Years ago, as publicist for a TV station, I got a call from one of the town’s top newspaper TV critics.
The call wasn’t unusual, but its purpose was.
The big news was that our entertainment reporter had just quit. And this critic, who’d spent years tsk-tsking us in columns for every misstep, wanted me to let management know he was available for the job.
Of course, that occurred in prehistoric times. These days, not only would the departure of a local TV reporter maybe merit an item, but what station has a publicist and what newspapers still have critics?
Flash forward to recent times. I’m handling a well-known news operation and get called by a media critic and longtime friend. His newsroom is heading into another round of massive layoffs and he’s decided he wants to do his job at our place. Can I get him a meeting?
Since I believe in candor, I point out that (a) I don’t recall he’s ever had a kind word to say about our programming and, despite my efforts, has mainly ignored us, (b) someone’s been doing that job for five years, which he doesn’t know because he ignores us, and (c) two weeks earlier, he’d publicly slammed the very same person he now wants to pitch for employment.
I think my suggestion was to wait a few weeks longer.
The essentially dangerous yet endlessly titillating relationship between media organizations and the media who cover them -- professional sexting with clothes on -- has heated up lately.
Not just because it was time for another round of bashing Howie Kurtz for his Washington Post/CNN media critic roles.
This week, John Koblin of the New York Observer reported that the New York Times media-beat staff are currently being trailed by a camera crew for a possible HBO documentary about them.
To be accurate, the Times deal is with documentarian Andrew Rossi. But Koblin noted that Rossi has a development deal with HBO, which is heavily invested in the genre, and “(Rossi) told the Times media team in a meeting that the network had expressed interest in the project.”
(Koblin’s story was subsequently reported out to death, a phenomenon summed up by the Los Angeles Times’ Joe Flint on Twitter: “Media watching media report on media. Oh barf!”)
On the New York Times website, I found 17 articles about HBO since mid-May -- six news or features, one positive critical analysis of its new programming direction and 10 reviews of docs and scripted series. Six stories ran after Sept. 1, as recently as Nov. 1. Rossi’s deal with the Times was likely initiated, negotiated and completed during the fall, if not earlier, and routine preproduction takes weeks.
In my admittedly cursory re-reading of those articles, I didn’t find any disclosures of this relationship.
For the birthers, teabaggers and other fringe types convinced there’s a vast media conspiracy, we gift you with your newest example.
For the Times, suffering everything from revenue troubles to that embarrassing "Daily Show" piece, good PR from a polished doc would be nice.
