Splendid reader Michael Pahre just sent this message to the hardworking staff in response to our recent WeinerWorld: New York Tabloids Edition (VIII)
Last edition? Ha!
The NY Post decided to put their covers to a public vote as to which one is best.
The hardworking staff’s vote in the tabloid bakeoff:
The best of a bad news lot.
Your vote goes here.
Last month the Boston Herald offered voluntary buyout packages (two weeks of salary for every year of service) to newsroom staff and managers.
And, as the Boston Globe reports today, the results are in:
The Boston Herald approved voluntary buyout packages for four newsroom employees, including three editors, as part of a cost-cutting measure.
Executive arts and lifestyle editor Larry Katz, Sunday editor Lisa Larson, food reviewer Mat Schaffer, and assistant sports editor Joseph Thomas are approved to take the buyout, according to current and former employees who did not want to be identified because they are not authorized to speak for the paper. The four have until Friday to make the buyouts official.
About a dozen other newsroom employees applied for the buyout, but were not approved, according to Herald employees.
Oddly, the Herald didn’t have space for the story in its newshole today. But here’s what the hardworking staff wants to know now: Who are the dozen newsroom employees currently held hostage by the frosty tabloid?
Free the Herald 12!!!
From our Small (Media) World desk:
In the wake of the hardworking staff’s Classic Cincinnati Concerts walk down Memory Lane comes this Wall Street Journal feature:
The Taming of the Fans
Tired of taking hits to their reputations and bottom lines, rockers with rowdy fan bases are making new moves to control their crowds.
Among the examples of Bad Trips the Journal chronicled is the 1979 Who concert in Cincinnati, at which “11 fans are crushed to death when a crowd rushes the entrance.”
Helpful image:
Paging Steve Stein. Paging Mr. Steve Stein.
Despite Groupon’s touting of Boston as “one of its biggest and most successful markets,” the Wall Street Journal reports, the daily-deal site is getting pounded here.
[A]s Groupon clones have proliferated—from nine active daily-deal sites serving Boston two years ago to 33 today, according to daily deal-site aggregator Yipit—the loyalty to Groupon of both consumers and merchants offering online deals has eroded.
The Journal graphically illustrates Quincy resident Stephanie Clarkson’s daily couponorama:
Good news for Stephanie. Bad news for Groupon.
The New York Times is having a field day with the Fall of the House (Organ) of Murdoch – aka the News of the World, kissin’ cousin of Times crosstown rival Wall Street Journal.
Friday’s Times had five – count ’em, five – stories about the British tabloid’s meltdown.
Representative sample:
Scandal Shifts Britain’s Media and Political Landscape
Handy graphic here:
Saturday’s Times keeps up the drumbeat: Page One piece, A8 piece, Joe Nocera column, A.C. Grayling op-ed.
This is mother’s milk to the Times. Don’t expect it to stop flowing anytime soon.
The hardworking staff has dutifully detailed the many indications that the FBI-runs-an-ad-campaign-and-nabs-Whitey-Bulger story is a total myth. Now comes more skepticism from – wait for it – the Boston Herald.
From Friday’s Herald:
Iceland paper: Reward tale fishy
A companion piece by Michele McPhee chronicles the complaint of one Keith Messina, who says he fingered Whitey in Santa Monica three years ago.
Your FOIA request goes here.
(Sorry no links, but the bleeping Herald website keeps crashing my browser and I’m sick of it.)
After the hardworking staff posted this memo from a New Yorker editor adrift in Red Sox Nation, splendid reader Steve Stein commented about his own displaced experience years ago in Cincinnati:
I did 7 years in Cincinnati (well, Dayton, ’76-’82) and followed the Reds (never a fan, thanks, Marge) during my deepening disaffection with the Yankees. Absolutely HATED Riverfront. And that hate was just intensified with my experience at The Who concert in Dec ’79. That tragedy was caused by the crowd, but exacerbated by the geometry of the area between the Riverfront Coliseum and the stadium.
Which reminded the hardworking staff of its own experience at the 1970 Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival in Riverfront Stadium’s predecessor, Crosley Field.
Among the featured acts: Grand Funk Railroad, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Mountain, and Iggy Pop and the Stooges.
Brian Powers of Cincinnati’s City Beat wrote a great retrospective for last year’s 40th anniversary.
Among the highlights:
Without a doubt, the one contribution that the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival gave to Rock history was capturing on film for posterity the performance of a young Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the godfathers of Punk Rock.
The footage shot by WLWT cameras shows Iggy, then 23, performing the songs “T.V. Eye” and “1970.” He dives into the audience, gets lifted by the crowd and then stands upright, held up by a sea of hands. He’s shirtless with his taut muscles exposed to TV viewers and every face on the field turned toward him.
Iggy later said at that moment he thought that possibly he was Jesus Christ. The next moment, Iggy received a large jar from an audience member and proceeded to smear peanut butter all over his bare chest and face, then threw huge globs of the jar contents out into the crowd.
The Stooges’ record company would later distribute photos from the performance, and it remains the defining image of Iggy Pop. (Check out Steven Rosen’s story “Pop Goes Cincinnati” for more about the 1970 music festival and a look at Iggy’s famous photo.)
The late Stooges guitarist John Asheton had a different memory of their set: “All I remember from that was the big video camera guy didn’t care about anyone on stage. I had to follow him, his wires were hooked up to my lead cords, and he’s dragging my fuzz tone and wah all across the stage. For me that was a pain in the ass.”
Another notorious Rock moment documented for the nation’s viewing happened during Alice Cooper’s performance. Cooper leaned down close to the edge of the stage, holding up a pocket watch to the crowd. He began attempts to “hypnotize” audience members, repeating the phrase “Bodies … need … rest.”
At that moment an accomplished marksman in the crowd lobbed a whole cake at Cooper, hitting him square in the face. Maintaining his cool, Cooper proceeded to take a handful of the cake and slap it right back into his own face. Again and again he repeated the gesture, smearing it in good.
One highlight Powers omitted: During Mountain’s set, some oversmoked longhair jumped on stage and started flinging his hair around, which got tangled in Leslie West’s guitar. West proceeded to jerk him around like puppet timed to the music. It was painful and artful at the same time.
Powers also wrote:
Despite the large presence of police, there was marijuana smoke in the air and pills being passed around in the stands. Several arrests were made, but for the most part both sides remained friendly.
The hardworking staff remains grateful for that.
Presidential wannabe Michele Bachmann (R-Death Ceiling) has hit the Iowa airwaves with her first TV spot, in which she lays out some biographicals and emphasizes her fight “against the wasteful bailout, against the stimulus.”
Here ’tis:
Get that last part? I – will – not – vote – to increase the debt ceiling.
Say, she is opposed to stimulus, isn’t she?
Which is probably just as well, given the sideshow that’s currently forming over a Pawlenty campaign official’s statement that Bachmann has “sex appeal.”
From CBS News:
Vin Weber, a top adviser for GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty, apologized Wednesday night for comments he made citing “sex appeal” as one of the reasons for fellow Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s success.
Weber, a co-chairman of Pawlenty’s political action committee, said in a Wednesday interview with the Hill that “sex appeal,” along with hometown appeal and ideological appeal, would make Bachmann, R-Minn., “very hard to beat” in Iowa.
“She’s got hometown appeal, she’s got ideological appeal, and, I hate to say it, but she’s got a little sex appeal too,” Weber said.
Not surprisingly, Weber moonwalked away from that statement shortly thereafter.
No comment from Bachmann. Hey – smart, too.
This email poured into the Global Worldwide Headquarters of Campaign Outsider today:
Dear Laughter Lovers,
Well, as promised, I’m up in Boston at the International Society for Humor Studies Conference. The conference proper hasn’t started yet, so I don’t have anything specific to report. But there was a party last night for humorologists, from here and abroad. Attending representatives of the international contingent included Matteo Andreone, of the Accademia Nazionale del Comico (“Compulsive Humorous Ploys”); Willibald Ruch, of the University of Zurich (“Dispositions Toward Ridicule and Being Laughed At”); and Dorota Brzozowska, of Uniwersytet Opolski (“Gender Stereotypes in Polish Family Jokes”), who I definitely will not be sharing my favorite Polish jokes with.
But maybe I will. Their wonky titles notwithstanding, I have always found the researchers—international and homegrown, men and women—to have very good senses of humor, taking their work, but not themselves, seriously. I feel right at home among them.
However, I don’t feel right at home where I’m staying in Boston. I’m a Yankees fan, and my hotel is at the epicenter of rabid Red Sox Nation. Here’s the view from my room:
And here are some of the infected streaming into yesterday’s game:
How can I cope with all this? Fortunately, there is a session this afternoon called “Coping and Humor,” chaired by Jon-Fan Hu, of National Cheng Kung University.
Cheers,
What say you, Red Sox Nation?
The Republican National Committee has launched an ad campaign that’s sort of a drive-by attack on Pres. Obama. According to CNN’s Political Ticker, “The 30-second spot will air nationally on cable television, notably in battleground states, throughout the month. It uses a crashing car metaphor to make the case for a Republican president in 2012.”
To be fair, it also uses a crashing train metaphor.
The CNN post dutifully records a pair of party apparatchiks dispensing the usual eyewash.
Republican eyewash:
“Republicans have already changed the conversation in Washington, but with the President unwilling to remove the country from its unsustainable course, it’s time to change direction,” [RNC Chairman Reince] Priebus said in a statement.
Democratic eyewash:
“While the President continues to fight to clean up an economic mess that was years in the making, Republicans would rather run negative ads than offer positive ideas,” [DNC communications director Brad] Woodhouse said in a statement.
Your backwash goes here.
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