Move over, LeBron; Connie’s back, too

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, who spent 30 years with the Plain Dealer, wrote:

“LeBron isn’t the only one who's returning. Last fall, my husband and I left our house in the suburbs and moved to Cleveland.

Sherrod Brown, Connie Schultz

“Greater Cleveland is divided, geographically and ideologically, by the Cuyahoga River. I’ve lived on both sides of it. I raised my children, mostly as a single mother, in diverse neighborhoods on the near east side. After I married Sherrod Brown in 2004, we moved into his then-congressional district—he’s a U.S. senator today—in a virtually all-white neighborhood on the far west side.”

Skeptics – there are ALWAYS those, right? – say Sherrod is positioning himself for a run at being Cleveland’s mayor. That’s a step up from being a U.S. Senator, right?

In her story, Connie talks about Greg Blount, who had worked for more than 30 years as Greg Anthony in Cleveland radio and TV. Now, he’s the Bell Captain at the Westin.

Station downsizing and his salary got him.

Brown, elected to the U.S. Senate in 2007, had been a member of the U.S. House previously. Avon was part of his district.

Schulz is an Ashtabula native and Brown is a Mansfield native.

To read Connie’s entire article, click on http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/why-i-came-home-to-cleveland-108945.html#.U8au640g-00

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

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/

News media ‘censor or block stories’ that don’t match their agenda

Sharyl Attkisson, an award-winning investigative reporter who resigned this year after 20 years with CBS news, says the news media are heading down a dangerous path to “censor or block stories” that don’t align with their preferred agenda.

Fox News is infamous for skewing its reports to pander to its conservative viewers, but if all media do the same for their constituents, what happens to objective journalism? Fair and balanced becomes just a slogan.

Attkisson, senior independent contributor to The Daily Signal, published investigative report about oxygen trials conducted on premature babies in the new news organization.

To read the article, click on

http://dailysignal.com/2014/06/03/exclusive-sharyl-attkisson-journalisms-dangerous-trend-censoring-stories/

What deserves more coverage: NJ traffic jam or 300,000 West Virginians with contaminated water?

WCHS-TV reporter Kallie Cart, 33 weeks pregnant, drew national attention for pushing back against the president of Freedom Industries, who answered a few questions about his company’s role in a chemical spill that affected the drinking water of 300,000 people in West Virginia, sipped a little bottled water, then tried to get away.

But Cart wasn’t having it. “We have more questions,” she called out. “Hey, hey, hey, hey. N-no. We’re not done.”

Amazingly, Southern turned back for more.

The attention Cart’s gotten for that moment has been flattering, as well as humbling and overwhelming, she said.

But West Virginia reporters also are disappointed that the national media is paying more attention to New Jersey governor Chris Christie and the artificially created traffic jam to get even with another politician, The Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox wrote. 

Apparently disasters in West Virginia are too common, she wrote. 

Plus Christie is the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination in 2016.

To read the entire Poynter.com article, click on http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/236019/while-national-media-focuses-on-bridgegate-w-va-reporters-stay-on-water-story/

CBS "60 Minutes" forces Lara Logan to take leave

CBS forced “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan and her longtime producer, Max McClellan, to take leaves of absence from work as punishment for their mishandling of the Benghazi report.

Their “60 Minutes” segment relied heavily on an account by Dylan Davies, a security contractor who was in Benghazi on the night of the assault, which left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Davies claimed that he was at the compound, but that contradicted what he had previously told the FBI, the State Department and his own employer.

To read the entire article, click on http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/26/us/cbs-lara-logan-benghazi-leave/

Headlines about Navy Yard mass shooting

Headlines from the Navy yard rampage that killed 12 people plus the shooter.

From the Bakersfield Californian, Boston Herald, Boston Metro, New York Daily News, Philadelphia Daily News, USA Today, Virginian Pilot and Washington Post.

Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor who had been discharged from the service after "a pattern of misconduct," murdered a dozen people at the Washington Navy Yard.

TV newscaster John Hambrick dies

John Hambrick, a former TV newscaster familiar to viewers in markets from New York to Los Angeles, died of lung cancer in Round Rock, Texas, on Tuesday. He was 73.



John Hambrick

Hambrick anchored WEWS in Cleveland from 1967 to 1975, where local ratings rose from third to first during his tenure. He once called his Cleveland stint his greatest success.

He also anchored news programs in San Francisco, Miami, Houston, Cincinnati and Beaumont, Texas, before his career ended in the 1990s.

His younger brothers, Judd and Mike, followed in his footsteps. At one time, all three were anchoring newscasts in major markets.

In Cleveland, Hambrick was succeeded on the WEWS anchor desk by Ted Henry, who called Hambrick “a friend, a colleague and a mentor.”

“He always had a word for me about how I could improve my skills. I learned enormously from him.”

Some notable events covered by Hambrick during his career of 30-plus years included meeting with Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in 1987 and urban riots in Cleveland and Cincinnati. In the latter, he and his cameraman were badly beaten by an angry mob, which also smashed their gear and news car. He also covered multiple presidential nominating conventions.

Hambrick studied at the University of Texas and California State College at Los Angeles, planning to be a teacher. But he was bitten by the acting bug and spent several years in Hollywood where he had supporting roles in various movies and TV shows before eventually landing a broadcast news job.

In every community where he served as a broadcast journalist, Hambrick was involved with a variety of charities and other causes. In Ohio, he chaired the American Cancer Society statewide campaign after his mother was killed by that disease.

Hambrick was honored with many professional awards over the years, including an Emmy in 1984 for co-anchoring the best newscast in New York with Chuck Scarborough.
Scarborough, who still anchors at WNBC, recalled that his former partner was a dedicated broadcast journalist: “He was thorough in his research, relentless in his pursuit of a story and, above all, a master of his craft with an intense, high-energy delivery that commanded attention.”

Beacon Journal staff report on Ohio.com

U.S. attacks Syria, hackers attack America?

If the United States attacks Syria then the Syrian Electronic Army, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, may launch another hacking attack on American web sites.

This is the same group that caused Internet users trying to access The New York Times website to be steered to servers controlled by the Syrian Electronic Army. The Syrian group tricked Domain Name System employees into giving up their passwords.

It’s a ragtap group, including teenagers, who plaster pro-regime propaganda across some of the Internet's most trafficked sites, a U.S. official told CNN.

In April, the SEA caused a brief panic and stock market drop when it hacked the Associated Press Twitter feed and sent a fake message:  "Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured."

To read the entire article, click on http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/30/tech/syria-cyberattacks/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

 

 

Hackers attack New York Times

A group that calls itself the Syrian Electronic Army today went after The New York Times, whose website had widespread outages as the apparent result of a malicious attack on the company's domain name registrar.

 
The group has hacked into the Twitter feeds of the Associated Press and The Washington Post, and several major news organizations, including CNN, redirecting them to a SEA page.
 
While the site was down, the New York Times continued to post articles at its numerical IP address and at news.nytco.com.
 
To read the entire article, click on http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/tech/web/new-york-times-website-attack/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

 

 

 

He or she? Regardless of equipment?

Today’s news organizations have a problem that few of us encountered in our journalism careers: He or she pronouns for transgender people.

Case in point: Pfc. Bradley Manning wants to be known as Pfc. Chelsea Manning and live as a woman.

The Associated Press, New York Times and National Public Radio will use “she.” The Washington Post will continue to use “he.” The New York Times will write “she,” but also “formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning.”

This applies even if a person has not changed biological characteristics, the entities said.

To read the entire article, click on http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/222260/ap-new-york-times-update-style-on-chelsea-manning/

 

 

Newsweek takeover has ties to Asia preacher Jang

What’s left of Newsweek’s assets have been sold to IBT Media, publishers of the International Business Times with ties to Southeast Asia preacher David Jang, whose followers consider him the second coming of Christ. 

Newsweek stopped publishing in print a year ago and media mogul Barry Diller combined Newsweek and The Daily Beast into a joint Internet venture.

Terms of the IBT deal were not disclosed.

IBT, a digital-only media company established in 2006 by Etienne Uzac and Johnathan Davis, reaches more than 7 million readers in the U.S. and 13 million globally through news sites in 10 countries and 7 languages.

The Newsweek.com website, which folded as part of the merger with The Daily Beast, will go live again under IBT.

Newsweek earned $30 million in 2007 and lost the same amount by 2009.

To read the entire article, click on http://www.buzzfeed.com/peterlauria/barry-dillers-newsweek-experiment-is-over

Wal-Mart takes on college junior over D.C. living-wage bill

Wal-Mart is pitting its Senior Director of Communications Steve Restivo and its multi-million dollar PR team against Georgetown University junor and student op-ed columnist Erin Riordan in a media counter-attack. It’s part of Wal-Mart’s effort to get Washington, D.C.’s living-wage bill derailed.

In March, Walmart aggressively opposed the bill under the coalition label of Don’t Block Progress, which has Wal-Mart as its only self-identified public member.

Most Wal-Mart employees with children live below the poverty line, and qualify for food stamps, thus dumping Wal-Mart workers onto the taxpayers to supplement their Wal-Mart wages.

The average Wal-Mart take-home pay is less than $250 a week. In Massachussetts alone, Wal-Mart employees, by being under the $15,000 a year poverty level for a single person, cost the taxpayers $14.6 million annually. 

Nationwide, the average Wal-Mart employee costs taxpayers $3,000 a year in public assistance, which comes out to about $900,000 a year per supercenter and $4 billion annually in national cost to taxpayers for Wal-Mart workers.

70% leave Wal-Mart within a year so the high turnover makes organizing a union almost impossible. 

Increasing minimum wage would affect the employees, and Wal-Mart, dramatically.

Wal-Mart is the leading employer of people of color in the United States. More than 125,000 African-Americans and more than 74,000 Latinos work at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores nationwide.

John Hambrick has terminal cancer

Former Cleveland news anchor John Hambrick, 73, with WEWS-Channel 5's "Eyewitness News" went it rose from third to first place in the early 1970s, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Texas native Hambrick move to Georgetown, north of Austin, after retiring from television. He began his TV career in Texas in 1963 at a station in Abilene. He was working at Cincinnati’s WCPO-Channel 9 before switching to Cleveland in 1967. 

He stayed eight years before being replaced by Ted Henry and moving on to anchor KABC-Channel 7 in Los Angeles, KRON-Channel 4 in San Francisco, WNBC-Channel 4 in New York, Miami’s WTVJ and WCIX.

Three Hambrick brothers became news anchors -- Judd Hambrick, in Cleveland at WKYC-Channel 3 and WJKW (now WJW)-Channel 8. Mike Hambrick, a reporter and anchor in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Dallas and Washington, D.C., had a  brief run as a noon anchor at Channel 5.

John Hambrick won three Emmys, two in New York and one in Miami.

Hambrick’s Cleveland co-workers were weatherman Don Webster, sports anchor Gib Shanley and commentator Dorothy Fuldheim. Dave Patterson became Hambrick's co-anchor in 1970.

To read PD and former BJ television critic Mark Dawdziak’s story about John Hambrick, click on http://www.cleveland.com/tv-blog/index.ssf/2013/07/former_cleveland_news_anchor_john_hambrick_has_terminal_cancer.html#incart_river

FBI denies investigating Hastings

By John Nolte, Breitbart.com

According to a tweet from Wikileaks and Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the liberal site BuzzFeed Politics, not long before his death in a one-person car crash earlier this week, left-wing journalist Michael Hastings believed he was under investigation by the FBI.

Michael Hastings

Hastings gained national attention in 2010 after exposing inflammatory comments made by Gen. Stanley McChrystal about President Barack Obama and the civilian leadership of the military.

Friday, the FBI denied it had ever investigated Hastings.

Immediately after the news of the 33-year-old reporter's death broke, conspiracy theories started to swirl claiming that the government was behind the fiery crash. The Wikileaks' tweet and Smith's apparent confirmation only served to fuel those theories.

As of now, though, the LAPD does not suspect foul play and the evidence points to speed being the major cause of the 4:30 am accident.

A toxicology report is expected in a few weeks. Hastings had a history of drunk-driving and admitted to struggling with substance abuse.

Gannett will buy 20 Belo TV stations

Gannett will buy Belo for $2.2 billion. That will increase Gannett’s TV stations from 23 to 43. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2013.

Belo spun off its newspapers, which include Dallas Morning News, Providence Journal and Riverside, California Press-Enterprise, as a separate company called A.H. Belo in 2007.

This acquisition comes not long after Media General announced plans to merge with the New Young Broadcasting Company. The combined company will own 30 stations.

To read the article, click on http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/13/191281967/gannett-to-buy-tv-station-owner-belo-for-2-2-billion

NPR reporter nails report on Oklahoma tornado

Texas reporter Wade Goodwyn on National Public Radio provided one of the best narratives of the tornado that decimated the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore.

So writes Roy Peter Clark on Poynter.org.

To read Clark’s praise of Goodwyn’s work that evokes images, even though it was on radio, click on http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/writing-tools/214211/npr-tornado-report-reveals-the-elements-of-vivid-newswriting/

CNN provides some startling and disturbing videos of the havoc wreaked by the tornado. It was terrifying deja vu for Moore residents, who had another tornado slam into them in 1999 that killed 36 and injured 295 plus another that did less damage in 2003.

The latest tornado killed 24 and injured 377.

City refused gangs map; Toledo reporter came up with it on her own

When the city of Toledo’s authorities refused to release a map showing territories controlled by gangs, Toledo Blade reporter Taylor Dungjen rounded up the information, one person at a time, and had the Blade art department draw the map to go with her series on gangs in Toledo.

Last June, nine people were shot in a handful of incidents. That prompted the request for a gangs map and the Blade series on gangs in the city just across the Ohio-Michigan border from Detroit.

To read the full article, click on http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/212284/when-the-police-refused-to-release-a-gang-map-crime-reporter-drew-her-own/

Journalists deadly targets in Syria

Journalists have become targets during the revolt in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Agence France-Presse and Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders put the total at 23 since March 2011.

American Marie Colvin, 56, working for the Sunday Times, was killed by Syrian Army mortar.  

An additional 60 “citizen journalists” have been killed. Click on http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130502/journalists-who-have-died-syria-war

to see the list.

Among those listed as missing are Agence France-Presse and GlobalPost freelance journalist James Foley and McClatchy and Washington Post freelancer Austin Tice.

Click on http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/212510/james-foley-likely-being-held-with-one-or-more-western-journalists-in-syria/

to read the entire article on Foley and Tice.

Attack today; gone tomorrow

Daily Beast writer Howard Kurtz went after the Sports Illustrated story about NBA player Jason Collins publicly announcing that he was gay. The next day the Beast and Kurtz have “parted company,” Beast editor in chief Tina Brown announced.

To read two stories, click on http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/212428/daily-beast-and-howard-kurtz-have-parted-company/

And, this one tracing Kurtz’ false statements, click on  

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/daily-beast-drops-howie-kurtz-163130.html