Formerly a writer and consultant based in New York City, Philip was a regular columnist for Mediaite.com. The former director of campaigns for the Silicon Valley Democratic Party and a senior designer at Adobe Systems, Philip has a unique perspective on the intersection of the media, politics and technology.
In 2010, Philip was a finalist for a Mirror Award in the category Best Single Article - Digital Media. The Mirror Awards are presented by Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications for excellence in coverage of the media.
That Ill-Informed Fox News Viewer Poll? Actually It's Based On Proven Methodology MediaiteNovember 22, 2011
November 22, 2011
I used to run political campaigns; as part of that, I commissioned polls. I have a good sense of how polling works, what it's good for, what makes a poll valid. Martel's implication that 612 people is an absurdly low sample size is not only erroneous, it's a staple of those who want to cast doubt on research for political purposes.
Pandora Is the Latest to Tap Political Ad Revenue, Won't Be the Last The AtlanticNovember 21, 2011
all articles from The Atlantic
November 21, 2011
Broadcast's audience is softening; cable networks' targeting is unrefined. Both hit wide swaths of people who don't need to see the ad. City-level targeting used to be enough. Now, campaigns want to influence city blocks.
Which is why Pandora is in such a good position. The service already differentiates advertising by location; if you're a listener, you've no doubt heard location-specific ads pop up. You may be less aware of the way it subtly differentiates along another line: what you listen to.
Patti Stanger And Jenny McCarthy: Experts Without Expertise MediaiteNovember 1, 2011
November 1, 2011
The star of Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker, Stanger prides herself on her savvy ability to create romantic relationships from mid-air. Now in its fifth season, the show thrusts millionaires – usually men – into a roiling stew of potential mates – usually women. Patti lays down ground rules, a match is made, and all are happy.
Except: that never happens. ...
Which is why it’s perfect – divinely, hair-pullingly perfect – that a special guest joins her on tonight’s episode. That guest: Jenny McCarthy, America’s premiere purveyor of wholly nonsensical horseshit.
The History of How We Follow Baseball The AtlanticOctober 26, 2011
all articles from The Atlantic
October 26, 2011
Its a luxury of modern sports that you can bring the game with you. Santorum was watching football on a small tablet; he could as easily have been streaming a ballgame over an iPhone, or watching a constantly-updated gamecast. Should he have had more discretion, he could at a minimum have peeked at scores over the web.
A hundred years ago, sports fans -- read: baseball fans -- were not so lucky.
Dear Ms. Bachmann: Can You Please Clarify God’s Position On Some Things? MediaiteAugust 29, 2011
August 29, 2011
Michele Bachmann declared that last week’s earthquake in DC and the damage done by Irene are a message to politicians from God.
Ms. Bachmann, some questions.
The New Yorker Goes Digital - But Leaves Its Iconic Covers Behind MediaiteJuly 28, 2011
July 28, 2011
New Yorker covers as icons are all but doomed. Online distribution has already scattered the magazine's contents to the wind and diversified the content the magazine produces. For a visitor to the magazine's website, the cover is unimportant, an ancillary to the article akin to the cartoon that the site reflexively serves up. The New Yorker, like all publications, isn't consumed as a curated album, it's shared as a number of hit singles, with website-only bonus tracks.
4 Ways Technology Can Enable Your Inner Introvert The AtlanticJuly 25, 2011
all articles from The Atlantic
July 25, 2011
What some describe as an always-on society is, in fact, becoming a Golden Age for introverts, in which it has become easier than ever to carve out time for oneself while meeting the needs of our extroverted friends. That's a key distinction: we live in a time in which introverts can regularly mask their introversion if they so desire.
Soup Of The Day: Anthony De Rosa Is The Most Influential Social Mediaite You’ve Never Heard Of MediaiteJune 28, 2011
June 28, 2011
From writing casually for a few Mets blogs, he’s now a juggernaut in the world of social media and – particularly of late – in using it to curate the news. He’s been an invited speaker at industry conferences like SxSW, Social Media Week, and Toronto’s Mesh. In the past two months alone, he was quoted by David Carr in the Times, cited by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, interviewed Times‘ chief Bill Keller (generating a maelstrom of discussion online), and been praised by the editor of Salon.
Revisiting 'Zork': What We Lost in the Transition to Visual Games The AtlanticJune 27, 2011
all articles from The Atlantic
June 27, 2011
What we forget, what was lost with the transition to visual games, is how literary the experience was. A quick catalog of words I learned from text adventures -- mostly from Infocom, the granddaddy of the genre: menhir, footpad, topiary, lapis lazuli. The games were written as much as they were designed; tantalizing adjectives to create a sense of the world, sometimes-obscure nouns to describe things which may not exist in real-life.
Where Does Local News Fit If National And Social Media Take Up All Your Time? MediaiteJune 16, 2011
June 16, 2011
Once upon a time, there were two main ways that people learned about what was happening in the world: newspapers and the six o'clock news. Each had a limited amount of space which was divvied between local and non-local news. In the paper, the division generally occurred between sections. On TV, it was half-hour chunks. You got your news, and you liked it.
Now, of course, people can get any information they want on anything at any time. They can follow a thousand different Twitter accounts and have five hundred Facebook friends and Flipbook their way to the things that interest them. The odds that the City Council's negotiations on a sewer contract makes the cut are small.
Breaking Down (Then Rebuilding) the Media Industry, One Atom Of Content At A Time MediaiteMarch 14, 2011
March 14, 2011
Institutional journalism started to splinter the day Tim Berners-Lee created the first webpage. But for the institutions to actually crumble, the Web had to splinter, too. ...
Today, more and more links arrive not with the context of a referring page, but with the context of a referring individual. We (or, our Twitter and Facebook accounts) have taken the place of Berners-Lee's webpages. We're aggregated collections of information about ourselves and the things we're interested in, and, at least for hardcore users, we're the first source of our own information.
The Web atomized publications; social media is atomizing stories.
The Tyranny of the Majority AOL NewsAugust 17, 2010
August 17, 2010
Today, a majority is readily identifiable -- on an hourly basis -- through the magic of polling. Unfortunately, it's easy for 535 people to out-yell nine, much less one -- especially when over 400 of them are up for re-election in a few months and are clutching the latest poll numbers.
The problem isn't polling or seeking public support -- it's an elected official who fails to look beyond what is popular to what is right. The problem is our making a tacit transition from a republic that elects decision-making representatives to a nation that takes a daily, informal and uninformed plebiscite on every issue.
Welcome to the Golden Age of Email Scandals MediaiteJuly 23, 2010
July 23, 2010
The moral of the story is this: as much as we hold the Administration to account for overreacting in Shirley Sherrod’s case, we should exercise the same restraint when the next email scandal breaks. I say this in part from self-interest, of course, but the point remains. Our relationship with email is still evolving, and we live in a moment in which it can easily be misunderstood. We owe it to ourselves to take isolated emails out of context with a grain of salt – no matter the source, no matter the topic.
We’ll only see more revelations like those of recent months. It is up to all of us to assure that we understand why we’re seeing them.
The Mehserle Jury Got It Right AOL NewsJuly 9, 2010
July 9, 2010
The death of Oscar Grant seems clear cut. Lying face-down on a BART train platform in Oakland, he was shot in the back by a uniformed security officer and killed. Thursday, the trial of the shooter, Johannes Mehserle, concluded. The verdict: guilty -- of involuntary manslaughter.
Involuntary manslaughter isn't murder. Not in a legal sense, not in the heft of the words themselves. "Murder," we understand. If Mehserle were convicted of murder, there's a moral valuation that comes with that. In that case, we are confident that Mehserle killed Grant, meant to and must be punished. "Involuntary manslaughter" sounds like it's trying to be politically correct, like Grant's death was no one's fault, really.
But in this case, involuntary manslaughter was the right call.
The Unsettling New Era Of The Individual Journalist MediaiteJuly 8, 2010
July 8, 2010
The democratizing effect of the Web has shaken up media companies in obvious financial ways. But what Weigel, Nasr, Rosen and Kinsley are experiencing and commenting on is the democratization of opinion. The stolid editorial boards of two decades ago are the disparate personalities of today – just as anonymous bylines have become journalist’s brands. As such, journalists need to be more comfortable being themselves – and their employers need to feel comfortable in allowing it. The next Dave Weigel’s resignation, one would hope, would be rejected. In the future, we can assume, the next Octavia Nasr will have more latitude to explain her position.
The Tea Party Bares All In Playboy MediaiteJune 21, 2010
June 21, 2010
This month’s Playboy has a stunningly unusual and potentially disruptive article: an expose, purporting to be from an established Republican consultant, discussing how Washington hacks are controlling the political advances of the Tea Party.
We’ll take a quick break here for those interested in making an “only read it for the articles” joke.
Penned anonymously, the article, “Confessions of a Tea Party Consultant”, strikes the reader at first blush as representing the antithesis of what the Tea Party espouses. The author is insider-y, cynical, and obviously relishes the perverse “dark arts” of winning elections.
Not the Obama We Needed AOL NewsJune 15, 2010
June 15, 2010
[H]ere's the calculus, Mr. President. The oil spill is jobs; this crisis, the economy. Yes, yes, a lack of regulation created the BP disaster, just as it created the economic one. And yes, you're all over it, I hear you. (I mean, National Guardsmen are standing by to help with processing claims, as you noted.) But just as no one will consider the economy fixed while so many are out of work, no one will consider this spill fixed until the oil stops.
That oil is gushing out as I write these words. It gushed out while he spoke, more than 25,000 gallons during his 15-minute speech. As he talked about the fishermen's prayer ceremony, more than a thousand gallons leaked into the gulf. And the U.S. government is just standing there, scratching its head, shrugging.
The Alvin Greene Mystery Theories, Explained MediaiteJune 14, 2010
June 14, 2010
One week ago, as candidates for office in California, Maine, Virginia and several other states were in the midst of a last-minute push to get voters to the polls, it’s safe to say that Alvin Greene wasn’t. The nominee of the South Carolina Democratic Party for the United States Senate says that he “worked hard” during his campaign – despite all evidence demonstrating the opposite.
Something seems off. May be it’s the human tendency to seek patterns and explanations in things that happen, but theories are running rampant on the Internet – among them, that Greene’s a Republican plant, or that Republican voters in an open primary voted him into office, or that Greene is a guy with outsized ambitions who got (un-)lucky. As befits the situation, no single theory neatly answers every question.
Michael Kinsley, Opinion, and the Evolution of Media MediaiteJune 9, 2010
June 9, 2010
The past decade has seen the worlds of technology and media blend to a degree nearly unimaginable in 2000. You know this, of course: Apple is the world’s largest music retailer; blogs drive information sharing; the most popular way to watch videos is through Google-owned YouTube, etc. The world of traditional media has shifted – been upended – accordingly.
Few have ridden the crest of this wave more savvily than [Michael] Kinsley. That spirit of challenging conventional wisdom has been demonstrated both in his articulated opinions and his willingness to embrace new systems for sharing those thoughts. As a pundit on CNN’s Crossfire, editing Slate, leading the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and now at The Atlantic, Kinsley’s philosophy has been an open desire to speak truth to power, and to bend the boundaries of where and how the media engages with its audience. It’s a philosophy that blends nicely with the Internet – and mirrors the core tenets of the American experiment. It’s an idea, if widely adopted, that could rebuild the public conversation.
Facebook Open Graph: Social Metadata For Everything MediaiteApril 22, 2010
April 22, 2010
In 2006, Facebook unveiled a “controversial feature” – sharing changes users made to their profiles with the users’ friends. This was the feature that made Facebook, well…Facebook, the change that created the first truly social network. It’s what made people keep coming back to the site, and what made Facebook the most popular website in America.
In subsequent years, Facebook unveiled other ground-breaking tools. First, Beacon, a system for pushing notifications from advertisers to users’ walls; then, Facebook Connect, which allowed users to use their Facebook identity at other websites….
There are two key lessons in this history, leading up to yesterday’s bombshell unveiling of Open Graph. The first is Facebook’s efforts to build a true social web infrastructure, something Slate’s Farhad Manjoo put his finger on last year. The second is their willingness to push people outside of their comfort zones.
The Mediaite Census: Where The Aughts Took You, And Why MediaiteJanuary 5, 2010
January 5, 2010
This little yellow line, moving southwest to terminate in a small bulb, is 92.85 kilometers long, or about 57.69 miles. It’s less than the distance between New York City and Philadelphia; slightly more than from San Francisco to San Jose. 57.69 miles won’t even get you from Austin to San Antonio.
That line, after hundreds of additions to our Mediaite Census map tracking people’s moves between 2000 and 2010, also represents the net movement of our contributors. Moves of 17,000 kilometers from Great Britain to Australia and moves of less than two within a single city all combined to show the decade’s total movement: less than an hour’s drive southwest – albeit in a boat on the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere off the Delaware coast.
Revisiting the New York Times’ 2001 “Year In Ideas” MediaiteDecember 14, 2009
December 14, 2009
This week, the New York Times Magazine was dedicated to their newly traditional Year In Ideas thinkpiece. It’s always a fantastic collection of new discoveries, shifts in ways of thinking, and products that we’re likely to hear more about in years to come. It tries, in many ways, to be predictive; to isolate still-germinating concepts that will shape the world.
I thought, therefore, that it made sense to see how they did. In the spirit of the end of the decade, I looked back at their first Year In Ideas released in December of 2001. Heavy on concepts that emerged following the terrorist attacks (such as “American Imperialism, Embraced”) and the Internet (“Populist Editing”), the series was born at a fascinating moment in American history.
I Was an Astor Trial Juror The Daily BeastOctober 9, 2009
all articles from The Daily Beast
October 9, 2009
By October 6, just past the six-month anniversary of my jury service in the case of People of the State of New York vs. Anthony Marshall and Francis Morrissey (or, in general parlance, the Astor Trial), I could safely say that I believed Brooke Astor’s son, Tony Marshall, had the right to give himself a raise as the manager of his mother’s estate—in other words, that he had not committed grand larceny as defined by the State.
It was our third week of deliberations, and we the jury had already found the defendants guilty on a number of charges, including that they schemed to defraud the ailing and addled Mrs. Astor. Only a handful of counts remained on which to reach a verdict, including the one of grand larceny.
I remained, at that point, unconvinced that Marshall was guilty of the grand larceny count. The prosecutors noted the rapidity with which Marshall, having just gotten a raise, turned around and bought a $920,000 boat. The yacht purchase looked bad, sure, but maybe he’d been planning to buy one for years. Still, that October morning, the words of one of my fellow jurors came back to me in, of all places, the shower. “But this,” she had argued, “was at the same time that he was stealing from the estate!” True. That nagged.
How To Estimate A 9/12 Protest MediaiteSeptember 13, 2009
September 13, 2009
In the passion of yesterday’s 9/12 protests against, um, something, Jay Rosen noticed that Michelle Malkin was crowing about attendance of 2 million at the protest in D.C. Also known as one out of every 130 people in America.
Sensing that perhaps that number was a little high, he traced the error back to a conservative Twitterer named @pinkelephantpun, who claimed to have gotten the figure from ABC News. (Which, faster than Joe Wilson can amend an apology, ABC News denied.) In fact, ABC estimated the crowd, on the high end, at about 70,000.
Fox Achieves A Previously Unseen Level Of Meta The Huffington PostAugust 22, 2007
all articles from The Huffington Post
August 22, 2007
Fox has developed a solid way to capitalize on the unparalleled journalistic respect it has earned: debuting a reality program about the hiring of a completely unqualified former WWE Diva and "Price is Right" model to anchor a news program in rural Texas.
Let me repeat that. Fox has extended the realm of reality programming -- that conceit that anything can be done by anyone and is worth televising -- to the world of journalism itself.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Term Limits The Huffington PostFebruary 13, 2007
all articles from The Huffington Post
February 13, 2007
Clearly, term limits have some drawbacks. The current California legislature is nearly the youngest and least experienced ever. And sure, limits lead to some unlikely transitions.
But I recently came to a stark realization: any such complaints are merely myopic. People who criticize term limits because of the obvious and bizarre detrimental impact they have on our government are just thinking small. Where term limits really shine -- in every other occupation. Term limits at coffee houses. Term limits for bus drivers. Term limits at PriceWaterhouse.
Why Gavin's "Mistake" Matters The Huffington PostFebruary 2, 2007
all articles from The Huffington Post
February 2, 2007
The fundamental mistake that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made is that he breached the core criterion of political life: maintaining loyalty. In politics, loyalty is paramount. Without loyalty, without the bond of trust that political partnerships engender, an elected official is incapable of building consensus and, ultimately, governing.
And for an elected official to be so outrageous as to betray the confidence of the person most dedicated to maintaining his position is unconscionable. That Gavin would be so indiscreet as to sleep with the wife of his campaign manager, during his campaign, is staggering.
This Week in Review: The Guardian goes digital first, local journalism’s future, and preserving news stories Nieman Journalism LabJune 17, 2011
June 17, 2011
Before you get too depressed about the study, though, you should check out Lab editor Joshua Benton’s cautionary notes about the findings. Benton also broke the data out by community, giving us some fascinating geographical data to play with. Meanwhile, Mediaite’s Philip Bump posited that people don’t have time for local news because it’s squeezed between the two levels people really care about — the individual and the national.
'Weinergate': The 'strange' scandal of a congressman and a lewd Twitter photo The WeekMay 31, 2011
May 31, 2011
Photoshop pro Philip Bump says a close examination of the photo shows that it wasn't taken with Weiner's BlackBerry, like the rest of his Twitter photos, but also was likely posted at some point to his yfrog account.
This Week in Review: Time’s non-pay paywall, free vs. pay in Britain and what to do with content farms Nieman Journalism LabJuly 9, 2010
July 9, 2010
The debate over objectivity and journalism raged on this week, fueled by the firing of CNN’s Octavia Nasr over a remark she made on Twitter. Many of the arguments circled around to the same ground we’ve covered with the Gen. McChrystal and Dave Weigel flare-ups, but I wanted to highlight three takes that stand out: Salon’s Dan Gillmor on America’s “technically good subservient press,” Jay Rosen on “objectivity as a form of persuasion,” and Mediaite’s Philip Bump on a journalism of individuals.
The Left Bashes Obama's Oil Spill Speech AOL NewsJune 16, 2010
June 16, 2010
Mediaite columnist Philip Bump likened the president to a different legacy -- challenged Democrat.
"Tonight we saw the worst of the calculating Obama. It was Michael Dukakis, onstage during his presidential debate in 1988, calmly elucidating the intellectual argument against the death penalty," Bump said in an AOL news op-ed. "You could practically see Obama's bullet points written on a piece of paper."
Interview: Alvin Greene The Michael Smerconish ProgramJune 16, 2010
June 16, 2010
Interviewed by Michael Smerconish about South Carolina's Alvin Greene, after taking a closer look at the theories behind his primary win.
Mirror Award Finalists Announced, Including Our Own Philip Bump MediaiteApril 22, 2010
April 22, 2010
On Monday, finalists for the Mirror Awards — the Newhouse School’s annual honoring of excellence in writing about journalism and the media — were announced, featuring some of the best writers and thinkers in our industry, particularly at a time when it is changing so rapidly. Some of the work honored is by familiar bylines: David Carr, Brian Stelter, James Poniewozik, Michael Calderone, Michael Wolff (but not, thank goodness, for his recent column speculating on Sandra Bullock’s alternative film career), John Koblin — and our own Philip Bump. So we are proud.
Palin's 'In Touch' cover: Sell out? The WeekJanuary 18, 2010
January 18, 2010
Palin earned almost as much in the eight hours it took her to pose for ‘In Touch’ as she did governing Alaska for a year, says Philip Bump of Mediaite. “With payouts like this,” it’s hard to imagine why she'd ever return to the difficult, unremunerative job of public service.
Revisiting NYT Magazine’s “Year in Ideas” from 2001 PoynterDecember 14, 2009
December 14, 2009
By Philip Bump‘s count, of the 77 ideas presented in 2001, over half (40 or so) are still relevant in 2009. About 30% aren’t. “Many others I considered ‘maybes,’” he writes. “I just don’t know enough to make the call.”
Magazines for Tablets and E-Readers: Pros and Cons The AtlanticDecember 4, 2009
all articles from The Atlantic
December 4, 2009
At Mediaite, Blogger Philip Bump conceded that the demo video for the digital SI "is pretty snazzy." However, he took major issue with the fact that it included a glaring typo, which he said was sign that the publisher still wasn't paying close-enough attention to its future:
CNN Taking Credit For "Balloon Boy" Scoop They Blew The Huffington PostOctober 19, 2009
all articles from The Huffington Post
October 19, 2009
Certainly, we should all give credit and thanks to the heroic television camera that was pointed in the direction of this news, and which dutifully recorded it. But I think it's a bit much to call it an "Aha! moment" when it glosses over the fact that CNN and Wolf Blitzer completely missed the moment as it unfolded in real time. Philip Bump, at Mediaite, like Pepperidge Farms, remembers:
In Court and Outside It, Money Plays Lead Role The New York TimesOctober 9, 2009
October 9, 2009
Mr. Bump became convinced of the truth of the maxim about money and happiness. Mr. Marshall and his wife, Charlene, “certainly weren’t happy with where they were,” he said.
“I don’t think this kind of life leads to internal happiness,” he said. “That is patently not the case.”
Interview: Arnold Schwarzenegger The Daily Show with Jon StewartJuly 1, 2005
July 1, 2005
Interviewed by Samantha Bee of The Daily Show about an event involving California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Governor digs fixing potholes San Francisco ChronicleMay 27, 2005
May 27, 2005
Still, demonstrators from a coalition group called STOP -- Standing Together to Protect Our Families -- who protested the governor's appearance in San Jose -- said they had foiled the attempt to keep him under wraps.
"He's sneaking around. ... He tried to keep it undercover as much as possible,'' said Philip Bump, who led protesters in chants throughout the governor's event. "His poll numbers today are lower than they've ever been ... because the message is getting out there that what Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to do is not what Californians want.''
Personal blog at pbump.net | LinkedIn | Twitter | Email Philip