The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Coming Implosion of Salon.com

Posted on | July 10, 2012 | 19 Comments

Iowahawk today pointed out the omens that Alex Pareene’s current employer is unlikely to survive another year:

In a sign that Salon is very close to being shuttered, the company “lost” its CEO and CFO recently. . . . At the end of the final quarter of 2011, Salon had $149,000 in the bank against short-term liabilities that included $12.7 million in loans. During the same quarter, Salon lost $997,000 on revenue of $1.03 million.

This is just further confirmation of what I wrote in April:

Salon is basically the cockroach of Web ‘zines. Begun in the age of dial-up modems, it has survived the dot-com bubble, the rise of blogs and social networking, etc. While it has survived, however, no one can say that Salon has thrived. It spent a dozen years as a Slate wannabe before trying to re-invent itself as a weak imitation of HuffPo or something.
No one knows how much money Salon has lost since 1995, although it was estimated last year that its annual operating loss was $1.5 million. So, cumulative losses by now are probably somewhere between $20 million and a metric buttload.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that “investors” in such an enterprise don’t care how much money they lose, but are simply taking a tax write-off to support left-wing journalism. At some point, then, the calculation is more about political utility than about revenue potential.

OK, so in a oprogressive online media environment now crowded with HuffPo, Daily Kos, TPM, Think Progress, etc., where is the political utility of a maintaining a persistent loser like Salon? Where is the suggestion that Salon is having any meaningful impact? Or is it possible that Salon’s funders consider it their patriotic duty to provide an outlet for Glenn Greenwald’s unique brand of anti-patriotism?

A fool and his money are soon parted, and fools have wasted more money on less viable media entities. But why bring Current TV into this?

UPDATE (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers. Please enjoy a chuckle at the expense of that Bolshevik blowhard Bob Beckel.

UPDATE II (RSM): Thanks to the commenter who points out that last month Salon indicated it was trying to sell The Well (Well.com):

“As other online communities and social networks emerged over the years, The Well’s subscriber base dwindled to 2,693, which did not bear financial promise.”

They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

 


Category: Journalism

Permit Me to Remind You: Obama Still Has More Campaign Cash Than Mitt

Posted on | July 10, 2012 | 20 Comments

A fact I pointed out yesterday:

[T]he Obama campaign entered June with a cash-on-hand advantage of more than $90 million ($109 million to Romney’s $17 million). And during May, Team Obama out-spent Team Mitt by nearly $30 million ($44.6 million to Romney’s $15.6 million).

Keep that in mind when you read this:

Senior White House adviser David Plouffe on Tuesday accused wealthy Mitt Romney supporters of trying to “purchase the White House,” one day after the presumptive GOP nominee announced a $106 million June fundraising haul that stunned the Obama campaign.
“You’ve got a few very wealthy people lining up trying to purchase the White House for Mr. Romney,” said Plouffe on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “We’re going to have to have everybody out there who wants the president to continue to a second term to step up and help the campaign.”

video platform video management video solutions video player

Romney and the RNC had a good month in June, but I guarantee you this: When the June FEC reports are released later this month, Obama will still have more cash on hand than Romney, and the FEC reports will show Obama’s campaign out-spent Romney’s campaign in June, just as they’ve outspent Romney every month since February.

Seriously: Even while Romney was fighting tooth-and-nail in a three-way GOP primary battle against Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, his campaign still spent less than $12.4 million in February, compared to nearly $12.6 million Obama’s campaign spent in February.

Yet David Plouffe, sitting atop a vast mountain of campaign cash, expects us to believe that there are no “wealthy people lining up” for Obama!

 


Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012, Mitt Romney

Essay Contest Winner: ‘Why I’m Not a Democrat, in Three Words’

Posted on | July 10, 2012 | 16 Comments

And those three words are, “Debbie Wasserman Schultz“:

Disclosure forms reveal that Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, previously held funds with investments in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, and the state bank of India. This revelation comes mere days after the Democratic chair attacked presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for holding money in Swiss bank accounts in the past.

At least there’s no need to out-source hypocrisy, eh?

Category: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

East Coast Opium Kingpin Alex Pareene Writes About ‘Standard-Issue Right-Wing Character Assassination’ of Kimberlin

Posted on | July 10, 2012 | 42 Comments

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Far be it from me to give credence to unsubstantiated (perhaps entirely satirical) allegations that Alex Pareene is the “East Coast kingpin of the Cambodian opium traffic,” but when I consider that Pareene credulously repeats assertions made by convicted perjurer Brett Kimberlin and the “Breitbart Unmasked” site while treating my own statements of fact as mere “claims” . . .

Well, if Alex Pareene would care to give me a phone call or send me an e-mail, perhaps we can discuss whether it is “character assassination” to suggest that the “unknown blogger” behind the “Breitbart Unmasked” site is notorious Internet menace Neal Rauhauser, who keeps showing up in Brett Kimberlin’s courtroom entourage and is almost certainly on Kimberlin’s (tax-exempt non-profit) payroll.

Pareene could call me to ask why the Kimberlin-Rauhuaser connection seemed to me newsworthy and relevant, and then I’d happily give Pareene the chance to deny that he’s a major opium distributor.

Of course, smuggling Cambodian opium isn’t nearly as a bad as blowing people up with bombs, but some folks might think it was worse than “standard-issue right-wing character assassination.”

Hat-tip to Patterico, who writes:

Pareene describes Kimberlin’s victim’s as people who “receive a great deal of joy from pretending to be the victims of unprovoked and terrible persecution.” Ask Aaron Walker how much joy he received when he and his wife lost their jobs, he was arrested, and spent money defending against frivolous actions from Kimberlin. It was not “joy” I experienced when Kimberlin’s site published photos of my house and my address; when he filed a state bar complaint against me; when he attempted to file frivolous criminal charges against me with the California Attorney General and the stalking unit of my office; or when he complained to my office numerous times about me.

Kimberlin has attempted to destroy his targeted enemies, and has apparently employed Neal Rauhauser to harass and smear anyone who attempts to defend Kimberlin’s enemies.

UPDATE: Dan Collins has been forced to publish a correction after erroneously calling Pareene an alleged heroin dealer. While this was almost certainly a simple mistake, some opium kingpins might consider it libelous. This is much like the unfortunately common mistake of saying that Matt Edelstein is a truck-stop prostitute, when we have no conclusive proof that he has followed in his mother’s footsteps.

UPDATE II: Dan Riehl points out that Pareene quotes the “unknown blogger” who cites unnamed “sources” for dubious assertions about me that Pareene never bothered to verify.

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

Category: The Kimberlin Files

The Columbia Journalism Review Is (Still) Depraved and Decadent

Posted on | July 10, 2012 | 11 Comments

“In the context of journalism, here, we are dealing with a new kind of ‘lead’ — the Symbiotic Trapezoid Quote. The Columbia Journalism Review will never sanction it; at least not until the current editor dies of brain syphilis, and probably not even then.
“What?
“Do we have a libel suit on our hands?
“Probably not, I think, because nobody in his right mind would take a thing like that seriously — and especially not that gang of senile hags who run the Columbia Journalism Review, who have gone to great lengths in every issue during the past year or so to stress, very heavily, that nothing I say should be taken seriously.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing in Washington: The Boys in the Bag,” Rolling Stone, July 4, 1974 (collected in The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time)

The best possible career advice anybody could give ambitious young journalists is this: Get the hell out of the journalism racket.

Go to law school. Start dealing methamphetamine. Go do something — anything — where the work-to-reward ratio doesn’t require a masochist’s appetite for constant humiliation.

However, if you’re one of those mule-headed young fools who refuses to heed such wisdom, or if you’re someone who pursues a career in journalism because you have no aptitude for any honest vocation, please keep in mind these two invaluable pieces of advice:

  1. Quit your bitching and get to work. Nothing is less interesting than journalists whining about the low pay, wretched hours and miserable working conditions of their trade.
  2. Ignore the Columbia Journalism Review.

There is no greater waste of time than sitting around reading a magazine about journalism, edited by swine who are self-evidently incapable of earning an honest dollar, and who therefore attach themselves to the teats of an Ivy League university journalism department.

The only thing worse that reading CJR is writing for CJR, and I don’t know how Ben Adler will ever overcome the stigma of having contributed an article to that monument to uselessness:

In 2009, an editor for a new website called The Faster Times, which sought to be “an edgier Huffington Post,” emailed to ask if I was interested in a part-time job. I didn’t know it was possible to be edgier than HuffPo, but their payment scheme was certainly more innovative. Whereas HuffPo paid staff reporters the old-fashioned way, with a salary and benefits, while paying freelancers nothing at all, The Faster Times was creating a third way. Instead of staff writers, it had contributors who spent roughly 10 hours a week blogging and aggregating news on a given topic. In exchange, they would receive a majority of the revenue generated by ads sold on the pages they created. It took me a while to realize the editor was suggesting that I promise to perform a regular amount of work in exchange for no guaranteed payment at all.

Actually, it’s not a bad article, and it’s a crying shame that Adler couldn’t find a respectable venue willing to publish it. The plight of young freelancers in the New Media environment must indeed be dire, when someone like Adler — a promising writer who seems to have real talent — is so desperate that he would be willing to let his byline appear in CJR.

Deperate young freelancers who are unwilling to augment their incomes by dealing dangerous narcotics can probably be excused for such gestures of despair as writing for CJR.

If Dave Weigel hadn’t been growing potent hybrid sinsemilla in his D.C. townhouse for the past few years, he never would have been able to survive on the pittance he gets from those thieving vultures at Slate, and Alex Pareene’s status as East Coast kingpin of the Cambodian opium traffic was the only way he could afford to write for ripoff outfits like Gawker and Salon. Adler examines the grim alternatives:

Today’s aspiring magazine writers might be better advised to start their own websites, promote them on their Twitter feeds, freelance for no paycheck, and hope for good things to happen.
These days, you might start out by writing an unpaid piece for HuffPo or The Awl (and hope it goes viral), or blogging 12 times a day, as a job I interviewed for at Curbed last year required. You might be working from home, without an editor to mentor you. You might be earning no money, or never knowing what you will earn, month to month.

Writing an unpaid piece for HuffPo? My God! This is the most disreputable thing any journalist could ever do, short of joining the editorial staff of CJR or informing the DEA that Reason magazine editor Matt Welch controls the crack cocaine trade in Anacostia. Resourcefulness is required for today’s young journalists, Adler says:

The new approach has worked so far for Emma Carmichael, a 2010 Vassar graduate who moved to New York hoping to break into journalism. While working days at a public-relations firm, she wrote unpaid pieces for The Awl. She credits those clips with helping her land an unpaid internship at Deadspin, Gawker Media’s sports blog. That led to a job as a paid staff writer at Deadspin, and she has since been promoted to managing editor of Gawker.

Deadspin is another plantation in Nick Denton’s blog-slave empire, and “managing editor of Gawker” is a title like SS-Obergruppenführer — a gig with a few perks and a certain amount of status, but unlikely to endear you to the victims of your crimes against humanity. Exactly how a graduate of Vassar (annual tuition $45,580) could be compelled to pursue that kind of gruesome work, Adler doesn’t bother to explain, but he does point out the most obvious problem facing commandants of these online concentration camps:

Meanwhile, every editor of a website with one of these new payment models acknowledges a common quandary: People are willing to wax philosophical or crack jokes for free, but not to do real reporting. “One of the gaps we have is that I would like to have more reporting,” says [former Gawker editor Choire] Sicha [who now runs another site]. “The scale of the economics doesn’t work for that, necessarily.”

And indeed, why should any reasonably ambitious writer “do real reporting” for peanuts, when they could make a lot more money cooking moonshine whiskey or selling bootleg oxycontin? But there’s probably no need to drag Nick Gillespie into this argument . . .

My point is that there is nothing wrong with 21st-century journalism except (a) the continued existence of the Columbia Journalism Review and (b) the shortage of good, cheap mescaline. And if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. IYKWIMAITYD.

 

Category: Fear. Loathing., R.S. McCain School of Journalism

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Former Democrat Unexpectedly Addresses NOVA Tea Party

Posted on | July 10, 2012 | 14 Comments

by Smitty

The World’s Youngest Blogger and I caught up with Artur Davis three weeks ago at the Fairfax County GOP. Here we are this time at Grevey’s, which did a good job of handling an overflow crowd*. If you only have time for one clip, I did pan to the World’s Youngest Blogger at the end, with the motivational “USA! USA! USA!” cheer swamping the microphone.

Answering the mail on comments from the last Artur Davis post:

  • Attacking Davis for Specter-ism is ‘too easy’. It is not abundantly clear yet that Obama is going to lose the election in November.
  • The Tea Party represents a non-GOP path to redemption for those who had formerly identified as Democrats. The attention of those laying claim to any Judeo/Christian heritage is drawn to Proverbs 25:21. On the other hand, those demanding scalps can volunteer their own as an example.
  • And yes, “trust but verify”. Every. Single. Miserable. Public. Figure. Politics has been about being sellouts for a long, long time. The notion that Davis is somehow less trustworthy than anyone else you could name is a study in naïveté. No matter who wins what office in the coming election, getting the ship on course and keeping it that way is going to require everyone’s involvement.

With all that said, enjoy Mr. Davis’s remarks. The Virginia GOP Chairman had just spoken as Davis is getting warmed up:

Davis contends that the Tea Party movement has had greater shaping effect on politics than any movement in history, including the Civil Rights movement. (We’ll see, Davis, when the Tea Party actually restores fiscal sanity.) Makes the point that this story is not exclusively a Republican Party tale. Makes the point that the Tea Party is more liberal about speakers than Baptist churches, which is a fair.

The mention of church leads to confession. Davis is one of 8 to 10 million who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 who have seen the light. Here he shares testimonials of people from his blog who are hacked off at #OccupyResoluteDesk for various reasons. Pull quote: “Tired of being told that success is part of the problem in this country.”

Davis invokes Sarah Palin, which will totally impress Doug Mataconis, I am certain. Doubles down, plays the Reagan card, contrasts the perils of today with those of the late ’70s.

Concluding, he beats the drum that the election could boil down to Virginia, and whips the troops into shape with the vision of TV news anchors at midnight on 06 November with a solemn look on their faces. The audio gets a bit swamped here due to applause. “Act like it’s in our hands.”

*Can we get a changing table in the men’s room, please?

Category: GOP, Tea Party, Video, World's Youngest Blogger

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.10.12

Posted on | July 10, 2012 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Obama Stumps In Iowa For Limited Tax Cuts

President Obama

Romney pushes back, wants all cuts extended

Generals Warn Egyptian President Over Parliament
Morsi calls for court-dissolved legislature to reconvene today


Romney, Republicans Outraise Obama, Democrats In June
Two months in a row now as GOP moneymen rally to the candidate



POLITICS
Rick Perry Becomes Sixth Governor To Reject Obamacare

Rick Perry makes a stand

Texas governor rejects Medicare expansion, state insurance exchanges, other works of the devil PPACA
Related: Arizona’s Gov. Brewer undecided


Senate Democrats Push Tax Credits For Business

Episcopalians Set To Be First Major Denomination To Approve Gay Marriage

Redistricting Makes Veteran Democratic Congressmen Vulnerable To Challenges

Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) To Face House Ethics Probe

DIRNSA Calls For Passage Of Cyberdefense Law, Promises Not To Read Your E-Mail



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Down Slightly As Norway Strike Averted, PRC Imports Down; NYMEX $84.62, Brent $98.56
LIBOR Scandal Turns Spotlight On Regulators
EU Finance Ministers Agree To Speed Spanish Bank Bailout
Wall Street Slumps On Danger Signs From Europe
US 10-Year T-Notes Edge Up But Supply Caps Gains
Campbell To Buy Bolthouse For $1.55 Billion To Add Juice To Soup
Top Fed Officials Argue Case For QE3
DNS Changer Malware Threat Passes With No Significant Outages
More Confident Microsoft Serves Up Full Slate Of Plans
Google May Face Record $22.5 Million Fine To Settle FTC Privacy Charges
UK Judge Rules Samsung Tablets Not As Cool As iPad, Rejects Apple’s Suit Seeking Sales Ban
Cellphone Surveillance Requests Surged To 1.3 Million Last Year
Steam’s Greenlight Lets Gamers Pick The Next Big Release




SPORTS
Cano Shut Out By Pops, Draws Jeers From Fans

Kansas City fans jeer Yankees' Cano

Yankees slugger comes up empty at Home Run Derby, takes heat from fans over failure to pick hometown hero Butler

Bryce Harper Among Record Five Rookie All-Stars

All-Star Game Another Stop On Dickey’s Incredible Journey

Marcus Camby Returns To Knicks

Judge Swiftly Dismisses Lance Armstrong’s USADA Suit

Drug Test Parks Allmendinger For NH Race

Robinson Leaves Devils For Sharks

Strasburg, Gonzalez. Night, Day.



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Cruise, Holmes Reach Divorce Settlement

The divorcing couple in happier days

Details not yet public; sources say Holmes keeps cutody of daughter Suri while Cruise has extensive visitation rights
Tom Cruise “Very Pleased” With Settlement, Lawyer Says

Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Fergie, Will.i.am Being Considered As Judges For “American Idol”

$carJo Makes ‘Em Pay: Actress To Get $20 Million For “Avengers” Sequel

Mick Jagger’s Affair With David Bowie Revealed In New Book

Barry Watson From “7th Heaven” To Join “Gossip Girl” Final Season

Sam Ronson: Paris Hilton A Disgrace To DJs

Fassbender Game For “Assassin’s Creed”



FOREIGNERS
Annan Asks For Iran’s Help On Syria Peace Plan
Ex-PM Olmert Found Guilty Of Corruption, Innocent On Other Charges
Russia To Halt Arms Shipments To Syria
Neither Liberal Nor Islamist: Who Are Libya’s Election Frontrunners?
ASEAN Seeks PRC Agreement On South China Sea Code
Egyptian Couple Caught Trying To Smuggle Baby In Hand Luggage



BLOGS & STUFF
Weasel Zippers: White House Promises Veto Of Any Bill Failing To Raise Taxes On Those Earning Over $250K
Scared Monkeys: Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush Not Being Vetted For VP…Thank God
Moe Lane: Tom Junod’s Cowardly Attack On Obama’s Cowardly Drone Strikes
Ed Driscoll: The Evil Of Banality
Hugh Hewitt: The U-Turn Election
Weekly Standard Blog: Lobbyists Hold “White Trash Reception” On Capitol Hill
Rep. Allen West: No, I Am Not Equating Social Security To Slavery
Legal Insurrection: Conservatives On SCOTUS Feel Betrayed? Welcome To The Club
Gateway Pundit: Former Obama Donor Holds High-Dollar Fundraiser With Other Former Obama Donors
Allahpundit: Romney Ready To Hit Back Against Bain Attacks By Calling Out Obama As A Liar
Lonely Conservative: Survey Shows 83% Of Doctors Considering Quitting Over Medicare
Riehl World View: Dems Losing Their “Trumka” Card?
NRO Corner: Good Bye And Good Luck
Hit & Run: Unindividualistic Americans Already Live In A “European-Style Social Democracy”
The Conservatory: I Was A Right-Wing Child Star

Category: Live at Five

Stephen Green Stolen And Replaced By Bob Dylan

Posted on | July 9, 2012 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

Not really, but he certainly has gone from a high-brown boozer to a jolly, lowbrow drunk. At last, the Hope and Change have been located!

Check back tomorrow morning for some exclusive Artur Davis video with a voiceover by the World’s Youngest Blogger!

Category: PJTV
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