“I want to say something you won’t hear the mainstream media say,” said Pollock. “I’m so honored to be in your presence. I’m privileged to be with you. And we want to know what you guys are doing. If you have something that you want PJTV to know about, let us know.”

Clockwise from top left: Byron York, Michael Barone, David Freddoso and J.P. Freire (YouTube screenshots)

For the first few years of George W. Bush’s presidency, Mark Tapscott was a journalist without a newsroom, shouting from the sidelines about his industry’s swift decline. Tapscott ran the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Media and Public Policy, and trained reporters in the use of technology for research and crunching numbers. When he considered how few conservatives, libertarians, or real skeptics of federal power were working in newsrooms, he saw a problem that was making the growth of government possible.

“The [Freedom of Information Act],” Tapscott wrote in a 2004 commentary, “has been subverted from its original intent – shining light in all corners of the federal establishment – and used instead by the bureaucrats, special interests and politicians who live off the Nanny State, especially those hiding behind closed doors in places like Health and Human Services, the Education Department and Housing and Urban Development.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Sitting up straight in his office at the Washington Examiner, where Tapscott has been the editorial page editor for three years, he repeats the point. “There are 57 people in the Freedom of Information Hall of Fame,” he says. “Three of them are conservatives — two of them, if you don’t count me. Now, that’s a problem.”

Since its launch in 2005, the second daily metro newspaper owned by conservative billionaire Phillip Anschutz (the first was the San Francisco Examiner) has struggled for an identity in a city crawling with political journalists. But since the November 2008 election, the Examiner has beefed up its staff and pulled prominent right-leaning reporters and pundits away from publications like The American Spectator and National Review. Tapscott and a growing staff of political and opinion writers are carving out an identity as the conservative version of the left-leaning opinion and investigative journalism sites that — in the view of many conservatives — have used reporting to embarrass conservatives and the Republican Party.

It wasn’t always this way. In 2004, Tapscott and many other conservatives looked at the reporting and fallout of a badly flawed CBS News report on President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard as a watershed moment, the arrival of a form of citizen journalism that could do distributed research and bring down media titans. Tapscott was awed by the “reporting power demonstrated by the blog leaders in Rathergate such as Littlegreenfootballs.com and [Powerlineblog.com],” he wrote at the time. And in 2006, Tapscott joined forces with conservative and liberal bloggers to uncover the identity of a senator who put a hold on anti-earmark legislation. But conservatives point to that period as the tipping point when liberal-leaning sites like Talking Points Memo, whose Muckraker blog chased the “secret hold” story, overtook conservative sites. By the time that voters went to the polls to elect Barack Obama, conservatives saw sites such as TPM, The Huffington Post, Media Matters, Pro Publica, and the Center for American Progress as part of a new left-wing conspiracy. The Examiner has beaten other outlets to the punch in putting together a right-leaning answer to that.

“I don’t think TPM has any special claim to the type of reporting we do,” said Josh Marshall, the editor of TPM. “If the Examiner wants to get reporters down into the weeds holding the administration and Congress to account with tough, by-the-books reporting, I think that’s not only possible but a great thing.”

If a number of other conservative publishers have their way, the Examiner will get more competition. PajamasMedia, the blog conglomerate that grew out of the “Rathergate” story, is talking to potential reporters for an investigative journalism site. Jennifer Rubin, the site’s Washington editor, declined to discuss the plans but pointed to the site’s coverage of anti-tax “Tea Parties” as proof that “the old model of elite journalists peddling liberal opinion as ‘objective reporting’ is dying.” NewMajority.com, an opinion-heavy site launched by conservative writer David Frum on Inauguration Day, employed former Republican National Committee staffer Moira Bagley as an investigative reporter, but published only 11 of her stories before letting her move on in mid-February. Journalist and commentator Tucker Carlson is currently interviewing conservative journalists for a new site tentatively called The Daily Caller, although he declined to discuss it with TWI, explaining that he had “launched too many ventures that were heavily publicized before they were prepared for scrutiny.”

But Tapscott’s paper has gotten there first. After Anschutz’s Baltimore Examiner newspaper was closed in February, more resources were allocated to the Washington paper. They’ve been used to scoop up talent from other conservative media. Tim Carney wrote a column about the lobbying industry while still editing the Evans-Novak Political Report; when founder Robert Novak decided to shutter it in January, Carney moved to the Examiner full-time. One week later, the paper hired Byron York away from a nine-year stint National Review, where he’d been the magazine’s lead political reporter. At the start of June it poached David Freddoso also of National Review, the reporter who’d written the bestselling “The Case Against Barack Obama” for Regnery, and it hired J.P. Freire, who had recently left The American Spectator, to be the managing editor of the editorial pages.

In his modest office, a short walk away from the Examiner’s newsroom, Tapscott can’t pour enough praise on the new hires or on the columnists that have been added to the paper’s lineup, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, and political encyclopedia Michael Barone, hired away from U.S. News and World Report. Scott Ott, a political satirist who won fame in the conservative blogosphere for his site “Scrappleface,” now puts his satire in a weekly column. In a 2004 blog post, Tapscott had mulled over what could happen if a newspaper grabbed fresh political commentary and put it in one place. “If The Washington Post were to sign on Powerline not merely for weekly op-eds and/or the reprint rights but as members of the reporting team,” he speculated, “the Posties would have the collective talents, experience and insight of Hindrocket, The Big Trunk and Deacon to help shape the paper’s reporting agenda, assist in developing major stories and generate new sources for the reporting staff.” Five years later, he’s doing just that.

According to Chris Stirewalt, the paper’s bow-tie-wearing political editor, that lineup has brought attention to the paper that’s also boosted the political coverage. “Two years ago,” says Stirewalt, “people were saying ‘Gosh, if only if there was a vertically integrated place where I could get all this stuff.’ I promise you that two years ago, nobody said ‘You know, if you have Barone and York and Carney and this kid in a bow tie writing columns in a newspaper it would be really cool. That was serendipity. Sometimes if the people are available and the money is there, things come together.”

The results so far: increased Web traffic (up 300 percent since January, according to Web editor Matthew Sheffield) and more attempts to shame federal agencies, members of Congress, and the White House. Some of it has gone largely unnoticed so far. The editorial page’s Kevin Mooney reports a feature called “Dirty Money,” in which he digs through databases to find out which officers or members of unions have been convicted of crimes and how much those unions have given to members of Congress, then calls up the members’ office to ask whether they’ll give the money back. To date, none of them have even given Mooney an on-the-record response; Tapscott hopes to tie that up into a scolding editorial.

York’s political reporting has had a greater calculable impact. In his columns and in his blog, York is given space to hound the White House about embarrassing stories that interest conservatives more than other newsroom’s editors. York wrote multiple pieces on a somewhat obscure complication that preceded Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) turning down an appointment as Commerce Secretary — whether or not the Census would be run from the Commerce Department or from the White House. Since last week, York has filed piece after piece on the firing of Gerald Walpin, an Americorps inspector general who has asked whether his investigation of the Democratic mayor of Sacramento was ended because the target is an ally of the president. Since the paper ran those first stories last week, the controversy has gone up the food chain to Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

Over the next few months, Sheffield wants to update the Examiner’s site to “integrate social media” and build on what’s already bringing links to the site from RealClearPolitics, Fox Nation, and conservative blogs. And this week’s purchase of The Weekly Standard by Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group was welcomed by Tapscott, who might have an even larger pool of conservative talent to draw on for his long-term project. “I am ecstatic about the move,” he said, “and the prospect of working with Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes.”

A little decoding: it is considered noteworthy, and hilarious, that President Obama dispatches political allies who become a problem to him. Indeed, this is pretty strange and no politician has done it before. But since the cliche “throwing [person or thing] under the bus” took hold, conservatives have applied it to anyone that Obama apparently distanced him from, ever.

• The video begins with Rachel running over a TV image of “my white grandmama,” whom conservatives believe was “thrown under the bus” in Obama’s speech on race when he talked about her admitted uneasiness among black men.

• The reference to the “brother in a shack” is to George Obama, the president’s half brother, who lives in Nairobi.

• The lyric about the “magic negro” story is sort of garbled — Rachel says the “New York Times called” Obama that, but it was black critic David Edelstein Ehrenstein in The Los Angeles Times. Rachel jokes that Rush Limbaugh was pilloried for citing the comment, but it didn’t really become an issue until Republican National Committee chairman candidate Chip Saltsman sent around a CD of parody songs including “Barack the Magic Negro,” sung by an Al Sharpton impersonator.

Anyway, that’s the state of PajamasTV at the moment.

–

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OK, what about President Obama?

He is enemy, only, of Islam and of the Muslims.  So nobody — nobody show to the world about this. Especially Pakistani media. Pakistani media will show, they will turn to the people and show, what he want. What Mr. Obama want. Nobody can reject this. Nobody can reform the United States.

The Taliban has its own Joe the Plumber! Khan goes on to say that he’ll allow “all journalists from the U.S.” to come to Swat. PajamasTV, I’m looking at you. Go after the story of how Obama is a self-hating Muslim.

Weren’t those revolutions in countries that didn’t have functioning democracies? Well, so is this one! People are angry, says Mayer, “whether it’s due to massive electoral fraud or the emergence of big corrupt banks with big corrupt politicians.”

I’d thought, somewhat naively, that President Obama’s decisive winning margin ended the agonizing “not my president” debates of 2001-2005 and to a lesser extent (thanks for nothing, Greg Palast) 2005-2009. But maybe, just maybe, ACORN scared up 9.5 million fake votes for Obama. Who can say, really?

That’s the key scene, but what struck me was Wurzelbacher’s whiny recollection of what happened after he made a highly publicized visit to Republican Senate staffers, in which he gave them political advice.

I went further into the Capitol building. I wanted to ask some senators some questions as well. And I was told I needed some credentials. So I went to the office to get the credentials and unfortunately I was explained to that (sic) right now PJTV.com is considered more opinionated than hard news. And that kind of put me off. I was surprised about that.

This news disturbs host Roger L. Simon, the Bernie Madoff of internet video. “We heard the same thing, funnily enough!” He reads a letter from the Senate Press Gallery explaining why PJTV wasn’t given media credentials because it’s an opinion site, not a news site. “Well, Joe, there you have it! You’re too opinionated! Ironically, it was the NBC news crew who shot you in the press office being denied access. The network of Keith Olbermann has press credentials, and you don’t!”

If Simon wants to prove that “citizen journalists” deserve the same access as NBC News, he could start by explaining how the credentials process works. I’ve been through this. For two and a half years I worked for Reason magazine, a libertarian publication (which turns 41-years-old this year) owned by the Reason Foundation. Because of that, we were not allowed to get regular press credentials. This is a trap that small political magazines (and Websites) fall into. For-profit news organizations are allowed to apply for the credentials, and individual reporters can apply for long-term passes that are only available on a case-by-case basis.

I didn’t love this situation. I dealt with it, because if I called up any congressional office with an interview request, I could get credentialed for the day and roam around. That’s all any reporter needs, especially if that reporter, like Wurzelbacher, is on the Hill for one or two days to do some quick interviews. That’s what Keith Olbermann would do if he was on the Hill to talk to senators, as he’s the opinionated host of his own show, and not a daily Hill reporter. Either Simon and Wurzelbacher are scamming their viewers (can we use the plural?) by telling them the credentialing process is biased, or they really don’t understand the process.

“Hrm,” I thought. “They must have a ton of start-up capital for PajamasTV.”

Today we learn the other side of this story, as PajamasMedia tells the conservative bloggers who signed up with PJM’s blog ad service (launched in 2005) that this phase of the company is coming to an end.

Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom posted the Dear John letter from Simon.

[W]e have decided to wind down the Pajamas Media Blogger and advertising network effective March 31, 2009. The PJM portal and the XPressBlogs will continue as is.

Since our ad relationship continues for the time being, you should note that in order to be paid for the 1st quarter of 2009, you must leave the current Pajamas ads up until 12:01AM April 1. We will be sending you information in mid-March on removing the ads. As of April 1, 2009, you will be free to arrange syndication or re-sale deals.

We thank you very much for participating during the formative years of Pajamas Media and we look forward to working with you in other ways. One of those is, of course, Pajamas TV. If you have any ideas in that regard, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Roy Edroso has the rest of the details, and the intra-blog sniping, which peaked with a shockingly snotty letter from Simon in which he explained that the ad business had been losing money, so:

… people getting their quarterly checks from PJM were getting a form of stipend from us in the hopes that advertisers would start to cotton to blogs and we could possibly make a profit. Didn’t happen. No wonder those people are kicking and screaming now that they are off the dole. I might too. [What's their beef? I thought most of them were free marketeer libertarians or something.-ed. Go figure.]

Leaving aside the fact that bloggers weren’t exactly told that they were a bunch of welfare queens — who had been aggressively courted by PJM, remember — Ann Althouse nails the other problem here. PajamasTV’s content is significantly worse than that of, say, BloggingHeadsTV and ReasonTV*.

*Full disclosure: I am a contributing editor at Reason magazine.

The greatest champion of liberals (they thought) is on the verge of repudiating their agenda. But he is also undermining the opposition. The result may be that centrist nirvana which many have pined for these many years.

Same author, two weeks ago:

The Obama transition team, soon to be the Obama administration, is concocting a reenactment of the New Deal. [...]

If you think this sounds half-baked and suffers from historical amnesia, you are right.

Same author, right before the election:

Obama has presented a certain face to the voters and we should see if it matches up to the face he showed others before he imagined anyone outside his circle of like-minded comrades might take particular notice.

I forgot to note the source of this articles. Rubin is the Washington editor of Pajamas Media, whose owners are currently crowing about the “618,000 hits” you get when googling “Joe the Plumber” and “Israel” and bragging that their decision to send the extremely bored plumber to cover a war has “started a war of its own.”

As Terry Wogan once said to David Icke: Guys, they’re laughing at you.

This is why.

The crucial bit, if you don’t want to watch it all:

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, ‘Well look at this atrocity,’ well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.

The PJM bloggers think this is great stuff, and they compare him to Stephen Crane. PJM’s Bill Hobbs writes, in a post defending the enterprise:

I don’t know if he can craft a coherent sentence or conduct an revealing interview. And perhaps he’ll be an absolute disaster as a journalist, even as he’s created a PR explosion for PJTV.

I’m still hung up on why this guy matters at all. Has he given up on buying that plumbing company and cruising into the $250k+ tax bracket? That, I thought, was why we were supposed to care about his unschooled, incoherent views.

Human rights groups and Palestinian officials are reporting a sewage crisis, with human waste bursting from antiquated pipes as the Israeli blockade of Gaza doesn’t allow for sufficient diesel to power the pump-station generators. This, of course, has significant health implications for one of the most population-dense places on earth:

Sadi Ali, project manager for the Palestinian Water Authority, said the health risk from sewage on the streets was clear.

“There is a risk of the spread of all sorts of water borne diseases such as dysentery and cholera,” he said.

What you need in this situation is obvious. And who cares more about over one million beleaguered Palestinian civilians than Pajamas Media?