Spring ahead.....

Just a friendly reminder from your friendly blogger:

Turn those clocks forward (ignore the incorrect instructions on the graphic to the left but it's the only good illustration I could find) before you turn in tonight.

And don't forget those smoke detector batteries!

There may yet be hope

From Editor and Publisher:

A real journalism sweat shop busted:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003719291


I'm hoping my friends still in the business keep track of the real hours they work. Someday a class action suit will be filed with the State of Michigan and a lot of them should get some nice retro and overtime pay.

It is simply wrong that a newspaper should require workers to work beyond the hours allowed in state law. Someone should call the state and complain. Maybe I'll have time next week.

I should have organized a union there years ago.

A little musical interlude

This was very nice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5jtKuQeq0w

Something soothing to get you ready for the weekend:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL8kZ-iVk90&feature=related

Remember to watch in full screen. (Click on button on right hand corner of the You Tube screen)

Funny news clips

Watch this clip with an on air confrontation between a reporter and an anchor. It is very funny.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pOc4XgBespw

Here's another one:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EHTXh3R66hE&feature=related

This one is good, with some great clips of Sam Donaldson:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=doow7YPLSUU

I'll add a few more favorites:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mXjI0TaWATk


http://youtube.com/watch?v=N_-QnH-maAQ&feature=related

I know this isn't right, but I smiled anyway:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sw6vxe74KmI&feature=related

Corrections with a flair and a little humor

If you haven't gone over and checked out regrettheerror.com you are missing some great reading. Here are a few examples. What I really like is that many major newspapers go into great detail on how the error happened and who is responsible. Refreshing that some newspapers are willing to go the extra mile to clear up mistakes. Do yourself a favor and check out this website frequently.


(From the Express-News)
Police photo error implicates wrong man
Because of an incorrect photo provided by the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, a Tuesday Express-News story about a slaying suspect was accompanied by a photograph of a San Antonio man who was not connected in any way with the slaying. The story, ‘Transient’s tale ends in arrest,’ was published on Page 1A. The photo did not appear on MySanAntonio.com.The actual suspect, Robert Patrick White, 38, described by police as a homeless man, is pictured here. White and two others have been charged with the slaying earlier this month of Christopher Duncan, a 23-year-old South Side man.‘The wrong photo was in the wrong data file,’ Ralph G. Serrano, manager of the central records and identification section of the Sheriff’s Office, said in an e-mail to the Express-News. ‘I apologize for any embarrassment or inconvenience that this may have caused.’The Express-News also apologizes to the misidentified man, his family and friends and to our readers. Link
And the misidentified man is…?
Thanks, Craig!

(From the guardian)
Lessons in geography etc.
Mount Baldy, where Leonard Cohen spent time at a Buddhist retreat, is not in Greece, but in the San Gabriel mountains, about 40 miles from Los Angeles (Hail, hail, rock’n'roll, page 14, Film & Music, February 29).
By Craig Silverman on March 4th, 2008 in Newspapers Tagged geographical errors, guardian Comments (0)

(Sidebar: I have been on Mount Baldy during my years growing up in Los Angeles and can confirm it is nowhere near Greece!)

(From the Houston Chronicle):
Wrong since 1971
A story and headline on Page C1 Sunday were wrong in saying the NCAA men’s basketball tournament had not been in Houston since 1971. Houston hosted games in 1973, 1980, 1983, 1985 and 1986. Link

More bad newspaper news

At least some newspapers are honest enough to report there own bad news:

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/feb/19/the-star-cuts-seven-jobs-in-its-first-layoffs/

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8306309?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com&nclick_check=1

There's more over at newspaper deathwatch.com.

Not everyone is unhappy

Just to be fair, here's a new site:

HappyJournalist.com

We'll see whether it eclipses the overwhelming number of comments on AngryJournalist.com

On selling newspapers...

The editor-in-charge-of-corrections weighed in Sunday on his recent decision to create a controversy where none previously existed.

A Genesee County school district sent out a mailer warning parents that a suspected sexual offender, who the school did not name, was living in the district near a school. Parents were apparently happy for the information.

That's when the editor-in-charge-of-corrections decided to ramp up a controversy by first, naming and picturing the accused sex offender in the newspaper, and then seeking someone, anyone, who would call the school's letter a violation of the alleged sex offender's privacy.

Locally, apparently, they could find no one to weigh in with that opinion, so they went to New York and Human Rights Watch who criticized the district for the letter.

This technique is popular among editors devoid of real news sense. It's the "I'll hold your coat" style of journalism. A reporter tells one source that another person/organization has done something offensive to it/them. That prompts a reaction from the uninvolved individual, who then weighs in with a salvo of theirs against the "other" side. Back and forth it goes as two people/organizations who previously had no issues with each other fight it out in public, while the newspaper "holds their coats." It's a cheap technique, one not worthy a good newspaper.

There are plenty of ongoing fights that don't need fabricating that can be covered, but when the news cupboard is bare, this one can be used in a pinch. Then after all the dust dies down some vacuum headed editor can then opine in public about how important it was that they started the fight to begin with.

I had my own such issue, just a year ago, over a proposed rabbit farm in Lapeer County. Not just any rabbit farm, but one which produces pathogen-free rabbits for use in university medical schools for high end research. These animals are used in critical cancer research and must be 100 percent free of any disease, virus or pathogens of any kind.

Potential neighbors of the facility raised an issue of truck noise and odors, but no one was concerned about any animal rights issues. That's when the editor-in-charge-of-corrections stepped in and decided that I should call People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and let them weigh in, even though no such issue existed.

I refused. That created a big issue for the editor-in-charge-of-corrections (let's shorten that to eicoc) who demanded that I be made to make the call. Still I refused. So it was going to fall to a less experienced intern to do the dirty work and so I contacted the editor-in-charge-of-the-editor-in-charge-of-corrections (eicoteicoc) who found his cajones for once and stopped the effort to ramp up a controversy where none existed.

Newspapers, particularly the Flint Journal, ramp up controversies all the time. They do so for a variety of reasons, many of them are good reasons and sales of newspapers is one of them. (We'll get back to that in a minute).

Trust me on this, if for some reason the school district knew about a suspected sex offender - and then didn't inform the public - the eicoc would have been the first to have a reporter jump on them with both feet for NOT doing so. The eicoc is a bully, he is a bully in the newsroom and a bully in the community, one he doesn't even live in. The eicoc lives far outside the Journal's subscription area and has for ten or more years.

That's really interesting because the eicoc has assigned and required stories about the residency of many local officials and employees. He's singularly obsessed with how much every public employee makes, but try and get that, or any other information, about how much he or anyone else makes at the newspaper.

With the loss of many veteran reporters, those who couldn't be bullied, look for more such stories in the future.

Now let's talk just a minute about the eicoc's bold statement that he has never heard anyone assign a story based on selling newspapers.

I'm sure the eicoc was present at a number of meetings where the eicoteicoc spoke last year about how the American Idol Lakisha Jones stories were designed to sell newspapers and bring a lot of younger readers to the Flint Journal. Heck there was a virtual orgy of articles (see http://freefromeditors.blogspot.com/2008/01/top-10-story-list-joke.html).

Heck just in the last week, the Flint Journal has spent countless inches promoting "Semi-Pro" an awful movie (people who have seen it have warned me away from wasting my money) and for what other reason than to sell newspapers to the fools who believed they were going to appear in it as extras.

I was in the business for 30 years, I never apologized for the fact the point of the business was to sell newspapers. Heck, GM certainly doesn't apologize for selling cars, do they? But to say boldly as the eicoc did Sunday that he has "never" heard that is very startling.

Maybe a correction is in order? But as the eicoc says, anything that "stirs" discussion is good.

Detroit link-o-rama

Friends:

Spent Friday and Saturday at a men's Anglican retreat at the St. John's Retreat Center in Livonia. (correction: Plymouth, thanks DP) In addition to the great information I learned about the Bible and the wonderful fellowship with a bunch of Christian men, I had a chance to visit with Father Richard Dalton who has a wonderful website full of links that cover much of what is important in the Detroit Metropolitan Area.

Music, theater, weather, sports, web guides, etc. are all there at: lookupdetroit.com

There are thousands of local links and an extensive media guide. Do give it a try and if you forget the link, it will be posted on my links at the upper right hand part of my blog.

And if you ever get a chance to spend time at a retreat at St. John's, do it! It is a very comfortable setting, beautiful grounds and unlike some of the old "bunkhouse" retreat centers, each member has their own clean motel style room. (No TV or phone, it is a retreat after all).

Great quote!

Found this on AngryJournalist.com:

Angry Journalist #1261:
Great site!
“I am not the editor of a newspaper and I shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.”Mark Twain

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Fixed on fixin'

See addition (in bold faced italic type) to article a few inches down.....
Last night I spent nearly three hours reading my new favorite website - regrettheerror.com. For a journalist this is a must read. The author has assembled and catalogued the major mistakes, plagarists and fabrications for the past four years.

It's a great site and I again commend it to your reading.
Reading three hours of sad stories of journalists who cheated and humorous tidbits of newspaper mistakes brought to mind the continuing effort at my former paper to eradicate the "correction."
For the record, I'm very much for improving the accuracy of newspapers, but the Journal's efforts are sometimes laughable.

Just this past Sunday (Feb. 24), again, the Journal editor wrung his hands publicly in his column and told his readers how hard the paper was working to eliminate mistakes. Heck, when I was there he offered a semi-annual drawing for a $20 gas card among reporters who had gone six months without having to post a correction.

At the meeting where this "carrot" was announced I told him I thought the offer was demeaning and that any good journalist should avoid mistakes out of professional pride and that vying for a $20 gas card was insulting. But the offer remained and the only winners (so far) have been a woman who compiles the wedding announcements and a graphic page designer. Now that's really fair! You take people who handled pre-written copy into the mix of reporters dealing with complicated interviews, facts, figures and working under deadling and consider them equals.

Whenever there is a carrot there is also a stick. To fend off mistakes, the paper required detailed memos of how the mistake was made, the requirement of an apology letter to the person the mistake was about (if applicable). So far they haven't made a reporter write a letter to Third Avenue apologizing for calling it a street). Anyway, the paper had a vigorous program to stop corrections and punish offenders.

With no consideration for the complexity of beats, the number of stories produced or hours worked, a quota of four mistakes per year were the drop dead limit with a threat of discipline and firing if additional corrections were tallied. Some reporters were told that they were on the brink of dismissal if they had any more corrections. What do you think that does to the incentive of admitting a mistake?

I know for a fact that some reporters deliberately deflected requests for corrections ("I'll make sure I get it right next time") in order to avoid having to come under the correction program.
One of the duties of the managing editor is to keep a daily list of corrections. He keeps a daily chart of who has sent letters, who has sent their memo to him and the editor-in-chief. It's nice to know that someone has plenty of time on his hands.

Heck if the reporters had that kind of time to do a story, that would go a longer way to eliminating the need for a $20 gas card incentive.

But let's talk about a correction that was not reported. Last year, an alert editor noted a disturbing trend among one reporter who in a matter of minutes could find a random citizen to comment on even the most obscure subject or event.

Suspicious, the editor attempted to locate any of his most recent sources for feature articles. None of them could be found through traditional means (phone books, etc.) Then she asked the reporter to produce the sources and he could not. The editor-in-chief confronted the reporter about a number of suspect fabricated sources in several stories and the reporter abruptly resigned rather than providing the sources.

And what did the Journal report to its readers about the fabricated sources?

Zero, zip, nada. No apology letters, no flogging, no nothing. Pass Go and collect your $20 gas card. So how serious are you really when you insist on correcting the little errors, but then cover up the biggest screw up of the year? Not very.

Update: A former Journal colleague, who is now gainfully employed elsewhere, points out that the strict Journal correction policy could certainly contribute to the temptation to make up a source. (The colleague is not excusing the behavior) "Afterall, fake sources rarely call to say they were misquoted," the colleague said. Point taken.

Here's a big suggestion to eliminate many mistakes: Quit treating the employees like factory line workers with set quotas for the number of stories they must produce each day and give them the time to work, massage and fact check a story.

When you push and hurry people, there is less time for follow-up and fact checking calls.

P.S. The Journal refuses to explain to readers how the mistakes were made. The editor-in-charge-of-corrections says that's because readers don't care. Well even if readers don't care, staff, particularly reporters care that sources know that they got it right and that the editor or copy desk inflicted the wound. Get over this idea that you can't explain to readers who was responsible for the error.

Here's a good example: I had a pretty good record of not making mistakes. But a source gave me an incorrect name for an auctioneer for a public auction. The source called and left a taped mea culpa on my voice mail. I mentioned this to the editor-in-charge-of-corrections and even sent him a copy of the taped message. But when the correction appeared it looked as if the paper had made the mistake, or more specifically that I had made the mistake. As any reporter will tell you that kind of thing is noticed by people on your beat and damages your credibility.

But the editor-in-charge-of-corrections explained that readers don't care. Well, reporters and sources do. To steal a page from the old Clinton playbook: "It's the morale, stupid."

By the way, reporters never got letters of apology from the editors who mangled copy and made it wrong. Although a few of my favorite copy editors were very polite and apologetic when they did make an error. Not so the editor-in-charge-of-corrections.

A word about comments

Friends:

As this blog is getting more and more traffic I just wanted to continue to welcome all your comments. I spent a career protecting my sources and will do so here as well.

Please feel free to leave anonymous comments (although making up a name is fun too!) as long as they are civil and without expletives. Let's leave out the real names of those who you are writing about. Even without the names the stories are still very compelling. The point of this blog is to inform, not to hurt.

One suggestion: It might be better for those still in a working newsroom to restrict your posting here to doing so from your home computer. Many newspapers stand on the first amendment and free expression, but aren't too sympathetic about employees exercising either one.

Some have asked me off line why I am so negative about the newspaper business.

The answer is easy, I am passionate about newspapers and news. When newspapers are run well they serve the community in a most important way. When they are run badly, they are at least an embarrassment and at worst irrelevant. My hope, my prayer is that the Flint Journal will find a way to return to what it was when I started there in 1989: A kick butt daily paper that people enjoyed and feared, in the best way possible. Sadly, it won't do it with the current editorial management.

So keep it clean, keep it real, but by all means, keep it coming.

The anatomy of a story not told

Congratulations to our local ABC affiliate - WJRT-12 - here in Flint for finally telling the story that could have been told by the Flint Journal last summer.


How do I know this? Because it was my story on a major mortgage scam that couldn't get by the top editors and lawyers at the Flint Journal. The reason: Fear of legal action.

Just to give you an idea of the investment we had in the story I had spent more than a week (40 hours) pulling and copying the property records for each property in the subdivision. In addition, I pulled all the tax records for each property and had called many of the banks and individuals named as owners.

My wife and I spent a romantic Friday night (on my own time and on our way home from dinner) driving slowly through the subdivision to make sure I had not missed any of the properties. With my wife's help we logged which homes were occupied, which were vacant, which were for sale and which were falling into disrepair.

I spent hours on the phone with Township Supervisor Kurt Soper, township building inspector Randy Stewart and many of the residents who were living or acquainted with the subdivision and its failings. Only two people would speak for the record out of fear of becoming a target themselves. The point being, the Journal had a significant investment in time, mileage and effort in this story.

The ABC story (see link below) has no more information than I had in August. Yes, the banks have finally filed a major lawsuit, but the reason my story was held was that Kurt Heintz refused to talk to me. His refusal to comment on a massive mortgage fraud was the reason cited to me why we couldn't go with the story. Forget that I confronted him at his front door after going to his former office and finding it closed.

Finding him was no small feat. After I found his office closed I went to his home address and found a bank security guard on duty keeping anyone from coming on the property. I did learn that the property had been seized by a bank (the one named in the Channel 12 story), but I didn't stop there.

I went next door and a nice neighbor pointed down the street to the rented home where Mr. Heintz was living and told me he was there at that time. That's when I drove down, talked to a young boy who brought Mr. Heintz to the door where he denied who he was. When I couldn't get him to admit who he was I left a business card so "Mr. Heintz" could call me later. Which, of course, he never did. This, by the way, is the same house where the stabbing occurred just a few months later.


Then the Journal's lawyers and top editor got involved and the story fell into a journalism black hole.


In the ensuing months, Heintz's wife was stabbed by an angry investor (trust me there are dozens of them as well as banks). But in August I had all the documents we needed to show a really massive fraud. Houses assessed at three times what they were worth. Dozens of homes in a high class subdivision in Davison Township standing empty and in foreclosure. But even with all the evidence, township and county documents, I could not get this story in the paper. I even had a better comment than Channel 12 from the FBI. At least I got them to confirm they were looking at the mortgage irregularities in the subdivision. I had plenty of background confirmation of what was going on as well.
So a month into my retirement I got a call from a Journal reporter - after the stabbing - asking me for all my information so they could NOW do a story on the whole mess. Unfortunately, I turned over all the documents to another reporter and frankly, was ticked off enough that I really didn't want to help. "Why would they want to run the story now with the same information I had in August?," I asked.

The next day they ran a weak follow, still not using all the documentation I had gathered.

By the way, when the Channel 12 reporter went to Heintz's door to get a comment, he got nothing as well. But at least the station went ahead with the story anyway.

The watered down story that finally appeared in the Journal was a pathetic recounting of neighbors complaints about high weeds and rotting homes and how the Township had failed to resolve their complaints. There was a passing reference to an investigation, but nothing about Heintz, his mortgage company or the massively inflated mortgages.

It was akin to an 1865 newspaper running a review of the Ford Theater play "Our American Cousin" and then mentioning in passing that President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated before the intermission.

Trust me, the neighbors and officials I had worked with over a month's time were stunned that the Journal did not see, or was not brave enough to tell the story last summer.

Want to know why some newspapers are failing? They are chicken.

I don't know how long it will be up, but here's the link to the Channel 12 story:

http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/local&id=5980917

To fix, or not to fix, that is the correction

Found this great site - regrettheerror.com - and received permission to link to it from here.

I particularly liked the following page and some of the incredible corrections:

http://www.regrettheerror.com/regret-articles/crunks-07-the-year-in-media-errors-and-corrections

Just to whet your appetite here's a short sample:

Runner UpThe Sentinel-Review (Woodstock, Ontario):

"In an article in Monday’s newspaper, there may have been a misperception about why a Woodstock man is going to Afghanistan on a voluntary mission. Kevin DeClark is going to Afghanistan to gain life experience to become a police officer when he returns, not to shoot guns and blow things up.The Sentinel-Review apologizes for any embarrassment this may have caused."

I have placed the website link with the others on the top, right side of the page.

This would be a good place to check frequently for a little comic relief.

A couple videos about newspaper videos

Couple of short, but clever video clips that will bring a smile (or a smirk) to the faces of reporters now dealing with the demands of producing videos for newspaper webpages....

http://www.andydickinson.net/2008/02/17/a-video-guide-to-video-strategy/

Let me know what you think

This site has touched a nerve

AngryJournalist.com is getting flooded with hits from angry journalists from around the world. There are a lot of people in the same boat (see Titanic photo below) and people seem to need a place to vent.
I'm not just reposting the site and moving it to the top of my links list because that site was kind enough to give me a shout out, but it certainly didn't hurt.

Very funny You Tube....

If you haven't seen this You Tube, it is very funny. Do yourself a favor and stick with it to the end....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuMMfgWhm3g

Enjoy!

Drip, drip, drip

From Editor and Publisher:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003712001

About jockeys, sergeants and editors

Before my 30-year career as a newspaper reporter I spent seven years as a police dispatcher and police officer for two California suburban police departments.

I learned a lot about good supervision and bad supervision during those seven years. In many ways, police work and newspaper work have a lot in common.

They are both professions where those who practice it must react quickly to rapidly changing circumstances. It requires supervisors and employees to work closely and effectively together, but not in the traditional boss-employee way.

Unlike a factory assembly line supervisor, police supervisors (and editors) should be working with and not above the police officers and reporters they share office or police car space with.

In my years as a police officer I witnessed a number of promotions of police officers to sergeant and can make some general observations.

Those who remained humble and didn't let a promotion go to their head were the more effective and efficient sergeants that I worked for. Officers I worked with would do everything they could to make a good sergeant look better.

But in those cases where a new sergeant let his/her promotion go to their head the result was almost always a disaster. I remember one officer (Patrick) who turned into an officious butthead after he was promoted. No matter that Patrick had been maybe the biggest slacker on our shift once he was promoted he turned into a monster. In other words, a mediocre officer was now in charge of his peers.

I remember one of his first supervision shifts when he told me and a couple other officers, "Even though we have been friends, from now on in public, you need to refer to me as 'sergeant.' Actually, that was the last time any of us called him 'sergeant.' Patrick was mostly "hey you' or completely ignored because of that.

Patrick, who had little road experience before he 'kissed' his way to the sergeant stripes, showed up at a traffic accident and we deliberately stood around with traffic backing up in all directions until he arrived. When he got there he asked us what we were doing and we told him we were just waiting for our supervisor to arrive so he could tell us what to do.

He was so frustrated, and with little previous knowledge of what to do, he nearly melted down as we made our point that he needed to lighten up and get off his pedestal and work with us and not 'above' us. Eventually, Patrick got the point and settled into being a decent supervisor.

Editors are in the same position. New editors should be mindful that many of their contemporaries remember how they were as reporters. So when they take on the officious manner of an editor they once fought and argued with, people aren't too sympathetic or cooperative.

Under the best editorial management of my career, reporters and editors were pretty much equal in status. It was not a boss-employee relationship, but one of mutual respect and an understanding of the different, but important role of each position. At times it meant sharp disagreements and even heated arguments. In the end, both realized they were working for the same thing, a good newspaper.

Sadly, at the Flint Journal in the past few years the editorial management style is more akin to a foreman in a plant than one of professional cooperation. I can tell you that most reporters react very negatively to being treated like a line worker, especially when they are pushed to the limit, stretched thin and getting little help or support from editors.

If you hover like a shepherd, you end up with sheep. Good reporters are not sheep, they are thoroughbreds and should not be handled like sheep. More on thoroughbreds later.

Remember the old Disney dark rides like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride? You rode in an open car that traveled on tracks as wild and scary things jumped out at you in the dark. There was the illusion of danger, but really no danger.

Well, journalism of the type being practiced by the management at the Flint Journal is the newspaper equivalent of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. There is the illusion of journalism and hard edged reporting, but really not so much. Company lawyers and timid editors see to that. How else can you explain that the Flint city mayor was unchallenged during his campaign just last year with assertions of an $8 million surplus and just months later announcing a $4 million deficit and layoffs. Someone was asleep at the switch. All while the Journal wasted countless inches and pages on an also ran American Idol candidate.

The difference between what the Flint Journal and hard hitting major newspapers are doing is the contrast between the dangers of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and the Indianapolis 500.

The Journal shuns overtime, but basically winks at the fact that many of its employees are working hours much longer than what they are being paid for. But still, its editors who have little understanding of what constitutes real news reporting, feel no shame in challenging the work ethic of some very hard working people.

I heard a story once about the jockey who rode the great horse Secretariat to glory. The jockey was asked by a sports reporter how "tough" it was to ride such a strong and powerful animal.

The jockey responded that Secretariat was actually one of the easist rides of his career.

"How so?," said the reporter.

The jockey explained that Secretariat loved to run, loved to run ahead of the pack and so the only thing that would discourage him would be if the jockey pulled back on the reins and bit.

The only horse races Secretariat ever lost, and there were not many, the jockey explained was when he had pulled back on the reins to try and control him in tight quarters. At the pull of the bit, Secretariat slowed and quit on the race.

What bad editors refuse to understand is that some people run better and work harder when they are not hard on the bit. When the bit is jerked on they pull, resist and slow. It's not science, just human nature.

Being a good editor is more than reading copy and assigning stories, it's understanding your people as individuals and giving them their head (another horse analogy) and letting them work unfettered by useless meetings and direction.

I think of the editor-reporter relationship more in the realm of a military squad. Editors, especially the lower line editors, should be akin to the lieutenant who takes a squad into battle, but lives and suffers along with the enlisted.

No one worries about who is wearing lieutenant bars when the bullets are flying. Everyone looks out for everyone else.

If editors want to treat others like a factory worker, then by all means give them the overtime and breaks they deserve.....

This and that....

Here are some new articles posted on newspaperdeathwatch.com and their links. All interesting reads.

Tidbit quote from the first link:

"I think it's unfair to single out journalists as thieves, or violent, or drunks, or child abusers," says Reynolds. "Sometimes they're all of the above."

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/01/notepads-of-sha.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2182072/pagenum/all

Here's a tidbit from the last item I will post here:

"But there's also the greed monster Wall Street has created, wherein a single digit profit margin is no longer enough reason to get out of bed in the morning." Frequent freefromeditors ommenter Oakland will surely agree with that. Here's the whole article.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/77102