This was posted on Friday afternoon but recorded on Thursday at about 5:30 p.m. — just as news was breaking worldwide about the death of some guy named Michael Jackson. At some point near the middle of the recording, I will look down and to the left (my right) and tap on my iPhone, off-screen, puzzling over a text message from my brother:

Michael Jackson dead?

I had actually gone into the recording having heard that Jackson had been rushed to the hospital, but you know how it is — or was — with Jacko news. Always something. In any case, there is a moment immediately following where I contemplate mentioning this during the recording. It’s probably better that I didn’t. In any case, if you happen to pinpoint the moment where this happens, send me the dingalink — I’m curious tp see it, but I can never really watch very much of myself on these things (the Bheads commenters are too kind).

In any case, we talked about Mark Sanford’s press conference announcing his marital infidelity, the insider-outsider outrage (and inrage?) about President Obama’s semi-staged Q&A with HuffPo blogger Nico Pitney, plus upcoming bills on health care and the environment.

Considering that my last two posts were more or less about non-coverage of the John Edwards kerfuffle and highly active Wikipedia articles, I can’t believe I’ve so far missed out on the controversy over what to do with said scandal on said politician’s entry on said reference website.

More than 26,000 words (!)* have been expended on the discussion page associated with the John Edwards encyclopedia entry since the National Enquirer posted a story claiming he was seen leaving a hotel room rented for Rielle Hunter (last week), the woman with whom they have alleged he fathered a child out of wedlock (last year). So far, there is no mention of this story in the article — let alone the existence of Ms. Hunter — and because it has been temporarily locked (see above), it doesn’t appear that anyone will. Not just yet, anyway.

I’ve now read about half the debate, which is the whole extent of it before new people start showing up and re-arguing old points. Based on my own knowledge of how Wikipedia works and what I’ve seen in the press, I’ve come to the conclusion that, even though it sure looks like Edwards’ goose is cooked, Wikipedia’s editors are currently doing the responsible thing by keeping it out of the article.

This post is longer than most, so I am tucking the length of it below the fold. If this subject interests you, follow me.

*When I started writing this post yesterday, it was 15,000. Another 11,000 words (!) went up overnight.

Update: This post was featured in a story by Sarah Stirland at Wired.com today, and points out, there are now a couple sentences about the controversy in the article. I left this comment on the story:

When the page came unlocked, it seems that Wikipedia editors previously uninvolved in the debate came onto the talk page, held a formal vote, and now it’s just a few sentences in the 2008 Presidential campaign section. Or it was until I changed it to “2008 presidential campaign” — a Manual of Style thing.

I’ve seen it argued several times that many people will be coming to the article on Edwards for information about the situation — after all, it’s his second Google search result — but, and you’ll have to trust me for a moment, that is not in fact reason enough to include it. Wikipedia rules supersede any supposed “right” to read about it on Wikipedia.

So why not add it?

Though I certainly agree that it looks like the stories about Edwards going back several months now have some real merit and something certainly happened at the Beverly Hilton two Mondays back, the key allegations of infidelity and illegitimate paternity have yet to be reported by a reliable source, generally meaning any publication with a record of accuracy and fact-checking. The Enquirer, which has indeed accurately reported scandals involving politicians but is also known for paying sources, falls short of this standard. And Fox News, which does count as a reliable source, has only corroborated circumstantial details of the story.

This standard is not being selectively applied. When Tim Russert’s Wikipedia article was edited to reflect his passing before there was confirmation, I commended the editor who changed it back:

I’d also like to salute the anonymous first-time editor at 66.187.200.74 in New York City for rolling the page back until the rumors could be verified. … [T]he Verifiability requirement for new information is one of the central tenets of Wikipedia. It’s what keeps the sometimes unreliable website anywhere in the neighborhood of reliable.

As one of the article’s chief defenders pointed out,

Fox confirmed that Edwards was at the hotel. Should we add in a section that says, “Edwards found at hotel avoiding tabloid reporters”? That is all that has been corroborated.

That’s what Alex Pareene suggested at Gawker yesterday, not at all unreasonably:

Wikipedia’s power-mad power-users are immediately deleting any and all mention of the John Edwards lovechild scandal the second any other user adds it. You could go over there and add “In July of 2008, Edwards was confronted at a Beverly Hills hotel by National Enquirer reporters searching for evidence of his participation in an extra-martial affair”—all true and verified by more “reliable” sources!—and it wouldn’t last two minutes.

So the better question is: Regardless of the merit of the central charge, doesn’t the fact of the controversy warrant mentioning? The short answer is: Not yet.

To be sure, many have pointed out that the Enquirer story has been discussed in mainstream newspapers, and the Edwards talk page is in fact hosting two separate lists of traditional media articles covering the dispute.

There are two reasons to proceed with caution, in addition to the truth remaining at large. One is Wikipedia’s strict guidelines for biographies of living persons and the other is that Wikipedia is a reference site, not a news site.

To take the last point first, the simple fact of Wikipedia’s not being a news source means that being up-to-date is just one value in competition with others. One seemingly strong argument for adding the controversy to the article is that it is a major event in Edwards’ career. That will probably be true, but we still do not know how it will play out. As the Wikipedians like to say, Wikipedia is not a crystal ball.

To the first point, this caution goes double for articles about living people. These articles are scrutinized more than most, because Wikipedia knows that its articles can meaningfully impact the lives of its subjects. Even though Wikipedia does not consider Wikipedia itself to be a reliable source, people will still believe what they read there. And can you blame Wikipedia for not wanting to be sued? Just because Edwards isn’t suing the Enquirer doesn’t mean Wikipedia should run with it. Not to mention, Wikipedia doesn’t “run” stories.

Here’s an example I think Edwards’ critics will respect: Last year, the Enquirer reported claims that George W. Bush had resumed drinking. This story was never corroborated, and unlike this current Edwards situation, that story passed quickly into obscurity. Consequently, you will not find this mentioned on the main article about Bush. Nor should it be. Until the situation is revolved, the two Enquirer stories are more alike than not. But if the media controversy does have a notable or reportable impact on Ewards’ future career, it will be duly noted.

Perhaps it will even warrant its own encyclopedia entry.

Ultimately, the lack of corroboration and uncertain notability of the situation is is all that’s keeping it from inclusion on the Edwards article. Patience. And remember that Wikipedia is best understood as a starting point for research, not as a final arbiter of truth.

Tony Pierce, editor of the Los Angeles Times, issued an edict to the paper’s own bloggers to stay off the subject. “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer, we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations,” he wrote.

Wow! Tony Pierce, longtime writer of Tony Pierce dot com + busblog and former editor of LAist, has risen all the way to become chief editor of the fourth-largest newspaper in the United States by reported circulation? That’s incredible!

It may sound credible, but it certainly is not creditable. Pierce is a web editor at the L.A. Times, overseeing about two dozen blogs on the latimes.com website. And except for the part about working for the Times, that sounds like a pretty good job by itself.

The Times of London simply omitted the conditional “an” before “editor,” giving an inflated impression of Pierce’s role. I thought maybe there was a difference between U.S. and U.K. English usage, but after clicking around google.co.uk, I’m pretty sure it’s just a mistake.

So who is editor of the Los Angeles Times? After all the turmoil at the newspaper these past few years, I had to look it up: Russ Stanton, a 10-year veteran of the paper, who was in fact a web editor himself.

So don’t count Pierce out yet. In the meantime, at least there are now thousands of people around the world who think that he is, in fact, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times.

P.S. Another reason why Pierce has a shot? He may have been punk at one time, but from what I’ve heard of the fallout, he’s been fairly humorless about it. I suggest Tony “Keep Rockin’” Pierce as an appropriate nickname.

P.P.S. This leaked follow-up memo from L.A. Times executive editor Meredith Artley gets it right the second time. That’s one memo too late, but it still should have been leaked more widely.

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.

Everybody’s calling Eliot Spitzer’s fall “Shakespearean.” I’ve seen the comparison made in The Wall Street Journal, on blogs, even on Fox News, and I wonder if other Shakespeare scholars find this as cringe-worthy as I do. Even if he did quote Hamlet in his high school yearbook, Spitzer’s story is in no way Shakespearean and he certainly is nothing like a Shakespearean hero. Not even a little bit.

Characters like Hamlet or Macbeth are destroyed by the virtues which lifted them to greatness in the first place. The most remarkable feature of the whole Spitzer debacle, his extreme hypocrisy, is maybe the one characteristic all Shakespearean tragic heroes lack. …

All [these pundits] are saying is that something dramatic has happened. “Shakespearean” used to mean a situation of extreme emotions in high politics mixed in with a measure of the unfathomability of fate. Now it is shorthand for any situation in which somebody becomes powerful and/or loses power. The whole range of Shakespearean terms has been debased. “Lady Macbeth” is shorthand for any ambitious woman. “Othello” is shorthand for anyone jealous. “Hamlet” is shorthand for anyone who overthinks. The time has come either to use these terms far more selectively or to retire them altogether.

Marche was the first to say it like an English teacher, but he is not in fact the first to say it at all. Dean Barnett at the Weekly Standard beat him to the “you’re no Shakespeare” punch by more than two weeks:

“Shakespearean” suggests a certain nobility of character that eventually lost out to the tragic figure’s flaws. Pardon me for playing Mickey the Dunce, but where, pray tell, was Eliot Spitzer’s nobility? As a prosecutor, he was a bully. As a husband and a father, he was a wretched failure who brought humiliation to his family while violating their trust in a serial manner.

And finally, when the gig was up and he could have earned a small measure of redemption by showing a little honor and dealing forthrightly with his shortcomings, what did he do? He refused to face the music. He didn’t answer press inquiries. He uttered some rank rubbish suggesting he had a disease. And he hid behind the wife that he had treated so poorly.

This is, of course, a slightly different gloss on what “Shakespearean” is supposed to mean. But where Barnett says “nobility,” Marche says “dignity.”

Of the 76 results at Google News for Spitzer + Shakespearean, they aren’t all responsible for the cheapening of “Shakespearean.” Then again, those who object also have somewhat different notions of what “Shakespearean” is supposed to mean. But I’m inclined to think they all have a point.

Make sense?

This would be completely impossible without WikiRage, an online resource keeping track of the most-edited pages for various time periods and categories. We’ll be using the previous week and the raw number of edits. Also, credit for the concept goes to the podcast Wikipedia Weekly which has done something similar before. However, as I count just three episodes 2008 YTD, it is weekly in name only. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen to us. With that, let’s look at the list for the week of March 16-22:

1. Article: Arthur C. Clarke
   Why: The celebrated author of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and many other science fiction stories passed away this week at age 90.
   Detail: His death loosed a number of obituaries and many, many edits clarifying many aspects of his life and stories.
2. Article: 2008 unrest in Tibet
   Why: It’s more than a current event; it’s the worst political turmoil in mainland China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
   Detail: Despite China’s attempts to keep the lid on news coverage it has generated plenty, and no small amount of disagreement about what belongs in the article.
3. Article: Deaths in 2008
   Why: Among the notables passing away in the past week: Science fiction writer Clarke, film director Anthony Minghella, actor Paul Scofield, former child aviator Vicki Van Meter.
   Detail: Not currently evident from the page, an editing skirmish over whether to include Abigail Taylor, a six-year-old Minnesota girl who drew headlines when her intestines were partially sucked out by the drain of a public swimming pool.
4. Article: Britney’s New Look
   Why: It was the new episode of South Park this week. It was also about Britney Spears, which must count for something.
   Detail: Fans of the show take the plot summaries very seriously.
5. Article: Bear Stearns
   Why: Facing imminent collapse, the brokerage firm sold to JP Morgan Chase for $2 a share, down from $30 the week before and $172 at its height.
   Detail: Bear Stearns has its defenders; the “Controversy” section dealing with the crisis itself is still yo-yoing between deletion and re-inclusion. Who will win? I’d bet on a slightly toned-down and retitled version of that section. One can’t argue the plunge in share price and sale is not a key event in the company’s history.
6. Article: David Paterson
   Why: Not only is he the new governor of New York, but he’s already embroiled in a controversy over whether he abused state resources in conjunction with admitted romantic affairs.
   Detail: Prior to taking over for Eliot Spitzer this week, Paterson was said to be the first legally blind governor of any U.S. state. However, that may be a matter of dispute.
7. Article: 2008 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament
   Why: Productivity plummets (not really) as March Madness sweeps office spaces across the country.
   Detail: This page is amazingly detailed. Whomever designed the bracket templates, I salute you.
8. Article: Horton Hears a Who! (film)
   Why: It was the number one movie at the U.S. box office this week.
   Detail: Now that the film has been released, moviegoers are building out the entry. Oh, the things some people see fit to add to Wikipedia entries.
9. Article: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
   Why: This staple of college-level English courses hasn’t changed in 500 years… right?
   Detail: Turns out there is a new translation of the poem out. At least, that’s where I think what is causing a number of edits aiming to emphasize Freudian and homoerotic subtext in the tale. However, other Wikipedians disagree — and both have been debated on the discussion page. Literary fight! Then again, some vandals want others to confuse it with Monty Python.
10. Article: Brian Posehn
    Why: On March 19, the comedian and actor mentioned editing his own Wikipedia entry on Late Night with Conan O’Brien
    Detail: It’s amusing how would-be Wikipedia editors can’t even agree on what Posehn actually said.

Well, that’s it for this week. If you have questions or comments about this feature, please let us know.

So what did that initial explosion look like, online? All it takes is a little bit of trial-and-error on Memeorandum, the live-updated aggregation of the political blogosphere, find out where the Spitzer scandal first popped into online consciousness. Specifically, it appeared about midway down the page of the 2:20 p.m. update like so:

Just kinda sandwiched in there between a couple other articles getting some contemporaneous linkage from around the ’sphere. Hats off to Jammie Wearing Fool and New York Magazine — one pure blogger, one blogging MSM outlet — for getting there first, even if some luck played a part in their picking up the Times report ahead of the pack. And it didn’t take an hour for the rest of the pack to join in. The article reached its highest point of linkage at 5:15 in the evening, just shy of three hours after it was first posted:

The rest is recent history: the offline mediasphere swooped in after, Gov. Spitzer threw in the towel after 48 hours’ thought, and his consort, Ashley Alexandra Dupre/DiPietro/Youmans joined Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails among the few musical artists to earn millions releasing music online. Aside from a “60 Minutes” interview a few years down the road (his) or a reality show on E! (hers) this story is about done. Coincidentally, just in time for the McGreevey sex scandal to make headlines and bloglines once again.

Bonus pre-scandal tidbit: Lest we fgorget, here’s Hotline’s Quote of the Day from Feb. 27:

“I’ll be there maybe later in the week or next week, if this continues.”
NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer, explaining why he won’t be campaigning for HRC in OH 2/27

In retrospect, I’m sure he would have rather spent that week campaigning for Sen. Clinton.

And how are these two stories different?

Simple, really. You see, the first one they grabbed off the AP wire. The second one was written by a Politico staffer, Carrie Budoff Brown.

The first version contains this canned response from Larry Craig spokesman Sidney Smith:

“We’re still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight – and stay in the Senate.”

Whereas the Politico’s version contains this canned response from Larry Craig communications director Dan Whiting:

“As he stated on Saturday, Senator Craig intends to resign on September 30. However, he is fighting these charges, and should he be cleared before then, he may, and I emphasize may, not resign.”

Was this worth alerting me twice? I can’t see how. I generally appreciate the alerts they send out. But right now, the only thing separating Politico from Fox News or MSNBC is a sound effect.

Update: Okay, at this point, I kind of just give up.

• Karl Rove
• Denny Hastert
• Deborah Pryce
• Chip Pickering
• Alberto Gonzales
• Tony Snow
• John Warner
• Larry Craig

Chuck Hagel could have a similar announcement within weeks. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, survivor (of John Thune and a kind-of stroke) Tim Johnson alone in the Senate remains a question mark. Heck, Lautenberg sounds like he’ll stick around to beat Strom Thurmond’s record.

Who am I missing?

P.S. That said, I think the editors at TNR Online are going about this all wrong:

Judis’ actual piece is pretty much straight analysis, not at all implausible, and definitely not gloating like the long headline. And what’s with the short headline? Dear Editor, for the analogy to work, isn’t Judis arguing this will be a Blue Dawn? Remember, the Reds were the enemies.

Now on the same day that this story broke two other stories broke which contained absolute bombshells to both Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party in general. The first was the fact that George Soros’s defunked America Coming Together received the third largest fine in FEC history for voter fraud during the 2004 election. The other news of course – which hasn’t been told completely – is the growing campaign scandal involving several democratic candidate for president – including Hillary Clinton.

Both stories were just about knocked off the page by the Craig story and the obvious question was who behind the witholding of the story – again for two months – as almost to emerge the minute anti Hillary Clinton or anti democratic stories unfold.

First I’d like to point out, these stories (plus the not-so-distant Vitter revelations) mark another example of a cliché that isn’t necessarily wrong: Republicans can’t have sex, and Democrats can’t have money.

Second, he’s not wrong — the Hsu story might have been observed as a sign for Democrats that a Hillary Clinton administration could be scandal-ridden like her husband’s (well, not exactly like). And the left accuses Republicans of election-stealing enough that the Soros group’s financial misdeeds could have been pundicized, and bore greater scrutiny. Instead it seems to have only bored.

In fact, this this IceRocket trend chart showing comparative mentions almost makes the above observations sound understated:

Indeed the GOP gay no-sex scandal carried the week, and while that may be unfair, it certainly isn’t surprising. While there may well be solid examples of liberal-leaning reportorial and editorial decisions to be found throughout all this coverage, one also cannot deny the human drama of Craig’s unraveling career is more compelling than improprieties by non-electeds. In a tabloidy way, of course. After all, sensationalism is a troubling media bias, too.

P.S. Less than a year ago, this blog defended Sen. Craig against rumors very similar to his Minneapolis bust. Whoops! But based on the evidence at the time, no apology is necessary. A whisper campaign that turns out to be right is still a whisper campaign. A named source would have been a different story.

P.P.S. Mickey Kaus has a point about what Soros did and didn’t do. What he didn’t do was anything that conservatives and libertarians think should be illegal. What he did do was run afoul of existing FEC regulations. But conservatives have lost those battles, at least for now. What should be done is to change those laws, not excuse Soros for breaking them.

Breaking: AP says Craig is out. And you know what I mean.