I take no pleasure in the misery of others, but as someone who recognizes that the mainstream media is the arch-villain in the fight for human liberty and the survival of an America that doesn’t resemble a European socialist country – yesterday, it was impossible for my heart to do anything other than leap for joy when I read that the New York Times lost $40 million in 2011.

No one wants to see anyone lose their job, but the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, and all the rest are nothing more than lairs for arch-villains, and when these hollowed-out volcanoes are bankrupted, the virtue of this outweighs what happens to the faceless henchmen who are now out on the streets looking for work. I wish them luck. I wish things were different. But this is about saving our country and humanity.

Over in England, some are openly panicking over the future of newspapers:

Remember when AttackWatch launched?

The President’s new site aimed at fighting that with which they disagree collects anything negative written of the President — what it terms “smears.”

Now it’s completely silent and has been so for the past several months.

The push, which includes a website and a Twitter feed, received instant ridicule from conservatives and inspired a satirical introduction video that quickly went viral. The whole thing brought back memories of the Obama White House searching for “fishy” emails about Obamacare.

But it looks like the false attacks either aren’t coming in or haven’t been a priority.The Twitter feed has been silent now for nearly three weeks, and the website hasn’t been updated for the same amount of time.

The ridiculous of the endeavor spawned Misfit Politics, who ridiculed the initiative into oblivion with their viral video.

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Now that they’ve officially been hung out to dry by both the elite media and the Left, Occupy Wall Street has apparently decided to die with a whimper instead of with dignity. Five lonely Occupiers in Chicago. Three in Indiana. And when that evil (not really) Rush Limbaugh makes an appearance in the very heart of Occupied territory, New York City, and only a dozen or so neo-hippie crybabies bother to show up, methinks that’s a death rattle I hear.

But you have to remember ’twas New Media that killed Obama’s astro-turfed, anti-American army of poopers, rapists, vandals, drug abusers and trespassers — and that without New Media the MSM would’ve gotten away with their evil (yes, really) master plan, which was to recreate the sixties’ anti-war movement. The whole of the MSM intended to give these Occupy degenerates the same oxygen they gave anti-war degenerates forty years ago. The worst people in the world would be spoon fed the encouragement and legitimacy required to spin them into something they are not. And all of this was going to be made possible through the covering up of a hundreds of sins both big and small.

The only problem for the MSM, though, is that this isn’t the sixties and, therefore, they no longer control every portal of mass communication. Thus, armed with our own cameras, the power to disseminate information without funneling through the media’s corrupt filter, and armed with THE TRUTH — video by photo by investigative report, Occupy collapsed under the exposed weight of their own hypocrisy, noxious beliefs, and craven misdeeds.

In the form of a victory lap, here are my top ten New Media moments:

10. The Copper-Pooper Photo That Went ‘Round the World

A moment captured on film frequently comes to define a movement. Just as the flag-raising at Iwo Jima defined WWII and one brave soul stopping a contingent of tanks defined Tienanmen Square, so will the Copper-Pooper Photo forever define Occupy Wall Street. Anarchy, depravity, incivility, and the utter pointlessness of it all captured forever.

The photo might have been snapped by the mainstream media, but it was New Media that wouldn’t and will never let it die.

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Let’s back up a little bit before we get to the list…

A few weeks ago in Denver I had the opportunity for some up close and personal time with the Occupy movement, and what I saw was about what you would expect. These are marginal and marginally intelligent people who have grown up conditioned by public educators and the welfare state to believe that they’re something special and entitled to the good life just because they’re special and entitled to the good life. And they’ve also been brainwashed to believe that if America doesn’t acknowledge their specialness and if, indeed, they’re not enjoying the good life, the problem must be a corrupt America.

Occupy is all about greed, self-actualization, and narcissism. The fastest and easiest way to feel superior is to assume the role of a victim … because a victim is always superior to his or her oppressors.

Occupy is also an army the left and Alinksy-style community organizers like Barack Obama have been breeding for decades. The formula is simple: feed enough self-esteem to those who don’t deserve it and you create an entire generation of entitled crybabies desperate to direct the frustration of their unfulfilled lives at whomever.

The left thought they had found the right moment to launch their Army of the Frustrated. With Obama’s poll numbers in the tank and the crippled economy unable to leap on a white stallion to save him, the idea was to launch Occupy in the hopes it would change the 2012 election conversation and media narrative from Obama’s failed record to ground upon which he might be able to win reelection: income inequality and those evil one-percenters on Wall Street who destroyed the economy.

And so the filthy, frustrated, and brain-fried, under the direction of their Adbuster Masters (more about this below), took to the streets, and for a few weeks the plan went perfectly. High-profile Democrats, including President Obama, endorsed and encouraged them, while the corrupt MSM worked overtime to cover up the movement’s hundreds of subhuman misdeeds (literally) and held it up as an example of all that is pure and righteous in America.

But then something happened the left and their media allies didn’t expect. They had woefully underestimated the power of New Media to expose the truth, and expose the truth we did, until the Occupy dream all came crashing down in an overwhelming narrative (overwhelming because it was true) involving Occupy’s frightening tolerance for rape, violence, vandalism, and public masturbation and defecation.

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Every movement in history experiences challenges that cause it to morph from the purpose and design of its founders, usually in an effort to stay alive.

The incredible world-wide movement of citizen journalism is no different. In chapter one of our* book titled “Handbook for Citizen Journalists,” I point out that the movement is happening with no organized structure, no inspirational luminary, no headquarters, no power center, little or no funding, usually no government help and often government interference, no mass marketing strategy, no fixed standards–and most significantly–wild innovation.

The result is that many expressions of citizen journalism have been seen some unexpected successes and some well-funded failures. As time passes and more entrepreneurial journalists find ways to take advantage of the gap left by understaffed newspapers and developing technologies, more changes are sure to come. (more…)

Thanks to those stubborn things called facts, today it’s the Washington Post under fire, not the subject of their Thursday hit piece, Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio.

And now the WaPo memory-holing has begun.

First, the Miami Herald came out swinging against WaPo’s embellishment of Rubio’s so-called embellishments, then the Senator himself hit back, then we learned the troubling back-story of the WaPo “reporter” who wrote the piece, and now the once-legendary newspaper has taken to quietly scrubbing the original story in order to make it look like something closer to the truth.

Here are the two opening paragraphs of the original WaPo story, which was re-published at Yahoo:

But today at the Washington Post’s own website, here’s what the story looks like: (more…)

‘That was a little dismissive,” I wrote to some of my colleagues yesterday morning after reading somewhere that Governor Sarah Palin had referred to The Mighty Herman Cain as ‘the flavor of the week.” Cain’s my favorite candidate in the race, Palin’s my favorite candidate not in the race, and suddenly I was all conflicted and tense — because I’m sensitive that way. Moreover, it seemed awfully uncharacteristic for the Governor to wrist-flick Cain in such a manner. In the past, I’ve never heard her speak of Cain with anything but respect and even affection.

—–

After mentally processing all of this I figured it was just the liberal media being the liberal and went on about the business of the day. But before the day was out I saw that a number of conservative sites had picked up the “flavor” comment and that it was taking off on Twitter.

And now we get to the beauty of new media part.

Because we live in the great, big open world of the wild, wild Web, the fact that this growing meme seemed so counter-intuitive to what I had heard with my own ears wasn’t something I had to remain confused over. Instead, I could go out and investigate on my own: What did Palin really say? What was the full context?

And lo and behold look what I found… We’ll start with the quote everyone’s still parsing, interpreting and going on about. I’ve emphasized the moment in question but encourage you to read the full quote: [There's some  dumb sideshow over whether or not Palin called Cain "Herm." Whatever. Below is straight from the FNC transcript.]: 

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In complicated times, when even the grown ups can’t get it right, Gen Y TV sat down with new media publisher and New York Times Bestselling author, Andrew Breitbart (Righteous Indignation: Excuse me while I save the world!) to gain insight into the man behind BigGovernment.com, the Internet media outlet best known for breaking the ACORN and Anthony Weiner sexting scandals.  Addressing topics from new media opportunities to the current political landscape, Breitbart discussed each topic with a heavy dose of reality as it applies to Gen-Y, specifically young adults 18-35.

“Gen Y is very much SCREWED!” Breitbart said with conviction, “when it comes to the raw economics of what my generation and the baby boomers have handed to you.” Regarding the future of Generation Y in new media, he took a more positive, yet cautious position, “There are so many opportunities out there if media continues to be free, and if the government doesn’t try to impede and say we’re going to put limitations on you.” Breitbart stressed the innate compatibilities between young adults and new media, and encouraged anyone with a digital camera to report stories from their community that the mainstream media isn’t covering.

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Fresh from the Accuracy in Media A/V Room:

Accuracy in Media had the opportunity to sit down with Big Journalism’s fearless Editor, Dana Loesch, to discuss precisely how Conservatism is the new punk rock. Rather than simply complaining that the media is biased, she explains that a conservative’s do-it-yourself attitude can be put to good use when building our new media.

In part two, Dana and Accuracy in Media shoot holes in the tea-errorist meme passed down from the White House.

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INTRODUCTION

I. Whoever Controls “The Narrative,” Controls the National Political Conversation

When it comes to most of today’s mainstream media we are no longer talking about an entity that reports truth or facts. Everything about the MSM is now about The Narrative. Even though they’re supposedly made up of separate and competing newsrooms, there’s a very good reason why the MSM as a whole is usually covering, emphasizing and amplifying the exact same stories. This is what The Narrative is and its usefulness to the MSM is how it pushes particular stories to the forefront of public awareness in order to further a political agenda — an agenda that 90% of the time is meant to aid the Left and damage the Right.

Another part of The Narrative is what the MSM chooses NOT to cover; what they willfully ignore.

You can see The Narrative at work as I write this. The same MSM that assured us that when it came to Barack Obama, the church he attended for two decades didn’t matter, is now obsessing over a church Rep. Michele Bachman’s hasn’t attended in over a year. Here you have two separate (and wildly hypocritical) narratives at work: one meant to protect a Democratic presidential candidate, the other meant to damage a GOP presidential candidate.

On the other hand, you can also see The Narrative working by what’s NOT being covered today. The same MSM that obsessed over the Valerie Plame non-story is currently all but ignoring Obama’s brewing “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal –mainly because it’s exactly the kind of scandal that can swamp a presidency into paralyzing, under-40 approval ratings.

II. How Alternative Media Created the MSM’s Need for a Media Matters for America

Prior to the rise of the Internet, the Left almost completely owned the narrative. The simple truth is that before Al Gore’s invention was fully realized, other than a few esteemed columnists, the media had no serious ideological competition from the Right. The rise of the Internet, however, changed all of that as citizen journalists — many of whom are motivated by the MSM’s liberal biases — found this new tool invaluable when it came to both debunking the MSM’s latest lie (the most famous being RatherGate) or reporting on stories the MSM chose to ignore for ideological reasons.

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As the Weinergate story leaves behind many unanswered questions, the Twitterverse is not likely to get many truthful answers – not as long as Joan Walsh has anything to do about it.  The Salon.com editor had some harsh words for reporters who tried to cover the story from an angle that didn’t suit her own anti-Breitbart bias.

Over Memorial Day weekend, the Weinergate story developed in the wee hours of the night on Friday evening and early Saturday morning, when a lewd photo purported to be from Congressman Weiner’s yfrog account surfaced on Twitter.  Given that the story was literally unfolding on Twitter, where thousands of other users were witnessing the now infamous tweet in real time, it wasn’t exactly a “sit and wait” situation.  In the age of social media, stories make themselves – good or bad, one tweet can erupt into a firestorm in the blink of instant.  This presents both a challenge and an opportunity.  On one hand, media can wait and verify every fact, but at Twitter speed, the story will move far more quickly than standard fact finding and requests for comments can possibly occur.  On the other hand, new media journalism can fill that void and get ahead of such a story before the firestorm gets out of hand.

And this is exactly what the Big sites did when Weinergate erupted.  BigGovernment.com ran with a post just before 12:30am on Saturday, headlined “Weinergate: Congressman Claims ‘Facebook Hacked’ as Lewd Photo Hits Twitter.”  Given that the story was in its infancy but was moving so quickly online, editors merely presented the facts as they were known at the time, indicating that it was a developing story.  They also decided to publish the tweet and photo, but took caution by redacting all of the personal information of the young woman for whom the tweet was supposedly intended. (more…)

From the NYT:

World Entertainment News Network, a news and photo agency, announced this month that it had become the “exclusive photo agency partner” of Twitpic, a service with over 20 million registered users that allows people to upload images and link to them on Twitter. The deal allows the agency to sell images posted on Twitpic for publication, and to pursue legal action against those who use such images commercially without its permission, according to the agency.

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Let’s talk about 2012 and electability…

There’s no way to be sure if the story is true or not, and I don’t even remember where I read it, but when I did I knew Senator John McCain had no chance of winning the presidency in 2008. The article was about his relationship with the mainstream media, which had been a pretty chummy one while he was the Maverick in the Senate stirring up trouble for conservative Republicans, most especially President Bush. The story said that McCain felt that his long-standing media relationships would serve him well during his run for the White House. After all, he had been friendly with these folks for years, they had treated him pretty fairly, and there was no reason for him to believe that would change.

Again, I don’t want to sell McCain short with something I read two years ago that may or may not be true, but either way it goes to a larger point. But first, a more recent example — which would be this. Yes, that’s correct, the GOP actually considered letting two of the most corrupt news outlets ever conceived — NBC and Politico — co-host the first presidential debate. Thankfully, someone smartened up and the debate was postponed until September, but it’s still a very bad idea and shows a dangerous naivete from our side when it comes to dealing with the media.

When Democratic candidates boycott Fox News, do you want to know what that is? Smart. Real smart. Not to take anything away from Fox, who would obviously be much fairer to Democrats than the rest of the MSM is to Republicans, but those Democrats are trying to get elected and so it only makes sense that they play it as safe as possible. That’s not cowardice, it’s tactical competence. (Once elected, however, they have an obligation to do the rounds.)

Shouldn’t our candidates consider doing the same thing in 2012?

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Undeterred by opposition to an unpopular health control bill they rushed through congress, the deficit they tripled in just two years’ time, fumbled foreign policy moves, and disastrous energy proposals, Democrats believe that the problem isn’t with their policy, but with messaging.

Democrats are hoping they’ve found a secret weapon for winning back the House in 2012: Twitter.

House Democrats say that while they may be outnumbered, they stand to come out ahead by becoming more savvy to social media to stay more directly connected to the public.

Exit polling from November 2nd showed that the top concern for voters was the economy. A recent ABC poll shows that confidence in government has hit a 30-year low while 55% are unhappy with how Obama is handling the economy. Democrats are making a politically deadly assumption that any loss for GOP in terms of public perception is due to Republicans grossly watering down the red mandate they were handed on November 2nd — not because voters suddenly favor the very Democratic policies which caused them to vote red last year.

It’s not that Democrats aren’t already connected to the public; the public just doesn’t like what it sees.

The California Democrat pointed to the roles that Twitter and Facebook have played in affecting political climates, most recently in the context of the government upheaval in Egypt and labor disputes in Wisconsin. Democrats should harness that same potential when it comes to developing an effective messaging strategy this cycle, Honda said.

“I think when we have more air time and utilize technology … we can focus on getting control back of Congress in 2012,” he said.

A gross misunderstanding of new media and its role in grassroots. Social media served to organize and spread information about counter demonstrations in Iran and Egypt — just as it was used (and still is) with the tea party movement and before that, #dontgo.  Social media won’t help Democrats sell a rejected platform. Revising the platform and then attempting to spread awareness of the changes will work, but House Democrats believe that voters just don’t get it. You’re stupid, apparently, and need the benefit of the big govocrats’ “effective messaging.”

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NEW YORK (AP) – The rapid growth of smartphones and electronic tablets is making the Internet the destination of choice for consumers looking for news, a report released Monday said.

Local, network and cable television news, newspapers, radio and magazines all lost audience last year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research organization that evaluates and studies the performance of the press. News consumption online increased 17 percent last year from the year before, the project said in its eighth annual State of the News Media survey.

The old way of getting the news.

The percentage of people who say they get news online at least three times a week surpassed newspapers for the first time. It was second only to local TV news as the most popular news platform and seems poised to pass that medium, too, project director Tom Rosenstiel said. Local TV news has been the most popular format since the 1960s, when its growth was largely responsible for the death of afternoon newspapers, he said.

“It was a milestone year,” he said.

People are just becoming accustomed to having the Internet available in their pockets on phones or small tablets, he said. In December, 41 percent of Americans said they got most of their news about national and international issues on the Internet, more than double the 17 percent who said that a year earlier, the report said.

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The way the mob in Madison surrounds the MacIver Institute’s citizen journalist with the with ravenous eyes is creepy. They call him a  ”teabagger” and a “narc” while saying that he will probably make them out to not look peaceful.

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If you’re not familiar with Righthaven, it’s a fairly simple organization:

Righthaven LLC is owned 50/50 by two limited liability companies.  The first is Net Sortie Systems, LLC, which is owned by Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson – the Nevada attorney who is behind all of the lawsuits filed by Righthaven.  The second is SI Content Monitor LLC, which is owned by family members of investment banking billionaire Warren Stephens whose investments include Stephens Media, LLC which owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Righthaven is the leading copyright troll organization in the country. They use Google searches to find text or images that have been used on blogs, forums or websites. When they find something, they buy the rights to that specific article from the rights holder and sue the offending party. Righthaven never offers any warning. In fact, those being sued usually learn about it in the newspaper.

Righthaven has a standard list of demands which includes a six figure sum (often $150K) for infringement plus the domain name of the site that published the material. This is mostly bluster. Here’s the real plan as described by Boing Boing:

the copyright troll business-model is to skimp on legal analysis, threaten to sue people, and offer “settlements” that are cheaper than paying for a legal defense.

Indeed, they almost always settle out of court for small sums from bloggers who have no means to fight them off. To my knowledge, they have never been given a website URL. In fact there is apparently no basis in law for ever doing so.

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