Connecting - February 17, 2021

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February 17, 2021

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Colleagues,

Good Wednesday morning on this the 17^th day of February 2021,

We bring you sad news of the death of our colleague Bill Beecham, whose AP service in Salt Lake City brought him great respect from AP staff and the members he served both as a newsman and bureau chief.

Bill died Tuesday morning in Salt Lake City. If you have a favorite memory to share of working with him, please send it along.

First responses are in as Connecting looks for the story behind your unusual email address. Hope you share your own story.

Congratulations to a member of AP’s exclusive 50-Year Club, our colleague Richard Drew (Email), on celebrating his 51^st year with the AP on Tuesday. Richard, a staff photographer in New York, started Feb. 16, 1970, in the San Francisco bureau (after being hired from the Pasadena Star-News) and transferred to New York in July 1973. He said, “I remember listening to the Watergate hearings while driving cross-country. My first day on the job I shot student unrest in Berkeley after the Chicago 7 verdict, and a bombing at a San Francisco Police Dept. substation in Golden Gate Park. My baptism by fire.” When he heard Richard was going to transfer from FX to NY, then San Francisco Giant Willie Mays (and later NY Met) told him: “Be careful in New York, they’re going to eat you alive.”

Another member of that club, Edie Lederer, AP’s chief UN correspondent in New York, worked together with Richard in San Francisco before she was assigned to AP’s Saigon bureau, Richard said, “And now I see her when I work at the UN.” Edie will mark her 55th AP year in March.

Have a great day -be safe, stay healthy.

Paul

Bill Beecham, former Salt Lake City bureau chief, dies Tuesday

Bill Beecham and his wife Fumiko in 2018 – the year of their 50^th anniversary.

Bill Beecham, longtime AP chief of bureau in Salt Lake City, died Tuesday morning at Highland Care Center in Salt Lake City.

His younger brother, Dave, posted word of his death on Facebook and said, "He left peacefully. Great thanks for all of your prayers and positive thoughts." Dave had announced on Feb. 12 that his brother was in hospice care and had only a couple of days to live. Their sister Kate passed away three months ago.

Beecham served with the AP for 35 years, 29 of them in Utah, before retiring in 2004. In an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune at the time of retirement, he listed as major stories he covered or helped supervise coverage: The execution of Gary Gilmore. Barney Clark's artificial heart. The deadly pipe bombings by forger Mark Hofmann. Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping and return.

Beecham is survived by his wife, Fumiko, and children Kevin and Teresa, and Kevin’s son Cameron. Kevin is a prosecuting attorney in California and Teresa lives in Salt Lake City.

A native of St. Paul, Minn., Beecham studied to be a Catholic priest before joining the Navy. He was stationed in Japan, where he met his wife, and also served for a year in Vietnam. After returning home in 1967, he took a job as a police reporter for the Missoulian newspaper in Missoula, Mont., earning $85 a week.

That led two years later to a job covering the Montana Legislature for the AP in Helena. Beecham transferred to the AP's Salt Lake City bureau in 1972, where he and a colleague soon made a splash with an exhaustive three-part series detailing the finances of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As Beecham recalled to the Tribune, not a single newspaper in Utah ran it.

Bill Beecham (left) and David Briscoe look at one of their joint efforts on the CRT screen at the Salt Lake City bureau in 1976. The pair won an SDX/SPJ prize for their series on Mormon business interests. Photo/AP Corporate Archives

That colleague was David Briscoe – and the two worked as reporters together in the Salt Lake bureau in 1975 on a ground-breaking series of AP stories on finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Recalled Briscoe, “We estimated at the time the church was bringing in more than $3 million a day or $1 billion a year in donations and income from its many business interests. The stories got attention around the country and earned the first General Excellence prize for print media in 1975 from the Utah Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi).

Beecham covered a wide variety of Utah stories and witnessed the execution of Gary Gilmore. “It was an experience that deeply touched him and one of many memorable moments in journalism he talked about in his final years,” said Briscoe, who was news editor at the time.

Beecham is remembered for his dogged reporting on Gilmore, the convicted murderer who was executed by a Utah firing squad on Jan. 17, 1977. The execution, the first in the United States in 10 years, drew worldwide attention. As the lead AP reporter at the Utah State Prison that morning, Beecham dictated his report from outside the converted cannery where Gilmore was shot.

After a three-year stint in Spokane, during which he helped cover the eruption of Mount St. Helens, Beecham returned to Utah in 1982 to run the Salt Lake City bureau.

"Bill was one of the finest reporters in the Intermountain West and a dear friend,” Briscoe said. “He knew the region as well as any reporter and played a seminal role in building and maintaining AP as a force in local journalism throughout Utah and Idaho."

What’s behind your unusual email address?

Norm Abelson - naftali@maine.rr.com - How did I decide on my email address? First, I went through a list of cute words. Dumped that idea. Next I searched for something “different.” Boring. Then it occurred to me how much I always have disliked my first name, especially when, as a kid, it gave way to the hated “Normie.” What I have always preferred was the Hebrew name given me at birth: Naftali, one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Even thought about officially changing my first name, but that seemed cumbersome. But using Naftali to identify me on-line? Perfect. And so it is.

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Joni and Gary Beall - glbbbq@gmail.com - My husband and I share an email. First three letters are my husband's initials. The last three are bbq, as in barbecue. Not only do we love eating bbq, but for his 40th birthday my husband bought himself a big smoker. He makes Eastern North Carolina pork bbq over wood. Early on, he got tips from Melton's BBQ in Rocky Mount, NC (even though they weren't using wood anymore). For those of you who miss Melton's BBQ, we also have the slaw recipe. Delish.

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Helen Mitternight - voxredux@aol.com – I set up my personal email address -- one of many -- back in the days when AOL sent out disks for you to load and negotiating with family members not to use the phone line so you could send an email -- and I really had no idea what the Internet was or what could be done with it. I imagined it like some big echo chamber, you would send out your voice (vox) and it would just ping off someone and come back to you (redux). I'm not sure why I stick to my AOL -- others tell me it makes me seem old -- but I still like the email address.

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Larry Paladino - rto173rd@wowway.com - My e-mail address, rto173rd, refers to my service in the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam and as an infantryman I carried the radio for the company commander (radio-telephone operator -- rto). I was there from May 1965 to May 1966, after eight months on Okinawa where our unit trained special to go to Vietnam. When we went on May 5, 1965, it was as a whole unit, becoming the first Army combat unit to go to Vietnam. Right now, they're in Germany and Italy, one of only two airborne major units along with the 82nd Airborne Division.

AP in the Los Angeles Times

Linda Deutsch (Email) - As a constant reader of my hometown newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, I have been struck by the number of AP stories that make up the paper these days. But more than that, I was pleasantly surprised in recent weeks to see the Times adopt a new policy of using AP bylines. Wow! In the 48 years I reported for the AP, I think I may have once gotten a Times byline. Occasionally, of course, they would use an AP bug on a story, but never the kind of attribution now being used. The best we could hope for was a tag saying, “The AP contributed to this story.” Times have changed.

For instance, on Monday, the front section was a thin 12 pages. It included nine AP stories and eight different AP bylines. A couple have the “Associated Press” as the byline including, oddly, the announcement of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex expecting a new heir — a story from Los Angeles, and a virus story from New Zealand.

The bylined stories are from such far flung places as: New Delhi (Ashok Sharma)Tallahassee (Bobby Caina Calvin) Washington (Impeachment related stories by Colleen Long, Jill Colvin, Alexandra Jaffee and Jonathan Lemire), an undated business story on jobs and salaries nationwide (Christopher Rugaber) and an Atlanta report on Virus case numbers (Sudhin Thanawala and Kate Brumback.) Sunday’s paper, heavy on the Times’ own reporting of the impeachment verdict, used AP to report on McConnell’s rebuke of Trump (Alan Fram and Lisa Marcaro)

Tuesday’s paper was even more AP-heavy with 9 AP bylines, 12 AP stories and pages 3, 4 and 5 entirely made up of AP stories. The far flung datelines included Chicago, London, Gaza City, Kingston, Jamaica; Frankfurt, Germany; Tel Aviv, Washington, Portland, Ore.; Austin, Tex. Atlanta, Laramie, Wyoming; and an undated stocks story.

The AP bylines on Tuesday are Lindsay Tanner, Jill Lawless and Jo Kearney, David McHugh, Hope Yen, Kate Brumback and Russ Bynum, Mead Gruver and Elaine Kurtenbach.

Each story carries a tagline saying "(writer’s last name) writes for the Associated Press.”

AP photos, of course, are a staple of the Times daily layout. I counted 10 AP photos in the Tuesday front section.

In case you’re wondering, the Monday and Tuesday front pages had five stories each, all by the Times’ own staffers, leaning toward features. They are long and jump inside the paper. The more localized California section is written primarily by Times staffers. It also had one AP obit. It’s worth noting that the Times, which no longer has an obit staff, frequently gives great displays to AP obits on famous people.

Some of us remember a scary moment years ago when the Times dropped AP, thinking they could get along without us. That didn’t last very long. It’s now apparent that the AP, facing its own economic and staffing challenges, has become the backbone of newspaper journalism in our vast country.

I guess Mark Twain was right when he said: “There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe…the sun in the heavens and The Associated Press down here.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling proud of our world of talented, dedicated staffers who are breathing new life into the newspaper business every day.

Connecting mailbox

Read more here.

'The New Normal’ pandemic photo book

Julie Adam (Email) - The New Normal” is a compilation of the hard work of photojournalism students at the University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. It is a result of the unforeseen circumstances that both the students of KU and members of the Lawrence community endured due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 16 students enrolled in this course, both juniors and seniors, captured moments in the semester that represent the pandemic, the 2020 presidential election, unemployment and the Black Lives Matter movement. All four of these topics have not only shaped this photojournalism book but have shaped our world today.

During KU's spring 2020 semester, the deadly COVID-19 virus forced KU to move all classes entirely online in mid-March until the end of the semester. From that point on, our KU experience was forever changed.

Once enrollment for the 2020 fall semester classes opened, the school offered Journalism 410 Photojournalism with Instructor Eric Thomas as a journalism elective, allowing students to photograph and publish images. This course began Aug. 25 and ended with finals week concluding on Dec. 11, 2020. For many students enrolled, this was our only in-person course of the semester, and we met every Tuesday or Thursday in Stauffer-Flint Hall. Our classroom was small and to maintain Center for Disease Control distancing guidelines to control the spread of COVID-19, class sessions were split into half in-person and half online. Students also had the option of using Zoom, an online video conferencing platform, if they could not attend in-person class.

Each week, Thomas provided students with photo assignments, including “Sense of Place,” “Composed Portraits,” “Student Life,” “Campus Life,” “An Issue in Action” and others. Due to social distancing guidelines and restrictions at local Lawrence establishments, students had to get creative with capturing their photographs while staying personally safe. Students captured these photo assignments using their DSLR cameras they had prior to taking this course, or one they rented from the journalism school’s Resource Center.

We also captured candid moments in everyday life for our “New Normal” assignments. Each week, students captured five photos of people performing everyday tasks, often with our camera phones. These photos were authentic with no editing or cropping. Once we captured our pictures, we submitted them through Google Photos. We received feedback from Thomas as well as from our peers.

Many students enrolled in this photojournalism elective with pretty limited skills. Few of the students had previously taken a photography related course. However, by the end of the semester, students obtained a better understanding of photojournalism and the ability to capture moments despite the limitations of an unforeseen global pandemic. From all of us in this Photojournalism class, we hope you enjoy the moments we have documented this fall.

Click here for a link to this story.

Click here for information on how to order the book.

Connecting wishes Happy Birthday

Eldon Cort - elcort@aol.com

Martha Irvine - muddlymud@mac.com

Welcome to Connecting

Mary Ganz - mganz@uuma.org

Justin Myers - justin@justinmyers.net

Stories of interest

Tribune agrees to purchase by hedge fund for $630 million (AP)

CHICAGO (AP) — The newspaper publisher Tribune has agreed to be sold to Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund known for cutting costs and eliminating newsroom jobs, in a deal valued at $630 million.

Tribune Publishing Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun and other newspapers, said Tuesday it has agreed to sell its shares to Alden for $17.25 apiece, in cash.

Alden became Tribune Publishing’s largest shareholder in 2019; it holds a 32% stake. The hedge fund owns one of the country’s largest newspaper chains; its papers include the Boston Herald, the Denver Post and the San Jose Mercury News.

The Baltimore Sun is not included in the deal. It will be sold to a nonprofit formed by businessman and philanthropist Stewart Bainum Jr. that will run the paper “for the benefit of the community,” the Sun wrote on Tuesday.

Read more here.

Click here for Chicago Tribune story.

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The Baltimore Sun to be purchased by nonprofit (AP)

BALTIMORE (AP) — The Baltimore Sun announced Tuesday that the newspaper and its affiliated publications will be purchased by a nonprofit developed by businessman and philanthropist Stewart Bainum, a move that would place it back in local hands.

The newspaper reported that the sale was made possible by Alden Global Capital’s $630 million deal to acquire full control of Tribune Publishing, which also publishes the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News and other major newspapers.

As part of the acquisition, the nonprofit Sunlight for All Institute would acquire The Baltimore Sun, The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, The Carroll County Times and several other local weeklies and magazines and affiliated online properties, according to The Sun.

Read more here.

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My Teens Are Coronavirus Vaccine Guinea Pigs (New York Times)

By Sheila Mulrooney Eldred

The day after my teenagers got their first shots in the Moderna Covid vaccine trial, I found my 13-year-old daughter, Zoe, sprawled out in bed during a distance-learning art class. Under a pile of blankets, she said she had chills. My heart skipped a beat. Any other time I would have worried about her missing school or Nordic ski practice, but this time I was elated when her temperature peaked at 100.5 degrees.

A fever meant she was probably reacting to a real mRNA vaccine, and not a placebo. Maybe she’d won the vaccine lottery!

When Pfizer and Moderna were granted emergency authorization to license their vaccines in December, the shots were approved for people as young as 16 and 18, respectively. But in order to end the pandemic, many experts said that younger children will need to be vaccinated.

Read more here. Shared by Dennis Conrad.

The Final Word

UK’s chief mouser celebrates 10 years on the prowl

FILE -In this Thursday, May 21, 2020 file photo, Larry, the official 10 Downing Street cat walks outside 10 Downing Street before the nationwide Clap for Carers to recognise and support National Health Service (NHS) workers and carers fighting the coronavirus pandemic, in London. Monday, Feb. 15, 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of rescue cat Larry becoming Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office in a bid to deal with a rat problem at 10 Downing Street. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, file)

FILE - In this Saturday, March 23, 2019 file photo, demonstrators carry a poster with a picture of 10 Downing Street's cat Larry during a Peoples Vote anti-Brexit march in London. Monday, Feb. 15, 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of rescue cat Larry becoming Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office in a bid to deal with a rat problem at 10 Downing Street. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

By JILL LAWLESS and DANICA KIRKA

LONDON (AP) — Larry the cat, a four-legged inhabitant of London’s 10 Downing St., is marking a decade as Britain’s mouse-catcher in chief on Monday.

The tabby cat was recruited by then-Prime Minister David Cameron to deal with a pack of rats seen scuttling close to the British leader’s official residence, and entered Downing Street on Feb. 15, 2011.

The former stray, adopted from London’s Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, was given the title Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, an unofficial pest control post. He was the first cat to hold the rat-catching portfolio since the retirement of Humphrey in 1997, and has loyally served three prime ministers.

But it seems like yesterday that Larry was just another cat — as opposed to a media superstar — said Lindsey Quinlan, the head of cattery of Battersea.

Read more here.

Today in History - Feb. 17, 2021

By The Associated Press

Today is Wednesday, Feb. 17, the 48th day of 2021. There are 317 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Feb. 17, 1815, the United States and Britain exchanged the instruments of ratification for the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.

On this date:

In 1801, the U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president; Burr became vice president.

In 1863, the International Red Cross was founded in Geneva.

In 1864, during the Civil War, the Union ship USS Housatonic was rammed and sunk in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, by the Confederate hand-cranked submarine HL Hunley in the first naval attack of its kind; the Hunley also sank.

In 1897, the forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, convened its first meeting in Washington.

In 1944, during World War II, U.S. forces invaded Eniwetok (ehn-eh-WEE’-tahk) Atoll, encountering little initial resistance from Imperial Japanese troops. (The Americans secured the atoll less than a week later.)

In 1964, the Supreme Court, in Wesberry v. Sanders, ruled that congressional districts within each state had to be roughly equal in population.

In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon departed the White House with his wife, Pat, on a historic trip to China.

In 1988, Lt. Col. William Higgins, a Marine Corps officer serving with a United Nations truce monitoring group, was kidnapped in southern Lebanon by Iranian-backed terrorists (he was later slain by his captors).

In 1996, world chess champion Garry Kasparov beat IBM supercomputer “Deep Blue,” winning a six-game match in Philadelphia (however, Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in a rematch in 1997).

In 2006, Tanja Frieden of Switzerland won the Olympic women’s snowboardcross, speeding past American Lindsey Jacobellis, who’d fallen on her next-to-last jump before the finish line.

In 2015, Vice President Joe Biden opened a White House summit on countering extremism and radicalization, saying the United States needed to ensure that immigrants were fully included in the fabric of American society to prevent violent ideologies from taking root at home.

In 2018, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, told a conference in Germany that there was now “incontrovertible” evidence of a Russian plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. election; the statement stood in stark contrast to Trump’s claim that Russian interference in his election victory was a hoax.

Ten years ago: A group of Democratic Wisconsin lawmakers blocked passage of a sweeping anti-union bill, refusing to show up for a vote and then abruptly leaving the state in an effort to force Republicans to the negotiating table. Iowa high school wrestler Joel Northrup defaulted on his first-round state tournament match rather than face Cassy Herkelman, one of the first girls ever to qualify for the event, saying that wrestling a girl would conflict with his religious beliefs.

Five years ago: A three-way feud among the GOP’s leading White House contenders escalated, with Ted Cruz daring Donald Trump to sue him for defamation and dismissing Marco Rubio’s charges of dishonesty during a CNN forum just days before South Carolina’s high-stakes primary. Travis Hittson, a former Navy crewman, was executed in Georgia for killing a fellow sailor, Conway Utterbeck.

One year ago: More than 300 American cruise ship passengers, including 14 who tested positive for coronavirus, were quarantined at military bases in California and Texas after arriving from Japan on charter flights. A push by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam to ban the sale of assault weapons failed after some of his fellow Democrats in the state Senate balked at the proposal. Denny Hamlin won the rain-delayed Daytona 500 for a third time, beating Ryan Blaney in the second-closest finish in race history; Ryan Newman suffered a head injury in a spectacular crash on the final lap. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said he planned to spend $10 billion of his own fortune to help fight climate change. Novelist Charles Portis, whose best-seller “True Grit” was twice adapted into Oscar-nominated films, died at 86. Hall of Fame golfer Mickey Wright, winner of 82 LPGA tournaments including 13 majors, died in Florida; she was 85.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor-comedian Barry Humphries (aka “Dame Edna”) is 87. Actor Christina Pickles is 86. Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown is 85. Actor Brenda Fricker is 76. Actor Becky Ann Baker is 68. Actor Rene Russo is 67. Actor Richard Karn is 65. Actor Lou Diamond Phillips is 59. Basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan is 58. Actor-comedian Larry, the Cable Guy is 58. TV personality Rene Syler is 58. Movie director Michael Bay is 57. Singer Chante Moore is 54. Rock musician Timothy J. Mahoney (311) is 51. Actor Dominic Purcell is 51. Olympic gold and silver medal skier Tommy Moe is 51. Actor Denise Richards is 50. Rock singer-musician Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day) is 49. Rock musician Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters) is 49. Actor Jerry O’Connell is 47. Country singer Bryan White is 47. Actor Kelly Carlson is 45. Actor Ashton Holmes is 43. Actor Conrad Ricamora is 42. Actor Jason Ritter is 41. TV personality Paris Hilton is 40. Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is 40. TV host Daphne Oz is 35. Actor Chord Overstreet is 32. Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran is 30. Actor Meaghan Martin is 29. Actor Sasha Pieterse is 25.

Got a story or photos to share?

Got a story to share? A favorite memory of your AP days? Don't keep them to yourself. Share with your colleagues by sending to Ye Olde Connecting Editor. And don't forget to include photos!

Here are some suggestions:

- Second chapters - You finished a great career. Now tell us about your second (and third and fourth?) chapters of life.

- Spousal support - How your spouse helped in supporting your work during your AP career.

- My most unusual story - tell us about an unusual, off the wall story that you covered.

- "A silly mistake that you make"- a chance to 'fess up with a memorable mistake in your journalistic career.

- Multigenerational AP families - profiles of families whose service spanned two or more generations.

- Volunteering - benefit your colleagues by sharing volunteer stories - with ideas on such work they can do themselves.

- First job - How did you get your first job in journalism?

- Connecting "selfies" - a word and photo self-profile of you and your career, and what you are doing today. Both for new members and those who have been with us a while.

- Most unusual place a story assignment took you.

Paul Stevens

Editor, Connecting newsletter

paulstevens46@gmail.com

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