You already know if you’ve been following the Solomon Scandals blog. My name is David, I’m a newsaholic, and I’m cheering for the TBD news startup to thrive here in the Washington area. But will topics like sports and food elbow aside civic matters at times because of the personal passions of TBD’s affiliate bloggers? […]
Read MoreTBD’s Washington area news startup: Niche blogs wooed—but no signs YET of a hyperlocal nirvana
Update, July 2: Here, including further comments from TBD. Thanks for listening. – D.R. The TBD Web startup for local news in the D.C. area has added Allergy Life in Loudoun, U Street Girl, Rockville Central and other blogs, pushing the number of network affiliates past 70. But I’m still not yet seeing enough commitment […]
Read MoreSally Quinn, snobbery and the Mink Stole Ladies Syndrome
Washington is full of people telling others how to live their lives or at least wishing they could. Same for the media world. I call it the Mink Stole Ladies Syndrome, based on a party scene in The Solomon Scandals from the D.C. of several decades ago. Sally Sterling Quinn, with her judgmental dissections of […]
Read MoreWashington Post vs. Allbritton’s TBD Web startup plans: BOTH sides could do better
Mediaite has it right. Halfhearted measures like a kind-of local blog network are not enough to protect the Washington Post’s domination of D.C.-area news and opinion. The Post’s new blogger network is just a start and merely one measure; but it’s still a far cry from what I’d do in L Street’s place. Why no […]
Read MoreHyperlocal journalism: Georgetown publisher robbed—and eager to tell neighbors about it. Lesson for the Washington Post?
Update, 1:47 p.m.: Post rival’s local news strategy—a Poynter Institute item. – D.R. My online friend Beth Solomon, publisher of TheGeorgetownDish and absolutely no relative of the Sy Solomon in my newspaper novel, got robbed. A thief carried off Beth’s purse, checkbook, credit cards, wallet, car keys, iPhone, Blackberry, everything, after she left her car […]
Read MoreDeath notice gouges: $450 for 182 words in the San Francisco Chronicle?
Alan "Newsosaur" Mutter balked at paying the $450 that the San Francisco Chronicle wanted to charge for a "one-day run of a crappy-looking, 182-word death notice." So what does the Washington Post, here in the D.C. area, bill for such notices? "$9.21 per line, with a minimum charge of $64.47 (which includes up to seven […]
Read MoreApple iPad: Another way to read ‘The Solomon Scandals’ and other books
The Solomon Scandals is mostly about yesterday, but e-books do show up briefly in the afterword. We learn about the Scandals as people looked back on them many decades later in the 21st century. So what’s it like to read Scandals electronically on the just-released iPad—via the Kindle e-store or otherwise? As both a reader […]
Read MoreWashington Post iPhone app panned by gutsy WaPo technology writer: Symptom of worse woes?
Update, March 19: Hooray! The Post app in its current form now lets you change type size more gracefully. Tap the screen while reading a story and you’ll see the options. – D.R. Seymour Solomon, the real estate magnate in my D.C. newspaper novel, is among the Washington Telegram’s biggest advertisers and pals around with […]
Read MoreReporters vs. publishers and editors: On IQs, faulty edits, a Knopf editor and an unnamed columnist
The Solomon Scandals is a reporter’s novel, with editors and the publisher in the way of truth and decency. If nothing else, an ideological chasm gapes in the newspaper business between editorial coolies and publishers. Reporters tend to be far, far more liberal at many dailies than are the publishers. So what to make of […]
Read MoreThe Washington Post, Sally Quinn and the Mink Stole Ladies: How much VIP-watching is too much?
How closely should the world follow VIP journalists and politicians and—for that matter—celebrities in general? “Newspapers spend too much time explaining themselves.” So said Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of the Washington Post; and a media watcher even gave the pronouncement a name—the Brauchi Doctrine. Look, Marcus. Your paper is in decline for the moment despite […]
Read MoreRexwood Garst and the darker side of ‘meritocracy’ in journalism, politics and other fields
In The Solomon Scandals, I have a little fun with a hyperspecialized Yalie named Rexwood Garst, a reporter at a Washington Post-type newspaper. “Serbo-Croatian,” says this young resume jock who lives in a converted carriage house in Georgetown, “that’s the key. I know how to speak it.” It all jibes with my suggestion that the […]
Read MoreTruth or PR spin? W. Post’s Dana Milbank fires back at TNR’s ‘Apocalypse’ analysis of L Street
Firing back at the New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman, Dana Milbank at the Washington Post is spot on when he says the death watch on the Post newspaper is premature. I’ve given my own two cents on survival strategies. That said, Milbank needs to remember that the Washington Post Company’s priorities are less journalistic and more […]
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