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News Junkie Smackdown

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Is the Web Waiting for the Newspapers To Report the News?

From: Emily Yoffe
To: Michael Kinsley, Michael Newman, Timothy Egan, Sam Howe Verhovek, and Seth StevensonPosted Wednesday, July 22, 2009, at 3:08 PM ET

Oops. I was listening to NPR this morning and feeling that today's top stories are very much like yesterday's: Polls show public support for Obama is softening, and health care reform skepticism is setting in. Then Steve Roberts, hosting a discussion with reporters about health care reform, started the show by saying, "The New York Times today says health care reform is Obama's defining moment." So now I know—that's the top story of the day.

Without the newspapers, it's hard to find a pure news source (as opposed to commentary derived from newspaper reporting). Bloomberg agrees that health care, and the difficulties the reservations of both Republicans and conservative Democrats present to passing a bill by August, is the top political story.

CNN is shockingly useless—its lead stories are mostly freakish human interest: "555-pound teen lands mom in jail." But there seems not to be much actual news; we're mostly waiting for something to happen (health care) or not to happen (health care). Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in the United States, but not much is made of it anywhere I looked (NPR, Bloomberg, CNN). Both NPR and Bloomberg, in response to the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest story, had stories about black men and unprovoked arrests (and I discovered the Gates incident actually happened last week).

Then there's a story I bet didn't reach the papers—both Politico and the Atlantic report on the "birther" movement (a phrase I'd never heard before). These are the people who believe President Obama's birth certificate is fake, he was actually born in Kenya, and is therefore president illegally. I didn't read far enough into these stories to see whether the birthers also think the stories about the 40th anniversary of the moon landing are marking a hoax.

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Is the Web Waiting for the Newspapers To Report the News?

From: Emily Yoffe
To: Michael Kinsley, Michael Newman, Timothy Egan, Sam Howe Verhovek, and Seth StevensonPosted Wednesday, July 22, 2009, at 3:08 PM ET
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Tim Egan, the author of The Good Rain, reports for the New York Times from Seattle. Michael Kinsley is a columnist for the Washington Post and the founding editor of Slate. Michael Newman is Slate's politics editor. Seth Stevenson is a frequent contributor to Slate. He is the author of Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World. Sam Howe Verhovek, a former national reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, is writing a book about the first generation of jet airliners. Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or comments to .
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
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