Fuel economy ledes about Obama announcement

Here’s a survey of today’s ledes from some of the nation’s top newspapers about President Obama’s intentions to toughen fuel economy standards for automakers. The Wall Street Journal offers the most specific opening graf, while the Washington Post and New York Times do a good job of contextualizing the announcement. The Los Angeles Times lede, on the other hand, is syntactically jarring, sacrificing clarity and accessibility for conjecture and information that could have been included further down in the article:

Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration plans to order auto makers to increase the fuel economy of automobiles sold in the U.S. to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, four years faster than current federal law requires, people familiar with the matter said.

Washington Post:

The Obama administration today plans to propose tough standards for tailpipe emissions from new automobiles, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases.

New York Times:

President Obama will announce tough new nationwide rules for automobile emissions and mileage standards on Tuesday, embracing standards that California has sought to enact for years over the objections of the auto industry and the Bush administration.

USA Today:

The Obama administration is set to announce Tuesday what will amount to a sweeping revision to auto-emission and fuel-economy standards, putting them in the same package for the first time.

Los Angeles Times:

The agreement that the Obama administration will announce today forcing dramatic reductions in vehicle greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in auto mileage marks a potentially pivotal shift in the battle over global warming — and a vindication of California’s long battle to toughen standards.

This is America. Pound sand.

Here’s the audio link to David Schultz’ report for WAMU about his interview with Army veteran Tommie Canady.

And I love this comment from DupontJay, in response to today’s WaPo story about the WAMU/Veterans Affairs dust-up:

I am very disappointed that any Washington Post reader thinks for a moment that the reporter was under any obligation whatsoever to turn over his audio recorder. He simply was not.

This is America. When some security goon walks up to me and says “Give me your property” or “erase those pictures”, I’m going to tell them to pound sand. And the law is on my side.

Sound card returned in Veterans Affairs – WAMU dispute

The Washington Post is reporting that the Department of Veterans Affairs has returned the sound card belonging to WAMU radio reporter David Schultz.

Schultz had his sound card confiscated on Tuesday while interviewing  a patient at the VA hospital in Washington, D.C.

Today I called the number for the public information officer at the Bay Pines VA Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fl, to get her take on the incident and talk about the need to get written permission from patients or members of the health care team before recording or videotaping conversations. The office was closed, but I will be sure to follow-up after the weekend.

Digital newsbooks for the stories you missed

Here’s a product that’s long overdue. Major newspapers will start selling multipart investigative series repackaged as digital books:

Later this month, a coalition of news organizations — including the Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Associated Press — will try selling some of their multipart series as repackaged “digital newsbooks” for e-reader devices. Fainaru’s series, “The Private Armies of Iraq,” will be among those available for $4.95.

Zachary M. Seward, the article’s author, lauds the effort:

Michael Kinsley writes, Jeff Jarvis applauds

The interweb was abuzz today over Michael Kinsley’s Washington Post op-ed, “Life After Newspapers.” And perhaps no one was buzzing with more buzzy glee than the BuzzMachinist himself, Jeff Jarvis.

Jarvis’ post “Kinsley nails it again” (as in another nail in the newspaper industry coffin?) praises the Slate cofounder for his dismissal of government subsidies as a solution to the industry’s woes.

Jarvis, if you didn’t already know, is no fan of dead-tree media. Among his pronouncements:

Are you an upstanding citizen of Fox Nation?

The Fox Nation website debuted today to much fanfare across the interwebs. I know what you’re thinking: “But is Fox Nation the right news source for me?”

To determine your eligibility for citizenship, simply answer Megan Garber’s eight-question pop quiz. If you choose correctly, you’re bound to like it:

You’ll enjoy it so much, in fact, that you might not question whether spreading insipid Washington-themed gossip (“The Daily Beast: Who did Pelosi’s face?”) does, in fact, celebrate “core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse—and fair and balanced coverage of the news.” Or whether it’s fair or balanced to slug a hard-news AP article about the Huffington Post’s new investigative journalism venture “Huffington Post to rummage through your trash.” Or whether, speaking of the HuffPost, it’s intellectually honest to completely appropriate the left-leaning aggregator’s model while stoking partisan passions by outwardly mocking it.

At Huffington Post, John Delicath admits that Fox Nation isn’t his cup o’ biased non-journalism:

Shafer on Washington Post’s bad journalism

Jack Shafer tears the Washington Post a new one as he deconstructs its front-page claim that PCP use is on the rise:

How do stories like the Post’s get published? As Robert P. Bomboy wrote in 1974, newspapers don’t (but should) keep reporters on the drug beat and few employ editors who are knowledgeable about drugs. The press corps gives into their readers’ worst fears when reporting about drugs, embracing the most sensational or dramatic aspects of the story. And worst of all, the press routinely fails to cross-check information provided by law-enforcement sources.

Journalists are under tremendous pressure to produce articles on deadline that will grab readers’ attention.  But they do the public a disservice when reporting the kind of stories Shafer takes apart.

Ad revenues down, readers up for news sites

Advertising revenue may be on the decline in the newspaper industry, but according to Editor & Publisher, 25 out of the top 30 online newspaper websites experienced a rise in unique visitors for the month of January.

NYTimes.com led the way with over 21 million unique visitors, far ahead of second place WashingtonPost.com, which had just over 11 million uniques.

Tampabay.com, the Web presence for the St. Petersburg Times, ranked 29th on the list, with just over 1.7 million unique visitors for January.

Top 10 newspaper website designs

OK, if you read my previous Virtualjournalist post, you know the top newspapers sites in terms of traffic. Now let’s look at the top 10 newspaper websites in terms of design, as ranked by The Bivings Group.

The New York Times, which ranks number one in terms of traffic, also gets the nod for best design, which Bivings calls “classic.” The other carry-overs from the visitors list  include The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

Nieman ranks the top newspaper websites of 2008

Want to know what the top 15 newspaper websites were of 2008 in terms of traffic? Of course you do, and the fine folks at Nieman Journalism Lab are all over it, compiling the data.

They have the overall rankings, a closer analysis of the top five national newspapers, as well as a look at six regional newspapers that enjoyed substantial audience growth over the past year.