Grumpy Editor

News release on New Year’s event crosses desk

Here we are in mid-August and Grumpy Editor just received the first news release relating to a New Year’s happening. 

Such material seems to arrive earlier every year.  At this rate, year-end announcements soon will appear right after the Fourth of July.

The news release promotes a year-end travel package.  It features train passage from California or the Midwest to Arizona, all sightseeing, overnight hotel stay in Williams, Ariz., travel aboard the Grand Canyon Railway, two nights at the Grand Canyon, a drive to Las Vegas for a three-night stay at a resort-hotel, New Year’s festivities and “much more.”

As the packager boasts, the getaway “features a delightful combination of stunning natural beauty in the Grand Canyon combined with man-made wonder in exciting, vibrant Las Vegas.”

However, there’s no mention of possible snow swirling around that time of year in the higher elevations of the Grand Canyon area or the thousands of happy celebrants that will assemble on the Las Vegas Strip to welcome in 2008.

As ‘Flossie’ fizzles, media focus on other storms

Media, which have been uneasy about the lack of hurricanes so far this year (after all, there is nothing like photographing wind-whipped palm trees) have a triple play, sort of, over the next few days, notes Grumpy Editor.

First, all this week, hopes were high in editorial rooms that Flossie in the Pacific, would wind up as a hurricane smacking Hawaii.  Some newspapers yesterday ran a 23-inch Associated Press story, with art, on preparations being made for the storm, under headlines such as "Hawaii Braces for Hurricane Flossie."

But with decreasing winds yesterday as it moved over cooler waters, Flossie was downgraded to a tropical storm when it was more than 225 miles south-southeast of Hilo on the Big Island.

Meanwhile, tropical storm Erin swirls in the Gulf of Mexico on course for  southern Texas.  CNN yesterday morning already had a crew reporting on scene from Corpus Christi waiting for big winds to develop.  Main threat today, however, will be heavy rainfall, expected to cause widespread flooding in the lower portion of the Lone Star State.

Far out in the Atlantic, tropical storm Dean is expected to make a few landfalls over the eastern Caribbean Islands starting tomorrow before moving over the Dominican Republic and Haiti on the weekend. The storm then may then head toward the Gulf of Mexico next week.

That will put additional camera crews on standby --- for those swaying palm trees shots.

‘Mad Men’ puffs along in depicting ad life in 1960

Mad Men, one of the interesting summer TV series, depicting lives of the “ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Ave. advertising” gives it the old college try in recounting the way things were in 1960 from hair styles to fashions to music.

But one thing that is overemphasized by executive producer/writer Matthew Weiner (Emmy award-winning executive producer and writer of "The Sopranos”), is the smoking.
Cigarettes are dangling all over the place.

Grumpy Editor observes just about everyone in the TV drama is busy lighting up, fingering a cigarette or blowing smoke  (Of course many advertising agencies of that era were blowing smoke, too.)

The cast, especially ones who are not true smokers, must have “smokers’ cough” and itchy eyes after several takes.  Smoke fills nearly every scene of every one-hour episode seen on the AMC cable channel, Thursdays at 10 p.m., Eastern.

Expelled smoke occurs in bedrooms, board rooms, client meeting rooms, rest rooms, examination room (where a doctor, with cigarette between lips, greets a female patient) --- and, well, just about every enclosed space.

The TV series, indeed, is a “puff piece.”

Chicago Tribune plans editorial tutoring in newsroom

The Chicago Tribune feels its editorial staff needs a writing hypo.

So, starting Oct. 1, it will have a new senior editor whose job will be to oversee staff writing development that, as an internal memo relates, “underscores our deep commitment to compelling storytelling and powerful journalism.”

Responsibilities, it adds, will include serving as writing coach and all-around journalistic mentor for staff members…“to foster excellent writing in every section of the newspaper.”

Group and individual tutoring will be provided.

Grumpy Editor feels by the time a reporter reaches the level of The Tribune, one of the country’s top newspapers, he or she should be well versed on how to research, report and write for a big-city daily newspaper.

This is something developed in journalism school and fine-tuned with hands-on, basic training via small and suburban newspapers, while building a resume.

All this comes at a time with almost daily announcements of layoffs at budget-cutting small, medium and metropolitan newspapers (magazines, too), throwing many seasoned news people --- with deep experience in reporting and, yes, storytelling --- into the job market.

FTC sends Spanish news release to English readers

Are some members of the Federal Trade Commission’s office of public affairs lunching on too many fajitas or tacos?

A Spanish language news release last week was disseminated to many who speak and read only English.  That includes Grumpy Editor whose only command of Spanish stems from high school courses and an occasional visit south of the border.

With August doldrums, when things are quiet in Washington, D.C., the FTC’s PR folks whipped up a news release offering tips for protecting laptops from theft. In these days when slippery fingers lurk at airports, bus terminals and busy restaurants, that’s a great public service idea.

However, the news release went out to several hundred news people in Spanish under the headline:

Computadora Portátil bajo Llave

Seeking an English language version --- even though English still is not the official language in the U.S. --- Grumpy Editor requested a more easily readable version.

After five days, the English translation still hasn’t shown up.

Perhaps too many margaritas are available as August heat grips Washington where the temperature today is expected to reach a sweltering 94 degrees.

‘Bourne Ultimatum’ gives some moviegoers the shakes

With The Bourne Ultimatum, the week’s top movie, starring Matt Damon, most reviewers gave it top grades.  “Easily the best action thriller of the year,” proclaimed USA Today’s Claudia Puig.  Some other movie reviewers echoed that.

But few mentioned use of an irritating, non-stop, herky-jerky, hand-held camera, a technique relished by director Paul Greengrass.

For Grumpy Editor, the woozy result is like being on a pitching and rolling boat during a hurricane or standing near a fault during an extra-long 6.7 earthquake.  The camera trembles even when it comes to filming close-ups of documents for theater patrons to read.

At least two other reviewers were uneasy with Greengrass’s filming style.

William Arnold, movie critic, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, noted: “With virtually every sequence shot like a battlefield documentary --- from a jerky hand-held camera framed extremely closely --- and edited like an MTV music video, the movie is so surreal it's just not very involving. As an action extravaganza, it's busy but dull.”

Arnold adds, “Greengrass' effort to make his film the last word in tightly framed, nervous-camera action scenes is fairly disastrous. Most of the sequences are such a mess that we simply can't tell what's happening in them. The cumulative effect is boredom.”  Arnold concludes that the film “cries out for a few long shots to orient us as to what the heck is going on.”

Peter Rainer, film critic of The Christian Science Monitor, observes “Greengrass downplays the movie's travelogue aspects by repeating the bobbly, hand-held camera style he used on The Bourne Supremacy. It's not a style I'm fond of.  Instead of imparting a present-tense immediacy, it just makes me seasick.”

Grumpy Editor agrees, and suggests for queasy moviegoers, forget the popcorn but take along a barf bag.

After Bonds’ record, Fox, ESPN zoom in elsewhere

Now that San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds smacked his 756th career home run Tuesday to set a major league record, plus hitting No. 757 last night, Fox Sports and ESPN television cameras will have to zero in on other players on the field, in dugouts or in bull pens.

For weeks this season, in televising Giants games, directors have called for continuous and lengthy Bonds close-ups during games --- while ignoring other action on the field, notes Grumpy Editor.

This led to cameras poking into the Giants’ dugout to see Bonds looking at the upper decks, staring into space, scanning the ball park or just chewing.

Cameras focused on close-ups of Bonds on deck followed by all sorts of angles in the batter's box.  Taped hefty swings were repeated and then replayed.  Then replayed again --- in slow motion.

While at his position in left field, viewers saw Bonds resting with one knee on the grass during a pitcher change, standing with one hand on hip, looking over to right field, checking the stands, and, yes, even occasionally spitting.

All captured via zoom lens in glorious color.

Now it’s back to giving the slugger a bit more privacy.

And, for viewers, a chance to see what the other players --- umpires, too --- are doing on the field.

News media rating sags in latest WSJ/NBC poll

National news media need a bit of PR for themselves.

It didn’t get much exposure --- for obvious reasons --- but just 18 percent of 1,005 adults interviewed in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll expressed a great deal (9 percent) or quite a bit of confidence (9 percent) in the U.S. news media.  That’s down from 20 percent in a December, 2000, similar poll.

Meanwhile, 42 percent voiced very little (24 percent) or no confidence (18 percent), a worse showing than the 40 percent tallied in a December, 2000 poll.

Grumpy Editor finds those figures unsettling.  Publishers, print editors and TV news executives have been scratching their heads over sagging revenues and ebbing subscriptions/declining viewers.

Now it’s up to them to spark remedies.

‘Journalist’ Sean Penn tours Venezuela with Chavez

Actor-director Sean Penn told the Associated Press in Venezuela, where he traveled the countryside with President Hugo Chavez at the wheel of a Jeep, that he was “here as a journalist” for an undisclosed publication.

Among other events, the pair drove through fields of corn, potatoes and lettuce, then slipped into white lab coats and toured an agricultural research laboratory.

There was no indication if the Hollywood actor took out a pen and made copious notes.

Grumpy Editor feels that should make those who are solidly in the journalism field squirm a bit.

Penn’s past “journalism” credentials stem from a June, 2005, visit to Iran where he wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Now, how would Penn --- who received an Academy Award for best actor in 2003’s Mystic River --- welcome a movie “extra” to his set who claimed to be a seasoned actor, maybe even a veteran director?

AP's rebranding Tancredo as 'radical' gets by editors

An Associated Press story by Matthew Lee in Saturday’s newspapers rebranded a declared candidate in the 2008 Republican presidential race.  Lee pinned the label, “radical Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo” on the lifelong conservative from Colorado who earlier made some gung-ho remarks --- that weren’t new, notes Grumpy Editor.

Lee used the radical term after Tancredo, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1999, told 30 people at an Iowa town hall meeting that, if it is up to him, he would give an advance warning to terrorists that a nuclear attack on the U.S. “would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina.”

Earlier, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.), also in the 2008 presidential race, refused to rule out use of nuclear weapons in going after Islamist militants.

But Tancredo’s remarks got the spotlight even though they weren’t new.  In an Orlando, Florida, radio interview two years ago, Tancredo was asked about a hypothetical response to a nuclear attack on the U.S. by al-Qaeda.  He said one possible retaliation would be “taking out” Muslim holy sites.

Tancredo touched on this deterrent again yesterday during the Republican presidential candidates discussion on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos.

Since his days serving in the Colorado House of Representatives (1977 to 1981), Tancredo, a former junior high school teacher, has been a conservative legislator.  In the U.S. House, he’s known for his strong stance against illegal aliens.