News Cut: June 23, 2009 Archive

Five at 8 - 6/23/09

Posted at 7:35 AM on June 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)

First, this from the pond hockey championships in the Twin Cities last winter.

If that doesn't work for you today, try this: Snow sculpting from the winter carnival in St. Paul last January.

You know what makes the heat worse than it really is? Newspeople telling you how hot it is non-stop all day.

It's time for an "Embrace the Heat" campaign. We have to get ready for the dead of winter, when we're complaining about how cold it is. So capture a good image that makes us sweat just looking at it, and send it to me. I'll have something to post next January, when we can dream about the joy of hot days.

As long as we're on the subject -- sort of -- let's consider the science of skating. The New York Times details scientific studies that may ease the physical grind for figure skaters.

The Madoff strategy

Posted at 9:32 AM on June 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice

Lawyers for Bernie Madoff, who has admitted swindling his investors out of their savings, have asked the judge who'll sentence him next week to give him a sentence that will allow him a chance of seeing freedom again.

Madoff could get a 125-year sentence. His lawyers think 12 would be more fair for his stealing $13 billion from over a thousand clients.

You have to give his attorney, Ira Sorkin, credit for chutzpah. In his letter to the judge, he did a fair amount of blaming the victim.

"We believe that the unified tone of the victim statements suggests a desire for a type of mob vengeance that, if countenanced here, would negate and render meaningless the role of the court," Sorkin said.

"The significant anger and resentment evidence in the victims' words is no doubt justified in light of the circumstances of this case," Sorkin said. "Thankfully, none of the fury expressed in the victim statements has been as shocking as the death threats and anti-Semitic e-mails that have been directed toward Mr. Madoff and his counsel."

Natalie Erger said her 78-year-old husband had been obliged to go back to work - initially as a telephone salesman, then in a local bagel store.

The Guardian chronicled another case:

Angelo Viola, 79, from Staten Island, New York, says he is "not the typical media portrayal" of a Madoff victim: "I live in a modest two-bedroom house and I own one car. I was a small business owner and I worked six days a week for most of my life and funded my own IRA [retirement account] in order to retire comfortably. Now I am considered under the poverty level and I do not think I can last another six months in my home."

"At the age of 89, I find myself and my wife (86) devoid of future hope," another victim said. "I find it hard to believe what he did to us and...all the charities affected by this Bastard."

It's an interesting strategy that -- if it works -- would use the statements intended to keep Madoff in prison longer to get him out earlier.

Here are the victim statements. You decide.

Madoff Statements -

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Ed McMahon, 1923-2009

Posted at 10:36 AM on June 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Icons

"Who cares?" a follower on Twitter asked today, when the subject of the death of Ed McMahon came up.

I guess I don't have a great answer for it, although I do think there's value in remembering the icons of mass media when it was really mass media. Like McMahon, the Milton Berles and Dinah Shores poured the foundation for the influence of television.

"Here's Johnny!" I wonder how many people think that's Jack Nicholson's line?

Long before people talked about what was on Daily Show last night, they talked about what was on Carson.

The Archive of American Television has a series of interviews with McMahon here.

McMahon also was the last of a breed. Like Ted Williams, he was a star who interrupted his career, to go fly planes in the war in Korea.

After Carson, McMahon went on to host a series of forgettable shows and commercials -- Cash for Gold -- which just made us old-timers feel sad for the guy.

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School newspaper flap

Posted at 12:02 PM on June 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Schools

Another flap over the direction of a school newspaper has broken out in the region.

In West Fargo, Jeremy Murphy, the student newspaper and yearbook adviser, has been removed because of "how negative the paper was," according to the Detroit Lakes Online Web site (reg. required).

Murphy, a former reporter, didn't hold back in a letter he sent to the North Dakota Newspaper Association. "Administrators simply want an adviser who will restrain students from reporting on certain topics and I wasn't willing to compromise their freedoms to that extent," he said. "Although they didn't have any specifics, I just think it was the fact that students covered both sides and that negative perspective really wasn't well-received by district officials."

The paper -- The Packer -- won top honors in this year's Northern Interscholastic Press Association competition.

The paper's Web site has a great sample of stories including the bankruptcy of a company that was handling the French class trip, the one-person race for student body president, and a student who's moving to Kenya. Its opinion page features a column wondering why some of the teachers became teachers and one that questioned administrators for canceling a school trip because of blizzard fears.

School newspapers have always presented a dilemma for administrators who balance the teaching of a subject area -- in this case, journalism -- with the needs of their teachers.

In Faribault, Minn., the school district's superintendent closed down the school newspaper last December because the school paper wouldn't let him pre-read an article about a teacher. The students simply started publishing the paper online.

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The Nixon tapes

Posted at 1:56 PM on June 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

The Richard Nixon Presidential Library today released more than 150 hours of previously classified recordings of the president. The tapes include telephone discussions on the agreement to end the war in Vietnam and reaction to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.
Dig in here.

h/t: Brad Robideau

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News conference choreography

Posted at 3:06 PM on June 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News, Politics

The very tail end of President Obama's news conference today provided the best glimpse into the workings of the White House press corps.

Listen to the comment shouted at the end of the president's remarks. (Listen)

After Obama had bid everyone "adieu," an unidentified reporter whined "No questions about Iraq?" It seemed an odd complaint to a president, coming from someone responsible for asking the questions, one of which, by the way, included "how many cigarettes do you smoke a day?"

I wondered about that on Twitter, when Kevin Watterson, the Minnesota House Republican Caucus' communications boss, suggested coordination between Obama and the press corps over what questions would be asked.

He wasn't the only one. Writing on the Politico blog, Michael Calderone noted that Obama invited a question on Iran from Huffington Post's Nico Pitney.

Reporters typically don't coordinate their questions for the president before press conferences, so it seemed odd that Obama might have an idea what the question would be. Also, it was a departure from White House protocol by calling on The Huffington Post second, in between the AP and Reuters.

CBS Radio's Mark Knoller, a veteran White House correspondent, said over Twitter it was "very unusual that Obama called on Huffington Post second, appearing to know the issue the reporter would ask about."

Knoller says a news conference shouldn't "be choreographed," although presidents historically have had a "go-to" reporter to call on when questioning gets tough -- the kind of reporter who might ask about, for example, a new dog or the number of cigarettes he smokes a day.

Most of the questions asked today seemed to follow the issues that currently have our attention -- Iran and health care. It's not clear what question about Iraq the lonely reporter with the complaint would have asked had he been given the chance.

On that subject -- the news agenda -- a survey of what we're interested in (by way of the news media) speaks to our short attention spans.

Here's the graph for the last week, compiled by Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism:

And the week before that:

And the one before that:

Iraq hasn't registered on the PEJ's news coverage index since the third week in February.

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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