Grumpy Editor

‘Save the Frogs Day’ protesters target certain eateries

If wrapping up the week with a luncheon today featuring frog legs…beware, you may be the focus of protesters, warns Grumpy Editor.

Why?

It’s “Save the Frogs Day,” certain to gain some coverage on TV today and in tomorrow’s newspapers.

Frog supporters say they will be holding peaceful protests around the country, zooming in on eateries that feature frog legs.

It seems anyone caught munching on frog legs will be subject to scrutiny. 

So, for today, it might be better to go for a cheeseburger or clam chowder (before someone starts “Save the Clams Day”).

The frog savers point out the leaping, tailless amphibians are facing what they call serious problems from disease, habitat loss and invasive predators --- including those who dine on frog legs ordered from contemporary cuisine menus.

Among places targeted is Restaurant Gary Danko near Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, serving pancetta-wrapped frog legs with garlic purée, and Uncle Julio’s, specializing in Mexican food but including marinated and mesquite-grilled frog legs.

For today at Gary Danko, it might be better to order Maine lobster or sea scallops.

At Uncle Julio’s, with locations in Chicago, Atlanta, Boca Raton, Dallas and Washington, D.C., fajitas may be the better substitute today --- hoping that doesn’t result in a frog in the throat.

News regulars return to desks --- as freelancers

A report, based on a “Forbes source,” mentions six reporters who were laid off in October, 2009, are back at their desks --- but some of the returnees are in freelance positions, notes Grumpy Editor.

Payroll trend in recent months, in efforts to boost magazine and Web site bottom lines:  replace full-time staffers with freelancers.

Similar happenings occur at newspapers.  At the Los Angeles Times, for example, a staff correspondent in Latin America for 22 years still covers the area --- but as a freelancer.

For publishers, this provides a lower-cost way to latch on to seasoned writers to fill up editorial space along with eliminating worries that come with regular staffers.

The editorial payroll is trimmed by replacing high salaries associated with long-time, experienced workers and their ever-growing costs for health and retirement plans with the abundance of freelance journalists willing to work long hours, including weekends and nights, with no company benefits.

Thus, publishers get more productivity at less cost in editorial departments.

The freelance writers pool, via constant layoffs at many publications, continues to grow.

Along with this, freelancers in general these days are earning less.

That’s because competition for such talent is keen and many publications also have been cutting back on editorial space, article length (resulting in less pay per word) and, in many cases, pay per word.

One outside source, Associated Content, claims more than 350,000 freelance contributors who have supplied (as of yesterday) 2,124,520 "published submissions."  Writers are paid $5 to $30 an article.

Publications also are going to outside non-journalists for contributions at no pay.

These include experts in the technology, employment, legal and sales fields.

Carl Levin utters “shxxty” word 11 times on live television

Knowing television cameras were broadcasting live feeds from the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations on the financial crisis didn’t deter Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), the panel’s chairman, from uttering a vulgar word (that sounds like shirty) 11 times in under four minutes, observes Grumpy Editor.

No advance notice was given on the surprising daytime usage at yesterday's session televised nationally by CNBC and C-SPAN 3.

Use of that word is customarily bleeped on broadcasts.

The repeated word, best described as “inappropriate for children” and others offended by salty language that usually gets an “R” rating in movies, came with Levin quoting from an e-mail message:

"Boy, that Timberwolf was one sh**ty deal," referring to a transaction involving subprime mortgages at New York-based investment banker Goldman Sachs.

Then Levin repeated the deal phrase, with variations, seeming to be delighted in using it while grilling Daniel Sparks, the former head of Goldman’s mortgage department.

Maybe Levin, born and raised in Detroit --- and a product of the Motor City’s public schools --- wasn’t alarmed in springing the sensitive word.

It may get him labeled with a nickname:  No bleep Levin.

See the action here.

 

U.S. newspaper circulation continues downward drift

With the exception of The Wall Street Journal, which achieved a small gain, other top 25 newspapers saw continued drops in circulation in the six months ended March 31, compared with the same year-ago period, notes Grumpy Editor.

Average weekday circulation decreased 8.7 percent while Sunday circulation slipped 6.5 percent, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Publishers and editors, scratching their heads, don’t have far to look as to why readership continues to ebb.  They pinned major blame on “free” news on the Web, although the economy is a major factor.

But many newspapers have made it less attractive to subscribe.  Rather than dangling inducements during tight wallet times, they have sought to offset advertising revenue by jacking up newsstand and subscription prices.

Also scaring off readers:  fewer pages, extra charges for weekly TV listings supplements, dropped favorite features and comics, and elimination of editorial cartoonists, movie reviewers and Monday business sections.

Reduced newsroom staffs and coverage also have contributed to subscribers pulling out.

The Wall Street Journal remained in first place with a 0.5 percent weekday circulation gain to 2.09 million, beating USA Today’s 1.83 million, after a 13.6 percent drop.

The New York Times came in third with an 8.5 percent decline in weekday circulation to 951,063 and a 5.2 percent drop to 1.38 million but leading the list on Sundays.

The San Diego Union-Tribune was the top weekday loser with a nearly 23 percent tumble to 241,330 while The Washington Post fell 13.1 percent to 578,482.

Taking the biggest Sunday circulation hit was the Dallas Morning News, off 21.45 percent to 373,031.

Editors miss key elements in 7 shuttered Illinois banks

When seven banks in and around a major city --- Chicago --- are closed on the same afternoon by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and one of the financial institutions is owned by the family of the state’s treasurer who happens to be running for President Barack Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat, shouldn’t those two unusual elements point to beefing up a story based on the now-weekly FDIC bank failure announcements, asks Grumpy Editor.

The story, out Friday and treated as a routine piece by Associated Press, was picked up by some print and broadcast outlets around the nation.  Despite all the bank failures being in Illinois, the AP story carried a New York rather than a Chicago or a Washington (home of FDIC) dateline.

The New York Times, meanwhile, on its Web site Friday ran only the first six paragraphs of AP’s 11-paragraph story.  The chopped seventh paragraph mentioned Broadway Bank, Chicago, one of the shuttered seven that day, was "owned by the family of Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat who is running for President Barack Obama's old Senate seat."

The Wall Street Journal, usually alert to major FDIC announcements, omitted mention of the Illinois failures in Saturday editions.

Along with Broadway Bank, others closed by the FDIC were New Century Bank, Citizens Bank & Trust Co. and Lincoln Park Savings Bank, all based in Chicago; Wheatland Bank, Naperville, 30 miles west of the Windy City; Peotone Bank and Trust Co. in Peotone, 40 miles south of Chicago and Amcore Bank, Rockford, 85 miles northwest of Chicago.

Amcore, with 52 branches and $3.8 billion is assets, was the biggest of the seven.

U.S. Senate candidate Giannoulias said shortly after doors were closed on the four-office, $1.2 billion-in-assets Broadway Bank:  “It is an incredibly sad and heartbreaking day for me and my family.”  His brother, Demetris, was CEO of the family operation started 30 years ago by their father.

A spokesperson for Rep. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), Alexi Giannoulias’ opponent in the U.S. Senate race, declared:  “While years of risky lending schemes. hot money investments and loans to organized crime led to today’s failure, it’s a sad day for Broadway Bank employees who may lose their jobs due to Mr. Giannoulias’ reckless business practices.”

Alexi Giannoulias at one time was chief loan officer at the family-run bank when $20 million in loans during a 14-month period were made to a pair of Chicago crime figures, according to an examination by the Chicago Tribune.

The Chicago Sun-Times has reported FDIC records showed Broadway Bank took more chances in commercial and construction loans than most banks.

AP Stylebook change: Web site becomes website

Bye-bye Web site, hello website.

Or is it?

The upcoming AP Stylebook, a reference followed by much of the media, will show Web site combined as one word with a lower-case letter w, frowns Grumpy Editor.

Confusion looms in editorial rooms because other locations in the course of writing stories are pinpointed in two words, such as vacation site, weather site, bomb site, building site and murder site.

Try running those words together and one gets the confusing vacationsite, weathersite, etc.

The two-into-one contractions are even confusing to spell checkers.

Other sources also reject the use of website.

Take Webster’s Online Dictionary, for example.

It’s description in the computing category:  “Web site (not website).  Any computer on the Internet running a World-Wide Web server process.”

As for the 2010 Stylebook, expected to be available next month, "We decided to make the change because 'website' is increasingly common," says Sally Jacobsen, deputy managing editor for projects at the AP and one of three Stylebook editors.

"We also had invited readers and users of the Stylebook to offer us some suggestions for a new social media guide that we're including in the 2010 Stylebook, and we got a very good response and a large number of people who favored 'website' as one word."

AP’s entry reads:

website:  A location on the World Wide Web that maintains one or more pages at a specific address. Also, webcam, webcast and webmaster. But as a short form and in terms with separate words, the Web, Web page and Web feed.

Grumpy Editor notes two climate change editing jobs

Today being Earth Day, for those with editing skills and an interest in climatology, Grumpy Editor finds two positions are open as associate editors at Nature Climate Change, a monthly magazine slated to debut next April.

Nature Publishing Group, which produces Nature, reveals the upcoming international journal “will publish original research across the natural and social sciences and will strive to forge and synthesize interdisciplinary research.”

NPG, a worldwide company that employs more than 800 people, describes the upcoming publication as providing “in-depth analysis and opinion on the impacts and wider implications of the Earth’s changing climate.”

The journal’s mission, it adds, “will be to unify the body of research on the understanding, and impacts, of climate change as well as to place it in a wider social and political context.”

Candidates must have a Ph.D. and be willing to be based in London.

Key elements of the positions include the selection of manuscripts for publication and commissioning, editing and writing of other content for the journal, says NPG, which is seeking “one associate editor with a background in physical climate science and/or climate impacts research, and one associate editor with a background in social sciences and climate research.”

Closing date for applications:  May 10.

For contact information, go here.

 

Most Nevadans remain skeptical of global warming

Does skeptical thinking on global warming by folks in Nevada (in the Wild West) carry much weight with New York and Washington-based media, wonders Grumpy Editor.

Apparently not.

Other than a number of postings on the Web, results of a fresh poll on how Nevadans feel about global warming got waved off by major media who are gearing up for heavy coverage of “cap and trade” legislation from Washington.

Results of a poll released by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., found 55 percent of Nevadans believe global warming remains “unproven and subject to debate.”

That compared with 35 percent who feel it is a “scientifically established reality.”

The poll, commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and conducted last week, was based on responses from 625 registered Silver State voters --- 44 percent indicating they were Democrats, 38 percent Republicans and 18 percent independents.

On the matter of “cap and trade” that would limit the amount of greenhouse gases companies could emit, 55 percent of those polled oppose it while 37 percent support it.

Closing of last U.S. sardine plant blamed on restrictions

Most news accounts on the closing Friday of the last U.S. sardine cannery, hitting Maine and especially Prospect Harbor where the plant has been operating for more than 100 years, missed an important element of the story --- a federal limit on the catch, finds Grumpy Editor.

Closure of the cannery producing the Beach Cliff sardine brand --- largest in the U.S. --- stems from a reduction on the federal limit of Atlantic herring (sardines are juvenile herring that thrive in the cool ocean waters from Greenland to North Carolina).

The limit this year was sliced in half to 91,000 metric tons from 180,000 six years ago, according to a spokesperson for San Diego-based Bumble Bee Foods which, in 2004, acquired what continues to be known as Maine’s Stinson Seafood plant.

Closure affects 128 workers.

In the 1950s, Maine had more than 50 plants canning the tiny fish.

A New York Times story blames the closing on “global competition, corporate consolidations and a general lack of appetite, at least in the United States, for sardines, despite their nutritional value and attempts by chefs to give them an image makeover.”

Dana Rice, a lobster dealer and the town’s first selectman, tells the Bangor Daily News that the reduction of the annual herring quota by the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) “surely deserves much of the blame for the plant’s demise.”

NEFMC is one of eight regional councils established by the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, a program for the conservation and management of U.S. fishery resources “necessary to prevent overfishing, to rebuild overfished stocks, to insure conservation to facilitate long-term protection of essential fish habitats and to realize the full potential of the nation’s fishery resources.”

Looks like lovers of U.S.-processed sardines will now be out of luck as another once thriving American industry is padlocked.

Report: Microsoft’s Chinese supplier abuses teen workers

Revelation of worker abuse and low wages in sweatshop conditions at a Chinese plant that produces products mainly for Microsoft Corp. illustrates why the U.S. continues to lose jobs as corporations seek low-cost manufacturing overseas, notes Grumpy Editor.

The National Labor Committee, a Pittsburg-based human rights advocacy group, cites the KYE Systems Corp. factory in Dongguan, in China’s Guangdong province, on overworking teenagers and housing them in harsh conditions.

KYE also manufactures computer keyboards, card readers and camera modules.  Other companies using KYE output include Hewlett-Packard Co., Samsung Electronics, Foxconn Technology, Acer and Logitech.

Other than The Wall Street Journal on Friday and London’s Daily Mail yesterday, not much has been in print or broadcast on the worker abuse topic.

The charge comes as the U.S. Labor Department says initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 24,000, largest jump in two months, to a seasonally adjusted 484,000.  About 15 million persons remain unemployed in the U.S., which translates to 9.7 percent.

The WSJ mentions that the NLC report alleged many of KYE workers are 16 and 17 years old, housed in cramped dormitories, work 15-hour shifts six to seven days a week and wind up with hourly pay of 52 cents an hour after deductions for food.

NLC says along with students, KYE prefers to hire women 18 to 25 years old because they are considered easier to discipline and control.

During the long work hours, workers are prohibited from talking, listening to music or using the bathroom, NLC reveals.  Young women describe the factory as a prison where everyone who can flees within six months, the report adds.

“The work pace is grueling as workers race to complete their mandatory goal of 2,000 Microsoft mice per shift,” NLC notes.  "During the long summer, factory temperatures reach 86 degrees and the workers are drenched in sweat.”

Microsoft says it will be investigating.