Eli Wallach dies

Eli Wallach, 98, husband of actress Anne

Eli Wallach

Jackson, died Tuesday in Manhattan. They met at a 1946 stage production of “This Property Is Condemned.”

He was never nominated for an Oscar, but he was Clark Gable’s sidekick in “The Misfits,” a Mafia don in “The Godfather: Part III” and a Mexican bandit in “The Magnificent Seven.” He got an honorary Oscar in 2010, at the age of 94. It’s a thing they do when they think long-time actors who were bypassed previously are near death’s door.

Eli’s first movie was 1956’s “Baby Doll,” with Carroll Baker and Karl Malden.

He grew up as a Jew in a predominantly Italian Brooklyn neighbor and graduated from Erasmus Hall High School.

To read his entire New York Times obituary tribute, click on http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/movies/eli-wallach-multifaceted-actor-dies-at-98.html?_r=1

Mudrak’s childhood home goes on auction block

Former BJ reporter Barbara Galloway Mudrak, among 500 years of experience that walked out the door on the same day in 2001, is putting her parents’ Garfield Heights home, built in 1948 just before they moved in, on the auction block.

Responding to my request for details, Barb wrote:

“The address is 12613 Darlington Avenue, Garfield Hts., and the auction is Wednesday, July 16 at 5:30 p.m. This is a 3-bedroom bungalow in a

nice neighborhood in Garfield Hts.

“My parents lived in the house from the time it was built in 1948 till they passed away, Mom in 2008 at age 87, Dad in 2009 at age 94. We had it remodeled so they could live out their days in their home with a live-in caregiver (unlike the

"Green Acres" theme song, farm livin' was not the life for them; couldn't talk them into moving to the farm in Columbiana County where

their only child has lived since marrying the farmer in 1975).

“The first floor is handicapped accessible with a walk-in shower, two bedrooms, and a ramp to the deck in back. The attic was remodeled into

a huge bedroom, electrical and other systems are all updated, it's in move-in condition. The renter -- who lived two doors down and knew my

parents -- has taken good care of it and was going to buy it, but is being transferred to Houston for work.”

The rapid demise of the BJ began in 2001 when Barb and a ton of talented people walked out the door on the same day. Old Blue has never been the same since, and is down to about 60 newsroom people, so starved for more people with talent that the bones are showing through the skin.

The tragedy was reported -n this BJ Alums blog March 27, 2014 under the headline, “The Day the BJ Music Died.”

Barb previously had noted on this blog:

“After taking a buyout in 2001 after 23 1/2 years at the BJ, I went back to Mount Union to get my teaching license. Since the fall of 2003, I've been teaching English and Journalism -- and being the adviser for the illustrious Red and Blue Flyer -- at Alliance High School. Still living on the farm in Columbiana County with Pete and two boys, one at KSU, one in grad school at Auburn.”

Here's Barb's email address: barborpete@gmail.com

If you want to traipse through Barb’s childhood, the auction will be July 16 in Garfield Heights.

Media wrong about Iraq in 2003 at it again?

Everybody – reporters and news site -- has an agenda so it’s hard to know what to believe.

But Media Matters for America senior fellow (impressive title, huh?) Eric Boehlert writes that the people who botched the Iraq War in the first place – George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, etc. – are being given ready access to criticizing President Obama for what’s happening today because the same media helped convince the American public that the original screw-ups were right.

Why? The same guys in the media who helped sell the war before the 2003 invasion now are trotting out the WMD liars to attack President Obama because Iraq is a civil war mess, thanks to an ISIS so on the fringe that even Al Kaida rejects the group.

"The neoconservative program cost the United States several trillion dollars and thousands dead and wounded American soldiers, and it sowed carnage and chaos in Iraq and elsewhere," writes Harvard University professor Stephen Walt in Foreign Policy.

Boehlert writes: The media got it wrong 11 years ago and is using the original architects of the Iraq debacle to slam President Obama for it.

Media Matters for America is at the opposite end of the agenda spectrum from Fox News, and admits its goal in life is to “correct conservative information in the media,” so take all this with a truckload of salt.

I’ve pretty much lost faith in people with R or D in front of their names because they seem to be beholden to people and companies with B in front of their wealth indicator.

You can read the entire article and judge for yourself at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/by-rehabilitating-iraq-wa_b_5521565.html

Kevlar inventor dies

Stephanie Kwolek, a DuPont chemist who in 1965 invented Kevlar, the stronger-than-steel body armor that has saved thousands of lives of military and police force members, died Wednesday at 90.

Kwolek made the breakthrough while working on specialty fibers at a DuPont laboratory in Wilmington, Delaware. She is the only woman to be awarded DuPon’s Lavoisier Medal for outstanding technical achievement.

Kwolek was born on July 31, 1923, in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, graduated from Carnegie Institution of Technology with a chemistry degree and was hired by Dupont a year after the end of World War II.

Kwolek found a solvent that was able to dissolve long-chain polymers into a solution that was much thinner and more watery than other polymer solutions. The fibers are five times stronger by weight than steel. DuPont had to get new equipment to test the tensile strength.

More than 3,100 police officers are members of a "Survivors Club" formed by DuPont and the International Association of Chiefs of Police to promote the wearing of body armor

Kevlar today is used in airplanes, armored military vehicles, cellphones, sailboats, spacesuits, baseball bats, notebook computers and underground mining equipment.

To read the entire article, click on http://alj.am/1svlxkW

Mizell prowling in California

Former Beacon Journal managing editor Mizell Stewart III, vice president/content of the

Mizell Stewart

newspaper division of E.W. Scripps whose current home is near Middletown and Hamilton in southwestern Ohio, is roaming northern California now that his eyepatch is gone from cataract surgery.

It's work, not fun, or so he says. He and his group are checking out Scripps properties in the La-La Land.

Explains Mizell:

"Visiting the Scripps-owned Redding Record Searchlight (about two hours north of Sacramento) and then joining Scripps journalists attending the Investigative Reporters & Editors conference in SF later in the week. Eye is fully recovered!"

Mizell lives in West Chester Township, which is convenient to his Cincinnati-based Scripps job but a lot different than his native Cleveland.

Mizell succeeded Debra Adams Simmons as the BJ’s top newsroom dog and was replaced by Bruce Winges, the current big kahuna in the BJ newsroom, or what’s left of it (about 60 people, down from 200+ when I retired in 1996). Debra succeeded Jim Crutchfield.

Mizell left the BJ in 2007 to become editor of Scripps’ Evansville, Indiana Courier & Press. His newspaper stops included Dayton, where I was with the Daily News till I switched to the BJ, and Tallahassee, where Florida politics are run in the state.

Ex-BJ TV critics team to help New Jersey celebrate

David Bianculli, former BJ TV critic, enlisted the help of his BJ successor, Mark Dawidziak, who migrated to the Plain Dealer as TV & pop critic,

  David Bianculli    Mark Dawidziak

in preparing for New Jersey’s 350^th birthday on June 24.

Bianculli will show film clips Sunday, June 22, in the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton about the Garden State and filmmaking set in Joisey over the decades. 

Not wanting to do all the heavy lifting himself, David got Mark and others to round up the NJ movie list for him.

Bianculli’s roundup includes Clint Eastwood’s new movie, “Jersey Boys,” but David didn’t mention the most famous Jersey icon of all, “The Sopranos,” probably because it's a successful TV series. Good thing James Gandofini has been permanently cremated with his ashes delivered to family and/or friends or the waste management business might have another pickup.

The Bada-Bing Strip Club in the Sopranos was in Lodi, New Jersey in real life. Satriani’s pork store in real life was in Kearney, New Jersey.

To read the entire article about Bianculli, New Jersey and David’s co-conspirators, click on http://www.tvworthwatching.com/BlogPostDetails.aspx?postId=7617

Post-Dispatch drops George Will column

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has decided that Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative George Will’s columns have gone too far over the line, dropped his column and apologized for his column on college campus sexual assaults.

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Illinois native Will’s column is syndicated in newspapers across the country by the Washington Post, which bills him as “the most influential writer in America.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch notification:

“The change has been under consideration for several months, but a column published June 5, in which Mr. Will suggested that sexual assault victims on college campuses enjoy a privileged status, made the decision easier. The column was offensive and inaccurate; we apologize for publishing it.”

The irony is that the Pulitzer Prize was set up by Joe Pulitzer, Post-Dispatch owner.

With a tip of the hat (of course) to Stuart for posting the photo on his Facebook page. 

And that's Susan Kirkman Zake, former BJ photographer who joined the Kent State journalism faculty, as part of the perpetual migration from the BJ to KSU, in 2013.

Mark J. Price chimes in:

That's copy editor Joe Kiefer in the bottom left corner of the Wheels of Fortune photo. He was the lead copy editor on the series. He works at the Columbus Dispatch now and is married to copy editor Debby Stock Kiefer (who also works at the Dispatch).

Thanks, Mark.

Advertisers balk at CNN’s high rates & lower ratings

CNN, whose advertising revenue has plummeted from $347.8 million in 2011 to $320 million in 2013, isn’t impressing advertisers by switching emphasis from instant news coverage to documentary series.

CNN’s high ad rates in the industry are getting less bang for the buck, particularly with younger viewers, advertisers complain. Fox News, the right-wing bastion, regularly out-draws CNN.

And CNN can only beat the drums on the Malaysian plane crash for so many months without losing traction.

To read the article, click on http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/ad-buyers-resist-cnns-upfront-pitch-1201222831/

54,200 newspaper, magazine jobs gone since 2003

Newspapers and magazines have lost 54,200 newsroom jobs since 2003, according to Pew Research. Newspapers lost 16,200 full-time jobs; magazines were hit harder, axing 38,000 jobs.

Blame it on a reader shift to digital media, which newspaper owners failed to get in front of while clinging to century-old strategies. That contributed to the evaporation of classified and display advertising, the heart and soul of newspapers’ existence.

When I retired from the Beacon Journal, there were 200 or so in the newsroom. Today, about 60 jobs have survived, and cutbacks to even that sparse supply keep happening. 

Worse, the most valuable and experienced reporters and editors are the ones to go, because they cost the most.

More than half the media Washington bureau jobs are gone, which must make politicians delirious. The watchdogs slinked away, whimpering.

While 54,200 were slashed from newspapers and magazines, internet-based news jobs added less than 5,000. So nearly 50,000 journalists went elsewhere, or just went away.

To read the article, click on http://washingtonexaminer.com/pew-54200-newspaper-magazine-jobs-axed-since-2003/article/2549876

Ernest Borgnine dies

Actor Ernest Borgnine, who won an Oscar for the lonely Bronx butcher in “Marty,” died Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 95. “Marty” won the Oscar for best picture.

Ernest Borgnine

Borgnine also the “Fatso” Judson, the sadistic sergeant who beat a private to death in the 1953 movie, “From There to Eternity.”

And in 1962-66, the PT boat commander in the sitcom, “McHale’s Navy.”

Born Ermes Effron Borgnino in Hamden, Conn., on Jan. 24, 1917, Borgnine was the son of Italian immigrants.

To read the entire Los Angeles Times article, click on http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/09/local/la-me-ernest-borgnine-20120709

Jim Carney reflects on his 6-week-old retirement

Retired Beacon Journal reporter Jim Carney, one of the class people in this world, takes a look at his new life, which is six weeks old:

Jim Carney

“Report from the land of the retired. It has been quite an adjustment. Kind of like landing on a planet far away. It made no sense at first. Someone told me you really need deprogrammed after you stop working. That is true. I miss my pals and the excitement of daily newspapering. The paper looks good.

“Am glad I did what I did. I've been cleaning the basement, the garage, working on photo projects, getting Michael and Laura married, babysitting a friend's grandchild. Been reading and writing. Taking naps. Babying Alfred. Making KT's lunch. Tonight, put together mac and cheese and chilli dog dinner. And praying for a pennant. Reading the obits. A classmate died this week. It will be six weeks tomorrow. Blessings to all.”

Speaking as someone who has been retired 18 years after running to work at the BJ for 26 of my 43 years on newspapers because I loved it, Jim, I think you’re going to ADORE retirement, but maybe not till Katie joins you in this hallowed land.

I’ve been to 52 countries and 43 states, and that never would have happened if I had stayed at the BJ. And winning my (and 49 other retirees’) lawsuit against the BJ over its health care reneging helps tremendously. $2 prescriptions for ANY 30-day medications, brand name or not ($4 for 90 days if I do it by mail) and restoration close to my retirement-day 80% Medicare/20% BJ medical coverage for everything else helps, too.

The retirees’ lawyers in Cleveland got a $750,000 (give or take a few bucks) check from the BJ for handling our case. I got a substantial reimbursement for out-of-pocket medical expenses that the judge said the BJ was not entitled to take away. So did the 49 others.

Every day I thank the late Dave White, Composing honcho, for starting that lawsuit. The Canadian picked on the wrong dude who ran into the right dude (a lawyer) on the Siesta Key beach in Florida.

Enjoy your retirement, Jim. Find something you love to do, but didn’t have the time or money while you were working. Hell, with your bent in life, volunteer in a soup kitchen or, like retired photographer Don Roese, find people living under bridges and help them with better shelter. You were made for helping others.

Don't be in a hurry to find it. Let it find you.  

Maybe the Black Keys kid can help, too. He can pay for carrying his drum sticks.

Get back to me in May 2015 and we'll have lunch and see what you worked out. Plenty of good restaurants near me in Chapel Hill.