March 2007 Archives

Jimmy Breslin says, "rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers." Amen brother

While I've been away, Foothill Cities slaps me upside the head and adds comments.
The story from Alison Hewitt that he's talking about, and is behind our ludicrous paywall, is copied on the jump.

LA Beat: "Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora, is insistent that the MTA should prioritize a $1.1 billion Gold Line expansion that would extend the line from its current terminus in east Pasadena all the way to the Ontario Airport. (h/t Foothill cities)

Some reporters at one New York tabloid once told me how during the senate challenge between Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, stories would be killed about Rudy and stories about Clinton rushed into print. The reason given by editors for killing the Giuliani stories was that they needed "more reporting." Of course no amount of reporting would have put those stories in the paper.
As a native New Yorker, I was there when Giuliani first came to office. The city needed a law and order guy and he fit the bill perfectly. Unfortunately, as the city prospered, he never broke out of that mindset. His political career would have turned to dust, I believe, if not for his steady hand in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Having said that, Guiliani has a lot of people who don't like him, and reporters have material never used. So be ready for more of this.. Of course, there's always the dress.

"A time to get over our past and get on with our future." Maybe this should be my mantra, “I didn’t get in this business to be a hospice nurse.”

I went to a talk by David Wallis the other day on the scarcity and slow demise of the cartoonist. I'll post more on my thoughts on that later.

make sure you have your sound on.

It's a disease that creeps in slowly. Words that are made up by activists and public relations people. High on my list are:proactive, wellness and undocumented worker. The first two are uncontroversial, active and health are the benign true words. Undocumented worker is a politically potent. Those who crossed the borders illegally were at one time called illegal aliens. A bureaucratic nonesencial term. So the more accurate illegal immigrant came and there it should have stayed. Despite calls from the Latino activist groups, like the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, of which I am a member. What exactly is an undocumented worker? Does that help the reader in any way or is it made up to confuse the story. Our job is not only to be a guardian of the public's right to know but the language as well.

"Both Blake and Spector come from scrappy New York-area families -- Blake (né Gubitosi) from New Jersey, Spector from Brooklyn. Both men experienced major acts of violence as children. Both are short, are said to wear lifts, and have explosive tempers. And it would seem that their major left or right turns were predestined. The most crucial decision in their lives, to move west, was made by their parents."

Apparently, according to the Web site, they were (?) "dedicated to investigating paranormal and unexplained phenomenon." The forums look like they have been attacked by spam, so I'm assuming they are no more. I stumbled over it when I heard that Galster Park and South Hills Elementary (!) in West Covina were haunted. Then I found out that there are places in Rosemead, Montebello, and forget about Pasadena. For some strange reason a lot of the alleged sightings were at schools, especially high schools. hmmm. Teens are pretty good witnesses...right? I e-mailed the director of the SGV group just to get at the bottom of this haunting mystery.

Just because they're applying, doesn't mean they know what's coming.

Tim Crews is the 63-year-old owner, editor and reporter of the Sacramento Valley Mirror. While he may mix his opinions with his news reporting a tad much, his type of small town newspaper journalism is important and becoming rare.
"We're s -- disturbers. It's what a small county needs," said the bespectacled editor as he sat at his cluttered desk in his office, fielding calls and listening to a police scanner. "It is really important for a place like this to have somebody hold up a mirror."

I'm in New York for the next week or so taking care of my mother. I'll keep blogging for the fun of it because it gives me something to do in the very boring town of West Islip. Not having cable (!) I'm tooling around youtube and other places to see what's going on. I just found this video from the Colbert Show and the woman of the fighting 39th.

Whether you are for or against the war, you have to respect the sacrifices of our men and women in the armed forces. We tried as we move into the fifth year of the Iraqi War to honor those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is going to be fun.

"Other than the cancer and the $25 million lawsuit, I’m doing all right.”
If I can have that sense of humor when things are bad, I'll be doing all right.

"And hopefully this will be some kind of subtle message to other newsrooms that if you can spare the time and the resources to turn a reporter loose for a good bit of time, then something good might happen."

Claremont Insider makes some interesting points about the growing power of local blogs and how they are becoming part of the solution in covering communities.
"It's a different time, though. There are other ways for communities to communicate and share information."
Traditional newspapers no longer have the resources to cover all of our local communities as well as we should. It's something I believe and have said before.

The idea: "an attempt to bring together professional writers and editors with citizen journalists to collaborate on reporting and writing about the rise of crowdsourcing on the Web. Inspired by the open source movement, the goal of Assignment Zero is to develop a working model of an open newsroom."
- I might still have a job if this takes off, but I don't know about reporters.

Patterico takes apart the LA Times story on U.S. Attorneys being fired. The one point that I believe most stories bury is that this has been done before by other presidents, including Clinton and the first Bush. If people don't want politics to play a role now, where were they then?

Editors need to balance what readers want and what they need. Most times stories meet both criteria, sometimes not. As I have said before, I thought these arrests were minor, a short story at best, but some believed that we should have reported on it before Election for various reasons. I still think we made the right decision. After digging through archives, finding court documents and talking, or trying to talk, to everyone involved, this is what Alison Hewitt found. And considering how some of the players in this story acted before and how some of them are acting now, it reveals an interesting tale of small town politics. But one that should have waited until after Election Day.

Editors need to balance between what readers want and what they need.

Our state Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, (left) gets locked out of his office when state Sen. Don Perata, president pro tem, decides to act like a juvenile.

Forget politics and editing. What about blogging and shooting video about eating food? The only thing is can I expense it. (via Claremont Insider)

Hilda Solis has been appointed to a global warming panel.

Reader Kyle also thinks we should have printed the story about the Glendora teens arrest before the election, so he joins Foothill Cities who feels the same. Another person who sent an e-mail backed my stance, so maybe I'll get a late push.

Foothill Cities doesn't agree with our decision on the Glendora teen arrests.

Occasionally, we get phone calls from people angry over our coverage of immigration – illegal or legal.
While I think most people can talk about the issue in a responsible and civilized way, no matter which side of the issue they fall, some are incapable and see a vast liberal conspiracy to hide the news. One of those people called me the other day, upset that we didn't put in our story about Armando Garcia that he was an illegally in the country when he shot and killed Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy David March.
The caller was right, it should have been in the story. We have covered it extensively and put that description in, and this time editors missed the omission. It happens. Deadline pressures and other breaking news are an enemy in the news business. I admitted our mistake and told the caller we have put it in other stories but this time blew it.
But the acknowledgment of his complaint didn't mollify him, he then went off on a 15 minute, or at least it seemed to me, rant about how illegal immigration is destroying this country and that we are aiding and abetting criminal behavior by not printing more stories about this threat.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité, ou la mort!
The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday. (via Instapundit)
Sounds like the French professional journalists have a pretty good union. Wonder if there are any job openings?

No bias. No favor.
It’s a mantra we journalists try to live by. And around election time, the standard guides us as we decide which stories to publish before Election Day and which ones to publish afterward.
Every year in the weeks heading up to the day people vote, tips of skullduggery flood our phone lines: Candidates or their supporters misusing campaign contributions, lying about their accomplishments or other candidates’ histories and destroying lawn signs. These are just a few of the usual accusations.

The last thing a journalist wants to hear about himself: "NBC News anchor Tim Russert delivered devastating testimony" in the perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby was found guilty today obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
Update: Russert says he ain't happy.

Hiring citizen journalists.

Unlike before when the police didn't issue a press release, this is an actual press release from the Glendora police. Once again, this is the kind of weirdness that blows up right before an election. You don't have to agree with why we didn't think it rose to the level where we disregard that hurdle but at least here there is more context

Press Release: the City of Glendora has received a number of inquiries concerning the February 19th arrest of two 18-year-old women who allegedly vandalized political campaign signs belonging to candidates for Glendora City Council.
In response to those inquiries, these are facts that relate to the case which is being referred to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution. On the night of Monday, February 19th, the Glendora Police Department received a call that two women had been observed vandalizing campaign signs in the vicinity of Foothill and Lone Hill. The responding officers stopped the vehicle and encountered Keleigh Marshall and Cristina Giammalva, each of whom readily admitted having vandalized the signs of the council candidates Gary Clifford, Ken Herman and Doug Tessitor. During the last several weeks, approximately 600 signs belonging to City Councilman Clifford, Herman, and Tessitor have been vandalized with similar stickers. None of the other candidates have reported their signs vandalized with these stickers.

Former New York City Mayor and possible presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger before this.

* I'm a native New Yorker and still can't spell Rudy's last name.

AP: MONTEREY PARK - "Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani asked for privacy Monday to deal with strained relationships within his family, and defended his wife as a "very loving and caring" mother and stepmother.
The Republican presidential candidate came to Southern California to speak with sheriffs about gang violence, but found himself answering questions about his family after his son, Andrew, publicly said their relationship had become distant after Giuliani's messy divorce from Andrew's mother, Donna Hanover, and his later marriage to Judith Nathan."
Considering that one of the things that softened Giuliani's tough prosecutorial image in New York was pictures of him with his son Andrew this isn't the best thing that could happen.
Update: Here's a NY Daily News article with more detail.

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I'm not sure I like this. We were part of this public records audit as a way to show that police departments need to be transparent. While there may be a point where we would have to file a lawsuit for a particular case, a general lawsuit like this sounds counterproductive.

Health blogger critiques Board of Supervisors.

Foothill Cities has a long blog on the Glendora teen arrest story, including a swipe at our 'lack' of coverage. I have already stated our reasons for holding off on this weird story here until after the election. People may not agree with it, but considering it's Glendora, we're not going to jump before we have to. I will clear up one inaccuracy in both the LA Times story and Foothill Cities blog. The police didn't release a statement, every morning we do a round of cop calls. That's when we found out about it. Police must give us the names of people arrested, they have discretion over the victims, which they rarely if ever do.

As I said earlier, the arrest of two teens caught defacing a politician's sign apparently hanging in a public right of way, which would make it illegal, was a minor story for us. Now I see on the local CBS news that there are people protesting the arrest. This on top of Saturday's L.A. Times oddly written story. Sheesh. Sometimes you never know what people are going to rally around. I'll post the video if I can find it.

I've known Rich McKee for a few years now, and I still don't quite understand why he so zealously advocates the ideals of open-government.
He is a Pasadena City College chemistry professor, served as president of the California First Amendment Coalition and recently resigned from Californians Aware. For nearly 20 years, I think, he has challenged local municipalities and public agencies to follow the Ralph M. Brown Act and the Public Records Act. This includes filing lawsuits that he almost always won, forcing them to follow the law.
As part of our attempt to get more community voices in our paper, Rich, a La Verne resident, has become a columnist of late. It gives him a chance to spread the word about local open-government issues, and gives us unique opportunity to educate the public.
It's an experiment because Rich has to stay a chronicler and stay away from being a newsmaker. The transition so far has been smooth. But he becomes outraged quickly when he thinks someone has disregarded open-government laws, so it should be fun. Here's his latest column.

Roiled..er..not really. Unless of course you read the breathless prose of this LA Times story today.
"The 18-year-olds, Keleigh Marshall and Christina Giammalva, set out the night of Feb. 19 to engage in some mischief by putting stickers on the political signs of Glendora elected leaders. The stickers read, "This sign violates Glendora city ordinance," a reference to Glendora's law prohibiting campaign signs on public property.
Notwithstanding that law and an accompanying set of rules that regulate the placement of campaign material, the same council members who passed the regulations appeared to be violating them — and thus the protest by Marshall and Giammalva."
Notwithstanding that it's only later that you find out that Marshall is the daughter of a former council member, this reporter obviously accepted that the teens were just "protesting" the signs placement not the candidates themselves. Remember, when John Harrold, Paul Marshall and Richard Jacobs were recalled, Clifford was one of the people who replaced them and was supported by the group that was behind the recall effort.
We did a short story on the arrest, and after looking further into it decided it was a type of story that is blown out of proportion before it's near an election. There are many unanswerable questions and possible motivations. Politics as usual indeed.

Updated: put some added details in. Because we have a dumb pay wall for archives, I pasted two stories after the jump that gives some additional informatin on the recall, and other possible explanations for the "protest." Notice the attorney's name as well.

Man who killed LAC Deputy David March pleads guilty.

You gotta be kidding me.

A bit late.

Mother Jones:"The report found that locally owned television stations, on average, presented 5 1/2 minutes more local news per broadcast than stations owned by out-of-town conglomerates."

Homeland Security committee: "Jefferson insists he has an honorable explanation, which he will provide when, and if, he's charged with a crime"

Will they just make up their minds?

AP:" A dentist to the rich and famous has filed a $7 million lawsuit against the estate of late New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, claiming his home was destroyed when the ballplayer's small airplane crashed into his apartment building."

This is the fun time for newspapers as we near Election Day next week. We get a slew of unconfirmed tips and one-sided complaints about council candidates and anything else on the ballot. Stolen and defaced signs. Campaign paraphernalia stuck in public right of ways (in violation of election code). Our task is to carefully walk the minefield and try to find the wheat from the chaff.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, just not where expected.