Category Archives: Obituaries

Good journalism memories

Posted on October 31, 2009 | Comments Off on Good journalism memories

Sometimes the memories of the first daily you worked at are the best. Certainly the most fun. But even as today’s newspapers fade away, mainly from business pressures, but also some political ones, there’s always hope in an old editor’s eye.

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Posted in Obituaries, Scribbles

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White House Photo of The Day

Posted on October 29, 2009 | Comments Off on White House Photo of The Day

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Caption says the "reporters" are studying the inscriptions on the shovels for the ceremonial dirt-turning for a memorial tree for fallen American troops. You know, while Barry dithers about whether they need reinforcements or not. This is what the legacy media does these days instead of asking hard questions. Bush quietly met with the survivors of the fallen. Barry turns their deaths into a photo op and a tree-planting. Frankly I think he prefers them fallen. The fallen don’t talk back.

Via Mudville Gazette.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Obamalot, Obituaries, Scribbles, The War, Troops

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Adios, UH-1

Posted on October 22, 2009 | Comments Off on Adios, UH-1

This seems to be it, as far as the American military is concerned, for the UH-1 Huey, the workhorse troop- and casualty-mover of the Vietnam war. Course the feeling of the nose-down takeoff, the wind roaring through the open side doors, and the distinctive sound of the rotor blades from the ground as one passes over will live on in memory, until the last veteran passes on. Few of them ever even knew it was, officially, called the Iroquois.

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Posted in Obituaries, Troops, Viet Nam

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A dead newspaper’s autopsy

Posted on October 2, 2009 | Comments Off on A dead newspaper’s autopsy

The Rocky Mountain News closed in February, the first large daily to do so in the Internet age. In a lengthy but candid postmortem, John Temple, editor and publisher in the paper’s last eleven years, wields the scalpel. Quite fairly, for one who shares the blame:

"We didn’t understand the Web…Our online objectives kept changing…The Web was an afterthought all along….There’s still too much of a sense of entitlement in the industry." Audio and transcript here. Temple also has a blog.

Neither television or radio killed newspapers, though both give the news away free. So that bugaboo should be put to rest. But the Web is primarily text, which competes directly, and also can be accessed at any hour, as well as old or new teevee and radio newsclips. Thus. Still, it’s management’s appalling lack of imagination to find ways to compete with Craigslist, et al, that has hurt the most.

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Posted in Obituaries, Scribbles

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9/11 as a joke

Posted on September 8, 2009 | Comments Off on 9/11 as a joke

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The World Wildlife Federation’s “commemoration” ad for 9/11, according to ad agency DDB Brazil. The fine print in the upper right says: The 2004 Indonesian “tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11.” Yeah, let’s compare corpses, shall we? Just keep those donations coming folks. First, the federation claimed it was rogue work and they didn’t approve it. Later they admitted they did.

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Posted in Obituaries

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Newspaper in the vanguard

Posted on September 1, 2009 | Comments Off on Newspaper in the vanguard

Thirty years ago this fall, the first daily newspaper I worked for went under. It was a PM and they were dying everywhere then, apparently unable to compete with television news. Or so it was said at the time, though this was in the days before cable and the rise of local teevee news.

You might say the old Huntington (WVA) Advertiser (which hit the streets in 1874) was a trend setter, in the vanguard of today’s newspaper debacle, in which AMs are collapsing like the PMs of old. Blamed, now, on the Internet. Maybe.

Anyhow, the folks who were in at the end of the old paper are having a reunion in October in the city (famous for its Swinefest–Think Pig) that has grown with a stylish new bridge among other things. My at-home dad schedule will prevent me from attending, but I’ll link their good reunion web site here for anyone interested. And wish them well. The how-it-all-began. More or less.

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Posted in Library, Obituaries, Scribbles

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Ol’ Ted’s Public Option

Posted on August 26, 2009 | Comments Off on Ol’ Ted’s Public Option

Somehow I don’t think naming Obamacare after the famously overweight boozer and skirt-chaser is going to boost the chances of it passing. Not even if, as Dan Riehl says, there are some new features:

"…amending it to include mandatory long distance swimming lessons, as well as CPR and breath control classes for all Americans. Apparently one young woman wasn’t enough for Teddy. Now he can play a roll in the un-timely demise of more Americans than he could even count."

The Dems and their captive media may have loved the deceased hypocrite, but many Americans did not. So it’s still going to be pass-it-at-your-political-peril for those up for re-election next year.

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Posted in Obamalot, Obituaries

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