Grumpy Editor

Thirsty Nevadans take only 3 percent of Colorado River

Periodically, especially during dry years, such as 2013, thirsty-for-stirring-things-up media put the spotlight on how less Colorado River water looms for the Southwest --- especially the growing Las Vegas area --- and certain steps will have to be taken to limit usage, observes Grumpy Editor. 

But what is not emphasized is that the whole state of Nevada, not just Las Vegas, sips only 3 percent of the Colorado River water released from Lake Mead while a foreign country, Mexico, siphons five times more from the same source. 

The water also is shared by six other states:  Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.  Mexico was included via a treaty way back in the 1940s. 

So it’s not unusual to read predictions such as “without dramatic and wide-ranging action, population growth and climate change will overwhelm the Colorado River within 50 years.” 

It’s natural for dry periods to alternate with wet seasons.  

With the latter, when there are large spring-summer runoffs from heavy snowfalls in western mountains, very little “water pinch” rhetoric emanates from media. 

If water supply is of such concern, then perhaps the decades-old treaty with Mexico should be renegotiated to reflect population changes in the U.S.

 

Keystone XL pipeline hits another federal bump 

Grumpy Editor notes the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, long in the works, now is sidelined by the Interior Department that is concerned on effects mainly on wildlife. 

The pipeline would extend 1,700 miles from Canada’s oil sands to Texas Gulf Coast refineries and create thousands of jobs while cutting U.S. reliance on imported oil. 

As pointed out by Los Angeles Times writer Neela Banerjee last week, a 12-page April 29 Interior Department letter, but posted mid-August, “grimly catalogs many ways Keystone XL could harm wildlife: ‘species displacement, increased predation rates and predator travel lanes, increased nest parasitism, vehicle collisions with wildlife…invasive plant species, increased wildfire risk, lower wildlife density, increase in collisions with power lines and electrocutions on power poles … and increase in poaching.’” 

(Sounds almost like what happens daily along Los Angeles freeways.) 

The Interior Department comments contradict the State Department’s March draft environmental assessment, which concluded the project would have only a temporary, indirect impact, noted Banerjee. 

The Times writer also mentioned: “The State Department could issue its final environmental impact statement at any time. The Obama administration must then determine whether the pipeline serves the national interest, based not just on the State Department's analysis, but those of other federal agencies, too, such as the EPA and the Interior Department.”

 

In case you missed these… 

Publishing items:  Other publications must be drooling at the WSJ. monthly magazine for September, which is packed with ritzy ads.  With 160 pages, readers don’t get to the list of editorial contents until page 37…Koch Industries Inc. over the weekend ended speculation on buying the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune or other Tribune Co. newspapers.  Brothers Charles and David Koch say they are no longer interested.  This must have brought relief to some L.A. Times staffers who earlier vowed to quit if the billionaire brothers took over.  Name mentioned now is Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman, who has expressed interest in the L.A. Times with its closeness to the entertainment business…A large group of Egyptian protesters, opposing the Muslim Brotherhood, gathered in front of the Washington Post Thursday, temporarily shutting down the main lobby.

With Army soldier Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison Thursday for leaking 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents over seven months in 2010, Grumpy Editor finds it strange that not one newsperson asked how a 22-year-old private first class (with one stripe on sleeves), could be placed in the sensitive position of intelligence analyst.  Manning last week announced he replaced his first name with Chelsea and intends to live as a female…Walt Disney Co. plans to lay off about 175 people in its Disney/ABC Television Group…A new Rasmussen Reports survey finds 79 percent of adults believe most Americans watch too much television…Easy-to-take Vin Scully, 85, who returns to the Los Angeles Dodgers broadcast booth in 2014 for his 65^th season with the team, terms the long-term relationship “a love affair that continues”…Former House speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will be one of the hosts on CNN’s revived half-hour political debate show, Crossfire, which restarts on Sept. 16. 

While most media have become silent on IRS and Benghazi scandals, on Thursday they jumped to write or air material on the 40-year-old Watergate event based on additional Richard Nixon tapes.

Halting source of salad mix illness takes two months

 

It took two months to halt shipments of prepackaged salad mix that brought 576 cases of cyclospora to 19 states, at last count by the federal Centers for Disease Control through Thursday, notes Grumpy Editor. 

The outbreak started in Iowa and Nebraska before spreading to 17 other states:  Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York (including New York City), Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Medical writers, essential staffers at one time before newsroom cuts became routine, probably could have cracked source and distributor in a matter of days. 

First cases of cyclospora --- a single-celled parasite often associated with contaminated fresh produce --- turned up in early June.  Shipments of Mexican-grown Taylor Farms salad mix were halted Aug. 9. 

Reports circulated that some restaurant chains served the contaminated salad mix.

Cyclospora symptoms can take several days or weeks to appear and include diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue, nausea and stomach cramps. 

J-school grads take 6-8 months to land jobs 

It’s been a tough time for journalism graduates to line up jobs pronto. 

A University of Georgia’s Grady College survey found about 66 percent of 2012 journalism graduates took six to eight months after graduation to line up full-time positions.  That was up from 62 percent in the prior year. 

The J-school graduates were going into a market where thousands of newsroom jobs have been slashed at both large and small publications. 

“Employers might be shedding senior-level jobs, but there’s always pressure to hire entry-level jobs,” said Lee Becker, University of Georgia journalism professor and co-author of the report. He noted there was an increase in start-up online publications. 

The median salary for new hires hasn’t been earth-shaking:  $32,000 in 2012, edging up from $31,000 a year earlier.

 

In case you missed these… 

Celebrity scandals or Egypt riots?  A new Rasmussen Reports national survey found 81 percent of Americans think fellow Americans pay too much attention to celebrity news and not enough attention to other developments that have real impact on their lives.  In allied action, Rasmussen tallied 58 percent of those surveyed, when given the choice, preferred to read printed versions of newspapers rather than online material, while 29 percent gave the nod to online versions of papers --- and 12 percent were undecided.  

Rick Folbaum, from Fox News Channel, joined Miami’s WFOR-TV (known as CBS4) as co-anchor of the station’s weeknight 5 and 11 newscasts.  He goes on air next Monday…Also in Miami, demolition is under way at the former Miami Herald headquarters by the Genting Group which paid nearly $240 million for the site on Biscayne Bay.  Genting plans a condominium and hotel project on the property and is seeking approval to incorporate a casino…Sports makes way for classical music beamed from California’s Monterey-Salinas-Santa Cruz radio station KYZZ 

Chris Roush at Talking Biz News uncovered a busy business editor at the Statesboro (Ga.) Herald.   He pointed out Jan Moore, along with editing business items for the daily, also is a psychologist for the local school system and is running for mayor of Statesboro. 

The city, with a population of about 28,000 is in Bulloch County, southeast Georgia.

Climate change causes wildfires, say senators Reid, Boxer

Two U.S. senators, without meteorological or scientific backgrounds, have grabbed chunks of print space with their “expert” comments on climate change, notes Grumpy Editor 

Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) in the Las Vegas Sun opinion page yesterday declared, “There should be no doubt: Climate change is contributing to wildfires in the West and causing them to be more ferocious, frequent and devastating.” 

He pointed out 28,000 acres recently burned in the mountains west of Las Vegas.  

But he did not mention that wildfire was started by a lightning bolt, and U.S. acres burned this year through mid-July ranked second lowest for the like period over the past decade, (according to a tally by National Interagency Fire Center). 

Reid, who co-hosts a Las Vegas gathering tomorrow on clean energy, said extreme weather will be one of the issues to be discussed and “how clean energy investments can make communities more resilient to such weather.” 

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), in the wake of a wildfire that burned 19,000 acres near Palm Springs, also puts the blame on climate change --- but also indicated budget cuts are limiting resources to fight such blazes. 

(She did not mention that budget cuts are man made.)

 

Many say news reports often inaccurate, finds Pew 

Outside of the media’s role of watchdog, 67 percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press say news reports are often inaccurate.

Pew Research also finds 76 percent of those surveyed say news organizations tend to favor one side while 75 percent mention media often are influenced by powerful people and organizations 

Ratings of news organizations have declined steadily since Pew Research first began tracking attitudes in 1985. Many current ratings stand near all-time lows reached in 2011. 

For 69 percent of those surveyed, television remains the top news source. This compares with 28 percent who prefer newspapers and 23 percent who tune in to radio as their main source. 

“The current media landscape is starkly different than in 2001, when 45 percent said newspapers were their main source for news,” relates Pew.

 

In case you missed these…

With TV:  Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus threatens to pull NBC and CNN access to the 2016 Republican primary debates unless those networks shelve their recently-announced Hillary Clinton film projects.  Priebus says if the networks fail to pull those films by Wednesday’s RNC summer meeting, he will "seek a binding vote of the RNC stating that the committee will neither partner with you in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates which you sponsor”…John Seigenthaler Jr., remembered for his 11 years at NBC, joins the new Al-Jazeera America network as a prime-time news anchor of the network's nightly prime-time show to be broadcast from New York.  When it launches Aug. 20, Al-Jazeera America will have bureaus in a dozen U.S. cities…Bad TV day:  A news crew from San Francisco’s KGO-TV and its security guard were greeted in Oakland mid-afternoon last week by three men, one with a gun, who ran off with camera equipment…Jay Leno’s final “Tonight” show on NBC will be on Feb. 6. 

On the heels of the recent Internal Revenue Service scandal, small business owners in the U.S. are receiving letters from the IRS questioning the reporting of their cash income. Some lawmakers and business owners say the move is alarming…Maybe the IRS seeks additional funds for this:  The U.S. government needs an estimated $1.7 billion annually to keep up 6,700 empty and 71,000 underused buildings, reveals Bloomberg Businessweek…After cutting newsroom staffers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer now publishes a free-standing business section only on Sundays…AccuWeather introduces a 45-day (that’s right, a month and a half) weather forecast offered free-of-charge on Accuweather.com.

Speaking of weather --- and illustrating hot summer days --- rather than the usual U.S. beach, sailing or kids running through sprinklers shots, Associated Press last week transmitted a photo (used by U.S. editors, no less) of children cooling off via water in a park --- in Bucharest, Romania.

Climate change triggering 'violence' stirs news editors

Team climate change with a likely increase in future violence and news editors at major print/broadcast media go bananas, finds Grumpy Editor. 

Grabbing chunks of newspaper space and radio/TV airtime Friday and into the weekend were mentions that shifts in climate --- even relatively minor departures from normal temperatures --- could significantly increase human conflicts around the world by 2050, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University. 

Solomon Hsiang, the study’s lead author, is described as a postdoctoral fellow in science, technology and environmental policy at Princeton during the research project and now is an assistant professor of public policy at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. 

Most print/broadcast news outlets did not identify Hsiang other than “lead author,” although Associated Press labeled him as an economist. 

What media overlooked was that Hsiang, also as lead author in a study publicized two years ago, covered much of the same ground with “often war is associated with global climate change.”  See him in an Aug. 29, 2011 podcast here.   

If future extreme heat is likely to trigger violence, then violent crime should be rampant now in places such as Palm Springs, Phoenix and Las Vegas, where temperatures last month soared to (what is considered normal for the period) 112-118 degrees --- and 100-plus readings continue this week. 

And Death Valley, where the thermometer reached a world record ---  a scorching 134 degrees --- a century ago (July 10, 1913, to be exact), should be the shootout capital of the world.  However, readings at the California tourist site “cooled down” in recent days from 128 degrees on July 3 and 129 degrees on June 30.  The temperature reached only 112 degrees there on Friday.  No recent crime sprees were reported. 

Most July job growth comes via part-time work 

While most media trumpeted the July government employment report released Friday as adding 162,000 positions (and not mentioning the number was below economist expectations of 184,000), Kevin G. Hall, at McClatchy’s Washington bureau, went a step further to point out: 

A closer look at the Labor Department figures “suggests that part-time work accounted for almost all the job growth that’s been reported over the past six months.”

He also worked in quotes from Keith Hall, a senior researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics:  “Over the last six months, of the net job creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work.  That is really remarkable.”

The researcher added, “That is a really high number for a six-month period. I’m not sure that has ever happened over six months before.” 

Plain Dealer dumps 50 newsroom staffers

In what one news person said was a “graceless” layoff method, Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial staffers were told to stand by their telephones on Wednesday, between 8 and 10 a.m., to learn if they got the ax.  Fifty did.

Others got the green light to go back to the office.

Those getting pink slips were then asked to collect severance materials the following day --- at the paper’s production center about 10 miles away from the editorial room.

Ohio’s largest newspaper, owned b y Advance Publications, in April announced a scale-back in home deliveries to three days a week.

Meanwhile, getting pink slips in other cities were 29 workers at Gannett Co.’s Arizona Republic, Phoenix, and Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial writer Drew Johnson who wrote a headline:  'Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President: Your policies have harmed Chattanooga enough.”  It appeared over an editorial on Tuesday, the day President Barack Obama visited the city.

In case you missed these:

With cries for more U.S. jobs, the Pentagon plans to buy additional Russian-made helicopters for Afghanistan.  The Pentagon has spent $1.1 billion on the Mi-17 choppers since 2010 and will pay $350 million for 15 more of the aircraft, reported the Wall Street Journal…Speaking of where U.S. taxpayers’ money goes, Bloomberg News reported President Barack Obama proposes giving about $323 million in aid next year --- to Columbia, to combat drug trafficking and violence in that South American nation.

Amelia Rose Earhart, weather and traffic co-anchor at TV station KUSA, Denver, an NBC affiliate owned by Gannett Co., is finalizing plans to re-create her namesake and distant relative Amelia Earhart’s legendary flight which ended on July 2, 1937, when her airplane vanished on approach to Howland Island in the western Pacific.  With co-pilot Patrick Carter, a Fayetteville, Ark., businessman, KUSA’s Earhart, 30, plans the flight for next summer…Less on-base magazine purchasing for Army and Air Force personnel as Army and Air Force exchanges worldwide dropped 891 periodicals ranging from Playboy to Saturday Evening Post --- yes, even SpongeBob Comics…ESPN will hire bloggers to cover NFL teams this season. 

Lack of investigative reporters?  While a wide outbreak of cyclospora, a lengthy intestinal illness, sickened more than 400 salad eaters in the U.S., media failed to dig in and seek the source of the tainted pre-packaged veggies, as health officials stayed unusually mum on the source and label involved.