Kochspeak in the Times

Journalistic coup or public relations placement?

What do you make of the Times's exclusive interview with David Koch, the friendlier, East Coast Koch? David Koch and his older brother Charles don't often appear in the news, and they don't often give interviews. They prefer to be known by their names appearing on the honor rolls of numerous big charities.

Yesterday, the Times scored a brief, and rare interview with David Koch at one of the socially desirable charity functions that rich people are wont to attend by virtue of their huge gifts. It sets them apart from you and me. Their peers, as well as the recipients of the largesse always applaud the featured donors. The story played on the top-level web page, but was on Page 12 of the paper version.

The occasion yesterday was the opening of a new research center at M.I.T. that will bear Koch's name. He gave the center $100 million. A trifle for a multi-billionaire, but vastly more than the $43,000 the Kochs' political action committee gave Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, which is why Koch is talking to the reporter. The Kochs' support of Walker, who's out to bust state employee unions in his state, became big news in the last few weeks, and the Kochs don't like it.

They counter by entertaining a few questions, the answers to which are recorded and published. The follow-up interviews in the article went to the doctors who benefit from the largesse. The doctors' work, of course, is a good thing, and it's perfectly understandable that the doctors are grateful. But something's amiss. It's rare that a single charity contribution gets 1,300 words in the Times.

As for Walker, oh, the Kochs don't really know what he's up to there "more than 1,000 miles away" from Cambridge, Mass., where the reporter caught up to Koch. The article doesn't dwell on the money that the Kochs gave to Walker, but quotes Koch as saying only a small portion of his donations goes to politicians. He complains in the article: "I read stuff about me and I say, 'God, I’m a terrible guy,' And then I come here and everybody treats me like I’m a wonderful fellow, and I say, Well, maybe I’m not so bad after all."

If you want to get a feeling for the big picture about Koch donations to all sorts of things, and the Koch's motivations, there was an excellent article in the New Yorker in August:

Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. It was written by Jane Mayer, a former Wall Street Journal reporter now on the New Yorker staff. The Kochs refused to talk to her. I think they know how to choose their shots.

Maybe that's ancient history to the Times.

But Koch does respond to the famous phone call Ian Murphy, the editor of a tiny website in Buffalo, N.Y., who impersonated David Koch and got through to Gov. Walker when no one else could. Koch now says it was "identity theft".

In discussing the call, Koch himself explains the reason all this is important. Although the writer of this story soft-pedals it by pointing out twice that Koch was joking, Koch's one sentence is the essence of the role of money in politics, and a rather clear contradiction of Koch's assertion that he has no idea about what these little politicians are doing.

He told the Times: "I was thinking to myself, My God, if I called up a senator or a congressman to discuss something with them, and they heard David Koch is on the line, they’d immediately say, 'That’s that fraud again — tell him to get lost!'"

Oh, if that were true, what a great public service Ian Murphy has done!

But don't count on it. Those senators and congressmen will
answer the call.

A New Strain of Smug

A gushing story on temperamental chefs appeared in the top center spot of the main web page yesterday afternoon, and was still clinging to the front page at the end of the evening.

It read as if written by a masochist who enjoys being sneered at by artistic cooks. As the story says, "New York has spawned a breed of hard-line restaurants and cafes that are just saying no." And then proceeds to listing a series of faux pas that make snobbish owners and chefs sneer at their customers.

Almost 20 years ago, Seinfeld made fun of the cringing esthetes buying soup in the famous "Soup Nazi" episode. Maybe some of the prohibitions make a sliver of sense -- like not offering takeout espressos. But most of these rules are beyond the pale, like policies of no substitutions and no instructions to the kitchen. So if you won't eat undercooked brussels sprouts for $50 a plate, you won't eat at all. The writer calls this accessorizing to the customer's taste.

This sensibility has gotten out of control. Successful people are ceding control of what they like to eat to obnoxious cooks who might turn you out into the cold night because they are offended by the appellation -- they are chefs, they will tell you angrily, and that means they are filled with artistic temperament. And if you don't like what they cook, they way they cook it, screw you.

The story celebrates a perverted pride in submitting to these petty tyrannies.

Am I overreacting? Do I miss the arch irony? I think not. The headline writer got it right: "Have It Your Way? Puritan Chefs Say No Way", which is a riff on a series of fast food ads from the not-too-distant past. It's your choice: McDonalds, or these heavenly cooks.

I say liberate your ketchup if you want.

At Home With Gail

I've been wondering for a long time just exactly what it is that makes me dislike Gail Collins's columns.

I admit that the wry, folksy tone is not to my taste, but I try to resist reacting on such subjective things.

But there is one thing that never fails to drive me up a wall: Nonsense.

After the first few lines of her last effort, Girls and Boys Together, I came across the line, "I got married when I was 25, and I felt as if that was extremely late in the game." I looked over at the head shot immediately to the left of this passage and saw a woman who's got to be a decade or more younger than I. I remember what she cloyingly calls the Mesozoic era quite well, and tbe reality was the exact opposite. Since she appears to be in her 50s, maybe even her 40s, her claim is pointedly nonsensical.

I checked and found that she is actually around my age. Still, she's a 60s kid. I also found that she has a good education and has worked in journalism from the beginning. She's clearly bright and liberal in politics and social values -- in other words a solid citizen of the East Coast intelligensia. And as such, this feeling weird about being an old maid when she was young is bull, unless she was completely out of it then. By 1970, the year she married, hardly anyone her age married, and the few that did split up right away. Gail and I were young at the same time and grew up in the middle of several social revolutions, all of which looked askance at marriage and other family values.

There's another too cute passage, but the rest of the column is an excellent, informative report on a federal government report on the status of women. I wish the news pages were filled with such clear, direct and economical stories.

I wondered what the readers made of all this, and I started reading the couple hundred comments. I was floored by a stylistic detail in them: Not only were they long and fulsome in their praise, almost all who addressed her, addressed her as Gail. That has such an odd ring in the Times, which may be the last English speaking place to use honorifics.

What then are her fellow columnists called? Her partner in something called "The Conversation", David Brooks. He is Mr. Brooks to his fans. Moving along to the others, Krugman is often Professor Krugman. Blow is Mr. Blow. Friedman is Mr. Friedman. Cohen is Mr. Cohen. For some reason, Douthat is Douthat. There are also variations and exceptions, but I'm not going to do a count.

Maureen Dowd, the other female columnist, would be the real test. Her fans hesitate, evade and avoid. When pressed against the wall, some call her by her full name, but it seems she isn't addressed directly very often. (Though, in truth, I noticed one Maureen in the latest batch, and there might have been one Roger among Cohen's fans.)

Maybe the readers, or at least the commenters among them, betray a subtle sexism. Maybe Gail invites familiarity with her warm and fuzzy intros. Maybe Dowd is more threatening. Not being a Times writer, I cannot read minds and cannot explain this.

The Winds of Democracy Reach the Magazine

I missed it, but what of it? Those magazine stories are so, so very long that I rarely can get to the end. I didn't see the editing credit and emails there.

It seems that the new editor, Hugo Lindgren, has changed the policy so that editors will get credit at the ends of articles, and that both writers and editors will have to provide email addresses.

I'm of two minds on the first reform. On the one hand, it's a bit of a revolution for all those nameless souls who toil as editors at all the lower levels, from the the copy editors on up to those functionaries who talk directly to the people at the highest levels. On the other hand, it sounds a bit like the film industry, which is so glamorous that even the people who fetch lunch are named in the end credits.

Thanks to Adweek for noticing this development in the previews to this Sunday's Magazine.

Long ago, I loved two publications above all others. One was the New Yorker before Tina Brown reversed the direction of the earth's spin to make Hollywood rise in the East every morning, and the other was the Sunday Times Magazine before Adam Moss turned it into a knockoff of every other glossy in the city. Thus began my retreat as a paying customer of journalism, way back in the early 90s.

Now, that I'm engaged in this exercise reviewing the daily newspaper for a few weeks, I've read that Lindgren was planning big changes for the Magazine and as the enemy of my enemy is my friend (symbolically, of course), I had hope.

Lists of people who will be leaving their posts are all over the place. All the departures seem like good ideas to me. I hope he's not going to be immersed in trivia such as email accounts that in all likelihood will never be checked. I mean what glam magazine writer wants his iPhone bonging away all through dinner at some trendy restaurant?

But wouldn't you know it. There's one email that I cannot seem to find anywhere in magazine articles: Hugo Lindren's.

Where Are the Popular Kids Now?

The Mideast coverage is dropping out of the top 10 lists at the Times, as was probably inevitable. The story is multifaceted, difficult, and above all uncertain. There is a probably a principle of diminishing returns in what readers get out of ongoing coverage of even the big stories, and maybe even an emotional reaction of "enough!"

When I noticed this decline in popularity of the Mideast story last night, I wondered whether newspaper audiences were the same all over the country. I was surprised that they are all distinct: It was worse inland from the coasts.

With a broad brush, I'll draw several very tentative conclusions. I'll give you the more detailed comparison down at the end of this post. They're fascinating.

• The New York Times, and the LA Times, are the only ones whose readers kept any Mideast stories in the top 10, not even the Washington Post has any.
  
  
• The readers of the Times favor more of a daily magazine, with more columns and more analytical pieces in the top 10, but a magazine with a Yuppie cast.
  
  
• The New York Times readers don't bother much with New York stories. In fact, I found the Long Island attempted murder story I wrote about earlier this morning in the Washington Post most-popular lists.
  
  
• Some of the smaller papers in between the coasts are like another kind of magazine in that their readers gravitate towards celebrities and sports topics much more.
  
  

Much of this might be expected, but my survey lacks a clear idea how the different publication do their tabulations. I don't have enough information to make sense out of any one paper's lists. I don't know what information they track and how they count it.

Without knowing the relative sizes, say of the number 1 story to the number 10, they are meaningless in terms of an internal comparison. Without the absolute numbers, there is no explaining why some stories seem to stick on the list for days and others come and go.

As far as the methodology, there are different ways to collect clicks and to count them. It looks like the Times collects detailed information, but there are many subtleties.

But interpretation is still difficult. For example, what happens if I start a story at one time and go back to it later? Under what circumstance does that count twice? What happens if I walk away with a Times page on my browser and don't return until after work? Does it imply that I read the story thoroughly and pondered it, or that I walked away with a shrug?

For one thing, the most-emailed list is worthless to me. I suppose the idea is that a story emailed from one reader to another has a special value. But the data are far too biased to have any meaning at all.

The Times has an "email this story" button, but there's no need to use it. It clutters up the email I send to friends so I use the browser function to email the link. If you don't use the Times's button, the Times's logs won't show it as emailed. And finally, no matter what level your technical sophistication, the Times has no clue about your motivation. Maybe the staticians tell the news executives those are inconsequential and will average out -- just the way the Wall Street quants knew the housing market would fall into the chasm that it did.

There's another important issue: Does popularity determine the play of the stories? Different papers say different things. I was thinking that this might be the time for me to get on the phone and ask them, but I that the Times did a good story itself in September on this issue.

The fact is that stories move around all over the front of the web page all day long. Stories appear on the web often hours before the print version is laid out. Does popularity matter?

I think we could answer that with a long-term statistical study of the most-popular lists and the play of the stories, but it would require a long time because we don't know the details of the lists. But if you read the story from September, the answer is clear that they do -- somewhat.

Read the Times's executive editor, Bill Keller: "The New York Times does not use Web metrics to determine how articles are presented, but it does use them to make strategic decisions about its online report," according to the story.

Keller is quoted thusly: "We don't let metrics dictate our assignments and play, because we believe readers come to us for our judgment, not the judgment of the crowd. We're not 'American Idol.' "

Then the story says, "Mr. Keller added that the paper would, for example, use the data to determine which blogs to expand, eliminate or tweak."

I agree 1,000 percent, to borrow a quote from the 1972 presidential campaign. It's carefully worded. The metrics don't dictate, they influence. That's how I read it. It could be a politician talking about his wealthy contributors. I think these lists and the way it looks like the news is following such audience surveys can destroy the news and turn it all into the smiley banter of early morning TV.

I just hope they're god-damn careful about how they interpret the metrics. The consequences could be very bad for them, those people on the Times payroll, and for us.

Here is a most informal comparison done yesterday evening:

The New York Times:

1. Live Blogging the iPad 2 Announcement
   
2. Thomas L. Friedman: This Is Just the Start
   
3. Justices Rule for Protesters at Military Funerals
   
4. A Good Appetite: Once a Villain, Coconut Oil Charms the Health Food World
   
5. Op-Ed Contributor: Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You
   
6. Basics: Natalie Portman, Oscar Winner, Was Also a Precocious Scientist
   
7. Can Exercise Keep You Young?
   
8. Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges
   
9. Jobs Returns to Introduce a New iPad
   
10. Rebels in Libya Win Battle but Fail to Loosen Qaddafi’s Grip
    

The LA Times

1. FDA orders 500 cough and cold drugs off the market
   
2. Senate approves stopgap funding measure
   
3. Yemen leader reportedly reaches tentative pact with opposition
   
4. Rights group takes a step-by-step approach on gay marriage
   
5. Lakers seeking payback against the dreaded Bobcats
   
6. Wisconsin recall efforts spread to Senate Republicans
   
7. California's Indian casinos slowly recovering from recession
   
8. Serena Williams has pulmonary embolism and 'unexpected scare'
   
9. With stopgap funding bill passed, budget sparring resumes
   
10. Serena Williams suffers pulmonary embolism
    

The Washington Post

1. Obama signs short-term spending bill, averting federal shutdown
   
2. Lt. Gen. John Kelly, who lost son to war, says U.S. largely unaware of sacrifice
   
3. Supreme Court rules First Amendment protects church's right to picket funerals
   
4. NY police: Gunman intended to commit mass murder
   
5. Obama's 'Where's Waldo?' presidency
   
6. iPad 2 specs announced by Steve Jobs today at Apple event
   
7. Charlie Sheen's Twitter following grows; actor reacts to losing custody of twin sons
   
8. Five myths about Ronald Reagan
   
9. The TV Column: Charlie Sheen keeps talking; CBS gets in on the conversation
   
10. Midwest union battles highlight debate over improving schools
    
    

The Miami Herald

1. Miami Heat finally conceding that Big 3 is not enough
   
2. Miami Hurricanes walk-ons are ‘heart and soul’ of team
   
3. After Kirby Hocutt’s departure from UM, only questions remain
   
4. Miami Police officer under arrest for alleged fraud involving non-profit education group
   
5. Miami Heat’s Dwyane Wade adjusts to lesser role late in games
   

The Dallas Morning News

1. Christina Aguilera
   
2. Charlie Sheen
   
3. Kamala Harris
   
4. Serena Williams
   
5. Ralph Macchio
   
6. iPad 2
   
7. Christina Hendricks
   
8. John Galliano
   
9. Bristol Palin
   
10. Josh Holloway
    

The Chicago Tribune

1. Live sex toy demonstration held on NU campus
   
2. Flee Partyers seem right at home behind Illinois' Jell-O Curtain (it's a column about the Wisconsin Democrats hiding out in Illinois)
   
3. More minorities moving to suburbs
   
4. Steve Jobs emerges from medical leave to unveil iPad 2
   
5. Serena Williams at home recuperating after pulmonary embolism, hematoma
   
   

The Many Degrees of Murder

All murders are not equal. In the news in general, and the Times in particular, only a few murders actually make it into public view. Murder, in general, implies some intention, a minimum of planning, that varies from one state's criminal code to another. Many kinds of killing by one human of another are not murder.

Most murders, I expect, are done by the criminal underclass, and are almost universally ignored in the media. On the other hand, you can understand that certain murders are automatically newsworthy, like murders involving celebrities, politicians and other headline names. And recently, all too often, murders with political motives, that is, terrorism.

But there are murders of a special class.

These are done by people who look so normal. Like the woman in a middle-class suburb of Tampa, Fla., who shot her two sweet teen-aged children to death in January. This one is worth good play and 1,600 words in the Times.

I wonder, then, why is this old murder worth attention? The standard editor's response begs the question: It's news judgment. But I think I can explain. A story like this sends a cheap shiver up the spines of other middle-class people because it could happen right there in their own peaceful communities, with good schools, maybe a golf course, just like Tampa Palms.

The point is not lost on book publishers and authors with vague literary ambitions. Together they turn out scores of these true crime titillating tomes.

I think the most economical way to convey the tone of the article is to quote chunks of it. I hope this doesn't run afoul of legalities of the Internet.

The community is stunned. The story says, "But in recent weeks, the residents have become all too aware of how deceptive surface appearances can be. On Jan. 28, the police arrived at a two-story house on a quiet cul-de-sac in Tampa Palms to find Julie Schenecker unconscious on the patio, blood on her white bathrobe. Inside were the bodies of her two children, Calyx, 16, and Beau, 13."

It goes on: "Since the killings, neighbors, teachers and others who knew the family have struggled to reconcile the outward trappings of a picture-perfect suburban life — the car pool, the soccer games and track meets, the Christmas card photos of a beaming couple with their two handsome, popular, high-achieving children, the family weekends spent boating or skiing — with an act so dark that, as one neighbor, ... , put it, 'there’s no words to describe it. It was stunning, unthinkable.'"

But no Times story about people is complete without a touch of psychology: "Yet such extreme violence rarely comes out of the blue, and since the killings, fragments of information have surfaced that hint that the family’s veneer may have covered a more turbulent reality." It turns out that the suspect had a car accident in November. (She drives a Mercedes, by the way.) Investigating officers noted signs of drug use.

Since there's a hint of some systemic oversight, for example, some failure by society to recognize the warning signs, it's typical to get academia involved.

The story continues, "Forensic researchers who have studied mothers convicted of killing their children said that such women often leave a trail of clues behind them." It continues quoting Cheryl L. Meyer, a professor at Wright State University, at length.

What does it all mean? The story says the suspect will likely plead insanity.

Suburb’s Veneer Cracks: Mother Is Held in Deaths

---

Meanwhile, much closer to home, and probably more than few steps down the socio-economic ladder, we have a most curious wire story.

A heavily armed man who luckily crashed his pickup truck on Long Island before he did too much damage. He shot an emergency medical technician who went to the accident scene, but was shot and killed by the police soon after.

The suspect was so heavily armed, with six weapons and ammo strapped to his body, that the police said he appeared to be on his way to carry out a mass killing.

From the map, it looks like he was on a local street, but like most of Long Island he was close to one of the highways leading into the city.

I checked the New York tabloids and they had the same scant wire story, which did not include the suspect's name. The tabloid did, however, allow comments, and some readers immediately suggested that the suspect had an Islamic name. The comments alone don't feed that anti-Islamic hysteria, but the uncharacteristic politeness of the media invites it.

Here's the Times editing of the wire.

---

A look at Long Island Newsday provides some answer: At least the motive and a name.

"The family of the man, Jason Beller, 31, of Commack, who was killed in a shootout with police, Wednesday night described him as 'extremely troubled.' They offered an apology to ... " the EMT worker who was wounded, Newsday said.

But few of us will know more, for Newsday sits behind a paywall that very few of us who don't have Long Island cable television ever pay to get behind. Newsday is owned by the cable company, which provides an online subscription to subscribers. Beyond them, almost no one else ever bought the paper that once advertised that it was dedicated to "truth, justice and the comics," when the paper's former owners had ambitions to compete in the New York. The Times respects that.

A precis from Newsday

To Greener Pastures

The news burst today that Frank Rich was jumping ship and heading to rejoin his old friend Adam Moss at New York Magazine.

By lunchtime, Google's index had located more than 400 stories in the media and on the Internet on the personnel move. That sounds like an outsized reaction for a story that didn't make much of a splash in the Times.

Rich has, for another two weeks, a prime spot for political pontificators in his weekly column on Sunday. He trades this for a monthly column and some indistinct role at New York.

Of course, Rich and Moss, New York's editor, are very old friends. In fact, it was Rich who introduced Adam Moss to Joe Lelyveld, the former executive editor at the Times, and got him hired as a consultant with indistinct responsibilities. Moss was out of work and couldn't find a spot in the magazine world of New York after he spent the two years leading a new magazine 7 Days into the ground in 1990. According to contemporary accounts, Rich rescued Moss, who then went on to head the Times Magazine and later to New York.

Now, the Times is certainly very much alive if not well. It's also doubtful that the motive is money, because there's simply not that much swirling around the publishing world. But money's not the only thing of value in the world.

A year ago, two of Rich's fellow columnists, Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, were identified as members of the faction that tried to hold off on a Times paywall. They didn't like the dramatic loss of readers that accompanied the Times's earlier experiment with charging for content.

Rich, who is perhaps more astute in office politics, wasn't mentioned in that context. But I don't imagine he relishes a dramatic loss of readers. And a second failure in an effort to wring subscription fees out of the Internet audience would look really bad. Bad for the writers; bad for the paper; bad for the stockholders.

Also by lunchtime, the Times issued its first quarter report to Wall Street. There was some slight improvement in financials (and the stock jumped over 3%, and the executives promised that the paywall is close, very close.

Perhaps what goes around ... and Moss is rescuing Rich.