Working for Free Cheapens the Profession

A little late, as usual, but on point, the NYT finally catches onto the "trend" of unpaid internships:


May 30, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Take This Internship and Shove It

By ANYA KAMENETZ
MY younger sister has just arrived in New Orleans for the summer after her freshman year at Yale. She will be consuming daily snowballs, the local icy treat, to ward off the heat, volunteering to help clean up neighborhoods damaged by Hurricane Katrina and working part time, for pay, at both a literary festival and a local restaurant. Meanwhile, most of her friends from college are headed for the new standard summer experience: the unpaid internship.

Instead of starting out in the mailroom for a pittance, this generation reports for business upstairs without pay. A national survey by Vault, a career information Web site, found that 84 percent of college students in April planned to complete at least one internship before graduating. Also according to Vault, about half of all internships are unpaid.

I was an unpaid intern at a newspaper from March 2002, my senior year, until a few months after graduation. I took it for granted, as most students do, that working without pay was the best possible preparation for success; parents usually agree to subsidize their offspring's internships on this basis. But what if we're wrong?

What if the growth of unpaid internships is bad for the labor market and for individual careers?

Let's look at the risks to the lowly intern. First there are opportunity costs. Lost wages and living expenses are significant considerations for the two-thirds of students who need loans to get through college. Since many internships are done for credit and some even cost money for the privilege of placement overseas or on Capitol Hill, those students who must borrow to pay tuition are going further into debt for internships.

Second, though their duties range from the menial to quasi-professional, unpaid internships are not jobs, only simulations. And fake jobs are not the best preparation for real jobs.

Long hours on your feet waiting tables may not be particularly edifying, but they teach you that work is a routine of obligation, relieved by external reward, where you contribute value to a larger enterprise. Newspapers and business magazines are full of articles expressing exasperation about how the Millennial-generation employee supposedly expects work to be exciting immediately, wears flip-flops to the office and has no taste for dues-paying. However true this stereotype may be, the spread of the artificially fun internship might very well be adding fuel to it.

By the same token, internships promote overidentification with employers: I make sacrifices to work free, therefore I must love my work. A sociologist at the University of Washington, Gina Neff, who has studied the coping strategies of interns in communications industries, calls the phenomenon "performative passion." Perhaps this emotion helps explain why educated workers in this country are less and less likely to organize, even as full-time jobs with benefits go the way of the Pinto.

Although it's not being offered this year, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Union Summer internship program, which provides a small stipend, has shaped thousands of college-educated career organizers. And yet interestingly, the percentage of young workers who hold an actual union card is less than 5 percent, compared with an overall national private-sector union rate of 12.5 percent. How are twentysomethings ever going to win back health benefits and pension plans when they learn to be grateful to work for nothing?

So an internship doesn't teach you everything you need to know about coping in today's working world. What effect does it have on the economy as a whole?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not identify interns or track the economic impact of unpaid internships. But we can do a quick-and-dirty calculation: according to Princeton Review's "Internship Bible," there were 100,000 internship positions in 2005. Let's assume that out of those, 50,000 unpaid interns are employed full time for 12 weeks each summer at an average minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. That's a nearly $124 million yearly contribution to the welfare of corporate America.

In this way, unpaid interns are like illegal immigrants. They create an oversupply of people willing to work for low wages, or in the case of interns, literally nothing. Moreover, a recent survey by Britain's National Union of Journalists found that an influx of unpaid graduates kept wages down and patched up the gaps left by job cuts.

There may be more subtle effects as well. In an information economy, productivity is based on the best people finding the jobs best suited for their talents, and interns interfere with this cultural capitalism. They fly in the face of meritocracy — you must be rich enough to work without pay to get your foot in the door. And they enhance the power of social connections over ability to match people with desirable careers. A 2004 study of business graduates at a large mid-Atlantic university found that the completion of an internship helped people find jobs faster but didn't increase their confidence that those jobs were a good fit.

With all this said, the intern track is not coming to an end any time soon. More and more colleges are requiring some form of internship for graduation. Still, if you must do an internship, research shows you will get more out of it if you find a paid one.

A 1998 survey of nearly 700 employers by the Institute on Education and the Economy at Columbia University's Teachers College found: "Compared to unpaid internships, paid placements are strongest on all measures of internship quality. The quality measures are also higher for those firms who intend to hire their interns." This shouldn't be too surprising — getting hired and getting paid are what work, in the real world, is all about.

Anya Kamenetz, a columnist for The Village Voice, is the author of "Generation Debt."

So hungry I could have eaten a monkey....

Man, I was looking forward to eating six bucks worth of chicken and rice on that cruise! I had a fiver and a single all lined up in my wallet, at least $14 dollars worth of liquor in my empty belly, and every intention of chowing down.


But alas it was not to be! The much promised food (at least three mass emails' worth, not to mention a Gawker spot) failed to materialize.


I had to come home and eat my monkey, but only after he had dispatched the cat.

That's life in the Chong Alma!

Booze Cruise 2006

From Gawker:
"Columbia J-School Teaches Its Kids to Drink"

There is no more important training for a young journalist than a lesson in how to hold your liquor. And there is no better way to learn to hold your liquor than at an open bar you can’t get from. Hence the annual Columbia J-School booze cruise, at which this year — this is our favorite part — it seems the cocktailing will begin at 4 p.m. Of course, while an open bar would be ideal, the j-school currently charges its students a mere $38,500 in tuition and fees, and so it can afford only a cash bar. And, even better, a “cash food bar” — unless students shell out six bucks for the buffet, they’re stuck with only “chips and salsa, and crudite with herbed dipping sauce.” Dress is “reporter semi-formal,” which seems easy enough until you remember how reporters dress.

Full link here: http://www.gawker.com/news/columbia-journalism-school/columbia-jschool-teaches-its-kids-to-drink-172573.php

Invisible bitch-slaps

As a foreigner, I have no family in town for graduation and therefore no need for those golden tickets. Out of the kindess (some would say softness) of my heart, I've already given away three out of four.

Now, I'm sure there's a few skeptics of the market at School, but I've decided to employ the invisible hand to pickpocket some of my tuition fees.

Therefore, my remaining ticket (gravy) is to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Place your bids in the comments section (in-kind bids - drinks, meals etc. - are accepted, even encouraged).

This auction will close at 6pm, May 15, sharp. I'll contact the winner directly.

Cheers,
Matt

Another suggestion for our j-school t-shirt?

Troubles

From "The Infiltrator" in the April 2006 Atlantic Monthly:

In Belfast I met with Denis Donaldson, a Sinn Féin party leader and an IRA veteran alleged to have run the IRA’s intelligence wing...His face seemed thin and gray, the face of a man who senses an end looming.

A few weeks later, back in the United States, I received a phone call early one morning from a source in the United Kingdom. He said, “Yer man Denis Donaldson”—the legendary IRA hunger-striker who had met with me in his kitchen—“has just been expelled from Sinn Féin, about three minutes ago. For being a British spy.”

From today's Washington Post:

A former official in the Sinn Fein political party who was recently exposed as a British spy was found fatally shot Tuesday, after apparently being tortured, police said.

Denis Donaldson, 55, died in his isolated home in Glenties in northwest Ireland, said the Irish justice minister, Michael McDowell, adding that Donaldson's right forearm had been nearly severed.

it could have been worse, people...

McClatchy Looks Like the Favorite
To Buy Knight Ridder at Auction
By JOSEPH T. HALLINAN and DENNIS K. BERMAN
March 10, 2006
McClatchy Co. appeared yesterday in the pole position to purchase the Knight Ridder Inc. newspaper chain, people familiar with the matter said, offering a combination of cash and stock valued at more than $65 a share, or more than $4.35 billion.

Bids for Knight Ridder were due yesterday at 5 p.m. EST, and, as in any auction, the situation was fluid and subject to change, even past the stated deadline. But a consensus was building that McClatchy was the favorite, as it appeared MediaNews Group Inc. was fading from the scene and a large private-equity group including Texas Pacific Group and Thomas H. Lee Partners was showing an indication of interest -- albeit at a lower, all-cash price.

McClatchy publishes the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, the Sacramento Bee and other papers. Knight Ridder, the nation's second-largest newspaper publisher by circulation behind Gannett Co., publishes 32 papers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and Miami Herald.

Knight Ridder's board will have to weigh a complex mix of price, certainty of closing a deal and journalistic continuity as it examines the bids. With the auction entering its final stages, there could well be a surprise development or a dark-horse bidder that emerges.

Knight Ridder spokesman Polk Laffoon declined to comment. McClatchy spokeswoman Elaine Lintecum also wouldn't comment.

The auction has so far drawn a tepid response from investors.

"I'm absolutely on the fence," said Thomas A. Russo, partner in Gardner Russo & Gardner, a Lancaster, Pa., investment firm that holds 6.3% of McClatchy's Class A stock.

He said McClatchy's own low price -- its stock closed yesterday at a 52-week low -- makes it tempting for the Sacramento, Calif., company to use its cash to buy back its own shares instead those of another company. In 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading, shares of McClatchy fell 47 cents to $51.93. Shares of Knight Ridder, based in San Jose, Calif., rose 20 cents to $62.66 on the Big Board.

But McClatchy has almost no debt, putting it in a strong position to borrow heavily to make a big acquisition. This is exactly what it did in 1997, when the company surprised Wall Street by agreeing to buy Cowles Media Co., publisher of the Star Tribune, for about $1.4 billion in cash and stock.

McClatchy Chief Executive Gary Pruitt was criticized at the time for paying such a high price for the paper. But he was able to use the cash generated by the business to quickly pay down debt.

Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Lauren Rich Fine, in a note to investors, estimates that an all-cash deal for Knight Ridder would actually add to free cash flow per share -- a requirement Mr. Pruitt has identified as being necessary for an acquisition by McClatchy.

If the bids for Knight Ridder are insufficient, there remains the possibility that Knight Ridder's board could consider a recapitalization and engage in a large share-buyback program. At year's end, the company had 66.9 million shares outstanding. Its market capitalization is $4.21 billion.

Otis Chandler Dies

From the LA Times obit:

L.A. Icon Otis Chandler Dies at 78
By David Shaw and Mitchell Landsberg
Times Staff Writers

11:58 AM PST, February 27, 2006

Otis Chandler, whose vision and determination as publisher of the Los Angeles Times from 1960 to 1980 catapulted the paper from mediocrity into the front ranks of American journalism, died today of a degenerative illness called Lewy body disease. He was 78.

Chandler died at his home in Ojai about 4 a.m., according to Tom Johnson, a former publisher of The Times who was acting as a spokesman for the family. Chandler's wife, Bettina, was with him. Other family members had gathered at the Chandler home.

"Otis Chandler will go down as one of the most important figures in newspaper history," said Dean Baquet, editor of the Los Angeles Times. "He built a newspaper that was as great as the city it covers. He set his sights on a goal — making The Times one of the two or three great American papers — and he pulled it off."

Lewy body disease is a brain disorder combining some of the most debilitating characteristics of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Victims suffer from severe dementia, as well as the stiffness, tremors and impaired movements characteristic of Parkinson's. The disease is known for its fast progression. Chandler was diagnosed seven months ago, although doctors had determined about a year earlier that he was suffering from some form of dementia, his wife said. As recently as September, Chandler appeared fit, aside from a knee injury, and was lucid enough to sit for an interview and give a visitor a guided tour of his classic car and motorcycle museum in Oxnard.

Chandler was the great-grandson of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the blustery Civil War veteran who bought part-ownership of The Times in 1882, a year after it began publication, and was its publisher for 35 years. Chandler's grandfather and father followed Gen. Otis in the publisher's chair. The Chandlers had no rival as the most powerful family in Southern California. They owned vast landholdings and used their influence with elected officials and the business elite to shape the region's development.

But it was Otis Chandler — a world-class shotputter in college and a fierce competitor in every arena he entered — who took charge of a paper that for decades had generated almost as much ridicule as revenue and transformed it into one of the best newspapers in the country. He also made it more profitable than ever.

"No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did," David Halberstam wrote in "The Powers That Be," his 1979 book about the news media.

"You cannot overstate the importance of Otis Chandler's impact on the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper industry and all of Southern California," said current Times Publisher Jeff Johnson (no relation to Tom Johnson). "He was bold in making changes and investments in the paper that transformed The Times into a world-class news organization."

"Otis was a giant in every way," said Donald Graham, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of the Washington Post Co. "The paper you are reading is his monument. By his strength and by his judgment of good journalists, he was of unique importance in the history of the Los Angeles Times."

During Chandler's 20 years as publisher — and five subsequent years as editor in chief and chairman of the board of The Times' then-parent company, Times Mirror — the paper won nine Pulitzer Prizes and expanded from two to 34 foreign and domestic bureaus. At the same time, it doubled its circulation to more than 1 million daily and for many years during and after his tenure published more news — and more advertising — than any other newspaper in the United States.

RIP

thy breath be rude

Snowflakes Across The Western World

Rumsfeld speaks, you decide:

First, from the Fox TV affiliate via AP in San Diego
NEW YORK (AP) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the U.S. is prey to an "unacceptable, dangerous deficiency" in the way it talks to the world.

In a speech in New York, Rumsfeld said Al-Qaida and Islamic extremist groups have become expert at using the Internet to poison Muslim viewpoints. Rumsfeld tells the Council on Foreign Relations, "our government has not adapted."

Rumsfeld says the military has to adapt to changes in global media and better train officials about the importance of "timing and rapid response."

Rumsfeld calls the government's public affairs system antiquated. He says officials who work an eight-hour, five-day schedule can't keep up with a 24/7 world.

Next, the BBC
The US is losing the propaganda war against al-Qaeda and other enemies, defence chief Donald Rumsfeld has said.

It must modernise its methods to win the minds of Muslims in the "war on terror", as "enemies had skilfully adapted" to the media age, he said.

Washington and the army must respond faster to events and learn to exploit the internet and satellite TV, he said.

Separately, President Bush said the US should not be discouraged by setbacks in Iraq and must realise it is at war.

"We shouldn't be discouraged... because we've seen democracy change the world in the past," George W Bush said.

However, he also used his speech in Florida to claim progress in the war on al-Qaeda.

Mr Bush said that slowly but surely the US was finding terrorists where they hid.

'Newsroom battles'

Correspondents say that in recent months victory in the battle for public opinion has become a new front for the Bush administration.

In a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations, Mr Rumsfeld said some of the US' most critical battles were now in the "newsrooms".

"Our enemies have skilfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but... our country has not," he said.

Mr Rumsfeld said al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists were bombarding Muslims with negative images of the West, which had poisoned the public view of the US.

The US must fight back by operating a more effective, 24-hour propaganda machine, or risk a "dangerous deficiency," he said.

Government communications planning must be "a central component of every aspect of this struggle", he added.

"The longer it takes to put a strategic communications framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy."

Finally, The Australian

THE United States lags dangerously behind al Qaeda and other enemies in getting out information in the digital media age and must update its old-fashioned methods, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said overnight.

Modernisation is crucial to winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide who are bombarded with negative images of the West, Mr Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Pentagon chief said today's weapons of war included e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras and Web logs, or blogs.

"Our enemies have skilfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but ... our country has not adapted," Mr Rumsfeld said.

"For the most part, the US government still functions as a 'five and dime' store in an eBay world," Mr Rumsfeld said, referring to old-fashioned US retail stores and the online auction house, respectively.

Mr Rumsfeld said US military public affairs officers must learn to anticipate news and respond faster, and good public affairs officers should be rewarded with promotions.

The military's information offices still operate mostly eight hours a day, five or six days a week while the challenges they faces occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Mr Rumsfeld called that a "dangerous deficiency."

Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy of the opposition Democratic Party immediately criticised Mr Rumsfeld as missing the point.

"Clearly, we need to improve our public diplomacy and information age communication in the Muslim world," Mr Kennedy said in a statement. "But nothing has done more to encourage increased Al Qaeda recruitment and made America less safe than the war in Iraq and the incompetent way it's been managed. Our greatest failure is our policy."

Mr Rumsfeld lamented that vast media attention about US abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq outweighed that given to the discovery of "Saddam Hussein's mass graves."

On the emergence of satellite television and other media not under Arab state control, he said, "While al Qaeda and extremist movements have utilised this forum for many years ... we in the government have barely even begun to compete in

Autoplagiarism

In a New York article about the blog hierarchy, the same quote appears three times: in the middle of the article, as a pull quote, and as a kicker. I saw this online--maybe the print version is different. But have you ever seen the same quote used more than once in the same article?

Page 3:

For Rojas, the toil paid off handsomely. Last fall, AOL bought Jason Calacanis’s company Weblogs, Inc., which includes Engadget, for $25 million...“I didn’t intend to become a millionaire,” he says, “but I wound up there anyway.”

Page 6:

Last fall, AOL bought Weblogs, Inc., which includes his blog Engadget, for $25 million. “I didn’t intend to become a millionaire,” says Rojas, “but I wound up there anyway.”


Pull quote on page 4:

I can understand being excited over a good quote, especially when you try to explain the metholodogy behind a network theory-based analysis of the blogosphere in your lede. But thrice?

My response to the Bonnie Fuller fiasco

Bonnie Talks!
Tab queen exclusive shocks, dismays innocent journalism students.
By Sara Cardace
New York Magazine

Columbia J-schoolers got a lesson in too-good-to-check journalism when they had tabloid doyenne Bonnie Fuller (who runs the Enquirer and Star) in to speak in late January. Women’s Wear Daily reported that it was “an invitation she accepted, in part, because she hoped to attract recruits to her magazines”—which set off a blog firestorm and a mildly hysterical column in Ad Age. WWD also quoted Columbia Society of Professional Journalists speakers director Amanda Millner-Fairbanks, 26, seemingly commending Fuller as “sort of the mother hen of this new form that’s taken hold and is very profitable.” All of which left Millner-Fairbanks exasperated. First off, she says, Fuller’s publicist had pitched the idea—hard—to them, not the other way around. Plus, she felt the WWD quote was out of context. “It’s not like we were giving her an excellence-in-journalism award—it’s not as if we invited her and Judy Miller in for a luncheon,” she says. “The whole thing makes me feel a bit trepidatious about entering this world, where the codes of conduct are such a gray area.” Still, Fuller did say she was hiring.

Link: http://www.newyorkmagazine.com/news/intelligencer/15956/index.html

Mad about Bonnie Fuller

SHOCKER: OPRAH PREGNANT WITH JAMES FREY'S BABY!

And Bonnie Fuller Lectures the Society of Professional Journalists!

February 06, 2006

By Simon Dumenco

Insiders say that embattled faux-memorist James Frey and talk-show goddess Oprah Winfrey have not only reconciled following their notorious on-camera falling out, but have been secretly seeing each other. Now, says a friend of the new couple, Winfrey is pregnant with Frey’s lovechild.

The intense romance began Jan. 26, “backstage after James was on the show,” says a source close to Harpo, Oprah’s production company. “James broke down in tears and Oprah hugged him, holding him tight. I think they both realized right then and there how much they really cared for each other.” Frey’s very public dressing-down, says the source, culminated in “some hot-and-heavy undressing” behind closed doors. A friend of Winfrey and her stunned, now-ex-boyfriend Steadman Graham notes that Winfrey’s baby bump also comes as a surprise because the pregnancy came unusually fast, particularly for a 52-year-old woman. “But she’s Oprah, y’all. And if Oprah puts her mind to it, Oprah can do anything.”

There. Can I give a guest lecture to Columbia University students now?

Because in late January, Bonnie Fuller -- the editorial director of such journalistic pantheons as Star, Celebrity Living and Globe -- got to. She was invited to Columbia’s Graduate School of JOURNALISM by the Columbia chapter of the Society of Professional JOURNALISTS (SPJ). To speak about ... JOURNALISM.

What the $#*&$)*@???

Can’t we just admit, finally, once and for all, that Bonnie Fuller certainly does something compelling and entertaining, but it is not, for the most part, journalism? Her publications, after all, routinely rely on “sources” that again and again prove to be ... shall we say, wrong?

I mean, good for Oprah that she’s been able to direct laser-like focus on the issue of veracity, or lack thereof, in book publishing -- and I’m thrilled that everyone keeps calling for the obvious: that Frey’s books should get shifted from the nonfiction best-seller lists to the fiction lists. But while we’re at it, I want to formally call for the reclassification of the celebrity tabloids -- particularly those under Fuller’s purview -- from “journalism” to “non-journalism.”

If we don’t, apparently an entire generation of young journalists might think that the advice of people like Fuller is worth heeding. Young journalists like Amanda Millner-Fairbanks, the woman that Women’s Wear Daily says is responsible for lining up speakers for the Columbia SPJ chapter. Fuller, Millner-Fairbanks told WWD’s Jeff Bercovici, is “sort of the mother hen of this new form that’s taken hold and is very profitable,” thus justifying the speaking engagement.

Oy.

I used to keep the most astonishingly preposterous issues of the celebrity tabs, like the Star with the now-legendary “IT’S BABY TIME!” cover (right as unpregnant Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt were announcing their split). And Celebrity Living’s “JESSICA’S BABY WEIGHT BATTLE!” issue (right as unpregnant Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey were splitting). Not to mention Globe’s stellar Scott Peterson trial issue, with its “SCOTT WILL WALK FREE!” cover (which, in a classy bonus, also offered a “CHRIS REEVE -- WAS IT SUICIDE?” headline).

Unfortunately, running out of storage space, I tossed most of them. But now I’m regretting that I didn’t donate them to Columbia so that the kids there could learn all about the exciting new field of non-journalism.

Of course, I defend Columbia’s right to host controversial speakers. But did Fuller have to get humored by J-schoolers? Isn’t there some other wacky group -- some Columbia version of Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals -- that could have hosted her instead of student journalists?

For years I’ve said that “celebrity journalism” is as accurate as horoscopes. So, what the hell, why doesn’t Columbia’s SPJ chapter track down a “very profitable” astrologist who can offer students some reporting tips? And why don’t some of the photography students in Columbia’s MFA program invite a guest speaker from the ranks of the stalkarazzi that Fuller’s celebrity tabs have aided and abetted so forcefully?

But then again, maybe someone from Columbia will, Oprah-style, get on TV -- cable access or even YouTube would be fine with me -- and say, “We made a mistake and we left the impression that the truth does not matter, and we are deeply sorry about that because that is not what we believe.”

By the way, I’m happy to report that Oprah and James are expecting a baby girl. Friends say they intend to name it Bonnie.

Tab Drinkers Anonymous: Steve Isaacs in Talk of Town

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town
BEVERAGE NEWS
TAB SCARE
by Ben McGrath

As if the mainstream media were not beleaguered enough, now comes word that the Coca-Cola Company is about to release a ne drink called Tab Energy. The plan is to capitalize on the popularity of the Red Bull genre while trading on the retro cachet of Tab, wit those iconic pink cans—a plan that could threaten the sanctity of one of journalism’s secret, and most self-conscious, power cliques: the cult of Tab lovers, who have persisted in drinking the pioneering diet soda, despite its virtual disappearance from the market.

“This is a lonely but inspired society,” David Bradley, the owner of The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal, said recently, before news of the brand’s reëngineering had spread. “You can’t imagine the purchasing and trucking and warehousing issues we address in getting Tab into Washington.”

The original Tab, which appeared in 1963, is still produced, though in dwindling quantities. You’d be unlikely to find it at Gristedes, however, because Coke stopped promoting the drink in the mid-eighties, after the cancer scare involving saccharin, an artificial sweetener used in Tab. Present-day Tab enthusiasts must seek out wholesalers (New York Beverage, in the Bronx, is a local favorite) or rely on a kind of sixth soda sense—“the ability to spot the pink,” David Edelstein, the film critic for New York, calls it—in obtaining their daily fixes.

Here in the city, drinkers include Steven Brill and Danny Goldberg, the C.E.O. of the radio network Air America, each of whom has an office fridge stocked with Tab. “I have unadulterated enthusiasm for it,” Goldberg said, adding that he has long since delegated the task of finding the stuff to an assistant.

The fact that Tab comes in a pink can and was conceived as a drink for women seems only to have bolstered the appeal—it’s a “boy named Sue thing,” according to a financier, who picked up the habit from Bradley. (Brill, just to be sure, tends to crush his Tab cans as he drains them.) Then, there is the peculiar flavor (“It tastes like metal”) and the reputation for unhealthiness, a combination that Edelstein, who has four cases delivered to his house every other week, believes gives Tab “the courage of its convictions.”

Steve Isaacs, a self-described “Tab nut” and former Washington Post editor who teaches at the Columbia Journalism School, has been told by several doctors not to drink it. “I tell them to go to hell,” he said recently. Isaacs used to work at CBS, where his boss, Van Gordon Sauter, often drank two Tabs at breakfast. Now Isaacs may be the most influential Tab advocate in the business: he begins each semester by holding up a Tab and asking students to come up with a hundred story ideas inspired by the can.

At the end of last term, Isaacs threw a party for his students, at which he served Tab. “I was surprised at how many of them drank it,” he said. “One was putting Scotch in it. I mean, that sounds fucking awful.” Isaacs no longer drinks alcohol, for health reasons, but he doesn’t much mind, because he thinks that the flinty taste of Tab is like a fine Sancerre.

Tab Energy, for its part, is “really good-tasting,” according to a Coke spokesman, and “reminiscent of a liquid Jolly Rancher,” according to Fashion Week Daily, which recommends vodka as a mixer. The new can is slimmer, but it’s still pink, with the same Pop-art font. Whereas old Tab has thirty-one milligrams of caffeine and zero calories, Tab Energy has ninety-five milligrams and five calories. Nicole Richie is an early proponent, which seems right—more Los Angeles than New York. (To be fair, Tori Spelling and Bobcat Goldthwait are reported to be fans of original Tab.)

Coke officials promise that the old Tab isn’t going to be retired, which is good news for Edelstein. “For the last thirty years, through marriage, kids, fluctuations in my financial situation, Tab has been the one constant in my life,” he said. He was holding a glass of bourbon, but he swore that the taste of Tab lingered in his mouth. “Not to boast, but I’ve had eight cans today,” he said.

Article link: http://www.newyorker.com/printables/talk/060206ta_talk_mcgrath

Intern or maid?

I can't believe they consider this an internship. Sad what someone would do (really, though?) for a line on a resume.
http://www.gawker.com/news/columbia-journalism-school/but-do-columbia-jschoolers-do-windows-151609.php

Don't let James Fr(e)y!

Is anyone else concerned after watching Oprah today that James Frey might join his girlfriend "Lilly" and commit suicide soon? I'm just saying, the poor guy (well, the poor rich guy) looked so depressed and zoned out I swear he was counting pills in his head.

I'm not defending what he did (which by my accounts is called LYING not "embellishing") but I feel bad for him. I mean, Oprah basically yelled at him on national television! And unlike some people, Oprah never yells! If you've been called out by Oprah you KNOW you've done wrong.

If he does indeed end his own life, does this count as irony? And more importantly, will anyone believe that he's dead?

I'm thinking of making "Save James" t-shirts. Who's with me?

A research group has compiled a list of the most popular brand references or "shout-outs" in mainstream music this past year. They're calling it "American Brandstand." Clever, no?

Not surprisingly, 50 Cent leads the pack after rhyming about everything from Bentleys to Bacardi. It gives a whole new meaning to hip-hop going commercial eh? Check out the list here.

Exciting New Publishing Technology

Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device, trade named: BOOK

BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no
electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched
on. It's so easy to use, even a child can operate it.

Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere -- even sitting in an
armchair by the fire -- yet it is powerful enough to hold as much
information as a DVD. Here's how it works:

BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper
(recyclable), each capable of holding thousands of bits of
information. The pages are locked together with a custom-fit device
called a binder, which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence.

Opaque Paper Technology (OPT) allows manufacturers to use both sides
of the sheet, doubling the information density and cutting costs.
Experts are divided on the prospects for further increases in
information density; for now, BOOKs with more information simply use
more pages.

Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly
into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet.
BOOK may be taken up at any time and used merely by opening it.

Unlike other display devices, BOOK never crashes or requires
rebooting and it can even be dropped on the floor or stepped on
without damage.

However, it can become unusable if immersed in water for a
significant period of time. The "browse" feature allows you to move
instantly to any sheet and move forward or backward as you wish.

Many come with an "index" feature, which pinpoints the exact location
of selected information for instant retrieval.

An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open BOOK to the exact
place you left it in a previous session -- even if the BOOK has been
closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus, a single
BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers. Conversely,
numerous BOOKmarkers can be used in a single BOOK if the user wants to
store numerous views at once. The number is limited only by the number
of pages in the BOOK.

You can also make personal notes next to BOOK text entries with an
optional programming tool, the Portable Erasable Nib Cryptic
Intercommunication Language Stylus (PENCILS).

Portable, durable, and affordable, BOOK is being hailed as a
precursor of a new entertainment wave. Also, BOOK's appeal seems so
certain that thousands of content creators have committed to the
platform and investors are reportedly flocking. Look for a flood of
new titles soon.

Follow-up on Critical Issues

Who remembers that lovely "Food Lion" exposé we watched in critical issues? Not to mention the ensueing debate...

Anyways, 15 (or was it 20) years later, MSNBC does something similar. The results, however, are not quite the same. Make sure you check out the results.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10976595/

PS - Am I the only one who had never heard of Food Lion before that class???

The Many Moods of T. Jefferson

Pope Jefferson

Snowhawk

Captain of the Skies

more snow...

Halloween Mad Libs

Some of you participated in the Mad Libs experiment at the Halloween party. The results for Part I and Part II are online.

Too many j-schoolers, not enough PR people

So today I called Herb Scher, the flak for the NY Public Library, for a story on branch libraries' movement toward a six-day week. Actually got him on the phone. But he won't talk to me, he said, because he's had eight Columbia journalism students call him in the past two weeks and he doesn't have time to dig up information and talk to us.
As usual, I was told to check the web site.
Then there was the woman at the Drum Major Institute, who said Tuesday she'd had five calls from j-schoolers in the past few days. Great. I didn't get an interview there either.

Jeopardy Champ has his own board game

Is it sad that I sorta wanna buy this?

elements of bad style

from my hometown paper, the LATimes:


In praise of a mangled masterpiece

DAVID GELERNTER

November 4, 2005

SOMETIMES A SMALL issue lights a large landscape like a slash of lightning; for a moment we see society with dazzling clarity. A new edition of "The Elements of Style" has just appeared — "Elements" is the classic writers' handbook by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. The new version starkly illuminates our disrespect for national treasures.

In 1957, White was asked to revise Strunk's decades-old text. White (who had been Strunk's student at Cornell) agreed, and he published two further revisions in 1972 and '79. The result was not merely brilliant, it was beloved: It's never been out of print. White died in 1985. Then the trouble started. A post-mortem revision appeared in 1999; it has just been republished with pictures by Maira Kalman. To mark the new release, a PR volcano erupted. The New York Public Library even staged a musical "Elements." The new version violates what Strunk and White is all about.

The revision was done anonymously. The only new name on the title page is now the illustrator's. And the reviser has been unfaithful to Strunk and White. For starters, he changed White's signed introduction, a short memoir about Strunk — like reworking a Picasso but leaving the signature. He changed lots of other things too.

According to White, Strunk "felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, a man floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain the swamp quickly and get his man up on dry ground, or at least throw him a rope." The revised version tells us that Strunk felt, on the contrary, "that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up on dry ground, or at least to throw a rope."

"At least to throw a rope?" Throw it where? To whom? The phrase is vague bordering on meaningless. And White's "get his man up on dry ground" hints at the author's personal responsibility to his reader. Of course these are details. But White cared passionately about the details that make for good writing.

The reviser clearly disapproves of the indefinite masculine — "he," "man" and so on — to mean anyone. Fine. Except that White believed the exact opposite, and said so in a rule he added to "Elements": "He has lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances." This very issue caused a sad disagreement toward the end of White's long relationship with the New Yorker, a magazine he more than any other author raised to dizzying literary heights. In 1971, White submitted a piece attacking "gender neutral" writing — and the New Yorker rejected it. Dog rejects bone.

The latest "Elements" includes clunkers like this: "When repeating a statement to emphasize it, the writer may need to vary its form. Otherwise, the writer should follow the principle of parallel construction." Here's the way it was actually written: "When repeating a statement to emphasize it, the writer may need to vary its form. But apart from this he should follow the principle of parallel construction."

New words enter the language all the time, as Strunk and White tell us: "Youth invariably speaks to youth in a tongue of his own devising." A memorable phrase, taut as a piano string: "youth speaks to youth." Here is the new, "improved" version: "Youth invariably speaks to other youths in a tongue of their own devising." Who would have thought these small changes could do so much damage, like a monkey wrench through a plate-glass window?

Adding insult to injury, the illustrated edition includes a page of credits, dedications, copyright notices and so forth — each printed separately and placed on the page at strange angles or upside down. Clever. The word "hello" sprawls across the inside front cover in fancy italics; "thank you," "and," "goodbye" appear on three pages at the end.

"Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute," say Strunk and White.

When the 1999 version resurfaced in fancy dress, the New York literary world should have thrown a fit. Instead, it threw a party. But what gives anyone the right to tamper with a masterpiece? American authors had a good year in 1957. Would anyone have the nerve to publish a revised version of a story by Malamud, Shaw, Updike, Nabokov? Or an essay by Mailer, Podhoretz or White himself? True, the language changes. But why couldn't the reviser's bright ideas have appeared as notes surrounding the unchanged original?

What should we make of literati who claim to treasure "Elements" but don't mind seeing it brutally mangled? And here's the larger problem: A society that has no respect for its literary treasures probably — deep down — has no respect for itself.

Fax?

Is there any place in the J-school or thereabouts where we can receive faxes? Preferably for free, but I'm desperate, so...

Mind your Ps and Qs

An interesting quote, given Friday's Critical Issues class:

"You can say 'please' and 'thank you' and still ask, 'Did you steal the money?'"

(Quoted in The Investigative Reporter's Handbook, p.105)

war on whatever

(from WSJ)

Word Flu
By LIONEL SHRIVER
October 22, 2005; Page A6
We've had the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism. It's time for the War on Whatever.

I am not being glib. I have declared war on the word "whatever." More virulent than E coli, more contagious than bird flu, this verbal virus has infected not only the entire population of the United States, but has also reached pandemic proportions in the U.K. (In his last bestseller, the novelist Nick Hornby used four supposedly distinctive first-person voices; and all four narrators, from tough-cookie kid to middle-aged bag, said whatever.) It was bad enough when this pestilence spewed from my friends' mouths like toads. Yet when Donald Rumsfeld testified to Congress this summer that one of the armaments being sent to Iraq was "whatever," I knew we had a national emergency on our hands.

Mr. Rumsfeld's usage was the bug's most innocuous. These days, "whatever" ends a series to mean "and so forth"; alternatively, "some other example I can't think of"; most of the time, "uh." Indeed, if you declare, "I'm going to do a little shopping, meet some friends, whatever," what does the W-word contribute besides a hackneyed gloss of modernity? The adolescent's double-whammy of fillers -- "He's, like, whatever" -- is so impeccably inarticulate as to constitute a triumph.

A cook might commend baking a cobbler using "blueberries, peaches, whatever," and you could infer "or other seasonal fruit." Nevertheless, one would be hardpressed to make heads or tails of a recipe that listed its ingredients as "1/2 c. sugar; 1 T. cornstarch; 2 c. whatever."

An equally commonplace usage is far more exasperating. I will ask my husband, "Do you want pork chops or pasta for dinner?" "Whatever," comes the reply. Various translations present themselves: "I don't give a damn"; "Don't bother me with such trifling domestic considerations"; "I'm not really sure what I feel like eating tonight"; or perhaps most credibly, "I'm not paying any attention to you, and I don't plan to." In any event, I still have no idea whether to take the chops from the fridge or put water on to boil. What would you think of George Bush if you asked him what he plans to do with Social Security, and he said, "Whatever"?

Granted, both eras and locales have their verbal tics. The Irish, for example, are given to the locution, "He speaks grand English, so he does." The compulsively reflexive syntax is charming, at least at first. But "whatever" has grown blandly ubiquitous, and charming it is not. The cool, too, need the clueless. If everybody uses it, it cannot be hip.

I can testify to the fact that, once contracted, this particular virus is fiendishly difficult to purge. Not long ago I realized (too late!) that I had started saying "whatever" myself -- which was a little like looking down and discovering my body covered in suppurating pustules. Take courage! After months of mindfulness, I vanquished the disease. Yet a word of warning, for there is a downside to taking the cure: You will grow hyper-alert to whatever-speak, and everyone else will drive you nuts.

Ms. Shriver's last novel was "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (HarperPerennial, 2004).

Big news!

Maddox Jolie has been named one of the "50 Most Powerful People Under 39" by Details Magazine. He came in at #2, just behind the fallen soldier and the google guys.

I know, I am just as shocked as you are. He totally should have been #1. =p

investigative fun!

http://www.license.shorturl.com/

Ye can lead a man up to the university, but ye can't make him think

Does anyone know why Jimmy Breslin gets attributed with the saying, "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted." As far as I know, Mencken said that.

The Sixth Photo

NYU student needs sources

I received this plea to post this "advert." If there are any takers, please contact her directly.
RC
____________________

Are you a student who charges for access to your own web cam porn site?

I’m writing an article about students who share their sexual exploits for profit through web cams. I’d like to get a grasp of the ins and outs of the business.

Any prospective source would be greatly appreciated; student need not be from Columbia University.

**ALL INFORMATION IS TREATED WITH THE STRICTEST CONFIDENCE.

Thanks,

Nicole Clarke
Nicole.Clarke@nyu.edu

was she for real?

After seeing Cynthia McFadden on the post-"Good Night, and Good Luck" panel on Friday, I'm even more shocked and annoyed about this.

What, Me Worry?

"The Big Picture:
2 reminders that journalists once pursued greatness"
By Patrick Goldstein
Los Angeles Times


For a journalist, it's surely a guilty pleasure to see a movie about someone who commits himself wholeheartedly to the pursuit of a story with no thought for the consequences. As portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote," the New Yorker's Truman Capote was just as cunning and exploitative as any marauding paparazzi in the course of reporting "In Cold Blood," his mesmerizing account of the brutal murder of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kan.

The man whose book influenced a generation of young journalists was a master of the black art of doing anything to get a story — lying and flattering, deceiving and dissembling nearly every step of the way. When he couldn't get access to Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, the two imprisoned killers, Capote handed the prison warden a $10,000 bribe. He wooed Smith relentlessly, bringing him Thoreau to read in jail. He helped the suspects get a new lawyer so they'd stay alive long enough for him to complete his interviews. And why not, Capote reasoned. As he breathlessly tells his pal Harper Lee after an early meeting with Smith: "He's a gold mine!"

Of course, if you prefer a journalistic hero cast as a white knight instead of a wily charmer, look no further than "Good Night, and Good Luck." Directed and co-written by George Clooney, it chronicles a climactic battle between CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow and Red Scare-era demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy. At a time when most journalists are portrayed in TV and film as gushy lightweights — many deservedly so — it's quite a jolt to see someone act like a real hero. Played impeccably by David Strathairn, the laconic, chain-smoking Murrow is uncompromising and incorruptible, like Gary Cooper with a bespoke suit instead of a pair of six-guns.

This pair of artful portraits of two world-class journalists couldn't come at a better time. As you may have heard, morale at newspapers and TV news divisions is at a low ebb, thanks to circulation drops, low ratings and a string of layoffs. As cable news grows more influential each day, network news is scrambling to reinvent itself and hold on to its aging audience. The sense of turmoil is equally apparent in print journalism. With circulation down and costs up, newspapers are in the midst of a wave of soul-searching as they grapple with how to compete with the lightning speed and breezy informality of Internet news sources.

It's nice to have these Hollywood reminders that journalists once pursued greatness, not just ratings and ad linage. One of our biggest challenges these days is facing up to our low standing in public opinion. That's where movies come in — almost since their inception, they've been a reliable barometer of the nation's attitude toward journalists. In the years before the U.S. entered World War II, in such films as "It Happened One Night" and "His Girl Friday," newspapermen were wisecracking working-class heroes, in the racket for the scoop, not the money. By the 1950s, the portrait was less romantic, ranging from the bitingly cynical "Ace in the Hole" to "Sweet Smell of Success," a damning portrait of abuse of power, with Burt Lancaster as a Sith Lord-style Broadway columnist who demolishes everyone in his path.

After Watergate, our crusading image flickered back to life, thanks to films like "All the President's Men" and "The China Syndrome," but by the 1980s, as in "Broadcast News," critiques of hollow careerism were in vogue again. In recent years, the movies are largely focused on journalistic excess and ineptitude, from the portrayal of plagiarist Stephen Glass in "Shattered Glass" to a variety of TV news buffoons, like the one Jim Carrey plays in "Bruce Almighty."

There's a good reason Clooney had a hard time finding anyone to finance "Good Night, and Good Luck." Murrow's rectitude is out of sync with today's cynical attitude about newsgathering. If you asked young moviegoers to cite a typical 21st century journalist, they'd probably point to the doe-eyed young Vanity Fair-style scribe played by Alison Lohman in "Where the Truth Lies," which opened this weekend. Lohman is uncovering a murder mystery about a '50s showbiz team — think Martin and Lewis — whose career is derailed when a beautiful blond turns up dead in their hotel suite. Her investigatory methods include doing drugs, posing as a schoolteacher, wearing outfits that would make Jessica Simpson blush and sleeping with both members of the duo (though not at the same time, as the dead blond did).

It's probably fortunate that Murrow and Capote died young, Murrow of lung cancer, Capote of booze and pills. They would've had precious little good to say about their heirs, especially the ones so enamored of glitz and celebrity. Esquire, once the hallowed home of Norman Mailer, Michael Herr and Gay Talese, is now crammed with fashion advisories — the October issue actually has a style section in which male models, wearing Prada and Armani, pose as paparazzi. In Murrow's day, journalists comforted the afflicted. Today they celebrate the comfortable. Last Thursday, in its House & Home section, the New York Times ran a huge story largely devoted to helping Rupert Murdoch sell his SoHo triplex — he's asking only $28 million.

Even worse, all too many of today's most recognizable journalists — meaning the ones you see on TV or Dominick Dunne — aren't interested so much in uncovering a story as in making themselves part of it. After Hurricane Rita, "The Daily Show" featured a variety of cable newsmen "covering" the story, including a CNN reporter rescuing a puppy and Geraldo helping a wheelchair-bound lady down the stairs of a flooded rest home. As a kicker, Jon Stewart cut to Ed Helms, his correspondent on the scene, who did his report with a man he'd "rescued" slung across his back.

While Capote is guilty of all sorts of unscrupulous behavior in getting his story, once he put pen to paper, he left the stage, allowing his characters to have the spotlight to themselves. What makes "In Cold Blood" so sobering, now that the movie has allowed us to see its author at work, is that it undermines many of our bromides about good journalism. Though a pivotal work of reporting, it is also a fascinating test of our eternal "do the ends justify the means" debate: Do you judge a writer by his brilliant work or by the deception that went into creating it?

Capote isn't the only journalist to cut corners getting his story. As Marc Weingarten writes in his new history of New Journalism, "The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight," when Hunter S. Thompson didn't have an ending for his book "Hell's Angels," he deliberately provoked the Angels into giving him a sound thrashing to give the book a more dramatic conclusion. Even now, decades later, the Angels are ticked off that Thompson made them look like the heavies.

As Joan Didion warned three decades ago, "Writers are always selling somebody out." They are usually selling a point of view too. "Capote" and "Good Night, and Good Luck" demonstrate how little the hallowed journalistic notion of objectivity applies to their central characters' work. Battling McCarthy, Murrow is clearly a partisan voice, willing to risk his reputation — and his job — by taking up the cause of a man who was kicked out of the Air Force for supposed communist ties.

Defending his adversarial stance, Murrow said, having searched his conscience, "I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument." This is a far cry from how today's TV mavens would handle McCarthy. They'd simply referee a squabble between the witch hunter and one of his antagonists, letting the audience decide who offered the more persuasive retorts.

If Murrow comes off more as admirable than Capote, his righteousness trumping Truman's narcissism, it's because we see that while Capote's work took a huge emotional toll — he never finished another book after "In Cold Blood" — Murrow's courage was in support of a greater cause, our freedom of speech. Standing up to a bully always earns bigger applause than empathizing with a killer.

Still, it is Capote who turned out to have the larger influence on modern-day journalism. Murrow's quiet authority is completely out of fashion in a TV news world that has become a carnival of noisy attention-seekers. And too many of today's writers seem to have learned the wrong lessons from Capote, soaking up the reporter-as-celebrity persona of his later years rather than studying his exacting, imperturbable prose. The seduction of his subjects was only one of Capote's many gifts, but today it is often the raison d'être of celebrity journalism.

When I asked "Capote" director Bennett Miller if he was worried that the film made Capote appear too unsympathetic, he answered, "The truth is that good people do horrible things and terrible people can be surprisingly kind. The tragic thing is that Capote didn't just betray Perry Smith, he betrayed himself."

The same thing goes for journalists today. It's not our subjects I'm worried about, it's our souls.

The Fifth Photo

I am leaving my house to travel an hour to my beat to walk around talking to people about ice-cream.

Is this not the worst day to do that or what?

Someone needs to tell Mama Nature to stop it with this weather.


Anyone else with "I got stuck doing reporting in the wind and rain" stories to share?

Report on NY Freelancers

For many of us, this is a snapshot of the future...

http://www.workingtoday.org/stf/pdf/Freelancers10.pdf

I woke up at 5am this morning to get to Flushing by 7. Upon arrival, I was put into the back of a police car and told to stay there for 8 straight hours. My legs were cramping up and my head felt flushed. The handcuffing, however, felt strangely exciting...

Okay, I'm kidding about the handcuffs. But I did spend 8 hours in a cop car today as part of my "police ride-along" assignment. We were to ride with the cops in our area and get a sense of the community and the issues that affect it.

In the morning, I rode with Officer K, a tough-talking girl who looked like a meaner Kelly Monaco, and Officer T, who claimed his grandfather was in the Italian mafia and then barely said a word. Their car didn't have the fence-thing that separates the front seats from the back, so it wasn't a problem for me to sit in the back. I quite enjoyed talking to them and trust me, we had a lot of time to talk because there was nothing going on in Flushing. There was one call about a German Shepherd dog that was loose and another one about a guy wanting a refund back from the hardware store, but that was about it.

At one point, we got a call in about an assault, and Officer K, the driver, took me on the wildest car ride I have ever been on in my entire life. I kept grabbing for the seatbelt (which I didn't have on.. I know, I know) but everytime I thought I had it in my hand, Officer K would make a sudden swerve or brake really hard and the seatbelt would come loose again. I hadn't been bounced around the backseat like that since senior prom night 2001. (Totally kidding). We didn't end up getting to the assault because another car picked up the call. But my heart needed a good half-hour to beat at a normal rate again after the ride.

In the afternoon, I went with out with Officer V and Officer A. They were both very chatty, interspersing facts about Flushing's history with, "Do you like hockey?" and "Wanna go see the hookers?" I told them I liked the Leafs and no... well, maybe.

(For the record, Officer V liked the Islanders and said the prostitutes probably wouldn't be out in the middle of the day).

In the afternoon, I was in the backseat once again, but this time I was behind the fence. You should've seen the stares I was getting from people every time we were stopped at an intersection. I tried making the "I'm not a criminal" face but then I realized that that is probably the face that everyone sitting in the back of a cop car tries to make. Eventually, the officers rolled down the window for me and I sat with my hands hanging out so that people would know I wasn't bound to my seat.

"You okay back there?" they'd ask occasionally. There was zero leg room and my knees were pushed right up against the back of the front passenger seat. My back was aching from the uncomfortable hard leather seats and I was boiling from having to wear a bulletproof vest in 85 degree weather.

"I'm great," I responded.

We did a few routine calls, including pulling someone over for running a stop sign and stopping some poor lady who didn't know that "handsfree cell phone" meant not holding the phone in your hands (They let her go). Then we got lucky.

We found a man who had crashed his car, cut his head on the windshield and was walking incoherently beside the highway!! I know this sounds mean, but I was so happy to cover a car accident with injuries! (Only journalists can get excited by gruesome accidents and bloody injuries because it gives them something to write about). This story got better. The man was on medication for the zanies and had not taken his pills in a few days. He was on his way to see his psychiatrist when he crashed his car. Crazy eh? Yes.. crazy...

Before I knew it the ride-along was over. I went to return my bulletproof vest (though I thought of keeping it to make my 50 Cent costume for Halloween) and the person who collected it turned out to be the community affairs officer who I had not yet met. "Oh so you're Detective K!" I said in excitement.

"Oh, so you're a Columbia student," he said, not nearly as excitedly.

"I've been meaning to talk to you," I said.

"Thanks for returning the vest and I hope you had fun today," he said. "Bye."

I gave him my business card and told him it was show and tell and he had to give me his. No really, I think I actually used the words "show and tell." He sighed and reluctantly gave me his contact information.

I walked out of the station house and prompty jay-walked across the street. Officer V was outside and looked in my direction. "Uh.. go Islanders go?" I said.

"Go Islanders go."

Its post-season time again!

So October's finally here, and you know what that means: Baseball's Post-Season. With both the Yankees and the Red Sox making it into October, the New York papers are bound to be all over the story. As an example, most vendors are now displaying the Post with its back sports cover, not whatever unimportant sensationalism is on the front. These next few weeks, they're for New York baseball.

So its time to make predictions. Personally, I'd like to see the Yankees and the Red Sox both taken down in their first series', to let for some good baseball from some good teams (the Angels and the "white hot" White Sox).

My predictions

NL:

Astros over Braves in 4 games. (I'm a Mets fan, so I despise Atlanta)
Cardinals over Padres in 3 games (The Padres are the worst team to make it to the post-season, with a lower record than the Mets. The Cardinals are by far the best team in the National League today)

Division: Cardinals over Astros in 6 games

AL:

Angels over Yankees in 6 games (The Angels are a very good team, and they can give the Yanks, who are more hype than hot playing, a run for their money)

White Sox over Red Sox in 5 games (The White Sox are the best team in Major League Baseball today, period. The Red Sox are good, but they were barely good enough to make it past the Indians last week)

Division: White Sox over Angels in 5 games (The Angels will be tired after their bout with the Yankees)

World Series: Chicago over St. Louis in 7 games (Chicago needs a championship. St. Louis might have its own little curse going on, but after a sweep by Boston last year, they're not ready for this)

A Place Called Home

She's a vain old lady of the Upper West Side. Cloistered amongst old money and Ivy, with her new money and ideas, she's always been the black sheep. She's 93 years old, a little eccentric, and mostly made of stone.

Rooted on the south-east corner of 116th and Broadway, the eight-story Graduate School of Journalism, with pillars and marble and faux-gas lamps, seems to fit well with the lush, modern-Greek Columbia University campus.

But the J-School had a difficult birth, conceived as she was by a Hungarian-born media mogul whose favorite color was yellow. Joseph Pulitzer, owner of The New York World, dreamed of making journalism respectable. Nearing the end of his years, in 1892 he offered the University $2 million to establish the school - and was turned down flat.

"She's a tradeswoman, not a professional," they cried.

Finally, 14 years later after had mogul passed away, his money was grudgingly taken and this baby girl was born. Pulitzer had high hopes for his progeny, a plaque in the lobby reads of "public virtue" and "trained intelligence."

But her academic peers have always looked down on her. The school's entrance opens not to the grand central commons, but to a scrap of grass outside the undergraduate dining hall. Tucked away, an embarrassment.

She is even the butt of jokes amongst journalist, whom she was designed to teach. Far from being based on high ideals, the Boston Globe's Renee Loth said that "The guiding ideological principles of most American newsrooms are entropy, chaos, procrastination and lunch."

And, if Michael Lewis's New Republic story "J-School Ate My Brain", has any grounding in truth she is not only a black ewe, but also a black widow. Lewis wrote in 1993 of bizarre classes, including demands that a hat generate a hundred story ideas.

But things are different now. Today there is no hat, because now they use a boot.

Still, despite the sneers, despite the jibes, this airy old lady still enjoys good company. Her suitors, mostly one-year flings, still arrive in droves. Their company and their gifts, coupled with her vanity, means she's always going under the knife. Construction work is ever-present to keep up with the latest trends: radio, television, and the newfangled internet.

Yet all this architectural botox can't disguise her age. Her elevators, only one of which goes all the way up, are mirror opposites (including, infuriatingly, the placement of floor buttons). To the left: stainless steel and smart. The right: particle board and vivid graffiti smut.

The history, the ill-fit, the attempt to marry ideals and practice is best seen in the lobby. Thomas Jefferson acts as bouncer, bronzed and imperious on a five-foot pedestal planted outside the front. Inside, there's that idealistic plaque, watched over old, dignified men. Carved high into the walls are medallions showing Addison, Franklin, Delane, Greeley, Thomas and Defoe.

The centerpiece is two grand wooden semi-circles on which this lady's mission is written bold. On one, "To uphold standards of excellence in journalism;" The other, "To educate the next generation of journalists."

But amidst this history, and these lofty ideals, she is trying hard to be modern. Attached to the rear of these wooden quarter-circles are six computer screens. The monitors are blank. Their cables hang lifeless, without a socket. Disconnected.

To be fair and balanced, these are the professor's marking comments: "Let's say a frown over this disorganized, careless, data-weak piece. Your viewpoint isn't based on a floor-by-floor evaluation of the structures or an intelligent curriculum critique of the ciriculum. Giving the school sexual identity doesn't help. Facts, figures and accurate reporting, let alone the good writing ability your first piece displayed, would help."

Suddenly, law class has relevance

Apparently Judge John Roberts is not a fan of the Supreme Court's ruling in The New York Times v. Sullivan. His response to a question on the case from the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn't look too promising to journalists:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/politics/politicsspecial1/27libel.html

good night, and good luck

opening the new york film festival was george clooney's movie about edward r. murrow, "good night, and good luck." i eagerly anticipated seeing the movie for a good year and was thrilled to walk up to the box office at 6pm and get two tickets for $10 each (obstructed view).

had i been able to hear the movie, i could tell you how much i liked it. alas, my theory that new yorkers don't know how to watch movies was proved many times over at that screening. why would the pretentiously-named "new york film society," a group that supposedly nurtures and loves films, choose to screen this award-winning movie at the avery fischer hall? all hard surfaces and the wrong dimensions for showing a film to a large audience (longer than it is wide), probably two rows of people could both see and hear the movie. also, why were so many people in black tie for a movie?

the title could have done well with a subtitle: good night, and good luck trying to watch this movie because this is new york and we only know how to watch the living theater and certainly can't lower ourselves to moronic things like movies and television.

Don't clap for the goddamn students

OK, this is probably gonna get me lots of hate mail, but I suppose that as a journalist, I should get used to it, right?

It's only the second week of Critical Issues and already something's off. Not with the course itself - for a 200-person seminar, I think it's going rather well. And today's speaker was really interesting.

I'm talking about the number of people - students - who stand up to the mike and make broad, unsubstantiated generalizations and try to pass them off as The Truth. Then, when Prof. Wald (or anyone else) challenges their position, they can't back it up and are forced to admit they don't have all the facts.

Isn't that the exact opposite of what journalists are supposed to do?

Then there's those long, impassioned political speeches that somehow always emerge from whatever discussion we're having. I realize that seminars are all about debate, and that everyone's personal experience affects their beliefs and understanding. But there's a way of expressing that without turning class into a soapbox.

Hey, I'm all for freedom of speech. But we're also paying good money to learn about journalism from established and respected veterans of the field - not to hear our fellow students expound on their latest theory.

I'm not saying people shouldn't talk. That's the whole point of a seminar, and that's what makes it interesting. But here's a hint: if you're talking longer than the guest speaker (or if your question is longer than the reply), something's wrong.

Let the crucifixion begin. ;-)

Private White House Dinners: Just Say No

Interesting in terms of last week's discussion. Does Andrea Mitchell's reporting conflict with her marriage to Alan Greenspan? Mitchell claims to still be an outsider, but I can't help wondering if her objectivity is inherently skewed?


[I posted the entire article here because I can't link to Washington Post.com without forking over my first born...]


---
Covering Herself
By Jonathan Yardley
Tuesday, September 20, 2005; C02

TALKING BACK

. . . to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels

By Andrea Mitchell

Viking. 414 pp. $25.95

Like a great many prominent journalists -- certainly in Washington,
but no less so in other centers of power, wealth and celebrity --
Andrea Mitchell of NBC News wants to have it both ways. On the one
hand, she wants to be the prototypical, hard-nosed, gumshoe reporter
whose specialty is " 'talking back' to presidents and dictators," but
on the other, she wants to be part of the parade, on first-name terms
with the powerful, wealthy and famous, invited to their dinner parties
and salons, courted and cosseted by them. Thus at the end of this
memoir she describes prowling "the VIP section" at the 2005
inauguration of President Bush, which she attended with her husband,
Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve:

"In a prominent seat, next to the CIA director, was Alan. . . . As his
wife, I could have sat with him among the official guests instead of
covering the event as a reporter. But for me, this was a dream
assignment: we had a live broadcast, hundreds of prominent politicians
with no way out, and no one stopping me from snagging interviews. . .
. Knowing me as he does, Alan understood that it wasn't even a close
call. But looking across the way at him, I was struck by how different
our roles were on days such as this: he was inside, looking out, while
I was outside, looking in."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Though Mitchell may have
arrived in Washington in 1976 as an ambitious outsider -- hired away
from a Philadelphia television station by the local CBS affiliate,
WTOP, "to cover the corruption trial of the governor of Maryland,
Marvin Mandel" -- she became an echt Washington insider as she moved
to NBC, covered the White House, Congress and other highly visible
beats, married Greenspan, and became something of a celebrity in her
own right, "a player." By virtue of her prominence as a journalist and
her husband's prominence in the government, she is strictly A-list.

In this, as mentioned above, she is scarcely alone, but the ways in
which she dances around the issue shed some light on the contorted
lines of reasoning that permit people in her position to claim
journalistic independence -- journalists, she says she learned at an
early age, "were supposed to be adversaries of those in power, wardens
against abuses and conflicts of interest" -- yet to sup at the tables
of the mighty. She's come a long way from the Bronx and New Rochelle,
and though she says that "I still love the chase for news," she does
her chasing in an environment to which most journalists are denied
admission.

Say it for her, though, that what she does, she does very well. She's
smart, energetic, determined and fast on her feet: a real terrier.
She's in a business that now deals almost entirely in sound bites, but
she has higher standards than many people in that business. She's
dismayed that "in a nation of people increasingly informed by talk
show rant on the right and the left, facts are incinerated in a blaze
of rumor and accusation," that "lost in the haze of left- and
right-wing polemics is real journalism." As television journalism
becomes ever more enchanted by flash and dazzle, she clings to
old-fashioned notions of what journalists should do, and she's right.

She's considerably less right in her apparent conviction that a
blow-by-blow account of three decades on the front line of television
journalism is, in and of itself, an interesting story. It isn't.
Mechanically marching through one story after another, "Talking Back"
quickly boils down to an endless "and then I covered . . ." plod that
has no narrative line. Her prose is clean enough, if susceptible to
cliches -- "the grizzled veterans of the press room," "I hammered
Gergen with questions," "a heartbeat away from the Oval Office" -- and
she occasionally reveals a genuine grasp of complex national and
international issues, but she's so intent on leaping from one hot
story to the next that she leaves no doubt that it's the chase, rather
than what's found at the end of it, that really matters to her.

Thus, for example, there is her exceedingly weird obsession with being
the person to "break" the story of a presidential nominee's choice for
his running mate. Nothing could more plainly illustrate the
inside-the-Beltway mentality to which she's fallen victim. She
breathlessly recounts the digging that led to her disclosure in 1988
"that George Bush had selected Dan Quayle to be his running mate" --
"My role in breaking the Quayle story helped people within the network
realize I could be a player" -- and her pursuit of 2004's "next big
story, John Kerry's choice of a running mate." Though she acknowledges
that "to this world outside television news, it may seem like a silly
business" -- amen to that -- she insists that "we all became
journalists because we love to chase stories, and this was a story
worth chasing."

I beg to differ. A running mate probably hasn't changed an election's
outcome since at least 1960; being five minutes ahead of everyone else
on a "scoop" that eventually will be little more than a press release
isn't news at all. It was news of the first order on Nov. 22, 1963,
when Merriman Smith of UPI grabbed the telephone in the press car and
beat everyone else to the terrible story in Dallas, but chasing around
after the vice-presidential nominee is essentially child's play.
Mitchell acknowledges as much when she says that "the dirty little
secret of journalism is that it's fun, like being hooked on detective
novels," but she doesn't really seem to understand just how silly this
kind of non-story actually is.

Nor does she seem to understand the compromised position in which she
is placed by her dual roles as journalistic celebrity and A-list
socialite. She acknowledges that when Colin Powell returned to the
government in 2001 as secretary of state, it would be "a difficult
balancing act" covering someone whom she "considered a friend" --
Powell and his wife "had both been guests at our wedding" -- but this
marginal awareness of the delicacy of her position doesn't keep her
from, say, attending a 1991 dinner given by George H.W. Bush in honor
of Margaret Thatcher, "upstairs in the White House residence, more
private and special than even a state dinner in the downstairs
official rooms." It was, she says, "my first time upstairs in the
Yellow Room" and continues:

"I enjoyed being a fly on the wall at a private dinner in the White
House; at the same time, I felt that the 'designated shouter' from the
press corps was a little out-of-place upstairs, sitting with officials
whom I covered. I knew I could neither ask questions, nor quote
anything that was said to me. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling that
I might be gaining unusual access, but losing some independence."

Mitchell isn't alone in this, and the problem certainly isn't limited
to broadcast journalists. The spectacle of journalists from all media
slurping up to politicos and other "assorted scoundrels" at events
such as the annual dinners of the Gridiron Club and the White House
Correspondents' Association is repellent in the extreme. Yes,
journalists are human, as vulnerable to flattery and courtship as
anyone else -- perhaps all the more so since our egos tend to be a
good deal larger than our talents -- but the solution to the problem
is very easy: Just say no.

they like us! they really, really like us!

From Frank Rich's Op-Ed column ("Message: I Care About the Black Folks" NYT, 9/18/05):

You know the world has changed when the widely despised news media have a far higher approval rating (77 percent) than the president (46 percent), as measured last week in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

The Real Question Is...

Is Kermit the Frog a journalist?

Election Day

Hey - does anyone know if the J-School is open on Election Day? Because the CU website says there's a holiday Nov. 5-8, but the J-School calendar doesn't...

Imagine - two holidays in November....

A New Look

Gone are the days where this looks like a basement operation. Now its a blogger-template operation... so we've got a little more class. It looks just a little bit better. Enjoy!

NYPD podcasts its news updates....

From gothamist...

http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2005/09/15/nypd_podcasts.php

It's got to be easier than dealing with DCPI....

It's that time of year: New York Fashion Week 2005!

What is Stevie Wonder doing at a fashion show? I'm just saying... oh never mind.

The Fourth Photo

More New Orleans Ugliness...

From my blog...

george bush doesn't care about black people

i'm probably breaking every rule on the j-school blog by posting this, but whatever, it's a blog and it's school. rules shmules.

the so-called protest remix


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
The Legendary K.O. delivers powerful message against George W. Bush Through Song
“George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People” Receives Widespread Acclaim

As the world has seen and heard by now, rapper Kanye West expressed his frustration at the Katrina relief efforts and his thoughts on U.S. President George W. Bush last week during a nationally televised benefit. While his thoughts and statement have received much attention, a rap group from Houston, The Legendary K.O., has taken it one step further and recorded a song, entitled “George Bush Don't Like Black People”, using the Kanye West “Gold Digger” instrumental.

The song, available for free download through www.k-otix.com , received over 10,000 downloads in the first day alone, with listeners ranging from the U.S. to Europe and Japan.

Legendary K.O. member Micah Nickerson lives minutes away from the Astrodome, where many Katrina victims are being housed, came up with the song concept immediately after hearing Kanye West's remarks.

“I had really wanted to write about this in the first-person, as someone stuck in New Orleans and left by this administration to basically fend for myself, but was having trouble putting the emotions I felt into words. When I heard Kanye during the benefit, the rest as they say was history,” said Micah.

The song was recorded and included on a friend's web site promoting new music from various artists (www.fwmj.com). Within a day, his site was overwhelmed with the traffic, as users were flocking to download the song.

Damien Randle, the other member of The Legendary K.O., says that the song expresses their and many others feelings about this administration.

“No matter which side of the political debate we reside on, I think we can all agree that this situation represents the ultimate human tragedy, and highlights the need for sweeping improvements in some of the most fundamental segments of society. The safety and well-being of all people should always be considered first, and we felt compelled to express that through song,” said Damien.

The Legendary K.O. is not staying on the sidelines during this tragedy, making music, but not taking action. Micah and Damien have also donated food, clothes, and time to local organizations and urge anyone that has not donated to please do so.

Their actions have also caught the attention of numerous media outlets, including MTV.com: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1509274/20050909/mos_def.jhtml?headlines=true

The group is also available for print, radio, and TV interviews. To set-up interviews now, please contact The Legendary KO at k-otix@k-otix.com

Suggested sites for donations:

http://www.houstonhurricaneaid.org/

The American Red Cross - http://www.redcross.org

Predictions

Mayor:

Ferrer - 38%
Fields - 24%
Weiner - 23%
Miller - 15%

Borough President
Winner: Scott Stringer

Manhattan D.A
Winner: Leslie Crocker-Snyder

Brooklyn D.A.
Winner: Charles "Joe" Hynes

I Can't Use This

Dear Editor,

Amidst all the tragic stories unfolding as a result of Hurricane Katrina, there are some “lights in the darkness” – stories of hope and inspiration – as people displaced by this tragedy try to piece together their lives.

One such story in which you may be interested is that of Romel Brumley-Kerr, an international transfer student from Limon, Costa Rica, and an aspiring 30-year-old baritone opera singer, who from 2003 until just recently, had been on a full music scholarship at the University of New Orleans.

This Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 12:15 pm, at LeFrak Concert Hall on the campus of Queens College, Romel will be performing as part of a relief concert organized by students to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It is his way of thanking all the people who helped him get his life back on track since he was evacuated from UNO with just his passport and clothes in a single plastic bag, leaving his friends and “adopted” family behind.

Thanks to the President’s Scholarship Fund at Queens College and the efforts of administrators and music faculty, Brumley-Kerr is now enrolled at the college’s Aaron Copland School of Music, receiving full tuition and funds for books and his performances. He is currently living with his aunt in Jamaica. “I just want to be independent…fulfill my dreams, and be somebody,” says Romel wistfully.

This very talented student is available for interviews. We are also glad to put you in touch with President James Muyskens, who will discuss the college’s commitment to students displaced by the hurricane’s devastation.


More information on Romel is attached. To set up interviews, please contact: Phyllis Stevens: 718-997-5597

Alex Gregory New Yorker cartoon

the bronx is going green

we have been invited to attend the sustainable energy conference in the bronx on sept. 23 from 8:30am -4:30pm at hostos community college.

email me (nmg2114) if you want to go and i'll get you in touch with the right contact person.

I managed to get access to the U.S. Open Red Carpet Arrivals last night. Between my press pass and the tournament taking place in my beat of Flushing, the big PR people happily let me in. I got a spot just in front of the red carpet and right beside a bunch of crazy paparazzos. I felt right at home.

We were told that a lot of celebs would be coming to watch the women's final and so we arrived at the stated time of 4:30 p.m. And we stayed there, standing no less, until almost 8. And barely any celebrities showed up.

There were no A-listers, contrary to what our media package told us. Instead, we got people like Leann Womack, Dennis Leary, and Richard Branson. I wasn't aware that such C-listers could still get access to red carpet events. They happily posed for pictures and answered questions while people scratched their heads trying to remember Leann Womack's last hit or Dennis Leary's last movie that actually made more than ten bucks.

I don't know if this means anything... but I seemed to be the only person there who knew who these three people were. The paparazzos actually turned to me after photographing the "stars" to ask who they were! I felt so special writing down, "Richard Branson, President of Virgin and failed reality-TV star" on the back of the crumpled Starbucks napkin handed to me by one of the crazy photographers. It totally made my night.

When Jason Lewis (of "Sex and the City" fame) arrived, the crowd went wild. Grown woman started begging him for an autograph or worse, a kiss. The crazy paparazzos yelled for him to take off his shirt and look their way. I motioned for Jason to come over and talk into my voice recorder for a second and he nodded. Meanwhile, some lady from US Weekly made a similar request only to have him tell her he wasn't interested and that she should just stay to the side. I felt special.

He didn't end up talking to me but that's really besides the point. The most important thing is that I was given preference over the reporter from US Weekly! This Columbia journalism thing isn't half bad.