Just a reminder that UVA was under a strict federal review of its sexual assault practices before the Rolling Stone piece ever came out.
— @irin
Max Fisher on the collapse of
The New Republic:
The fact that there are two parallel conversations among journalists about this magazine, almost totally separated by race, further demonstrates the degree to which Washington's elite political publications are often not by, for, or about people of color. That doesn't mean their editors agree with [Marty] Peretz's racism — they don't — but it's why it was easy for them to shrug it off in a way that Hughes' closer-to-home mistakes are not. A publication that buoyed anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-Arab, Islamophobic racism was tolerable. A publication that fired two beloved white men was not.
I still remember the Iraq war and when we used to call it (under Peretz)
The New Republican. They didn't like bloggers. But that grievance is hardly unique or paramount (see this:)
Sorry whenever journos lose jobs, but some of us colored folk will always remember @tnr with mixed feelings.
— @tanehisicoates
@tanehisicoates I worked there, I'm white, but even I know the Bell Curve, McCaughey, and so on means TNR's legacy is mixed.
— @jamescdownie
USA Today:
Rolling Stone magazine said Friday that it found discrepancies in its controversial story about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia and had lost faith in the piece, a shocking retreat coming merely days after author Sabrina Rubin Erdely defended the reporting.
"In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced," Will Dana, the magazine's managing editor, wrote on its website.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Megan McArdle with a long and interesting read about TNR:
Prominent among the unique challenges of the media manager: the frequent tension between the actions that build your reputation and audience, and those that monetize it; the difficulty of getting creative types to produce great stuff on demand; the astonishing amount of autonomy that journalists need, because it's impossible to write hard guidelines, and too expensive to supervise long hours of reporting and typing; the fact that great writers are frequently terrible managers and editors, which screws up the normal management pyramid; the simultaneous need for speed and accuracy; the fact that media employment selects for a cluster of personality traits that resists closer management; the professional ethic that will stymie you when you decide to make a different set of trade-offs between competing priorities such as speed, accuracy, and the need to monetize your content; the fact that writers, especially in the digital age, frequently take their audience with them if they leave, making it even harder to impose discipline. These days, add the fact that the whole industry is having trouble figuring out a financial model that works. Not all of these problems apply to every company -- and each of these problems can be found in some other industry. But the collection of all these problems in one place makes media, particularly the glamourous prestige media that most outside owners want to buy, an unusual headache.
Every new owner looks at media and thinks, "This is insane and inefficient. Obviously, this is a dinosaur industry ripe for rationalization by someone who actually knows how to run a business." When you get inside, however, it turns out that the industry is not actually staffed, as previously assumed, by archaic snobs who wear suspenders and spats when they sit down with a glass of sherry to read the latest Dos Passos epic. Instead, most of the seemingly inexplicable inefficiencies are driven by the peculiar nature of this business.
Reading what went on at FirstLook and TNR, I suspect that Omidyar and Hughes were more blind than most to these differences, because if you squint right, a tech company looks kind of like a media company. After all, aren't we all in the business of acquiring content and selling it on the Web? And didn't I just prove that I'm really good at identifying those sorts of business opportunities, and monetizing them? We'll take over, identify some top talent, get some good management in there, and kick this industry into the 21st century.
As foolish as thinking all there is to medicine is getting some good managers into a practice group and kicking butt.
WaPo:
After days of questions, Rolling Stone has finally answered the two big questions asked of its blockbuster story about sexual assault at the University of Virginia: Did reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely try to contact the students who were accused of gang-raping Jackie, a student whose shocking story anchored the piece? And if not, why not?
NY Times:
After more than five years of elusive gains, ordinary Americans may finally be about to see the benefits of the recovery where it really counts: in their pocketbooks and wallets.
The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added 321,000 jobs in November — a much stronger number than expected — but perhaps even more significant was the biggest gain in average hourly earnings since June 2013.
Neil Irwin:
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah from your friends at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The November jobs numbers from the federal agency, released Friday morning, are the best all-around news about the state of the American economy in months, and maybe years. Indeed, it is in the details of what make this report a good one that you find evidence for momentum in the economy.
In short, for the last couple of years, there has been great progress in reducing the unemployment rate, but it was accomplished in part because people left the job market, and it was not accompanied by any meaningful gains in wages.
There have been anecdotal hints for months that employers are facing new pressure to raise workers’ wages as the job market has gotten tighter. And Friday’s report is the first piece of real evidence in the official government data that it’s happening.