We will look hard at the critical functions of business and of government, the two biggest centers of power. But we will also focus on such institutions as unions, universities, hospitals, foundations and the media when they appear to be exploiting or oppressing those weaker than they, or when there is evidence that they are abusing the public trust."

The organization's website includes a "scandal watch" of top stories about corruption and abuse of power. Numerous rss feeds keep a timely eye on breaking stories in such areas as Business & Money, Justice & Law, Energy & Environment, Government & Politics, Health & Science, Media & Technology, and National Security. A little more than a half year old, the Manhattan-based news organization says it is needed now because investigative journalism increasingly is being crowded out by the media's obsessive focus on trivia (press release).

The Corporate Media: Unfair and, in every sense of the word, Unbalanced

For a measure of the media bias against the Democrats, consider this from Shoddy! Tawdry! A Televised Train Wreck! (New York Times, 2008-04-20), Frank Rich's meditation on ABC's trivialization of the issues during this week's debate:

At an Associated Press luncheon for newspaper editors in Washington last week, Mr. McCain was given a standing ovation.(The other candidate who appeared, Mr. Obama, was not.)

The editors can't rouse themselves to be polite, let alone fair.

The L.A. Times: No news would be good news

Friends at the Times (where I wrote about the magazine business in the long ago) keep me posted on what's going on there, but I rarely get exercised enough to write about it. The Times contributes so little to the political, cultural or social life of the county -- admit it, if it disappeared tomorrow, you wouldn't miss anything but the grocery store inserts, that it's hard to care very much about internal machinations that, although they may make the workplace more or less tolerable, are guaranteed to have zero impact on you or me.

However, the other Times, the real Times thinks it's news [Los Angeles Times Names New Top Editor by Richard Pérez-Peña (The New York Times, 2008-02-15)] that our fishwrap's publisher, David Hiller, decided to give the top editorial job to Russ Stanton weeks before Jim O'Shea was forced out for resisting another in the series of staff cuts that have decimated the paper.

Some of Stanton’s colleagues were disgruntled enough by the prospect, according to Pérez-Peña, to "have taken the extraordinary step of going to Mr. Hiller to ask him not to choose Mr. Stanton....[T]he concerns raised about Mr. Stanton were not about his ability, but about whether he had the stature and breadth of experience to run one of the nation’s most important newspapers."

I hear that the real story is that, in the wake of the Times' recent staffing problems, Stanton, who as the company's "Innovations Editor" (egad!) has been tasked with improving the paper's famously mediocre website, will be nothing more than a flunky for the publisher, who is regarded with contempt by most of the news staff. Stanton responded to that charge by asserting that the "circumstances under which Jim left...really hindered whoever was going to get this job, almost setting them up to be the publisher’s lackey.” Trying to find something nice to say, Pérez-Peña describes the new chief as a "little quirky; he keeps an extensive collection of Los Angeles Dodgers bobble-head dolls in his office."

...like Mr. O’Shea before him, [Stanton] faces an uphill fight to persuade the newsroom that he is not a puppet of Mr. Hiller.

...

A new regime, led by the real estate developer Sam Zell, took control of The Tribune Company in December, and gave more autonomy to each newspaper publisher and television station general manager in a company that had been very top-down. But the new leadership has also made it clear to each property that it must improve its bottom line if Tribune is to meet the heavy debt obligations from the takeover.

Tribune Company bought The Times’ parent company, Times Mirror, in 2000 and installed a widely respected editor, John S. Carroll. At about that time, the paper had a news staff of about 1,200 people.

But after being forced to shrink the newsroom, Mr. Carroll quit rather than carry out another round of reductions. A new publisher, Jeff Johnson, was sent out from the company headquarters in Chicago, and a new editor, Dean P. Baquet, took Mr. Carroll’s place. They made deep cuts in the newsroom but were fired in 2006 for refusing to cut still more.

Once again, the company sent Tribune veterans from Chicago to ride herd on The Times: Mr. Hiller and Mr. O’Shea.

Typically, the local Times buried the story in the business section, but did manage to include the information that

Latimes.com, the paper's online edition, has been adding readers at about a 20% annualized clip recently, Stanton said. The print version of The Times, the nation's fourth-largest daily, however, has seen daily circulation fall to about 780,000 from a peak of more than 1.1 million in the early 1990s, though it has shown a slight improvement recently. The print newspaper generates more than 90% of The Times' revenue, but Hiller noted that the share from online publishing has been growing rapidly.

That may explain how Stanton won the post even though he "doesn't have the same range of experience as many of his predecessors, who before moving into the editor's chair had won Pulitzer Prizes and other accolades for their own reporting or coverage they supervised." High-visibility assignments covering wars or Washington or seasoning by running other journals -- not auxiliary websites -- "traditionally have been steppingstones to the top job at The Times and other large newspapers."

You're far more likely to find the news you want in papers and websites out of New York, Sacramento and the Bay Area than from 1st and Spring, and from digital news outlets like The Huffington Post and Truthdig. If there's any good news it's that morale at the Times can hardly get worse. But further staff cuts aren't likely to improve either situation. Eli Broad and Ron Burkle ought to be relieved their bid to buy the Times was thwarted; if things continue along the same track, in a year or two they should be able to pick it up for a song.

Media: Times' Shakeup # 2,143

As reporting goes, this is pretty cheesy (on my part), but what the heck: daily journalism being essential to a viable community life, you need to know that

A source told E&P [Will LAT's Stanton Replace O'Shea? (E&P)] that Russ Stanton is the frontrunner to replace James O'Shea, who was fired over the weekend in a shakeup at the Los Angeles Times. Stanton has been innovation editor at the paper since January 2007, and is in charge of editorial content at latimes.com. Before that he was business editor. Forbes: The honeymoon is over at Tribune, writes Louis Hau. NYT: The ousted editor of the Los Angeles Times on Monday offered a scathing critique of the newspaper industry and specifically his longtime employer, the Tribune Company, arguing that cost cuts, a lack of inve stment and an aversion to serious news was damaging the business. LAT: Tribune Co. chairman Sam Zell on Monday backed Los Angeles Times publisher David D. Hiller's decision to replace the newspaper's editor. LA Observed: O'Shea's remarks to newsroom. E&P: Former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll said the weekend dismissal of editor Jim O'Shea "affects morale." Chicago Tribune: Hiller said in an interview Monday that he would "love to say we can spend more or spend the same every year, and I don't th ink that's realistic" given the economic realities of the news business.

This comes from MediaBistro's Daily Media News Feed, essential reading for anyone in journalism, tv or public relations in any of the municipalities where such crimes occur.

L.A.Times: When we lament the loss of newspapers, we're not usually thinking of the Times

As reporting goes, this is pretty cheesy (on my part), but what the heck: you need to know that

A source told E&P [Will LAT's Stanton Replace O'Shea? (E&P)] that Russ Stanton is the frontrunner to replace James O'Shea, who was fired over the weekend in a shakeup at the Los Angeles Times. Stanton has been innovation editor at the paper since January 2007, and is in charge of editorial content at latimes.com. Before that he was business editor. Forbes: The honeymoon is over at Tribune, writes Louis Hau. NYT: The ousted editor of the Los Angeles Times on Monday offered a scathing critique of the newspaper industry and specifically his longtime employer, the Tribune Company, arguing that cost cuts, a lack of investment and an aversion to serious news was damaging the business. LAT: Tribune Co. chairman Sam Zell on Monday backed Los Angeles Times publisher David D. Hiller's decision to replace the newspaper's editor. LA Observed: O'Shea's remarks to newsroom. E&P: Former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll said the weekend dismissal of editor Jim O'Shea "affects morale." Chicago Tribune: Hiller said in an interview Monday that he would "love to say we can spend more or spend the same every year, and I don't th ink that's realistic" given the economic realities of the news business.

This comes from MediaBistro's Daily Media News Feed, essential reading for anyone in journalism, tv or public relations in any of the municipalities where such crimes occur.

The Dems and Iraq: Confusing "can't" with "won't"

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting makes the point that, "Following a pattern set when Congress passed supplemental funding for the Iraq War last May, major media outlets continued to 'explain' the politics of the war in incomplete and misleading ways....Congress does not have to pass legislation to bring an end to the war in Iraq - it simply has to block passage of any bill that would continue to fund the war. This requires not 67 or 60 Senate votes, or even 51, but just 41....the Democrats have more than enough votes to end the Iraq War - if they choose to do so."

The rest of the story: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

2008: Just the Facts

FactCheck.org has done yeoman work in service of the idea of an informed voting public. Now, it will no longer need to soldier on alone. PolitiFact.com has announced that it also will pan for truth in the stream of 2008 presidential rhetoric. The St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly have teamed to produce the new site, offering among other services a "truth-o-meter" that rates statements by the candidates for president on a scale from "true" through "half true" to "pants on fire." The site is organized well, the writing is crisp and to the point, and sources are hyperlinked where appropriate. Users can browse the commentaries by candidate or ad sponsor, by issue, by truth-o-meter ruling and, in the case of attack ads, by who is attacking whom. Twenty-one researchers, writers and editors from the periodicals have been assigned to the project. Both companies are affiliates of the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, a center for journalism education in St. Pete.