WaPo's Ezra Klein: The scandals are falling apart

shortformblog:

justinspoliticalcorner:

[the entire article]

H/T: Ezra Klein at Washington Post

We shouldn’t publish full articles unless we have to (say, if the article gets taken down).  A couple of key paragraphs is fine. People can click to read the rest. And the folks that don’t want to will just miss out. 

You like Ezra Klein as a writer? Don’t take away his traffic. I don’t mean to pick on anyone, and this isn’t directed at anyone in particular, but it happens far too often on Tumblr. We have to start somewhere, right? So why not here? — Ernie @ SFB

“Arguing that the muscle of daily newspapers would let the Kochs deal unions and taxes a death blow does not reflect the reality of the modern media. News organizations with a tenth, or even a hundredth, of a city daily’s personnel can produce reporting with just as much impact thanks to the flattened distribution system of the Internet. One example: InsideClimate News, which has seven full-timers and just won a Pulitzer.”

Andrew Beaujon (@abeaujon), writing in “Why news will survive the Koch Brothers,” at Poynter today. For those who fear the Koch Brothers’ entry into media: all is not lost. For those who aren’t worried: good call. (via poynterinstitute)

shortformblog:

On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, we’re revisiting this video, which we first posted several months ago — it’s NBC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent, Richard Engel, detailing to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow the horrifying tale of how he was abducted by pro-Assad forces within Syria, and how he came to be freed. Engel is one of the lucky ones (extremely lucky, considering the content of his story) — 23 professional journalists have been killed covering the civil war, the majority of them Syrian, on top of dozens more slain citizen journalists. 

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“The conventional media approach is, ‘We do our thing, and you consume it’—it’s one-way,” says Mark Coatney, who launched Newsweek’s highly regarded Tumblr account when he was a Web editor there in 2008. “Effective media organizations on Tumblr interact with the audience as equals.”

This new form of engagement can pose some challenges. On Newsweek’s Tumblr site, Coatney cultivated a punchy, irreverent tone and often discussed controversies swirling around Newsweek itself, such as the news that the magazine had been put up for sale. That kind of personal, informal voice might clash with the sensibilities of a straitlaced newspaper, wire service, or network news program.

”

(Streams of consciousness : Columbia Journalism Review)

My quote isn’t all that great, but there’s some really smart things said by others in Ben Adler’s nice CJR piece. 

(via markcoatney)

(via markcoatney)

“CNN has been in the middle of a rehabilitation ever since Jeff Zucker was appointed at the end of last year to run CNN Worldwide. Until now, the defining story in the Zucker era had been a doomed cruise ship that lost power and was towed to port, where its beleaguered passengers dispersed. This week, CNN seemed a lot like that ship.

… Part of the reason that we still want CNN to be great is that at a moment when information and news seem to have done a jailbreak — bursting forth everywhere in all sorts of ways — it would be nice to have a village common where a reliable provider of news held the megaphone. By marketing itself as the most trusted name in news, CNN is and should be held to a higher standard.”

In Boston, CNN Stumbles in Rush to Break News
Read: NYTimes
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