Good morning.
- Too close for the comfort of many
Per usual, President Obama was very funny and very cutting at the celebrity meat market that’s now The White House Correspondents Dinner. (USA Today) Per usual, much of the audience probably didn’t get how acidic he was toward the press. (Vox) But it clearly squirmed when the professional comic, this year Larry Wilmore, cut too close to the bone for its taste. “I am a black man who replaced a white man who pretended to be a TV newscaster. So, in that way, Lester Holt and I have a lot in common.” Ouch, for Holt and my friend, Brian Williams. Speaking of Obama and NBA star Steph Curry: “Both of you like raining down bombs on people from long distances.” There was this: “Speaking of drones, how is Wolf Blitzer still on television?” To Obama: “Who you killing tonight? Can’t be print journalism. That industry has been dead for awhile now.” And this: “Some of our finest black journalists are here tonight. Don Lemon is here, too. Hi, Don. Alleged journalist Don Lemon, everybody.” The C-Span camera caught Lemon then giving Wilmore the finger.The overweening self-regard of the event was underscored by CNN’s own pre- and post-red carpet coverage and analysis. It was Oscars Lite and very lame (too bad they missed the after-party brawl between Huffington Post and Fox News reporters). (New York Daily News) Like Hollywood and music awards shows, there’s a link between the unimportance of a gathering and the self-absorption it inspires. There was even a post-dinner exchange on CNN in which a Kayleigh McEnany (“Trump supporter” was the most nuanced designation they could offer) inveighed about how Wilmore “assassinated people’s characters and profession,” prompting Lizz Winstead, a professional comedy writer-producer and a creator of “The Daily Show,” to respond that a comic’s job is to make folks uncomfortable. (YouTube) Yes, yes. She might have added how his humor revealed a lot about Wilmore’s own sense of vulnerability and how precious few journalists have a sense of humor about themselves, with crusades for truth and any well-honed sense of irony tending to operate merely externally. They are outraged when a joke is also on them.
Fortunately, I simultaneously watched the San Antonio Spurs throttle the Oklahoma City Thunder on TNT. The Spurs, if you don’t follow sports much, are a marvel. Many of their players are far more accomplished at what they do than the vast majority of folks attending the White House dinner (and they make more money than an even larger majority). There were a lot of big egos of modest achievement in that ballroom. Typically, during one long dinner break, C-SPAN caught many carrying on conversations while looking over shoulders to see if somebody more alluring (perhaps a politician to curry favor with) was coming their way. It’s the Washington modus operandi.
By contrast, we have the Spurs, who practice a wondrous degree of selflessness and, thus, wipe out most of their opposition with likely greater accuracy than Obama’s drones. Their way of operating is not found much in Washington, especially among ambitious members of the media. It was refreshing to see.
- One of TV’s vast wastelands: education coverage
The Education Writers Association surveyed 400 education writers about the state of their craft and, by and large, came away with an upbeat take on how much they like their work. Tucked away inside an extensive effort, released Sunday during an annual meeting in Boston, is also a pretty depressing assessment of television news. Not even one of the 17 TV journalists surveyed “express confidence in education news on television. By contrast, longstanding polling by Gallup finds virtually no difference in the amount of confidence the American public places in news on TV versus newspapers.” The problem is that so many people do get their education news from TV. Alas, “‘generally, most TV coverage is awful,’ said an interviewee with a television background. ‘In smaller markets…I think that they’re really trying to do good stories. The problem with local TV news [is]…they’ve priced out veteran reporters, so you have lots of young reporters…Nationally,…you just don’t see a lot of education coverage.'” (EWA) - Trump in Indiana
They seem to be taking an early victory lap on “Morning Joe,” with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough again reminding the unwashed this morning of how they’ve presciently divined Trump’s ascension for so very long. As for tomorrow’s Indiana primary, Scarborough rightfully skewered Gov. Mike Pence’s Ted Cruz endorsement, which was very empathetic toward Donald Trump. “If somebody endorsed me that way, I’d go on the radio the next hour and say he can take his blanking endorsement back. It was more an endorsement of Donald Trump.” “Fox & Friends” was pretty banal as it informed that Indiana is “do or die” for Bernie Sanders, “the socialist from Vermont,” as CNN’s “New Day” listed Republicans hopping the Trump bandwagon believing that Trump “will sit down and get advice on how to conduct himself as president, as opposed to Ted Cruz,” as former “Meet the Press” host David Gregory put it. And now there’s the evolving elite Democratic Party pundits’ conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton should be more scared of Trump than Cruz. - Yahoo’s “worth” of minus $8 billion
A withering cover story suggests, “Everything you think of as Yahoo — apps, websites, employees, computers, buildings — has a negative value. A more charitable analysis, where one imagines Yahoo selling its stock and paying the full corporate tax rate, yields a depressing result: Its operating business might be worth $6 billion. This discrepancy, or the ‘significantly negative value’ of Yahoo’s operating business, as the hedge fund Starboard Value put it in an exasperated letter in November, is also a withering assessment of Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive officer, who until recently was one of Silicon Valley’s brightest stars.” (Bloomberg Business Week) - Who the hell needs ABC’s “Scandal”?
“The legal battle over media mogul Sumner Redstone’s mental competence, which finally heads to court this week after transfixing Hollywood and Wall Street for months, features a cast of characters befitting a reality TV show. Besides Mr. Redstone, the 92-year-old chairman emeritus and controlling shareholder of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp., there is his much younger ex-girlfriend-turned-companion, a once-estranged daughter, an unpredictable granddaughter, an embattled chief executive and a nurse who wields unusual power in Mr. Redstone’s Beverly Park mansion because he interprets the ailing billionaire’s extremely impaired speech.” (The Wall Street Journal) - Scoop on a big Dem helping Trump
Nice work by the Chicago Sun-Times: “A law firm headed by Ald. Edward M. Burke, one of Chicago’s most powerful Democrats, has helped Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and investors in his luxury downtown hotel cut their property taxes by 39 percent over seven years, saving them $11.7 million, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis has found. Burke—one of 47 Chicago aldermen who voted to approve development of Trump International Hotel & Tower in 2002—won reductions in six of the seven years for the hotel, retail and other commercial space in the skyscraper, records show.” (Chicago Sun-Times) - A 100-year-old fashion model
Harvey Nichols is breaking with the conventions of the youth-obsessed fashion industry running an ad featuring a 100-year-old model to celebrate the centenary of Vogue magazine. The department store chain is to run an ad featuring Bo Gilbert, who was born in 1916, which will run in the June edition of Vogue. (The Guardian) - Reporters, before you call Uber to get to that story…
“An Uber driver who reportedly made several unwanted sexual advances toward a Boston.com reporter is no longer active with the platform, the news website reported Friday.” Allison Pohle of Boston.com — which is owned by Boston Globe Media Partners, the parent company of The Boston Globe — wrote on Friday morning that the harassment occurred while she used an Uber ride to return home. (The Boston Globe) - A battle ends
Julie Soderlund, known to many journalists as a top communications specialist for former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, died at age 38 after a nine-month battle with melanoma that she chronicled. (The Sacramento Bee) She blogged about her treatment and her last posting on March 9 declared, “We are praying for a miracle, for a treatment that works. As someone said to me a few months ago, ‘don’t give up the day before the miracle happens.’ Amen.” - A good warning for the media
Writing in The Guardian, two top international aid officials note the modest response to an air strike on a 34-bed hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo last week. “Eight doctors worked full-time in the hospital, two of whom were among the 14 confirmed dead.” But “A dangerous complacency is developing whereby such attacks are starting to be regarded as the norm. They are part of the tapestry of today’s armed conflicts where civilians and civilian infrastructure are targeted, and marketplaces, schools, homes and health facilities are ‘fair game.'” (The Guardian) - Just like media giving away content for free
Read the Business of Fashion’s look at an accelerating race to the bottom among J.Crew, Gap, JCPenney, Macy’s and others as deep discounting “is creating a race to the bottom, shrinking profit margins and diminished brand value, while making the path back to growth more difficult.” (BOF) - A “Maddux”
Baseball fan Chuck Todd of NBC was tweeting his justifiable reverence for Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw yesterday. (@chucktodd) He also mentioned that Kershaw was nearing a “Maddux.” Ok, even another baseball nut (me) didn’t quite get that. In fact, it refers to pitching a complete-game shutout and throwing 99 or fewer pitchers. It’s a symbol of true precision and efficiency. (SB Nation) In a 25-year period from 1988 to 2013, retired Hall of Famer Greg Maddux led the pack in doing it 13 times, with the next pitcher at a mere 7. - Thanks, Mr. President, but…
Walter Robinson (played by Michael Keaton), one of the Boston Globe “Spotlight” team members lauded by Obama during his Saturday night speech at the Correspondents Dinner, tweeted Sunday, “Grateful to POTUS for Spotlight shoutout. But this President has used Espionage Act to thwart investigative reporting.” (@WalterVRobinson) Yes, the Obama legacy on various press issues, including the Freedom of Information Act, is underwhelming. - Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin
Ben Mullin is on vacation. Job moves will resume tomorrow.
Send Ben your job moves: bmullin@poynter.org.
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