For now, at least, the technology and media industries are looking at the brighter side. “Steve believes in old media companies and wants them to do well,” said a person who has seen the device and is familiar with Apple’s marketing plan for it, but who did not want to be named because talking about it might alienate him from the company. “He believes democracy is hinged on a free press and that depends on there being a professional press.”

Call me cynical, but I have a difficult time seeing Steve Jobs wax philosophical about democracy and the free press. This is, after all, a man who is famous for bullying and stonewalling the press. (Not that these attitudes are fundamentally incompatible, but they do look funny next to each other.) No, I think this sounds more like, I don’t know, maybe New York Times executive editor Bill Keller. You’ll remember him, he’s the one who appeared to let slip something he wasn’t supposed to let on that he knew about last year:

I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.

Yes, that “democracy” quote sounds a lot more like a particular someone I can think of who would not want to be named because talking about Apple’s new product because it might alienate him from the company.

A little over a week ago, on May 14, 2008 we exclusively broke the news that Jason Reitman, the director of Juno was adapting the book UP IN THE AIR which you can read HERE. Later on that afternoon, Jason Reitman’s publicist Bebe Lerner of ID PR called me personally and asked me to update our story. Our scoop forced her to go into spin mode. Bebe wanted us to say that Reitman’s directing deal for UP IN THE AIR was not yet in place. We kindly obliged. In return, the only thing we asked Ms. Lerner to do was to tell the Hollywood trades to either mention or credit us with breaking the story. She agreed. As a precaution, when we broke the story we even emailed Borys Kit over at The Hollywood Reporter and a reporter at Variety. …

Later that night at Midnight (EDT), Variety posted the story on their site which you can read here. Guess what? We weren’t mentioned. We emailed Tatiana Siegel and Michael Fleming (Variety) and kindly requested that their story recognize our contribution and properly credit us. We were ignored.

An hour later at 1A.M., The Hollywood Reporter ran their story without crediting us over here. We were heartbroken.

Later that morning on May 15, 2008, we again emailed Ms. Siegel and Mr. Fleming at Variety and once again we we’re ignored. At least Borys Kit from The Hollywood Reporter was kind enough to email us back, apologize, and explain the situation.

That apology is bittersweet though because Borys Kit and Variety did it to us again today with the news of Jake Gyllenhaal being cast as the lead in Prince of Perisa which we first broke HERE ABOUT A MONTH AND HALF AGO ON APRIL 8TH. This not only happens to us but to all movie websites and bloggers that break exclusive news.

I’d never heard of the site before and unless you’re a serious upcoming movie junkie (once upon a time when I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly, I was) you may not have, either. But here’s one I bet you have: Ain’t It Cool News. According to Latino Review, AICN has been mentioned by Variety and THR “a grand total of 7 times.” That sounds awfully low, but it also doesn’t sound impossible.

Indeed, this not only happens to movie bloggers but all bloggers that break exclusive news or develop new stories. Blog P.I. has noted this phenomenon more than once:

• Radar is a serial offender, failing to credit numerous blogs (including this one) for reporting on the “fake” blog that exposed the Mark Foley scandal, while claiming an “exclusive.”
• More recently, Radar claimed exclusivity for an erroneous report that James Carville would take an active role in Hillary Clinton’s campaign; perhaps they should have given a hat tip to Big Head DC, which was erroneous first.
• Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report, beloved by the Internet generation, have jacked numerous ideas from the Internet without acknowledging that their brilliance is made possible in part with the help of amateurs.

Mickey Kaus, who left the MSM of his own volition for the relative freedom (”no money, no editors”) of the blogosphere, complained about this earlier in the week:

There’s an implicit model underneath [Newsweek's Jonathan] Alter’s comments–blogs as the minor leagues, Off Off-Broadway, trying out storylines and scoops that may or may not make it to the Big Show. I have to admit I’ve embraced this model myself, as “Model Two.” I think blogs are (for the moment***) particularly suited to functioning as a sort of intermediate tryout area for burgeoning scandals (”undernews”). …

Alter makes big bucks because he’s called on to write about the story of the day at the precise moment it breaks out into the mainstream–and not a moment too soor! If the US bombs a Syrian nuclear reactor, the public wants to know about it right then–and Alter more or less has write about it or have a pretty damn good excuse why not. Newsweek’s editors, in effect, can make Alter jump. He’s very good at it. I’m not.

The problem with the “minor league” model of the blogosphere, is that it’s simply an extension of this “just in time” model of journalism–blogs are a conveyor belt, if you will, delivering news. ideas and angles to the MSM on a precise production schedule.

Of course, we also know that some of the brightest lights in the mainstream media both fear and loathe the blogosphere, simultaneously viewing them as competitors and parasites. To their mind, both are reasons to deny bloggers credit for the work they contribute in this asymmetrical media landscape.

The best defense they can offer, which Latino Review addresses in its rant, is the claim that blogger scoops are unverified gossip, while their reports are confirmed and fact-checked. They can say this without being effectively challenged because a) many bloggers, Kaus notoriously so, will write about unconfirmed stories that rise only to the level of gossip, and b) newspapers and magazines have multiple-source standards and established procedures for confirming their reporters’ work.

But it’s also true that sometimes blogs break legitimate news the MSM initially won’t touch or simply miss, and that sometimes the established news-gathering and -publishing processes break down. But never mind that — mainstream outlets hog the credit and spread the blame.

A blogger’s best hope is to be called up to the big leagues like Justin Rood, who went from TPMmuckraker to ABC News, or Brian Stelter, who went from TV Newser to the New York Times.

But we’re starting to get off track here, so let’s return to Latino Review’s narrow point: what to do when mainstream news organizations won’t acknolwedge true reports that originate in the blogosphere? In the short term, all anyone can do is raise the issue when it happens. Plagiarism is a serious issue in journalism, and eventually, some newspaper will be embarrassed enough that a visionary editor will require its reporters to acknowledge when a story they’re covering started online. Not only will this give credit where it’s due, but it will help news consumers look into the matter for themselves.

And when will this actually happen? My guess is about the same time the Pulitzer committee starts handing out awards for online journalism. In other words, I hope you’re very, very patient.

Denton has parted ways with titles before, selling Oddjack and shutting down Sploid and Screenhead a few years back. This time he has found new homes for each of his websites. As of today, Wonkette belongs to managing editor Ken Layne. This is the second time Denton has put one of Layne’s blogs out to pasture; he was the sole editor of Sploid during its brief-ish run.

During Wonkette’s existence I have been an occasional reader and loyal critic. I am an approved commenter on the Gawker network, and every once in awhile I swing by to let them have it. Coincidentally, the most recent time was just last night.

Under Cox, I felt the blog leaned too far to the left while claiming to be non-partisan. Under subsequent editors I let go of that complaint and moved on to on the fact that it is simply not written for a Beltway audience. It breaks no news and advances no stories; it merely adds a garnish of cheap snark to the day’s headlines. Gawker matters to New York City (well, Manhattan at any rate) and Valleywag matters to the Silicon Valley (even if they hate it), but Wonkette offers no special insight on Hollywood for ugly people. Outside it’s America, which treats politics like entertainment. Here in the District, Defamer and Deadspin probably matter more, since we don’t want to talk shop after hours. But don’t take my word for it — check out the comments at DCist.

The last time Denton tried to make the site relevant to the actual District which it purports to cover, he moved Alex Pareene from New York to DC. Pareene was very funny (and still is on Gawker, for which he writes now) but these new kids — recent college student Jim Newell and total unknown Sara K. Smith — are bad Xerox copies. Fittingly, Layne doesn’t even live in Washington.

I take Denton entirely at his word in his explanation for selling it:

Why these three sites? To be blunt: they each had their editorial successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the advertising than we did. … As for Wonkette: political advertisers are a strange breed; they don’t come through the same agencies our sales people deal with.

So now Wonkette returns to Henry Copeland’s unique Blogads advertising network, which handles a great deal of political advertising (including Blog P.I., on the infrequent occasions that someone wants to do business with us) and is a much better fit than whatever agency handles Gawker’s advertising.

Ultimately, politics just isn’t where the money is. (Don’t think for a moment Mark Penn built that tunnel between his houses in Georgetown with campaign earnings.) But as others note, now is the time to cash out. Traffic is up, likely due to growing interest in the presidential election. And just as you don’t want to sell pumpkin futures the day after Halloween, the day before isn’t any good either. Better do it while your buyers still have some expectation of getting a return on their investment.

A hearty congrats to all featured, and I think my colleague the Virginia delegate to QandO may be quoted in the piece. Yet the pay wall leaves me wondering. As a resister of all things Star Trek (and sympathizer with K-Lo at The Corner on this) I’m not sure if I should be envious; Matt Lewis’s Town Hall commenters are pretty harsh, and not just the Ronulans.

But the article isn’t public, so I can’t judge for myself, nor can bloggers or their commentariats. C&E publishes much of its content on the website, but right now there is a little symbol next to the one article that’s actually about bloggers. Who are the ad wizards at C&E who came up with this one?

I also wonder if the falling out between David and Erick (and others) from a few months back gets any inches. My guess is not, and even if I’m wrong, it makes me think it’s too bad Wonkette doesn’t report on its city’s industry in the same depth as Valleywag (retooled in early 2007) or even Gawker (retooling, but not pulled).

Certainly the Beltway and the District is as much a company town as the Silicon Valley/Palo Alto, so where’s the 100-word-version? Someone, please, quote the key grafs in a blog post. Make it so.

And to tell the truth, I probably watched ST:TNG on afternoon television for at least thee years in middle school.

Update: I have now read the article, and I am pleasantly surprised that the kerfuffle noted above is indeed covered, and that author Walter Alarkon even used the word “kerfuffle.” Aside from the annoying Star Trek motif and an embarrassingly lame pull quote, the article does a reasonably good job of explaining the current challenges Republican web strategists face. If the piece brings a wider awareness to these issues, it’ll have done all it needs to.

You can read the article here in the original layout; thanks to Theodora in the comments for bringing it to my attention. Still, the snazzy NXTbook software (which doesn’t even live on the C&E page) features no plain text, so it’s next to invisible to search engines. Likewise, it doesn’t let you copy and paste, so it’s next to useless for blogging.

Updated again: In the comments, it has been pointed out that there is an XML page running in the background, so it’s not a total SEO disaster. Meanwhile, Rob Bluey is weighing in…

I wasn’t going to post it, but I feel the need to set the record straight. For starters, I hate Star Trek.

Wait. I think I need to do an exaggerated double-take, for comic effect:

Forty bucks? What is this, a college-level textbook? A coffee table book? Merely oversized? Is it 800 pages? I buy enough books that my Amazon Prime account pays for itself, and I can’t remember the last time I shelled out this much for a book that wasn’t out-of-print.

For comparison, here are the Amazon listings for other recent (though indeed they are all recent) books about politics and the Internet:

These aren’t all new, and they’re not all hardcover. But you’ll see that the two released this fall — the tomes by Graff and Bai — are indeed hardback, and with Amazon discounts they cost less than half of “Netroots Rising.”

It is certainly the kind of book I would be inclined to buy. I bought most of the books listed above, mostly from Amazon, and mostly when they were brand new. But at forty bucks, I may just have to apply for a library card.

In conversations before and after a speech Zell delivered Thursday night at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, Calif., the billionaire said newspapers could not economically sustain the practice of allowing their articles, photos and other content to be used free by other Internet news aggregators.

“If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?” Zell said during the question period after his speech. “Not very.”

One wonders if Zell is familiar with the doctrine of fair use. In fact, one wonders if Zell is driving at something else entirely, because these comments make no sense. I have limited sympathy for Viacom’s billion-dollar lawsuit against Google/YouTube, but at least they have a case.

Apparently Zell has never used Google News, because the website doesn’t itself host any of the stories it features — it merely links. Google is “stealing” what, headlines and news photos? They aren’t even hotlinking those images, so the free advertisement doesn’t even cost Zell a cent — but it does give readers a thumbnail view of what to expect if they click through.

To demonstrate, if you run a Google search on the word “Zell” right now, here’s what you’ll find:

Note, Zell is the proud new papa of two of the papers linked above. Google is not depriving him of traffic, but delivering it to him.

If Zell sticks to his guns, I fully expect he’ll demand Google remove his newspapers’ headlines from their aggregator, sue Matt Drudge (who actually does hotlink images) and then set his sights on Google once again when he realizes those damn kids on Blogger are using his excerpts without permission.

At that point, all that’s left is to build a subscription wall around the Tribune Co’s online assets. I can’t wait to sign up for ZellSelect.

Not only does Zell have no idea what he’s talking about, he has no idea what he’s doing. The Internet is a threat to the long term viability of print newspapers for a number of reasons, but newspaper owners’ failure to understand what makes for successful online content will only hasten their slide into irrelevance and unprofitability.

If nothing else, this should count as an example of the fact that while Drudge himself is a conservatarian of some stripe, his instinct to overhype is not limited by ideology. But when you start talking gloom and doom and Sports Illustrated, there’s really only one way to turn:

And there’s more to it than that. In fact, the global warming story and the definitive meditation on the “SI Jinx” were both written by frequent SI contributor Alexander Wolff. Just one question remains: What does this mean? Does the SI Jinx apply to global warming, thus signifying happy days ahead? Or to planet Earth, signifying a cloudier future than Ron Artest’s?

One thing we know for sure is that when the subject is sports*, never trust Matt Drudge — a lesson SI itself could learn.

*Not unlike other subjects.

Rarer still is for a group blog to be bought out — but this past month, that’s just what’s happened at RedState. If anything, that deal less resembles those mentioned above than the Washington Post’s acquisition of Slate from Microsoft two years ago.

In mid-December, the conservative community group site announced it had agreed to be purchased by Eagle Publishing, the parent company of Human Events, Regnery Publishing, Evans-Novak Political Report, the Conservative Book Club, among other movement conservative publishing enterprises.

RedState already had undergone several changes since its launch in 2004 as a 527, including a switch from RedState.org to RedState.com in 2005 to create a for-profit entity that could accept advertising. This was followed by a major redesign and relaunch in the middle of last year, whereupon founding director Erick Erickson was hired/stepped up to run the site full-time. Most of the ad revenue went to him, which was just enough to get by on. But it brought RedState to another crossroads: Paying Erickson stretched the site’s resources too thin to develop and expand the site further.

About a year ago the site’s directors — Erickson plus Clayton Wagar, Mike Krempasky and Ben Domenech — started looking ahead once again, this time with an eye toward a merger. They entertained offers from a few different entities — whose names, alas, I was not told — but questions lingered about whether those groups and individuals understood the site.

The first talks with Eagle, in late spring or early summer of 2006, started out no more serious than those with suitors who had come and gone. But that soon changed. Chiefly, Eagle promised to:

• Respect the brand and not change it fundamentally
• Invest in the property long-term, with an eye toward financial viability
• Keep Erickson and hire Wagar as a consultant to make sure of it

As Erickson told me: “They made it clear to us, we see you as your own brand.” And Eagle’s Group Publisher Stephen O’Connor confirmed, they didn’t “want to break something that’s fixed.”

The formal process began in mid-summer, and sometime in the fall an agreement was hammered out for an undisclosed sum. RedStaters themselves earned a share of the proceeds — and not just the site’s directors, either. About 20 contributors overall, including site co-founder and former director Josh Trevino, did as well. (Some were unable to accept the money on account of job-related ethical considerations.) “Nobody’s going to afford a Bentley,” said Domenech. More like “a few car payments.”

So what will change? For one thing, Erickson now has a boss in Eagle’s e-business head, Stuart Richens. Upon the initial announcement, the plan was for Human Events online editor Robert Bluey to be a liaison between RedState and Eagle/Human Events — mostly to rope Erickson into their editorial meetings. However, as noted here recently, Bluey will soon depart for Heritage. Now Erickson will work directly with Richens, who like himself and Wagar, is based in Georgia.

Although Krempasky and Domenech retain no official oversight of the company, they will remain with Erickson and Wagar as directors — along with recently-elevated directors Jeff Emanuel and Thomas Crown — but only for making editorial board decisions, not running the business. Erickson wrote in a subsequent announcement, “In the past, we’ve used the terminology ‘Directors’ and we will probably continue to do so.” The titles will remain the same, though it won’t carry the same legal meaning.

When I spoke to principals from Eagle and RedState in mid-December, there were no existing plans for writers from the Human Events site to cross over to the other, but already that’s been the case: Human Events has a regular feature, “Today on RedState” which sends traffic in that direction, while Bluey had a post on RedState just yesterday.

Is there overlap between Human Events and RedState? Both sides believe there is not: While both are obviously online conservative group efforts, they see Human Events as news editorial content whereas RedState is user-generated. Eagle is a publishing house with different labels, and RedState would just be the newest addition.

For a long time, RedState was thought of as Daily Kos for the right, in terms of being a community politics site, down to using the same content management system. And they too were conscious of this debt, although where dKos is a purely grassroots site, RedState aimed to be more tightly organized. Their mid-summer move from Scoop to Drupal could be seen as one step in that direction. However unintentional, their acquisition by Eagle seems to represent another.

Eagle assures me that RedState members will not start getting regular e-mails (if you’re on their list, they can send a lot) but their interest in RedState is related: RedState has a database of registered users, and they’re always picking up more.

Eagle’s business model is similar to other ideological publications with a limited, but highly self-selected subscriber base. That base of members (with contact information) is valuable, and candidates, campaigns and organizations will pay good money to rent them. Subscribe to the Washington Monthly, wait a few weeks, and in addition to each monthly issue you’ll get the occasional fundraising plea from the William J. Clinton Foundation. Likewise, Eagle rents its lists to such groups on the right, and with more than 20,000 open accounts at RedState, that’s not a bad place to start looking.

Based on their own data, RedState claims their readers skew “a good decade and a half younger” than those at Daily Kos, and certainly younger than those at FreeRepublic. Often ex-military, married with kids, RedState sees a traffic uptick after work hours, perhaps suggesting their readers include a large number who don’t sit in front of a computer all day. While online demographics are notoriously difficult to measure accurately, it seems plausible they have a unique political audience. On the other hand, if they are younger, they might not have quite as much money.

Yet now, Eagle’s resources enable RedState to do move in new directions. More than just a wannabe Daily Kos, by now it’s in a new category: a reciprocal relationship between new media and old. This kind of thing is not entirely new — AOL paid Jason Calacanis some $25 million for Weblogs, Inc., while the New York Times Co foolishly plopped down more than $400 million for About.com — but those have more in common with dot com-era gambles rather than synchronistic strategic acquirements.

Those companies just wanted ad revenue, but Eagle’s acquisition actually strengthens its brand — again, not unlike the Post and Slate. So if at some point in the future (let’s say) the New York Times Co. decides to buy Huffington Post, it will owe less to any success with About.com and more to deals like Eagle-RedState.

P.S. Human Events has found its new editor, replacing both now-at large Terry Jeffrey and Bluey in his online capacity: NRO contributor and Bush 41 dep. Undersec of Defense, Jed Babbin. U.S. News’ Washington Whispers whispers:

One of Babbin’s first tasks: Beef up the paper’s website and capitalize on Internet holdings like RedState.com.

No, seriously.

New Media Strategies, my employer and the sponsor of this blog, has agreed to be acquired by Des Moines-based Meredith Corporation.

If you find this a bit confusing, I understand. This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day. To help you through this period of transition, I have prepared a simple FAQ consisting of questions I imagine you might ask:

What is this “Meredith Corporation” you’re always going on about?

The Meredith Corporation was founded in 1902 by Edwin Thomas Meredith, publisher of Successful Farming, which I presume was something like the CNBC of its day, provided you were on Central Time. Mr. Meredith was also a Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson, which just goes to show the revolving door between government and media is the same as it ever was.

1902? That was a hundred years ago! So what does it do now?

Would you believe they still publish Successful Farming? Believe it. But most of their holdings today are in newer old media than that — network affiliate stations and especially glossy women’s magazines.

And we are proud to welcome Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, Midwest Living, American Patchwork and Quilting, Renovation Style, and Ladies Home Journal — among many other fine magazines — to the Blog P.I. stable of publications.

Are they publicly traded? Can I buy the stock?

Good question! Yes, and yes. The ticker is MDP on the NYSE, and by the looks of last quarter, I am definitely hoping this post puts me in the running for some backdated stock options.

Where do you work again?

I thought we covered this. I work for New Media Strategies, the industry pioneer in online intelligence, brand promotion and brand protection. Me, I find myself writing a lot of IMs.

You are so getting downsized.

Come on, that’s not even a question — let alone one I imagine would be frequently asked. But let me assure you, nobody is losing their job. NMS is staying in Rosslyn, under the same management, with minimal interference from our corporate overlords. And I for one welcome our new corporate overlords! I’d like to remind them that as a trusted blog personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

So what does this mean for Blog P.I.?

Um, what do you want it to mean?

Does this mean Blog P.I. will finally get a redesign?

Hey, I happen to like K2 for Word Press, thank you very much. But yes, Blog P.I. will at least come up with a banner at some point. Perhaps Meredith can loan me someone from Renovation Style.

Looks like you’ve sold out, huh?

No, I already did that.

Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention earlier. Did you say this blog was bought by Meredith Baxter Birney?

Yes, that’s right. In fact, as of today Extreme Mortman will be written by Michael Gross.

P.S. I nearly forgot — the AP completely botched their headline on the merger:

Meredith Acquires Interactive Companies Genex, New Media

On the other hand, if that means we’re synonymous with “new media,” how can we complain? But that wasn’t the AP’s only favorable screw-up:

New Media Chief Executive Pete Snyder will continue to lead the 700-employee company after the acquisition.

700! As we’ve been saying around here, you have to love 1000% growth without the corresponding overhead.