Joe Hildebrand

Joe Hildebrand began by tweeting “I just want to say I think it’s great that Sydney Airport is providing so many jobs for the mentally handicapped.”

This prompted a reasoned, articulate rebuke from columnist Stella Young, herself a disabled Australian. Her column was noteworthy in that it eschewed shaming, or demands for firing, in favor of a simple plea for empathy: (the whole thing is more than worth a read)

Like the countless people who make thoughtless jokes about disability, I don’t think Joe Hildebrand was conscious of the ableism inherent in his silly joke. But it was there. And the thing with speaking from a position of privilege is that you’re not often asked to think about how your language affects other people – and when you are, it seems everyone jumps up and down complaining about how the system is oppressing their freedom of speech, with little thought for those whom the speech routinely oppresses.

Much like the homosexual community has to deal with people (okay, mostly teenagers – the rest of us have finally cottoned on that it’s more than a little bit homophobic) referring to things that are a bit shit as ‘so gay’ in our post-ironic society. I find it hard to imagine Hildebrand referring to the staff at Sydney Airport as ‘so gay’ – so why is it still okay for disability to be treated as synonymous with subpar performance?

Hildebrand’s tweet is offensive because it uses disability as a shortcut to mean “crap”. And in doing so, he reveals a subtle and no doubt unconscious contempt for disabled people that is still rife in our culture. At best, it displays a blatant ignorance of the very real barriers faced by people with disability, some of which, ironically, are employment and air travel. At its worst, it assumes that jokes like these are okay – because they’re not about anyone important. Perhaps it’s assumed that people with intellectual disabilities won’t ‘get it’ anyway. That they can’t be hurt by a joke they don’t understand.

Young’s message appeared to have gotten through, as Hildebrand retweeted a link that described the piece as “passionate and articulate.”

Yeah, not so much. Hildebrand followed up that tweet with these:

Just want to say how sorry I am for using the words “mentally handicapped” in a tweet. That was really retarded of me.

Just want to say I’m sorry for offending so many people by using the word “retarded” in a tweet. That was really Irish of me.

Sorry I just offended so many people by using the term “Irish”. Just having a blonde moment.

Then, just to be sure everyone knew he was specifically spitting on Young’s rebuttal, he retweeted this:

@mostlyFilth @Joe_Hildebrand your series of faux pas today has been pretty gay.

If Hildebrand is anything like Rush Limbaugh, the courage he displays in the face of the mentally disabled, the wheelchair-bound, the Irish, and the gay ought to stand him in good stead with his audience.

This brand of “defiance” crops up quite a bit here, but the thing that people like Hildebrand or Rush Limbaugh fail to realize is that what they call “language policing” is really just an attempt to let people know when they’re being assholes, and affording them the opportunity to stop.

(h/t Kate Doak)

“Fox did kill my NewsCorp hacking joke. Which sucks bc I think it would have made them look better. A little,” tweeted Baldwin this evening, before announcing that he was done with the bit. According to Entertainment Weekly, Fox claims the joke wasn’t cut by News Corp, but simply considered “in poor taste”:

On Thursday, Baldwin had tweeted “I did a short Emmy pretape a few days ago. Now they tell me NewsCorp may cut the funniest line.”

Apparently, Fox was uncomfortable including a joke that Baldwin made that had to do with Murdoch and the much-publicized phone-hacking scandal, and they had it cut from Baldwin’s script. When EW talked to Fox, the network was very clear that the decision to cut the joke was made at the Fox level — not by anyone at News Corp. Fox also claims that the reason the joke was cut was not because of Murdoch’s name, but because it was in poor taste to make light of the serious allegations surrounding the phone-hacking scandal.

Everyone’s favorite Hollywood liberal activist who also loves banks seems not to be buying that story, however, as his Twitter feed has been in overdrive for the past hour or so, culminating by telling his followers he wasn’t the first or last to go to the “media woodshed,” and taking and even tougher stance against News Corporation:

Tangled up in this rage were also some derisive comments about Citizens United.

While Fox seems to have released their definitive statement on the matter, Baldwin’s tweets will likely not be the last word on this, as Baldwin himself and his show, 30 Rock, is up for a few Emmys, and the most critical piece of this drama puzzle– the content of said “joke in poor taste”– is as of yet undisclosed.

Michael Wolff, author of a biography of Rupert Murdoch, has told Reuters that Murdoch–and his family–must go. “I don’t think this company can go forward–both News International and News Corporation–with the Murdochs running it.” Wolff believes the legendary Murdoch name itself has, after weeks of scandal surrounding phone hacking and the closing of the company’s News of the World, become toxic. “I think the Murdochs have to, and will, step out of not only day to day running it, but they won’t have jobs.” Wolff says that will likely happen within 60 days.

Among the major issues, Wolff says, is Rupert Murdoch’s age. “Rupert is eighty years old. He’s not a young eighty, either. And I think he has lost his grip on the leadership of this crisis.” Wolff says leadership at News Corp. must pass from the family because “Rupert is too old and James is too young and inexperienced–and we’re seeing the results.”

Watch it here, from Reuters:

Host Rick Folbaum proposed to the panel whether the coverage of the scandal was well warranted. The panel seemed to agree that it was worth covering, but to what extent remained to be determined. Panelist Rich Lowry suggested that it was worth mentioning, but not a top story– to get an exclusively British story on the front page of the New York Times as much as this one has been, he joked, “you’d need the Queen to abdicate or a plane to hit London.” Kirsten Powers agreed the coverage in some forums had been from “a lot of people that are wanting to see tha this is the thing that takes Rupert Murdoch down,” was still a worthwhile story. Meanwhile, Ellen Ratner defended the story enthusiastically, noting that it was the story of story where “we don’t know how it’s going to end,” and that, as its plot was driven by “larger than life characters” like Murdoch and the News Corp team, it made for compelling coverage.

The panel then turned to the Parliamentary hearings themselves this week and whether they provided any particular news fodder, or a “gotcha moment” for Murdoch’s foes. “A gotcha moment defined as something dramatic and live on television?” asked Jim Pinkerton, thus answering, “I guess the pie” to laughter. He also noted the coverage of the pie incident was not up to his tastes– “some nitwit at MSNBC felt obligated to say the Murdochs must’ve been behind the pie thrower,” he scoffed.

The panel also discussed the role of CNN anchor Piers Morgan in the scandal, and his support of Murdoch over Twitter, which Folbaum suggested “sort of nailed it.” Lowry replied that Morgan “as a stake in this fight,” as his book exposed certain practices on Fleet Street that were not quite exclusive to Murdoch (though Morgan had edited News of the World in the past). Ultimately, Lowry concluded, it was crime that needed policing, not “the media or media culture.”

The panel discussion via Fox News below:

Abrams noted that the Wall Street Journal had suggested a further investigation into Fleet Street in their editorial earlier this week, as “this has been happening for years” there and was not, they argued, exclusive to News Corporation. “If the investigation is expanding into other papers,” Abrams told host Tom Foreman, “News Corp and Rupert Murdoch have to be thrilled.” While he noted that “this is not to suggest that this is going to somehow absolve Murdoch,” the odds of finding something– anything– when an investigation begins are such that it might take some of the pressure off. “Investigation others,” he concludes, “has to be good for them.”

The findings of any investigation, however, will be subject to legal analysis, and Abrams argued that the fate of the media involved depended on whether they were “getting information that people didn’t want you to get [or participating in] illegal activity.” In order to arrest anyone, however, the crimes must fit into some discrete law– Abrams suggested the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act may be used against them. While he noted that its most common use was in contracts cases (an example he gave was an instance in which a group “bribed the Thai officials on a film festival to get special access”), he also argued that “prosecutors have increasingly gotten aggressive” with its use, and it could find its way into this case.

The segment via CNN below:

The piece was written by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a tabloider-turned-media-prosecutor frustrated with how difficult it is to deliver justice to those in his former trade. He begins with a fairly strong argument for why tabloid journalism is insidious, arguing that those journalists “have justified their tactics by deluding themselves that they are avengers for the working class, exposing the decadence of the rich and famous as well as the royal family.”

He presents evidence against News Corporation and the Murdoch empire that few would refute is reprehensible– but then expands the scope of his argument to dizzying levels. “The problem isn’t Rupert Murdoch,” he argues. “The problem is that the culture of tabloid journalism in both Britain and the United States is deeply tied to criminal acts.” He goes on to explain that “without illegal conduct, tabloids could not preempt the mainstream press.”

That is about as far as Shapiro argues, however, without tying his claims directly to his personal experiences. He explains that he left the tabloid world after blowing the whistle on his editors for “the attempted extortion of a police detective”– threatening to write something negative about the officer if they did not leak certain evidence. This behavior, he argues, is pervasive in tabloid culture, but his enlightenment came when he attempted to prosecute it, and found that extortion being illegal isn’t enough to get tabloids in trouble for committing the crimes. He quotes an FBI official who says, “Every time we get reports of misconduct by the press, we try to do something, but the U.S. attorney’s office shuts us down because of the 1st Amendment.”

Shapiro concludes that “the judicial system is too quick to bow before the 1st Amendment,” which allows criminals to use it as a shield if they are also “journalists.” Many of his points are well-taken: extortion is a crime and should be punished accordingly, no matter who is responsible for it. As extortion, bribery, hacking, and the many alleged crimes of tabloids have nothing to do with writing whatever one feels like writing, being a journalist shouldn’t put anyone above the law. Where Shapiro fails is in blaming the problem on the First Amendment.

The First Amendment is very short. It reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The relevant bit there, of course, is the abridgment of the freedom of press, directly correlated to that of speech. This is why defamation, libel and slander, are civil infractions, but can never be prosecuted criminally. Supreme Court precedent staunchly defends the right of publications to say whatever the wish, and these precedents do cause hesitation in judges when passing down sentences. In suggesting that this tradition– the tradition of Hustler v. Falwell that permits writers to say what they wish– is somehow flawed is to misunderstand the fundamental principles upon which this nation was founded.

Shapiro leaves out a very important point in arguing against the First Amendment: the crimes for which News of the World is currently under investigation have nothing to do with expression. Extorting a police officer has nothing to do with speech. Hacking the phones of terror victims has nothing to do with speech. As it turns out, the Constitution also has a near-universally recognized right to privacy in it, as well– one that bars the government from American bedrooms and medical files, and one that gives life to violations elsewhere by private entities to individual privacy.

The theory of the Constitution is not wrong. It is the practice, the implementation of punishment against the violation of the Constitutional right to privacy, that needs reform, and to suggest that law and not man is at fault in this case could ignite a troubling movement to silence expression that has nothing to do with crime.

[h/t Reason]

O’Reilly gave the story both a hard news and analysis treatment tonight. Fox News’ Amy Kellogg reported that, while there was plenty of outrage about the hackings, especially since the scandal goes “beyond media… now touching the police, touching government at the highest level,” Murdoch still had “loyal readers” who probably suspected of illegal activity. But the more intriguing segment was with the Heritage Foundation’s Nile Gardner, who stridently defended News Corporation against this “witch hunt” and lamented the possibility of further regulation.

“There is not a shred of evidence that the U.S. side of News Corporation has been involved,” Gardner argued, though meeting some resistance from O’Reilly over the actual allegations. “Journalists are people, too,” O’Reilly argued, and should be subjected to the law, especially in situations like the hacking of Milly Dowler‘s phone, a teenager who was murdered in England. While O’Reilly agreed that the New York Times “absolutely running wild” with the story was questionable, O’Reilly expressed skepticism in Gardner’s argument that no further regulation is needed in England. “The British press is probably the freest on the face of the earth,” Gardner argued, but “there is real accountability in place. We don’t need new regulations.”

The segment via Fox News below:

The editorial, published on the 16th in Australia, depicts the Murdoch scandal as a “crusade” against free speech, beginning with a litany of complaints and celebrations from enemies of News of the World, only to declare that the “excitable hacks” comparing the scandal to the fall of the Berlin Wall and other major events “do a grave injustice to the freedom-hungry masses of yesteryear by lumping their struggles in with the media-led agitation against Murdoch. For no amount of shameless plundering of past democratic moments can disguise the fact that what we are witnessing in Britain is a media coup led by a tiny gaggle of illiberal liberals.”

Who, precisely, falls in this gaggle? Brendan O’Neill, the piece’s author, spares no names. In fact, perhaps the most scorching (and personal) bit of the editorial is the following paragraph on the enemies of News of the World in Britain:

The two politicians at the forefront of the crusade are John Prescott, former Labour deputy prime minister, and Chris Bryant, Labour MP. It can’t be a coincidence that both have been badly burned by Murdoch tabloids, finding their extramarital affairs (Prescott) or their penchant for posing in their Y-fronts on gay-sex websites (Bryant) splashed across their pages. Likewise, one doesn’t need a degree in political science to see why Hugh Grant has transmogrified overnight from floppy-haired actor into a one-man army against tabloid hacks: he’s never forgiven them for the fun they had at his expense after he indulged in certain roadside larks with a hooker in Los Angeles in 1995.

But the editorial doesn’t stop at attacking those who O’Neill claims to have personal vendettas against Murdoch, a list which also includes the editorial board at the New York Times and several other prominent politicians. This is not just a personal tiff. To O’Neill, it is a fight for free speech.

These self-interested crusaders may pose as warriors against alleged criminality in the tabloid press, but their true target is the culture of the tabloid press, the age-old arts of muckraking and sabre-rattling, which they consider vulgar and offensive. Under the guise of ending illegal phone-hacking, they’re really pursuing a culture war against what they view as the ugly, mass, populist media.

O’Neill concludes warning against the “homogenisation of the press, the straitjacketing of journalism, the enforcement of middle-class moral conformism.” In case it isn’t already clear, nowhere in the piece does O’Neill say anything about the rights of those being hacked, or of the corrupt relationship between the police and News of the World. Only in passing is there a reference to phone hacking, which O’Neill describes as a “guise.”

O’Neill may have a point that personal animosities may lead many who are currently after Murdoch down the witch hunt path, and of course a free press is integral to the health of any democracy. But the personal animosities do nothing to explain away the pain of the family of Millie Dowler, who thought their teenage girl may be alive thanks to the News of the World illegally deleting her voicemails. It does nothing to explain what those reporters thought they were doing snooping through the phones of victims of the September 11th attacks. And, most importantly, it does nothing to made Rupert Murdoch and his troubled enterprise appear more relatable or sympathetic to a global audience that has been given little evidence that News Corporation and News International deserves nothing but scorn for their work in the UK.

[h/t]

On tonight’s In the Arena, Abrams countered claims that the scandal was a product of News Corporation culture– a claim many are using to suggest that Fox News and other American entities associated with those in the UK should also be investigated. “As a legal matter, you’ve just got to evaluated them separately,” he noted, especially as “there’s no evidence up to this point that the American institutions, Wall Street Journal, Fox News Channel, etc., were engaged in any of the kind of conduct we’re talking about.”

That said, Abrams noted that there was a serious concern Stateside for Murdoch’s entities. “The bigger concern for the empire as a whole,” Abrams argued,” is that the U.S. authorities are now investigating, the FBI is investigating in regard to 9/11 victims, but there are federal laws that basically prevent an organization from paying off foreign officials.” The law, Abrams further explained, was typically employed to catch bribes for contracts– not illegal wiretapping– but “there are some saying that the law could be used to prosecute News Corp here in the United States, but I think that to do that there’s going to have to be some knowledge on the part of U.S. officials that this was going on.”

In regard to that Wall Street Journal editorial accusing many in the media of seeking out the schadenfreude of watching their organization collapse, Abrams called the move “classic for a Murdoch operation” but, in this context, “not very smart.” While he told Lemon he did perceive a “glee on the part of those who despise Murdoch and his operation,” to go on the offensive on this story “suggests that it’s not a real story,” which undermines their position. “That’s almost taunting,” Abrams observed, recommending the tactic in situations of “less scrutiny and less trouble.” Instead, the former head of the first paper to fall– News of the World– was arrested, and many more threaten to follow Rebekah Brooks‘s footprints.

The segment via CNN below:

Fox News

The cable news network has done couple of segments on the story today including a “Breaking News” announcement of the paper closing which you can see below. It’s interesting to note that, with the help of TV Eyes, Mediaite can see that Fox News mentioned the hacking scandal and fallout two times since midnight last night while their competitors at MSNBC and CNN have mentioned it 10 and 13 times respectively in that same time period.

FoxNews.com

Over on Fox News’ website, the story was labeled as “Urgent” and was one of the top stories although you had to scroll past a lot of Casey Anthony information to get to it (this shouldn’t be seen as Fox News hiding the story, as we know, people love their dead little girl trials). The website’s story however, links to a Sky News post (Sky, of course, being in negotiations for a full takeover by News International. Negotiations which may be adversely affected by this scandal) rather than containing original Fox News reporting. It’s interesting though that that Sky story contains a Sky News video showing an interview with Labour MP Tom Watson who is quite negative towards News of the World, News Corp., and Murdoch himself (you can watch the Sky News clip below).

Fox Business Network

The Wall Street Journal

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal has the story front and center on their homepage with a lengthy article about News of the World’s closing. What’s even more interesting, Sky News has also aired a video of a number of reporters ambushing Murdoch on a Utah golf course and trying to get his comment. If you listen, you can hear that one of the reporters is from the WSJ itself and pushes to the front to ask if Murdoch still supports Rebekah Brooks. Clearly no fear of angering the big boss man there. You can watch that clip below.

Here’s the description from user Hiropro999, a YouTube account which was created a week ago and has only uploaded this video:

“Hello

Last night I hacked into the FoxNews news ticker on 6th avenue in NYC.

Here’s the video. If you’d like to know why, just read the message in the hack.

I accessed the Fox ticker basically to get your attention. Also because Fox deserves it: they’re the 24/7 mouthpiece of the right wing. They are huge perpetuators of the big lie.

This country isn’t broke. Question is: where is the money going?

Americans have a right to know their pockets are being fleeced by corporations and tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and we can no longer tolerate the deceit FoxNews is perpetuating.

For the record, I am not connected to Anonymous or any of the recent attacks on the PSN, PBS, Nasdaq or So-net.

We are being lied to and you cannot stop Americans from fighting for the truth. Sorry my friend is somewhat annoyingly enthusiastic in the video but it’s one of the best hacks in recent memory so cut her a break.”

The question now is whether or not this is just clever hoax. Our own Philip Bump, straight off giving his thoughts on the “Weinergate” photo, had this to say:

“The key factor that points to fakery: the flash at :40 seconds that looks like a screen being switched over.

1. There is no evidence that the display can show colors besides amber, but the display flickers with reds and blues.
2. This isn’t a TV. It’s likely a series of LEDs. Meaning that such a switchover effect is highly unlikely – more likely that it would simply switch off and then back on with new text.”

Another clue that the video is faked is the fact that we haven’t heard about the hack till now. Sure it was brief, but a number of people walked by in the video and, yet, there are no mentions online about it from the time frame that the original uploader claimed it to have occurred. Wouldn’t someone have tweeted about the incredibly technological tomfoolery they just witnessed? People I follow on Twitter tell the world when Gremlins 2 is on cable, yet no one said anything about this?

If it is a hoax, it’s similar to the video that was widely circulated a few months ago showing a man seemingly hacking screens in Times Square. That video was revealed to be viral marketing for the movie Limitless. However, real or not, the video is a clever idea that will surely get the political message of whomever made it out there pretty quickly.

UPDATE: Fox News has confirmed with Mediaite that the video is fake and that there was not a real hack.

Watch the video below:

(h/t Raw Story)

Beliefnet will always have a place in the history of the online journalism world, having experienced a meteoric rise and fall and rebirth helmed by Steven Waldman, one of the site’s co-founders and a pioneer of online journalism.

But when Fox Entertainment Group–which ran faith-related entities HarperCollins’ Zondervan, HarperOne brands, and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment’s faith-based programming–took over the site, the news content that made Beliefnet famous began to collapse to be replaced by self-help blogs, prayer requests, and mystical, pop-religion talk of angels and gauzy spirituality all in an attempt to make more money.

David Gibson, now at AOL’s PoliticsDaily, joined Beliefnet to cover Pope Benedict XVI’s 2008 visit to the U.S. at the urging of Waldman. In an email to Mediaite, he said he was drawn to the site not for the money–which is notoriously low–but because he got to do the kind of coverage he wanted and Beliefnet had the reputation as a good outlet for religion journalism.

“I’m not sure anything in particular went wrong that anything could cure,” Gibson said. “Beliefnet was one of the first sites of its kind, and the Internet tends to be kinder to next generations of inventions rather than the original.”

Started in 1999, the site provided an opportunity for some of the country’s top religion writers and thinkers to discuss religion in a non-partisan setting. The site won the American Society of Magazine Editors award for general online excellence in 2007 after being a three-time finalist, as well as winning both WEBBY and Online Journalism Association awards.

In late June, News Corp. sold Beliefnet to investement group BN Media which runs Affinity4 and Cross Bridge Media, two media companies with strong ties to the Evangelical Christian world.  Affinity4 board members and Cross Bridge advisers include Pat Robertson-acolyte Jay Sekulow, a Beliefnet blogger, and Rev. T.D. Jakes.

Since the purchase by New Corp., the site has been plagued by a huge turnover of bloggers—who have largely replaced independent religion journalism on the site—recruited by Waldman. Former Bush administration official David Kuo came to Beliefnet, like so many people, to promote his book and left to create the short-lived Culture 11. Sojourner’s Jim Wallis also had a popular blog, only to move it to Sojourners where the debate was more civil.

Ju-Don Roberts, Beliefnet’s executive editor and senior vice president, acknowledged in a statement that there has been significant turnover at Beliefnet but downplayed that it was due to frustration with the  News Corp regime.

“Long-timers go off to try something new; new bloggers come on board bringing new perspectives and adding to the diversity of our coverage,” she said in a written statement to Mediaite. “We will continue to strive to make Beliefnet a place where bloggers and our users want to come and contribute to the conversation taking place here.

By far, Beliefnet’s most well-known and successful current blogger is Rod Dreher, a former Dallas Morning News editorial writer who also had stints at the National Review and the New York Post. His blog averages about 400,000 pages views a month, which is around 100,000 fewer a month since he changed the blog’s focus to be less political after joining the staff of the non-partisan John Templeton Foundation.

Dreher, who has been at Beliefnet since 2006, is leaving the site next month when the blog moves to Templeton’s Big Questions Online. The move was part of the deal Dreher struck when he moved to Templeton and was agreed on before News Corp’s decision to sell the site.

In assessing his experience at Beliefnet, he praises Waldman and his editors and has fewer complaints about the pay largely because bloggers receive bonus payments for driving traffic to the site. Dreher’s willingness to be provocative and prolific means links from powerhouse bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and a place on the national scene, something few Beliefnet bloggers have been able to achieve.

Though my day job was as an editorial writer and columnist at the News – and that was the job I put most of my effort into – the Beliefnet blog was the thing that kept getting me requests to be on radio and TV.  It was a bit frustrating, because I’d work really hard to write what I thought was an important column, and … crickets. But I’d put up a tossed-off blog about a hot issue, and some producer in New York, Washington or some other place would be on the phone, wanting me to come on and talk about it.

Despite the notoriety he’s gotten from the site, Dreher says he’s disappointed that Murdoch and News Corp. didn’t push for more commentary and a harder news focus. He said that there was initially hope that Murdoch and News Corp. would use Bnet to create religion news content for its other properties—including Fox News—but that never happened.

“[A]s far as I can tell, Fox has no interest – zero, zilch, nada – in religion news,” Dreher said. “It’s such a mystery to me – as if the Fox News Channel demographic has no natural interest in religion! But that’s how it was, and it was a bit discouraging. There was only so much Steve could do.”

Waldman left the site in 2009 to take a position with the Obama administration after saying he wasn’t in for the long haul after the site was bought by News Corp.

In a New York Times column about the sale, Waldman said he had regrets about the direction Beliefnet took away from hard news. He told Mark Oppenheimer that “I had to lead the site to being something that was not my personal sweet spot. So that was hard. On the other hand, the most helpful parts of the site are not where I am reading about religion and politics — it’s the prayer circles.

Waldman told NYT that some advertisers weren’t interested in “overtly religious content” and that it was placed in certain parts of the site so that advertisers could avoid words like “God” and “Bible.”

One challenge that has always faced Beliefnet was that it tried to focus on the larger world of religion and spirituality, which runs counter to what many religious people are looking for in a website.  Gibson said Beliefnet “cast such a wide net that it had trouble establishing an identity, and the site could look so busy that it only reinforced its kind of syncretistic

Jason Pitzl-Waters, who is at the epicenter of the online Pagan community and has been critical of Beliefnet for failing to include Pagans, agreed.

The site itself, aside from a few of its blogs, was so watered down as to be completely uninteresting to those looking for something aside from bland platitudes and feel-good inspirational stories. As others have complained, the site seemed direction-less, purpose-less.

With blogs like “Our Lady of Weight Loss,” “The Queen of My Self,” and “Lessons from a Recovering Doormat,” the site has taken on a very Oprah-like presence.

“I think News Corp “blinked” on doing something about it, and were afraid to dismantle the successful newsletter programs and hits-generating “stories” like “Beach Quotes” or “21 Tips to Help A Grieving Friend” in order to point it in a new direction. Instead they just added more “stuff” and made the site more confusing,” Pitzl-Waters said.

Terry Mattingly, at the religion journalism watchdog site GetRelgion said Beliefnet provides users “a kind of vague, non-judgmental help — in the form of listservs and prayer circles in which they were communing with people they would almost certainly never meet in a religious context involving doctrine and face-to-face contact. It was niche, digital spirituality, pure and simple.”

The blogs and newsletters would suggest that Beliefnet has a largely female and older readership, although it’s hard to pin down Beliefnet’s demographics and traffic.

In 2009, Beliefnet told potential advertisers that they were receiving 5.8 million unique visitors a month to the site and newsletters and that they had a mailing list of 9 million people.  The site was overwhelmingly trafficked by women (73 percent) over the age of 35 (92 percent). The demographics show the average Beliefnet reader is well-educated with a relatively high income.

In 2010, Beliefnet says they are receiving a significantly lower 2.7 million unique visitors a month across the Beliefnet network, with 80 percent of our users older than 35 and 51 percent being female. Those 2009 statistics, according to Roberts, came from Nielsen@Plan and are less reliable then their current numbers which are provided by Comscore Media/Metrix.

Few people who watch Beliefnet expect the new owners to return to Waldman’s vision of strong news content, especially with the growth of online religion news sources like CNN’s Belief Blog–helmed by Beliefnet alum Dan Gilgoff and Eric Marrapodi–HuffPost Religion, and On Faith, by the Washington Post and Newsweek.

The new owners have no experience in traditional journalism with the companies largely doing fundraising for non-profits–including non-profits headed by Sekulow (American Center for Law and Justice) and Jakes (Potter’s House ministry)–and creating promotional media. The purchase by the companies largely controlled by people with connections to Sekulow and Jakes has raised some eyebrows given Beliefnet’s ecumenical approach, although the new owners told Christianity Today that they planned to name a multi-faith advisory board.

Mark Silk, a new Beliefnet blogger, said on his Spiritual Politics blog that he didn’t have concerns about the new owners, quipping “if I could work for Fox, I can certainly work for Affinity4,” despite the companies’ commitment to “the sanctity of the family.”

Even Pitzl-Waters conceded “it’s hard to muster much outrage or even annoyance” that the new owners may take the site in a much more Christian–even Evanegelical–direction given the maturation of the online religion world.

What’s lost, all agree, is the good old days when Beliefnet was at the forefront of religion journalism and a place where major figures in religion and faith came together to talk about faith.  Those days appear long gone, although there are still quizzes on celebrity and family life to fill the void.

Traditional search results will deteriorate to the point that folks begin to question search’s validity as a service. This does not mean people will stop using search – habits do not die that quickly and search will continue to have significant utility. But we are in the midst of a significant transition in search – as I’ve recently written, we are asking far more complicated questions of search, ones that search is simply not set up to answer. This incongruence is not really fair to blame on search, but so it goes. Add to this the problem of an entire ecosystem set up to game AdWords, and the table is set. Google will take most of the brand blame, but also do the most to address the issue in 2010.

At that, Battelle predicts that Bing will overtake Yahoo and become the #2 search engine behind Google.

Battelle isn’t the first person to call the future of search into question, nor will he be the last. Writing about Rupert Murdoch’s threat to block Google from indexing News Corporation sites, Dallas Mavericks owner and generally colorful character Mark Cuban made the claim that Twitter is overtaking search:

“TWITTER IS SURPASSING GOOGLE as a destination for finding information on breaking and recent news of all types. Whats more, TWITTER POSSES NO THREAT to any destination news site. 140 characters does not a story make. Find it on twitter, link to a story on say, FoxNews and everyone is happy. The same concept applies to Facebook Links. Twitter and Facebook are not news destinations that can compete with traditional news sources. Google is. Rupert loves him some twitter. Google, not so much.”

Of course, Google signed a search deal with Twitter in late October, so Google must love itself some Twitter as well. Whether that burnishes its search or wrecks it is as much a question of personal taste as of futurology.

Here are John Battelle’s Predictions for 2010, as well as his track record for previous predictions going back to 2004. (Not bad at all!)

(h/t Data Mining. image via SEOYourBlog)

The “Hulu for magazines” joint venture spearheaded by John Squires officially has a name: Next Issue Media. According to Folio, the partnership has some real heavyweights behind it: Time Inc., Meredith, Hearst, Condé Nast and News Corporation. All of which represent some serious old media muscle, but will they be able to compete in the digital marketplace?

AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka has a nice summary of the steep obstacles they will face, which include getting Amazon and Apple onboard and, well, creating a product that people want to buy:

They’ll have to convince consumers who already have billing relationships with Amazon, Apple and other vendors to sign up with yet another service.

They’ll have to convince device makers to play along with the strategy, which runs counter to many of their own plans. Both Amazon and Apple, for instance, have intentionally created closed systems that give them control of both devices and distribution.

They’ll have to create content consumers want to buy. The new product can’t simply be a digital version of the magazines they’re already printing: That’s already available on the Web, and consumers have shown almost no interest in paying for it, and advertisers haven’t fully embraced it either.

At that, the New York Observer‘s John Koblin reports that John Squires has been a powerful driving force behind the venture; what Squires can accomplish by sheer force of will should not be underestimated.

A quick GoDaddy search reveals that nextissuemedia.com is registered to CooperKatz & Company, a “New York based marketing and public relations firm specializing in technology, financial and professional services, trade associations and consumer products,” the name of which appears on some of the joint venture’s press releases.

Rupert Murdoch dropped the hint that he was thinking about pulling The Wall Street Journal’s content from Google earlier this week, decrying Google News and aggregator sites as thieves, “plagiarists,” and “parasites.” Conveniently overlooked: plenty of News Corporation sites pull content from other sites, some extensively.

TechDirt makes the excellent point that foxnews.com, All Things D, Rotten Tomatoes, and, yes, The Wall Street Journal‘s site all aggregate to greater or lesser extents, with Rotten Tomatoes, which is owned by News Corp. subsidiary IGN, being the closest to pure aggregation. Here’s their writeup of the WSJ site’s ‘transgressions’:

Well, let’s start with the flagship Wall Street Journal itself. It integrates its own “aggregator” with headlines and links to other stories. For example, on the WSJ’s tech news page if you scroll down, you’ll find a bunch of headlines and links to other sources — without permission.

Oops. Looks like the WSJ is “parasiting” and “stealing” according to Murdoch. Perhaps he should cut them off too.

When Murdoch dropped the The Blogs predictably fell into a tizzy; the reactions split between “he’s so dumb, u can’t do that” and “he’s probably just bluffing to negotiate for licensing fees from search engines.” When a businessman is as shrewd and successful as Murdoch, it’s wisest to give him the benefit of the doubt. But it’s also fair to say that if he doesn’t know what his own sites are up to, Murdoch — who Michael Wolff claims had never used Google as of a year ago — probably does not understand the Web’s content economy very well.

A customer services spokesman for Waitrose told The Guardian: “We take the placement of our ads in individual programmes very seriously, ensuring the content of these programmes is deemed appropriate for a brand with our values… Since being notified of our presence within the Glenn Beck programme, we have withdrawn all Waitrose advertising from the Fox News channel with immediate effect and for all future TV advertising campaigns.” Sky News, which is owned by Fox’s parent, News Corporation, rebroadcasts a significant chunk of Fox’s content, though its revenue is considered separate from Fox’s.

As we’ve said several times, the Color of Change-led boycott of advertising on Glenn Beck has the weakness that cable advertising is sold in network-wide blocks rather than by time slot. Not many of the American advertisers who made swashbuckling public statements about dropping ads during Beck’s program followed through with the actually meaningful step of dropping all Fox ads (UPS was one of the rare few to claim to do so, though their advertising is scheduled to return to Fox immanently).

Waitrose may not be a well-known name in the US, but it’s a fairly substantial chain in the UK: there are 216 Waitrose supermarkets in the UK (compare that to the 276 Whole Foods locations in the US and UK combined). What’s more, it’s considered a high-class establishment; as the raw story points out, they were the first supermarket chain to get a Royal Warrant from the Queen of England. Though it won’t directly impact Fox News’s US revenue, Waitrose’s decision to drop the ads is a meaningful one that could have a spillover effect in the US.