Day Four

235 lbs. Off to the "Athletic Center."

What Happens When You Promote Karen Eliot House to Publisher?

You're down a great foreign affairs columnist. Her piece yesterday on North Korea and Iraq was clear and cogent. And an antidote to all the drivel that has been written on the subject in recent weeks.

Day Three

236. Off to the gym.

When Is A Columnist The Lonely Voice of Truth?

When he's Paul Krugman! Here's what he told Der Spiegel:

"Instead [of writing a column about the New Economy], I now find myself once again as the lonely voice of truth in a sea of corruption. Sometimes I think that one of these days I'll end up in one of those cages on Guantanamo Bay (laughs). But I can still seek asylum in Germany. I hope you'd accept me in an emergency."

Andrew Sullivan has more.

When Is A Scribe Like Billie Holiday?

When he works at The New Yorker! Here's New Yorker editor David Remnick on New Yorker "essayist" Hedrick Hertzberg:

"He's the political voice of the magazine....Rick's writing has a kind of moral tone that is irreplaceable—he has tone control the way Billie Holiday had tone control, and his sentences are as well-timed as the most brilliant joke or song phrasing."

Not just a moral tone! Moral tone control! I bet you don't have that.

Dear Fatso

Thanks to all those who have e-mailed diet/exercise advice. I appreciate it. I haven't consulted a nutritionist or dietician (or whatever they're called). I'm just going with the "eating less" diet (and no sweets). And working out every day. I've postponed the nicotine patch until Monday, just because.

Virginia Postrel, whose excellent site you should bookmark if you haven't already, has taken an interest in my progress and reports today that I have gained six pounds. This is incorrect. When I began this drill, my weight on our bathroom scale was 229 pounds. My weight on the gym scale was 233 pounds. I threw out 229 pounds as my benchmark weight and reset it at 233 pounds, after I was informed that the gym scale was (alas) accurate. Since then, I've gained three pounds which I expect will be gone by Monday.

The workouts are great. 30 minutes on the elliptical, 20 minutes on the tread or the bike and then weight-lifting for 15 minutes, followed by stretching and adios. The I-Pod makes it move along nicely. I've started at the "2" level of exertion and will stay there for two weeks. Then up to "3." Then up to "4." Etcetera.

I'm using the blog to discipline myself. No matter what happens, I have to post my weight every day until April 10th. Needless to say, my "friends" are using this to set up over-under betting pools. One of them was kind enough to inform me that the over-under on my weight for February 1, 2003 was 236 pounds. Another emailed to say that he was betting heavily that I would be 240 pounds by April 1st. Another emailed with the salutation: "Dear Fatso."

I wish them all luck with a capital "F."

Day Two

236. Off to the gym.

The NFL on Pay-Per-View

The networks are losing their shirts carrying National League Football. The Wall Street Journal reports the gory details:

"Fox took a $387 million charge in 2002 against earnings to pay for the NFL. Industry executives estimate ABC is losing more than $100 million a year on its broadcast of "Monday Night Football." Despite this season's increase, NFL TV ratings are down more than 10% since the current network contract began in 1998. The cost picture isn't improving: The networks' annual payments to the NFL -- an average of $500 million to $600 million -- are scheduled to escalate in the last three years of the current eight-year deal."

NBC estimates that it would have lost $1 billion over the last five years on the NFL, had it not "lost out" in the bidding for broadcast rights. Ever true to form, CBS maintains that it does not lose money on its NFL contract. I'm not sure if this is corporate vanity or corporate mendacity. But it ain't true.

Strategery

New York Times reporting on the behavior of The New York Times Company is usually highly polished, with perfect quotes from management and rosey scenarios for whatever management is plotting. So this morning's report by David Kirkpatrick on the NYT's takeover of the International Herald Tribune is revealing, since it describes management as essentially clueless.

The key graphs:

"Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Co., said it intended to keep the existing International Herald Tribune intact. 'We are not jumping into this to change the IHT,' Sulzberger said. 'We are jumping into this to understand a marketplace that we don't understand the way we should.'"

Edward Atorino, an analyst who follows newspaper companies at the investment bank Blaylock Partners, said the Herald Tribune might eventually provide a useful base for international expansion, a logical extension of The Times's recent moves to attract more readers in the United States outside New York. But Atorino said profit from publishing internationally was unlikely to amount to a significant sum for The New York Times Co. as a whole. .

Howell Raines, executive editor of The Times, will oversee the news operations of the Herald Tribune. Raines said the international paper, which is printed in many locations around the world, would eventually become part of The Times's strategy to make its journalism available in a variety of formats, including local and national editions and the Herald Tribune, as well as television, radio and the Internet.
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"What we are moving toward is a kind of integrated New York Times report that is carried in a variety of media, including the International Herald Tribune," Raines said.

The NYT is jumping into a marketplace (it doesn't) understand? The IHT will eventually become part of a New York Times strategy? The IHT won't make any money? And remember: this is the official, scrubbed-twelve-ways-to-Sunday version of the story.
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What The World Needs Now: More Liberal Media

You can't make this stuff up. Here are the two key paragraphs from Jim Rutenberg's story this morning about Democratic schemes to create a more liberal media:

"In one of the more ambitious of the ideas circulating, a group of wealthy Democratic supporters is toying with the idea of starting a liberal cable network. That endeavor would cost in the hundreds of millions and require the backing of a media company with enough leverage to force it onto the major cable systems.

Democratic officials said that they had discussed a similar idea with Haim Saban, a media mogul and party supporter, a couple of years ago, as Fox News began its ascent, but that he ultimately decided against it, in large part because of the odds against success."

If Democrats believe that they are losing elections because the media are not liberal enough, then they really ought to just give up.