The Volokh Conspiracy

So suggests John Avalon, in a Daily Beast column “The Secret History of the Birthers.” He traces birtherism to a Texas woman named Linda Starr, who was a Hillary Clinton delegate to the 2008 Texas state Democratic Convention. Avalon writes that Starr “was also cited as a key source for CBS’ discredited election year investigation into George W. Bush’s National Guard records that led to Dan Rather’s replacement after 24 years as the evening news anchor.” Avalon links to the Thornburgh/Boccardi report, which was conducted at the request of CBS News to examine CBS’s conduct in producing the infamous 60 Minutes story about Bush supposedly evading National Guard service and then having the records scrubbed. As the report details, Starr made the claim about Bush in an article on her website, three days before the 2000 presidential election. She also played a key role in serving as an intermediary for CBS to obtain the document which purported to be National Guard memo regarding the removal of NG records about Bush. The Thornburgh/Boccardi report does not claim that Ms. Starr knew that the document  was a clumsy fabrication.

At the very least, however, the fiasco of the Bush National Guard story shows that Ms. Starr did not provide her Internet readers, or CBS, with a story which could withstand factual scrutiny. Accordingly, if Avalon’s reporting is correct, he has provided yet another reason for people to disbelieve the (already-implausible) assertion that President Obama was not born in the United States. In contrast to the way the mainstream media initially handled the 2004 Bush National Guard story, the mainstream media did a better job in 2008 by not embracing a story about a presidential candidate which could not be supported by solid, verifiable facts.

I have been trying to follow the story of the dustup among Amazon, Apple, and Macmillan on pricing on e-book readers, but have been distracted by other things.  What interests me are the business models being pursued by the various parties here – and whose makes sense, whose doesn’t, and who is likely to survive and win out.  Plus – someone tell me what the legal status is of “books” that I purchase today on Kindle – am I simply purchasing a revocable license of some kind to read it?  What’s the legal condition.  I love my Kindle, and anticipated that some kind of pricing battles would eventually break out – but I sorta hoped that competition would favor me as a consumer.  At this point, is it?  Someone explain to me what’s going on.

Here’s Charles Martin on the business model; there are good stories in the Times, WSJ and FT.

Update:  Delighted to have Virginia Postrel, of whom I am a big fan, join the comments and point us to her article at the Atlantic business channel.  Very interesting article on pricing.

Update 2:  There are a number of exceptionally interesting comments here in the thread.

New York Magazine is reporting (good piece by Gabriel Sherman) that the NYT has decided to move to a paid-online site model – a drastic shift away from its current free website.  The article explains the debate between the two sides within the Times – those urging that it has to somehow get to a paid online subscriber base, and those arguing that if it can hang in there, it will emerge with the largest global news site audience, which will enable it to charge a premium advertising price that cannot be charged now:

The decision to go paid is monumental for the Times, and culminates a yearlong debate that grew contentious, people close to the talks say. In favor of a paid model were Keller and managing editor Jill Abramson. Nisenholtz and former deputy managing editor Jon Landman, who was until recently in charge of nytimes.com, advocated for a free site.

The argument for remaining free was based on the belief that nytimes.com is growing into an English-language global newspaper of record, with a vast audience — 20 million unique readers — that, Nisenholtz and others believed, would prove lucrative as web advertising matured. (The nytimes.com homepage, for example, has sold out on numerous occasions in the past year.) As other papers failed to survive the massive migration to the web, the Timeswould be the last man standing and emerge with even more readers. Going paid would capture more circulation revenue, but risk losing significant traffic and with it ad dollars. At an investor conference this fall, Nisenholtz alluded to this tension: “At the end of the day, if we don’t get this right, a lot of money falls out of the system.”

But with the painful declines in advertising brought on by last year’s financial crisis, the argument pushed by Keller and others — that online advertising might never grow big enough to sustain the paper’s high-cost, ambitious journalism — gained more weight. The view was that the Times needed to make the leap to some form of paid content and it needed to do it now. The trick would be to build a source of real revenue through online subscriptions while still being able to sell significant online advertising. The appeal of the metered model is that it charges high-volume readers while allowing casual browsers to sample articles for free, thus preserving some of the Times’ online reach.

At the end of December, I stepped down as the chair of a nonprofit media assistance organization aimed at developing world media companies and their businesses, so I pay a lot of attention to media economics.  Bloggers, especially on political blogs, tend to assume that the problems of a NYT trace back to politics, but that is far from the case.  The economic problems are baked into the newspaper model, to start with, and the NYT has special economic problems all of its own.  But also bear in mind that the Times is actually in (somewhat) better shape than an awful lot of newspaper companies in the United States – i.e., it is not in bankruptcy.  Also, the Times website is magnificent – the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a real newspaper “feel” online.  I love the WSJ site, too – but it doesn’t feel like a newspaper the way the Times site does.

I have thought a lot about the Times’s business dilemmas, and really don’t know what I think would work even in principle.  I’ve linked here to a Pajamas Media piece talking about dropping our ($600 a year in DC) home subscription – but since then I find my New Yorker wife re-upped, only after, I am happy to say, the Times offered a price below home delivery of the Washington Post.

Jan Crawford (fka Jan Crawford Greenburg), author of Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, has returned to the legal blogosphere with “Crossroads,” a new legal blog at CBSNews.com. Crawford left ABC News several months ago to join CBS News as their new Chief Legal Correspondent, but could not start with CBS until now because of a non-compete agreement in the old contract.

Her first post, “Auld Lang Syne,” went up today.  It discusses the new gig at CBS, her recent jury duty experience, and other changes in her life.  Given her past work — at the NewsHour, ABCNews, the (short-lived) Legalities blog and Supreme Conflict — I am much looking forward to her new blog.  Welcome back, Jan!

Pace University announced this morning that New York Times science and environment correspondent Andrew Revkin will be leaving the paper to become a “Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding” at the University’s Academy for Applied Environmental Studies.

University of Illinois climate scientist Michael Schlesinger threatens the NYT‘s Andrew Revkin with “the Big Cutoff” because he quotes and interviews the wrong people.  According to Schlesinger, this makes Revkin’s reporting “very worrisome to most climate scientists.”  Revkin’s offenses?  Noting that some Copenhagen prostitutes promised to give freebies to climate conference delegates (“gutter reportage”) and “giving space in [his] blog to the Pielke” [climatologist Roger Pielke Sr. and environmental studies professor Roger Pielke Jr.]  Pielke Jr. comments:

You’d think that after the actions of certain activist scientists to suppress certain perspectives was revealed in the CRU emails that there would be a little bit more self-awareness in this community.

Here’s the way the New York Times describes an ongoing controversy over whether the Berkeley Daily Planet is obsessively anti-Israel and perhaps anti-Semitic:

For the last six years, The Berkeley Daily Planet has published a freewheeling assortment of submissions from readers, who offer sharp-elbowed views on everything from raucous college parties (generally bad) to the war in Iraq (ditto).

But since March, that running commentary has been under attack by a small but vociferous group of critics who accuse the paper’s editor, Becky O’Malley, of publishing too many letters and other commentary pieces critical of Israel. Those accusations are the basis of a campaign to drive away the paper’s advertisers and a Web site that strongly suggests The Planet and its editor are anti-Semitic….

Still, she says she has no intention of stopping the publication of submitted letters, citing a commitment to free speech that is a legacy of the city where the Free Speech Movement was born in the 1960s….

Ms. O’Malley denies any personal or editorial bias, and bristles at the suggestion that she should not publish letters about Israel ….

“I have the old-fashioned basic liberal thing of believing that the remedy for speech you don’t like is more speech,” said Ms. O’Malley….

The paper has published unpopular opinions on other subjects, including a commentary from a local activist arguing that the murder of four Oakland police officers — none of whom were black — by an African-American parolee in March was “karmic justice” for past police killings of civilians. But such pieces are in a section of the paper that clearly states they “do not necessarily reflect the views of the Daily Planet.”

I’ve never heard of the Daily Planet, much less the relevant controversy, but the Times’ piece seemed so one-sidedly favorable to the Planet and its editor that it prompted me to look at John Gertz’s dpwatchdog.com (referenced in the article) to see what the fuss was about.  The site is somewhat rambling and unprofessional, and unfortunately does not generally link to the full text of the op-eds, editorials, and letters it quotes from.

Nevertheless, if the Times is going to cover the controversy, you would think its reporter could at least be bothered to figure out what the controversy actually revolves around.  Below are some of the allegations I learned from the site that I didn’t learn from the Times, allegations that show, specifically, that the controversy is not, as the Times has is, about the Planet publishing uncensored letters to the editor that “do not necessarily reflect the views of the Daily Planet.”

“Becky O’Malley used to claim that, being a free speech absolutist, she publishes everything she receives.  The lack of pro-Israel pieces merely reflected the fact that she received very few.  This was a flatly false statement at the time she was making it, since we have seen quite a number of pro-Israel pieces, which were sent to O’Malley but which she declined to publish.

Then she changed her story.  She called some pro-Israel pieces “Islamophobic,” and she refused to run them for that reason.  She also claimed that pro-Israel articles would “bore” her readers…. When she does publish pro-Israel letters, she has been known to edit their most important sections out.  All of this is thoroughly documented elsewhere on this website.”

“The Berkeley Daily Planet’s own employees share an obsession with Israel, starting with O’Malley herself.  Contrary to O’Malley’s assertion that she does not write about Israel, to date (September 2009) the Berkeley Daily Planet has published 24 editorials written with Becky O’Malley’s own hand and which concern the topic of Israel or the Jews.  She has written on virtually no other part of the world, except, very occasionally on Iraq.”

“Conn Hallinan writes a regularly appearing foreign affairs analysis column for the Berkeley Daily Planet, under the byline, “Dispatches From the Edge.”  Hallinan is in fact from the very edge of the American body politic, being a lifelong Communist.   He is a contributor to various anti-Israel websites, such as PalestineThinkTank.com.  At least 15 of his columns to date entirely or mostly concern Israel, while many more bring Israel into articles written chiefly on other topics.”

Managing editor, Justin DeFreitas has published at least 13 cartoons concerning Israel or the Jews, but only a small handful about all the other situations in the world.  Additionally, there have been numerous “news” articles concerning Israel…. By admission and implication, the Berkeley Daily Planet, while obsessed with Israel, is only interested in one side of the story.

“O’Malley placed an anti-Israel article by well-know anti-Israel activist Henry Norr in the news section instead of in the commentary section where it belonged (August 30, 2005).”

“Both Becky O’Malley and Conn Hallinan (we will consider Hallinan in depth elsewhere) equate Israel and its supporters with the Nazis.  This in itself is a very strong indication of anti-Semitism, while Daily Planet cartoonist, Justin DeFreitas, has used imagery in depicting Israel that is indistinguishable from Nazi and neo-Nazi propaganda.”

Gertz also claims that despite its claimed commitment to freedom of speech, the paper has special rules that apply to Jews and Israel only, such that pro-Israel Jews (but no other ethnic groups) may be slurred on ethnic grounds in the paper. (The Times notes that Gertz was attacked in a letter to the paper for wearing the “funniest looking yarmulke,” but fails to note that Gertz points out that he doesn’t wear a yarmulke, making the remark not just a juvenile insult, but a juvenile insult of the sort someone who hates Jews would make, like saying “Obama wears the funniest looking dashiki I have ever seen”).  Gertz also suggests that the paper has a special letters to the editors policy re Israel, so that anti-Israel and even blatantly anti-Semitic letters from readers outside the Bay Area (one of which is noted in the Times) are published, but pro-Israel letters from local residents are “censored.”

In short, Gertz alleges not that the Planet is too indulgent in publishing crankish letters to the editor, but that it has an official editorial policy, adhered to by its editors, columnists, and reporters,  that is obsessive about and extremely hostile to Israel, to the extent that it sometimes crosses the line into overt anti-Semitism.

Again, I had never heard of the Planet, or O’Malley, or Gertz.  But it does strike me that if the Times thinks that the controversy over the Planet’s coverage of Israel and Jews is worth reporting, it should report both the allegations and O’Malley’s defense, not take the line that O’Malley is under seemingly unfair attack for adhering to free speech principles.

UPDATE: Bizarrely, two commenters below seem to think that my block quotations from Gertz’s site mean that I’m endorsing both his general attack on the Planet and all of the specifics in those block quotes.  I should think that it’s very clear that I’m just reporting, not endorsing, his allegations, because I think the Times’ story did not fairly portrary those allegations, and it’s easy to show that this is true by just reprinting them.  But just to be even clearer, the point of my piece is that the Times’ only provided O’Malley/the Planet’s side of the story, and failed to accurately portray Gertz’s allegations.  I did not address whether those allegations are sound in general, much less endorse any or all of Gertz’s specific language. (Further update: perhaps this will clear up the source of the confusion: the block quotes, including internal links, are all Gertz, no me).

ADDITIONAL UPDATE: I do not meet to imply that the author of this article, San Francisco bureau chief Jesse McKinley, is motivated by hostility to Israel or Jews.  Rather, I suspect a combination of sloppy, lazy reporting and the tendency of Times reporters to portray any case in which a media outlet is being criticised as involving trogrlodytes who don’t understand the value of free speech, and treating editors under attack as beleaguered heroes, almost without regard to the merits of the underlying controversy.

This week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers started off by asking them to rank the importance of various media that the political blogger himself uses to stay informed. On both the Right and the Left, “websites/blogs” came in first. However, on the Left, daily print newspapers were second, while on the Right, they were fifth. Print magazines were third on the Left, and last on the Right. For me, the web comes first, and print newspapers (Wall St. Journal, NY Times, Denver Post, and Boulder Daily Camera) are second.

The next question was to give a grade to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. The Left gave him a B-, while the Right voted for D+. I gave him a B, and explained, “He’s said some silly things, but some missteps are inevitable when one talks to the media that much. Overall, he comes across as a likable guy. The failed policies he has to defend aren’t his fault.”

The final question was “Do think it’s a good idea for struggling newspapers to become nonprofits in order to receive tax breaks?” Sixty-nine percent of the Left, but only 16 percent of the Right liked the idea. I thought it was a fine idea, as long as a particular newspaper meets the legal standards to be a non-profit: “Why not? The country is better off with daily print newspapers than without them.”

The cover of next week’s Newsweek features a picture of Sarah Palin, along with the headline “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?” The cover is one more example of the periodical’s positioning itself as the ideas journal for people who think that the New York Times’ in-house editorials are middle-of-road, but have too many big words. And of the magazine’s cultural disconnect from much of the United States.

To wit: “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” is an early song in The Sound of Music, which won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Picture. In the song, several nuns at an abbey in the Austrian mountains summarize the problems with the novice Maria (Julie Andrews): Maria is too physically active, athletic and outdoorsy. She is too expressive emotionally, particularly about her happiness. She is flighty, and late for everything except meals. She has a good heart, but does not listen well to advice from her elders, and she is highly self-directed: “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” The harsh nun, Berthe, calls Maria “a headache” and “a demon.” Newsweek‘s subhead take’s Berthe’s role, calling Palin “bad news for the GOP–and everyone else too.”

The Mother Superior knows better: Maria is no bad-news demon. Rather, Maria is someone who lives the Good News, and whose talents, energy, and will-power are going to waste in the abbey. So she ships Maria off to a job outside the abbey–a job for which Maria is totally unprepared, and a job at which Maria’s predecessors have failed. After a rough start, Maria becomes a great success, due to her common sense, kind heart, wisdom, and readiness to defy convention. In the process, Maria also stands up to foreign totalitarian aggressors (winning the support of even her staunch critic Berthe), fortifies the nationalist sentiments of her country against those aggressors, and leads the people in her care to safety and freedom.

Ergo, the question “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?’ provides its own answer, at least to people who know the film from which the song comes: Make her the President of the United States.

I’m not arguing for or against Palin for President–just observing that, as is so often the case, the Palin-hating media are less clever than they think, and end up inadvertently making her stronger.