On popups, rollovers, takeovers

I take it as a sign the of troubled times in the newspaper business: ads on papers' web sites are becoming unavoidable. Not in number, but in style. Take a look at Bernie from the Bernie & Phyl's furniture chain, on boston.com recently.


It could be worse -- they could be charging me.

D-bags jump the shark

The New York Times ran a front-page story over the weekend about the latest "it" word -- douchebag. The Times asked the anti-free speech group Parents Television Council to count how many times you hear it in primetime. The answer: 76 times this year.

Missing from the story was any mention of what a douchebag is literally or figuratively, making the article a little dry for my taste

Suffice it to say, this little piece of journalism will certainly spell the end of the popularity of douche. Might I suggest a related replacement: Colostomy bag, c-bag for short.

Detractors call it "Klempson"

I want to share this video for two important reasons. First, it makes fun of Clemson, one of my least favorite colleges in the history of colleges. Second, it answers the question of what sportscasters talk about in commercial breaks.

The video begins with off-air banter making fun of a Clemson fan distraught by a loss. Halfway through is what actually aired. Watch is soon, before ESPN lawyers force it off YouTube.

Live or Memorex?

Thanks to my sister for pointing this one out.

One of these magazine covers is real. The other is fake. Try and figure out which is which.

We've been down this road

We're closing in on about 20,000 journalism jobs that have been eliminated since the start of 2008. Yes, it's dire. But I can't say it's all that new.

Take a look at what Dilbert said on the matter, all the way back in February 1995.


I suppose there are some who will see this and think wistfully, "Ah, the mid-90s, when companies would make frivolous part-time hires."

"This is an experiment.... We're not in it to make money."

Way back in 1981, a group of newspapers started fooling around with making their content available to home computer users. Those intertubes might as well have been a trojan horse.

Repeats

The New York Times bought the Boston Globe back in the 1990s, with the promise they'd have a hands-off approach for five years. They lived up to the promise, then after five years sent "storm troopers" into the building and cleaned house, as a colleague once put it.


Their newsrooms remain separate, though that argument is sometimes tough to buy, especially when you see such similarities as the one above.

A bridge crossed

It goes without saying that something historic happened last night. It's the sort of thing that will change the way we see the world forever. I don't really feel like I can overstate it.

I'm referring of course to the debut of CNN's new hologram technology. As Wolf Blizter put it, CNN can now "beam" someone into the studio from hundreds of miles away and make it appear they're speaking face to face with an anchor.

I guess what I don't understand is why CNN would go through all the trouble to fly reporter Jessica Yellin to Chicago, then spend all this money to make it look like she's in the studio. Seems like they could've saved a lot of effort had they just kept her in the studio the whole time.

Flakes on a plane

I am now going to make fun of a lady who got arrested at Logan Airport the other night.

Her name is Randi Goldklank (that's her twice at right, one pic from the Herald and the other from the Globe). She's the 40-year-old general manager of Boston's NBC affiliate, WHDH-Ch. 7. You've probably never heard of her, which is part of what makes it so funny that she told arresting officers "Leave me alone, don't you know who the $@#! I am?"

Well, we do now.

She also threatened to call a camera crew and put the officers on TV to ruin their lives. She changed her tune once she was being booked, telling a sergeant "You think I’m cute and I think you're cute, just drive me home."

Why such erratic behavior?

According to the police report, she was overheard saying she'd had "about three dozen drinks." I struggle to believe her, since Ch. 7 is prone to exaggeration. Though she is from Long Island, so maybe it's true.

In Goldilock's defense, she says she was so angry after getting of the flight because she was groped by a male passenger.

She's been placed on administrative leave from her super high-powered job.

Oops

The Boston Herald all but admitted in a correction this week that it routinely rewrites blogs and press releases without crediting them, then puts an AP byline on their copy as a cover.

They got caught when they mistakenly took for real a fake Andy Borowitz satire about Dick Cheney challenging Hillary Clinton to a hunting match.

Borowitz made up that Cheney was on Meet the Press and fabricated this quote:

To be frank, Hillary Clinton's stories about her adventures with guns don't exactly pass the smell test. If she really wants to show that she knows how to handle a rifle, there's an easy way to do that: meet me in the woods.

What's worse, the Herald story (I'd link to it, but it's been taken down) said Cheney made the challenge on ABC's Meet the Press. You think the fact that Meet the Press is on NBC might've tipped an editor off. If the Herald had any editors left.

Hopefully they don't also read the Onion.

Ali Velshi: All Hat, No Cattle

CNN's senior business correspondent Ali Velshi is known for his big beautiful bald head and impeccably styled vests.

But as part of the run-up to next week's presidential primary in Texas, CNN has dispatched its best-dressed host to the Lone Star State, and Velshi has decided that while he's in Rome he'll do as the Romans do.


That's what he usually looks like, on the left. On the right, he's trying to blend in.

Get that man to a haberdashery. And fast.

Dictators on Parade

Each year America's last bastion of quality journalism, Parade Magazine, puts out a list of the year's worst dictators. Kim Jong-Il of North Korea unseated Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan for the No. 1 spot.

I like to think that all the dictators get together for a party where they unveil the new rankings. Can you imagine how pissed Iran's Sayyid Ali Khamenei is that he fell from third to seventh? I can just hear him complaining "How many public executions must a man orchestrate to remain in the Top 5?!? C'mon!"

I understand that Fidel Castro was so ticked off he's not even on the list anymore (his brother Raul is No. 18) that he is actually getting out of dictatoring altogether.

What the heck is going on here?

I guess it's a demonstration of how quickly a city can go from being full of lovable losers to being drunk on winning. The New England Patriots are four days away from facing the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII, and the collective reaction in Boston goes something like this: "Ho-hum."

I think it's best summed up by what one Boston businessman told the Globe. "It's crazy to say, but it's the same old, same old," he said. "It's almost like, who hasn't been to one or two of them already?"

Um, me?

And that's not even the worst part. Boston Mayor Tom Menino owes me a Coke, because he totally jinxed the team when he said yesterday that the city had already planned a victory parade. That's right. The day, the time, the route. All that we're missing at this point is the Lombardi Trophy.

I usually think the Boston Herald is a little heavy handed, but today's front page treatment of Mayor Menino goes a little soft on him, I think.


I don't know if the Giants will win, but definitely pick them to cover.

Talk about advocacy journalism

The Lewiston Tribune newspaper in Washington state played an inadvertent role in capturing an alleged wallet thief. They ran a surveillance video picture of him, right below a feature photo of the same guy decorating his storefront.

Take a look. (You can click on this image to enlarge it.)


Is this irony or coincidence? I can never remember.

Let's get ready to Bumble

Fox debuted a new show last night that blends reality, news and sitcom. A struggling Texas TV station hires a bimbo as a news anchor. Cameras roll. Hilarity ensues.

My first reaction was to bemoan the death of journalism, the blending of news and entertainment, the sad commentary on blah blah blah. Just typing these bland and banal arguments makes my head hurt.

Actually, I don't so much mind. I mean, this Texas TV station is just admitting publicly what all the other stations do without the wink and the nod: They're hiring a pretty person who doesn't know anything about news.

Even the pretty people who do know something about journalism can be a little vapid.

Case in point: When working in a TV/radio newsroom, I got a stationwide memo from a recently hired anchor that said, in essence, "Hi, great to be at the station. Please stop using my Bumble & Bumble hairspray in the bathroom."

She's still in the market. You can write a guest blog if you guess her correctly.

When words have no value, no one will pay attention

Do you remember way back, 1992 maybe, when CNN's Breaking News graphic used to actually mean something? It wasn't just a chyron (fancy news word for "words on a screen") back then, but a three-dimensional graphic that spun from right to left across your entire screen. It was so important that it was accompanied by a voice-over from James Earl Jones. Darth f'ing Vader himself, people.

But now? Every damn thing is breaking news. And if it's not breaking news, it's a developing story. And if it's not a developing story, then it's new video.

The newsmerizing coverage of this week's big story drives home this point. Just this morning, here was the breaking news out of Minneapolis:

Red Cross has set up a family assistance center.
That's breaking?

The visual pollution on my TV screen is worse than a superfund site, and there's no one around willing to clean it up.

Katie Couric assaults co-worker, laughs about it

Third place news anchor Katie Couric tells New York Magazine that she sometimes regrets leaving NBC's Today Show and the sunny side of Rockefeller Center for the deep dark doldrums of the CBS Evening News.

She also tells the magazine that she physically assaulted an innocent CBS news editor, who put the word "sputum" into her news copy without giving her a heads up.

I got mad at him and said, "You can't do this to me. You have to tell me when you're going to use a word like that." I was aggravated, there's no question about that.

I sort of slapped him around.

I gave Couric a shot, but now I'm calling for a boycott.

News producers must have blanket authority to make arbitrary changes to anchors' copy without fear of retribution, even if those changes cause the anchor to stammer and babble. There are few things I feel more strongly about. Boycott Katie.

NYT Magazine: The Repeats

The New York Times Magazine, which I readily admit is not targeted at slobs like me, seems to be stuck on repeat, at least when it comes to the cover art. At least once a month, they employ the same portraiture motif. I think it's tired. Decide for yourself.

Leave them wanting more

A wise man once said you should always leave them wanting more. In the last week or so, I've seen one guy I admire following this advice, and another totally ignoring it.

First up, the cheer goes to Brian McGrory, who has left his post as a metro columnist for the Boston Globe to become the paper's deputy managing editor for local news. I'll miss his understated hilarity, but hopefully that will begin to seep into the daily coverage in the paper.

Second up, the jeer goes to Brett Farve, the Packers quarterback who reportedly said he wanted a trade after his team failed to upgrade in the offseason. He denies it now, but I think the damage is done. I think he's gotta hang it up.

Did Gisele buy you that hat?

It's hard not to describe the Boston Herald's reaction to the sight of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in a Yankees hat as apopleptic. I guess it was a slow news day.

I don't really care what Tom Brady wears on his head, so long as he remembers how to beat Peytom Manning this season.

For what it's worth, I tried on my cuz-in-law's Yankees hat one time and it just felt wrong.

Like wearing women's clothes, or at least how I'd imagine wearing women's clothes would feel if I ever wore women's clothes, which I've never done.