Bad Day In San Jose: Naming Carole Leigh Hutton Editor at Mercury-News Heralds Further Slide to Mediocrity

Mitch Albom Apologist Raises Profile After Merc Editor Packs Up For Plain-Dealer
When Carole Leigh Hutton's appointment as executive editor of the San Jose Mercury-News was announced yesterday, she told the staff she was "passionate about journalism" but "pragmatic about where we are."
That last phrase should give beleaguered Merc staffers pause.
When we last left them, Merc reporters were digesting the bitter reality of a lousy contract that was foisted on them in return for a pledge by new owner William "Lean Dean" Singleton to reduce the number of layoffs he'd contemplated.
Through it all, the much-diminished paper soldiered on, though executive editor Susan Goldberg apparently got tired of fighting the good fight and has decamped for The Plain-Dealer in Cleveland, where she'll succeed retiring Doug Clifton.
So that leaves Hutton, who this space last spotted as she was doing her "Animal Farm" routine when she led the Detroit Free-Press, after columnist Mitch Albom got caught writing fiction where a column should have been.
Albom told his loyal minions in an April 3, 2005, column about two former Michigan State players rooting on their team at the NCAA Final Four. Only problem: they never made it to the game. Albom's column was a work of fiction.
So, while mere mortals who toil in journalism would've been fired at warp speed and branded with a scarlet A, Hutton -- who also served as Free Press publisher -- merely placed Albom on paid leave and imposed some "discipline" that she never disclosed.
Because it was Albom, star columnist, best-selling author and media behemoth, Hutton decided to forgive his trespasses. The man sold papers, after all. Who cares if he sacrifices the paper's credibility in the process?
It is such a dubious legacy that Hutton now brings to the Merc. Everyone will be held to account. Except some will be held less accountable than others.
If Merc staffers find themselves questioning Hutton's judgment sooner than later, they'll have ample reason. The truth is out there. Too bad Hutton may not always see fit to publish it.

All Lester Holt, All The Time

Weekend Today Wasn't Enough; Now He Gets To Do Nightly News on Saturday and Sundays Too. Does This Signal A Campbell Brown Exit?

Lester Holt is the new The Man at NBC News. Not only does he get to wake up in the middle of the night on weekends to host "Today," he now gets to go home, take a nap, and come back nice and refreshed to anchor "Nightly News."

Holt replaces John Siegenthaler, who parted ways with the Peacock, after his bosses realized he was only working two days a week for a fat paycheck and they didn't know what else to do with him. No such problem for Holt.

An NBC press release reveals Holt will also fill-in for Brian Williams, contribute to MSNBC and take on "special assignments" within the news division. And maybe he'll get to see his family every now and then as a reward.

A lingering question now is whether this announcement presages the end of Holt's Today co-host Campbell Brown's tenure at NBC. Her contract is soon up, and the rumor mill has been cranking about her possibly decamping to CNN and getting the Paula Zahn slot.

Brown has also proven to be a valuable backup/intrepid reporter as well as an engaging "Today" host. If she was sticking around, it wouldn't have been hard to give her one of the "Nightly News" slots, similar to what CBS does with Thalia Assuras and Russ Mitchell on weekends.

You'd think NBC would want to hold onto a good thing in Brown, but she might want to sleep in a bit more, especially after getting passed over for the weekday "Today" gig when Katie Couric bolted.

A job at CNN would allow her to throw away her alarm clock.

Missing Ingredient in New York Times Piece on Chef Wannabes Cooking Up Debt

Kim Severson Makes It To Front Page But Loses Steam After Jump

Maybe she was the victim of a space crunch, or maybe it was a case of writing something and expecting we'd take her word for it, but an interesting A-1 piece in today's New York Times by food writer Kim Severson about culinary-school grads who have big debt supplanting their big dreams, came up a little short.
Specifically, this passage:

Certainly, professional training can help cooks move up quickly through the kitchen ranks. And culinary schools have produced many of the nation’s finest chefs.
But some of those chefs equivocate about whether the high cost of some culinary degrees is worth it for someone who just wants to cook for a living.

Good point, but the subsequent quote is from the director of nutrition from the Berkeley School District. Not exactly Chez Panisse.
And no other chefs are heard from.
Which doesn't detract from the cautionary tale of the article. But it would be more helpful to get top chefs to weigh in on whether any of their deputies went to culinary school, and if the education you get is worth the five-figure nut left to digest upon graduation.
Grist for another story, Kim?

Star-Tribune Grows Dimmer In Minnesota

Another Lesson In What Happens When Newspapers Go Private; As Profits Plunge, New Owners Pull Out The Stops To Pull Plug On Staff
From our cautionary-tale file comes news that the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis will shed another 145 bodies from its hardly-bloated payroll, including 50 in the newsroom. Combine that with a previous round of cutbacks a few weeks ago, that means there will be 20 percent fewer editors and reporters at the start of the year.
Thanks a whole heckuva lot, Avista Capital Partners. It was not enough that they bought the Strib this year for $530 million, roughly $700 million less than what McClatchy had paid for it. Instead of bolstering its prized asset, Avista decided it needed an ROI sooner than later and retreated to the suicidal newspaper-think of cutting resources to make the balance sheets sing, thereby giving more people fewer reasons to buy the paper.
Look, no one's disputing that times have changed for the worse for the once-mighty metro dailies. Classifieds have fallen off the cliff, while ads are showing lemming-like tendencies. Meanwhile, readers keep heading for the exits. The Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers show the Strib plunged 4.8 percent daily and 5.3 percent on Sunday.
In other words, ouch.
Strib brass are saying all the right things about bolstering local coverage, and "smarter" in-depth stories, as if to imply that the current enterprise pieces are pretty insipid.
Still, it's another version of "we have to kill the newspaper in order to save it." Brian Tierney has shown how to do this in Philadelphia [and stop puffing your chest, Bri, about the Inky gaining .61 percent in circulation] and Sam Zell may yet do the same in Tribune World.
So why is it that these people want to own newspapers? They're not doing anybody any favors, especially their employees and readers.

Robert Krulwich: The Master Holds Court on NPR

In His Hands, Even Global Warming Doesn't Sound Like Such A Bad Thing
Sure, you couldn't blame Robert Krulwich when he left NPR, where he made topics like economics bother understandable and fun, for the better-paying precincts of CBS, then ABC. There's nothing like a noble calling, and NPR is about as close as one gets in radio, but it wouldn't hurt to earn a proper living at the same time.
Eventually, though, Krulwich could have his cake and nibble on it too. He worked out a deal in 2005 where he'd continue to pop up on ABC, but also get to once again ply his considerable radio craft at NPR, where he's focusing on science. This is what's called in the business a big time win-win.
That was evidenced today by a wonderful piece of what can best be described as audio theatre, as Krulwich told us all about carbon, as NPR kicked off a series in conjunction with National Geographic about climate change. Al Gore's Power Points need not apply.
To hear why radio can still be great, click here:
Indeed, Krulwich's dispatch literally comes alive albeit in the form of a cartoon at npr.org. Not the typical radio shtick. And that's exactly the point.

Franken, My Dear, Doesn't Give A Damn

Veteran CNN Political Correspondent Doesn't Go Quietly
Not having your contract renewed by your employer after 21 years can give you a case of the nasties.
Such is the case for CNN vet Bob Franken, who U.S. News and World Report says left but not before taking a swipe at Wolf Blitzer.
The precise contents of that note have yet to be leaked.
Franken, it seems, wanted one more presidential campaign on his formidable resume, while the network preferred him to be more of a "utility player."
Franken told colleagues his services are wanted elsewhere. That may very well turn out to be MSNBC, which could use some reportorial heft for its campaign coverage to go with its talking heads.

Another Inconvenient Truth: Going Green Can Make Advertisers See Red

Some Will Find Out the Hard Way That the Truth Is Out There, or, If You Think Bloggers Are a Pain in the Ass Now, Just Wait
Not a shocker when advertising and the unvarnished version of the truth don't necessarily go hand in hand. There's not a marketing class out there that teaches how to be fair and balanced, and for good reason.
But however well-intentioned or greedy they might be, companies are finding out that when it comes to going green, their marketing playbook goes out the window -- and hopefully into a recycling bin.
A piece from Advertising Age notes how corporate America can learn all-too-quickly that if they want to huff and puff about being a friend to the environment they better deliver the goods or risk being put to pasture -- which is treated with organic pesticides, of course.
"You become a bigger target," notes Chipotle marketing honcho Jim Adams. "When the underdog becomes the top dog, you want to knock them down."
Speaking about targets, Target got caught in its own bullseye, and was dinged by the group Rainforest Relief for using precious tropical wood in its outdoor and children's furniture.
More than ever, Madison Avenue will find that telling the truth can be especially inconvenient. But doing it right can go a long way toward improving the bottom line, where green turns into greenbacks.

What We Learned From The New York Times Dining Section

Our usual Wednesday routine with The New York Times is to skip over to the Dining (In, Out) section to see who restaurant critic Frank Bruni savored or skewered.
This week's victim was Morandi, Keith McNally's seemingly ill-conceived attempt at an Italian bistro, which has gotten a rep for being more crowded than good. Sounds like it was lucky to have gotten one star.
But for those who ventured further in the section came this morsel:

---A short item on The Silver Palate, and its feuding founders included a revelation from veteran food writer Florence Fabricant that she coined the name "on the spur of the moment and without any monetary compensation." And what she doesn't tell you is that her "Bravo!" blurb appears among the raves for the 25th anniverary of The Silver Palate Cookbook. For which she presumably did not get any monetary compensation for either.

Just When You Thought They Couldn't Come Up With Another Radio Format, Along Comes Lone Star

Clear Channel Dumps Classic Rock in Dallas for Hybrid of Outlaw Country, Americana and Southern Rock. Oh, Yeah. Fewer Commercials, Too

No doubt, Clear Channel is as responsible as any company for the dumbing down of music radio, where any sparks of creative programming are snuffed out by focus groups and station managers too scared of a hiccup in the Arbitrons to try something truly different.

Which makes today's transformation of its Dallas classic rock station KZPS all the more remarkable. Instead of just playing the same 400 dinosaur tracks ad nauseum, the station is now a unique hybrid complete with non-Nashville country, southern rock and the AAA artists who rock a little harder, not to mention Willie Nelson being the voice of the station.

A playlist sample, as provided by Radio & Records:

ZZ Top "Heard It On The X"

Willie Nelson "Ten With A Two"

Allman Brothers "Blue Sky"

Lynyrd Skynyrd "I Know A Little"

Old 97's "Barrier Reef"

John Mellencamp "Rain On The Scarecrow"

Bob Dylan "Someday Baby"

Johnny Cash "Folsom Prison Blues"

Molly Hatchet "Gator Country"

Arc Angels "Living In A Dream"

Pat Green "Take Me Out To A Dancehall"

Stevie Ray Vaughan "Pride And Joy"

Jimmy Buffett "Hello Texas"

Drive-By Truckers "Let There Be Rock"

Ian Moore "Nothing"

Hank Williams Jr. "Family Tradition"

Pretty cool mix. It shows a human being was actually thinking about the music (in this case program director Duane Dougherty).In addition to some of those artists, I caught Travis Tritt, Kenny Wayne Shepard, Waylon Jennings, Steve Earle -- even the Ozark Mountain Daredevils singing something else besides "Jackie Blue -- during an afternoon listen, made all the more tolerable by the paucity of commercials.

Which, if the station has its way, will be the way things will pretty much be, even if the sponsors do come a knockin'.

Gone are 30- and 60-second spots, replaced by weaving in plugs or quick mentions of sponsors throughout the programming. It's as if NPR got dropped in the middel of a roadhouse. On top of that, each sponsor gets exclusivity in their category.

So, Coors doesn't have to worry about bumping against a Bud Light spot while you'll hear lots of good things said about Southwest Airlines but no other carrier. Guitar Center and AT&T are the only other ones signed up so far.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the station got a lot of positive feedback from other sponsors, even if they haven't signed on yet, while others blanch at the prospect of surrendering their 60-second spots. Shame.

Of course, a solid Arbitron book or two could change that. And Dougherty and his bosses could then worry more about the music and less about the hiccups.

Why Philadelphia Newspaper Reporters Should Not Be Making Any Long-Term Plans

When Brian Tierney Speaks, Time To Run and Hide

At least give Brian Tierney a little bit of credit. First, he leads a group that buys the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, then quickly realizes he's in over his head and starts dismantling an already-decimated staff and shoves an onerous contract down their throats.
Then he had the good sense to hire William Marimow, a Pulitzer winner during his younger days at the Inky, who had put himself out to pasture as the NPR ombudsman after getting dumped by bean counters at the Baltimore Sun.
So, the ship's righted, right? Nah, given the desultory financial results most newspaper companies are reporting (Tierney's company is private).
Still, in a New York Times article, Tierney is pledging not to take his knife to the newsroom budget, Good luck with that.
This one paragraph is especially telling:

Mr. Marimow has set about reorganizing the newsroom, learning to do less with a lot less. While saying that The Inquirer is a work in progress, he saw “signs of promise,” first in his reshaping of the paper and second in interest expressed to him by former Inquirer editors and reporters in coming back. To make it easier to recruit talent, Mr. Tierney has pledged that there would be no more layoffs.

Quick show of hands: how many Inky and DN staffers believe him? Exactly.

As evidence that the Inky still has the will and the manpower to put out a newspaper worth giving a damn about, Tierney cited the work of a photographer who grabbed a compelling shot after last year's Amish school shooting:

“The photojournalist who took this slept in a car, walked across a field where she wasn’t supposed to be and hid in a tree to get this shot,” he said proudly. “As long as I have folks who are that committed to what we’re trying to do, we are going to be very, very successful.”

Tierney may need a fresh dose of hubris. Given his track record thus far, such enterprising newsgathering will be done in spite of him, not because of him.

"This Is A Columbine-Type Situation. It's Actually Much, Much Worse Than That."

Live Blogging The Virginia Tech Shootings and Other Media Hustles
Interesting, and given the unfolding nature of the story, the best approach by the message board is a litle more disturbing. Instead of a way for people to vent their grief, it's degenerated into an overheated discussion on guns and the Second Amendment.
Meanwhile, CNN has been showing dramatic video taken by a student, though anchors Betty Nguyen and Don Lemon feel the need to pat the network on the back. They told viewers twice within the space of 15 minutes that the video -- taken on a cellphone camera -- has been viewed more than 120,000 times on CNN.com.
MSNBC later had that student -- sans video -- on live for some Q&A, though the better interview was nailed by Allison Stewart, who interviewed student Derek O'Dell, who was shot in the arm by the gunman who invaded his classroom.
It intially looked like Fox News was trying to make a bad situation worse, by reporting that at least 32 were dead, while MSNBC and The New York Timews had 22 killed as of 2:15 p.m. ET, with the AP and CNN holding at 21. But the Washington Post also went with the higher number, which now appears to be the right total, though many media will view it as 31 who were killed plus a dead gunman.
The actual number doesn't detract from the scope of the tragedy, of course. But the rush to be first shouldn't preclude the need to be accurate.

Nike Declares That Ignorance, Thy Name Is Imus

Too Bad The Swoosh Kings In Beaverton Don't Know How to Spell
Tucked inside today's New York Times sports section, among other outlets, is an ad from Nike that's a bitch slap to Imus with a velvet glove.
In small type that takes up no more than a fifth of the page, it starts off:

Thank you, ignorance
Thank you for starting the conversation.
Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutger's team story. And for making us wonder what other great stories we've missed.

That's Nike's spelling of Rutgers, not mine.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't make a big deal about such a thing. Well, actually I would, as it's an inexcusable mistake, given the number of eyeballs at corporate HQ as well as its ad and PR agency honchos who look over this stuff before it goes public.
Here, Nike's trying to be all righteous, as often is its forte. But it just looks dumb when it gets the most basic details wrong, especially in an ad that likely cost north of $50K in the Times, where no one else was apparently reading the copy either.
At least we now know who has the Rutgers shoe contract.

"Nappy-Headed Hos" Claim Another Victim On the Radio

Deejay in the Poconos Finds It's Not The Phrase That Pays Now That He's On The Unemployment Line
While Don Imus waits to find out whether CBS Radio will take him back after his two-week suspension now that MSNBC has pulled the plug on his simulcast, it's time to separate the wheat from the racist chaff elsewhere in radio land.
Today's silenced morning yakker is one Gary Smith of WSBG in Stroudsburg, PA. The Pocono Record reported Smith used "I'm a nappy-headed ho" as the "phrase that pays" on his show Tuesday morning.
Oops. Guess comedy takes longer to translate in the Poconos.
Ironically, WSBG's sister station, WVPO, carries Imus and has no plans to drop him. No such luck for Smith, who pissed away a 17-year career at the station and a lot of goodwill with that one remark.

Imus Takes His Medicine, While Sharpton Keeps It Real

The Reverend Says Being Contrite Doesn't Make It Right; Imus Not So Snappy As "Nappy-Headed Hos" Backlash Continues To Slap Him Silly
Now being Don Imus means always having to say you're sorry.

When you're the ringmaster of a national radio show that's also simulcast on MSNBC, , you like to think you can say what you want when you want. Imus has been finding out otherwise since Wednesday, when he called the Rutgers' women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos."
Which is how the I-Man found himself dragging his tail this afternoon to the Rev. Al Sharpton's radio program syndicated by Radio One. Sharpton called the comments "racist and diabolical" and made it clear that an apology just wouldn't cut it.
"For him to mainstream this kind of racial hate is something that we must send a message that enough is enough."
Sharpton wants Imus gone. Curiously, so does Bryan Monroe, head of the National Association of Black Journalists, who before Imus appeared, told Sharpton free speech does come at a price.
"I cannot see another way that this saga to end and send this message to America that this thing is OK. It’s not OK to use these words to hurt young ladies just for a laugh," Monroe said.

Sharpton can be just as much of rabble-rouser as Imus, and knows the only reason anyone is fretting over this is because it’s Imus, not some generic morning-zoo loudmouth who thinks bathroom humor is the only way to goose the Arbitrons. That kind of yaboo would have been out on his ass as soon as the words left his mouth. Imus has merely been scolded by his bosses. Sharpton was looking to do more than rap knuckles.

"I will give you credit for showing up," was the nicest comment he could think to utter. And then the knives were sharpened.

Imus admitted what he said was bad, just not bad enough to get him fired. "I think it can be forgiven. But I don't think it should be overlooked," later adding his only agenda was to preside over a comedy show that sometimes runs amok. "Sometimes we go too far. Sometimes we go way too far."
While admitting that what he said was "repugnant and repulsive," Imus insisted that "what makes a difference in this context is what was my intent," which he said was not to make a racist comment.
That argument didn't wash with Sharpton or one of his other guests, Rev. Buster Sawyers, pastor for the Rutgers women's basketball team. "Regardless of whether you’ve been slapped with your left hand or right hand, you’ve been slapped," Sawyers said.

Sharpton was also unimpressed by Imus' recitation of his good works, including the ranch he runs in New Mexico for seriously ill children, saying that doesn't mean he should escape this incident unscathed.
"Unscathed?" Imus shot back. "Don’t you think I’m humiliated? Don’t you think I’m embarrassed?"

Things got even more testy when Sharpton piled on Imus with Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, who called herself a "woman with naturally curly, coarse hair" (which some white radio hosts might call nappy-headed).

Imus grew annoyed as he attempted to agree with Kilpatrick's comments. Still, she continued to rip into him as Sharpton chimed in.

"I can't get anyplace with you people," Imus complained.

"What do you mean by 'you people'?" Sharpton asked disingenuously.

Imus, who by the minute appeared to be regretting coming on the show -- was on the verge of accusing Sharpton of race-baiting before they cut for a break.

Which may be what everybody involved in this controversy should take right about now.

UPDATE, 7:30 p.m: CBS Radio and MSNBC have suspended Imus for two weeks starting on Monday, which may give everyone just enough time to calm down . And if you missed Imus on the Sharpton show, but want to hear him spewing sorrow, check out this clip:

And exactly why does MSNBC use the AP to report this news on its own Web site?

Imus To Kiss Al Sharpton's Butt

First He Was Trying to Be Funny, Now He's Trying to Be Contrite
Al Sharpton was leading the charge over the weekend to have Don Imus fired for calling the Rutgers womens' basketball team "nappy-headed hos." Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson is calling for a protest Monday outside NBC's station in Chicago.
Despite the fact that Imus is too much of a cash cow for CBS Radio and MSNBC to actually be fired over the remark -- bad, but not N-word bad -- the radio cowboy is apparently feeling the heat. So much so, that he'll appear on Sharpton's radio show Monday afternoon to tell everyone he's really, really sorry if anyone was offended. Or so we're led to believe.
By the way, if you didn't hear or see the conversation in question, MSNBC has conveniently offered up a transcript on its Web site.
It could also help explain why Imus' former foul-mouthed sportscaster, Sid Rosenberg, who's been popping up again on Imus' show lately, didn't make a scheduled appearance Saturday on WFAN, Imus' radio flagship, where Rosenberg also served as a sports-talk host. Rosenberg's been relegated to a shift on the number-two sports station in Miami after his off-color mouth and unreliability got him booted out of New York.


Imus: So, I watched the basketball game last night between — a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women's final.
Rosenberg: Yeah, Tennessee won last night — seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.
Imus: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and —
McGuirk: Some hard-core hos.
Imus: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some — woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like — kinda like — I don't know.
McGuirk: A Spike Lee thing.
Imus: Yeah.
McGuirk: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes — that movie that he had.
Imus: Yeah, it was a tough —
Charles McCord: Do The Right Thing.
McGuirk: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Imus: I don't know if I'd have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?
Rosenberg: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.

Imus May Lose The "Nappy-Headed Ho" Demographic, But Not His Job

Imus' Employers Are Shocked, SHOCKED, That He Would Utter Racist Jokes
No one tunes into Don Imus expecting happy talk and the I-Man tends not to disappoint. If you listen, you know what to expect, and those who employ him on radio and TV know that all too well.
So, when Imus, after being goaded by his producer Bernard McGuirk, called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos," the howls of protest came from all corners. Imus finally apologized yesterday, but not before MSNBC called the remarks "deplorable" and CBS Radio, which pays most of Imus' freight, said it was "disappointed."
But not enough to fire or suspend Imus. Simple reason: lots of people listen and his corporate overlords make too much money, because people want to hear Imus and his crew insult just about anyone and everyone, not just black women.
That's what 40 years in the radio business, where you've cultivated lots of powerful friends in the media establishment allows you to do.
If a mere radio mortal -- one who wasn't syndicated on 70 stations or had his show simulcast on a national cable network -- had made that remark -- they'd be out of their ass, not long after it left their lips. Broadcast executives love to weasel out of contracts for talent by firing them "for cause."
Imus knows that, which is why his one-time sportscaster Sid Rosenberg is now his former sportscaster for telling listeners that after her breast-cancer surgery, singer Kylie Minogue wouldn't be "pretty with just one titty."
But even then, Rosenberg's ouster came after a slew of less disgusting insults. In the end, it's not that outrageous as long as the ratings are good, as Mark Starr of Newsweek notes.
Which is why we'll inevitably hear Imus apologize about something else, while his bosses just shake their head while counting their money and blessings.

Albany Times-Union Tries To Outdo Itself Trying to be Politically Correct

Ghetto, What Ghetto?
The Times-Union in Albany, N.Y. has been in a lather much of this week over what might otherwise be viewed as a throwaway tag line at the end of a story about a rape near a downtown bar.
As a T-U editor's blog explained, a reporter was sent out to supplement the March 31 article b y Brendan Lyons with reaction from bar patrons about the assault. One person, who lives in a town just outside the city remarked: ``That's the thing with Albany, there's always a ghetto nearby.''
A few things: First off, that's not true, although the heavily minority Arbor Hill and South End neighborhoods are in the vicinity of the bar. Second, even if it was true, the woman raped said she was attacked by a white man.
So, we have a case where someone is tacitly blaming minorities for what happened, even though a person of color was apparently not involved. Debatable, then, whether such a quote should have made its way into the story, even though there always is that temptation to end a story with a saucy quote, relevant or not.
Well, the T-U brass came down square against using the ghetto quote, in a blog entry on April 2 penned by managing editor Mary Fran Gleason titled "We Made A Mistake." She took the unusual and highly dubious step of publicly taking those involved out to the woodshed.

The reporter exercised utterly poor judgment by including the quote when she updated Brendan’s original story. Ditto for the night city editor who failed to delete the quote and for the copy editors who also failed to red-line it.

So much for the buck stops here.

Depending on your Albany frame of reference, "ghetto" is not necessarily code for minority. Hundreds of SUNY Albany (my alma mater) students live off campus in what is commonly referred to as the student ghetto. Nothing sinister intended. It's what everybody called it, plain and simple.
True, the context for the article in question was different. Either way, it didn't merit Gleason's response, especially one so public. These are the types of issues you handle in-house. Newspapers have enough problems without letting their dirty laundry hanging in the breeze. For readers offended by the remark, a proper response could have been issued without having to point fingers. Gleason should know better.
Going by her own standards, she is ultimately the one who has to be held accountable. But that would be too much to expect. Maybe the blog entry should have been titled "We Made A Mistake (Well, Not Me)."

Dumb and Dumber: WFAN Gives Sid Rosenberg Another Bite of the Big Apple

UPDATE 4/8/07: For reasons not yet made clear, Sidney never made it onto the air Saturday. Instead, his scheduled 1-3:15 p.m. shift was filled by Evan Roberts, who was originally down just for 10-1 p.m. As speculated on the NY Radio Message Board, Rosenberg was on the air with Imus during the "nappy-headed ho" discussion of the Rutgers basketball team. Could be a case of guilt by association, or WFAN management regaining their memory.

Strike Three Has Long Come and Gone, but the "Sidiot" Is Still Not Out
Some eagle eyes at the New York Radio Message Board noticed a most-curious and troubling addition to sports radio WFAN's schedule tomorrow -- namely Sid Rosenberg mucking up the airwaves from 1-3:15 p.m.
Rosenberg, about whom much has been written about in this space, is currently in exile in Miami, hosting a midday show on the number-two sports station there. At least he was able to find some kind of gig after imploding multiple times during his tenure on WFAN as a talk-show host and the sports guy on "Imus in the Morning."
Rosenberg lost the latter gig after he made a crack about what singer Kylie Minogue would look like after breast cancer, the end of the line of insults, jokes and one-liners that had inexplicably made him an Imus favorite.
Then Rosenberg, a recovering drug and gambling addict, not to mention alcoholic, got himself canned from his sports-talk gig on the FAN after he failed to show up for duties on a New York Giants pre-game show.
Finally, the last straw, but not the last of Sid.
Rosenberg has somehow managed to persevere, not to mention keep working. He's even been heard on Imus recently. And now the Saturday gig on the FAN. You would think enough would be enough. But WFAN is apparently run by gluttons for punishment. Or those who enjoy car wrecks.
Maybe they're hoping Rosenberg will crash again. It may not be pretty, but it could make for great radio. And isn't that all that matters, no matter who gets hurt in the process?

Another Voice of Summer Is Stilled: Remembering Herb Carneal

I never got to hear much of Minnesota Twins announcer Herb Carneal, but knew of his legend that was justly acquired from being the voice of a team for 45 years. That means millions of fans heard his steady, authoritative voice spread across the Upper Midwest calling thousands of games.
Carneal wasn't flashy. He called attention to the game rather than himself. His was the voice of a reporter rather than a radio star. That made him a beloved figure in Minnesota and also earned him a place in Baseball's Hall of Fame in 1996.
Carneal died yesterday at age 83, and with his passing goes one more legend from the days before cable TV and the Internet when radio and baseball were intertwined in a match that has withstood the test of time and technology.
If you want to catch up to some of what Twins fans will miss, the Star-Tribune has some good clips, as does the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting.
Remembrances can also be heard on the site for WCCO, which had been the team's only radio voice unti this year. A nasty divorce over money and promotion sent the team to KSTP, but hearing Carneal on WCCO was part of Minnesota lore.
Godspeed.

Enough Already: New York Times Coverage of "Extra Innings" Flap Both Exhaustive and Myopic

Richard Sandomir & Co. Prove There Is Such A Thing As Over-Covering A Story
It's not that New York Times sports business writer Richard Sandomir (left) hasn't written about other topics in the last two months about the flap between Major League Baseball and cable operators over the Extra Innings package. It just seems that way.
And all that ink about a service that affects about 180,000 cable subscribers -- across the country. That's chicken feed in the TV universe, even if the dollars being talked about aren't.
For those of you not scoring at home, the story so far: MLB used to sell Extra Innings, which allows fans who pay $180 or so to watch just about any game they want, to both cable and satellite operators. But this year, the league cut a deal with DirecTV, which offered up $700 million over seven years for exclusive access, while also offering to carry a new baseball channel in 2009. Not so coincidentally, DirecTV also has a 20 percent stake in the channel.
The cable titans cried foul, and offered to match the DirecTV offer, but balked at carrying the baseball channel. So, despite attempts by no less than John Kerry to mediate, Extra Innings is off cable for now, depriving far-flung fans from seeing their teams, unless they, conveniently, subscribe to the mlb.tv package online.
Regardless of the merits of the deal, this dispute has been covered way too aggressively in the Times. Even business columnist Joe Nocera felt compelled to chime in on Saturday and tripped over his own logic while slamming MLB.

Nice going, fellas. The N.F.L. would never do anything this dumb. Of course, that’s one of the big differences between pro football and pro baseball. The football guys actually know how to run their business with some intelligence.

Only thing: the NFL already does something just like this. It has Sunday Ticket, its own version of Extra Innings, which it also sells exclusively --- to DirecTV, which shells out $700 million a year for the privilege.
However, by Nocera's reckoning, that would ostensibly be a "dumb" thing to do, as you keep Sunday Ticket off cable, thereby depriving the cash-crazy league with even more revenue. And given the hassle the NFL has had getting its channel onto many cable system, that should speak volumes.
It has nothing to do with intelligence, only money. And both MLB and the NFL are only trying to suck up as much as they can. That's not dumb. That's business.

USA Today Website Snowed Under By White Space

For a publication that redefined newspaper design and practically goaded newsrooms out of their black-and-white slumber, it's disturbing, to say the least, to see what USA Today.com looks like nowadays, or more specifically, doesn't look like.
All of its section fronts, especially the home page, reek of wasted opportunity. There are headlines running down the right side and not much else. Not only that, they are presented without rhyme or reason. On Saturday, right underneath word that former NYC Police Commisioner Bernie Kerik rejected a plea deal for various and sundry felonies, was word that swimmer Michael Phelps notched yet another gold medal at the world championships.
Further down were items about Serena Williams winning another tournament, and circus clown Bello pleading for the return of his mini-bike. Both were followed by at least two inches of white space. Gannett may be up to its penny-pinching, but is there no one around to throw in a blurb?
To find out virtually anything about any story on the home page, you would have to click on a headline, which then makes the site a must-avoid instead of a must-read for anyone with limited time or short attention span. Meaning, it's doing exactly the opposite of what it's intended to do.
USA Today became the master of effectively packaging news -- attacking the sanctity of stories that jumped to another page and offering us "news you can use" in effective, attractive packages. Sometimes, the journalism, indeed the very substance of the product fell victim to the style.
But those problems have long since been addressed, and gone are the days when you'd go bonkers when your hotel gift shop didn't stock The Wall Street Journal or New York Times, and you had to settle for the paper left on your doorknob.
Now its Web site must play catch-up in a bad way.

Ben Schott Gets Bitch-Slapped By New York Times Book Review

Almanac Guru Denies Plagiarism, Paper Kind Of, Sort Of, Begs To Differ
You can fool all of the editors some of the time, but you can't fool all of the readers.
At least that's what appears to have happened to publishing darling Ben Schott, he of the "Schott's Almanac" and "Schott's Original Miscellany," which have sold millions of copies worldwide.
An editor's note in yesterday's New York Times Book Review noted how several readers had pointed out "similarities" in an essay he wrote for the March 4 Book Review about mistreating books.
Several of the super-literate out there noticed thematic "similarities" to an essay contained in Anne Fadiman's "Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader."
Granted, it wasn't a word-for-word lift, but the opening paragraph of Schott's piece has an eerie familiarity if you know Fadiman's work.
Schott denied he had ever read Fadiman, whose essay was also brought to his attention by a Book Review reader. He blames the similarity on the "coincidental result of the narrowness of the topic."
Talk about a euphemism.
True or not, it was enough to give Book Review editors the heebie-jeebies.
"Had editors been aware of Fadiman's essay, the Book Review would not have published Schott's."
Which presumably means that Schott, who has been doing some freelance work at the Times, is now able to consider assignments from other publications.

CNN Caught Reporting John Edwards Scoop That Wasn't

The competition among the cable newsers sometimes has a casualty: accurate reporting.
Just before the John Edwards news conference about the recurrence of his wife Elizabeth's breast cancer, CNN ran a headline on the network, its Web site and headline service that appears on Captivate.com that he was suspending his campaign while she was treated.
Which would have been a great thing to be in front on were it not for the fact that Edwards told the nation that just the opposite was happening. That meant CNN had to shuck and jive in its online version.

"The campaign goes on," John Edwards said at a news conference outside the couple's home, contradicting earlier media reports to the contrary.

Those reports, of course, included CNN, though you wouldn't know that from reading that dispatch.
Of course, it was easy to assume Edwards would be stepping aside given that it was unlikely he'd hold a news conference just to let everyone know his wife was all right. And he had canceled a campaign appearance yesterday in Iowa.
As the Des Moines Register notes: "Many political observers speculated this morning that John Edwards would at least suspend the campaign, but those reports proved incorrect."

Ah, speculation. Assumption. Guesswork. None of which have any place in journalism.

No matter how intense the 24-hour news cycle, speculation can't take the place of accurate reporting. Even if it was relying on outside sources, CNN should have used its own formidable resources to first verify the news. You need to get it right before you get it first.

Honolulu Star-Bulletin Dumbs Down Its Pages; Could Be A Dumb Idea

Or, It Could Be The Only Way To Get People To Read Something Besides the Ads and TV Listings. Sigh.
Stop scolding. Yes, know full well newspapers are in a cage match with the inexorable migration of their readers to the web.
The Star-Bulletin, the scrappy afternoon (yes, a few still exist) paper in Honolulu (lucky stiffs) has taken a scythe to the conventional wisdom about newspaper layout, according to Mark Fitzgerald in Editor & Publisher.
Now the S-B's front page and section fronts are full of up to 20 short items that can be viewed as either blurbs on their own or as refers to the full story inside a section. It's the paper equivalent of a click-through, which editor Frank Bridgewater makes no apologies about.

"We know the overwhelming number of readers don't like jumps, but for some reason the newspaper industry has continued to force jumps on people,” Bridgewater told E&P. “The older readers accept it a little bit, or I should say, I think they tolerate it. But the younger the reader, the more they hate jumps.”

Bridgewater may be bending to reality, having spent more time than he cares to in the Short Attention Span Theatre. But he then risks the danger of dumbing down the product, making it superficial to the point of being irrelevant, especially for the "older readers" (definition, please?) who still make up the lion's share of paid circulation.
Yes, that's the core of the problem in newspaperdom, not enough eyeballs under 40 plunking down coin for the product. But until you figure out a way to snare that crowd, don't alienate the core.
My concern is if you give people a reason just to read the section fronts, they won't go further afield, reducing the perception of the S-B as a must-read.
It reminds me of my time in network radio news, where you knew that after the commercial break on the hourly newscast, a lot of stations would dump out and not take the back minute. The consequence was the compulsion to then cram more stories into the front part of the newscast, which meant more breathless and shorter shrift for items that begged for more context and explanation.
The Star-Bulletin, which faced extinction just a few years ago, can't afford to go down that path. It trails the morning Honolulu Advertiser in circulation 143,020 to 64,305. Faced with that, it'll likely find that less does not translate into more.

Catch My Disease on the 4 Train: Sharon Moalem Likes Himself Very Much. Pregnant Women? Not Very Much

"Survival Of The Sickest" Author Takes His Own Publicity Tour on the Subway

The wife and I caught last Thursday's "Daily Show," where the guest was Sharon Moalem, who has written "Survival of the Sickest," a book whose cover proclaims him as a "medical maverick" who's here to tell us "why we need disease."

Jon Stewart took the bait. We haven't taken that leap, at least not yet. But maybe we'll find the time to read his treatise about how lots of diseases have evolutionary virtues. Turns out some genetic traits that are harmful today actually helped ancestors survive and thrive. OK, then.

For the more scientifically inclined among us, the book has received its share of reviews and avid readers, not least among them, Moalem himself.

My wife spotted on Tuesday someone on the uptown Lexington Avenue express reading "Survival of the Sickest." She then realized it was Moalem caught up in his own book.

When the train reached 14th Street, Moalem grabbed a seat to continue his self-love reverie, beating out my six-months-pregnant wife, who was forced to hover nearby. Which means he has something in common with just about every other guy who rides the 4 and 5 trains.

Maybe Moalem's next book can be about chivalry. No time like the present to start his research.

"24' Can't Tell Time -- But So What Else Is New?

The Numbers Don't Add Up As CTU Takes On Russian Bad Guys

A cracklin' good "24" tonight, much to Gregory Itzin's (right) chagrin as we got to watch ex-Prez Charles Logan flatlining at the end.

This was a rare Jack Lite episode, as much of the hour was spent with Logan trying to get ex-wife Martha -- she in the expensive loony bin with former Secret Service demigod-turned-paramour Aaron watching over her -- to call her dear friend Anya, the wife of Russian President Subarov.

Logan wanted Anya to convince her husband to tell super-baddie Markov at the consulate in L.A. to surrender before CTU stormed the gates and started WWIII.

Sounds simple enough, right? Only thing: It would have been pushing 4 in the morning in Russia. Yet, we're told Subarov is giving a speech in Omsk? To whom, the night shift at the city morgue?

Anywhoo, as they say in Omsk, it appears the Subarovs are night owls. Anya picks up the phone. She's wide awake and dressed rather nicely. Her peripatetic husband is later seen by her side, conveniently dressed in a suit and tie, because you never know when a diplomatic incident is going to break out.

Of course, all that time-zone silliness came just before Martha stabbed Logan, which left her quite pleased with herself. Yet, somehow she managed to sound lucid immediately afterwards during her chick chat with Anya.

Which is the great thing about "24." You roll your eyes over what absurd plot device they've managed to cook up. But you keep coming back. How could you not? The world may blow up any second now.

P.S. Jury still out on Ricky Schroeder. Might be some high-priced window dressing, or he could be a keeper. Gotta have a real kick-ass guy running Field Ops, after all. And hope they got some extra dough in the set-design budget what with Powers Boothe angrily chewing through all that scenery.

Bobby Brown Decides He Doesn't Want To Be a Model Citizen After All, Not To Mention a Radio Host

Hot 99.5 Tried to Get Deadbeat Dad Out of Jail and In the Studio
So, Washington radio station Hot 99.5 hoped to goose its morning ratings by having Bobby Brown on for a week to talk about what a swell, misunderstood guy he really was. This, after the station bailed him out of a Massachusetts jail for not paying child support.
It was supposed to be a week of good-natured razzing, regret and rumination, not to mention unpredictable, as anyone who saw the train wreck that was his reality show "Being Bobby Brown" can attest.
Then, Brown apparently came down with a bad case of cold feet after the cash found its way toward his camp (see below item). Brown's people are trying to spin this sucka, saying the station didn't front his bail money and that he never agreed to come on the air. Hot 99.5 begs to differ and has the proof.
Oops. Nothing like an email to ruin a good story.

It's His Prerogative: Bobby Brown May Bail On Radio Station That Bailed Him Out

Clear Channel Station in D.C. Could Be on Hook for Washed-Up Pop Star's Child Support Tab and Nothing In Return

It sounded good, at least on paper. Bobby Brown, has-been singer, estranged husband of Whitney Houston, and reality show head case, was in jail for not ponying up child-support bucks.

So, Washington radio station Hot 99.5 had a swell idea. Bail out Brown by paying the $19,150 Brown owed in Massachusetts, then have him be an "employee" of the station, yuck it up for a week with morning host Kane and sort of be a role model/punching bag.

Brown certainly appeared game enough. Rehabilitating yourself on the air sure beats a cell. Except now he may be having second thoughts, all the more inconvenient for Hot 99.5, as they've already laid out the cash.

Brown told Kane on the air this morning that he really didn't want to dwell on his legal troubles and said he was the victim of lies spread in the media. Uh-oh.

After Kane had a few WTF moments as it appeared Brown was trying to weasel out of his commitment, Brown hung up, leaving the radio station and everyone else without a clue as to what will happen next.

Which has been Brown's problem all along, as Hot 99.5 is learning the hard way.

Washington Times' Managing Editor Makes a Day in the Newsroom Interesting -- And Dangerous

A Full Moon Follows Fran Coombs As He Belittles, Berates and Blows Up

No one ever accused journalists, especially managing editors of distant second-place papers, of being a stable lot. Proof of that comes via Wonkette from George Archibald, a faaaaar right-wing blogger who toiled for many years with like-minded brethren at the Washington Times.

Archibald, via newsroom moles, recounts recent run-ins Times managing editor Fran Coombs has had with staff members. It's a real Moonapalooza of a day when he's around.
To wit, this purported exchange with one reporter:

Coombs: "I heard you were pissing on Julia Duin's series and bad-mouthing the Washington Times, like you always do."
Carter: "Who told you that? I wasn't and I didn't."
Coombs: "I heard you were, like you always do, and if I catch you, your ass will be grass."
Carter: "Are you going to punch me?"
Coombs: "No, You'd like that wouldn't you. But that is not going to happen. I'll fucking fire your ass. I’m going to fucking take your ass out."

Not exactly a wet dream for those in H.R. But great stuff for the rest of us who have the good fortune of not working at the Times.

For A Change, Hockey Is Again Recognized As A Sport in The New York Times

Three Bylined NHL Articles in One Day Despite No Reports of Pigs Sprouting Wings

As we've documented in the past, The New York Times has, without shame or regret, abandoned most of its hockey coverage. The Rangers are the only team that has a regular beat reporter, although Lynn Zinser rarely goes on the road with the team.

As for the Islanders and Devils, who between them have won seven Stanley Cups over the last 30 years, they mostly exist in two paragraph NHL roundups courtesy of the A.P.

So, it was quite a shock this morning to see last night's Islanders game covered by John Branch instead of the wire. True, it was to herald the Islanders debut of semi-superstar Ryan Smyth (above), acquired Tuesday from the Edmonton Oilers, but still, you'd never take for granted that the Times would show up. Because they might not again.

Today's edition also had a piece from freelancer Ray Glier on the trials and tribulations of the Atlanta Thrashers. Nice to see. However, lest you wonder what such a piece would be doing in a New York paper, then two minutes in the penalty box for you!

Remember, as Times execs always will, Lady Gray is a national paper. Yes, more people read the Times outside the metropolitan area than in. The problem is the sports department seems a little too proud of that fact, which is why coverage of local teams continues to suffer.

Tribune Deal Lets Gannett Extend Its Mediocrity To All Of New York's Northern Suburbs

Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time Victims of Chicagoans Trying To Shed Properties and Free Up Cash
The Washington Post has news of the latest media fire sale, with Tribune selling the Stamford Advocate and its diminutive sister, the Greenwich Time for a relatively paltry $65 million. That's a healthy reflection of the sickly state of newspaperdom when two properties that cover some of the wealthiest towns in the U.S. are unloaded like that.
However, it's nothing new when you look at deals like McClatchy selling the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis last year for $530 million, even though it had paid $1.2 billion just eight years earlier. Yeah, yeah, the company got $160 million in tax benefits. But still.
What will readers in Connecticut get when Gannett takes over. Not a hell of a lot, as subscribers of The Journal-News [a one-time employer of mine in the 1980s] in the neighboring New York counties of Westchester, Rockland and Putnam can attest.
Not that the Advocate or Time are much better thanks to persistent penny-pinching by Tribune. But still.
Gannett has been a persistent underachiever with The Journal-News, consistently fumbling attempts to cover its diverse region in anything but a piecemeal way. Its business coverage -- mirroring the cutbacks at many other papers -- is anemic, as are its feature sections. To its credit, it does do a fine job covering high school and local college sports.
Pro baseball and football teams have beat writers who do go on the road. That's not the case with the Knicks and Rangers, though, who mostly get staff bylines only when they're at Madison Square Garden. Currently, the Connecticut papers get local team coverage from the still-strong sports department at Newsday. Which now means expect greater use of AP copy.
Gannett's all about efficiencies, bottom lines and squeezing enough to hear their reporters and editors squeal like pigs. The journalism comes second. So, good luck Advocate/Time. You've been warned.

Brian Williams Wants Off The Anna-Nicole Spears Train, But One Journo Says Keep Rolling

The St. Petersburg Times' Eric Deggans Begs to Differ on Celebrity Blackout
You can't fault Brian Williams for trying to inject some gravitas into "NBC Nightly News" recently by proclaiming his 22-minute slice of the airwaves would be devoid of the latest odious nuggets about Anna Nicole-Smith's repose and our favorite bald pop tart imploding and re-imploding before TMZ.com staffers could hit the send button.
Yet, Eric Deggans at the St. Petersburg Times cries foul over Williams wanting to cover the actual news of the day. Why?
Because there is real news embedded in these ongoing soap operas. And a media-weary public needs quality journalists like Williams to pull substance out of these tawdry messes.
Again, I ask, why? Or, why Williams?
Maybe the better question is why not the cable newsers, who have done anything and everything to ensure their studios will need a good fumigating after these stories have finally ebbed? Surely in the zeal to report and re-report the same pablum, they could have stepped back, exhaled and mustered up a package putting these messes in context.
No reason for Williams, Couric or Gibson to muddy up their precious moments with these pathetic sagas unless actual news emerges. Imagine that.

New York Times Brings The War Home As It Follows Dustin Kirby On Road to Recovery

Medic Whose Bravado Was Captured in Brilliant Profile By C.J. Chivers Now Tends To His Own Wounds; a Happy Ending Of Sorts
His official title is Petty Officer Third Class, but everyone simply called Dustin Kirby "Doc." He was a medic assigned to the Second Mobile Assault Platoon of Weapons Company, Second Battalion, Eighth Marines, which meant too often he was attending to wounds inflicted by snipers.
Kirby's balance of triage, fragile emotions, outrage and fear were expertly captured in a Nov. 2 article by C.J. Chivers in The New York Times. Sadly, but not tragically, Chivers had to report on Dec. 29 about Kirby being wounded badly by another sniper's bullet.
As is not often the case, though, Chivers had some good news to report yesterday about Kirby's recovery which is gradual, but is expected to be complete after another series of operations this year.
A more uncertain path is being traveled by Marine Lance Cpl. Colin Smith, a friend of Kirby. The first article described how Kirby had attended to Smith on the battlefield after a bullet tore through his skull and destroyed the top frontal lobes of his brain.
Smith is said by his family to be in good spirits, though his progress is uncertain.
Sometimes as a reporter you start out telling a story and you have no idea how it will end. Fortunately, this is one still being written. And with Chivers' brilliant and sensitive reportage, it will be well worth reading.

UPDATE 11:00 A.M./2/26: Glad to see others felt the same way about Chivers, who the American Society of Newspaper Editors awarded its top prize for deadline reporting. The winning entries in all categories show that, despite increasingly daunting odds, there are still plenty of newspaper reporters fighting the good fight in a medium that's diminished but just as indispensable as it ever was.

When Restaurants Attack: More Eateries Want To Fry Critics Who Burned Them With Tepid Reviews

Frank Bruni Gets Some Company As Restaurant Enemy Number One

Much was written this week about restaurant mogul Jeffrey Chodorow taking out a full-page ad to rebut the negative review from New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni of Kobe Club, Chodorow's newest Big Apple eatery.
Reactions ranged from "atta-boy Jeff" to "he's even more insane than we thought."

To be sure, Bruni was not alone in savaging the steakhouse, pricey even by the mind-boggling expense account tabs typical of a New York meat emporium. Adam Platt of New York magazine and the New York Post's Steve Cuozzo also took Kobe Club to the woodshed.

But Chodorow spent at least 80 grand on the ad to go after Bruni, not the other doomsayers. Now, a bad review from Bruni (who savaged Kobe Club with a piddling no-star, Satisfactory rating) isn't necessarily fatal to a restaurant, unlike a thumbs-down from theater critic Ben Brantley. Still, it doesn't help, even if Chodorow threw out the PR playbook and made his displeasure so public.
In the rebuttal, Chodorow didn't help his case by saying Bruni was entitled to his opinion except when he said bad things about his restaurants.

I open restaurants for people, not critics. Kobe Club, with its 2000 samurai swords dangling blade-down, and its over-the-top luxe menu is not for everyone, but do we really need another traditional steakhouse in New York City?

And if he opens restaurants for people, then why does he care so much about the critics?

Still, Chodorow really is a people person. Honest.

I have been too successful and battle-hardened to be affected by this, but my restaurant staff,
who are some of the nicest, most hard-working people I have ever worked with are affected, and they deserve an apology.

So there.

At least Chodorow is confining his vitriol to expensive rebuttals and starting a blog so he can say nice things about restaurants and food. A Philadelphia-area restaurant wants to exact revenge in the courts for a review that took up all of three sentences.
Indeed, a little can say a lot. In this case, it's the steakhouse (another one? Geez!) Chops in Bala Cynwyd hot and bothered by Philadelphia Inquirer restaurant critic Craig LaBan's labeling of a strip steak "miserably tough and fatty." Only thing: the restaurant alleges LaBan had a steak sandwich, not an actual steak.
The restaurant says LaBan apologized on the phone, but refused to make a correction in print. So, it's off to court we go, or at least to the lawyers' offices, which is bound to leave a bad taste in everybody's mouths.

Flying in The Wrong Direction on NPR's Morning Edition

When Your Show's Produced in Washington and L.A, Sometimes The Facts Get Lost
Nancy Solomon had a report on today's "Morning Edition" on how Newark Liberty Airport takes the booby prize for having the most late arriving flights.
Part of the problem is too many planes, too little airspace.
Solomon capped the report by saying that a major new airport is being built on Long Island to help relieve congestion.
Which would be news to the people on Long Island, which has one airport, Islip MacArthur, with jet flights that local officials keep on a very tight leash.
Where Solomon should actually be looking is 50 miles north of Newark and Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey just bought to relieve the rampant airport madness closer to the city.
And which, it should be noted, is nowhere near Long Island.

Getting To Make Fun Of Your Own Newspaper Without Getting Fired

The Florida Times-Union's Wayne Ezell Shows The Foolishness of the Ad Department's Ways and Performs A Public Service at the Same Time
It's fun being a reader advocate or ombudsman sometimes. You can pretty much say what you want, skewer a few sacred cows and piss off people in the newsroom without fear of a pink slip.
Wayne Ezell at the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville knows that well. Which is how he got to have fun at the expense of the newspaper's ad department, which accepted a full-page ad that had a big stink to it.
The cool part: people inside the newspaper aren't supposed to say "no comment," hang up or curse at the reader advocate. They have to provide answers, even if they wind up being lame like the one offered up by ad director Mark Cohen.
"We cannot check out the creditability [sic] of every advertiser or offer. However, if we have a legitimate complaint from a reader that they were in fact 'scammed, then we will investigate, and if found to be true we will no longer accept further advertising."
But does the T-U check out the veracity of any ad? Might a full-page ad that's advertising the ready availability of "surplus cash" ring a few warning bells? Apparently not, so long as the check clears. Times are tough in the news business, after all. Caveat emptor yada, yada, yada.
Which is why we need more Wayne Ezells helping us sort out the wheat from the chaff, even when his bosses profit handsomely from that chaff.

Update: Portland Press-Herald Asks Groups To Help It Pick Out Good Jews

Publisher Asks: You Mean Other People Have Big Noses and Eat Bagels Too?
While we don't expect the advertising department at the Portland Press-Herald to spontaneously break out singing "Hava Negila," at least the paper's trying to make sure it doesn't offend Jews again, after managing to pull off that feat twice in two weeks.
The newspaper is embarking on diversity training in order to empower its staff with some semblance of common sense (see below story).
All well and good, but the fact that we're having this conversation in 2007 is rather bewildering and incontrovertibly sad.
In other words, a shonda.

The Portland Press-Herald's Problem With Jews

For The Second Time In Two Weeks, An Item Makes It Into The Paper That Definitely Isn't Kosher

First there was an ad for a sermon at a local Baptist church titled "The Only Way To Destroy The Jewish Race." OK, it was actually somehwat complimentary of Jews, but maybe the title was best kept out of the paper.

Then the Portland Press-Herald runs an ad for a local bank with a large headline "The Fee Bandit." Wouldn't you know? The guy in the picture above just happens to look a little too much like a Hasid you'd see walking down the street in Borough Park.

Oops. So, the putz factor apparently runs high at Maine's largest newspaper. Of course, Jews are not exactly, um, abundant Down East. Many people in the state probably haven't seen a Jew since "Seinfeld" went off the air. Nonetheless, a big-time boner, and the Press-Herald concedes as much.

"Publishing these advertisements was an unfortunate mistake and an error in judgment on our part, for which I accept full responsibility," blubbered publisher Charles Cochrane.

Thanks for that, Chuck, though, he was not in a contrite mood when contacted by the Sun-Journal in Lewiston and told them to kush meer in toches (kiss my ass).

"We don't discuss that - you'd need to call the advertiser about that," Cochrane said. "Have a nice day."

Apparently, Cochrane got a little religion in his keppe and changed his mind. But he's got some convincing to to do. Sorry's just not gonna cut it. As a local rabbi told the Sun-Journal: "One time is a mistake. Two times is a policy."

Cochrane may also have a little trouble convincing some of the inbred backwoods types who chimed in on the paper's Web site. Like this one from rocket scientist Clinch up in Poland Springs:

What's next? Will the NAACP complain about ads that have bronzed sun-tanned bodies in them? Will Juan Valdez and his Colombian coffee now be a poster child for sub-standard working conditions in South America? (What? He still has a donkey? Are his "kind" too poor to buy a "John Deere?" Some people need to get a life.

Or a clue.

N.Y. Daily News Quits While It's Behind on Cesar Borja Story

Editorial Asserts Reporting Flawed, But Still Reflective of Big Picture of Woes Confronting Ground Zero First Responders
It's the journalistic equivalent of a hard-on. You own the story. It's your clips that TV reporters drag around when they write their own scripts for their live shots; the ones your competition is forced to match, or simply crib from.
Such was the tragic story of Cesar Borja, the New York cop who died of lung disease as a result of all the dust, asbestos and other crap that lingered in the air after the World Trade Center collapsed.
Borja's death caught the attention of many a politician, including Hillary Clinton and President Bush, who was lobbied by Borja's son Cesar Jr. to provide more federal dollars to help sickened first responders.
Borja's plight was first brought to light in January by the Daily News, who portrayed him as a tireless first responder who worked extended shifts on the pile after the towers collapsed.
It was a great story. Only problem, as The New York Times told us Monday in a 2,800-plus-word dispatch, it didn't quite hold up under closer scrutiny.
Borja was at Ground Zero, but not until December. Which means he didn't rush from a tow pound, where he spent most of his police career, straight to the pile, as the Daily News reported.
End result: A steady diet of crow on offer in the Daily News city room. And the paper, to its credit, owned up to as much in an editorial unusually placed on page 6 today:

We first stated that when the Trade Center collapsed, Borja "rushed to Ground Zero and started working long days there - even volunteering to work extra shifts." The article also asserted that Borja "volunteered to work months of 16-hour shifts in the rubble." Neither statement has been supported by documentary evidence.

The paper had first tried to spin its way out of being caught up in its own mess yesterday with a piece headlined "My dad will always be a hero to me!"
In the article, Borja's son, Cesar Jr. accused the Times of attacking his father's honor, even though the Times had quoted him as saying “I don’t believe my father to be any less heroic than I previously thought, any less valiant than the other papers previously misreported on.”
Today, it put aside its mea culpas, and for good reason.

The only consolation for the News is that the paper that scooped it was not the New York Post. Fear not, the Posties are reveling in what happened. The Murdoch gang used an editorial yesterday titled "Death of a Myth" to slam the News for hyping the Borja story without firm evidence his death was caused by Ground Zero exposure.

[Borja] had smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for years before quitting in the late '90s. And his regular NYPD assignment was at an auto tow pound, where surely he inhaled engine exhaust on each shift.
But the fable fabricated by the Daily News has energized a cash-driven crusade to authenticate a "Ground Zero Syndrome" - requiring billions in taxpayer outlays to palliate.

And to dig the knife in a little sharper, it called the Times story, by Sewell Chan and Al Baker, "genuine public-service reporting."
Which is one thing everybody should be able to agree on.

Saga at the Santa Barbara News-Press Just Keeps Getting Sadder

Not To Mention More Desperate and Pathetic as Editorial Page Editor Impales Himself On His Own Words

So, first we have a self-important millionairess publisher who sticks her nose in the news product to protect her friends and punish her own pet peeves. Top editors are given the boot along with some veteran reporters. Others follow them out the door. Massive community protests ensue along with a federal labor investigation.
End result: The Santa Barbara News-Press is a husk of its former self.
And in a continuing drive to show its ends justifies its means, editorial-page editor and acting publisher Travis Armstrong flailed away at former colleagues in a column Tuesday for taking a principled stand. The nerve.

In betraying the principles of their past craft, they appear to want to shut down the paper's free speech, as well as hurt the livelihoods of 200 News-Press workers and their families.

OK, let's put aside the fact that the ex-staffers have been exercising their free speech in protesting McCaw -- and Armstrong's wanton ways. Funny, don't recall Armstrong cozying up to the First Amendment when the News-Press, under the old regime, posted a short item about his DUI arrest. When he was sentenced, McCaw ordered the story on the court proceeding killed. So much for the First Amendment.
But Armstrong has in the past made no apologies for injecting himself into the newsgathering process, despite that generally being a no-no for those in the executive suite.
Now back to the screed:

Growing up in a Teamsters family, I remember as a young boy listening to men talk over the kitchen table or on the phone about spreading nails or damaging trucks. It was scary stuff.
Those who have brought such an outfit to our peaceful community deserve scorn.
... Where are groups such as the ACLU in battling this governmental interference in free expression?

Oy, vey. Cue the Stradivarius.

Many of the dozens of staffers who've quit or been fired gave the best years of their journalistic lives to the News-Press. None should be actively seeking to kill the paper. After all, Armstrong and McCaw are already doing a bang-up job of that on their own, as Susan Paterno exhaustively chronicled in the American Journalism Review. That article spurred a libel suit by McCaw that Paterno is aggressively defending.
The truth hurts, and as his column shows, Armstrong is in a lot of pain.

Pinch Sulzberger Pulls No Punches About The Future Of The New York Times

Publisher's Rhetoric May Be Just A Lot Of Air -- At Least For Now

Catch someone in an unguarded moment and you might be surprised about what you hear. Such a moment transpired in the rarefied air of Davos, home of the World Economic Forum.

That's where Eytan Avriel of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz cadged a short Q&A with New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger (above left), who normally hides behind NYT flacks.

Here's an eyebrow-raiser from that chat:

"I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care, either."

Ouch. Yet Pinch surely doth protest too much. He knows, of course, that the once-Gray Lady will still be responsible for killing millions of trees now and for decades to come.

That doesn't mean, though, that the Times won't increase its already-formidable Web presence. It will, and it has to.

But he's aware that the broadsheet is still the straw that stirs the online version's drink, especially when the act of holding a newspaper in one's hands remains a more-interactive experience than nytimes.com can provide on a daily basis.

Still, you have to think the gang over on West 43rd St. is hardly reassured hearing those words, hyperbolic as they now are. The Internet may be the Times' future, but that would be a future that inevitably begets a smaller staff and fewer resources to actual newsgathering -- both of which have already shrunk to dangerous levels.

Good for the techies, bad for the newsies.

Chances are, though, that's not going to be a story you'll be able to read about in the Times.

Utah Jazz Flacks Try To Put Jerry Sloan's Homphobia Back In The Closet

He's Here, He's Queer, But His Ex-Coach Isn't Getting Used To It

Now that former NBA center John Amaechi has declared he's gay, now comes the parade of homphobia-in-pro sports stories.

But first, embedded in the news articles about Amaechi's homosexuality and new book, were comments from Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan (above right), who had a contentious relationship with Amaechi. In the AP story yesterday Sloan was asked if knowing Amaechi was gay would have mattered. "Oh yeah, it would have probably mattered. I don't know exactly, but I always have peoples' feelings at heart. People do what they want to do. I don't have a problem with that."

Although from that statement it sounds like he does.

Not so coincidentally, Sloan was whistling a different tune as news about Amaechi went from a dull roar to a full-blown production number.

John is 1 of 117 players I have coached in the past 19 seasons, and it has always been my philosophy that my job is to make sure Jazz players perform to the maximum of their abilities on the floor. As far as his personal life is concerned, I wish John the best and have no further comment.

Which might be the best course of action right about now.

NBA players, some of whom did play with Amaechi, are doing their darndest to say the right things. For a sampling, visit Outsports.com, which was first with the Amaechi story.

Finding An End To "Lost"

As We Fasten Our Seatbelts for the Next 16 Weeks, Some Assurances That A Finale Is Really In The Works Before We Start Longing For Laura Palmer To Rise From the Dead

The shark's not jumping yet on "Lost." But if showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof aren't careful, it could be getting antsy real soon.
Now that the show cranks up again Wednesday, it's time to once again wonder about how it's eventually going to end, namely long before we stop caring about polar bears in the South Pacific, mysterious Black Smoke and that darn Hanso Project.
To his credit, Cuse insists there is something over the horizon. But exactly how long they'll take to get there no one knows, he recently told TV writers:

"It's time for us now to find an end point for this show. It's always been discussed that the show would have a beginning, middle and end...[and] once we a lot of the anxiety and a lot of these questions like - 'we're not getting answers' - will go away."

The 16 consecutive episodes to finish out season three may well foretell what will ultimately be Lost's defining moments.
But as Verne Gay notes in Newsday, not even Cuse and Co. are fully clued into their own instincts. That could be a good thing as the show bridges the gap between those who want love triangles and the legions who crave enough obfuscated mythology to keep the blogosphere at full boil.
Either way, as long as we don't see the Fonz on waterskis, "Lost" should be all right.

Jeff Zucker Has The Wright Stuff -- Finally

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Replacing Ed Bradley May Be Easier Than CBS Thinks

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

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

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