Connecting

Jan. 20, 2023

Click here for sound of the Teletype

Colleagues,

Good Friday morning on this Jan. 20, 2023,

Today’s Connecting brings more of your stories of working in relief positions in the AP.

Keep those stories coming. Great reading, great history.

We lead with a photo from the retirement party for our colleague Janet McConnaughey, who was a journalist in the New Orleans bureau for 47 years.

Have a great weekend – be safe, stay healthy!

Paul

Janet McConnaughey honored for 47-year AP career

Friends and colleagues of our colleague Janet McConnaughey gathered to celebrate her 47-year career with The Associated Press in the New Orleans bureau.

The gathering in the home of Stacey Plaisance was the site for the retirement celebration Jan. 14.

Pictured with Janet are present and former AP employees and their families: Back Row: Gerald Herbert (current AP photographer), Brett Martel (current AP sports reporter), Adrienne Spencer (wife of former AP photographer Bill Haber), Howard Gros (former AP director of technology for New Orleans), Chevel Johnson (current AP reporter), David Rae Morris (former AP freelance photographer), Kevin Mcgill (current AP reporter), Stacey Plaisance Jenkins (former AP reporter), Kanestra Conely Mitchell (former AP reporter)

Second Row: Kendall Mitchell and Kayla Mitchell (children of Kanestra Conley Mitchell), Charlene Gros (wife of Howard Gros), Stephen Smith (current AP video journalist), Janet McConnaughey (the honoree), Larry Tuohy (former AP elections worker and longtime partner to Janet McConnaughey), Angie Lamoli Silvestry (former AP tech department employee), Jillian Jenkins (daughter of Stacey Plaisance Jenkins)

Front (kneeling): Former AP photographer Bill Haber.

(Shared by Stacey Plaisance)

More stories of working AP relief jobs

Peg Coughlin - I pestered Charles Hill into my FIRST AP relief gig, phoning him as Minnesota-Dakotas bureau chief relentlessly after my Foggy Afton Mountain masterpiece in the months before my graduation from South Dakota State University, until he cried “uncle”. Thanks to Sandy Johnson, Tena Haraldson and Denny Gale – AP-promoting SDSU grads through my collegiate years – I knew what I was going to with my journalism degree. Charles hired me for my dream career start as legislative relief in Pierre, South Dakota.

Chet Brokaw and Joe Kafka whipped me into shape on the Trash-80 in Pierre, and then-COB Tena hired me as a “regular” in Bismarck, North Dakota. A year later, a life move was taking me to Kansas City. “Sorry, no openings,” COB Paul Stevens said. The very next day, he called and said, “We have an opening.” It was a relief job, and I would need to resign my regular job to take it. Which I did and started my SECOND relief gig. Until a short three weeks later when a regular job opened in KAN, and I was first on the list.

As I’ve oft told Ye Olde Connecting Editor, “Stop, if you’ve ever heard the one about me having to resign and lose my vacation and pension time for a mere three-week relief gig. …”

 -0-

Charlie Hanley - I’ll introduce my brief “vacation relief” tale with this window into the past….

… That’s the AP Albany buro in 1963 (from AP World mag). Five years after this pic was taken, I showed up at that very desk, a “reliever” fresh from college, a month short of age 21, and the lady on the right, the formidable Toni Adams, cigarette ever perched in her right hand, took me under her wing and made a newsman of me. So long ago.

-0-

Bill Kole - I completed two vacation relief assignments before I joined AP full-time, and I'm still amazed at the huge stories I got thrown into as an untested newbie.

Both temp stints were in Detroit; the first in 1988-89 under news editor Alan Adler and the great COB Hank Ackerman, and the second in 1991-92 under news editor extraordinaire Paula Froke and the talented Charles Hill. They dispatched me to some pretty big breaking stuff: Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his suicide machine; the Archdiocese of Detroit's closure of a bunch of parishes; and a bloody postal shooting in suburban Royal Oak carried out by a disgruntled worker with a sawed-off Ruger hunting rifle.

Hank was a wonderful confidante and, as a former foreign correspondent himself, he encouraged my own dreams of becoming one -- something that happened in 1995 with a posting to Paris. The late great Robert Shaw had called to offer me a permanent position in Indianapolis after that first relief gig, but I'd already taken a job back in my native Massachusetts helping The Sun Chronicle, a small daily, start a Sunday edition.

I realized my mistake soon enough, but Paula and Charles were kind enough to bring me back to Detroit for temp stint No. 2, and that quickly led to a full-time Michigan statehouse reporting job in Lansing. From there, I'd eventually transfer to the International Desk in NY, and then literally take flight: Paris, Amsterdam, Hartford (the Paris of Connecticut) and Vienna. I finished my 31-year AP career in December in Boston, initially as New England COB before making my Houdini-like escape back to the newsroom, retiring early as New England news editor.

I'll always be grateful for those temp stints in the Motor City, a fantastic news town, and for the Detroiters who patiently taught me so much: Alan, Hank, Paula, Charles, Geoff Haynes, Margaret Mellott, Laura Grimmer, John Raby, Andrea Dickerson, Jim Irwin, Jesse Washington, David Goodman, Fred Standish, and a bunch of others.

(I'll blame them, too, for a lifelong addiction to the news that I've been unable to shake even now in semi-retirement: I just started this week as a part-time remote copy editor for Axios.)

-0-

Doug Pizac - Back in the 1970s when I was stringing for AP-Los Angeles Photos, ACOB Spencer Jones suffered a medical condition that kept him out from work for a few months. To make up for his absence, a desk photo editor moved into his office and a photographer moved up to the desk which left a void among the staff shooters. Even though stringer pay was around $35-75 per assignment, the sudden surge in work had me hopping and bringing in good money.

After two weeks of this financial windfall, then COB Ben Brown called me into his office and offered me a temp photographer relief position until Spencer could return, at third-year scale based on my previous work experiences. I thought what a great opportunity this was and responded with an immediate YES. Then when I got home that night, I thought about the deal I agreed to in financial terms. Doing individual stringer assignments was earning me more money per week than what top scale staffers were then making and I would now be working more hours per week for less pay. Even so, I was very happy with the situation and it provided me a foot in the door and a world of new opportunities.

Spencer then came back and I lost my relief job. However, that wire-service work experience opened the door for me to easily get newspaper jobs in Kentucky and Florida before Spencer called me one day and told me to get my a$$ back to Los Angeles for a full-time permanent position. The only downside was that when I returned, I found my paycheck was based on first-year scale -- not the third-year I was previously earning. John Brewer was now the new COB and when I told him about what Ben had done for me and the pay drop, he made it right by upping my scale which made the continuation of my 30+ year stint at AP even better.

So, thank you Spencer for getting sick, and thank you, Ben and John. Without the three of you I would not have more importantly met my future wife (then AP photo editor Betty Kumpf), had a great set of boy/girl twins, a wonderful career and lots of fine memories working with my extended family of former colleagues.

-0-

Jim Reindl - Reading the entertaining ‘I-got-my-AP-Start-as-Vacation-Relief’ series and the references to taking ‘the test’ makes me wonder if there’s fodder in asking about people’s experience taking the test. I’ll go first.

In the fall of 1982, I was a newly minted graduate student from the Kiplinger Program at Ohio State. That was also somewhat of a recession year for the business but on the strength of the Kiplinger name, I had several tryouts at some Gannett papers. I failed them all in spectacular fashion (when an editor asks you to write about Paula the Polar Bear, you shouldn’t burst out laughing).

As fall turned to winter and with an impending spring marriage my buddy working at a dying film production company in Detroit got me a job cleaning out a warehouse. I would take the old 35-mm reel canisters and fire them at the brick walls while doing primal scream therapy about my miserable fate. Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.

I’d always thought of myself as a newspaper guy, especially after my four years at the Muskegon Chronicle after undergrad. My goal was a life at the Free Press. But I needed work and I knew the AP required a test so I called up and asked if I could come in and take it.

They said yes and I showed up with my AP Stylebook under my arm. Nobody said anything so I frequently consulted it. Then the spelling test. I’ve always said a dictionary is my best literary friend but that would have been a step too far. Feeling OK but uncertain at the end, I went back to my parents’ basement to wait (yeah, life was grand in that period).

A couple of weeks later a letter arrived from AP, which I assumed mirrored the several I’d received from Gannett papers. Instead, it was an invitation to call for an interview with a notation: “but you did miss 11 spelling words.”

This is the part where I thank Mike Graczyk and Chuck Green, news editor and CoB, respectively, for doing some major overlooking and having a little faith, which I hope I repaid over 32 years.

-0-

While covering February 1980 Santa Fe prison riot, Jane Seagrave pictured consoling the distraught mother of a prisoner hungry for information on her loved one (who it turns out had earlier been transferred to a county jail 40 miles away). 

Jane Seagrave - Since Paul called me out, I will come clean with the honest-to-God true story of how my AP career began. After college, I worked for a few years in Boston for the Massachusetts Municipal Association, a trade group for cities and towns. At 25, I had my first midlife crisis and moved to Santa Fe, N.M., took a job as a waitress at the Bull Ring, a favorite watering hole for state legislators, and played at writing a novel. After work one night I ran into longtime AP Correspondent Bill Feather at the bar and we began chatting. He mentioned that the other longtime AP person in Santa Fe, Larry Calloway, was leaving for a year on a Knight Fellowship and perhaps I would be interested in his job?

The next day I called the bureau chief in Albuquerque, Burt Wittrup, who it later turned out was about to resign and – possibly thinking this would be a hilarious parting gift – let me take the AP test, then offered me a temporary relief job. By the time I started, Paul Stevens had taken over as bureau chief, and some four decades later he still holds the title of best boss I ever had. A few months later, Larry decided not to return to the AP and I ended up with a plum of a full-time job in Santa Fe that, to my knowledge, was never advertised.

A funny coda to the story. A year or so later, a syndicated columnist gave a speech to the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association at which he said the AP was so lame that they’d hired a “bar maid from the Bull Ring” to cover the Legislature. Unfortunately for him, the brother of our news editor, Kent Walz, was in the audience and reported back. Somewhere in my archives I have that columnist’s letter of apology.

P.S. I’m still working on my novel.

-0-

Susan Stocum – I was the Des Moines bureau football “score kid” (though these days, I call it my college internship) in late 1992 and graduated from Drake University that December. With no real job, I went home to Albuquerque, N.M., for Christmas and planned to come back to Iowa and the AP to be the basketball score kid and figure things out. 

But the desk supervisors touted my acumen at not only taking Division III box scores over the phone, but also crafting 150 words for the wire, and I guess I emerged as a candidate for the XGR relief position.  

The only problem - they had no way of contacting me. My Drake advisor gave them my address from the student directory, but my parents had an unpublished phone number. Then-News Editor David Speer called the Albuquerque bureau and asked them to find a neighbor on Cedar Ridge Drive via the city reverse directory. Imagine my surprise when Jeff from next door rang the doorbell and told me the AP was trying to find me. The next morning, I took the AP test on a manual typewriter in the Albuquerque bureau and got the job that afternoon. 

Thanks for indulging in my trip down memory lane. I left AP in 2001 but enjoy staying connected.  

-0- 

Peggy Walsh – When I worked summer relief at the AP in Phoenix I had no idea I'd be part of history. 

My first AP jobs were elections in the late 60s and early 70s, tallying vote counts on cards and waiting for the Grand Canyon votes to be carried out on donkeys.  

My relief stints were in 1973-74 when I was teaching third grade and had the summer off. 

Since I lived in the area, I was used to the hot summers Bob Moen mentioned. I, too, did broadcast splits and remember Neil Bibler in our small office near the wire room where all the teletype machines clacked constantly. 

The most memorable day was Aug. 8, 1974, when we were told the Phoenix Gazette, the afternoon paper, had word that Richard Nixon would resign later that night as a result of the Watergate debacle.  

Legend was that the source was then Sen. Barry Goldwater, who along with Sen. Hugh Scott and Rep. John Rhodes had met with Nixon to tell him of his dwindling support.  

Whoever was in charge of the AP office that day called New York. I remember furious typing and newspaper staffers cramming the very small office like sardines because they wanted to witness history. 

Click here for a story in the New York Times crediting the Gazette (13^th graf).  

So PM papers got the scoop. 

I drove home in my car whose air conditioner cut off when I stopped at lights and made it back to my apartment in time to watch the resignation on TV. 

That was the day I decided to follow the journalism gene in a family that included my great, great grandfather, a great uncle, my dad, his brother and my mom.   

I quit my tenured teaching job and took a probationary AP job in Atlanta just as a relatively unknown former governor and peanut farmer decided to run for president.

Beijing News

Retired Associated Press newsman Patrick Casey, left, on Tuesday caught up with Rick Dunham, co-director of the Global Business Journalism Program in the Graduate School of Journalism at Tsinghua University, China's Harvard. Dunham, the former Washington bureau chief for the Houston Chronicle and past president of the National Press Club, returned to Beijing last week after a three-year absence caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Casey, who lives in Beijing with his wife photographer Zhang Wanli, is an occasional guest lecturer at Tsinghua on such topics as covering major breaking news stories (9/11, the OKC bombing), wire service reporting and photography.

AP launches Top 25 Movies ranking

The AP debuted its inaugural ‘Top 25 movies ranking’ Thursday, an honor roll of films that premiered over the past year. Movies with unique storylines, female-focused films, and theatrical-first releases earned top rankings, such as Irish dark comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin,” and sci-film “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

The Top 25 Movies ranking is adapted from the storied AP Top 25 sports polls. The complete list is available on APNews.com.

Click here to learn What Made the Cut.

The Mouse

Terry Wallace - When I joined the AP in Charleston, WV, in 1991, the Vax was already the editorial computer system.

Yet I heard dark horror stories about the Vax's predecessor, the Mouse.

Now I have no idea why the system was called the Mouse. But I heard the legends.

The big, bulky computer terminals were framed all in metal, as I recall.

The horror comes on cold, winter days, especially in carpeted offices. I heard that if you had a story on your screen and you developed a static charge and sparked the Mouse's casing, the story would vanish into the infinite.

It sounds too horrible for words, and as with all legends, if I didn't witness it, I'm skeptical. Can anyone confirm?

More memories of Gina

Dennis Redmont - Actually, I believe the Rome AP bureau had some input into getting Gina Lollobrigida to 50 ROCK, but I am NEARLY sure we didn’t have too much to do for her changing her job description as a photographer in her later years.

This photo is one of the many encounters she had with AP. It was taken at a gala dinner in Rome, perhaps at the time of the filming of " buona sera Mrs Campbell" which was released in 1968. But I cannot vouch for the date!  

Connecting wishes Happy Birthday

Merrill Hartson

On Saturday to…

Matt Friedman

Maria Pallais

Byron Yake

On Sunday to…

Kevin Bohn

Amir Bibawy

Ford Burkhart

Charles Pittman

Stories of interest

How an all-women news outlet is changing Somalia’s media landscape (Christian Science Monitor)



By Scott Peterson

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA

The dream of becoming a journalist began for Kiin Hasan Fakat when she was just 10 years old. Her family had joined legions of Somalis displaced by war and hunger and since 2007 had been living across the border in northern Kenya, in one of the largest refugee camps in the world.

Each day, Ms. Fakat listened to her uncle’s small radio, which was powered by AA-sized batteries, and tuned to the Voice of America Somali service.

And each day, she became more aware of – and inspired by – the reporting of Asha Ibrahim Aden, a veteran correspondent who spoke with authority and confidence, and whose example showed Ms. Fakat what a Somali newswoman could achieve.

“I used to say, ‘Maybe I can be like this female journalist. I like her reports,’” recalls Ms. Fakat, who was raised in Kenya’s Dadaab Camp but was originally from the southern Somali town of Buale.

Today it is Ms. Fakat who has herself become a role model for Somalia’s aspiring female journalists, as part of the reporting team of the country’s first all-women news outlet, called Bilan, which means “bright and clear” in the Somali language.

Read more here. Shared by Susana Hayward.

-0-

Supreme Court leak report findings: Lax security, loose lips (AP)

By JESSICA GRESKO and MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight months, 126 formal interviews and a 23-page report later, the Supreme Court said it has failed to discover who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion overturning abortion rights.

The report released by the court Thursday is the apparent culmination of an investigation ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts a day after the May leak of the draft to Politico. At the time, Roberts called the leak an “egregious breach of trust.”

The leak touched off protests at justices’ homes and raised concerns about their security. And it came more than a month before the final opinion by Justice Samuel Alito was released and the court formally announced it was overturning Roe v. Wade.

The report also offers a window into the court’s internal processes. It acknowledges that the coronavirus pandemic, which expanded the ability of people to work from home, “as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks.” The report recommends changes so that it’s harder for a leak to happen in the future.

Read more here.

-0-

Supreme Court Poised to Reconsider Key Tenets of Online Speech (New York Times)

By David McCabe

For years, giant social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have operated under two crucial tenets.

The first is that the platforms have the power to decide what content to keep online and what to take down, free from government oversight. The second is that the websites cannot be held legally responsible for most of what their users post online, shielding the companies from lawsuits over libelous speech, extremist content and real-world harm linked to their platforms.

Now the Supreme Court is poised to reconsider those rules, potentially leading to the most significant reset of the doctrines governing online speech since U.S. officials and courts decided to apply few regulations to the web in the 1990s.

On Friday, the Supreme Court is expected to discuss whether to hear two cases that challenge laws in Texas and Florida barring online platforms from taking down certain political content. Next month, the court is scheduled to hear a case that questions Section 230, a 1996 statute that protects the platforms from liability for the content posted by their users.

Read more here.

-0-

Jeff Bezos Visits The Washington Post as Layoffs Loom (New York Times)

By Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson

The Washington Post has been battling declining ad revenue and stalled online subscription growth. The question hovering over it in recent months: What does Jeff Bezos think?

The Amazon founder, who bought the news organization in 2013, has said nothing publicly about The Post’s recent struggles. But on Thursday, he made a rare appearance in the newsroom, joining the morning news meeting for the first time in more than a year.

He still said little. “I’m delighted to be here and see all these faces,” Mr. Bezos said, according to three people with knowledge of his remarks, before asking The Post’s top editor, Sally Buzbee, about her recent trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Thank you for allowing me to listen in,” he continued.

“Great,” Ms. Buzbee said. “Let’s have a news meeting.”

But the meeting — with Mr. Bezos seated next to Ms. Buzbee at a large conference table in a glass-walled conference room on the sixth floor, with the publisher, Fred Ryan, sitting nearby — signaled that he was paying attention.

Read more here. Shared by Mark Mittelstadt, Linda Deutsch.

-0-

2022 is a tumultuous year for CNN, with changes to leadership and lineup (Editor and Publisher)

Gretchen A. Peck | for Editor & Publisher

On February 2, 2022, CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker resigned after it came to light that he’d had an undisclosed but consensual relationship with another CNN executive.

Six days later, Richard J. Tofel wrapped some context around Zucker’s ouster in his “Second Rough Draft” newsletter. “Virtually every big company in America now has a rule against personal relationships between bosses and people who report up to them. There are important reasons for this, ranging from the possibility of lack of genuine consent in such relationships to the most blatant sorts of conflicts of interest to the impact on other staffers who must navigate these situations,” Tofel wrote in a column he titled “On the Culture Problem at CNN.”

“And Zucker’s case, notwithstanding the apparently entirely consensual nature of the relationship, may have been an extreme one: numerous reports on the timeline indicate that he hired his partner into a plum job, set her salary, promoted her, presumably evaluated her performance, and perhaps lied about the relationship to his own bosses, colleagues and outside journalists. That’s more than enough to get anyone fired. It’s also, unfortunately, not all that remarkable, even almost five years after #MeToo,” Tofel opined.

Read more here.

Today in History - Jan. 20, 2023

Today is Friday, Jan. 20, the 20th day of 2023. There are 345 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first chief executive to be inaugurated on Jan. 20 instead of March 4.

On this date:

In 1801, Secretary of State John Marshall was nominated by President John Adams to be chief justice of the United States.

In 1841, the island of Hong Kong was ceded by China to Great Britain. (It returned to Chinese control in July 1997.)

In 1936, Britain’s King George V died after his physician injected the mortally ill monarch with morphine and cocaine to hasten his death; the king was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne 11 months later to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States.

In 1964, Capitol Records released the album “Meet the Beatles!”

In 1981, Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.

In 1986, the United States observed the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

In 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s 44th, as well as first African American, president.

In 2011, federal authorities orchestrated one of the biggest Mafia takedowns in FBI history, charging 127 suspected mobsters and associates in the Northeast with murders, extortion and other crimes spanning decades.

In 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, pledging emphatically to empower America’s “forgotten men and women.” Protesters registered their rage against the new president in a chaotic confrontation with police just blocks from the inaugural parade.

In 2020, Chinese government experts confirmed human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus, saying two people caught the virus from family members and that some health workers had tested positive.

Ten years ago: The San Francisco 49ers rebounded from a 17-0 deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons 28-24 in the NFC championship game. The Baltimore Ravens earned their first Super Bowl appearance in 12 years with a 28-13 victory over the New England Patriots for the AFC championship.

Five years ago: A dispute in Congress over spending and immigration forced scores of federal government agencies and outposts to close their doors; tourists were turned away from sites including the Statue of Liberty and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. (Congress voted two days later to temporarily pay for resumed operations.)

One year ago: Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that there would be a “swift, severe” response from the United States and its allies if Russia were to send military forces into Ukraine. As President Joe Biden ended the first year of his presidency, a poll from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found a clear majority of Americans for the first time disapproving of his handling of the job amid an unrelenting pandemic and roaring inflation. Meat Loaf, the rock superstar known for his “Bat Out of Hell” album and for such theatrical, dark-hearted anthems as “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” died at age 74.

Today’s birthdays: Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin is 93. Olympic gold medal figure skater Carol Heiss is 83. Singer Eric Stewart is 78. Movie director David Lynch is 77. Country-rock musician George Grantham (Poco) is 76. Israeli activist Natan Sharansky is 75. Actor Daniel Benzali is 73. Rock musician Paul Stanley (KISS) is 71. Rock musician Ian Hill (Judas Priest) is 71. Comedian Bill Maher (MAR) is 67. Actor Lorenzo Lamas is 65. Actor James Denton is 60. Rock musician Greg K. (The Offspring) is 58. Country singer John Michael Montgomery is 58. Sophie, Countess of Wessex, is 58. Actor Rainn Wilson is 57. Actor Stacey Dash is 56. TV personality Melissa Rivers is 55. Actor Reno Wilson is 54. Singer Edwin McCain is 53. Actor Skeet Ulrich is 53. Rap musician Questlove (The Roots) is 52. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is 51. Rock musician Rob Bourdon (Linkin Park) is 44. Singer-songwriter Bonnie McKee is 39. Country singer Brantley Gilbert is 38. Rock singer Kevin Parker (Tame Impala) is 37. Actor Evan Peters is 36.