We hear that ABC News vlogger Amanda Congdon's contract won't be renewed. Congdon, who came to fame at RocketBoom, started contributing to their website late last year. She has been quite productive recently—taking tours of homes in Santa Barbara and talking about angry iPhone buyers. No word yet on the state of her contracts with DuPont.
During a briefing yesterday concerning the recommendations of a panel appointed to investigate the treatment of our wounded soldiers, President Bush singled out former ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, who was grievously injured in Iraq.
I am not subject to the 'rules' traditional journalists have to follow. Isn't that what new media is all about? Breaking the rules? Setting our own?
Look, we know it's a slow news day, but come on. Don't forget to tune in to World News Tonight, when Charlie Gibson assesses the possibility that a group of convicts being transported to a maximum security prison might actually take over the plane in which they're flying.
It's here, it's here, the Amanda Congdon show is here! If you're willing to sit through a thirty-second Sheraton commercial and ignore the thousands of pop-unders ABC inflicts on you, you can catch The Rack in all its unfettered, Steely Dan-clad glory. We watched it with the sound muted so as not to be distracted while we were getting off, but the Times' Virginia Heffernan reviews the performance:
Are you excited for tomorrow? You should be: It marks the debut of A/C on ABC, the new web-whatever-the-hell-it-is from Amanda Congdon, who "blasted out of the blogosphere," according to the promotional copy. What's Amanda's goal? "To bring the best of the web - all of its content, all of its culture, even its potential for social change - to the ABC News digital audience." Best of all, A/C on ABC will be interactive: "[T]alk to Amanda, ask her questions, help her shape her program." Worried that working for a professional news network may somehow drain Amanda of the exuberance for which she is so justly celebrated? Don't be! If the placement of those buttons on this ad are any indication, ABC has a pretty good handle on her appeal.
BusinessWeek:
It turns out that Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" is the voice of my generation. It narrates the 20th century's transition from optimism to disillusion, beginning with some dude's poetic idealization of his girlfriend, and dissolving amidst the sound and fury of encroaching insignificance. It's like taking your date to the malt shop and winding up in a tomb.
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin pretend that they're playing with real money. [NYT]
• "It's generally a questionable sign when a publisher flees before a magazine publishes its first issue; it's worse when the magazine has been launched and failed twice already." WWD harshes out on Radar, compensates by running "thin" picture of Maer Roshan. [WWD]
• Keith Olbermann makes obscure reference to the time Nicole Richie took a gigantic crap in Paris Hilton's mouth in an epic game of Truth or Dare gone awry. [FBNY]
• The problem with new media? Not enough people getting killed. [LAT]
• "Maybe if you want to get a younger audience for your newscast, maybe you could start by not ash-canning a pregnant 43-year-old woman and replacing her with a man 20 years older. I'm just thinking out loud here." We would have said "shit-canning," but otherwise James Poniewozik speaks for us. [Tuned In]
If you think of the media as a vast Ouroboros (or, more appropriately, a giant circle jerk) you'll find one more piece of confirmation on today's Drudge Report, where Matt celebrates The Way to Win, the forthcoming political tome from Mark Halperin and John F. Harris. What is it that Matt likes so much about the book? The "extended 15-page homage to the glories of this site." After Matt quotes reams of praise heaped upon the Drudge Report, the reach-around achieves its climax with a link to the book's Amazon.com page. We can understand Matt's appreciation of Halperin and Harris, but what makes him such an appealing figure to the pair? Well, Harris is the national politics editor of the Washington Post. Halperin is the poltical director of ABC News and principal author of daily newsletter "The Note," which is essentially dictated each morning by Karl Rove. So there it is: they're all tugged by the same string. Except for the hurricane stuff: Matt writes all that on his own.
Congratulations to former ABC News anchor Elizabeth Vargas and husband Marc Cohn, proud parents of another baby boy. Little Severance Wyatt Cohn arrived on Wednesday weighing seven pounds, nine ounces. The boy was born with a "full head of hair" and the lifelong burden of having to hear how he killed his mother's career.
ABC July 19 will officially change the name of World News Tonight to World News With Charles Gibson.
• The news is still big; it's the newspapers that got small. [Slate]
• David Carr asks: Is CNN news or entertainment? What, it can't be both? [NYT]
• Pissing off Dick Cheney was not, in fact, the Times' reason for running its financial-records-spying story, says Bill Keller. [NYT]
• As we already told you, WWD media man Jeff Bercovici is going to Radar. WWD media woman Sara James, however, is not. She's leaving Women's Wear — we're sure of that — but it's just unclear where she's going. [Jossip]
• Roger Ailes thinks with Fox Newsies aren't working hard enough. [B&C]
• Wednesday will be Charlie Gibson's last day at GMA, and his feeling will be hurt if he doesn't get as many video tributes as Katie did. [USAT]
• Spiers steals David Lat from slutty sister Wonkette for her nascent juggernaut. Next time, she'll just twist Denton's nipple directly, without the intermediary. [WWD (second item)]
• Bigshot VCs give people like Rafat Ali — proprietor of the distressingly capitalized paidContent.org and, years ago, an intern where we used to work — money. [WSJ]
• We did not go to Slate's pre-party panel discussion last night on the future of newspapers in the internet age, as we long ago decided we'd never attend another print-vs.-web panel. Others have a more flexible stance on this issue. [E&P]
• Speaking of The Note, Eric Boehlert kind of hates it. [Wash. Monthly]
• Lauren Weisberger's eye-catching title, The Devil Wears Prada — by which we mean the actual four words of the title — perhaps wasn't even her own coinage. The horror! [WWD]
• Look, mom! We're in Nexis! [Media Mob/NYO]
Our slutty sisters in Washington love to pick on The Note — ABC's way-inside-the-Beltway daily political tip sheet — but it's not typically on our beat. But this morning, and for the first time ever, we received a press release from an ABC flack alerting us to some highlights in today's Note. For example:
• Dan Rather says farewell and that he'll see us all soon. [Romenesko]
• Charlie Gibson doesn't care about ratings. Ya-huh. [WP]
• Michael Wolff doesn't like Slate because it's "by and for smart boys trying strenuously to be ever smarter than anyone they perceive as threatening their smartest status." Ironic, eh? [Slate]
Joe Hagan ("Something of a snake" - Charles Gibson) takes a look at the race for the anchor's chair at ABC News. And what a look: There are more words in this piece than the evening broadcast has viewers. We understand that you're busy people who don't have time to read the War and Peace of second-place network news succession stories, so we've broken it down in convenient lesson form. After the jump you'll find all you need to know about Charles, Diane, the lady with the baby and the rest of them.
