Grumpy Editor

Grumpy Editor gets into holiday spirit, returns Jan. 6

Grumpy Editor, mellowed somewhat by holiday goodies, is taking time off to celebrate Christmas and welcome in year 2014.

He --- and his grumpiness --- will return to this space on Jan. 6.

Christmas shopping season figures create confusion

A clue as to why Wall Street is confused over latest economic data --- figures and headlines are all over the place, notes Grumpy Editor. 

Among headlines from Friday’s newspapers: 

Retail buoys economic outlook

Retailers singing ‘Blue Christmas’ as sales fall

Spending jumps in November

The first headline, above, reflects information from the Commerce Department.  It reports retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 0.7 percent in November from the prior month, marking the biggest gain in five months. 

The second headline is based on a report from the National Retail Federation.  It estimates the four-day Thanksgiving Day weekend (including Black Friday) dropped 2.9 percent from last year. 

The third headline also stems from the Commerce Department report with an Associated Press story adding, “Two straight months of healthy sales suggest steady hiring is encouraging Americans to spend more this holiday season, particularly on big-ticket items.”

The AP piece also quotes an economist who points out the Commerce Department report “suggests that the holiday shopping season began on a strong note.” 

The Wall Street Journal, in citing the Commerce Department report, also adds input from an economist who says, “the numbers certainly suggest a stronger trajectory of consumer spending than we had thought." 

 

In case you missed these… 

 

NEW JOURNALISM JOBS LOOM AS LOS ANGELES SOON GETS A NEW DAILY.  Aaron Kushner, co-owner and publisher of the Orange County Register says his operation will move into the City of Angels early next year with a new, seven-days-a-week newspaper, the Los Angeles Register, staffed by journalists working in Los Angeles covering local news.  Kushner points out more than 200 people were added to his news staff in the past year, more than the size of most newsrooms in the country. 

 

NOT A VERY NICE CHRISTMAS PRESENT.  Martha Stewart Living magazine is hit especially hard as Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia lays off between 75 and 100 staffers --- about 25 percent of the company’s work force --- 13 days before Christmas. 

 

JOURNALISM MAJOR RETURNS AT TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY.  The College Station school in the Lone Star State is bringing back its journalism major next fall.  But it will be "a small, rigorous program limited to 25 entering freshmen per year,” says the university. 

 

LOCAL VS. FOREIGN THINKING BY SAME-CITY EDITORS.  A few days after the Las Vegas Review-Journal runs a photo of Santa Claus cavorting with fish in a far-off South Korea tank, the Las Vegas Sun features a full page with five photos of a Sin City Santa swimming with sharks and other fish in the aquarium at nearby Silverton, a Las Vegas casino.

 

AT LEAST BALLPARK HOT DOGS REMAIN UNCHANGED --- FOR NOW.  Taking some of the sport out of the game, baseball’s rules committee votes to outlaw home-plate collisions by 2015.  Under the rules, runners would have to (politely?) slide home while catchers, giving runners a clear path, will not be allowed to block home plate.

 

“HURRY UP AND WAIT” ROUTINE CONTINUES FOR VETERANS.  Not widely heralded in national broadcast or print news from Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s home state, is that Nevada veterans shockingly wait an average 433 days to have disability benefits claims completed by the Veterans Administration, according to Dean Heller, the Silver State’s other U.S. senator, a Republican. 

 

NOW IT'S SANTA’S TRANSPORTATION VEHICLE THAT IS THREATENED.  While polar bears used to be the great concern of global warming folks, now it’s the Arctic’s alleged reduced number of reindeer that worries them --- and obviously making it tough for Santa. 

 

ONE AWARD THE WHITE HOUSE SNUBS.  PolitiFact gives President Obama its “lie of the year” prize for his claim that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Period.”

Is ‘Taps’ looming for Stars and Stripes newspaper?

Among operations the Pentagon is eyeing in efforts to cut its overall budget:  stopping the presses of Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that made its debut in 1861 during the Civil War and since World War I has been eagerly read mainly by military personnel around the world, reports Grumpy Editor.

The daily newspaper, receiving a slim $7.8 million Defense Department subsidy for 2014, doesn’t make much of a dent in the Pentagon’s overall budget with defense spending this year passing the $700 billion mark.  But the Pentagon next year faces a $52 billion cut from planned spending levels and every one of its operations is being scrutinized.

(Yet, budget-cutting Pentagon still has a fat checkbook.  An Associated Press story over the weekend reports the  Pentagon is buying more than five dozen Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters to outfit Afghanistan’s security forces.  Price tag:  more than $1 billion.)

Stars and Stripes generates a good chunk of its budget internally via advertising, sales and special issues on education, insurance, retirement planning and travel.

Over the years, Stars and Stripes provides an editorially independent voice to its readers, now numbering about 200,000.  That’s down from its peak of more than one million during World War II but today the newspaper is seeing a growing online presence.

The publication maintains news bureaus in Europe, the Pacific and the Middle East to provide first-hand reporting on events in those theaters. In addition to news and sports, its contents contain all the elements of an American hometown paper.  That includes comics, puzzles and entertainment stories.

Stars and Stripes got its start when 10 Union soldiers utilized the abandoned newspaper office of the Bloomfield (Mo.) Herald.  (Returning to its roots, The Stars and Stripes Museum/Library is located in that city.)

At one point, the newspaper had 25 publishing locations in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific.

The number of editions touched 35 during World War II, with up to 24 adless pages per issue.  Pacific editions, also without ads, started in 1945.  Stars and Stripes has since been a prime source of daily information for U.S. forces from the Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War to Iraq and Afghanistan.

While in past years most staffers wore U.S. military uniforms representing Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, today its publisher and most of its employees are civilians.

In case you missed these…

Associated Press transmitted one of its rare “flashes” to announce Nelson Mandela’s death…TV news channels were excited when a vehicle transporting radioactive isotope cobalt-60 was hijacked near Mexico City.  “It may be headed toward the U.S. border,” they promptly exclaimed, hinting about a possible sinister purpose.  But the vehicle and its lethal contents were found two days later near the stolen site…The New York Times ran a long piece on restaurants, mentioning No. 66 opening in an upscale eatery area --- in far-off New Orleans…Look for a weekly print version (which ceased last year) of Newsweek to reappear next month or in February…It didn’t get the super national coverage that recent happenings of Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford received, but Statesboro (Ga.) Herald business editor Jan Moore was elected mayor of Statesboro, Bulloch County’s largest city, with a population of about 30,000…Big radio buzz in Southern California talk radio has Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Clark Howard moving to KTLK, Los Angeles, next month.  Meanwhile, booming KFI, Los Angeles, goes all local with live chatter…TV and radio news continues to drop everything to air released audio recordings, such as 911 calls, of major past events.  Last week the focus was on year-old 911 calls from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Conn.  After the airing, legal analyst Mark Geragos said the decision to air the recordings was wrong.  “Other than pure titillation, I don’t see any public interest served by this whatsoever,” he said.

A (huh?) report from the Federal Reserve last week noted the U.S. economy in recent months expanded at a “modest to moderate” pace.  Now, that’s a precise, nifty indicator.

L.A. Times makes way on front page for giant Disney ad

At a time when most newspaper readers seek more front-page news, the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday turned over a chunk of its opening page to The Walt Disney Co. for a sprawling movie ad that included space where normally a top headline is placed, notes Grumpy Editor. 

In the process, only three news stories appeared on the front page.  Usually four to six reports run on its opening page.  (This compared with 15 to 18 opening-page stories when The Times, with greater competition from five other dailies in the city, produced “newsy” front --- and larger --- pages with eight columns.) 

The Disney ad, in white letters against a blue background, stretched across the top of the page, down the left side at almost a column width and full-width across the bottom in continuing the message. 

“In the past, The Times has sold movie tie-in wraps around the front page, done fake front pages that cause controversy or sold a chunk of the page for advertising,” Kevin Roderick wrote on his LA Observed website. “This is the first time I remember The Times (or any other top U.S. newspaper) dropping half of the content on its actual front page for an ad --- in this case for an advertiser the paper regularly covers and a movie it will also cover.” 

Roderick, who labeled it a “garishly unattractive Disney movie ad,” added that in The Times newsroom “there is a growing sense that the editors and publisher no longer care much about the printed paper, feeling that the future is digital.”

 

In case you missed these…

USA TODAY AND MCCLATCHY JOIN IN NIXING WHITE HOUSE PHOTO HANDOUTS.  Joining three dozen other news outlets that are nixing White House-provided photography, including images of President Barack Obama, are USA Today, the leading Gannett Co. newspaper, and McClatchy Co. which operates 30 daily newspapers.  USA Today said it will not use handouts originating from the White House Press Office, except in “very extraordinary circumstances.”  McClatchy editors simply said they will not publish photography issued by the White House.

 

Quiz time:  What was the most overused word (especially in advertisements and broadcast coverage) since last Wednesday?  See answer below.

 

IN THE “BAD PR” DEPARTMENT, ESPECIALLY FOR A CITY:  Huntington Beach, Calif., was threatening Johnny’s Saloon, a fixture in the Orange County beach city for three decades, with a $960 fine unless it removes a large rooftop POW-MIA sign that reads: THANK A VETERAN FOR YOUR FREEDOM!   Popular with veterans, the sign has been up for six years.  Said a city spokesperson:“We have been unable to locate a building and electrical permit for the roof sign so we need the owner to demonstrate that it has been permitted.” 

 

NEW MEANING FOR THE MILE-HIGH CITY.  The Denver Post appointed Ricardo Baca as the editor overseeing coverage of the recreational marijuana law that takes effect next month.  Baca, with the Post for nearly 12 years, was entertainment editor and music critic at the paper. 

 

ON TOP OF THE NEWS.  Some Bloomberg Businessweek subscribers still have not received the much-heralded 212-page Nov. 18 issue, its largest since 1999.  Missing that issue, callers to its subscription service were told to hold off until Nov. 25, then, if the issue was still missing, to request a copy.  Those who did call again were informed to expect the slow-to-receive issue in two to four more weeks --- in time for Christmas.

 

Quiz time answer:  Doorbusters. 

 

One of the funniest lines of the week from Jan Leno’s monologue on NBC’s The Tonight Show: 

Obama told Iran “if you like your uranium, you can keep your uranium.”