David Taintor May 25, 2012, 8:07 AM David Carr, media columnist and culture reporter for The New York Times, talked recently to TPM about the future of news, the “glorious” view of the Port Authority Bus Terminal from his desk and what would happen if Twitter went dark tomorrow. What is your writing/reporting day like? Today, I spent far too much time on email and Twitter, and far too little time reporting a story I’m working on. I stayed up until 2 o’clock last night. I did sort of a personal elegiac post about Netflix, comparing it to my experience with AOL. I like to write at night. I’m kind of a vampire, and I have trouble writing in the newsroom. When I was first ... Continue reading →
It appeared to be a minor arrest, except that the spa’s owner is the wife of the investigations editor at the local newspaper, The Times Union. And that’s where it gets complicated. The investigations editor, J. Robert Port, said he believed that the city’s mayor and local law enforcement agencies targeted his wife’s business in retaliation for critical coverage in his newspaper, including a series of articles questioning the practices of an undercover unit of the sheriff’s office that investigated drug cases, prostitution and gambling. City officials deny Mr. Port’s charges. The county sheriff, Craig Apple, disputed Mr. Port’s contention of a plot but said he had asked his internal affairs division to review his agency’s role in the case. Mr. Port’s wife, Bin Cheng, ... Continue reading →
A User's Guide To Smoking Pot With Barack Obama Barry was quite the accomplished marijuana enthusiast back in high school and college. Excerpts from David Maraniss' Barack Obama: The Story dealing with the elaborate drug culture surrounding the president when he attended Punahou School in Honolulu and Occidental College in Los Angeles. He inhaled. A lot. posted May 25, 2012 8:29am EDT Continue reading →
THE NARRATIVE – OBAMA CAMPAIGN HAS ROUGH THREE WEEKS -- Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei: “Nothing inspires Democrats like the Barack Obama swagger — the supreme self-confidence on stage, the self-certainty in private. So nothing inspires more angst than when that same Obama stumbles, as he has leaving the gate in 2012. That’s the unmistakable reality for Democrats since Obama officially launched his re-election campaign three weeks ago. Obama, not Mitt Romney, is the one with the muddled message — and the one who often comes across as baldly political. … One Democratic consultant who often advises the campaign said that although Obama has spent a few weeks on the defensive, top Obama aides are unfazed. ‘These guys don’t panic, don’t turn into a circular ... Continue reading →
WASHINGTON – The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted Thursday that he was behind a series of websites used to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the contractor.The online "misinformation campaign," first reported last month, has raised questions about whether the Pentagon or its contractors had turned its propaganda operations against U.S. citizens. But Camille Chidiac, the minority owner of Leonie Industries and its former president, said he was responsible for the online activity and was operating independent of the company or the Pentagon."I take full responsibility for having some of the discussion forums opened and reproducing their previously published USA TODAY articles on them," he said a statement released by his attorney, Lin Wood, of Atlanta."I recognize and ... Continue reading →
Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O' Donnell and Chris Matthews Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images Chris Matthews must be getting that tingling feeling down his leg again. He and his colleagues may soon have a giant news site to call their own. That’s because NBCUniversal is in serious negotiations with Microsoft to buy back MSNBC.com. Several sources with first-hand knowledge of the situation say that negotiations between the two companies have progressed to the stage where NBCU parent company Comcast is conducting its due diligence. They said that the partnership could be unwound by this summer. Both the MSNBC network and MSNBC.com were launched as a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft in 1996 during the Web’s early emergence as a news vehicle. In 2005, NBC ... Continue reading →
