Newspapers

Commenting on this post about the Damian McBride Affair, Shippers makes an excellent point: things are just as bad, if not worse, on the other side of the Atlantic. Consider this example, culled from Politico’s daily Playbook: The WashPost’s First Dog exclusive – which the WP says the First Lady’s office offered in March to stave off a premature story about the White House vegetable garden, which had been promised as an exclusive to The New York Times (we’re not making this up) – is rained on by weekend Web leaks. But the WP has first word that the adorable black Portuguese water dog, a gift from Senator and Mrs.

Courtesy of the Scotsman: Boycott rigged poll, says Al-Qaeda chief This would surely come as no surprise to many of the great man’s former team-mates, but still, what can this mean? Has Sir Geoffrey been stuffing ballot boxes in some Greatest Yorkshireman contest or something? And why should Al-Qaeda care about that? Has Boycott offended them too? Alas, no, seems it’s something to do with the Algerian elections. More important, perhaps, but less mysterious or intriguing.

Jack Shafer  – entertaining as ever – mounts a spirited defence of yellow journalism: “Being rambunctious to the extreme, yellow journalism is misunderstood. At its best, yellow journalism was terrific, and at its worst, it really wasn’t all that bad.” Quite so. Newspapers are an entertainment just as much as they’re a source of, like, news. That’s one reason why you can make a decent argument that, taken on its own terms, the News of the World – the yellowest of our papers – is also the best paper in Britain. Shafer adds this: One of the biggest enemies of yellow journalism in the 1890s was Adolph Ochs, who purchased

I’ve long been an acolyte of US new media guru Clay Shirky. His book Here Comes Everybody is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of the media and the future of… well, let’s just say the future. One of my students (thanks Alex) has just alerted me to these thoughts, entitled, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, on the future of the industry I have worked in for most of my professional life. It’s a long piece (so much for the web encouraging bite-sized chunks of information) and some of it is very technical. But this passage struck me as wise: “The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at

At some time in the future, historians will view the Jade Goody Affair with the same kind of bewilderment and revulsion that we reserve for the excesses of Victorian Britain. But of course Goody’s celebrity – absurd and mawkish and repellent as it was – demonstrates how little human nature changes and reminds us that we’re much closer to the past than we sometimes like to think. And that, of course, is just another way of observing that the sky is always falling. To wit, here’s the Telegraph’s (lengthy) obituary, which also serves as a commentary on the marvellous monstrosity that is the British tabloid press: The first time she

John F Burns is a great reporter, but did he really write this or did some sub-editor in New York alter his copy? The relative prosperity that peace has brought, the respite from the anguished cycle of killings and revenge, has built a constituency for the power-sharing government in Belfast. That arrangement, which has worked awkwardly but steadily for 22 months, has given practical form to the reconciliation envisaged in the Good Friday agreement of 1998, which was brokered by the United States. [Emphasis added.] Outside the Clinton family, no-one in their right mind can consider the Good Friday Agreement to have been “brokered” by Washington. Mr Burns, who is

Good news for the New York Times; bad news for the Atlantic. Ross Douthat is going to be Bill Kristol’s replacement on the op-ed page. Even better, in addition to his columns, Ross will be blogging at the NYT. This is splendid news and it’s hard to think how the NYT could have made a better choice. It’s also a bold one since Ross hasn’t spent 20 years “earning” his spot on the op-ed page. This is a generational shift and thus, surprising. But welcome! I heartily recommend Ross’s book – written in partnership with his co-conspirator and sometime Spectator contributor Reihan Salam – Grand New Party which contains lots

It’s hard to know how to describe Gene Weingarten’s piece in the Washington Post’s magazine, except to say that it is one of the most heart-breaking, moving, humane, pieces of journalism I’ve read in years. And one of the best. In a sense, mind you, even saying that trivialises the story.  It’s about how a parent can inadvertently leave their toddler in the back of their car on a hot day to swelter and, god help us, bake to death. And it’s about how a parent can ever hope to come to any sort of terms with the consequences of such a desperate, fatal, mistake. Just read it.

Golly. The Daily Mail seems to have a very narrow, dangerous view of who is, and who isn’t, British: However although the figures from the Government’s Office for National Statistics show an increase in numbers of foreign born people they still fail to record the true impact of immigration because they record their children as British rather than second or third generation immigrants. How – what’s the word? – charming. [Via Danny Finkelstein]

Mind you, it’s not just the Irish police who are confused by foreign languages. A reader emails this piece of Fleet Street entertainment: That reminds me of XXX’s story chasing a British felon somewhere on the Spanish Costas. He got an interview with a doctor who slagged off the guy on the run but the chap refused to give his name. The Sun newsdesk insisted they have a name, so our intrepid hack went back to the guy’s office and took down the name on the door… Imagine the surprise and embarrassment the next day when Spanish speakers phoned The Sun to ask why they were quoting a doctor called

It’s a rather terrible story, but this AP headline is a keeper: Berserk chimp heard during frantic 911 call as owner pounded him with a shovel. It wasn’t the chimp that called 911…