- The New Hampshire Union Leader endorses Gingrich.

- Sponsorships verses failing banner ads: an interesting discussion on the future of digital news advertising:

I simply cannot believe that there isn’t a way to tell people about new products and services and special deals without pissing them off. After all, at the right times and in the right quantities, we want to know about the new furniture store that opened up just outside downtown, next month’s concerts at the arena and the new flavor of Doritos. The problem is not that we hate advertising, the problem is that we hate the kind of advertising we get.

[...]

One promising alternative to banner ads, it seems to me, is a revival of the good old-fashioned sponsorship and the copywriting behind it.

- NYPD tells officers not to interfere with the press:

The New York Police Department’s commissioner on Wednesday sent an internal message to officers ordering them not to unreasonably interfere with media access during news coverage and warning those who do will be subject to disciplinary action, after several journalists were arrested covering Occupy Wall Street demonstrations last week.

The message by Commissioner Raymond Kelly was being read at police precincts citywide.

- As more and more viewers lose trust in media, all media, due to the bias, progressives move from manipulating the news itself to manipulating fact-checks with oftentimes questionable sources.

You’re reading a wrap-up of the Sept. 22 Republican presidential debate when you land on this claim from Rep. Michele Bachmann: “President Obama has the lowest public approval ratings of any president in modern times.”

Really? You start googling for evidence. Maybe you scour the blogs or the fact-checking sites. It takes work, all that critical thinking.

That’s why Dan Schultz, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab (and newly named Knight-Mozilla fellow for 2012), is devoting his thesis to automatic bullshit detection. Schultz is building what he calls truth goggles — not actual magical eyewear, alas, but software that flags suspicious claims in news articles and helps readers determine their truthiness. It’s possible because of a novel arrangement: Schultz struck a deal with fact-checker PolitiFact for access to its private APIs.

If you had the truth goggles installed and came across Bachmann’s debate claim, the suspicious sentence might be highlighted. You would see right away that the congresswoman’s pants were on fire. And you could explore the data to discover that Bachmann, in fact, wears some of the more flammable pants in politics.

This becomes an argument about perception. The petty Bachmann example cited is flawed and simply because the entire conclusion is based on a presupposition and attempts to asininely make scientific an off-handed remark. If you want a real example of scientific measurement, why not begin with the President’s claim that there exist 57 states in the union? Oh my gosh, Bachmann split an infinitive while giving her response in the last debate. FACT CHECK! Senate Democrats haven’t produced a budget in over 800 days while pouring blame all over conservatives in the media. Crickets.

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- NYT under fire from its readers for the casual use of both “rape” and “sex” in their Penn State stories:

Times Ombudsman Arthur Brisbane said the word “rape” is in flux, and that the Times’ Stylebook says it should be used to mean “forced intercourse, or intercourse with a child below the age of consent.” Brisbane talked with sports editor Joe Sexton about the issue:

[He] told me the paper had “no reluctance to use ‘rape’ ” and was not trying “to somehow shy away from the graphic nature of the allegations.” He said the charges included a variety of acts, so the paper had used “sexual assault” to cover the range. Further, he said, the paper’s reporting on Penn State officials’ accounts of their actions required careful wording, as none of them besides the graduate assistant had acknowledged that rape was involved.

Brisbane said journalists should be as specific as possible.

We asked this question a couple of weeks ago: Why Is the Media Glossing Over Child Rape?

-David Frum says he’s blacklisted from Fox because of his Limbaugh comments.

Frum gets his digs in.

- The New York Press Club announces its forming a new group to monitor relations between the NYPD and the press. They’re calling themselves The Coalition of the First Amendment.

- Why are more and more newspapers turning to firewalls? The cost of advertising:

a University of Missouri study found that 50 percent of newspapers derive only 9 percent of their revenue from online editions. What the heck’s the problem?

The answer, it turns out, may just be that newspaper advertising costs too darn much.

According to this analysis by comScore, the average CPM for online advertising is $2.52. Social media – by far the hottest and one of the most effective and targetable categories – CPM rates come in at $0.56. Newspapers on the other hand had an average CPM of $6.99…277 percent greater than the national average!

If you look at CPM rates across media (a notoriously-difficult comparison), print newspapers look even worse. According to these 2008 figures from Borrell Associates, which compare local ad costs across all major media, newspaper CPMs come in over $60…almost three times more than primetime broadcast TV, almost six times more than non-premium cable, and around 20 times more than online advertising!

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Whether we’re talking about college professors encouraging students to go to the West Bank and lie down in front of Israeli bulldozers or now MTV encouraging young people in Saudi Arabia to “Resist the Power” (potentially at great personal peril), there is a constant: liberals who manipulate children into engaging in protests are cowards.

The one-hour “Resist the power, Saudi Arabia” documentary was part of a program called “True Life.” The documentary was filmed in Jeddah, where the producers and cast met with a number of young Saudis who spoke about elements of the Saudi lifestyle that bothered them. The majority of Saudis who watched the video was offended and said it was a major insult to their traditions and customs.

The producers and crew contracted by MTV took their footage back to the U.S. for post-production long before the program aired. The young Saudis in the show are now subject to whatever harsh punishments their countrymen come up with (including imprisonment and/or hundreds of lashes): (more…)

The NFL is having a backwards week. The Pro Bowl is being played before the Super Bowl.  And instead of commercials featuring cute monkeys, frustrated cavemen and talking babies being the most popular water cooler topics on the Monday morning after the game, it’s a yet-to-air Super Bowl commercial garnering all the attention and discussion in the week leading up to kickoff.

In case somehow you haven’t heard, the University of Florida National Champion quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner and NFL draft hopeful Tim Tebow is going to be featured, along with his mom, in a pro-life spot sponsored by James Dobson’s conservative Focus on the Family.

Even though nobody outside of CBS and Focus on the Family has actually seen the spot, conservatives are thrilled someone is taking a pro-life stand on the biggest world stage. Liberals are livid – Gloria Allred has already threatened a lawsuit against CBS – and pro-choice activists are calling for the ad to be yanked.

If one of my clients wanted to do this spot, I’m not sure how quickly and in how many languages I’d be able to say “no.” (more…)

Pro-abort blogger Jenna Henry Hansen at the Huffington Post is typical of many in her dwindling tribe who feel the need to add this caveat when discussing abortion:

Every time I discuss abortion I find it necessary to mention that pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. A person identifying her or his self as pro-choice supports a woman’s right to choose whether or not to be a parent at that time.

Were that statement actually true, a pro-abort would spend 50% of his or her time supporting the sanctity of preborn human life and 50% supporting the killing of preborn human life.

Of course, that’s not what happens. And I don’t know why pro-aborts are so defensive about it. Abortion kills a blob of tissue at worst or a parasite at best, so they say; big deal. The fact is that pro-aborts abhor any and all support of preborn human life.  That includes conversations… for even 30 seconds. (more…)

From AirAmerica.com:

It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.

The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America’s business. This past year has seen a “perfect storm” in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like that of the industry’s long-time trade publication Radio and Records have signaled that these are very difficult and rapidly changing times.

Those companies that remain are facing audience fragmentation as a result of new media technologies, are often saddled with crushing debt, and have generally found it difficult to obtain operating or investment capital from traditional sources of funding. In this climate, our painstaking search for new investors has come close several times right up into this week, but ultimately fell short of success. (more…)