Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Is Todd Palin trying to look like John Kerry?

I was struck by the similarity of Todd Palin's new look to John Kerry.  Gone is the prominent beard, replaced by a two day stubble.  But it's the hair.  The hair has all the appearances of a younger John Kerry.

This picture from AP was taken at the Rolling Thunder event in Washington DC, where Sarah Palin was an instant draw.  It is part of her bus tour of the Northeast (Blue state country) that began in Washington and will end in New Hampshire.

 And she is driving the media nuts.  There are no press releases. No one to tip the press where she is planning to be.  When they ask, she tells them to check her website. To add confusion, she is being intentionally deceptive.  This from CNN today:

Sarah Palin pulled a clever bait and switch on reporters in Gettysburg on Tuesday, as her "One Nation" bus tour rolls into its third day.

The Palin family and a few members of her staff snuck out of their hotel early, leaving their flashy bus behind in the hotel parking lot to give reporters chasing her the impression that she was still readying for the day.

As members of Palin's advance staff began to roll out luggage to the bus on Tuesday morning, a crush of media and tourists gathered to meet the potential presidential candidate on her way out of the hotel.


But CNN was soon tipped off that Palin was long gone, off to visit the Civil War battlefields and onward toward Philadelphia.

So the media assumes the role of the paparazzi, following her every step and trying to anticipate her every move and giving her far more publicity than she would ordinarily get. And they wonder if they are being duped.  Of course they are. 

Attention media: She is playing mind games with you.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

At the NY Times, the left hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

 Media Post News reports today that the target figure for Times “pay to play” for online content (300,000 subscribers) is inaccurate according to the Times digital head Martin Nizenholtz.  According MPN, he stated, “I don’t know where that number comes from.”

Well it came from the NY Times.  Again from Media Post News:

Actually, the figure first appeared in a highly reputable source that often serves as the basis for news that shows up all over the place -- the pages of The New York Times. Staci Kramer, reporting in PaidContent, takes care to point out that Niesenholtz knew that fact, and that his comment referred to the "company executives" who "privately" gave the 300,000 figure to reporter Jeremy Peters.

At the NY Times shareholder meeting two weeks ago, CFO Janet Robinson touted the fact that in three weeks time they had signed up 100,000 paywall subscribers, which gave the appearance they were well on their way to hitting the announced 300,000 target.  What she neglected to say was the Lincoln Division of Ford, a regular advertiser, had contacted about 200,000 of the Times’ heaviest digital users to offer them free unlimited access to the Times for the balance of the year.  Nor did she say what the arrangement was between Lincoln and the Times.  Felix Salmon at Reuters wonders too.

Seems the Times wants to move the goal posts a bit.

See also my Island Turtle article:  Is the Washington Post about to spoil the NY Times big payday?