Grumpy Editor

London’s Sun staffers get inside look at North Korea

Cheers to two newsmen from The Sun, London, who used ingenuity in posing as businessmen to get a truer inside look at North Korea without being shadowed or escorted as journalists, notes Grumpy Editor.

The second part of the story --- by writer Alex Peake with photos by Simon Jones --- runs today in the British newspaper. 

The pair entered from China, crossing the border into what they called “the crumbling town of Sinuiju” where Peake noted “many of the people here are starving.”  Also, he added, “Nobody was smiling and most people were walking alone in a zombie-like state, staring at the floor.” 

From there, a 200-mile, six-hour journey on a chugging 1940s-era train took them to Pyongyang. 

In the capital city, their hotel room featured a TV set and “airtime on one channel filled with pro-regime propaganda including hours of footage of new leader Kim Jong-un watching military displays.” 

They toured the town, saw statues, rode on the Pyongyang Metro, sampled a Big Mac-lookalike which Peake declared, “God only knows what the meat is, there was no way it was beef.” 

Peake noted less than one percent of North Koreans own a car “so traffic jams are non-existent” and that most of Pyongyang “is plunged into darkness at 11 p.m.” 

The Sun writer also observed blue vans with megaphones patroled streets in cities and countryside blaring the message:  Work harder.

 

Times-Picayune, New Orleans, will drop daily publishing

New Orleans is joining the growing list of cities without a daily newspaper, as The Times-Picayune will reduce publishing to three days a week in the fall, notes Grumpy Editor. 

Major staff reductions will accompany the move. 

Insiders expect the newsroom staff to be chopped by a least a third, to 100 from 150.  Remaining workers will face sharp salary cuts. 

With the shift to non-daily, the focus will be on boosting online news. 

Along with the change, NOLA Media Group has been formed to oversee coverage on the Internet. 

The newspaper will be published on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.  Management considered those the “most valuable days for the newspaper’s advertisers.” 

Ricky Mathews, incoming publisher of the newspaper, established in 1837, said the changes were necessary by the upheaval in the newspaper publishing industry. 

A recent circulation tally of U.S. newspapers placed The Times-Picayune, in the Advance Publications Inc. family, at No. 55 with about 141,000 daily.

 

Dual job: Turn in Money copy, then book boss’s flight

Money magazine has a job opening that should keep an aggressive multi-tasking reporter busy without too much time to check an iPad, notes Grumpy Editor who spotted the “help wanted” call in a TalkingBizNews.com Friday item.

The personal finance publication, in the Time Inc. family, is seeking a full-time contract reporter (with previous financial journalism experience a plus) who can handle various tasks --- including a chunk of time required for non-writing undertakings that, in prior days, were assigned to several staffers who never attended journalism school. 

Multi-tasks on the editorial side include writing beat stories and front-of-book articles, finding real people anecdotes for features, creating data visualizations, helping senior writers and fact checking.

But the position requires 20 percent of the job --- that’s equivalent to one day a week --- assisting Money’s managing editor with administrative tasks, such as answering phones, making travel arrangements, coordinating the M.E.’s schedule, submitting expense reports and helping with presentations.

The only things missing:  fetching coffee and fresh doughnuts.

 

Newspaper reporter nears bottom of 200 jobs list

Journalism students hoping to don press hats and write exciting front-page stories should be aware that newspaper reporter ranks near the bottom of the worst jobs for 2012, warns Grumpy Editor. 

That’s something journalism professors won’t mention. 

A Jobs Rated Report by CareerCast.com puts newspaper reporter --- with mid-level income of $35,275 --- at number 196 on a list of 200 professions, between waiter/waitress (No. 195) and oil rig worker (No. 197). 

Newspaper reporter slips eight places from the last tally. 

Doing slight better is broadcaster (No. 191), with mid-level income of $27,324.  But the position drops 63 places on the list since the last time around. 

“Many jobs in the media are characterized by high stress, short deadlines, long hours and a poor hiring outlook,” mentions Tony Lee, publisher of the report. 

“Despite these poor working conditions,” he adds, “competition is steep for what jobs remain after massive consolidation and layoffs in the media industry.” 

Media positions ranking higher on the list are public relations executive (No. 70 with the media group’s best mid-level income of $92,156), advertising account executive (98), author (113), publication editor (119), photographer (147) and photojournalist (166). 

Topping the jobs list?

Software engineer.

 

For some J-students, ‘change major,’ advises Fox’s Ailes

“Change your major,” was Fox News CEO Roger Ailes’s advice to college students pursuing journalism as a vehicle to change or save the world, notes Grumpy Editor. 

“If you want to bring world peace or save starving children --- both very noble goals --- the way to affect that as a journalist is to investigate why the United Nations is so ineffective at doing either of those even though they get 22 percent of their budget from the American taxpayers,” illustrated Ailes who addressed students at the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications last Thursday. 

Ailes added the U.N. seems “to have trouble bringing peace, and they seem to have trouble feeding people, so we need to question that.” 

He also mentioned something that many print and journalists seem to have forgotten:  “Journalism has to act as a watchdog. Not a lap dog, not an attack dog, but as a watchdog.”

Durham’s Herald-Sun writer Melody Guyton Butts mentioned Ailes defended Fox News, “often a target of criticism for what some see as a conservative bent, countering that while many of the talk shows that appear on the channel feature conservative-minded hosts, the ‘hard journalism’ is unbiased.”

(Underscoring its “fair and balanced” motto, Fox News this month hired Chicago-based Santita Jackson, Jesse Jackson’s eldest daughter, as an on-air contributor, pleasing those on the left, observes Grumpy Editor.) 

Butts added that Ailes claimed that in the 15 years since Fox News was launched, the channel has never had to retract a story for inaccuracies and it’s the only news organization that hasn’t laid off employees for financial reasons.

 

Tribune Co. continues editorial cuts --- with L.A. Times

Shakiness of editorial staffers these days was underscored this week with another in a series of Tribune Co. “workforce reductions” that this time hit the Los Angeles Times newsroom, following last week’s release of 15 Chicago Tribune workers, notes Grumpy Editor. 

In the latest round, about a dozen Times employees from news operations, copy desk and design were affected. 

Among them, accepting a buyout:  Craig Turner, arts and entertainment editor, with the newspaper for almost 41 years, including the position of metropolitan editor. 

As Grumpy Editor mentioned on March 16, editorial employees at some Tribune Co. newspapers may be getting edgy following the prior day’s downsizing at the Chicago Tribune. 

Besides the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, the Tribune Co. family includes the Baltimore Sun, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Hartford Courant. 

Ironically, as Los Angeles Times staffers were departing, the business section posted an opening for “an ambitious reporter to cover the food and farm beat.”

 

Stars and Stripes move from Washington raises questions

Military budget cuts have now spread to Stars and Stripes, the 150-year-old U.S. military newspaper that is slated to be kicked out of Washington, D.C. headquarters, finds Grumpy Editor. 

Distributed worldwide, the newspaper started by 10 Union soldiers during the Civil War, has been ordered to move 30 miles from D.C. to the Fort Meade military base.

The cost-cutting effort was directed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta who figures the move, affecting 80 newsroom and business staffers, will save $1 million a year in rent by leaving the National Press Building.

Moving operations to an Army base, staffers feel the location will cause loss of journalistic independence.

The distance from Maryland also will make it a bit difficult to cover Capitol Hill.

Over many years, the daily newspaper, now with an estimated 350,000 readers, has angered Pentagon and military leadership by printing beefs from military personnel. 

Douglas B. Wilson, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said the decision to relocate the newspaper to Fort Meade “is not a matter of reducing independence for Stars and Stripes. It is a matter of reducing rent costs to the taxpayer.” 

But raising his eyebrows, Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote to Panetta.  He said questions of editorial independence for Stars and Stripes were “well-placed, and should lead to a review of possible alternatives to this decision.” 

Levin asked, “If this move is based on cost savings, were other alternatives considered, including other government spaces and other leased locations? 

“If Stars and Stripes is moved to Fort Meade, what will the department do to ensure that the actual and perceived independence of the important service provided by Stars and Stripes is preserved?”

 

Writers quickly label Breitbart died of ‘natural causes’

A few hours after conservative blogger and Tea Party favorite Andrew Breitbart collapsed on the sidewalk shortly after midnight near his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles last Thursday, news stories attributed the 43-year-old’s death to “natural causes” --- indicating the writers never worked on police beats, notes Grumpy Editor.

Long before official findings from an autopsy, reporters --- without raising an eyebrow --- almost immediately pinpointed the cause of death. 

Results of a Friday autopsy by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office will not be known until early to mid-April, when toxicology and other lab tests are finalized.

"It's standard procedure," said Craig Harvey, coroner’s office spokesman.

"We have a very young man who died suddenly and unexpectedly, so we want to make sure we cover all the bases,” he added.

Highly-active Breitbart collapsed while walking home from a bar-restaurant where he sipped red wine and spent almost two hours in what has been termed “a friendly debate” with a marketing executive.

Breitbart entered journalism editing the Drudge Report in 1994.  Eleven years later Breitbart and Arianna Huffington founded the Huffington Post. 

On his own, he later started several news websites including breitbart.com, bighollywood.com and biggovernment.com. 

Along with that, in recent years he became a favorite target of liberals in the media.

 

Deadly Hollywood fire report omits pinpointing ‘where’

In writing news stories, journalism students are taught to follow the five Ws and the H --- who, what, when, where, why, and how --- yet pinpointing the where sometimes gets lost in the excitement of covering events such as with a deadly Hollywood fire last Friday, notes Grumpy Editor.

An Associated Press story reported three seriously injured gunshot victims were pulled from a burning Hollywood home where two others, including the gunman, died.

The story described the blaze that required 130 firefighters two-and-a-half hours to knock down.

With photos, coverage took up as much as half a page, with AP photos, in some newspapers on Saturday.

The story included quotes from neighbors.

Was the scene amid luxury homes in the Hollywood Hills?  Was it close to famous Hollywood and Vine?  Or perhaps near the Sunset Strip?

Readers of the AP story (along with broadcast accounts picking it up) never learned exactly where the incident took place.

Location was not pinpointed in the lengthy account.

Thus, it made traveling out-of-town Hollywood residents uneasy and concerned on learning of the happening.

It wouldn’t have taken much additional space to insert the precise location of the single story home:  517 N. Harvard Blvd.

And while mention of Hollywood always grabs attention, the scene was in an older, far eastern end of Hollywood --- three and a half miles northwest of the Los Angeles Civic Center. 

 

AP suggests journalists avoid use of ‘illegitimate child’

The latest AP Stylebook update says use of “illegitimate” in reference to offspring of unmarried mothers should be discouraged, notes Grumpy Editor. 

The style guide for journalists suggests substituting "illegitimate child" with phrases such as “the child, whose mother was not married” or “whose parents were not married.” 

It’s also a case of using five or seven words to replace two. 

The description “doesn’t come up very often in our news copy, but it’s a term that’s stigmatizing, and unfairly so,” relates David Minthorn, AP’s deputy standards editor. 

The term is okay to use as part of a quote, he adds, but “our guidance would be to use something more sensitive.” 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the percentage of births to unmarried mothers declined slightly to 40.8 percent in 2010 from 41 percent in 2009. 

Of course, the description can be whittled down to one word that used to be common in the U.S. and Britain --- and is incorporated in the script of the current “Downton Abbey” series on Masterpiece Theater on PBS (Sunday night).

That word: bastard. 

And, yes, some workers still refer to their nasty bosses by that noun.