Tag Archive for: New York Times

“Classy” Way to Bow Out of a Job

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As reported by ace media observer Jim Romenesko, the delivery person of the NY Times for a subscriber in the Bay Area lost his job delivering the paper. This subscriber is like me a Romenesko reader. Under the Twitter handle ‘@KatieS’ she sent Jim a tweet: “Sad day for my @nytimes delivery man. Laid off as they find a cheaper delivery service.” As a goodbye to his customers, the gentleman found it in himself to make a final delivery to his customers–this large-hearted farewell letter. Later, Romenesko received an update from @KatieS: “Thanks to everyone for the kind words (and better yet, some great job leads!) for our classy @nytimes delivery man.”

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From the Annals of Colossal Republican Nerve & Media Failure

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From the NY Times article: “The president [Addington] said violated constitutional law. ‘I’m kind of surprised he did it, because more so than most presidents, this guy has a personal ability to assess the constitutional implications,’ Mr. Addington said, referring to Mr. Obama’s experience as a teacher of constitutional law. ‘It’s flabbergasting and, to be honest, a little chilling.’”

Nowhere in the following paragraphs does reporter Weisman point to the appalling and rich irony that this statement was made by a veteran of an administration that never failed to arrogate more power to itself. Surely, Weisman could have pointed at this without injecting the dreaded appearance of undue opinion-making into his piece. His editor should have insisted on more perspective in the story. It is journalism like this that makes news consumers like me disgusted with the New York Times and other media that consistently refuse to point out self-serving and tendentious statements made by partisan sources. // more. . .

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Is the FBI probing Bain Capital?

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A letter the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request suggests that an investigation of Bain Capital–the company that Mitt Romney worked at for many years, and from which the New York Times has reported continues to receive significant compensation–is ongoing or possibly commencing within the Bureau. The letter, viewable on Scribd.com, has had the name of the person requesting information redacted, as well as the date it was written. The top of the letter reads “Subject: Bain Capital” The relevant paragraph in the letter, signed by the FBI’s David Hardy, Records/Information Dissemination Section Chief reads,

“I have determined that the records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; that there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records; and that the release of the information contained in these responsive records could reasonably be expected to interfere with the enforcement proceedings.” // see letter in post . . .

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The 99% at the NY Times

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Since I’m an optimist, I’ll offer a hopeful observation that this labor conflict at the Times ought to make the paper’s coverage of the #OWS Movement more respectful and less dismissive, as so much of their reporting has been over the past few months, like this snarky article by Ginia Bellafante from last September. I’ll be watching for any change of tone, even as I realize my optimism is probably unwarranted. // more. . .

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Media Organizations Inadvertently Pranking Themselves

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Carl Franzen of TPM’s IdeaLab reports that for several hours today News Corp. was erroneously corroborating that the Twitter handle of @wendi_deng was in Twitter-speak a ‘verified account’. Turns out they were wrong, as was Twitter. . . . I detest seeing errors in books I’ve published–I get sick to my stomach the first time I see an error in a book I’ve edited–so my outlook here is informed by that. And yet, I know that I am fallible, along with other people, and that we’re all probably more mistake-prone in our screen-dominated age than in eras past. Mistakes will continue to occur in communications. But what’s inexcusable is to make errors on top of errors. Both companies here failed as organizations to correctly assess the matter at hand. I guess you might say they’re simply too complex to be simple when they need to be. // more. . .

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Verizon’s Quick U-Turn a Sign of Anti-Corporate Energy

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I love how rapidly Verizon caved on their plan to charge subscribers a $2 fee for processing certain kinds of monthly payments. As reported in the New York Times, reactions from customers, communications industry watchdogs, and FCC officials ranged from outrage to threats of investigations. The recent campaign that made Bank of America drop its proposed $5 debit card fee took a few weeks to reach its goal, while this explosion of anger at Verizon was over in a scant 24 hours. This says something about the anti-corporate mood prevalent in the U.S. right now, thanks to the #OWS movement. Only at their peril do companies blithely try putting anti-consumerist policies into place. GoDaddy’s loss of subscribers over their support for SOPA, which I posted about last night, is another example of the same impulse in the consumer zeitgeist.

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