Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Turning Which Corner (by Tim Duy at Fed Watch, Economist’s View)
Is the economy turning a corner? And, if so, which corner is it turning?… If there is one picture that sums up the cyclical story of the past year, it is the path of real consumption… The sharp deceleration has come to an end, of that there can be little doubt… [I]t is difficult if not impossible to characterize the data flow as “good.” But it is certainly less “bad.” The path to Great Depression II has hit something of a speedbump.

Obama on Health Reform: The Dog That Didn’t Bark (by Robert Reich)
The only troubling thing about the President’s statements [Monday] concerning health care reform was what he did not say: that he wanted a any health plan that emerges from Congress to include a public insurance option for Americans who do not want to buy private insurance. But without this option, there will be no pressure on private insurers to adopt all the other reforms to control costs or give all Americans access to affordable care… Hopefully, the President’s failure to mention a public insurance option today was not intended to signal to Congress that the White House is no longer especially interested in it. The Administration should quickly inform policymakers how important this option is as a spur to real change.

Are health groups’ voluntary actions enough? Likely not (by Margaret Talev and Tony Pugh, McClatchy)
President Barack Obama on Monday called a pledge by health industry groups to shave $2 trillion from rising costs voluntarily “a watershed event” in a years-long campaign to make coverage available to all Americans. Their voluntary commitment suggests that these interests, some of which fought President Bill Clinton’s health care overhaul attempts in 1993-94, now think that some congressional action is inevitable and want a hand in controlling how they’re affected…

The president, in remarks following the meeting, was careful to characterize the groups’ pledge as “complementary to” and “completely compatible with” the effort Democrats are leading in Congress — but not a substitute for it… Key lawmakers, including the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, D-Mont., have talked for months about the need for many of the ideas the industry offered Monday. These include bundling payments to hospitals and doctors, and increasing preventive coverage and coordination of care for people with chronic diseases.

Grassley: Show me the money on health care (On Politics, USA Today)
Skepticism over President Obama’s announcement today that the health care industry has agreed to cut $2 trillion in costs over the next decade is alive and well on Capitol Hill. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has just released a statement suggesting, in short, that he’ll believe it when he sees it… “There’s no doubt saving $2 trillion in health care costs would be a move in the right direction,” Grassley said in the statement. “When the White House and the industry put concrete proposals on paper and get a score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), then we’ll know if the suggestions really achieve that kind of savings and it’ll be big news.  For health care budgeting purposes, CBO’s word is the only one that counts.”

The insurance companies are fighting dirty for their right to profit from your illnesses:
Ex-Hospital CEO Battles Reform Effort (Washington Post)
The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn’t get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment… The campaign is being coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the “Swift boat” attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, and is inspired by the “Harry and Louise” ads that helped torpedo health-care reform during the Clinton administration…

The effort has alarmed many Democrats and liberal health-care advocates, who are pushing back with attacks highlighting Scott’s ouster as head of the Columbia/HCA health-care company amid a fraud investigation in the 1990s. The firm eventually pleaded guilty to charges that it overbilled state and federal health plans, paying a record $1.7 billion in fines. In an ad broadcast in the Washington area and in Scott’s home town of Naples, Fla., last week, a group called Health Care for America Now says of Scott: “He and his insurance-company friends make millions from the broken system we have now.”
Exactly. Rather than attacking individuals or a party, highlight the conflict of interest. How could they possibly be trusted, when they make a ton of money from the system as it is?

New Health Care Ad Hits Insurance Companies, Pressures Dem Senators (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Yesterday’s big White House powwow on health care, where the insurance and medical lobby vowed to help rein in health care spending en route to reform, has aroused suspicions that these groups are positioning themselves to undermine from within the push for a public insurance option. So the pro-reform group Health Care For America Now is already going up on the air in multiple states with this new spot that says the only way to weaken the insurance industry’s power is to give people the option of a public plan as an alternative to private insurance… The ad is running in the states of nine Dem Senators who haven’t yet signed on to a public option…

The spot features a doctor strongly emphasizing that the public plan option will mean patients are no longer at the “mercy” of the insurance industry and will give patients the freedom to make health care choices in consultation with their doctors. It’s push-back against two anti-reform arguments — that reform will deny you choice and de-personalize your relationship with your doctor. If nothing else, the ad is a sign that yesterday’s gathering was a kind of starting gun for the fight over whether to include a public option, which some see as the only route to real reform.
Another good way to fight back. Click through to watch the ad.

Limbaugh says Obama’s meeting with health industry groups is “like Don Corleone, calling all these people together” and “telling them … what they have to do to remain in his good graces” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
From a man who knows a thing or two about mob boss tactics, having used them so effectively himself.

Obama focuses on outreach through the Web (AP)
Someone really is reading those comments left on Barack Obama’s Web sites: the president himself. The White House on Monday changed the name of a major office to reflect how much the administration is using the Internet to sell its agenda and communicate directly with voters. For a candidate who harnessed the Internet to win the presidency, the move — announced on the White House Web site, naturally — underscores Obama’s understanding of new media’s power. “This office will seek to engage as many Americans as possible in the difficult work of changing this country, through meetings and conversations with groups and individuals held in Washington and across the country,” Obama said in a video message posted to the Web.

Coupled with that, Obama read a 33-page report with comments from his pre-presidency Web site, letting him know his supporters’ single top priority for the new administration: changing the nation’s policy banning marijuana. The report also included affirmation for his campaign promises to improve care for veterans, invest in environmentally friendly jobs and end abstinence-only education.
I believe that affordable health care, including single payer, was one of the top options.  So why wasn’t it mentioned on Health Care Day? And isn’t this the fourth incarnation of the campaign organization?

Fort Launderdale gay activists asks Obama to do more (McClatchy)
The national Democratic Party chairman asked gay activists gathered in Fort Lauderdale on Friday to keep working for President Barack Obama. But the crowd wanted something in return.

Barack Obama’s rich supporters fear his tax plans show he’s a class warrior (The Telegraph, U.K.)
Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy. But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America – and that they were more than just election rhetoric.

A top Obama fundraiser and hedge fund manager said: “I’m appalled at the anti-Wall Street rhetoric. It was OK on the campaign but now it’s the real world. I’m surprised that Obama is turning out to be so left-wing. He’s a real class warrior.”… The president’s plans are direct repudiation of the model of light touch regulation credited with creating economic growth and wealth in America in recent decades.
What?! Those supporters couldn’t get their 15 minutes on the phone with Rahm? They had to go to a foreign newspaper to be heard? The Telegraph is a right-wing newspaper, so it’s not surprising that it would take up this class war meme, or that it would praise light regulation but neglect to mention that lack of regulation has practically destroyed the global economy.

IG Report: Waterboarding Was Neither “Efficacious Or Medically Safe” (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
A CIA inspector general’s report from May 2004 that is set to be declassified by the Obama White House will almost certainly disprove claims that waterboarding was only used in controlled circumstances with effective results. On Monday, the Washington Post reported the impending release of a May 7, 2004 IG report that, the paper added, would show that in several circumstances the techniques used to interrogate terrorist suspects “appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture” and did not produce desired results. It is difficult, the report will conclude, “to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks.”…

But there is no need to wait for the report’s declassification. Information from its pages was already made public in the footnotes of the Office of Legal Counsel memos written by Steven Bradbury in 2005 and released by the current administration less than one month ago. And the conclusion seems pretty clear: Not only did interrogators, for a period of time, use waterboarding that was deemed by U.S. officials to be more frequent and intense than was medically safe, it did so to apparently limited results.

Bob Graham: I Wasn’t Told About Waterboarding Or EITs In My Briefing (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Former Senator Bob Graham, who received a classified briefing on terror detainees during the same month in the fall of 2002 as Nancy Pelosi, was not briefed about the use of either waterboarding or enhanced interrogation techniques during the meeting, he claimed in an interview with me. Graham’s assertion — his first public comments since the release of the intelligence document detailing torture briefings given to members of Congress — directly contradicts the document’s claim that he had been briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques, or EITs. Graham is now the second Dem official to deny on the record the document’s contents and raises questions about its claim that Pelosi had been told, which she has denied.

“I do not have any recollection of being briefed on waterboarding or other forms of extraordinary interrogation techniques, or Abu Zubaydah being subjected to them,” Graham told me by phone moments ago, in a reference to the terror suspect who had been repeatedly waterboarded the month before. Graham is the only other Dem aside from Pelosi to get briefed in 2002, so they are both in effect asserting that no Dem was briefed on the use of EITs that year.

White House Lobbies Hard for 2016 Olympics (Political Wire)
The White House “is playing an unprecedented role in the bid to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago, with top adviser Valerie Jarrett spearheading an effort that draws on the international symbolism of his presidency,” reports Politico.
“Any president would have an interest in helping an American city win an Olympic bid. But none has been as closely associated with an Olympic proposal as Obama, and the emerging effort by the White House is unusually pointed in its attempt to wrap the campaign around the president and his appealing image abroad — a strategy veteran Olympics watchers say is paying dividends and could result in an enormous hometown farewell party if Obama wins a second term.”
The whole situation is unprecedented, not just Obama’s lobbying. I’m not terribly keen on having the Olympics in my neighborhood, but of course Obama will help Mayor Daley bring them here.

White House On Sykes-Limbaugh: 9/11 Jokes Cross The Line (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Two days after comedian Wanda Sykes quipped during the White House Correspondents Association dinner that Rush Limbaugh was likely the 20th hijacker on 9/11 (only he was so strung out on Oxycontin he missed the plane), the White House publicly distanced itself from the remarks. “There are a lot of topics that are better left for serious reflection rather than comedy,” said spokesman Robert Gibbs. “I don’t think there is any doubt that 9/11 is one of them.”
My objection to her so-called jokes is that it’s the kind of personal attack that won’t have a lasting effect at either increasing confidence in the Democratic Party or at decreasing confidence in the Republicans. It was just stupid. Click through to watch the Gibbs video.

Glass-Steagall Act: The Senators And Economists Who Got It Right (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
The footage of him speaking on the Senate floor has become something of a cult flick for the particularly wonky progressive. The date was November 4, 1999. Senator Byron Dorgan, in a patterned red tie, sharp dark suit and hair with slightly more color than it has today, was captured only by the cameras of CSPAN2. “I want to sound a warning call today about this legislation,” he declared, swaying ever so slightly right, then left, occasionally punching the air in front of him with a slightly closed fist. “I think this legislation is just fundamentally terrible.”

The legislation was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (alternatively known as Gramm Leach Bliley), which allowed banks to merge with insurance companies and investment houses. And Dorgan was, at the time, on a proverbial island with his concerns… Ten years later, Dorgan has been vindicated. His warning that banks would become “too big to fail” has proven basically true in the wake of the current financial crisis. He seems eerily prescient for claiming then that Congress would “look back ten years time and say we should not have done this.”

Nephew Mentioned Rep. Murtha in Dealings as Contractor‎ (Washington Post)
Robert C. Murtha Jr. has made a sizable living for years working with companies that rely on Pentagon contracts over which his uncle,  Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), holds considerable sway. He has maintained that his uncle played no role in his defense-related work, much of it secured without competition. Newly obtained documents, however, show Robert Murtha mentioning his influential family connection as leverage in his business dealings and holding unusual power with the military. The documents add to mounting questions about Rep. Murtha, whose use of federal earmarks to help favored defense companies and whose relationship with a former lobbying firm are under scrutiny by federal investigators.

CREW CALLS FOR REP. MURTHA TO STEP DOWN FROM DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington)
[Monday], Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) called on Rep. Murtha to step down from his position as chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee pending the outcome of a federal grand jury investigation into the lawmaker’s earmarking practices… The Washington Post has obtained documents showing that a contract to fund a biological materials detection test shifted to three companies over a ten-year period, but that companies in which Rep. Murtha’s nephew, Robert Murtha, had an interest nevertheless maintained subcontracts on the project though they did little to no work. In addition, at Robert Murtha’s insistence, some of the work was moved to Rep. Murtha’s district.

Reid’s Trump Card (Political Wire)
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is a top Republican target for 2010. However, Roll Call says Reid “may have found the ultimate trump card: President Barack Obama. The administration’s decision last week to kill a proposed nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain is the latest in a string of moves the White House has taken to help Reid in his runup to next year’s election.”

Steele: ‘Hell no’ Coleman won’t go. (Think Progress)
In an interview with Hotline On Call following Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, embattled RNC Chairman Michael Steele was emphatic that Norm Coleman should not concede his electoral loss to Al Franken, saying the case will “get bumped” to the federal courts: “Asked if Coleman should concede if entertainer Al Franken (D) is deemed the winner, Steele said, “No, hell no. Whatever the outcome, it’s going to get bumped to the next level. This does not end until there’s a final ruling that speaks to whether or not those votes that have not been counted should be counted. And Norm Coleman will not, will not jump out of this race before that.’”

Specter Faces Revolt From Pennsylvania Progressives, Poll Finds (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
A poll of progressive grassroots Pennsylvanians shows heavy support for a primary challenge to newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter. The Pennsylvania Senate Straw Poll, sponsored over the course of five days by some of the leading progressive groups in the state and nationally, shows that 85 percent of Pennsylvanians (and 86 percent of national respondents) support a movement to draft Rep. Joe Sestak to run against Specter in the upcoming primary.

Casey Does Not Oppose Primary for Specter (Political Wire)
In an interview on CNN, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) said that Democratic party leaders should not be telling candidates whether or not to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) in a primary next year. Said Casey: “I don’t think anyone in our party should ever dictate to a candidate. That’s really up to that candidate, to run or not run.” Nonetheless, Casey already endorsed Specter “no more who runs against him.”

Madigan Reconsiders Senate Bid (Political Wire)
llinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) is reconsidering the possibility of running for the U.S. Senate in 2010, according to the Washington Post. “Madigan, widely considered the 800-pound gorilla in the state’s politics, had previously flatly ruled out a Senate bid in 2010 — insisting that all of her attention is on the governor’s race next year.” A poll conducted late last month suggested Madigan would run away with the nomination in a Democratic primary.

Florida’s Crist will seek U.S. Senate seat, roiling state’s GOP (McClatchy)
Gov. Charlie Crist is expected to announce Tuesday that he is running for the U.S. Senate, setting off a high-stakes game of musical chairs that will completely overhaul the top echelon of state government in 2010.

Trippi refutes claim Edwards staffers knew of affair (Political Ticker, CNN)
Joe Trippi, a former top aide to John Edwards, is sharply refuting a report a handful of campaign staffers knew about the former presidential candidate’s affair and had plans to sabotage his White House bid, telling CNN Monday the claim is “complete bull s**t.” “No one that I know had such a plan, I wasn’t involved in a plan like that, it didn’t exist, it’s a fantasy,” Trippi said in a phone interview.
Joe says on his Facebook page that he is seriously steamed by this report.

Earlier Edwards Withdrawal Would Not Have Helped Clinton (Political Wire)
Mark Blumenthal looks at the polling data and finds that John Edwards’ presence in the 2008 Democratic presidential race actually took more votes away from Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton. ”The biggest lurch in support over the course of the two year campaign occurs for Obama just after Edwards dropped out (when pollsters stopped including his name on vote preference questions). Just before the Edwards announcement, most polls showed Obama’s support in the mid-30s. Just after, his support surged the mid-40s. Over the same period, Hillary Clinton’s aggregate support held mostly steady.”

Blumenthal concludes that an earlier Edwards withdrawal from the race — if the news of his marital infidelity became public — probably would not have changed the outcome of the Democratic primary.
It would have revealed the fissure in the party earlier and, perhaps, given Clinton supporters online an earlier start on fighting the vicious hatred expressed against her.

Top Republican Says Obama Trying to Kill Jobs (Political Wire)
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) — head of the House Republican campaign effort — cited rising unemployment in asserting that the Obama administration intended to “diminish employment and diminish stock prices” as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy to consolidate power, reports the New York Times. Sessions said Mr. Obama’s agenda was “intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it.

NRCC: Sessions Standing By Claim That Obama Has Secret Plot To Kill Economy (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
A spokesperson for NRCC chief Pete Sessions is not backing off Sessions’ surprising suggestion in an interview that Obama has a secret plot to kill the free enterprise system as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy to consolidate and hold power. In an interview published [Monday] in The New York Times, Sessions pointed to rising unemployment and said that the Obama administration was deliberately trying to “diminish employment and diminish stock prices.” Sessions told the paper that this was part of an agenda on Obama’s part that is “intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it.”

Steele: Perez Hilton Is Obama’s Kind Of “Empathetic Judge” (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Michael Steele has made perhaps the most peculiar case yet against President Obama’s criteria for choosing a Supreme Court nominee… “What was so outstanding about Miss California, let’s do a little parallel… This is what an empathetic judge looks like,” Steele said of celeb-blogger Perez Hilton. “The empathetic judge in this case, the judge of the beauty pageant, asked this woman a question and instead of taking her answer at face value, he was empathetic to a particular community and he thought her answer should be favorably disposed towards that particular community. And as a consequence she answered a different way. She answered honestly. She answered based on the facts of her situation, the facts of her upbringing, the facts of this country, which by and large sides with her.”

“To even get off on this tangent of asking her a socially controversial question and then getting ticked off because you don’t like her answer. Then what the heck did you ask the question for? Just because she is Miss California you presume she is going to have a left-of-center answer on gay marriage? Come on. This is the slippery slope this nation is putting itself on and I’m telling you folks to stop it. Don’t go there.”
The ability to make sense is, apparently, is not a requirement for the top job in the Republican Party.

Powell More Popular Than Cheney, Limbaugh (Political Wire)
[Sunday], former Vice President Dick Cheney made the point that he’d rather have Rush Limbaugh as spokesman for the Republican party than Colin Powell. [Monday night], the DNC had some fun pointing out that Powell’s approval rating (80%) is higher than that of Cheney (18%) and Limbaugh (26%) combined.

Background Briefings Irk WH Press (Politico)
Members of the White House press corps are grumbling about a spate of background briefings by “senior administration officials.” “We’ve been concerned about the needless use of ‘on-background’ briefings when it comes to sharing straightforward information,” AP spokesman Paul Colford said.
I, too, am concerned about this trend. It makes no sense.

Feherty apologizes for Pelosi, Reid remarks after pressure from Media Matters (County Fair, Media Matters for America)
From a May 10 Associated Press article: “CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty apologized Sunday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a morbid joke that went bad in a Dallas magazine.”

Two Bush-aides-turned-reporters invent a Biden “gaffe” (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Here’s Joe Biden talking about his dog to a group of schoolchildren in Syracuse, New York: “Do I have a dog? I got a great dog. Have I ever petted a dog? Oh yeah, and guess what? I got one who lives with me. The coolest, smartest dog in the world. His name is Champ. And he’s a German sheppard. And he is the neatest dog … I kid the president. My dog is smarter than Bo, his dog. [Schoolchildren laugh] I think, yeah I do. I think he is. But Bo is a beautiful dog, too.”

Here’s the video. Watch for yourself. This is clearly not someone who is insulting President Obama’s dog; this is clearly someone who A) loves his dog and B) is making a joke about the relative intelligence of his dog and the President’s dog. Schoolchildren understand that; they laugh at the joke. Now here’s how Christian Science Monitor reporter Jimmy Orr describes the comments, under the headline – yes, he put this nonsense in the headline! — “Biden insults President Obama’s dog at Syracuse”:

LUKE RUSSERT MIA AT NBC NEWS (Page Six, New York Post)
SOME hardworking folks at NBC and MSNBC – who work long hours for little pay — are wondering, “Where in the world is Luke Russert?” One insider sniped, “He was hired last year to be the youth correspondent — he got a great contract and was supposed to cover youth issues, blog and bring in young viewers, but he’s been MIA for a while. It’s like, ‘Well, that’s what you get for nepotism.’ ” Russert, 23, was hired at the network on July 31 as a correspondent-at-large, after his beloved father, Washington bureau chief and moderator of “Meet the Press” Tim Russert, died last summer.

Viewers Doing a 180 on Anderson Cooper’s 360 (Los Angeles Times)
Cooper’s ratings have been in a sharp decline all year, and so far the month of May is no exception. According to Nielsen, the audience for the 10-11 p.m. hour of his show so far this month is 933,000 viewers. This is the first time he’s fallen below the one-million mark since the dog days of last August. Anderson is losing almost 20% of his lead-in from Larry King and is in danger of being passed in the ratings by MSNBC’s 10 p.m. repeat of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.” Since the start of 2009, Cooper has lost one-third of his audience.

New Web Venture for MSNBC’s Carlos Watson (Business Week)
Another personality who first made a name in traditional media is putting the final touches on an ambitious online destination. Carlos Watson, an MSNBC anchor who also hosts a show on talk radio network Air America, and a small band of staffers are readying The Stimulist, a news and opinion site.

FNC’s Gallagher, Cameron joke about whether Credit Card Bill of Rights includes a “mechanism to stop wife spending” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

They WANT to be compared to Muslim fundamentalists?
‘Men can slap wives if they spend too much’ (Independent Online)
A Saudi judge told a seminar on domestic violence that it was okay for a man to slap his wife for lavish spending, a report said on Sunday.

O’Reilly says Sebelius is “pro-abortion, she wants the babies done for” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: Obama administration’s economic “objective” is “unemployment” and “more food stamp benefits … think forced reparations” (video at County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Media Matters for America headlines

Media declare Gingrich GOP’s “ideas man,” ignore his frequent falsehoods

On Fox, Rove gave false account of Blair’s position on torture

O’Reilly’s Ark: Gay marriage could lead to goat, duck, dolphin, and turtle marriage

REPORT: On Supreme Court, cable news turns to Republicans for comment

Limbaugh has repeatedly smeared progressives, media by linking them to terrorists

Drudge posts dubious picture of Obama “laugh” at joke about Limbaugh’s kidneys

Ignoring Bush concession, Bozell declares: “[T]here’s no one” held at Guantánamo “who should be released”

US journalist freed by Iran, reunited with parents‎
An American journalist imprisoned on espionage charges in Iran for four months was freed Monday and reunited with her smiling, tearful parents — a move that clears a major obstacle to President Barack Obama’s attempts at dialogue with the top U.S. adversary in the Middle East. The United States had said the charges against Roxana Saberi, a 32-year-old dual Iranian-American citizen, were baseless and repeatedly demanded her release. Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could also win some domestic political points a month before he faces a re-election challenge from reformers who seek to ease Iran’s bitter rivalry with the United States.

Chavez threatens to close TV channel critical of him
President Hugo Chavez is threatening again to shut down Globovision, the sole television channel in Venezuela that regularly criticizes him — saying it had stirred panic for reporting an earthquake before the government announced it.

ProPublica Investigates Farrah Fawcett’s Feelings (by Hamilton Nolan at Gawker)
Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett is upset with her lack of privacy as she undergoes cancer treatment, reports ProPublica. Now, for cheap laffs, let’s juxtapose that with ProPublica’s mission statement: “ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with ‘moral force.’ We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.”
Perhaps she doth protest too much. If Farrah Fawcett is so concerned about her privacy, why is she hosting a prime time special on her condition.

New Study Probes What Readers Will Pay For Beyond Financial News (Paid Content)
While it’s practically become cliché to say that web users would be willing to pay for financial news, a PricewaterhouseCoopers study finds that the possibilities for newspaper publishers are a little less narrow than that. Readers (the survey had more male respondents than female) are fairly amenable to paying for sports—they would be willing to go up to 77 percent of the full price, while finance content would command 97 percent of the highest price publishers might offer. Of course, the likelihood that readers would pay for content tends to diminish as you look at the inclinations of younger users.

News Corp. Plans Micro Payments for WSJ Web Site
News Corp. will introduce “micro payments” for articles and premium subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal’s Web site. “Once we have your details we will be able to charge you according to what you read, in particular, a high price for specialist material,” said Journal editor Robert Thomson.

Can a Paywall Coexist With Sharing? I’m Afraid Not (by Stan Schroeder at Mashable)
News Corp is planning to introduce micro-payments for individual articles from the Wall Street Journal… Perhaps someone over at News Corp has thought about this; maybe they’re planning some sort of system that lets paying customers receive the content early, and then sets it free after a certain period of time. I doubt even this would work, however, because on the Internet a couple of hours late is too late. A paywall – any kind of paywall – will not solve newspapers’ problems. The WSJ and other publications are, of course, welcome to try.
It depends on how the software is designed. There’s no technical reason why someone quoting from a News Corp article can’t link to it, and the link can show a portion of the article to the person following the link. That happens right now with WSJ blocked content. Click here for an example.

Rodale Finds Ways To Make Them Pay (by Steve Smith at MIN)
What content will people pay for online? Maybe the secret involves an offline connection. “Almost every product we have is sold usually with an offline component,” says Rodale VP of customer marketing Gregg Michaelson.

The New York Times on Adobe AIR; The Paper Without the Paper (Mashable)
The New York Times isn’t only getting innovative with ads, but also debuting an impressive application: Times Reader 2.0, an Adobe AIR application that comes as close to the newspaper reading experience as you’re going to find on the desktop. Once you’ve downloaded the upgraded Times Reader, the application automatically updates with the latest NYT content every 5 minutes, meaning you can take it offline (Times Reader 2.0 has Google Gears-like offline support) with up-to-date news. More impressive than that, however, is the interface, which has the look and feel of the print edition of The New York Times, but with the convenience and usability of a desktop app.
Judging from the screen capture associated with the article, it looks much like the NYT’s home page, where I go when I want to see the NYT’s home page. Not sure why I might want it on my desktop.

Video: How The New York Times Is Reworking Content For Different Screens (Paid Content)
Last week, NYT Media Group GM Scott Heekin-Canedy talked about how a “number of new display devices will be coming to market soon.” But a tour of the paper’s research and development group by the Nieman Journalism Lab shows that the NYT is also thinking about reworking its content for devices already on the market, such as netbooks. A smart move considering that 7.8 million netbooks are expected to be sold this year (penetration the Kindle will likely never reach, at least for the forseeable future).
Click through to watch the video.

Sulzbergers May Have Run Out of Time
The family that controls The New York Times empire has lost more than 86 percent of its fortune and may have sell their controlling stake to get out of debt. The Ochs-Sulzberger family may also face unusual pressure from about two dozen descendants to cash out and restore their lifestyles.

Geffen Sets Sights on NY Times
David Geffen, the former record executive who made an offer for the Los Angeles Times two years ago, now wants to buy the New York Times. Geffen made an offer in the past two months for the 19.8 per cent stake in the New York Times Company held by Harbinger Capital Partners.

Big Media, R.I.P.
After its various spinoffs, Time Warner will be left as a more sharply focused, purebred content company comprised of filmed entertainment and news brands. Basically, it will represent a corporate reincarnation of its original form, back in the days before Time and Warner became intimate.

Wall Street 2.0 Tests Bloomberg LP
Bloomberg LP is experiencing one of its toughest stretches ever. The company recently had to hand out its first significant round of pink slips, and has seen its bread-and-butter business — the leasing of its ubiquitous terminals — fall by 2.8 percent since November.

Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web
E-reader technology is making it easier to obtain and distribute copyrighted material on the Web for free.

A Blog Geared to Women Yields a New Site for Slate
Coverage of the presidential election from a female perspective helped make a blog a success and, now, an online hub… The new site, Double X, which is set to start publishing Tuesday, grew from a group blog created on Slate in October 2007 called The XX Factor, after the pair of X chromosomes in women. The blog featured commentary on politics, sex and culture from several women who write for Slate… Although the editors describe the site as a savvy, intellectual, feminist antidote to glossy, celebrity-obsessed women’s magazines, it will not turn away male readers, which they say have made up 40 percent of the blog’s readership. The site has recruited several men to contribute essays about parenting and fatherhood as well.

Double X is the latest addition to the Slate Group, owned by The Washington Post Company, which has recently expanded its cluster of offerings to include a video site called Slate V, a financial analysis area called The Big Money, and The Root, a news and opinion site for black Americans.

Vibe to Launch ‘Tabloid-Themed’ Spin-Off
At a time when music magazines are struggling to stay in business, the Vibe Media Group, publisher of Vibe, is looking to defy the odds by launching The Most!, a biannual print magazine and Web site. With an initial print run of 300,000, The Most! is set to hit national newsstands June 16.

Playboy Plans ‘Radical Changes’
Playboy is considering “radical changes” of the print business model, including price increases, a frequency reduction and lowering its rate base of 2.6 million. The company said it would combine Playboy’s July and August issues into a double issue.

Mags Mine Web for Subscriptions
Magazine publishers may not have cracked the code on charging for content online. But some have turned the Web into a sophisticated tool for shoring up new subscribers — a bright spot for publishers at a time when their print ad revenue is nosediving and newsstand sales are slumping.

10-Q Watch: Sirius Could Lose Hundreds Of Thousands Of New Subs From Chrysler Bankruptcy (Paid Content)
Sirius said last week on its earnings call that the Chrysler bankruptcy is bad news for the satellite radio operator. In an SEC filing…, the company added some numbers to that statement, saying Chrysler accounted for about 900,000 subscriber additions in 2008, or 16 percent of the company’s total gross new subscribers.

Yes, You, Too, Can Manage A Playboy Playmate (Virtually, At Least) (Paid Content)
E! has got the Girls Next Door, but Irish video-game firm Jolt Online Gaming is making the Playboy Playmate experience even more interactive. It plans to launch Playboy Manager, a massively multiplayer online (MMO) casual game that lets players live out the fantasy of managing a group of Playboy models. Jolt picked up the rights from Playboy; the startup’s CEO and founder Dylan Collins told the Sunday Business Post that it was “the first time that Playboy has come into the online gaming space.”

Rape game rewards sexual violence
A Japanese computer game maker has dismissed a protest by US rights campaigners against the game “RapeLay”, which lets players simulate sexual violence against females. New York-based Equality Now launched a campaign this week “against rape simulator games and the normalisation of sexual violence in Japan”. It urged activists to write in protest to the maker and Prime Minister Taro Aso, arguing the game breaches Japan’s obligations under the 1985 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Yokohama-based games manufacturer Illusion brushed off the campaign.

Warners, Watchmen, Blu-ray Live, and Facebook: The Fantastic Four? (Mashable)
If Warner Bros. [and Facebook] have just inked a deal to allow viewers to simultaneously watch Watchmen on Blu-ray Disc Live (BD-Live) while exchanging comments with their Facebook friends. Even though BD-Live viewers could already connect with each other mid-screening, the new Facebook deal adds a greater community element – i.e. Facebook’s 200 million users - to the video watching experience. According to the Hollywood Reporter, there was no money exchanged in the deal, which will let users sync their BD-Live buddy lists with their friend networks on Facebook.

Only the Blu-ray “Watchmen Director’s Cut” will have the additional layer of social connectivity, and it will be made available in late July via iTunes and Amazon on Demand for $35.99.

NightTline: Twitter and ABC Launch a Tweetable News Show (Mashable)
[ABC’s] popular Nightline news program and anchors are going to host a weekly online news program that uses Twitter for debate and questions. It’s called NightTline. Yes, that’s Nightline with two Ts. The show airs its first episode this Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. EST. According to ABC, the show will take on Nightline’s Face-Off model, which pits two opposing sides on an issue that an ABCNEWS anchor provides and moderates. It’s a model that causes a lot of heated debate and verbal exchanges, perfect for an easily-distracted online audience. The first question on NightTline? “Is torture ever acceptable?”

Twitter will be integral to the entire show. There will be a Twitter widget that allows viewers to chime in on the discussion or ask questions during the debate. The Nightline anchors will also use Pixel touchscreen technology to display and interact with the debate occurring on Twitter.

Interactive Housewives Finale Nets Social Media Success for Bravo (Paid Content)
Last week, Bravo hosted a virtual viewing party for The Real Housewives of New York season finale, and they were desperate for you to tweet them during this interactive live stream that combined Facebook Connect, Sign In with Twitter, and mobile chat. Now that the drama has played out on-air and the Web, we know that their efforts prevailed. Overall the campaign more than doubled Bravo’s (@bravotv) Twitter follower count, resulted in a huge spike in Twitter mentions during the virtual viewing party, and attracted record numbers to Bravo’s website. Plus, as it turns out, one of the housewives, Bethenny (@Bethenny), was a trending topic on Twitter during the season finale.
If anything good can come out of this recession, could it please be a reduction in the number of vapid reality shows about vapid rich people?

NewsHour on PBS to Get Makeover
The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, public broadcasting’s nightly newscast, is getting a makeover, designed to bring it more fully into the digital era, give it a livelier look and nudge it, however slowly, toward the day when its longtime anchor decides to retire.

Jon Stewart to Create History Channel Special
Jon Stewart will create a two-hour special on the U.S. naturalization process for History Channel, to air in the fourth quarter. Stewart’s show, The Naturalized, is among the highlights of History’s most substantial programming investment ever.

Oliver, Seacrest Set to Helm ABC Reality Series
ABC is teaming with British chef Jamie Oliver and Ryan Seacrest for a new unscripted series that gives healthy makeovers to an entire city. Oliver will travel to the unhealthiest places in America and find ways to use nearby resources to improve local eating habits.

Earnings: DISH Network Loses Subs, But Cost-Cutting Boosts Profits (Paid Content)
DISH Network lost 94,000 subscribers during the first quarter, but cost-cutting helped the satellite TV operator boost profits. Revenue grew 2.1 percent to $2.9 billion, while net income grew 21 percent to $313 million and earnings-per-share (EPS) was $0.70, beating analyst expectations of $0.57. The total number of subscribers at the end of the first quarter was 13.6 million.
Click through for highlights.

Create a WordPress-Based Blog Network With Blogs.mu (Mashable)
Have you heard of WordPress MU? It’s short for WordPress Multi User; a feature that lets anyone create their own WordPress based blog network. It’s just as easy as installing WordPress; the problem is, installing, upgrading and maintaining WordPress isn’t really that easy for every end user, and the same goes for WordPress MU. This is where Blogs.mu comes into play; it’s WordPress MU, simplified… It’s not all absolutely free, though. Blogs.mu runs their ads on your site; if you want to remove those and run your own, as well as use your own domain name, activate additional plugins or choose from a selection of 100+ themes (free users only get 15 themes), you’ll need to become a “supporter”, which boils down to paying $9 per month for 10 blogs.

More Real-Timeness At Facebook: Popup Alerts (Mashable)
In the last couple of weeks, Facebook has started improving all sorts of little things around the site: it added semi real-time notifications about new posts in your stream, and most recently it added the possibility of creating custom friend lists in Facebook Chat. Now, it added popup alerts above the chat box, which instantly notify you about events such as one of your friends writing on the wall and the like. The popups appear automatically, stay up for a couple of seconds and then are gone; you can still find a list of all the notifications by clicking on the icon in the lower right corner of the screen… You can turn off specific types of notifications, by clicking on the X to close the popup, after which you’ll be asked to permanently turn off future notifications of that same type. However, the option to completely kill popups of any kind would be nice.
I’m waiting for the application that will tell me what my friends are going to do BEFORE they do it.

Social Media Giving: Target’s Smart Facebook Campaign (Mashable)
Retail chain Target already gives 5 percent of its income to charity. For the next couple weeks, they are going to be allocating those funds – which come out to $3 million every week – to charities selected by Facebook users. The company has launched the “Bullseye Gives” campaign on Facebook, which is essentially a voting application connected to the brand’s existing Facebook page. On it, users select which of ten charities they’d like to see funds allocated to. Money will then be given out based on percentages, so if 10 percent of users vote for Salvation Army, that organization will receive 10 percent of the total donations.
You can vote once per day until May 25.

Report: Facebook Planning Its Own Virtual Payment System (Paid Content)
Tired, perhaps, of getting shut out of the millions of dollars being spent on virtual goods and social games that run on its platform, Facebook plans to test its own micropayment system within the next few weeks.
Because paying real money for fake stuff is part of the American dream.

Beyond Clicks And CPMs: A Look At ‘Engagement’-Based Ad Deals (Paid Content)
Facebook has its Engagement Ads that try to entice users to interact; Hearst’s digital division is letting advertisers pay to “engage” with Seventeen and CosmoGIRL readers by answering their questions; and video-ad firms like VideoEgg and ScanScout offer “cost per engagement”-based buys. Meanwhile, publishers’ sales teams are increasingly serving up stats like time spent, return visits, and event the number of times a brand gets mentioned in the comments, as proof of why advertisers should pay more for their inventory.
Click through for more information.

Ex-NYer Writer Tweets at Length About His Firing
Dan Baum, a newspaper reporter turned New Yorker staff writer, is tweeting his 2007 firing from the magazine. In 140-character dispatches, Baum reveals that like all New Yorker writers, he was paid according to a simple dollars per word equation — in Baum’s case, $90,000 annually for 30,000 words.

Kindle Store Optimized for iPhone and iPod Touch
Online retailer Amazon opened its Kindle Store on Monday, optimized for the iPhone and available through Apple’s App Store. When Kindle for iPhone users click on the option to “get books,” the Kindle Store opens in Apple’s Safari browser.

Vodafone to open network for applications store
Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile operator by revenue, plans to launch a mobile online store to sell games, news and travel applications that its customers can buy on whatever model of phone they use.

Android Poised for Massive Success?
Google’s initial success with its Android mobile operating system will continue — and in a very big way. That’s according to research firm Strategy Analytics, which predicts that global shipments of Android-based smart phones will grow a stunning 900 percent this year.

A Meeting in New York? Can’t We Videoconference?
Starting early last year, sales began to rise, offering evidence that videoconferencing was being used more often to replace some business travel.
Indeed. Airlines, hotels, and others in the hospitality industry will definitely be taking hits.

Tech firms could see fallout from antitrust shift
If the Obama administration is serious about more aggressively responding to antitrust complaints, some of technology’s biggest companies could have to rethink their business strategies or expansion plans… For instance, Intel Corp. could face a steep fine in Europe this week over its behavior in the microprocessor industry. An IBM Corp. competitor is accusing the company in Europe of manipulating the market for mainframe computers. Microsoft Corp. — a marquee antitrust defendant during the Clinton administration — has been battling other charges in Europe in this decade as well. Tougher antitrust enforcement could also focus on Google Inc., whose leading market shares in online search and advertising markets were already drawing scrutiny in the waning days of the Bush administration.

Google: Making One Cheeseburger Uses As Much Energy As 15,000 Web Searches (Paid Content)
What can you do to help the environment? Keep clicking away on Google, according to the search engine. The company, under attack from some quarters for the amount of energy it uses, is offering some new data in its defense. The new numbers, released on Google’s blog today, aim to put into perspective the amount of carbon dioxide emitted each time a person does a Google search. Not completely clear why the company decided to put out the data now, but it may still be rattled by a Times of London report earlier this year that showed that performing two Google searches could generate the same amount of CO2 as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea.