A rchive Date
[ 10-06-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Microsoft ]
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[http://ojr.usc.edu/content/spike.cfm?request=343
Spike Report
Microsoft Begs Dubya's Pardon
Aw Shucks, Ain't We Great? Microsoft Lobbies Bush, Everybody
By Tom Spurgeon, OJR Contributor
April 11, 2000
Big names and big issues carry the New York Times story of Microsoft's efforts to lobby the George W. Bush campaign months before the nominating convention. The big names are the candidates themselves and the unctuous former head of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed.
Reed's Century Strategies firm was hired by Microsoft to lobby multiple candidates in direct response to their anti-trust case, hoping for potential relief from newly elected officials. Joel Brinkley's article smartly if briefly delves into a Reed strategy: pleading Microsoft's case not to the candidate himself by rather his strongest supporters on a state-by-state basis. As a senior consultant to the Bush campaign, Reed is in good position to identify and screen potential targets. Brinkley also brings up Microsoft employee campaign contributions, and quotes Microsoft officials as saying their lobbying efforts include a separate campaign aimed at the Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore.
The Times gets a humorous lead-in award by starting their article "The Microsoft Corporation has quietly hired Ralph Reed..." Not anymore, they haven't.
Still Censored After All These Years
Media nuts rarely do better than Project Censored's list of forgotten or neglected news stories from the previous year. This year's list includes a comparison of Viagra spending versus spending on medication designed to combat more severe illnesses related to the poor, sweatshop conditions created by uniform contracts with the U.S. Department of the Defense, and a skeptical analysis of U.S. motivations in the Balkan conflict, concentrating on oil interests.
In conjunction with the release of Project Censored's book, more than a few alternative weeklies profiled the list. The best I saw online is the article in Baltimore's City Paper, which contains links to the top ten stories. And while we're talking about mostly-forgotten stories, I'd like to point out a favorite of mine: Chicago Reader's archiving of John Conroy's pieces on police brutality, a refreshingly content driven section on a Reader site dominated by arts writing and classifieds.
Jim, Huck, Forced Damming and Fishkill
The environmental group American Rivers has certainly maximized coverage of its annual list of endangered rivers, starting with a press release in mid-March designed to counter a Clinton administration decision about four federal dams on the Snake River. The full list was released Monday, and is available in an interactive list format.
There are two guiding principles to American Rivers' list. First, the problems facing the rivers are man-made, and second, environmental damage to river species is happening at an accelerated pace. Environmental on-line sources such as Environmental News Network are running the list almost verbatim, with quotes from American Rivers spokespeople, although ENN is good enough to link to at least one scientific report charting the destruction of river ecosystems.
Of course, these are issues local papers have been dealing with for a while. The Boise Weekly's articles have been evenhanded to the point of blandness, but reports like Robert Speer's 1999 Year-End summary "The Future of the Fish" give you an idea as to the basic impasse on-hand and the entanglements between businessmen, landowners, sportsmen and environmentalists over the issue. Also helpful reading is a report from the Fresno Bee on their local environmental river problem, "Rescuing the San Joaquin", a river facing similar problems, although not severely enough to make American Rivers' list. With a decision on the Snake River in May, and with George W. Bush rumored to be looking for environmental issues with which to attack Al Gore on his ideological home turf, Boise Weekly's prediction that this could become a presidential campaign issue isn't far-fetched.
Masters of No Domain
This past weekend's big sports event, the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia, featured a potentially interesting online partnership. Sports mega-site CNNSI.com was teaming with local newspaper The Augusta Chronicle for shared coverage of the event, on a special site co-hosted by Time Warner and the Chronicle's ownership group.
Anyone hoping for some serious on-site reportage, or even interesting profiles of local caddies and ordering tips at Augusta restaurants, were no doubt disappointed by the partnership, as the coverage was subsumed into the CNNSI model of interactive features, close attention to big names like Tiger Woods, and lackluster first-person appreciations from regular columnists. Some of the better writing came from Chronicle staffers, such as this report on the lowest-shooting amateur player, but nothing that distinguished the partnership. In fact, without both sources trumpeting the pact, it may not have been noticed at all.
SHORT TAKES
Jurassic Snark
Is there anyplace better to read about Sumner Redstone's broadcast media rallying cry than online? Marc Graser reports for Variety.
More on the Staggering Genius
Literary It Boy of the moment David Eggers plays cultural referee in Artforum. An analysis of Eggers as Internet prankster is provided by OJR's Ken Layne.
We Had Colonel Potter in the Pool
Larry Linville, whose twitching, thin-lipped Frank Burns on the TV show MASH makes him perhaps the only man to ever out-act Robert Duvall, passed away in New York yesterday, says wire reports.
Elian! Elian! Elian!
Want more ongoing coverage that reads like post-event commentary? Today there's David Greenberg's analysis of the Elian Gonzalez protesters' strategy of civil disobedience in Slate.
Super-Size It
Thanks to the miracle of DNA testing, a New Castle, Indiana teen was busted for spitting on a police officer's food at a Burger King, perhaps ruining one of the traditional 20th Century pranks for the next century and calling into question what exactly appears on your fast-food tray. The latest, with fries, at the Muncie Star-Press.
Not So Secret
Finally, I enjoyed the literary investigation of Charles Hutchinson and Peter Miller into actual surviving copies of legendary New York character Joe Gould's diaries, on the eve of a movie that plays off of that legend in a different direction, in the Village Voice.
[Looking for more Web highlights? The Spike Report regularly follows links from these useful daily Weblogs: Jim Romenesko's The Obscure Store and MediaNews offer highlights in the areas of news, features and media gossip; The Industry Standard's Media Grok column reviews press coverage of the Internet economy; Arts Journal and Arts & Letters Daily cover the arts and culture beat; Jorn Barger's Robot Wisdom Weblog serves up an eclectic mix of political, technical, scientific and general-interest items.]]
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