Guest Of A Guest broke the news, and the full release is after the jump. Mediaite talked to Carney today about his new job, leaving Business Insider and more.

Mediaite: What do you think about moving from a more new media company like at Business Insider to the more corporate environment of NBCU?

Carney: I guess I’ll learn a lot about Big Media or the MSM and the televisions. In all seriousness, though, I was a corporate lawyer at one of the biggest law firms in the world for five years. Corporate environments don’t frighten me.

Mediaite: What attracted you to the job at CNBC/CNBC.com?

Carney: They have a great team with big ambitions for CNBC.com and the broader network. I was really impressed by the quality of the people there.

Mediaite: You haven’t always written the most positive things about CNBC. How do you think the transition will be to the new role?

Carney: That’s true! But the folks at CNBC never seemed to hold a grudge about it. So I won’t hold one against them either.

Mediaite: Were there other offers you considered at positions similar to your previous job?

Carney: There’s a really great expansion going on in online business journalism right now. I talked to lots and lots of people about some really exciting plans. It was like an informal survey of the state of the financial blogosphere. And here’s my conclusion: I’m going to have to kick ass at CNBC to stay competitive with all the other awesome bloggers and sites out there.

Mediaite: Can you describe the experience of exiting Business Insider? Looking back now, what do you take away from the experience?

Carney: I had a great year and half run at Business Insider, working alongside some of my best friends. Joe Weisenthal is one of the hardest working people on earth, and I learned a lot from working with him. I really have no ill-will towards the Business Insider gang, and I wish them the best. I’m sure they’ll be nimble enough to correct course if the current strategy doesn’t pan out.

And here’s the full release from CNBC:

John Carney will be joining CNBC.com, the online destination for real-time global business news and expert analysis, as Senior Editor, it was announced today by Allen Wastler, Managing Editor, CNBC.com. In addition to writing for the site, Carney will also appear regularly on CNBC’s Business Day programming.

“John has deep connections on Wall Street and has a unique insight into its trading community,” said Wastler. “He is well-known within the financial world and we are delighted to have him on our team.”

“We look forward to welcoming John’s reporting savvy, distinctive voice and take on Wall Street to the network,” said Nikhil Deogun, Managing Editor, CNBC Business News.

“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to be a part of the best team in business journalism,” said Carney.

Carney’s appointment to CNBC.com comes on the heels of a record-breaking month for the site. In April, CNBC.com scored a record page view month, with 282 million, making it the #1 stand alone financial news website by total page views according to the latest data from comScore Media Metrix.** In addition, the online destination for global business news and expert analysis was visited by 5.7 million unique visitors, the most in any April on record.

Previously, Carney was the managing editor of Business Insider’s financial news and gossip vertical, Clusterstock. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal named Clusterstock as one of the ten best financial blogs.

Carney began his journalism career at DealBreaker, a Wall Street blog that covers the personalities and culture that shape the financial industry. There since launch, he served as editor-in-chief and led the site to some of its largest numbers ever. Carney was widely lauded for his hour-by-hour reporting on the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and his in-depth reports on the turmoil inside of Merrill Lynch in the year leading up to its sale to Bank of America.

Carney has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New York Sun, Page Six Magazine, Gawker, TheAtlantic.com, The Daily Beast, Time Out New York, Fortune and New York magazine.

Before joining Dealbreaker, Carney practiced corporate law at firms such as Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Latham & Watkins, primarily representing banks, hedge funds and private equity firms. He received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Carney graduated Summa Cum Laude from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Carney currently resides in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

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Nate Silver calls the decision “a mistake on par with John McCain’s ‘suspending my campaign’ gaffe.” Marc Ambinder speculates that it could be seen as reactive, though the ‘middle’ may be comforted by the sound of “spending freeze” no doubt a large motivator in this decision. John Carney of Business Insider pointed out to me earlier this morning that “We spent more bailing out AIG than will be saved by Obama’s spending freeze” and that decisions such as these are often “a policy people employ when they lack ideas.” (Carney also dug up a video of Obama arguing against the spending freeze back in 2008.) Already-ticked-off Paul Krugman calls it (among other dire things) “appalling on every level.” But the harshest response thus far came from Rachel Maddow last night who just excoriated the President. Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned. Whew.

You might recall that Republican Senator John McCain ran for and lost the presidency on the idea of answering economic calamity with a spending freeze [among other things]. Since that’s the kind of strategy that Herbert Hoover used in the ’30s to make the depression great…If you’ve ever taken economics, it’s usually on day two of like a 101 level college econ class where they teach you that a spending freeze is not the way to bring the economy out of a downturn, let alone a recession. One lesson from the interminable Japanese recession in the 1990s was that the government was not aggressive in spending enough for long enough and that’s why it became Japan’s lost decade, instead of Japan’s lost couple of years. And then, of course, there was the great American mistake of 1937, when as the U.S. was finally coming out of the depression, in a burst of stupid Hooverism, the government stopped spending for recovery too soon and it put the economy right back in the drink. Deficit spending is what governments do to get economies moving again. A spending freeze it like trying to put out a fire by putting gasoline on it.

Maddow followed up with a longish interview with Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden (Ambinder calls him the “probably the best economic spokesman the White House has”) who went to some lengths to defend and explain the White House’s decision. It’s worth watching the whole segment, Obama has effectively knocked health care out the news cycle with this announcement and it will likely be the focus of just about everyone between now and tomorrow’s speech. Video below:

Now that the first shock of yesterday’s attempted bombing on Northwest Flight 253 has passed the real fallout is starting to take effect, mainly for regular travelers (like the ones who “averted disaster” yesterday) attempting travel across the country today. The Times and elsewhere are reporting on new travel restrictions, which were put in place almost immediately after yesterday’s incident was reported and it ain’t pretty:

Although transportation officials had not announced new security measures yet, Air Canada said the Transportation Security Agency would make significant changes to the way passengers are able to move about on aircraft. During the final hour of flight, customers will have to remain seated, will not be allowed access to carry-on baggage and cannot have personal belongings or other items on their laps, according to a notice on Air Canada’s Web site.

In effect, that means passengers on flights of about 90 minutes or less will not be able to get out of their seats, since they are not allowed to move about while an airplane is climbing to its cruising altitude.

In the words of Gawker’s Ryan Tate: “Airline passengers repeatedly do what TSA can’t — intercept terrorists — so let’s treat them even worse. Shameful.”

NPR reported earlier today that passengers appeared to be “taking it in stride and are very calm about it” but if you want a real sense of what it’s like to be in the air today (or waiting to be in the air today), beyond the cut and dry version the news outlets are offereing, then you need look no farther than Twitter. We put together a collection from across the Twittersphere to give you a sense of how these new restrictions are (or aren’t, as the case may be) affecting traveler’s ability to get where they’re going this holiday season.

Blogger Xeni Jardin perhaps (alas for her) provided the best report on the realities of international travel today.

Our own Rachel Sklar, who was flying domestic, noted there were less security measures than one might have presumed:

Business Insider’s John Carney, meanwhile, was apparently just hoping to find a way to the snowed-in MidWest:

And they were far from being the only ones.

See anything you think we should add? Drop us a line at tips@mediaite.com. And safe travels!

Here’s the change that is causing the most consternation and for very good reason:

Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone, including Facebook-enhanced applications, and therefore do not have privacy settings.

So basically the entire world can now see your interests and who all your friends are. Think this isn’t a problem? Felix Salmon at Reuters and the guys at Clusterstock have already had their entire friends list published by a website in a move that looks a lot like a cyberstalking intimidation tactic. The only way to get out of this is to change your search results so that no one can find you on Facebook but your friends (which sort of defeats the purpose, which is probably what they had in mind), though even then all your friends, and 3rd party apps can see all your friends. And we all know that all our Facebook “friends” are not necessarily people we want to invite into all areas of our lives (let alone 3rd party apps). Getting the sense Facebook may not be on your side?

Then there’s this, which only came to my attention because people on my Facebook feed have been noting it warning “your friends are unwittingly transmitting your Facebook profile data to 3rd party apps YOU never authorized” which turns out to be the case.

If your friend uses an application that you do not use, you can control what types of information the application can access. Please note that applications will always be able to access your publicly available information (Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages)…

And practically everything else unless you go here to remove yourself. Wow right.

So, why now? You may recall Facebook struck a deal with Neilsen not that long ago to measure “ad awareness” of its users; basically how effective are the ads on your page at generating money. The more pages the more dat to mine. But there’s also this. Facebook has upwards of 300 million users most of whom have spent some considerable time filling their profiles with information and connections they’d probably rather not lose (the same argument behind Facebook charging a user fee). So basically the question now, for everyone involved is how far can Facebook push their policies, arguably against the users best interests, before the user decides to opt out. Answer is, they haven’t got there yet, though they certainly are walking a fine line with this latest round of changes.

What they have going for them is convenience and laziness; as irritated and angered as I am by all this I’m probably never going to spend the time to remove all that info, or find a new place to house all those connections, unless of course someone else comes along and makes it easy for me to do so. The irony, of course, would be that at some point down the line they cross the line enough that the government has to step in to protect our civil liberties. Orwell probably never saw that one coming.

UPDATE: We asked Facebook to explain why and how they thought these changes in privacy settings were in the user’s best interests and this is what we heard back from a Facebook spokesman:

The overwhelming majority of Facebook users have decided to make what we’ve classified as “publicly available information” available to everyone. We’ve found that the small percentage of those who have restricted any of this information have intended to prevent contact from non-friends. Users can still prevent from being found in searches on and off Facebook and messages or friend requests from strangers. Users come to Facebook to connect and share, not to hide and we know they get more value from the service when they find friends and are found by friends. With more than 350 million members, Facebook has grown so large that there are multiple users for even uncommon names and potentially thousands for common names. This additional information helps users connect with the friends they are looking to find.

Going forward, applications on the Facebook platform will only have access to a user’s publicly available information and any information he or she has made visible to “Everyone.” To access any more information, the application will need to ask for the user’s approval. A very small percentage of our 350 million plus users (about 350,000) opted out of platform in the past. That makes the setting one of the least used features on Facebook. Under the new system, users can hide all the non-”Everyone” information they deem fit. With regard to publicly available information, it’s worth noting that this change is largely an additional disclosure of an existing practice. Users could never restrict visibilty of name, networks and pages they are a fan of.

So basically, this sounds to me like a lot of users weren’t paying attention to their Facebook privacy settings and Facebook has taken that as a democratic reflection of the wishes of its users as a whole, without actually putting it to a vote, or allowing those old settings to remain for the easily overlooked 350,000 users who took the time to find them and apply them. How forcing users to comply with this arbitrary decision and removing their control over their own profiles is in our best interests still remains a mystery.

It was, simply put, a good time. Guests included Ann Curry and Meredith Vieira (fresh from their own NBC party at 30 Rock), whom I walked in with to a first glance that included John Carney from Clusterstock, Cindy Adams and Dan Rather. New media mixed with old in a room where Cathie Black and Kate White mixed with Rex Sorgatz and Rick Webb (or at least stood near them); and new colleagues reconnected with former coworkers (for me, Danny Shea and Katherine Thomson from the Huffington Post, for Mediaite TV editor Steve Krakauer, TV Newser editor Chris Ariens). It was great to introduce our columnists like Tommy Christopher, Jose Simian, Lesley Blume, Katie Baker, Phil Bump and Melissa Lafsky to one another. It’s pretty fun to close down a party with Katie Couric.

Oh, and also, Snape was there. Yes. That Snape.

The second wave included more friends coming over from 30 Rock - Hoda Kotb, Willie Geist, Chris Licht, Contessa Brewer, Peter Alexander, as well as their counterparts from other networks like Gigi Stone, Ali Velshi, Pat Kiernan and Deborah Feyerick. Couric came by with Brooks Perlin and some CBS friends; of the picture above she joked “It’s an Abrams Sandwich!” and that sort of describes the evening: a tantalizing assortment of spicy, nutritious guests held together by Dan and Floyd. You know what I mean. Anyway, it was delicious.

Below I captured Dan’s remarks to the crowd (slightly truncated due to a camera glitch, right where he’s proudly declaring himself new media – give the guy Tweetdeck and there’s no giving back) and thanking his staff, aka my wonderful colleagues who make that 24/7 whirl of Internet immersion so damn fun: Managing Editor Colby Hall, Senior Editor Glynnis MacNicol, TV Editor Steve Krakauer, Contributing Editor (and “Consigliere”) Andrew Cedotal (but not to be confused with Dan’s other, unofficial, consigliere, Dave Zinczenko), Office Manager (and Girl Friday) Ruthie Friedlander, Associate Editors Robert Quigley & Joseph Coscarelli and me, Rachel Sklar, the Editor at Large and in charge of the wobbly footage below:

Other guests included Brian Stelter, Laura Brown, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Lloyd Grove, Jason Binn, Susan Stroman, Hilary Shor, Neil Shah, Lisa Shields, David Lauren, Robert George, Sujata Thomas, Geraldine Hessler, Rachelle Hruska, Felix Gilette, Michael Hogan, Matt Pressman, Gossip Cop cousins Michael Lewittes and Daniel Jacobson, and our infamous Panel Nerds, Etan Bednarsh and Danny Groner. Collect all your favorites in the photo gallery below! Thank you to everyone who joined us Tuesday evening, and thank you to Dan and Floyd for a great party.

This morning, like much of the New York media world it seems, I woke up to Spencer Morgan’s New York Observer piece ‘Rrrowl! Beware Cougar’s Young Niece, the Cheetah.’ Not so much because the first thing I do on Wednesdays is click on NYO.com to see what’s new (there was a day, however, when that was the case), but because it was blazing up my G-chat and Twitter. And for good reason. It is at the same time utterly offensive and utterly idiotic. The column, for those of you with other things to spend your morning on, is about ‘cheetahs‘: “woman, presumably single, who wants to get laid and preys on some poor sap who is too drunk to fight back.” (Sadly, there was no mention of a corresponding label for the guy who hangs around till the bar is closed, hoping to prey on drunk girls: oh right, he’s mostly just known as a (sometimes) single man in New York City.)

So while on the one hand I was angrily spewing away in numerous g-chat windows, frequently in ALL CAPS, and a number of times with persons quoted in the article, I was at the same time irritated with myself for getting so upset over a piece that was clearly intended to result in my spending my morning doing just that. As Hamilton Nolan observes, “A mad reader is an engaged reader!”

This we know. Everyone who has ever worked in media time-out-of-mind knows this. The blogosphere is built on this model. Cable News increasingly so. Still, knowing that didn’t stop me from being angry; angrier still that it had worked. And it does work. But why does it always seems to work best when women are shown at their marginalized worst? The answer: Sexism sells.

Don’t think so? Two weeks ago angry reactions to Newsweek‘s Sarah Palin cover stormed the air and Internet waves. Newsweek, once the co-king of the newsmag weeklies, has struggled more than most this year to maintain readership. But wow, did they generate a lot of eyes with their ‘what to do about a problem like Sarah Palin in short running shorts’ piece! Sex and political incorrectness! Voila. The idea the it never crossed long-time editor Jon Meacham’s mind that that cover would elicit cries of sexism strikes as too naive.

And then there’s the Huffington Post. HuffPo is not a media empire desperate to retain its glory days. It is a website arguably in the midst of its glory days, built on a model of mostly free contributors (of which I am sometimes one) doing everything it can to stay there by generating traffic. Traffic equals advertising equals profit. As someone recently involved in launching a website I am well aware that certain content decisions sometimes have to be made with traffic in mind. HuffPo however, has lately taken this to an often disturbing extreme with their slide shows; something they’ve been increasingly coming under fire for. Amanda Hess noted the phenomonem earlier this year in an article titled ‘Huffington Post: Liberal Politics, Sexist Entertainment.’ And while I am not one to begrudge someone their Hollywood starlet slide show, this recent, utterly offensive NSFW slide show seriously crossed the line. It also received more than 400 comments and was on their most viewed list for weeks. HuffPo’s fearless that way.

Yes, of course I am aware sex-infused images of (or columns about!) women are not new. Nor is it new that they are offensive. Nor is it new that they sell. What does seem to be relatively new though is the intentional use of particularly degrading images of (or columns about!) women as a tactic to generate chatter, or more appropriately and importantly, links! Clicks! TRAFFIC. We are now living in a world where not just sex but sexism is being intentionally exploited as a way to sell (prop up) struggling media entities. And just because I know that, and I know they know that, and I know that in their real lives the people generating this sort of thing probably know better, doesn’t make what they are doing any less infuriating, or insulting, or marginalizing. Maybe more so, actually.

Related:
Rrrowl! Beware Cougar’s Young Niece, the Cheetah [NYO]
Sexism and The City! Another Cringer From The New York Observer [Mediaite]
Hisss! Grrrrowl! Article Goads Lady Cheetahs From Their Lairs, On Purpose [Gawker]

Or maybe it’s that Morgan wrote that piece for a series called “Men of Manhattan,” which celebrated one-half of the population of city full of vibrant, successful, interesting people. There was no corresponding column.

Or maybe it’s that I’m turning 37 next week and am already getting tired of the “cougar” comments. I already know that I should be fearful and scared I’ll never find a husband — I read that in the Observer, too.

Or maybe it’s that I can’t read a New York Observer piece about dating and mating and sex in New York City that does not make me want to PUNCH A FREAKING WALL.

You know what? That’s it. Because the Observer’s latest Spencer Morgan piece is called “Rrrowl! Beware Cougar’s Young Niece, the Cheetah.” BE CAREFUL GUYS! SHE’S COMING FOR YOU!

What is a cheetah? As Jezebel’s Irin Carmon notes, it’s “unclear what a “cheetah” actually is, except amalgam of lazy gchat reporting, cliches [and] double standards.” Apparently it’s a woman, presumably single, who wants to get laid and preys on some poor sap who is too drunk to fight back. (You know, to fight back against getting laid at the end of the night when they’re drunk. Because guys HATE that.)

It’s the usual double-standard that the Observer loves so well — a guy sleeping with lots of younger girls is a stud! Girls need to be careful! Especially the ones who might enjoy sex! — and as Hamilton Nolan notes at Gawker, it is preposterous, dated and utterly transparent link-bait. But, you know, the Observer is a pretty well-regarded publication, read by many of the city’s media and business elite, and also here it is on the internet. There are some people who might think this story actually has merit. Certainly the guys earnestly quoted in it — all with huge followings and media footprints — indicate as much.

There are some confusing things in the article. Like, the cheetah is not necessarily old, like a cougar. (“A cougar would fuck and then leave and not feel bad.”) And she’s not even necessarily ugly! (“The cheetah was not necessarily unattractive but that for some reason or another, she was not aware of her attractiveness.” Gee! I wonder what media world would contribute to that!) I am, however, completely confused about what this means: “It is about women past the first flush of youth wanting to date or at least fuck ‘above their station.’” What, exactly, is this woman’s “station?” And if she is hanging out with a group of friends at a bar, how, exactly, is she beneath them? Or is it that she’s not good looking enough for any of the drop-dead supermodels quoted in the article? Shockingly, Morgan fails to elaborate.

What we do know, though, is that the Cheetah is pathetic, because unlike “her Auntie Cougar and Cousin Puma” she lacks “a certain dignity.” (A Puma is a woman in her late 20s early 30s who dates younger. Basically according to this article, unless you are in your early 20s and let the boys come to you, WATCH OUT). The Cheetah, sadly, actually wants….something? A relationship? Acknowledgment? To not have to schlep her ass out of bed at 5 am and hail a cab on dark, empty streets to go home? (“The cheetah stays the night.”). That is, presumably, in sharp contrast to the virile men of the story, who need nothing (except, perhaps, the affirmation of their own heavily-notched belts. You know who you are, kids).

This article could have been about a scene — a scene where friends go out and mingle and drunkenly hook up, or about how singles interact in New York, and what those expectations are and what people are looking for, and need. Ha! That would have taken too much work, or been too relevant. This is about celebrating guys and their conquests — and how they were too good for those forgettable, regrettable, pathetic chicks. It’s about warning women that sexually aggressive behavior is unacceptable, makes them the object of mockery and scorn and pity. It’s about being worried about what you look like without makeup, worried about whether you’re too old for your new boyfriend, worried about whether you’re going to feel like shit after a drunken hookup, worried that someone, somewhere is going to judge you.

Well, you’re right to be worried. That someone is judging you. You’ll find them at the New York Observer.

Related:
Man Vs. Wild (Woman): Intrepid Explorer Exposes Dangerous “Cheetahs” [Jezebel]
Hisss! Grrrrowl! Article Goads Lady Cheetahs From Their Lairs, On Purpose [Gawker]
Rrrowl! Beware Cougar’s Young Niece, The Cheetah [NY Observer]

Rachel Sklar is Mediaite’s Editor-at-Large and writes often about sexism in media. She also co-writes a blog dedicated to celebrating awesome women in their thirties, where today she wrote this. Sarah Henderson would appreciate it.

(Illustration from Gawker comments here.)

1. September 2008 – Lehman Bros. files for bankruptcy, amidst a flurry of frightening headlines, and the NYT.com begins its months-long habit of instilling fear in our hearts with homepage images of plummeting graphs. The blogosphere, which was on the story before the MSM, proves itself the more adept medium to handle the breakneck pace of the fallout.

SLIDESHOW: New York City newspaper front pages from Sept 15, 2008.

2. So much has happened in the interim that sometimes it’s sort of amazing to recall now that the economy tanked amidst the most historic election of our times, and that George Bush was our President when it happened. You may recall just a week after Lehman filed for bankruptcy, Senator John McCain suspended his campaign and dropped everything, including a Letterman appearance, to rush back to D.C. in order to fix things! By way of Katie Couric‘s set. This did not sit well with David Letterman who tore him to pieces on his show that night, inflicting early, and arguably severe, damage on a campaign that had yet to suffer the full effects of the Sarah Palin fiasco.

NEXT: Bernie Madoff, Jim Cramer, and Matt Taibbi

Yesterday, bloggers Peter Feld and John Carney had a heated back-and-forth about health care on their various Tumblrs. Among other points, they debated death panels, the relevance of police tasering to the discussion, and just how good the U.S. Postal Service is.

It all started out with this short post by Carney:

johncarney:

Trying to defend Obamacare, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein said he saw no evidence that the government was prone to madness.

Watch this video about cops tazering a teenager with a broken back 19 times if you also think you haven’t seen evidence of government madness.

I know “death panels” are a scare tactic. But when it’s not hard to believe in death panels when you see this sort of thing.

Here’s what Peter Feld (above, left) had to say. To see Carney’s rebuttal, click here.

This takes the cake, but it’s indicative of the distracting, misleading, intentionally irrelevant campaign that health care opponents on the right have been waging. Here’s how it works: Take something completely unrelated to health care, that puts government in a bad light, and say, hey! you hate waiting at the DMV, don’t you? Or the Post Office? Well then, you sure don’t want the government anywhere near your health care! Look at the cops torture that poor kid — well, you sure as heck don’t want these people in charge of your medical treatment!

When I was on Fox News with two Republicans last week, they tried to taunt me with “what has the government ever done well?” That’s not hard to answer. NASA put a man on the moon. FEMA does a pretty good job when it’s not being run by George Bush. The government built the interstate highway system. We have public universities (that means, run by the government!) at the top of the rankings, like UC Berkeley where I studied, or Michigan, or SUNY. As for the Post Office, where’s the complaint? Put a 44 cent stamp on a piece of paper and a few days later it will be delivered across the country. And as Bush-lovers have bragged, the government prevented another terror attack on US soil after 9/11.

Closer to health-care relevance, the government inspects the food supply and keeps us from being poisoned. And the National Institutes of Health is at the forefront of medical research, the Food and Drug Administration safeguards the approval of new medication, and the Centers For Disease Control are masters at coping with pandemics. And there are great government-run hospitals. Even the DMV — and I’ve been caught up in their system once or twice — generally hands me a number and takes care of me as quickly as any other line I have to wait on. I could go on.

A video of a kid being tasered (removed for your non-viewing pleasure) might be an argument against police having tasers. In fact, maybe we shouldn’t let the government anywhere near our law enforcement! Maybe we shouldn’t let the Feds send Americans abroad with guns and weapons, either. Or operate prisons. Well, a few of the people showing up to yell at their congressmen might actually make one or two of those arguments, too. (The same ones who show up to see the President with loaded guns, maybe). Either way, that clip has zero relevance to this issue. You do not need to see a kid being tasered by cops to take part in the health care debate.

And amazingly, John Carney is still trying to convince us that there are death panels in the health care bill. There are not! There was a totally sensible provision, suggested by Republican Senator Johnny Isakson, to have insurance reimburse doctors for couseling patients and their families about end-of-life decisions and living wills. Thanks to the nimnuts at the Town Hall meetings, it has been removed. Thank you, conservative right.

Peter Feld is a writer and content strategist, a former Democratic political consultant and ex-market research director at Conde Nast Publications. He taught political polling and strategy in NYU’s graduate Political Campaign Management program, and holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UC Berkeley. He has written for Ad Age, the New York Post, Gawker, Radar, Portfolio.com and Cookie. This post originally appeared at Six Degrees of Peter Feld.

John Carney’s rebuttal

compiled by Robert Quigley.

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/peter-feld-and-john-carney-debate-health-care/feed/ 2 http://www.mediaite.com/online/win-ben-steins-column-space/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/win-ben-steins-column-space/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:57:49 +0000 Glynnis MacNicol http://www.mediaite.com/?p=10959 New York Times fired Sunday business columnist Ben Stein freeing up some of the most valuable real estate in media. When the Times replaced Bill Kristol with Ross Douthat earlier this year they appeared to be not only aiming to attract a younger audience (he was 29 at the time of his hiring), but also an online one. Will they do something similar this time? One can only hope! Here's some suggestions. ]]> Yesterday another high-profile New York Times columnist bid the paper adieu. Just this past January Bill Kristol departed his Monday slot after a year of almost non-stop criticism, and yesterday the paper fired Sunday business columnist Ben Stein. Stein’s firing, it should be noted, was not the result of unsatisfactory content (in the NYT‘s mind at least!), but because the paper felt he had violated its ethics rules by appearing in FreeScore.com commercials. The result however is the same: some of the most valuable real estate in media has just been freed up!

There’s no shortage of good writers looking for a job these days, and there is certainly no shortage of opinions on the economy nor has there arguably ever been a greater public level of interest So who should the Times be considering as a replacement? When the Times replaced Kristol with Ross Douthat they appeared to be not only aiming to attract a younger audience (he was 29 at the time of his hiring), but also an online one — Douthat had a well-read online column at TheAtlantic.com. Will they do something similar this time? One can only hope! Here’s some suggestions.

Felix Salmon: Salmon hated Ben Stein (we’re not exaggerating this point…see here and here), so tapping him as a replacement for Stein would be a sweet irony for everyone who sided with his opinion. Of course, Salmon also has years of experience covering finance: he was the financial columnist for Portfolio.com and departed just before the mag folded to blog for Reuters . He would arguably bring both long-time experience (and the MSM credibility that goes with that), as well as a built-in online audience to the table. Both good things for the NYT.


Megan McArdle: McArdle currently blogs over at TheAtlantic.com, which is also where recent hire Ross Douthat came from (TheAtlantic.com, it should be noted, has a spectacular blogging lineup across the board), and before that was a The Economist. McArdle generally covers the economy, and finance and more recently has jumped into the deep-end of the Health Care debate (she is not a fan). She’s also young (35) and a woman, two things the NYT could use more of.

John Carney: Carney currently blogs for Clusterstock at Business Insider and prior to that at Dealbreaker. In the interest of full disclosure it’s probably best to mention that he has also on a number of occasions been called upon to explain the economy to me (not that he bears any responsibility in my continued confusion over certain numbers). Back in September, while at Dealbreaker, Carney broke the Lehman story, and more recently was so far ahead of the game on reporting a high-level firing at Merrill Lynch that the company felt it necessary to send out a nation-wide memo denying the post. The exec is question was ousted this week. If the Times tapped him not only would one more paper add a Carney to the masthead, but the Times would add some serious online cred and punched up prose to its weekly business coverage.

Matt Taibbi: The Rolling Stone journalist whose traditional provenance has been politics (and authority challenged athletes) jumped into the economic fray back in March with his much-read piece ‘The Big Takeover‘ and again last month with his controversial ‘Inside The Great American Bubble Machine.’ Taibbi’s gonzo journalism in the political arena has won him a fairly large and devoted following over the years. His financial pieces lately have been ruffling feathers in all the right ways. With both those things in mind the Times would probably do well to consider bringing Taibbi’s rock-star quality to its Sunday pages.

@NPRpolitics: Can Former Comedian Be Senate’s Straight Man? http://bit.ly/424ZoV

@NYT_JenPreston: Fascinating look at Harvard’s efforts to map news and info on the Web http://bit.ly/KVuZm

@Tlrd (Towleroad): New York City Gay Men’s Chorus in Financial Trouble /-Towleroad News- [#gay]/ – The New York City Gay Men’s … http://tinyurl.com/l34tkx

@Romenesko: LAT’s James Rainey: “NYT has a bad habit of letting a few well-connected journalists run amok.” http://is.gd/23DiL

@Carney: My newest idea on how to save print: publish on edible paper, so you can buy lunch and the newspaper at the same time. “News You Can Chew.”

@MarkEvans: Strange, I’ve noticed several people within my Twitter stream recently who I definitely know I haven’t followed. How’d they sneak in?

@Jenny8Lee: if you missed the frost nixon interviews on nyc’s PBS last night, they are on again 8/10 at 8 pm: http://bit.ly/1hsLp1

@Yelvington: The Clinton picture w/ Kim is fascinating in its omission of any other Koreans. Avoids analysis of pecking order.

@niche: Season 1 of ’21 Jump Street’ is now on Hulu.com  Gotta watch it to see a very young Johnny Depp.

@Weblens: Rehab staff ‘killed web addict’ (BBC News): A Chinese teenager sent to an internet addiction rehabilitation camp.. http://bit.ly/yashq

@SarahW: Prepare for Agatha Christie Week, running from September 13-20: http://is.gd/23BWP

@IanShapira: Awful story out of Congo in today’s NYT. Male rape victims. http://bit.ly/10vMDT

@BorowitzReport: Clinton to Travel World, Filling Plane With Women

@FordModels: I like it when a man takes matters into his own hands: Clinton gets the girls http://bit.ly/9SRMl GG

@TodayShow: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks out about the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Video: http://tr.im/vyI3

@TheStalwart: Actual dream last night: I wrote a Tweet with the word ‘webinar’ in it, and instantly got 5 new marketing people following me.

@Jason_Pontin: NASA’s new ION space engine, which might be ready for launch by 2013: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23120/

There is more interest, argument and passion surrounding the condition and future of American business than there has been in several generations. And yet, in the space of three months, two business magazines — the organs that exist to offer the stuff people are clamoring for — have been abandoned. One, Portfolio, a newbie, was closed. The other, BusinessWeek, an old stalwart, is up for sale, according to reports that caught even the magazine’s own editorial staff by surprise.
*
So while ad pages are plummeting for all magazines, they’re flirting with terminal velocity for business titles.

Perhaps Time needs to widen its definition of “business journalism.” It’s certainly not news that business magazines are having a rough ride at the moment, along with the rest of the magazine industry (or that Portfolio might have remained viable if Conde Nast had invested a little its online property) . But business journalism? That’s a bit of a stretch.

A quick glance at the Print / Online Reporters category of our Power Grid tells a slightly different story. Andrew Ross Sorkin, the NYT star business reporter, ranks #1; James Surowiecki, the New Yorker‘s business writer is #10; John Carney of The Business Insider is #21. While we’re on the subject, we’re told TBI averages 10 million monthly visits — not very terminal! It’s safe to say none of these people appear to be vanishing.

Neither does Michael Lewis, who recently left a plum contract with Portfolio for an even richer one with Vanity Fair — his article “The End” about how Wall St. met it’s demise last fall, was one of the most passed-around articles of last year. And then there’s Matt Taibbi, the Rolling Stone journo who’s turned his attention from politics to the business of Wall Street and whose two most recent articles on the subject — “The Big Takeover” and “Inside the Great American Bubble Machine” — have created some pretty significant waves inside and outside the business community (Our own business columnist, Jim Impoco, has written about both of them.)

All of which may lead the casual business reader to conclude that while BusinessWeek is in tough shape (and, in fact, this is really as far as the article reaches) business journalism itself is actually thriving, or at these those writers who were able to adapt their writing platforms to ones which were able to keep pace with the story itself.

Photo via.

You see, I really know next to nothing about Walter Cronkite.  He means nothing at all to me. Hearing that he’s dead was like a looking at a well-painted apartment wall. You get the feeling that a good job might have been done but that’s the limit of the emotional or intellectual reaction.

So why does this make me feel young? Well, let’s face it. Cronkite was important to the kind of people whose memories of our public life is full of Kennedy and King assassinations, the hippies fighting cops at Democratic convention in 1968, the ’60s culture wars, Watergate, Gerald Ford, Vietnam, the oil crises, Elvis’s death and Lennon’s murder, Three Mile Island, and Jimmy Carter’s 1979 summer meltdown.

I care about that stuff the way a guy storming the beach at Normandy cared about the Spanish American war. It’s more well-painted walls.

Now, I don’t speak ill of the dead. But I’ll make an exception: I’m pretty sure that if I did care about Cronkite, I wouldn’t like him very much. No good contrarian can like anyone known as “The Most Trusted Man In America.” Also, I have no admiration for the anchor-as-guide to the world version of television news, and I’m glad it’s a dying form. If, as someone on the television said today, we never see anyone like him again, I’d say that this state of affairs couldn’t have come too soon.

Reading a bit here and there about him has made me suspect I’d dislike him even more than that. From what I can tell in Peter Feld’s write up, he seems to have disdained the lives actually lived by most of his countrymen. I guess it’s not surprising to discover an aversion to the lives of ordinary people in someone who spent his life performing a job that put his face in the living rooms of millions of strangers.

I’m sure his family and friends will miss him, and if I knew any of them I’d be sorry for their loss. And maybe I’d tell them to say thanks to Walter for me. Like I said, it’s rare that the death of a public figure makes me suddenly feel young.

John Carney is Managing Editor of Clusterstock. This piece was originally published at Rise If You Must, his personal website.

Me: I want someone (you) to explain to me why Goldman Sachs was able to make so much money. Is it Taibbi’s conspiracy theory at work?

John: No. Except kind of.
It’s easy.
Goldman can borrow at very low cost thanks to government.
That means they can make money off of trades other people can’t.

Me: But if Goldman can trade at low costs because of the government how come others can’t?

John: Well, some others can too.
Morgan Stanley, for instance
But Citi and BofA have much bigger mortgage linked balance sheets.

Me: So the fact that Goldman Sachs made all this money is a sign that TARP worked?
Or a sign that Wall St is as corrupt as ever?

John: Both?
Well, I mean, it’s a sign that the game is rigged, and Goldman is really good at winning rigged games.

Me: That does not make me feel better.
But is this a sign that the economy is getting better? Or business as usual?

John: Not a sign the economy is getting better, that’s for sure. If you can borrow at artificially low rates, all sorts of things become profitable that wouldn’t have been before.
So Goldman can make money even if the opportunities are thin b/c the economy sucks.

*

Feel better now? Me neither. However if one of the reasons the economy tanked last year is that the public had no idea what was going on than at least we can assist with that end of things, in so far as providing you with further links to read!

Matt Taibbi vs. the Giant Vampire Squid

Okay, This Time Matt Taibbi Nails Goldman And The Bailout

Congrats Goldman Sachs! You’re the New Symbol of Banker Greed

The Great American Bubble Machine