Dawidziak as Twain on Thursday

PD and former BJ entertainment critic Mark Dawidziak, who rivals Hal Holbrook nationally as a Mark Twain impersonator, will be at his craft again at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 16 at the Fairlawn-Bath Branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library.

A year ago he performed Twain in the library of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut.

Rudolph Stocker, who began at the New York Times in October 1965, finally retired May 18 at the age of 78, well beyond Social Security eligiblity. He is the last hot type setter at the Times with the lifetime job guarantee.

Rudy Stocker

BJ printers had that same lifetime job guarantee, the brainchild of John S. Knight, that allowed computers into Ol’ Blue Walls and ushered out the smoking hot linotype machines.

I remember the day that, as Newsroom makeup editor, I escorted the last hot-type in BJ history to the engravers alongside Composing foreman Don Baker and printers Carl “Red” Neston and Ed Fobean in 1976.

Red died in 2004, Don and Ed in 2006. Unlike the linotypes, I’m still smoking hot at damn near 84.

Rudy operated a steampunk linotype at the Times. But he was adaptable. With the Times in the computer age he set ads on a Mac, using InDesign and PhotoShop. Old dog learned new tricks, as many did as the BJ.

Rudy was in the secret 9^th floor mini-Composing room the Times set up to put together its 1971 Pentagon Papers section, all done in secrecy.

Still, Rudy left the Times without a farewell party or speech. His decision.

If you want to read about the old codger, click on http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/1966-2016-the-last-hot-type-printer-puts-down-his-tools.html?_r=1

Sad, undeniable numbers

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Job losses at newspapers are astounding.

271,800 jobs have been lost since 1990. That’s 59.7% of the 1989 total.

Magazines lost 36% of its jobs. Radio lost 27%.

Internet publishing and broadcasting rose from 30,000 to 198,000.

At the BJ, there were 250 in the newsroom when I retired in 1996. Today, there are fewer than 60. That’s a 76% job loss!

To read the report, click on https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-newspaper-industry-hollowed-job-losses-190549050.html

Will tronc re-naming trump Gannett takeover try?

Tribune Publishing, trying to avoid a takeover bid by Gannett, has changed its name to tronc (which it says stands for Tribune Online Content).

That’s to let the world know that it’s branding itself as a digital company while moving its stock listing from the more prestigious New York Stock Exchange to the smaller Nasdaq, which Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernie Madoff once was chairman or president.

All the Tribune/tronc directors were reelected but a substantian percentage of shares were withheld from the voting as a protest encouraged by Gannett.

Various large-percentage have filed lawsuits or pushed Tribune/tronc to take the Gannett offer which was $864 million.

Ironically, tronc (from the French term “tronc des pauvres”) in English is “poor box.”

USA Today next stop for Mizell

Former BJ managing editor Mizell Stewart III will join the USA Today Network as vice president of news operations. That means he’ll be heading up a team seeking to enable and elevate local journalism in more than 100 communities in America.

Mizell Stewart

Wife Valerie and Mizell will continue to live in West Chester Township, which is near Middletown and Hamilton and Cincinnati.

Mizell will work from USA Today’s McLean, Virginia headquarters.

Current BJ vice president and editor Bruce Winges succeeded Mizell, then the managing editor, as the top newsroom executive at the BJ in 2007.

Mizell went to the Evansville, Indiana Courier and Press as editor. Later, he became vice president/content of the newspaper division of E.W. Scripps and Journal Media Group managing director of content. 

Twinsburg native and Bowling Green graduate Mizell worked in Tallahassee, Florida before coming to the BJ in 2006.

Re-direct your cable bitching to Spectrum

Well, we can no longer complain about our Time Warner Cable service, which seems to be a favorite pastime of BJ folks.

Charter Communications swallowed Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks and calls the three-way Spectrum, although all three are under the Charter Communications umbrella. I’m sure consultants/researchers were paid mucho dinaros to come up with that name.

Spectrum is the fastest growing TV, Internet and Voice provider in the United States -- #2 nationally with 24 million custmers from New York to California to Florida, which pretty much takes in all of America. Actually, 41 states. 9 states escaped.

So says the company press release.

Comcast, which we get at Paula’s home in The Villages, Florida, is #1, in customers and complaints.

Charter moved from St. Louis to Stamford, Connecticut. Maybe the City Arches cast too big a shadow onto executive office windows.

Charter began in St. Louis with three former Cencom Cable Television executives who decided to spread their wings.

In 1995 Charter gobbled up Cable South. In 1998 Dallas-based Marcus Cable. In 1999, Stamford’s American Cable Entertainment and nine other cable companies around the nation.

In 2002, four Charter executives were indicted for fudging subscriber numbers to look more attractive. It cost Charter $144 million.

In 2009, Charter filed for bankruptcy, reducing its debt by $8 billion and getting $3 billion more to play with.

In 2010, Charter paid $18 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over technicians’ wage and overtime claims.

Other acquistions were made in 2008 and 2013. Now it’s your turn, as a Time Warner customer.

No price change, Spectrum assures, “at the time of the merger.” A few days later, though, look out!

Plus, in 2007 Charter was labeled by PCWorld as having the worst customer service among the then-14 largest cable companies. Be forewarned.

Pulitzer winners mostly white males

Whether you go back 100 years or the past decade, about 84% of the Pulitzer Prize winners are white and mostly male.

African-Americans have about the same percentages in this decade as they had in the 1970s and 1980s.

Women have gone from to 16% to about one-third. The total has gone from 5 in the 1970s to 52 in the past decade, mostly in feature writing and investigative reporting.

Former PD columnist Connie Schultz won a 2005 Pulitzer for commentary.

For the full article, click on http://www.cjr.org/analysis/100_years_of_data.php

Scarborough out at Akron

Ohio’s Polytechnic University is dead and Scott Scarborough, who pushed for the brand, has resigned as University of Akron president after a disconcordant and disruptive two years.

Scarborough can choose to be a faculty member in the college of business administration or take a contractual buyout of $450,000. 

He must vacate the university-owned home by Sept. 27. He will receive $15,000 in moving expenses. All his presidential perks, including a vehicle stipend, travel expenses and club memberships, end on Sept. 28. 

Rex Ramsier, interim senior vice president and provost, will take over until an interim president is named.

Let the healing begin.

Fall enrollment is down and programs led by Scarborough flopped miserably. One cost 800K. The OPU push was killed, too.

BJ business writer Betty Lin-Fisher and husband Paul Fisher are celebrating their 21^st wedding anniversary.

Betty has more more awards than I can keep track of – the Cleveland Press Club Ohio Excellence in Journalism competition (2008, 2009, 2010, 2015 firsts) and Akron Beacon Journal Excellence Awards (2005).

That’s more than a decade of collecting awards for her excellent work.

And more than two decades of Betty and Paul enjoying each other’s company, which is an even more remarkable achievement these days.

Newspapers keep vanishing

The newspaper massacre just won’t stop.

The Times Press-Recorder, based in Santa Maria, California, is the latest to go belly-up – after 129 years.

 The company also announced the Santa Maria Times would stop publishing a Monday newspaper next week.

The number of newspapers per million population has plummeted from 1,800 to 400.

And shrinking almost weekly.

Tribune, Gannett heading to sharing a bed?

Are Tribune Publishing and Gannett tap-dancing their way to Tribune swallowing Gannett?

That interesting theory is posted at http://www.poynter.org/2016/the-latest-from-tribune-and-gannett-escalation-or-prelude-to-a-deal/412444/

Tribune Publishing began in 1847 as the Chicago Tribune. Its wire service at one time was called the Knight-Ridder Tribune before KR went belly up.

Depending how you count them, Tribune Publishing has 31 newspapers.

Gannet was born in 1923 in Elmira, New York from a newspaper business that started in 1906. It has been acquiring newspapers and TV stations for more than a century.

More than another newspaper death

There’s more to the death of a newspaper than just the financial details.

To read the human toll and agony involved with the Tampa Bay Times (aka St. Petersburg Times) swallowing and killing the Tampa Tribune, click on http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/business/media/an-abrupt-end-to-the-tampa-tribune-after-a-blow-from-its-rival.html?_r=0

Since 2007, the Tucson Citizen, Rocky Mountain News, Baltimore Examiner, Kentucky Post, Cincinnati Post, King County Journal, Union City Register-Tribune, Halifax Daily News, Albuquerque Tribune, South Idaho Press, San Juan Star, Honolulu Advertiser  and Tampa Tribune have gone belly-up.

That’s a dozen once-vibrant newspapers in less than a decade. Including big and small, nearly 1,000 newspapers vanished during that time.

‘Mr. Ed’ star Alan Young dies

Alan Young, Mr. Ed

Alan Young, whose co-star for five years was a “talking” horse, died Thursday in California. He was 96.

“Mr. Ed” ran from 1961-66 on CBS. Young played architect Wilbur Post, who was married to Carol (played by Connie Hines, who died in 2009) and kept a horse, Mr. Ed, in their suburban stable.

Mr. Ed, voiced by Allan “Rocky” Lane, would speak only to Wilbur, whose name he “said” by twitching his horse lips. Thread made that happen in early episodes, but the horse eventually learned to twitch his lips when Young stopped talking.

Bamboo Harvester, who played Mr. Ed, died in 1970.

Young voiced Scrooge McDuck. So did Dallas McKennon in the 1960s, Stephen Stanton, Bill Thompson, Patrick Fraley and Will Ryan.

Russ Musarra, Tom Moore on Cuyahoga Valley Railway train

Russ makes tracks to reunion with Tom

BJ newsroom retirees Tom Moore and Russ Musarra had a reunion on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway.

Tom has been a conductor for most of his retirement, when he’s not helping former BJ sports editor Tom Giffen run the Roy Hobbs World Series for older baseball players in Fort Myers, Florida.

Russ – Rosario Musarra is you look at his birth certificate – lives in Streetsboro with his wife for almost six decades, Bev. They moved there in 2003 after living 15 years in Northfield Center and 22 in Macedonia.

Wrote Tom: “Sometimes you get a pleasant surprise while volunteering on the Scenic Railway. “This guy looked me up and I hadn't seen him for a while. We worked together for 30 years at the Akron Beacon Journal. He's a first-class reporter and person. They just don't make guys like that anymore.”

Two years ago Paula and I met Russ and Bev for dinner in northern Summit County. We didn’t go on or off the rails that time.

Russ is 75 pounds trimmer than during his days at Ol’ Blue Walls. He walks around Sunny Lake in Aurora during good weather and inside a Lowe's store near their Streetsboro residence when Mother Nature doesn't cooperate.

Russ was a BJ City Desk reporter and succeeded the late Polly Paffilas as the BJ's About Town columnist. He retired in 2000.

Russ and retired BJ artist Chuck Ayers in 2007 got their "Walks Around Akron," a long-running BJ series, into a book published by the University of Akron.

After the Beacon Journal dropped the "Walks" essays, they were published by Akron City magazine and later Akron Life and Leisure magazine.

They also collaborated on two other books -- "Greetings From Akron" (subtitled "Celebrating Akron’s History in Picture Postcards"), published in 2000 by the Summit County Historical Society, and "Joe’s Place: Conversations on the Cuyahoga Valley," published in 1999 by the Cuyahoga Valley Association.

Russ also wrote "Sleep With the Angels," with former Cleveland detective Robert L. Bolton, that was published in 1985. 

Bev and Russ have four children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, all living in the area.

If you want to touch base with Russ:

Russ Musarra
8916 Falcon Drive

Streetsboro 44241
Home phone: 330-626-4188
Cellular phone: 330-322-8890
E-mail: rmusarra@neo.rr.com

Tom was born in Richmond, Virginia. His 41-year newspaper career included the Bluefield (West Virginia) Daily Telegraph, Zanesville News, Lorain Journal, Columbus Citizen-Columbus Citizen Journal and the BJ.

Tom and wife Dot have four children.

John S. Knight was born in Bluefield.

Cheryl Scott Sheinin, retired after 45 years in the BJ Finance Department, attended the ceremony for the final resting place of former BJ security guard Anna Nitz.



Anna passed away in 2012 at the age of 80. Tuesday, her ashes were distributed into the Atlantic Ocean off the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina that she loved so much.

Anna’s husband of 62 years is Bill Nitz.

Albert Nitz, Bill's cousin who drove Bill  to Myrtle Beach, read from the Bible and a tribute to her that he had written. Then everyone present sang “Amazing Grace.”

Who could ask for a better sendoff?  Cheryl’s husband is former BJ staffrt Neil Sheinin.

Anna was with Pinkertons since 1968. She was security guard at the parking desk entrance and the BJ lobby for decades.

She made lots of friends at Ol’ Blue Walls over time, was active in the Ladies Golf League and competed in the Corporate Challenge several times. 

BJ Advertising retiree Mike Williams, who returned from months in warm and sunny Mexico to a driving April snowstorm when he landed in Ohio with his wife of 27 years, Jane Spiess Williams, provided me with Anna’s 2012 obituary.

Here it is:

Anna M. Nitz, 80, passed away on August 26, 2012.

She was born in Akron on October 28, 1931, to the late Gerald and Anna Rezack.

Anna was a member of St. Vincent Catholic Church and retired from Pinkerton Security Company after 42 years of service.

Preceded in death by brothers, Gerald and Frank, survivors include husband, William; brother, Tom (Pat) Rezack; best friends, Cheryl Sheinin and Johnny Lynn King; and her dog, Nicki.

A memorial service will be held Thursday, 11 a.m., at Copley Place, 528 Rothrock Rd., Copley. NEWCOMER FUNERAL HOME, 330-784-3334

Published in Akron Beacon Journal on Aug. 28, 2012

Anna with her favorite guy at her favorite place

 

Goddard will retire in November

Dick Goddard, after 55 years on Cleveland TV as a weatherman, will retire in November. The ballyhooed announcement was made on Wednesday's WJW-Channel 8 newcast.

Dick Goddard

Goddard, 85, began in Cleveland in 1961 and at WJW in 1966.

He will focus exclusively on animal welfare.
 

Actually, Goddard has been easing his way out the door for years. 

 Meteorologists Melissa Mack, Andre Bernier, Scott Sabol and A.J. Colby have been assuming more and more of his duties.

There’s one area where Goddard will never retire, as long as he’s alive: Promoting animal welfare.

"Helping the four-foots is my goal in life," Goddard told PD and former BJ entertainment critic Mark Dawidziak.

The Akron native is a Green High School graduate who received his earliest weather training in the Air Force, where he handled forecasts for America's atomic testing in the Pacific.

Then he worked toward his Kent State graduation while broadcasting National Weather Service reports from Akron-Canton Regional Airport.

He began on KYW-Channel 3 (now WKYC) in 1961, moved to Philadelphia for a few months in 1965, then returned to Cleveland when he didn’t feel the Brotherly Love in Pennsylvania.

He signed with WJW in 1966.

And the legend began.

Medina County resident Goddard also was a Cleveland Browns statistician for home games and created the Woolybear Festival in Vermilion in 1973.

Guild firebrand Stephen Hatch passes away

Stephen Hatch, Cleveland Newspaper Guild executive secretary who was fired during a 1974 Cleveland newspaper strike but reinstated after an arbitrator’s ruling, has passed away.

BJ picture editor Bob DeMay, at the BJ since 1999 and Guild leader at Ol’ Blue Walls, emails:

“John

“Got a note today about the death of former Local 1 Guild Executive Secretary Steve Hatch. Hatch, a former Plain Dealer reporter and Guild member, was Local executive secretary from 1978-92.

“This pre-dates my time at the BJ but thought the retirees might have an interest. 

“That's all the info I have for now.”

Hatch, who lived in Seven Hills, succeeded Jack Weir in 1978 as CNG executive secretary.  He was a formidable Guild activist who rankled Cleveland newspaper management.

That prompted the Newhouse legal eagles to shove Hatch out the door. Temporarily, as it turned out.

But Hatch was willing to take one for the team, his fellow union members.

Oplinger a Hall of Famer

Doug Oplinger

BJ managing editor Doug Oplinger was inducted into the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors Hall of Fame on Sunday in Columbus.

The BJ’s Susan Gapinski Price was chosen best headline writer. Third places went to Paula Schleis for best news writer in Ohio, page designer Brian Shellito for full-page design for “LeBron” and for best sports section.

I remember Doug, the guy with the John Deere cap and the baby face, leading the charge, with then-ME Larry Williams cracking the whip, to the 1987 Pulitzer Price for general news reporting for its coverage of Sir James Goldsmith’s greenmail attack on Goodyear Tire & Rubber that cost millions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

In 1993 Doug organized 16 focus groups that examined race relations and brought Ol’ Blue Walls another Pulitzer in 1994, for public service.

The green kid from Green, a part-timer and Akron U. student during my State Desk days, has been at the BJ for 45 years.

General Excellence awards for 2016 went to the Columbus Dispatch, the Canton Repository, the Mansfield News Journal, the (Newark) Advocate and the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette. The Cincinnati Enquirer won the First Amendment Award for pursuing freedom of information to make a police video public.

 

Connie Schultz is WVU commencement speaker

Former PD columnist Connie Schultz, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, was the commencement speaker for the West Virginia University Reed College of Media graduates in Morgantown on Friday.

Connie wrote two books “Life Happens – And Other Unavoidable Truths,” a collection of essays, and ”? and His Lovely Wife,” a memoir about her husband Sherrod Brown’s successful 2006 race for the U.S. Senate.

She is Professional in Residence at Kent State University, where she graduated with a journalism degree in 1979.

She grew up in Ashtabula. She joined the PD in 1979, resigned in 2011 to avoid a conflict of interest with her husband’s re-election campaign.

Final curtain for last ‘Casablanca’ survivor

Madeleine Lebeau

Madeleine Lebeau, who played Humprey Bogart’s jilted lover Yvonne in “Casabalanca” with the eyes filled with tears during her singing of France’s “La Marseillaise” national anthem, died May 1 at the age of 92.

Lebeau is the last surviving cast member. Not too long before making the film, she had escaped Nazi-occupied France with her husband, actor Marcel Dalio, who played croupier Emil in the movie.

Lebeau yells “Viva la France!” in her final, emotional closeup.