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Connecting
March 10, 2022
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Colleagues,
Good Thursday morning on this March 10, 2022,
SAVE THE DATE for “Remembering Larry Heinzerling.”
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Honoring one of AP’s finest journalists, this hybrid memorial event will offer both in-person and online options and will be held Saturday, May 28, at 11 a.m. EDT at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, Ceremonial Hall, 2 West 64th Street at Central Park West, New York City.
Heinzerling, a 41-year Associated Press news executive and bureau chief who played a key role in winning freedom for hostage Terry Anderson from his Hezbollah abductors in Lebanon, died Aug. 11, 2021, after a short illness. He was 75. Click here for his obituary.
More details and a more formal invitation to follow but his family would like to know if you are likely to attend in person, so that it can plan accordingly. And if you can't be there in person but would like to join online, please respond so you can be put on a list for a more formal invitation to come. Contact for your response is Larry’s daughter Kristen Heinzerling - kheinzerling3@gmail.com
Have a great day – be safe, stay healthy!
Paul
Walter Mears – never too busy to give new reporter some advice
Bruce Lowitt - In June of 1968 I was in my second year with The AP in LA and working the night shift, and Walter Mears was covering what would be the last days of Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. I took dictation from Walter, the first time I had ever spoken to him. I was in awe of how beautiful and descriptive his story was, particularly because, he said, much of it was off the top of his head from notes.
When he had finished, I asked if he could spare a few minutes. He said sure. I told him I had grown up reading both Walter Lippmann and Jimmy Breslin, wanted to become a political writer and asked how to go about it. He didn't know me, this 26-year-old kid reporter, but he spent the next 12-15 minutes talking about whom to speak to, whom to listen to, and whom to ignore; the kinds of questions to ask; suggestions on research, standing up to harassment and so on.
I was enthralled and thanked him profusely (I suspect I was babbling at the end, so taken was I by just speaking to him). The following spring, I was assigned to help cover politics for one term in the Sacramento bureau - where I discovered that not only would I never be the next Walter Mears but that I would be neither a cheap imitation of the next Walter Mears nor even a slightly capable political writer.
By the end of 1969 I changed my focus to sports. But the memory of that tutorial-by-phone from one of my journalistic icons has stayed with me for more than 50 years.
Young reporter’s paper attracted readers – and a president
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Norm Abelson with President Clinton. 1996 White House photo
The weekly newspaper, at its height, had a paid circulation of more than a thousand. Just about all the businesses in downtown Concord, N.H., placed ads. It was read far and wide in the community. But there was something very special about that publication: Each and every staff member, from editors to reporters to columnists, to photographers, to business side, to distribution, was a student in a fifth-grade class at Walker Elementary School.
My young friend, Steve, who was the teacher, had asked me to volunteer as a writing instructor, and we came up with the idea of starting a newspaper as a vehicle to get the students stimulated. Over the past 30 or more years I have taught writing at libraries, high schools, universities and many other venues. Never have I seen such diligence, excitement and hard work as from those kids at Walker, most of them from low-income, single-parent homes. A handful were slow learners who had been main-streamed into a regular classroom. It was moving to see other classmates voluntarily sit beside them, helping them move up to speed on their computers, and get their articles written. (Each student had an article, or was otherwise actively involved, in every single issue.)
Circulation started mostly with families, but those kids personally sold ads, went house to house to get customers, and each week hand delivered copies. They interviewed the mayor, attended city council meetings, covered the police and fire departments. It was like a civics class in action. As the content got better and better, and the word spread, a batch of new subscribers piled in. Also, through hard work and practice, those kids became darn good writers.
I'll never forget one youngster who privately told me her story. Both her parents were on drugs; often there was no food in the house; she came to school hungry, and she didn't have a winter coat. (we got her one.) But, secretly, in that troubled home, she had been writing essays and poetry. She said her dream was to be a writer, but she felt there was no way for that to happen. Until the Walker Talker. where she quickly became one of the stars, “Mr. A, now I know some day I will be a writer,” she told me. I've long since lost track of Steve and the kids. But I'd like to think that young woman succeeded.
That class also had another distinction. Because of Steve's tech obsession, it became the first in the nation to go on the internet. As such, it attracted the attention of another, more well-known, techie, President Bill Clinton, who famously paid the class a visit. Whatever else – positive or negative – about him, I believe I saw Mr. Clinton at his best that day. Of course, he didn't show up alone; the little room was crowded with staff, Washington press and photographers. But the president largely ignored them, and went slowly from student to student, missing none, reading articles from their computers, chatting and laughing. Finally, his staff practically dragged him out to a speaking engagement for which he already was quite late.
I was standing off to a corner by myself, but Mr. Clinton – never one to ignore a potential vote – came up to me to shake hands. I said to him, “Mr. President, these are mostly kids from poor homes with not a lot to look forward to; your visit has changed their lives.” As he turned to leave, I'm pretty sure there were tears in his eyes.
The river ran red
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Mark Mittelstadt - The river ran red this week in Marana, a fast-growing bedroom community northwest of Tucson. It was nothing sinister — no genocide, no huge chemical spill. University of Arizona and U.S. Geological Survey researchers released a couple gallons of what they said was a nontoxic dye into the Santa Cruz River on Tuesday morning. The experiment was to learn about sunlight’s effects on “trace chemicals” in the water.
The river was once a source of irrigation for crops grown by ancient peoples east of the Tucson mountains. As western settlers populated the area it became polluted and the channel altered. In the mid 20th century the stretch through Tucson dried up completely. The river is being restored through conservation efforts and is fed by runoff of treated wastewater. By Wednesday afternoon the red dye had dissipated.
How’s this for a nom de plume? - ETAOIN SHRDLU
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Charles Richards - I got an email a couple of days ago from a retired Texas newspaperman with whom I once sat side-by-side at a daily newspaper where we were both reporters “back in the day.” He later went on to be the editor of a couple of large daily newspapers. He knew that I had worked on my dad’s weekly newspaper as a teenager, and he wrote:
“In the old days, Linotype operators cleared the keyboard by running their finger across the top row of keys. The result was a weird series of letters that was unpronounceable. I suspect you operated Linotypes. What was that series of letters? I might use it as my nom de plume. Thanks.”
I replied:
“I'm very familiar with the issue you ask about. Did it hundreds of times myself. The unpronounceable word you spoke of was created by running a finger DOWN the keyboard rather than across. As opposed to the HORIZONTAL rows on a typewriter or computer keyboard, the Linotype keyboard had VERTICAL columns.
”The series of letters you're talking about is ETAOIN SHRDLU. The Linotype keys are in order of how often they are used in real life. The first row on the left side is ETAOIN, the second is SHRDLU, the third row is CMFWYP, and so on. Actually, there were five columns of the lower-cased letters on the left side of the keyboard. The same rotation of letters – except upper-cased -- were on the far-right side of the keyboard.
The reason a Linotype operator had to "crap out" a line was because he noticed a bunch of mistakes in the line he had started -- and the easiest and fastest way for this not to get in the paper unnoticed was to fill out the remainder of the line with all caps -- SHRDLU and CMFWYP. “Crapping out” a line took only a second or two by running a finger down each of the first two columns on the upper-case side of the keyboard. BUT ... it occasionally DID end up published, and that was laughingly embarrassing.
My grandfather, Hardon Gideon "Hard" Richards, was editor/owner/publisher of a weekly newspaper at Anton, Texas in the 1930s and 1940s (the same newspaper I worked on as a teenager in the late 1950s after my dad took it over). My grandfather wrote a front-page column every week and instead of using his own name, he wrote: "By Etaoin Shrdlu". Old newspaper guys got it immediately.
My grandfather was a co-founder -- along with longtime Lubbock Avalanche-Journal publisher Chas a. Guy -- of the West Texas Press Association.
Anyway, now you have "the rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say.
And…This morning’s email included a reply from my retired friend:
“You are a prince! I want to use your grandfather’s byline. That series of characters is exactly what I wanted … & Siri was stumped.”
Closing a regional printing plant in Texas
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Tom Fenton - Having been publisher at the El Paso Times from 1986 to 1993, I was shocked and saddened by Gannett’s announcement that it was closing its regional printing plant and selling the building to the city for $3.6 million.
El Paso Times, the Las Cruces (N.M.) Sun-News, USA Today and other small but longstanding newspapers in New Mexico also were printed there: The Alamogordo Daily News, Carlsbad Current-Argus, the Deming Headlight and the Ruidoso News. Employees thought they were pretty much bullet proofed against cutbacks because of the regional obligations. The facility was reported to cost $30 million when the plant opened in the 1990s.
Apparently Gannett grabbed some low-hanging cash for debt service. The city already owned the connecting office building that once housed JOA partners El Paso Times and El Paso Herald-Post and had an option on the printing plant building. The Times has since moved into much smaller rented quarters and, of course, the p.m. Herald-Post died in the late 1990s. Former staffers tell me the initial thought was to print the region’s papers at the Gannett plant in Phoenix, some 430 miles away, and truck them in, even though it would add a day to deadlines. Instead they moved the printing operation across the river to Juarez, where the papers are now printed. Gannett provides the newsprint and only pays a production fee. I am sure it represents considerable savings. Under terms of the sale, Gannett is required to empty the building and the deal can’t close until that happens – possibly by the end of the month.
I was interested in what was going to happen to those giant presses so I talked to the salvage company that is handling the demolition. And I learned a little about the process that I thought former colleagues might find interesting. The foreman said that several years ago there was a market internationally for presses but now, “Nobody wants them.” The foreman said he gets $340 a ton for scrap steel so his crew is cutting up the presses and everything else. He also said that his men have been demolishing a newspaper printing plant at the rate of about one a month and that his crew has not spent any time at home for two years. He is on to Sacramento when this job is completed.
On a side note: our little operation is just two blocks away and for scrap value we were able to pick up some equipment we can use. We own El Paso Inc., the weekly business journal, and PDX Printing, which, in addition to our house publications, prints the area’s high school, college and church newspapers -- really small potatoes compared to the huge operation being taken apart just down the street.
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Connecting wishes Happy Birthday |
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Stories of interest
How journalists decide which images from Ukraine are too awful to publish (Washington Post)
By Paul Farhi
The scene was ghastly. Four people lay sprawled on the pavement in the immediate aftermath of a mortar strike on civilians fleeing a Ukrainian town Sunday morning. A mother and two children were already dead as soldiers knelt over a man who had been with the family, frantically trying to save him as he took his last breaths.
A New York Times photographer approached from behind a nearby building and aimed her camera.
Like many war images, Lynsey Addario’s photo of the dead and dying was never guaranteed to be published. Newsrooms have for decades been cautious when it comes to displaying such graphic images, weighing the journalistic benefits of chronicling the horror against the distress it might cause readers and the victims’ families.
Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac, Mark Mittelstadt, Peg Coughlin, Myron Belkind.
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How to Reach Russian Ears (Center for European Policy Analysis)
By THOMAS KENT
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has not only used tanks and troops. He has also seized control of Russia’s information space. If his information blockade is to be broken, the West will need new commitment and capabilities to communicate with Russia’s people.
Putin has prepared for more than a decade for total information control. For years, he has ratcheted up pressure on Western news organizations with Russian-language services. His agents have harassed and threatened Russia’s own independent journalists. The Kremlin has repeatedly practiced disconnecting Russia from the international internet.
Now that war has begun, Putin has moved into a final phase, blocking Russians from Western news sites and shutting down any domestic outlet that the Kremlin cannot intimidate. He has blocked Facebook and Twitter, and an internet shutdown could happen at any time.
The West does not appear to have a plan for this moment. For years, diplomats have wavered about expanding communication to Russia’s people. Some feared such action would provoke Putin into new steps to undermine Western societies. Others thought Russians were so propagandized that no Western messaging would work. Many Westerners also opposed anything that smacked of “our own propaganda,” believing that an attempt to assertively promote our views would inevitably deteriorate into our spreading false information.
Read more here. Tom Kent is former AP International Editor and Moscow bureau chief, and a Connecting colleague.
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Post leads White House reporters’ revolt after Psaki briefing ends early (New York Post)
By MARK MOORE
White House correspondents erupted in protest Monday after an Associated Press reporter signaled press secretary Jen Psaki to pull the plug on the daily briefing before others had a chance to ask a question.
“Thanks, Jen,” the AP’s Josh Boak told Psaki 39 minutes into the Q&A period, indicating that time was up even as another reporter shouted a question about whether the US intended to get oil from Venezuela.
Although the briefing lasted for nearly 40 minutes, that time was taken up by three reporters in the first two rows asking multiple questions and follow-ups.
The Post’s White House reporter Steven Nelson, along with Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, led the outcry and confronted Boak.
Read more here. Shared by Mark Mittelstadt.
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Reporters Are Coming Under Attack in Ukraine as War Worsens (Vanity Fair)
BY CHARLOTTE KLEIN
International press safety groups are looking into a spate of recent attacks on members of the media in Ukraine. The incidents have drawn attention to the ongoing risks posed to journalists covering the war on the ground and raised questions about potential targeting of the press. “Several media crews have already come under fire and four reporters have sustained gunshot injuries in Ukraine” since Vladimir Putin invaded fewer than two weeks ago, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reported Tuesday. “We therefore call on all parties to the conflict to immediately commit to protecting journalists in the field in accordance with international law,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.
Swiss photojournalist Guillaume Briquet was reportedly fired upon and robbed by members of a Russian special commando on Sunday while driving towards the southern city of Mykolaiv. “They clearly shot to kill,” Briquet, whose car and bulletproof vest were visibly marked “press,” told RSF. “I’ve been fired on before in other war zones, but I've never seen this. Journalists traveling around the country with no war experience are in mortal danger.”
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Today in History - March 10, 2022 |
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Today is Thursday, March 10, the 69th day of 2022. There are 296 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 10, 1969, James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tennessee, to assassinating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (Ray later repudiated that plea, maintaining his innocence until his death.
On this date:
In 1496, Christopher Columbus concluded his second visit to the Western Hemisphere as he left Hispaniola for Spain.
In 1785, Thomas Jefferson was appointed America’s minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.
In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln assigned Ulysses S. Grant, who had just received his commission as lieutenant-general, to the command of the Armies of the United States.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant, Thomas Watson, heard Bell say over his experimental telephone: “Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you” from the next room of Bell’s Boston laboratory.
In 1906, about 1,100 miners in northern France were killed by a coal-dust explosion.
In 1913, former slave, abolitionist and Underground Railroad “conductor” Harriet Tubman died in Auburn, New York; she was in her 90s.
In 1965, Neil Simon’s play “The Odd Couple,” starring Walter Matthau and Art Carney, opened on Broadway.
In 1985, Konstantin U. Chernenko, who was the Soviet Union’s leader for 13 months, died at age 73; he was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev.
In 1988, pop singer Andy Gibb died in Oxford, England, at age 30 of heart inflammation.
In 2015, breaking her silence in the face of a growing controversy over her use of a private email address and server, Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded that she should have used government email as secretary of state but insisted she had not violated any federal laws or Obama administration rules.
In 2019, a Boeing 737 Max 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed shortly after taking off from the capital, Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board; the crash was similar to one in October 2018 in which a 737 Max 8 flown by Indonesia’s Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 people on the plane. (The aircraft would be grounded worldwide after the two disasters, bringing fierce criticism to Boeing over the design and rollout of the jetliner.)
In 2020, clusters of the coronavirus swelled on both U.S. coasts, with more than 70 cases linked to a biotech conference in Boston and infections turning up at 10 nursing homes in the Seattle area. Members of a choir in Washington state gathered for a rehearsal that was later found to have been a superspreader event; disease trackers said a choir member with coronavirus symptoms attended, and 52 of the 60 others who were there got sick with confirmed or probable COVID-19, including two who died. (Experts said the public health investigation that followed was key in concluding that the virus was spreading through the air.)
Ten years ago: Rick Santorum won the Kansas caucuses in a rout and Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney countered in Wyoming. Israel pounded Gaza for a second day, trading airstrikes and rocket fire with Palestinian militants, killing 15 of them. F. Sherwood Rowland, 84, the Nobel prize-winning chemist who sounded the alarm on the thinning of the Earth’s ozone layer, died in Corona del Mar, California.
Five years ago: President Donald Trump chose Scott Gottlieb, a conservative doctor-turned-pundit with deep ties to Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry, to lead the Food and Drug Administration. Two girls, ages 10 and 3, were killed in a fire in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, blamed on an exploding hoverboard; a firefighter died in a traffic accident en route to the blaze. South Korea’s Constitutional Court formally removed impeached President Park Geun-hye from office over a corruption scandal.
One year ago: The House gave final congressional approval to a landmark $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill; Republicans in both chambers opposed the measure unanimously, describing it as bloated and crammed with liberal policies. The Senate confirmed Merrick Garland to be U.S. attorney general with a strong bipartisan vote; senators also confirmed longtime Ohio lawmaker Marcia Fudge as housing secretary.
Today’s Birthdays: Bluegrass/country singer-musician Norman Blake is 84. Actor Chuck Norris is 82. Playwright David Rabe is 82. Singer Dean Torrence (Jan and Dean) is 82. Actor Katharine Houghton (Film: “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”) is 80. Actor Richard Gant is 78. Rock musician Tom Scholz (Boston) is 75. Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell is 75. TV personality/businesswoman Barbara Corcoran (TV: “Shark Tank”) is 73. Actor Aloma Wright is 72. Blues musician Ronnie Earl (Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters) is 69. Producer-director-writer Paul Haggis is 69. Alt-country/rock musician Gary Louris is 67. Actor Shannon Tweed is 65. Pop/jazz singer Jeanie Bryson is 64. Actor Sharon Stone is 64. Rock musician Gail Greenwood is 62. Magician Lance Burton is 62. Actor Jasmine Guy is 60. Rock musician Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam) is 59. Music producer Rick Rubin is 59. Britain’s Prince Edward is 58. Rock singer Edie Brickell is 56. Actor Stephen Mailer is 56. Actor Philip Anthony-Rodriguez is 54. Actor Paget Brewster is 53. Actor Jon Hamm is 51. Rapper-producer Timbaland is 50. Actor Cristián (kris-tee-AHN’) de la Fuente is 48. Rock musician Jerry Horton (Papa Roach) is 47. Actor Jeff Branson is 45. Singer Robin Thicke is 45. Actor Bree Turner is 45. Olympic gold medal gymnast Shannon Miller is 45. Contemporary Christian singer Michael Barnes (Red) is 43. Actor Edi Gathegi is 43. Actor Thomas Middleditch is 40. Country singer Carrie Underwood is 39. Actor Olivia Wilde is 38. R&B singer Emeli Sandé (EH’-mihl-ee SAN’-day) is 35. Country singer Rachel Reinert is 33. Country musician Jared Hampton (LANCO) is 31. Actor Emily Osment is 30.
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Got a story or photos to share? |
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Connecting is a daily newsletter published Monday through Friday that focuses on retired and former Associated Press employees, present-day employees, and news industry and journalism school colleagues. It began in 2013 and past issues can be found by clicking Connecting Archive in the masthead. Its author, Paul Stevens, retired from the AP in 2009 after a 36-year career as a newsman in Albany and St. Louis, correspondent in Wichita, chief of bureau in Albuquerque, Indianapolis and Kansas City, and Midwest vice president based in Kansas City.
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:
- 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.
- 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?
- Most unusual place a story assignment took you.
Paul Stevens
Editor, Connecting newsletter
paulstevens46@gmail.com
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