Four Monday

1. Andrew Breitbart tells the L.A. chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition that objectivity in journalism means surrender, and unveils plans to start a Big Jerusalem site. fishbowlLA

2. An ad in today's Miami Herald congratulations the Miami Heat, which lost the NBA championships. Miami New Times

3. AOL's Patch sites are busy, but not with muckraking stories. LAT

4. ABC's Chris Cuomo embarrasses himself as he rationalizes paying sources. Poynter

When a power elite turns on himself

In the wake of the Shirley Sherrod dustup, the Los Angeles Times has a short profile of ultraconservative blogger Andrew Breitbart. The story, by Robin Abcarian, is here.

Rooting out the "undermedia"

Media watchers have produced one-week-after reflections on the two Big Stories that surfaced out of the conservative's activist media: Andrew Breitbart's take down of a USDA employee on a bogus charge of reverse racism and Tucker Carlson's attempt to expose a liberal media cabal by publishing the musing of self-identified liberal commentators.

David Carr describes the stories as "provocateur" journalism, a radicalized form of the advocacy journalism practiced by more traditional media:

As content providers increasingly hack their own route to an audience, it’s becoming clear that many are less interested in covering the game than tilting the field.

Carr's colleague at the New York Times, Brian Stelter, writes about an "undermedia" (a Breitbart term) that pushes stories meant to reinforce and amplify a set of beliefs, or fears, rather than to test conventional wisdom. Thus, Breitbart runs a false story because he sees his job as constructing a conservative narrative, not chasing down facts.

Breitbart told Stelter:

"It’s my business model to craft strategies to make sure that the mainstream media is forced to reckon with stories that it would love to ignore because it doesn’t fit their narrative."

Breitbart and Carlson desperately want us to treat news as a series of competing partisan narratives. It is an effective way of neutering facts that contradict one's own views and emboldens like-minded thinkers to ignore any argument that support the other side. It tells readers that they have a choice of ideologies, and that they must identify with one or the other, and in doing so deprives them of the facts they need to evaluate these partisan narratives for what they are: the tools of the entrenched to manipulate votes. Breitbart's folly, a result of giddy over-eagerness, hopefully pulls back the curtain.

Entrapment journalizm

Simon Owens at Bloggasm attempts to dispell the silly notion that conservative political activists with cameras are doing the hard work of uncovering corruption that the lamestream media chooses to ignore. Instead, he argues, the likes of James O'Keefe and Jason Mattera are seeking attention - and YouTube hits - for their political views.

A link to Owens' column is here.

The ambush method, as described by Owens, seems to borrow from the work of the Daily Show and even the old Howard Stern radio program. Except that instead of being funny, and possibly satirical, the right-wing videos seethe with a raw, impotent anger that makes the whole enterprise humorless.

Andrew's ankles

Atlantic magazine asked conservative firebrand Andrew Breitbart what he's reading. Apparently, he has a "secret wire" that's three minutes faster than everyone else's and a nose for email-inbox gold.

Also, if you've had a Twitter spat with Breitbart, it's only because he thinks he's better than you:

I use Google Alert for my name to start fights with people in comment sections or on Twitter. It's clear that Keith Olbermann's strategy to get noticed was to attack people above him. I have precisely the opposite strategy: to go after the mosquitoes that bite my ankles. I'm not sure it's a good business model but I'm a petty enough man to indulge them.

Breitbart also labels Gawker as an ankle-biting enterprise - which it is, but this seems a bit of a pot-kettle thing.

Four in the morning

1. God is dead... No, wait. The mainstream media is dead, and Andrew Breitbart is coming to collect the body (just as soon as that thing with James O'Keefe is taken care of). NPR

2. The Los Angeles Times shuffles a few editorial positions and hires former Daily News sports reporter Steve Dilbeck to blog about the Dodgers. LAO

3. The Twitter bullies are out. Nick Bilton at the New York Times is highly offended that New Yorker writer George Packer is leery of the new "information economy" that comes in the form of Tweets. NYT (Packer's original post)

4. The Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has honored five journalists: Celeste Fremon of WitnessLA, Denise Nix of the Daily Breeze, Claudia Peschiutta of KNX 1070, Dave Lopez of CBS2/KCAL9, and Andrew Blankstein of the Los Angeles Times. SPJ

Drudge, Reuters and the Breitbart connection

Gawker has an interesting story about a profitable arrangement between Reuters, Andrew Breitbart and Matt Drudge.

Here's the setup:

...a large percentage of the stories the Drudge Report links to are newswire stories, which can be licensed by any entity willing to pay for them. An Associated Press story, for example, may be carried on literally hundreds of sites – and Drudge is free to link to whichever one of those sites he chooses, for whatever reasons. In turn, the lucky site he links to is rewarded with a huge blast of monetizable traffic through no reportorial work of its own.

How does it pay off for Breitbart?:

Over the course of a year, the Drudge Report links to thousands of AP and other newswire stories. At some point, Breitbart realized this was basically like pouring money down a drain, only worse. It was like pouring money down a drain that some random newspaper publisher was sitting under, cackling gleefully as the money poured down on him.

Why, Breitbart must have wondered, couldn't he be that cackling publisher? A newswire portal would require little investment other than the newswire licensing fees, and yet with the Drudge Report sending it a thundering river of traffic every day, it could potentially make millions of dollars in advertising too.

And so, in 2005, Breitbart launched Breitbart.com, which is basically a portal for newswire stories. Links to Breitbart.com from the Drudge Report followed. A study found that in the year the site launched, 25 percent of the links on Drudge pointed to Breitbart.com.

So how did Reuters, a bastion of "liberal media," hook up with Breitbart, the self-appointed basher of "liberal media"? Well, Reuters was one of the wire services Breitbart had a license with. Then they broke up. Then Reuters came back with a new idea:

Typically, newspaper sites pay newswires to license their content, and that's what Breitbart was doing until Reuters cancelled its original contract with him. Now, it wanted to switch things up.

Under the terms of the new proposal, Breitbart would not be able to publish complete Reuters stories on his own website. Instead, he'd merely publish headlines and summaries that would link to Reuters' own page.

How did this change Drudge Report's link habits?:

The Drudge Report linked to Reuters.com just 29 times from January 1, 2005 to October 14, 2005. Then, Breitbart signed his new deal to drive traffic to Reuters.com for money. From October 15, 2005 to December 31, 2005, the Drudge Report linked to Reuters.com 229 times. ... In 2006, the Drudge Report linked to Reuters.com 1888 times.

Read the whole story here.

Four in the afternoon

1. Mailer wars in the 32nd Congressional District race - Sen. Gil Cedillo's camp takes a cut-and-paste approach. LAT

2. The Los Angeles Daily News laid off Dodgers beat writer Tony Jackson. LAO

3. Washington Times columnist and sometimes Drudge Report editor Andrew Breitbart spoke at an anti-tax rally in front of Pasadena City Hall and said this about how America treats dissenters: "Just like in Cuba, like in Venezuela, those that dissent are marginalized at best, and jailed or killed or worse." PSN

4. Charlie Munger, who has a big stake in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, had this to say about the state of the newspaper industry: "It’s really a national tragedy. As they disappear - I think what replaces them won’t be as desirable as what we’re losing." His partner, Warren Buffett, said he wouldn't buy another newspaper "at any price." PaidContent