Who are the "Newsbreakers" and what is their 'agenda'? Well, the NY Times has a great tongue-in-cheek piece from Sunday that pokes around the edges of that. It's a fun read - but if you don't have the time - just take a look at their site.

What's really interesting is thinking of the "Newsbreakers" as a metaphor for what is happening to news as a closed-shop walled garden world. It used to be that only folks with a TV Transmitter and call letters (like WHAM in Rochester) had the tools and the network to tell the 'news.' But now folks like Newsbreakers want to "take over the news." And to some extent, they already are. BTW - read the comments of WNYT's Paul Conti in this Times piece A ray of intellectual understanding of the First Amendment among the humorless folks in local TV news.

Media Activists Who Smile and Throw Cheese
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By MARK LASSWELL
Published: June 26, 2005

A group devoted to monkey-wrenching live reports on local news, the Newsbreakers have a standing interest in media mishaps. But in this case their interest was personal: just a month before, an "Opie & Anthony" producer had approached them about joining in its Assault on the Media campaign of on-air stunts. And now one of those stunts, staged by one of the show's interns, had cost Mr. Chi'en his job. "We looked at each other," Mr. Landon recalled, "and said, 'That could have been us.' "

Well, yes and no. The Assault on the Media stunts are essentially a bid for free publicity, in the loutish tradition of Howard Stern fans calling television stations during breaking news events and blurting out references to Mr. Stern. The Newsbreakers, Mr. Landon said, are something else entirely.

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