Ken Shepherd of NewsBusters posted Tuesday on Editor and Publisher's March 11 article listing the four-year circulation changes at the nation's top 20 newspapers, concentrating on the 20% loss at the Los Angeles Times during that period.
What's also compelling is that the Top 20 really has three winners and 17 losers during that four-year time frame, as the chart that follows demonstrates:
In another arrogant piece from a "professional" journalist claiming that Internet journalism is "dangerous," one where the writer imagines that he is somehow the personification of truth in "reporting," we get yet another screed on the theme that they are the only ones that should be allowed to be called "journalists." And this one is a hoot, too. In an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, former journo and current professor David Hazinski seems to imagine that it's the job of the "news industry" to "monitor and regulate" the content of blogs and Internet journalism. No, I'm serious, he really said that! This self aggrandizing piece is so filled with blind assumptions and presumptuous pap that it quite literally boggles the mind.
Lately, we have seen quite a few of these screeds against Internet journalism with nose-in-the-air, self congratulatory philosophies underlying their logic. Hazinski's takes it to the next step, though. In Unfettered 'citizen journalism' too risky, Hazinski, a former NBC correspondent and current professor of telecommunications and head of broadcast news at the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism, has graciously deigned to lower himself and his fellow "professionals" to the role of overlord, making sure we ignerint Internet writers conform to the obviously higher standards that he and his fellow journalists employ so successfully in their field -- can you say Dan Rather and Jayson Blair?
A red meat speech to Gwinnett County, Georgia, Democrats was cause for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Rhonda Cook to whip up a 15-paragraph Max Cleland press release just in time for Veteran's Day. Not once were any Georgia Republicans quoted for balance in Cook's November 11 story, as the former senator and Vietnam veteran thundered about impending doom for Republicans both nationwide an in Georgia in 2008. But particularly offensive was how Cook uncritically relayed a tired, discredited liberal Democratic meme that Cleland was ousted from office in 2002 thanks to an ad questioning his love of country:
Democrats were especially angered by Cleland's loss to Saxby Chambliss five years ago because of an 11th-hour television ad in which the Republican challenger questioned the incumbent's patriotism.
Of course, Democrats and longtime Cleland supporters are welcome to think anything they want about the ads that questioned Cleland's voting record, but it's not objectively accurate, and neither Cook nor the AJC should uncritically further the Democratic talking point.This is hardly the first time liberals have played the Max Cleland-as-a-victim-of-McCarthyism card. National Review's Rich Lowry capably addressed this three years ago (emphasis mine):
It is understandable, but not forgivable, that business reporters at Old Media newspapers might think that the economy is in bad shape. They first have to get past how poorly most of their employers are doing. The industry as a whole has not been doing well, and it's been that way for quite some time.
This table illustrates that point (September 30, 2007 figures are at this post, which originally came from this Editor & Publisher article, which will soon disappear behind its firewall; March 31, 2005 figures were estimated in reverse using annual percentage changes reported as of March 31, 2006, because older data I thought would remain available no longer is):
On Monday, President Bush honored a Cuban political prisoner, author Harper Lee, and former congressman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), along with five others in a Medal of Freedom ceremony. Yet while Washington Post Foreign Service staffer Nora Boustany led her November 6 article with a focus on the Castro-imprisoned Dr.
It appears that Editor & Publisher felt the need to get in front of some really bad news in the newspaper business.
The media was fascinated with the story of the Americans in Michael Moore's "Sicko," who left the US for medical treatment in Cuba, a country with socialized medicine, and it was used to highlight the failings of the US health care system. When the exact opposite occurred, and an American fled Italy's socialized medicine for medical treatment in the privatized care of the US, the media decded that angle was no longer significant.
In the coverage of Andrew Speaker’s TB quarantine, very little was mentioned about why he was so determined to return to the US that he ignored the CDC’s command to remain in Italy to treat his life-threatening illness, which is the most serious form of TB and is resistant to most drugs.
Speaker was so adamant about getting out of Italy and returning to the US health care system because Italy's was inadequate for his needs. The AP recounted the Diane Sawyer interview on ABC where Andrew Speaker said the doctors at a Denver research hospital said the US was his only hope (emphasis mine throughout):
"Before I left, I knew that it was made clear to me, that in order to fight this, I had one shot, and tha was going to be in Denver," he said. If doctors in Europe tried to treat him and it went wrong, he said, "it's very real that I could have died there."
Do you ever find it amusing when liberal newspaper reporters tear their hair out in frustration that all the Bush administration gives them is publicity, not news? If someone wants to argue that it's not a reporter's job to recycle robotically the publicity blurbs of the party in power, there is a two word retort: Bob Dart.
Did you happen to see the reports last week predicting that summer temperatures in the southeastern part of the country could reach 110 degrees by the year 2080?
Well, according to a study just released by the Roger Pielke, Sr. Research Group, the media took “an otherwise interesting and informative research article” published in the Journal of Climate and translated it “into an almost hysterical claim of future weather.”
For those that missed it, here is an example of the hysteria as published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday in a piece marvelously titled “Ready for 110 Degrees? NASA Warns Climate Change Could Cook Atlantans” (emphasis added):
Conservatives often ponder why more young conservatives don’t go into journalism. Here’s one easy reason: the path to prizes and prestige doesn’t come from fierce investigative probing into liberal sacred cows or sharp-eyed conservative commentary. It comes from pleasing liberals with stories which advance their agenda.
The 2007 Pulitzer Prizes must have been a sad affair, what with no major prize for exposing and ruining an anti-terrorism program, and no major natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina to blame on President Bush. But that doesn’t mean the Pulitzers weren’t typically political. After all, the panels of judges are stuffed with long-standing figures in the liberal media establishment.
Let’s start with the Commentary prize, which was awarded to Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The official Pulitzer Prize Board’s press release hailed Tucker’s “courageous, clear-headed columns that evince a strong sense of morality and persuasive knowledge of the community.” Translation: she’s liberal, and she hates George Bush.
NewsBusters has reported for months how the mainstream media did an absolutely lousy job covering the controversy surrounding former President Jimmy Carter’s book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [see editor's note at bottom of post]. As odd as it may seem, the ombudsman for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution agreed with us.
Angela Tuck, the AJC’s public editor, wrote the following on February 24 (emphasis mine throughout):
The controversy surrounding former President Jimmy Carter's book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the story that won't go away. And frankly, this newspaper was slow to cover the book and the firestorm it created.
That was only the beginning of this fabulous account of liberal media bias that would make Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly proud:
Dr. Global Warming, aka Al Gore, in his 1992 book “Earth in the Balance,” proclaimed that the internal combustion engine was “a mortal threat . . . more deadly than that of any military enemy.”
An op-ed written by an economics professor at the University of Georgia counters Gore’s dire assertions, and fervently stated that this invention is actually saving the planet.
In his piece published Tuesday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dwight R. Lee wrote (h/t JunkScience.com, emphasis mine throughout): "The motto of all environmentalists should be 'Thank goodness for the internal combustion engine.'"
Got your attention? Good, for Lee was armed for Gore, err, I mean bear: