Hillbilly armor

A question from my personal gadfly, Rachael:

"is Pitts completely unethical or a brilliant journalist? What say you?"

My thought is that the answer, as you might have guessed, lies somewhere between the two poles you offer, Rachael, though I do lean toward "brilliant journalist." In fact, I think I might clear him entirely if he had disclosed in his article that he had planted the question. Of course, the waters are muddied again because the soldier told some newsweekly--Time, maybe--that he thought the question up himself. That would, of course, absolve Pitts of ethical wrongdoing, but would also strip him of any credit for getting the quote.

In general though, I think the principle you need to follow is that if you can't get access yourself, there's nothing at all wrong with using proxies--so long as the proxies get their credit, and you practice full disclosure.

Game Theory

All hail the video game critic!

Now I don't play video games much myself. I leave that to my personal video game adviser, Jason, who, frankly, does play video games much. And yet, even though I have no real need for a video game reviewer, I find myself, almost weekly, turning to the "Game Theory" column of the New York Times's Circuits section. Charles Herold is the reviewer there, and he has forged what, for me, is the perfect voice for a critic. He is personable and first-person. He acknowledges conflicting points of view, but stands by his own experience. And he accepts that he has a really fun job.

While I'm at it, I want to give similar kudos to the New York Observer for its movie reviewing (even though I've let my subscription drop). The Observer, the pleasantly pink weekly, also gives its two reviewers real columns where they can develop trustworthy (or otherwise) personae. Of the two, I find the venerable and aged auteurist Andrew Sarris to be a cinematic soul mate, at least when it comes to enjoying movies or not. I rarely ever agree with his counterpart Rex Reed. What's fun is that the Observer lets them overlap from time to time, unlike more staid papers that take an official position.

In short, I like a bit of personality in my criticism. I think it's charmingly old-fashioned--and more accurate.

Saul Survivor

This week's New Yorker has a story by Roger Angell about the Red Sox winning the World Series. The accompanying illustration is a colored-pencil drawing of a fanciful, physics-defying ballpark. As the work of Saul Steinberg goes, I actually like this piece. And the fact that Steinberg has been dead for five years doesn't change how I feel about the drawing--at least that fact on its own doesn't.

But the late Saul Steinberg may very well be the most frequent contributor to the New Yorker. A couple of weeks ago, he even had a drawing on the cover. Some of these primitivist drawings work for me; some don't. But I'm sick of seeing them.

Steinberg is probably most famous for a cover drawing he did, with Manhattan in the foreground, and everything east of the Hudson river reduced to insignificant specks. While that may accurately reflect my worldview, I don't think it's grounds for continuing to run the man's works approximately every two weeks. And I don't think I'm exaggerating. I find more of the drawings downright bad than good enough to be running in the country's best magazine.

So to the art department of the New Yorker: let's give some living artists a try. I know there are some good ones out there.

Howl, howl, oh Howell!

My class and I have been discussing Howell Raines, Jayson Blair, and that whole fiasco this week. And since it's verging on a month since I've posted anything to this blog, I thought it appropriate to share this parody I wrote of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."


Howell

By Kevin Lerner, with appropriate apologies

I.
I saw the best writers of a new generation destroy with plagiarism, borrowing
hysterical faking
dragging the gray lady through the negro—not that it mattered that he was negro—streets
at dawn
who passed through the University of Maryland without degree,
who cowered in apartment in Brooklyn, cell phone expense report
West Virginia claimed
who described tobacco fields and interviews never had, cell phone to photographer
lied I’m coming
who racked up corrections, setting A2 records, earning weeks off for mental health,
warnings from Landman
who despite said warnings earns promotion to National, sniper coverage,
Maryland officials exclusive source ghosts
who read avidly the San Antonio Express-News
who told the Observer idiot editors couldn’t catch fabrications and borrowings,
anonymous sources from whole cloth
who refused to fade silently, feeding Pappu Romanesko chatrooms
pundits for weeks
who fueled Jay’s jokes, laugh lines from Letterman, a town hall meeting of those who
strive to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose
who brought down the Raines from heaven and Boyd who stand before you speechless
and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul.

II.
What Sphinx of talent and burnout and too many second chances bashed open our skulls
and brought ignominy to the mighty Ochs and Sulzberger trust, and yet could still
Bragg about his wiles?
Jayson! Jayson whose mind is pure machinery! Whose fingers are ten armies destroying
the Power and the Glory!
Jayson! Jayson! Jayson of Brooklyn, whose mind is running book deals!
Jayson! The low point of 152 years of history!

The Curse of the Bamb-me-no

Red Sox fans are supposed to be the ones blaming themselves for 86 years of misery, not me. But I'm growing more and more convinced that I'm to blame for the lack of a championship in the Bronx since 2000.

In the Spring of 2000, just before the start of the season, I was interviewed for a job as an editor of Yankees Magazine, the souvenir program. After the first person offered the job had failed a background check, I was given the offer. I thought it over for an evening, and then called back to turn it down. The pay and the working conditions were going to be terrible, though had the Yanks won, I would have gotten a cut of the World Series check and my very own ring.

That summer, I wrote and published an article about that interview experience. It ran in New York Magazine in July. That Fall, the Yankees lost to the Diamondbacks in the Series. They haven't won since, and a few minutes ago, they collapsed monumentally against the Sox. Am I to blame? Probably not. It would be a delusion of grandeur to put myself on a historical plane with the Babe. But when you're a miserable fan--and when all of the world is rooting for you to lose--it's hard not to kick yourself.

Poll-itzer Prizes

A day after I commented on the Washington Post's Daily Tracking Poll, the New York Times ran its own poll (in conjunction with CBS). But I'm more interested in the sidebar article that tries to explain the methodology behind all of the various news organizations' polls.

I'm thoroughly ambivalent about the idea of polls as journalism, but I do like the fact that this article admits to their being an inexact science. I only wish that the poll itself had been a sidebar to this.

Survey says

I'm addicted to the Washington Post's Daily Tracking Poll, and I would get the DTs if they took it away.

But I'm convinced it's bad for journalism. Other pundits have talked about how stories covering campaign tactics to the detriment of policy take away from the seriousness of political coverage. I agree, and I think that polls turn politics into a sport. I say this while I'm watching the Yankees. Reason tells me that I should hate the Yankees. They're overpaid, even by Major League Baseball standards. They win more often than any other team. They're inherently unlikeable. And yet I live and die by Yankees games. Several of my New York City colleagues today commented on how they went to bed at 1:30 a.m. today, after watching the Red Sox steal a game from the Yanks. We have an undeniable emotional connection, though, and no amount of reason (including calculations of hours of sleep) can convince us to cheer for another team.

And the same, I believe, is becoming true of politics. I believe that the unwavering certainty that Ron Suskind ascribes to George W. Bush in yesterday's New York Times Magazine is also infecting the electorate--and on both sides of the aisle. And all we care about is win or lose. I'm as much of a victim of this attitude as anyone.

Republicans are sure W will win. Democrats are sure W will win. Bostonians are sure the Sox will lose (and they're right). But despite the positive blip Kerry got in the polls after the debates (which I liken to the Red Sox 12th-inning win last night) served only to give Democrats their requisite moment of faith before sliding back into their resignation.

I watch the Washington Post daily tracking poll like I read the sports scores. I read other papers' polls--and automatically dismiss the ones with which I disagree. Americans, for the most part, know for whom they will vote in two weeks. The rest is box scores.

Catching up

I've been buried under reading for my classes, and grading student papers, but I have been keeping at least one eye on the media. One night last week, I had to triple-task between the debates, the Yankees, and a stack of papers.

Last week, Daniel Okrent, the Times Public Editor, addressed the question of whether or not the Times is biased toward one campaign or another. I generally tend to agree with his assessment, that no, it's not particularly biased. But then, I also have to admit my liberal tendencies--an admission which may undermine my following argument, but then I don't know what to do about that, except to ask for the reader's trust.

This week, Okrent invited two guest columnists to fill his column. Of course, neither of these columnists agreed with Okrent, which was both predictable, and Okrent's point. Todd Gitlin, a sociologist and journalism professor at Columbia, took the liberal approach, using the argument that being overly "balanced" tipped things in Bush's direction.

Bob Kohn wrote from the Right. He wrote that while the Times may make a good effort to accurately portray Bush's approach to policy, the paper undercuts that evenness by running articles about political issues that fall solidly on the side Bush is not on.

My response to both arguments is the same, and one I have expressed in this space before. One side of an issue can actually be the wrong side of the issue, and mere stenography--which is what Gitlin is accusing the Times of committing--does a disservice to the public. I agree with this, but I direct Gitlin toward Kohn's point. The Times may be committing stenography when it covers what Bush says, but in its surrounding coverage, that error is mitigated. The man, after all, is technically President of the United States, and what he says deserves to be heard, whether or not it is agreed with.

--

In two other notes, the Times Magazine this week ran what I had thought until today was the most important non-covered story of the Presidential election, which is the full story, so much as anyone can access it, of Bush's faith and its effect on government policy. Frank Rich writes about the Bush administration's closed-door press policy, and does so much better than I could, so I leave the story to him.

An opinion can't be wrong, but...

The New York Times editorial in tomorrow's paper about tonight's VP debate seems to be the result of wishful thinking on the editorialists' part. The editorial seems to think that Edwards was the clear winner of the debate, and while I would wish that were so, I have to disagree.

But this blog is not about my politics. It is about the media. And as American libel law history has made clear, everyone has the right to his opinion, but no one is allowed his own facts. The Times here, seems to be guilty of a little spin of its own in its interpretation of a much fuzzier debate than this editorial describes.

The New York Times Book Review Review

This weekend, the New York Times unveiled its new designs for its various Arts & Leisure sections and the Book Review. My personal jury is still out on the revisions, but I'm inclined to like them. The general idea seems to have been to move towards a more magazine-like presentation of the material.

Any time you create a "department," as magazines are prone to do, there's going to be a shakedown period. It seems to me that that's where the Times is at the moment, but expect fuller comments from me in the future.

All aboard, America

Though it's not media in the press sense of the word, advertising does fit. I want to commend Amtrak's recent Northeast corridor advertisements. Though they're thoroughly modern, they capture something of the romance of vinatage Deco train and ship posters.

And you can buy 'em cheap, too.

Senators be damned

It doesn't pertain exactly to the media, but I wanted to be on the record with this. Assuming Major League Baseball finalizes the move of the Montreal Expos to Washington, DC, I'd like to suggest that they call the team the "Monuments."

My friend Daniel prefers that they be sponsored by the Homeland Security Department, but I stand by my choice. Daniel, however, did seem to like my suggestion that the Washington Monuments play with pointy bats.

Fair and Balanced

The Chicago Tribune's Public Editor wrote today about reader complaints that his newspaper was not fair and balanced the way a newspaper should be. His answer--which is that the news is a collaborative process and that sometimes reader complaints are valid--is true, but there is more going on, and it's not liberal bias, exactly.

(I do believe that the press has a duty to be "liberal" as part of its mission, but that's another blog. And before you dismiss me as a liberal tool, note the quotation marks; I promise to explain at a later date.)

What's going on in this Tribune case is that the public has been led to believe that journalism should be unbiased (which, in the American tradition, is the standard). But many people interpret this to mean that "there are two sides to every story" and that the newspaperman's job is to lay out all of the facts and let the reader figure out what's true and what's not. It's Fox News's slogan (though not their practice). However, that's not the case.

Not every story has two stories, and not every fact is true, just because someone said it. It's the journalist's job to serve as the filter and to some extent, the analyst of news. And if that means choosing to put one candidate's speech higher on the front page than another, that doesn't equate to bias. Calling statements into question doesn't equate to bias--as long as it's done across the board. That's what it means to be a fair and balanced journalist--not giving equal time and space to all comers.

Union Man

Here is another story I did this week for Architectural Record. This one is about the architect Thom Mayne and his new design for the Cooper Union in New York.

Tick Tock

Though CBS has now acknowledged that the Bush memos are forgeries, much about them still remains a mystery. This Washington Post article is the best reporting on the whole process CBS followed (through yesterday) that I've seen.

Inconclusive

Newspapers have an obligation to report as much information as they have in as accurate a characterization as they can manage.

This morning, USA Today reported that its own poll showed Bush ahead of Kerry. But it stuffs the news that two other polls still have the competitors in a statistical dead heat down in the 8th paragraph. The headline supports the lead (though an abbreviated headline on the website mentions both).

USA Today should not privilege its own poll over equally valid polls in order to have a scoop or even to tout the fact that it conducted a poll in the first place. Give the whole news--which is still that no one knows who's gonna win this thing.

Project Rebirth

A link to a freelance story I wrote for Architectural Record, where I used to be the web editor. The story is about a film and web site project called Project Rebirth, which will chronicle the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site in time lapse photography.

The Columbia Blogcasting System

A Wall Street Journal editorial about the CBS News forged documents affair takes the whole incident over into the realm of the debate over the so-called liberal media.

I hope that this does not become that. Dan Rather has a history of being an antagonist of the Bushes, which would certainly raise questions from the right over his impartiality. And, as has been pointed out, the documents really only revived the mostly-accepted idea that Bush skipped out on his duty. This is nothing very new, and the new documents don't do much to support the story. So motives are suspect, and Dan Rather would have done himself and CBS a favor by waiting for more conclusive proof before going with the story. That's a lesson for journalism students.

On the other hand though, pundits seem to be celebrating the bloggers for somehow uncovering these forgeries. I need to point out that these documents have not yet been proven forgeries. All the bloggers did was complain and raise some conspiracy theories. And so far, that's all anyone has on any side: conspiracy theories. The WSJ editorial raised the possibility that the Kerry campaign or the Democrats fed Rather the documents. But the other side of the fence (The WSJ is notoriously conservative) is just as paranoid. In her column this morning, Maureen Dowd talked of rumors that Karl Rove is behind the documents. In this twisted scenario, Rove fed CBS the papers, knowing that they would be discredited, so that people would stop talking about Bush's lackluster service record, and talk instead about how the Dems planted these documents (see the WSJ editorial).

Neither one of these scenarios is immediately plausible, but they both seem more likely than the idea that Dan Rather or CBS is intentionally duping the American public with false documents. As the media writer Ken Auletta pointed out, 60 Minutes is still the best network TV news magazine, and its heritage certainly points toward good journalistic judgment. And CBS better figure out what happened before some enterprising blogger actually moves from skepticism and punditry and does some reporting. If that happens, then bloggers would really have accomplished something.

I'd Rather not

...to paraphrase Bartleby. I've been intentionally avoiding comment on the 60 Minutes 2 uproar about the forged--or not--documents from Bush's Air National Guard service.

There has been much praise of the "blogosphere" for uncovering this "story." And while as a newbie blogger myself, I do think that there is merit to that sort of scrambling angry personal-opinion journalism. But I just watched the follow-up to the story in which Bush's superior's secretary said she thought the documents were forged, but that the ideas were not. A sort of third way.

Is this ass-covering on Rather's part? Maybe. But we can't really know what's going on, since we weren't wherever it was that these memos made their way to CBS. I can't imagine that CBS made this up, as some blogging conspiracy theorists have suggested. I CAN imagine that someone did. But I could be wrong, and anything I say is speculation.

Which is why we need good, professional journalists, too. Bloggers may have outed the documents, but they're not going to solve the mystery.

Today's thoughts on Today

Ew, never mind. Kitty Kelley overload. A five minute segment, maybe. Three days in a row? Ew. Forget my praise of NBC. Make her go away.