Jeff Zucker Has The Wright Stuff -- Finally

Leaks From Wags At NBC Universal Make It A Not-So-Super Sunday for Outgoing Peacock Chieftain

Not that it is a surprise that Jeff Zucker (left) will succeed Bob Wright (right, naturally) as the head of NBC Universal, but it's a bit of a pimp slap to Wright that he's being removed as CEO rather than bowing out gracefully, as he had planned to at the end of this year.

The Los Angeles Times confirmed Wright's ouster first on Sunday, outhustling Bill Carter at The New York Times, whose print version merely said a scheduled NBC board meeting tomorrow was "fueling speculation" about a regime change at 30 Rock. Carter matched the story online this morning.

Now Zucker gets to run the whole candy store rather than just the TV department. Wright gets to stay on, for now, as chairman of NBC Universal, while Zucker becomes CEO. But that sound you'll soon hear of one hand clapping will be emanating from Wright's office.

Look for him to be on a veranda swapping GE war stories with Jack Welch before long.

U.S. Media Turning Thumbs Down on Anti-Ahmadinejad Ads

Straddling The Line Between Political Content and Muzzling Jewish Advocates
The party line could go something like this: Sure, we despise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just like the next guy, but we can't be seen taking sides.
And so it goes at some 40 U.S. media organizations, which the Jerusalem Post reports have rejected banner ads from the World Zionist Organization and Israel-based Jewish Agency, which promotes Jewish emigration to Israel, of warning about the all-too-apparent paralells between Iran's leader and Hitler circa 1938.
The problem: these news sites don't want to be infected with political and advocacy statements for fear of compromising their mission of covering both sides of a story. Fair enough.
Of course, you could argue, as the WZO does, that a campaign against hatred and anti-Semitism hardly qualifies as a political statement. But there you have it.
What remains to be seen, however, is whether this was a blanket rejection or the lack of due diligence by Network Solutions, which attempted to place the ads.
As the article notes, Village Voice publisher Michael Cohen, whose publication -- even in its watered-down form --was unlikely to reject the ad for the simple reason that "sales representatives work based on commission and it is in their interest to sell as much ad space as possible."
Which is why, in this age of shrunken media profits, you'd be surprised anyone would reject the ad at all, unless someone is so hellbent on not alienating that all important fundamentalist, Jew-hating Iranian demographic. You know how they can get.

Replacing Ed Bradley May Be Easier Than CBS Thinks

Of course, there's full agreement that Ed Bradley was a TV icon, and that he will not be so much replaced on "60 Minutes" as much as there will be somebody merely occupying the chair he formerly sat in.
CBS News Correspondent Byron Pitts, above, was asked the replacement question on the CBS Public Eye blog and offered this response:

I hope the decision will be made to hire someone who can follow in his footsteps. Someone who is a journalist who has shown range, who has shown compassion, and someone who's real. One of the things that I think that people loved about Ed Bradley – as they do about all the people at "60 Minutes" – is you get a sense that they are real people, they are not people who just showed up on the scene, but they are people who have a body of work, and when they tell you something, because they have covered all the major stories in the course of their careers, that you can believe it.

Pitts is too humble to nominate himself, but CBS could do a lot worse than to hire on this everyman workhorse of a reporter who has quietly distinguished himself be it in Iraq, amid Katrina and a hundred other points in between.
There have been complaints that the CBS News bench is not very deep, and the network would have to look beyond West 57th to fill the ranks at "60 Minutes."
To be sure, CBS may not have as many stars in waiting as the other nets, but they have solid journalists who don't make a spectacle of themselves but can effortlessly pull off a compelling dispatch no matter where they're sent. Pitts falls into that category.
He deserves a shot on Sunday nights.

Making The Best Of Weather Stories

The Bane of Many a Reporter's Existence Also Offers A Chance to Show Your Chops With a New Spin on the Tried and True
When it's an unseasonably warm day or an unexpected cold snap arrives, the smart reporter knows to hide. For that's when the city editor comes a courtin', looking for you to get out to the nearest ice cream shop to see which flavors are moving or calling the local Home Depot to see if people are rushing in to stock up on road salt.
We've all done these stories as reporters because we have to, or we just didn't look busy enough.
But you can derive small satisfactions from these journalistic facts-of-life when you can actually find something different to say. To wit, this dispatch from Sabra Ayres at the Anchorage Daily News, about how fog is keeping lawmakers from their appointed rounds in Juneau:

In Sitka, [Senate Majority Leader Gary] Stevens and the other passengers were unloaded and instructed to wait out a weather break. Several took the opportunity to indulge in the Sitka airport's famously good pies.
"I highly recommend the banana cream pie," Stevens said.
More waiting. More pie slices were brought out. Finally, the passengers were given a choice to take a flight to Ketchikan or wait out their luck in Sitka.
Stevens and his wife headed to Ketchikan, where they were held for three more hours, this time without the pies.

From The Headlines You Don't See Every Day Dept:

From the Honolulu Advertiser Web site:

Man, 49, Reports Gang Rape

Kickin' Ass Doyle McManus May Need To Convince Himself Of His Own Words

Bravado by L.A. Times Washington Bureau Chief May Be Difficult To Pull Off

Among yesterday's comments about Dean Baquet becoming The New York Times' Washington bureau chief and an assistant managing editor, came these saucy words from Doyle McManus (above), D.C. bureau head honcho for Baquet's former employer, The Los Angeles Times.

[T]o quote one of our most incisive newsroom philosophers -- we'll just go out and kick their ass. We've done it before; we can do it again.

Not to take anything away from the L.A. Times and the often-estimable work of its bureau, but judging by the way Tribune keeps cutting -- especially with the increasing unlikelihood of a sale anytime soon -- and it will become increasingly difficult to plant a foot on the gluteus maximus of Baquet & Co.

Right now, the bureau is chock-full of correspondents who have largely been insulated from the worst of the pain inflicted on the editorial staff as the Times' circulation continues to shrink. That could very well change. Hopefully, McManus knows something we don't. In any event. we wish him and his charges luck.

As he knows first-hand, Dean Baquet plays for keeps.

Will Storm Field Clear Up the Weather Picture at WCBS-TV

Now That He's Out In The Cold in the Dead of Winter, There's An Opening At Two of His Old Haunts
Ah, the tangled web that New York TV meteorologists weave. These guys and gals sure know how to move all over the dial, sometimes whether they like it or not.
The latest exhibit is Storm Field, he of the legendary weather pedigree, courtesy of Dr. Frank, but who has made his own mark in New York on channels 2 and 7, before a 10-year stint at WWOR-TV, channel 9. His tenure there came to an abrupt end on Wednesday. As is often the case, it didn't end well. But then again, TV general managers often have to check their souls at the door before they get their corner office.
The Daily News reports Storm's replacement is Audrey Puente, who was herself dumped by WCBS/Ch. 2, and replaced by John Elliott, late of MSNBC, who must have got a boatload of cash to sign onto the ratings trainwreck that is the station's morning news.
Still, Ch. 2 does have one weather slot open on the weekends, which is being filled by Jeff Berardelli and Liz (Ibby) Carothers for now. Might Storm brighten the skies on West 57th? Never know. Then again, Ch. 7 has an opening on weekend mornings.
A lot may depend on station economics, and whether they want to still pony up for a fourth meteorologist. Ch. 2 has shown it's not in the habit of rushing to fill openings. Also, Storm won't exactly be working for AFTRA minimum, though he might shave a few dollars off his asking price if nobody in the market comes calling before long.
Either way, Storm's ouster shows there is no sentiment in the TV news business when there is so much money to be made and lost. That the talking heads we watch often get the ax in the quest for another tenth of a ratings point, is an accepted if lamented fact, one that's a lot more predictable than the weather.

TV Guide Shortens The Year For Its Subscribers

Jeers For Its Lame Explanation For Telling Readers Their 52 Issues Actually Run Out in November
I long ago stopped needing TV Guide for its listings, which have become all but irrelevant in the 500-channel universe. Used to be you could actually get some useful synopses of upcoming shows every week. But digital cable took care of that.
Still, the magazine does have its merits, even if it gets overly gushy about Grey's Anatomy and American Idol (but keep those 24 and Lost tidbits coming!)
Matt Roush's criticism is usually spot-on, and Michael Ausiello's column is alternately tart and reverential, but in a good way. My go-to every week, though, is the Cheers and Jeers column, lauding or lamenting the best and worst on the tube.
So, here's a Jeer, and this one goes straight to TV Guide itself.
It was without hesitation that I renewed my subscription, which expired in January. Yet, when I checked the address label for my new issue, it said I was good only until mid-November in 2008 instead of January.
What gives? The magazine is offering this, to put it charitably, rather incredible explanation: whenever the magazine has more than 24 pages of listings, it considers that a double issue, which may happen up to six times annually. Thus, while your subscription might be for 52 issues, that won't get you to the end of the year.
Dunno which Einstein in the publishing suite thought up that whopper, but apparently if you call TV Guide customer service and start yelling, they'll give you the issues you're really entitled to rather than just the ones the magazine thinks you should get.
Of course, most people don't read their subscription labels so they won't know until it's too late that TV Guide and its ilk are trying to pull a fast one. Get into the habit. As I have found out more than once, you might be surprised as to what you find.

New York Times Shows It's Not Easy Describing Big Easy Population

Adam Nossiter, who generally has been doing bang-up work as The New York Times' main man in New Orleans, has an item in Sunday's paper about the population in the Crescent City that may never be recovered post-Katrina.
But he may have stretched a little too hard to make a point, and in the process, underestimated the potential gravity of the problem.

The low population figure, 191,000, which was reported by the Louisiana Recovery Authority in November last year in the most credible survey to date, was about half the 444,000 count in a Census estimate before Hurricane Katrina.

Actually, it's about 43 percent, not quite about half. Granted, some people will continue to return and edge that number higher. But Nossiter goes to great lengths to point out that many of those caught up in the hurricane disapora are those least able or inclined to start over again in New Orleans. And this was a city that was already losing 1.5 percent of its population a year before Katrina, the article notes.
As the Nagin administration continues to show signs it's without a clue, that exodus is likely to continue unabated, especially as the problems so long endemic to New Orleans, high crime, crappy schools, a crumbling infrastructure and racism that is persistent if not less pernicious than it might have been, continue to fester.
About half? Maybe, but anyone like myself who's been through areas like the Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview and Gentilly recently, are dubious that will happen anytime soon.

Buzz Bissinger (Maybe) Tells Stephen Smith and John Grogan To Buzz Off

"Friday Night Lights" Scribe -- Or Reasonable Facsimile -- Tells Columnists To Take One For The Team and Take Off
We're doubting it's really him, but someone writing as Buzz Bissinger was one of the many people chiming in with comments on Daniel Rubin's blog at Philly.com, where he threw a sanctimonious pity party for his 71 colleagues at the Philadelphia Inquirer who got pink-slipped (see below posting).
Bissinger, or someone like him, called on star columnists Stephen Smith and John (Marley and Me) Grogan to throw themselves into the funeral pyre to spare two of their less handsomely remunerated colleagues now out on the street.
The real Bissinger, before becoming the celebrated author of "Friday Night Lights," was a Pulitzer Prize winner for the Inky in 1987.
The would-be Bissinger in the blog said Smith doesn't need the Philly dough because he's Mr. Ubiqitous on various ESPN platforms. But he saved most of his venom for the best-selling Grogan:

Grogan has become rich beyond all imagination as a result of Marley. According to Bookscan figures, the hardcover edition of Marley and Me has sold 1.758 million copies. Bookscan only accounts for about two-thirds of all sales since such outlets as Wal-Mart and Costco are excluded. Given that Marley has sold enormously well in these places, it is reasonable to assume that his sales are in the range 2.5 million. Assuming the standard royalty rate of 15 percent, Grogan has profited somewhere around $8.125 million from his hardcover sales, excluding royalties from the new $29.95 gift edition (69,469 sold to date according to Bookscan), excluding paperback profits since the paperback has not come out yet. When all is said and done, Grogan will make well over $10 million on his book, More power to him, but if he has one tenth of the morality he shows off in his insipid columns, he will quietly retire from the Inquirer so someone's job can be saved.

A humongous question mark that one media fatcat would really tell two others of his ilk in public to take a hike. But it's such uncertainty that makes the blogosphere such fun.

Crossing The Divide Between Sanctimony and Survivor's Guilt at the Philadelphia Inquirer

When nearly 70 journalists get booted from the Philadelphia Inquirer, that's cause enough for mourning.
And it's no occasion to pile on with empty sentiment.
And as an Inquirer scribe, Daniel Rubin should know better. In his blog on Philly.com, he properly laments the loss of his colleagues and the diminution of a newspaper that was once great, but now destined to be now and forever an also-ran.
That is, until Rubin gets to the penultimate paragraph of his missive.

I've said to a couple of glum-looking people today that there's part of me that's envious. I know it sounds hollow, coming from someone who has seniority. But this will be saving some people from heartache later, when it's harder to pull up stakes. This is a good time to be looking for other ways to use those peculiar skills they put to work here.

You must be kidding. Here's a guy who has a job, distributing his crocodile tears to dozens of hard-working, talented, decent colleagues who did nothing except get blindsided by three different owners in the course of a year. First, it was Knight-Ridder dismantling its newspaper headline. Then came KR purchaser McClatchy, which promptly put the Inquirer and its sister, the Daily News up for sale. Finally comes millionaire homeboy/flack extraordinaire Brian Tierney, who from the get-go showed he was in way over his head and now wants to balance the books on the heads of those who put out his papers.

So, these reporters and editors who are now exiting for an uncertain future don't need Rubin or anyone else telling them about their peculiar skills. Peculiar skills? What claptrap.
Funny, last time I checked Rubin was not falling on his sword, so who is he to give a pat on the back and tell his colleagues to chin up and start singing "Tomorrow."
I find such sanctimony particularly offensive, having worked at three media outlets where layoffs became a reality. Fortunately, all three times I was spared the ax. But for those shown the door, the last thing they wanted was a pity party. They needed a job, and for the 68 to 71 Inquirer professionals who used to have one and want to stay in the news business, getting one that even comes close to approximating what they did at the Inquirer will be difficult at best.
Empty words like the ones issued by Rubin don't help their cause.

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Columnist Scorned

Dan Le Batard Wastes No Time Pimp-Slapping Nick Saban
Any Miami Dolphins fan who took coach Nick Saban seriously when he said he was not looking for a megabucks deal to be the coach at Alabama pretty much got what he deserved.
Saban gave Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga a thumbs-down. Huizenga wisely thought it better to let Saban out of his contract than have a pouty coach running a team who doesn't want to be there.
The sentiment seeping out of South Florida is one of good riddance. Among those most vehemently hoping the door hits Saban on the way out is Dan Le Batard, who gets today's hustle award for posting his column online today rather than making us wait until tomorrow when this is geezer news.

Oh, a man, even one under contract, is allowed to change his mind and listen to other offers, especially those that double his salary. But what makes Saban's behavior so unctuous recently is that he had the audacity to question the questioners with super-sized arrogance even while lying all along to his players and his boss. Huizenga has given this man everything he has wanted -- given him more than any NFL owner anywhere has given any other coach. He deserves better than this. He deserves better than Saban leaving him to answer the hard questions today.

You could make a case that Le Batard is taking this a little too hard until you see the litany of denials Saban has made about the Alabama job, going back to as recently as Monday, as detailed by the Sun-Sentinel.
Among them, this whopper from Dec. 21:

"I guess I have to say it: I'm not going to be the Alabama coach. I shouldn't even have to comment on this. I think I've said this over and over again. What they do with their position is their business."

Funny how the promise of $36 million changes a guy.

And what do the good folks in Alabama feel about all this? Maybe a little nonplussed for the time being.
The Tuscaloosa News, the Crimson Tide's hometown paper, didn't get up the gumption to update its Web site.
Ditto, the Birmingham News, though they had three articles leading up to this morning's decision.
They could take a lesson from the Crimson White, the University of Alabama's student newspaper, where Saban is the lead item on the home page. The school's sports information department was already distributing canned quotes from the players. Apparently, they're excited. They sure as hell better be.

A President Dies, But Not In The (Early Editions Of) New York Times

True, word of Gerald Ford's death arrived at an inconvenient time -- going on midnight -- for newspapers on the East Coast that had gone to bed with their first editions or were on the verge of getting them ready for the presses.
But breaking news sometimes has a way of pushing back those deadlines. Ford's passing didn't rise to that level for papers like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, whose editions that arrived on my doorstep this morning failed to note.
At that hour, the front page is locked up for copies that are going beyond the city limits. The exception for late news at that hour is sports, as evidenced by the Times recounting the Jets' win late Christmas night that appeared in Tuesday's papers.
You would think, though, that because the sports section has a late close, the Ford obit could have been stuck there, with a quick refer inserted in a box on A-1 to at least cover you for the early edition, saving the banner head for the late city edition.
But even the Times wasn't quick enough to act, which means you have to read its exhaustive obit online. Which may be what editors intended.
Long gone are the days when you had to rely on the print version to get your news, and the Times and the other 400-pound print gorillas have continuous news desks for that reason. Still, if you automatically assume that people will rely more on their computer instead of the front page for their information, then before long fewer people will feel compelled to read that front page and the rest of the paper, the very engine that's driving the Web sites in the first place. Which, of course, means the print versions need, more than ever, to stay relevant. And the first step is to get the most important news of the day into the paper, even if it means pushing back those crucial deadlines a few minutes.
The death of a president would certainly qualify on that account.

Gerald Ford Dies, Networks Yawn

CBS, NBC, Choose Jay Leno and Stupid Pet Tricks Over Breaking News Of Death Of A President
CBS told viewers about the death of the 38th president, with a crawling headline while "The Late Show" played on. And that was it. No special report. Can't interrupt the network's $30 million man. Don't deprive us of Stupid Pet Tricks, though that dachsund that could put himself in his cage was pretty damn good.
The network supposedly learned its lesson 10 years ago when there was no anchor in the broadcast center on the Saturday night over Labor Day weekend when Princess Diana died in Paris. NBC and ABC, along with CNN, had blanket coverage. CBS affiliates were left to wallow in their local programming.
Belatedly, CBS scrambled to put on a perfunctory special report anchored by Vince DeMentri, a local anchor in New York who had just finished his newscast.
The TV news division had taken the weekend off, and it showed. Ironically, it was CBS Radio -- with correspondents Adam Raphael in London and Elaine Cobbe in Paris -- that was first with the confirmation that Diana was dead.
But that episode led to wholesale changes at CBS, including having a correspondent in the building at all hours in case the network had to go live. So how does the death of a president not give rise to that? The network had an obit ready to go. It could get its consultants and correspondents on the phone and cobble together some information. Bill Plante, Bob Schieffer and Mark Knoller come quickly to mind.
But it didn't. Once again, the decisionmakers at CBS News decided to go on holiday and turn their Blackeberrys off. When you work at a network, you don't wait until morning to report the news. The radio news division certainly didn't, cranking out three updates an hour all night. Their colleagues at TV couldn't muster anything close to that effort.
NBC could at least claim it had an excuse, namely MSNBC. But rapid channel surfing as news of Ford's death broke betrayed no hint that the network interrupted "The Tonight Show" when it could have simply simulcasted MSNBC to alert viewers in all time zones about what happened. But there was no apparent game plan -- no black book to consult when such an emergency occurs. You can't assume people will automatically gravitate to cable when news breaks. Own the story unless told otherwise. "Today" more than made up for the network's lapses last night, but it was way too late in the game.
The cable networks acquitted themselves well as the news broke. MSNBC had Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw and Andrea Mitchell on the phone weighing in. But why couldn't they have done the same on the Peacock?
ABC got lucky, sort of. "Nightline" was on in the East Coast when Ford's death was announced. At least it covered the news in real time, but only to a point. "Jimmy Kimmel Live" went on as scheduled.

No More Schmaltz in South Florida As Greedy Owners Look To Exterminate The Rascal House

Progress, shmagress. Word today from The Miami Herald that the Rascal House, the venerable Jewish deli/comfort food emporium on Collins Avenue, in what is now called Sunny Isles Beach, will soon be no more.

Oy.

Seems the town fathers of Sunny Isles Beach, which hasn't even existed for a decade, have something of an edifice complex, as many of the no-frills motels that used to line its part of the oceanfront have been replaced by fancy condos and high-rises.

A similar fate awaits the Rascal House, (above, photo from Roadfood.com) whose lack of charm is part of its charm. You go for the the copious portions of food, everything from pastrami sandwiches that make the tables sag from their weight to desserts that are a cardiologist's worst nightmare. And those rolls -- small, soft specimens of perfection whose leftovers from the basket the waitress would dutifully bag so you could eat "falayda" -- for later, for the uninitiated.

True, the Jews who would ensure there were lines out the door at the Rascal House almost any time of year are fewer in number, having died off or moved to places like Boca Raton, where the Rascal House made an unsuccessful go of it a few years back. And they weren't replaced by those who now make this part of South Florida home or the perennial vacation spot it used to be for those on a budget.

The last couple of times I went I walked right in without a fuss. Where were the long lines, where you waited according to the size of your party? Something didn't feel right. Still, the restaurant had hung on when its less storied rivals had cooked their last blintz. Now the house that Wolfie Cohen built will soon follow.

Another example of how progress isn't necessarily progressive. Nor will what comes next provide anything that tastes nearly as good as what's been coming out of the Rascal House kitchens since 1954. But tradition will always be trumped by the promise of a well-heeled crowd shelling out millions for their place in the sand.

And speaking about trump, yes, the Donald already has his pawprints in Sunny Isles Beach. That should tell you more than you need to know.

A Lot of Blarney in Kearny: When Bad Things Happen to Good Students

Why Do So Many People Hate Matthew LaClair For Being Right?
Matthew LaClair would prefer to be just another junior at Kearny High School in New Jersey. Unfortunately, his history teacher David Paszkiewicz won't let him.
In a story that's gaining in national traction, especially after yesterday's New York Times piece, LaClair recorded the teacher telling his students that if they didn't accept Jesus they would go to hell. For good measure, he proclaimed there were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark, and that there was no scientific basis for evolution. And let's not forget, Paszikewicz intoned, only Christians would be allowed in heaven.
"Basically, what he said is this is the truth," LaClair told Brian Lehrer on WNYC. (Click here for the interview).
The sad part about the Times story was to find out that LaClair has become a pariah for having the temerity to protest when the church-state boundary was repeatedly trampled on by Paszkiewicz, who's a youth church minister outside of school. LaClair has lost friends and even received a death threat.
Paszkiewicz was described by the school's principal as an "excellent" teacher, even though he appears to have a rather fuzzy knowledge of the Constitution. Judge for yourself from these clips.
And judging is what many people in Kearny, a blue-collar, perhaps too-close-knit town about 10 miles from Manhattan, are doing.
The level of hate directed at LaClair and his father Paul, a lawyer now considering suing the school district is startling and scary. Reading the message boards at Kearnyontheweb.com make the town seem more like a 21st-century version of Salem.
Give Paul LaClair a lot of credit for giving as good as he got on the boards, and for shredding Paszkiewicz and the district that tolerates his proselytizing, in a letter to the local paper, The Observer.
For now, school officials are hiding under the "it's a personnel matter" excuse to decline to say what actions they belatedly took against Paszkiewicz, who likely would have continued on his "fire and brimstone" approach to history were it not for LaClair.
But the fact that they dawdled in the face of incontrovertible proof of Paszkiewicz's pedagogical malfeasance, and that so many people have blindly rushed to support him, tells you a lot more than you need to know about Kearny.
The odd part, this whole episode may be the best education Matthew LaClair's ever received in Kearny. Suffice to say, he deserves a lot better.

Knicks-Nuggets Slugfest Inspires Rare Moment of Candor on MSG Network

Mike Breen Tells It Like It Is, Rather Than How James Dolan Wants It To Be
Those who admit nowadays to being fans of the New York Knicks were incensed enough by James Dolan, owner of the Knicks and chairman of Madison Square Garden, when he dumped the peerless Marv Albert as the team's play-by-play announcer in 2004.
Besides providing game calls against which all others are compared to, Albert was unfailingly honest with his audience, sometimes too much so, as far as the Knicks were concerned. Dolan, with his typical cluelessness and ignorance of Knicks traditions, preferred a cheerleader instead.
That's something Albert never was nor will be, which is why he now calls Nets games on YES and other NBA games for TNT.
Those who work Knicks games on the MSG Network nowadays are more given toward spin, sycophancy and utter lack of peripheral vision, as Bob Raissman reminded us in his Daily News column on Sunday. It's a shame given that bootlicking broadcasters are not standard issue in New York, unlike in many other cities.
So, it was refreshing that Albert's play-by-play replacement Mike Breen -- an exception to the above -- not hold back on Saturday night when the Knicks and Nuggets squared off to fight instead of shoot hoops.
“Another dismal evening at Madison Square Garden, and this one turned ugly not only from a basketball standpoint," is one of the Breen quotes chronicled by Richard Sandomir in The New York Times.
Or, how about:
"This is turning into some kind of disaster" or "Just makes you sick to your stomach."
Not exactly a cheerleader, huh? But since Breen grew up idolizing Albert, as many announcers did, you wouldn't expect anything less.

Did Isiah Thomas Want To Break a Neck or Foot? Dueling Quotes In The New York Times

Either Way, Bruce Bowen Won't Be Getting Any Christmas Cards From the Knicks

The underachieving New York Times sports section has kicked into gear with its coverage of the latest incarnation of Saturday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Of course, the Mecca of boxing was not expecting Denver Nuggets superstar Carmelo Anthony and New York Knicks Coach Isiah Thomas to be on the main card.

Lots being written about what Thomas supposedly telling Anthony late in the game "Hey, don't go to the basket" as the Nuggets were finishing up a blowout of the woeful Knicks.

That led to a flagrant foul, 10 players ejected, a sucker punch by Anthony and Thomas at a loss of words trying to explain himself. We should find out later today who will be punished and how badly, but it's instructive to step back in time for another incident in November when Thomas didn't like the aggressive defense being played by Bruce Bowen (left) of the San Antonio Spurs.

"Break his neck," that's what Bowen said he heard, writes Selena Roberts in her column in today's Times.

But Knicks beat writer Howard Beck, in a front-page story on the incident, says "Thomas was also heard shouting to his players to "Break his feet."

Feet, neck, what's a broken body part between friends?

Of course, getting a quote right is far from an exact science, as the media consistently demonstrates.

To wit, Alan Hahn in Newsday says the quote was 'Next time he does that, break his -- foot!', though in a Nov. 14 article, he said Thomas called for Bowen's neck to be snapped in pieces, though I doubt Thomas used an ellipsis.

The Daily News' Frank Isola also said it was the foot, a version echoed by Mike Finger from the San Antonio Express-News.

Confused? You should be. But we are happy to report that Bowen has all limbs and body parts intact, at least for now.

NPR Goes Into the Way-Back Machine for "All Things Considered"

Was a little weird but nonetheless comforting yesterday to hear Noah Adams filling in for Robert Siegel on "All Things Considered" yesterday, given that he had been with the weekday edition of the program from 1982-1987 and 1989-2003, and co-hosted with Siegel and Linda Wertheimer for much of that latter stretch.
Adams has been heard occasionally as of late as a "senior correspondent," which is the same title NPR wanted to give Bob Edwards when the put him out to pasture.
Adams, though, actually files reports -- Edwards quit to go to XM before that could happen -- and is also busy writing books.
Actually, Adams' stint is in keeping with the NPR spirit. Many of its stars keep popping up either co-hosting or filing special reports, including Linda Wertheimer, and the nonpareil Susan Stamberg.

Double Dipping With Anderson Cooper

So, Anderson Cooper had a nice story on "60 Minutes" Sunday when he interviewed a former MP whose life has descended into a surreal kind of hell since being the whistleblower on Abu Ghraib.
The Coop is doing five stories for 60M this year, though it's unclear if his arrangement with CBS gives him free rein to recycle those segments for his own "Anderson Cooper 360" on CNN.
But that's just what he did last night. Yes, CBS did get first dibs on the interview. Nonetheless, have to wonder if they were expecting a rival to get a second crack at the story.
Not exactly giving comfort to the enemy, especially when the correspondent works both sides of the fence.
Still, this might not be the kind of precedent CBS envisioned setting, and one they didn't have to visit when Christiane Amanpour was doing similar duty.

George Riggs Drinks From A Half-Full Cup At The Mercury-News

Forgive the Newspaper Guild, Though, If They Decline A Sip
Hardly a shock that George Riggs, publisher of the San Jose Mercury-News would call the tentative contract he reached with The Newspaper Guild a "good deal for both sides."
While, yes, the number of threatened Guild layoffs was reduced from 69 to 27.51, the upshot is those who are lift will be kicking in serious dollars for health care, losing their pension plan and getting annual 2 percent pay increases.
It's not so much a win-win, as it is a win-save face, which was reflected in the glum assessment by Guild officer Luther Jackson: ``I think we did the best we could in a very tough strategic environment.''
And he's right.
Which is sad.
Assuming ratification, what remains to be seen is the effect on the layoffs on top of the cutbacks already suffered at The Merc, the one-time pig in doo-doo of the newspaper world during the dot-com boom now slashing and burning its way to survival.
There's still a passionate if dispirited bunch of journos there, as evidenced by the Save the Merc Web site. Now we'll see if they'll be allowed to practice great newspapering again, or, as MediaNews, might prefer, fill in the blanks in the spaces where there are no ads.
Those left in the newsroom have to find a way to still care. Same goes for the Merc's readers.

Swallowing Hard At The San Jose Mercury-News

A New Contract Yes, Happiness In The Newsroom, No
The Newspaper Guild at The San Jose Mercury-News reached a deal with owner William "Lean Dean" Singleton.
The best you can say about it is, it could have been worse. Just ask reporters at The San Francisco Chronicle, who agreed to a deal that was just that.
Let's take a look at the more salient details, posted on Romenesko, to see how that once-proud Knight Ridder flagship fared.
--A two-year deal in which the number of Guild layoffs is reduced from 69 to 27.51 (don't ask how they came up with .51) and that the paper has guaranteed there will be no layoffs until at least June 30.
Which means come July 1, all bets are off, except for the one that staff will likely be further trimmed, if circulation and advertising patterns continue as expected. The Guild knows that, so does the Merc. If anything, it gives vulnerable reporters and editors time to look elsewhere before they're tapped on the shoulder.
--A $1,000 signing bonus to ease the pain of now ponying up about 20 percent of the cost of health insurance. That will more than offset the average 2 percent annual pay increases during the contract. Sure, it sucks, but the Merc newsroom is now among the many feeling this pinch.
--Ditto for the frozen pension plan, which will now be replaced by a 401K, with a 50 percent match up to a six-percent employee contribution.
--Victories, if you want to call them that, was the dropping of management's insistence of eliminating the "evergreen clause," which keeps the terms of an expired contract in place while negotiations continue; no 40-hour workweek and no "management rights clause." But those are things that employers throw into the soup during negotiations, with little or no expectation that they become bargaining chips. That's labor relations biz.
Could the Guild have done better? Armchair quarterbacks might say yes, but then again this is a sickly industry that shows no signs of getting better.
The real losers might be the Guild members over at the Philadelphia newspapers, which are still trying to iron out a deal on wages, benefits and pensions after settling on non-economic issues. The union had been threatening a strike but backed off amid signs of progress. But management may be emboldened by what happened at the Merc, the Inquirer's and Daily News' former corporate sibling.
The Guild in Philly may talk a good game, but ultimately they may have no choice but to swallow hard and accept a deal that's not to their liking, just like the reporters at the Merc will likely do.

Brian Tierney Continues To Make The Inky Look Dinky

More Evidence That Philadelphia's Would-Be Media Savior Is Desperately Searching For A Clue
The end of this Wall Street Journal interview with Philadelphia Newspapers major domo Brian Tierney is revealing:

WSJ: You are in the midst of negotiating with some of your unions , and there is concern at the Inquirer about editorial layoffs. Do you think advertisers care about staffing levels and depth of coverage? If you cut back on resources, do you think advertisers will complain or grow more wary?
Mr. Tierney: I haven't met an advertiser out there who thinks ... that the secret to being better is to necessarily have a lot more people doing it.

Further evidence, as if we needed more, that advertisers have any clue about the media they participate in. And, so it seems, newspaper publishers.
True, you could conceivably do more with less, but the Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News have done with a lot less, and it shows. The newsroom continues to shrink along with circulation. Does anybody think about cause and effect? Not Tierney, who tells the Journal he's content to let his papers focus on neighborhood news and high-school lacrosse scores than the big-picture enterprise pieces that won the Inky a rafter full of Pulitzers.
The man who was supposed to be Philadelphia's newspaper savior is instead solely focused on saving money. But there are enough tombstones in the newspaper graveyard to show that being pennywise is always pound-foolish.
The question remains as to whether Tierney will realize that before it's too late.

Why It Sucks To Be Kevin Convey

Sure, It's Great To Be The Editor of A Big-City Paper, But Not When It's The Boston Herald
At least give Boston Herald owner Pat Purcell credit for not calling it quits, at least not yet, in trying to right the listing ship that is his also-ran Beantown tabloid.
Staff cuts, pay freezes, selling off suburban newspapers, Purcell is pulling out all the stops to keep pace with the Globe, even though the gang at Morrissey Street is also reeling from a circulation freefall.
Still, they persevere over at Herald HQ, where Kevin Convey's been elevated from Managing Editor to Editor after Ken Chandler fled back to New York to become a consultant to corporations on how to polish their image in the media.
As more people find newspapers dated, irrelevant, dense or unnecessary in an age of Internet instant gratification, the only red ink will be stanched on the balance sheet will be to stop putting black ink on newsprint.
It may not happen now, maybe not even in five years. But there will be a time when papers like the Boston Herald, i.e. dinosaurs otherwise known as the second paper in a two-paper town, will cease to exist.
The staff of the Philadelphia Daily News should be all but resigned to that reality. Ditto the Chicago Sun-Times. You don't want it to happen, you'll give it your best, but you know it won't be enough in the end. Sad, but inexorably true.
Meantime, enjoy the ride. The Herald, to its credit, is still pumping out news items you won't see in the more staid Globe, like this bitch-slap of Jill Carroll, who apparently segued effortlessly from journalistic hero to uppity primadonna.

Fox Squeezes O.J. Off TV and the Bookshelves

Even Rupert Murdoch Got The Creeps From Hearing Simpson's "Confession"
Judith Regan no longer has to utter her lame mea culpas about interviewing him for a two-part Fox special and paying him $3.5 million to essentially own up to what most people assume he did 12 years ago.
Fox pulled the plug on the special, in the face of a revolt from affiliates, not to mention Bill O'Reilly, and deep-sixed the book, though Regan Books will likely still have to pony up the cash for the advance.
Reportedly, O.J. hasn't seen that money yet, which no doubt cheers the Brown and Goldman estates, who've been dunning Simpson for cash from the civil trial that he's never made an effort to pay.
So the right move has been made.
Now comes the harder questions. Like what was Regan thinking when she green-lit this travesty?
Fox may have been the home of the likes of "When Animals Attack" but didn't Peter Ligouri and the other programming honchos even give pause before they put this show on the schedule? Sure, the network's fall ratings have been in the toilet, but you can't go trolling for Nielsens in the gutter.
It appears the Foxies belatedly got some religion in the last week, as they put on a united front of "no comments" as just about every TV reporter in the land wanted to get their side as story after story was written effectively slapping the network upside the head.
Of course, they'll be chastened. At least until the next sweeps in February. Somehow, Kevin Federline -- "As You've Never Seen Him Before!!!!" could be coming to a Fox station before long. "Kevin -- How I Didn't Do It Or Much Of Anything" should be riveting television.

The Peacock Continues To Shed: New York Edition

NBC News continues to shrink as promised. First, Dateline correspondents Edie Magnus and Rob Stafford got the boot, the highest profile pink-slippees among the layoffs at the network news shows.
Now the axe is visiting local newsrooms at the network's O&O's. Gawker.com and Broadcasting & Cable are reporting that longtime stalwarts at WNBC-TV news, Jane Hanson, Joe Avellar and Dr. Max Gomez have uttered their last on Channel 4.
No sentimentality here. There was nearly a half-century experience at the station between the three of them, with Hanson dating back to 1979.
Imagine a lot anxiety is ruling the roost at WMAQ in Chicago and KNBC in Los Angeles, among other outposts. If you know of any staff excisions, please do tell.
Alas, 'tis the season for these sort of things. If misery loves company, then it's going to be positively smitten over at 30 Rock.

John Tierney's "Polack" Problem

All Of A Sudden It's OK To Hurl Ethnic Slurs On The New York Times Op-Ed Page

The timid church mice that populate The New York Times copy desk are up to their usual no good.
Numerous transgressions have revealed they tread carefully, or not at all, when it comes to the sacred cows at the paper, namely star critics and columnists who are often unchecked regardless if what they write might be inane, obtuse, incoherent, or just plain wrong.
Or borderline bigotry, in the case of John Tierney.
The sort-of conservative columnist used his column Saturday to provide his three cents about Borat.
Not to worry, he laughed in all the right places and he gives appropriate props to Sacha Baron Cohen.
But he couldn’t walk out of the multiplex feeling sorry for the fine people of Kazakhstan, and what all us xenophobes might think of their land.

They’re depicted as rapists and prostitutes, bigots and idiots. I instinctively side with comedians when the antidefamation police come after them, but in this case I sympathize with the Kazakhs angry at becoming the new global Polack joke. The country has enough problems as is.

Gee, thanks, John for being a First Amendment paragon. But since when did it become OK to put ethnic slurs in an Op-Ed column? Why was it so important for Tierney to straddle his bully pulpit and use “Polack” when he just as easily could have used “Polish?”
Readers could have still given Tierney the knowing glance and validation he was so desperately seeking without having to hurt and alienate an entire ethnic group.

This is not a case of the politically correct police paying a visit to West 43rd St. By any measure, Tierney wouldn’t have gotten away – or so we hope – with using other slurs. Swap out “Polack” with “Wop,” “Kraut” or “Mick.” Even the see-no-evil copy editors probably would have flagged those. Maybe Tierney and the Times view “Polack” as sounding more benign, even playful than the others. But it’s not.
Tierney surely knows that, yet he put the insult in there anyway, almost as if he was daring his editors to take it out. Being of the spineless variety, they declined to take the bait.
Shame on them. And Tierney.

"All Things Considered" Lets Listeners Ask The Questions, But Doesn't Provide The Answers

Thursdays is when NPR's "All Things Considered" opens its email inbox to see what comes spilling out from listeners, many of which are not shy in expressing their views.
A good number apparently wrote in criticizing the network's calling of the Ohio governor's race when polls in some area remained open.
One writer wondered why. But hosts Michelle Norris and Melissa Block were only there to read, not to respond.
One good place to turn would have been NPR's ombudsman. Alas, William Marimow lasted in that job all of two weeks -- after previously being NPR's vice president of news -- before decamping Wednesday to take on the role of executive editor/executioner at his beleaguered hometown paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
It's a much different newspaper than the one where he one two Pulitzers in 1977 and 1985. The glory days have been replaced by a desperate owner looking to slash and burn through the newsroom to achieve cost savings.
Before long , that ombudsman job is gonna look like one cushy gig. Good luck.

MAXjet Crashes And Burns While Trying To Back Out Of A Bad Story

What Happens When Your PR Person Is The One To Blame For Your Bad PR

This has actually been out in circulation for a while, but I first caught up to it over the weekend in reading the October issue of Business Traveler magazine and haven't seen anything else on this dustup. It's a doozy and definitely worth your attention.

One reason a magazine like Business Traveler exists is to give its presumably well-heeled readership a glance at what life is like at the front of the plane before they plunk down some serious coin for a seat, or convince their employers to do so.
In each issue the magazine reviews the service on several long-haul itineraries. Its reviewers get to deal with the jet lag so you don't have to.
The reviews offer an opportunity for airlines to get some seriously good press in a publication that reaches a critical mass of potential customers. Or not.
Pity MAXjet, one of the airlines offering an all-business-class service between JFK and London for less than what the major airlines charge.
Nice concept, bad execution, according to Adam Rodriguez's account. Among his grievances was being plagued by flight attendants who first ignored him or were downright surly, especially the head purser on the London-JFK run.

When I displayed the temerity to request a double Bloody Mary, she turned me down flat. I pointed out -- respectfully enough, I thought -- that I typically ordered the same cocktail in other airlines' business-class cabines ... "I don't give a shit," she explained. "I'm quitting next week."

Later, Rodriguez asked this genius for a new digital entertainment player, which all passengers get but which Rodriguez and other passengers found continually malfunctioned.

"Honey, if you don't like it, take a nap," Janet shouted at me as she ordered a colleague to confiscate my unfinished tray of food, while she whisked away my water bottle and my entertainment system. She added that if I objected, she would have security meet me at arrival and detain me for hours."

Rodriguez managed to avoid the shackles after getting an apology from the captain on that flight from hell for Janet's behavior and gave him a business card with the CEO's email address.
Soon after, he was contacted by Lori Tucker, MAXjet's spokeswoman and later received an email apology from the airline's CEO Gary Rogliano.

Judging by the portion printed in the magazine, Rogliano was sufficiently obsequious and contrite. But here's where it really gets good.

Rodriguez wanted to follow up with Rogliano after getting the email. But Rogliano made the fatal mistake of shunting Rodriguez over to Tucker, an experienced PR pro out of Dallas who apparently took leave of her senses and proved herself in need of a remedial course or three in media relations.

First, Tucker tried to dissuade Rodriguez from running his review by offering free MAXjet tickets to the magazine's staff. Rodriguez demurred. That put Tucker into desperation mode, as Rodriguez recounted.

She said that she had been directed to do "whatever it took" to keep this story out of the magazine, and noted that MAXjet had received other bad reviews that she felt were unfair.
I subsequently offered to give MAXjet an advance draft of our article so that it could respond in print. Ms. Tucker replied she was only interested in keeping my unfavorable review out of the magazine ... Ms. Tucker actually threatend to accuse our group of being drunk or on drugs during our flights, and warned ominously that someone would be "looking into our background" to "see who we were."

Oooooooo!!

Kudos to Rodriguez for not caving in, especially because most of the magazine's advertising is from airlines.
A dunce cap to Tucker for attempted bribery. That she even attempted such a maneuver is likely evidence she's been able in the past to wine, dine and comp travel journalists, who collectively have never put ethics high on their to-do lists. That Rodriguez refused to take that bait must have sent her running for the Advil.
As for Rogliano, he doesn't seem too hot and bothered by this episode. A look at the latest MAXjet press releases show they've emanated from Tucker & Associates, although the media contact is not Tucker.
Which might be the best move MAXjet has made in a while.

Dean Baquet Walks The Plank

The Other Shoe Drops At The Los Angeles Times; Will He Put Down Martyr As The Latest Entry On His Resume?
The Tribune Company, to no one's surprise, refused to blink.
The beancounters in Chicago decided to turn L.A. Times Executive EditorDean Baquet into a hero-martyr by showing him the door.
As usual, great timing on Election Day.
Apparently populism has no place in the newsroom, especially when the man at the barricades is senior management.
Clearly, given Baquet's open and rather vocal defiance of cuts demanded by Tribune, it was not a question of if but when he'd be deposed.
Too bad.
Of course, there could be Baquet II if a local billionaire like David Geffen steps up to buy the Times even though Tribune has said it's not for sale.
As for who's left? Well, publisher David Hiller is promising no layoffs -- at least not this year. Hardly reassuring, and a fate that what is still one of the nation's best newspapers doesn't come close to deserving.

I Can't Sleep, I'm A N.Y. Times Sportswriter!

Clifton Brown Gets Some Serious Frequent-Flier Mileage To Make Up For A Lack of ZZZs
The front page of today's New York Times sports section has a dispatch from Clifton Brown on last night's Colts-Patriots game played in Foxboro, Mass.
All well and good. Then you go to the bottom of D-5 for a second-day story about Saturday night's Floyd Mayweather-Carlos Baldomir bout in Las Vegas. It was also written yesterday by Brown.
Which means he finished the piece early Sunday morning after pounding out the main story earlier for the late editions, hopefully got a few hours of sleep, then bopped over to McCarran Airport for the first flight out to Boston in time to get to Gillette Stadium for the football game, which the Colts won 27-20.
And you thought being a sportswriter was glamorous. Buy that man a double espresso pronto.

Going Beyond John Kerry To See The Real War

N.Y. Times Correspondent C.J. Chivers Not Only Provides Gripping Slice Of Life On The Front, But Shows Why Overseas Reporting Still Matters
C.J. Chivers has proven to be one of the more gifted foreign correspondents for The New York Times, one who often gets out in the field and comes back with intriguing portraits that desk jockeys more comfy with press releases and official sources never get to see.
The latest example today for the Moscow-based Chivers was his travels with a Navy medic operating just outside of Falluja. In Petty Officer Third Class Dustin Kirby, Chivers hit pay dirt.

In one course, an advanced trauma treatment program he had taken before deploying, he said, the instructors gave each corpsman an anesthetized pig.
“The idea is to work with live tissue,” he said. “You get a pig and you keep it alive. And every time I did something to help him, they would wound him again. So you see what shock does, and what happens when more wounds are received by a wounded creature.”
“My pig?” he said. “They shot him twice in the face with a 9-millimeter pistol, and then six times with an AK-47 and then twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. And then he was set on fire.”
“I kept him alive for 15 hours,” he said. “That was my pig.”
“That was my pig,” he said.

You don't get that from a briefing inside the Green Zone.
And you feel safe concluding there are a lot of others like Kirby out there. The Republicans know it. John Kerry knows it. Which is why the firestorm he ignited by flubbing a word in a bad joke needs to go away and fast. In its own way, the Times, by putting this story above the fold on the front page, reminded everyone that sniping in Washington is always trumped by snipers in Anbar Province.

To be sure, the Times knows what it has in Chivers, a one-time Marine recruiter who came to the Times from the Providnece Journal-Bulletin. His reporting from Afghanistan helped the paper secure its 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its 9/11 follow-ups.
If you want to see what Chivers can do outside a war zone, check out his trip deep into Kazakhstan in early winter to report on the importance of the horse and how the locals use every part of it for food and sustenance, just like they have done for thousands of years.
That story moved nearly a year ago and left a deep impression for both its detail and effortless prose. Today's dispatch will do the same.

Maine TV GM Decrees Global Warming Doesn't Exist

Michael Palmer Turns A Deaf Ear To An Inconvenient Truth
Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that in Maine, a state with two seasons -- July and winter -- you'd find a skeptic or two when it came to global warming.
Still, it's troubling when that skepticism turns to intolerance, especially when it comes from the general manager of two TV stations, as The New York Times reports.
Michael Palmer, who runs the ABC and Fox affiliates in Bangor, decreed that no global-warming stories will heat up the airwaves he oversees, likening hype over global warming to scares over killer bees and Y2K.
As for all the incontrovertible evidence? Feh. Science, schmience. Don't need any of that hooey Down East. Guess until he can put out the garbage in February without pulling on a parka, we'll
have to hear about global warming from every other news outlet in Maine.
Thanks, Mike, for taking on the experts. Oh, and call your office. The Luddites would like you to fill out the membership application that's been sitting on your desk.

Implosion Alert: Newspaper Circulation Continues To Tumble While Good Ideas On How To Stop The Slide Are Hard To Come By

Like Finding Yourself Careering Down A Black-Diamond Trail With One Ski
To no one's surprise, just about every major metro newspaper took another body blow with release of the latest FAS-FAX circulation numbers.
The one exception: The New York Post, which for the first time is selling more copies than The Daily News, though that rather Phyrric victory comes only because it sells for a quarter in the city compared to a half-buck for the News, and Rupert Murdoch is content to underwrite losses that may run north of $40 million a year.
Still a win's a win, no matter how expensive.
You have to think that folks at such places as The Los Angeles Times (down 8 percent), Boston Globe (down 6.7 percent) and Philadelphia Inquirer (down 7.5 percent) would have liked to have any good news, regardless of its price tag right about now.
Consider their plight, despite remaining profitable albeit less so in years past. The Times is likely facing more Tribune-mandated trims, with or without Dean Baquet at the helm.
The Globe just extracted a contract from The Newspaper Guild, which largely ties pay increases to revenue.
Meanwhile, staff at the Inky and its sibling The Philadelphia Daily News took a strike vote when new owner Brian Tierney said he needs cuts and fast because cash flow fell far short of what he expected and those darn bankers want their notes paid on time.
Which is why these and other papers need publishers with a clue. The natural tempation would be to slash and burn their way out of this morass. Lower overhead might be nice, but that's often accompanied by a diminished editorial product, giving more people than ever less of a reason to pick up the paper.
Pretty soon the papers will need a tourniquet instead of a Band-Aid. But eventually they'll be no one left to stop the bleeding.

Testicle Mania! Comedy Central's Ballsy Approach To Broadband Programming

"Baxter & McGuire" Allows The Family Jewels To Shine
Comedy Central will unveil next month a show about two buddies. Did we mention that they're also testicles?
Uh, yeah. Not a misprint.
"Baxter & McGuire" is among the network's forays into original broadband programming. Suffice to say, it's one that's not ready for prime time, or even late-night fringe, for that matter, when Comedy Central sometimes goes uncut on weekends. Rare is the media buyer who'd have the balls to put his client on a show like this.
The two three-minute segments I watched are moderately amusing, even if they might hit a little close to home for some guys. To wit: one segment has our heroes turning blue during an episode of coitus interruptus. To the extent that can be funny, it is.

Swift Justice For New York Times Icon David Rosenbaum

Second Of His Two Killers Convicted Of Murder In Swift Move Through Justice System
This is how stupid Percy Jordan is. First, he's arrested for murdering New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum.
After an accomplice, his cousin Michael Hamlin, pleads guilty to second-degree murder, Jordan could have copped to that plea and maybe stand a chance of getting out of prison before he died. That's unlikely to happen now.
Jordan inexplicably decided to take his chances at trial, and was convicted of first-degree murder with a minimum sentence of 30 years to life, despite overwhelming evidence against him, not to mention Hamlin's testimony.
Good riddance.
Beyond losing a journalist who had contributed so much to his peers better understanding the inner workings of the government and who had so much left to offer, the tragedy of his death is compounded by the fact that he could have been saved.
But a misdiagnosis at the hospital -- Rosenbaum's traumatic blow to the head from Jordan striking him with a pipe was mistaken for intoxication -- and an indifferent and incompetent response from paramedics helped seal his fate.
That's led to a lot of reforms and soul-searching in D.C. over how to properly respond to emergency calls. Sadly, that will also be part of Rosenbaum's remarkable legacy.

New York Times Copy Editors Want You To Know They Rocked On The SAT Verbal Section

Using Three-Dollar College Words For Fun and Profit, and Wrongly at That
A front-page story in yesterday's New York Times reported on the latest politicial sex scandal Israeli style.
Juicy stuff. Too bad the lead was written in a way few but the most erudite and those cramming for a spelling bee could know. In other words, in a way totally opposite to how you're supposed to write a newspaper article, even one in the Times.
The first paragraph of the story by Dina Kraft, headined "Israel Warriors Find Machismo Is Way Of Past" starts off:

For decades it was widely accepted that some of Israel’s top military officers and government ministers considered sexual encounters with female employees a seigneurial right.

Come again?
To save you a trip to the dictionary, seigneurial is an adjective pertaining to a seignior, another word for a lord, especially a feudal lord.
Oy!
True, the Israeli military had its share of macho leaders who may have viewed it as part of their portfolio to drop their pants with any comely teenage secretary in their midst in order to cement their Zionist credentials.
Israeli women studies professor Avigail Moor notes in the article that: "Young women serving in these high-status platoons were almost led to believe that it was something that spoke highly of them if they were chosen to be a sexual partner of a high commanding officer.”
But hardly to the level of a lord being serviced by his vassals.
And even if that was true, a word like seigneurial doesn't belong on the front page of a newspaper. Copy editors at the Times often forget that the paper's mission is to inform readers, not to show off how smart they are.

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back At NBC News As Jeff Zucker & Co. Slash Away At The Peacock

If you're a fan of hard news, you had to be cheered recently when NBC opened up a Beirut bureau around the time when Israel and Hezbollah squared off.
Then came word last week that the network was opening -- actually reopening -- a bureau in Bangkok, to supplement its efforts in Asia.
Since the broadcast networks foreign efforts had become rather dessicated over the last two decades, this was a most welcome reversal of fortune.
We'll see how long it lasts, after NBC big cheese Jeff Zucker (above) announced the network was cutting 700 jobs company-wide, including its 11 news divisions.
The cuts are no surprise to NBC insiders, who just have to look at the ratings numbers to know something would eventually be up.
While the Hollywood Reporter says Telemundo and NBC News Channel will be among those hardest hit, no show will be immune, if layoffs at other networks are a guide. And that includes on-air talent, according to the AP.
Fasten your seatbelts.

Read NBC's official announcement here:

Payback Time: Philadelphia Newspapers Owner Brian Tierney Rears His Ugly Head

"Remember that guy who said he was about to start the next great era in journalism? He was full of shit.”
You knew it would happen. Local rich guy swoops in to buy his city's newspapers and promises big things. Only thing: Rich guy paid a lot of money and there's that little matter of the $350 million in debt he rang up in the process.
So, to no one's surprise, he's rattling union cages, threatening layoffs, pension freezes and other calamities.
Such is the situation faced by the staffs at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, the Philadelphia Weekly reports.
It's good to be the king, but Tierney somehow forgot he has to make the monthly installments on his crown. Right now, he thinks his serfs should help pick up the tab. Grab those pitchforks now.
Yet another reason why employees at The Los Angeles Times should stop pining for one of the billionaires who's been sniffing around the property to become their savior. They won't. They can't. Newspapers are a business, not vanity projects. You become a valuable public commodity only after you break even -- and pay off the bankers.

In Praise Of "The Voice" --- More Tributes To Christopher Glenn

Many people who work at CBS News Radio tend to stay a good long while (though I managed all of 7 1/2 years), which is why so many there acutely feel the loss of Christopher Glenn.
Many of them arrived early in their careers to listen and learn from a man who long ago was already cementing his legend.
My friends Steve Kathan and Paul Farry have tributes to Chris today at CBSNews.com. Steve is filling in this week as the anchor of the "World News Roundup," the signature radio broadcast at CBS, which Chris anchored at the time of his retirement in February, and which Paul produces.
It's a show that often leaves its competition in the dust come radio awards time. Just two days ago, Paul picked up an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association on behalf of the show, whose authority and legacy will be forever burnished by the booming bass of a voice that was Chris' calling card.
Also weighing in with his usual eloquence is my buddy Greg Kandra, a writer for Katie Couric, who also spent time in the radio newsroom working with Chris.
"He had a voice that mingled cognac and cigarette smoke -- he was an inveterate, ceaseless smoker -- and both Chris and that famous voice seemed ageless."

Going Gently Into The Good Night With Christopher Glenn

One Of Radio's Great Voices Has Been Stilled
Beyond the sadness over the unexpected passing of Christopher Glenn at age 68, I was surprised to hear he had died of liver cancer. Same would go for anyone who worked with him at CBS.
For Chris loved his cigarettes, which he would puff away prodigiously in Studio 3 of the CBS Broadcast Center -- when that was still allowed -- while doing "The World Tonight." Sometimes, he might even take a drag before telling his listeners about the latest warning about smoking from the Surgeon General.
Later, when smoking was verboten inside the building, Chris would waste no time scurrying outside for a nicotine fix. At least you knew where to find him.
Beyond the cigarettes, though, you always knew you were working with a special talent, as I noted when word of his retirement was announced in January. For those of us who had spent our careers at CBS working with him, not to mention having grown up hearing him on one of the 5,000+ "In The News" segments he did, it was hard to imagine a broadcast day without him.
But on Feb. 23, he called it a career, and was happy in retirement, by all accounts.
A shame that his induction into the Radio Hall of Fame in less than three weeks will be posthumous. Then again, he was modest about his immense talent, more abashed than anything else about the tributes heaped upon him when he left the air.
Now it's time to sit back and remember. Better yet, sit back and listen.
You may not have known Chris Glenn, but if you hear some of his work, you'll know a lot.

P.S. Kudos to Brian Williams for a nice tribute to Chris on "NBC Nightly News."

Gerry Studds Makes His Mark In The New York Times By Dying

What may have been a first in The New York Times, or any other MSM publication, occurred over the weekend in the obit for Gerry Studds, the first openly gay Congressman. The paper attributed word of his death to Studds' "husband."
Not "companion." Not "lover." Not "life mate."
Instead, we got husband, which, of course, is accurate given that Studds lived in Massachusetts, where two men can live in wedded bliss.
The AP, whose obit was used by the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, also referred to Dean Hara as husband, as did the Boston Globe, but not the Washington Post, which instead used the phrase "who married Mr. Studds in 2004 shortly after same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts" when referring to Hara.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, a usually-more-enlightened paper, also couldn't bring itself to call Hara a "husband," rewriting the AP obit to use the "who married Mr. Studds shortly after same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts in 2004" terminology.
In the news business, they're called "weasel words."
For those newspapers' gay readers and employees, they're probably calling them lame.

Steve Lyons Scapegoated: Announcer May Be A Lunkhead, But Is Fox Any Better For Pandering to Show How Enlightened It Is?

No Offense, Jose Mota
Steve Lyons shouldn't have been fired by Fox Sports for making comments offensive to Latinos on Friday night's ALCS broadcast. He should've been dumped long ago for being uninteresting, stating the obvious and not providing viewers much of a clue that he once made his living playing baseball.
Richard Sandomir in The New York Times summed up what led to Lyons's ouster:

Lou Piniella, a guest analyst working with Lyons and Thom Brennaman, noted that the Oakland Athletics could not expect shortstop Marco Scutaro to continue to produce runs as he did when he drove in six during the division series against Minnesota.
Piniella said that expecting similar production would be “like finding a wallet on a Friday night and looking for one on Sunday and Monday, too.” Four minutes later, they had moved to different subjects and Piniella said something in Spanish. “The bilingual Lou Piniella,” Brennaman said.
Lyons said: “Lou’s habla-ing some Español there, and I’m still looking for my wallet. I don’t understand him, and I don’t want to sit close to him now.” The three laughed and continued calling the game.

Dumb, yes. A firing offense? Debatable. Then again, Fox had already suspended Lyons once before for a lame-brained crack at Shawn Green, a Jewish player, for not practicing on Yom Kippur. Apparently at Fox, it's two strikes, yer out.
Lyons was replaced for what turned out to be the final game of the series on Saturday by Los Angeles (I first typed California, then Anaheim)Angels analyst Jose Mota, who does the color on the team's Spanish-language broadcsts, but also does some Fox gigs.
No knock on Mota, who knows his stuff and seamlessly blended into the booth with Brennaman and Piniella. Still, you have to wonder if Lyons had trash-talked another ethnic whether Mota would have been there.
Fox gave itself cover by quickly importing a seasoned and informed voice, but the ethnic link to Mota and the lunkhead Lyons' remarks were a little too obvious. Fox could find a better way to say it's sorry than by pandering.

Lyons could have company on the unemployment line. Lamar Thomas, the analyst on Comcast's airing of that Miami-F.I.U. free-for-all where 31 players were suspended for fighting, may be guilty of providing a little too much color to the broadcast.

To wit, this missive, which is among those being aired out of rebroadcasts of the game:

''Now, that's what I'm talking about. You come into our house, you should get your behind kicked. You don't come into the OB playing that stuff. You're across the ocean over there. You're across the city. You can't come over to our place talking noise like that. You'll get your butt beat. I was about to go down the elevator to get in that thing.''

So far, he's being promised with "disciplinary action." Stay tuned to see if Thomas is allowed to coming down with a bad case of brain freeze and do his best contrite routine before he's shown the door.

Air America Gasping For Breath -- Could Chapter 11 Be The Last In Liberal Radio Saga?

Rush Limbaugh's Having A Good Laugh Right About Now
Air America is bankrupt, fiscally speaking.
A lot of reasons why you shouldn't feel bullish about their future, but you should root for them anyway.
If you'd like to see just how much they owe -- and it's a lot to a lot of parties -- The Smoking Gun has the filing.
In the end, the concept of an all-liberal cum progressive talk network going 24/7 might not be a going concern. But as some posters on the New York Radio Message Board have suggested, AAR might be worth more in pieces than as a whole entity.
In other words, syndicate the most popular hosts, Al Franken, Randi Rhodes, etc., and don't tie down affiliates to carrying all the programming.
There are enough talk stations out there who would welcome some fresh voices, especially if they're shut out from carrying reactionary gabbers like Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity and Beck in their market.
Now's the time to test the waters, because the ship is sinking fast.

Chris Wallace Realizes That Being A Jackass To The New York Times Wasn't Such A Good Idea, After All

Is He Blue? Yes!
The Chris Wallace-Bill Clinton donnybrook refuses to go away, thanks to Wallace, who doth protest way too much.
Wallace crossed the line from legitimate questioner to partisan attack dog when he ambushed Clinton with questions about Osama Bin Laden and then played the role of hurt puppy when his motives were called into account.
Which may have put him in a sour mood when Deborah Solomon interviewed him for The New York Times Magazine and was asked what political party he belonged to.
"None of your business," came the reply.
Which was obnoxious if nothing else, and disingenuous to boot, as The Washington Post tells us. Shock! The Fox News Sunday host is a Democrat, albeit a reluctant one.
"The reason I'm a registered Democrat is that in Washington, D.C., there is really only one party," Wallace fessed up to the Post. "If you want a say in who's going to be the next mayor or councilman, you have to vote in the Democratic primary."
Oh.
The Post helpfully points out that there is a Republican and an independent on the district council. But I guess Wallace's ego is apparently too bruised to worry about getting the facts straight. Bill Clinton certainly feels that pain.

When An Aircraft Crashes Into A Manhattan Building, Think Before You Type

As news began breaking about an aircraft that crashed into a high-rise apartment building on the Upper East Side, the Associated Press, as it's paid to do, started cranking out an initial lead. Too bad, it was wrong.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Police say an aircraft has crashed into a building on Manhattan's Upper East Side at 72nd Street and York Avenue. It is near Rockefeller Center.

No, it's not. For those of you unfamiliar with Manhattan geography, Rockefeller Center is located between Fifth and Sixth Avenues from 48th-51st streets.
In other words, nowhere close to Rockefeller Center, as if that was ever relevant in the first place.
It's a fact that someone at the AP should've gotten right, given that until a couple of years ago its HQ was located at, yep, Rockefeller Center.

Is That Your Entree Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

Foodie Alert! Guangzhou Is Big Dick of the Chinese Restaurant World With Its Own Penis Eatery
Sometimes, you read stories that you're glad you weren't the reporter sent to cover it. This is one of them. Thank you, to Andrew Harding of the BBC for this, um, package, which first ran on Sept. 23, but is definitely worth catching up to.

Shon Gables No Longer Gone

Former WCBS-TV anchor hottie resurfaces on "The View" and is preggers with number two
Good reviews in the Daily News for Shon Gables, the former Channel 2 anchor, who resurfaced yesterday and today on "The View" in a guest-host role.
One nugget of news: She's expecting number two, though no word on who the father is. Gables' first child was with Bryan Abrams of now-defunct boy band Color Me Badd, who Gables sued last year for being a deadbeat dad.
You can color Abrams more or less broke: He now works in an Oklahoma City tire store.
Gables, judging by my mail, has been missed by many Channel 2 viewers, where she co-anchored the low-rated morning news. The show had grown unwieldy with too many anchors sitting at the desk trying to get a word in edgewise, and the entire crew was swept aside.
The station reportedly offered her a weekend gig, which she turned down and Gables hasn't been seen since until yesterday. But apparently she's been busy.

At Least He Didn't Call Them Macacas: Tom (Chiahuahua) Fiedler Says He's Sorry

Learning To Hate Castro At The Miami Herald Without Being Politically Incorrect
Here's how the news business works nowadays. First, Miami Herald editor Tom Fiedler gets into a lather about charges from his own reporters that the paper caved into anti-Castro forces because the paper's Spanish-language version El Nuevo Herald, rehired journalists who also just happened to be on the Radio Marti payroll.
Fiedler's idea of a retort quickly bit him in the ass, as yesterday's Herald reported:

In staff meetings Tuesday, Miami Herald reporters asked whether the paper was caving to critics. Editor Tom Fiedler dismissed that notion, saying the ''22 people who listen to Cuban radio'' were being stirred up by ''little chihuahuas nipping at our heels.'' He later apologized for his choice of words.

Ay, caramba.

Today, Fiedler put on his ashes and sackcloth to apologize. At least he didn't say his own staff quoted him out of context.

I used an unfortunate term, intending only to refer to the persistence and sharpness of the commentary. My intent was not to offend anyone, although I now realize that I did.

Miami New Times provides the context Fiedler left out of his three-paragraph sorrow saga. That includes a denial that the Monday resignation of Herald publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. was due to community pressure over the Radio Marti fiasco and a critical column by Carl Hiaasen that Diaz was on the verge of killing until his bosses at McClatchy intervened at Hiaasen's behest and threat to quit.

Bottom line: Fiedler, a Herald institution, has been doing everything but somersaults to show he's contrite. Time to move on. The anti-Castro faction will bray regardless of what the paper does. For now, the Herald, which has been nothing if not beleaguered in recent years, needs the steady hand of a seasoned leader rather than the turmoil that making him walk the plank would bring.

Meet The Mets (Announcers)

The Garys (Thorne and Cohen) get a Post-Season Taste, While Howie Rose and Tom McCarthy Need To Slide Over
New York Mets fans, in addition to being blessed with the best team in baseball this year, are also treated to a crop of play-by-play announcers who are at the top of their game.
Gary Cohen, who had established himself as the nonpariel radio voice of the team, effortlessly made the transition to the SNY-TV booth and made the analysis of Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling that much better.
The end of the season should have meant Cohen's year was over in the booth. The Mets and WFAN had other ideas, as he's doing an inning each of play-by-play and color on radio. That means the regular first-rate radio team of Howie Rose and Tom McCarthy get a little less mic time, which they are no doubt underwhelmed about.
It was good to hear Cohen again on the radio, especially his gripping call of David Wright's two-run double in the sixth yesterday, but that would have been McCarthy's inning to call. Instead, he provided authoritiative color.
McCarthy, in his rookie season on Metscasts has been consistently excellent. There are those who say he sounds like Cohen, something I don't hear. But it's a most favorable comparison and one McCarthy has said he takes as a high compliment. McCarthy's profile is diminished only in a way listeners can't see. He went on Weight Watchers and dropped 130 pounds.
Mets fans who caught yesterday's game on ESPN heard another familiar voice, Gary Thorne, who was paired with Bob Murphy on radio during the Mets' last championship season in 1986, and did a second stint with the team on TV for a dozen years until 2003.
Too bad the Murph's no longer around to witness this team. Here's to an October filled with happy recaps.

A Journalism Giant In More Ways Than One: Remembering Johnny Apple

There are few newspaper luminaries who, by virtue of seeing their byline, you make a point of reading if for no other reason that you will be engaged, entertained and the time spent reading will have been well worth the effort.
Such were the writings of R.W. Apple, the not-so-gentle giant of The New York Times, who died today of cancer at age 71.
Because of the roilling changes in the newspaper industry, seeing another reporter with as checkered a career is unlikely at best. Few are the correspondents who roam the world, then help define modern political coverage, while then settling into a more comfortable life as an eminent grise, churning out pieces on travel, food and architecture from wherever the mood struck him.
Todd Purdum's obit of Apple is an elegant account of a complex, irascible man that is thankfully atypical of the drearily perfunctory treatment the Times has given many of its own departed. But Apple deserved no less.

With his Dickensian byline, Churchillian brio and Falstaffian appetites, Mr. Apple, who was known as Johnny, was a singular presence at The Times almost from the moment he joined the metropolitan staff in 1963. He remained a colorful figure as new generations of journalists around him grew more pallid, and his encyclopedic knowledge, grace of expression — and above all his expense account — were the envy of his competitors, imitators and peers.

There are many journalists who want to be like him. Too bad, they'll never get the chance.

To get a taste of what Johnny Apple, was most passionate about, this interview from PBS' Newshour offers a nice flavor.

However, this profile from the Seattle Times from 2004 reminds us that Apple was ever the newsman first, gourmand second.