Raines's Big 'I-Told-You-So'?
Plus stock options, left-wing violence, and teens not having sex.
John Ellis shorts the New York Times because it's badly managed, is wasting money on television, and "is squandering its greatest asset, which is its reputation for delivering high quality information." The last charge is true, but I'm not sure that it follows that the Times won't succeed commercially. It certainly seems as if there is a large market of readers who share the paper's unembarrassed, moralistic anti-Bushism.... Meanhwile, alert kf reader G.R. remembers an unflattering section of Ken Auletta's New Yorker profile of Times editor Howell Raines:
Sometimes Raines imposed his own views on a story. In December, when Gerald Levin announced that he would step down as C.E.O. of AOL Time Warner and that his protege, Richard Parsons, would replace him, editors were puzzled by the meaning of the move. Suddenly, from one end of the long conference table, Raines asked, "It's obvious, isn't it?"
The others weren't so sure that it was.
"The old company won," Raines said. "That's the story!" The former political reporter, who is proud of being able to anticipate stories, was convinced that Levin and the Time Warner side of the company had won a battle with the AOL side. This editor-driven account appeared the next day, and it upset several business reporters, who thought the analysis was simplistic -- and wrong.
It now looks as if the simplistic, seat-of-pants angle Raines imperiously imposed on his reporters was, basically, right. ... Might Raines' overblown three-column-hed Saturday treatment of the AOL Time Warner executive reshuffle have been a big I-told-you-so? Ordinarily, "Media Exec Forced Out" is only moderately more newsworthy than, say, "New Jersey Mayor Indicted" or "Italian Government Falls." 12:15 P.M.
I agree with Michael Kinsley that most of the current debate over corporate reform is for show -- Washington Make Believe, as Charles Peters used to call it. I'm also perfectly willing, indeed eager, to think that changing the accounting treatment of stock options -- treating them as an expense deducted from profits instead of a caveat buried in the fine print -- won't make much of a difference because, as Kinsley argues, the investment pros read the fine print already. But if nobody's fooled by burying the options in the fine print, and a change would have no effect, then why have so many corporations, especially in the tech sector, lobbied so furiouslyto maintain the current arrangement? Are they fools? Obviously it makes a difference to them -- presumably because many investors look at reported profits and don't recalculate them after reading the footnotes....It's not as if there was irrational overinvestment in tech or anything! ... Larger point! Kinsley's piece is v-funny, and like most of the pols he ridicules, I've never cared much about the accounting treatment of stock options before. (I still don't, actually.) But my main political dispute with Kinsley is over income distribution -- he's more redistributionist than I am. Shouldn't someone who's so willing to take money away from the rich -- even when they've fairly earned it in the marketplace -- be more worried about one of the major ways they might be unfairly earning it? ... The vulgar Marxist explanation:: I don't have Microsoft stock options and Kinsley does.. ...2:45 A.M.
No danger on the Left? If you don't think there's any danger of political violence coming from the angry anti-Bush left, check out this creepy message-board post on the subject of how to seat Gore (the "duly-elected President") in the White House. I'd repeat the money sentence here but I don't want the Secret Service on my case. ...Remember, it only takes a few fringe cases. ...P.S.: The place where this is posted seems to be a forum for discussing Bartcop.com, which is a site associated with Media Whores Online. It doesn't appear to be actually posted on Bartcop.com. That doesn't change the basic point, which is that this is how some of the people who read those sites are thinking these days. [How can you be so sure Bartcop is associated with Media Whores?--ed. On the Media Whores site it says "In Association With Bartcop.com"] 1:45 A.M.
The New Republic blasts Tom Daschle for blocking a bill to require the expensing of stock options (if a company deducts that expense on their tax returns). Good point! But the magazine turns Daschle's misguided action into a righteous indictment of New Democrats for betraying their principles. Is Daschle such a New Democrat? I'm not sure TNR's veryNewly Democratic itself these days -- does the magazine really feel betrayed or is it just seizing on the stock option dispute as an occasion on which to bash DLC-types as hypocrites? (The paragraph lauding past New Democrat accomplishments reads a bit like a committee of atheists praising the achievements of the Catholic Church.) ...P.S.: And why not criticize Sen. Lieberman -- who's been more enthusiastic about blocking option-expensing and is more of a New Dem -- by name? ... P.P.S.: The editorial also usefully points to this excellent John Judis piece, which I'd missed in May, on why options should be declared as expenses if they're deducted as expenses. Judis does finger Lieberman. ...11:30 A.M
Does anyone deny there is some large cultural shift going on in the African-American community? Check out these statistics on sexual activity of high school girls, showing a giant (one-fifth) drop for black, non-Hispanic women in just two years, from 1999-2001. (Here is a brief discussion of the drop from Child Trends.) ... I credit welfare reform, of course -- do you have a better explanation? -- though whatever the cause, the shift seems like a good thing. ... It's also a reminder that the '90's weren't necessarily the loose, immoral decade now referred to in the press (especially by Clinton-blaming Bushies). ... [Isn't the statistical drop too big to be believed? Maybe the high-schoolers lied in answering the survey questions--ed. Even if they lied, that itself reflects a cultural shift -- e.g., early sex becoming more embarrassing or shameful. Why would teenagers now feel the need to lie, more than they did in previous years?] .. Thanks to K of N.Y. for the tip. 10:45 A.M.
Et tu, Hendrik? 9:45 A.M.
The Daily Howler spends many precious screens defending Katie Couric in her debate with Ann Coulter. Background: On the September 27, 1999, Today show, Couric said Edmund Morris called Reagan an "airhead," rather than what Morris had really said ("apparent airhead"). Noting that the Washington Post had originally misquoted Morris and omitted the "apparent," the Howler's Bob Somerby says:
Why did Couric say what she did? Because everyone thought it was true. [Italics his.]
But the Post had promptly published a correction of its error, on September 24, and there was enough of a media fuss about the "airhead" description that the Post's correction didn't go unnoticed. Couric had three days to get it right. Indeed, on the very same show in which she got it wrong, NBC correspondent Bob Kur (in a report introduced by Couric herself) read the entire Morris quote and did get it right. But Today omitted the "apparent" again in an opening teaser the next day. So I don't think Somerby's 'mass ignorance' defense will fly. ... P.S.: I'm perfectly willing to believe this distortion was caused by a desire to generate viewer-attracting controversy more than it was caused by "liberal bias." (It's overdetermined!) The whole "airhead" spat was in large part a fake PR-driven festival of mutual-promotion rather than a real dispute. Was even Morris unhappy to be misquoted, since the misquote stoked the controversy and boosted sales? P.P.S.: Somerby doesn't even discuss the issue on which kausfiles took Coulter's side -- Couric's righteous insistence that Today only used the "airhead" teaser for "just one day." Couric was wrong about that. Why can't Somerby admit it? Isn't it possible for liberalism to be right even if Katie Couric isn't? 12:00 P.M.
