The mainstream American media is suffering from financial pressure, but more worrisome is that its quality has gone downhill.  The major news organizations are failing in their coverage of the big stories.  More people turn to sources like Wikipedia and blogs.

I’m not the only one who says so.  Ryan Chittum, writing on the Columbia Journalism Review’s blog, pointed out that thin coverage and the back-paging of front page-worthy stories is a real problem for the New York Timesand the Wall Street Journal:

The Journal, which scored recently by bringing David Reilly back into the fold after a stint at Bloomberg, posts a Reilly news article looking at the culpability of Lehman auditor Ernst & Young. The paper dumps it on C7. The NYT has on the same angle—a very good one to examine closely—and slides it inside on B2.

Somehow the Times thought more people would care about Sorkin’s scoop on a $3 billion deal for Tommy Hilfiger or that it was more important than an auditor approving accounting fraud. They don’t and it’s not.

Look, I know that Lehman collapsed a year and a half ago, but this is a major story—one that finally gets awfully close to putting the crimes in the crisis. I’ll go ahead and say it: If you’ve wanted to know about the Valukas report and its implications, you’ve been better served by reading Zero Hedge and Naked Capitalism than you have The Wall Street Journal or New York Times. This on the biggest financial news story of the week—and one of the biggest of the year. These papers have hundreds of journalists at their disposal. The blogs have one non-professional writer and a handful of sometime non-pro-journalist contributors.

Chittum, from his perch at the CJR, points to several Lehman stories that blogs broke that should have been broken by the big outlets if they had just…read the Lehman report.

More evidence of the news organizations failing  jumped out at me in thisWashington Post story about a persuasive healthcare speech President Obama gave today in Ohio.  Reportedly, some Republicans voters were swayed enough by the President to give it a try:

Still, not everyone has a firm opinion, and many admit they have a limited understanding of the details. Voters often say they are not sure whom to believe, offering a version of a comment by Patrick O’Toole, Mary Jo’s husband: “You hear this from one side and that from the other side, and you don’t know what’s right.”

Overlooking Obama’s shortcoming for not not hammering out these speeches much earlier and more often, Patrick O’Toole points to a media failure.  Too many media outlets are following the Fox News approach, which is to have no standards for who they put before your eyes.  There is weak critical analysis of what is said, so the news story is ultimately the talking point barked, when the story should be the talking point supported or debunked.  The consequence is an electorate exemplified by Mr. O’Toole.

Standards have eroded across the board; two months after Betsey “Death Panel” McCaughey was shown on Jon Stewart to have no basis for what was dubbed Lie of the Year, she wrote another column about the healthcare bill for the Wall Street Journal.  It was not accompanied by an editors note cautioning, “This woman can’t find her facts in the bill she is writing about, she just believes they exist.”

Three and a half months into my diet

Nightline recently aired a debate between some fat women and some thin women and called the piece “Is it OK to be fat?”   You can find the episode here.

I watched this program incredulously. What the hell do those wackos at Nightline mean?  Is it ok to be fat? What?  That question goes right up there with, “is it ok to play in traffic?”, “Is sharing heroine needles really that bad?”, and my favorite “is it really ok to sleep with several multiple partners without a condom?”.  Stay tuned for those Nightline episodes; I’m sure they’ll be riveting.

Must I say the obvious? Of course it’s not ok to be fat!

Now, before you jump up from your computer and point a finger at me screaming “biggot!”, settle down there.  Take a good look at me.  I’m not wearing a pointy white hat.  If you look closely you’ll see that I’m fat.  Granted, I’m less fat than I was three and a half months ago, but honestly.  I promise you.  I’m fat.

Dont get me wrong.  If what Nightline is really asking is “is it ok to discriminate” against fat people, then come on.  That’s another stupid question.  Don’t be silly.  It’s not ok to point and snicker at an obese person.  It’s not ok to fire someone, or refuse to hire someone, or promote them, just because they’re fat. That just makes you a jerk.

But is it ok to charge an extremely fat person more money for an extra airline seat if he or she can’t actually fit into one seat? Of course! That’s not discrimination, people.  That’s common sense.  You pay for what you use.  Why should it ever be otherwise? What does it matter why I’m using the extra seat?  Whether it’s for my infant? Or for me to stretch my legs out?  If I’m using two seats, I’m paying for two seats.

Is it ok to judge a fat person as unworthy?  Well, not any more than it’s ok to judge a person as unworthy because he’s blind, or deaf, or gay, or a Jew, or African American. And unless you’re a card carrying member of the KKK, then I don’t think you can really dispute this point.  Now that we’ve resolved that it’s never ok to discriminate against a fat person, let’s revisit the question Nightline asks in this piece.

Is it ok to be fat? Is this really a question we need to ask?  Before I set out on my diet back in November, I was an enormous 75 pounds overweight.  I was, and incidentally still am, clinically obese.  I’m working to change that.  Why?  Mostly because being fat is unhealthy, although I won’t deny that being skinnier also makes me feel better because I look better.  But here are some health issues that personally plagued me at a mere 75 pounds overweight:  sleep disturbance, snoring, difficulty breathing, asthma, sudden growth of a renegade right boob (due to rapid weight gain, scout’s honor), acid reflux, and highish cholesterol. Let’s not even discuss the fact that two years ago, at 38 and newly divorced, I consulted my doctor about the possibility of having a baby with just me, a bottle of mysterious sperm and a turkey baster.  You know what he said?  Lose weight!

Why?  Because getting pregnant at 75 pounds overweight is a recipe for disaster.  Heavier women develop all kinds of weight related issues while pregnant.  It’s a fact. So is it “ok” to be 75 pounds overweight and get pregnant?  I don’t know. Is it ok to invite gestational diabetes, preeclampsia and fetal morbidity into your pregnancy?

Of course, I’m well aware that women who are overweight do get pregnant, and they do have babies.  Often everything turns out just fine.  But it would be easier, and better, and healthier for both baby and mom if obesity were not an issue. That cannot be disputed.

75 pounds overweight, one month before my diet began

Watching the heavier women on this Nightline program argue that being “fat” didn’t mean they were unhealthy was disturbing.  I mean, I think it’s kind of a forgone conclusion that when you’re obese you’re going to have some health issues.

This doesn’t make you a bad person. It just makes you a person at risk for health issues. It’s pretty simple.  I think the women arguing that “being fat doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy” were confusing “unhealthy” with “unlikeable”.  Being fat doesn’t mean you’re bad. It doesn’t mean you’re ugly. It doesn’t mean people should dislike you.  It doesn’t mean that people should treat you like shit.

But it does mean that you’re at risk for heart disease, respiratory and vascular issues and I’m sure a whole host of others I’m not thinking of right now.  So from a health stand point, it’s certainly not ok to be fat. I’d venture to say that anyone who argues this point is mired in a heap of denial.

That kind of denial is something I understand all too well, so I know it when I see it. It’s still hard for me to look that label “obese” straight in the eye and embrace it as one that defines me.  But it does. I understand, on a deeply intimate level the desire to argue that being fat is ok.  But I won’t jump on that bullshit bandwagon.

No one is saying you have to be “thin”, least of all me.   No one is suggesting that everyone ought to be eating 1000 calories a day, or that everyone should weigh 115 pounds.  What is clear, though, is that if you’ve hit that magical number on the scale that makes you “clinically obese” then you’ve got some work to do.  I know I do.

Being fat doesn’t mean you don’t love yourself, and it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be loved.  It means you’re not perfect. Welcome to the human race. I’m fat.  I know it.  I’m changing it one day at a time.  And that, my friends, is what’s ok.

The folks at PETA are pure geniuses at marketing their cause: as of this writing, there were 314 stories on Google News about the Tiger Woods ad that they’ve barely used:

Brooklyn-based band The Hold Steady announced they will release their fifth album on May 3rd, Heaven is Whenever, their first since 2008’s Stay Positive, according to Luke Slater at Drowned in Sound.

Image: Taken for Wikipedia/Creative Commons in New York’s Webster Hall at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.

A guy that the Huffington Post claims is part of the famed Rothschild family is actually an impostor.

Apparently, all it takes to blog there is to claim a pedigree and build a bunch of fake websites with Moonfruit: check out HuffPo’s “Stefan de Rothschild“.

All of the websites used to bolster his credibility were created by the same guy, and all are hosted by the do-it-yourself Moonfruit:

rothschildarts.org=146.101.249.107
rothschild-estates.com=146.101.249.107
rothschildglobalfoundation.org=146.101.249.107
www.moonfruit.com=146.101.249.107

None of those organizations actually exist (try Googling them with quotes).

Who is the guy who created them?  He used to go by Stefan Roberts, who has a website at stefanroberts.com.  If you look at the photo and layout, it’s the same as stefanderothschild.com

The Huffington Post was contacted by members of the Wikipedia Review, who caught on when Wikipedia was continually deleting the fake biographies of both Stefan Roberts and Stefan de Rothschild, and also Stefan’s fake father “Andrew de Rothschild” (here’s that discussion – worth a read).  However, HuffPo still has him up.

So much for the future of journalism – HuffPo is helping this scam artist, who appears to be soliciting donations through them:

Here is their (still live as of publication) biography of “Baron Stefan de Rothschild”:

Pretty comical; even by his own admission Stefan was born in 1992, which makes the claim he is a “leading voice” about anything pretty ridiculous.  Anyone who has only read a magazine article about the Rothschilds knows 1) they wouldn’t put a teenager in charge of so many businesses; and 2) they are far more private than this kid, who practically begs people to e-mail him.  Here’s the other HuffPo profile of Stefan Roberts, who has written a non-existent book:

I can’t wait to read his book on how to be liberal on some issues, and conservative on others.  Even though that describes the majority of voters, we’d all like to learn how to do it properly.

Pretty much everything about this guy is fake – but hey, now you have Huffington Post helping it (even Wikipedia didn’t fall for this).

Check out Stefan Roberts fake biography when he wanted to be known as His Excellency Lord Stefan Roberts of Jersey.

If you go to StefandeRothschild.com, you come across this opening shot:

Now here’s Stefan Roberts, same outfit, just slightly different pose:

It’s my understanding that the Rothschilds (the real ones) have been alerted.

So to those victims in Haiti that “Rothschild Estates” claims it is giving $2.5M and that the Washington Post reported about?  Don’t expect to see it.  Here’s Stefan lecturing Huffington Post readers from his column “Since When Was There a Minimum Donation Amount?” (with 130 comments):

The Huffington Post’s coverage of the corporate world’s reaction to the terrible earthquake in Haiti last week has prompted a ludicrous and frankly reprehensible reaction from HuffPost readers – many of whom seem to think that businesses should have some kind of minimum donation amount.

I am on the board of a company which donated $2.5 million to the relief effort, and I am very pleased that we have made such a commitment. We donate over $50 million to charitable causes around the world every year. But these are planned and executed after months of extensive research and assessment to ensure that the money will get into the right hands.

Arianna is not going to like this one bit (now will somebody please tell her).

Update 2/1-A:  The editors of Wikipedia contacted the Rothschild Foundation, which responded:

The Rothschild Foundation replied “Thanks for your message – it has been passed it [sic] on to the relevant authorities.” It will be interesting now to see if Stefan’s fake sites suddenly disappear. JohnCD (talk) 10:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

But he’s still up at Huffington Post!

Update 2/1-B:  Baron de Scamchild is being revealed, and everyone wonders how HuffPo *still* has his blogs up:

• Felix Salmon @Reuters
• Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish
• Gawker/Valleywag: How a Layabout Used the Huffington Post to Become a Rothschild

Update 2/1-C:  Around 5:30 pm EST Huffington Post *finally* removes the “Stefan de Rothschild” and Stefan Roberts blogs; it only took all the blogging above to get them to do it.  Let’s face it: their brand is hurt.  Here’s the message on the now deleted blogs:

Editor’s Note: On February 1st, it came to our attention that this blogger had misrepresented himself and was blogging under a false identity, part of an elaborate online hoax. As a result, his work will no longer be published on HuffPost, and his previous pieces have been removed.

Update 2/1-D: Stefan took down his fake websites sometime around 7:30 p.m EST, but since he has been doing this since 2005 and his StefanRoberts.com website is still up, I imagine this ethically-challenged young man will scam again.  Seek help, Stefan.  Maybe it runs in the family: apparently dad Andrew Roberts  (“Andrew de Rotshchild”) had a fake investment group called Roberts Investments Group (see that whole mess here).

Above you see my photograph of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya that is found on Wikimedia Commons used by the Miami Herald in a December 22, 2009 story by Lori Kozlowski that was recycled from the Los Angeles Times.  Nowhere on the article is the work attributed to me.

Now, I’ve written before about my own views regarding attribution and there are really only three categories where it does not bother me if someone does not give me the credit for my own hard work:

1. I am asked;
2. An artist is using the work, and attribution would interfere with their creative vision; and
3. For a non-commercial entity’s use.

All others should give credit where credit is due, and particularly a member of the mainstream media that has advertisements plastered all around it.

For those of us who work in the Creative Commons–I retired from it in 2009–one of the few benefits is credit for our hard work.  The Herald robbed me of that small satisfaction in this case, and I imagine I’m not the only one.

Boo, hiss, Miami Herald, for taking the hard work of others without giving them the credit.  It violates the copyright terms that are clearly spelled out where you found the image.

If you would like to see my other photos of Petrushevskaya, one of Russia’s foremost literary authors, click here.

In his perennial effort to trash God’s reputation on Earth, Pat Robertson blamed him for the heartrending devastation in Haiti by saying the Caribbean country was suffering from the pact they made with Ol’ Scratch.

Turns out, the Devil wasn’t so pleased himself with this (ostensibly, God will sort out Robertson at a later date). Thank you Lily Coyle of Minneapolis for your pitch-perfect piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher.

The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake.

Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll.

You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best, Satan

I am a huge fan of The Libertines, and their music–and that of Babyshambles and Dirty Pretty Things–had a massive impact on me.  Hell, in 2006 when I broke up with my boyfriend I sent him the song Music When the Lights Go Out, as it was practically written about the relationship and how much I had soured on it.

But after I read this BBC interview with Carl Barat about a possible reunion with Pete Doherty after their acrimonious split in 2004, I was left wondering:  does anyone care if they get back together again?  From the BBC:

Former Libertines star Carl Barat has said he expects some “hostility” to the notion of a band reunion in 2011.  The musician also admitted that he had not yet discussed the idea with his former co-frontman Pete Doherty.

“I sent him a text a couple of weeks ago, but he never got back,” Barat said during rehearsals for his theatrical debut next week.

Earlier this week, Barat told the Evening Standard that it would be “glorious” to reform the band in 2011.

Carl, what you face may not be hostility, but ambivalence.

Any Libertines fan knows that a possible reunion of the band has become an almost quarterly news story in the music press that never goes anywhere. Back in 2006, when the idea was first mentioned seriously, my hopes were huge.   I remember forwarding stories to my friends that were full of exclamation marks.  But story after story, year after year, I simply don’t care any more.  And who is to say that a reconstituted band would do any justice to the early work?  They both have carved out admirable careers in the interim, but I think most of us have moved on from the idea that it will ever happen.

Shit or get off the pot, mates, but fans and non-fans alike are a bit sick of all the never-ending talk about it.

In last week’s New York magazine there was a very large feature about literary and political giant Larry Kramer (above, left).  In the article, they reference my interview with Edmund White (above, right), another literary giant and a former friend of Kramer’s (in the early 1980’s they were amongst the co-founders of GMHC).  The New York story itself made news, and quite a few Wikimedia Creative Commons shots of Kramer were used in the ripple effect (Dallas Observer and the Advocate, for two).

I know Wikinews has been used as a source in reliable sources before, but I’m not sure if there is a running list out there of when it happens.

New York references my Edmund White interview because of some unpleasant things that White and his partner Michael said about Kramer.  There is a feud between the two icons, on a William F. Buckley v. Gore Vidal level.   White, a professor at Princeton, was candid and unabashed throughout.  He was a subject with seemingly no limits in where he allowed me to take him.   There was a sense that if I had the guts to ask, he had the guts to answer although White notoriously does not suffer fools.  I would occasionally ask a question thinking to myself, Now surely he’s not going to answer this one! and Professor White would.  Below are a few of my favorite exchanges from the November 2007 interview, Edmund White on writing, incest, life and Larry Kramer.

DS: What is a gay novel?

EW: One that is marketed as gay. Usually a picture of a cute boy on the cover.

DS: Would Hollinghurst’s Swimming Pool Library be one?

EW: Well, he’s a cross-over writer. He’s a little different because he did win the Booker Prize with The Line of Beauty, and he was the editor of The Times Literary Supplement, which is the most prestigious reviewing organism in the English-speaking world. He has a dark brown voice and he went to Oxford and he knows everybody. He’s admired by everybody. London is such a different place because in America writers teach in different universities and they are scattered all across this huge country and they sometimes know each other, but not usually. Whereas in England they are all journalists , they live in London, and they all know each other. It’s a very small world, which is good and bad. One of the good things is that if somebody is really talented like Hollinghurst and has accumulated a bastion of power like the TLS, he’ll have enormous impact, and everybody knows it. Whereas here somebody like David Leavitt is teaching in Gainesville, Florida. That’s pretty far off the beaten path even though he’s a wonderful writer. His last book, The Indian Clerk, was reviewed on the front page of The New York Times book review very glowingly. Nevertheless, it doesn’t sell and nobody cares. It’s very hard.

————–

DS: You had mentioned particular issues about a father may arise in a slave-master relationship. You were sexually attracted to your father, so do you think you worked through your own issues with him?

EW: Yes.

DS: Where do you think that attraction came from?

EW: I don’t know; I think it’s very hard to explain attraction. If I’m attracted to you right now, why? I don’t know why.

DS: But that’s something people could perhaps explain more readily than attraction to one’s father.

EW: I don’t know; I wasn’t really raised by my father. I lived apart from him and I would spend every summer with him, but not see him much during the year. My parents were divorced from my age of seven on. I think the incest taboo sets in and turns somebody off sexually with somebody they know very well and lives with. I think with my father he was somebody who every eye in the family was focused on and he was a sort of a tyrant and nice-looking, the source of all power, money, happiness, and he was implacable and difficult. He was always spoken of in sexual terms, in the sense he left our mother for a much younger woman who was very sexy but had nothing else going for her. He was a famous womanizer. And he slept with my sister!

DS: What you describe is power; are you still attracted to power?

EW: No. I mean, my idea of power, but not everybody’s idea of power. In other words, I wouldn’t want to go to bed with Bush…

DS: What did your father’s incestuous relationship with your sister do to you?

EW: I was envious of my sister. I wished I had that kind of access to him.

DS: Did you try?

EW: Yeah.

DS: And he spurned you?

EW: No, it was so subtle he probably didn’t even know I was longing for him because, I mean, we’re talking about the 1950’s in Cincinnati, Ohio, or Texas. He didn’t know I was gay until later and he would tell me he had just fired a man because he thought he might be gay, or at least he wasn’t married and he wore a ring.

DS: How would you respond?

EW: You couldn’t say anything.

DS: Did he ever know?

EW: About me? Yes. Fairly early on, when I was about 15.

DS: What was his reaction?

EW: He was horrified, because he thought it was my mother’s bad influence because I had led an overly sophisticated life with her. He thought I should lead a simpler life and put in hours and hours of yard work and that would make me straight.

DS: Your mother was attracted to you, right?

EW: Or anybody that was around, I think?

————–

DS: You have to choose whether to blow up China or India, and if you do not choose then they both go. They are roughly equal in population according to their last censuses; which do you choose?

EW: I think I would blow up China. I majored in Chinese in college and I was a great admirer of traditional China, but I don’t really like modern China very much and I’ve never had a desire to go there. I feel like whatever wisdom or culture or civilization they had they pretty much destroyed through the Cultural Revolution, paradoxically, in the Seventies. I think that will end up being the worst thing that happened in the Twentieth Century, worse than the Holocaust. It killed more people and it destroyed the fabric of their society more than anything. India never really had anything comparable. They had the British, they had the Raj, and that was pretty damn bad, I guess, but it was an ambiguous thing. It preserved a lot of things and it destroyed others, but it consolidated power in India. It had been so many different little kingdoms.

DS: So is China.

EW: Yeah, that’s right, although the Chinese empire is very old. There is nothing comparable in India.

DS: It’s more cohesive now, but China, once the Communist Party loses its grip on power, it’s going to fall apart.

EW: I don’t think so. Maybe Tibet.

DS: You have Muslim provinces, you have Tibet. You have problems in the south with the north. Hong Kong. You don’t think that there will be a domino effect that when one goes, the others will go?

EW: I don’t think so. You know why? China has been one country. Obviously Tibet is a different problem. Manchuria is a different problem. Mongolia is a different problem. But if you forget all those problems, and you just talk about the central provinces—which are immense—that’s always been one country for almost 4,000 years with an emperor ruling it. Starting with the Han Dynasty, which is about the time of Christ, with an elaborate civil service system. That’s what Confucius was about.

DS: So the age of the end of the empire won’t touch China? It won’t be a Soviet Union?

EW: If you look at Russia and all those places, like Georgia and Uzbekistan, those are all different little countries and it was the Soviet Union that dragged them all together and when the Soviet Union croaked they all fell apart. I think China traditionally was unified.

My Creative Commons photography for Wikimedia is one of the most personally rewarding things that I have done in my life, and I knew that it would be a continuous gift when I gave it all away.  Here’s one example.

Time Out New York was my main magazine–almost my bible–to learn about free events going on in NYC with notable people where I could go photograph them. One of Time Out’s graphic artists, Rob Kelly, turned one of these photos into art for the magazine for an interview with Mariah Carey.

I chanced upon the photograph because I have a subscription to TONY, and what a thrill it was to recognize an excellent derivative of my own work in a magazine that was indispensable to the project that created that very image.