Grumpy Editor

Bush daughter adds Southern Living to media doings

Southern Living magazine’s staff box is adding a familiar name --- former presidential daughter Jenna Bush Hager, notes Grumpy Editor. 

While continuing as a correspondent for NBC’s “Today” show, the daughter of former President George W. Bush joins the magazine as an editor at large. 

In a monthly column, Paper Napkin Interview, she will cover influential Southerners and noteworthy places in the region. 

The addition of Bush Hager, 30, a Texan living in New York, is considered a move to attract some younger readers. 

With almost 3 million in circulation, median age of the magazine’s  readers is 51.2 years. 

She mentions that she grew up reading Southern Living and that her mother had a subscription. 

Grumpy Editor hastens to point out that one of the features in the monthly is the Grumpy Gardener (no relation) who, in his latest column, covers “Give a Grow Box This Christmas.”

 

N.Y. school officials revoke ‘sensitive’ words list

After getting much static, New York City school officials have shelved the idea (reported here on March 29) of banning “sensitive” words such as birthdays, dinosaurs, poverty, dancing, terrorism and Halloween, applauds Grumpy Editor. 

Also targeted to be scrubbed were references to “creatures from outer space,” divorces, diseases, celebrities, and homes with swimming pools and computers. 

The unmentionables, among 50 words and terms frowned on, were disclosed in a request for proposals to companies competing in providing various tests designed to measure student progress.

The N.Y. Education Department document pointed out the subjects were listed because they “could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students.” 

The nutty action was revealed late last month by Yoav Gonen, New York Post education reporter, who called it “a bizarre case of political correctness.” 

At that time, an Education Department spokeswoman, insisting the routine is not censorship, declared, “This is standard language that has been used by test publishers for many years and allows our students to complete practice exams without distraction.” 

This week, Shael Polakow-Suransky, the New York City’s chief academic officer, said: 

“After reconsidering our message to test publishers and the reaction from parents, we will revise our guidance and eliminate the list of words to avoid on tests.

“We will continue to advise companies to be sensitive to student backgrounds and avoid unnecessary distractions that could invalidate test scores and give an inaccurate assessment of how students are doing.”

 

Dutch girl,16, nears end of around-the-world solo sailing

While most newspaper editors have been cramming their editorial space this month with election year candidates/events and milestones, such as Associated Press’s lengthy Guantanamo Bay prison's 10^th anniversary story yesterday, being overlooked is an adventure-courage story of a 16-year old Dutch girl nearing the finish of her solo sailing trip around the world, points out Grumpy Editor. 

Few print readers and television news viewers are aware that Laura Dekker is on the final leg sailing from Cape Town, South Africa, to the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, where she set sail on Aug. 21, 2010. 

She’s due to dock on or around Jan. 24. 

There’s even appealing material, stemming from the voyage, that’s tailored for Nancy Grace on HLN:  Seems that Dutch truancy officers have issued Dekker’s father a summons after a newspaper quoted her as saying poor weather was keeping her from her studies. 

Indeed, the Dutch sailor --- who piloted her first boat when six years old --- this week ran into squalls. 

Sailing the high seas always is an adventure. 

Yesterday, via her Website, Dekker reports:  “The gusty and heavy squall that brought 40-knot winds and pouring rain finally dissolved.” 

New Zealand-born Dekker’s adventure is similar to that of Abby Sunderland, who, at 16 in June, 2010, had to abandon her planned around-the-world solo sailing when bad weather with 30-foot waves snapped her $120,000 yacht’s mast in the Indian Ocean, 2,000 miles west of Australia.

 

‘Daisy Carnival’ near riot in L.A. not news in Las Vegas

While the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun provided pages of coverage relating to late June’s three-night Electric Daisy Carnival --- already booked to return in 2012 --- that drew up to 85,000 generally “well-behaved” attendees each night in Las Vegas, both dailies spiked news reports of a near riot by several thousand rowdy revelers in Hollywood last Wednesday night during a film premiere of the “Electric Daisy Carnival Experience,” notes Grumpy Editor.

Action on famous and busy Hollywood Blvd., where a massive traffic jam developed, showed unruly young people defying police orders to disperse, throwing bottles and stomping on several police cars, damaging roofs and windshields.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority --- eager for any gathering involving 100 to 100,000 attendees --- was delighted when Electric Daisy Carnival backers selected Las Vegas for this year’s music festival. 

The LVCVA cheered even more when EDC announced plans to return to Las Vegas next year, despite some negativeness associated with the mostly young crowd.

The EDC moved its music festival to Sin City this year after Los Angeles banished it following the death of a 15-year-old girl last summer.  Two others died at an EDC event in Dallas in early June.

At the June festival in Las Vegas, police were busy booking some attendees at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway grounds, site of the event.

Twenty-seven felony and 31 misdemeanor arrests were made in Sin City, according to a Las Vegas Sun tally.

The festival each day started around 6 p.m. and concluded at dawn. 

Last week’s near riot on Hollywood Blvd. where the screened film at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre documented one of the nation’s largest electronic dance parties, didn’t get much coverage in U.S. dailies either, although Los Angeles television stations were on scene.

The screening was a private, invitation-only affair.

The near riot in Hollywood was triggered following a Twitter invitation to attend a block party outside Grauman’s.

 

 

Fortune magazine two-page spread focuses on 4-H Club

It is refreshing to see the July 25 issue of Fortune magazine focusing on the much-overlooked 4-H Club, a long-time youth organization, taking up most of two up-front pages including a dominant photo of two members showcasing their 18-month old bulls at the San Diego County Fair on June 29, notes Grumpy Editor. 

The 4-H program, born in 1902, is a bit of Americana but gets surprisingly little coverage in print and broadcast media, especially in large cities. 

Few realize that the 4-H (which stands for head, heart, hands and health) Club is the nation’s largest youth development organization. 

The clubs can be found in every county in every state, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands plus Army and Air Force installations worldwide. 

While members’ projects used to focus mainly on raising animals --- from rabbits to pigs --- the program in recent years has expanded to topics of members' choice. 

Modern 4-H members, usually nine to 19 years old, zero in on such categories as gardening, technology and Web design.  And animals remain popular projects. 

Fortune, a Time Inc. publication, points out there are 6 million young people enrolled in 4-H programs, up from 1.9 million in the 1950s. 

The clubs, linked to university cooperative extension systems, are in urban neighborhoods, suburban schools and rural farming communities. 

An Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University study finds 4-H members are: 

• Nearly two times more likely to get better grades in school.
• Nearly two times more likely to head for college.
• 41 percent less likely to engage in risky behaviors.
• 25 percent more likely to contribute positively to their families and communities. 

With that uplifting profile, more news editors should seek features on wholesome 4-H members in their areas.