Asleep on the job

A New York morning-news anchor for a local station got dumped last week for dozing through a newsbreak about a tragic Bronx house fire that made national headlines.

Ordinarily, this sort of thing wouldn’t interest me, but it turns out that I used to know the guy – Steve Bartelstein and I worked at the same college radio station. He was a charming and funny guy – he broke down laughing on air once during a “special report” we were doing during finals week on a phys-ed class’s final exam, a ping pong game; the lackadaisical sound effect of the ball bouncing back and forth sent him into paroxysms of laughter from which he just barely recovered.

Bartelstein, the report says, had gotten away with many indiscretions before this final transgression. And, yeah, I remember that side of him, too: He borrowed my car once to meet with a radio station manager; two months later, I got an overdue notice for a parking ticket near the station. I later found the ticket stuffed down next to my driver’s seat.