Judging by the front pages of newspaper Web sites, the Amish school shootings struck a chord in many parts of the world.
Maybe it was the Amish angle -- and their peaceful, bucolic lives violated by a deranged gunman and that the girls held by Charles Roberts were shot in the head execution-style.
Perhaps it's the desire of foreign media to seize upon the recent school shootings as a symptom of what's wrong with the U.S. Or, it could be a story that dozens of correspondents could get to without a hassle.
Whatever the reason, the British press has been playing it big, including The Guardian, The Sun, The Times as well as the Daily Telegraph. The Independent, whose front page blared "Horror At The Schoolhouse," was also among those who did the obligatory sidebar on the Amish and their 19th-century ways.
Elsewhere, Corriere Della Sera also gave the shootings prominent play, though they were essentially shrugged off by Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung.
However, the shootings were the lead stories on the home pages of the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail in Canada, and also got big play in Australian media, although some readers Down Under were wondering what the fuss is all about. One wrote to The Age in Melbourne:
I am starting to get sick of Australian news picking up on these shootings in the US, as they have no bearing on my life here in Australia. Easy access to guns + the worst social and economic disparity between citizens will always lead to this sort of scenario. The fact is that there are many murders every day in the US. Is 'THE AGE' going to publish all of these?
Well, yes. If it bleeds, it leads, after all.
Many others chimed that the U.S. was "nutters" for allowing guns to be so easy to get. For many they were saddened by what happened, but hardly shocked. Which could be part of the problem.
If it happens often enough, does it stop becoming news? Think about how briefly U.S. military fatalities are mentioned nowadays and you don't have to wonder too hard about that.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Blogs Aren't Where We Go For Breaking News
Duh!
Was this ever in doubt? A Lexis-Nexis survey found that when there's breaking news, blogs are the last place people turn.
Only 6 percent go to blogs or other so-called "emerging media" when the ca-ca hits the fan.
Well, yeah. Bloggers are not exactly known for their newsgathering, rather they gather their own thoughts after others have gathered the news.
Did somebody really need to find this out?
But good news for the 25 quadrillion blogs out there. The topic of greatest interest is popular entertainment, for which blogs, user groups and chat rooms are the most frequented sources after lifestyle media.
So someone get Nick Denton off the ledge now.
Was this ever in doubt? A Lexis-Nexis survey found that when there's breaking news, blogs are the last place people turn.
Only 6 percent go to blogs or other so-called "emerging media" when the ca-ca hits the fan.
Well, yeah. Bloggers are not exactly known for their newsgathering, rather they gather their own thoughts after others have gathered the news.
Did somebody really need to find this out?
But good news for the 25 quadrillion blogs out there. The topic of greatest interest is popular entertainment, for which blogs, user groups and chat rooms are the most frequented sources after lifestyle media.
So someone get Nick Denton off the ledge now.
Washington Times Wants To Scalp Hastert, But Its Conservative Compadres Decide Not to Go Scapegoating -- For Now
Wall Street Journal Says, Sure Foley's Gay and Maybe A Sexual Predator, But Let's Not Rush To Judgment
The Washington Times made some of headlines of its own this morning by calling on Speaker Dennis Hastert to clean out his office for overlooking/covering up/trying to ignore Mark Foley's email courting of teenage male pages.
Give the editorial board credit for ganging up on Hastert, given the also-ran Times' vaunted status as the GOP Beltway house organ.
Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.
That's gotta hurt, Denny.
But Hastert still has some friends -- for now, at least -- over at the Wall Street Journal, where Paul Gigot is likely jabbed with electric cattle prods should he ever stray from the party line. Today is no exception, where an editorial notes that sure what Foley did was "odd and suspect," but:
Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger socieity must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?
Where are the Non-Sequitur Police when you really need them?
They're pretty steamed over at the conservative Chicago Tribune, which brings up Hastert's past as a high-school wrestling coach, which should have made him aware of how easily determined predators can get too close to children.
If Foley committed a criminal offense, he won't go unpunished in state or federal courts. But remember, those who knowingly enable predators are guilty of their own sordid offenses. They have to answer too.
The Trib slammed Hastert for running to the Department of Justice for a Foley probe, when he's better equipped to get one done himself and pronto.
Mr. Hastert, you don't need a squad of FBI agents to tell you how you and your colleagues in the House reacted when they first learned that Mark Foley had crossed a line that ought never be broached.
Hastert may have thought he'd get caught some slack by the leading media outlet back home. But cutting slack is why he's in this mess in the first place.
Hastert would be wise to heed the lesson of another Foley, this one Tom, the former Democratic Speaker of the House. Foley had the dubious distinction in 1994 of being the first sitting Speaker to be defeated for re-election since 1860. That was for different reasons, including the GOP tsunami that swept over D.C. during those mid-terms. But still. There's plenty of time until Nov. 7.
The Washington Times made some of headlines of its own this morning by calling on Speaker Dennis Hastert to clean out his office for overlooking/covering up/trying to ignore Mark Foley's email courting of teenage male pages.
Give the editorial board credit for ganging up on Hastert, given the also-ran Times' vaunted status as the GOP Beltway house organ.
Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.
That's gotta hurt, Denny.
But Hastert still has some friends -- for now, at least -- over at the Wall Street Journal, where Paul Gigot is likely jabbed with electric cattle prods should he ever stray from the party line. Today is no exception, where an editorial notes that sure what Foley did was "odd and suspect," but:
Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger socieity must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?
Where are the Non-Sequitur Police when you really need them?
They're pretty steamed over at the conservative Chicago Tribune, which brings up Hastert's past as a high-school wrestling coach, which should have made him aware of how easily determined predators can get too close to children.
If Foley committed a criminal offense, he won't go unpunished in state or federal courts. But remember, those who knowingly enable predators are guilty of their own sordid offenses. They have to answer too.
The Trib slammed Hastert for running to the Department of Justice for a Foley probe, when he's better equipped to get one done himself and pronto.
Mr. Hastert, you don't need a squad of FBI agents to tell you how you and your colleagues in the House reacted when they first learned that Mark Foley had crossed a line that ought never be broached.
Hastert may have thought he'd get caught some slack by the leading media outlet back home. But cutting slack is why he's in this mess in the first place.
Hastert would be wise to heed the lesson of another Foley, this one Tom, the former Democratic Speaker of the House. Foley had the dubious distinction in 1994 of being the first sitting Speaker to be defeated for re-election since 1860. That was for different reasons, including the GOP tsunami that swept over D.C. during those mid-terms. But still. There's plenty of time until Nov. 7.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Lean Dean Singleton Looks To Squeeze Mercury-News Staff 'Til They Bleed
Too Bad They'd Already Been Sucked Dry By Knight-Ridder
The staff of the San Jose Mercury-News was understandably anxious when as part of the breakup of the Knight-Ridder empire, the newspaper was acquired by MediaNews, which is owned by William Dean Singleton, a man with cash who likes to slash.
When the sale was announced April 26, the Newspaper Guild's Save The Merc Web site reacted with predictable alarm.
Still, most in the newsroom were willing to at least let the guy try to right the listing ship in Silicon Valley, especially when he initially was saying all the right things.
No more.
Now it's contract negotiation time, and the Guild now sees that it's the same old same old with Lean Dean, who's rattling the sabers to get reporters and editors to cave into a draconian contract now or face the ax later.
After what happened to reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle, who voted to cut their pay, and gave up sick days and vacation time after being threatened with extinction by management, it's going to be ugly -- and that's on a good day.
And not to say I told you so, but I got the heebie-jeebies when this was first announced. This is not a time where I'm happy to be vindicated.
The staff of the San Jose Mercury-News was understandably anxious when as part of the breakup of the Knight-Ridder empire, the newspaper was acquired by MediaNews, which is owned by William Dean Singleton, a man with cash who likes to slash.
When the sale was announced April 26, the Newspaper Guild's Save The Merc Web site reacted with predictable alarm.
Still, most in the newsroom were willing to at least let the guy try to right the listing ship in Silicon Valley, especially when he initially was saying all the right things.
No more.
Now it's contract negotiation time, and the Guild now sees that it's the same old same old with Lean Dean, who's rattling the sabers to get reporters and editors to cave into a draconian contract now or face the ax later.
After what happened to reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle, who voted to cut their pay, and gave up sick days and vacation time after being threatened with extinction by management, it's going to be ugly -- and that's on a good day.
And not to say I told you so, but I got the heebie-jeebies when this was first announced. This is not a time where I'm happy to be vindicated.
Chris Wallace May Do Many Things Well, But Being Disingenuous Isn't One Of Them
There's A Difference Between Being A Tough Questioner and Not Playing By The Rules
So you're Chris Wallace, and you have an interview set up with Bill Clinton to talk about his Global Initiative. But instead, you want to talk about why he didn't incinerate Osama bin Laden while still residing in the White House.
So you're Bill Clinton and now you're pissed off at Chris Wallace, which is why Wallace sounds less than credible when asked about Clinton ripping him a new one on camera.
"All I did was ask him a question, and I think it was a legitimate news question. I was surprised that he would conjure up that this was a hit job," Wallace said.
So you're Chris Wallace, and you have an interview set up with Bill Clinton to talk about his Global Initiative. But instead, you want to talk about why he didn't incinerate Osama bin Laden while still residing in the White House.
So you're Bill Clinton and now you're pissed off at Chris Wallace, which is why Wallace sounds less than credible when asked about Clinton ripping him a new one on camera.
"All I did was ask him a question, and I think it was a legitimate news question. I was surprised that he would conjure up that this was a hit job," Wallace said.
Wallace set Clinton up with a few softballs on his Global Initiative, then launched into a familiar Fox device, a variation on "people are saying," to legitimize the following question
"When we announced that you were going to be on "Fox News Sunday," I got a lot of e-mail from viewers. And I've got to say, I was surprised. Most of them wanted me to ask you this question: Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president?"
Let's deconstruct the first part of that. "I got a lot of e-mail from viewers." Most of it was from employees at the RNC and Heritage Foundation.
"And I've got to say I was surprised." That I didn't get more.
Of course, one could argue Clinton should have known what he might have been in for appearing on Fox, which was the official Impeachment Channel, after all. I mean, who really cares about yeoman efforts to curb genocide, AIDS and global warming?
What Clinton may not have expected was that he'd be interviewed by Wallace, who acts like he still needs to show his daddy that's he got a set of stones too. This wasn't the time or place to affirm that.
And if you don't believe me, read the transcript of the Wallace-Clinton dust-up and decide for yourself, more than what Fox usually allows you to do.
New York Times Ends The Baseball Season Early For Most Teams
But You Really Didn't Care About The White Sox-Mariners Game Anyway, Right?
In its determined slide toward mediocrity and embarrassment, The New York Times sports section provided more grist for the mill.
The latest tomfoolery from sports editor Tom Jolley and Co: Print box scores for only the New York teams and those still in the hunt for a wildcard.
The games themselves were relegated to tiny paragraphs at the bottom of D3. Granted, there may be little interest in the New York area for who got how many hits in the Angels' 7-1 thrasing of the A's, beyond those in Fantasy leagues.
But printing box scores is one of those until-now sacrosanct things. You did it because there was a game report to render and this was the best way to do it. End of discussion.
Instead, the Times thought it more prudent to offer us complete agate on an LPGA tournament, the Dover 400 for the dozens of NASCAR fans on the Upper East Side, and the results of every tennis tournament from Albuquerque to Calcutta. Literally.
Not enough money, you say? The Times' 3Q financials will come in much lower than expected? Yeah, we know. But at the same time that it can't print all box scores, this is the same paper that spends thousands of dollars to send three staffers to the Giants-Seahawks game in Seattle and print all of three stories. Then again, sidebars on the games readers care about the most have never been the Times' strong suit.
Instead, it used up its precious football allotment for bylined stories on the Colts-Jaguars and Bears-Vikings game. That's right, the Times is really a national paper that just happens to live in New York, a notion the sports department seems to run away with whenever it gets the chance.
In its determined slide toward mediocrity and embarrassment, The New York Times sports section provided more grist for the mill.
The latest tomfoolery from sports editor Tom Jolley and Co: Print box scores for only the New York teams and those still in the hunt for a wildcard.
The games themselves were relegated to tiny paragraphs at the bottom of D3. Granted, there may be little interest in the New York area for who got how many hits in the Angels' 7-1 thrasing of the A's, beyond those in Fantasy leagues.
But printing box scores is one of those until-now sacrosanct things. You did it because there was a game report to render and this was the best way to do it. End of discussion.
Instead, the Times thought it more prudent to offer us complete agate on an LPGA tournament, the Dover 400 for the dozens of NASCAR fans on the Upper East Side, and the results of every tennis tournament from Albuquerque to Calcutta. Literally.
Not enough money, you say? The Times' 3Q financials will come in much lower than expected? Yeah, we know. But at the same time that it can't print all box scores, this is the same paper that spends thousands of dollars to send three staffers to the Giants-Seahawks game in Seattle and print all of three stories. Then again, sidebars on the games readers care about the most have never been the Times' strong suit.
Instead, it used up its precious football allotment for bylined stories on the Colts-Jaguars and Bears-Vikings game. That's right, the Times is really a national paper that just happens to live in New York, a notion the sports department seems to run away with whenever it gets the chance.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Getting Brunied: Waiting For a New York Restaurant To Get an Overly FRANK review
Can A So-So Review Convince The Crowds To Go Elsewhere At Freeman's?
Eater.com, a blog that does a workmanlike job of covering the comings and goings at New York's five zillion restaurants, had contributions recently from an owner of Freeman 's, a popular Lower East Side hangout most notable for being in an alley. You gotta know where to find it and plenty of hipsters and wannabe hipsters have done just that over the last two years.
So has New York Times restaurant slayer Frank Bruni. The missives on Eater from William Tigertt of Freeman's dwelled first on when Bruni was spotted in the restaurant, fretting over the menu and then hoping for the best after Bruni called with some questions along with Times fact-checkers.
He wrote on Monday:
It makes me sad to think that tomorrow night I will sitting in my office in front of a computer clicking reload on the New York Times webpage until carpal tunnel syndrome sets in. I would much rather be carousing dive bars with my co-workers, self-medicating our jitters, and celebrating whatever victories and setbacks the past two years of New York has thrown at us.
Which is why it will be interesting to see what Tigertt will write next, given that Bruni's review in today's Times gave the restaurant zero stars, saddling it with the kiss-of-death "satisfactory" rating. Such reviews make for good reading if not eating.
The folks at Eater, unabashed fans of Freeman's are fulminating. They had been expecting a one-star review, with a two-star assessment a distant possibility. "[H]is sticking Freemans with a Satisfactory this week is somewhat inexplicable in that it reads mostly as an "I told you so" wrist slap."
But the thinking at Eater is Freeman's has a healthy coat of Teflon to fend off even the worst Bruni barbs. Keep that order of grilled Cheddar toast warm for me, in the meantime.
Eater.com, a blog that does a workmanlike job of covering the comings and goings at New York's five zillion restaurants, had contributions recently from an owner of Freeman 's, a popular Lower East Side hangout most notable for being in an alley. You gotta know where to find it and plenty of hipsters and wannabe hipsters have done just that over the last two years.
So has New York Times restaurant slayer Frank Bruni. The missives on Eater from William Tigertt of Freeman's dwelled first on when Bruni was spotted in the restaurant, fretting over the menu and then hoping for the best after Bruni called with some questions along with Times fact-checkers.
He wrote on Monday:
It makes me sad to think that tomorrow night I will sitting in my office in front of a computer clicking reload on the New York Times webpage until carpal tunnel syndrome sets in. I would much rather be carousing dive bars with my co-workers, self-medicating our jitters, and celebrating whatever victories and setbacks the past two years of New York has thrown at us.
Which is why it will be interesting to see what Tigertt will write next, given that Bruni's review in today's Times gave the restaurant zero stars, saddling it with the kiss-of-death "satisfactory" rating. Such reviews make for good reading if not eating.
The folks at Eater, unabashed fans of Freeman's are fulminating. They had been expecting a one-star review, with a two-star assessment a distant possibility. "[H]is sticking Freemans with a Satisfactory this week is somewhat inexplicable in that it reads mostly as an "I told you so" wrist slap."
But the thinking at Eater is Freeman's has a healthy coat of Teflon to fend off even the worst Bruni barbs. Keep that order of grilled Cheddar toast warm for me, in the meantime.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Zahara Jolie-Pitt is a "Chocolate Monkey," Chirps Genius Twin Cities DJ
K102's John Hines Says He May Be Ignorant, But That Doesn't Make Him A Racist
Morning radio DJs don't have to be Mensa candidates to be successful. But at least half a brain would help.
John Hines needs help.
As the clown-in-chief on the morning show on country station K102 in the Twin Cities, Hines and his cohorts were riffing on how Jon Voight was having trouble with the names of the children of his estranged daughter Angelina Jolie, including daughter Zahara Jolie-Pitt.
That's when things headed rapidly downhill, reports the Star-Tribune.
"I don't know what that child's name was, but I said, 'He could have said Chocolate Monkey for all I know and what would the difference be? He's never met the kids.'"
Hines said he didn't know Zahara is black.
Oops.
Hines says he's sorry if his mouth overtook his brain, but that doesn't qualify him for KKK membership. We'll see if his bosses believe that. Or if they care.
Morning radio DJs don't have to be Mensa candidates to be successful. But at least half a brain would help.
John Hines needs help.
As the clown-in-chief on the morning show on country station K102 in the Twin Cities, Hines and his cohorts were riffing on how Jon Voight was having trouble with the names of the children of his estranged daughter Angelina Jolie, including daughter Zahara Jolie-Pitt.
That's when things headed rapidly downhill, reports the Star-Tribune.
"I don't know what that child's name was, but I said, 'He could have said Chocolate Monkey for all I know and what would the difference be? He's never met the kids.'"
Hines said he didn't know Zahara is black.
Oops.
Hines says he's sorry if his mouth overtook his brain, but that doesn't qualify him for KKK membership. We'll see if his bosses believe that. Or if they care.
Great Moments In Journalism: CNN Edition
Larry King Catches Anderson Cooper With His Journalistic Pants Down
Ah, live TV.
Tonight, Larry King was interviewing Joe Biden about Ahmadinejad's UN speech (summary: liar, liar, pants on fire. Bush did a decent job).
Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer were in the studio with King while Biden was elsewhere.
Ever the inclusive one, King asks:
"Anderson, do you have a question for Joe?"
"Ummmm. No."
Ah, live TV.
Tonight, Larry King was interviewing Joe Biden about Ahmadinejad's UN speech (summary: liar, liar, pants on fire. Bush did a decent job).
Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer were in the studio with King while Biden was elsewhere.
Ever the inclusive one, King asks:
"Anderson, do you have a question for Joe?"
"Ummmm. No."
Monday, September 18, 2006
A Spin Control Tutorial, Or Why Jim Webb Can Beat George Allen Jr. In Virginia
Meet The Press Debate Revealed An Empty Vessel In The Incumbent's Chair
In the Virginia Senate race, it's the dark horse vs. the guy who rides a horse.
The former would be Democrat Jim Webb, political neophyte cum war hero going up against Bush lapdog George (my Dad was a football icon and thank goodness he named me after him) Allen Jr.
Allen's got more name recognition, more money and the advantage of incumbency, but nothing is forever as the latest polls show.
Ideology aside, Webb should win in a landslide if yesterday's debate on "Meet The Press" is any indication.
From a rhetorical perspective, Webb gave Allen a big-time pimp slap that should convince the Allen camp to stick a prod in their candidate and give him some life.
Webb was plain-spoken and forceful in his opposition to the Iraq war and concisely explained to Tim Russert why he supported Allen in 2000 but not now.
In response, Allen offered up political bromides, using the tired tactic of referring to Webb, who was sitting right next to him, as "my opponent," rather than "Jim" or "Mr. Webb," as if people would somehow forget his name if he didn't utter it.
When Russert repeatedly pressed him on his unyielding support for the war and would he do it again if he knew that the CIA had concluded there was no Saddam-al Qaeda link, he bobbed, weaved and bumbled rather than offer a straight answer.
Allen has been consistent in saying he voted for the war out of loyalty to the country, not Bush, and he went back to that sawhorse yesterday -- never really explaining what the hell that means in the first place.
As for the "Macaca" crack, Allen took himself to the woodshed, even though he denied knowing it was a racist slur. "There was no racial or ethnic intent at slurring .... It was just made up, made up words" and said he had never heard of the word before.
OOOOkay.
And what about that Confederate flag you once kept in your house along with a noose at his law office?
In the session's "duh" moment, he offered: "I wish I had experiences in life earlier and I would have made decisions differently" and insisted, without conviction but with copious amounts of platitudes that he really, really likes black people and others who don't look exactly like him.
Somewhere, Allen's press handlers must have been looking for a noose of their own. It couldn't have gone any worse for their man.
Somewhere else, those at the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee should be looking in their till and give what they have to Webb. It's not often they get a candidate running against an opponent too distracted from the foot that keeps getting stuck in his mouth.
In the Virginia Senate race, it's the dark horse vs. the guy who rides a horse.
The former would be Democrat Jim Webb, political neophyte cum war hero going up against Bush lapdog George (my Dad was a football icon and thank goodness he named me after him) Allen Jr.
Allen's got more name recognition, more money and the advantage of incumbency, but nothing is forever as the latest polls show.
Ideology aside, Webb should win in a landslide if yesterday's debate on "Meet The Press" is any indication.
From a rhetorical perspective, Webb gave Allen a big-time pimp slap that should convince the Allen camp to stick a prod in their candidate and give him some life.
Webb was plain-spoken and forceful in his opposition to the Iraq war and concisely explained to Tim Russert why he supported Allen in 2000 but not now.
In response, Allen offered up political bromides, using the tired tactic of referring to Webb, who was sitting right next to him, as "my opponent," rather than "Jim" or "Mr. Webb," as if people would somehow forget his name if he didn't utter it.
When Russert repeatedly pressed him on his unyielding support for the war and would he do it again if he knew that the CIA had concluded there was no Saddam-al Qaeda link, he bobbed, weaved and bumbled rather than offer a straight answer.
Allen has been consistent in saying he voted for the war out of loyalty to the country, not Bush, and he went back to that sawhorse yesterday -- never really explaining what the hell that means in the first place.
As for the "Macaca" crack, Allen took himself to the woodshed, even though he denied knowing it was a racist slur. "There was no racial or ethnic intent at slurring .... It was just made up, made up words" and said he had never heard of the word before.
OOOOkay.
And what about that Confederate flag you once kept in your house along with a noose at his law office?
In the session's "duh" moment, he offered: "I wish I had experiences in life earlier and I would have made decisions differently" and insisted, without conviction but with copious amounts of platitudes that he really, really likes black people and others who don't look exactly like him.
Somewhere, Allen's press handlers must have been looking for a noose of their own. It couldn't have gone any worse for their man.
Somewhere else, those at the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee should be looking in their till and give what they have to Webb. It's not often they get a candidate running against an opponent too distracted from the foot that keeps getting stuck in his mouth.
Don't Hold Your Breath: Why You Shouldn't Expect The Los Angeles Times To Be Sold Anytime Soon
Today's Wall Street Journal led with a roundup on the latest dustup at The Los Angeles Times, and the supposed pressure on Tribune to sell its largest and best paper.
But I doubt that's in the cards. Here's why:
---Ship Without A Rudder -- The Times, even in its diminished state caused by years of budget and staff cuts, is still a great newspaper, routinely winning Pulitzer prizes and the grudging admiration of its rivals. It still stirs the drink when it comes to entertainment coverage, while its vaunted foreign bureaus will now also service most of the other Tribune properties who lost their own bureaus thanks to the beancounters in Chicago. Take them away and most foreign news in those papers will come from the wires, which could include the LA Times via a syndicate, in what would be quite an ironic and sad turn of events.
---Still A Cash Cow--Unless you're a greedy institutional investor who waxes nostalgic about the oceans of black ink flowing from newspapers' bottom lines during the dot-com boom, then a 20 percent profit margin like the one generated by the Times is mighty respectable. The Times is responsible for about a quarter of Tribune's publishing revenue, according to the Journal. Take that away, and the company is much-diminshed, more damaged goods than nimble.
---Economies of Scale--The likes of Ron Burkle and David Geffen have been sniffing around the Times sensing an opportunity, not to mention the lofty goal of making the Times locally owned again (we all know how well that's worked out in Santa Barbara, after all). But when these billionaire wannabe publishers have to negotiate their own deals for such mundane items as newsprint and health insurance, they're on their own. No corporate rates spread over many properties. Then they have to justify the price they paid. That means making a buck. That means cutting jobs. That spells disaster.
It's still possible for Tribune to fold in on itself and be broken into pieces a la Knight Ridder if Wall Street is truly ravenous. But it's doubtful Tribune will facilitate that by getting rid of the Times. At least not yet.
But I doubt that's in the cards. Here's why:
---Ship Without A Rudder -- The Times, even in its diminished state caused by years of budget and staff cuts, is still a great newspaper, routinely winning Pulitzer prizes and the grudging admiration of its rivals. It still stirs the drink when it comes to entertainment coverage, while its vaunted foreign bureaus will now also service most of the other Tribune properties who lost their own bureaus thanks to the beancounters in Chicago. Take them away and most foreign news in those papers will come from the wires, which could include the LA Times via a syndicate, in what would be quite an ironic and sad turn of events.
---Still A Cash Cow--Unless you're a greedy institutional investor who waxes nostalgic about the oceans of black ink flowing from newspapers' bottom lines during the dot-com boom, then a 20 percent profit margin like the one generated by the Times is mighty respectable. The Times is responsible for about a quarter of Tribune's publishing revenue, according to the Journal. Take that away, and the company is much-diminshed, more damaged goods than nimble.
---Economies of Scale--The likes of Ron Burkle and David Geffen have been sniffing around the Times sensing an opportunity, not to mention the lofty goal of making the Times locally owned again (we all know how well that's worked out in Santa Barbara, after all). But when these billionaire wannabe publishers have to negotiate their own deals for such mundane items as newsprint and health insurance, they're on their own. No corporate rates spread over many properties. Then they have to justify the price they paid. That means making a buck. That means cutting jobs. That spells disaster.
It's still possible for Tribune to fold in on itself and be broken into pieces a la Knight Ridder if Wall Street is truly ravenous. But it's doubtful Tribune will facilitate that by getting rid of the Times. At least not yet.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
White House Slap Fight: No Snow Job From Tony Even If David Gregory's Hair Keeps Getting Whiter
Can't We All Just Get Along? Not!
They're getting testy over at the White House press room, apparently jonesing for the midterms and the hopeful humiliation of the Bushies by a mad as H-E-double-hockey-sticks electorate.
Meantime, NBC White House chieftain David Gregory and presidential mouthpiece Tony Snow are done with their honeymoon. Somewhere, Scott McClellan is cackling rather loudly, following this exchange:
MR. SNOW: Okay, let me -- let's not let you get away with being rude. Let me just answer the question, and you can come back at me.
Q Excuse me. Don't point your finger at me. I'm not being rude.
MR. SNOW: Yes, you are.
Maybe if they had kept going, it would have devolved into:
Q: I know you are, but what am I?
MR. SNOW: I see London, I see France. I can see your underpants.
Q: Your Mama.
MR. SNOW: Your Mama is a leading contributor to MoveOn.org.
Q: WAAAAAA!!!!
Play nice, you two!
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Crikey! Aussie Media Tries To Find Context Amid Hysteria Over Steve Irwin's Death
Amid Offers of A State Funeral for the Croc Hunter, Reports Try To Make Sense of Ray Attack
Now the second-day stories from Down Under on Steve Irwin's demise are starting the transition from grief to questions to reflection.
Click on the story in the Sydney Morning Herald where police determined Irwin was not "intimidating" the homicidal ray, and you get 31 links to other sidebars, tributes, videos and photos. Also included is a poll asking: "Should video footage of Irwin's death be shown?" As of this writing, it's 58 percent against, by the way.
Over at The Australian, columnist Matt Price sounds a bit bemused, even a little put off, by the worldwide reaction to Irwin's bizarre death, noting it shows how little the rest of the world knows about his country.
In truth, of course, Irwin’s Australia is largely a romantic myth. We are the most urbanised nation in the world, living in increasingly crammed cities on an increasingly crowded coastline. We are, as a rule, terrified of sharks, crocodiles, snakes and spiders, just like everyone else in the world.
Then again, Prime Minister John Howard appears to be buying into the myth, when he said Irwin died in "quintessentially Australian circumstances" and offered up a state funeral if Irwin's family wants one.
But there are the inevitable dispatches that try to knock Irwin's legacy down a peg or two, including one from Mark Coultan in Melbourne's The Age. Writing from New York, he made note of the saturation coverage here and added for good measure: "Irwin was a nightmare for tourism marketers trying to shift Australia's image from beaches and koalas."
Coulter says Irwin's success begat other Discovery Channel staples like Shark Week. More danger = higher ratings, but encouraging irresponsible behavior -- if a bloke like Steve can do it why can't we? -- among viewers that can lead to a bad outcome. His death might give Discovery pause before showing other programs of this ilk. But don't count on that.
Over at 2UE, one of Australia's leading news-talk stations, this was topic one, of course. It was refreshing to listen to overnight host Stuart Bocking actually talk to a caller who felt Irwin encouraged disturbing animal habitats for the better part of seven minutes, and not once shout him down, call him an idiot and hang up spewing epithets.
Conversations on talk radio. How quaint.
Now the second-day stories from Down Under on Steve Irwin's demise are starting the transition from grief to questions to reflection.
Click on the story in the Sydney Morning Herald where police determined Irwin was not "intimidating" the homicidal ray, and you get 31 links to other sidebars, tributes, videos and photos. Also included is a poll asking: "Should video footage of Irwin's death be shown?" As of this writing, it's 58 percent against, by the way.
Over at The Australian, columnist Matt Price sounds a bit bemused, even a little put off, by the worldwide reaction to Irwin's bizarre death, noting it shows how little the rest of the world knows about his country.
In truth, of course, Irwin’s Australia is largely a romantic myth. We are the most urbanised nation in the world, living in increasingly crammed cities on an increasingly crowded coastline. We are, as a rule, terrified of sharks, crocodiles, snakes and spiders, just like everyone else in the world.
Then again, Prime Minister John Howard appears to be buying into the myth, when he said Irwin died in "quintessentially Australian circumstances" and offered up a state funeral if Irwin's family wants one.
But there are the inevitable dispatches that try to knock Irwin's legacy down a peg or two, including one from Mark Coultan in Melbourne's The Age. Writing from New York, he made note of the saturation coverage here and added for good measure: "Irwin was a nightmare for tourism marketers trying to shift Australia's image from beaches and koalas."
Coulter says Irwin's success begat other Discovery Channel staples like Shark Week. More danger = higher ratings, but encouraging irresponsible behavior -- if a bloke like Steve can do it why can't we? -- among viewers that can lead to a bad outcome. His death might give Discovery pause before showing other programs of this ilk. But don't count on that.
Over at 2UE, one of Australia's leading news-talk stations, this was topic one, of course. It was refreshing to listen to overnight host Stuart Bocking actually talk to a caller who felt Irwin encouraged disturbing animal habitats for the better part of seven minutes, and not once shout him down, call him an idiot and hang up spewing epithets.
Conversations on talk radio. How quaint.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Dan Rather Sacked By Football: CBS Bids Anchor Away With Retrospective, But Not In New York
After seeing Bob Schieffer's farewell [along with Sean McManus' painfully awkward attempts to give his outgoing anchor a hug], we were getting ready to fire up the TiVo to watch CBS' promised retrospective on Dan Rather's 44 years at the network.
You'll have to tell me how it was.
In New York, CBS is preempting the special for a meaningless preseason NFL game, according to the Channel Island blog at LATimes.com. No alternate air date's been scheduled.
In Los Angeles, Dan is also dissed, but he's at least dumped over to CBS' other station, KCAL. No such luxury in the Big Apple.
By the way, if you're looking for a little sauce to ladle on the usual TV news piffle, Channel Island is most worthy of your time. Props to the blog for taking to task the media sycophants who lap up what the network flacks offer up, in the interests of "access."
Thursday, August 31, 2006
The Beacon May Fade To Black Thanks To David Black
If Things Were Bad At Akron's Newspaper, Now They Really Suck; An Aging Newsroom Is Picked Off One By One
It's bad enough that David Black, the new owner of the Akron Beacon-Journal, is cutting a quarter of the newsroom staff.
What's especially revealing in a piece from Cleveland Scene is an observation by Beacon columnist David Giffels that because of these and previous layoffs, the paper has no young reporters, which in this case, is not a good thing.
"When we had cuts five years ago, I watched the next generation of exciting reporters depart before they got a chance to blossom here," he says. "We don't have any young reporters, not anyone left in their 20s, and not very many left in their 30s. We can't reinvent ourselves unless we have fresh young people who think about journalism in a more modern way."
Which poses a larger problem for the newspaper industry as a whole. How do you get J-school undergrads to go into newspapers, when they see layoffs at newspapers large and small nationwide? And if they do get a job, inevitably the starting pay is often paltry -- to put it generously.
Even the widest-eyed ideologues who still want the experience the frisson of a newsroom might find $25K a year to start hard to stomach what with all those student loans. All of a sudden that career in PR or advertising doesn't sound so bad.
Some of you might say, well, that's the union for you. Last hired, first fired, regardless of whether some geezer on the city desk has been doing a spot-on imitation of a useless slug since the first Bush administration.
But that's not what's in play here, and these latest cuts went right to the paper's muscle, with a lot of veterans, who built the Beacon-Journal into the Pulitzer Prize-winner it was under the previous Knight-Ridder ownership, now collecting unemployment.
It's all about the money, and for a paper's owner to do anything it takes to prop up the 20 percent or more profit margins they've become accustomed to. It doesn't matter whether what's left will be a paper worth reading.
At least it's in the black. Right, Mr. Black?
It's bad enough that David Black, the new owner of the Akron Beacon-Journal, is cutting a quarter of the newsroom staff.
What's especially revealing in a piece from Cleveland Scene is an observation by Beacon columnist David Giffels that because of these and previous layoffs, the paper has no young reporters, which in this case, is not a good thing.
"When we had cuts five years ago, I watched the next generation of exciting reporters depart before they got a chance to blossom here," he says. "We don't have any young reporters, not anyone left in their 20s, and not very many left in their 30s. We can't reinvent ourselves unless we have fresh young people who think about journalism in a more modern way."
Which poses a larger problem for the newspaper industry as a whole. How do you get J-school undergrads to go into newspapers, when they see layoffs at newspapers large and small nationwide? And if they do get a job, inevitably the starting pay is often paltry -- to put it generously.
Even the widest-eyed ideologues who still want the experience the frisson of a newsroom might find $25K a year to start hard to stomach what with all those student loans. All of a sudden that career in PR or advertising doesn't sound so bad.
Some of you might say, well, that's the union for you. Last hired, first fired, regardless of whether some geezer on the city desk has been doing a spot-on imitation of a useless slug since the first Bush administration.
But that's not what's in play here, and these latest cuts went right to the paper's muscle, with a lot of veterans, who built the Beacon-Journal into the Pulitzer Prize-winner it was under the previous Knight-Ridder ownership, now collecting unemployment.
It's all about the money, and for a paper's owner to do anything it takes to prop up the 20 percent or more profit margins they've become accustomed to. It doesn't matter whether what's left will be a paper worth reading.
At least it's in the black. Right, Mr. Black?
Linda Greenhouse Finds The Supreme Court Justices In A Talkative Mood
Catching up after a few days in the ether, it was remarkable to see yesterday's account in The New York Times by their Supreme Court doyenne Linda Greenhouse about how female law clerks are few and far between.
The story went beyond Greenhouse's usual more-than-workmanlike reporting on the justices. What was truly startling was that she got three of the justices --- Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer -- to be interviewed on the record about the lack of distaff staff. Plus, retired Sandra O'Connor also briefly weighed in.
These are people who aren't prone to make public statements beyond the occasional commencement speech or keynote address at an ABA convention.
Greenhouse has enough cred in chambers because of her longevity at the Court. But that doesn't necessarily translate into access.
Give her credit for trying to get justices to talk, rather than assuming they wouldn't. And give them credit for opening up about what's become a rather vexing issue in their midst.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Hankie Alert: StoryCorps, NPR Team Up For Unforgettable Katrina Stories
When Radio News Still Matters
Sometimes the best radio comes through the door. It's not a news event, it's not a crafty piece of edit or voice-of-doom broadcaster who by virtue of his intonations, let us know something is important.
Often, the most absorbing radio experiences are courtesy of just plain folks talking about life, talking about themselves.
Which is why the StoryCorps project championed by NPR is so great to listen to. The mobile recording booths allow people to spin compelling yarns about pivotal moments in their lives. StoryCorps has been in the Gulf Coast and New Orleans and they found people unburdening themselves emotions still raw from Katrina a year later.
Today's "Morning Edition" had two stories that break your heart and make you want to hug someone you love in a hurry. More can be heard at www.npr.org.
Think good thoughts for Douglas deSilvey, who tells of losing his wife, daughter and wife's parents in Gulfport, Miss. His family was lost, and now his is too.
Then there is New Orleans cop David Duplantier, who is heard with his wife Melissa. As he recalls his thoughts from sleepless nights spent at the Superdome, he realizes this is the first time Melissa has heard him speak this way.
"I'm sorry for not talking about this with you before," he says, his voice tinged with both love and regret.
Sometimes the best radio comes through the door. It's not a news event, it's not a crafty piece of edit or voice-of-doom broadcaster who by virtue of his intonations, let us know something is important.
Often, the most absorbing radio experiences are courtesy of just plain folks talking about life, talking about themselves.
Which is why the StoryCorps project championed by NPR is so great to listen to. The mobile recording booths allow people to spin compelling yarns about pivotal moments in their lives. StoryCorps has been in the Gulf Coast and New Orleans and they found people unburdening themselves emotions still raw from Katrina a year later.
Today's "Morning Edition" had two stories that break your heart and make you want to hug someone you love in a hurry. More can be heard at www.npr.org.
Think good thoughts for Douglas deSilvey, who tells of losing his wife, daughter and wife's parents in Gulfport, Miss. His family was lost, and now his is too.
Then there is New Orleans cop David Duplantier, who is heard with his wife Melissa. As he recalls his thoughts from sleepless nights spent at the Superdome, he realizes this is the first time Melissa has heard him speak this way.
"I'm sorry for not talking about this with you before," he says, his voice tinged with both love and regret.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Understatement Of The Day: "Challenges" At The Akron Beacon-Journal
Union leader says things may get difficult now that paper's new owner is getting rid of 25 percent of the staff. Ya think?
Andale Gross, a reporter at the Beacon-Journal, and unit secretary for the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild, is on the wrong side of the news now that a chunk of the paper's union brethren are getting the ax.
At least the reporters there have a contract, which runs until 2008. Good luck getting the next one.
"We expect there to be some challenges," Gross told Editor & Publisher about future talks. "Negotiations with a new owner. We don't know what that will bring forward. I don't think it is going to be easy."
Gross doesn't know the half of it, given the state of recent contract negotiations at other media outlets, which have been drawn-out and usually unsatisfying to the rank-and-file who hold their noses when voting yes, e.g. San Francisco, Youngstown.
As for "challenges." I guess that's one way of putting it. But the Akron Guild will need more than euphemisms right about now.
Andale Gross, a reporter at the Beacon-Journal, and unit secretary for the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild, is on the wrong side of the news now that a chunk of the paper's union brethren are getting the ax.
At least the reporters there have a contract, which runs until 2008. Good luck getting the next one.
"We expect there to be some challenges," Gross told Editor & Publisher about future talks. "Negotiations with a new owner. We don't know what that will bring forward. I don't think it is going to be easy."
Gross doesn't know the half of it, given the state of recent contract negotiations at other media outlets, which have been drawn-out and usually unsatisfying to the rank-and-file who hold their noses when voting yes, e.g. San Francisco, Youngstown.
As for "challenges." I guess that's one way of putting it. But the Akron Guild will need more than euphemisms right about now.
Cal Thomas Need Not Worry: Bloggers Think Andrew Young's An Idiot, Just Like George Allen
Young Says He's The Victim of His Own Hate Speech
Normally, I wouldn't be jumping on any bandwagon that conservative columnist Cal Thomas would be riding on.
But he wondered whether all the bloggers as well as Jon Stewart -- who blasted away at Sen. George Allen for calling an opposition campaign worker a "macaca" will similarly get their girdles in a swing over Andrew Young, the former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor turned Wal-Mart shill.
You may have read how Young, who was helping Wal-Mart improve his public image, told the Los Angeles Sentinel that, yes, Wal-Mart may have been responsible for running mom-and-pop stores out of minority neighborhoods, BUT:
"[T]hese are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bred and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they ripped off our communities enough. First it was the Jews, then it was Koreans, and now it's Arabs; very few people own these stores."
So, yes, Young is an idiot. Maybe at age 74, and his neurons are heading to the exit at a prodigious rate. Which would explain how he tried to weasel out of his remarks by saying they were "misread and misnterpreted."
All those years of goodwill built up as a civil rights leader and he pisses it away, perhaps finally saying out loud what he's felt all along.
Which was Thomas' point. Would there be sufficient outrage in the blogosphere for Young, as was reserved for Allen?
At least judging by Technorati, Thomas need not have anything to worry about. There's plenty of outrage to go around among bloggers, from the left and right. Jon Stewart? Well, give him a few days, Cal. There are few sacred cows at The Daily Show.
Meanwhile, if you want to hear Young continue to try to dig himself out from under his rhetoric, click here as he flagellates himself with the assistance of Anderson Cooper.
Now he says he's sorry. You be the judge.
Brian Williams Wants To Stay The Course. Does He Know Something We Don't?
In this week's New York Observer, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams opines:
"Walter Cronkite called us a headline service. He called us the supplement to a good daily newspaper. Well, add to that a good selection of Web sites and other sources of information and he’s still right.”
Agreed. But that's part of the problem plaguing the network newsies. Williams is staying the course as far as his broadcast is concerned, easy enough to do when you're number one. But he's at the top of an ever-shrinking heap, even if it still contains 9 million or so viewers.
At one extreme is Williams' status quo. On the other end is the "destroy the village in order to save it" approach. It's broke, let's fix it, and hope for the best. Katie Couric and CBS aren't striving for that radical a show-ectomy when she hits the airwaves again in two weeks. But she's sending visible smoke signals that business will not be as usual, a sound strategy when you're running a solid third in the Nielsens.
Still, the time may well come a lot sooner than later for Williams & Co. to embrace a new reality, if Couric's ratings don't do that for him. Some of the operative words in the above quote are "headline service" and "daily newspaper."
To be sure, a lot of the audience these newscasts are after -- as opposed to the graybeards and retirees who now make up most of the viewers -- have been surfing the Web checking headlines and news updates from any number of sites, which will provide a helluva lot more depth and context than one 23-minute newscast.
As for daily newspapers, sure 58 million of them are still sold every day. But that number keeps dropping every year, and fewer of us have the time to sit down and read more than a few stories. The rest we scan or skip entirely. Tragic but true.
So, the mission of the network news shows -- on days when there is not a momentous news event that consumes all coverage -- is an anachronism whose time is gone. Couric realizes this. Williams will eventually have no choice but to follow suit.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Cable News Says Thanks To John Mark Karr
CNN and Co. Were Getting Real Sick Of The Middle East, Anyway
All JonBenet just about all the time, as if we expected anything less.
But with the blanket coverage comes hours of speculation, useless sidebars, along with the usual innuendo, half-truths and distortions, much as we were used to over the last decade.
Particularly desperate to try to advance the story today was CNN's Kyra Phillips, who tried to get correspondents in the field to read tea leaves.
Ed Lavendera, to his credit, was among those who didn't take the bait. He was covering the cryptic press conference by Boulder D.A. Mary Lacy, who was revealing little and for good reason.
Lavendera was happy to tell Phillips he really didn't know the answer to her speculative, what-if questions. Lesser reporters would've vamped. Lavendera chose to deal with the facts.
Dan Simon, a recent CNN hire via the now-defunct "Celebrity Justice," was at a California courthouse looking at Carr's divorce records, and sounded more desperate to give the ravenous Phillips something, anything.
At one point he quoted "unconfirmed reports" about some nugget of Carr's alleged sordid past with children.
So, Simon was giving viewers what was at best third-hand information that may not have been true in the first place.
It was better than nothing, right? Actually, no. But that hasn't stopped the cable newsies, especially CNN, which distinguished itself for its Middle East coverage and has spent the last 24 hours cashing out that journalistic goodwill.
If nothing else, the coverage allows John Roberts, Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper to continue catching up on their sleep. And for the rest of us to watch something else.
All JonBenet just about all the time, as if we expected anything less.
But with the blanket coverage comes hours of speculation, useless sidebars, along with the usual innuendo, half-truths and distortions, much as we were used to over the last decade.
Particularly desperate to try to advance the story today was CNN's Kyra Phillips, who tried to get correspondents in the field to read tea leaves.
Ed Lavendera, to his credit, was among those who didn't take the bait. He was covering the cryptic press conference by Boulder D.A. Mary Lacy, who was revealing little and for good reason.
Lavendera was happy to tell Phillips he really didn't know the answer to her speculative, what-if questions. Lesser reporters would've vamped. Lavendera chose to deal with the facts.
Dan Simon, a recent CNN hire via the now-defunct "Celebrity Justice," was at a California courthouse looking at Carr's divorce records, and sounded more desperate to give the ravenous Phillips something, anything.
At one point he quoted "unconfirmed reports" about some nugget of Carr's alleged sordid past with children.
So, Simon was giving viewers what was at best third-hand information that may not have been true in the first place.
It was better than nothing, right? Actually, no. But that hasn't stopped the cable newsies, especially CNN, which distinguished itself for its Middle East coverage and has spent the last 24 hours cashing out that journalistic goodwill.
If nothing else, the coverage allows John Roberts, Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper to continue catching up on their sleep. And for the rest of us to watch something else.
When Bad Things Happen To Bad Airlines
Northwest Becomes Early-Line Favorite For PR Boner Of The Year
Every writer needs an editor, loathe as we often are to admit such a shortcoming.
But for that naturally adversarial relationship to have any chance of succeeding, both sides need to have a clue.
Suffice to say, Northwest Airlines is lacking in said clue. Ditto the chuckleheads at alleged "employee-assistance" firm NEAS, the company that wrote a handbook for airline employees being laid off on how to cope with their diminished lives now that they were being restructured.
Word that the handbook had such helpful hints as using old newspapers for cat litter, asking friends and family for hand-me-down clothes and pull stuff you like out of the trash, in order to save money, spread fast and furious for obvious reasons.
And what makes for great copy makes for humongous headaches for companies. NWA said they were sorry, although a company spokesman tried to pass the buck to NEAS, which didn't take the bait and clammed up.
What's both amusing and sad is that when you visit the NEAS Web site, it proclaims:
When life or work become a balancing act, a helping hand provided by highly skilled and compassionate professionals, not just technology, can make all the difference.
Forgive Northwest employees if they engage in a collective guffaw over that whopper.
And NEAS might have gone amok with its good intentions, but remember, it was Northwest that paid for this missive.
It's hard to believe that someone at Northwest -- which doesn't deserve much credit for anything nowadays, especially labor relations -- actually read this thing before it was sent out. Or, it could have been the latest episode of the airline giving its employees the finger during its extended stay in Chapter 11 protection.
Either way, it tells you something about Northwest and why it teeters with extinction. It doesn't deserve better. Their employees do.
Every writer needs an editor, loathe as we often are to admit such a shortcoming.
But for that naturally adversarial relationship to have any chance of succeeding, both sides need to have a clue.
Suffice to say, Northwest Airlines is lacking in said clue. Ditto the chuckleheads at alleged "employee-assistance" firm NEAS, the company that wrote a handbook for airline employees being laid off on how to cope with their diminished lives now that they were being restructured.
Word that the handbook had such helpful hints as using old newspapers for cat litter, asking friends and family for hand-me-down clothes and pull stuff you like out of the trash, in order to save money, spread fast and furious for obvious reasons.
And what makes for great copy makes for humongous headaches for companies. NWA said they were sorry, although a company spokesman tried to pass the buck to NEAS, which didn't take the bait and clammed up.
What's both amusing and sad is that when you visit the NEAS Web site, it proclaims:
When life or work become a balancing act, a helping hand provided by highly skilled and compassionate professionals, not just technology, can make all the difference.
Forgive Northwest employees if they engage in a collective guffaw over that whopper.
And NEAS might have gone amok with its good intentions, but remember, it was Northwest that paid for this missive.
It's hard to believe that someone at Northwest -- which doesn't deserve much credit for anything nowadays, especially labor relations -- actually read this thing before it was sent out. Or, it could have been the latest episode of the airline giving its employees the finger during its extended stay in Chapter 11 protection.
Either way, it tells you something about Northwest and why it teeters with extinction. It doesn't deserve better. Their employees do.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
EW's Box-Office Crystal Ball On The Fritz
Pointless Prognostications A Waste Of Time And Space
Entertainment Weekly normally puts out a more-than-workmanlike product, providing both an insider's edge, along with enough bark and bite when the subject warrants, which is often.
For those of us who by sheer dint of the media covering them so thoroughly, have become absorbed by box-office grosses, EW runs the numbers and then some.
But what is the point of predicting what a movie will rake in before it actually happens? Why can't we just wait for Sunday to find out who scored big with the popcorn set? All of this supposed psychic ability to see into the hearts and minds of moviegoers can turn into sloppy journalism.
To wit, EW.Com's number cruncher Joshua Rich, who predicted that "World ade Center" would be tops at the box office over the weekend, with $25 million in tickets sold. It actually came in third with $18.7 million.
"Talladega Nights" was number-one for the second week in a row with $22.1 million, which Rich said would come in second with $24 million. The real runner-up was the surprising "Step Up," which grossed $20.7 million. Rich slotted it number four with $11 mil.
Detecting a pattern here?
Maybe Rich should put his crystal ball back in the closet, and be bothered to take time out from his busy schedule on Sunday to analyze the real numbers and actually give readers something worth reading.
Entertainment Weekly normally puts out a more-than-workmanlike product, providing both an insider's edge, along with enough bark and bite when the subject warrants, which is often.
For those of us who by sheer dint of the media covering them so thoroughly, have become absorbed by box-office grosses, EW runs the numbers and then some.
But what is the point of predicting what a movie will rake in before it actually happens? Why can't we just wait for Sunday to find out who scored big with the popcorn set? All of this supposed psychic ability to see into the hearts and minds of moviegoers can turn into sloppy journalism.
To wit, EW.Com's number cruncher Joshua Rich, who predicted that "World ade Center" would be tops at the box office over the weekend, with $25 million in tickets sold. It actually came in third with $18.7 million.
"Talladega Nights" was number-one for the second week in a row with $22.1 million, which Rich said would come in second with $24 million. The real runner-up was the surprising "Step Up," which grossed $20.7 million. Rich slotted it number four with $11 mil.
Detecting a pattern here?
Maybe Rich should put his crystal ball back in the closet, and be bothered to take time out from his busy schedule on Sunday to analyze the real numbers and actually give readers something worth reading.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Larry David Already In Mid-Season Form As New Season of "Curb" Announced
Good news for those of us who find Sunday nights just aren't as cranky as they used to be. HBO and Larry David are bringing back "Curb Your Enthusiasm" for a sixth season, though an air date has not been announced, according to USA Today.
Judging by this item on Page 6, looks like Larry is rarin' to go, and may have even gotten some inspiration for a future episode.
It's rare that gossip columnists can help their targets make lemons out of lemonade, but what the heck. Props to Richard Johnson and crew for getting it wrong.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Emeritus, Schmeritus: Mike Wallace Nabs Interview With Iranian Prez
Semi-Retirement's For Pussies
Mike Wallace is a journalist who just happens to be Jewish, rather than a Jewish journalist. At least in the mind of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's Zionist-hating, Holocaust-doubting president/Hezbollah best pal.
Which is why Wallace nailed an interview with Ahmadeinejad after cooling his heels for a week in Tehran, always lovely this time of year.
A preview of that chat will be on Thursday's CBS Evening News, followed by a longer session on "60 Minutes," which gets woken out of its summer repeat slumber with this scoop.
Wallace told the AP's Dave Bauder that Ahmadeinejad came across as "more rational than I had expected."
Israel might beg to differ on that account.
Mike Wallace is a journalist who just happens to be Jewish, rather than a Jewish journalist. At least in the mind of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's Zionist-hating, Holocaust-doubting president/Hezbollah best pal.
Which is why Wallace nailed an interview with Ahmadeinejad after cooling his heels for a week in Tehran, always lovely this time of year.
A preview of that chat will be on Thursday's CBS Evening News, followed by a longer session on "60 Minutes," which gets woken out of its summer repeat slumber with this scoop.
Wallace told the AP's Dave Bauder that Ahmadeinejad came across as "more rational than I had expected."
Israel might beg to differ on that account.
N.Y. Times Turns To Bloomberg To Fill Sports Section
Mayor Mike's Money Machine Migrates From Business Day As Gray Lady Tries To Do Sports On The Cheap
CJR Daily reports today on Bloomberg News' obsession with how often its dispatches appear in The New York Times biz section.
Wonder if Matt Winkler and his minions are as concerned about how their sports writers (yes, they do have them) make it into the Times, which has occasionally used Bloomberg for briefs, but little more.
So, it came as a bit of a shock to see most of the sports section's second page taken up by a long Bloomberg takeout about where the Achilles tendon implanted in Bengals QB Carson Palmer came from.
It was a nice piece of shoeleather from football beat writer Curtis Eichelberger [who got his byline knocked off in the Web version], the kind the Times might do if it wasn't being a big-time Scrooge with its sports budget.
This could be the next step in the ever-so-gradual shift by the Times to tap other sources besides the AP for news. Sometimes, the International Herald-Tribune scribes make it into print. Ditto, more sporadically, for reporters from the NYT regional papers in Florida.
As the belts get ever-tighter on West 43rd St., it wouldn't be far-fetched to see Boston Globe or Worcester Telegram product make its way south.
Which only bodes well for the Bloombergers, especially when they can provide the Times with a story nobody else has.
CJR Daily reports today on Bloomberg News' obsession with how often its dispatches appear in The New York Times biz section.
Wonder if Matt Winkler and his minions are as concerned about how their sports writers (yes, they do have them) make it into the Times, which has occasionally used Bloomberg for briefs, but little more.
So, it came as a bit of a shock to see most of the sports section's second page taken up by a long Bloomberg takeout about where the Achilles tendon implanted in Bengals QB Carson Palmer came from.
It was a nice piece of shoeleather from football beat writer Curtis Eichelberger [who got his byline knocked off in the Web version], the kind the Times might do if it wasn't being a big-time Scrooge with its sports budget.
This could be the next step in the ever-so-gradual shift by the Times to tap other sources besides the AP for news. Sometimes, the International Herald-Tribune scribes make it into print. Ditto, more sporadically, for reporters from the NYT regional papers in Florida.
As the belts get ever-tighter on West 43rd St., it wouldn't be far-fetched to see Boston Globe or Worcester Telegram product make its way south.
Which only bodes well for the Bloombergers, especially when they can provide the Times with a story nobody else has.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Air America Springs More Leaks In The Corporate Suite
A Good Idea In More Danger Than Ever Of Becoming Irrelevant (Or Extinct)
Another exit from the upper ranks of progressive talk network Air America, this time COO Carl Ginsburg, who judging by recent events may have had his job relegated to arranging the sheet music for the radio equivalent of the dance band on the Titanic.
Recently, the network announced its shifting its New York flagship signal from the spotty signal of WLIB to even-weaker WWRL, which has rarely made an appearance in the Arbitron books since its heyday as a soul station 25 years ago.
Nice move.
Do you listen to AAR? Do you want to, but can't pull in a signal? That many people answer no and yes, respectively, to those questions is something Al Franken need to address, and in a hurry.
Another exit from the upper ranks of progressive talk network Air America, this time COO Carl Ginsburg, who judging by recent events may have had his job relegated to arranging the sheet music for the radio equivalent of the dance band on the Titanic.
Recently, the network announced its shifting its New York flagship signal from the spotty signal of WLIB to even-weaker WWRL, which has rarely made an appearance in the Arbitron books since its heyday as a soul station 25 years ago.
Nice move.
Do you listen to AAR? Do you want to, but can't pull in a signal? That many people answer no and yes, respectively, to those questions is something Al Franken need to address, and in a hurry.
Joe Francis Gone Wild
Or How A Soft-Porn Kingpin Could Use A Good P.R. Man (Not Woman) In A Hurry
I'm not sure whether to offer Claire Hoffman of The Los Angeles Times kudos or my sympathy for a riveting profile of "Girls Gone Wild" guru Joe Francis, complete with her being manhandled by her subject.
Whether the guy was serious or just in love with his public party-all-the-time persona is hard to tell.
Hoffman declined to press charges, which in hindsight may have been a mistake, after you read exchanges like this:
He rubbed my shoulder. His gestures were oddly gentle—even fond. I felt sick.
"I'm sorry," he said, reaching over to tousle my hair. "We love our little reporter. Don't we guys? We love our little reporter."
I stared down at the dirt as he whispered in my ear, "I'm sorry, baby, give me a kiss. Give me a kiss."
She felt sick. And so did we.
I'm not sure whether to offer Claire Hoffman of The Los Angeles Times kudos or my sympathy for a riveting profile of "Girls Gone Wild" guru Joe Francis, complete with her being manhandled by her subject.
Whether the guy was serious or just in love with his public party-all-the-time persona is hard to tell.
Hoffman declined to press charges, which in hindsight may have been a mistake, after you read exchanges like this:
He rubbed my shoulder. His gestures were oddly gentle—even fond. I felt sick.
"I'm sorry," he said, reaching over to tousle my hair. "We love our little reporter. Don't we guys? We love our little reporter."
I stared down at the dirt as he whispered in my ear, "I'm sorry, baby, give me a kiss. Give me a kiss."
She felt sick. And so did we.
Monday, July 31, 2006
News Judgment Takes The Weekend Off at New York TV Stations
Newscasts For The Journalistically Impaired
In just a short time of channel surfing last night, I was witness to a panoply of sloppiness and cluelessness on New York newscasts even worse than usual. Chalk it up to the summer heat, or perhaps the usual crews on holiday. Either way, it was bewildering and disappointing at the same time.
Exhibit A: WPIX-Channel 11 had a report on the New York Fire Patrol possibly being disbanded. Left out of the three-minute piece, however, was any real explanation of what the Fire Patrol does.
According to the patrol's union, it is underwritten by the insurance industry and responds to "commercial fires in the five Boroughs and risk their lives to minimize and prevent adverse consequences of commercial fires."
But that was not made clear in the report, which heavily relied on union mouthpieces. The package was more of a press release than an episode in explanatory journalism.
Over on WWOR-Channel 9 (My 9 News), a graphic for the piece on drunk-driving, Jew-hating Mel Gibson was plastered with the misspelled "Anti-Semetic Remarks."
Meanwhile, Chris Wragge on WCBS-Channel 2 led off the first segment of his sports wrap-up show with a package on the Yankees. Fair enough. But then he goes to a break and teases the next segment filled with footballl, including his non-news interview with Giants' star LeVar Arrington.
Gone begging: only the Mets, you know, the team with the best record in the National League who just happened to sweep the Atlanta Braves on the road, the first time that's happened since 1979.
Wragge would do well to his show should be full of sports not himself.
In just a short time of channel surfing last night, I was witness to a panoply of sloppiness and cluelessness on New York newscasts even worse than usual. Chalk it up to the summer heat, or perhaps the usual crews on holiday. Either way, it was bewildering and disappointing at the same time.
Exhibit A: WPIX-Channel 11 had a report on the New York Fire Patrol possibly being disbanded. Left out of the three-minute piece, however, was any real explanation of what the Fire Patrol does.
According to the patrol's union, it is underwritten by the insurance industry and responds to "commercial fires in the five Boroughs and risk their lives to minimize and prevent adverse consequences of commercial fires."
But that was not made clear in the report, which heavily relied on union mouthpieces. The package was more of a press release than an episode in explanatory journalism.
Over on WWOR-Channel 9 (My 9 News), a graphic for the piece on drunk-driving, Jew-hating Mel Gibson was plastered with the misspelled "Anti-Semetic Remarks."
Meanwhile, Chris Wragge on WCBS-Channel 2 led off the first segment of his sports wrap-up show with a package on the Yankees. Fair enough. But then he goes to a break and teases the next segment filled with footballl, including his non-news interview with Giants' star LeVar Arrington.
Gone begging: only the Mets, you know, the team with the best record in the National League who just happened to sweep the Atlanta Braves on the road, the first time that's happened since 1979.
Wragge would do well to his show should be full of sports not himself.
The Conundrum of Travel Guides: Obsolete Before They're Printed
During my family's recent travels to the Canadian Rockies, we relied mainly on two books, the Moon Handbook and the Dummies Guide to the region.
The former was more comprehensive and knowledgable than the latter, which took an overly liberal scattershot approach to the region -- even for dummies.
But both had the dubious distinction of having information -- particularly about pricing -- that was wildly out of date.
Of course, that is par for the course for most guidebooks. The Moon book was published in 2005, for example, which meant that most of the information was revised and verified (hopefully) in 2004. When both books tell you that a Canadian parks family pass costs $89 CAD, but you wind up shelling out $123.50, it's a bit of shock to the system.
However, the Moonies and Dummies and their ilk can't be faulted if prices change, roads close and attractions go up in flames after they go to press. Nonetheless, in this age of instant information, it shouldn't be so hard for the publishers to attempt to update some of the most salient info on their Web sites at least once a year.
Moon has a good overview of its Canadian Rockies book on its site, but with prices from the outdated book. This is especially important when Moon and Lonely Planet, its main competitor, may go 2-4 years between editions on its titles.
This is just the task to sic a few interns on, not to mention the guidebook authors. To show how it could be done, Wizard Publications, the small publisher of four excellent Hawaii guidebooks, has an update page for each of their refreshingly honest and spot-on titles. "We are the only publisher who updates our books every time we reprint them," they boast. But when that's not possible, they turn to the Internet between editions, such as the latest one for the Ultimate Kauai book. No surprises, just a lot of aloha.
The former was more comprehensive and knowledgable than the latter, which took an overly liberal scattershot approach to the region -- even for dummies.
But both had the dubious distinction of having information -- particularly about pricing -- that was wildly out of date.
Of course, that is par for the course for most guidebooks. The Moon book was published in 2005, for example, which meant that most of the information was revised and verified (hopefully) in 2004. When both books tell you that a Canadian parks family pass costs $89 CAD, but you wind up shelling out $123.50, it's a bit of shock to the system.
However, the Moonies and Dummies and their ilk can't be faulted if prices change, roads close and attractions go up in flames after they go to press. Nonetheless, in this age of instant information, it shouldn't be so hard for the publishers to attempt to update some of the most salient info on their Web sites at least once a year.
Moon has a good overview of its Canadian Rockies book on its site, but with prices from the outdated book. This is especially important when Moon and Lonely Planet, its main competitor, may go 2-4 years between editions on its titles.
This is just the task to sic a few interns on, not to mention the guidebook authors. To show how it could be done, Wizard Publications, the small publisher of four excellent Hawaii guidebooks, has an update page for each of their refreshingly honest and spot-on titles. "We are the only publisher who updates our books every time we reprint them," they boast. But when that's not possible, they turn to the Internet between editions, such as the latest one for the Ultimate Kauai book. No surprises, just a lot of aloha.
Never Far From Home: You Never Know What'll Pop Up On Canadian Cable Systems
Follow The Bouncing Satellite. Want To Find Your Favorite Network Program North Of The Border? Good Luck.
Some much-needed R&R was recently completed in the Canadian Rockies. A swell time was had by all, as would be inevitable in such a setting.
We did have a little downtime early in the morning and late at night when the tube beckoned beyond the Canadian channels. Fortunately, most cable systems obliged, though in some rather unusual ways.
The usual superstations were often represented, including WGN-Chicago, WSBK-Boston, KTLA-Los Angeles and WPIX-New York, which allowed me to watch hometown traffic updates in Calgary. Ooh-wee.
But then it got a little funky when it came to network affiliates. In Calgary, we saw Seattle stations. Up in Banff, it was Spokane. Notwithstanding the fact that Alberta is in the mountain time zones, an hour ahead of Washington state.
For a one-nighter in Revelstoke, British Columbia, we were all set for an hour of Gordon Ramsay turning chef wannabes into mush on "Hell's Kitchen." Only problem: It had been on three hours earlier, as the cable system there -- which went on the fritz in the whole city later that night -- brings in Detroit stations.
Back over to Jasper, it was Seattle for the nets except for Fox, which was represented by WFXT in Boston. Say what?
Yeah, I know, you're not on vacation to watch TV, but still. Seems there's a method to the madness in a way.
That would be the Canadian Radio-and television Telecommunications Commission, which has a list of stations that may be retransmitted.
Supposedly, cable systems can have a second network feed on a digital discretionary basis, whatever that means. But that doesn't quite explain how a system would choose stations from three time zones away exclusively.
Can anybody help out a wayward Yankee on this one?
Some much-needed R&R was recently completed in the Canadian Rockies. A swell time was had by all, as would be inevitable in such a setting.
We did have a little downtime early in the morning and late at night when the tube beckoned beyond the Canadian channels. Fortunately, most cable systems obliged, though in some rather unusual ways.
The usual superstations were often represented, including WGN-Chicago, WSBK-Boston, KTLA-Los Angeles and WPIX-New York, which allowed me to watch hometown traffic updates in Calgary. Ooh-wee.
But then it got a little funky when it came to network affiliates. In Calgary, we saw Seattle stations. Up in Banff, it was Spokane. Notwithstanding the fact that Alberta is in the mountain time zones, an hour ahead of Washington state.
For a one-nighter in Revelstoke, British Columbia, we were all set for an hour of Gordon Ramsay turning chef wannabes into mush on "Hell's Kitchen." Only problem: It had been on three hours earlier, as the cable system there -- which went on the fritz in the whole city later that night -- brings in Detroit stations.
Back over to Jasper, it was Seattle for the nets except for Fox, which was represented by WFXT in Boston. Say what?
Yeah, I know, you're not on vacation to watch TV, but still. Seems there's a method to the madness in a way.
That would be the Canadian Radio-and television Telecommunications Commission, which has a list of stations that may be retransmitted.
Supposedly, cable systems can have a second network feed on a digital discretionary basis, whatever that means. But that doesn't quite explain how a system would choose stations from three time zones away exclusively.
Can anybody help out a wayward Yankee on this one?
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
What The Puck? Los Angeles Times Latest Paper To Freeze Hockey Coverage
Lord Stanley Spinning As Number-Four Sport Falls Off The California Coast
The latest cost-cutting at The Los Angeles Times has put the sports section there in the penalty box. LAObserved.com reports writers assigned to The Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Mighty Ducks will not go on most road trips. Also, hockey columnist Helene Elliott becomes a general columnist and won't write her weekly league roundup.
Instead, the AP and stringers will get to shoulder the hockey burden. So, when the nation's fourth-largest newspaper decides to curtail coverage of a still-major sport, what hope is there for smaller newspapers? Actually, little or none, as they don't make road trips either.
Hey, at least the Tribune gang in Hollywood is actually covering the teams when they're home. The New York Times has cut back to one hockey writer who covers the Rangers, although even that team was subject to road wire coverage occasionally.
As for the New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils, who between them have won seven Stanley Cups, they might as well have not even existed. Rare was a reporter sent even to a home game. That the Times relied instead on the AP was apparently viewed with little embarrassment on West 43rd St.
And with word that the Times will shrink in size by 2008, cutting the newshole by 5 percent, expect a lot more of the same.
The latest cost-cutting at The Los Angeles Times has put the sports section there in the penalty box. LAObserved.com reports writers assigned to The Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Mighty Ducks will not go on most road trips. Also, hockey columnist Helene Elliott becomes a general columnist and won't write her weekly league roundup.
Instead, the AP and stringers will get to shoulder the hockey burden. So, when the nation's fourth-largest newspaper decides to curtail coverage of a still-major sport, what hope is there for smaller newspapers? Actually, little or none, as they don't make road trips either.
Hey, at least the Tribune gang in Hollywood is actually covering the teams when they're home. The New York Times has cut back to one hockey writer who covers the Rangers, although even that team was subject to road wire coverage occasionally.
As for the New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils, who between them have won seven Stanley Cups, they might as well have not even existed. Rare was a reporter sent even to a home game. That the Times relied instead on the AP was apparently viewed with little embarrassment on West 43rd St.
And with word that the Times will shrink in size by 2008, cutting the newshole by 5 percent, expect a lot more of the same.
Friday, July 14, 2006
A Wee-al Big Story: When The W.C. Isn't P.C. and Another Loo-Loo Of A Toilet Tale
Keeping The Place You Pee Ad-Free
The Daily Mirror in the U.K. offers up this advertising nightmare. Thousands of urinals and toilets destined for the new Wembley Stadium were 86'ed after it was found the manufacturer's name was on the front. Apparently, that's a big no-no. If you have to go, there can't be a logo.
And is it art, or a place to take a leak? An American tourist chose none of the above, so now a Dutch McDonald's needs to install urinals that are a touch, um, less whimsical.
Westchester Recovers From F2 Twister and So Does The Journal-News
Editors Finally Realize They Badly Misplayed The Story The Day Before
When a rare tornado tears up your backyard, it's time for the hometown newspaper to spring into action. Such was the case for The Journal-News, in Westchester County, N.Y., albeit a day late.
Today's package, including most of the front page and four inside pages was a thorough breakdown of the devastation, the aftermath and what comes next. It's a fairly thorough and workmanlike rendering of the surprise twister that had winds of up to 157 mph.
The only problem: A lot of what's in today's paper should have been in yesterday, as I've pointed out.
Sure, every news outfit plays catch-up, but not when you should have been owning the story from the get-go, and missed crucial plot lines, such as the state trooper, whose car was tossed around by the wind and then slammed upside down. A seatbelt meant he escaped with minor injuries. The car was totaled.
The trooper's story made it to The New York Times yesterday. But that thread was absent from The Journal-News, which gave the impression most of its hurricane coverage Thursday emanated from its Harrison headquarters.
Fortunately, Phil Reisman filled in the blanks on the trooper story, and today's photos were exponentially superior to yesterday's efforts, though that was mostly the fault of the layout and the scant space afforded the story Thursday, rather than the shooters themselves.
One hiccup today: A sidebar that led off "A 264-acre Thornwood property owned by the Legionaires of Christ, a Roman Catholic order, was not spared by the twister."
Which implies it was supposed to escape the tornado's wrath, but the Lord above didn't get the memo. Maybe next time.
Hopefully, The Journal-News could use the tornado coverage as an exercise for how to mobilize for crisis coverage on the day it happens, not the day after. In other words, more news, less journal.
When a rare tornado tears up your backyard, it's time for the hometown newspaper to spring into action. Such was the case for The Journal-News, in Westchester County, N.Y., albeit a day late.
Today's package, including most of the front page and four inside pages was a thorough breakdown of the devastation, the aftermath and what comes next. It's a fairly thorough and workmanlike rendering of the surprise twister that had winds of up to 157 mph.
The only problem: A lot of what's in today's paper should have been in yesterday, as I've pointed out.
Sure, every news outfit plays catch-up, but not when you should have been owning the story from the get-go, and missed crucial plot lines, such as the state trooper, whose car was tossed around by the wind and then slammed upside down. A seatbelt meant he escaped with minor injuries. The car was totaled.
The trooper's story made it to The New York Times yesterday. But that thread was absent from The Journal-News, which gave the impression most of its hurricane coverage Thursday emanated from its Harrison headquarters.
Fortunately, Phil Reisman filled in the blanks on the trooper story, and today's photos were exponentially superior to yesterday's efforts, though that was mostly the fault of the layout and the scant space afforded the story Thursday, rather than the shooters themselves.
One hiccup today: A sidebar that led off "A 264-acre Thornwood property owned by the Legionaires of Christ, a Roman Catholic order, was not spared by the twister."
Which implies it was supposed to escape the tornado's wrath, but the Lord above didn't get the memo. Maybe next time.
Hopefully, The Journal-News could use the tornado coverage as an exercise for how to mobilize for crisis coverage on the day it happens, not the day after. In other words, more news, less journal.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Tornado Sweeps Away News Judgment At The Journal-News
Westchester Twister Fails To Rouse Gannett Suburban Mediocrity Out Of Its Journalistic Slumber
Residents in the tony suburban towns and villages of Westchester County, north of New York City, are more accustomed to reading about tornadoes than being hit by one.
So imagine their surprise when a funnel cloud made its way from the Hudson River near the Tappan Zee Bridge and across the middle of the county, leaving a lot of damage, rattled nerves but fortunately no injuries to speak of.
Sounds like a great story, right? Wicked weather that rarely hits the Northeast tears through the area without warning. Perfect fodder for the local newspaper to own this puppy, with lots of great photos, anecdotes and graphics. Then again, the newspaper is The Journal-News, the perennial underachiever in metro N.Y. journalism (full disclosure: I worked there in 1988-89 and left for greener pastures on good terms).
This is what the paper does, or is supposed to do, cover the big stories in its backyard, the kind everyone will be talking about tomorrow and which might actually spur higher sales the next day. At least on the former account, it fumbled badly.
True, most of the front page was devoted to the storm, but two of the three photos were shrunk down to the point of being irrelevant. The two stories on the front page should have jumped inside to be accompanied by a spread of sidebars and photos to showcase the damage. A double-truck spread in the middle -- make it up to the advertisers later, heaven forfend -- would have been appropriate for starters.
Instead, on A6, there is the continuation of a reaction story with two color photos, while a whole page of coverage on A8 had its three images in black-and-white. A dozen reporters were credited with working on the "coverage," yet The Journal-News could only muster the space for three stories and a tiny sidebar, along with a timeline for previous tornadoes in the lower Hudson Valley. A dozen reporters and scant evidence that few of them made it out of the newsroom.
If they had, maybe they would have gotten a good sidebar from County Executive Andy Spano, who related how a state trooper's car was picked up and spun around, as reported in The New York Times, which deigned to put the tornado story on page B3 and strangely, given the paper's heavy suburban readership, didn't even tease it on the front page. However, its photos of the worst damage by Alan Zale outshone those by three Journal-News photographers.
And the newspaper industry wonders why readers are abandoning them in droves for the Internet -- where the newspaper didn't fare much better. The Journal-News is exhibit A.
-------------
Now some of you in other locales might think I'm overreacting. Sure, it's a tornado, but nobody was hurt except for some roofs, trees and power lines. These things happen all the time, Steve, so chill.
Exactly, they happen all the time, except in places like Westchester. When a tornado passes less than two miles from my home and causes damage on streets I travel every day, I want to know anything and everything. So do my friends and neighbors.
Local TV stations understood this need. For example, Fox 5 had four reporters and a weathercaster up in the area doing live shot filled with lots of compelling anecdotes and tidbits that The Journal-News barely touched on, if at all. Case in point: the most severe damage was at a California Closets store in Hawthorne, where the walls collapsed.
The reaction story on the front page led with a quote from a woman who was interviewing for a job at the store and was trapped in the building, but escaped without a scratch. There's one quote from her. One. Doesn't that episode warrant further examination? We heard more from the woman, Tara Kelly, on TV. Why not The Journal-News?
That there's no good answer for that question has too often been the case at the newspaper, where the overlords are more content to kowtow to their Gannett chieftains whose priority has long been its shareholders rather than its readers. That's why the ads -- including the one unconscionably resting at the bottom of the front page -- are in color, while photos devoted to the lead story inside are not.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, Gannett released its second-quarter earnings yesterday -- down 8.3 percent. Among the reasons: higher newsprint costs.
If that's an excuse for why The Journal-News came up short today, it's a lame one, just like its tornado coverage.
Residents in the tony suburban towns and villages of Westchester County, north of New York City, are more accustomed to reading about tornadoes than being hit by one.
So imagine their surprise when a funnel cloud made its way from the Hudson River near the Tappan Zee Bridge and across the middle of the county, leaving a lot of damage, rattled nerves but fortunately no injuries to speak of.
Sounds like a great story, right? Wicked weather that rarely hits the Northeast tears through the area without warning. Perfect fodder for the local newspaper to own this puppy, with lots of great photos, anecdotes and graphics. Then again, the newspaper is The Journal-News, the perennial underachiever in metro N.Y. journalism (full disclosure: I worked there in 1988-89 and left for greener pastures on good terms).
This is what the paper does, or is supposed to do, cover the big stories in its backyard, the kind everyone will be talking about tomorrow and which might actually spur higher sales the next day. At least on the former account, it fumbled badly.
True, most of the front page was devoted to the storm, but two of the three photos were shrunk down to the point of being irrelevant. The two stories on the front page should have jumped inside to be accompanied by a spread of sidebars and photos to showcase the damage. A double-truck spread in the middle -- make it up to the advertisers later, heaven forfend -- would have been appropriate for starters.
Instead, on A6, there is the continuation of a reaction story with two color photos, while a whole page of coverage on A8 had its three images in black-and-white. A dozen reporters were credited with working on the "coverage," yet The Journal-News could only muster the space for three stories and a tiny sidebar, along with a timeline for previous tornadoes in the lower Hudson Valley. A dozen reporters and scant evidence that few of them made it out of the newsroom.
If they had, maybe they would have gotten a good sidebar from County Executive Andy Spano, who related how a state trooper's car was picked up and spun around, as reported in The New York Times, which deigned to put the tornado story on page B3 and strangely, given the paper's heavy suburban readership, didn't even tease it on the front page. However, its photos of the worst damage by Alan Zale outshone those by three Journal-News photographers.
And the newspaper industry wonders why readers are abandoning them in droves for the Internet -- where the newspaper didn't fare much better. The Journal-News is exhibit A.
-------------
Now some of you in other locales might think I'm overreacting. Sure, it's a tornado, but nobody was hurt except for some roofs, trees and power lines. These things happen all the time, Steve, so chill.
Exactly, they happen all the time, except in places like Westchester. When a tornado passes less than two miles from my home and causes damage on streets I travel every day, I want to know anything and everything. So do my friends and neighbors.
Local TV stations understood this need. For example, Fox 5 had four reporters and a weathercaster up in the area doing live shot filled with lots of compelling anecdotes and tidbits that The Journal-News barely touched on, if at all. Case in point: the most severe damage was at a California Closets store in Hawthorne, where the walls collapsed.
The reaction story on the front page led with a quote from a woman who was interviewing for a job at the store and was trapped in the building, but escaped without a scratch. There's one quote from her. One. Doesn't that episode warrant further examination? We heard more from the woman, Tara Kelly, on TV. Why not The Journal-News?
That there's no good answer for that question has too often been the case at the newspaper, where the overlords are more content to kowtow to their Gannett chieftains whose priority has long been its shareholders rather than its readers. That's why the ads -- including the one unconscionably resting at the bottom of the front page -- are in color, while photos devoted to the lead story inside are not.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, Gannett released its second-quarter earnings yesterday -- down 8.3 percent. Among the reasons: higher newsprint costs.
If that's an excuse for why The Journal-News came up short today, it's a lame one, just like its tornado coverage.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
No Big Love In Borneo: A Beastly Fine For Bigamy
Our Asia desk is working overtime to find the most important news of the day. To wit, this dispatch of a Malaysian man caught on the wrong side of a marriage certificate and fined by a tribal court one buffalo and pig.
The buffalo we can understand, but the pig? Harsh!
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/07/12/D8IQDLRO5.html
The buffalo we can understand, but the pig? Harsh!
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/07/12/D8IQDLRO5.html
Monday, July 10, 2006
Bridgeport Becomes Urinetown: Local Paper Gets Mayor To Pee In Cup
Who Was Grandstanding More, Mayor Fabrizi Or The Connecticut Post?
To say that Bridgeport, CT, is a city with a lot of problems is like proclaiming there are a lot of holes in Swiss cheese.
It's painfully obvious that the city, halfway between Stamford and New Haven saw its better days vanish long ago along with a lot of its viable tax base.
After all, this was a city that installed speed bumps in some of its neighborhoods, so drug dealers would have a harder time jumping on I-95 if they were chased by cops.
The same ignominy applies to City Hall, where Mayor John Fabrizi was once quite the cokehead. He came clean last month in a tearful appearance before the editorial board of the Connecticut Post, and said he had not partaken in the nose candy since 2004, and offered to take a drug test "anytime anywhere."
OK, the Post said last week, how about Thursday? To which Fabrizi replied, how about right now?
http://www.connpost.com/news/ci_4030220
And off he went with the Post's managing editor to a lab. The next day, results showed Fabrizi's piss was clean even if his reputation was not.
So, the Post confirmed the mayor can legitimately say "Just say no." But at what cost? The Post effectively acted as judge and jury. Fabrizi may have put out the offer, but the newspaper didn't have to be the one to act on it.
Fabrizi no doubt knew what the results would be and effectively manipulated the Post into turning a contentious political issue into a media sideshow.
Then again, the Post was a willing accomplice. The unquenchable thirst to find more dirt muddied the judgment of its news chieftains, who instead got caught up in their self-aggrandizement to forget a Journalism 101 maxim -- you report the story, you don't become the story.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Chef On A Shoestring Hangs Ira Joe Fisher Out To Dry
Oversized Weatherman Gets Dissed For Dessert On The Saturday Early Show
Guess who won't be getting invited back to the Saturday Early Show? That would be cook/author Nancy Silverton, who was frantically whipping up a three-course meal in the seven-minute Chef On A Shoestring segment.
Normally, these are tasty if innocuous affairs, with one of the hosts kibitzing with a star chef -- who usually has a cookbook to push -- on how to concoct three dishes spending no more than 40 bucks.
At the end, the other host, along with normally jovial weatherman Ira Joe Fisher, come on camera to help sample the wares. Fisher is, um, plus-sized, if you will, and is always eager to plunge into the gastronomic bounty that awaits.
Today's show was no exception, as Silverton described dessert, a blackberry-yogurt soup with vanilla ice cream and blackberry compote. So far, so good.
Fisher comes in for the kill as host Tracy Smith is helping Silverton prepare dessert. She asks Silverton about the ice cream:
Smith: "One scoop or two?"
Silverton: "I think I'll do one today" and then turns to Fisher on her left, "I don't think you need two, right?"
To which the abashed but poker-faced and ravenously hungry Fisher replies: "No, but let's have two."
Of course, Silverton spoke what many people think, but this is TV, after all.
If you'd like, you don't have to blame Silverton, although where would be the fun in that?
Instead, point a finger at the segment producer,who had Silverton outside grilling burgers and being consumed by the ensuing smoke when the live piece started. Normally, the guest chefs will start a dish from scratch, start cooking it and whip out a finished version prepared earlier.
This time, Silverton was frantically tending her beef and Smith had to coax her away from the flames. She was game but frazzled.
Too many distractions set her up for a fall, and left her eating crow. And she probably didn't save a piece for Ira Joe.
Guess who won't be getting invited back to the Saturday Early Show? That would be cook/author Nancy Silverton, who was frantically whipping up a three-course meal in the seven-minute Chef On A Shoestring segment.
Normally, these are tasty if innocuous affairs, with one of the hosts kibitzing with a star chef -- who usually has a cookbook to push -- on how to concoct three dishes spending no more than 40 bucks.
At the end, the other host, along with normally jovial weatherman Ira Joe Fisher, come on camera to help sample the wares. Fisher is, um, plus-sized, if you will, and is always eager to plunge into the gastronomic bounty that awaits.
Today's show was no exception, as Silverton described dessert, a blackberry-yogurt soup with vanilla ice cream and blackberry compote. So far, so good.
Fisher comes in for the kill as host Tracy Smith is helping Silverton prepare dessert. She asks Silverton about the ice cream:
Smith: "One scoop or two?"
Silverton: "I think I'll do one today" and then turns to Fisher on her left, "I don't think you need two, right?"
To which the abashed but poker-faced and ravenously hungry Fisher replies: "No, but let's have two."
Of course, Silverton spoke what many people think, but this is TV, after all.
If you'd like, you don't have to blame Silverton, although where would be the fun in that?
Instead, point a finger at the segment producer,who had Silverton outside grilling burgers and being consumed by the ensuing smoke when the live piece started. Normally, the guest chefs will start a dish from scratch, start cooking it and whip out a finished version prepared earlier.
This time, Silverton was frantically tending her beef and Smith had to coax her away from the flames. She was game but frazzled.
Too many distractions set her up for a fall, and left her eating crow. And she probably didn't save a piece for Ira Joe.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Sun Sets On Foreign Coverage In Baltimore, While Newsday Has A Bad Day
Shuttering Foreign Bureaus: Cost-Cutting Because We Don't Care About The Rest of the World?
If you need to know what's going in Patchogue and Hicksville, then Newsday has been the place to turn. But Newsday was never really a suburban newspaper. It was a newspaper that just happened to be in the suburbs, in this case Long Island.
Its ambitions were always much grander, and that's why it put together a formidable Washington bureau, an office in Albany usually crammed with more reporters than the Times, and a more-than-respectable foreign report often filled with courageous enterprise reporting.
But that was a long time ago, or so it seems.
The Washington bureau has been dessicated since Newsday was acquired by Tribune as part of the Times-Mirror deal. Albany is but a shell. And now the remaining foreign bureaus, in Beirut and Islamabad (the last of six), are on the way out, a prospect that Newsday left to the wires. "The Tribune-wide staffing changes will not reduce our commitment to providing an enterprising foreign report," said Newsday editor John Mancini.
And if you believe that, Newsday has a bridge in Brooklyn that you might be interested in purchasing. Oh, I forgot. The paper got rid of most of its reporters in the city.
Now Newsday will have to rely the wires and a team of Tribune correspondents, mostly from the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, who will now be writing for the whole chain.
This is the same newspaper where current foreign editor Roy Gutman won a Pulitzer in 1993 for his unrelenting series of reports about human-rights atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia that were chilling in their detail, and remarkable given how they were written in a war zone where Gutman was constantly in peril.
More recently, former foreign editor Dele Olojede won a Pulitzer last year for his unstinting look at Rwanda 10 years after the genocide there. Tellingly, Olojede left Newsday in 2005, taking a buyout rather than reduce his commitment to foreign news, as the parent company embarked on yet another cost-cutting spree.
That's all gone now. Newsday continues its evolution as a shell of its former self. "I don't know what's going to replace them. The paper thrived on that," Gutman told the Baltimore Sun, another Tribune paper which is losing its last remaining foreign bureaus too (Moscow, Johannesburg), while its Jerusalem reporter will be absorbed into the Tribune foreign network.
Sun Editor Tim Franklin says the amount of space devoted to foreign news won't change. It just won't come from Sun reporters. The paper had eight bureaus just a decade ago.Franklin did everything but launch into "Tomorrow" from "Annie" as he spun these latest developments, proclaiming: "We'll continue to have a storied tradition of foreign reporting - just in a different form."
But Sun foreign editor Robert Ruby knows better. As he told the AP, the bureau closings were a "very sad development for the newspaper."And for anyone who cares about the news business.
If you need to know what's going in Patchogue and Hicksville, then Newsday has been the place to turn. But Newsday was never really a suburban newspaper. It was a newspaper that just happened to be in the suburbs, in this case Long Island.
Its ambitions were always much grander, and that's why it put together a formidable Washington bureau, an office in Albany usually crammed with more reporters than the Times, and a more-than-respectable foreign report often filled with courageous enterprise reporting.
But that was a long time ago, or so it seems.
The Washington bureau has been dessicated since Newsday was acquired by Tribune as part of the Times-Mirror deal. Albany is but a shell. And now the remaining foreign bureaus, in Beirut and Islamabad (the last of six), are on the way out, a prospect that Newsday left to the wires. "The Tribune-wide staffing changes will not reduce our commitment to providing an enterprising foreign report," said Newsday editor John Mancini.
And if you believe that, Newsday has a bridge in Brooklyn that you might be interested in purchasing. Oh, I forgot. The paper got rid of most of its reporters in the city.
Now Newsday will have to rely the wires and a team of Tribune correspondents, mostly from the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, who will now be writing for the whole chain.
This is the same newspaper where current foreign editor Roy Gutman won a Pulitzer in 1993 for his unrelenting series of reports about human-rights atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia that were chilling in their detail, and remarkable given how they were written in a war zone where Gutman was constantly in peril.
More recently, former foreign editor Dele Olojede won a Pulitzer last year for his unstinting look at Rwanda 10 years after the genocide there. Tellingly, Olojede left Newsday in 2005, taking a buyout rather than reduce his commitment to foreign news, as the parent company embarked on yet another cost-cutting spree.
That's all gone now. Newsday continues its evolution as a shell of its former self. "I don't know what's going to replace them. The paper thrived on that," Gutman told the Baltimore Sun, another Tribune paper which is losing its last remaining foreign bureaus too (Moscow, Johannesburg), while its Jerusalem reporter will be absorbed into the Tribune foreign network.
Sun Editor Tim Franklin says the amount of space devoted to foreign news won't change. It just won't come from Sun reporters. The paper had eight bureaus just a decade ago.Franklin did everything but launch into "Tomorrow" from "Annie" as he spun these latest developments, proclaiming: "We'll continue to have a storied tradition of foreign reporting - just in a different form."
But Sun foreign editor Robert Ruby knows better. As he told the AP, the bureau closings were a "very sad development for the newspaper."And for anyone who cares about the news business.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Adam Pascal and Darlene Love Don't Get Any Facetime Amid Fireworks
Meanwhile, the GOP plays it safe at Ford's Theatre
If you watched last night's NBC telecast of the Macy's fireworks, it was a pyrotechnicapalooza, to be sure.
But lost amid the boom-booms was the fact that for the VIPs and the folks watching at home, there was a live orchestra and singers, including Syosset's own Adam Pascal and that ever-shimmering Crystal, Darlene Love.
At various times, they cut to an insert of the orchestra playing at Waterside Plaza, so you could see it was live, not Memorex. And we also had to watch too many shots of people watching fireworks.
Yet, at no point did we see Pascal or Love sing. No doubt, they would have appreciated a little face time with America. Instead, we got what amounted to a voice over from them. Their agents might need a good talking-to right about now.
And was the sound a little bit out of whack with the photos, or was Liza Minnelli lip-syncing "New York, New York" for the broadcast's finale?
Later on, ABC aired the previously taped "An American Celebration at Ford'sTheatre," with the Dubyas front and center guffawing and clapping with the rest of the tuxedoed crowd. Did anyone happen to notice any known Democrats during the audience cutaway shots? And was it just me, or is GOP-gun lover Tom Selleck, last night's emcee, looking more butch than ever? Just asking.
N.Y. Times' Debt Story Owes Us More Of An Explanation
Should We Be Shocked That People Owe Money and Collection Agencies Want That Money? The Horror!
On the front page of today's New York Times is a piece that goes across the bottom of the top fold headlined An Outcry Erupts As Debt Collectors Play Rough
Is this news? Collection agencies aren't exactly known for playing patsy with deadbeats, but now they apparently have been getting a bad case of the nasties.
I guess the Times felt that it's readership in Scarsdale and Short Hills, not to mention Riverdale and Murray Hill, needed to be reminded that not everyone is like them, and, jeepers, aren't able to make their credit-card payments every month.
The nub of the story, by hyper-prolific Sewell Chan, is actually contained in the 19th paragraph:
Robert J. Hobbs, the deputy director of the National Consumer Law Center, an advocacy organization based in Boston, attributed the rise in complaints about abusive collection practices to three broad trends: the rapid growth in the number of collection agencies, the tightening of bankruptcy-protection laws last year and the record level of consumer debt, now totaling $2.2 trillion, complicated by rising interest rates and stagnant personal incomes. Identity theft and Internet fraud are also cited as factors.
All well and good, assuming you jumped to B4 to read it.
What would have been a lot more helpful, not to mention, gasp, more explanatory, is for a breakout box that explains what abusive collection practices are, and the rights consumers have under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. In other words, what you can do to fight back if you're the victim of what Chan spends the better part of 1,500 words talking about.
Or maybe Joe Sexton and the well-compensated denizens on the Metro desk simply assume that if you can plunk down a buck for the paper, you and bill collectors shall never meet. How blithe of them to make that assessment.
But beyond that value judgment it's a matter of good journalism to fill in the blanks. First you say that complaints about collection practices have soared, but there's virtually nothing about how to fight back.
Time to empty the news vacuum on West 43rd St. and suck in some of the real world.
On the front page of today's New York Times is a piece that goes across the bottom of the top fold headlined An Outcry Erupts As Debt Collectors Play Rough
Is this news? Collection agencies aren't exactly known for playing patsy with deadbeats, but now they apparently have been getting a bad case of the nasties.
I guess the Times felt that it's readership in Scarsdale and Short Hills, not to mention Riverdale and Murray Hill, needed to be reminded that not everyone is like them, and, jeepers, aren't able to make their credit-card payments every month.
The nub of the story, by hyper-prolific Sewell Chan, is actually contained in the 19th paragraph:
Robert J. Hobbs, the deputy director of the National Consumer Law Center, an advocacy organization based in Boston, attributed the rise in complaints about abusive collection practices to three broad trends: the rapid growth in the number of collection agencies, the tightening of bankruptcy-protection laws last year and the record level of consumer debt, now totaling $2.2 trillion, complicated by rising interest rates and stagnant personal incomes. Identity theft and Internet fraud are also cited as factors.
All well and good, assuming you jumped to B4 to read it.
What would have been a lot more helpful, not to mention, gasp, more explanatory, is for a breakout box that explains what abusive collection practices are, and the rights consumers have under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. In other words, what you can do to fight back if you're the victim of what Chan spends the better part of 1,500 words talking about.
Or maybe Joe Sexton and the well-compensated denizens on the Metro desk simply assume that if you can plunk down a buck for the paper, you and bill collectors shall never meet. How blithe of them to make that assessment.
But beyond that value judgment it's a matter of good journalism to fill in the blanks. First you say that complaints about collection practices have soared, but there's virtually nothing about how to fight back.
Time to empty the news vacuum on West 43rd St. and suck in some of the real world.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
All That's Missing Are The Pitchforks and Angry Villagers: Journalists Turn On Each Other In Times Bank Records Flap
Memo To Richard Valeriani: Shut Up
Everybody and their editor has an opinion on The New York Times money-tracing story that has the Bush administration in a tizzy while the National Review has all but called for the paper's First Amendment privileges to be revoked.
Nothing unexpected there. But it is a bit startling when the vitriol comes from someone who should know better, in this case Richard Valeriani, the former long-time NBC correspondent who often dwelled in the national-security trenches.
In the Huffington Post, Richard Valeriani is foaming at the mouth over what he views as borderline treason by Bill Keller's gang.
This was show-off journalism, pure and simple. Look at us. Look at what we found out. Look at how good we are uncovering secrets.
em>
Yeah, so what?
Valeriani almost sounds hurt as if he wishes he was still at the network so he could've been the one on with Brian Williams breaking the story rather than everybody else, who had to chase after the Times, when the story first posted at 9 p.m.
In a vain attempt to justify his sanctimony, Valeriani offers up two analogies and fails miserably both times. First:
After the take-over of the American Embassy in Iran in 1979, I found out that six American diplomats had escaped and were at large somewhere in Teheran. The Executive Editor at NBC Nightly News wanted to run the story, but fortunately, management was more sensible, and we did not report the story at the time.
Bully for him, but how do you equate this story with hostages escaping from dangerous radicals? You don't. We're talking about lives in the balance, as opposed to yet another dash to secrecy by the White House, where the slope becomes ever more slippery for the Constitution. Yes, nothing is illegal about the program. At least from what we've learned so far.
Valeriani saves the best for last:
Running the story about the money-tracing program is a version of giving Anne Frank’s address to the Nazis.
Whoa, Dick! That's a crappy comparison in all kinds of ways.
Reality check time. The Times had the story, with The Wall Street Journal and L.A. Times soon on its tail. In other words, leading newspapers liberal and conservative did their job -- disclosure trumped government secrecy. If anything, the adminstration has only itself to blame. By constantly trying to operate in the dark, even in matters that don't involve security, it was easy not to give the White House the benefit of the doubt.
The Times isn't the enemy. Valeriani should know better along with the other latter-day nattering nabobs of negatavism who all of a sudden think freedom of the press wasn't such a good idea after all.
Everybody and their editor has an opinion on The New York Times money-tracing story that has the Bush administration in a tizzy while the National Review has all but called for the paper's First Amendment privileges to be revoked.
Nothing unexpected there. But it is a bit startling when the vitriol comes from someone who should know better, in this case Richard Valeriani, the former long-time NBC correspondent who often dwelled in the national-security trenches.
In the Huffington Post, Richard Valeriani is foaming at the mouth over what he views as borderline treason by Bill Keller's gang.
This was show-off journalism, pure and simple. Look at us. Look at what we found out. Look at how good we are uncovering secrets.
em>
Yeah, so what?
Valeriani almost sounds hurt as if he wishes he was still at the network so he could've been the one on with Brian Williams breaking the story rather than everybody else, who had to chase after the Times, when the story first posted at 9 p.m.
In a vain attempt to justify his sanctimony, Valeriani offers up two analogies and fails miserably both times. First:
After the take-over of the American Embassy in Iran in 1979, I found out that six American diplomats had escaped and were at large somewhere in Teheran. The Executive Editor at NBC Nightly News wanted to run the story, but fortunately, management was more sensible, and we did not report the story at the time.
Bully for him, but how do you equate this story with hostages escaping from dangerous radicals? You don't. We're talking about lives in the balance, as opposed to yet another dash to secrecy by the White House, where the slope becomes ever more slippery for the Constitution. Yes, nothing is illegal about the program. At least from what we've learned so far.
Valeriani saves the best for last:
Running the story about the money-tracing program is a version of giving Anne Frank’s address to the Nazis.
Whoa, Dick! That's a crappy comparison in all kinds of ways.
Reality check time. The Times had the story, with The Wall Street Journal and L.A. Times soon on its tail. In other words, leading newspapers liberal and conservative did their job -- disclosure trumped government secrecy. If anything, the adminstration has only itself to blame. By constantly trying to operate in the dark, even in matters that don't involve security, it was easy not to give the White House the benefit of the doubt.
The Times isn't the enemy. Valeriani should know better along with the other latter-day nattering nabobs of negatavism who all of a sudden think freedom of the press wasn't such a good idea after all.
Cutting Anderson Cooper Just A Little Slack
CNN Pretty Boy Actually Has Some Journalistic Heft Under His Hair
So it's fashionable to dump on TV news It Boy Anderson Cooper. Sometimes, the silver-haired one makes it a little too easy, like during his fawning Angelina Jolie interview ,where he embarrassed himself asking questions about childbirth.
And, as The New York Observer's Rebecca Dana gleefully points out, all the hype hasn't translated into ratings for his two-hour newsfest on CNN. In fact, they slip most nights in comparison to his somnabulant predecessor, Aaron Brown.
http://observer.com/20060703/20060703_Rebecca_Dana_pageone_nytv.asp
For now, let's try to give the guy at least an eensy bit of credit. If he was all hair, blue eyes and empty-headed, he'd be interviewing hucksters on infomercials by now. Instead, he's hit the highway numerous times in search of a good story and has often come through. CNN isn't exactly blowing its travel budget on a bubble-head.
Covering the tsunami, Cooper found the right mix of gravitas and emotion. He may have gone off the rails at times during the Katrina coverage, but so did most of us as we watched the story unfold.
The Coop's also gotten down and dirty in Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other dubious ports of call. And his brief excursions to "60 Minutes" were solid to a fault, which bodes well for the five stories he's slated to do there in the coming season.
For now, let's forgive him his Jolie trespasses and see what happens next. You might be pleasantly surprised.
So it's fashionable to dump on TV news It Boy Anderson Cooper. Sometimes, the silver-haired one makes it a little too easy, like during his fawning Angelina Jolie interview ,where he embarrassed himself asking questions about childbirth.
And, as The New York Observer's Rebecca Dana gleefully points out, all the hype hasn't translated into ratings for his two-hour newsfest on CNN. In fact, they slip most nights in comparison to his somnabulant predecessor, Aaron Brown.
http://observer.com/20060703/20060703_Rebecca_Dana_pageone_nytv.asp
For now, let's try to give the guy at least an eensy bit of credit. If he was all hair, blue eyes and empty-headed, he'd be interviewing hucksters on infomercials by now. Instead, he's hit the highway numerous times in search of a good story and has often come through. CNN isn't exactly blowing its travel budget on a bubble-head.
Covering the tsunami, Cooper found the right mix of gravitas and emotion. He may have gone off the rails at times during the Katrina coverage, but so did most of us as we watched the story unfold.
The Coop's also gotten down and dirty in Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other dubious ports of call. And his brief excursions to "60 Minutes" were solid to a fault, which bodes well for the five stories he's slated to do there in the coming season.
For now, let's forgive him his Jolie trespasses and see what happens next. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Dan Would Have Rathered Taken The High Road But Found It Was Full Of Potholes
CBS Is A Network Not Always Big On Big Goodbyes
Dan Rather said all the right things today as his departure from CBS after 44 years became official.
So did CBS, but the end result was different.
Usually, this is a time for every bromide to be taken out of cold storage for a valedictory statement. Rather -- whom I did some writing for during my time at CBS News Radio -- was having none of that.
Still, the public candor and residual bitterness in his statement was remarkable given how rare it is.
My departure before the term of my contract represents CBS's final acknowledgement, after a protracted struggle, that they had not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there. As for their offers of a future with only an office but no assignments, it just isn't in me to sit around doing nothing.
CBS demurred by responding in kind -- their contract offer or lack thereof had already spoken volumes.
Instead, it issued a pat: "We value and respect Dan's tremendous career at CBS News. Despite the fact that we couldn't reach an agreement that satisfied everyone, we wish him all future success."
CBSNews.com, though, to its credit, did mention Rather's criticism and linked to the entire statement.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/19/national/main1727285.shtml
The network says it's working on a primetime special honoring Rather's career to be aired in the fall (should we hold our breath?). We'll see if it's all hosannas all the time, or will they mix in some of the lower moments ("Ready, Set, Gorbachev", "Courage", walking off when the U.S. Open tennis ran long, the Afghan fashion statement and that little Bush/National Guard thing).
A lot may depend on how much he pisses off his now-former bosses in his interviews over the next few days.
What I'll miss about him is that despite all the idiosyncrasies and Ratherisms -- "this race is hotter than a Laredo parking lot" anyone? -- is that CBS had in its anchor chair for 24 years a dogged reporter whose bullshit detector was almost always on high.
Unlike Brian Williams, to name one, Rather didn't have to be seasoned in the field to establish his credentials. Vietnam and the Nixon White House had long since taken care of that. He liked presiding in the big tent that a network anchor is afforded, but still yearned to be pounding the pavement in search of a good story to tell. And when he latched onto one, there were few better in his prime.
Dan often surprised us grunts in radio with how generous he was with his time to provide analysis on a story, or give us a preview of an interview he'd just scored with some head of state or newsmaker du jour.
Many TV correspondents thought radio was not worth their bother -- even though more people heard the hourly newscasts than watched the evening news -- but not Dan, who remembered from whence he came. He was always introduced as CBS News Correspondent Dan Rather, rather than CBS Evening News Anchorman Dan Rather.
Of course, he was more than just a reporter. Getting paid $10 million a year does that to a guy. But he was all about the news -- lots of steak -- Texas-sized, to be sure -- easy on the sizzle.
So, it's not surprising that he's declined to go quietly. Rather, cowboy boots and all, was having none of that, and is happy to hitch his ride at some other outpost.
Good for him.
Dan Rather said all the right things today as his departure from CBS after 44 years became official.
So did CBS, but the end result was different.
Usually, this is a time for every bromide to be taken out of cold storage for a valedictory statement. Rather -- whom I did some writing for during my time at CBS News Radio -- was having none of that.
Still, the public candor and residual bitterness in his statement was remarkable given how rare it is.
My departure before the term of my contract represents CBS's final acknowledgement, after a protracted struggle, that they had not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there. As for their offers of a future with only an office but no assignments, it just isn't in me to sit around doing nothing.
CBS demurred by responding in kind -- their contract offer or lack thereof had already spoken volumes.
Instead, it issued a pat: "We value and respect Dan's tremendous career at CBS News. Despite the fact that we couldn't reach an agreement that satisfied everyone, we wish him all future success."
CBSNews.com, though, to its credit, did mention Rather's criticism and linked to the entire statement.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/19/national/main1727285.shtml
The network says it's working on a primetime special honoring Rather's career to be aired in the fall (should we hold our breath?). We'll see if it's all hosannas all the time, or will they mix in some of the lower moments ("Ready, Set, Gorbachev", "Courage", walking off when the U.S. Open tennis ran long, the Afghan fashion statement and that little Bush/National Guard thing).
A lot may depend on how much he pisses off his now-former bosses in his interviews over the next few days.
What I'll miss about him is that despite all the idiosyncrasies and Ratherisms -- "this race is hotter than a Laredo parking lot" anyone? -- is that CBS had in its anchor chair for 24 years a dogged reporter whose bullshit detector was almost always on high.
Unlike Brian Williams, to name one, Rather didn't have to be seasoned in the field to establish his credentials. Vietnam and the Nixon White House had long since taken care of that. He liked presiding in the big tent that a network anchor is afforded, but still yearned to be pounding the pavement in search of a good story to tell. And when he latched onto one, there were few better in his prime.
Dan often surprised us grunts in radio with how generous he was with his time to provide analysis on a story, or give us a preview of an interview he'd just scored with some head of state or newsmaker du jour.
Many TV correspondents thought radio was not worth their bother -- even though more people heard the hourly newscasts than watched the evening news -- but not Dan, who remembered from whence he came. He was always introduced as CBS News Correspondent Dan Rather, rather than CBS Evening News Anchorman Dan Rather.
Of course, he was more than just a reporter. Getting paid $10 million a year does that to a guy. But he was all about the news -- lots of steak -- Texas-sized, to be sure -- easy on the sizzle.
So, it's not surprising that he's declined to go quietly. Rather, cowboy boots and all, was having none of that, and is happy to hitch his ride at some other outpost.
Good for him.
Editor's Resume Victim of Bad Copyediting
Ex-Wisconsin ME Sues Over Not Getting A Second Chance To Make A First Impression
Sure, it's embarrassing when you send out a resume and it's rife with typos, even more so when you're a former newspaper editor in search of greener pastures in flackdom.
Such is the plight of poor Barbara Uebelacker, former managing editor of the Janesville Gazette in Wisconsin.
For some reason, known only to Uebelacker, she paid $1,720 to an employment agency to help her find a job. That exorbitant fee included writing her resume and sending it out to prospective employers.
http://www.gazetteextra.com/typosuit061606.asp
Just one wrinkle in that scheme: The agency sent out hundreds of letters, with Uebelacker's faked signature to boot, with gibberish in the letter, which , shall we say, doesn't exactly leave the right impression for a job where attention to detail is paramount.
Now she's suing for humiliation, mental anguish, etc. Despite the gaffe, it's still not a slam dunk as to whether she actually has a case or whether it's really worth the expense of litigating. Of course, that's never stopped anyone from filing suit, and this one will never get as far as the courtroom.
Still, the larger question remains is why someone would pay all that money for someone to help them find a job. A little sweat equity can go a long way.
Nowadays you rarely need a stamp to apply for a job, as Monster, Hot Jobs and Career Builder will no doubt tell you.
A job change is a big deal and trusting some anonymous agency to do the legwork for you is practically begging everyone who knows you to yell in unison "I told you so."
Which is not to say Uebelacker got what she deserved, but she came pretty damn close.
Sure, it's embarrassing when you send out a resume and it's rife with typos, even more so when you're a former newspaper editor in search of greener pastures in flackdom.
Such is the plight of poor Barbara Uebelacker, former managing editor of the Janesville Gazette in Wisconsin.
For some reason, known only to Uebelacker, she paid $1,720 to an employment agency to help her find a job. That exorbitant fee included writing her resume and sending it out to prospective employers.
http://www.gazetteextra.com/typosuit061606.asp
Just one wrinkle in that scheme: The agency sent out hundreds of letters, with Uebelacker's faked signature to boot, with gibberish in the letter, which , shall we say, doesn't exactly leave the right impression for a job where attention to detail is paramount.
Now she's suing for humiliation, mental anguish, etc. Despite the gaffe, it's still not a slam dunk as to whether she actually has a case or whether it's really worth the expense of litigating. Of course, that's never stopped anyone from filing suit, and this one will never get as far as the courtroom.
Still, the larger question remains is why someone would pay all that money for someone to help them find a job. A little sweat equity can go a long way.
Nowadays you rarely need a stamp to apply for a job, as Monster, Hot Jobs and Career Builder will no doubt tell you.
A job change is a big deal and trusting some anonymous agency to do the legwork for you is practically begging everyone who knows you to yell in unison "I told you so."
Which is not to say Uebelacker got what she deserved, but she came pretty damn close.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Lyrical Wire Prose for Phil Mickelson's Epic Collapse
AP Copy Doesn't Have to Be Boring. Honest.
When Phil Mickelson bungled his way to a second-place finish yesterday in the U.S. Open, it was a stunning story. No doubt, more than a few laptops were whirring in the press tent about Lefty winning his third-straight major, tying Tiger Woods
The gallery loves the doughy Lefty, he of the warm smile, telegenic wife and cute daughters. It was the story of the day, except a double-bogey on 18 got in the way. Which, of course, turned into a better story that the AP's Doug Ferguson turned into a compelling narrative remarkable not just for its lyrical grace but because it ran on the AP, whose sports report usually errs on the side of staid, even by wire-service standards.
Instead of being linked with Woods in the majors, the comparisons turned to Jean Van de Velde at Carnoustie in 1999, when the Frenchman took triple bogey on the last hole of the British Open. But at least Van de Velde got a chance in a playoff.
Mickelson could only cup his hands over his cap and acknowledge a New York crowd that he disappointed again.And he had only himself to blame.
He had a two-shot lead with four holes to play, but his stubborn side continued to hit driver, and his miscues finally caught up with him ... And while he found a way to escape most times, Winged Foot got its vengeance at the end.
http://www.wjxx.com/sports/news-article.aspx?storyid=59538
Good stuff, especially in the unforgiving world of get-it-to-me-five-minutes-ago deadlines in the wire-service world.
Other nice leads riffing on The Double Bogey, included Hank Gola in the New York Daily News:
A four to win, a five to tie. Phil Mickelson made a six, and not since the Red Sox beat the Yankees in seven in 2004 has New York felt such a sickening punch to the solar plexis.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/427948p-360887c.html
Sam Weinman of The Journal News, the tournament's hometown paper, led off with this nice detail:
When it was over, after the men in blazers lined up, and the speeches had already begun, and the trophy was improbably handed to someone else, there was Phil Mickelson left in the corner of the pro shop.
He was seated in the back, with his wife, Amy, at his side. The golfer ran one hand through his hair. He held Amy's hand in another. At one point, he dropped his head down flat on the table as if he wanted to crawl underneath it.
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060618/USOPEN/606190309/1249
Oh, and there's that unsung hero of the day, you know, the guy who won the whole thing, Aussie Geoff Ogilvy. Still, even though he came out on top of the leader board, Ogilvy sounded a bit surprised that it was he, not Mickelson or Colin Montgomerie, as Ed Sherman reminds us in the Chicago Tribune:
Ogilvy, though, knew he was lucky to be holding the trophy.
"I think I was the beneficiary of a little bit of charity," Ogilvy said.
Mickelson and Montgomerie should check if their donations are tax deductible.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/golf/chi-0606190092jun19,1,7818128.story?coll=chi-sportsnew-hed
When Phil Mickelson bungled his way to a second-place finish yesterday in the U.S. Open, it was a stunning story. No doubt, more than a few laptops were whirring in the press tent about Lefty winning his third-straight major, tying Tiger Woods
The gallery loves the doughy Lefty, he of the warm smile, telegenic wife and cute daughters. It was the story of the day, except a double-bogey on 18 got in the way. Which, of course, turned into a better story that the AP's Doug Ferguson turned into a compelling narrative remarkable not just for its lyrical grace but because it ran on the AP, whose sports report usually errs on the side of staid, even by wire-service standards.
Instead of being linked with Woods in the majors, the comparisons turned to Jean Van de Velde at Carnoustie in 1999, when the Frenchman took triple bogey on the last hole of the British Open. But at least Van de Velde got a chance in a playoff.
Mickelson could only cup his hands over his cap and acknowledge a New York crowd that he disappointed again.And he had only himself to blame.
He had a two-shot lead with four holes to play, but his stubborn side continued to hit driver, and his miscues finally caught up with him ... And while he found a way to escape most times, Winged Foot got its vengeance at the end.
http://www.wjxx.com/sports/news-article.aspx?storyid=59538
Good stuff, especially in the unforgiving world of get-it-to-me-five-minutes-ago deadlines in the wire-service world.
Other nice leads riffing on The Double Bogey, included Hank Gola in the New York Daily News:
A four to win, a five to tie. Phil Mickelson made a six, and not since the Red Sox beat the Yankees in seven in 2004 has New York felt such a sickening punch to the solar plexis.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/427948p-360887c.html
Sam Weinman of The Journal News, the tournament's hometown paper, led off with this nice detail:
When it was over, after the men in blazers lined up, and the speeches had already begun, and the trophy was improbably handed to someone else, there was Phil Mickelson left in the corner of the pro shop.
He was seated in the back, with his wife, Amy, at his side. The golfer ran one hand through his hair. He held Amy's hand in another. At one point, he dropped his head down flat on the table as if he wanted to crawl underneath it.
http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060618/USOPEN/606190309/1249
Oh, and there's that unsung hero of the day, you know, the guy who won the whole thing, Aussie Geoff Ogilvy. Still, even though he came out on top of the leader board, Ogilvy sounded a bit surprised that it was he, not Mickelson or Colin Montgomerie, as Ed Sherman reminds us in the Chicago Tribune:
Ogilvy, though, knew he was lucky to be holding the trophy.
"I think I was the beneficiary of a little bit of charity," Ogilvy said.
Mickelson and Montgomerie should check if their donations are tax deductible.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/golf/chi-0606190092jun19,1,7818128.story?coll=chi-sportsnew-hed
Monday, June 12, 2006
David Carr Leaves Us Hanging While He Lets Ann Coulter Off The Hook
So the Princess of Pablum has released another hysterical screed entitled "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" and is now flogging it or having others, like David Carr of The New York Times, do it for her.
In his column today, Carr earnestly tries to show he's onto Coulter, who at 45 is looking more haggard as she gets more strident, but is hoplessly, desperately trying to show he's not one of those Coulter has gotten rich trying to hard to despise.
After nearly 1,000 words of trying and generally failing to explain her away, Carr writes:
Without the total package, Ms. Coulter would be just one more nut living in Mom's basement. You can accuse her of cynicism all you want, but the fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us.
And exactly what is that something, David?
Coulter may have a devoted audience, but so do many right-wing columnists and talk-show hosts. They're a loyal fringe who revel in their own myopia. They like that someone is bold enough to be the politically incorrect/class clown that they are too cowered to be -- a warped Greek chorus, if you will.
And that the someone who calls Katie Couric "Eva Braun," Cindy Sheehan a "C-list celebrity" or 9/11 widows "harpies" who enjoy being millionaires now that their husbands are dead is tall, thin, blonde -- and to some, good looking -- is so much icing on their odious cake.
Conservatives are good at trying interrupting and ridiculing others who disagree with them and trying to be the loudest in the roomn, as if he who bellows most is the one who's right. Coulter excels at being a bully, which is why you see her on TV a lot. It's also the key to her success as an author, not to mention why journalists like David Carr bother writing about her.
And that says something about the Fourth Estate. But it doesn't say something, anything about the rest of us.
That may be the answer you're looking for, Dave.
In his column today, Carr earnestly tries to show he's onto Coulter, who at 45 is looking more haggard as she gets more strident, but is hoplessly, desperately trying to show he's not one of those Coulter has gotten rich trying to hard to despise.
After nearly 1,000 words of trying and generally failing to explain her away, Carr writes:
Without the total package, Ms. Coulter would be just one more nut living in Mom's basement. You can accuse her of cynicism all you want, but the fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us.
And exactly what is that something, David?
Coulter may have a devoted audience, but so do many right-wing columnists and talk-show hosts. They're a loyal fringe who revel in their own myopia. They like that someone is bold enough to be the politically incorrect/class clown that they are too cowered to be -- a warped Greek chorus, if you will.
And that the someone who calls Katie Couric "Eva Braun," Cindy Sheehan a "C-list celebrity" or 9/11 widows "harpies" who enjoy being millionaires now that their husbands are dead is tall, thin, blonde -- and to some, good looking -- is so much icing on their odious cake.
Conservatives are good at trying interrupting and ridiculing others who disagree with them and trying to be the loudest in the roomn, as if he who bellows most is the one who's right. Coulter excels at being a bully, which is why you see her on TV a lot. It's also the key to her success as an author, not to mention why journalists like David Carr bother writing about her.
And that says something about the Fourth Estate. But it doesn't say something, anything about the rest of us.
That may be the answer you're looking for, Dave.
XM Radio's Lee Abrams Wants Credit For The Good, Softpedals The Bad
Programming Guru Who Has Helped Make Satellite Radio Great Also Among The Reasons Terrestrial Radio Sucks
First things first: Give Lee Abrams a lot of credit for recognizing back in the early 70s that FM radio was poised to take over in a big way and was the architect of the AOR format that so many stations rode to success for two decades or more.
The problem is, he created a monster that he prefers to distance himself from now that he is the brains behind the music programming at XM Radio, which much more often than not is brilliant, inspired and realizing the possibilities of radio in a way that a commercial station could never even hope to dream about.
In an interview with FMQB, Abrams recalled how he bridged the gap between what he called "vulnerable Top 40 listeners" and the few underground/progressive stations that were but a blip at a time when you still had to pay extra to get a radio with FM.
They liked about every fifth record. When the Stones or Cream would come on they liked it. But they didn’t care for the Neil Diamond and Bobby Goldsboro records in between. However, that was a little easier for them to handle than some of the progressive stations where, if it was raining you’d hear hours of rain songs, or if the night guy didn’t like Jethro Tull he didn’t play any Jethro Tull. There wasn’t a lot of discipline in those stations.
http://www.fmqb.com//article.asp?id=226605
Fair enough. But in creating the Album Rock/Superstars format that soon ruled the roost at hundreds of stations, Abrams effectively parroted the rigid formatting of a Top 40 station albeit with a somewhat larger playlist. Hey, radio's a business first and foremost, and AOR struck a crucial balance.
The problem: Abrams's success begot a host of imitators, all trying to outdo the master. That led to program directors besieged by focus groups, and music and audience research to the point where the wannabes were afraid to take chances on new music. Deejays were spanked if they said something else than what was on their liner cards.
Abrams succeeded big-time from an Arbitron and revenue standpoint, and that was all that really mattered, especially as corporate ownership became the norm at radio stations and mind-numbing predictability by stations playing it safe led to a slew of disenfranchised music fans, particularly those in the 25-44 demographic who remembered the good old days.
Abrams told FMQB he provided a mix of depth and discipline, though you could certainly argue the former. Yeah, it was more than Top 40 but if you spent anytime listening to college radio or the progressive stations still out there, AOR stations often provided the sizzle but a very pallid steak.
Now he's more than redeemed himself at XM, where he has a canvas of dozens of music channels to work with. By catering to many narrow audience he can please just about anyone. He just doesn't have to do it at the same time.
It's a good thing he doesn't have to give in to temptation or the pressures rained down upon programmers from Arbitron. Otherwise we'd be right back where we started. For the stations devoted to just playing the hits also happen to be the most popular music channels on XM.
P.S. If you want to keep track of what's on the mind of XM's programming head honcho, Abrams is one of the quadrillions of us out there with a blog at http://leeabrams.blogspot.com.
First things first: Give Lee Abrams a lot of credit for recognizing back in the early 70s that FM radio was poised to take over in a big way and was the architect of the AOR format that so many stations rode to success for two decades or more.
The problem is, he created a monster that he prefers to distance himself from now that he is the brains behind the music programming at XM Radio, which much more often than not is brilliant, inspired and realizing the possibilities of radio in a way that a commercial station could never even hope to dream about.
In an interview with FMQB, Abrams recalled how he bridged the gap between what he called "vulnerable Top 40 listeners" and the few underground/progressive stations that were but a blip at a time when you still had to pay extra to get a radio with FM.
They liked about every fifth record. When the Stones or Cream would come on they liked it. But they didn’t care for the Neil Diamond and Bobby Goldsboro records in between. However, that was a little easier for them to handle than some of the progressive stations where, if it was raining you’d hear hours of rain songs, or if the night guy didn’t like Jethro Tull he didn’t play any Jethro Tull. There wasn’t a lot of discipline in those stations.
http://www.fmqb.com//article.asp?id=226605
Fair enough. But in creating the Album Rock/Superstars format that soon ruled the roost at hundreds of stations, Abrams effectively parroted the rigid formatting of a Top 40 station albeit with a somewhat larger playlist. Hey, radio's a business first and foremost, and AOR struck a crucial balance.
The problem: Abrams's success begot a host of imitators, all trying to outdo the master. That led to program directors besieged by focus groups, and music and audience research to the point where the wannabes were afraid to take chances on new music. Deejays were spanked if they said something else than what was on their liner cards.
Abrams succeeded big-time from an Arbitron and revenue standpoint, and that was all that really mattered, especially as corporate ownership became the norm at radio stations and mind-numbing predictability by stations playing it safe led to a slew of disenfranchised music fans, particularly those in the 25-44 demographic who remembered the good old days.
Abrams told FMQB he provided a mix of depth and discipline, though you could certainly argue the former. Yeah, it was more than Top 40 but if you spent anytime listening to college radio or the progressive stations still out there, AOR stations often provided the sizzle but a very pallid steak.
Now he's more than redeemed himself at XM, where he has a canvas of dozens of music channels to work with. By catering to many narrow audience he can please just about anyone. He just doesn't have to do it at the same time.
It's a good thing he doesn't have to give in to temptation or the pressures rained down upon programmers from Arbitron. Otherwise we'd be right back where we started. For the stations devoted to just playing the hits also happen to be the most popular music channels on XM.
P.S. If you want to keep track of what's on the mind of XM's programming head honcho, Abrams is one of the quadrillions of us out there with a blog at http://leeabrams.blogspot.com.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
The Donald Picks The Right Apprentice, Sort Of
In the end, you knew that unless Sean Yazbeck screwed up royally on his final task, Donald Trump would name him the winner of season 5 of "The Apprentice," the best edition of the show since its rookie edition.
Yazbeck had the experience, good looks, really cute girlfriend and engaging British accent, to, um, trump Lee Bienstock, very capable, extremely determined, but still baby-faced at 22.
Nonetheless, Trump was very impressed by both of them. "I'd like to hire both of you, but I can't."
Well, yes and no.
Yes, there's only supposed to be one Apprentice. But that choice had been unequivocal until last season, when Randall Pinkett wowed the Donald, though he was also smitten with Rebecca Jarvis.
Pinkett got hired, but Trump didn't want to say goodbye to Rebecca just yet. So, he asked, Randall, if he was in Trump's shoes, would he also hire Rebecca. To which he replied, to the scorn of many:
“Mr. Trump, I firmly believe that this is ‘The Apprentice,’ that there is one and only one apprentice, and if you’re going to hire someone tonight, it should be one. It’s not ‘The Apprenti,’ it’s ‘The Apprentice.’”
Not wanting to risk sending Sean into a hissy fit so soon after his triumph, not to mention a buzzkill among the audience in the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, Trump decided not to lose control of his show anymore and bade Lee farewell the old-fashioned way.
What remains to be seen is whether Lee will have a future with Trump after all. During the extended closing sequence -- spurred by Trump saying goodnight before the show really had to end -- there were extended shots of people on stage, and at one point it looked like The Donald was telling The Lee something like "I'll talk to ya," indicating there might be something in the offing.
Or not.
And, yes, Sean really did say he was going to marry Tammy. Great catch and mazel tov. Maybe you could find out where they'll be registered at www.seanyazbeck.com, assuming you can navigate past the first page. So far, I can't.
ADDED AT 8:48 p.m. :
If you want to hear more from Lee, who is being very much the good sport, at least in public, check out:
http://www.canonist.com/?p=884
Thanks to Steve Weiss for sharing this.
Yazbeck had the experience, good looks, really cute girlfriend and engaging British accent, to, um, trump Lee Bienstock, very capable, extremely determined, but still baby-faced at 22.
Nonetheless, Trump was very impressed by both of them. "I'd like to hire both of you, but I can't."
Well, yes and no.
Yes, there's only supposed to be one Apprentice. But that choice had been unequivocal until last season, when Randall Pinkett wowed the Donald, though he was also smitten with Rebecca Jarvis.
Pinkett got hired, but Trump didn't want to say goodbye to Rebecca just yet. So, he asked, Randall, if he was in Trump's shoes, would he also hire Rebecca. To which he replied, to the scorn of many:
“Mr. Trump, I firmly believe that this is ‘The Apprentice,’ that there is one and only one apprentice, and if you’re going to hire someone tonight, it should be one. It’s not ‘The Apprenti,’ it’s ‘The Apprentice.’”
Not wanting to risk sending Sean into a hissy fit so soon after his triumph, not to mention a buzzkill among the audience in the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, Trump decided not to lose control of his show anymore and bade Lee farewell the old-fashioned way.
What remains to be seen is whether Lee will have a future with Trump after all. During the extended closing sequence -- spurred by Trump saying goodnight before the show really had to end -- there were extended shots of people on stage, and at one point it looked like The Donald was telling The Lee something like "I'll talk to ya," indicating there might be something in the offing.
Or not.
And, yes, Sean really did say he was going to marry Tammy. Great catch and mazel tov. Maybe you could find out where they'll be registered at www.seanyazbeck.com, assuming you can navigate past the first page. So far, I can't.
ADDED AT 8:48 p.m. :
If you want to hear more from Lee, who is being very much the good sport, at least in public, check out:
http://www.canonist.com/?p=884
Thanks to Steve Weiss for sharing this.
As Kimberly Dozier Keeps Getting Better, The News From Iraq Keeps Getting Worse
Context and Perspective from the Killing Fields
Of course, it's great to hear that Kimberly Dozier continues on the slow but steady road to recovery from the bomb blast that severely wounded her and killed her camera man and sound man.
As a former colleague of Kimberly's, you shudder when you hear her name used in such grave terms. It especially rattled friends over at my old stomping grounds at CBS News Radio, as she had just been in New York recently, and she looked as good as ever. You never heard "shrapnel" and "Dozier" used in the same sentence until last week.
When her Dad told CBS last week that Kimberly's "sharp as a tack," the sigh of relief on West 57th St. was palpable.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/30/iraq/main1664012.shtml
But the story continues, and it's a grim reminder of just what Kimberly and her journalistic brethren are up against.
Nearly 1,400 civilians were killed in May -- many of them execution style -- and that number doesn't include those killed by bombs.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/06/iraq.main/index.html
Which only underscores how being an intrepid journalist in Iraq is hazardous to your health. And Kimberly, at the time of the attack, wasn't even covering the car bomb du jour, or the other selections on the bad news menu that the military flacks rail against.
She was serving as a 21st-century Ernie Pyle, showing how Memorial Day back home was just another dangerous tour of duty outside the Green Zone for a typical G.I.
The fact that she was even embedded is a remarkable feat nowadays. Reporters, to the extent that they feel safe, often feel more protected going out with the military. But those arrangements nowadays can take weeks.
If you ever thought about the glamour and excitement in the life of a war correspondent, Iraq has done a great job to disabuse you of those notions. It certainly has for those working there, who have covered many a conflict.
Along those lines, must reading is a recent New York magazine profile by Jennifer Senior about Iraq-based correspondents, and the toll their assignment has taken on them, written before the Dozier attack.
You admire what they do at the same time you're glad you're as far away from that mess as possible. It's the kind of story that at once is emblematic of why people want in to the news business, but it's also the kind that might send you running and screaming from a laptop once you've realized what you've gotten yourself into.
http://www.nymetro.com/news/media/17014/index.html
Of course, it's great to hear that Kimberly Dozier continues on the slow but steady road to recovery from the bomb blast that severely wounded her and killed her camera man and sound man.
As a former colleague of Kimberly's, you shudder when you hear her name used in such grave terms. It especially rattled friends over at my old stomping grounds at CBS News Radio, as she had just been in New York recently, and she looked as good as ever. You never heard "shrapnel" and "Dozier" used in the same sentence until last week.
When her Dad told CBS last week that Kimberly's "sharp as a tack," the sigh of relief on West 57th St. was palpable.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/30/iraq/main1664012.shtml
But the story continues, and it's a grim reminder of just what Kimberly and her journalistic brethren are up against.
Nearly 1,400 civilians were killed in May -- many of them execution style -- and that number doesn't include those killed by bombs.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/06/iraq.main/index.html
Which only underscores how being an intrepid journalist in Iraq is hazardous to your health. And Kimberly, at the time of the attack, wasn't even covering the car bomb du jour, or the other selections on the bad news menu that the military flacks rail against.
She was serving as a 21st-century Ernie Pyle, showing how Memorial Day back home was just another dangerous tour of duty outside the Green Zone for a typical G.I.
The fact that she was even embedded is a remarkable feat nowadays. Reporters, to the extent that they feel safe, often feel more protected going out with the military. But those arrangements nowadays can take weeks.
If you ever thought about the glamour and excitement in the life of a war correspondent, Iraq has done a great job to disabuse you of those notions. It certainly has for those working there, who have covered many a conflict.
Along those lines, must reading is a recent New York magazine profile by Jennifer Senior about Iraq-based correspondents, and the toll their assignment has taken on them, written before the Dozier attack.
You admire what they do at the same time you're glad you're as far away from that mess as possible. It's the kind of story that at once is emblematic of why people want in to the news business, but it's also the kind that might send you running and screaming from a laptop once you've realized what you've gotten yourself into.
http://www.nymetro.com/news/media/17014/index.html
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