As seen on the web at We Want Media.

When Jonathan Landman walked into the room, I had him pegged for a New York Times guy. With his squared glasses and graying hair, he looks like a Times guy. With his composure and enunciation, he talks like a Times guy. But what he told me was not exactly what I was expecting from a Times guy.

As deputy managing editor for digital journalism at that old bastion of a newspaper, Landman has had his hand in the Times’ reinvention of its online persona, and it’s clear that he’s both intelligent and qualified enough to handle such a gargantuan task. But among the soft-spoken rhetoric and the eloquent explanations, his admission that the Times doesn’t know precisely what its game plan is for the web — aside from the knowledge that whatever it is, it carries enormous gravity — was surprising to me. As I said to him myself, the Times is so large it’s hard to realize people work there, much less take chances on a crapshoot.

Landman’s strained, muted comment that reporting on colleague Judy Miller was the toughest thing he’s had to do in 19 years on the job showed a side of him that went beyond his relaxed composure, making him take pause to gather the thoughts that otherwise so effortlessly flowed forth. So what did I learn from him? Jonathan Landman showed me that living, breathing people work at the Times — and the guy who gets the big piece of chicken at the dinner table each night might just be that guy who shoulders global responsibility.

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]

As seen on the web at We Want Media.

“According to the Riverton Sheriff, his deputies found guns, ammunition, knives and coded messages in the bedroom of one of the suspects.”

In another CNN story sure to hit close to home, it’s more than cannibals that are at risk of digital backfire. This time, five teenage boys were arrested in Kansas for plotting a high school shooting rampage on the anniversary of the Columbine massacre. And how did the perps get canned? They wrote some of the details on their MySpace.

Now, Rupert Murdoch is barely hip to the idea of sexual predators trolling his new bloggy toy, much less assassinations and homicides. Again, we must reconsider the legal and social implications of online publishing – on MySpace, no less – and what rights we do or don’t have. Will Murdoch work with law enforcement to make widespread arrests of his users for the good of the community?

It seems a blog post can be grounds for investigation – but what if someone else is posing as you? Which are more important – equality of rights or a human’s life? I caution the use of such information – saying “I’ll kill you” on your LiveJournal might put you behind bars.

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]

As seen on the web at We Want Media.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that you might not get that fabulous job because of a handful of un-PC comments on your MySpace, now you can get tossed in the slammer for posting your answer to the above question online.

Kevin Ray Underwood is the kind of 26-year-old guy that wanted more from life. A lonely guy who confessed to planting himself in front of the computer for 14 hours a day “barely moving” from his chair, it wasn’t too hard for police to accuse the Carls Jr. employee of killing a 10-year-old neighborhood girl after they found meat tenderizer in his kitchen and a body in the bathroom.

The catch is, Lecter-isms aside, authorities recently found his online diary, with Underwood confessing that he wanted “to be able to live like a normal person,” yet battling with a darker side: “If people knew the kinds of things I think about anymore, I’d probably be locked away. No probably about it, I know I would be.”

As a major legal player, the blog can help us unearth the unknown about a cannibal’s psyche. While this particular case was already in motion before the blog was discovered, it’s both interesting and condemning (as if skewers as evidence weren’t enough) to read a motive like this. While it’s no tell-all, the blog is becoming a triple-edged sword: one side can be an opinionated release, another side can be the evidence that can arrest you, and the final side can let us into the mind of a killer.

I’m sure people disagree whether he’s guilty or not – after all, the trial’s still happening – but we can all agree that his blog was surely in bad taste. By the way – his answer to the question?

“The skin of last night’s main course.”

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]

As seen on the web at We Want Media.

Just when you thought media’s attitude on ethics left a bad taste in your mouth, The New York Post’s Page Six came along and dosed a spoonful of arsenic.

This weekend, the Daily News (who else?) broke the story that Page Six lackey Jared Paul Stern met with billionaire recluse Ron Burkle to strike a $220,000 deal that made the investor immune from printed lies on the page for a year.

Wait. Struck a deal? Illegal. Printed lies? Unethical. Recluse? Fantastical.

Now, as the FBI and Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office give Rupert Murdoch’s baby the shakedown, allegations that fellow columnist Richard Johnson was rubbing elbows (more?) with Girls Gone Wild chief Joe Francis, letting the guy throw him bachelor parties infused with, well, you know.

Oh, calamity.

Now, I really don’t care if gossip writers hang with porn kings, because hey, that’s their job. But when we’ve got some serious violations of journalistic ethics (oh, and federal law), the whole industry is at risk. But more importantly, the individual journalist. Sure, it was the Post, and to a degree we can write it off as another hijink by those crazy Page Six-ers trying to stay on top. But when this is the best defense the paper’s got, we should take pause:

Asked whether such gratuities violate the Post’s ethics guidelines, Rubenstein said, “The paper has no response.” (Daily News)

Uh oh. In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with schmoozing – just make sure your paperwork is in order before you submit yourself to a full-scale audit.

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]

As seen on the web at We Want Media.

Bravo, SPIN. With a little flourish and some Klosterman karma, you fooled hundreds of bloggers into thinking that Axl Rose was finally going to deliver after 15 years with Chinese Democracy.

I admit I laughed pretty hard when I read that everyone’s favorite overweight, jersey-wearing 80’s icon finally got it together. Though there is some seed of truth to the pending rumors – there are quite a few demos for the album circulating the internet – no one called Rose’s publicity manager for comment. Instead, some blogs got excited. Some even had the connections to double-check, and didn’t. But when someone not blinded by the little halos around Axl’s cornrows noticed the April 1 review date, well, then all those breaking insider blogs sheepishly retracted their copy-paste claims.

Axl Rose 8, Blogosphere 0. (After all, this isn’t the first time.)

Though blogs are a primary source of gossip, with something so easy to check – like calling Rose’s reps or punching in the numbers of SPIN themselves – major mistakes (on April Fool’s Day, no less – for shame!) make it look like the blogosphere is just a bunch of talentless, unoriginal hacks who all crosslink to one person’s original (but completely false) material.

Oh, and did I get excited? No. I’m a GN’R fan for sure, but depending on Axl Rose to deliver a good album is like depending on Colin Powell to prove Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

Welcome to the jungle, bloggers.

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]

As seen on the web at We Want Media.

Kurt Andersen says celebrities are dead and we’re slowly beginning to shun their dying personas. I think he’s wrong – and Paris Hilton is probably banking on it, Sidekick and all.

It’s true that we’ve been more saturated then ever. Between VH1’s Celebreality and Us Weekly and Defamer and Dancing With The Stars and the Oscars and…well, you get the point. But let’s not be naïve here. People are always going to care about other people’s lives – and don’t tell me that you, reader, aren’t a little media voyeur yourself – so declaring the celebrity “hobby” a fad on the way out is being a bit presumptuous. The famous have always been famous, and as we chew through each one, we find a fresh new victim to feed on – when Bennifer was gone, Spederline enticed us; Brangelina came along, and TomKat distracted us. Who knows who’s next – Gatalie?

I think we’re just seeing the American-as-apple pie celebrity obsession spreading across diversified media. Sure, EW’s not selling as many magazines anymore, but neither is the New York Times papers, or MTV viewers. What we’re seeing is the celebrity beat thinning out – so while a new gossip mag fails, blogs like Jossip thrive. It’s Darwin for the Page Six crowd.

After all, what’s Gawker Stalker for, anyway?

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]

As seen on the web at We Want Media.

Arianna Huffington screwed up. She knows it, George Clooney knows it, the blogosphere knows it, and now, the nation. On March 13, Huffington strung together a bunch of comments George Clooney made to other media outlets regarding the war in Iraq.

The problem?

She attributed the article to Gorgeous George, and both Clooney and the rest of the blogosphere called her out. Best of all? In her apology, Huffington used Clooney’s lack of knowledge about blogs as part of her reasoning for posting the thing in the first place.

Seriously, Huffington? Whether you agree with her viewpoints or not, The Huffington Post gets some major traffic on our beloved ‘net, and it’s a setback in establishing journalistic credibility for bloggers (whether they want it or not) if we can’t even make sure who wrote what. That’s like putting Al Gore’s name in the byline of a “Best of Bush-isms” feature. Can someone say (a perfect) firestorm?

Look, Huffington –– you called Danny Ocean a liar and a thief. But he’s no liar.

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]

As seen on the web at We Want Media.

This Thursday, CBS began streaming live telecasts of March Madness (the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship tournament for those of you who didn’t fill out brackets) free of charge on the Web. Aside from easy-access hoops for those of us who can’t wrangle the remote away from a roommate who just got his or her hands on the latest season of 24 on DVD, the streaming tournament is going to put professional sports deals with television networks out to pasture.

As a rabid hometown sports fan (I’m from Philadelphia), I need my fix of Philly-based teams no matter the sport. Yet when networks blackout home games because of low ticket sales or my aforementioned roommate forgets to pay the cable bill, I’m forced to follow statistics on online scoreboards that update in real-time. With March Madness in full swing, CBS’s streamed telecasts are to a college basketball fan what a Ferrari is to a 16-year-old kid with a new driver’s license: high-octane freedom. Not only can I argue with friends over which player made a better basket, I can watch the game on my laptop while I’m stuck in an office meeting about teamwork. Yeah, it’s that good.

With CBS’s new leap to streaming live games, I finally might be able to get more bang for my buck for that monthly broadband bill. And if other networks follow suit for other sports? Well, let’s just say “Fly, Eagles, Fly” might just slip onto the cover of my latest TPS report.

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]

As seen on the web at We Want Media.

I’m sick of the Brokeback media trend. Ever since Jake-Darko-Gyllenhaal laid one on “That’s the most words I’ve said in a year” Aussie Heath Ledger, people have been snatching up cowboy boots and hoping their gay best friend finds a guy who castrates cows for a living.

Now with Logo, an MTV-owned gay channel, Bravo’s OutZoneTV.com, gay broadband entertainment, and PlanetOut, a crop of gay magazines and websites, gay media is flying around faster than Scott Stapp’s sex video.

Is it over yet?

Most of these new upstarts are doomed to fail by targeting such a narrow audience. The fact is, people aren’t any more tolerant than they were before – its just hip to be gay all over again (remember the Fab Five?) with what I find to be a gay reworking of Pretty Woman (offbeat characters and a fantastic romance). The only way gay culture will have media staying power is if it integrates with the mainstream, instead of sitting beside it as America’s latest fascination.

Until a cable network can successfully run Queer as Folk back-to-back with Moesha and the O.C., I won’t be happy. I’ve got high hopes for mainstream gay themes – so long as they aren’t a novelty.

For now, you’re a fad, Brokeback, and I’ll be watching Will and Grace until I know how to quit you.

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]

As seen on the web at We Want Media.

As a cutting-edge politics junkie (and yes, I’m nothing but cutting-edge), I’ve seen my fair share of Gallup polls. From Dean screams to trial denials, the Gallup poll has been a wonderfully cynical way to tap into the fears of your favorite American-next-door. But their latest poll on the Big Easy had me scratching my head.

Just in time for Bourbon Street beads, booze and breasts, Gallup released a “Katrina check-up,” polling New Orleans residents post-’cane. Putting aside for a moment the apparent results that black families were affected harder than white, what piqued my interest the most – and interest is hard to conjure up these days, let me tell you – was that each race had differing outlooks on the future of the city.

Segregated optimism? C’mon, New Orleans! Faith in your city’s future shouldn’t run along race lines – at least not anymore. You’re all in the same boat here (pun painfully and regretfully unavoided). This is your culture and your home, New Orleanians, even if your house is no longer there. Here’s your chance to fix the cracks in your convictions and let Mayor Nagin worry about demographics for reelection.

After a disaster like that, blacks and whites in the Big Easy should feel as much a family as bohos and brokers did in the Big Apple five years ago. So take advantage of your horrific situation, New Orleans – ignore the media pundits and crack open a crawfish together.

[We Want Media Andrew Nusca author page with 13 total posts]