For the White House, the “permanent campaign” is fighting to win every news cycle, and protecting information with a tight inner circle of in-the-know people. The Bush administration mastered the art of the permanent campaign—is Barack Obama following suit?

In a New York Times Magazine feature posted online Wednesday about future White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, lamented the end of the campaign. ”It’s never going to be the same,” he said. “I think everyone is wistful.”

Ah, the days when you could completely control the message. Obama was allegedly furious that details about his courtship of Hillary Clinton for secretary of state leaked out. He said he was hopeful, yet realistic, about what it would be like once his team was installed in the White House. “This is Washington,” he told the Times. “Or it will be Washington. So I’m sure it will not be perfect.”

A White House with no leaks? Impossible. And we’ve presumably learned there are drawbacks to a administration that is always in campaign mentality. Scott McClellan, Bush’s press secretary between 2003 and 2006, received praise from Bush for staying so consistently on-message. As related in the Times feature, Bush thanked McClellan for his work during the campaign. “I want to thank Scotty for saying—nothing,” the President said.

And yet McClellan eviscerated Bush in his tell-all book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, writing that running a permanent campaign with the goal of getting re-elected was especially bad. “And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising.”

There’s no question we’re getting ahead of ourselves—Obama hasn’t even been president for one day yet. And while Obama and his team might be wishing the campaign were still going on, they also aren’t the Bush administration. According to the Times article, Robert Gibbs will have walk-in privileges to Obama’s office, which will be right down the hall from his own. David Axelrod, one of Obama’s closest advisers, says the the atmosphere will be “collegial” and “not excessively hierarchical.”

President Bush attempted to keep the press at bay during his first term in office, holding the fewest number of press conferences (17) for any president in the television age. Obama had beaten the record for most post-election, pre-inauguration press conferences back in November.  At least in superficial access, Obama gets the nod.

Obama is also experimenting with how he communicates with his constituents—directly, and not through the press. He is posting his weekly addresses on YouTube, and there is a place on the Change.gov Web site for feedback from voters. Like any new media experiment, it’s not clear how well this one is working yet. The first Obama address received almost one million hits, but since then, the numbers have steadily decreased. Only 161,000 people want to watch the President-elect talk about his choice for Secretary of Housing last week.

When Obama selected conservative pastor and gay marriage opponent Rick Warren to participate in the inauguration, people turned to transition Web site, voicing their opposition on the one place they could—the discussion page about Obama’s plan for service. Thousands said Warren was a bad choice. Obama hasn’t changed his mind about Warren yet (he said at his press conference Thursday, “We’re not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable …) but the transition team did add a new discussion page Friday for “general issues.” Here’s one sample post:

I’m done. While I wouldn’t vote for a Republican, I will actively promote people to not vote for Obama in the future, unless an apology is released.

An explanation that all he is doing is bringing different opinions together is not OK. you don’t get it, you don’t have to fight for your right to see your partner in the hospital everyday.

Shame on you Obama. Shame on your people. We had such big hopes and look at what you did to us.

In 2012 we will not come out in support of you, not after what you have done.

At the very least, this experiment in direct communication with constituents will be a learning experience for Obama. If Obama thought the press could be bad, he doesn’t know the American people.

David Gregory, superstar of NBC News and former White House correspondent, will host his first episode of “Meet the Press,” the interview news program, this Sunday. While the media had been speculating for weeks about who the new host would be, Americans have mostly survived the wait. At least I have.

“Meet the Press” is the longest-running television show in broadcast history, and NBC staffers regard it with a great degree of reverence. This same fawning is paid to Tim Russert, the long-time host of MPT who died earlier this year. Tom Brokaw, who took over as temporary host after Russert died, was in full reverence mode when he introduced Gregory as the new host on last week’s show. “Tim always liked to say that ‘Meet the Press was a national treasure, the rest of us were all temporary custodians of all that,” Brokaw said.

Apparently, within the NBC studios Brokaw is also a national treasure. At least that’s how Gregory treated him during their conversation last week. “I feel so grateful to you for everything you’ve brought to the program in such a difficult time after Tim died, and it’s really meant a lot,” Gregory said. “It’s meant a lot to the country, it’s meant a lot to us to see your example.”

Really? It’s meant a lot to the country? Russert’s untimely death may have been a surprise, but I’m sorry to say most people have pretty much moved on by now. (Slate’s Jack Shafer documented the media’s obsessive and saccharine Russert coverage.) With the newly canonized Russert tied so closely to “Meet the Press,” it’s understandable (in a way) that the press hyperventilated about his replacement (as again covered by Shafer.)

In his sign-off last week, Brokaw noted how “Meet the Press” was valued by viewers outside of New York City and Washington, D.C. “Across the country,” he said, “I have been very struck by how important this broadcast is to people as a regular appointment for them.”

But “Meet the Press” was relevant only once during the presidential campaign, when Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama. And this relevance was due solely to Powell’s praise for Obama.

There has to be a generational gap, because I have watched “Meet the Press” exactly once: for the Colin Powell segment. And that was by streaming video.

Brokaw encouraged Gregory to “reach to your generation and get some fresh new voices that are out there because it’s a very impressive crowd of young journalists who are coming of age.” I’m flattered, Tom, I am. But notice he didn’t say “young viewers.” Maybe that’s because no young person in her right mind would wake up at 8 a.m. Sunday morning to listen to politicians go over their talking points.

If “Meet the Press” is the institution I keep hearing it is, then it will still be around in 39 years, for its 100th birthday. By then I’ll be 65, and old enough to appreciate the wonder that is “Meet the Press.” Will David Gregory still be hosting?

The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, in a move to begin restructuring its debt. The Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and various television stations, has $7.6 billion in assets and owes $12.79 billion.

The publisher of the Tribune, Tony Hunter, wrote a letter to the paper’s readers, pledging continued service in the face of adversity. In the letter, he worked to convince readers that the debt restructuring would serve them best.

This restructuring is in Tribune’s best long-term interest. It will reduce pressure on our operating businesses, enabling us to pursue our vision of creating a sustainable, cutting-edge media company valued by our readers, viewers, and advertisers, and that plays a vital role in the communities we serve. In turn, this will help ensure our newspaper and online products continue to deliver the news, information and entertainment you can’t get anywhere else. It’s what you expect and what we’ll continue to deliver.

At the Times, publisher Eddy H. Hartenstein also wrote to assure readers everything would be OK at the Tribune Co.

This restructuring is in Tribune’s best long-term interest. It will reduce pressure on our operating businesses, enabling us to pursue our vision of creating a sustainable, cutting-edge media company that is valued by our readers, viewers and advertisers, and that plays a vital role in the communities we serve. That, in turn, will help keep this website showing up on your computer every day, offering you news, information and entertainment you can’t get anywhere else. It’s what you expect and what we’ll continue to deliver.

That’s right, Hunter and Hartenstein’s letters are essentially the same. I wonder what poor schlub in the Tribune Co.’s legal department had to write it?

Let’s take a moment to remember that the publishers of these papers certainly do not have the interests of their readers at heart. Hunter became publisher of the Tribune in late September; Hartenstein, a month before. The Times publisher’s prior job was with DirecTV.

Sam Zell, the CEO of Tribune, in a letter to staff members, said he was proud of the work everyone at the company had done. “We’ve reduced costs, gained market share, and laid the groundwork for creating a new business model out of traditional media,” he wrote.

There’s no question newspaper companies have to figure out what the “new business model out of tradition media” is. But as Zell writes about Tribune’s “great brands,” he must remember that a brand that is only a shadow of its former self, and is primarily surviving on its name, is hardly a great brand anymore.

Will the Times and Tribune have to cut staff even more in the coming months? Maybe the papers’ publishers need new assistants. After all, those letters to subscribers don’t write themselves. Actually, just one assistant will do.

The New York Times has had Rep. Charles Rangel in its sights since July, when the paper reported on the New York congressman’s four rent-stabilized apartments. Last week, the Times raised the stakes, reporting on Nov. 25 that Rangel kept open a tax loophole for a corporation whose chief executive had made a large donation to Rangel’s charity.

Rangel responded to the story’s allegations the next day by letter. Instead of running a shortened version of the 700-word letter in the hard-copy version of the paper, the Times posted the entire letter online Wednesday afternoon, with a 1,500-word point-by-point rebuttal of Rangel’s complaints and clarifications by the original story’s author, David Kocieniewski.

News outlets reporting on the Times and Rangel back and forth have called it a “war of words.” And the verdict is in: After a “beatdown,” “the Times is winning the battle.”

The strangest description of the fight comes from the Congressional newspaper Roll Call, which said the Times‘ response was a “bizarre new twist.” The response is hardly bizarre—after the paper asked Rangel multiple times for an interview, only his lawyers spoke with the reporter. Immediately after the story ran, Rangel offered a lengthy explanation, but one that still raised questions. The Times used the expanded space of the its Web site to put Rangel’s response in context.

Charles Rangel’s actions deserve to be scrutinized; he wields a lot of power as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. And that scrutiny has turned up plenty of questionable behavior (all documented here). But the Times‘ extraordinary response to Rangel’s letter shows just how much power the paper wields, too. There’s no question more people read Rangel’s letter and the Times‘ response because it was posted in full on the paper’s home page.

What kind of precedent does the paper’s devastating rebuttal set? The Times‘ reporting was rock-solid in this instance, so it had no problem with doing a point-by-point takedown of Rangel’s letter. What happens when the reporting isn’t so solid? Will the protesting letter get relegated to the paper’s letters page?

The interaction between the Times and Rangel has been fascinating to watch. Will Rangel respond again to the paper’s reporting? And if it doesn’t run his next letter on the Web site, Rangel can always call a press conference to dispute the Times‘ claims.

There is no point in wringing our hands about the slippery slope of posting letters and responses to the Web—more dialogue between papers, sources, reporters and the reading public is a good thing. But it’s important to remember that the Times took the step of running Rangel’s letter because it knew it had the goods to dispute him. Every story should be as well-reported as the work David Kocieniewski has done on Rangel. If it isn’t, let’s hope the Times is still willing to publish a takedown, even if it takes down itself.

The stock market might be hard to predict during these unsteady times, but there’s one thing that’s certain: You’ll see plenty of photos of unnamed stock brokers on the floors of exchanges around the world looking pretty upset as the market collapses around them.

The style and composition of these photos rarely changes. The traders are usually shot from above, and the more of them in the photo, the better. Getting a ticker sign in the background, preferably with red numbers or down arrows, is good too.

The brokers are rarely identified in these photos, they are simply a visual representation of “Oh crap, the bottom is falling out of the market!” The photos are all the same, and yet each one has its own personality. Thankfully, two people have captured the absurdity of these photos with their blog, Sad Guys on Trading Floors.

Chris Riebschlager and Jess Hemerly launched the site on Oct. 7, a day when the Dow dropped 508 points. The genesis for the site was simple. “I made an off-hand remark on Twitter that it was a bad time for the economy but a banner year for photographers who specialize in sad trader photos,” Riebschlager said in an interview with P+P. “Jess saw this, we started talking about it and decided it’d be funny to start a site based on all these photos. The time between joking about making the site and actually having the site running was a matter of minutes.” (Not quite the same conversation Regis and Kelly had about the market, also on Oct. 7.)

The site has now received over a million hits, and with another extended downturn in the markets possible (though they did respond positively to Barack Obama’s pick of Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary), and plenty more photos of sad traders coming, I asked Riebschlager about the site.

How do you find the pictures you use? They’re a good mix of “traditional” trading floor photos, with kookier ones included, too.

They’re not hard to find at all. Every news story about the economic crisis (and there have been plenty lately) always have an accompanying photo of a sad trader. It’s just a matter of taking a quick stroll through the news sites.

I have come across some odd photos. I have a feeling that the photographers working on the NYSE floor get tired of the typical trader facepalm. When something weird happens, like Gene Simmons shows up or a clown rings the opening bell, they pounce on that.

Newspapers wouldn’t run at least half of the pictures you have on your site—it’s almost like your pictures have too much personality. One of my observations is any story about the stock market dropping has to be illustrated by specific type of photo—group of brokers looking up at board, with a pained look on their faces. Why do you think this is?

A photo of a sad trader is probably the easiest way to illustrate the financial crisis. When the market falls, these people are the first to experience it. The market is such an abstract thing that sometimes the best way to photograph it is to capture the facial expressions of the people right in the middle of it.

The captions are great. What type of commentary do you think you’re making about stock brokers, or about the stock market in general?

I’ve been a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 since I was a kid, so making jokes out of serious things has become a permanent fixture of my personality.  Jess and I have the same sense of humor so early on we were just trying to crack each other up with the captions. We’re not trying to make some relevant commentary on the crisis and we’re absolutely not attempting to insult the people who appear in the photos.  We’re just trying to crack ourselves up and hopefully make some other people laugh.

Do your captions personalize people who are rarely identified? Do they become something more than just a sad face?

I have a very minimal understanding of how a trading floor works, but it seems ridiculous to me that this kind of business is handled by frazzled men and women shouting at each other in a big room. So all the photos taken on the trading floor automatically have a certain amount of ridiculousness built in. Every caption we write is just trying to get a laugh out of that ridiculousness.

You work for an ad agency in Kansas City in new media/interactive advertising, pretty far from the world of Wall Street. Does this make it easier for you write for your site?

I think that l could do this site no matter where I lived. If you’re watching the news, no matter where you are, you are painfully aware of what’s happening on Wall Street. I would guess that’s a large part of why the site received so much attention, we’re poking fun at a phenomenon that a lot of people were already familiar with.

Other people have commented on the “sad brokers” phenomenon (It’s not clear if they are following Riebschlager and Hemerly’s lead, or noticed the pictures independently.) Hemerly found a dubiously funny sketch comedy duo that wrote a song about the common broker habit of “facepalming” while watching bad news on the trading floor. And a blog similar to Sad Guys on Trading Floors, Brokers with Hands on Their Faces, also launched in October, though it hasn’t been updated in two weeks.

With the way the economy is performing now, it’s unlikely there’ll be a blog called Smiling Brokers Can Sleep Well at Night Again. But as depressed (and depressing) as the markets may be, their performance, and the brokers’ reactions, will give Riebschlager and Hemerly plenty more material.

MSNBC anchor David Shuster was the victim of a hoax.

On Monday, he said the source for a particularly salacious piece of gossip about Sarah Palin (that she thought Africa was a country) was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy advisor. After all, Eisenstadt said so on his blog.

By Wednesday, the New York Times had the whole story, and MSNBC was running a correction.

Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish created the character of Eisenstadt, and created his blog, designed a Web site for the fake think tank he works for and filmed YouTube videos of Eisenstadt in action (played by Gorlin).

MSNBC wasn’t the first news organization to be fooled by Eisenstadt. Mother Jones blogger Jonathan Stein was tricked by Eisenstadt in July, but in his retraction post, he fully documented the commentator was fake. Gawker called bull on the “adviser” on Nov. 4, a full week before the MSNBC story ran. And if an MSNBC researcher just Googled Eisenstadt’s name, he would have found some sites that had outed Eisenstadt as a hoax as early as June 27.

So David Shuster got fooled. And in retrospect, Martin Eisenstadt isn’t too convincing of an advisor (just watch those YouTube videos!). But it worked just the same. If you want to create a fake policy adviser, how do you do it? What’s the best way to hoax the media?

Step 1: Come up with a believable name. Per Eitan Gorlin, he and Mirvish settled on Martin Eisenstadt because, he told the Times, “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”

Step 2: Say you work for a think tank named after a president who governed in the 1920s. Just check out the mission statement pages of the real Hoover Institution and the fake Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy.

Step 3: Say something the media outlets want to hear. Formerly anonymous source coming forward to admit he’s a backstabbing staff member? Of course we’ll report it! (Documents proving George W. Bush was a lousy Air National Guard member? Of course we’ll use them!)

Step 4: Remind yourself of a couple Internet truisms: Anything written online is true, therefore, your fake adviser’s blog will be believed to be true. And don’t forget the second truism: Anything sent via e-mail is true, too.  MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines told the Times that someone in the newsroom learned about the Palin source from a colleague via e-mail and assumed it had been verified.

So where will the next hoaxter come from? Who knows? But one piece of advice: Don’t trust any senior fellows from the James Buchanan Equality Institute.

It looks like my print subscriptions to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times might have actually earned me some money. That’s because, in the wake of Barack Obama’s historic election, the Wednesday edition of major newspapers are selling on eBay and Craigslist for upwards of $200.

Newspapers are printing hundreds of thousands of extra copies and still selling out. USA Today increased its print run by 380,000 copies and sold them all. The Washington Post tripled its newsstand rate to $1.50 and still sold out. In fact, it sold so many copies the paper ran off another 250,000 copies of Wednesday’s paper on Thursday. People lined up in front of the Chicago Sun-Times’ printing plant to buy copies practically straight from the baler. The examples go on and on.

This seems to indicate a couple of things about the state of print journalism. First, it puts into stark relief just how many people have dropped their subscriptions over the years. Of course, not every person of the millions who bought extra copies used to be a newspaper subscriber. But some certainly were, and it took a presidential election to get them to go out and buy a copy of the magazine.

More important is the concept of commemoration. The Sun-Times is selling framed copies of its cover for $99. The Times will send you a copy of Wednesday’s paper for $14.95, which includes a protective plastic sleeve. Newspaper companies that put their emphasis on their print product used to say newspapers were still valuable journalism because they provided context and analysis, something that couldn’t be delivered immediately. The millions of people buying these extra copies aren’t buying them for the news analysis, they’re buying them because it’s tangible proof of what happened on Tuesday night.

In some ways it’s gratifying that people still turn to papers in momentous times like these. But the newspaper is acting as little more than a photo to frame.

This election was something more than the beginning of the end for print papers—that happened long ago. This election was a true changing of the guard. Political sites like the Huffington Post and Politico saw huge increases in page views—HuffPo was up 472 percent compared to a year ago, and Politico was up 344 percent. Even traditional newspapers’ Web sites saw large increases in traffic. Want to see more polling data? Go to Pollster, FiveThirtyEight or 270toWin, don’t wait for the newspapers to summarize their own polls for you later.

Granted, I said I subscribe to both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which is unusual for someone my age. It’s mostly because I want something to read while eating breakfast, and the L.A. Times was practically giving the paper away. I certainly wasn’t waiting until Wednesday morning for my election analysis.

Newspapers love to write about themselves (see all that self-congratulatory Pulitzer coverage), so of course there were plenty of stories (previously linked to throughout this column) about the millions of extra newspapers printed to document Obama’s victory. And most of them had a slight air of gloating. “See, we aren’t dead yet!” the stories seemed to say.

Fair enough, but isn’t it a little sad for your goal to be stuffed in a protective sleeve, then stuffed in a closet and then likely never read again?

Related: Urb magazine founder Raymond Roker compiled a cool slideshow of covers celebrating Obama’s win. Here’s a taste.

If a political advertisement starts with amber waves of grain, it’s got to be horribly cheesy, right? Somehow Barack Obama’s 30-minute infomercial, shown on seven networks Wednesday night, passed the schlock test: It was moving without being too sticky sweet. Obama, stepping out from behind a presidential-looking desk, and standing in an Oval Office-looking room, was our narrator for the evening, telling us about four struggling families (predictably, some were from swing states) and explaining how his policies would make life better for the featured families, and by extension, America as a whole.

Obama has proved many times he can draw a large audience in person. He proved on Wednesday he can draw a large television audience as well. Final Neilsen numbers show Obama’s commercial had 33.6 million viewers across the seven networks. (In contrast, the conclusion of the World Series that same night had 19.8 million viewers.)

Obama sounded like a candidate in the lead—he didn’t mention John McCain or his policies, and only made a couple of vague references to “the last eight years.” According to Obama, the country is suffering, but he is listening to peoples’ problems.

Traditional media largely shied away from giving the commercial too much additional coverage after it aired. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times buried their recaps (here and here) in the middle of their front sections, and the Washington Post handed coverage to their style columnist.

The big concern prior to the airing was whether the advertisement was too much—too much Barack, too much television, too much grand-standing right before the election. But in Politico’s survey of policy-makers, most said the ad was “surprisingly effective.” Obama looked “presidential,” and during the ad he “raised the bar for discourse.”

Some pundits, mainly conservatives, had one broad complaint: Obama only sees what’s wrong with America.

Mark Hemingway from National Review Online: “The last thing that should be driving America’s voting habits is a half-hour of Manipulative Portraits of Downtrodden Victims of Shadowy Governmental Forces. Whatever our problems are right now, America is not one big breadline.”

Michelle Malkin: “Obama is now profiling Americans in economic distress … more sob stories … Another couple facing hard times, layoffs … Sorry, I am having a snort attack.”

Michael Lind from the New America Foundation: “Am I the only one who finds Obama’s vision of America a downer? Even the music in the infomercial struck me as sad rather than inspirational, more suited to a telethon raising relief money for victims of Katrina than a political revolution against the forces of reaction.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Obama really is a depressing man, and he sees a depressing country. He sees an America with nothing but victims.”

Yes, the commercial wasn’t an “America is great” cheerfest. But most viewers probably didn’t didn’t disagree with Obama’s central message. After all, in Thursday’s new New York Times/CBS News poll, 85 percent of respondents said the country was on the wrong track and 89 percent had negative views of the economy.

Obama’s supporters like to say he is a different type of candidate, and through his commercial he tried to prove that. By highlighting families suffering from high health care costs and fearing job cuts he showed he was being realistic about the challenges Americans face today. And Obama’s closing speech, before cutting to a live campaign event in Florida, must sound inspirational no matter you end up voting for. He said:

I’m reminded every single day, that I am not a perfect man. I will not be a perfect president. But I can promise you this, I will always tell you what I think and where I stand; I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you when we disagree, and most importantly I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in your democracy again.

It’s a promise any voter would want to hear. Now we just have to see if the candidate can keep it.

Ralph Nader is back in the news, but probably not quite in the way he hoped. He hasn’t convinced millions of voters to support his independent campaign for president. His rhetoric against “McBama” hasn’t won him frequent press coverage. But attempting to break a Guinness record for the most speeches in a day will earn you an article or two, just like any other schmo.

Nader traveled across Massachusetts on Saturday, speaking in 21 different locations for more than 10 minutes to more than 10 people. He stopped in cafes and colleges and, of course, a Dunkin’ Donuts. His message? ”Barack Obama has raised more corporate money than any candidate ever before in the history of the Democratic Party,” Nader said. “He has told these business interests he’s their man.”

Obama may be raising more corporate money, but he’s also drawing larger crowds. The day after Nader’s traipse across the Bay State, more than 100,000 people assembled to hear Obama speak in Denver.

Nader believes we need a strong three-party system to have true representation of the electorate. But neither John McCain nor Barack Obama was the conventional-wisdom choice for his party. Obama defeated the Clinton machine during the primaries, and McCain’s campaign was left for dead in the summer of 2007. Voters had plenty of choices during the primaries, and Mitt Romney learned you can’t buy a nomination, no matter how much of your personal fortune you spend.

Yes, we all know our political system is flawed. But sometimes you’ve got to go along with the rules to make your point. Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, ostensibly could have run as an independent and not competed in the primaries, but far fewer people would have heard his message. Paul participated in the primary debates and grew legions of fervent fans, despite opposing the two-party system. After bowing out of the Republican race, he had much more influence among independent-party circles.

Ralph Nader has always fought against the system. He got 2,882,955 votes in the 2000 election and, many argue, stuck the country with George W. Bush. In 2004 Nader’s fortunes had changed. He wasn’t even on the ballot in Ohio, the key swing state that year. He only received 463,653 total votes. Will he break 100,000 this year?

Nader is making campaign stops across the country in the final days of the campaign, with many visits at college campuses. Too bad the students will be waiting for Obama instead.

John McCain has been portrayed in a “substantially negative” light over the past six weeks by the national media, according to a new study released Wednesday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Barack Obama’s media coverage has been more balanced, with 36 percent of stories positive, 35 percent neutral, and 29 percent negative.

In contrast, 57 percent of stories about John McCain were negative, 29 percent were neutral and 14 percent were positive.

The negative McCain coverage isn’t coming from an inherent media bias however. Instead, the report concluded, more negative stories were written about McCain Between Sept. 8 and Oct. 16 because he was behind in the polls.

The PEJ said …

In the end, the trajectory of McCain’s coverage during this heart of the general election phase reflects the convergence of three closely related factors—the exploding economic crisis, some missteps in handling it, and the polls showing Obama moving solidly ahead. Once McCain began to fall behind in the polls, his efforts to change that were viewed from a political perspective. And on this ground, he lost footing.

The media love covering the horse race aspects of the campaign—53 percent of all campaign stories in the six-week window focused on horse-race elements, like strategy and polling.

McCain enjoyed a bounce in coverage in the week following the Republican convention, when 37 percent of stories about him were positive and 32 percent were negative. In contrast, 41 percent of stories on Obama were negative during the same time period, and only 20 percent were positive.

But that positive press changed the following week, when McCain gave his infamous “fundamentals of our economy are strong” speech. Every week after Sept. 15, positive press coverage decreased, as McCain struggled with how to respond to the economic meltdown.

Coverage of Obama has changed dramatically since the early days of campaign, when it was overwhelmingly positive. Between Jan. 1 and March 31, 2007, 47 percent of Obama stories were positive, while only 16 percent were negative, a PEJ study found. If reporters had the Obama infatuation bug early last year, they’ve gotten over it by now.

The problem for candidates is how the press works as an echo chamber. The PEJ writes in its report, “The event is covered. The effect is measured. And the reaction to that measurement by the campaigns is then examined and covered. That pattern becomes a snowball, and the trajectory of any one campaign event is magnified.”

An upcoming New York Times Magazine story on John McCain’s campaign (posted online Wednesday) shows how it has frequently tried to change the candidate’s message. These changes get amplified by the media, growing from ripples to waves. McCain and his strategists may be trying to change the narrative of his campaign, but this ends up working against them.

There are plenty of things wrong with media that only focus on the horse race. But this election, projecting a “steadiness of temperament” has certainly paid dividends for Barack Obama.

Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” calling him “a transformational figure.” The support from the former Secretary of State under Buash and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff does much to allay undecided voters’ concerns about Obama’s lack of experience.

But it is the Obama campaign’s announcement on Sunday that it had raised $150 million in September that should really be worrying the McCain campaign. Obama is already airing four times as many advertisements as McCain, and has broken the advertising spending record George W. Bush set in 2004 election with more than two weeks to go.

On Monday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said Obama’s fundraising total was impressive. “That is a ‘wow’ moment. No question about that. It’s an enormous amount of money.”

In contrast to Obama’s massive war chest, McCain’s filing with the Federal Election Commission said he has $47 million to spend in October after spending $37 million in September.

McCain is relying on $84.1 million in federal financing, which limits him from directly raising additional money. And the support he expected from state GOP offices may be drying up. The Florida GOP is saving at least $2 million to spend on the 2010 election cycle.

Bloomberg estimates Obama will have $200 million more total to spend over the last two weeks of the campaign than McCain.

And what will the Obama campaign be spending that extra money on? How about advertisements touting the candidate’s most significant endorsement? Even former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted as much on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday.

“What this just did in one sound bite—and I assume that sound bite will end up in an ad—is it eliminated the experience argument,” Gingrich said.

There’s no question Powell’s endorsement is devastating to McCain, both personally and politically. Mike Murphy, McCain’s senior strategist for his 2000 campaign, said as much on his blog at Time.

“I am not normally of the view that endorsements mean much in Presidential politics. But Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama today is a real sledgehammer blow to the already staggering McCain campaign. Not just because a Powell endorsement shores up Obama’s shaky foreign policy bonafides, but even more because of the content of Powell’s remarks on “Meet the Press.” The General showed he still knows how to launch a brutal offense.”

We know how important momentum, or the appearance of momentum in the eye of the media, is over the last stretch of the campaign, and Obama is clearly surging now. Time magazine’s Mark Halperin predicts the real benefit of the Powell endorsement is it keeps the spotlight on Obama. He writes:

“However, the indisputable benefit that Powell brings Obama is that the former Secretary of State and general is sure to block out any chance McCain has of winning the next two or three days of news coverage, as the media swoons over the implications of the choice. It is simple political math: McCain has 15 days to close a substantial gap, and he will now lose at least one fifth of his total remaining time.”

Colin Powell brings new credibility to Obama’s bid for the presidency, and with his enormous fundraising totals, Obama can ensure voters are hearing his message, not McCain’s. Talk about a tough one-two punch.

The election is fewer than three weeks away, and Barack Obama has a sizable lead. But that doesn’t mean the race can’t tighten. Obama is ahead—he shouldn’t pander to any voters he knows he won’t get. McCain is behind—but he shouldn’t panic and try any last-minute stunts that might push him ever farther in the red.

Past presidential candidates could have used a bit more restraint. Here are a few more tips, culled from history ….

If you don’t hunt, don’t start now … On Oct. 21, 2004, John Kerry stepped into the Ohio cornfields a politician, and stepped out a hunter and a man. Well, that’s what he wanted voters to think, at least. In a last-minute pander to gun-toting midwesterners, Kerry went on a goose hunt. But the stunt (and let’s face it, it was a stunt) didn’t work. The New York Times‘ summary of the hunting excursion included this stinging sentence: “In fact, the outfit was borrowed, along with the shotgun, from the farm’s owner, and within hours Mr. Kerry was back in tailored suit and rose-colored tie for another photo-op …” Ouch. Barack Obama, for the love of God, stay away from the shotguns! Your attempt at bowling was bad enough!

Birds are scary when they attack from the air … At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Harry Truman was trailing Thomas Dewey in national polls. Convention organizers had this great idea to boost flagging spirits. And now I quote from the Christian Science Monitor: “Convention planners tried to lift morale at the 1948 Philadelphia convention by releasing doves into the hall. The symbolism backfired. Some doves died in the sweltering heat. Others dive-bombed bemused delegates.” Granted, Truman won the election. But that doesn’t mean the doves weren’t a horrible idea! John McCain, on Tuesday, when you’re at the Forum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, avoid the temptation to release that clutch of fowl you keep on the Straight Talk Express.

Be careful with those magazine interviews! In the November, 1976 issue of Playboy, Jimmy Carter (honestly) said, “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times …” Carter was somehow able to recover from this amazing gaffe, but he did have to defend himself during the presidential debate. Carter got lucky when Gerald Ford said something even more unbelievable (go to 1:00). Note to Obama and McCain: you’ve given enough interviews! There’s no point in giving one more that might blow up in your face! It’s time to act like Sarah Palin.

If you go on a fishing trip, avoid the rabbits … Now this incident might just have done Jimmy Carter in. On April 20, 1979, he was fishing when a swamp rabbit attempted to board his boat. Carter fought the rabbit off with one of his paddles. The press didn’t learn about the incident until late August, when Carter’s press secretary told an Associated Press correspondent about it. And that set off a media frenzy. The press had fun with the story for a week, renaming the bunny a “killer rabbit.” The Washington Post ran the story on the front page, complete with illustration, since the president’s office wouldn’t release photos. Let this be a lesson to you, McCain and Obama! Watch those campaign managers—you can’t have Rick Davis and David Plouffe leaking anything inappropriate at the last minute.

Do not pander to sports fans … Everyone knows Florida is a battleground state. And most people know the Tampa Bay Rays are heading to the World Series to face the Philadelphia Phillies. But everyone certainly knows Barack Obama is from Illinois and John McCain is from Arizona. Neither one should say he is rooting for the Rays, just to try and luck into some votes. After all, Rudy Giuliani tried that last year, saying he was rooting for the Red Sox during last year’s Series when he was campaigning in New Hampshire. Giuliani’s claim that he’s “an American League fan, and I go with the American League team” didn’t turn out too well. Fortunately, Obama has already gone on record saying he only roots for the White Sox. But they’re an American League team! Please don’t change your mind now, Barack.

Above all else, don’t buy 30-minute prime-time commercials … on all four major networks a week before the election that will push back game six of the World Series and look to the American people like you’re bragging about how much money you have to spend when the economy keeps getting worse. Oh, wait.

After 27 years as an oversized magazine, and after publishing in a large-size version since its inception in 1967, Rolling Stone switched to traditional magazine dimensions with its Oct. 30 issue, which is on newsstands now.

By trimming one inch from its height and two inches from its width, the magazine will fit easier on newsstand racks, and advertising inserts will be easier to produce and print.

In a note to readers, publisher Jann S. Wenner said the size change did not come without serious thought. “The large format was one of Rolling Stone’s trademarks … We felt this was the right move but remained a little uncertain, knowing this was not just up to us but also in the hands of the large number of passionate and longtime Rolling Stone readers.

At one point I was both a passionate and longtime RS reader—I got my first subscription as a Christmas present in 1998. But at the end of last year I let my subscription lapse, because I was tired of reading cookie-cutter celebrity profiles. I picked up the Oct. 30th issue of the magazine to look and see if the new design could somehow win an ex-reader like me back.

My first thought when I picked the magazine up: It doesn’t have the heft previous thick issues of the old version of RS had. At 148 pages, the issue isn’t thin. But it just doesn’t feel as substantial as before.

In an interview with the Associated Press, managing editor Will Dana said the new format would let page designers use photos larger. To my eye, though, the photography doesn’t have the larger-than-life feel it used to. Included in this issue is another photo essay by photojournalist Sebasião Salgado, who is spending eight years photographing parts of the world that still look like they did thousands of years ago. Rolling Stone won a National Magazine Award in 2006 for Salgado’s work. His black-and-white pictures are just as striking in the current issue, but I miss the giant two-page-spread photos.

Wenner said in his note the magazine would be adding pages to ensure edit wasn’t getting cut, and the issue didn’t feel weak on content to me. In fact, the seven feature stories ran together, without any ad pages dividing the articles.

But the edit packages did suffer at the front of the magazine in the National Affairs section, where the political pieces, which are frequently accompanied by illustrations, are published. In each of the two political stories, the accompanying illustration didn’t run larger than half the page, and neither started on a spread. The larger format gave the pages room to breath, and they sometimes feel cramped here.

After reading the issue cover to cover, I was reminded why I did like the magazine, once upon a time. In this issue there were no pointless articles about aging rockers way past their prime, or stories on slutty starlets designed to appeal to the teen demographic. Instead I read a 12-page article remembering David Foster Wallace, and another 12-page story on how the U.S. has lost the war in Afghanistan.

But, but and but: No amount of good reporting is going to change how a magazine feels in your hands. To me, in a smaller size Rolling Stone doesn’t speak with the same authority it once did. This might be ridiculous, and Wenner said subscribers sent a test issue in the new size embraced the new design.

Each time newspapers scale down in size, readers complain, and then they get used to it. I didn’t think I would adjust when the New York Times lost 1.5 inches in width, but now I can’t remember what the larger size felt like.

Magazine subscribers have a different relationship with their publications than newspaper readers, however. It’s more personal. Granted, it’s unlikely hordes of people will cancel their RS subscriptions—the writing and the photography is what’s most important, not the size.

But by changing sizes, Rolling Stone does loose part of its identity. It’s literally trying to fit in with the other magazines on the shelf. And it shows.

Does the world really need another news aggregator Web site? Tina Brown poses this question to introduce her new site, the Daily Beast. Brown, formerly the editor at Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk magazines, launched the Daily Beast earlier this week.

Brown says the site will be more than just an aggregator (naturally). She writes, “[The Daily Beast] is a speedy, smart edit of the Web from the merciless point of view of what interests the editors … The Daily Beast doesn’t aggregate. It sifts, sorts, and curates. We’re as much about what’s not there as what is.”

I spent a day with the site, reading most of the content and getting used to the site’s interface. Is Brown’s staff executing her editorial goals so far?

The site has a spiffy design, with a feel that’s more magazine than Web site. Unlike other aggregators, the Daily Beast doesn’t overwhelm you with text. And unlike the Huffington Post, it’s look is more polished.

The strength of the site comes from one of its four main components: “The Big Fat Story.” Here, editors select a “story of the day” to feature, with six articles drawn from a wide variety of sources designed to give readers an overview of the topic. The Daily Beast’s first “fat” story focused on Bill Ayers, “pal” of Barack Obama’s and former domestic terrorist, who has been mentioned frequently by Republicans on the campaign trail during the past few weeks. The stories include a biography of Ayers, a piece questioning the New York Times‘ recent Obama/Ayers story, and links to Obama’s Web site for an official response.

Readers seek out aggregators that have a sensibility close to theirs, whether it be the Drudge Report or Digg. The benefit of the Big Fat Story is it allows readers to make up their own minds about a hot story … to a degree, of course. Readers have to trust Daily Beast editors are providing them with a variety of sources.

One criticism of aggregators is they might whittle the “whole” Internet down some, but there’s still a lot of content to sift through. The Daily Beast has an answer to that complaint with its “Cheat Sheet” page, a list of fewer than 20 stories generated each day and designed to give readers a “best of the best of the best” of stories and other content available online. Examples from Thursday’s list: A story from the Times about the bailout, and clips from Michelle Obama on “The Daily Show.”

Reading through the list of Cheat Sheet stories, it’s clear the Daily Beast doesn’t yet quite know what type of animal it wants to be. Should it be snarky? Funny? Focusing on the weird minutia of the Internet? The problem is there are already aggregators for all those types of news requirements, so it isn’t clear how the Daily Beast is going to stand out in this notoriously crowded marketplace.

Similar to the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast will have a stable of columnists with their own blogs, plus original reporting (all included under the “Blogs & Stories” header). Already the site has created buzz by running a spiked Jennifer Lopez profile, where the singer and actress appeared disheveled and talked about her recent nervous breakdown. Michael Kinsley, Slate founder and Time magazine columnist, added to the lore about John McCain’s temper when he retold a story for his blog about the senator blowing up at a craps table in Puerto Rico.

Tina Brown isn’t being accused of publishing the Daily Beast for selfish and superficial reasons, unlike Arianna Huffington when she started her eponymous site. But HuffPo is now a well-established Internet entity, and the Daily Beast has a ways to go. In today’s cluttered Internet, even the aggregators need to stand out. The Daily Beast hasn’t distinguished itself yet.

Pity the reporters at the business desk of the New York Times. Things just won’t be the same now that the Wall Street downturn is accelerating into a free fall.

At least that’s the message the paper is sending with two stories documenting changes people in the financial elite are making. The lead story in the Sunday Business section is essentially a eulogy to the good times on Wall Street. In  “Goodbye To All That,” the Times says goodbye to the second gilded age – and what a send-off. No more Lincoln Town Cars waiting outside Lehman Brothers (and later at night, outside Scores, the high-end strip club). No more $100,000 weddings at the Plaza hotel.

The previous day’s story, also on the front page of the Business section, told other tales of woe. Apparently the super-rich are having to cut back on their expenses. People are passing on expensive wine auctions, selling yachts and private jets, and potentially missing vacations in the Caribbean that cost up to $350,000 for a two-week stay (for board only).

Very little distinguishes the two articles, and it seems like there’s another message hiding under the surface. New York Times reporters are bummed this is all coming to the end. Isn’t it a critique of reporters that we just like to bask in other peoples’ glow and live vicariously through their successes?

Reporters like to cover glitz and glamor because it makes them feel glitzy and glamorous, too. And in both these stories, there’s an audible sigh as the writers lament the end of the good times. The article on Sunday mentions the downturn in the Greenwich, Conn. real estate market. Sure, the reporters might not own $14 million mansions in Greenwich, but they loved to hear about how the renovations were going. “Is the ice-skating rink finished yet, Steve?” Times reporters probably didn’t go to Scores very often, but they undoubtedly heard some wild stories.

We learned another thing about the writers on the Times’ business desk—they love quoting bar owner Harry Poulakakos. He is the lead anecdote to the Sunday story. ”I hope this is going to be over, Poulakakos said in the piece. “If Wall Street is not active, nothing is active.”

Poulakakos’ bar, Harry’s, is a Wall Street institution, glorified in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. Poulakakos himself is a New York Times institution. Need some local Wall Street color? Go to Harry’s. The bar was the backdrop to a story that ran on Sept. 19, documenting what the previous four days were like as insurance company A.I.G. collapsed and the Dow began to drop.

Poulakakos is a great source because he’s reliable. Quoted in the Sept. 19 story he said, “In 1988, it was my biggest year ever because people decided they needed to get together face-to-face and talk business.”

Who knows when Wall Street will begin to recover. Chances are, though, we’ll get a story from the New York Times about increased sales of private jets. And then someone will head on down to Harry’s and see what the old man thinks about things. We hear he’s a pretty good quote.