New Media Tells Old Media What’s Journalism Now

From Southern Political Report’s Tom Baxter:

Convinced (former Alabama Governor) Siegelman was guilty and ready to move on, they (traditional media) were bailing out of the story just as the new media was beginning to pay attention. Since Siegelman’s conviction, the story has been kept alive on the internet — notably on the blog Horton writes for Harper’s and several spirited, Democratic-leaning Alabama blogs — and in a few of the state’s smaller and alternative newspapers.

At times, the animosity between the two sides of the media divide has equaled that between the two parties in Alabama. Horton has sharply criticized the Birmingham News, the Mobile Press-Register and the Huntsville Times, all former Newhouse papers now owned by Advance Publications, for their coverage.

Bloggers… whatcha gonna do with ’em?. Read more from ’em! All that Alabama dirt Mr. Horton at Harper’s has been digging in is here.

Karl Rove Does Multimedia His Way

Apparently Republicans are so offensive even to each other that they’re now having to run whining to the enemy/dreaded liberal media with their sorry tales of woe about… how the White House made ’em do it. Is anyone really all that surprised?

From CBS News, where the whole sorry story airs Sunday night February 24th  on 60 Minutes:

Rove’s attempt to smear Don Siegelman was part of a Republican campaign to ruin him that finally succeeded in imprisoning him, says the operative, Jill Simpson.

Simpson speaks to Scott Pelley in her first television interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, Feb. 24, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Simpson spoke to Pelley because, she says, Siegelman’s seven-year sentence for bribery bothers her. She recalls what Rove, then President Bush’s senior political adviser, asked her to do at a 2001 meeting in this exchange from Sunday’s report.

“Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman?” asks Pelley.

“Yes,” replies Simpson.

“In a compromising, sexual position with one of his aides,” clarifies Pelley.

“Yes, if I could,” says Simpson.

Simpson says she found no evidence of infidelity despite months of observation.

Who knew Rove had such an interest in hanky-panky multimedia? Maybe he should have tried YouTube first, if of course that medium had been available way back in the dark ages of 2001, when most of this “surveillance” stuff allegedly took place. But no matter now, as bribery charges seem to have done the trick.

And if you wonder sometimes… could your friends, colleagues and neighbors be watching you in hopes of catching you in something compromising? Well, given this sordid tale, they sure are!