A tipster tells us (and Twitter confirms) that Bloomberg's website has been blocked in China thanks to their publication this morning of this lengthy investigative story detailing the wealth of various relatives of Xi Jinping (pictured, with Hank Paulson), the man likely to be China's next president.
BuzzFeed has built a lucrative business on organizing the internet's confusing spectacle into listicles easily comprehended by even the most numbed office workers. But the site's approach to all content as building blocks for viral lists puts it in an awkward position in relation to internet etiquette and journalistic ethics.
Ed Shadid, the cousin of dead New York Times foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid, caused a stir over the weekend when he claimed in a speech that Anthony pre-emptively blamed the Times for his death in Syria, telling his wife: "If anything happens to me, I want the world to know that the New York Times killed me." In an interview with Gawker, the surviving Shadid confirms the account and says the Times knew a trip to Syria was too dangerous, but sent him anyway.
Fabulously wealthy CEO whisperer and newspaper columnist Thomas Friedman is little more than a human-shaped random word generator programmed with the "Computers and Internet" section of a fourth-grade vocabulary textbook and fitted with a mustache. He writes one single column, sometimes using different proper nouns or cycling through slightly new platitudes, in order to allow a new headline to be written. The Only Thomas Friedman Column That Exists—which ran right on schedule yesterday—opens like this:
A note from Dan Rather: I'm aware that my musings run counter to some of the more prominent early reviews in high-profile publications such as The New Yorker and the New York Times. But with all due respect (and I have a lot of it for those reviewers), I just don't think they "get it"; they've somehow missed the breadth, depth and "got it right" qualities –- and importance — of Newsroom. Maybe it's because they are print people. Then, too, maybe they're right and I'm wrong. I never rule out the possibility of that. But I've lived in the world of television newsrooms for most of my adult life. I know the people, the venues and the challenges — the satisfactions of success and the heartbreak when things go awry. From where I sit and based on my experience, Sorkin and crew have got it amazingly right, even when they over talk it.
Yesterday we found out that Jonah Lehrer, the Gladwellesque whiz kid who's The New Yorker's newest staff writer, reused his own old writings for every goddamn blog post he's written for The New Yorker so far. A self-plagiarist, he is. Big time. What's the latest? He is an even bigger time plagiarist (self, and otherwise!) than we knew yesterday. And for it, he should probably be eased out of journalism's highest echelon.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's investigation into the origins of the Watergate break-in—which took place 40 years ago yesterday—is one of the most highly mythologized episodes in the history of journalism. It represents the Platonic ideal of what journalism-with-a-capital-J ought to be, at least according to its high priesthood—sober, careful young men doggedly following the story wherever it leads and holding power to account, without fear or favor. It was also a sloppy, ethically dubious project the details of which would mortify any of the smug high priests of journalism that flourished in its wake. The actual Watergate investigation could never have survived the legacy it helped create.
Neil Munro, a reporter for Tucker Carlson's after-school project website the Daily Caller, repeatedly interrupted President Obama's statements on his new immigration policy at the Rose Garden today. For his efforts, we can now crown him the biggest asshat in Washington, D.C. (during this particular hour).
Doddering Reaganite Peggy Noonan has become the conservative version of Richard Cohen: a doddering old columnist employed by a respected journalistic institution who uses their column space to demand less journalism and more government secrecy. Have you heard of these so-called "leaks," from our leaders? The United States government is not a house of plumbing, sir. Sir? Sir.
Cottonheaded Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is fond of adopting odd positions. Sometimes, he takes the position of the people he's supposed to be policing. Sometimes, he adopts the position of rapists. And sometimes, he adopts no position at all. Now, for your pleasure, Richard Cohen is rolling out a new type of position: the ??? position.
As you probably read in some of those less reputable pornography news outlets, a Brooklyn high school teacher has been arrested and charged with rape for allegedly having sex with a 16 year-old student in her office, like a dozen freaking times. Why do we even bring up this tawdry mess, when we could be discussing the fiscal impacts of the latest unemployment report? Well, because of Hot Lesbian Teachers, of course.
This morning on Fox & Friends, Fox News aired a straight-up, unadulterated four-minute attack ad mocking Obama's "Hope and Change" message and cataloguing the purported failures of his administration, complete with ominous music, depressing charts, and voiceover audio of Mitt Romney attacking him. Not someone else's ad, mind you—this was actually an in-house production of Fox News, involving weeks of work by a Fox staffer.
Oh that John Edwards, that guy, always combing his hair and having babies out of wedlock while his wife is dying of cancer, that jerk. What is his latest outrageous action, that he did, so that we can all get mad at him, once again, the pretty boy? Let's see, here it is, right in the foldy newspaper with all the pictures:
Fat dick Roger Ailes, who runs Fox News channel when he's not busy spying on his employees, threatening old men, or trying to destroy people who take photographs of his bathrooms, made some waves last week when he called the New York Times "lying scum" for writing about him. What made fewer waves was the fact that the thing that had him so exercised about the Times never happened, and his accusation was itself a lie.
The thing that every "Life" or "Style" or "Pop culture" columnist must keep in mind at all times is that the things they write about are not important. (I include much of Gawker.com's content in this sweeping generalization.) These types of columnists do not write about economic policy, or international relations, or genocide or poverty or war. They just write about the latest bit of eye-catching news-lite distraction, like everybody else on the internet. Because of this, there is absolutely no excuse for these pap columnists not to take a firm stand on the "issues." Because it doesn't matter!
