American News Agenda Determined by Bill Keller's Wife's Pastor
In your revealing Thursday media column: Bill Keller discloses how he sniffs out news, HuffPo goes hard on the Twitter, a new way to backstab your fellow media employees, and more Michael Wolff beef.
- At the end of an exchange of letters with a Catholic dude, NYT editor Bill Keller said this: "My wife returned from mass last Sunday moved by the pastor's Easter sermon, in which he described how shaken he has been by the latest round of scandal. The next day I asked our national desk to look into the impact of the crisis on the morale of priests." How your national news agenda gets set, ladies and gentlemen: the boss's wife hears something at church. (This happens here too, but it's usually something heard at a bar.)
- The Huffington Post is launching a new "Twitter Edition," which will be "super-charged, if you will, for Twitter users." Is the regular Huffington Post too much for you? Why not consume your HuffPo in small Twitter chunks, then? Or just kill yourself.
- Ha, a TV news director in Orlando has hit upon a novel way to motivate his staff to stab one another in the back: He issued a memo telling them to write down the three worst employees at their job, a.k.a. "battery drainers," and submit the names to him anonymously. Let's see...Pareene, Lawson, Tate. [Computer, anonymize this].
- The Wrap sent a cease-and-desist letter to Newser telling the site to "immediately cease and desist using The Wrap as a source for Newser content." Uhhh. Is that even legal? I'm not a lawyer so I don't know. But I don't think so. Basically they just want Michael Wolff to credit and link properly and be less of an asshole. Please, tell your lawyers it's best not to feed him.
[Photo via Getty]