New York Times Calls out Clarence Thomas

[MineralMan]

Lots of reports around here from websites about Clarence Thomas and his questionable alliances, but this story in the New York Times outweighs dozens of reports in minor websites. It's a wonder the direct link hasn't shown up. When a major media outlet covers the story, that needs to appear here on DU. Direct coverage by main stream media is critical.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/us/politics/19thomas.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=clarence%20thomas&st=cse

Friendship of Justice and Magnate Puts Focus on Ethics

PIN POINT, Ga. — Clarence Thomas was here promoting his memoir a few years ago when he bumped into Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery that employed Justice Thomas’s mother as a crab picker.

Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery where Justice Clarence Thomas's mother worked, on the site of the old cannery. Mr. Varn said Justice Thomas put him in touch with a buyer to restore the property and build a museum.
Mr. Varn lived at the old cannery site, a collection of crumbling buildings on a salt marsh just down the road from a sign heralding this remote coastal community outside Savannah as Justice Thomas’s birthplace. The justice asked about plans for the property, and Mr. Varn said he hoped it could be preserved.

“And Clarence said, ‘Well, I’ve got a friend I’m going to put you in touch with,’ ” Mr. Varn recalled, adding that he was later told by others not to identify the friend.

The publicity-shy friend turned out to be Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate magnate and a major contributor to conservative causes. Mr. Crow stepped in to finance the multimillion-dollar purchase and restoration of the cannery, featuring a museum about the culture and history of Pin Point that has become a pet project of Justice Thomas’s.

more at link....

[Stuart G]

1. K and R

[Gabi Hayes]

2. good! I just asked you about this on that other thread. nothing since January that I could find.

why didn't this come up when I just looked for it a couple minutes ago?

how'd you find it?

thanks...my google skills seem to be negligible

[MineralMan]

5. I found it in a link in another thread. They quoted the NYT,

so I went to the NYT. It also shows up in a Google News Search, and it's the talk of the blogosphere. Yet, I did not see a thread here about the NYT story. Just stories from blogs, etc. When there is major news media coverage of something, someone needs to post from that major media source.

Google gives high priority to DU headlines, so we have a chance to get hits for the story. DailyKOS does not have the same national clout as the New York Times, to be quite frank. And minor progressive blogs have no clout at all. The NYT has clout, and is actually the source of much of what is being posted about this. Why not have it directly on DU?

So, I posted it, after discovering it buried in some blog article from a blog I'd never heard of.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. I skimmed those. was concentrating on find a separate Times headline

amazing how there's no coverage.....

[MineralMan]

12. There was a direct link to the NYT story in the credoaction

article. That's how I found it. Breaking news on Sunday in the NYT, but not on DU. We need to do better, I think.

[Gabi Hayes]

15. it's buried, and it's going to stay buried. if this were about any of the socalled liberals on the

SCOTUS (breyer's the only one with a breath of that in him), you'd never heart the end of it

again, why no mention of the disclosure forms. that's CLEAR evidence of making false statements.

I'm pissed

it's a start, but I've seen too many of those just disappear

reminds me of AWOL

[spanone]

19. It was posted here...YesterDay

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1324011

[MineralMan]

20. Thanks. I missed it.

[pnorman]

21. " Google gives high priority to DU headlines..."

I didn't know that, but I was beginning to suspect it! My first move when seeing something interesting in DU, is to hit Google. Quite frequently, among the first few hits was that same DU thread!

[MineralMan]

23. Google spiders DU continuously.

Within minutes of posting an OP title here, it shows up in Google's search results at the top of the list if you search for the exact title. If the title is well-constructed, using search terms that are likely to be used by searchers, you'll get above-the-scroll results almost every time.

Google knows that DU is important, so it gives high priority to DU posts. They're current, topical, and of interest. Basic SEO strategies, especially in your choice of title, can result in great results for any DU post.

[handmade34]

3. petition to sign

http://www.credoaction.com/campaign/resign_clarence_thomas/?rc=homepage

[Fumesucker]

4. I'm reccing this..

Good find..

But if you think Weiner's Johnson sucked all of the oxygen out of DC that will look like a hyperbaric chamber compared to an impeachment of Slappy Thomas.

[MineralMan]

8. Well, it seemed to me to be a more important source than

credoaction.com. I've never heard of that, but I've sure heard of the New York Times.

DUers need to think about the sources of what they post. If the source on a minor blog is a major media outlet, then the story should come from that outlet, not the minor blog site. People read links posted here, because Google puts OP titles at the top of its search results. Just google the title of this OP.

[Gabi Hayes]

11. bradblog has great stuff on this, but you know the reaction to that will be nil

what about TPM?

[MineralMan]

Just go compare the number of unique visitors to

bradblog or TPM with the number at the NYT site. That's all you need to know. We can have a larger impact on DU if we concentrate on following blog articles back to their original source, then posting from that original source.

If impact is what we're looking for, we should always go to the original source, not a third-hand rewrite of the information. Blogs are great, but only as ways to find original material. People will follow a New York Times link far more often than some blog link. It's just how it works.

To see how popular a website is, and how many visitors it gets, go to www.alexa.com and search for the website. Most of the websites people quote from here on DU have only a tiny fraction of the impact a site like the New York Times has. It's all about the numbers, frankly.

[pinboy3niner]

6. K&R

[Gabi Hayes]

7. ronald fricking roTUNda says it's not unethical? know who he is?

http://www1.chapman.edu/~rrotunda/

George Mason U

Chapman U

joke colleges funded by the likes of......the Koch brothers

this article is pretty lame in spots. why on EARTH did they go to rotunda, who totally misinterpreted the constitution about Obama's eligibility to receive the Nobel Prize (not that he deserved it, IMO)

[MineralMan]

10. I don't know, but I will tell you that a link to the NYT has

much more impact than one to www.credoaction.com. Every time. We should be linking to major media sources whenever a story is originally sourced at them. Much more impact. I post this for a specific reason, and with a specific title, because I know how Google ranks posts on DU. We can have more impact than we often do if we take the time to think before we post. credoaction.com might be a cool site, but it carries far less weight than the NYT when it comes to stories like this.

SEO matters.

[Gabi Hayes]

13. I know that, but it kills me that, of ALL the experts in the universe, they

relied on that POS....

also, there is ZERO mention in all four pages of the disclosure forms, which is the meat of the issue, the pubic hair on his constitutional coke can, if you will

leveymg has put things in very stark relief with his journal. have you seen that?

he seems to know what he's talking about

again, how come there's not WORD ONE about the forms?

wtf is up with Jill Abramson. did she get scared of clarence since she literally wrote the book on him?

what's going on here?

[MineralMan]

14. The forms are old news. The New York Times had stories

about that, too, at the time. It's good to read major news outlets. It really is. That's where the blogs are getting their information, after all.

Why shouldn't we link to recognized sources? Personally, I think we should, whenever those links exist. First hand is always a better bet than second or third hand information. Always.

[Gabi Hayes]

17. and one mention since January on that. ZERO coverage of weiner's calling out Thomas

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DfexJzH0uWEJ:topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/clarence_thomas/index.html+anthony+weiner+clarence+thomas+disclosure+forms+new+york+times&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

check that....NOTHING came up, not even Weiner's name anywhere on the page.

one mention of the disclosure form:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/us/politics/28scotus.html?ref=clarencethomas

it's part of a story on other justices' outside income

NOTHING after that

zilch

and NOTHING about it in the latest article, and NOTHING about what Weiner was up to re: Thomas

have you seen that other thread about the blackout?

[MineralMan]

18. They do not recap everything in every story.

Here's a list of NYT stories on Clarence Thomas:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/clarence_thomas/index.html

[Gabi Hayes]

26. I know...that's the one linked via googlecache, with the embedded highlights, to

make it easier to find stuff

not one word about weiner/s imbroglio with thomas

if you can find it, i'll kiss you

[MineralMan]

30. I'd rather kiss the real Gabby Hayes...

[MineralMan]

16. Right now, on Google:

If you search for New York Times Clarence Thomas, you'll find the New York Times article, just under the News listings. This thread is just two hits under the New York Times entry. That's how we get people to come here and read our stuff. It's basic Search Engine Optimization. Write a title in a way that people will search, and they will find DU. Link to a major source, and Google ranks the article higher in a search.

We need to work smarter on DU with our posts. We shouldn't just be preaching to the choir. We should be getting people to come here for their information. We can do it, but only if we think about it when we create original posts.

[sabrina 1]

22. This has been posted a few times on DU

I disagree that the people who have worked so hard for so long while the media turned the other way are is out-weighed by this one article in the NYT.

I and so many others do not have the NYT to thank for what we know about the corruption on the highest court.

When they start reporting on the money he received from Citizens United, and on his wife's sham corps profiting from the decision he made on a case from which the rules demanded he recuse himself, and when they report that one Congressmember was trying for months to stop the continued abuse of the Highest Court in the land and paid a heavy price for his efforts, then I will agree that their one article even begins to outweigh the work of those 'minor blogs'.

And when they demonstrate, which I intend to do, the timeline of when the campaign against him began in relation to those revelations about the Thomases, mostly by 'minor blogs', then I will agree they are beginning to catch up to this incredibly important story.

I doubt anyone, without the knowledge we already had from all those bloggers and activists and mostly from Rep. Weiner, including commentary from Law Professors which was featured on those blogs, would even have read or posted this article. They are way, way behind this story.

The LA Times has reported on it also btw, but this story requires saturation coverage by the MSM in order for it to have any effect. The same kind of coverage given to a single member of Congress' perfectly legal sexcapades.

[MineralMan]

24. You may do as you choose, of course.

Here's a list of NYT stories on Clarence Thomas. They've covered everything you mentioned:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/clarence_thomas/index.html

[sabrina 1]

29. No, actually they did not.

An article here and there, no followup, as was done by the blogs, does not even begin to tell this story. I have followed their coverage, and in comparison to the bloggers, it was dismal to say the least.

And, they failed miserably, so far anyhow, to draw attention to the political hit on the one Congressman who was attempting to preserve the integrity of the USSC. That is a story that should have been headlines, instead they participated in the hit.

[sabrina 1]

25. Oh yes, and unrec'd for denigrating the incredible work

done over the past year by those 'minor' bloggers. Bradblog now has a show on Pacifica radio and stands in sometimes for other radio hosts. His coverage of this story deserves a Pulitzer prize.

This article doesn't even begin to touch on the major corruption of Thomas and his wife.

And shame on them for ignoring this story which has and has had and will have a huge impact on this country for generations to come. I guess the personal sex lives of members of Congress is deemed to be of far more importance to them. They helped take out the one man in Congress who was working on ending this corruption.

[MineralMan]

27. Oh, noes...an unrec...

Do you think I care about recs and unrecs. They're completely irrelevant, you know.

Have a nice day.

[Gabi Hayes]

28. the Times has largely sat on its ass on the important issues since about Ellsberg's day.

it is no friend of progressive causes

ask judith miller

I hope, though, that if they start pushing, others will follow.

but that certainly hasn't been the case recently

what big story antithetical to the pugs has had any legs in the last few years?