New York Times Gets Cozy With Maria Sharapova

What Happens When Ads Get Too Close For Comfort

Dominating the five-ish pages The New York  Times devoted to sports today (notice I didn't say sports section), the first page is dominated by news of Maria Sharapova calling it quits from tennis at the not-so-ripe age of 32 because injuries and constant pain did her in.

Most of the page, as the Times is prone to do nowadays to cover up its paucity of sports copy, is a striking photo of Sharapova, at once frustrated and content. The next page jumps to a chronology of her remarkable career and the rest of the article by Christopher Clarey. All well and good.

However, immediately adjacent to the jump page is a Nike ad, which, even if you have only a passing knowledge of Sharapova, or just read the preceding spread, you know it's her.

The Clarey article has an interview with Sharapova and the photo was taken by a Times freelancer. But the ad right next to the article? While it may not have been the intent, the end result looks like an advertorial for Sharapova's swan song, in effect paid for by a five-figure Nike ad buy. It would have been much more appropriate--and effective--for the ad to go on the back page of the section, which is mostly taken up by sports news.

The news and business sides of the paper aren't supposed to get involved with each other. But when their worlds collide, somebody has to step in and referee, lest there appears to be some collusion between editorial and advertising.

More curious is that the Times ad is markedly different than another version circulating on the web:

Certainly looks more deliberate than a printing oopsie. This one was just for the Gray Lady--very gray, given the resolution.

It should be noted that the Times didn't have the exclusive on Sharapova. That went to Vanity Fair and Vogue, which had a first-person account from the five-time Grand Slam winner about why she was hanging it up. Still, it doesn't appear she gave an interview to anyone else except the Times, which makes no mention of the magazine missive. That's no knock on Clarey, who has done a more-than-workmanlike job covering tennis and other sports for the Times for decades. It's just a shame that his exclusive is sullied by the impression that Nike and the Times ad reps got a little too cozy.

And because you don't want to zoom in, here's the ad copy.

They wanted you to smile more.
They wanted you to be more polite.
They wanted you to scream a little softer.
They wanted you to be less aggressive when you won.
They wanted you to walk away when you made mistakes.
But instead of just becoming the player the game wanted?
You became the player it needed.

Vintage Nike. A good ad, just one that was not in a good place.

The Death Star of Newspapers Not So Deadly?

Alden May Finally Be Realizing When Enough is Enough
An interesting take by Rick Edmonds of Poynter on how Alden Global Capital, the rapacious venture capitalists who gobble up newspaper assets whole and then spit out their desiccated remains, has essentially hit a pause button on its plundering. At least for now.

The thinking, according to Edmonds, is that Alden has stripped away the muscle from its properties and is momentarily content to look at the bones.

Since the company does not entertain questions, it’s a guess why. More reductions could be on the way later this year. Or Alden may have calculated that it has reached the minimum number of staffers necessary to put out a news report people will pay for, now that it is revving up a drive for paid digital subscriptions.


If so, there's a dangerous flaw in that model, one others like Gannett haven't realized or didn't care too much to rectify. Namely, it's hard to convince people to pony up for digital subs when there's nothing worth paying for. If all a paper does is re-purpose what little print content it has for the web without any value add, the ennui readers will have for the print version will infect the digital edition.Most papers out of the Times-Post-Journal orbit still pay too little attention to the web product to make it worth paying for, certainly not to the point where it can convince people to shed the more-expensive-to-produced-and-distribute print version. 

There's a reason why print circulation has cratered. There's a reason there hasn't been a corresponding digital migration.So, instead you have a company like Gannett slapping a $2.50 price tag on a 16-page edition of The Journal News and wondering why its daily circulation is down to 24,000, when it was 160,000 back when I was a reporter there in the late eighties.The end of print, or at least curtailing the number of print days at most publishers, seems a foregone conclusion at this point. It's already happened in Pittsburgh, at many Advance Media titles, like the Post-Standard in Syracuse and soon the Saturday editions at McClatchy titles. Monday papers would likely be next to go.

Which brings us back to Alden. What reason is there to expect it's capable of investing in digital if it can shake the print habit? I don't think the remaining reporters in places like Denver, San Jose or St. Paul have any expectations of that happening. Then again....Alden is all about extracting value. Maybe the best way for that to happen is by actually injecting some cash into their digital side, so the papers become more profitable and, more importantly, valuable. That's valuable, as in attracting a buyer.

Could Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon Shiong, e.g., find a reinvigorated San Jose Mercury-News and its beleaguered sister papers in the Bay Area irresistible? Yes, Alden appears to bask in its reputation of predatory buyer. But making money is often more about knowing when to get out rather than staying in. You just need to have something worth selling first. 

"The Affair" Cheats on the LIRR

Don't Mess with the Train Nerds

On last night's episode of "The Affair," we see Alison (Ruth Wilson) making her season 3 debut sitting on a train. Given that many of her story arcs take place out in Montauk, it's easy to assume she's heading there.

But then the episode cuts to a shot of an Amtrak train heading through verdant farmland. So, she's headed somewhere up the Hudson Valley. Intriguing. Until...you notice the train interior and it's not that of an Amtrak train. Then you see her getting off. Lo and behold, the train not only belongs to the Long Island Railroad, Alison is getting off in Montauk after all.

Yeah, yeah, get a life, train nerd. I hear you. But how hard could it have been to get a shot of an LIRR train. Maybe it was cheaper to use stock footage of an Amtrak consist, but for a show that tries hard at being authentic in both its settings and emotions, it does stand out.

It's like when "Law and Order" detectives were routinely visiting Manhattan apartments that, in the actual street grid, would have been located somewhere in the middle of the Hudson River. It wouldn't have been that hard to come up with a fake address that sounded real. "Law and Order" could have been mildly forgiven that its writer's room was in L.A.

For "The Affair," however, what happens is very much about where it's located. And you wouldn't want Alison getting off at the wrong stop. She's messed up enough as it is.

Viva Miami Herald with Fidel Finale

Glory Days Long Since Passed, but South Florida's Faded Prime News Source Still Owns Story

An editorial in today's Miami Herald is headlined "Damage Done, Fidel Castro Was Irrelevant Long Before He Died."

True enough and well put, from a newspaper that has struggled to stay relevant itself.

Not long ago, the Herald routinely showed up on lists of 10 best newspapers in the U.S. Until the mid-90s, the paper was fat with ads and ambition, with reporters spread over Florida from Key West all the way up the Treasure Coast to go along with overseas bureaus stretched from Jerusalem to Managua.

Of course, the Herald was not immune to the malaise that afflicted all newspapers as the web swallowed its content creators whole. But the paper's problems were magnified by the fact that as its core readership went elsewhere or died off, they were being replaced by a Latin diaspora that didn't read English papers if they read any at all.

In 1973, the Herald had a weekday circulation of nearly 405,000. By 2013, it was down to about 130,000. It fell off the list of the nation's 25 largest newspapers six years ago and is third or fourth in circulation just in Florida, depending on how you count.

Fidel may have gotten a final middle finger in the air by dying late enough for his demise to be announced after the Herald had gone to bed. In more flush times, this news would have warranted an extra edition.
These are not flush times.

The Herald's been down for the count for years, but got off the mat when word came that El Presidente had breathed his last. Given that the Herald had been unrelenting in chronicling the many abuses of the Castro regime and, along with its sister El Nuevo Herald, had served as the media lifelines for the hundreds of thousands of Cubans in Miami-Dade, you would expect nothing less. But the way newspapers have shrunk, you've learned to expect less.

Fortunately, the Herald delivered today, while it still can.

OK, Now Go Buy OK Go's Records

Someone's Gotta Pay for These Videos

A lot of people are justifiably enjoying OK Go's latest video for "The One Moment."

More than 14 million views, as of this writing, notwithstanding the fact that the album the song comes from was actually released in 2014. This prompted me to revisit some of their other other-worldly videos for tracks like "Upside Down and Inside Out"

and the one that started it all in 2006, "Here It Goes Again," you know, the treadmill video.

All of these may obscure the fact that OK Go is a pretty damn good band, which deftly knows how to embrace pop conventions without being swallowed up by them. The beats may sound familiar, but they're hardly derivative.
Still, despite the viral tag that's automatically conferred on their videos, I was hard-pressed to think when was the last time I've heard them on the radio. And the Billboard charts have not exactly burned up with the group's record sales. We're too busy trying to figure out how did they pull that off to buy their music. Viral success doesn't always pay the bills, after all, as this Guardian article noted in 2010.
I'm as guilty of that as anyone, with only "Here It Goes Again" on my iPod back in the days when .99 typically bought you a single. Not that this is news to OK Go. "We're that fucking video band," frontman Damian Kulash once said. Still, they've embraced the moniker, corporate sponsorships and all, and it's safe to say they're getting a few pennies every time someone watches the ads before clicking on the videos.
Nonetheless, if the music was crap it wouldn't matter how elaborately choreographed or ingeniously executed the videos are. That's a right a band to listen to rather than just watch. This could be the one moment for that to happen.

Bush League Coverage of the Major Leagues

Mets Net Zero In Pages of New York Times

So, just as soon as I got finished extolling the Times for its Muhammad Ali coverage and magazine wizardry over the weekend, along comes an 18-wheeler running up hard in the blind spot of the Times sports section, namely adequate coverage of New York teams.

The Times will soon have a new Mets beat writer, imported from the Washington Post, after Tim Rohan left for Monday Morning Quarterback. In the meantime, they won't shell out for another scribe on the current roadtrip. Today's paper had an AP blurb about Saturday's game. The write-up on today's tilt with the Marlins that's online was done by a desk man in New York who apparently watched the game on TV. 

While this isn't the first time the Times has pulled this stunt before, it's usually been reserved for late September games when the Mets were long ago eliminated from playoff contention. This, thankfully, is not that team. So, why treat them as such? The Yankees aren't subjected to that treatment. And neither should the Mets, with not only a better record but also exponentially more interesting to watch and read about. 

We get it. There are more people reading the Times outside of New York than in. But If the New York in The New York Times is strictly window dressing, then let us know once and for all. In the meantime, don't subject us to bush league coverage of the major leagues.

Why Print Still Matters, Part II

An Inspired Idea, Above 800 Feet

If you don't normally plunk down five bucks for the Sunday New York Times, tomorrow may be a good excuse for an exception.

The magazine, for its New York issue, is centered on life above 800 feet. It's a different idea, to be sure, with some mind-blowing photography highlighted by the double-fold cover of a guy climbing the spire of the World Trade Center (much better him than me).

But what's especially mind-blowing is that the whole issue is presented sideways, calendar style, as if to bring home the perspective of life literally at the top. In other words, not something you can experience on your iPad. Thank goodness there are still creative types who have not run out of ideas in newsroom. Ditto for them having bosses who let them roam free.

To be sure, the Times hasn't forgotten about its digital diehards, who now make up the bulk of the readership if not the revenue. There is a VR component to the web version. And, being a non-millennial, while I've been a reluctant adopter of the medium, if ever there was an opportunity to showcase it as more than a gimmick bound to be the 21st-century version of the 8-track tape, this story is it.

Why Print Still Matters, Part I

Muhammad Ali's Death On Deadline Doesn't Stop The N.Y. Times

The copy of The New York Times that's hurled on my driveway every morning doesn't always contain late sports scores. It's a fact of life I've grudgingly learned to accept as the price of business for living in the suburbs north of the city. So, it was more than a mild shock to see extensive coverage of Muhammad Ali's death on the front page and the sports section even though the story had broken after midnight.

Because the Times is, well, the Times, it has a deep stable of correspondents, current and former, who actually covered Ali. That's why heavyweights like Bob Lipsyte, had his byline on the obit, which started above the fold on A-1. That's why remembrances were in the can from former columnists Dave Anderson and George Vecsey, sterling as usual.

The obit jump, along with a photo gallery and the columns, took up the first five pages of the sports section. Which meant a lot of hustle in the newsroom with no time to spare. True, reports of Ali's imminent demise were out there. But it's one thing to know about something, it's another to actually crank out the product on deadline. The Times kicked some serious butt on that account.

So, what does this have to do with print? After all, the aforementioned content is on nytimes.com, which now has more than twice the subscribers of the daily print edition. And those stories have since been supplemented by others from the Times stable from those still at the paper, including a Michael Powell column and Rich Sandomir's reflection on Ali's relationship with Howard Cosell.

The point is, there's still nothing quite like spreading out a newspaper to look at the dramatic photos, complemented by dispatches from sports writing heavyweights in one package. If  you're clicking and skipping, you'll inevitably miss out on something. And if Ali, in his prime, was the greatest show on Earth, why miss a minute?

Goodbye, Rubio Tuesday

Tampa Tribune Can't Shed Stink of Marco Fast Enough

Granted, Marco Rubio's ears were ringing early last night after the fat lady had wrapped up her aria. It was about 8:15 when he decided it was best to tuck himself and the kids in early. After all, they had school the next day. As for Rubio, he could go back to doing what he does best, not show up in the Senate.


Still, even though Rubio 2016 was sent to the scrap heap early, at least some mention of his campaign's demise would still be prominent on the home pages of Florida newspaper websites. For the most part, that was the case. The Miami Herald this morning is fully invested in its second-day stories (which may have been written many days ago, sort of like an obit).


The Sun-Sentinel leads with how Rubio is the latest victim whose "dreams were crushed by the Donald Trump steamroller." Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Times has a couple of post-mortems, while the Orlando Sentinel did its due diligence though the reliably conservative editorial page is a little slow off the mark and more focused on approval for yet another airline terminal.


Then there's the Tampa Tribune, whose lede as of 9:40 a.m. ET was  headlined "Voters in Tampa Bay Area See Dire Consequences if the Other Party Wins." Not a bad approach the day after, but click to other elections coverage and the main story on last night's primary was from the A.P. It's only after you click on a small button for "more elections coverage" do you find a staff-written piece that folds in the Democratic and GOP primaries. It includes a few perfunctory grafs about Florida's not-so-favorite son, but that's it. One article about the most-watched primary of the night.


Maybe it shouldn't come as too big of a shock, given the fortunes of the Trib lately. I visited the newsroom four years ago, before the last Florida primary. I was struck by how many empty desks I saw in the newsroom. Suffice to say, they weren't empty because reporters were out to lunch or covering stories.

Would You (Did You) See This Story Online?

When Plunking Down $2.50 for The New York Times Can Make a Difference


The lead story (at least in print) for today's New York Times is a compelling yarn from Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery about how collection agencies use the courts to sue unwitting debtors, but can legally block those debtors from challenging them in court.
Instead, they must resort to arbitration, a tactic few pursue because it's a process that's too expensive or one they don't understand.
Since my dinosaur-esque tendencies compel me to hold the Times in my hand each morning, I read the piece with my coffee and coffee yogurt (totally spontaneous and unrehearsed). Mind you, I do check in frequently on the Times later in the day on the PC or assorted mobile devices. Which led me to wonder how the top article on A-1 was being played when I went to nytimes.com about noon ET.
Not very well, as it turns out.
I had to scroll down to the Business Day tab lower on the home page. The article--assuming it had been there once--was no longer one of the three visible headlines. Instead, I clicked on the section and found the piece under the DealBook moniker as part of a recurring series. Maybe the night before it had received more prominent play.
Why does this matter?
More people now have digital Times subscriptions than print. Given the trove of content that's being pumped out, it's easy for stories to get shuffled down the screen or hidden entirely. The Times also has a tendency to post stories that may not make it into the paper until a day or two later. That's even more so the case on Wednesday, when the cover story for the Sunday magazine will appear online (If you need a head start on this year's edition of "The Lives They Lived," have at it). It's a journalistic feast, but we may pay a price for all of that gorging.
In other words, there's a need for editors to align the priorities of digital and print more closely. If an article is the top item above the fold on A-1, then it should be prominent for longer on the home page. Think of readers on the West Coast, Alaska and Hawaii who are getting to nytimes.com later in the news cycle. The debt collection story is one worthy of their time, but they may not get to see it if they don't know to look for it in the first place.
Given that the reporters conducted hundreds of interviews for this series, more readers should be able to reap the fruits of their labors and the Times can justify the expense of backing this commendable project.

No Flipping

Larry Sanders Makes a Comeback, of Sorts

I've been away from the blogosphere for a while, but wanted to chime in on what may be my favorite correction of the year, even though it's got some whiskers. From a Dec. 11 New York Times story on the marriage of comedian Carol Leifer and longtime companion Lori Wolfe:


An earlier version of this article misidentified one of the guests at Ms. Leifer and Ms. Wolf’s wedding reception. He is Garry Shandling — not Larry Sanders, a character played by Mr. Shandling.

I always wondered why I never saw the two in the same room.

Doing Sherman Adelson's Bidding in Connecticut

But with Tiny Circulation, Might be Journalistic Version of One-Hand Clapping


The Las Vegas Review-Journal saga keeps getting curiouser and curiouser after Sheldon Adelson was finally outed as the buyer of Nevada's largest daily.
If the R-J newsroom got a little bit queasy when they realized the loud and proud GOP donor was now presiding over their paychecks, no amount of Maalox would have done the trick when editor Mike Hengel announced yesterday he was taking a buyout.
In other words, to be continued.
Now comes a bizarre twist to this story from The Hartford Courant, about why the New Britain Herald, a newspaper with circulation just north of 9,000, published a lengthy story about so-called business courts, including 10 paragraphs devoted to a dustup Adelson had in one in Las Vegas. For a paper the size of the Herald, undertaking such a story is both unusual and unwarranted, given the few reporters left in its newsroom.
Turns out, the Herald's publisher, Michael Schroeder, has a business relationship with Adelson. But that's not where the story ends. The Courant reports it was written by someone named "Edward Clarkin," a scribe no one seems to know anything about, including current and former editors at the Herald or its sister paper, the Bristol Herald.
And for a little extra icing on this cruddy cake, two people quoted in the Clarkin missive said they were never interviewed for the piece and are wondering out loud how they made their way into print.
As for Schroeder, he's not talking about the Herald's newsgathering priorities or much of anything else. Apparently, what happens in New Britain.....

Is Unemployment Better Than Working For Gannett?

Maybe Not, But.....

I've been chatting this week with a couple of scribes at the Journal News, the Gannett paper in New York's northern suburbs where I toiled in the late 80s. The paper, like many in the chain, is a desiccated husk of its former self both in size and staffing. The circulation has followed a similar pattern, now down to about 55,000 daily where it was 160,000 when I was there.

Those convos got me thinking about Gannett's newest employees, the staffs of 11 dailies in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Texas, as part of a swap with Digital First in which Gannett gave up its 19 percent interest in some California newspapers in return.

Suffice to say, if you're an employee of the El Paso Times, the York Daily Record or one of the nine other dailies that are now orbiting the Gannett mother ship, these are not happy days. Not that you were exactly doing jigs with Digital First, which shares a reputation with Gannett as a ruthless cost-cutter.

Gannett has shown no compunction about staffing its newsrooms to the bare minimums. Copy editing is farmed out to regional hubs as is design. Admittedly, I don't know if the six small New Mexico dailies have separate editing staffs below the top of the masthead. But if they do, chances are they won't for long, if Gannett is consistent with past moves at papers in New Jersey and New York, among others. The same will likely hold for printing presses.

As Ken Doctor pointed out, the move makes financial sense for Gannett, now that it is a standalone newspaper company lacking debt. It also makes sense for Digital First, which is breaking itself into pieces after attempts at finding a buyer for all of its disparate parts never went anywhere.

Does it make sense for any of the newspapers' employees? Doubtful. It will likely be a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

At least they have what fewer people than ever can claim--jobs working for a newspaper.

For now.

Red Cross Bloodied Again by NPR and Pro Publica

And Another PR Fumble by Charity Run Amok

On tonight's "All Things Considered," NPR ran a devastating report from Laura Sullivan about the apparent mishandling by the American Red Cross of hundreds of millions of dollars donated in the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

The 19-minute report as as startling for its length as it was for its sweeping indictment of broken promises, lame excuses and a choking bureaucracy that swallowed up too many donations. It's a compelling listen that will make you think twice the next time a disaster strikes. The investigation was a collaboration with Pro Publica, where the headline for its report makes very clear where it's headed: "How the Red Cross Raised a Half Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Houses."

In other words, it's not going to end well for the Red Cross.

For NPR and Pro Publica, whose dispatch is also well worth your attention, this is not the first time the Red Cross has come up in their crosshairs. They collaborated last year on a scathing report about how the Red Cross badly botched its response to Hurricane Isaac and Superstorm Sandy.

During Isaac, Red Cross supervisors ordered dozens of trucks usually deployed to deliver aid to be driven around nearly empty instead, “just to be seen,” one of the drivers, Jim Dunham, recalls.
“We were sent way down on the Gulf with nothing to give,” Dunham says. The Red Cross’ relief effort was “worse than the storm.”

And that's just the tippy tip of the iceberg.

In both stories, the Red Cross--to the extent that it's forthcoming--displays a stunning lack of hubris and tone deafness in its response to reporters' questions. To wit, this telling nugget from a portion of the Haiti story about a supposed $24 million project for the "physical renewal" of one Port au Prince neighborhood and a brochure touting its benefits.

[T]he Red Cross' head of public affairs in Washington, D.C., sent NPR and ProPublica an email saying we had mischaracterized the project, though they did not dispute the information in the brochure. NPR and ProPublica were "creating ill will in the community, which may give rise to a security incident," the email says. "We will hold you and your news organizations fully responsible." No security incident happened — but residents did ask if they could keep the brochure.

Kill the messenger? Really? Wow. And it gets better.

NPR published on its website a response from the Red Cross, which just doesn't get it.

The Red Cross is disappointed, once again, by the lack of balance, context and accuracy in the most recent reporting by ProPublica/NPR, which follows the pattern of all their previous Red Cross stories. It is particularly disappointing to see our work misrepresented considering we answered more than 100 questions in writing and provided an interview with the head of our international programs.

Quantity doesn't trump quality, alas. That head of international programs wouldn't answer questions about specific programs, how much they cost and their expenses. The report said much of the money donated never reached people in need and was eaten up paying third parties to run programs after the Red Cross took its own cut for administrative fees. How did NPR and Pro Publica know this? Because it was all in writing. In Red Cross documents.

Brian Williams Falls on His Sword, Sort Of

Bri Bri Says Bye, Bye For "Several Days"

The glare of the spotlight that Brian Williams turned on himself has gotten too bright.

The "NBC Nightly News" anchor/managing editor, who didn't realize that when he was telling stories they were supposed to be grounded in fact, is going on hiatus for "several days" to defog his memory about his non-near death experience covering the Iraq war. At least judging by this announcement from NBC News, it was his choice. Then again, maybe not.

In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions.

As Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News, I have decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next several days, and Lester Holt has kindly agreed to sit in for me to allow us to adequately deal with this issue. Upon my return, I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us.

Interesting that this was put out as a press release. Don't look for it on nbcnews.com or the Nightly News home page. I sense there are still hordes of walking wounded at 30 Rock still trying to make sense of this F.U.B.A.R. exercise.

Now, about this several days thing. Better than even it's a poorly chosen euphemism. Lester Holt may be doing more than sitting in--he could be getting fitted for a new chair.

Is Williams a dead anchor walking? Maybe not yet. But he's badly bleeding and nobody at NBC is in a hurry to offer him a Band-Aid.

Nationwide Is Not on the Side of Common Sense

Explain Away All You Want, But the Buzzkill Still Lingers


Now that we're in the midst of Dead Kid-Gate, Nationwide Insurance has come out with a defense, of sorts, of its Debbie Downer of an ad for yesterday's Super Bowl. It's like Pete Carroll made the media buy.

Per PR Newser:

We knew the ad would spur a variety of reactions. In fact, thousands of people visited MakeSafeHappen.com, a new website to help educate parents and caregivers with information and resources in an effort to make their homes safer and avoid a potential injury or death. Nationwide has been working with experts for more than 60 years to make homes safer. While some did not care for the ad, we hope it served to begin a dialogue to make safe happen for children everywhere.”

Noble intentions are swell. But during the Super Bowl? At $4.5 million a spot? And after a funny Nationwide ad with Mindy Kaling had just aired?

On any other day, you would have had parents everywhere sprinting for the Kleenex. Instead, you just pissed them off, including those who had to explain what happened to their kids.

The dialogue Nationwide so desperately wanted about an important topic is overshadowed by the one about the incredibly bad judgment of the company and its ad agency.

If you're tone deaf in the media world, you're toast. And Nationwide got burnt.

White House Charges $60K a Head for Next Charter; I Got a Bargain with Cuomo

Then Again, Watertown's a Little Cheaper to Get to than Beijing

For news organizations who want to cover President Obama's next swing through Asia, getting a seat on the press charter isn't a problem. Getting accounting to pay for the trip is another story.

The Washington Post reports each journalist who wants to span the globe with POTUS will first have to ante up $60,000 for a seat. And that doesn't include meals, hotels and so-called ground costs. That'll set the journos back another $10K or so. No word yet on whether the White House will include sodas and an in-flight movie to soften the blow.

That's a lot of samoleans to watch a lame-duck president commune with heads of state, but the big dogs will invariably be on the plane, though they'll be bringing fewer puppies along for the ride. Too many kibbles for a likelihood of not too many bits of news.

Back when I was a reporter for UPI in Albany in the mid-1980s, I took several day trips with Gov. Mario Cuomo as he made public appearances across the state. Interest in Cuomo was high, at a time when he still hadn't decided whether to run for president. UPI was still a viable news service then, at least in name, if not on its balance sheet (the company had gone Chapter 11 in 1985).

Getting a seat on the prop plane wasn't an issue. Only a handful of reporters would be on one of these trips, where you would sit across from him on a bench seat. Maybe he'd give you some news on the flight out--and that would be your story--rather than what Cuomo would actually speak about on the ground. The flight back to Albany was generally off the record or inconsequential; Cuomo would chat with us then about other besides politics.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which was in charge of the governor's plane would, every now and then, send a bill to my office, in essence charging UPI for letting me ride on a plane that was making the trip anyway. Typically, the bill was in the $200-$300 range. I dutifully put it in my manager's box. And it was dutifully forgotten by everyone, including the state. Just as well. UPI was never big on accounts receivable.

The White House, on the other hand? They don't strike me as IOU types. I suspect there may be a few UPI veterans there. They know better.

Filing Dispatches from the Valley of Death

Ebola Reporting Nothing Short of Heart-Rending, Courageous

Ebola has certainly grabbed its share of headlines over the last month, though I suspect it was still viewed with detachment by most Americans. That is, until yesterday, when word came of a Liberian man holed up in an isolation ward in a Dallas hospital. Now it's no longer one of those "African" problems, you know the kind that get a short mention in the wire briefs buried in a newspaper.

Fortunately, some media have ignored the xenophobia and have told the Ebola story with compelling renderings that provide the context for why thousands of foreign doctors and soldiers are pouring into Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to treat the afflicted and stop the virus's spread. It gives you some hope. But just as quickly you realize just what it is they are up against. And soon the hope begins to ebb.

That was my feeling after reading today's story from Adam Nossiter in The New York Times from a forlorn (is there any other) district in Sierra Leone, where he visited what the headline aptly calls "A Hospital from Hell."

“Where’s the corpse?” the burial-team worker shouted, kicking open the door of the isolation ward at the government hospital here. The body was right in front of him, a solidly built young man sprawled out on the floor all night, his right hand twisted in an awkward clench.

 

The other patients, normally padlocked inside, were too sick to look up as the body was hauled away. Nurses, some not wearing gloves and others in street clothes, clustered by the door as pools of the patients’ bodily fluids spread to the threshold. A worker kicked another man on the floor to see if he was still alive. The man’s foot moved and the team kept going. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

In the next ward, a 4-year-old girl lay on the floor in urine, motionless, bleeding from her mouth, her eyes open. A corpse lay in the corner — a young woman, legs akimbo, who had died overnight. A small child stood in a cot watching as the team took the body away, stepping around a little boy lying immobile next to black buckets of vomit. They sprayed the body, and the little girl on the floor, with chlorine as they left.

Read it and weep.

High praise to Nossiter for keeping it together to craft this gripping dispatch. You might say, that's his job. Trust me, this is not what journalists, even the West Africa bureau chief for the Times, signed up for. Not only is he reporting a story of incredibly tragic proportions, he is putting is own safety at risk in the process. The precautions one needs to take before entering a hospital filled with the bodily fluids and excretions of the dead and dying are nothing short of extraordinary.

Also, walking among dead bodies never becomes routine. You simply don't detach and retire to the hotel bar for a dirty martini. I can't help but think Nossiter is thinking about his children and how badly he wants to hug them. This kind of reporting takes its toll. It has to, no matter how good you are. And Nossiter is damn good.

The reportage from him and others, like NPR's Jason Beaubien and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, Robyn Dixon of The Los Angeles Times we are given a light that shines on what Ebola really means. Families laid to waste. New colonies of orphans. The fear and anger that has supplanted despair. Through it all, there is a dedicated cadre of reporters who are there to sort out the truth from the conjecture, providing perspective amid the uncertainty. For that, they have my thanks.


 

AP Goes Op-Ed With Anti-Israel Tweet

It Reports. And Decides.

Someone at the AP went off their meds with this tweet: Apparently, no one has keys to the closet with all the red flags.

As much of world watches Gaza war in horror, members of Congress fall over each other to support Israel: http://t.co/DepO2etLQS
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 29, 2014

Holy crap.

So you know, this is the story the tweet was purportedly based on:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/israel-war-us-lawmakers-give-full-support

Suffice to say, the story reads differently. In other words, without making judgments. You know, the way you're supposed to do it in the first place.

UPDATE: 

No apologies from the AP, but at least they walked the tweet back:

Hello from @AP, and thanks for your feedback on this tweet: https://t.co/AIG1Z3sHtQ. We've now sent a revised tweet: https://t.co/97ZEZby801
— Eric Carvin (@EricCarvin) July 29, 2014

Still.

The News Really Does Never Stop

Global Editing Hubs Eliminate the Lobster Trick in Newsrooms

You've heard a lot about the 24/7 newsroom. It all sounds great, unless you're one of the unfortunate souls who--usually not by choice--is assigned to uphold that mandate in the dead of night. But it appears more news organizations don't want a bunch of bleary eyes overseeing their digital real estate.
Nieman Lab has a fascinating piece on how newsrooms are handing off control to staffers in other time zones--not to mention continents--so fresh content can get out earlier. Not only is it a good idea, but it also saves money. Overnight shifts (and I've done my share) normally pay more.
For example, a Finnish news agency shifted its predawn patrol from Helsinki to Sydney. So, when the Stanley Cup final in that hockey-crazed haven ended at 7 a.m. local time, the lowdown came from Down Under.
Pretty cool. And a great idea, which is also employed by digital domos like the Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.
Now the news really never stops. Not even for a nap.