WSJ's Greater New York Section: Not Great. Yet.

Sure, the More the Merrier, but Make the Section Relevant First


Rupert Murdoch made no secret of why he wanted to create a section devoted to New York news within the Wall Street Journal. He wanted to squash The New York Times like a diseased bug, eat all the Sulzberger young and dance on their graves in some kind of bizarre pagan ritual holding aloft a copy of News Corp.'s latest earnings report.

OK, maybe not the pagan ritual, but you get the idea.

Simply put, Murdoch doesn't want the Journal to be a second read, like it is for me after I polish off as much as the Times as I can during my commute. He wants the Journal to be all the wealthy, powerful, and influential digest with their venti soy latte and brioche. Of course, if they want to use it to hide the fact they're actually reading The New York Post, no harm, no foul.
But the Greater New York section is not a category killer. It's more like an eager puppy, jumping up and down, not always peeing on the paper (the Times, of course), but eager to please.

First, the good:

---The mostly featurish approach to local sports coverage works most of the time. The Journal assumes you found out elsewhere what the score was, and if you really care what the Mets did, there are innumerable sources for recaps and analysis. But the real saving grace of the sports coverage is columnist Jason Gay, whose "The Couch" column in the regular Journal on Monday is destination reading. It's at once funny, knowledgable and reverential. But can we do away with the courtesy titles in sports stories? "Messrs. Burnett, Sabathia, and Teixeira, whom they signed in a....." Yeesh.
---The Journal made a good pickup in having Jason Gershman cover state government. He knows his way around the miasma that is Albany. At the same time, he has seamlessly shed the ideological bent that marked his reporting in the late, lamented neocon-fave The New York Sun.
---The aggressive real estate coverage definitely adds to the conversation about a topic that nobody can stop talking about.


Not as good:
--The lack of a voice. The section badly needs a feisty columnist to hoist a few petards and let us know when the glass really is half empty, like the Times has with Jim Dwyer and Clyde Haberman. Right now, the only columnist is Ralph Gardner Jr., who takes a more gentleapproach to view life in the city. A recent column focused on a guy who used to work in finance and now wears a lobster suit handing out fliers in midtown for a seafood joint. Nothing wrong with that sort of thing, but maybe not every day, and not at the expense of something hard-hitting.
--The Heard & Scene society coverage. Maybe it's just me, but I don't give two craps about who's attending what charity ball and the designer togs they're wearing. I have a feeling, among readers under 65, that I'm not alone. If you only have a 12-page section, squandering precious real estate on floss and dross just makes me finish the paper faster.
---If you're going to call the section Greater New York, then cover Greater New York. That means the world outside of the five boros, where so many of the Journal's readers live. I'm not saying you have to set up bureaus in Greenwich or Scarsdale, but there are enough interesting stories in the 'burbs going uncovered by the desultory and/or desiccated papers there that could have broad appeal for Journal readers.
---The lack of coverage about New York's blood sport: dining out. Inexplicably, the main Journal scaled back on food and wine, when it effectively dumped freelancer Raymond Sokolov's restaurant column in March and got rid of nonpareil wine columnists John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter in December.

To be sure, it really is a compliment to say that the section is a good complement to the rest of the Journal. But it is not a replacement for the Times, which for diehard readers -- from arts coverage to Maureen Dowd, from the crossword puzzle to Floyd Norris -- is simply too hard a habit to break.
There may come a point where, if you don't already do so, you might start reading the Journal because of the Greater New York section. However, it's nowhere close to getting you to stop reading the Times for the same reason.

Thirsty? How About Some Soy Jizzum?

The Gang at Fox 5 Near and Dear in the Heart of YouTube Land

Fox 5 New York morning anchor Rosanna Scotto's been in the TV news game a long time now. But that doesn't mean light-hearted banter comes easy to her. Sometimes, it's better just to read the teleprompter. Or shut up. Then again, if she had done the latter, we wouldn't have this to show you:

And it's already prompted a remix:


Thanks people with no hobbies!

Idaho's Governor Not Having A Ball With This Story

C.L. Otter Not Gettin' Along with the Little Doggies

From the Eastern Media Elite Desk comes this snicker after reading an item from the A.P. in The New York Times about how Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter was back on the job after two nights in a hospital with fever and dehydration.

Seems the 67-year-old Otter felt ill last weekend while, wait for this, helping Lt. Gov. Brad Little brand and castrate calves.

Turns out, it was the second time this year Otter has assisted Little with ball-shearing duties at his ranch. "He likes to help, it's a nice change of pace," Little told the AP.

After all, he can only threaten to cut the balls off of legislators. The calves: not as fortunate.

It's not necessarily the kind of story you'd say "Only in Idaho" about. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, for one, is a rancher and likely knows his way around an emasculator (that's what one implement is really and aptly called).

It's safe to say most of Otter's counterparts on the other side of the country are exposed to calves only if they order the veal marsala at their favorite Italian joint.

Meantime, glad ol' Butch is back in the saddle again.

Wall Street Journal Editors Should Make Their Own Paper a Must-Read

Photo Cutlines Really Are Part of the Paper Too

Taking up about a third of the real estate above the fold on the front page of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal is a photo of a street battle in Managua firing at a hotel where Nicaraguan lawmakers were meeting to try to repeal a decree President Ortega issued extending the terms of some officials.
All well and good. Nice picture and all. But what I just wrote above is all you'd have found in the Journal about this story. Normally, big display art would normally lead to a story inside the paper if it didn't accompany the photo. Not here. If the photo is deemed worthy enough to occupy A-1, there needs to be more to the story. There needs to be a story, first and foremost.
And if you do a story with matching art, make sure the photo's cutline refers to it. On page A10 in the same edition, the story headlined "Airports Reopen, Safety Debate Lingers" had a photo captioned: An Icelandair plane takes off Tuesday from Glasgow International Airport bound for Reykjavik in Iceland."
Only problem: The photo clearly shows the plane is one from Lufthansa and, as an online correction noted, it was taking off from Dusseldorf.
Glasgow. Dusseldorf. Hard to tell them apart after all that volcanic ash mucking up the works. But at $2 a copy, you expect Journal editors to be paying more attention to not-insignificant details like that.

When Less Really Is Saying Less

An "Undisclosed Illness" for Yankees Trainer Gene Monahan in The New York Times is Cancer Just About Everywhere Else

Among those receiving World Series rings yesterday was Yankees trainer Gene Monahan who has been with the team since 1973. Monahan was moved to tears by the ovation he received. Why? You really wouldn't know by reading The New York Times.
Stalwart columnist George Vecsey said Monahan is "not working this spring while battling an undisclosed illness."
Yankees beat writer Ben Shpigel is no less ambiguous:

"Gene Monahan, the beloved longtime trainer who missed spring training because of an undisclosed illness, surpassed that. During the ceremony, Monahan was called forward first, and the Yankees honored him by having him stand alone with his ring by first base."
“Knowing what he’s going through, it was really emotional,” said Girardi, who fought back tears after the game as he spoke about Monahan. “We’re all thrilled to see him here.”

But Monahan's illness is anything but "undisclosed."
In the Daily News, baseball writer Bill Madden devoted his entire column to Monahan, and told us he's battling cancer and receiving daily radiation treatments on his neck and throat, including one that morning in the clubhouse.
George King and Brian Lewis also devoted an article to Monahan in the New York Post, while Erik Boland in Newsday and Chad Jennings in the Journal-News also mentioned the cancer. And so on.
It's inconceivable that both Shpigel and Vecsey both don't know the true nature of Monahan's illness. They're too good reporters to slip up like that. Rather, they appear to have been muzzled by a P.C. copy desk that wants nothing short of a press release or full confessional confirming the disease before they will let the C-word make it to print.
But Monahan's diagnosis was hardly a secret. And upon seeing its rivals write about his battle in an unvarnished way -- complete with quotes from Monahan about his ordeal -- sports editor Tom Jolly or someone in his minion could have fixed the omission online or in late editions of the print version.
Saying his illness is undisclosed is not just incomplete. It's wrong. Monahan's not hiding from the truth. Neither should the Times.

The Truth Shall Not Set the Vatican Free in Abuse Scandal...

So It Attacks The New York Times for Telling the Truth; Denial is Also a River That Runs Through Rome

Ah, nothing like a tsunami of stories about pedophile priests to put a damper on Holy Week. And it seems like the Vatican has had enough -- with the media coverage, that is.
Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the Associated Press: "I am not proud of America's newspaper of record, the New York Times, as a paragon of fairness."
This harrumphing is over the startling and sad story by Laurie Goodstein about how the church mishandled the case of a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting deaf boys, even though officials knew going back to the 1950s he may have been up to no good.
What has the Vatican incensed, though, is that Goodstein reported that Milwaukee's archbishop sought to have the priest defrocked and appealed to the office run by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, and was apparently discouraged from pursuing further action. At no point did the Times report that edict came from Ratzinger. But Levada still views that as guilt by association, and he's not a happy camper.
But, of course, as a Times spokeswoman pointed out to the A.P., the Church never disputes the accuracy of the article. It merely doesn't like what it says.
Just for chuckles, I looked to see what Bill Donahue, the president/mouthpiece of the Catholic League had to say about this, if only because Donahue always reflexively attack anything and everything that even remotely smacks of being anti-Catholic. He didn't disappoint.
Donahue also went into kill-the-messenger mode. "Why did the victims' families wait as long as 15 years to report the abuse? Why were the civil authorities unconvinced by what they uncovered? Why did Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland wait almost two decades before he contacted the Vatican?"
Again, Donahue never says that they're lying. But that doesn't stop him from questioning motives anyway.
That's typical Donahue and it appears the Vatican is reading from the same playbook. That's a mistake, yet another one it has made as this scandal begins to spiral out of control.

Remembering Ron Lundy

WABC Radio Great Dies of Heart Attack at 75

If you grew up listening to radio in New York in the 1960s and 1970s, then you knew Ron Lundy, because you listened to WABC, where Lundy ruled the midday shift.

"Hello, Luv!" he boomed to millions of us on WABC and later on WCBS-FM until his retirement to his native Mississippi in 1997.

Lundy had been in failing health lately, and a heart attack finally took him yesterday.
A classy tribute from Bob Shannon on WCBS-FM can be heard here.

The New York Radio Message Board is awash with heartfelt tributes and great stories, including this one from Vince Santarelli involving Lundy's close friend Dan Ingram, another radio legend who followed Lundy on WABC:

When Ron came to New York to sign his contract, he finished up and popped his head in the studio door and told Dan Ingram, "I'll see you in two weeks."
Dan responded, "the hell you will. You're going to stick around and when I get off the air tonight, we're going out for drinks and steaks and talk."
Ron himmed and hawed and finally called the airport to arrange a later flight. The two went out after Dan got off at 6 and had a good night.
Later on , they found out that the plane that Ron was originally supposed to be on, crashed into Lake Michigan with no survivors.

He was lucky that night. Just damn good the rest of the way. Go in peace, Ron.

Trade Schools Flunk Crucial PR Test with New York Times

Many Only Make Matters Worse in Scathing Front-Page Article

The article in Sunday's New York Times about the precarious mix of high debt and low pay for many students of for-profit colleges and trade schools was a real education.

Peter S. Goodman expertly pried the lid off of the often-unseemly recruiting practices of many schools, which left students awash in broken promises and mounting bills.

Let's hope that some of the schools mentioned use the piece as a cautionary tale, not for how to do right by their students -- although that would be a welcome byproduct -- but how not to turn into a quivering mass of gelatin when a reporter calls.

To wit, ITT Educational Services, one of the industry's top names, where a former financial aid officer told of risking the wrath of management if she told prospective students for computer and electronics trades about likely job prospects, which weren't good.

“If you said anything that went against what the recruiter said, they would threaten to fire you. The representatives would have already conned them into doing it, and you had to just keep your mouth shut.”

Offered an opportunity to reply, ITT's flackette demurred. And you know what that means for the average person reading the article: Guilty as charged.

A major opportunity to score brownie points was wasted, and proof of why a company of any size should have a crisis communications plan in place rather than diving for the bunker and acting clueless.

The same goes even when you do choose to cooperate with the media. Career Education Corp. spoke with Goodman, who focused on the experience of a former student at the company's Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Portland, Ore.

While the company wouldn't comment on that student, citing privacy concerns, it did send Goodman the names of other students to talk about their experiences. That's when the journalistic equivalent of a wet dream began.

One came with a wrong number. A second had graduated 15 years ago.
A third, Cherie Thompson, called the program “a really positive experience” but declined to discuss her debts or earnings. The fourth, Ericsel Tan, graduated in 2003 and later earned $42,000 a year overseeing catering at a convention center near Seattle. He said his success reflected his seven years of kitchen experience prior to culinary school.

Not exactly fodder for your testimonial page, huh? It's basically a reverse gotcha. Career Ed walked into an ambush of its own making, one that a few phone calls could have easily avoided.

Instead, kudos to Goodman, whose article may help steer students away from a life of big debts and small payoffs, while hopefully shaming these schools into doing more than just lining their pockets.

Wall Street Journal's Lifestyle Coverage Goes on a Diet

First, It Scales Back on Wine Coverage, Now It's Dumping Restaurant Reviews Too


The Wall Street Journal's going all schizoid on us, and it has nothing to do with its wacked-out editorial page.
At the same time, the Murdochian paper of record for the financial set is ramping up with a mysteriously intriguing New York edition, it's nipping and tucking other resources, and not for the better.
Pete Wells reports in The New York Times food blog that restaurant critic Raymond Sokolov called it quits after he was asked to cover food trends instead because the paper was abandoning restaurant reviews.
Sokolov, who had ridden a most-filling gravy train filing entertaining and informed reviews from all over the country, demurred.
Maybe the bean counters got all cheesed off when Sokolov filed a column from Vegas, where among his stops was a new Japanese restaurant called Shaboo, where the tab runs $500 a head. Tax, tip, and wine extra. And he wasn't dining alone.
But those kind of expense reports didn't seem to bother the Journal much, though that seems to have changed more ever since ol' Rupe got his mitts on the paper.
In December, the Journal dumped the husband-and-wife team of John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter, who wrote an estimable wine column.
The Journal, just like it promises with restaurants, didn't abandon wine coverage entirely. But it's more intermittent and largely devoid of insight let alone personality.
Sokolov's departure means yet another reason the Journal's Saturday lifestyle coverage is less appetizing.
What was once a must-read over the weekend is now a I'll-maybe-get-to-it-if-I-have-time-after-reading-the-Times-and-FT read.
At a time when he's adding a New York edition, Murdoch should be running headlong at his competition, not running from it.

More Fallout from "Last Train to Hiroshima"

Charles Pellegrino's Editors More Out of Touch with Reality Than He Is

Much has been written in the last week or so about the book "The Last Train from Hiroshima," and how Henry Holt & Company after author Charles Pellegrino confirmed he was duped by his primary source who claimed to have been a last-minute replacement on one of the planes that escorted the Enola Gay, which dropped the a-bomb on Hiroshima.
So, the book, which was originally going to be corrected in future editions, is now kaput. Holt said it acted not only because of the lies told by that source, but also because Pellegrino may have fabricated other sources in his book, which he vehemently denies.
Beyond this pathetic case of he said, they said lies a larger issue, namely getting facts straight before the book goes to press.
It is what editors do, after all, besides checking that you used the serial comma and didn't split infinitves. But maybe not.
As Robert Gottlieb, the famed editor who worked at Knopf and helmed The New Yorker -- known for its annoyingly fastidious fact-checking department -- told The New York Times:
"It would not be humanly possible to fact-check books the way magazine articles can be fact-checked, just because of length."
So, by Gottlieb's standard, if a 500-page manuscript at least smells right, that's good enough. Facts? We'll just cross our fingers and hope for the best. What twaddle.
Even worse is Pellegrino's editor at Holt, a 15-watt bulb named John Macrae, who told the Times "the difference between fact and fiction is a very fine line."
Come again?
To be sure, the Times article by Motoko Rich does state that Macrae questioned more than 250 parts of the book, but he was more interested in survivor stories and less focused on how the bomb was dropped, the fabricated story of which led to the book's demise.
But let's go back to Macrae's whopper just above. "The difference between fact and fiction is a very fine line."
Here's a guy who has trouble distinguishing between the two and yet he's a high-ranking editor at a major publishing house. How sad. Maybe that's why the book industry has to undergo a ritual humiliation every couple of years.
Macrae sounds like he's channeling Nan Talese, who got burned in 2006 by James Frey in the "Million Little Pieces" debacle. Back then, she said: "At the New Yorker and Time and Newsweek you have experienced people who know where to go and what's right and what's wrong. We don't. There's been a traditional dependency on the author."
Talese was also the one who insisted that memoirs should be held to a different standard than an autobiography, but that's another sorry issue.
So what we're left with are publishers unwilling to spend a little extra money and time vetting a book like "The Last Train to Hiroshima" that sheds a different light on a pivotal moment in history. Instead supposed publishing pros offer lame mea culpas for a massive FUBAR like this one.
Holt paid a steeper price than what fact-checkers would have cost because of the hit its reputation took over this embarrassment. It's a stain that won't wash away anytime soon.
But what's even sorrier are excuses like the ones coming from Gottlieb, Macrae and Talese, and why it's only a matter of time before I'll be blogging about the next dubious manuscript to get pulled from circulation.
We're supposed to learn from our mistakes. Too bad the book industry is a little slow on the uptake.

What's Up, Doc: Emrick Has Another Gold Medal Run Calling Olympic Hockey

And You Don't Have To Believe In Miracles to Get Excited

As the USA's 5-3 stunner Sunday over Canada in Olympic men's hockey continues to sink in, thoughts inevitably wander to the Miracle on Ice in Lake Placid 30 years ago. Even if it was edited and on tape delay, and some of us found out the score too early (thanks, Rene Poussaint at WJLA!), it was still a great moment and one that will define the already-considerable career of Al Michaels.

So, it was pretty classy of him to tell Richard Sandomir in The New York Times how he was hardly wistful about not being behind the mic calling the games in Vancouver.

“Here’s the reality: Mike Emrick might be the best guy to ever call hockey,” he said, referring to NBC’s play-by-play announcer. “I can’t do it one-tenth as well.”

Which tells you all you pretty much need to know about Emrick, who the diminishing number of New York-area hockey fans have been able to enjoy in his regular job as the TV voice of the New Jersey Devils.

There have been other stops along the way, but the Devils gave Doc (he has a PhD in broadcasting from Bowling Green) a much broader canvas on which he paints eloquent word pictures that are at once intelligent, insightful, and in perfect tempo with the pace of the game. He's an exquisite student of hockey, but he's never a show-off. The knowledge is parceled out only when needed. It's always about what's on the ice, not him.

Sandomir noted that Emrick said following a particularly frantic period of play: “It’s kind of nice to have it peaceful right now. I hope I’m not yelling too much.”

Not to worry.

More recently, he's been calling Stanley Cup games and the Winter Classic on New Year's Day for NBC, so he's hardly a poorly kept secret. It's not like he only brings his A material for the network. He has no B material.

But viewers who only watch hockey once every four years will notice just how good hockey can be. And Emrick will be a big reason for that, no matter what the final score is.

New Music Channels on DirecTV: Sonic Crap

DirecTV Dumps Sirius XM To Save Dough and Latches on to Pale Imitator

While it's far from perfect, I have always found much to like on satellite radio, particularly what was put out by XM. Even after it merged with Sirius, there was still plenty to keep me listening for the adult album alternative and singer-songwriter tracks I gravitate to most often.
Given that only one of our cars -- the one I'm usually not driving -- has XM, I usually listened via DirecTV. Spectrum, The Loft, and The Coffeehouse were often on in the house. No more. A couple of weeks ago, DirecTV dumped SiriusXM for something called SonicTap, programmed by an outfit called DMX Music that, among other things, puts together music channels for cable systems.
DirecTV never said why it made the switch, so you can assume money was the overriding issue. It can't be because DMX is delivering a better product when just the opposite is the case. It's what happens when you have a computer program a channel instead of a person. Algorithms may work on Pandora, but DMX shows no signs it's invested in R&D to offer an intelligent music mix.
To wit: Spectrum is now called, stultifyingly enough, Adult Alternative. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
The Loft, which was laden with a very deep playlist and quirky, compelling specialty shows from the likes of David Johansen and Lou Reed, along with New York radio legends Vin Scelsa and Meg Griffin, is now called Singer-Songwriter. Unfortunately, these singer-songwriters are usually heard on adult contemporary stations. Again, no clue.
As for The Coffeehouse, the channel is now called Coffeehouse Rock. But the lunkheads at DirecTV and DMX apparently never heard the channel, which is devoted mostly to acoustic performances and alternative versions of well-known tracks. It was the perfect accompaniment to reading a book chapter before bed. Now it is the aural equivalent of a double espresso rather than the soothing decaf it once was.
So, now I have a good excuse to turn off the TV a little sooner. Time to get reacquainted with the stereo and the CD collection. I'd rather DIY my music choices than DMX them any day.

Killing the Tigers in Order to Save Them

Fascinating Wall Street Journal Piece Opens Rare Window to Chinese Tiger Farms

Today's Wall Street Journal has an item about a proposal by two economists to legalize sale of tiger parts in China to combat poaching and reduce the rate that the habitat for wild tigers is shrinking.
And these parts would come from farm-bred tigers. That's right, farm-bred, which is legal in China, where 6,000 tigers are bred in captivity. I was initially in a bit of denial when first wondering why there are tiger farms in the first place.
Were that that many zoos out there that needed to restock? Nah. The article by Beijing correspondent Shai Oster notes that some farms exist for research. After all, wild tigers in China have been virtually hunted to extinction. Then there are those that tourists can visit and feed the tigers live cows and chickens.
But it appears they really exist to harvest parts for use in traditional medicines, parts that can sell for up to $70,000 on the black market when taken from one animal. Yes, these sales have been banned since 1993, but Oster reports some farms have freezers filled with hundreds of carcasses in case the ban is lifted.
It's a fascinating story, one that makes a good case for why newspapers need their own foreign reporters and not rely on wire service reporters who are too caught up in the day-to-day work to do too much enterprise reporting.

Casting a Pall

Death of Luger Nodar Kumaritashvilli Leaves Media at a Loss for Other Words

The papers that came to my door this morning read as follows:

Luger's Death Casts Pall Over Start of the Winter Games--Wall Street Journal

Luge Athlete's Death Casts Pall Over Olympics--New York Times

The death of a Georgian competitor in the luge during training cast a pall over the opening of the Vancouver Winter Olympics.....(opening of refer on A1 of Financial Times)

Pall.

It actually has several definitions. But the apt one here for the horrific death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvilli is "anything that covers, shrouds, or overspreads, esp. with darkness or gloom," according to Dictionary.com.

A pall can also be a cover for a coffin, bier, or tomb. That will come later.

Obviously, the athletes, officials, dignitaries and journalists at the Vancouver Games were shocked and saddened by the crash, which is now being attributed to human error. In other words, Kumaritashvilli didn't have enough experience to handle a challenging curve on a highly technical track while going nearly 90 mph.
But while the tragedy is unmistaken, after watching the opening ceremonies last night -- and no, you didn't need to stay up late to know Gretzky was going to light the flame -- you have to wonder if there was really a pall. It was a deservedly festive affair, understated, dignified and entirely appropriate. Very Canadian indeed.

I didn't sense a pall. It would have been easier as well as more accurate to describe the incident as one that "momentarily tempered" or "muted" the celebration, especially when the Georgian team entered the stadium and, later, when a moment of silence was held for the fallen luger.

And Kumaritashvilli's death doesn't appear to have cast a pall at the luge track either, where today -- aside from a "change in the ice profile -- it's business as usual.

For another interesting take on how papers handled the crash, Charles Apple looks at it from the perspective of a graphics editor, asking whether this really needed to go on A1. The answer he reluctantly comes to, I much less reluctantly come to, is yes.

How Willie Mays Hustled Leo Durocher

Sure, Durocher Was a Father Figure, but Say, What the Hey, It's Just Money

Before he's going, going, gone, Willie Mays finally decided to cooperate with a biographer. It only took him to age 78 to realize this was a good idea, before more baseball fans than not had heard of him. Borderline blasphemy, I know, but these kids nowadays, no sense of history.
Anywhoo, Bruce Weber's story in yesterday's New York Times had an interesting nugget that will make "Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend" (out next Tuesday) a keeper if there are a lot more stories like the one about his first Giants' manager, Leo Durocher, who Mays regarded as a father figure.
To help keep Mays out of trouble, Durocher would have him room with his 7-year-old son Chris and look after him on the road. Chris told Dad he was eating a lot of soul food and Durocher gave wanted his son to eat steak.

"And I said, 'well give me steak money then.' And Leo would whip out four or five hundred and stick it in my pocket. And we'd go somewhere, and I'd ask Chris, 'you want a steak?' and he'd say 'No, I'll eat what you eat.' I never told Leo."

As anecdotes go, that's a home run. Let's hope there are another 659 like them in the book.

Game Change Cover: Prescient or Pretentious

We Know The Heilemann-Halperin Blockbuster is Good, But This Good?

My copy of "Game Change" made a surprise arrival tonight after Borders.com told me it was on backorder and I'd have to cool my heels for at least a couple of weeks.
So, before I started to devour the many political morsels contained within, I noticed at the top of the cover it said "#1 New York Times Bestseller."
That's fairly recent news. And even more remarkable given that I opened the book and discovered that it was a first edition.
So, maybe HarperCollins knew something we didn't. Or maybe they were just cocky.
Either way, they were right.

Haiti Quake: Being There for the Big Story Has Its Price

Post-Katrina Pattern of Personal Reporting the Order of the Day. NPR's Jason Beaubien Offers a Textbook Example

No doubt, when a big story breaks most journalists want to be where the action is, even if they never leave the newsroom. Resources, experience, maybe even a little chutzpah, often determine who hits the road.
So, you have your cadre of reporters who show up in war zones and natural disasters. They want to be there, not because they're paid to, but because that's where the story is, where what their work can be a game-changer, misery and reward worked into one.
Yet, it is the Haiti quake that has been a game-changer for some, who have seen some of the worst that fellow man and Mother Nature can dish out. This one is different.
That was evident yesterday in a report on All Things Considered, when NPR's Jason Beaubien was doing a Q&A with anchor Melissa Block outside a hotel, talking about a badly wounded girl bandaged but otherwise lying untended. As he looked at her and described her condition, Beaubien began to cry.

"She keeps lifiting her head and her lips are shaking .... Sorry, Melissa," he said amid tears.
"That's OK," she quietly replied."
"It's heartbreaking, what is happening here," Beaubien continued, quickly regaining composure. "There are people just in the streets everywhere."

This is no journo-tourist. Before becoming Mexico City bureau chief, Beaubien spent four years in Africa for NPR, reporting from 27 countries, where war, famine, and AIDS were a prominent part of his landscape. He's also been to Haiti before, covering the aftermath of hurricanes.
It was interesting that Beaubien was interviewed by Block, who filed report after gripping report from China, following the earthquake that devastated Sichuan province in 2008. She was a human being first, a reporter second. And that's how you get the story right, not to mention a shower of awards that came her away, along with co-anchor Robert Siegel and their team.

Beaubien's the father of two boys. When he gets home, there are bound to be lots of hugs.

It's hard to say who will need them more.

Evening Newscasts Not Dead Yet

Still, Don't Expect Metamucil and Depends to Stop Advertising Anytime Soon

From TV Newser comes good news for those who toil in and around the likes of Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, and Brian Williams.
Some 27 million people watched the network newscasts in the first week in January, with ABC/Sawyer putting up a good fight against NBC, though Brian Williams is still top dog by a good margin.
That's not to say those numbers will be as robust throughout the year, especially as the weather gets warmer. But still extremely decent by any measure.
A caveat: only 8 million or so of that number is linked to the 25-54 demo. So, the bulk of the audience is still older boomers and/or their elderly parents. And contrary to advertising myths, they still spend money, and not just on the prescription drugs that account for so many of the ads between 6:30-7.
The tough part will be finding new viewers as the old folks start aging out, something newspapers have failed miserably at. The nets have an advantage in that they don't charge for their product. The larger question remains how many will continue to need it. Short-term, that's not a worry for the news divisions. Twenty-seven million viewers have seen to that.

Now It's Being Called the Muff, Instead

Dam it, Canadian magazine The Beaver Changing Its Name

Canadian history magazine The Beaver was founded in 1920, back when a beaver was just, well, a beaver.

Ah, how times and dirty minds have changed.

Seems double entendres take their time making their way across the border, hence a belated name change of the magazine to, yawn, Canada's History.

Love this quote from editor Mark Reid:

"Market research showed us that younger Canadians and women were very very unlikely to ever buy a magazine called The Beaver no matter what it's about. For whatever reasons, they are turned off by the name."

It must have been a serious problem as Reid used "very" twice, which I take as the Canadian equivalent of Defcon 4 in the publishing business. The women part I can understand. Younger Canadians? Not so much. If anything they'd just be pissed off when they find out the magazine is about history and not, um, you know, wildlife.

A Delicate Marketing Dance: DNA Testing Goes Mainstream

So Where Do These Kits Go In the Drug Store, the Condom Aisle?

I stumbled upon an ad the other day for a swab-at-home DNA Paternity Test from a deftly named company called Identigene.

Apparently, it's the only over-the-counter test of its kind. As such, it's a little weird to see a product like this being touted in a magazine let alone on a store shelf. Then again, we don't think twice anymore about ads for condoms, douches or vaginal-itch cream.

Ads like these, for better or worse, have become a fact of life -- literally so, for Identigene.

In case you were wondering, the collection kit goes for $29.95. The test itself is another $119.

Sort of.

As the kit's website points out, there's a difference between this test and a legal test, in other words, one that would be admissible in court. The testing methodology is the same; the only is it involves an independent party who would verify identification and witness the collection. That'll run you another $250.

Interestingly, Identigene is playing to people who want both outcomes. On the home page is a link to the ABC show "Find My Family," a Kleenex-fest where long-lost family members are reunited, kids looking for birth parents, etc. Identigene provides the DNA testing for the show.

Next to that link is one for a New York Times magazine from November about men who find out through DNA testing that they weren't the father of their children after all, and how a negative paternity test isn't necessarily the end of the story.

Either way, Identigene is there to help -- for $149-$399, of course.