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Barack Obama's advance staff confused everyone when they told journalists not to wear green during their trip to the Middle East. Obama's staff claimed green is the color of Hamas, which is actually isn't really. Though it is the color of Islam in general. So Obama is distancing himself from all the Muslims in the world, which should help dispel those rumors about him being a fist-bumping terrorist by seeming like he's trying way, way too hard, almost like a man with something to hide. Or maybe some staffer just did a shit job of research and thought that was a helpful and clever suggestion. Journos are also prohibited from wearing nail polish and tank tops and from actually asking the candidate any questions, as Andrea Mitchell bitches about in this attached Hardball clip. Chris Matthews is so thrilled that Barack Obama can shoot a basket (he is also shocked that there are so many black people in the military!), but Mitchell seems to think pretend interviews organized by the military are maybe a bad thing? She's not wearing green, though. Don't you hate how biased everyone is?

New York Times publisher and genial buffoon Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger is not worried about how his newspaper's circulation sucks and the share price is at a historic low. You know why? Because Craig Newmark, the guy who invented Cragslist and destroyed the newspaper revenue stream, just got a Times subscription! So hey, no worries, Times staffers. If there's one thing Pinch has learned since he took over as publisher 16 years ago, it's to always mention the moose in the room. But not to bring an actual moose with him anymore. The "moose in the room" is one of those unbearably stupid management book stories, in which a moose ends up at a dinner party or something and no one at the table has the nerves to ask why the moose is there. See, the moose represents big problems that no one wants to talk about. So you are always supposed to mention the moose in the room. Get it? The whole thing is asinine. Of course, Sulzberger is big into management fads and business book bullshit (as we said, buffoon). And back when the Jayson Blair scandal was rocking the Times newsroom, he did this (per Seth Mnookin's Hard News): Now, though, he thinks that was maybe a mistake. In an infamous incident, Mr. Sulzberger showed up at a company crisis meeting holding a toy stuffed moose. It was a gimmick meant to symbolize things that people were afraid to say, but nobody was in the mood for goofy shtick. He wouldn't repeat it. "Obviously not," he said. "The anger that came out of that meeting, it was so palpable that the moose wasn't a necessary tool, it became clear," he said. "It just wasn't. Now, it had proven necessary in other situations, but it wasn't in that one, so no. "But look, if that's the biggest mistake I make as leader of The New York Times Co., this is a good thing." Ha ha "the moose wasn't a necessary tool." And you should know about useless tools, Pinch! It's a testament to Pinch's unwavering ability to miss the point that he doesn't realize the Moose Incident wasn't one bad decision but rather a lovely symbol of how incredibly out of touch he is—with his own newsroom, with the state of media today, with the national mood. Former Times reporter John Darnton just published an entertaining murder mystery set at a newspaper that bears some resemblance to the Times. Here's how he paints the publisher of his fictional newspaper: The prizes and revenue poured in. it was like standing on the bridge of an aircraft carrier and believing that you, not the ocean were actually keeping the damn thing afloat. But now, with the Internet, the blogs, MSNBC, fifteen minute news cycles, giveaway papers in the subway—Christ, you turn around for a moment and the whole damn world is different. A cliché, maybe, but it's true. Just two days ago, he asked Rosen, one of his two sons, a computer geek, to introduce him to some sites; he read a smattering of them (superficial.com, gawker.com, defamer.com) and he was aghast. Where the hell did it come from, this abiding compulsion to read about breakups and breakdowns of third-rate celebrities? To pursue them into restaurants and nightclubs as they turned bulimic or cheated on their partners or adopted African babies? And written in a spirit of such spite (he didn't know the word schadenfreude). "That's the whole point, Dad," his son had said laughing condescendingly. "You've got to be snarky." But in this book is the seed of the actual good news for Times reporters. The paper is still a great springboard to actual media success. They've taken recently to building personalities out of their contributors. It's a break from Times tradition, and a welcome one. Does it matter whatever Warren St. John's actual salary and position at the Times are? No, not so much. What matters for Warren is how effective the paper is at promoting his book, and his brand. What is David Carr? A film vlogger...? And now addiction memoirist? He's whatever the hell he wants to be at the New York Times, which is good news for people who enjoy his writing, and good news for his Amazon ranking. Is it good news for the Times? Who the hell knows. Pinch sure doesn't.

After the New Yorker ran its controversial Barack Obama cover satirically mocking smears against the candidate, the presumptive Democratic nominee acted like it really didn't bother him all that much. "It's a cartoon," he told CNN. That seemed very reasonable! But it sounds like Obama was more angry than he let on. The New Yorker was shut out of much-coveted plane tickets for the senator's trip to the Middle East and Europe next week. Neither Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza nor, Politico's Mike Allen confirms via email, anyone else from the magazine is among the 40 journalists blessed with seats. Granted, some 200 people applied for tickets. But given the New Yorker's circulation, influence and often heroic coverage of not only politics but also the war in Iraq (George Packer), U.S. intelligence and covert military operations (Seymour Hersh, Steve Coll), American torture (Jane Mayer) and the inner workings of the Bush administration, it's hard to see the snub as anything other than payback. Of course the Obama campaign will say the decision was made strictly for space reasons it already has but given the publicity surrounding the New Yorker cover and around Lizza's story on Obama's early poltical career, his people had to know what signal it would send to exclude the magazine so soon after the cover flap: That the candidate of change is not above trying to manipulate the press like any other politician. Which, as the New Yorker's luck would have it, not only reinforces the central message of its cover story (that Obama is a politician much like any other) but also smoothes its potentially awkward transition from self-described "extremely favorable" coverage of candidate Obama to the inevitably more critical coverage of nominee and president Obama. Sometimes it's worthwhile to buy your own damn plane ticket! For Obama, there is at least some risk of blowback from the decision. As Daily Show host Jon Stewart pointed out on his show last week, getting upset about magazine illustrations is not the best way to swat down rumors one is an intolerant extremist: [Politico]

The co-editors of Ivygate published an LA Times op-ed yesterday arguing that kids today are embarrassing and otherwise undermining themselves by oversharing online, but also arguing that social judgements about these gaffes are softening. Perhaps they spoke too soon: One of the editors, Jacob Savage found his appearance on the show America's Election Headquarters had been cancelled after allowing Fox News Channel producer Virginia Grace to "friend" him, thus unlocking a profile that listed him as "very liberal." He wasn't cancelled because the topic was no longer of interest his op-ed coauthor still got to go on air but because suddenly there was only room for one person. It could be because Savage is a lefty, and lefties are detested on Fox, but after seeing the segment, I'm going with Radar's theory that the co-author, Maureen O'Connor, was selected for being kind of hot. Fox tends to know its audience like that. The Girls Gone Wild footage chosen to accompany the on-air chat would tend to reinforce that notion. Excepts of the Fox chat and Savage's Facebook profile, after the jump. [Radar] (Video via RedLasso, Facebook image via Huffington Post)

In his "On The Street" slide show for the Times Style section today, longtime fashion photographer Bill Cunningham (pic) can't get over the kids today and their saggy jeans. In fact, Cunningham keeps waiting for a pair of low-slung trousers to fall off someomne's torse, yet they refuse, and the whole thing is a tragedy. Said Cunningham: "I have waited and thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to get one right now, his pants are going to fall off. And it hasn't happened. It's just terrible. I've waited and waited." But he'll probably get his coveted "saggy jeans fall off some kid" shot soon enough since, according to Cunningham's theory, male waistlines seem to fall in sync with the ailing stock market. Video excerpt after the jump. [Times]

So we were vaguely aware Katie Couric had a YouTube channel, but had no idea the CBS Evening News anchor put so much energy into it. It's almost as though she feels stifled at work! Can't imagine why that would be. Anyway, Los Angeles Times writer Matea Gold watched all the videos so you don't have to, and wrote up the highlights, which we've assembled into a quick montage after the jump. Couric snaps Larry King's suspenders, chats up the paparazzi, sings with Bette Midler, makes a Saturday Night Live joke and hangs out barefoot with a bunch of mom bloggers. Ripped out of the context of the Evening News, Couric is charming and fresh, particularly when filmed next to stodgy Charles Gibson of ABC News. But it's not clear Americans want their TV news anchors charming and fresh, and that's probably why CBS producers have not promoted the YouTube channel, which has received just 19,000 views (some individual clips did better). But the success of attractive, downright whimsical anchor Anderson Cooper at CNN should help producers make up their minds. For all his blushy, coquettish on-camera moments, there's little doubt Cooper would be taken seriously reprising the sort of coverage that raised his profile in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Nor does arguably hunky (*chokecough*) Keith Olbermann at MSNBC have trouble getting his "special comments" taken seriously, despite his repeated silly antics, like impersonating a pirate version of Rupert Murdoch. Likewise, it's no sexist knock against Couric's potential as a newscaster to say she reveals attractive, inviting, authentic glimmers of herself on the YouTube channel, one that might serve the former Today host well in an environment more receptive to her talents than the Evening News has thus far been. [LA Times]

Audio emerged tonight of former President Bill Clinton calling Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum a "sleazy... dishonest... slimy... scumbag." Former Times reporter Purdum, of course, is the guy who wrote the just-released article about how Clinton is running around the world on private jets, including one called "Air Fuck One," with billionaire scuzzballs like Ron Burkle, Steve Bing and Jeffrey Epstein. Clinton told a Huffington Post reporter Purdum was awful, and that the Vanity Fair piece has "five or six blatant lies," but then added he had never read it. But that didn't stop him from continuing to trash it, nor did the fact that Purdum is married to Clinton's former press secretary Dee Dee Myers. Audio after the jump, along with a text summary. "The editor of Esquire he sent us an email yesterday and said it was the single sleaziest piece of journalism he'd seen in decades. He said it made him want to go take a shower and he was embarrassed to be a journalist when he read it." "You know he didn't use a single name, cite a single source in all those things he said. It's just slimy. It's part of the national media's attempt to nail Hillary for Obama. It's the most biased press coverage in history. It's another way of helping Obama. They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn't do anything about it. The first day he said 'Ah, ah, ah well.' Because that's what they do he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain maybe I better quit the church. It's all politics. It's all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don't think anything about it." So, just to recap: Clinton utterly trashed a reporter based on a story Clinton had never read; dragged a competing editor into the fight based on a private email (that he may or may not have quoted accurately); then insinuated without substantiation that Obama pushed a preacher to make racial remarks about Hillary Clinton. It's getting hard to keep track of who, exactly, is sliming who with poorly-checked facts. [Huffington Post]

The anchor of Fox's "Good Day New York" thinks this Rachael Ray/ Dunkin' Donuts controversy (recap: Celebuchef Ray wore a keffiyeh in an ad, right-wingers were outraged, the company pulled the ad) is so stupid. It is! When the story came up this morning, he acknowledged that he can't stand Rachael Ray and doesn't even care what this controversy is about. Cue co-anchor Jodi Applegate leaning over and hissing (audibly): "Dunkin Donuts is one of our sponsors." His backtracking is magical! Please, click to watch this moment of journalistic integrity in action.

When News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch decided to sit down for a rare, on-camera interview, it was of course with two reporters from his own media empire, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal. In this clip from the Journal's D conference in Carlsbad, California, Murdoch explains how he thinks the Journal and Times will be competing aggressively with one another on all stories business, political or otherwise within just "a few months." He also rants about how it's "ridiculous" that an average of 8.3 editors looks at a typical WSJ story, inevitable expanding it beyond reason. "People don't have time for it there's not a story that you can't get all the facts in (within) half the space." Also: Murdoch confirms he was involved in the Post's decision to switch its allegiance from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama. Of course, Murdoch is correct that virtually any story in the Journal, or in any other newspaper, can pack in the same amount of fresh information in half the space. But that begs a follow-up question: Aren't newspapers, and the Journal especially, differentiated from newer media by precisely the sort of context and analysis that would end up on the cutting-room floor? Mossberg, interviewing his boss, is disarmed by a Murdoch joke, and doesn't ask that question, at least not in the footage he's released. On editing and competition with the Times: On Obama and the Post endorsement: More Murdoch gushing on Obama is available here, along with his claim that cable channel Fox News conveys both right- and left-wing political perspectives in its news coverage.

In the following clip, Hillary Clinton is asked to choose between celebrities Ellen DeGeneres, Simon Cowell and Jimmy Kimmel as a vice president. "Who would you pick and why?" asked Mary Alice Haney, of MomLogic.com and TV channel Extra. The only appropriate response, of course, would be for Clinton to use the lasers behind her cyborg eyes to set Haney's hair on fire, but it's 2008 and the Democratic presidential candidate needs to out-cool Barack Obama and John McCain, so she just laughed (at the sad future of our country) and said they'd all be on her short list. I really wanted her to snap and live up to her reputation as a caustic bitch, but she didn't, not even when asked about inane advice from Cowell. Clip after the jump. [Extra]

Earlier this week, dangerous fiend Gene Morrill was convicted of 20 charges of sex crimes involving minors. At his sentencing hearing in Stafford County, Virginia, yesterday, Morrill offered a stunning defense: a sasquatch molested him in the woods of New Hampshire. The heroic journalists at Washington DC's WJLA led with this story on yesterday's 5 p.m. newscast. Reporter Jessica Weinstein actually contacted experts at the Bigfoot Field Research Organization to ask whether Bigfoot had ever been spotted in New Hampshire. This is why blogs can never replace genuine shoe-leather reporting. The ABC7 report is attached. [WJLA]

This crosslinked and multiplatform new social interactive online media world is causing actual respected media outlets to fuck up. No question about it. Exhibit one: The national paper of record has allowed its core purpose of covering the news to evolve and extend to the point that this totally incomprehensible short video featuring Josh Hartnett staggering through the snow can fall under the Times' content umbrella. It's truly a long tail of crap, or something. The press release explains that the "T Community online" is all about "discovering what is new and hot in stylized online storytelling." Journalistic! Anyone who can intuit the meaning of this video, and logically connect it with the core purpose of the financially beleaguered newspaper industry in any number of rational steps, wins our undying gratitude. Couldn't the money spent here be used to give Sewell Chan a raise? Click to watch the star-studded clip.

A U.S. attorney announced the bust of The Emperors' Club last Thursday. We noted that the Duke of Westminster was allegedly linked, back in the day, but otherwise the story seemed mostly innocuous, as the only people named were in brothel management, not customers. Except to the Times reporters who realized that a government official was involved. They learned it was Spitzer by Friday, and they amazingly held on to that news until the following Monday, when they went live with it at 2 p.m. and immediately caused all sorts of media hell to break loose. Everyone's initial reaction: OMG. The most jaded of observers couldn't conceal their shock. We who have seen everything were still stunned at how this came seemingly out of absolutely nowhere. AIM windows across the city lit up. Then came the wisecracks and first judgments. The early verdict: what a fucking moron. Seriously, how could he be so stupid. WTF. Fox News sparked the resignation speculation by 3 p.m.. Less than an hour after the news broke! Before Spitzer had actually decided anything! This began a hum of speculation and predictions that would only grow in volume over the next, well, day. The requisite public apology came ridiculously early too. Once again, an hour after America learned of his sin, he was paraded before us to grovel for forgiveness, his poor, blue-clad wife by his side. And then he made that sad muppet face that we've all seen a million times since. While he begged forgiveness, bloggers were all combing over the available documents for the filthy details of Spitzer's kinks. Client 9! Unsafe sex! How much did he pay? The Smoking Gun was there, natch. The first Client 9 t-shirt probably hit CafePress by 5 p.m.. It bears repeating: this is still Day 1. Of a story that broke that afternoon. It wasn't even a tabloid story because there had not yet been enough time to print a tabloid. The Observer even got their first meta "inside the Times scoop" story up that night. Everyone was scrambling! Intern Mary's headline analysis chart sums up most of the media response from that first 24 hours. Once they did get to the story, the tabloids introduced us to the outrage phase. We'd gotten over shock, remarkably quickly, and now it was time to condemn. The Times even got into the act, thought hey couldn't bring themselves to ask for him to resign. We got the "HIS POOR WIFE" columns, the ladies of The View weighed in, and everyone was fixated on what a terrible person Spitzer was (I KNEW HE WAS A FRAUD not just, like, he hadn't made up his mind yet. Or maybe he was taken aback by how ridiculously quickly all of this had spun out of control. Then he finally resigned! Less than 48 hours after the news broke! News networks went nuts, following his SUV as it slowly drove through midtown traffic like OJ was behind the wheel. The press conference itself defined 'media circus.' But the news wasn't even really about him anymore. He was just a punchline! The only real interest left was in finding the call girl. We, among others, first searched for her during Monday's chaos. We thought we finally had her by Wednesday morning! But the Times, amazingly, scooped everyone again, and tracked down "Kristen" and linked to her MySpace and everything, and suddenly the story was about camping out outside her apartment and tracking down every footprint she ever left on the internet. This one ought to flame out soon enough, but we haven't even gotten to the morning show appearances yet, so give it a little more time. All that's left now, especially after the one-two punch of attacking another man's moral failings and then exploiting an attractive young woman tangentially involved, is the media self-flagellation period, where cable pundits and media bloggers and newspaper op-eds will all ask, "did we go too far?" As that is the most annoying part of any media circus, you'll forgive us if we skip it.

George W. Bush has a special relationship with the press: he threatens them with prosecution, pressures them to withhold damaging stories, and accuses them of treason in order to drum up anti-media sentiment among the masses. But he also gives them funny nicknames, so they like him. John McCain, the Republican nominee for President, enjoys taking the press to barbecues and having friendly chats with journalists about how much he hates "gooks." And as this clip from Bush's endorsement of McCain earlier today shows, once he is elected he will not suffer their "questions" bullshit either.

What journalism should be: a dogged, annoying reporter with a big microphone camped out in front of a fancy building harassing people about fake parking permits. We have to admit, we are suckers for this kinda thing. David Yurman can sell his crappy jewelry for thousands of dollars, but his employees need a fake court officer parking pass on their $60,000 Mercedes to avoid a $65 ticket? Tell that to the average American! We love it. Watch this entire Fox 5 clip, then call the Pulitzer committee.

Malcom Gladwell was on precious radio program This American Life recently, telling some stories of his earliest days of "real" journalism at the Washington Post. He apparently had a bet with a colleague to determine which of them could be the first to insert a couple amusing phrases into the venerable paper. First was "new and troubling questions," which is surely already a journalistic cliche. Following that was the more amusing "perverse and often baffling" a harder fit, but Gladwell managed it. Of course, Gladwell, easily one of the most charming one-trick ponies in media, has been dining out on this story for a dozen years. Despite that, it upset Jossip very very much, as it raises new and troubling questions about the state of respectable journalism. Audio clip attached.

Wonkette videographer Liz Glover made her way up to New York to cover fashion week, and she ran into Fox News! Or the Fox Business Network, that unwatched cousin. They were at fashion week filming a story about how hemlines predict the economy. Apparently. The Liz bugged them about their political affiliation. (The resulting Fox Business Hemline story is after the jump.) Here's Fox's resulting wacky hemline story! The ladies of Fox Business seem almost personally offended that fashion week wasn't sluttier. They'll raise the nation's hemline by themselves, dammit.

Popular internet gossip weblogger Mario "Perez" Hilton-Lavandeira 's late endorsement of Senator Hillary Clinton in the California primary might have been the deciding factor, according to venerable ABC journalist Sam Donaldson, who was trotted out by terrorists of some kind and forced to interview Lavandeira by phone, to his utter befuddlement. Donaldson explains that he knew Perez's grandfather Conrad, he wonders why there was "this hugely pregnant woman" on Ms. Hilton's internet site, then he promises to watch Perez Hilton's website every day. Buzz buzz! [ABCNews]

Salty billionaire Sam Zell has long been known for his foul mouth and abrasive demeanor, rough edges that helped the real estate magnate build a reputation as a feisty and iconoclastic investor. But Zell's bluntness backfired at a Jan. 31 meeting of Orlando Sentinel staff after Zell said "fuck you" to a journalist who twice questioned him about softening news coverage. Most staff did not hear the insult until they watched the incident on video, one source said, in a recording that has been making the rounds and generating buzz within the Sentinel. The target of Zell's curse was photographer Sara Fajardo, and Zell called her at least twice the weekend to apologize, the source said. After the jump, exclusive video of Zell's brazen insult. The journalist in the video asked where the paper's journalism was headed, and Zell said journalists needed to focus on what readers want, thus helping generate revenue to reinvest in the paper. The journalist then followed up, saying readers want "puppy dogs" rather than real information. Zell took umbrage, delivering the eminently quotable line, "you're giving me the classic... journalistic arrogance of deciding that puppies don't count." Zell dropped his F-bomb a few breaths later, at the very end of his answer. The source added this tidbit: The video was taken down for half the day Friday as the publisher, Kathy Waltz, debated on whether to edit out his little aside, but everyone in the newsroom had seen/heard about it by then. It went back up in its original, unedited form. For the impatient, a 10 second "fuck you" shot from Zell: The full 1:45 minute give-and-take between the journalist and Zell: