Four today

1. Aggressive conservative bloggers get Nina Totenberg's Christmas comment exactly backwards. But we all know what those NPR really people think, so why bother asking? WaPo

2. They call him Mr. Sunday? Amazon

3. Perhaps you've seen the cryptic commercials for RT.com and wondered what the hell it was, but were afraid to go to the website for fear of what might pop up. Well, it's a Russian news service, formerly known as Russia Today. Wikipedia

4. Facebook update of the day comes from Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation: "...believes it's the sixth-day weather story that separates the pros from the amateurs."

Four in the morning

1. At least the headline isn't editorializing ... oh wait. Politico

2. The coming onslaught of privacy legislation. San Jose Mercury News

3. Journalists need to make readers understand why they need to pay attention. Nieman Lab

4. Like his Republican opponent, Jerry Brown will release a budget plan that can safely be ignored. PropZero

Four in the morning

1. The Washington Post hearts the Huffington Post's content model. Nieman Journalism Lab

2. NBC 4 in LA has launched a new web project called "Prop Zero" that bills itself as the Ground Zero for change in California politics. Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation is a contributor. Prop Zero

3. The danger of plagiarism in the reTweet. Good

4. A lengthy piece in the New York Times Magazine about the emerging business models for online news... It looks like the lifestyle of a starving actor trying to break into the movies: lots of work for low (or no) pay and, in the end, the audience gets to decide who's talented enough to rise to the top. NYT Magazine

California country

Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation will host a Zócalo panel on Thursday, April 22 at the Autry National Center to discuss whether California would be better off as a country. The speakers are political consultant Darry Sragow, PoliPoint Press editor Peter Richardson and "Global California" author Abraham Lowenthal.

Embrace your inner Dumpster diver

Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation argues that journalists could learn a thing or two from the methods employed by anti-ACORN activists to dig up dirt on the organization:

The best thing about the anti-ACORN reporting is that it may revive two journalistic methods that have long been dismissed as sleazy: surreptitious taping and dumpster diving on journalistic subjects.

In a skeptical age, there is no substitute for getting the goods: the video that shows the subject damning herself with her own words, the documents that demonstrate malfeasance. As institutions become more sophisticated about dodging journalistic inquiry, journalists need every investigative tool to hold institutions accountable.

But mainstream news organizations have shied away from these tactics, in large part because of terrible state laws and precedent that, in the name of privacy, protect powerful people and institutions against investigation.

Before investigative reporters run out and buy pimp and hooker gear, it's important to remember that the real differences between journalists and the anti-ACORN crowd is motive.

Yes, journalists should be more persistent and push more envelopes, tough to do in this age 24/7 deadlines, distractions and shrinking staffs. But the anti-ACORN folks resorted to unusual tactics because they were fixated on finding dirt, and because they have a political agenda. Is that really the role of the press? Should reporters learn to hack email chains, given the revelations discovered in what's now known as Climategate?

That being said, I don't know how many important stories lie at the bottom of a Dumpster. I'm sure there's a time when you have to jump in. Changing the law will be difficult because mostly because the trash rats are likely to be paparazzi sifting through celebrity garbage. Still, one can see the benefit of grabbing documents from, say, Countrywide's trash pile.

Secret phone calls seem less important to me, but maybe I'm not thinking creatively.

Four in the evening

1. Fear the shield: An attorney and former judge says a federal shield law for reporters is more trouble than it's worth. Boston Globe

2. Legislation by ballot: Californians pass legislation and even amend the state Constitution through the ballot box. So why aren't more of the campaign documents related to those ballot measures made public? Joe Mathews says they should be. Fox & Hounds

3. Good for what Ailes you: Fox News CEO Roger Ailes met with White House political boss David Axelrod to look for common ground. Politico

4. Executive-suite privilege: Freedom Communications, owner of the Orange County Register, isn't interested in sharing its business records publicly. Ironic, no? Editor and Publisher

I can't stay mad at you

The Republican effort to recall Republican Assemblyman Anthony Adams of Claremont for supporting a budget that included temporary tax increases appears to be losing steam. Proponents have gathered about 20,000 signatures, roughly half of what they need to assure the measure gets on the ballot, Joe Mathews reports at his Blockbuster Democracy Blog.

Mathews writes:

Fearless prediction: this recall won't make the ballot. We've already had another budget agreement since the February deal. And voters effectively have said their piece through the May special election, when five of the six measures that were part of the February deal were rejected. For conservatives still angry with Adams (who represents a rare swing district in California), a primary challenge might be a better strategy. Assembly terms, after all, are only two years long.

What rough beast is this?

Joe Mathews, formerly of the LA Times and now with the New America Foundation, takes a stab at interpreting the logic behind Sarah Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska and finds it shows a hyper awareness that America has entered the age of hyper politics. Mathews goes so far as to call the move brilliant, at least when compared with the sad displays Mark Sanford and Bobby Jindal made in their respective 2012 presidential campaigns. By contrast, Palin will be able to fortify herself financially and politically, unburdened from the distraction of governing, as the campaign drags into 2010.

The meaning of rejection

Tuesday's statewide election results are significant - but significant how? What exactly did the California voters reject? Taxes? Spending? The system? Schwarzenegger? Legislation by ballot? All of the above?

The spin teams are out today trying to answer those questions for us, but it remains uncertain which arguments will win out. As Dan Schnur of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC told the Sacramento Bee: "These measures will end up being a $25 million Rorschach test ... Everybody will end up seeing in the results what they want to."

There's no shortage of interesting analysis - in between the predictable sniping from the right and the left. Michael Finnegan at the Los Angeles Times has a smart piece about the dysfunctional relationship between voters and Sacramento. Anthony York at Capitol Weekly thinks the election might mean an end to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's postpone-the-pain brand of governing. Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine argue that Californians must embrace institutional changes before they'll find fiscal stability. Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation proposes more elections to eliminate the need for these high-stakes gambles.

Where has the good Times gone?

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Joe Mathews, now at the New America Foundation, writes in the New Republic about what's gone missing at his hometown newspaper:

You can count up the journalists who have left the profession and are out of work, but much of the carnage of the ongoing media industry can't be measured or seen: corruption undiscovered, events not witnessed, tips about problems that never reach anyone's ears because those ears have left the newsroom. With fewer watchdogs, you get less barking. How can we know what we'll never know?

-snip-

Gone is the stuff my neighbors and relatives read, the straightforward news about their local communities, particularly in the suburban counties that ring Los Angeles, a county of ten million people and 88 cities. A decade ago, the Times fielded more than a dozen reporters in the some of the county's larger cities. Dozens more toiled in the big, growing areas that border L.A.--Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange. Yes, those writers were young and green. Yes, they missed things, as inexperienced reporters do. But they were there. They watched council meetings and school board meetings and county supervisors meetings. They called the cops. They looked at court filings. The most ambitious dug deeply into problems of transportation and development.

And how many of those inexperienced reporters, now gone, won't grow up to become the experienced journalists leading the newsrooms of the future?

One point Mathews makes that I'd quibble with: Local papers cover the smaller cities and suburban counties of Southern California...

The line seems to imply that the local papers remain intact. Local papers have not escaped the carnage. Many have suffered far more damage than the Times - although far fewer people depend on them for comprehensive coverage. Still, even before the Times began amputating its limbs, it depended on healthy local papers to beat the bushes and scare out stories it never had the resources to find. That, too, is disappearing and shouldn't be ignored.

God and good prices

The folks behind Proposition 4, which would require minors to notify a parent before getting an abortion, are beating the bushes for votes. To that end, they've asked supporters to reach out to Latinos in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

But where would one go to find a Latino in Southern California? According to the campaign: Wal-Marts and churches (Evangelical or Catholic, take your pick).

Joe Mathews at Blockbuster Democracy has a copy of the campaign email here.

Surrender the will

A terribly incisive piece by Tom Junod about the most famous Governor in American history, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Here's Schwarzenegger on Kabuki: “I’ve always been able to see ahead to the finish line when I’m negotiating,” (Schwarzenegger) told me one day. “It’s always been that way. I see it, and then I want to get there. I get impatient. In business, that’s not a problem. But in politics, a lot of people need to do the Kabuki, the song and dance. They feel cheated if you don’t let them. So now if you want to do the Kabuki, okay, you can do the Kabuki. We’ll get to the finish line eventually. It will just take longer.”

Joe Mathews, author of another incisive work on the guv, the book "The People's Machine," says the story rings true.

Read more from Joe here. He is leaving the LA Times to become a California fellow - a journalist on a stipend - at the New America Foundation.