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Connecting
May 25, 2022
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Colleagues,
Good Wednesday morning on this May 25, 2022,
The Connecting confessional remains open with more of your stories about mistakes made on the job.
Remember: a statute of limitations has been instituted by Ye Olde Connecting Editor, so come ahead with your own story – a way to get it off your chest and prove to others that their own mistake may not have been all that bad.
Memorial Day 2022 - Connecting welcomes your own stories of those loved ones who have died - and keeping with our journalistic theme, especially those who played a role in your career. A favorite story or anecdote. We will publish these through this week.
175th Anniversary AP Merchandise – If you’ve put off purchasing AP merchandise with the 175th anniversary logo, it’s time to act. Our merch source Jenny Hammerton of AP-London tells me that “I'll be sunsetting (as I believe the groovy new term is) the 175th anniversary merchandise at the end of May.” (2021 was AP’s 175th anniversary year.) She promises a new range of products that we’ll tell you about when they’re available.
Click on Top AP News and Top AP Photos in Connecting’s masthead for the latest AP coverage of Tuesday’s tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Poynter’s Tom Jones offers an excellent summary of media coverage; click here.
Have a great day – be safe, stay healthy!
Paul
Connecting confessional:
Mistakes that we make
Norm Abelson - Was it really a mistake? The governor certainly thought it was.
I was covering the New Hampshire governor's news conference when he responded to a reporter's question with vehemence and rising anger. I called in the story, reporting the guv was “red-faced, and slammed his fist on the desk.” (I'm pretty sure those were the words.)
Later, at dinner, the phone rang, and Dina answered it. Moments later, she returned and whispered, “It's the governor.”
Well, he ran me up one side and down the other, insisting I had no right to describe him in that way. My protestations that I was only reporting what had happened cut no ice, as he slammed his phone down.
All that may seem like pretty weak milk these days, but back in the 1950s it sure scared the hell out of a young, and still uncertain, AP reporter.
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Patrick Casey - Holy Moses! I once misidentified Charlton Heston, the actor, political activist and five-term leader of the National Rifle Association, as Charleston Heston while on the night desk in Oklahoma City in the mid-1990s. A few members were practically dancing with glee when they called to point out the goof.
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Ruth Gersh - My first “paid” -- $35 a week! – job was at a weekly newspaper in Michigan, where we covered everything. Including weddings. As a child of the counter-culture 60s, there hadn’t been any weddings among my cohort, and none within the family since I was an infant. I knew nothing. And so my first wedding story for the Mackinac Island Town Crier mixed up the fabric of the bride’s wedding dress and the flowers she carried. She carried organza and wore hydrangea. No story I wrote since then garnered as much displeasure as that one.
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Hal Spencer - My unusual (and messiest) mistake was rooted in insensitivity, not error. I wrote a story about a much-loved and respected Washington State Senator who was fighting for passage of a bill to better regulate pesticides. He wanted this bill to be his final legislative act as his body gradually failed from a blood cancer he (and his blood specialist) believed was caused by pesticides. By the time I wrote the story, the senator was receiving daily blood transfusions in a room off the Senate floor. The story I filed included the overline: "Dying Senator fights for pesticide controls." The problem of course was the word "dying," (I did not use the word in the story itself.) A newspaper read by the senator's wife used the over-line verbatim as a headline.
The senator's wife was deeply upset. She called the Seattle Bureau and COB Dan Day called me. What to do? It seemed unproductive to kill myself. A correction? What would THAT look like. I challenge anybody to write one. Dan instructed me to get some expert medical opinions and to talk to the senator. I did the first and was told, unanimously, that the disease is definitely fatal. Even transfusions would stop working. Then I talked to the senator. He was amused but he needled me a bit. Aren't we all dying? he asked. I finally asked if he wanted a correction. No, he said, he was to die soon and hoped we'd drop it. His wife was OK now. I conveyed all this to Dan, who chewed me out again but forgave me.
Lesson one (which I thought I knew): if you don't want to see it in the paper, don't write it. Lesson two: Never forget empathy. I covered the senator's well-attended funeral a month later. As for the senator's pesticide-control bill, it was carried by now US Sen. Patty Murray, and a toothless version finally passed.
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Chris Sullivan - As we confess our journalistic mistakes, it might lessen the shame to read about “The Least Accurate Newspaper Report.” That is the tagline over an item a friend copied and sent me from an unidentified book, apparently some sort of compilation of oddities, many in England. Here’s the item:
“Newspaper reporters make mistakes, of course, but few have been more innovative than the one who contributed a personality profile of a local man called `Harris’ to the Wiltshire Times and Chippenham News in 1963. The following week the paper carried a magnificent apology.
“`Mr. Harris,’ it said, `has asked us to point out a number of inaccuracies in our story. After returning from India, he served in Ireland for four years and not six months as stated; he never farmed at Heddington, particularly not at Coate Road Farm as stated; he has never counted cycling or walking among his hobbies; he is not a member of 54 hunts; and he did not have an eye removed at Chippenham Hospital after an air raid on Calne.
“`My only disappointment when interviewing him,’ wrote the reporter in his original article, `was that I could not spare more time with this raconteur.’”
It’s Indy 500 time – favorite story from the Brickyard?
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Doug Richardson - My best story from covering the Indianapolis 500 was when I was working the one third of the pits, which included Mario Andretti and Paul Newman, the car owner. Mario led almost all the race until the 190th lap, when his car failed. Newman, dressed in a white Brooks Brothers shirt, and jeans, started to walk away. I chased. He picked up his speed. I did, too. After I hurdled a tire rack at Gasoline Alley, Newman turns to me and asks, “What do you need?”
I said, a quote. Newman: “Here: if I had written the script, this wouldn’t have been my ending.” I said thanks. He sprinted off. Never saw him again.
Talk about this, talk about that. Ugh
Doug Tucker - Let’s raise a toast to R.A. Dickey for making Hal Bock pose a question and not just issue a command.
As my time was winding down with The Associated Press, I developed a genuine pet peeve on this point. Increasingly, my fellow sports writers were not bothering actually to interview anyone.
Instead, they would just say, “Talk about this,” and “Talk about that.”
Really bugged me. It’s a lazy way to elicit information and gather story-expanding quotes. It’s also less effective than asking pointed, specific questions that draw the subject into a flow of conversation. (Clarification: I am NOT accusing Bock of being lazy or ineffective. Far from it. Hal was one of my most honored AP Sports colleagues, someone whose talent and tremendous body of work I have always admired.)
Nevertheless, I’ll never forget the time Dan Quisenberry, the late All-Star reliever, finally got fed up. After a particularly rough night when he blew the save and cost his team a win, a young scribe told him, “Talk about your outing.”
Quiz, just about the sweetest and most cooperative guy in baseball, started to speak but stopped and said:
“You’ll have to ask a question.”
Startled, the young man did just that, and Dan gave him an excellent response.
The Associated Press 1-Minute Archive Film Competition
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The Associated Press is calling on filmmakers to create a 1-minute film using footage from its archive. One film will receive a prize of £1,000, whilst the top three entries will get to see their short film on the big screen at this year’s edition of Sheffield DocFest - taking place 23-28 June 2022. All short films must be submitted by Thursday 26 May.
The winning film will be selected by Sheffield DocFest 2022 Guest Curator Asif Kapadia, the Academy Award and BAFTA-winning filmmaker of the acclaimed documentary films SENNA (2010), AMY (2015) and DIEGO MARADONA (2019).
Filmmakers will have unlimited access to The Associated Press archive, including the iconic British Movietone collection, the world’s greatest newsreel archive. The archive includes over 1.7 million global news and entertainment video stories dating back to 1895. Hours of new video footage is added daily with coverage from AP's global news gathering network.
On May 24, 1844…
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Samuel Morse demonstrates the telegraph with the message, “What hath God wrought?”
In a demonstration witnessed by members of Congress, American inventor Samuel F.B. Morse dispatches a telegraph message from the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail at a railroad station in Baltimore, Maryland. The message—“What Hath God Wrought?”—was telegraphed back to the Capitol a moment later by Vail. The question, taken from the Bible (Numbers 23:23), had been suggested to Morse by Annie Ellworth, the daughter of the commissioner of patents.
Morse, an accomplished painter, learned of a French inventor’s idea of an electric telegraph in 1832 and then spent the next 12 years attempting to perfect a working telegraph instrument. During this period, he composed the Morse code, a set of signals that could represent language in telegraph messages, and convinced Congress to finance a Washington-to-Baltimore telegraph line. On May 24, 1844, he inaugurated the world’s first commercial telegraph line with a message that was fitting given the invention’s future effects on American life.
Just a decade after the first line opened, more than 20,000 miles of telegraph cable crisscrossed the country. The rapid communication it enabled greatly aided American expansion, making railroad travel safer as it provided a boost to business conducted across the great distances of a growing United States.
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Connecting wishes Happy Birthday |
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Stories of interest
Afghan male journalists wear masks on-air in solidarity with female colleagues (The Hill)
BY MONIQUE BEALS
Male journalists at several major news outlets in Afghanistan have covered their faces on-air in recent days, protesting the Taliban’s order that women, including television presenters, cover their faces in public.
Their moves prompted other Afghan men to post photos with their faces covered as part of the #FreeHerFace social media campaign, Human Rights Watch reported.
Earlier this month, the Taliban issued a decree that women and older girls must cover their faces in public and avoid being outside if possible.
Last week, the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue said female television presenters had to cover their faces as well, adding that “the decision was final and that there was no room for discussion.”
Read more here. Shared by Richard Chady.
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'They were shooting directly at the journalists': New evidence suggests Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in targeted attack by Israeli forces (CNN)
By Zeena Saifi, Eliza Mackintosh, Celine Alkhaldi, Kareem Khadder, Katie Polglase and Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN
Video by Livvy Doherty and Oscar Featherstone, CNN
(CNN) Several shots ring out in quick succession, cutting through a clear, blue spring morning in Jenin, in the West Bank. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.
The cameraman filming the scene scrambles backwards to take cover behind a low concrete wall. Then a man cries out in Arabic: "Injured! Shireen, Shireen, oh man, Shireen! Ambulance!"
When the camera operator pans around the corner, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh can be seen lying motionless, face down on the ground as another Palestinian reporter, Shatha Hanaysha, crouches down beside her, using a tree trunk for cover. Hanaysha reaches out and tries to rouse her as gunshots continue. There's no response. Both women are wearing helmets and blue protective vests marked "Press."
In the moments that follow, a man in a white T-shirt makes several attempts to move Abu Akleh, but is forced back repeatedly by gunfire. Finally, after a few long minutes, he manages to drag her body from the street.
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Ex-White House press secretary Jen Psaki hired by MSNBC (AP)
By MARK KENNEDY
NEW YORK (AP) — Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki has officially landed at MSNBC, where she is expected to make appearances on the network’s cable and streaming programs as well as host a new original show.
The program, set to debut in the first quarter of 2023, will “bring together her unique perspective from behind the podium and her deep experience in the highest levels of government and presidential politics,” the network said in a statement Tuesday.
Psaki will also appear on NBC and during MSNBC’s primetime special election programming throughout the midterms and 2024 presidential election.
In a tweet, Psaki write that she was thrilled to join the network this fall. “Breaking down the facts and getting to the bottom of what’s driving the issues that matter most to people in this country has never been more important,” she wrote.
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Today in History - May 25, 2022 |
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Today is Wednesday, May 25, the 145th day of 2022. There are 220 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed when a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for about 9 1/2 minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and pleading that he couldn’t breathe; Floyd’s death, captured on video by a bystander, would lead to worldwide protests, some of which turned violent, and a reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S.
On this date:
In 1787, the Constitutional Convention began at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia after enough delegates had shown up for a quorum.
In 1946, Transjordan (now Jordan) became a kingdom as it proclaimed its new monarch, Abdullah I.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy told Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”
In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, ordered the Virginia county to reopen its public schools, which officials had closed in an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka desegregation ruling.
In 1968, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was dedicated by Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall.
In 1977, the first “Star Wars” film (later retitled “Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope”) was released by 20th Century Fox.
In 1979, 273 people died when an American Airlines DC-10 crashed just after takeoff from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.
In 2008, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander arrived on the Red Planet to begin searching for evidence of water; the spacecraft confirmed the presence of water ice at its landing site.
In 2011, a judge in Salt Lake City sentenced street preacher Brian David Mitchell to life in prison for kidnapping and raping Elizabeth Smart, who was 14 at the time of her abduction in 2002. A judge in Tucson, Arizona, ruled that Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of wounding U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killing six in a shooting rampage, was mentally incompetent to stand trial. (Loughner would later plead guilty; he was sentenced to seven life terms in prison.)
In 2016, actor Johnny Depp’s wife, Amber Heard, filed for divorce in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences after 15 months of marriage.
In 2018, Harvey Weinstein was charged in New York with rape and another sex felony in the first prosecution to result from the wave of allegations against him. (Weinstein was convicted of rape and sexual assault; he is serving a 23-year prison sentence.)
In 2020, a white woman, Amy Cooper, called 911 to claim she was being threatened by “an African American man,” Christian Cooper, who had confronted her for walking her dog without a leash in New York’s Central Park. (After a video of the confrontation was widely circulated, Amy Cooper lost her job with investment firm Franklin Templeton and was charged with filing a false police report; the charge was dismissed after she completed a counseling program.)
Ten years ago: The private company SpaceX made history as its Dragon capsule docked with the International Space Station. In Syria, more than 100 people were killed in one day in a cluster of villages in central Homs province; U.N. investigators blamed pro-government gunmen for at least some of the killings, but the Syrian regime denied responsibility and blamed rebels for the deaths.
Five years ago: Surrounded by stone-faced allies, President Donald Trump rebuked fellow NATO members for failing to meet the military alliance’s financial benchmarks. Republican Greg Gianforte won a special election for Montana’s sole U.S. House seat a day after being charged with assaulting a reporter.
One year ago: The White House confirmed that President Joe Biden and Russia’s Vladimir Putin would hold a summit in June in Geneva. The family of George Floyd met at the White House with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the first anniversary of Floyd’s death during his arrest by police in Minneapolis. Former Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia died at the age of 94; the former Navy secretary was married to film star Elizabeth Taylor when he first ran for the Senate in 1978, and he held that Senate seat for 30 years.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Ann Robinson is 93. Former White House news secretary Ron Nessen is 88. Actor Sir Ian McKellen is 83. Country singer Jessi Colter is 79. Actor-singer Leslie Uggams is 79. Movie director and Muppeteer Frank Oz is 78. Actor Karen Valentine is 75. Actor Jacki Weaver is 75. Rock singer Klaus Meine (The Scorpions) is 74. Actor Patti D’Arbanville is 71. Playwright Eve Ensler is 69. Musician Cindy Cashdollar is 67. Actor Connie Sellecca is 67. Rock singer-musician Paul Weller is 64. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is 62. Actor-comedian Mike Myers is 59. Actor Matt Borlenghi is 55. Actor Joseph Reitman is 54. Rock musician Glen Drover is 53. Actor Anne Heche (haych) is 53. Actors Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush (TV: “Little House on the Prairie”) are 52. Actor-comedian Jamie Kennedy is 52. Actor Octavia Spencer is 52. Actor Justin Henry is 51. Rapper Daz Dillinger is 49. Actor Molly Sims is 49. Actor Erinn Hayes is 46. Actor Cillian Murphy is 46. Actor Ethan Suplee (soo-PLEE’) is 46. Rock musician Todd Whitener is 44. Actor Corbin Allred is 43. Actor-singer Lauren Frost is 37. Actor Ebonee Noel is 32. Musician Guy Lawrence (Disclosure) is 31. Olympic gold medal gymnast Aly Raisman is 28.
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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
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