Washington media criticism from Will Sommer.
Now blogging at Washington City Paper's City Desk.
Send your tips and gripes to wsommer@washingtoncitypaper.com.
Twitter: @willsommer
I mentioned it earlier, but now it’s official: all the media blogging you love (and much more) has moved to City Desk. I kicked things off yesterday with some news I think you’ll be interested in about TBD.
Also, the Twitter account has a new name, @willsommer.
Chevy Chase residents on the neighborhood listserv have been playing detective over the past weeks, trying to nail down whoever’s stealing flowers from their flowerbeds. Does the culprit sell to area florists, or to independent vendors, or the guys who come into restaurants when you’re on a date? All of these possibilities have been discussed at length, but no one has been caught.
That could change now that the New York Times is on it. A resident posted this email from Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer on the listserv yesterday:
I am a reporter based in DC for the New York Times. Someone showed me an item on the Listserv detailing a spate of alleged flower stealing incidents around the Chevy Chase area. I was interested in hearing from people who had their flowers stolen for a possible story.
I cringe to think about what angle Steinhauer could be working here that would turn a hyperlocal flowerbed theft story into a Times article, but who knows.
Superior Court has finally gotten its revenge for the Washington Times’s Emily Miller’s illicit picture-taking.
When resigned Council Chairman Kwame Brown showed up at Superior Court today to plead guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance charge, officials let Brown use a private entrance for employees, which allowed him to avoid reporters waiting at the court’s public entrance.
WTOP’s Mark Segraves asked a court spokesperson why Brown was allowed to use the entrance. In an email, the spokesperson said Brown was let in the private entrance because of previous scuffles with the press (NBC 4 has video here) and, apparently, because of Emily Miller (emphasis added).
“We are committed to keeping courthouse corridors orderly given the numerous proceedings taking place concurrently. We are similarly committed to ensuring that court rules, such as those forbidding photography in the courthouse, are strictly observed. Recently a member of the media took a photograph of a proceeding in a Superior Court courtroom; that photograph was published in print and online, despite the reporter knowing that taking photographs violates court rules.
It’s hard to see what Miller’s boring iPhone pictures have to do with allowing Brown in a private entrance.
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Speaking of Kwame Brown, DC Politics Hour co-hosts Eugene Kinlow and Chuck Thies at WPFW had me on yesterday to talk about Brown and the media. You can check out the show here.
Washingtonian editor-at-large and Georgetown liberation fighter Carol Joynt has a saucy story in this month’s issue: an interview with a DC dominatrix. It’s a nice break for the relentlessly service-y magazine (Cheap Eats. Best Doctors. Cheaper Eats.). This being Washingtonian, though, Joynt keeps the lid on any potential steaminess.
In between asking about the dominatrix’s tax status and client-spotting techniques, Joynt uncovers this gem:
I also live on a farm in West Virginia with my submissive. He’s my daily companion. He drives me around. I don’t have a cell phone; I use his. He does whatever I want him to do.
Whaat? Does this guy have another job? How does he afford to be her servant, and apparently, also own a farm? Rather than ask more about the most interesting part of the interviews, Joynt gets back to what her readers want, in what is the eternal Washingtonian question:
What do you tell your neighbors you do for a living?
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Nice photography on this story, but an article on how to dress like you’re always on a yacht is redundant for Washingtonian’s readers.
Kyle Gustafson, former Washingtonian web editor and a freelance concert photographer who works with the Post, has an interesting blog post about all the work that goes into taking photos at a concert.
Before shooting a recent Radiohead concert, Gustafson studied previous setlists to figure what songs the band would play and which band member to focus on during each song:
I studied setlists and video from previous gigs and I was totally ready for them to play “Bloom,” “15 Step” and “Bodysnatchers” and game planned exactly what I was going to shoot during those three songs. So of course, they changed the setlist.
And this is why you register your domains. Former TBD news editor Julie Westfall, now at California’s KPCC, noticed last week that dcporcupine.com redirects to the righty Media Research Center, which is run by lion halfling Brent Bozell (above).
According to the site’s whois info, the same mystery domain owner also bought dcporcupine.net and dcporcupine.org. The domains were registered in early March. They’re registered to an address at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, and the listed phone number (202-555-1212) connects to AT&T’s 411 service.
This isn’t a big deal since I’ll be starting at City Desk soon (next week, be there or be square!), but it is a little strange. It seems a little like some straightforward domain squatting, but what domain shark redirects to the Media Research Center? The Media Research Center didn’t respond when I asked them if they owned the domains.
In other DC Porcupine masquerading news, @dcporcupinecom is a bot that retweets stories from Glenn Bleck’s The Blaze.
The ongoing radio rankings feud between WTOP and WAMU continues, with WAMU taking back the top spot from WTOP in the third week of May, DCRTV reports. Hot 99.5 came in third, and rival news station WNEW came in at 24th.
WTOP’s Mark Segraves
Council Chairman Kwame Brown does not want WTOP reporters asking him questions about the federal investigation into his 2010 campaign. In January, he got in a screaming match argument with then-WTOP host Mark Plotkin at Fox 5’s studio.
Then today, with rumors swirling and Bruce Johnson reporting that the US Attorney has approached Brown with charges, he shoved WTOP’s Mark Segraves outside the Council chambers.
In an interview, Segraves said he was waiting with two other reporters to talk to Brown in an hallway between Brown’s office and the Council chambers, ahead of today’s budget hearing. When Brown approached, Segraves asked him about Johnson’s report that he had been approached by the US Attorney.
In response, Segraves says, Brown shoved his elbow into Segraves’s chest.
“Sir, you don’t have to push me,” Segraves says on a recording of the exchange. The Examiner’s Alan Blinder described the shove as “not hard, but enough to send a message.”
After the exchange, Brown winked at Segraves from the Council dais. ”I really don’t know how to take that,” Segraves said in an interview.
Shoving aside, there was a lot of media attention at Council today, according to Segraves, from reporters who were looking to ask Brown about the scandal or get B-roll in case he’s indicted.
“There are definitely more reporters than have ever covered a budget vote,” Segraves said.
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Where’s the long-promised Plotkin-Brown face-off video, Fox 5?
Thinkfluencer Clay Shirky has a response in the Columbia Journalism Review to Ryan Chittum’s story from a few weeks ago on the Washington Post Co.’s self-cannibalization through pointless stock buybacks and high dividends.
Chittum shouldn’t complain that the Post is blowing its money instead of investing in its businesses, because, Shirky writes, the Post in its current situation “is basically screwed.” Instead, the paper should do more format-busting similar to DC’s Homicide Watch:
To adapt to the current ecosystem, the Post (like all papers) will have to alter the way it works, not just the way it makes money….
Homicide Watch provides far broader crime coverage than the Post, coverage of clear value to the community, and does so in a way that makes that value cumulative, rather than just spinning out updates on the hamster wheel. In comparison with the Post, though, the most important thing about Homicide Watch is that they do all this with two employees…
Shirky is working from a pretty tortured false dichotomy here. The Post shouldn’t invest in its business because it’s screwed, he says, but it should create new models for business, which he seems to think wouldn’t be helped with investment money. Instead, the Post should emulate a site that was also built on outside money (in this case, Chris Amico’s salary from NPR), that didn’t pay its editor anything in its first year, and whose business model is essentially built on its uniqueness.
From the February Washingtonian (emphasis added):
Laura has been working on Homicide Watch full-time for more than a year without pay; the couple lives off Chris’s salary from NPR, where he now works. Their business model calls for marketing Homicide Watch to news organizations.
Homicide Watch and the Amicos do great work, and the Post should always be trying new stuff, but it’s not clear why Shirky thinks that whole innovative process wouldn’t be helped with some cash that the Post is otherwise throwing away.
Now that I think about it, the Post already is trying new things with WaPo Labs. Yes, to varying degrees of success, but they’re trying. What is Shirky talking about?
Via Poynter
There’s a little meta media fight brewing between City Paper’s Loose Lips columnist Alan Suderman and Council Chair Kwame Brown over a story City Paper (where, disclosure, I’m about to start working) ran this afternoon on Brown’s wife’s finances.
Suderman’s article is about Brown’s wife, who was recently sued by American Express for nearly $16,000 in what the company says are overdue credit card bills. You may remember that Brown had his own overdue credit card problems in the 2010 campaign.
Suderman’s justification for running the story on Brown’s wife is that Brown blamed his previous credit card issues, in part, on his wife:
When NBC4’s Tom Sherwood first reported the story of Brown’s unpaid debts, Brown invoked his wife (even though the credit cards were in his name): He told told Sherwood that he and his wife were “‘living beyond our means.” Similarly, Brown told the Washington Post that the debt came from everyday family purchases “such as violin lessons and after-school care for his two children.”
Brown’s spokesperson disagreed, and refused to give Suderman a comment until he ran the initial story. The resulting statement takes a harsh look at City Paper’s story, which Brown writes is being used to attack him through his wife (emphasis added):
“As an elected official, my life is an open book and is subject to examination and critique in a public forum. However, my family’s private matters are just that, private. I am deeply disappointed and concerned that the Washington City Paper has chosen to attack my wife in an effort to disparage me.The institution of journalism has long been a bastion of impartiality and truth. Reporting, such as this, diminishes the reputation of this publication. It is my hope that in the future, this paper will honor the rights of all private citizens.”
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The media seems to be getting bolder on the US Attorney investigation into Brown’s 2010 campaign payments to his brother. On his WPFW radio show today with Eugene Kinlow, political consultant Chuck Thies said there has been “an extraordinary rumor mill” amongst reporters and political types that Brown will be charged or take a guilty plea as early as in the next few days.
You can listen to the Brown talk here by clicking the latest DC Politics episode and skipping to around 55:00.
