Grumpy Editor

Student censured for recording teacher’s comments

A student secretly videorecording an Orange Coast College teacher making anti-Donald Trump remarks --- including mention that his election as president was “an act of terrorism” --- in class resulted in the student's suspension for the current semester and the summer term, noted Grumpy Editor.

That harsh action by the Costa Mesa, Calif. community college came because Coast Community College District said policy prohibits recording someone on the district's property without his or her consent.

The student, Caleb O'Neil, who recorded comments of Olga Perez Stable Cox, also was told to write an apology letter and a three-page essay describing why he recorded the teacher and his "thoughts and analysis" of the incident.

Cox, 66, also compared election results to the nation “divided clearly as it was in Civil War times."

Representing 19-year-old O’Neil, attorney William Becker said the punishments were excessive and O’Neil’s legal rights have been violated.

Becker added: "This is an attack by leftists in academia to protect the expressive rights of their radical instructors at the expense of the expressive rights of conservative students on campus."

 

IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE…

Media notes: Lots of chatter over the weekend on “preserving a free press.” What concerns the White House --- and seasoned news folks --- however, is a constant stream of erroneous/unconfirmed information worked into print and broadcast news stories…An example of a fabricated report: White House press secretary Sean Spicer denied that the Trump administration was considering a proposal to mobilize up to 100,000 National Guard troops to round up illegal immigrants…Meanwhile, jabs by media personalities do not help, as with NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” yesterday when, as an example, he injected an opinionated line: “You don’t have presidential leadership right now”…Also working in more opinions in his 3 p.m. (Eastern) newscasts last week was Fox News host Shepard Smith.  Contrary to the "fair and balanced" slogan of the news channel, Smith, in one example, glared at the TV camera and sternly criticized President Donald Trump for "repeating ridiculous throwaway lines"...Some of the mainstream media represented at Trump’s Thursday news conference were irked after he avoided calling on any of them. (This after some news organizations likened him to Adolf Hitler and floated false reports.)

After five and a half weeks with a new face in the White House, the New York Stock Exchange continued to roll to new highs, with the Dow Jones closing Friday at 20624.05…Thinking about becoming a print or broadcast journalist but find it difficult to meet deadlines? Better focus on another line of work. A CareerCast survey of 1,000 people found 71 percent have higher than moderate stress in the workplace. The Carlsbad, Calif. company said most common cause of stress was deadlines (30%)…A quiet fee boost points to shorter stays in Sin City.  Caesars Entertainment, which operates 10 Las Vegas hotel-casinos including Caesars Palace, Paris Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood and Rio, upped its resort fee starting March 1 by $1 to $3, making it (with tax) $39.68 per day, tacked on to the room rate, surprising some visitors.  Look for other casino operators to follow with an increase…Delta Air Lines announced it will start serving meals to all passengers on 12 long-haul routes --- including busy New York-Los Angeles --- over the next several weeks…One of the strongest storms in years smacked Southern California late in the week. Heavy rain triggered mudslides, flooding, sink hole, jammed roads and closed freeway sections.  Yet, Gov. Jerry Brown still thinks there is a drought… Apple and Amazon topped the annual list of Fortune magazine’s most admired companies.

Today is Love Your Pet Day. Thus, it’s a good time to give your dog, cat and (perhaps) turtle an extra goodie! Pet stores hope sales of pet beds and toys get a boost today.

Questions remain in wake of U.C. Berkeley rioting

Grumpy Editor noted a couple of interesting things in connection with last Wednesday’s widely-covered rioting at U.C. Berkeley: With wall-to-wall protesters, some tossing explosives and others smashing windows and starting fires, only one (or three) arrests were made. And, strangely, apparently no media person sought quotes from U.C. President Janet Napolitano, the former secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama.

The violent protests that prompted the cancellation of Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos’s speech resulted in $100,000 in damage.

Police estimated 1,500 protesters were involved.

Most stories cited just one arrest. But KGO, San Francisco, put the number nabbed at three.

Media were silent on some questions:

Why weren’t there more arrests?

Why weren’t there more police on the scene?

Were many protesters non-students?

Rioting extended to downtown Berkeley where windows of bank offices were boarded up Thursday after being smashed the previous night.

On Thursday's CNN Tonight, U.C. Berkeley professor and former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich promoted a conspiracy theory, maintaining it was a group of right-wingers --- perhaps linked to Breitbart News --- who were responsible for the rioting.

The uprising resulted in President Donald Trump questioning federal funds to the campus while mentioning, “U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view.”

U.C. Berkeley last year received $370 million in research money from the federal government, more than half its total research budget of $674 million.

 

IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE…

Setting the media straight:  Vice President Mike Pence was busy on the Sunday news circuit, making the rounds at ABC's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press," CBS' "Face the Nation" and "Fox News Sunday"... The Mercury News, San Jose, reported after a month of blizzards, the Sierra Nevada snowpack --- source of a third of California’s drinking water --- is 177 percent of the historic average, most since Feb. 1, 1995, adding, “California Gov. Jerry Brown isn’t likely to amend or rescind the state’s emergency drought declaration until April”…NewsBusters observed New York Times CEO Mark Thompson on CNBC’s Power Lunch argued that the newspaper doesn’t display a liberal bias because “we aim to be objective and to tell people straightforwardly what's happening”…The New Yorker and Vanity Fair have pulled out from White House Correspondents’ Dinner events slated for April 29… Now animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is concerned over ‘Punxsutawney Phil,“ the groundhog that gets national coverage on Groundhog Day.  On Thursday, “Phil” took the stage in Gobbler's Knob, Pa. and predicted six more weeks of winter. The time-honored tradition, however, could actually be harmful for Phil, PETA told Britain’s DailyMail.com…Meredith Corp., publisher of Better Homes and Gardens, Parents and Shape, among others, laid off 40 staffers…The Wall Street Journal is closing its bureau in Budapest as part of its downsizing in Europe and Asia.

 

In a New York Times op-ed piece, actress Angelina Jolie wrote that discriminating against refugees for their religion or country of origin "invites the very instability we seek to protect ourselves against."

Princeton University bans any word containing ‘man’

This just in:  Princeton University in New Jersey no longer has freshmen --- they are now known as first-year students, observes Grumpy Editor.

It’s all part of a national trend toward doing away with man in solo form or contained in a descriptive word, and going gender neutral.

Among other “neutral” changes:  substituting ancestors for forefathers and using humanity or people rather than mankind.  (But those behind the anti-man policy overlooked the word humanity contains the three banned letters m-a-n.)

Other universities also are pushing for the use of gender neutral or gender inclusive language.

Anything with “man” gets tossed.

Even workmanlike is being thrown out and replaced with skillful.

Replacement words are being used on a variety of occupations that typically include the word “man,” such as businessman, foreman and weatherman.

 

IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE...

From yesterday’s New York Post column under the headline, American journalism is collapsing before our eyes by Michael Goodwin, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who has been on the New York media scene for 30 years: After mentioning The New York Times (where he once worked) used to be considered “the flagship of journalism,” Goodwin wrote, “The Times now is so out of the closet as a Clinton shill that it is giving itself permission to violate any semblance of evenhandedness in its news pages as well as its opinion pages"...Nasty comments came from readers of the St. Louis Business Journal after it profiled the city’s 25 “most influential business women” in a photo gallery that shows each with a pair of shoes. Apparently St. Louis business readers aren't familiar with the much-larger-in-circulation Bloomberg Businessweek that regularly runs a feature that identifies sources of clothes and shoes of prominent business people.  Current Businessweek, for example, displays a full page focusing on the attire of a female San Francisco executive --- and noting her shoes are Saint Laurent...Meanwhile, a strange Bloomberg Businessweek cover now lurks on newsstands.  Name of the magazine is hardly readable as the title, in dark gray, fades into a black background where date of issue is just about invisible.  The cover's main line --- traditionally to attract attention --- is a mere three sixteenths of an inch in height with seven tiny words in yellow...Ford plans to produce self-driving cars for commercial ride-sharing or on-demand taxi services by 2021...While some cable news networks went almost wall-to-wall with word that Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort resigned, some newspapers wrapped up the development in seven sentences.  Such concentrated effort, incidentally, sidetracks coverage of the monster flood that smacked Louisiana. Old-school news reporters say if the once-in-a-century flood happened in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, there would be non-stop coverage at the top of the news…Trump blasted the media last week for what he viewed as distorted and biased reporting.  On Saturday he threatened to ban more news organizations from covering his campaign...Meanwhile, the Trump campaign released its first TV ads of the general election with a $4 million buy.  But it is still far behind the $61 million the Hillary Clinton campaign spent so far...Many TV news operations aren’t too alarmed by 15 more Guantanamo Bay prisoners being released even though military experts say 2o to 30 percent of them go back into the field as bad guys.

 

A surprise appearance of a life-size statue of a naked Donald Trump appearing in New York City’s Union Square prompted this response from (presumably a straight-faced) parks spokesman:

“NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small.”  

 

Do campus fees result in some students being homeless?

Hard to believe, but a study found one in 10 California State University students is homeless and one in five doesn’t have steady access to enough food --- yet students pay thousands of dollars in annual tuition fees, observed Grumpy Editor.

The study --- not widely reported --- was conducted by the CSU system, largest public university system in the country, with 460,000 students at 23 campuses.

University officials said students aren't required to report unstable housing conditions and many don't seek help “because of the shame associated with homelessness.”

So the homelessness figure could be higher.

CSU undergraduates pay the systemwide tuition fee of $5,472 per academic year for enrolling in more than six units per term and $3,174 for enrolling in six or fewer units.

Students enrolling in graduate programs and other post baccalaureate students pay a tuition fee of $6,738 for more than six units and $3,906 for six or fewer units.

In addition, students at each campus face mandatory fees, varying by location.

 

IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE…

Major overreaction?  It should be noted, following the British vote to leave the European Union, that the U.K. accounts for only about four percent of the world economy...Overlooked quotes on taxes in an election year:  "We have the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world --- 39 percent.  Other countries over the past 20 years have been steadily lowering their corporate tax rates.  Ours has stayed the same.  We also have very unpredictable regulations," said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow and director at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and former U.S. Labor Department chief economist...Bank of America Corp. will pay $415 million to settle allegations that its Merrill Lynch unit misused billions of dollars in customer funds...Pacific Gas and Electric Co.will shutter its Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, last one in California, in 2025...Overlooked story:  The U.S. Senate voted down a Republican-backed proposal to expand the F.B.I.'s secretive surveillance powers following the mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub...Bloomberg reported the U.S. commercial real estate market could be headed for a slump...Behind Californians leaving for other states: High home prices, worsening traffic, high taxes and a generally more expensive cost of  living.  In the past year, the number of people departing the Golden State exceeded by 61,100 the number who moved to California from elsewhere in the U.S., according to state Finance Department statistics. The "net outward migration" was the largest since 2011, when 63,300 more people fled California than entered...The Council of Economic Advisers reported the proportion of working-age men dropping out of the labor force in the U.S. is higher than in any other advanced economy in the world except Italy...The Japanese government said it is aiming to double the number of tourists visiting Japan to 40 million within four years...A Harvard survey reported by the Washington Examiner:  Home ownership hit a 48-year low, driven in part by foreclosures that put 9.4 million out of their homes...Weather blamed --- again:  Jane Harman, president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said women are disproportionately affected by climate change in developing countries.

 

A half century on TV.

KTRK-TV news anchor Dave Ward was honored last week as the person with the longest career as a television news broadcaster.

He started at the Houston station Nov. 6, 1966.

 

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.

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.

 

San Diego Union-Tribune name change triggers confusion

With the San Diego Union-Tribune changing its name to U-T San Diego this week, some confusion has popped up, especially outside of Southern California, finds Grumpy Editor.

Seems that the abbreviated title --- UT --- has a collegiate flavor since it also stands for:

University of Texas

University of Toledo

University of Tennessee

University of Tampa 

Hotel owner Doug Manchester, who acquired the newspaper late last year, declares, “This change marks a new era in our company’s history.”

The change also affects everything from the newspaper’s business cards to its website. 

Manchester purchased the Union-Tribune from Platinum Equity, an investment firm, which acquired it in May, 2009 from long-time owner Copley Press Inc. 

(During the acquisition process, Manchester said, “Taking ownership of a 143-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization comes with great responsibility. We believe San Diego is the finest city in America and pledge to be strong advocates for the city’s interests and conscientious caretakers of the Union-Tribune and its legacy.”)

The name change is being accompanied by a requested new look of staffers.

In an area noted for casual California lifestyle and far from New York’s Madison Ave., management is asking employees to dress in “sharp business attire.”

Of course, the new “dapper look” will cause problems when reporters cover such events as sooty brush fires, high surf action at beaches and aftereffects of downpours.

But they will be among the best dressed at ribbon-cuttings. 

 

College journalism students nabbed for carrying guns

College journalism classes usually are rather serious in learning how to apply the five Ws (who, what, when, where, why) and one H (how) as key elements in news coverage, notes Grumpy Editor.

But packing weapons --- unless, perhaps, someone is gearing up for front-line reporting in a battle zone --- isn’t in curriculums.

So it is sad to note that two students, on leaving a journalism class Monday at Laney College, Oakland, are arrested after guns are found in their backpacks.

Police say one male student, 20, was packing a loaded .40-caliber pistol, the other, 21, possessed an unloaded TEC-9.

The two, police add, are alleged members of an East Oakland gang and one is on probation/parole for gun and robbery convictions, the other is on probation for robbery.

Laney College, named after Joseph C. Laney who was a journalist, among other positions, lists 44 types of associate degrees.

Its journalism department, which “offers practical newspaper experience and academic preparation,” places emphasis on new technologies and preparation for media jobs in a computer-oriented society.

Looks like some attention now also will be placed on the police beat.