In perfect sync with some apparently genuine positive news out of Iraq, Judith Miller is yet again delivering spoonfed reports on America's glorious strategy there, just as she did before she was disgraced at the Times. It seems we are finally being greeted as liberators — within the massive prison camps we have constructed. Miller, now employed by the neocons at the Manhattan Institute, reports in Reader's Digest that Iraq's "Camp Bucca" has been transformed from a riot zone into a super-empowering bakery, gym and mini-University, except for the 20 percent of prisoners sent to some sort of inner prison too terrifying to detail:

The Raleigh News & Observer, which unlike other newspapers has never declared itself too good for the John Edwards love-child scandal, is first with the angle that will probably at long last propel the sordid tale into the Times and Washington Post and basically everywhere: Edwards' presumed speaking slot at the convention, which "ordinarily would be locked in," may be taken away unless he eliminates questions about his alleged affair and love-child. The News & Observer seems to have assembled the piece before the blurry new pictures of Edwards-and-daughter surfaced today, so it probably shouldn't have much trouble scaring up another statement like this, the only supporting quote in the article:

Speaking of the constantly, publicly self-flagellating New York Times, now they're just co-opting our ragging on them. "After Deadline," a column on one of their 600 blogs, has an item today on phrases the Times overuses and grammatical mistakes they make far too often. It's like four nice little Gawker posts, but they're running them for some reason. What are the Times' various crimes against language? Misusing "Like." It's not a conjunction, people! Well, it is in casual English, but not according to the stylebook. Please use "as" or "the way." "Best" is the superlative form of "well." In other words, there is not really such a thing as "most well-known." They make this mistake all the time. "Meltdown" Meltdown! The easiest way for the Times to reference the current fiscal crisis is to call it a "meltdown," as they have 400 times this year. Finally, most egregiously, Tale of Two Cities references must be stopped. The Grey Lady published eight headlines involving the "Tale of Two..." construction last year, and one this year. This does not even take into account the many "Best of __, worst of ___" references. Editors, there are far, far better Dickens works to constantly allude to. Isn't Hard Times more appropriate these days? Still, we're pissed that someone in-house picked this up before we could. Stop taking the fun out of mocking you, New York Times!

It goes without saying that we will not be in Beijing to cover the Olympics. Furthermore, we've never been to Beijing, and our Olympic experience is limited to one pair of first-round tickets to see the Dream Team crush Kyrgyzstan or somebody in Atlanta in 1996. None of this precludes us from rounding up all of the information on the Internet in order to tell the media that actually is covering the Olympics in Beijing how to do its job. So listen up! Don't be just another sap writing about Michael Phelps while being beaten by Chinese police. After the jump, the only guide to covering the wondrous 2008 Olympics you will ever need:

Hooray! The National Enquirer has published photos of former political person John Edwards with a baby. The baby is almost certainly made up in part of DNA he left in a woman named Rielle Hunter, a former Edwards staffer who now spends her time cashing checks and hiding in hotels and denying everything to the media (until Good Morning America finally books her!). So now would be a perfect time for, like, established print media to cover this story, right? Anyone? Ha, no, they are all too embarrassed. Once again, it's up to the internet! The story is still sneaking in through the cracks. McClatchy ran a "why isn't Edwards answering our questions" piece that will set the tone for future MSM stories on this terrible subject. Leno and Conan have mentioned the story too, which definitely suggests that the era when no one would've known about this unless the Times picked it up is finally over.

Last week, the LA Daily News announced that its staffers could no longer wear jeans, thereby destroying the last remaining perk of a journalism career. Now, the paper has rescinded its rash decision. Break out the Cross Colours, copy editors! [LA Observed]

Remember that story in the Wall Street Journal last week about how maybe elite Barack Obama was too skinny for lardy everyday Americans? Sure you do, it was a total water cooler piece and we all ate it up like the obese news gluttons that we are. It had great details, like how the Democratic presidential candidate drinks Black Forest Berry Honest Tea, and great quotes, like that one Clinton supporter who said "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," LOL. Well, it turns out that "beanpole quote" came from a sort-of jokey anonymous reply to a message board topic the Journal reporter herself created, and was the only remotely quotable line in that thread. And the Berry Honest Tea detail originated in a memo put out by Obama rival John McCain's campaign manager. Whoops! Today's it's correction time:

If you've visited sites like those run by New York magazine and the Observer over the past couple of months, you may have noticed, in the comments section, repeated instances of a message that begins, "Steve Ratner [sic]... has paid my wife $500,000.00 to leave me." If you saw these comments, you probably wondered what the hell was going on. Well, the Times this morning sheds precious little light on the situation because, get this, there is a Steven Rattner, he did sleep with that guy's wife and now, as a result of the angry ex-husband's smear campaign, he has vacated his job atop the private equity division of Credit Suisse. The lesson, as relayed by the Times' hotshot finance writer Andrew Ross Sorkin, is that the internet renders "helpless" ordinary plutocrats who just want to hush up stories about how they allegedly taunted and harassed the husbands of the high-class escorts they procured on trips abroad. Wait, what?

How is the Wall Street Journal's new glossy magazine, WSJ.—helmed by yoga mogul Tina Gaudoin—bridging the gap between the paper's dreary workaday reporters and the unbridled glamor that is a glossy magazine? By having some Journal reporters and editors pose as extras in a photo shoot for the mag, "clutching cameras and clamoring around glamorous figures." Living the dream! [WWD]

One positive thing to come out of the widespread layoffs that have resulted from decimation of the newspaper industry is the fact that laid off reporters feel free to speak up publicly, sharing ideas about the industry that could actually do some good in the long run. That's cold comfort to unemployed journalists, of course, but it's pretty fascinating to read what these people have to say when they're unencumbered of their corporate shackles. William Lobdell, a longtime LA Times journalist who's now quit and "gone digital," has come forth with a damning list of dozens of things wrong with his old paper. And he's as clear as you could possibly ask:

Sometimes we come across a PR item so ignorant, misguided, and inexplicable that we just have to shake our heads back and forth and sigh in a dramatic manner. We have one such item right here. If you ran a newspaper that had been terribly embarrassed for treating a racist publicity stunt as front page news just weeks ago-so embarrassed, in fact, that the editor responsible was quietly fired-would you not, in the future, do everything possible to distance yourself from the bad designer who fooled you with with the stunt? Metro NY decided: instead of that, why don't we just sponsor this guy's next fashion show? The press release for the upcoming L.E.S. Fashion Flipside show is below. As you can see, Metro is listed as one of only two sponsors for the show. And [bad designer], last seen trying to sell a copy of his poetry book "America, My Whore" to a reporter from Jewish Week, is listed as the first name under "boutiques." Urgh:

Ha ha, China unblocked much of the internet this week as it moved to allow "free and unfettered" reporting around the Olympics, and look what happened: the entire country discovered that American "news" is full of lies written by cheap robots. This one was made by a cyclon photo director at Yahoo who wants the world to believe that China is still slaughtering people in Tiananmen Square, using furries. See, communists? This sort of madcap fun could be yours if you had a First Amendment! [Guardian]

One of the few good things left about working in journalism is the right to dress casually in the office. If a reporter knows they're going to be sitting behind a desk all day, making phone calls and typing stories, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to wear some god damn jeans. It's not like journalists—especially at newspapers—are getting paid a lot, or have job security or good remaining pension plans or a business in which layoffs are not forever imminent. Dressing down is really the only thing they can cling to when they ask themselves why they didn't go to law school. But not at the LA Daily News! After the jump, read the paper's new dress code that is a stake in the heart of every reporter who rationalized that, hey, at least my job is a good place to show off these designer jeans:

When the Asian American Journalists association announced that ABC's Nightline host Martin Bashir would be the keynote speaker at its July 25 Gala, the group's executive director said "We're excited to have Martin this year who is — so to speak —one of our own." It's true, because deep down the cancer-stricken Michael Jackson interviewer Bashir is just like you: A dude who wants to bone all of the women in his general vicinity, and is not afraid to go into detail about the causes of his erection on stage in front of a large crowd:

This will please Politico. (And our commenters!) Ron Fournier, who got in trouble recently for being too friendly to Karl Rove a couple years ago and also for turning down a job offer a couple years ago is now the official Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press. He was just acting chief before. Now he'll maliciously add pro-McCain bias to AP stories for real. [FishbowlNY]

A 1904 New York Times headline. [Radosh]

David Kuo was the former special assistant to Bush and wrote a tell-all book about how the administration wasn't quite religious enough. Bill Bennett was the former Bush I drug czar who doesn't like abortion and gay marriage half as much as he likes Barbaro in the fifth. Together they're starting a new web magazine tentatively called LibertyWire, which Kuo has characterized as the right's answer to Slate. "We'll publish apolitical pieces," he says, "explicitly conservative and libertarian pieces and even an occasional left-of-center piece. We're committed to rendering the world as it is, engaging ideas rather than dismissing them, intellectual honesty and conciliation rather than polemic." Two movement conservatives entertaining opposing viewpoints in a chatty and friendly style? Very Slate-y. Today's Picture will always be a shot of footsteps on the beach. Laura Ingraham will obsess about the MSM's bias toward McCain. Explainer columns will be titled, "Does masturbation really cause blindness?" What other LibertyWire headlines should we expect? [The Plank]

After wisely deciding that the massive John Edwards love child scandal is, in fact, a news story deserving of coverage, the Democratic politician's home-state newspaper the Raleigh News & Observer used basic journalism to uncover some interesting new information. Although Edwards' apparent mistress Rielle Hunter has claimed since even before her child was born that it was fathered by married Edwards aide Andrew Young, and even though Young issued a statement confirming this, the name of the father has been omitted from the child's birth certificate. Any other newspaper like the Times or Washington Post could have obtained this information, since informational copies of birth certificates are public documents in California. But those newspapers are too busy arrogantly destroying their businesses by ignoring the story to bother asking for a simple piece of paper. So they don't have either the birth certificate (PDF) or these fun non-denials:

Good news! You don't even have to read the Times today. Because you already have! The cauliflower ear story (there's an Action Sports section now??) was in the Washington Post in March and the fucking shorts piece in Styles has already been spotted in Styles at least five previous times.

"A silvery shade of purple happens to be in vogue at the moment because it goes with a lot of the gray fabrics of the season. But in this election, the news media's objectivity has also been part of the story." [Times]