Today's Guest: John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent, CNBC Mr. Media is recorded live before a studio audience of former St. Petersburg Times journalists who may be more famous now but sure do miss Tampa Bay in February… in the NEW new media capitol of the world… St. Petersburg, Florida! Here’s a job for you: No... Continue Reading →
Robert Knight’s Rock Prophecies: Slash, Hendrix, Stevie Ray! PODCAST INTERVIEW
Today's Guest: Robert Knight, rock 'n' roll photographer Maybe you don’t already know the name of legendary rock ‘n’ roll photographer Robert Knight. But by the end of this half-hour, you won’t be able to forget him. Knight shot the last photographs of guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan before his fateful plane crash. He took... Continue Reading →
London Review of Books publisher Nicholas Spice believes! PODCAST INTERVIEW
Image via Wikipedia There has been a lot of whining in recent years about the fate of the physical book—and, for that matter, magazines and newspapers. We’re in an era of rapidly shifting habits, spending more time, effort and money on the digital word over its print cousin. And yet there are some happy hangers-on... Continue Reading →
Stephen Colbert, Jake Tapper and Politifact say: Fact-check this, Mr. Media! PODCAST INTERVIEW
Today's Guest: Bill Adair, editor, Politifact.com If you’re going to get called on the carpet for something you did right, might as well be by Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central’s whirlwind of truthiness, “The Colbert Report.” That’s what happened about a week ago to Bill Adair, Pulitzer Prize winning editor of Politifact.com, the online fact-checking... Continue Reading →
Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Cynthia Tucker frames health care! PODCAST INTERVIEW
No matter on what side of the political fence you sit, today is a day you’ll no doubt long remember: it’s the day a federal health care policy—some would say “system”—emerged after long debate. One day it will likely be remembered as a key accomplishment of President Barack Obama. By sheer luck of timing,... Continue Reading →
Sam Zell biographer on how Money Talks, Bullsh*t Walks! PODCAST INTERVIEW
In retrospect, I can see why real estate billionaire Sam Zell thought buying the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Orlando Sentinel and all their related newspapers and media companies—plus the Chicago Cubs baseball team and its home, Wrigley Field—seemed like a classic ploy. Buy a big family-owned business on the skids for a discount, squeeze... Continue Reading →
A Boy Named Curtis created by a cartoonist named Ray! PODCAST INTERVIEW
There are a number of daily newspaper comic strips that we tend to take for granted. “Cathy,” by Cathy Guisewite, is one. Mort Walker’s “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi & Lois” are two more. And then there is my friend Ray Billingsley’s strip, “Curtis.” “Curtis” shares the adventures of a young African-American boy whose age... Continue Reading →
Peter Carlson wasn’t there but wrote K Blows Top anyway! PODCAST INTERVIEW
Peter Carlson could have taken all the research he did on Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev’s two-week barnstorming tour of the United States in 1959 and converted it into a Cold War-era fable such as Dr. Strangelove or The Mouse That Roared. He could have done that, but truth is stranger than fiction and the... Continue Reading →
Neil Budde says DailyMe.com is not all about Me, Me, Me! PODCAST INTERVIEW
I’m not one of those crybabies who thinks newspapers are dying. I do, however, think that the news itself is migrating to new distribution systems and that, in the future, the word “paper” will be less and less connecting with the word “news.”Okay, maybe I do think newspapers are dying. But I believe well-managed,... Continue Reading →
Get Syncopated with King Features comics editor Brendan Burford! PODCAST INTERVIEW
If you read the comics in your daily newspaper, my guest today has probably touched your life. Spider-Man, Hagar the Horrible and Curtis all report to him at his day job as comics editor for King Features Syndicate. But by night—and weekends, no doubt—Brendan Burford is himself a cartoonist dedicated to the notion that... Continue Reading →