Month: August 2009

by Robert Wright

Rupert Murdoch’s plan to build a pay wall around the Times of London and other media properties won’t be getting a thumbs up from former NYTimes.com head Vivian Schiller. Charging for content wouldn’t work, she once said, even “if all the news organizations locked pinkies, and said we’re all going to put up a big fat pay wall.”

Actually, I think pinky locking may be the only hope. If several big players–say, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times–put up a collective pay wall, the prospect of losing access to all three might get people to pay up. But if just one of them started charging, most readers would probably settle for the other two. Lots of people consider newspapers indispensable, but few people consider any one paper indispensable. 

And the irony is that Murdoch’s papers are more dispensable after he’s tinkered with them than before. He turned the Times of London from a paper as distinctively high brow as the New York Times into something a bit more downmarket. (As I write this, one of the Times of London’s home-page headlines is “UN worker ‘bites’ man, triggering nepotism row.”) And at the moment Murdoch is busy making the Wall Street Journal—which has long been one of the few news sites so special that people would pay for admission—seem less special. It now has sports coverage, like everyone else, and features more low-gravitas nonfinancial news. 

For much of the weekend the top story on the Journal’s site was that a helicopter and a plane had collided over the Hudson River. No kidding! Why would I pay for a home page that crams that story down my throat when every other news site is doing the cramming for free? 

There’s a lesson here about the tyranny of click-counting. 

Yes, the home-page story about the Hudson crash might get more clicks than some uniquely incisive analysis of the economy. But it also makes the home page more of a commodity and less of a brand. Paradoxical but true: It’s possible to post stories that make people who come to a web site more likely to click, yet may make them less likely to come back to the site, and certainly less likely to pay for it. If Rupert Murdoch wants his new pay-wall strategy to succeed—which is a long shot in any event—he should start by rethinking his whole publishing philosophy. And while he’s at it he might do some pinky locking. 

(hat tip: NYTimes.com Opinionator)

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

There was much to mock John McCain about, fairly, during the election. But mocking him for being old? As for the rest of that site, it's not even funny. Not even in an I-know-I-shouldn't-laugh-at-this-but-ouch kind of way.

Agreed. Between the dearth of RSS content and a rush to find something light and visual, I picked some low hanging fruit. (As an alternative, here are two viral videos I just received: a Trunk Monkey ad compilation and a clip from Michael Ian Black's new show.) To get a glimpse of some awesomely-hip seniors, check out this piece I recently wrote on nursing homes and the Nintendo Wii.

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Maybe it's because I am a lawyer, but I profoundly disagree with Andrew's assessment that prosecutions of those who transgressed even Bush's low standard for torture would be counterproductive and would "retroactively" justify those who tortured within the Bush guidelines. Were there to be a prosecution of those who tortured within the guidelines authorized by Bush, the defendants would no doubt raise the authorization as a defense. And in all likelihood that defense would succeed. A jury would be sympathetic to CIA interrogators who acted pursuant to authorization from the Justice Department. It is a myth that there is no such thing as a Nuremberg defense. Reasonable reliance on the Attorney General's OLC, benighted though it was, would have powerful jury appeal as a defense in a criminal case — if the judge even let the case get to the jury without tossing the prosecution.

The likely result of the Sullivan approach: the world would see that our judicial system did not punish torture. That would be the worst of all possible worlds. Now consider what would happen if Holder prosecuted the worst of the worst — those who transgressed even the Bush guidelines. The prosecution would likely succeed and the world would see that we do set limits — even if lower than the ideal — on what our interrogators can do. Once the Bush Justice Department blessed this shame, it was guaranteed that there would be no perfect legal outcome. So why not go with the least bad of the imperfect options — the Holder approach?

by Chris Bodenner

Mashable's Ben Parr points to new data showing how teenagers tweet much less than adults:

Twitter’s different than Facebook or MySpace because Twitter is not about your friends. As I highlighted in my analysis of Twitter’s new homepage, Twitter is quickly becoming the epicenter of world events. Yes, you can update your status, but you can do that just as easily on Facebook. What you can’t do on other social media sites is learn about the #IranElection crisis in real-time. But does this really interest teenagers? Teenagers are notorious for being terrible at social engagement, voting, and keeping up with the news.

(Tweet feeds from Atlantic writers are here. The Dish feed is here.)

by Chris Bodenner

Ezra Klein explores the indirect damage it can cause:

[T]he filibuster is making [Congress] less relevant. If you look back at the financial crisis, the lead response came from the Federal Reserve, because everyone understood that Congress couldn't move quickly enough. If you look at global warming, there's considerable pessimism that the Senate will be able to pass cap-and-trade, and many expect the Environmental Protection Agency to simply embark on its own campaign to regulate carbon emissions. If you look at health care, ideas like the Federal Health Board or the

Independent Medicare Advisory Committee are an explicit effort to entrust the continual process of health-care reform to a more agile body than the Congress. On issue after issue, the gridlock encouraged by the filibuster is not simply promoting inaction, but extra-congressional action.

After all, the fact that Congress cannot solve problems does not mean the the problems don't need to be solved. And there are other avenues for action. The judicial system. The executive branch. The Federal Reserve. Ad hoc agencies meant to make the decisions Congress cannot. An angry Congress could block these changes. But the majority doesn't want to block these changes. They want action on these problems, even if they can't be the actors. So they permit these second-best outcomes that address the issues, but do so by shrinking Congress's authority.

That's not a very good situation, of course. It's less accountable, for one thing. And it's less efficient.

Ezra has more great thoughts here. Drum and Yglesias chime in here and here. Harold Meyerson offers some strong parting words:

A more corrosive attack on the first principle of democracy, that of majority rule, is hard to conceive. The increasingly routine use of the filibuster stymies the efficacy of government (in itself a conservative objective) and negates the consequences of elections. […] When and whether the majority will bestir itself to reestablish democracy's first principle is anybody's guess. Abolishing the filibuster would be a good start — and perhaps a necessary step to enact to big changes like health reform.

by Patrick Appel

How Americans spend their day.

(Hat tip: Flowing Data)

(AP Photo/Matt Sayles)

by Patrick Appel

Abbas Milani, who was mentioned in the indictment,  takes on the Iranian show trials:

He goes on:

by Patrick Appel

Elizabeth Nolan Brown steers me towards farmer Blake Hurst's attack on Michael Pollan. One of the better points:

The romanticism of some industrialized food opponents can be naivete. I love organic produce as much as the next foodie, but it would be nice if food critics addressed the economic consequences of "sustainability" gone too far.

by Patrick Appel

Tim Mak of New Majority snags an interview: