What Ever Gave Us Silly NYT Readers That Impression?

I was looking at this graf in particular in the New York Times piece from a week
ago Sunday in which it looked at its/Judy Miller's involvement in the Plame affair
(I like to avoid "gate" suffix and/or the more unbearable "l'affair Plame"):

In August, Douglas Jehl and David Johnston, two other Washington reporters, 
sent a memo to the Washington bureau chief, Mr. Taubman, listing ideas for 
coverage of the case. Mr. Taubman said Mr. Keller did not want them pursued because 
of the risk of provoking Mr. Fitzgerald or exposing Mr. Libby while Ms. Miller was
in jail.

Juxtapose that with Keller's statement that:

"...I fear I fostered an IMPRESSION (emphasis mine) that The Times put a higher 
premium on protecting its reporters than on coming clean with its readers."

This undermines the sincerity of Keller's mea culpa. Readers got that IMPRESSION 
because, at least in  that one instance, there's no denying that he DID put the 
interests of Miller and the NYT ahead of those of its readers. 

Why can't anyone just apologize straight-up anymore? No one is fooled by this 
hemming and hawing.

Who Will Michiko be Today?

First, Michiko Kakutani channeled Holden Caufield for a review of Benjamin Kunkel's "Indecision." Now she's Holly Golightly reviewing the "new" Capote book, "Summer Crossing." She's been at this for a while. Is she bored?

Everyday is Boss's Day

Saw something on the drive to work yesterday that made me sad. A woman next to me had a "Happy Boss's Day" balloon in her car.

Not to NYT: Serve Your Readers, Not Yourselves

1. What I took away from the package:
   
   1) When push comes to shove, the New York Times will
   put its own interests above those of its readers.
   (Reporters pushed ideas for covering the story and
   Keller shot them down).
   
   2) Equivocating aside, Miller almost certainly lied to
   her editors. (When they asked the DC bureau is anyone
   was the recipient of Plame leaks).
   
   3) What motivates Miller, I cannot say. But if
   restoring her credibility was one reason for heading
   to jail, this whole thing has done more harm than good
   on that front. She said she discussed
   Plame/Flame/Wilson with other sources, but can't
   recall who or when? Please...The first mention of
   "Flame" was in the same notebook as the Libby
   interview notes, but not the same section? Well, then,
   what section WERE they in?
   
   4) Keller seems like a decent guy, but there's a
   willful ignorance on the part of Times management in
   this thing that's inexcusable. From a reporter's
   perspective, getting unqualified support from the
   bosses is a beautiful thing. But again, that worked
   out better for Miller than it ultimately did for the
   readers. Considering this is a reporter who was at the
   center of the paper's extensive (albeit soft)
   "correction" for its flawed WMD reporting, Keller
   would have been perfectly justified in supporting her
   while ALSO pressing for more details about her
   sources/interviews.
   
   5) I won't dismiss the time she spent in jail. Maybe
   she thinks it was for the greater good. But she's
   pushing the martyr angle a little too hard, me thinks.
   There's an example of a place more trying than that
   Virginia detention center where your fellow
   journalists are risking their lives to report the
   news. It's called the Baghdad bureau.

You Don't Have to be a Marxist (or an Arborist) to Recognize a Root Cause

Here's the full text of a letter a sent to Romenesko yesterday in response to this piece. Apparently, I'm not the only one who took issue with it. It was a weak piece and it deserves the heat it's getting, not least because it was written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

"Regarding Connie Schultz's piece, I too find it distressing that fewer journalism school students want careers in, well, journalism. But isn't a bit unfair for these profs to scold only students for chasing the big bucks (or at least a living wage)? Aren't they just taking their cues from the journalism business itself?

To the prof who says, 'The thought of starting out at $25,000 or $30,000 to expose corruption and champion the underdog just doesn't do it for them. They have no interest,' I'd say two thinks: 1) Starting out at $30K? Come down from your ivory tower. Many reporters (my former self included) had to get by on less than $20K to start (I started at $18K) and toiled for years before reaching $30K. Check the industry salary surveys. 2) Perhaps too many students have heard too many stories handed down from working journos whose own efforts to "expose corruption and champion the underdog" were squashed by publishers and editors who didn't share that passion and were unwilling to commit the resources or who spiked controversial stories to please an advertiser or who said, in response to a hot tip on corruption at City Hall, 'That's great, but we still need the 'cat-stuck-in-a-tree story form tomorrow's A1.'

I also despair that so few young people vote, but I put the blame largely on our screwed-up political system. Likewise, if students are turning away from hard journalism, maybe it's because too much journalism has gone soft. You reap what you sew."

I also agree with those writers who take Schultz and her sources to task for allowing anonymous hand-wringing unsupported by any hard facts to rule the column.

And, just so it's not all doom and gloom about the future of the business, the Boston Phoenix's Mark Jurkowitz has a list of journalism's up-and-comers. (Of course, let's check back in five years and see how many are in law school or at PR firms...sorry, couldn't resist).

Shrinking the Paper to Grow Profits

I can't think of a better metaphor for how badly lost the newspaper business is. It's an industry that's both incapable of and unwilling to figure out how to grow profits by actually growing the newspaper (old-fashioned things like increasing readership, expanding the number of editorial and ad pages). Whether it's the quantity or size of the pages or the quality or size of the staff, the only way they know how to make more money is to cut. Doesn't make for a very bright future.

The Economist Must Have all the Subscribers it Needs.

I'm having my own version of Jeff Jarvis's Dell Hellwith the bloody Economist magazine. I haven't received an issue since April. Ironically, it was the "Power at Last" issue at left which says the power of the Internet means "the consumer really is king." Online, maybe. But back here in the world of print and "service" reps, we're all apparently still nothing but a burden.

My subscription runs through Jan. '06. They have no record of me ever receiving the magazine even though I got it for a year and a half before it mysteriously stopped. The problem with their (and most) "customer service" reps is that they don't/can't/won't/aren't allowed to think for themselves. They get so wrapped up in their stock answers that they don't listen to you and they don't listen to themselves enough to realize the upsurdity of what they're saying. I'll paraphrase:

Me: So, uh, where are my issues?
Rep: We don't have any record of you in our system as ever having been a subscriber.
Me: I'll fax you a copy of the last issue with the mailing label to show you that I did, at one time, receive it.
Rep: That won't do any good.
Me: Why not?
Rep: Because if you'd received it, we'd have a record of it.

Then we did a little dance about the length of this "theoretical" subscription. I said it was for a year. "Well I don't know that," the Rep responded. "It could have been six months." Hmmm, says me, if you let me fax you this April issue with a Jan '06 expiration on the mailing label, then you can sit with it a while and figure out why that's not possible. But, still, she didn't think faxing the cover would accomplish anything.

I enjoy(ed) reading the magazine (or newspaper as it refers to itself), but not that much. So when this mess is finally resolved, it's buh bye!

What I want from Google Maps...

I love Google Maps' clean, sharp interface, but there's two things that I wish it would do. 1) Let me look at a street-level map, click on two points and have it show me directions/distance between the two. I realized this during a jog. I wanted to know how far I was running. I had a street corner as a reference point. More detailed than a town name, but less so than an address. But I'm out of luck. 2) When I punch in the name of a small town and returns results, I always zoom out because I want the context of the surrounding towns. But too often, by the time I've zoomed out enough to find a familiar reference point, I've lost site of the town I was searching for. Why can't Google Maps put a red pin point on the town name, just like it does on an address?