Memo from New York Times executive editor Bill Keller
Colleagues:
I’m sorry to inform you that Elvis Mitchell has decided to leave The Times. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, it is an amicable parting on both sides, a little wistful but not acrimonious. In the years since he joined The Times, Elvis has brought our readers (and shared with his colleagues) a profound knowledge of film, an original and exciting voice, and a great deal of fun. As one of the editors who hired Elvis, I will miss him a lot, and so will everyone who worked with him.
Bill

Elvis Mitchell (Photo credit: Jeremy Harmon/WireImage)

After joining the New York Times as lead film critic in late 1999 ago — arguably, the most influential film reviewer position in American media — Elvis Mitchell has resigned his position with the paper. Sean Elder, at Salon, wrote this piece, in 1999, about the appointment of Mitchell, and fellow reviewer A.O. Scott, to the Times’ movie section.
Richard Prince, at the Maynard Institute, reports that “Mitchell resigned after (cultural news editor Steven) Erlanger appointed colleague A. O. Scott the lead film critic.”
New York magazine’s Metro section suggests that Mitchell’s resignation may have something to do with “how unfriendly a place the New York Times is for blacks,” or, perhaps, the consternation that was felt when Mitchell accepted a job as a visting lecturer in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard (“He took another full-time job while he was working here as a film critic?”).

There are a couple of new websites that are turning a critical eye on the right in America which VanRamblings would like to bring to your attention.
The first website is called Media Matters, edited by David Brock.
According to a story in the New York Times …

David Brock, the former right-wing journalist turned liberal, describes himself as once having been a rather large cog in the machinery of the conservative media. Now Mr. Brock is starting a new endeavor built to combat the very sector of journalism that spawned him, with support from the same sorts of people (Democrats) about whom he once wrote so critically.
With more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals, Mr. Brock will start a new Internet site this week that he says will monitor the conservative media and correct erroneous assertions in real time.

Also, say hello to Moving Ideas.org, formerly known as the Electronic Policy Network, a website which is “dedicated to explaining and popularizing complex policy ideas to a broader audience.” From its about page …

Our goal is to improve collaboration and dialogue between policy and grassroots organizations, and to promote their work to journalists and legislators … (by) post(ing) the best ideas and resources from leading progressive research and advocacy institutions … We hope to strengthen democratic participation by providing a more inclusive and intelligible debate about the issues that shape our world.

Two worthy additions to the new media dialogue on issues affecting us all.

Is it any wonder that teenagers don’t read the daily newspaper, when there are so many alternatives to traditional print media available to them? And just as most savvy teenagers choose to build their own music playlists from songs downloaded from their favourite p2p network, and burn mixed mp3 CDs of their favourite artists, why wouldn’t they choose to receive the news of their choice from new media sources on the Net?
Editor and Publisher magazine reports that on Tuesday the Newspaper Association of American will release a study examining the ‘emotional attachment’ (or lack thereof) that teenagers have to newspapers. In part, the report says teenagers don’t want news that is ‘dumbed down’.
Vancouver’s Province newspaper should take note, and stop pandering to teens with their multi-page spreads of Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. Hint: take teens seriously, don’t talk down to them when reporting the news, provide more human interest stories on adolescents across the globe, report considerably more on the environment (a perennial concern of teens, as it should be for all of us), as well as on ‘new media’ and tech ‘gadgetry’, and cut the bullshit — teens know when they’re being lied to.

While March 19th marked the one year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, it also marked another anniversary – the day the mainstream press addressed the blurring boundaries between Clear Channel Communications and the Bush administration.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, writing in the International Herald Tribune, examines the “close links” between George W. Bush and Clear Channel management (Clear Channel’s vice president Tom Hicks helped make G.W. a multimillionaire) and points out how “the absence of effective watchdogs” make this merger between the media and the government possible. “In the Clinton years the merest hint of impropriety quickly blew up into a huge scandal; these days, the scandalmongers are more likely to go after journalists who raise questions.”
One of the first casualties of this “close link” was controversial disc jockey Howard Stern. “As soon as I came out against Bush, that’s when my rights to free speech were taken away. It had nothing to do with indecency,” Howard Stern said on March 19, 2004. Clear Channel dropped Stern’s show from 8 of its stations, following the imposition of a $495,000 Federal Communications Commission fine.
Film critic Roger Ebert weighs in on the Stern controversy, in an essay published April 16th in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Like millions of Americans, I listen to Howard Stern on the radio in the mornings. I think he is smart, quick and funny … A listener to Stern will find that he expresses humanistic values, that he opposes hypocrisy, that he talks honestly about what a great many Americans do indeed think and say and do … I find it strange that so many Americans describe themselves as patriotic when their values are anti-democratic and totalitarian.

Ebert goes on to say that what offends him “is that the right wing, secure in its own right to offend, now wants to punish Stern to the point where he may be forced off the air.”