1447 Stopped: The Presses

We’ve been paying a lot of attention lately to the amateurism that has infected TV news.  Now it’s time to look at newspaper circulation. It’s been in a death spiral for the last 15 or 20 years.

Papers blame competition from the internet and cable news channels. And they’re partly right.

But there are two other reasons – reasons they never get around to mentioning.

1. People can’t or don’t want to read.

2. Most papers are awful.

USA Today revolutionized newspapers when it first came out in the 1980s. It was pretty, it had color pictures and the stories were short enough to engage the then-beginning MTV generation which wants everything fast. It used charts to summarize stories it thought might be too complex for the D average reader. And it influenced every other paper in America, if not the world.

Former CBS News President Fred W. Friendly called it a TV show you can wrap fish in. Accurate then, accurate now.

But the graphics revolution was on, and even the New York Times – as staid as they get -- has color pictures in its pages, and a Sunday magazine that suddenly no longer looks like it was designed before World War I.

But pretty as they are, many papers don’t have much in them. They are incomplete. They are badly written. They are badly edited. They have no soul.

Part of the reason is they’ve learned from broadcasters, particularly radio. Radio stations are a commodity nowadays. Like pork bellies and oil. They’re homogenized, and their owners, no longer needing to serve their communities, can concentrate on the bottom line at the expense of the listener and the advertiser.

Newspapers, especially the big chains are falling into the same trap, which is no surprise. What IS surprising is that they hadn’t done it decades ago.

Newspapers, after all, are unregulated. There’s no FCC looking over their shoulders. There’s no license to renew. There are few, if any, restrictions on how many papers an owner can have in one city.

Knight-Ridder died because the diluted family gene pool running it failed to acknowledge the ink in its veins and instead listened to stockholders and investment bankers.

The New York Times is under fire from stockholders who don’t like that there are two classes of stock, one of which can’t vote. Like, who put guns to their heads and told them to buy Times stock in the first place.

The current generation of family controllers there also is paying less and less attention to the ink in their veins.

For a long time, the Miami Herald was so busy fighting Castro and putting out regional editions about bake sales and salsa parties that it’s lost its journalistic compass.

The Washington Post after Kate Graham was nothing but a local paper with some friends in high places and too many subsidiaries. New owner Jeff Bezos looks like he’s making the right moves.

The world has changed. Now, Rupert Murdoch is the only guy making a buck. And you don’t hear HIM complaining about cable channels and internet companies. Instead of yowling and playing the victim, he went out and started competing broadcasters.

That’s a long way from when his New York Post had to scrape together the day’s coins to buy newsprint.

As for the declining inability or unwillingness to read: don’t brutalize the kids. You’ll bruise their self esteem. There’ll always be some geek around who can read the menu to them.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1446 Bad Week for News

Bob Simon was one of those guys about whom the label “legendary” landed and stuck.  After covering wars on three continents, he died ingloriously on the battlefield of a New York City road.

David Carr was one of those reporters who covered guys like Simon.  His own war zone was a background in which the words “drug” and “booze” still emerged frequently, but whose insight and prose and investigative skills kept the rest of us more or less honest.

And then there’s Brian Williams.

Three guys gone missing in one of two ways.

Simon’s biography and his prowess have been well covered.  He was one of those correspondents who made CBS the “Tiffany network” at least for news.  And you can read anywhere about his exploits and the stupidity of his death as a passenger in a livery cab. Probably, you have already.

Carr was the media columnist for the New York Times.  He died “in the office” yesterday as the paper so delicately put it.  His work was a must read for those of us who navel gazed about ourselves, or work our colleagues and the trends -- really the tidal wave -- that the news business is dealing with nowadays.

And then there’s the now-suspended Williams, who brought honor and dishonor to NBC and osmotically to the rest of us lesser lights.

As for Williams, it’s time to let the scars heal before we resume the whipping. And let’s consider what the controversy really all about.

The short answer is money.

You have to ask, does NBC’s owner, Comcast, really care about the credibility of the fallen anchorman?  This also has a short answer: yes… money.

Not the estimated yearly ten to 13 million dollars they spend keeping him in good suits and a fancy midtown east apartment.  It’s the hundreds of millions the Nightly News program brings in.

Keep these facts in mind:

--The evening newscasts are on life support.

--The Williams version was the least likely to die until Brian was outed as a teller of tall tales.

--It is number one in a slow race largely because the ABC version is anchored by a kid whose main asset is that he’s a kid and the CBS version is so boring it puts you to sleep before 7 pm.

These once premier newscasts -- replacements for the afternoon and evening newspapers -- have descended into a television hell that tells you nothing you haven’t already heard on radio, read on the internet or don’t care about and shouldn’t unless you’re a big fan of missing puppies.

Think about it.  Huntley-Brinkley, Chancellor, Brokaw, Jennings and Cronkite used to sit you down for half an hour and tell you what you missed while you were busy all day.

But you don’t need them anymore.  You have CNN and Yahoo news.  And the Huffington Post and Drudge.

So the job of anchorman (or woman) now is more ring master than tour guide through the maze that is each day’s news.

People are comparing Williams’ six month unpaid suspension with the slow speed ousting of Dan Rather at CBS.  Not the same thing.  

First, Rather’s supposedly fake story might actually have been real, but he couldn’t prove it.  Second, Rather had his enemies within CBS and within the Washington establishment.  He got canned, but  wasn’t turned overnight into a national laughing stock.

Money.  Williams’ future hangs on what happens to ratings and revenue during his absence.

And the amateurs at Comcast need to learn how to run a newsroom.  So far, the lessons are lost on the company-wide news chief and her ineputy, the president of NBC News.

You can learn a lot about an anchor by looking at what he or she does during the off time.  Lester Holt is said to take refuge behind a Fender bass.  Cronkite took refuge on his sailboat.  Williams took refuge by appearing on Letterman and Saturday Night Live.

Then there’s Brokaw.  Here’s a story from a weekday afternoon in the third floor newsroom at 30 Rock.  

Brokaw has his coat on and is heading for the elevators.

The executive producer at the time, Jeff Gralnick (1939- 2011,) asked him where he was going.  The answer: to some local school where kids were waiting to talk with him.

Gralnick: “I want to send a camera crew along.  We can use that.”

Brokaw: “Nah.  That’s not what this is about.  This is about those kids.”

Heard it with my own ears from a distance of about one foot.

Guess we’re all going to have to turn to Jon Stewart for the news. Oh, wait… he’s calling it quits this year.

Well, there’s always Drudge and the Huff-post.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to it. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1445 A Flying Lesson From Singapore

Singapore wants to slow the rate of immigration.  And one of the ways it’s doing that is filling what the BBC says is a seven thousand worker shortage in the restaurant business with flying drones instead of people.

You get seated.  The menus are there.  You order from a tablet computer.  Your meal arrives by air.  Drones are a capital investment and a tax deduction.

Employees are neither.

The potential for trouble is astonishing.

How about a mid-air collision between a tray of flounder and a tray of merlot?  Unacceptable!  Everyone knows you need white wine with fish.

But it’s not only mid air collisions between or among drones.

“I was just getting up to go to the men’s room,” said Charles Yu, “when I was clipped by a drone flying extra rice to the next table.”  Yu is 5’8” tall.  The drones are programmed to fly at 6’4”. But if they’re heavily loaded, evidently, they fly lower.  Yu’s injuries were not life threatening.

But the air traffic controllers have to watch out for the flashing “電池電量不足” or “Low Battery” sign on each aerowaiter.  Unfortunately, early production models had trouble with this feature, trouble that the manufacturer, the unfortunately named Lo Fin Aviation Company of Canton says has been corrected in later production.

There are other woes.  Tipping in Singapore restaurants is uncommon.  But they often add 10% to the bill instead.  Who gets the money?

Then, there’s the removing of the food and drink from the robots and placing it before the customers. The drones don’t just plop stuff down on the table.  A human must remove things from the hover-craft and know which diner gets which dishes.

It’s easier than it sounds because Singapore restaurants, as in much of Asia place bowls or plates on tables and people take a little from here and a little from there.

But the electronic thingies don’t talk.  So the next generation of order tablets will have to be able to tell customers “no problem,” which is waiter-ese for either “thank you” or “yes.”

And the drones themselves will hover at tableside after a given length of time and say “may I get these out of your way?” And “Anyone save enough room for dessert?”

And if your order is incorrect, will you have to go the baggage claim area to fill out the paperwork?

Maybe they should re-think their immigration policy.

Shrapnel:

--By now you know NBC suspended Brian Williams without pay for six months because of verbal selfies that were photoshopped.  We’ll take a second look down the road.  Meantime, Lester Holt is a good solid newsman and worth your eyes and your time.

--Manhattan condo for sale. $28 million.  It belonged to Joan Rivers and is decorated like a 19th Century French house of ill repute.

--Would we care about the death of Kayla Mueller of Arizona if she were a swarthy complected and bearded young man from Detroit? Probably not, no matter the goodness of his intentions in or around the self- named fake country of ISIS.  Obama promises to bring her murders to justice, which presupposes there’s an actual justice system there.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1444 One Hand Washes the Other & Needle Drop

Sign in a restaurant men’s room in Bellmore, NY: “Employees must wash hands after use. If no employee is available to wash your hands, please do it yourself.”

Very funny.

But the message is there.  And at every other restaurant everywhere.  Wash your hands.

Now comes a United States senator who says pay no attention to those signs.  You shouldn’t be forced to wash up after going to the bathroom.

He is Thom Tillis (R-NC) and he was speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington DC.  “Too many regulations,” says the senator. Let businesses opt out.

This guy must be a worm.  Worms live in dirt. He adds that businesses that opt out should advertise that and the “market will take care of it.”

Second things second:  Do not shake hands with Thom Tillis.

Unless you’re wearing gloves.  Wearing gloves during a handshake would send Miss Manners into seizures.  But Dr. Oz might approve as long as the gloves are latex free.

Basic sanitation dictates we wash our hands thoroughly in these circumstances.  And one wonders where are the Great American advocates of “Common Sense” over “book larnin’” on this issue?

Oh, wait. Sen. Tillis is from what Jimmy Breslin calls the “low IQ States.”

Yes, folks, hand washing should be an option, not a requirement.  

And so should covering your face when you sneeze.

Of course, freedom of choice has its limits.  The borderline is where your freedom and my health or wellbeing clash.

All of which brings us to vaccinations.  And as we all know now, they’re worthless and bring about mental disorders.  Or Autism. Or beriberi. Or headache, neuritis and neuralgia. Just take a look at some of the vaccinated people who oppose vaccination.

Let’s get rid of those nasty needles and those needless potions!

That would be good for business.  More measles means more visits to the doc.  Profits!  You know doctors’ offices are almost always vacant. Why there’s hardly a patient alive anymore.  Gotta make people sick!

Polio, smallpox, chicken pox, ebola, victrola, motorola.  All good for business. While we’re at it, rickets and the plague haven’t gotten much air play lately.  Too many people are immune.

So skip those vaccinations, parents.  After all, there’s nothing like a near- death kid to generate the attention you crave.

So, the anti- science crowd gains some new momentum.  Brilliant.  And while it does, a megachurch in Texas is dealing with a measles outbreak.  The daughter of televangelist in residence Kenneth Copeland has told the so-called adults in her flock to have their kids skip the vaccine.  Now, one kid infects the next.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that most of the minor members are home schooled which means they don’t get out much. Except to shopping malls and church.  

Lock ‘em up, those who survive, until they can no longer do any damage.  Or better yet, turn ‘em loose in the tiny hamlet of Newark, Texas, where the Copeland crowd roosts and create a localized epidemic. If conditions are right, it’ll spread to Dallas and Fort Worth where it can cause real damage.

The megachurchgoers can be made to believe it’s punishment for … well … something.  And if Copeland & co. don’t, there’s always Pat Robertson.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1443 Brian, We Hardly Knew Ya

When it comes to telling a good story, it’s hard to beat Brian Williams, anchor of the NBC Nightly News.

Unfortunately, sometimes the good stories are too good.  

Such was the case when he kept telling us over the last couple of years that when embedded with the troops in one or another of our random, pop-up wars, the helicopter in which he was riding took enemy fire. It didn’t.

The major network newscasts run 30 minutes, of which about 22 is actual content.  Williams took almost a minute of that time last Wednesday to explain and apologize when reporters for the Stars And Stripes and others called him on the latest telling.

Fifty seconds on the evening news is almost a lifetime.  Most “tell” stories -- news items without video -- take about 20 seconds.

The apology amounted to “it was tough to remember all the details 12 years after the fact… I made an honest mistake.”

Sure.

Earth to Brian:  You’re in an aircraft that takes fire, you don’t forget in 12 years or ever.  If you’re in an aircraft is trailing an aircraft that takes fire by almost an hour, you might have talked yourself into believing something different.

So, were you addled or just lying?

Williams is a pretty normal guy, or at least he was back in the day.  He had and still has excellent credentials, a fine background including a stint as White House correspondent.  

He’s a funny guy.  He’s good company. He was a volunteer fireman.  Like many of his age and older, he never finished college, but went on to go directly into the news business.  

Don’t pooh pooh that.  Neither Peter Jennings nor Walter Cronkite were college graduates. Brokaw took plenty of time off between starting and finishing college.  (And so did I.)

But when something like Brian On The Helicopter comes up, you have to wonder … okay, was this an isolated incident?  Or are there things we don’t know about.

Who is defending Williams?  Dan Rather, the single most overrated news anchor in the history of television.  Speaking from exile at AXS TV, the Ryan Seacrest-owned, scarcely watched cable channel, Rather told Politico Williams is an “honest decent man, an excellent reporter and anchor -- and a brave one.”

Well, that’s what we all thought. And when it comes to the question about isolated incident vs. something more, Williams is the kind of guy that makes us easy to hope for the first.

There are no sinister motives.  Banish that thought. But the anchor of one of the three major PM newscasts has one and only one asset: credibility.

And right now, that’s in question.

Shrapnel:

--NBC has new owners, Comcast, which appears to be completely clueless about how to run a network or its news division.  We said the same about GE when it bought NBC as part of RCA in 1985. GE learned a thing or two in its years of ownership, but whether Comcast will is in doubt.

--The Williams issue and the Comcast issue are not directly related.  But what the latter does about the former will be telling.  Do they ride this out or make changes on Nightly News, and if so… what will they be?

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1442 Gluten Free Kale

Wessays™ is clinically proven to work as promised.

Allergy Alert: This blog post was written in a facility that processes soybeans, wheat flour and nuts of the two-legged and no-legged kind.  

Actually, all kale is gluten free.  So is all broccoli.

Phew. For a moment it looked like we were going to make a phony claim like “Kale tastes awful and so does broccoli.”  Perish forbid. Or kale will cure impotence, incontinence, plantar warts, impetigo, bunions and memory loss and when combined with broccoli will improve digestion, increase circulation and obliterate acne.

No, for those problems, you arrive at a fork in the road.  One branch leads to an actual doctor.  The other leads to the supplement aisle at MegaMart or Bullseye Stores or your local health food market’s homeopathic potions counter.

Uh, oh.  There’s a roadblock on that potions fork.  The New York Times reports the New York State Attorney General has demanded those retailers and GNC remove some supplements from their shelves forthwith.

Why?  Because they’re filled with junk but not with what the labels say is in them.  According to the AG’s complaint, every one of them has to go because every one of them is filled with mostly filler: garlic, rice, radish, wheat and other stuff.  The other stuff is harmless.  

But when there’s no Ginkgo Biloba in the ginkgo biloba capsule, some people might be misled into believing there is.  Especially if the nutrition facts chart says there is.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone.  What is surprising that anyone buys this stuff in the first place.

These lotions and potions are big business.  And for the most part, they don’t do anything.  Even though they all cite “clinical studies.”

No layman is sure about what a clinical study really is.

So here’s how some of them work:

1. You bring a bottle of EnerGize into the clinic. You ask the clinician “what is this?”
2. The clinician answers “it appears to be a bottle of EnerGize. Yes, that’s exactly what it is!”
3. You ask “does this stuff work?”
4. The clinician answers “How would I know.”
5. You give the clinician a copy of the small print leaflet and he or she reads it.
6. The clinician says “if all this is in these capsules there’s a good chance you’ll get a small short term energy boost.”
7. You put out an ad that says “Clinically proven to boost energy!!!!” Or “Clinical tests show this stuff works!!!!”

In today’s world it’s unlikely you’re going to convince our free market government types to inspect, test and regulate this junk.  So you have to be your own FDA.  And the only action you can take legally is to leave these things on the store shelf.

If you have a physical problem, maybe you should take the other tine in that fork.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.  Wessays™ is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.  Consult your mental health care professional before using.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1441 Bank in Training

1441 Bank in Training

You hear this often:  “When I grow up, I want to be a…” (insert occupation.)

Well, it’s not only true of little kids who want to be a cop or a firefighter or a doctor or a lawyer or a pilot. It’s true of companies, too.

One in particular, The Mini-Megabank down the street. Basically a small bank of the kind you’d find on Victorian era streets of London or in the middle of an Iowa cornfield or in a suburban strip mall.

Mini-Mega is practicing to be Chase.  But they have yet to complete the degree program at Megabank University.  So they’re only doing some of the bad stuff.  Guessing they haven’t gotten to the “good” part yet.

They know about mortgage bundling, peddling non-bank financial products, peddling auto and home equity loans to the three customers who have credit ratings above 740, overpaying executives and underpaying branch managers and tellers.

But they haven’t gotten the customer service right yet.

You have an account at Chase or Wells Fargo or Bank of America or Citi, and you can reach real people at any hour of the day or night.  In English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Transylvanian-accented Esperanto, and TTY.

You can reach them by phone, by fax, by email, by Internet, by smoke signals, telegram, semaphore and sometimes by seance.

Mini-Mega just chugs along singing the national anthem of customer service “Your call is very important to us.” Or the national anthem of the e-bank: “Website is down for maintenance until 4/23/2017. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please visit the nearest branch any Monday through Friday between 9 am and 3 pm.

Of course, 9 really means “ninish” and 3 pm really means 2:45.

Mini doesn’t update its website on weekends.  Its 17-thousand word “privacy policy” can be summarized by three words, “we have none.”  The interest it pays can’t be seen without an electron microscope.

And if your direct deposit paycheck is scheduled to arrive on a Saturday or Sunday, it ain’t gonna be there until the next business day.  Unless the next business day is a holiday.

Holidays include New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President’s (presidents’ presidents) Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day.

Also, JP Morgan’s birthday, the Feast of St. Barnabas, Lunar New Year, Groundhog Day (PA,) Pioneer Day (UT,) Rosh Hashanah (Lower East Side,)  Al Capone Day (Chicago and Brooklyn,) Miley Cyrus Day (TN,) Skin Cancer Day (FL, AZ,) Babe Ruth Day (Bronx,) Suge Sharpton Day (57th - 140th St.,) Elvis Day (MS, TN.)

Customer service on a Sunday?  Forget about it.  But if you owe them money and it’s due on a Sunday and you haven’t paid, you better believe they’ll be at you with notices and fees.  Instantly.

For that, they work holidays.

Shrapnel:

--Okay, Stuporbowl is over and we can all go back to sleep now, those few who managed to waken to begin with.  The game got faintly interesting, briefly,  because all of the balls were properly inflated and the team from Foxborough MA came from behind to win, which was almost as exciting as Katy Perry’s new tattoo.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015