InTheCapital

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

I came across this extremely ridiculous Newsweek cover and brushed it off as part of the photoshopped meme-ery that makes Tumblr so great. But after checking it out, it would appear this is actually Newsweek’s chosen cover image. For real. I weep for journalism.

…Also, I’m well-aware my choosing to write about this and feature the image only validates their decision to run this cover..it’s just…well…ughh…You win, Newsweek. You win. It is…kinda…cool.

..Also of note: It’s our 200th pre-launch post! Come celebrate with us as we move into our fancy new cyber digs on Wednesday! 

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Hey, so wanna be the Managing Editor of the Washington Post? How about a Senior Editor at Rolling Stone? Your chances are better this afternoon than they were last night as the WSJ and BuzzFeed make some monster acquisitions.

This morning BuzzFeed, which has been acquiring high quality talent like nobody’s business, scooped up Doree Shafrir of Rolling Stone to head up culture coverage at BuzzFeed, adding to their list of impressive journalists . BuzzFeed can afford her, too, given their $15.5 million round they raised earlier this January.

A Snippet of the Press Release:

“I’m excited to join the editorial talent that is converging at BuzzFeed,” said Ms. Shafrir. “The site has very quickly become THE place for a new breed of political writer and reporter to work at and I am excited to work with Ben and Scott to continue this momentum in new culture-based verticals.”

We’ve found ourselves mentioning BuzzFeed more and more since mid-December, as they seem to be taking every necessary step to assure they are a complete and total powerhouse in 2012. Without question, it appears BuzzFeed is at least poised to demonstrate a new model for online journalism this year—social sharing blended with a solid, hyper-updated editorial component. BuzzFeed has already gotten a few serious newsy scoops, like McCain’s endorsement of Mitt Romney, while also beating the competition to posts on viral campaign videos and photos. Our projection: With hires like Shafrir, BuzzFeed will only continue to scoop, and out-entertain their rivals as they bleed into more content verticals.

Also, a Washington Post shocker: Post Managing Editor, Raju Narisetti will head back to the Wall Street Journal as managing editor of their Digital Network. This is a huge amount of responsibility which includes (according to MediaPost.com) overseeing “WSJ.com, SmartMoney.com, MarketWatch and the Chinese, Japanese and German-language editions of WSJ.com. Narisetti will also become a deputy managing editor of the paper.”

A Snippet of the Post’s press release demonstrating Raju’s success:

The evidence is in the numbers: The Post’s online traffic has risen sharply in the last two years, with our page views in December up 45% from a year earlier, the number of visitors to our site up 14%, and the time each visitor spends on our site more than double what it was a year ago (according to comScore) – making 2011 our best year ever. We are a leader in the use of social media for delivering news and drawing readers to our site. Our video traffic has tripled in the last two years and our mobile visits doubled in the last year.

At the Post, Narisetti was in charge of striking a balance between their well-established online presence and the print edition, finding ways to drive readership, monetize the digtial content and re-think longterm strategy. Narisetti has some deep roots at the Journal, having worked there for 13 years. Narisetti will be in a better place at the WSJ as they have an established web presence as well as a pay wall that monetizes their content. With a structure in place, Narisetti has room to explore innovative ways to engage readers and build the Wall Street Journal’s digitial community for the foreseeable future. Plus, he’s got loads of responsibility over many successful online properties. This is a big move, and if you care about the future of online, paywall-based journalism, you’ll probably want to keep an eye on what Raju Narisetti is up to in the coming months.

[Lead image via ccconsultingllc.com]

(Screengrab of the USA Today Facebook Timeline App)

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

McLean, Virginia based newspaper, USA Today launched their Facebook Timeline App today and we took it for a very quick test-drive. Here’s what the USA Today’s President and Publisher had to say (via Potomac Tech Wire)

 ”As more and more people turn to social sites and their peers’ recommendations as a means of determining which news and information they will consume, it is more important than ever to reach our audience wherever they choose to consume their news,” said Dave Hunke, the president and publisher of USA Today.

The layout, we noticed, is aesthetically pretty nice, but there doesn’t seem to be too much the user can do to uniquely customize their experience…at all. The press release from the newspaper says that, “Users can customize the visual layout of USA TODAY + Me, choosing between a dynamic grid design or traditional list view” but we don’t believe this is much to write home about…in fact, it feels downright lazy to call that ‘custom’ in this day and age.

What is significant is the ability for USA Today to curate content for their Facebook app users based on information that the users share and even the information that friends are sharing with the user. This type of integration and targeting allows for Newspapers, which often struggle to retain readership these days, to throw pointed information toward their audience and thus, engage them. This doesn’t change the age old saying that, ‘content is king’…bad content won’t get read or shared. But this app could be instant marketing and focus-grouping for content distribution and that, if executed right, is pretty special.

CLAY JOHNSON’S BETTER ACTIVISM DAY LIVESTREAM EVENT

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Here is a great resource for you throughout the day. Clay Johnson, Co-Founder of Blue State Digital and author of ‘The Information Diet’ is hosting an all-day event to engage an audience and discuss the internet, media awareness, how Washington works, and how YOU can get involved. If you have some time today we strongly suggest giving this livestream a whirl.

Here’s how Johnson described the event:

 I’m holding a “Better Activism Day” with my friends at O’Reilly and PopVox. — a livestream of experts, most of the day, who will talk about how to improve your power in Washington from people who’ve been successful at moving it. It’s time we started getting some of the inside-the-beltway expertise outside of Washington.

Here’s the rest of the day’s schedule:

• The Outside Game: Media and Persuasion Tactics Karl Frisch(12:00-1:00)
• How to Watch What Congress Does - Jeremy Carbaugh - Sunlight Foundation (1:00-2:00)
• I am a Lobbyist, Ask Me Anything (Andrew Shore - Jochum Shore & Trossevin) (1 hr.)(2:00-3:00)
• I Used to Answer the Phones at a Congressional Office - Ask Me Anything (1 hr.) (3:00-4:30)
• Delivering Effective Messages To Congress - Marci Harris (4:30-5:30)
• Closing: 6:30-7

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

We know the Washington Post is just trying to have a little fun here, what with the ‘kids these days’ all bummed out about the internet going dark for a few hours. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that the Post’s Style Section ‘Wikipedia Survival Guide’ is actually, literally, just a common sense guide to studying for anyone who happens to have, you know, attended a school. 

Here’s a snippet of the Post’s Guide:

While Google may bump the Wikipedia pages to keep the best results near the top, that may not be such a bad thing.

Scroll a little further past the Wikipedia entries and you can find original sources — a.k.a, the places that Wikipedia editors cull their information from.

Google Books and Google Scholar are both good starting points. Also:JSTOR and DOAJ for scholarly journals, Project MUSE for academic research, and LexisNexis for news clippings and more (some may require memberships, but you can access them through a library). In fact, if you’re a student, you should be checking these instead of Wikipedia, anyway. The Wikipedia blackout could even improve your grades.

Try an encyclopedia: Breathe it in — that musty perfume of a set of tomes called “The Encyclopedia.” Maybe your parents own one. You can call it “Wikipedia Vintage,” if that sounds cooler. Reading the encyclopedia is like getting into vinyl. You could even be like writer A.J. Jacobs, and read the entire thing.

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

NPR just posted this bad boy to their tumblr.

A chance to work with @acarvin? If you’re looking for an internship I’d run, not walk to this one.

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Whether you watched or not, you probably woke up to hear that Mitt Romney eeked out a victory in Iowa by the skin of his teeth, which translates roughly into eight votes. 

EIGHT VOTES. This is not a real outcome. Certainly not the outcome of a national PRESIDENTIAL primary state. This was the outcome of a 7th grade student council election. I weep for this nation.

BUT it wasn’t all lame, boring punditry. If you were lucky enough to tough it out with us strange, non-showering political freaks (think button-down shirt-clad meth addicts) you were in for a real treat from the 376 people who happened to cram on-set at CNN’s ‘Election Center’. 

[Thanks to Matt Cherette from BuzzFeed for grabbing some of these great videos and posting them to the internets]

Best Moment(s) of the Evening - CNN AFTER DARK: At about 1:30am with coffee running low, delirium set in on CNN. Normally composed men and women became slaphappy and bumbled around the set aimlessly, unable to use their touch screens and hologram projectors.  Anderson Cooper appropriately asks, “Have we all just given up?”. 

If only you knew Anderson…it was just the beginning.

And then…deep into the 2am hour, the #iacaucus tweets began to slow. We personally considered going to bed between 2 and 4 times, but CNN’s crafty method of lying to it’s viewers, kept me awake and tuned in:

…So glad I did. Because THIS happened: Edith and Carolyn, officials from the ‘last county’ to report results got on the phone with Wolf Blitzer and John King…

At that point things devolved into complete and total madness. I began ingesting psychotropic drugs just to keep up. It was no use.

Then this happened:  

With the universe quickly collapsing on itself, I decided the best course of action had to be to head to sleep…but CNN was STILL on. Must. Soldier. On.

Again, it was worth it since this happened. And the Eurythmics began to play. Cannot make this up.

And lastly, Anderson Cooper with the porn grooves.

Satisfied and unsure of my consciousness, I went to bed…I think. Or maybe I didn’t…IS THIS INCEPTION?!!

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By Carl Pierre / @carlpierre

As we come to the end of 2011, it’s important to wistfully reflect upon your year and realize how much time in your life has been wasted on Social Media via an infograph. So take a quick pause from stalking that person on Facebook, hold off on tweeting about how you found a hair in your muffin this morning, and take a look at a few staggering metrics and figures that will make you question the direction humanity is heading.

“Out of the 800 million Facebook users currently active, more than 200 million were added in 2011.”

- This means that close to a seventh of the world’s population is on Facebook. If you just soiled yourself, fret not, this statistic induces that effect. God help us the day Facebook goes offline for whatever reason.

“eMarketer estimates there will be nearly 21 million Twitter users in the U.S. by the end of the year, a small supplement to the current 100 million users currently active on Twitter.”

- Have you ever dreamt of having omniscience as a child, being able to know what everyone is doing and thinking around you? Well you can stop dreaming and get the next best thing, a twitter account. That’s right, we’re doing it Jetsons-style in 2011 baby.

“Beyonce’s baby bump elicited a new Twitter record of 8,868 Tweets per second.”

- A lot of momentous things have happened in 2011; the earthquake in Japan, finding possible water on Mars, Congress’ budget crisis, the US pulling out of Iraq. What truly shocks me to my core is that of everything that has happened this year, the event that set the world’s tweeting record is Beyonce getting knocked up. Congrats humanity, we officially fail.

Netflix’s price hike caused 805,000 paid subscribers to ditch the service during the last quarter.

- The greed of corporations leading to something amazing being ruined is not a new story. Just look at Arrested Development.

One in three texters would rather text than talk.

- In the defense of texters, it does take a considerable amount of work to raise a phone to your face and hold it there. I consider talking on the phone the new isometric exercise of the year. Burning about three to four calories per phone call, about 10 reps a day, just a few more thousand phone calls till I have the biceps of Dolph Lungren.

According to Nielsen, 23% of overall internet usage is spent on a social network or a blog.

- This is actually a statistic I do enjoy. I think integrating more methods and mediums of absorbing knowledge into our lives is a good thing. 

65% of adult internet users now say they use some sort of social-networking site.

- This is a staggering statistic, and I cannot emphasize enough how this reflects the amount of weight Social Media carries in the average internet user’s life. It’s statistics like these that demonstrate how powerful a tool Social Media can be for businesses and companies.

44% of companies track employees’ social-media use in and out of the office.

- Possibly the most frightening statistic of all, truly affirming my 1984-induced paranoia of big brother. Tweak those privacy settings on your Facebook account to ninja status, and beware of tweeting disparaging comments about your boss or coworkers. This year has been filled with a variety of Social Media-related firings/scandals, feel free to check them out yourself.

Clearly 2011 has been quite an epic year for Social Media, and I anticipate 2012 will only get crazier.

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Ron Paul is finally getting the media attention his supporters complained for and yet he’s now being as cantankerous as ever.

This summer, Jon Stewart noticed what Paul supporters have complained about for years, referring to the Texas Representative as, “the 13th floor of a hotel” when it comes to media coverage. Fox News really seems to dislike the guy, most likely because he refuses to pander to the network like the other fringe candidates (Bachmann, Perry, Santorum) and a cursory “Ron Paul + Media” YouTube search while simultaneously peculiar, offensive, and hilarious illustrates a common theme: the dude is, for the most part, passed over by the media. That is, until now.

With less than a week until the bizarre kabuki we know as the Iowa Caucuses, Paul is (gasp!) leading the well-coiffed Mitt Romney in new polls. This is a reality that most saw coming, as Paul has ardent support among Iowa tea partiers and cat ladies.

Whether both the media and American people like it or not, the media is pretty much forced to give Paul some time in the spotlight and so far, it’s not all free markets and soaring freedom eagles.

Last week, Paul made headlines in the media for an old newsletter he used to publish that made numerous unsavory remarks toward minorities of all kinds. At least we think calling Martin Luther King, Jr. a “world class philanderer” is unsavory, right? (pauses) Yes, I believe we have confirmation on that one.

Paul is frustrated that the media has latched onto this silly snail-mailer from the early ’90s and for good reason. Paul is 76 years old and like most curmudgeons before him would like to be left the hell alone. And to make matters more outrageous, he didn’t even write the damn thing—he was too busy delivering thousands of innocent, god-fearing children. So he did what any enterprising man would do: hired a random collection of extremists to write it and attach his name to the letterhead. 

Paul’s frustration has manifest itself most prominently in a CNN interview with Gloria Borger (note the wildly ignorant title!) where it appeared Paul walked out when confronted with tough questions about the newsletter. We have since learned that the interview was edited and that Paul did seem to address the issue before then leaving the interview frustrated. More on that here.

And just moments ago, Politico’s Roger Simon noted that Paul would rather not take questions from the hoard of hungry journos.

Roger Simon @politicoroger

Ron Paul “declines” to answer any questions from press after his Newton, IA event.

Paul, it seems, is both a candidate who both wants and despises scrutiny from the press. This August, Paul’s campaign managers emailed The Washinton Post’s Chris Cillizza this:

“Dr. Paul has emerged as a top-tier candidat in this race and deserves coverage befitting that status,”

And yet now Dr. Paul is all:

Perhaps it comes from nearly two full campaign cycles for relative obscurity in the media—the guy is used to crafting his message without having to…well, answer for it. 

Or, if Erin McPike of RealClearPolitics.com is correct, perhaps Paul (like Santorum) has no real desire to be Commander in Chief. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#45799881 (see video link and forward to 8:45)

Only time will tell.

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Something important happened today in media. Very early this morning, Politico’s original blogger and blueprint for online political journalism, Ben Smith, announced his hire as the Editor-in-Chief of BuzzFeed. If you fancy yourself a news junkie or care about media, this is some pretty big news.

The internet is a swirling torrent of ceaseless media and anyone who is able to harness and make sense of the maelstrom may very well become the next media giant. From the looks of it, BuzzFeed would like to fill that role.

What makes BuzzFeed so important is the site’s ability to keep its finger on the pulse of internet trends. The site, which provides its audience with a real-time snap shot of viral media content is responsible for generating, sharing, and tracking internet memes with great success. The only problem is, most of the content is pretty shallow.

This, of course, is a familiar narrative for online news, where lighter fare like pictures, videos, and lists tend to bring in more traffic than longer form pieces by a large margin. Just this month BuzzFeed brought in over 7 million page views on one slideshow alone, proving they have an impressive ability to get their readers clicking on shared content. Now, just imagine if that content was propriety to BuzzFeed and both intelligent and newsworthy.

That’s where Ben Smith comes in. For five years at Politico, Smith helped establish the site’s reputation as the place to go for around the clock, hyper-updated political coverage. His blog covering the 2008 campaign set the standard for the sea of political bloggers trying to scoop the competition. Smith brings with him to BuzzFeed some true mainstream editorial clout along with a true internet sensibility. Couple that with BuzzFeed’s name and ability to monitor and promote trends, and you’ve got yourself an extremely powerful journalistic outfit.

If BuzzFeed plays its cards right under Smith’s leadership and continues to hire more good reporters, the site will be able to actively participate in a new and interesting form of citizen journalism for the 2012 campaign. Smith and his crew would be able to track important issues and stories as decided by their readers and help give voice to the issues that matter to their audience. Something that Smith couldn’t do on his own at Politico.

It obviously remains to be seen how readers will react to the changes at BuzzFeed, but Ben Smith brings with him a devoted online following and a reputation for intelligent and engaging content. The move is also proof that Smith is skilled at putting himself ahead of the competition. In an election season where many speculated Smith’s style was getting old, he continues to evolve and provide a service different from any that is currently out there.