Media Monitor: March 1

Our own private Limbaugh: KTLK’s Jason Lewis is one of the few conservatives in the media to defend Michele Bachmann’s Feb. 9 claim of knowledge of plans by Iran to partition Iraq. Asking “why is this a story,” the radio talkshow host blasts Strib reporter Eric Black, who first blogged on the still-unsubstantiated claim, as getting “down on his knees” before the authors of the blog Dump Michele Bachmann, who sent him a link to the podcast (a fact Black openly and unapologetically confirms). 

“This story is nothing more than a plant by a website run by a bunch of angry lesbians and radical pacifists,” Lewis said. “They hate America and they hate Bachmann. They hate western tradition. They hate capitalism.” Black’s blog partner, right-leaning politics team leader Doug Tice, said Lewis has a “naïve misunderstanding of how journalists do their work.” Lewis turned down Black’s request for an on-air discussion on the topic. Listen to Lewis here or download his 2/23 podcast here.

Why isn’t it a story? So, why didn’t St. Cloud Times legislative reporter and podcaster Larry Schumacher write a story on Bachmann’s unexpected assertion that Iran had made an “agreement” to create a named “Iraq State of Islam”? He blogged his rationale, which, considering the massive audiences Black’s coverage of the story brought to the Times, seems a tad thin: “my Fridays are pretty booked up with other things”; “our policy with the podcasts so far have [sic] been not to write print stories to accompany them”; and “I did do a story. My story was the podcast.” Perhaps the spike in site traffic will prompt Times management to reconfigure Schumacher’s  job description to make room for such coverage, but in the meantime, he said the paper will review the podcasts-as-web-only-content policy.

Media Monitor continues…Dude, who bogarted journalism? Let’s hope the first byline by Kevin Hoffman, Steve Perry‘s replacement as City Pages editor, doesn’t presage the new spirit