Halperin, who also works as an editor for Time magazine, was discussing Obama’s conduct in a press conference yesterday. During this discussion, he said that he “thought [Obama] was a kind of a dick yesterday.” Scarborough reacted as you would expect, with uncomfortable laughter.

A couple of hours later, MSNBC overreacted and suspended Halperin indefinitely. Check out their statement –

Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.

Yes, please apologize to your viewers, who haven’t been damaged this much since they saw Janet Jackson’s right nipple during the Super Bowl. I’m sure they will never be able to recover from hearing Mark Halperin say the word “dick.”

Check out his gaffe and subsequent apology below –

Halperin has now released a statement of his own, saying that he “completely agrees with everything in MSNBC’s statement.” He goes on to say that his remark was “unacceptable and [he] deeply regrets it.”

Here’s some Twitter commentary rolling in about Halperin –

Okay. Let’s break this down. This is not a political issue. You can make the argument that MSNBC is a left-wing network, so they are sensitive to what people say about Obama. Thus, they overreacted based on some partisan outrage. Fine, make that argument. But remember that they parted ways with Keith Olbermann for contributing to Democratic candidates. MSNBC doesn’t always protect its liberal commentators.

This a problem with sensitivity. Grow up, America. Are we really so sensitive that we have to reprimand someone for calling someone a dick? Sure, it was in poor taste to call the President of the United States a dick – it is disrespectful. But he apologized and MSNBC should have moved on. But no, fake outrage wins out every time.

This Twitter user seems to feel the same way –

On the other side of the spectrum, Fox News has a history of sticking by their pundits who make controversial statements. Remember when Bill O’Reilly said that he was surprised that the diners in a black restaurant were civilized? He said he was surprised that there “wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming ‘M.F’er, I want more iced tea.”

Or remember when Glenn Beck basically called Obama a racist, saying he has a “deep-seeded hatred for white people.”

Fox News released this statement -

Glenn Beck expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the of the Fox News Channel or any employee here other than him. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions.

And putting my own personal political feelings aside, I applaud Fox’s decision to stand by O’Reilly and others. We claim to be a country who values free speech, yet we are so inflamed when anyone says anything a tad bit jarring. People that appear on any news channel that are supposed to be “analyst” or “commentators” are going to be people with opinions. Do I think what Glenn Beck said is ridiculous? Yes. But he wasn’t suspended. Mark Halperin was for calling Obama a “dick.”

Seriously, MSNBC? I can only assume that you are acting on the notion that this is what our too-easily-offended American culture would want.

Nobody should be suspended for saying anything as benign as what Mark Halperin said. I think this is something that liberals, conservatives and everyone else should agree on.

END RANT.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

“President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Mo., on Sunday but you know what they’re talking about, like this right-wing slut, what’s her name, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama’s doing it, they’re working him over.”

Here’s the audio of the remark:

This remark obviously turned heads. Whether you agree with the core of his argument or not, the language used is quite acerbic. Schultz has been in hot water over comments before, after he called Republicans “bastards” earlier this year.

MSNBC suspended Schultz for his remarks for a week without pay:

MSNBC management met with Ed Schultz this afternoon and accepted his offer to take one week of unpaid leave for the remarks he made yesterday on his radio program. Ed will address these remarks on his show tonight, and immediately following begin his leave. Remarks of this nature are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

Ingraham weighed in on Twitter:

Ingraham also responded late last night via Facebook, also taking the chance to promote her upcoming book:

The crude comments made about me by Ed Schultz on his radio program: First, I was surprised to learn that Ed Schultz actually hosted a radio show. Is it only available online? Second, I have to get back to recording the audio edition of my new book “Of Thee I Zing.” Now I’m tempted to insert one additional zing–about men who preach civility but practice misogyny.

Last night on the Ed Show, Schultz apologized to Ingraham, saying his remarks were “vile and inappropriate.”

“I am deeply sorry, and I apologize,” said Schultz. “It was wrong, uncalled for and I recognize the severity of what I said. I apologize to you, Laura, and ask for your forgiveness. ”

Just a couple of hours ago, Ingraham tweeted this:

Others in the political realm have responded on Twitter. Former MSNBC pundit Keith Olbermann has defended Ingraham, even against those who attempt to justify Schultz’s remarks. In response to a tweet that said “It was a qualified ‘talk slut’, not a reference to her personal life,” Olbermann tweeted:

And unsurprisingly, Sarah Palin has something to say about it:

Lead Image Courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter

There’s no question that user engagement is a good thing and can attract advertisers, but should this be at the expense of pageviews? That’s a risk MSNBC is clearly willing to take. The Seattle Times has a couple quotes from the site’s VP of creative development:

The redesign may lead to fewer page views. Instead of maximizing the number of pages users visit, MSNBC.com is trying to increase time spent on pages by enabling them to read text, watch views, peruse photo galleries and comment in one place, said designer Ashley Wells, the site’s vice president of creative development.

"The quality of the ad impressions goes way up, the engagement with the user goes up," Tillinghast said. "If that means fewer page views, we’re fine with that."

PaidContent quotes a rep from MSNBC as saying, "Msnbc.com is in the business of selling advertiser experiences, not ad units."

The move is getting others throughout the news industry talking. "It is a distinctive approach," says Kirk LaPointe, managing editor of the Vancouver Sun. "Where most others encourage — and require — click-throughs to launch photo galleries and most of the text content (to garner page views to serve up ad impressions), MSNBC.com has determined its strategy will be to focus heavily on the front page and to attract advertising and sponsorship support to it."

The redesign has reportedly gone "fully live", but it’s not done rolling out as far as I can tell, mainly because I’m not seeing it yet.

What do you think of MSNBC’s strategy? Smart or risky? Comment here.

The emails and programming code notes clearly show that the science of anthropological global warming has been a fraud from the beginning. The CRU has routinely adjusted their own algorithm in order to provide the desired temperature result during certain time periods. View and search the raw emails here.

Within the global warming algorithm various programmers have written notes (which is pretty normal in programming code) that detail the deception. Here are some examples:

=====

; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to
; the real temperatures.

; Specify period over which to compute the regressions (stop in 1960 to avoid
; the decline

– Here, the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING – so the correlations aren’t so hot! Yet the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have

;mknormal,yyy,timey,refperiod=[1881,1940]
;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!

====

>>> Note that all of the above text including the bold text is all actual notes from CRU programmers.

The emails also show a pattern of deception at the highest levels of CRU scientists and illustrate their methods of discrediting other scientists who disagree with their warming orthodoxy. To top it all off the CRU scientists have only now admitted deleting all of their original data leaving just their massaged results which makes peer review impossible. 

Amazingly, the U.S. mainstream media including CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times and the Washington Post have hardly mentioned any of this! This lack of coverage by the MSM lets the Obama administration ignore the issue entirely and continue to push cap and trade legislation that is based on the accuracy of this very data. A week after the data fudging evidence was uncovered President Obama’s climate czar, Carol M. Browner stated the Administrations position. "[The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has] been studying this issue for a very long time and agree this problem is real." 

Fortunately, the Internet media from Twitter to independent  news sites like Politico and RealClearPolitics are covering the issue with the vigor it deserves. The mainstream media has been displaced by the Internet as the discoverer of truth. Of course, the Internet includes mainstream media but it is not controlled by it, and thus no coverups will stay covered for long. 

(Update) The head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Phil Jones is stepping down pending an investigation by the University of East Anglia.

- Read Statement -

(Update) Man caused global warming may be nothing more than a hoax. The actual temperature readings have been deleted by the CRU making review impossible. A leading academic has now condemned the climate change lobby as “climate comrades” keeping the “gravy train” going. Here’s more on that story…

Still no mention of this controversy on the evening news of the major broadcast networks. It’s ironic that these same news organizations are in Washington right now discussing the Internet’s impact on their business model while they continue not to cover news that the Internet media is covering. For years the major networks have covered global warming as fact — but now no coverage when there is significant evidence that global warming caused by humans is fiction. Interesting….

(Update) A complete PDF has been produced that succinctly explains Climategate: PDF Doc.

Apparently, the BBC was first to receive the climate files from a whistleblower in the CRU. They actually held the files for a month and did nothing. The whistleblower then uploaded the files to a small Internet board based in the United States which exposed the "fudging" of the data to obtain their desired political result. Amazingly, the Internet Media is still the main source for coverage of this world warming scandal.

RSS Feeds

“Not only that, a small business owner will have to either invest the time or find someone to invest the time for them (i.e. an IT person, which a lot of small business can’t/don’t want to afford) to find an RSS feed reader, configure it, show the owner how it works, probably provide additional support on top of that, and so on and so on. The costs and trouble outweigh any benefit for a non-IT-related business owner.”

Invest time to find a RSS reader and configure it? Huh? Well if you can’t do that, then don’t even be online to begin with. If you’re not willing to learn and work with the components that make the web what it is then forget about all together. Keep yourself in a box far, far away from technology.

Dealing with RSS lets users get information sent to them in a friendly format that saves you the time of visiting blogs and websites. Not sure what the point is here.

Blogs

“Now…before everyone who owns a blog decides to tear a strip off me and talk about all the wonderful benefits of it and how it can generate so much traffic and blah blah
blah yadda yadda, consider also the amount of maintenance you’ve put into your blog.”

Once again I have to keep coming back to why your online in the first place. If a small business has a website (and most all should, that is a separate argument if you don’t think you should have one) then you should form some sort of communication with your visitors. Sure back in 1999 the web was more one-way broadcasting of information/content, but it is surely not that way any longer. Visitors to all websites want to be able to do more than just email the owner/webmaster of the website.

Search Engine Optimization

“but where the hell is the average small business owner supposed to find the one good SEO in a room full of 100 blackhats? “

OK now I obviously don’t agree here. Should we all stop buying cars since there are a lot of shysters in that business? No. Gene and Adam are so far off the mark here. People spent over 29 billion online this past holiday season. Up nearly 20% from last year. Search spend is expected to reach nearly $8.1 billion in 2007. You think all these dollars are all going to waste????

CRM

“CRM software (and no, Jaan, Outlook doesn’t count) is too expensive for any of the benefits that it can provide. Hell, I know people that use Excel for a CRM…and it works for them.”

Yeah I know Adam, just saying I don’t need or want anything to do with CRM software. I agree it is a waste of money to me.

AdWords/PPC Advertising, Online Video

“But does the average small business owner have either the time or the $5,000 or more to experiment with Google or Yahoo! or MSN or (insert PPC ad provider here) to find the combination that works, if at all possible for their business?”

I love how it is so easy put up road blocks for improvements. Saying things are too hard or to expensive should not be in any small business vocabulary that wants to grow. Do you think world class athletes stay at the top of their sport by complaining how long it takes to train? Do you think some of the biggest companies in the world got to where they were at by complaining on how hard it was to adapt to be successful in the ever changing business environment they work in? If you don’t want new technology that is fine. But don’t complain when your competitors pounce on it and take over your market share.

Web 2.0

“Gene Marks absolutely nailed this issue and more importantly nailed a much deeper issue with IT in general; the technology, the explanations of the technology, and the benefits of the technology are beyond the grasp of the average non-IT business owner.”

Hard to debate this one, since I agree Web 2.0 means so many different things to so many different people. As I tried to define it in my last posting: “I personally feel Web 2.0 has to do with more user generated content and making the web more of community for each and every website rather than websites simply broadcasting their message.”

In conclusion I see what Adam is talking about to a point, but I can’t help feeling like if you’re not willing to invest time into what makes the web go around then yes forget about doing anything from Gene Marks article at all. Stay far away from the internet and keep yourself in old hat brick and mortar commerce.

I don’t know maybe this is nothing more than link bait Adam Senour? Seems to be the only reason for Gene Marks to post such garbage.

Comments

Tech ‘Solutions’ Your Small Biz Can’t Use

Another Idiotic Mainstream Media Article…and his title is very appropriate. Well Gene Marks is pretty much an idiot. Gene lists 10 things your small business DON’T need in any particular order:

1. RSS Feeds
2. Spam Filters
3. Antivirus Software
4. Blogs
5. Search Engine Optimization
6. Mobile Applications
7. Customer Relationship Management Software
8. AdWords
9. Online Video
10. Web 2.0

Here is a rundown one by one of all of Gene’s points with my responses back:

1. RSS Feeds

I love how Gene starts the list of with this one:

“Instead, he was “fed” an endless stream of meaningless items displayed in an overly large browser window that winds up distracting more than informing”. Well duh Gene it is the users responsibility to subscribe to RSS fees that are useful. If they prove not to be then simply delete it. To say RSS is useless is completely illogical. Gene in what way do you propose would be easier to keep track of updates on blogs and websites?

2. Spam Filters and 3. Antivirus Software

LOL, so spam filters and antivirus is not a good thing for companies to use, LOL. No comment.

4. Blogs

Now this is simply laughable. Probably the worst recommendation in this long list of crap. One of the easiest and cheapest ways for small business to get off the ground if through a blog. Blogs are easily picked up by everyone in the world, easy to advertise on and simply a way for the small guys voice to be heard. Whether your a company of 1 or 500, having a blog is smart thing to do. Creating this type of customer interaction is necessary in today’s web. If you don’t believe me look at the top companies performing online. Do most all of them have blogs? Yup

5. Search Engine Optimization

Ok so all business can simply forget about ranking in search engines right? Gene the crap you pointed out was buying from spammers. If you did a hour of research into this matter you would see thousands and thousands of companies are spending more and more each year on this type of marketing. Why? Because it works.

6. Mobile Applications

As mobile devices like LG Voyager and Apple’s iPhone allow for a more adequate browsers interface, you bet your life more people will be accessing the web and using web based mobile applications more. Just look at the growth of podcasting in the last few years.

7. Customer Relationship Management Software

I use Outlook and I am fine with that.

8. AdWords

Sure I can live without AdWords, but it doesn’t mean other businesses can. To make such a broad based sweeping recommendation is ludicrous Some companies survive on AdWords alone. Hey Gene ever hear of conversion analysis? Check it out sometime.

9. Online Video

Online video is fast becoming one of the best ways to market your business online. Video integration into your website is pretty much key no matter what service or product your offering online. Your saying you need Time Warner’s budget to maintain and create great video content? Hardly. Just look at the most viewed videos that are on YouTube weekly.

10. Web 2.0

Do you even know what Web 2.0 is? Do I? Does anyone. How can you expect someone to come along and define it. I personally feel Web 2.0 has to do with more user generated content and making the web more of community for each and every website rather than websites simply broadcasting their message. Why don’t you try and define it instead of simply saying no one can.

Wow, what a list huh? How off based can you be? I am sure Gene is just trying to help here, but once again this is one mans simple opinion and should not be construed with what is actually going on in the world. Is their even an editor at MSNBC. Nice job buddy.

Join the Sphinn conversation today on this subject.

Comments

Apparently, the staff in Yaho’s European division have been told to get their act together else the branch will shut down by 2008 Quarter 1. Yahoo! has already said that it might take up "strategic options", which includes a possible sale, for Kelkoo, the comparison shopping service it bought three years ago.

Toby Coppel, the new head Yahoo’s European business said, "If you make the content more relevant, people will come. If you make a great product, they will come." Mr Coppel said Yahoo’s problems in Europe stemmed from a historical lack of focus on the region. He admits, for example, that Yahoo has not always used its most advanced technology in Europe. "In rushing out to market, we built a lot of applications that didn’t speak to each other," he said. "We didn’t have the same resources. We were managing a larger number of legacy products with fewer people than in the States."

Yahoo’s sites across Europe include services such as greeting cards, horoscopes, and property, car and holiday listings.

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Still, the potentially neat thing about the redesign is its ever-changing nature.  “msnbc.com is able to creatively shift layouts and rich media surrounding news content as it happens,” said the company in a statement.  “Unlike limited templates used by most news sites, msnbc.com’s new platform enables its editors and designers to create new layouts at break-neck speed to surround its compelling stories with a range of high quality video, photography, slide shows, graphics, audio and more.”

Also, people associated with the site appear quite open to suggestions – Wells, along with Editor in Chief Jennifer Sizemore, invited comments following their posts about the redesign.

None of this is enough to draw me away from the BBC.  Still, it’s nice to see the hard work and innovation that went into MSNBC.com, and the redesign is sure to earn it some new followers.

Two points come to mind:

1) There is no question in my mind that social media can, and should enhance your news value.   And I had a great example of that yesterday.  But….

2) There is also no question in my mind that most PR folks are looking at social media as if it’s a press release distribution outlet. So they are doing it wrong and not getting enough out of it (mostly because they haven’t put enough into it.)

I spent last week working with the Associated Press on an exclusive for my client, Gilbarco Veeder-Root. They are the world’s largest maker of gas pumps.  Did you see yesterday’s story that you can get Google maps on the Gilbarco pumps?  Thanks to AP, it was everywhere.  From MSNBC and CNN to Yahoo, Engadget and TechCrunch.  The Engadget article as of this writing has 649 Diggs, and made the home page of Digg.  It’s now everywhere.

When I was looking at who to give the exclusive to, I briefly thought about going blogs first.  But AP still has lots of power, and clearly the smart blogs are watching the wires still.  (The story crossed the AP wire at 12:01 a.m. Engadget had it up, with a nice picture, at 7:52 a.m.  Impressive.)

So, for all the TV coverage and other hits, I was personally most excited about the Engadget/TechCrunch hits, because I know how influential they are in spreading news like this over a wide, wide area.  This is just one small, tiny example of social media helping PR.

But…  And this is a big but… Social media tools and sites clearly helped spread the news for me yesterday.  But a PR firm that thinks a hit on Engadget/Digg means you maximized social media is kidding themselves.  I had big news.  Interesting stuff that these folks like to write about.  It spread quickly.  Good for me.  Great for my client, who deserves ALL the praise for this great idea.  They put me in the rare and wonderful position of not having to light up the social media sites on my own, sort of bottom up, because AP did it top down.

A better example of really utilizing social media to spread news is what Joseph Jaffe did selling his book. If you’re a PR person trying to understand this space, read that post.  Too many PR firms think that social media is about press releases on PRweb.com and pitches to key bloggers that they’ve barely read.  I hear that a lot.

Progressive PR folks realize that social media is not an outlet.  It’s a fundamentally different way of speaking.  More natural, yet completely foreign initially.  Like any foreign language, the best way to learn it is immersion.  Try it.  There’s a whole other world out there.

Comments

I haven’t written about Newsvine in quite a while, but I was impressed by the service when I first tried it out during the beta trials last year, and I am even more impressed by how they have managed to grow and yet stay focused on their core principles — and done so while taking only $1.5-million in funding, as Mike Arrington points out. That is a model that other Web 2.0 companies would be wise to follow.

For MSNBC, the acquisition accomplishes something obvious: it allows the news site to incorporate social and community features without having to develop them itself. For Newsvine, it most likely solves the issue of ongoing funding, and gives the site a much larger community to draw from when it comes to interactivity, and more exposure for the writers that the site has developed.

Rex Sorgatz, who is not only executive producer of MSNBC.com but also the proprietor of the excellent Fimoculous blog, has some thoughts about the deal that are well worth reading. As he puts it:

“[Big media] needs fixing, now more than ever. And fixing it is about finding its roots — news as conversation, as a network, as a platform. By reconstituting media as participation, Newsvine suddenly makes news fun and engaging again.”

I have to agree with Rex, who has also worked for big media for a decade or so: big media is hard. It is resistant to change — and even when it does decide to move, it does so at a glacial pace, for a whole pile of reasons. Many mainstream news sites are trying to incorporate more social features, but it’s not something that comes easily, or instinctively. If buying Newsvine can help MSNBC do some more of that, then more power to them.

MSNBC’s story on the acquisition is here, and Mike Davidson’s thoughts on the deal are here. Rafat Ali at PaidContent says that his guesstimate of the purchase price is between $5-million and $7-million, and Richard MacManus has some perspective on the acquisition at Read/Write Web. More coverage and opinion in the New York Times, at Jeremy Wagstaff’s Loose Wire blog (where he talks about the thorny issue of compensation for “user-generated content”), at Newsroomnext and at ParisLemon.

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