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."

The public airwaves, public radio and the public good

In response to the Juan Willaims dust-up, Steve Coll, head of the New America Foundation, argues that NPR should get more funding from the government, not less, and the money should come from the commercial broadcasters that profit from use of the public airwaves.

From Coll's column in the Washington Post:

The episode matters in part because NPR's place in American journalism and society is changing. Its growing audience of 30 million listeners - attracted by the network's worldwide reporting, lengthy interviews and deep analysis - increasingly constitutes a distinctive and influential commons, comparable to the audience served by the news divisions of major broadcast networks during the 1960s and 1970s.

Altogether, the public broadcasting system - NPR; its quasi-rival on radio, American Public Media; the Public Broadcasting Service on television; and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides them funding approved by Congress - reaches 98 percent of the American population. The system has achieved this penetration despite being comparatively starved of government-mandated investment. The United States spends about $1.40 per capita, or $420 million a year, on public and nonprofit media through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Britain spends about $87 per capita, according to an analysis by the advocacy and policy group Free Press. Canada, one of the most miserly industrialized democracies in this area, spends about $27 per capita.

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.

Fact-based voting

The May 19 election is fast approaching and the ballot propositions (1A-1F) aren't getting any easier to understand. Mark Paul, a senior scholar at the New America Foundation, has put together a video that provides some context on the budget troubles that the proposition aims to solve - or, in Paul's words, "kick ... down the road." (h/t Calbuzz)