1421 The Bloomberg Omelette

This will be a little “inside baseball.”  But there’s a moral at the end that might be of value even if you don’t care a whit about former NY mayor Mike Bloomberg or his terminals or his news operation.

Bloomberg is making big changes at his company:  out with the old, in with the new.

For those of us long in the service of Bloomberg News, this is an old story, but with bigger than usual players.

And those outside the company are trying to read the tea leaves.  Forget about it.  There are no tea leaves.  The Maximum Chef is breaking eggs and trying a new recipe for an omelette.  He doesn’t know what it’ll look or taste like when it’s out of the pan and neither does anyone else.

Back when Mike was mayor, rumors spread that the company would buy “Business Week” magazine.  When reporters asked editor-in-chief Matt Winkler to comment, he said “we’re builders, not buyers.”

An eyeblink later, Bloomberg bought the magazine.  

That was a tea leaf, and some of us read it correctly, it turns out.

Now Winkler, who built the news operation from people watching pork belly and uranium trades to a giant of journalism is on his way upstairs. This after establishing a monolith with than 2,000 workers in150 bureaus.  The New York Times has about 50.

But the media world has changed around Winkler, and so has the company.  So now, he’s going to be “editor-in-chief emeritus,” whatever that is, and gets to hang out with Mike at the uber posh headquarters on Lexington Avenue and … and … do what?

The two men are close.  But Mike breaks eggs. It’s worked for him in the long run.

And there wasn’t a lot of mourning when the personnel change was announced.  Matt has the kind of personality that might have moved Gandhi to throw a punch.

That, too, has worked to the company’s advantage. Niccolo Machiavelli teaches us that it is more effective for a ruler to be feared than loved.

Matt’s stylebook, “The Bloomberg Way,” is the journalistic equivalent of a straightjacket.  But for an organization of the company’s size, it too works.  It’s thick, but in substance it’s little more than an annotated template.

Cranky executives never seemed to bother Mike. In fact, he embraced them.  So maybe it wasn’t Matt’s personality that got him kicked upstairs.  

Dedication never bothered Mike.  Matt never slept. Ever. No matter the time of day or the day of the week; no matter the location of his physical form, he was lurking.

Meantime, the data monolith marches on, carrying the news division on its shoulders.  Twenty grand a month per terminal, with 350,000 of them or so said to be in service:  that’s enough to run the news division the old fashioned way, as a public service.

So a big, look-to-the future wave is swamping all aspects of the company now that the Chef is out of city hall and back in the kitchen.

But there are no tea leaves; no tarot cards.  What you see happening is the omelette under construction, subject to regular tweaks of the recipe, some of them self-cancelling.

What you’re seeing is Mike being Mike.

I promised you a moral at the end: don’t try to second guess this guy or anyone like him.

Shrapnel:

--12/12/14… To Ed Koch:  Happy 90th, old friend. Sorry you had to go. Wish you were here.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1420 Montego Pete

Montego Pete came over from Jamaica after making a few bucks and he smiles, though he's a little hazy when he tells you how it happened.  But now he's in another Jamaica, the one in Queens and he's running a newsstand, living the American Dream.

There are thousands of newsstands in the City of New York and Pete, which is not his name, is running the only one of its kind.

He took those few bucks and borrowed a few more from either the local shark or maybe it was Citibank or maybe they're the same (he gets hazy about that, too, but always with a big smile,) and built this thing.

He's got coffee for the commuters.  He's got Caribbean magazines and newspapers for the back-home crowd, and he's got all the papers.  The Times, the Journal, The News, Il Progresso, The Forward, The Post, The Amsterdam News,  Newsday.  He gets the Jamaica Gleaner and the Sunday something or other, maybe a week late.

And he's got all the Magazines such as they are left of them:  Newsweek, Time, The Star, In Touch. And then there's Montego Pete's specialty, the trade journals.

You need The Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology?  You need Colorado Geology Digest?  You need The Aristotelian Review?  Montego Pete's got 'em.

"You know, people are always getting studies from these magazines second or third hand," he says.  "There are studies of Nevuses in Dermatology Today and you can only get them quoted in the papers.  You get 'em filtered through some reporter's reading. I want to give people the real deal."

So Montego Pete is the go-to guy for Cosmology Quarterly, which is the only place you can read Hawking's latest theory on Black Holes, Dark Energy and Anti-matter.  CQ is right there on the shelf next to GQ, Esquire and Cosmo.

"I don't sell a lot of this stuff," Pete says, "But it builds trust, and customer traffic.  And I get to meet a lot of dermatologists, cosmologists and  pediatric endocrinologists.  Also coal miners."

There are no working coal mines in Jamaica, Queens.  In fact, there are no coal mines anywhere in southeastern New York.  But they come anyway, because Pete's is the only place outside West Virginia and Kentucky you can buy Anthracite Today, which is the leading coal geology magazine.

"The public has a right to know," he says, "and they don't want to get their information second hand, like when the Wall Street Journal quotes a study of feet from Cobbler's Digest, which you can usually only get in Brazil and Italy, though there's soon going to be an Indonesian edition in English."

I ask him if he carries Genetically Altered Food Grower's Week.  He says he did, but the Sutphin Boulevard Ecology Club picketed him and that was bad for business.

"They made me sell fair trade coffee, and I accepted that.  But they drew the line at Genetically Altered Food Grower's Week."

I ask him if fair trade coffee is a monthly or a weekly.

"It's just coffee," he says.  They don't have their own magazine yet.  I'm thinking of starting one for them.

And always with that smile.

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

Note to readers: While constructing the annual WestraDamus feature, the Wessays™ staff voted to rerun an occasional earlier item in this space.  This one is from late 2007 and has been updated to eliminate some dead magazines.)

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014, 2007

1419 The Search Engine at Home

From Oldwaiter.com, a look at what internet search engines talk about while you’re not using them.

Search engine Oldwaiter.com:  you should hear the questions they ask me.  One person wanted to know where he could find information on violin lessons.  I told him a thing or two.  Tried to get him to switch to cellos, but no.  Screech on!  Imagine, a Jewish guy who wants to play the VIOLIN!

Mrs. Waiter, who is Rhoda:  Nu, so what’s the matter with violins?  Look at Yehudi.  THERE was a VIOLINIST.  And all those little Asian boys and girls with violins!  If they can do it, WE can do it.   Instead you want to have them all be like Yo Yo Ma?  Who names a kid “Yo Yo?”

OW:  Now, wait Rhoda, they can play what they like, all of them, and I don’t care, I just look up the things.  But I can’t let them just go off in every direction.  They have to have a little guidance.  That’s why they come to ME, and not to the other guys, like Alta Vista.

R:  “Alta Vista?”  That’s Italian, right?  Do they nose into somebody else’s business?  No.  So why should you?  If they want violins, give them VIOLINS.

OW:  So, what’s for dinner?

R:  That’s all you can think of when you get home?  Tonight we’re supposed to go to the Bernsteins’ and I’m not dressed yet.

OW:  Oh, Rhoda, I’m too tired to go anywhere, can’t we just have a little something here? Or maybe some Chinese takeout?

R:  If I were one of your question askers, you’d let me go to the Bernsteins’.  “Search for Bernsteins’”  “Answer:  A nice couple down the block.  He has a real job.  He’s a plumber.  What do you do?  Sit around all day and answer questions about everything.  You’re all of a sudden a Professor?  You with your fancy mail order degree?”

OW:  You’re making fun of my job again?  So who found you that nice fur?  Who found you that nice stereo?  Who gets you all those books?   Who figured out how to get cheap car insurance?

R:  You’re just the best search engine in the world.  Bernstein is taking his wife on a cruise.  Do we get a vacation?  No.  We get 50 thousand travel agent websites and six auctions.  Is that a BEER you’re holding?

OW:  It’s not just a beer.  It’s a new LichtenBergen Light, which I found while doing a web search for exotic beers for a customer last week.

R:  Lichten-what?  It sounds GERMAN.  YOU are drinking a German beer?

OW:  Not yet.  I have to open it first.  Then we’ll go to the Bernstein’s.

R:  A German beer, yet.  What I have to do to get this guy out once every six months!

Shrapnel:

--Pearl Harbor Day, yesterday, and we remember the sacrifices men and women made as we entered World War II.  Those were different times.  They were times we were all Americans and under attack on American soil, and we responded appropriately and as one, with great skill and energy, unlike now.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1418 Choke Hold Justice

The cops’ lament: “If I did that, I’d be pounding a beat in Staten Island.”  

The Superior Officer version: “Keep it up, Bozo, and you’ll be pounding a beat in Staten Island.”

Never was much of an assignment. Still isn’t.

Does the white cop’s killing of a 350-400 pound asthmatic black man by using the departmentally banned choke hold rise to the level of the Ferguson shooting death? Or is it even worse?  Doesn’t matter.  Each is bad enough.

After three months of testimony, a grand jury elected Wednesday not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo who has something of a history of not being indicted in lesser but similar cases.

Eric Garner, 43,  was accused of selling single untaxed cigarettes --  they call them loosies on the street -- at a Staten Island corner.  Others say he was breaking up a fight.  Garner is forever unavailable for comment.

Here’s the video .

So, how long before the character assassinations begin?  Was Garner really a “gentle giant” and neighborhood peacemaker who was selling loosies to people who can’t afford to pay retail at New York’s outrageous $12 to $14 a pack? A Pack?!  The city tax is higher than the cost of cigarettes.

But the penalty for unauthorized untaxed sales at street level usually is a fine, not death.

There are demonstrations from coast to coast and there will be more.  So far it doesn’t look like anyone’s looting or burning.  Probably by the time it all ends, there will be a few new unpaid for TV sets and iPods and maybe some canned goods in a few homes.

But New York, Los Angeles and Seattle are not some no-horse town in the Low IQ belt.

Here, we find demonstrations from the Brooklyn Bridge and Staten Island to midtown at the Rock Center Christmas tree lighting and Grand Central to the West Side Highway and up to Harlem.

As well we should.

The mayor, with a multi-racial family, gets up and speaks with great passion and love, but without condemning the grand jury action.

Huckster Al Sharpton seems legit for ten minutes.

Attorney General Holder announces a federal civil rights investigation.

Wrongful death lawyers gather, salivating.

And the defense?  If Garner had been shot dead, the officer’s would be “I was just cleaning the gun and it went off.” or “I didn’t know it was loaded.”

But there was no gun.  So the defense becomes “I meant him no harm.”  Say what?  One guy, piled on by a bunch of cops one of whom has him in a choke hold?  For selling cigarettes on a street corner?

If he even was doing that.

There’s strong evidence the cops in the incident and Garner knew each other.  If so, the police knew they could have talked down the situation instead of piling on.

You -- whoever you are, wherever you are -- could have talked things down.

The choke hold around the neck of justice.

Shrapnel:

--Note to squeegee men: if Garner’s offense was the kind of crime Bratton’s NYPD is focused on as it was in the Giuliani days, take a few weeks off.  Same goes for you, turnstile jumpers.  And jaywalkers.

--RIP Herman Badillo who has died of congestive heart failure at age 85.  He was the first Puerto Rican- born member of congress among much else.  But he never managed to realize his dream: becoming Mayor.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1417 Public Broadcasting

PBS’s latest annoying begathon is underway.  That gives stations the excuse they need to justify the “public” in their names.

People who don’t belong on TV go on camera to plead with you for money because they fear all their corporate underwriters may soon be under water.

Usually these endless pleading sessions are led by heart-on-the-sleeve locals who recently graduated from sincerity school.  And their pitches are surrounded by “special” programs “you can’t see anywhere else.”  

There are reasons you can’t see them anywhere else. How many times can you watch a Victor Borge routine or a lecture from a college psych professor who believes all the world’s problems can be solved with hugs?

They must have realized that dead comedians hugging lessons and washed up faux folk music trios no longer bring in the big bucks.

So they’re interrupting regular programming with their information- free infomercials.  “We’ll be back with more of the Antiques Road Show after a few words from your neighbor Godzilla McNamara-Avocado.  (There’s a quota -- and bonus points at PBS and NPR for people with hyphenated names.)

You can practically hear the viewers saying “Oh goodie!  I’ll just dial in and contribute.  And I can’t wait to get my gluten-free Channel 13 tote bag so I can show off my intellectuality at Whole Foods.”

Try ShopRite.  Everyone at Whole Foods has a gluten-free Channel 13 tote bag.

“A Blu Ray collection of Downton Abbey?  Where do I sign up?”

“Gwen Ifill is the best writer on television.  But I can read her excellent blogs on the PBS website.  So until they get back to a real program, let’s switch over to HLN and watch the next five “back to back” episodes of “Forensic Files” even though they haven’t made a new one in ages, and we’ve seen most if not all of the 750 old ones.”

The “contributor credits” have expanded to full length (but oh, so intelligently framed) commercials.  But sometimes you have to wonder about where those sponsors got their money.

The William T. Grant Foundation:  funny they have a lot of bucks even though Grant’s low-pay, mid-price  variety stores shut down in 1976, in what was then the largest bankruptcy in US history.

The Knight Foundation:  Knight-Ridder had some really good newspapers.  But its focus drifted into financial paper shuffling and KR was held hostage by institutional investors who wanted out and forced the sale of the company.

PBS could take a hint from Madison Avenue and its customers by publicly answering the question “what kind of return are we getting on our investment in Godzilla McNamara-Avocado’s dreary appearances?”

Grapeshot:

-Gwen Ifill really IS the best writer currently working in national television and you really CAN read her posts on the NewsHour website.

-”Forensic Files” narrator Peter Thomas, known for his near-tears style of announcing, is 90 years old and still working.

Shrapnel:

--The 2015 edition of  WestraDamus.com is under construction.  Your non-prophet is open to suggestions for inclusions.  Please respond to the email address below.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1416 Cyber Monday

It’s Cyber Monday! Let’s all stay in our pajamas and do what real Americans do: Shop.

Guys: make sure you don’t shave. They can’t see you. They can’t see the turkey gravy stain on your undershirt or tie.  

Ladies: No makeup today. And you can wear that frumpy nightgown your mother gave you… the one she knows will make you unattractive to that scuz you married over her heartfelt objections.  And which doesn’t.

First let’s say that you’re smarter than the average Black Friday shopper.  You don’t pitch a tent at Best Buy on a perfectly lovely Thanksgiving evening, leaving the dishes for your spouse and the kids.

If you’re a stereotypical woman you KNOW they won’t wash the dishes adequately and you’ll have to re-do them when you get home from your concrete camping trip.

If you’re a stereotypical man and you actually camped out at Dick’s Sporting Goods Thursday, you are an idiot. Unless, of course, they offered on site tent rentals, which they didn’t.

Camping out the night before Amazon opens doesn’t get you very far.  First, what kind of camping trip is it if you’re camping at your dining room table? Second, Amazon doesn’t open, because it doesn’t close.

It’s kind of like camping out in front of the Sears catalog when there was one.

Of course you’ve received 1,000 holiday catalogs from places you’ve never heard of.  The Vermont Country Store?  Or from places in the witness protection program like Duluth Trading Company which is hiding in Wisconsin.

How about the Albino, Texas Fruit Cake Company, serving building blocks since 1888?  Or the Shabaaz Bakery #43721 of Chicago but which actually is in Cicero?

Ah, but we digress.  The real action is in your inbox. Drugstore.com, Zappos, Deeringbanjo, and somehow those Canadian Pharmacies -- many of which are in the witness protection program in India -- are offering Cyber Monday deals on such items as fake Viagra and fake Zoloft and other things for which mere mortal merchants require (shudder!) a prescription.

These meds may or may not work.  But at least you don’t have to listen to ten minutes of terror inducing side effects to buy them.

You can’t buy gasoline on the internet.  But the day will come.  And it probably will be delivered by drone.

At least Cyber Monday crowds don’t provoke fights.  It’s not unusual to see 15 people staking claims to the three giant TV sets that Mega-Mart sets aside for early sale in its 15,234 stores.

To get into a fight on the LL Bean site (over one of those stylish green and tan rubber boots, no doubt) you have to punch yourself in the nose.  

Most of us won’t do that.

Most, but not all.

Shrapnel:

--Unindicted murder “suspect” Darren Wilson has quit the cops -- Ferguson’s Finest.  No severance, no pension, but a hope of continuing with police work somewhere.  Right, Darr… the closest you’ll get is when they slap the cuffs on.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

1415 A Murder in Ferguson, Missouri

Let’s get a few little things out of the way first.

--Peaceful protests do no harm but often little good.

--The only beneficiaries of a riot are the rebuilding companies and the bill collectors.

--Then, there’s the old lawyer joke: “Given the will, any district attorney can indict a ham sandwich.”

--Michael Brown, 18, was not the kind of guy you’d ask to watch your handbag when you had to use the restroom in the diner.

--Darren Wilson, 28, probably could be trusted to watch the handbag.  But at a traffic stop, you’d want to make sure the dash cam in his patrol car was running and in focus.

--Prosecutor Robert McCulloch has held that job since 1991 and is the son of a St. Louis police officer killed in the line of duty.  McCulloch is known locally as “the policeman’s best friend.”

--McCullough also is president of a group called “Backstoppers.”  It makes contributions to police, fire, EMS workers killed or injured in the line of duty.  According to published reports, Backstoppers benefitted from the sale of “Support Darren Wilson” t-shirts with proceeds going to his defense.  Backstoppers denies this.

Too bad Wilson isn’t a ham sandwich.  Because if he were, he’d be where he belongs which is behind bars.

It’s been said in some quarters that McCullough is what happens when you elect the village idiot.  This of course is untrue.  McCullough is tainted, but his errors of omission in this case were not bumbling or bungling. They were clever. They were devious.

Did the grand jury ever hear that Brown was not only an unsavory thug who may have beaten the owner of a small convenience store while stealing smokes, but was unarmed?  Apparently not.

They got a collective belly full of the unsavory thug and robber part, alright.  But not the unarmed part.  They may have known that anyway because the evil media covered it pretty thoroughly considering the story is about an 18 year old dead black kid.  But they never heard it out of an official mouth.

McCullough lobbed his hamwich of conflicting witness testimony on the table and said, in effect, “sort this stuff out for yourselves ladies and gentlemen. Get back to me when you have a decision.”

A typically enthusiastic prosecutor would have let the jurors know he wanted to put gunslinger Wilson on trial for pulling the trigger 12 -- count ‘em 12 -- times.

He would have thundered and rumbled and instilled his enthusiasm in the grand jurors who surely would have voted for an indictment.

Question: You ever buy a bag of white rice and find some stray grains of brown or black rice in it?  It happens.  This is not just about rice.  It’s also is a graphic description of the Ferguson police department. And of a grand jury that needed seven votes among the ten members to hand up a decision.  The grand jury was seven white people and three black.

Not everyone always votes on color lines. But such is the separation of majority blacks and minority whites in this town that it can almost be guaranteed in a case like this.

Do you think McCullough is going to convene a second grand jury?  And before you bleat about double jeopardy, that applies only if there’s a guilty verdict in a formal charge or an un-coerced confession which is the same thing as a conviction if it happens before or during a trial.

No indictment means no charge which means no trial and no verdict, hence no double jeopardy. But the prosecutor has to want a second bite. Are you willing to hold your breath until this one does?

In any event, with Michael the evil Giant out of the way, you don’t have to be as careful of where you leave your purse … if you can find a place to set it down amid the physical and emotional ruin that once was Ferguson, Missouri.

---

And now, the Wessays™ Guide to things you can say if you agree with the grand jury decision and don’t want to be … um … mistaken for a racist:

- “A crime is a crime and the color doesn’t matter.”  --Talk show guest.

- “(Michael Brown) looked like a demon.”  -- Police officer Darren Wilson.

- “We need to tackle criminal justice reform.”

-- Barack Obama.

- “This (riot) was … a strategic plan…” -- Rush

Limbaugh.

- (The autopsy report showed) “...Michael Brown had marijuana in his system when he died.” --Newsmax.com.

- “...this isn’t  a metaphor for police brutality or race repression or anything else, and never was. Aided and abetted by a compliant national media, the Ferguson protestors (sic) spun a dishonest or misinformed version of what happened.” -- Politico quoted by the National Review.

-“The riotous situation in Ferguson… has been hijacked by the media and diluted the real issue…”

--Former NYC Police Commissioner Bernard Kerick on the Steve Malzberg radio show, quoted by Newsmax.

-”That was one gutsy grand jury.” -- NYPost Editorial 11/25/14.

-”If Brown had surrendered, he’d be alive today.” -- too many sources to single out one.”

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014