Wonkette
We know that a few of you might consider this “inside baseball,” so if that’s the case, then don’t read any more of this post and go do something else. Easy! Now: The New Republic heard the kids’ clamoring and has decided to release the full, insane Politico memo quoted in its new story, about Politico. Mike Allen, or whoever wrote this, is basically an evil version of Hitler. [TNR]
he missed out “WHY”. j-school FAIL. also, evil FAIL.
slinkimalinki: And YOU forgot the “when.” J-school fail on you. Also.
Oh, I get it, the Politico people are the same retards who are always writing pseudo-questions in full caps, as if that gave them gravitas. DO WE KNOW WHERE OBAMA WAS BORN? etc. It’s amazing these idjits have jobs, let alone that anyone cares what they say.
“THE REWARD for cracking this code is that you’re part of an enterprise that is already famous and respect…”
Might be a little argument on that assertion
“-Speed kills. Velocity - SPEED + POWER (good sources, smart thinking)- will make you a winner.”
Perhaps not on the math portion of the SAT. Good enough for J-school, though!
I have had editors just like this over the years. I no longer work for them. And curiously, many of them no longer work for newspapers.
I do not work for Politico. Sure, I could use the cash an all, but I am really glad to be having a cup of coffee at 7:30 in the morning and perusing the front section of the New York Times rather than having to gin up crazy shit to capture eyeballs.
This reads like the literature they give you at any self-help type conference or for a pyramid scheme. Seems like real journalists/journalism doesn’t need this kind of crap.
Lascauxcaveman: And you both forgot WHO cares? Apathy fail! Or, in this case, whatever the opposite of apathy is. Pathy. Athy.
Thy.
Lascauxcaveman: “Whither” too, also. Fail fail fail.
I didn’t go to J skool. Do they really teach you to measure your career success by the number of Drudge links and appearances on Hardball? Sweet. Edward R. Murrow would be so proud. His beloved profession is at the mercy of a tiny SoCal rodent with a hat like Jug Head’s and puffy Irish bloviator with an inferiority complex. There might be a correlation between this development and the downward spiral of unprofitable news gathering organizations.
Oh, fuck. I will only get news from wonkette from now on. World Focus is doing a piece on environmental disaster in poor, fucked Haiti. They eat mud cookies. Also.
My family has a handy practice that everyone should adopt. We just stick stan on any country that’s really fucked up. Like, all Afgan, Pakis, so and and so forth. For instance, Haitistan. Those poor, poor people. Why do I watch the news? It would be so much easier if I were a Repubtard and didn’t give a fuck about anyone but myself.
A Wonkette Story works THE BUTTFUCKING EQUATION:
WHO is trying to GET it or (W)HOARD it?
WHAT MEANS are they using and what OBSTACLES are they encountering?
HOW are they doing and how is the contest reshaping the city, state, party, caucus, government body, industry, corporation, colon or social set?
Ahhh….now I understand why you hate Politico so much. And now I hate Politico passionately, too! We’re SO on the same page (that is not Politico)!
V572625694: I’ve had three semesters of physics and that last bit… just hurts my brain. And the sad thing is, if he went with “velocity is speed plus a direction,” there’d actually be a good and useful metaphor in there.
Now that I think of it, I think speed + power = paradigm shift.
INSIDE BASEBALL!
They have a mimeograph machine.
I wish I had a mimeograph machine.
I love the smell of mimeograph machine in the morning
smells like..
a speed lab in a licorice factory
SPEED + LICORICE = VELOCiRAPTOR HALLUCINATION
Guppy06: And speed kills…what? Carville said it in the ‘92 election because he meant you could reduce the impact of a negative story about Bubba by responding to it quickly. Okay, decent metaphor, full of agression, etc. But at Politico, speed kills only good writing, apparently.
V572625694: Speed kills your fuel efficiency!
DustBowlBlues: Ah, the mud cookies story. Never gets old. Also, it’s apparently good for pregnant women. Except for the hook worm.
“Thank you for indispensable your contribution…”
Engrish, no less. I knew it. They’re fricking outsourcing the editing of this rag to a country without bodface or italics. Buy America, dammit!
DUMB + ASS = POLITICO
Thanks for this, Ken. It is the sweetest inside baseball story EVER.
j6n: WHOM is being affected in city, town, mosque, refrigerator, washington, lamppost?
The eyeballs of mothers and bloggers are now benchmarks by which Politico deems an item important? Hahhahahahahahaha. Oh my.
So, the Politico formula for success means that each story will, in part, “pull pack the curtain on palace intrigue.” That’s a good start, but they should strive to Tupac the Shakurs and movers. Also.
MUST GET MOTHERS’ EYEBALLS.
ALSO, BLOGGERS.
PIKACHU, I CHOOSE YOU!
Did somebody say velociraptor wrasslin?
When I ride my bike to the ferry in the morning, I always ponder the deeper questions:
1. Will this ride TOTALLY make me look cool?
2. Is my helmet something OTHER RIDERS would be JEALOUS of?
3. Is my secretary STARING at me because I just walked IN with my BIKE?
4. When I ride home on the ferry am I turning my BACK LIGHT ON at the right MOMENT?
I think that if everyone lived their personal lives this way, the world would explode.
shortsshortsshorts: You have a black light on your bike? F’in burner.
How does Politico get its scoops? Keen and aggressive reporting, e.g., by tossing a bucket of flaming Sterno onto the diaper of an otherwise peaceful chimp.
You want to get the news? Well, little Mary, dig.
The Politico masthead motto: All The News That Needs To be Created.
And yet by this, I make a modest jest.
This reminds of the Fox News memos.
Politico, put a siren on it, and ya fuckin got Drudge. Calderone is the biggest wanker there and he can suck a dog dick.
Jesus Dancing Christ. So T.J. Mackey runs the Politico?
Or how about this, instead of PIMPING NARRATIVES about POWER STRUCTURES, they could ASK PERTINENT QUESTIONS and stop IGNORING THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM?
Here’s a helpful suggestion nobody seems to have considered. Call Janet Ashcroft and ask her what she talked about on the phone with President Bush the day his minions brought the full force of the Executive Branch to bear on her heavily drugged husband, in order to compel his cooperation in a conspiracy. Stuff like that might even get an invite on Hardball, if you run the spell check enough times.
OT, but did any of y’all catch Sharpton on Rachel tonite? This must be some end of the world recession if it put the skinny on his formerly orbular self. Yiiikes.
Caffeine OWNS THE MORNING
None of this explains why the Politico doesn’t hire black people..seriously, it the whitest place in DC (besides the senate)
Fox News Light: It’s all in the memo. I mean, c’mon, are you telling me your mother is going to read something written by a black? Plus it is well known that teh blax spend their nights clubbing and jitterbugging, then they sleep until noon or so, depending on how much jungle love went down the night before. Late risers don’t get to OWN THE MORNING.
HOARD GET!
Heywood Floyd: Howard not get. He break stuff.
shortsshortsshorts: O Positive?
A year ago I had never heard of the “The Politico.” Now they’re on every 24-hour news network punditing like they’re, I don’t know, pundits or something. How did this happen?
Anyone who can claw their way to the top that quickly has got to be ruthless and thus an asshole of some sort (see, i-bankers).
wouldn’t it be nice if the news actually looked at what worked, as opposed to who’s in power, once in a while?
What programs are functional? Why? What’s actually in that law?
I know, I know, such rampant idealism and hope for information is clearly NOT what real insiders want to know.
“Here at POLITICO, we write the STORIES you DON’T MIND reading.”
Well, OK then. Also, “mindshare”? WTF is “Mindshare”?
And the POWER EQUATION is P=I^2R. Any gigolo knows that.
I remember reading Axelrod told Obama during the campaign that they should only read Politico to know if they’d been deemed dead, since it would mean they were doing the right thing. Nice to know the VALUABLE INSIGHT the WAHINGTON INSIDERS is truly considered a treasure. FOR ME TO POOP ON!
Aside: Anyone finding it ironic that this will be a “most-emailed” story, and that Politico ISN’T HOARDING IT?
Oh yes, and I’m shocked they only pay “J-Mart” $250k to pal around with Karl Rove. That wouldn’t even cover half the Palins? silk boxers.
Journalism, R.I.P.
“would my mother read this” has got to be lowest benchmark imaginable. unless all politico writers’ moms are total assholes, in which case…yeah, okay, fine. good luck with your greatest adventure of trying to warm up frosty old mater, fellas.
Disgusting! Politico should follow the proven New Republic sanctioned formula for its stories: Jews, Negroes, Gays or any combination of the three.
In many ways, this stuff in The New Republic article can be summed up this way: This crap is not real journalism. It…………is…….not……real……journalism. Sorry–that was a “Politico” memo-style device there, with the dots!
The reality is that the more crazed editors try to change real journalism, the less they succeed. And if “Politico” continues to try and report based on publicity and public relations and dog and pony shows and ridiculous–literally ridiculous—thoughts about crappy web sites, they will fail.
By the way: most of these web sites the “Politico” guys seem to be crazily obcessed with–guess what makes up most of their content? That’s right–good, strong journalism stories from The Washington Post, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, Time, Newsweek, CBS,CNN, and other major-city newspapers and major cable and network news operations. That is a fact.
So you’re telling your reporters to write sensational, fact-deprived, research-deprived “stories” designed to get publicity and public relations and post on web sites that contain mostly links to other newspaper stories? Huh? That’s a blueprint for success? That’s a blueprint for failure.
Here’ the key to real journalism: Just report the news. The who, what, where, when, why and how of a story. Most of the time, it’s that simple.
i SEE. I had WONDERED just HOW they were DOING THAT. NOW it MAKES SENSE. ALSO.
A POLITICO story WORKS my last NERVE.