A couple of bloggers have gotten their panties in a bunch because the Associated Press, a coop that offers original reporting to its 1,500 member newspapers and syndicates to other outlets, is asking that they go a little easier on the copy-paste. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is having none of it!
As we reported last week, the Associated Press sent a copyright complaint to a harmless little left-wing news aggregating site demanding they remove posts that featured "39 to 79 words" of their precious, precious copy. Over the weekend, after outrage from various blogs, they retreated. But they're not giving up! Blogs will bow to them! They will set standards, and blogs will naturally decide to follow these standards on their own accord, because that's how bloggers act!
Hillary Clinton's race for the presidency is OVER. It's DONE. The primaries are finished! The Associated Press has just crowned Barack Obama the official Democratic nominee for President. The wire story is an amusing 'fuck you' to the Clinton campaign, which spent the morning crowing about how the AP got their earlier story wrong. Also it's long and they've clearly been saving it for when they could finalize the math. Like an obituary. Which it effectively is. [AP]
The Observer covered NBC's press conference anointing never-funny (but cute!) former SNLer Jimmy Fallon the new king of late-late night. They included this anecdote: "Mr. Fallon claimed his kindergarten yearbook featured his photo above the caption 'Most Likely to Take Over David Letterman.' (Someone in the crowd, possibly auditioning to be Mr. Fallon's sidekick, let out an audible 'Wow' at this point.) When asked what kindergarten had yearbooks, much less ones with references to David Letterman, Mr. Fallon joked, 'It's a magical kindergarten. It's taught by a unicorn, a talking unicorn.'" See? He's doing some of that funny joking-around stuff the late-night comics do. But no one told the Associated Press, as you can see in the attached story. [NYO, AP]
Hillary Clinton spent Saturday appealing to blue collar voters in Indiana. Which means drinking like a frat boy, obv. At a little neighborhood place called Bronko's in Crown Point, Indiana, Senator Clinton hoisted a mug of beer and then partook in a round of shots with the assembled locals. A shot of whiskey! A shot of blended Canadian whiskey. Dammit Hil, America makes the best whiskey in the world—who's reponsible for ordering Crown Royal? Wolfson? An Associated Press photog was there and captured the whole sad scene. We've got a charming gallery of hot Clinton party photos after the jump. Blue states truly lost.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Get real, people. That is not a naked woman reflected in Vice President Dick Cheney's sunglasses. Although it kind of appears to be. It you blow up the picture, you can see it is Cheney's hand gripping the handle of a fishing rod.
A tipster tells us that the Associated Press building on 33rd street (AP Digital) is undergoing some maintenance, so the water will be turned off all day. This means that employees must pee outside. Well, in Port-a-Potties. Out "by the loading docks." What inglorious injustice will Journalism suffer next?
Yesterday we noted the death of Paul Mento, whose body was found gagged with duct tape in a bathtub at Bay Ridge's Best Western Gregory Hotel, site of another recent murder. We also mocked the fact that police were "investigating the death as suspicious." No shit, right? Well, it turns out that Mento's death was in fact a suicide. And that's not all—he was a former executive with the AP.
