Mediaite, a must-read?

All the D.C. goo-gas have been atwitter about the impossible-to-say Mediaite launched recently to “cover the media.”  Well, in the first chance I had to review one of their posts, I was astounded by the lack of depth or analysis involved in its coverage.  This, despite the fact that Publisher Dan Abrams has written that he wants the site to be “the must-read for anyone interested in media, the business of it and the personalities behind it.”

The post, written by Kevin Gotkin, alleges to list (Mediaite is all about lists) the online folks “dedicated solely to shining a light on every gay thing Obama does.”  (First of all, a note to Mediaite: “Solely” means “only.”  Two of the four blogs listed cover more than solely gay issues and all four cover things other than Obama and LGBT issues. K, thanx.)  It goes on: “These are the people who do ask, do tell (do pursue and yes, do harass) and all from the comfort of their own online home.”

And Rachel Sklar, the editor at large of Mediaite, writes of this post: “I think that’s one of our best pieces, actually. Could not be prouder.”

The piece then lists four blogs, each of which I will go through in turn.

1. Queerty.  Really?  When I think of political analysis, I would not think of Queerty.  And, really, from Mediaite’s description, nor do they.  They write:

Queerty tries extremely hard to be the most opinionated gay blog out there. They might succeed if their snark didn’t translate into insults indiscriminately being hurled at everyone and anyone.  But since its inception, Queerty has undoubtedly been writing impassioned, biting commentary on everything gay.  When Queerty gets it right, its posts are inspiring, angering, and beautiful because its writers have little interest in reporting – they scream, they shout, but they rarely let someone slip by if it affects the LGBT community.  They understand that hot, half-naked guys might draw a little more attention than a great post about Obama’s unfulfilled promises, but that certainly doesn’t mean they bite their tongues.

That’s the Mediaite way, apparently, of being “dedicated solely to shining a light on every gay thing Obama does.”  That alone was enough for me to know that Mediaite is nothing more than the Mouthpiece Theater version of a blog.  An example of their “great post[s] about Obama’s unfulfilled promises” was the irrational post highlighted by Mediaite: “Obama Must Issue Exec Order to Begin DADT Repeal. And Yet He Won’t.“  No, that is not true — and no one, other than Queerty, has ever claimed so.  Queerty is good and fun for many things, but I’m not sure who goes there for analysis of LGBT political and legal issues.

2. David Badash and his site, The New Civil Rights Movement.  It’s a good site, and I think David deserves a place on this list.

3. The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan’s blog.  Andrew is the original gay blog, and I recall the dark-blue andrewsullivan.com site from way back when, so he is likely always going to show up on such lists.  As they point out, he doesn’t always focus on gay issues these days — in fact, his blog became an essential part of the Iranian election discussion — but people do pay attention when he says something on gay issues due to his lengthy tenure of writing about such issues.

4. AmericaBlog.  The idea that a site focused on analyzing and commenting on media would blindly reprint John Aravosis’s fabrications and misstatements is quite unfortunate.  They write:

AmericaBlog just launched its gay-only off-shoot of the motherblog, but the site would have made this list with or without its own homo URL.  Gay AmericaBlog could be considered the more outspoken counterpart to its friend-blog, Towleroad (a site that would have made this list if it wasn’t trying to be the gay CNN by reporting instead of commenting).  Yes, the advertising on the site takes up exactly half of the screen, but the posts never stray from their intent to deliver the truth that “a great nation deserves,” which, unfortunately, often includes deep criticism of Obama and his administration.

The “truth” a great nation deserves, generally speaking, should be true statements.  If by “more outspoken counterpart” they mean “yelling and screaming regardless of whether facts back it up,” then, yes, AmericaBlog is outspoken.  And if “deep” means “irrational,” then AmericaBlog fits the bill.

Among the posts that Mediaite highlights:

• Obama Defends DOMA in Federal Court, where the full headline, strangely omitted by Mediaite, is: “Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children.”  The “incest and marrying children,” which other times shows up on AmericaBlog as “pedophilia,” has been discussed at length by me, most notably at “Not a Vendetta” and “Chairman Frank and Aravosis’s Misstatements.”
• Obama DOJ Lies to Politico in Defending Hate Brief Against Gays, where reality was made up, as I discussed in those earlier posts and Professor Nan Hunter, quoting Marty Lederman, also discussed.
• President Obama Revealed Today Another Reason He Can’t Act on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which I responded to here: “AmericaBlogReality, Watching Distortions Spread.”

Regardless of the specifics, which cause enough concern, it’s clear that Mediate’s definition of being “dedicated . . . to shining a light on every gay thing Obama does” is shouting loudly and often about and at Obama.

If Mediaite thinks this is one of their “best pieces,” as their editor at large wrote, then I’m not so sure this venture is going to succeed.  If it actually wants to become a “must-read for anyone interested in media,” then the site likely should spend more time on those time-tested journalistic tools of researching and investigating its pieces to ensure they at least pass the laugh test for accuracy and less-than-superficial coverage.

[UPDATE: Gotkin claims, via Twitter, that "The facts I wrote were about Obama's biggest CRITICS, not the best 'political analysis,' as you seem to assume."  My response: "The all caps was helpful, but no, I understood what you were aiming at. I don't consider shouting criticism. Skeptical coverage is."]

If someone wants an actual representation of coverage of Obama and LGBT issues online, here’s my list:

1. Towleroad might not be an opinion blog, but the blog does more than any other to do what Mediaite said it was looking for: “dedicated . . . to shining a light on every gay thing Obama does.”  Towleroad is today’s gay newspaper, and Andy Towle deserves great credit for the work he does.
2. Daily Dish
3. Pam’s House Blend is a site with which I sometimes disagree, but not because I’ve felt that Pam or her other contributors have a disregard for facts or civility, but rather because we simply disagree at times on the best approach.
4. Kerry Eleveld at The Advocate is bringing more and better coverage of gay issues to the forefront than ever.

Also, don’t forget:

• The Bilerico Project is a multi-person site that often provides a wide variety of perspectives on LGBT issues.
• The New Civil Rights Movement
• The Box Turtle Bulletin is a smart site that provides analysis and insight with a few good contributors.
• Independent Gay Forum provides more poitical balance than most LGBT-related sites, and also provides always interesting thoughts.
• GayPatriot is a gay Republican voice.  Gasp.  We often disagree, but the site is certainly providing gay voices criticizing Obama.
• Rod, 2.0 is a gay non-white voice. Gasp again.  We agree much more, but Rod provides a unique voice.
• Queerty
• Good As You is similar to Queerty but with less skin and more coverage of the Right.
• Yes, AmericaBlog, is worthy of viewing, because — let’s face it — he has the traffic and sources.  And, often, when he sticks to the facts, John Aravosis does a very good thing.  But too often, he falls off the factual wagon and goes in the mud for his commentary — without skepticism — to be reliable.
• Oh, yeah, and Law Dork.  You should read him. ;o)

In a piece as much about the failure of traditional media as Froomkin’s new gig, Greenwald writes:

In yet another sign of how online media outlets are strengthening as their older establishment predecessors are struggling to survive, The Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin to be its Washington Bureau Chief and regular columnist/blogger.  Froomkin will oversee a staff of four reporters and an Assistant Editor, guide The Huffington Post’s Washington reporting, and write at least two posts per week to be featured on its main page and Politics page.

As important as his column-writing may be, the prospect of Froomkin controlling a little force of mini-Froomkins — reporters who can help him investigate and write about the parts of Washington ignored by others — may be the more important development in Froomkin’s hiring.

The big-picture news, though, is that Froomkin’s hiring shows us that journalism is alive and well, as Greenwald writes:

Clearly, journalism itself is not dying.  What is dying — and rightfully so — is the staid, establishment-serving, passion-free, access-desperate, mindless stenographic model to which establishment journalism rigidly adheres. . . . People are obviously hungry for the type of real journalism Froomkin practices.  The Huffington Post immediately capitalized on the Post’s short-sighted and myopic decision to fire one of their most vibrant, passionate and innovative journalists.  In this episode lies many insights about the real reasons establishment journalism is struggling severely.

Congratulations to Froomkin and The HuffPo, which just became an even better read.

Last week, Connie Schultz, whose work I greatly respect — particularly her strong work for equality — wrote a column pitching a newspaper lawyer’s proposal to change copyright law to limit the ability of blogs to take information from a newspaper’s Web site for a period of time — suggested is 24 hours — after publication.  Jeff Jarvis, at BuzzMachine, responded in full force.

Today, Ted did a little Web chat — that, incidentally, involved no chat with any readers — to promote, basically, the idea that bloggers don’t do any original research or reporting and, once he admits that some blogs actually do just that, that blogs don’t have any real reach anyway, so they’re irrelevant without the reach of newspapers.

But don’t trust my take, here are his words [with my italicized comments in brackets]:

There was a Pew Institute study that was done last year that said last year was the first time more people got their news for free off the Internet than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines.  [Does he not realize that a significant portion of that includes newspapers and magazines that have their content online "for free"?]  And that’s a difficult situation.  [The large Ceasars Windsor and Cleveland Museum of Art advertisements right next to the Web chat video on Cleveland.com were a nice juxtoposition.]

That doesn’t mean the news didn’t originate with newspapers, because it did.  [Note the definitive nature of this initial statement.]  Any news that you find on the Internet that you can find on almost any site [Any site?  Hedging?] that you can trust and believe and is well-researched and, watchdog process and everything else, chances are [More hedging.] it started off with a print reporter with a notebook and a pencil and a wealth of knowledge and experience in how to gather information, how to hold public officials’ feet to the fire, how to gather background and report all of the — everything is being done by the government with your tax money and your faith, it all comes from newspapers.  [Did Palin write this?]

Without that, I don’t know where the bloggers and Internet Web sites would even get their stuff.  [Well, golly, gee, I don't know, Mr. Diadiun.  In the past month alone, I've attended hearings of the Ohio General Assembly; read legislative proposals, court filings and judicial opinions; and picked up the phone to talk with folks.]

He went on to show that the last time he read anything about Web traffic was sometime before the 2000 election:

There is the wider reach that we have, both through the newspaper and through our newspaper Website, Cleveland.com, which has a much larger reach than really anybody else.  [This sounds definitively vague or vaguely definitive, I'm not sure which.]

Connie wrote about the original proposal two weeks ago, er, a week ago. And yesterday, she wrote about the reaction that her column has gotten and spent sometime rebutting something a guy [Jeff Jarvis has been one of the leading "new media" talkesr and writers since I first began blogging in 2003.] who’s taken it upon himself to support online news dissemination and public journalists at the expense of print and gave him a lot of ink in her column, which I thought was kind of unfortunate because, uh, you know, Connie’s column is read by 25,000 or 30,000 people a month, which is — has to be — many more times than this guy gets on his blog.  [My far smaller blog empire here at Law Dork had more than 38,500 page views in the month of June.]  And she gave him more publicity through that column than he would get on his own, anytime.  [No, you are insanely wrong.]

I mentioned that there was a big reaction from the blogosphere to Connie’s column last week.  A big reaction in the blog world is maybe 100 people, maybe 20 or 30 people responding and most of those are snarky comments that really don’t add a lot to the debate anyway. [My post on Obama and LGBT equality, albeit with Sullivan and Reynolds links, has received more than 6,000 views and has more than 60 comments in the 24 hours since it was posted.] It’s really a bunch of pipsqueaks out there talking about what the real journalists do, and I think that we do need to find a way to grab hold of our content and get paid for what we do . . . . [My post linked to Andrew Sullivan's Sunday column from the Times of London, and Andrew later linked to my post analyzing his column and applying its logic to a different topic.]

What a misinformed dolt.

My question of the night:  Who is further from reality, Sarah Palin or Ted Diadiun?

Although blamed on an “overzealous” marketing person, and though the newsroom has in no way been implicated in this, a paragraph from Howard Kurtz’s coverage suggests that — outside of the newsroom in the organization — this was just about as problematic as it could get:

[Publisher Katharine] Weymouth knew of the plans to host small dinners at her home and to charge lobbying and trade organizations for participation. But, one of the executives said, she believed that there would be multiple sponsors, to minimize any appearance of charging for access, and that the newsroom would be in charge of the scope and content of any dinners in which Post reporters and editors participated.

How the publisher of The Washington Post could think that charging lobbyists for access to her home and her paper’s reporters was not problematic is incomprehensible.  How she could think that having multiple sponsors would “minimize any appearance of charging for access” is absurd.

In that vein, it’s somewhat difficult to understand Weymouth’s statement that “This should never have happened.”  What exactly shouldn’t have hapened?

As Chris Hayes stated in his initial response to the Politico story: “If you’d asked me to come up with a story that encapsulates everything wrong with Washington, I couldn’t top this.“

A Suspect Is in Custody in the Killing of Controversial Abortion Dr. George Tiller, a Source Tells ABC News

Then again, maybe it’s OK because a breaking news alert is kinda like a blog post, which journalist extraordinaire Jeffrey Rosen explained, basically, means that it doesn’t need to be fact-based. (Click on the link to read Glenn Greenwald’s excellent post, and don’t get me started down that path.)

I can see ABC’s bulletin issued as James Earl Ray was arrested:

A Suspect Is in Custody in the Killing of Controversial Minister and Civil Rights Activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Source Tells ABC News

And upon recovering John Wilkes Booth’s body:

The Body of the Suspect in the Killing of Controversial President Abraham Lincoln Has Been Recovered, a Source Tells ABC News

And so on.  Most public figures who are killed are controversial to some people, including usually the person who killed them.

The point, as it turns out, isn’t about empathy at all.  It’s about journalism.  As all college — or even high school — students learn in their first newspaper class: As a reporter you don’t declare the person or event to be controversial, you allow the story to tell itself.  Controversy isn’t a fact, it’s an opinion.

True, a Breaking News e-Alert has limited space, but I don’t think that excuses a short-cut that cedes the very debate that made the figure controversial to some people.

For coverage of the killing, kansas.com has been the place to go.

[UPDATE: For an article I found this morning detailing the religious right and Operation Rescue's mission against Dr. Tiller, see this piece in Rolling Stone from 2004:

Since 1999, when he became the head of Operation Rescue, [Troy] Newman has been determined to come up with a novel strategy to prove himself. So two years ago, he moved his family to Wichita with a single, shining goal: to shut down Women’s Health Care Services. The clinic is run by a doctor named George Tiller, a lightning-rod figure in the abortion wars. Tiller’s reputation for performing late-term abortions draws women from all over the world to his clinic — women whose unborn children have been diagnosed with genetic deformities or whose health makes childbearing dangerous. It also makes Tiller’s clinic the perfect target for Newman’s campaign of intimidation. “Wichita isn’t big enough for George Tiller and me,” Newman declared in a full-page ad he took out in a Catholic paper called The Wanderer.

This morning, I tweeted that the article made me sick, and — thinking about his family and friends and thinking about the city of Witchita today — reading it again is just as awful.]

[FURTHER UPDATE: Ana Marie Cox just shared a Salon piece on Bill O'Reilly's campaign against Dr. Tiller, who he -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- called Tiller the Baby Killer over the past four years.]

Who would equate Google News with no-doc mortgages?

Of course, it would have to come from the fringes of the world — but, this time, it comes from the left: The Nation.

Michael Moran (that’s an “a” — not an “o” — at the end) writes about the Internet in an amazingly condescending and uninformed way that seems almost anachronistic. Seriously, as I write this, I keep looking back to see if it is satire.  Lines like this make me think it could be: “Call it NOPEC–the Newspaper Owners Print and Electronic Cartel.”

But, the clueless quotient about the Internet makes it clear that it must be serious.  For example:

Then there are blogs. From the pure, opinionated one-man bands like Daily Kos and the Drudge Report, to to well-financed Internet catch basins like Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, these outlets not only fail to fill the breach of serious journalism; they actively undermine it.

So, where to start?  How can one man be so wrong about so much so quickly?  Neither Drudge nor Daily Kos is a “pure, opinionated one-man band.”  Drudge is primarily, almost exclusively, a collection of links.  Though his choices obviously (notoriously?) reflect his biases — and though some of his “scoops” advance those biases — no one disputes that the vast majority of what he does is repetition of headlines.  And Kos is a “community” blog, which I would think very much disqualifies it as a “one-man band.”

Clueless.

There is a great value provided by good journalism, as the awarding of the Pulitzer Prizes today reminds us, but Moran’s way of propping that up is counterproductive to any possible discussion of how to keep that value in the public sphere as the world moves forward.

The piece goes awry from the start, with a headline that far outpaces the value of the story, “Holder has a long to-do list at Justice,” featured in USA Today and written by Kevin Johnson.  First, no to-do list is discussed, save for an amorphous restoring integrity to the office.  The piece actually is a “let’s name five things he’s done that I’m going to suggest signal a change in tone at the Justice Department,” and then ask a couple of people what they think of some of those alleged changes.

The piece doesn’t reflect any of the nuance that any good pieces about any of those five things — Guantanamo; waterboarding; politicization of DOJ; Sen. Stevens’ prosecution; and Holder’s race speech — have discussed.  I actually feel like someone who reads this article might lose some knowledge they had even from a casual reading of more nuanced articles by getting the impression that there is no argument about these actions.  On each of these issues, people from the left and the right have questioned the new Administration, but the USA Today piece hews to a simplistic “Democratic support and Republican challenges” mode of quotes.

Then, even when an alleged neutral voice is given space, no explanation of the people’s affiliations are given to help the reader understand why this person they’ve never heard of before might be saying this.  It’s not that they are biased, but we have no clue.  For example, “Bruce Udolf, former chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in South Florida” is quoted as saying that he “felt betrayed” by the politicization of the Department.  Why not tell your readers some relevant facts about him that might explain his reasons for why he would feel this way?  (Here are a couple: He was a Democratic candidate for Broward County Sheriff in 2008 and appears to have given, among other Democratic donations, $1,000 to Obama in Q1/2008 and $10,000 to the DNC in Q1/2004.)  The only other “neutral” quote is from a voting-rights group, the Campaign Legal Center.

Fake simplicity to fit a pre-ordered format.  The reason why some newspapers’ problems are of their own creation.