Connecting

Dec. 6, 2022

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Colleagues,

Good Tuesday morning on this Dec. 6, 2022,

Here’s a question for your consideration, from colleague Hoyt Harwell:

“A possible discussion for Connecting: newspaper extras—are any still issued, when was the last one, etc?”

Tell me about the last Extra you remember.

Want to read a great profile of a guy who was known as the ultimate gate-crasher? Read Rick Reilly's recent story in The Washington Post on a man named Dion Rich, who used to say he wanted his tombstone to read:

"Cause of Death: Living"

Well said. So I gotta ask, how about you?

Thanks for the birthday wishes – Monday was a good day, tennis with friends (to whom I delivered cupcakes) and BBQ with Linda and a park walk in the sunshine with Ollie…and in my Inbox, this from Connecting’s poet laureate Norm Abelson:

Happy, happy birthday to a Stevens named Paul,

who has made life more meaningful for us, one and all.

He took on a young and barely known site,

and grew it into a soaring journalistic light.

Connecting is more than another passing

It recalls and restores pride in the place we all come from.

For all of that, and more. for the efforts that he gave:

Here's to our friend Paul – Long may he wave!

Here's to many more trips around the sun for us all.

Have a great day – be safe, stay healthy!

Paul

New-member profile: Bill Newill

Selfie of my wife Darlene and me at a recent East Carolina U. Baseball game.

Bill Newill - I began my career as a reporter for the Bucks County (Pa.) Courier Times in 1972 and spent 12 years there in various writing and editing jobs, the last six as editorial page editor. I then spent 10 years as editor of the Burlington County (N.J.) Times, a 40,000 circulation daily in the Philadelphia suburbs.

After a brief stint as writer/producer for a cable TV news startup in West Chester, Pa., I joined the AP’s Trenton Bureau in March 1995. Over the next 16 1/2 years I worked as day supervisor, news editor and night supervisor.

I retired in September 2011, and my wife Darlene and I moved to Greenville, N.C., where we stay busy trying to keep up with our four grandkids’ activities. I’ve been working (with limited success) to reduce my golf handicap and raise my batting average as shortstop for our Senior Games Over-70 softball team. We also deliver Meals on Wheels, and I’m finishing up a two-year term as board chair of the Pitt County Council on Aging.

Catching Up with Harry King

Linda Sargent - Remember that time? Years of covering Arkansas for the AP got rehashed over the weekend as former Arkansas AP News Editor and Sports Editor Harry King and  his wife, Ellen, visited Dallas. Dallas AP staffer Jamie Stengle, my husband, Ed Sargent, and I got together to catch up.

Harry was news and sports editor when I joined the AP in Little Rock in 1979. He was sports editor there when Jamie joined the bureau in 1998. We both learned so much from his years of experience.

We talked about election nights, dictating football games (and taking that dictation), language that shouldn't have made the wire but did, stories that were gobbled by computer gremlins, and years of covering Arkansas for the AP. And Harry and Ellen's early introduction to Willie Nelson, who played a few songs in legendary Texas football coach Darrel Royal's townhouse after a golf tournament involving coaches and media members. As Royal promised them, Nelson certainly became a big name.

Ellen's brother Bill Rutherford was Ed's news editor at the Arkansas Gazette, so the memories spilled over to that newsroom.

Kansas City holiday lunch

Kansas City alums gathered recently at Union Station for a holiday lunch. Seated, from left: Shirley Christian, Kent Zimmerman and Peg Coughlin. Standing, from left: Orlin Wagner, Kia Breaux, Rod Richardson, Steve Crowley, Paul Stevens, Jim Bagby, Brad Martin and Cliff Schiappa.

The Booker Award winner – with fictional AP connection

Neal Ulevich - If someone has already mentioned this year's Booker Award winner, which has an AP connection, however fictional, I may have missed it.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a novel by Shehan Karunatilaka, won this year's prestigious Booker Prize. The tale is about a free-lance conflict photographer covering atrocities committed by all sides in the Sri Lanken Civil War. Our protagonist works for everyone including the AP. When we meet him, he carries much baggage - drugs, politics, a gambling habit, but mostly by being dead. His ghost is trying to figure out who killed him. He has seven days - Moons - to do it before demons or the blessed White Light claim him. The AP correspondent in question seems rarely if ever to have filed a story, and intimations are he is a spook of some sort. The novel is a page turner, realism and fabulism reminiscent of Salman Rushdie's brilliant Midnight's Children. Many reviews on the internet for those interested.

Walking amid Christmas lights, luminarias

Mark Mittelstadt - Mary and I enjoyed walking amid Christmas lights and luminarias Friday night at Tubac, Az., an historic village and arts destination approximately 50 minutes south of Tucson. On the first Friday and Saturday nights of December, Tubac merchants stay open late and welcome thousands of visitors to stroll the streets, shop and enjoy free snacks, including coffee, hot chocolate, cider and the occasional glass of wine, margaritas or shots of tequila. It's a way of welcoming "snowbirds" back to winter residences in southern Arizona and golf and kick-starting the holiday shopping season.

More about -30-

Bruce Lowitt - Regarding Robert Wielaard's query about -30-, I just sent this to him and thought I would share with colleagues:

According to Wikipedia (which, granted, is not always the most accurate of sources): The origin of the term is unknown. One theory is that the journalistic employment of -30- originated from the number's use during the American Civil War era in the 92 Code of telegraphic shorthand, where it signified the end of a transmission and that it found further favor when it was included in the Phillips Code of abbreviations and short markings for common use that was developed by the Associated Press wire service. Telegraph operators familiar with numeric wire signals such as the 92 Code used these railroad codes to provide logistics instructions and train orders, and they adapted them to notate an article's priority or confirm its transmission and receipt. This metadata would occasionally appear in print when typesetters included the codes in newspapers, especially the code for "No more – the end", which was presented as "- 30 -" on a typewriter.

As for the movie -30-, allow me to present to you the introduction to a book I self-published, "The Game Isn't Everything", a collection of my columns, features and essays from the St. Petersburg Times, where I was the National Sports Features Writer from 1986-2004, after leaving The AP (1967-86):

I was 17 when I first saw -30-, a 1959 film about a day in the life of a fictional Los Angeles newspaper. Looking back at it now, it is trite, with obvious plots and subplots, and cliches for everyone in the newsroom - a sarcastic city editor, nerd science writer, grande dame society writer and so on, and steely night editor Jack Webb, who also produced and directed it.

There is a scene, though, in which city editor Jim Bathgate (William Conrad), holding up a rolled-up newspaper and smacking it into his palm after each sentence for emphasis, is chewing out a copyboy, who is denigrating the newspaper business and talking about quitting.

"Do you know what people use these for? They roll them up and they swat their puppies for wetting on the rug! They spread them on the floor when they're painting the walls! They wrap fish in them! They shred them up and pack their two-bit china in them when they move, or else they pile up in the garage until an inspector declares them a fire hazard!

"But this also happens to be a couple of more things. It's got print on it that tells stories that hundreds of good men all over the world have broken their backs to get. It gives a lot of information to a lot of people who wouldn't have known about these things if we hadn't taken the trouble to tell them. It's the sum total of a lot of guys who don't quit.

"Yeah, it's a newspaper, that's all. Well, for once you're right, stupid! It only costs ten cents, that's all. But if you only read the comic section or the want ads it's still the best buy for your money in the world."

That speech first inspired me to even consider life as a newspaper reporter.

I still have -30- on videotape - I have no idea if it's available on a disc or any of the other more modern modes for viewing - but if you ever find a way to watch it, please do. You'll shake your head and laugh (or groan) as you watch it, but imagine yourself seeing it as I did, a naive teenager. It really did change my life, although it took six years - after two years at Long Island University and several inconsequential jobs - before I acted on that impulse and got my first newspaper job, in 1965, with the now-defunct Port Chester (N.Y.) Daily Item.

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Neal Ulevich - -30- was a telegraphic code, shorthand for "no more."   There were a number of systems used to abbreviate, thus improve transmission speed and reduce chargeable character count. -95- for URGENT and -73- for "Best Regards" also were common in the days of Morse telegraphy and somewhat later in message traffic conveyed by clattering Model 15 teletypes.

More on favorite journalism movies

Dan Sewell - Dennis Conrad reminded me of another journalism movie that as was "Absence of Malice", was set in Miami: "The Mean Season." Kurt Russell stars as a burned-out crime reporter drawn into covering a serial killer. He spent time around The Miami Herald's superb and colorful crime reporter, Edna Buchanan, in preparation for the 1985 movie.

If I had to pick two journalism movies to watch tonight, they would be "The Paper" starring Michael Keaton, both funny and realistic, and "The Year of Living Dangerously," starring Mel Gibson. I thought it captured what it's like to report from an oppressive and strange country - Haiti comes to mind from my experience - and the friendly competitiveness of the foreign correspondents and the reliance on local stringers. Don't recall any embassy attaches like Sigourney Weaver, though.

BEST OF THE WEEK — FIRST WINNER

Greater China staff delivers swift, compelling coverage of unprecedented lockdown protests

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

It started with an apartment fire that many blamed on China’s harsh coronavirus measures, which AP Beijing staff picked up early on. Dake Kang, who has covered the region closely for the past five years, scored an early interview with a relative of victims of the fire, beating out competitors. By reaching out to people on the ground online, Taipei-based writer Huizhong Wu confirmed protests that had followed, adding critical eyewitness accounts.

Within 24 hours of the fire, Chinese social media was swamped with anti-government messages – people angry at restrictions that have locked them into their homes for weeks or months at a time, and critically blaming the leadership. In a country where media is restricted, residents are surveilled, and individuals are punished for speaking out against authority, this was extraordinary.

Read more here.

BEST OF THE WEEK — SECOND WINNER

AP World Cup coverage extends far beyond the games

AP Photo/Abbie Parr

The World Cup staff covered multiple angles in all formats during the first week of the tournament in Qatar. Among the examples that resonated far beyond football fans: Mideast correspondent Isabel DeBre and Persian Gulf and Iran news director Jon Gambrell reported a story about migrant workers watching the World Cup far from the glitzy stadiums they helped build in and around Doha; Climate reporter Suman Naishadham wrote about Lusail City, the ultra-modern and mostly empty city near Doha built for this World Cup with an uncertain future. Sustainability was also an important topic ahead of the tournament, and advance planning paid off with Naishadham’s deep dive into Qatar’s green claims and climate risks at home -- and TikTok and Instagram reels video that accompanied the story.

Gambrell and sportswriter Ronald Blum broke news about the U.S. soccer federation's decision to scrub the Islamic Republic's emblem from Iran's flag on its social media accounts ahead of a crucial Iran-U.S. match. DeBre and sportswriter Ciaran Fahey reported on protests and tensions surrounding Iran's game. Geneva-based Sportswriter and FIFA insider Graham Dunbar reported the organizer’s decision to ban beer sales from the stadiums.

Read more here.

Connecting wishes Happy Birthday

Richard Drew

Dennis Lawler

Stories of interest

Journalists Injured by Police While Covering George Floyd Protests are Winning Large Settlements (First Amendment Watch)

By Sally Stapleton

Millions went into the streets during the summer of 2020 to protest the killing of George Floyd, pinned under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and three other officers. Two years later, attorneys representing municipalities, police departments and state agencies around the country remain embroiled in litigation and negotiated settlements to compensate journalists and citizens who were injured by law enforcement as they documented the protests.

Those who filed lawsuits claim they were targeted, victims of excessive force and still suffer from debilitating injuries.

The attacks raise serious questions about the law enforcement response in handling protests against police brutality and the chilling effect of that violent backlash. Nine days after Floyd’s death, the American Civil Liberties Union posted a story characterizing the attacks on journalists as a “full-scale assault on the First Amendment freedom of the press.”

As the attacks added up, so did the lawsuits filed on behalf of the media. U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, an open-source database of press freedom incidents, reported at the two-year mark following Floyd’s death that at least 50 journalists covering the protests had filed First Amendment lawsuits against law enforcement.

Read more here.

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Rupert Murdoch to be deposed in $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox (Washington Post)

By Jeremy Barr and Rachel Weiner

Rupert Murdoch, the 91-year-old chairman of Fox News parent company Fox Corp, will be forced to answer questions under oath next week about his network’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election.

Murdoch will be deposed on the mornings of Dec. 13 and Dec. 14 as part of election technology company Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, according to a filing in Delaware’s Superior Court. The lawsuit alleges that the network purposely aired false claims about Dominion’s role in the 2020 presidential election to boost ratings and fight off competition from more-conservative-leaning television networks.

According to the filing, Murdoch’s deposition will be conducted remotely, via videoconference.

Read more here. Shared by Sibby Christensen.

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ABC News Benches Amy Robach, T.J. Holmes After Romance Disclosure (Variety)

By Brian Steinberg

Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes will be benched from their anchoring duties at ABC News’ “GMA3′ while the news division weighs the effect their recent disclosure of a romantic relationship might have on the program and the company, ABC News President Kim Godwin informed staffers Monday.

Godwin told ABC News employees during an editorial call Monday that Robach and Holmes had not violated any company policy, according to a person familiar with the matter, but indicated ABC News felt the matter had become “an internal and external disruption,” and “wanted to do what’s best for the organization.”

ABC News declined to make executives available for comment. Gio Benitez and Stephanie Ramos will co-host Monday’s broadcast, this person said, but there’s not a sense at present of how the program will be staffed for the rest of the week or when Robach and Holmes might return.

Read more here.

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Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, and a Very Modern Media Maelstrom (New York Times)

By Michael M. Grynbaum

It was, on the surface, a typical example of reporting the news: a journalist obtains internal documents from a major corporation, shedding light on a political dispute that flared in the waning days of the 2020 presidential race.

But when it comes to Elon Musk and Twitter, nothing is typical.

The so-called Twitter Files, released Friday evening by the independent journalist Matt Taibbi, set off a firestorm among pundits, media ethicists and lawmakers in both parties. It also offered a window into the fractured modern landscape of news, where a story’s reception is often shaped by readers’ assumptions about the motivations of both reporters and subjects.

The tempest began when Mr. Musk teased the release of internal documents that he said would reveal the story behind Twitter’s 2020 decision to restrict posts linking to a report in the New York Post about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, Hunter.

Read more here.

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Meta threatens to remove news content over US journalism bargaining bill (CNN)

By Brian Fung, CNN

Facebook owner Meta threatened to remove news content from its platforms on Monday following reports that US lawmakers have added controversial legislation favoring news media to the annual defense authorization bill.

The warning highlights the danger that Meta perceives to its business model in the face of the proposed bill, known as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA).

The legislation introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar and backed by more than a dozen other lawmakers from both parties would create a four-year exemption under US antitrust law allowing news outlets to bargain collectively against social media platforms for a larger share of ad revenue in exchange for their news content. It is one of several tech-focused antitrust bills currently pending on Capitol Hill.

Read more here.

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The End of Companion Television (The Atlantic)

By BRIAN STELTER

Media Winter is here once more, and it is getting ugly. It seems as though every news giant is shrinking toward 2023 through end-of-year layoffs, hiring freezes, or otherwise Dickensian austerity. Text chains and Slack channels are bursting with farewells and expressions of uncertainty about the future.

Industry veterans will tell you they’ve come to expect these Christmas-time cutbacks. The Gannett newspaper chain is laying off scores of local and national journalists. NPR is looking for ways to save at least $10 million. The Washington Post is ending its Sunday magazine. CNN, where I was an anchor until August, is cutting several hundred jobs.

As usual, explanations vary. The advertising marketplace is softening. Economic headwinds are worsening. Shareholder demands are unforgiving. But the effect is always the same: contraction, lost livelihoods, diminished brands, fewer outlets for both reporters and consumers.

Yet there’s something different this time around. Job losses in journalism have been rolling across the industry for decades now. But it’s not every day that a fixture of cable television goes belly up. The demise of HLN, CNN’s 40-year-old sister station, which will stop airing original newscasts next week, deserves attention not just because it marks the end of an era but because it’s a reminder of how eras in media actually end. Before death comes obsolescence.

Read more here.

The Final Word

Jazzy ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ swings on after 57 years (AP)

Peanuts Worldwide via AP

By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) — The Mendelson family would love to find the envelope where their father, Lee, scribbled some lyrics to jazz musician Vince Guaraldi’s composition “Christmas Time is Here” for an animated TV special featuring the “Peanuts” gang in 1965.

The producer always said it had taken less than half an hour to write, and he likely tossed the scrap of paper away. He was in a rush. Everything was rushed. No one even knew, once the special aired, whether it would ever be seen again.

Instead, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” became an indelible holiday tradition and so, too, has Guaraldi’s music — perhaps even more so.

“Christmas just doesn’t feel like Christmas without hearing that album in the background,” said Derrick Bang, author of the biography “Vince Guaraldi at the Piano.”

The special itself was a bit of an oddity: a cartoon story of the meaning of Christmas soundtracked by a sophisticated, mostly instrumental jazz trio of piano, bass and drum.

Read more here.

Today in History – Dec. 6, 2022

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 6, the 340th day of 2022. There are 25 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Dec. 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, was ratified as Georgia became the 27th state to endorse it.

On this date:

In 1790, Congress moved to Philadelphia from New York.

In 1907, the worst mining disaster in U.S. history occurred as 362 men and boys died in a coal mine explosion in Monongah, West Virginia.

In 1917, some 2,000 people were killed when an explosives-laden French cargo ship, the Mont Blanc, collided with the Norwegian vessel Imo at the harbor in Halifax, Nova Scotia, setting off a blast that devastated the Canadian city. Finland declared its independence from Russia.

In 1922, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which established the Irish Free State, came into force one year to the day after it was signed in London.

In 1923, a presidential address was broadcast on radio for the first time as President Calvin Coolidge spoke to a joint session of Congress.

In 1947, Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Harry S. Truman.

In 1957, America’s first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed as Vanguard TV3 rose about four feet off a Cape Canaveral launch pad before crashing down and exploding.

In 1962, 37 coal miners were killed in an explosion at the Robena No. 3 Mine operated by U.S. Steel in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania.

In 1969, a free concert by The Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Alameda County, California, was marred by the deaths of four people, including one who was stabbed by a Hell’s Angel.

In 1973, House minority leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew.

In 1989, 14 women were shot to death at the University of Montreal’s school of engineering by a man who then took his own life.

In 1998, in Venezuela, former Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez (OO’-goh CHAH’-vez), who had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier, was elected president.

Ten years ago: Shocking some of his closest Republican colleagues, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina announced he would resign his seat to head Washington’s conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. Marijuana possession became legal in Washington state, the day a measure approved by voters to regulate marijuana like alcohol took effect.

Five years ago: President Donald Trump declared Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, defying warnings from the Palestinians and others around the world that he would be destroying hopes for Mideast peace. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would seek reelection, putting him on track to become Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

One year ago: The Justice Department said it was ending its investigation into the 1955 lynching of the Black teenager Emmett Till, who was killed after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman in Mississippi. The White House said the U.S. would stage a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing to protest Chinese human rights abuses; U.S. athletes would compete, but no U.S. dignitaries would be sent to attend the games. The Biden administration reinstated a Trump-era policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. Medina Spirit, a 3-year-old colt whose Kentucky Derby victory in May came under scrutiny because of a positive drug test, collapsed and died after a workout at Santa Anita in Southern California.

Today’s Birthdays: Comedy performer David Ossman is 86. Actor Patrick Bauchau is 84. Country singer Helen Cornelius is 81. Actor James Naughton is 77. Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is 77. R&B singer Frankie Beverly (Maze) is 76. Former Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., is 74. Actor JoBeth Williams is 74. Actor Tom Hulce is 69. Actor Wil Shriner is 69. Actor Kin Shriner is 69. Actor Miles Chapin is 68. Rock musician Rick Buckler (The Jam) is 67. Comedian Steven Wright is 67. Singer Tish Hinojosa is 67. Rock musician Peter Buck (R.E.M.) is 66. Rock musician David Lovering (Pixies) is 61. Actor Janine Turner is 60. Rock musician Ben Watt (Everything But The Girl) is 60. Writer-director Judd Apatow is 55. Rock musician Ulf “Buddha” Ekberg (Ace of Base) is 52. Writer-director Craig Brewer is 51. Actor Colleen Haskell is 46. Actor Lindsay Price is 46. Actor Ashley Madekwe is 41. Actor Nora Kirkpatrick is 38. Christian rock musician Jacob Chesnut (Rush of Fools) is 33. Tennis player CoCo Vandeweghe is 31. NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo (YAH’-nihs an-teh-toh-KOON’-poh) is 28.