16 posts tagged “new york times”

Less than a week after I pointed out that Twitter is not the be-all/end-all of communications during the unrest in Iran, the New York Times helps to make my case.

Don't think they read my blog? Check out what FAU said and what the Times said:

FAU (6.18.09):

Indeed some have compared bloggers and Twits in modern political uprisings to the pamphlet printers of the American Revolution. The difference is that while Twitter is great at getting information out fast, it is terrible for making a longer argument.

NYT (6.20.09):

Political revolutions are often closely linked to communication tools. The American Revolution wasn’t caused by the proliferation of pamphlets, written to whip colonists into a frenzy against the British. But it sure helped.

You're welcome.

Of course, then a friend links to this Ted Talk by Clay Shirky (who is much smarter than I am) and I suddenly feel like I need to reevaluate my whole premise. Watch this if you have 17 minutes and any interest in social media:

For past NYT scoops see here, here and here.

Between Obama's pick for the high court and the California State Supreme Court ruling on Prop 8, NYTimes.com seems to be having...issues.

Come on guys, you couldn't have seen both of these things coming today?

More evidence that the anti-Twits are gaining momentum:

For the second time this week, Joseph Jaffe has spoken out against the Twitter hype. This time he wonders if its all just a giant Ponzi Scheme:

So it's articles and posts about Twitter being promoted, distributed and amplified via Twitter and in doing so, driving traffic back to the same sites and blogs that set the ball rolling in the first place. And it's all thanks to the A.D.D.-like 140 character limit that basically lets you say Jack Squat except for a codified bit.ly slurl whatever that pushes you to go back to the scene of the crime.

Well put Joe. (Read the whole post if you have a second, it's well worth it.)

The New York Times got two steps closer to the backlash:

Maureen Dowd doesn't like Twitter and even took the time to let it's founder know this in person. I found out two things about Biz Stone from this piece: he's kind of funny and he hates the word Twit (in reference to a user of Twitter). This means I will use the word even more.  

Also, from the Times, the Bits Blog has weighed in with a thumbs down:

The news feed on Facebook, which isn’t a slave to 140 characters, does a much better job doing what Twitter is trying to do. If you enter links on Facebook (rather than having them fed from Twitter or some other place), the headline and site name are formatted nicely instead of as a short URL. And it is much easier to read an entire conversation in one place.

My friend GB sent me that last link and asked "Are you dictating our culture? I swear, one week after you mention something, it is everywhere...".

Becuase he sent it to me on Facebook we were able to have a converation about this (imaging that). I thanked him for the nice compliment and told him that while I have had my share of scoopes, the reality is that the Times is generally a week or more behind everyone (especially on tech issues).

Stay tuned, I am sure there is more coming.

1. She's from New York
2. She supports gay marriage
3. She has a blog
4. She's a brunette (we all know that they have more fun)
5. She knows what the frickin' Universal Declaration of Human Rights is...and cites it:
   

I know this is a bit overdue but … three cheers for Governor Patterson [sic] introducing legislation in support of gay marriage...I am proud that he supports what I hope to be the essence of our country, outlined and maintained by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified by the UN in 1948.

F**k yeah!! Excelsior!!!

Wait, what, she's not from New York? F-me this state can't do anything right.

Still, I applaud Leigh-Taylor Smith for speaking out on this issue.

Via Capitol Confidential.

Update: More proof that the Miss California meme has reached total media saturation: it made my cousin's blog at the Times.

OK, this time I had help.

If you recall, last week I guest blogged on A Mistake's site. This post evolved out of a discussion that he and I had over the budget negotiations in New York State.

A Mistake is much more in the know about NY state politics (he knows people and knows people who know people) and during our discussion he affirmed my belief that Shelly Silver was essentially running the state because Gov. Paterson and Sen. Smith had no clue what to do or how to lead.

And what do you know: according to the New York Times we were right (scooped you again). Turns out this budget is all Silver. Here are the telling quotes in this article:

Mr. Paterson, who no longer has a discernable ideology, is being increasingly marginalized. When he was laboring in obscurity as Senate minority leader, he was a champion of open government; as governor, he has been a sharp critic of the concept.

and

“I can’t see what the governor got out of it, or what the Senate majority leader got out of it,” said Kenneth Adams, the chief executive of the Business Council of New York State. “If it’s done by three people and two of them didn’t get much out of it, it certainly sounds like the third person gets the spoils.”

Right now I am wondering if Paterson should even bother to run in 2010. He just got punked by a man who has one of the safest political jobs in the U.S. Paterson is getting all of the blame for a budget he didn't even want.

Come on Governor, at least if you are getting f**ked you should enjoy it. Your predicessor did.

Last night there was a small, but significant change on the internets. The New York Times launched a "Global Edition" and quietly shifted the look of the International Herald Tribune (Wiki) site to essentially match this new edition (note the slight difference in the mastheads).

Few Times readers may have noticed this shift. I'll admit that I did see the link to the new addition, but it was not until A Mistake pointed out the Trib tie-in that I realized what the Times is really up to: they are taking the NY Times brand global and are (I think) retiring the Tribune.

Think about it this way: the Tribune had been owned by the Times and the Washington Post for many years. Last year the Times completed a buy-out of the Post's stake in the overseas paper and now owns it outright. The Trib has essentially been a paper in name only for a long time. The pages were full of Times and Post reprints with a little extra global content and "exotic" sports (great cricket coverage). But the locals don't buy it, the tourists and ex-pats do. They know the name, and the content is familar (and I believe credited to the sorce paper).

So your the Times and now you own the international paper outright. And you are cutting back on costs including overses reporting. What do you do with the this paper that most people know is yours anyway? You retire it.

In my mind this makes a lot of sense:

• The Times can mimic the sucessful models of Time and Newsweek with thier international editions and have an overseas version of thier paper that tourist will immediatly recognize on the newsstands
• They can unify two websites and mimic funcationality and content management of both
• They can use the "Global" site as an incubator for new ideas -- those that work get pushed to the "core" website, those that don't get shelved
• This opens up the opportunity for fully global ad buys across both sites and papers (and less competition for ad dollars)
  
• The Times gets to elevate their brand, further solidifying their position as the "national" paper of the U.S. (sorry The USA Today) while taking out an aging, less popular brand (sorry Tribune, you had a good run)
• Shared content allows for "special reports" from one publication to another with minimal reader confusion
• Consolidated news rooms save money

Of course I could be wrong, there could be a good reason to keep the Tribune around in print (maybe it sells better due to anti-American sentiments or maybe it makes no real cost difference). But I'll bet that the Times is trying this experiment online and if they get little to no push back they will quickly make this change offline as well.

Then again, they are the Times so we know they don't always make the best business decisions.

Additional coverage from Reuters and Editor & Publisher. 

Bravo to my cool cousin who edits the Room for Debate blog on the NYTimes.com. Why? She has finally scooped me.

Regular readers may recall that there have been two occasions when I scooped the Times. Well, yesterday I saw this article about Sylvia Plath's son committing suicide. It was very sad news, but I could not help but thinking that there was something to blog about -- mother and son, both accomplished, both troubled, both take their own lives...

However, since I know little about Plath and less about her son, I decided not to write the post. Wouldn't you know that my cousin with all her big "New York Times" connections would go create her own post on the topic. It's a good read and worth a look (and better than I could have done).

You've one this round Times, but I'm still here, waiting for my next chance to scoop you.

Room for Debate

The New York Times launched a new blog today that I encourage everyone to check out. My Cousin is the Editor working on it and I am shamelessly trying to get her some traffic.

Enjoy.

Sometimes the NY Times still shows the mojo.

Today they ran a piece about how Rudy Giuliani  is not so accurate with the facts and the figures. It seems that America's Mayor often get his stats wrong on things like:

• Crime in NYC before he "saved it"
• Rate of spending reductions in NYC when he was Mayor
• Tax rate reductions when he was Mayor
• Revenue from hotel taxes when he was Mayor
• Crime rates in Mass. when Romney was the Governor
• And my personal favorite -- prostate cancer survival rates in England vs. the US

What I found interesting about the article is not that Rudy lies (we knew that), it is how the Times framed the lies. Twice they conceded that many politicians lie and even cited instances when Hillary and Obama bent the truth. But the article went on to put Rudy's lies in a whole different category:

And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record.

AND

Mr. Giuliani is not alone in citing statistics in a questionable way. Last month, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, said that financing for the National Institutes of Health had decreased under President Bush; it has increased. Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, said the national debt had doubled under President Bush; it has not.

But with Mr. Giuliani running so strongly on his record, statistics have taken on a central role in his campaign.

In a former life, when I was a Right Wing shill, I would have called this the "liberal media" hanging a Republican out to dry. I now see it differently. As my old High School girlfriend said when she found out I had a daughter "payback is a bitch." The Gray Lady is getting her revenge for all the crap that Rudy spit out as Mayor. They know him better than most papers and like him, they have a national voice and are using it. And I say good for them.

Speaking as someone who lived in and around NYC at various times during the Rudy Administration I can say the following for sure: in general he left NYC better off than he found it, he cannot take all of the credit for that (he didn't cause the dot com boom), he knows NOTHING about protecting us from terrorists and he is bat shit crazy.

Someone (I can't recall who) said and President Rudy would be "the worst combination of Bush [the son] and Nixon". That is a President with no regard for civil liberties (don't believe me? then read this, this and this) who is also totally paranoid. Seriously, this man must be stopped at all costs, he will start a war in Iran and he will run the White House like "the family."

The saddest part of this piece in the Times is the end where a Republican strategist says the following:

“When he talks about New York, people see it,” Mr. Luntz said of Mr. Giuliani, “and they feel it, and if a number isn’t quite right, or is off by a small amount, nobody will care, because it rings true to them.”

Stephen Colbert said it best: "I want to feel the truth at you." That is what Rudy is doing.

More proof that when we love the liar, we ignore the lie. For other examples of how this works see Clinton, Bill and Bush, George W. For how it does not work see Gore, Al.

The New York Times finally got a breaking news headline right:

Finally, the magic number is 0 and the Yanks are in the playoffs. I am watching Joe Torre cry on YES right now.

How do you know it is September in the Bronx? You are looking forward to October.

Bring on Cleveland (or the Angels).