Is Chris Hughes Turning The New Republic Into Edvertorial?

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Chris Hughes answered the phones during Facebook’s startup, consequently became a multimillionaire, subsequently joined the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, and eventually bought The New Republic.

It was clear early on that Hughes would make the magazine a house organ for the Obama administration, starting with his 2013 interview of the reelected president, as the redoubtable Dan Kennedy noted at Media Nation.

magjump2-popupTNR’s new owner crosses a line with Obama interview

The New York Times goes deep on The New Republic’s latest reinvention. I wrote a couple of pieces for the venerable magazine many years ago, and I wish it well. But I also wish Times reporter Christine Haughney had explored a conflict of interest in TNR’s relaunch: the participation of new owner Chris Hughes in a major interview with President Obama.

Now Hughes is apparently extending his largesse to any and all comers . . .

Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.

 

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How Your Smartphone Is Selling You Out

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Smartphones are different from cellphones and landlines, in that smartphones reflect you in a way the other devices don’t. And marketers are taking full advantage of it.

From Sunday’s New York Times:

TRACKING-popupSelling Secrets of Phone Users to Advertisers

SAN FRANCISCO — Once, only hairdressers and bartenders knew people’s secrets.

Now, smartphones know everything — where people go, what they search for, what they buy, what they do for fun and when they go to bed. That is why advertisers, and tech companies like Google and Facebook, are finding new, sophisticated ways to track people on their phones and reach them with individualized, hypertargeted ads. And they are doing it without cookies, those tiny bits of code that follow users around the Internet, because cookies don’t work on mobile devices.

But other trackers do, as the Times piece notes . . .

Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.

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Did Dan Shaughnessy Just Jinx The Sox?

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

It’s called a kahn aynhoreh, “the magical phrase uttered to ward off the evil eye” according to The Joys of Yiddish.

And Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy failed to say it in his front-page piece in today’s Sports section.

1005slider16-13070Is it really necessary to go to Tampa?

Do we really have to go to Tampa/St. Pete? Can’t we just forgo the formalities and let the Red Sox advance to the American League Championship Series on sheer style, dominance, karma, and duende?

The Duck Dynasty/ZZ Top/Fidel Castro Red Sox look unbeatable at this hour. They bested the fatigued Rays, 7-4, at Fenway Park again on Saturday night and will send 12-1 Clay Buchholz to the mound to finish the series Monday.

And it gets even worse at the end . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

 

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WGBH Herald Hostage, Day 2

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

The Kochheads are here! Defenders of conservative billionaire David Koch are going after the liberal activists going after Koch for giving a reported $18.6 to local public broadcaster WGBH over the past three decades.

From [Saturday’s] Boston Herald:

David KochKoch foes blasted for ‘politicizing’ public TV

Environmentalists seeking to oust conservative billionaire David Koch from WGBH’s board of trustees came under fire yesterday from media watchdogs who blasted the activists for “politicizing” public broadcasting.

“If the shoe were on the other foot, I think you would have outrage in a lot of places, that someone is trying to throw somebody off a board over their personal politics,” said Bob Lichter, president of the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.

“My God, he’s supporting NOVA,” Lichter added of the PBS science program. “If you can get a climate change skeptic to give money to NOVA, I wouldn’t try to change that . . .

The environmental activists have gathered 70,000 signatures that they’ll try to present to WGBH trustees on Wednesday. One PBS critic, despite wanting to defund public broadcasting, calls the protest “political bullying.”

WGBH is essentially ignoring the protesters . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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Correction o’ the Day (Boston Mayoral Edition)

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

From Thursday’s Boston Globe:

Candidates address minority officers at forum

Screen Shot 2013-10-05 at 2.01.50 AM

John R. Connolly and Martin J. Walsh, the two finalists in Boston’s mayoral race, took turns Wednesday evening being grilled by members of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers, an outspoken group that has made no qualms about its desire to influence the first open race for the City Hall office in 20 years.

More than 100 association and community members packed the group’s headquarters in Dorchester as the candidates took the podium separately for 30 minutes to address issues of public safety, police diversity, and inequity of city services in minority neighborhoods.

From Friday’s Boston Globe:

Screen Shot 2013-10-05 at 1.58.01 AM

May have implied? Seriously? Try seemed to depict.

Rule #1: There’s no handshaking in Boston mayoral finals, as Tom Hanks might say.

So don’t expect any more.

 

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How To Get A World Series Ring

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Friday’s Boston Herald op-ed page featured a piece by Cornelius Chapman that serves as a perfect segue to post-season baseball in Boston.

Sports scribe put literary hat in Ring

Of all the newspaper reporters ever to tap a typewriter in Boston, only one has had his work collected by The Library of America, a recognition that it rose to the level of literature.

That man was Ring Lardner, who worked for this paper’s predecessor, The Boston American.

This year is the centennial of Lardner’s last season as a full-time sportswriter. While he lived here he covered the Boston Rustlers, who would become the Boston Braves, for $45 a week.

Chapman – who wrote The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Red Sox-
Yankees pennant race – hits some of the high points of Lardner’s career: “Alibi Ike,” “Haircut,” “shut up, he explained” (a famous line from The Young Immigrunts, one of the hardreading staff’s favorites). He also notes Lardner’s  ”profound” impact on our language and quotes British novelist Virginia Woolf, who said Lardner wrote “the best prose that has come our way.” Hey – we love Lardner, but Ginny went a bit overboard there.

Unfortunately, Chapman forgot Lardner’s most timely work: A World’s Serious.

Just a taste . . .

Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.

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The New York Times Has An Afro Problem

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

Maybe the Good Grey Lady was having a bad hair day Wednesday, but the Times certainly seems to be double-talking about the Afro sported by Dante de Blasio, son of New York’s mayoral frontrunner.

Two days ago the Times ran a front-page feature on Chirlane McCray, the very involved wife of Democratic mayoral candidate Bill di Blasio.

Once Alienated, and Now a Force in Her Husband’s Bid for Mayor

Chirlane McCray Plays Key Role in de Blasio Campaign

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She was the seventh-grader too frightened to stand in front of the room because her white classmates would mock her, contorting their mouths to make their lips look big. She was the smoldering teenager who took to writing poems every day to wrestle with her isolation and anger. She was the eldest daughter of one of the only black families in Longmeadow, Mass., who arrived home to see their new house scrawled with racist graffiti.

“I had never had a deep sense of belonging anywhere,” recalled Chirlane McCray, whose husband, Bill de Blasio, is now the front-runner to become the next mayor of New York. “I always felt I was an outsider.”

Well, she’s the consummate insider now, as the Times piece minutely details. And then there’s this detail.

She has been taken aback by the sudden stardom of her Afro-favoring son who has been mobbed at public events, deluged with requests to appear on television and irritated that those who approach him only want to talk about his hair.

Fair enough, except for this piece in yesterday’s Times, which represented a total about-face.

Screen Shot 2013-10-04 at 1.09.24 AM

Text:

Screen Shot 2013-10-04 at 1.10.06 AM

C’mon, Dante and assorted Timesniks. Sort this out, yeah?

 

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Ask Dr. Ads: What’s Up With The NYC Girls Project?

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

DrAdsforProfileWell the Doc opened the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

Did you see this story in the New York Times yesterday?

City Unveils a Campaign to Improve Girls’ Self-Esteem

The fashion industry and Madison Avenue are not anathema to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in the same way that soda companies and big tobacco are. But they are, in a sense, the impetus for City Hall’s latest public health campaign. girls-02-articleinline

Mr. Bloomberg is taking on the popular, unattainable notions of beauty promoted by professional image-makers with a campaign that tells girls that they are beautiful the way they are.

Mainly through bus and subway ads, the campaign aims to reach girls from about 7 to 12 years old, who are at risk of negative body images that can lead to eating disorders, drinking, acting out sexually, suicide and bullying. But unlike Mr. Bloomberg’s ads to combat teenage pregnancy, smoking and soda-drinking, which are often ugly, revolting or sad, these ads are uniformly upbeat and positive.

Whaddaya think, Doc – good idea?

– Bloom(berg) Off the Rose

Dear Bloom(berg) . . .

Read the rest at Ask Dr. Ads.

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You Have No Idea How Much They’re Watching You Online

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

cyber-onlinedating_custom-85ed474360a463d8ebb6a21c99a040c2d246da1b-s3-c85-290x290You probably know that Facebook and Google are strip-mining you like West Virginia for online data, but that’s just part of the story. NPR’s All Things Considered is trying to provide the rest of it in its series Your Digital Trail.

Tuesday’s installment . . .

Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.

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Corrections o’ the Day (NYT Kurt Andersen Edition)

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Campaign Outsider

From Tuesday’s New York Times Corrections 

Let’s start small:

FRONT PAGE

The Letter From Paris article on Sept. 21 about the efforts of Kristen Beddard, an American, to introduce kale to the French misstated the size of the house of Hermione Boehrer, who grows the vegetable on her farm near Paris. It is 130 square feet, not 30 square feet.

Slightly roomier, yes?

This, however, is large:

BUSINESS DAY

The Advertising column last Tuesday, about events during the first day of Advertising Week, misattributed several comments made during a panel that was part of the Interactive Advertising Bureau MIXX Conference and Expo 2013.

It was the moderator, Kurt Andersen — not a panelist, Ken Auletta — who expressed disappointment that “by now, 15, 20 years into the Web,” there are fewer “indigenous news entities online” than he had anticipated, saying that the “commentary and aggregation” supplied by so many Web sites is not sufficient replacement for journalistic reportage. It was also Mr. Andersen who joked that many Web sites that specialize in cat pictures actually “aggregate cat pictures; they don’t even make them.” And it was Mr. Andersen who said  that if the news media were once “news and a couple of pages of Op-Ed,” the news media now are too often “Op-Ed and a couple of pages of news.”

The column also described Studio 360 incompletely. It is a radio program that is also a podcast; it is not just a podcast.

So Kurt Andersen isn’t quite so curt after all.

We sort of knew that, didn’t we?

 

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