Media

“The announcement that CNN is totally revamping its morning show and scrapping Soledad O’Brien’s ‘Starting Point’ has sent shivers through her staff,” Betsy Rothstein wrote Wednesday for FishbowlDC. “Insiders tell us Executive VP Ken Jautz and VP Bart Feder addressed the staff after the show went off the air today. Suffice it to say, the…

“The New Republic has just lifted the embargo on its [wide-ranging] interview with President Obama, in which he talked at length about the role the media can play in breaking Washington’s partisan gridlock,” Dylan Byers wrote Sunday for Politico. ” ‘One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates,’ he…

Reporter’s Travails Don’t Make Detroit News The disclosure Wednesday that Leonard Fleming, Detroit News city hall reporter, was removed from his beat after allegations that he was having an affair with the ex-wife of state Treasurer Andy Dillon and threatened to kill her sent rival news organizations to court records for the order of personal…

Adviser Reportedly Cites Prospect of “Negative” Stories “The editor of the student newspaper at Florida A&M University learned via email today that he’s being replaced,” Michael Koretzky reported Wednesday for the Southern Drawl, a blog of the Society of Professional Journalists. “This is the totality of that email … “Thank you for submitting your application…

Pundits Display Personal, Ideological Filters The coincidence of the nation’s first black president being inaugurated for the second time on the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday Monday did not go unnoticed by pundits. Neither did President Obama’s delivery of what some called the most inclusive inaugural speech ever. How they interpreted that speech depended…

Advocacy Groups, Writers Called Dolls Inappropriate “The controversial ‘Django Unchained’ action figures have officially been DISCONTINUED … after several African American groups called for a boycott of the dolls … TMZ has learned,” the TMZ website reported Friday. Later in the day, the Weinstein Co., the film’s producer, said in a statement, “We have tremendous…

Author Says Southerners Wanted to Keep Slave Patrols As Hollywood puts slavery back in the American consciousness and the reaction to the Newtown, Conn., shootings has the Second Amendment on the front burner, an author and talk-show host links the two in an intriguing way. “The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery,” reads the…

“Author Sabrina Lamb was looking forward to kicking off her New Year with a bottle of champagne and a quiet walk on the beach. Instead, on the first day of January she was greeted with a video link from a friend of a brand-new reality show that sent chills down her spine,” Allison Samuels wrote…

Cops Gave Rivals Questions Asked by Post-Gazette The mayor of Pittsburgh called the executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and “professed outrage” that the city’s police chief had distributed to other reporters the questions Post-Gazette journalists were asking about police conduct in the slaying of a young woman and the suicide of the man police…

MSNBC “. . . enjoyed significant (around 20%) ratings increases across the board” in 2012, “but made astonishing gains with their already-large African American audience, growing that audience by 60.5% for the Mon-Sun 8pm-11pm period,” Tommy Christopher reported Monday for Mediaite. “MSNBC President Phil Griffin told me, in a phone interview, that he is ‘thrilled’…