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Friday 13 August 2010
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Dr Laura Schlessinger, a nationally-syndicated US radio host, told a black woman with a white husband: "don't marry out of your race" – and repeatedly used the word "nigger" on air even after her caller objected.A women, named Jade, had called Schlessinger's popular advice show to discuss the racism she endures from her husband's friends. When Schlessinger, a well-known conservative commentator, dismissed the examples she offered, Jade said the friends used what the American media refers to as "the N-word".
Schlessinger replied: "Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO and listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger. I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing."
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Wednesday 11 August 2010
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Richard Desmond: cutting Channel Five down to size. Photograph: David Levene/Guardian
Just 19 days after Richard Desmond took control of Channel Five, he has announced his first changes to the business. They are brutal.
A quarter of the workforce are being made redundant. All but two of the nine executive board directors are out. Continue reading...
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Tuesday 10 August 2010
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White House press secretary Robert Gibbs - critics comparing Obama to Bush are crazy. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
The Obama administration's most public face, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, has tried to climb down from angry remarks he aimed at leftwing critics, calling them "crazy".
In an interview with The Hill newspaper in Washington DC, Gibbs revealed frustration at attacks on the administration from liberal Democrats and others on the left, in terms likely to make relations even worse:
"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy."
The press secretary dismissed the "professional left" in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, "They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."
Within hours of the interview being published, Gibbs tried to walk back his remarks, calling them "inartful". He told the Huffington Post:
I watch too much cable, I admit. Day after day it gets frustrating. Yesterday I watched as someone called legislation to prevent teacher layoffs a bailout - but I know that's not a view held by many, nor were the views I was frustrated about.
Gibbs went on to say: "So we should all, me included, stop fighting each other and arguing about our differences on certain policies".
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John Plunkett: The latest Rajar figures have radio listening at a record high, but the amount of time we spend listening is on the decline Continue reading...
People listen to the radio less often, but more of us are tuning in at some point in the week. Photograph: David Sillitoe/Guardian
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Monday 9 August 2010
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Sky's £150m deal to buy HBO's catalogue will keep the BBC drama department on its toes, but the satellite broadcaster still lags far behind in home-grown shows Continue reading...
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Tuesday 3 August 2010
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Publisher Gestalten has posted an excellent video podcast that gives an insight into the work of the New York Times's award-winning graphics journalists.
Graphics director Steve Duenes and graphics editor Archie Tse talk about the pressures of turning round illustrations to explain breaking news stories such as 9/11, their relations with the newsroom, and whether they have a fixed house style.
The interview was produced by Gestalten to coincide with its forthcoming book Turning Pages about editorial design for print media.
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Newsweek: sold to 91-year-old audio manufacturer Sidney Harman
Newsweek, the rusting hulk of a news magazine that was once a gleaming media flagship, has been off-loaded by the Washington Post Company to a man who made his fortune selling car stereos and hi-fi equipment.
Sidney Harman, the 91-year-old founder of audio electronics manufacturer Harman International Industries, becomes the new proprietor of Newsweek, after the news weekly was put up for sale in the wake of years of sustained losses – including a $28m operating loss last year.
No figure for the sale was disclosed but the Washington Post Company said it "will not have a material effect" on its balance sheet, suggesting the price tag was insignificant. To make the deal sweeter for Harman, the Post has agreed to pick up redundancy cost for lay-offs the new owner makes, as well as staff pensions.
Jon Meacham, Newsweek's editor since 2006, said he will step down when the sale is finalised.
"In seeking a buyer for Newsweek, we wanted someone who feels as strongly as we do about the importance of quality journalism," said Washington Post Company chief executive Donald Graham after the sale was announced, setting the bar low.
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Friday 30 July 2010
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On the trail of radical chic: Tom Wolfe in 1966 with the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and the band's manager, Rock Scully. (Wolfe is the one in the suit.) Photograph: Ted Streshinsky/Corbis
The US website Cool Tools has compiled a list of the best magazine articles of all time that has sparked much online debate.
No doubt compiled with an eye to reading on the iPad, it's a fascinating (if subjective) trawl through the past half decade of magazine publishing. Continue reading...
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Thursday 29 July 2010
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Newspapers: boring? Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Years ago in the New Republic, Michael Kinsley ran a competition to find the most boring newspaper headline. The winner was "Worthwhile Canadian initiative". Unlike "Small earthquake in Chile; not many dead", which never appeared in print, "Worthwhile Canadian initiative" was real – it lives online in the New York Times archive from 10 April 1986.
Now Kinsley has a new competition, this time for the most boring article ever published in a newspaper. Kinsley explains:
The story that grabbed my inattention was in the New York Times on Monday, July 26. It was about a man who used to take long walks around the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, until he died last week. That's it. That's the story. In Silver Lake, he was wittily known as "the Walking Man." (You see, it's because he walked all the time).
I saw that particular piece in the NYT but didn't read it because it seemed, well, too boring. And that's the trouble, in the US at least, there's a lot of competition. Take almost any edition of the Washington Post, for example. But you'd have to read the damn thing in the first place.
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Tuesday 27 July 2010
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Admiral Mike Mullen: taking to Twitter to rebut the Wikileaks documents. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
How does the US military's public relations combat the release of 91,000 gruesome war logs from Afghanistan through the Wikileaks website? By opening a new front on the social media battleground.
Generals are often accused of fighting the last war – but not Admiral Mike Mullen, the most senior US military officer as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Mullen today made his first public response to the war logs leak – and instead of holding a press conference or releasing a statement, Mullen made his views known in 140 characters through Twitter.
Posting as @thejointstaff, Mullen wrote:
Appalled by classified docs leak to Wikileaks & decision to post. It changes nothing on Afghanistan strategy or our relationship w/Pakistan
Mullen was travelling in Afghanistan when the news of the war logs – carried in the Guardian, New York Times and Der Spiegel – first came to light. Shortly after tweeting his thoughts Mullen held a more conventional press conference in Baghdad.
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Friday 23 July 2010
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The Sun front page. Click for full cover image
Today's Sun front page reporting how the paper saved a donkey from cruelty in Russia is a classic piece of tabloid opportunism. It's also part of a great tradition of silly season stories. And it may spark a sense of deja vu in older readers.
The story started off on Wednesday with reports in several papers that a Russian company had sent a donkey parasailing as a marketing stunt. The Sun and the Mirror ran stories with typically excited headlines. Continue reading...
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Mary Anne Hobbs. Photograph: Andy Butterton/PA
Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs is to leave the station after 14 years. The DJ, who presents a dance and dubstep show between 2am and 4am on Thursdays, will present her last show on 9 September. She is joining the University of Sheffield to mentor and teach students on its radio, TV station and newspaper.
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The Daily Telegraph has had a mini management shake-up after the departure of its former editor-in-chief Will Lewis, focused on the paper's Saturday sections. Liz Hunt has been promoted to associate editor, and will oversee the Weekend section alongside executive editor Mark Skipworth. She will continue to oversee features. Kylie O'Brien has been promoted to weekend editor, while Joanna Fortnam will take over O'Brien's previous role as gardening editor. Paul Farrow has been promoted to editor of Your Money.
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'Vote late, vote often' seems to have been the motto for Tyler Brulé's staff
Analysis of voting patterns in poll for No 101 in power list finds surge in votes from Monocle editor's HQ. By Jane Martinson, Peter Robins and John Plunkett
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Thursday 22 July 2010
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Still under construction: even accurate early figures on the Times paywall may not tell you much about its eventual fate. Illustration: Corbis
An awful lot of British journalists were hoping that the Times and Sunday Times's paywalls would be an overnight success. At this point, we can probably assume that they aren't. News International's executives have every incentive to boast – more papers going behind paywalls would help the Times, and these things take so long to do well that NI would be likely to maintain its head start. So far, they are not boasting. They are leaving the field to Michael Wolff, Hitwise and Dan Sabbagh's secret squirrels, whose figures get less encouraging the more you look at them.
But all the folk unwontedly cheering on Rupert Murdoch should not lose heart yet. It would be very unwise to declare the experiment an overnight failure. Continue reading...
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