NewsCommonsense

News You Can Refuse

It still doesn’t look like internet users are willing to pay for new content sites, at least according to the headline on this S.F. Chronicle story.  But dig deeper and there appears some hope for rags considering charging for content.

The New York Times and other news outlets have said they will start charging for online access to news stories. But Nielsen said only 34 percent of newspaper readers and 39 percent of magazine readers would consider paying for online content, and that percentage drops to 31 percent for users of online-only news sites.

If about a third of your online readers are willing to pay something, even if only pennies per story, you would think newspapers could make the model work.

Who Put Adam Nagourney Up to His Thinly Sourced Article?

New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney has an article suggesting Virginia Democrats are regretting their choice of Creigh Deeds as their candidate for governor.  Nagourney’s analysis of Deeds’ poor campaign is accurate, but there are several problems with it.

1.  It is thinly sourced.  The only  source cited is Virginia political analyst Robert Holsworth.  Generally, Holsworth provides credible insight (though his blog posts are written in a weird one sentence per paragraph style that disjoint his thinking), but no one else is cited in the article.

2.  Maybe it is “hard not to forgive some Virginia Democrats for thinking that they might have been better off with Mr. McAuliffe at the top of the ticket,”  but Nagourney offers no one, quoted anonymously or even referenced, to support his contention.

3. Nagourney’s conclusion – for with no sources that’s all this article is – is ludicrous.  Whatever disabilities Deeds has -– and he is, at best, an ineffective, some might say bumbling, campaigner -– the idea that Terry McAuliffe, an abrasive interloper in the Commonwealth’s politics, could draw more votes than Deeds isn’t credible.  Would he excite Democrats more?  Yes, probably.  Would he have more money to spend?  Most definitely.  But would he get anything more than the most yellow dog Democrats outside of Northern Virginia to vote for him?  Absolutely not.  With Dems reminding everyone of their fecklessness on Capitol Hill and Obama appearing uncertain, weak and all hat and no cattle, the idea that McAuliffe could win the race is unsupported. Obama won Virginia.  Bill Clinton didn’t.  With McAuliffe’s ties to the Clintons, there is little chance he could win this year – or any year, really.

So the question is, who put Nagourney up to this article?  In it, he states that McAuliffe himself and aides to Deeds and his opponent Bob McDonnell “did not respond to a request for comment.” So what possessed the reporter to write this story?  Someone’s pitch worked.  I doubt it was Holsworth, but whoever it was, they are still smoking – and inhaling – something.

Cross posted on Commonwealth Commonsense.

Brooks vs. Limbaugh

David Brooks has a column this morning arguing that rancid radio and caustic cable shows really don’t have much power and that the GOP leadership should ignore them.  Of course, Rush Limbaugh shot back, arguing that more people listen to him than read Brook’s column.  That may be true.  But Brook’s article has one line in his column, referring to GOP politicians, that I think is brilliant.

They mistake media for reality.

Now you might argue that reality has nothing to do with legislation or elections for that matter.  I’ll leave it to you to argue with Brooks.

An NYT Lesson for Others

The New York Times AME of journalistic standards answers a reader’s question about how the Times responds to attacks by Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives mouthpieces criticizing its coverage:

The Times is attacked pretty much every day by commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, who even declared war against us. That’s not news, so we don’t “cover” it, but when they point out errors we have actually made, or other lapses, we correct them just as we do when others call them to our attention.