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But what most people who find it fashionable to criticize new media never realize is that this has already happened.  Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo employs real, live reporters, as does Politico, which was recently described in a barely cutting edge magazine article as “the first internet newspaper.”

But Talking Points Memo, Politico, and Huffington Post, which doesn’t hide their pride at being a hybrid blog/newspaper, all have staffs, and they all create their own news in addition to linking widely to other sources.  This is the future of big ticket journalism, and its critics are soon reaching the point where they’re going to have to stop derisively calling anything without a print issue counterpart a “blog.”  We’re beyond that now.

Yes, local news will suffer. But Denver still has the Denver Post, and even if the Chronicle goes under, San Francisco will not be long without a daily paper.  In a city of millions, do you really think someone is going to pass up the opportunity to open a daily or weekly local newspaper operation?

Papers will be smaller, almost entirely local news-based, and perhaps published less frequently than daily.  And they will employ a newsroom staff of no more than 10 or 20 people, with maybe a dozen more writing part time, even in big city papers.  This is a business model which is completely sustainable.  And it involves significantly fewer people than most papers are used to employing, but that’s just because they haven’t yet been willing to ask the most obvious question of all:

How many more do you really need?

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He was correct in every case but one oddball with unreliable polling — my home state of Indiana — and the one state he did indicate was literally polling as “too close to call” — Missouri — still has yet to be called, two weeks after the election.

And his success is now being rewarded, as he just inked a two-book deal reportedly worth $700,000 with Penguin Books.

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Bill Maher: “This isn’t what I voted for!”

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But when they start misquoting public figures to make them look better for readers who might be fans of theirs, they’ve crossed that important line between timidity and servitude.

Remember when Sarah Palin told Katie Couric that she read “all” the newspapers?  One of the most well-documented moments of the campaign?  Well, CNN, and particularly Political Ticker producer Alexander Mooney conveniently forgets what she said.  Instead they’re quoting her as saying “Um of them” rather than “all of them.”

In a new Political Ticker post where they farm Palin’s powderpuff interview complaining about the media with a conservative host, they don’t just misquote her, but also pull one of my favorite tricks.  They say her now-infamous interview with Katie Couric “appeared to go poorly.”  No, not that it went poorly, which the entire planet knows it did, but it merely “appeared” to go poorly — the implication being, the interview actually went quite well… but appearance and perception threw it all out of whack.

But hey, I guess printing that something “appeared” such a way is one step above printing that “some people said” it was that way, which used to be the industry’s standard dead-fish-code for not taking a stand.  Check out this double whammy:

Palin also faulted the McCain campaign for agreeing to a series of sit-downs with Couric after the first one appeared to go so poorly.

During one of those follow-up interviews, Palin took heat for appearing to be unable to name the newspapers or magazines she reads: “Um of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years,” was the Alaska governor’s response.

No, it wasn’t.

What’s that?  Maybe they didn’t misquote her?  Maybe there is some sort of debate about whether she said “All of them” or “Um of them”?  Well, aside from the fact that doing a google search for her name and that quote brings up only a single page — CNN’s ticker post with the misquote — there also happens to be this pesky viral video, which doesn’t lie to soften its impact for an audience:

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The magazine’s cover features a very sexy young lady dressed unmistakeably like the Virgin Mary — who first became famous for giving birth to Jesus in the Christian bible:

I must say, I definitely like this annual tradition we’ve started of having Virgin Mary controversies for the holidays.  Last year, it was that Keisha Castle-Hughes, the 16 year-old actress who played Mary in the sappy Christmas movie The Nativity Story — which was trying to ride The Passion of the Christ’s Coattails — was definitely pregnant, and out of wedlock at that, oh my!

Won’t someone please think of the children?

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Based on the title, I thought the article would tongue-in-cheek, and would eventually debunk all the silly religious paranoia that traditionally comes from “Antichrist” watchers.  They did, after all, also believe that Ronald Reagan was the Antichrist, because all three of his names had six letters in them.

Sadly, when you actually read the article, you realize that Newsweek’s faith-based reporter is as serious as a heart attack:

One of the winning lottery numbers in the president-elect’s home state was 666— which, as everyone knows, is the sign of the Beast (also known as the Antichrist). “It is very eerie, and I take it for a sign as to who he really is,” wrote one of Strandberg’s correspondents.

[...]

In this world view, “the spread of secular progressive ideas is a prelude to the enslavement of mankind,” explains Richard Landes, former director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University.

No wonder, then, that Obama triggers such fear in the hearts of America’s millennialist Christians.

[...]

The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions, but they’re not nuts: “They are expressing a concern and a fear that is widely shared,” Staver says.

Yes, you read that right.  Intrepid faith journalist Lisa Miller writes, in a national publication, the unqualified statement that people who believe that the next President of the United States is a religious-themed representative of Satan meant to bring about the end of the world are “not nuts.”

I love it when fear and paranoia are validated by respected external sources.  And why shouldn’t they be when some variation of lottery numbers in Illinois is 666?

Actually, the oddest part of the piece is how it acts purely as an advertisement for End Times opportunist Todd Strandberg.  Watch all this free pub go splashing around:

Strandberg is so certain that the Rapture is coming, he’s bought a number of Internet addresses in addition to RaptureReady: AntiAntichrist, Tribulationus and RaptureMe. In the event that RaptureReady crashes during the apocalypse, anyone who needs an update will, with a simple Google search, be able to get one. Strandberg says Obama probably isn’t the Antichrist, but he’s watching the president-elect carefully. On his Web site, he has something called the Rapture Index, a calculation based on signs and prophecy of the proximity of the end. According to Strandberg, any number over 160 means “fasten your seat belts.” Obama’s win pushed the index to 161.

Consider my seat belt fastened.

Only I’m not worried about Obama the Antichrist.  I’m worried about American religious fundamentalists who are eager to see their bible acted out in real life, and who are so quick to blame Obama for every abortion in history that they might take some insane action against him or his supporters.

And thanks to Lisa Miller for giving those people a pat on the head.

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Shep stands for reason against bitterness from the losing side–including many on his own network–as he says what most sensible people, including myself, know happened in these last couple of months:  “The media reflected what is happening in the nation.  It did not drive it.”  Amen, brother.

Enjoy:

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It’s a fair question, and a delicate foreign policy area.  Barack Obama said he would in a debate many months ago, and McCain called him out on it during Friday night’s debate.  So a kid asks Palin about it in a cheesesteak hut, and she says Obama’s right.

Today, McCain gets angry, cancels his town hall meeting, and yells at George Stephanopoulos about it.  Pretty funny.

Click here for video.

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But this morning, Joe got into an absurd tiff with David Schuster, who is an MSNBC reporter and was on the show acting as a guest commentator/analyst. For those of you who don’t know, Joe is a lot like Chris Matthews, only right-leaning (Matthews is left-leaning). Each of them are fairly laid back, curious guys with a genuine interest in politics and public policy. This genuine interest makes their respective shows immensely watchable.

Today, though, as often happens, Joe was going a little Right Wing on us, saying that if the president of Iraq wanted us to leave, we should, and he would be assassinated, and Joe said he didn’t care if that happened (in fact, Joe seemed to enjoy the thought). This was out of line, but in my opinion, Schuster was the one who brought up partisanship by calling Joe a Republican as if it were an insult. …okay, so maybe it is a pretty good insult these days:

But it comes on the heels of Keith Olbermann telling Scarborough to “get a shovel” (for his bullshit, you see) on national television last night, while Joe was making a legitimate claim about McCain gaining on Obama in the polls these last few weeks. If referencing polls is what qualifies as “bullshit” on MSNBC these days, I fear for the future:

And all of this seems to be a part of a larger theme, coming just a week after MSNBC hired Rachel Maddow for their third prime time TV slot along with Olbermann and Matthews, thus cementing their role as liberal antidote to Fox News. As a result, the liberals in the network seem to be far more bold and combative than they were even a few weeks ago — and that have Scarborough in their sites.

For the record, Fox news does need a liberal antidote — but not one that behaves exactly as Fox does, by suppressing viewpoints and demonizing well-meaning dissent.

I don’t always agree with Scarborough, but that’s the point. And that’s why I’m in his corner on this one.

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