On Tuesday, Ryan Simonetti, CEO of New York-based Convene, had an Uber ride he won’t soon forget. The D.C. Taxicab Commission is investigating the matter, a spokesman confirmed Wednesday. And a spokesman for Uber said the driver in question is no longer with the company.
Here’s how it all went down:
About 1:15 p.m. Monday, Simonetti and two colleagues had finished up meetings near the Verizon Center and were planning to take an Uber car from 7th and F Streets NW to the company’s new offices in Tysons Corner.
“I use Uber everywhere I go. I travel all over the country, wherever I go I use Uber. I’m a diehard Uber fan,” Simonetti said. As they approached their Uber car, they spotted a D.C. taxi inspector talking to the driver.
Simonetti got into the front seat, and his colleagues got into the back seat. The inspector walked away. Thinking back, Simonetti suspects the inspector was going to check the documents the Uber driver had handed to him. Then, the Uber driver started driving down the street. The inspector turned his lights on and started to follow.
“That cop’s following you. What’s going on?” Simonetti said he asked the driver. He said the driver told him not to worry. “Oh no, he’s not a real cop,” the Uber driver replied. Simonetti said the driver then told them: “I’m sorry, we’re going to have to run this red light.”
The Uber driver then headed for the 9th Street tunnel, got on I-395 and proceeded to race down the highway going “well above the speed limit,” Simonetti said.
The taxi inspector followed.
“It was like an episode of ‘Cops,’” Simonetti said. “We’ve all seen the ‘Cops’ episode. This only ends two ways. Either the car crashes or the guy jumps out and runs. And he had plenty of opportunities to slow down and jump out and run, and he wasn’t doing that.” Simonetti said they drove for eight to 10 minutes.
He and his colleagues were yelling at the driver throughout, asking him to just slow down enough so that they could jump out of the car. The driver, he said, narrowly missed hitting other cars multiple times but insisted that if he stopped he would get a $2,000 fine.
“It was insane,” Simonetti said. “I physically tried to force his leg to hit the brake. I ripped off his pant leg…. I said, ‘Here’s two options. You take this exit, or I’m going to knock the side of your head in. If we crash, we crash, but you’re gonna kill us anyway.’”
The driver pulled onto an exit ramp.
The taxi inspector, who had been following the car, Simonetti said, pulled ahead of the Uber car so the driver couldn’t pass.
The three passengers got out, and the Uber driver turned around and went the wrong way up the exit ramp, into Virginia, Simonetti said.
The taxi inspector stayed with the three passengers.
Neville Waters, a spokesman for the D.C. Taxicab Commission, confirmed that there was an incident Tuesday involving one of the commission’s inspectors and an Uber driver.
Waters said the inspector filed a written report, and officials hope to interview him for more details.
Waters said the inspector noticed that the vehicle had Virginia license plates and wanted to ensure that the pickup was done through Uber’s app rather than as a street hail, which is illegal in the District. But before the inspector could confirm the information, the Uber driver fled, Waters said.
If the inspector discovered the driver was making an unauthorized pickup,the Uber driver could have had his car impounded and faced a fine — though not a $2,000 fine, Waters said. However, if the driver showed he was there because the passengers had booked him via app, he likely would not have faced sanctions.
A side note: Waters said the hack inspector tried to radio for help from other agencies, but his attempt coincided with an outage of the city’s emergency communications system.
Simonetti said he tweeted about the incident to let Uber know what happened. The company followed up. Later that day, an Uber representative said the driver had been “deactivated.”
“Uber became aware of a potential incident involving an UberBLACK trip in Washington, DC [Tuesday] afternoon,” said Taylor Bennett, a spokesman for Uber. “Rider safety is our #1 priority. We will cooperate with authorities in their investigation and have deactivated the driver pending the outcome.”
Bennett said the driver in question was commercially licensed to drive in Virginia.
Simonetti said he still thinks Uber is a great business, but the incident made him wonder about the screening process.
“The question is what the vetting process is for drivers?” he said. “As they get [bigger], how do you prevent stuff like that from happening? How do you screen crazy people out?”
When it came time to get to Tysons, the three men took a regular taxi, which the D.C. inspector helped summon. When they left their meeting there, they thought about taking Uber, but the wait was too long, so they took a cab instead.
Thanks everyone for the concern. We’re safe. @uber and law enforcement are dealing with it now. — Ryan W Simonetti (@rwsimonetti) July 8, 2014
This post has been updated.
(Disclosure: Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is an Uber investor.)
In great news for anyone who’s ever fantasized about having an intimate experience with Ricky Martin, Ricky Martin announced Monday that he will maybe flirt with you in a private and “exceptional” meet-and-greet if you help raise funds for his favorite nonprofit, The Ricky Martin Foundation.
The dreamy 42-year-old singer appears in the romantic PSA below to alert fans to the fantastic new opportunity, which is open to anyone who gives donations to RMF before July 9. He explains that his foundation is working to “build a new school that will enable children to live safe and inspire lives,” and his passion for this cause has driven him to “do anything” to fundraise, which includes meeting you on the set of Australia’s The Voice.
Ricky says he wants to make this one of “the most authentic experiences of your life,” and assures that he’ll even bring a puppy for the two of you to play with. He wants to have a gazing contest with you, roll his R’s for you while you “communicate” and read his journal. He wants at least $10 from you (and everything in sliding increments up to $25,000 are ok too thanks).
Ricky is auctioning off this lucky authentic experience with a random draw on Omaze.com, where you can exchange $10 for one entry, $100 for 15, $1,000 for 25, and so on. For $5,000, Ricky will give you 1,000 entires and 2 VIP concert tickets. For $25,000, he will have dinner with you and four of your closets friends.
One lucky winner will win a flight to Sydney, where they will “join Ricky at the finale of The Voice” and later fly back to a mob of jealous friends. There’s never been a more perfect opportunity to increase your odds of being Ricky Martin’s next boyfriend.
Check out Ricky’s spiel below, and head on over to Omaze to get involved.
Billie Jean King and Jason Collins on Being Gay Athletes
6/27/2014 | The New York Times
Jason Collins and Billie Jean King share a table at Boulud Sud in Manhattan. Both said they received death threats after it was known they were gay. “It was so hard,” said Ms. King, who was outed. “As a professional athlete, you have to have thick skin,” Mr. Collins said.
Billie Jean King loves to connect. The 70-year-old tennis legend — winner of 39 Grand Slam titles, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and, most famously, the “Battle of the Sexes” match against Bobby Riggs in 1973 — peppers questions like forehand volleys. Within three minutes of walking into Boulud Sud, near Lincoln Center, Ms. King had learned that the restaurant manager’s mother rowed crew for Syracuse University; asked her interviewer’s partner’s name (and tossed it off casually through the afternoon); and compared notes on the French Open with the waiter.
Enter Jason Collins, the 7-foot-tall, 13-season veteran of the National Basketball Association, and the first male athlete in a major American team sport to publicly announce he was gay while playing. Mr. Collins, 35, did that on the cover of Sports Illustrated last year, causing an explosion in the Twittersphere and the beginning of a digital friendship with Ms. King. Mr. Collins likes to connect, too — whether in “surreal” congratulatory calls with President Obama or talking about diversity at the State Department. Over artichokes and daurade (for Ms. King) and shrimp and diver scallops (for Mr. Collins), they spoke candidly with The New York Times about their sporting and romantic lives; their radically different coming out stories; and Michael Sam’s notorious draft-day kiss.
‘I told my family and close friends over the course of the year before Sports Illustrated. But I had never been out on a date because I was afraid.’ -JASON COLLINS
BILLIE JEAN KING: The man! Finally, Jason, we meet in person.
PHILIP GALANES: I’ve read all about your Twitter friendship. Very 21st century. When did that start?
BJK: We don’t tweet much actually.
JASON COLLINS: No, it’s mostly texting. Let’s see, I came out on a Monday …
BJK: And I gave you a few days to [Ms. King sighs loudly]. Then I called on Friday.
PG: Do you remember what you talked about?
BJK: He said he finally had a date that night. “I get to breathe for the first time.” I think that’s what you told me. And he’s got a California accent, so I related.
PG: Where are you from?
JC: I’m a Valley guy. From Northridge, then we moved to Granada Hills.
BJK: But he went to fancy schools. Harvard-Westlake, then Stanford. I’m a public school kid from Long Beach. I went to Long Beach Poly. Ever heard of it?
JC: Sure. My old point guard from Stanford went there. He always talks about Cameron Diaz going there.
BJK: She did. She lived three blocks from my parents. When I saw her house, I thought: She really wanted to get out of here.
PG: The stars, they’re just like us …
BJK: What did your dad and mom do?
JC: My parents worked for Travelers Insurance. They met in Hartford, but my mom got transferred to L.A., and my dad to Detroit. He thought: This isn’t going to work. So he got himself transferred to L.A., and they got married, and then my brother and I came along.
BJK: Your brother was a [professional] basketball player, too?
JC: He was.
PG: And Billie Jean’s brother, Randy Moffitt, was a pro baseball player. Two sporting families. So, tell me: What makes athletes such powerful social figures? Why is one of my most vivid memories as a kid you beating Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes”?
BJK: It’s amazing how many boys remember that.
PG: My mother and I were jumping up and down. Why do we care so much about sports?
BJK: Because they reflect what’s going on. Sports is a universal language, no matter where you are in the world. They shape time and space, like dance. And the stakes are high.
‘All my endorsements were yanked. And I was really worried about women’s professional tennis, which was just starting, and our fight for equality with men — for equal pay. I was paralyzed.’ -BILLIE JEAN KING
JC: There’s a great new campaign that YouTube launched [to honor the gay community], called “Proud to Play,” and it starts off with a speech by Nelson Mandela. He talks about how sports transcend race, color, religion. It’s about: Can you play?
BJK: It’s a meritocracy, for real. Not subjective at all. You win or you lose. And that’s it.
JC: It’s a little different in team sports. You can still make plays to help the team, even if …
BJK: That’s true. I grew up in team sports. Basketball was my first love, then baseball and softball. I didn’t find tennis until fifth grade, when my classmate asked me to play. I said, “What’s tennis?” And when I went with her to this country club, I thought: “Uh oh. I’m not going to able to afford this.”
PG: You understood money that young?
BJK: Sure. My parents sat me down at 10 and showed me their budget. After that, I understood when they said no, it’s wasn’t because they didn’t want to buy me something, it was because we couldn’t afford it. It made things simple. It was also my epiphany as a little girl: I would fight for equal opportunity in my sport, for girls and boys, rich and poor.
JC: We learned that at an early age, too. Having a twin, you always have to share.
BJK: Did you guys get along?
JC: We had some sibling rivalry, but our parents always made us play on the same team, so it was about the team’s success and not the individual.
PG: One of the funniest parts of Jason’s coming out is when he told his twin — which is like a cliché for closeness — and his brother had no idea. So, is he clueless, or should you be a spy?
JC: I could sell it.
BJK: What?! He didn’t know until the magazine came out?
JC: No, I told him earlier. I told my family and close friends over the course of the year before Sports Illustrated. But I had never been out on a date because I was afraid.
BJK: If that many people know, even if they’re friends, most of the time you’ll get outed.
JC: That was why I decided to control my story and tell it on my terms.
BJK: Smart.
PG: The differences in your coming-out stories play like the last 30 years in American society. Billie Jean was outed in 1981. On a misery scale of 1 to 10, was it a 12?
BJK: It was horrible. I had an affair with Marilyn Barnett [Ms. King’s former assistant] and she outed me.
PG: What was her motivation?
BJK: Money. She wanted a house, stuff like that.
PG: And you were married to a man at the time.
‘I was focused on: It’s time. I was ready, and I was tired of waiting for some other guy who was still active in sports to do it.’ -JASON COLLINS
BJK: I had asked [former husband] Larry for a divorce way before that, but he wouldn’t give it to me. I loved him, but I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t talk to anyone. And I believe in monogamy, so I was screwed. It was terrible. I lost all my money overnight, paying lawyers. All my endorsements were yanked. And I was really worried about women’s professional tennis, which was just starting, and our fight for equality with men — for equal pay. I was paralyzed. Did you feel that?
JC: For the longest time.
PG: Of course, there was a silver lining: As terrible as being outed was, it made it easier for kids like us to come out.
BJK: That was my hope: that it would help somebody else. And I got there pretty fast because it was also about being true to myself. But Larry and the P.R. people, nobody wanted me to come out. My lawyers denied the story before they even asked me about it. But I fought for 48 hours to have that press conference. I needed to tell the truth.
JC: I was focused on: It’s time. I was ready, and I was tired of waiting for some other guy who was still active in sports to do it.
BJK: Some of the guys retired and then they came out.
JC: Like [former N.B.A. player] John Amaechi. He was a mentor to me.
PG: You two must be the go-to people for gay athletes. Any interesting conversations?
BJK: After me, some guy at Newsday was going to out Martina [Navratilova]. She asked me what to do. I said: Don’t get outed! Control your message, like Jason did. That’s why I’m so happy for you, because I lived through an outing. I was trying to get ready, but it was so hard.
JC: After I came out, I was anticipating younger people coming to me, like I went to John. But I was at a sporting event and a person a few years older came up to me and told me he was struggling. I wasn’t expecting that.
BJK: Do you think there are lots of gays in the N.B.A.?
JC: No.
BJK: A few?
JC: Yes.
BJK: Do you know there are a few?
JC: Yes. Just like in any sport.
PG: What do you say when they ask for advice?
JC: I listen mostly and offer support. You don’t want to tell them what to do because everybody has their own path.
BJK: I tell them: You’ll know when you’re ready.
PG: Did your families have a hard time with it?
JC: Some of my family come from a generation where you just don’t discuss it. But my thing is, I’m 7 feet tall and African-American. I don’t blend in. Not talking about it isn’t going to work.
‘I didn’t find tennis until fifth grade, when my classmate asked me to play. I said: “What’s tennis?” And when I went with her to this country club, I thought: “Uh oh. I’m not going to able to afford this.”’ -BILLIE JEAN KING
BJK: People couldn’t believe it when I gave my press conference because Larry was with me. But I loved him so much. His children are our godchildren. And my poor parents, I tried talking to them twice, but they weren’t ready, either. That was the toughest thing. They were so homophobic.
JC: And I didn’t have the tools to talk about it, but we did some therapy about communicating and adjusting and getting on the same page.
BJK: Therapy gives you the tools to put things in different places. God, I wish I’d had therapy when I was younger.
PG: Here’s what Jason said about denying his sexuality: “You keep saying that the sky is red even though you know it’s blue.” Were you talking about physical urges or keeping quiet?
JC: Both. You just keep trying to believe a lie, even though deep down you know you’re gay. You keep hoping that one day you’ll wake up and the sky really will be red. But you know it’s not a choice. It’s who you are.
PG: Were you lonely during that period?
JC: There were a couple years when I never went on a date. I would stay at home watching TV with my German shepherd, and when people asked what I was doing, I would make up something. So, yeah, I was lonely. Now I don’t have that stress in my life. I’m comfortable and proud of everything I am. I have the choice to stay home, but I have other options, too.
BJK: This is what’s so great about now versus the old days. It took me 20 years to get to that place of comfort in my own skin. It wasn’t until I was 51 and had some therapy. Nothing is exactly the same, but there’s a thread of similarity in figuring all this out.
PG: Plus, you were cofounding the Women’s Tennis Association and democratizing tennis with World Team Tennis, trying to get equal pay for women.
BJK: We still don’t get equal money, except in the major [events]. And you know why equal pay for women is so important? Seventy percent of poverty is with women. If you want to get families out of poverty, get women out of poverty.
PG: And it’s still a homophobic culture rattling around in our heads. Speaking of which, what did you make of “The Kiss” — Michael Sam’s kissing his boyfriend on N.F.L. draft day?
BJK: There were a lot of kisses. And they were real deep kisses, weren’t they?
PG: See? Our conservative sides are coming out. I was going: Enough already. You?
BJK: I think a lot of people felt that.
PG: Was ESPN milking it?
BJK: Of course they were milking it! But that’s not Michael’s fault.
PG: Nobody had a gun on him.
JC: No, no, no. He was being drafted that day. It’s such an emotional moment, going from amateur to professional. I can totally understand the kiss. Being swept away in that emotion. What I thought was hysterical was the cake.
PG: When Sam smashes the cake onto his boyfriend’s face, then kisses it off?
JC: Now that was hilarious to me because regardless of who your significant other is, as a veteran, if I see a rookie doing that …
PG: His nickname is pretty much “Cake” from then on?
Jason Collins with the Brooklyn Nets in a game against the Denver Nuggets in February.
JC: We are going to talk about that, especially in a locker room. Actually, my hope is that they do because that’s part of the team dynamic, part of joking with your teammates. It builds that chemistry and love, and you’re one of the guys.
BJK: If they tease you, you’re in. Lots of people don’t get that.
PG: But when you read the online comments about the kiss, you see some of the nastiest, most vulgar stuff around.
JC: You should see my Twitter feed.
BJK: What do you get?
JC: When I came out, I got death threats.
BJK: Me, too. “We’re gonna come get you.” “You’re a slut.”
JC: But I just block that stuff. As a professional athlete, you have to have thick skin.
BJK: It goes with the territory, man. Most of the comments are great. It’s the 1 percent who ruin it.
PG: Let’s get to some other great stuff: Billie Jean’s partner, Ilana Kloss, is also a former tennis player.
BJK: That’s how we met. She was ranked No. 1 in the world in doubles.
PG: And you’ve been together for 35 years?
BJK: Tennis helped us, I think, stick together that way.
PG: Because she’s going with you?
BJK: No, because we’re going with each other.
PG: Well said.
BJK: She was also playing. We retired about the same time, even though she’s a lot younger. I didn’t think about it when we started up, but now I worry. I don’t want her to be alone.
PG: It doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere.
BJK: I know. But 12 years older is a lot.
JC: My boyfriend is 11 years older.
PG: Hello?
Billie Jean King playing at Wimbledon in 1982 (she won 39 Grand Slam titles).
BJK: Now we’re getting down to it. Let’s go! Where’d you meet?
JC: We first met at a housewarming party last June, but I was dating someone else at the time. Fast forward to September, I’m single again, and I see him at a party in L.A. So we exchange information because he was leaving for Europe the next day. But while he was gone, I was asking everyone: Have you heard of this guy? The background check.
BJK: You have to be careful.
JC: He’s awesome.
PG: So how long it this been going on?
JC: Nine months.
BJK: That’s good, that’s a long time. And what does he do?
JC: He’s a producer in L.A. [Brunson Green]. His biggest movie is “The Help.”
BJK: I loved “The Help.” I love this guy already. You think it could be long term?
JC: Right now …
BJK: One day at a time?
JC: We’re doing well. We’re getting ready to go to London, to Wimbledon.
BJK: I never knew this guy liked tennis so much.
PG: I know. But how about basketball?
JC: I haven’t decided what I want to do next year. After making my announcement and putting myself in the mind-set of training, I need a mental break.
BJK: It’s exhausting. Emotionally, mentally and physically exhausting.
PG: So you’re still deciding?
JC: Yes. But I just got done working out, so if I choose to continue playing, I’ll be in shape.
BJK: I know what I’d tell him: Play as long as you can, because someday you can’t play, even if you want to.
JC: Father Time is undefeated.
BJK: I had no regrets. I retired at 40.
JC: I turn 36 in December.
BJK: If you’re willing to pay the price, just keep going
Correction: July 1, 2014
An earlier version of this article misquoted Jason Collins. His 36th birthday will be this December; it was not last December.
The organization has has launched an online petition to prompt NBC to air promo Jenny Slate’s movie
6/23/2014 | The Wrap
Planned Parenthood is lashing out at NBC for refusing to air the trailer for Jenny Slate’s new film,”Obvious Child.” The organization has launched an online petition to pressure the network into reversing its decision.
“It’s outrageous that a major network would choose to censor mentions about abortion,” the petition states. ”For far too long, the refusal to talk honestly about abortion has led to increasing stigma around the issue, and it’s got to stop.”
“Obvious Child” follows the story of a comedienne who becomes pregnant after a one night stand with a staunchly Christian man. The film has been lauded by critics for taking a brave look at a highly polarizing issue, however NBC has refused to run ads for the film due to its frank discussion on abortion. As TheWrap reported last week, NBC wouldn’t air the trailer as long as it contained the word, “abortion.”
The petition goes on to say, ”If NBC, is censoring the use of the word ‘abortion,’ then the network is refusing to even take part in a conversation, let alone an honest one that accurately reflects women’s lives.”
So far, Planned Parenthood’s petition has reached over 10,000 signatures.
A rep for NBC has not yet returned TheWrap’s request for comment.
It took more than 20 emergency responders Friday to free the young man, according to reports in the German newspaper Süddeutsche and The Guardian. He had wedged himself inside Pi Chacan, a 2001 stone sculpture by Peruvian artist Fernando de la Jara, in front of Tübingen University’s Institute for Microbiology and Virology. The police in Tübingen first learned of the incident when they received a call reporting that “a person is stuck in a stone vulva.”
The city’s mayor Boris Palmer said he could not understand how the student got himself in that situation in the first place, “even taking into account adolescent fantasy,” Süddeutsche reports.
No word on whether the student was trying to take a selfie.
UPDATE, 5:35 PM:NBCUniversal released the following statement to Planned Parenthood Action Fund, reiterating it did not turn down an Obvious Child ad for broadcast but acknowledging it did ask the media buyer to remove the word in a digital ad, which NBCU says was a mistake. Planned Parenthood, which by then had collected about 13,000 signatures on its petition telling NBC to knock off the rannygazoo, declared it a major victory, calling it “a huge step forward in the work towards more honesty about women and abortion in TV and movies.” Here is NBC’s most recent statement:
“NBCUniversal has no policy against accepting ads that include the word “abortion.” Several ad proposals for Obvious Child were submitted to our television broadcast standards group for review, and, consistent with NBCUniversal policy and practice, no direction was given to remove references to the word “abortion.” Ultimately, no final ad was submitted or purchased for television broadcast.
“Separately, an online ad was submitted for digital placement and feedback was mistakenly given to remove the word “abortion.” That is not company policy and we are currently reviewing our ad standards processes to ensure they are consistent across all platforms moving forward.
“Our digital platforms will accept the ad as it was originally submitted.”
PREVIOUS: Planned Parenthood says it has 11,000 signatures on a petition chastising NBC for what the health-care group says are reports that the network refused to run an ad for the indie film Obvious Child because it includes the word “abortion.” Written and directed by Gillian Robespierre, the movie stars Jenny Slate as a comedian who gets dumped, fired and pregnant just in time for the most chaotic Valentine’s Day of her life, and decides to terminate her pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood is basing its petition on a New York Post Page Six item that was subsequently picked up by other media, including one outlet that also reported NBC has a problem with the word “abortion” in general, having bleeped it out of a performance by Dana Eagle on its primetime series Last Comic Standing. But after Eagle tweeted that what she’d said was, ”I like my friends kids, I do but then there’s always those one or two where you’re like: ‘That one should have been a hummer,” and NBC directed the blogger to its online un-bleeped version of the episode, the website backed off.
An informed source says a media buyer did approach NBC about running an ad for Obvious Child on its air, on behalf of the movie’s distributor. NBC has issued a statement saying, “No final spots were submitted to NBC broadcast standards for on-air consideration and NBC Broadcast Advertising Sales was never contacted about a media buy on NBC for spots related to this movie. Moreover, initial feedback from our broadcast standards group did not include any suggestion to remove a specific word.” Contacted for comment, A24, which acquired the movie at Sundance back in January, responded, that it’s not commenting.
“It’s outrageous that a major network would choose to censor mentions about abortion,” Planned Parenthood said in its petition. The group added — with the important “if” qualifier — “If NBC, is censoring the use of the word abortion, then the network is refusing to even take part in a conversation, let alone an honest one that accurately reflects women’s lives.”
These recent artistic moldings of the clay of truth do not mark the first time NBC has engaged in conversation with Planned Parenthood over the abortion issue. Just last year Planned Parenthood praised NBC for taking part in the conversation, in an episode of its drama series Parenthood that featured a Planned Parenthood center. The group “bragged in tweets it was being featured in the show,” snarked Live Action News, which is put out by the anti-abortion group Live Action. That group blasted the Parenthood episode as being “obviously endorsed by Planned Parenthood itself” and “more like a giant advertisement for the abortion provider than it was an entertainment show. What is shameful is that a network TV show would use its prized airtime to create a glorified commercial for teens to have an abortion without parental consent.”
Back then, interestingly, the New York Post raised its eyebrows so high they rearranged their bangs, over NBC’s decision to air the episode, with the headline “Parenthood Did What Few Have Tried – Make Abortion Seem Nearly Normal.” (Abortion has been a hot-button topic on TV ever since 1972, when Bea Arthur’s Maude decided to terminate her unexpected pregnancy on Norman Lear’s ground-breaking CBS comedy of same name). In that article, exec producer Jason Katims is quoted saying the network fully backed the episode in which high schooler Amy (Skyler Day) terminated her pregnancy. NBC said it was “going to support us to tell this story because they felt we would tell it in a way that was not politicized,” he told the NY Post.
“They wanted to make sure that we were responsible in terms of the facts and how we told the story. But they did not ever suggest that we don’t do it,” Katims is quoted as saying in the article, in which the Post describes Live Action as a “human rights group.”
“NBC and the producers of Parenthood have sold themselves out as entertainment and become part of the Planned Parenthood propaganda sweeping the nation,” Live Action complained back then.
The Center for American Freedom is free of the traditional lines between politics and journalism. Reinschmiedt helped with paperwork, research assistance.
6/23/2014 | BuzzFeed
The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, employed a Republican consultant and opposition researcher to help put together two of this year’s biggest stories about former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
In February, the site published “The Hillary Papers,” a report that unearthed papers belonging to Diane Blair, one of Clinton’s closest friends, from the archives at the University of Arkansas. Last week, the Free Beacon released audio recordings from an unpublished 1980s interview, in which Clinton discussed a child rape case she took on in Arkansas. In the tapes, Clinton suggests the accused attacker, a man she successfully defended, was guilty.
The stories, both by Free Beacon reporter Alana Goodman, were a legitimate and hard-to-find commodity: new reporting on the most covered woman in America. They both landed large, lighting up the internet with headlines on the Drudge Report, occupying the political press for days, and ensuring the Free Beacon a place among the new partisan outlets whose reporting makes them impossible to ignore. Goodman’s most recent story hit during the first week of Clinton’s media tour to promote a new memoir, Hard Choices.
Shawn Reinschmiedt, a former research director for the Republican National Committee, provided Goodman assistance with both stories, according to documents released by the University of Arkansas and published by Business Insider on Sunday following a copyright dispute over the Clinton tapes.
The documents include a special collections request, signed by Reinschmiedt on March 5, for duplicates of the audio recordings, as well as a subsequent email and letter from the library to Reinschmiedt about his request.
Reinschmiedt has served as a consultant to the Center for American Freedom, the nonprofit that houses and funds the Free Beacon, since its founding two years ago. Tax filings show the organization paid Reinschmiedt’s “political intelligence” firm, M Street Insight, a total of $150,000 for “research consulting” in 2012.
Michael Goldfarb, founder of the Center for American Freedom and the Free Beacon, said it is standard practice for his reporters to rely on outside consultants for help with stories that have a research component. The Free Beacon also used a production firm to help present the audio from the Clinton tapes, he said.
Political reporters often work closely with partisan opposition researchers on stories; those researchers are typically employed by campaigns, however.
Reinschmiedt supplied assistance with paperwork and helped sift through archives, according to Goldfarb. (The Diane Blair collection includes thousands of documents, organized in 109 boxes in the basement of the university library.)
“The Beacon provides research and production support to all our reporters just like every other media outlet,” Goldfarb said Sunday night.
Until earlier this year, the Free Beacon had an “entire in-house research operation,” Goldfarb added. That project was shut down, but the website still uses outside firms, including M Street Insight — a fact “we made clear to anyone who cared to ask from the moment we launched,” he said.
Tax filings show the organization also paid the Republican firm CRAFT Media Digital about $233,000 in 2012 for “media consulting.”
Laura Jacobs, a spokeswoman for the University of Arkansas, said the school used Reinschmiedt as a go-to in its dealings with the Free Beacon.
“Reinschmiedt was the primary point of contact,” Jacobs said in an email.
The Center for American Freedom and the Washington Free Beacon were formed as part model, part parody, to their progressive counterparts: the Center for American Progress and its partnering news website, ThinkProgress.
In 2012, Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti namedThinkProgress and liberal news sites like Talking Points Memo as outlets whose success “at the cutting edge of ideological journalism” he hoped to emulate on the Republican side.
Judd Legum, editor in chief of ThinkProgress, said his reporters and editors have “never used consultants or research firms to help us on stories.”
“Although I’m not sure I see anything wrong with it,” he added.
David Brock, the founder of the liberal groups Media Matters and American Bridge, likened the Free Beacon’s use of outside consultants to the “Arkansas Project” — the 1990s dirt-digging operation in which he played a central role.
The project, funded by a Republican millionaire, aimed to bring down the Clintons with stories in the American Spectator, a conservative magazine. Brock, who has since become a leading figure in the Democratic party, worked on the operation as the Spectator’s investigative reporter.
“Having personally been in the middle of efforts to undermine the Clintons with negative information collected by paid Republican operatives and then laundered through the magazine where I then worked, the American Spectator, where it was presented as the product of legitimate journalistic inquiry,” Brock said, the Free Beacon’s methods have what he called “all the markings” of the Arkansas Project.
“All that seems to have changed is the names of the characters involved,” Brock said. “The M.O. is the same. This is the Arkansas Project redux.”
Brock has long navigated the straits of journalism and partisanship on both sides of the aisle. His group, American Bridge, served as the central Democratic opposition research center, and he now runs a group defending Clinton’s record. This month, he launched a “journalism institute” to investigate the “nexus of conservative power in Washington” and subjects like the Koch brothers.
Through Media Matters, his group that monitors conservative media, Brock plans to release a “news advisory” to reporters and editors on Monday about what he calls a failure to disclose Reinschmiedt’s involvement.
“I trust you’ll agree that a journalistic news website hiring undercover Republican operatives to misrepresent themselves as journalists and secretly to provide it with information is, at best, an unusual practice,” Brock says in the advisory. “I certainly know that you understand that any time a news organization pays money for information, journalistic ethics requires that it be disclosed to readers.”
Goldfarb dismissed the criticism of the Free Beacon’s reporting. “If Clinton allies prefer to talk about the editorial process at the Beacon instead of Hillary’s decision to defend a child rapist she knew was guilty and brag about it on tape after the fact, we won’t be surprised if that’s the story some reporters pursue.”
“If we weren’t doing these stories,” Goldfarb said, “the only Clinton coverage this past week would have been how many books she sold and which Supreme Court justice she ran into at the book signings.”
A study found that after early adolescence, the social status of socially precocious teenagers often plummeted.
6/23/2014 | The New York Times
At 13, they were viewed by classmates with envy, admiration and not a little awe. The girls wore makeup, had boyfriends and went to parties held by older students. The boys boasted about sneaking beers on a Saturday night and swiping condoms from the local convenience store.
They were cool. They were good-looking. They were so not you.
Whatever happened to them?
“The fast-track kids didn’t turn out O.K.,” said Joseph P. Allen, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia. He is the lead author of a new study, published this month in the journal Child Development, that followed these risk-taking, socially precocious cool kids for a decade. In high school, their social status often plummeted, the study showed, and they began struggling in many ways.
It was their early rush into what Dr. Allen calls pseudomature behavior that set them up for trouble. Now in their early 20s, many of them have had difficulties with intimate relationships, alcohol and marijuana, and even criminal activity. “They are doing more extreme things to try to act cool, bragging about drinking three six-packs on a Saturday night, and their peers are thinking, ‘These kids are not socially competent,’ ” Dr. Allen said. “They’re still living in their middle-school world.”
As fast-moving middle-schoolers, they were driven by a heightened longing to impress friends. Indeed their brazen behavior did earn them a blaze of popularity. But by high school, their peers had begun to mature, readying themselves to experiment with romance and even mild delinquency. The cool kids’ popularity faded.
B. Bradford Brown, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who writes about adolescent peer relationships and was not involved in the study, said it offered a trove of data. The finding that most surprised him, he said, was that “pseudomature” behavior was an even stronger predictor of problems with alcohol and drugs than levels of drug use in early adolescence. Research on teenagers usually tracks them only through adolescence, Dr. Brown added. But this study, following a diverse group of 184 subjects in Charlottesville, Va., starting at age 13, continued into adulthood at 23.
Researchers took pains to document the rise and fall in social status, periodically interviewing the subjects as well as those who they felt knew them best, usually close friends. About 20 percent of the group fell into the “cool kid” category at the study’s outset.
A constellation of three popularity-seeking behaviors characterized pseudomaturity, Dr. Allen and his colleagues found. These young teenagers sought out friends who were physically attractive; their romances were more numerous, emotionally intense and sexually exploring than those of their peers; and they dabbled in minor delinquency — skipping school, sneaking into movies, vandalism.
As they turned 23, the study found that when compared to their socially slower-moving middle-school peers, they had a 45 percent greater rate of problems resulting from alcohol and marijuana use and a 40 percent higher level of actual use of those substances. They also had a 22 percent greater rate of adult criminal behavior, from theft to assaults.
Many attributed failed adult romantic relationships to social status: they believed that their lack of cachet was the reason their partners had broken up with them. Those early attempts to act older than they were seemed to have left them socially stunted. When their peers were asked how well these young adults got along with others, the former cool kids’ ratings were 24 percent lower than the average young adult.
The researchers grappled with why this cluster of behaviors set young teenagers on a downward spiral. Dr. Allen suggested that while they were chasing popularity, they were missing a critical developmental period. At the same time, other young teenagers were learning about soldering same-gender friendships while engaged in drama-free activities like watching a movie at home together on a Friday night, eating ice cream. Parents should support that behavior and not fret that their young teenagers aren’t “popular,” he said.
“To be truly mature as an early adolescent means you’re able to be a good, loyal friend, supportive, hardworking and responsible,” Dr. Allen said. “But that doesn’t get a lot of airplay on Monday morning in a ninth-grade homeroom.”
Dr. Brown offered another perspective about why the cool kids lost their way. The teenagers who lead the social parade in middle school — determining everyone else’s choices in clothes, social media and even notebook colors — have a heavy burden for which they are not emotionally equipped. “So they gravitate towards older kids,” he said. And those older teenagers, themselves possibly former cool kids, were dubious role models, he said: “In adolescence, who is open to hanging out with someone three or four years younger? The more deviant kids.”
Dr. Allen offered one typical biography from the study. At 14, the boy was popular. He had numerous relationships, kissed more than six girls, flung himself into minor forms of trouble, and surrounded himself with good-looking friends.
By 22, he was a high-school dropout, had many problems associated with drinking, including work absenteeism and arrests for drunken driving. He is unemployed and still prone to minor thefts and vandalism.
But as Dr. Allen emphasized, pseudomaturity suggests a predilection; it is not a firm predictor. A teenage girl from the study initially had a similar profile, with many boyfriends at an early age, attractive friends and a fondness for shoplifting.
Yet by 23, Dr. Allen wrote in an email, “she’d earned her bachelor’s degree, had not had any more trouble with criminal behavior, used alcohol only in responsible ways and was in a good job.”
Dr. Mitchell J. Prinstein, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies adolescent social development, said that while teenagers all long to be accepted by their peers studies suggest that parents can reinforce qualities that will help them withstand the pressure to be too cool, too fast.
“Adolescents also appreciate individuality and confidence,” he said. “Adolescents who can stick to their own values can still be considered cool, even without doing what the others are doing.”
From “Your son is going to end up in New Orleans wearing a dress if we don’t get him into therapy right away” to kicking ass on Orange Is the New Black, Laverne Cox talks about the long road from growing up trans in the South to making Mrs. Ridgeway’s prediction come true by lecturing at Tulane University on LGBT rights.
And yet I earned little money, and even fewer readers.
6/19/2014 | The New York Times
WEST TISBURY, Mass. — FIVE months ago I published a short book called “Boom.” Commercially it was a bust. No news in that: Most books lose money and are quickly forgotten by all but their wounded authors.
But this experience wasn’t just a predictable blow to what’s left of my self-esteem. It’s also a cautionary farce about the new media and technology we’re so often told is the bright shining future for writers and readers.
Last fall a new online publication called The Global Mail asked me to write about the Keystone XL pipeline, which may carry oil to the United States from the tar sands of Canada. The Global Mail promoted itself as a purveyor of independent long-form journalism, lavishly funded by a philanthropic entrepreneur in Australia. I was offered an initial fee of $15,000, plus $5,000 for expenses, to write at whatever length I felt the subject merited.
At the time I was researching a traditional print book, my seventh. But it was getting harder for me to feel optimistic about dead-tree publishing. Here was a chance to plant my flag in the online future and reach a younger and digitally savvy audience. The Global Mail would also be bankrolling the sort of long investigative journey I’d often taken as a reporter, before budgets and print space shrank.
So I plotted an ambitious road trip, from the tar sands of subarctic Alberta through Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska, and returned a month later with a blown-out travel budget and enough material to write 40,000 words. As I wrote feverishly through the winter, The Global Mail negotiated to co-publish with Byliner — a classy digital outfit, based in San Francisco, known for novella-length works like Jon Krakauer’s “Three Cups of Deceit.”
In giddy calls and emails from Sydney, editors said that the first installment I had sent was “a ripper” and that Byliner thought we might sell up to 75,000 copies, with me getting a lofty cut of the profits.
I finished writing in late January, just as the State Department prepared to issue a much anticipated report on the Keystone XL. If I were writing for a traditional publisher, I’d have to wait months to see my work in print. This time, I’d be read within days, right on top of the news!
Exhausted but exhilarated, I headed to the liquor store for a celebratory bottle and returned to an urgent call from my editor in Sydney. “Mate, we’re [bleeped],” she said. The Global Mail’s backer had had a bad financial setback at his firm and evidently decided he could no longer afford a folly like quality journalism. He’d abruptly pulled the plug just hours before I filed my copy, making The Global Mail a dead letter.
Worse still, for me, Byliner hadn’t yet inked its deal with the Aussies. Suddenly I had no platform for a very long story on a subject that was about to be all over the news. And I’d yet to be paid anything beyond my original travel budget (which I’d overrun, in any case).
At this point I called my literary agent, whom I’d foolishly failed to involve in the project. (Another fantasy of the digital world: Writers can do it themselves and dispense with all those middlemen.) Late that Friday my agent brokered a deal between Byliner and me. The advance was only $2,000, but my work would be available by Monday, for $2.99, and I’d get about a third of the proceeds once my advance was paid off.
I worked through the weekend with Byliner staffers as they crafted a snazzy cover and a subtitle that included the words “strippers” and “cowboys.” In no time “Boom” was live and I was in love. The e-format delivered the timeliness and instant gratification of news reporting, yet with all the trappings of a book, absent the paper. There was even an author’s page with my picture. All I needed now were readers.
Oh, those. I was familiar with the stately ways of old-school book publicity: readings, dwindling print reviews, praying for a call from Terry Gross. Surely, Byliner’s tech-savvy team would move at light speed and deploy new tools like guerrilla marketing.
Except there didn’t seem to be a “team,” just an outside publicist who was busy on other jobs. She circulated a hasty press release and wrote a glowing review of “Boom” on Amazon, the main retailer of Byliner titles. Byliner urged me to “game the system” by soliciting more such “reviews” from friends and relatives, and issued a few tweets touting “Boom.” Then silence.
Physical books live on physical shelves at physical bookstores and can catch the eye of browsing shoppers. “Boom” was floating in the digital ether with millions of other works. How would anyone even know it was there? So I went to work hawking it myself, like a pushcart peddler: calling radio producers, sending “Boom” to big-mouthed friends, boring my tens of followers on social media. I wrote online articles for major sites, for which I wasn’t paid, since it’s generally understood in online journalism that we scribes are “building our brand” rather than actually making a living.
My month of self-flackery seemed to work. In the sales rankings on Amazon for Kindle Singles, “Boom” broke the top 25, and almost all the titles ahead of it were fiction. In categories like “Page-Turning Narratives,” my work often ranked No. 1. I was a nonfiction digital best seller!
Eager to know how many copies this represented, I asked Byliner for sales figures. It took them a while to respond — because, I imagined, they needed the time to tally the dizzying numbers pouring in from Amazon, iTunes and other retailers. In fact, the total was such that Byliner could offer only a “guesstimate.” In its first month “Boom” had sold “somewhere between 700 and 800 copies,” the email read, adding, “these things can take time to build, and this is the kind of story with a potentially very long tail.”
It was also the kind of story that could bankrupt a writer. I’d now devoted five months to writing and peddling “Boom” and wasn’t even halfway to earning out my $2,000 advance (less than the overrun on my travel). The cruelest joke, though, was that 700 to 800 copies made “Boom” a top-rated seller. What did that mean for all the titles lower down the list? Were they selling at all?
Byliner couldn’t be making money from “Boom,” yet made no discernible effort to sell it. I was asked to speak at a conference whose organizers wanted to pre-order 500 to 1,000 copies of “Boom.” I asked Byliner how to arrange this bulk buy. They never got back to me.
I began to wonder if Byliner was a Potemkin publisher, acquiring content for some reason other than making it available to readers. Maybe Amazon had a hand in this, some scheme involving drones. Or perhaps Byliner, for all its media applause, was just incompetent. I finally gave up, consoling myself with my work’s eternal if insignificant life in the e-sphere.
Then, even that was gone. On the first Monday in June I checked the Kindle Single sales rankings, having last looked a month before, when “Boom” was still hanging on at about No. 40. Now I couldn’t find it in the top 100. Oh well, I thought, can’t be a best seller forever.
I then went to the Amazon page for “Boom,” to savor any new reviews. A message appeared: “We’re sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site.” I checked my Amazon author page, and then iTunes and Barnes & Noble. “Boom” had vanished. Poof. As if it had never existed.
The next day I received an email that began “Dear Byliner author.” My publisher was “undergoing some changes.” As in death throes. “Every new venture requires a leap of faith, and we thank you for taking that leap with us.”
Actually, I hadn’t been given a chance to leap. I was going down with the ship. Byliner owned the rights to “Boom” and had made it and other titles unavailable, without warning, because of accounting and liability issues, I heard. Whatever that meant. Probably that Byliner no longer had an accountant, or much else, since several senior editors and the chief executive had left.
My laid-off Aussie editor, at least, did right by me in the end. As The Global Mail unraveled and its owner shut off funds, my editor managed to salvage the $15,000 I’d been promised long ago. A few days ago “Boom” also resurfaced on Amazon, as mysteriously as it had disappeared; Byliner pledged its continuing “commitment to long-form journalism”; and I learned that sales had inched into four figures. In all, a disappointing rather than a ruinous seduction.
But now that I’ve escorted two e-partners to the edge of the grave, I’m wary of this brave new world of digital publishers and readers. As recently as the 1980s and ’90s, writers like me could reasonably aspire to a career and a living wage. I was dispatched to costly and difficult places like Iraq, to work for months on a single story. Later, as a full-time book author, I received advances large enough to fund years of research.
How many young writers can realistically dream of that now? Online journalism pays little or nothing and demands round-the-clock feeds. Very few writers or outlets can chase long investigative stories. I also question whether there’s an audience large enough to sustain long-form digital nonfiction, in a world where we’re drowning in bite-size content that’s mostly free and easy to consume. One reason “Boom” sank, I suspect, is that there aren’t many people willing to pay even $2.99 to read at length about a trek through the oil patch, no matter how much I sexed it up with cowboys and strippers.
Meanwhile, I’m back to planning my next book. I don’t yet know on what subject. But I do know its form: in hard copy, between covers, a book I can put on the shelf and look at forever, even if it doesn’t sell.
Tony Horwitz is the author of “Confederates in the Attic” and “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War.”
