Joanne pre-NYMHM: 13 Jan 2017

A couple stories kind-of-more about journalism than about what they’re reporting on.

Matt Taibbi weighs in at Rolling Stone:

The only solution is an immediate unveiling of all the facts and an urgent public investigation. A half-assed whispering campaign a week and a half from a Trump presidency, with BuzzFeed at the center of the action, isn’t going to cut it. We need to know what the likes of Clapper and Comey know, and we need it all now, before it’s too late.

And Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev on Medium:

Mr President, is there love in your heart? Who you will be celebrating New Year’s Eve with? What’s your favorite food? “Questions” of this sort, sure to melt Putin’s heart, typically come from women working for small regional publications. . . . Another type of softball questions is hyperlocal issues that a president isn’t even supposed to be dealing with. . . . He will scold the local authorities and order to have a new road built. . . . But there will also be one token critic who will be allowed to ask a “sharp” question, only to be drowned in a copious amount of bullshit, and the man on the stage will always be the winner (“See? I respect the media and free speech”). 

[Note from the future: NYMHM grew out of these public posts from Joanne Merriam’s Facebook account. We retain them here in archives to provide a record going back to the beginning of Trump’s presidency.]