Grumpy Editor

Media face Internet, security problems at Olympics

It won’t be all fun and (Olympics) games for media representatives in Beijing, notes Grumpy Editor.  The Chinese, reversing an earlier pledge, declare 5,000 foreign journalists will be unable to access some sites on the Internet from the Main Press Center and other locations.

Then, aside from inhaling air pollution, reporters face the threat of cyberspying by Chinese computer hackers.

Foreign reporters attending the Beijing Olympics, Aug. 8 to Aug. 24, will not have access to some sites considered sensitive by the host nation.  Just two weeks ago, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said he was assured there would be no Internet blockage.

The censored Internet is the latest broken promise on press freedoms, reports Stephen Wade, Associated Press writer.  “In bidding for the games seven years ago,” reminds Wade, “Chinese officials said the media would have ‘complete freedom to report’.”

Wade also notes some on-scene journalists, in attempting to go on the Internet this week, complain about slow speeds, with several mentioning the sluggishness might be an intentional ploy to discourage use.

Meanwhile, on the security side, there is concern about dangers to U.S. laptop computers and cellphones.

Spy tactics, reveals Siobhan Gorman in The Wall Street Journal, “include copying information contained in laptop computers at airport checkpoints or hotel rooms, wirelessly inserting spyware on BlackBerry devices, and a new technique dubbed ‘slurping’ that uses Bluetooth technology to steal data from electronic devices.”

State and Commerce Departments officials are mum on this aspect “for fear of offending the Chinese” in business and diplomatic relationships, mentions Gorman.

But there is a bright side to the 2008 Summer Olympics:  NBC, and its associate channels, will broadcast the events in high-definition television.

L.A. Times correspondent recaps gritty overseas life

So, you have thoughts of becoming a foreign correspondent, inspired after viewing some vintage motion pictures or reading fictional passages in books that portray the “exciting and adventurous” life?

Hold on.

First, there are two types of foreign correspondents, reminds Grumpy Editor.  One works out of a hotel room with deluxe or at least standard accommodations, rewriting press releases or information from news conferences.  The other type gets out into the often dusty or muddy --- and risky --- field.

Carol J. Williams, a Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent for about a quarter of a century, starting with a 1984 posting to Moscow, the other day recounted her adventures in various areas around the globe.

Her vivid description of what a true foreign correspondent faces:  “Nights spent in war-zone villages without heat or indoor plumbing. Days of driving through blistering heat to hell-and-back outposts with no chance to bathe before bedding down with bugs, dust and strangers. Scary rides on dubious aircraft and lost-luggage nightmares so prolonged you burn the clothes on your back once you can take them off.”

But that’s not all.  “Bad smells, unsafe transportation, fear and humiliation exponentially overwhelm the breathtaking moments of history and excitement,” she adds.

“I've contracted giardiasis, caused by a microbial parasite, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and amoebic dysentery in the Balkans. A mold-spewing air conditioner in the Dominican Republic left me with bronchitis for six months. I've had food poisoning on four continents and rashes, gouges and bruises all over my body.

“I've been bitten by bed bugs at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and spent sleepless nights clutching a can of Chinese-made bug spray in a rented house in Kabul, poised to ward off cockroaches as big as my hand.”

For those now turned off on thinking about foreign assignments, a switch to covering City Hall seems like a quiet, sanitary, nifty beat to consider.

N.Y. Times explores images of U.S. combat deaths

Periodically, over the years, some media outlets seek to run graphic photos of dead U.S. military personnel.  When military authorities nix the images, cries go out about restrictions, a growing effort to control photos or footage, and press freedom.

Under the headline, 4,000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images, the New York Times on Saturday focused on the case of Zoriah Miller, a freelance photographer, who was barred from covering the Marines in Iraq after he posted pictures of combat deaths.  He has since departed Iraq.

Grumpy Editor says such photos, when published or aired on TV, serve no purpose other than shock value and lowered morale along with giving the enemy something to tout.  In addition, small things in the images, such as surroundings and shoulder patches on uniforms give the bad guys some welcomed free intelligence plus visuals on the effectiveness of their techniques in attacking troops.

Interestingly, all this comes at a time when there is a strong push in the education system and in business --- with abundant media stories chronicling the trend --- for more sensitivity.

One of Miller’s photos shows several dead Marines, with faces covered, on the ground following a June 26 suicide attack in Garma, Iraq.

Censorship of photos showing American casualties of war goes back to World War I.  Then in World War II, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt lifted censorship restrictions, LIFE magazine, in September, 1943, decided to publish a photo showing three dead U.S. soldiers near their upended landing craft after a Japanese ambush in New Guinea. 

Other photos of wounded and dead appeared during the Korean and Vietnam wars.  But editors generally put aside shots of body parts and bloody bodies.

Such photos, while sought by certain media outlets, are not something generally welcomed by today’s readers or TV viewers, especially families with members on active duty in the military.

In the New York Times piece by Michael Kamber and Tim Arango, they write that despite 4,000 U.S. combat deaths in the current conflict, “searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers.”

The writers mention that opponents of the war, civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the “public portrayal of the war is being sanitized.”

From the military standpoint, they point out, military commanders worry about security in publishing images of the dead as well as an affront to the dignity of fallen comrades.

Images of death also add to grief of families.

And, of course, such images puncture the current sensitivity movement.

How many really grasped Obama’s speech in Berlin?

While media were impressed with the 200,000 turnout in Berlin for Barack Obama’s 25-minute address Thursday, broadcast and print representatives failed to explain what lured a sea of people to the base of the Victory Column and how most of the German crowd reacted with immediate cheers following key sentences in the speech despite poor acoustics and without on-scene simultaneous translation into German, observes Grumpy Editor.

The event was part of a week’s journey to the Middle East and Europe designed to boost Obama’s foreign policy credentials and provide “photo ops” to print and broadcast media in his U.S. entourage.   The media group included evening news TV anchors Brian Williams, NBC; Charles Gibson, ABC, and Katie Couric, CBS, plus key newspaper and magazine reporters.

Despite the stellar journalism brigade, no member pursued how these factors contributed to the elevated attendance (originally, estimates were for up to 10,000 spectators) ---

•  Pre-address reggae and rock live music.  (Even delving in to the Berlin interest in reggae, derived from Jamaican rhythms, would have been an interesting sidebar).

•  Open-pit barbecues around the venue.

•  Tens of thousands of T-shirts, bearing a climate change message, provided by World Wildlife Fund.

•  Members of Democrats Abroad and the local chapter of the Social Democrats, partners in Germany's ruling coalition, rallied their members to attend.

In addition, origin of swaying signs in English and waving American flags was not touched on.

Most important, no one explored the prompt reaction to some of Obama’s delivered sentences.  While some Germans and a scattering of Americans in the crowd understood the oratory in English, what did folks standing up to a mile away near Brandenburg Gate see, hear and understand?  (A few, not visible in TV shots, brought small radios to listen to simultaneous translations via several stations.)

Contrast that with Friday’s joint appearance of Obama with French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris when every word at a gathering of media was translated:  English to French and French to English.

Valley News blushes with its misspelled masthead

Editors were blushing at the Valley News, Lebanon, N.H. this week after an extra S somehow was added to the newspaper’s masthead atop the front page on Monday, making the title read VALLEY NEWSS, notes Grumpy Editor.

Typographical errors in news stories or advertisements do happen on occasion.

But for a newspaper’s large nameplate to be misspelled is rather embarrassing.

The day after the king-size mistake, the newspaper explained, "Readers may have noticed that the Valley News misspelled its own name on yesterday's front page. Given that we routinely call on other institutions to hold themselves accountable for their mistakes, let us say for the record: We sure feel silly."

But the biggest front page error ever observed by Grumpy Editor was in the Los Angeles Times when the main headline rolled off the presses with large, bold, block type that turned Navy into NVAY.  It appeared in a weekday “bulldog edition” --- in the days when the early evening first edition of the next day’s paper appeared on newsstands.

Grumpy Editor’s end-of-week leftover notes:

Remote printing:  The Modesto Bee is making plans to print the newspaper at sister publication Sacramento Bee --- 70 miles away.  Moving the printing to Sacramento is expected to result in cutting about 80 equivalent full-time positions…For reporters who are assigned new beats that lead to fresh contacts not familiar to them, one of the chapters in the new AMACOM book, Persuasion IQ:  The 10 Skills You Need to Get Exactly What You Want, author Kurt W. Mortensen, supplies this advice:  Overcome skepticism and quickly establish genuine, lasting trust through competence, confidence, credibility, character and consistently matching words with actions….The New York Times newsstand price goes up 25 cents to $1.50 on Aug. 18…Associated Press, sifting through 449 candidates, named long-time staffer Jesse Washington race and ethnicity writer.  Previously, he was AP’s entertainment editor…Look for the Chicago Tribune to test a new format in a Saturday edition… Also changing its approach is the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison.  It plans to go from four sections to two on Mondays in August to reduce the overall number of pages “without substantially reduce the news hole,” says Tim Kelley, managing editor.  The two-sections format eventually may run Mondays through Wednesdays…A Scarborough Research study finds coupon clippers prefer Sunday newspapers as their top source…The University of Florida’s Center for Media Innovation and Research will start training students in digital media.  It also will house a think tank conducting research in that field.

 

National Hot Dog Day squeezed by other events

Hurricane Dolly blowing into Texas plus political coverage at home and abroad grabbed headlines and broadcast time on Wednesday, overshadowing another event:  National Hot Dog Day.

Thus, the observance received scant coverage even though millions of “dogs” are consumed every day.

One reason could be confusion as to the exact date of National Hot Dog Day.

Recent print and broadcast stories place the event at various times in July.  A Flint (Mich.) Journal story with recipes on July 18 pinpointed National Hot Dog Day on July 19.  Fast Company magazine’s July issue noted it was on July 18.  Still other references extended the observance to July 20 and 21.

So Grumpy Editor went to the authority on the subject, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council.  Spokesman Tom Super promptly declared July 23 as THE day.

Super also figured that on Independence Day --- when hot dogs were a highlight on backyard grills, at picnics and in baseball parks --- 150 million “weenies” were downed in the U.S.  If placed end to end, he illustrated, they would stretch from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles --- more than five times.

Two other interesting statistics from the Council:

•   New Yorkers consume more hot dogs than any other city, beating out Chicago and Los Angeles.

•   During the hot dog season, from Memorial Day to Labor Day and boosted by various sporting events, Americans typically consume seven billion hot dogs or 818 every second.

If you missed observing National Hot Dog Day, National Mustard Day looms on Aug. 2, providing another opportunity to spotlight frankfurters.

N.Y. Times’ axing of McCain op-ed piece brings static

Much reaction this week after the New York Times refused to publish op-ed material about the Iraq war submitted by Sen. John McCain.   The Arizona Republican’s piece, sent to the newspaper four days after The Times ran an opinion piece on the same topic by Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.), was intended to present his side.

It comes at a time when there is a clear imbalance on coverage of the two presidential candidates.

Key print media, plus major TV networks’ news anchors are swarming around Obama on this week’s tour of the Mideast and Europe, while in Manchester, N.H. on Monday night, for example, just one reporter and one photographer were waiting for McCain as his campaign plane arrived.

Nixing McCain’s effort was David Shipley, The Times’ op-ed page editor.  Some have cited the turndown as an example of the newspaper’s political bias, a suspicion heightened by Shipley's background in the Clinton administration where he served from 1995 to 1997 as special assistant to the president and senior presidential speechwriter, notes Grumpy Editor.

An e-mail last Friday from Shipley to Michael Goldfarb, a member of McCain’s team, mentioned, “I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.”  Then he went on to say, “Let me suggest an approach” and, “It would be terrific to have an article from Sen. McCain that mirrors Sen. Obama’s piece.”

An op-ed editor suggesting an “approach” along with text that “mirrors” McCain’s rival as the U.S. presidential race heats up is not the way it’s done. It’s then not the true voice of the person whose name appears atop the op-ed piece.  Remember, one of the candidates will be moving into the White House in January.

Considering the presidential election is less than three and a half months away, the truly fair and balanced way to have handled this for the “newspaper of record” was to run BOTH op-ed pieces on the same day.  That would have allowed readers to compare the candidates’ thoughts, side by side.

On Monday, The Times explained its decision with:  “It is standard procedure on our op-ed page, and that of other newspapers, to go back and forth with an author on his or her submission.”

Somehow, however, The Times is forgetting that, unlike much inferior material that is directed to op-ed pages around the nation, both Obama and McCain have access to seasoned writers equal to top reporters on The Times staff.  Add to that, public relations experts and advisors who also take squints at proposed texts before they are dispatched to media.

Among the many comments at the The Times’ Web site, “Disco” asks:  “So how many times did the New York Times go ‘back and forth’ with Sen. Obama?  And how many ‘suggestions’ were made to his drafts?  Or was Mr. Obama’s submission treated like the 10 commandments, brought down from Moses, as the word of God?”

Will court action shelve ‘wardrobe malfunction’ footage?

Seems that every few months over the past four and a half years, linked to various federal agency or court developments, TV networks haul out and run the taped action from the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show when millions of viewers got a fraction-of-a-second glimpse of singer Janet Jackson’s breast-baring “wardrobe malfunction.”

That footage flashed across TV screens again on Monday with word that a three-judge federal appeals court threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. 

Hopefully, that periodic snippet that shows singer Justin Timberlake doing the wardrobe adjustment will be placed in storage.

The court determined Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction was too fleeting to warrant the significant sanction sought by the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC had argued that the incident was graphic and explicit and CBS should have been forewarned.

CBS, in challenging the fine, said that “fleeting, isolated or unintended” images should not automatically be considered indecent.

In keeping with TV’s desire to recycle material, then repeat it, it’ll probably pop up again on a most-embarrassing-moment-type program or, perhaps, a “remember when?” as a lead-in to a future Super Bowl break, figures Grumpy Editor.

Obama’s campaigning (?) expected to draw thousands

When is campaigning for public office not campaigning   --- especially when it is conducted overseas?

It will be interesting to see if any of the three television network anchors get into this as they accompany Barack Obama’s overseas trip this week, including today’s stops in Iraq and Amman, Jordan and a major speech before a large gathering in Berlin on Thursday, wonders Grumpy Editor.

Also on the itinerary are stops in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Paris and London.

Over the weekend, Obama made a brief stop in Kuwait and a longer visit in Afghanistan.

The journey is designed to boost Obama’s foreign policy credentials.  It also provides an abundance of “photo ops” via still photos and TV footage as he is greeted by foreign leaders.

While the Democrats’ presidential contender will be meeting with officials along the way, his campaign maintains Obama will avoid public appearances that could be perceived as campaigning.

Yet, a Thursday speech slated at the base of Berlin’s Victory Column, within view of the Brandenburg Gate --- considered one of Europe's most famous landmarks and the initial site sought by the Obama campaign --- is expected to draw thousands, perhaps up to 10,000 or more.

(The Victory Column was built to mark 19th century Prussian military victories over Denmark, France and Austria.)

About 40 U.S. journalists, with notebooks in hand, will be describing the events.  Many are star political reporters representing major newspapers and magazines.

In addition, on-scene evening news TV anchors Brian Williams for NBC, Charles Gibson, ABC, and Katie Couric, CBS, will be busy describing the activities and jockeying for interviews with Obama.

Knowing that TV cameras from the major U.S. networks, along with their anchors, will be on scene, how will Obama’s Berlin speech differ --- other than location --- from one, say, in Iowa?

It will be a close call.

Meanwhile, many public relations folks would relish the unprecedented daily extraordinary print, radio and TV coverage for their clients.

L.A. Times tops list of newspaper staff sheddings

It’s been a tough week for newspaper employees as managements hauled out  axes to chop payrolls in an effort to improve bottom lines as advertising and circulation revenue slump and production costs ---from fuel to newsprint --- mount, notes Grumpy Editor.

Hardest hit is the Los Angeles Times.

About 250 people, including 150 from the Times newsroom, will be cut by Labor Day.  The reductions take the editorial department staff down to about 700.  That’s almost a 50 percent reduction from a decade ago.

Along with the decrease, David Hiller, who took over as Times publisher in October, 2006, is departing.

Elsewhere:

•  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is cutting 189 jobs, mainly affecting the news and advertising departments, between August and October.  This will be accomplished through buyouts, layoffs and job eliminations.

•  The Wall Street Journal, reorganizing its copy-editing system, is eliminating about 50 jobs at its South Brunswick, N.J., operation.

•  The Baltimore Sun is chopping 60 newsroom positions by August.

•  The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, Calif., is laying off 17 full timers, including four in the newsroom.  Others are in advertising and production.

•  The Honolulu Advertiser, a Gannett Co. publication, is dropping 54 workers.

Subscribers are getting uneasy.

Going to court is News & Observer subscriber Keith Hempstead, a Durham, N.C., lawyer, who maintains the Raleigh newspaper, after laying off 70 staffers last month and cutting news pages, is now not worth what he signed up for in a recent renewal and therefore the cuts breached the paper’s contract with him.

"I hate to see what companies that run newspapers are doing to the product," says Hempstead. "The idea that taking the most important product and reducing the amount of news and getting rid of staff to me seems pointless to how you should run a newspaper business."

Hempstead, by the way, is a former reporter for the Fayetteville Observer.

Grumpy Editor’s end-of-week leftover notes:

A Tuesday report that Russia is sending warships to patrol Arctic waters for the first time since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union left out the “w”:  why?...Another illustration why important baseball games should be played in the daytime:  Tuesday’s All-Star Game on Fox, which went to 15 innings, ended at 1:37 a.m. in New York.  The late ending meant the final stats didn’t make deadlines of Wednesday newspapers in the East and elsewhere.  It also saw a big drop in TV viewers as the game went past the usual nine innings…Another example of watching the bottom line at TV networks:  Starbucks coffee no longer is provided free to Law and Order staffers at NBC…Still photographers will welcome word that Tokyo-based Canon Inc. in January starts construction for a digital camera plant in western Japan.  This runs counter to most other camera companies that go to China and other cheap labor areas…Starting July 28, newsstand price of The Wall Street Journal goes to $2 a copy, up from $1.50, putting it on par with the Financial Times…Expecting big news on the economy and energy matters, the broadcast networks --- NBC, CBS and ABC --- joined the cable news networks in airing “live” President Bush’s Tuesday news conference…A year-long Washington Post investigation has produced a 12-parter, “Who Killed Chandra Levy?”  Chapter 6 runs today.  The series focuses on what the Post calls “Washington's most famous unsolved crime” in which police and prosecutors suspected a congressman was responsible. ..Fox News’ Brit Hume is expected to leave his anchor post after the November election but continue with his input as a "Fox News Sunday" panelist.