Happy Tuesday and here we go again

Hello. Thanks for looking in.

As I said last week, it's been a long time, about a month, since there was something written in this space. A lot has happened, and some of that has to do with why it's been a long time since something had been written in this space.

So, let's get right to it.

First of all, thanks to all of you who have checked back from time to time, even though the same old, same old was here.

In fact, since this blog began in December, 2006, there have been more than 10,000 hits on it. Now, some places get that many hits in a minute or less, but this is one guy's blog with nothing to sell or no ax to grind. So, not bad.

Thank you all.

Speaking of that, I just got an e-mail asking me if, for money, I wanted to review others' blogs and products. No, thanks. It's not that I'm too precious, it's just that I want to be able to say what I want to say, when I want to say it.

The only criteria to which I want to adhere is that it's really my opinion, it's hadn't been bought and paid for, and (hopefully) the logic makes some kind of sense. That's the goal.

So, let's start out with the second 10,000. By the way, the counter doesn't count me. I have a way of making that happen. Isn't software wonderful...when it works?

So where ya been?

Many of you know I free-lance for the New Haven Independent, a Web-only news site that covers New Haven. I had a few stories to cover. More about that later. My daughter also had a boy. I talked about Aaron and his b'ris in a previous posting.

Well, when that was written, it looked as if he was headed to a full recovery. No so, at least not

then. He was taken back to the hospital, and, of course, we had to be there to help. He seems to be on the right path now, thank God.

Add a bit of personal illness, some other concerns, a bit of plain laziness and that's where the time went.

The Annie Le caper

As I said, I work for the New Haven Independent on a part-time basis. Those guys did a great, wonderful, marvelous job of covering the Annie Le tragedy, breaking lots of stories and angles but not giving out the name of the suspect until he was arrested.

Some news organizations could only say they were the first to give out the suspect's name when he was little more than a twinkle in the cops' eyes. Others messed up the coverage altogether. And then there are the cable channels, the headline channels, with their "experts," shrinks who knew little about the case but said the motive for the slaying of the Yale graduate student, must be unrequited love, class jealousy and a dozen other things on the part of the young man who has been charged in her slaying.

By the way, the crime has been called murder. It's not until a jury says it is. It's a homicide. The prosecution says it was murder, but haven't said which kind, whether murder, capital felony, or felony murder. It couldn't be arson murder.

If the defense can convince the jury that there was extreme emotional disturbance, then the verdict could be manslaughter. Unlike Law & Order, in Connecticut, extreme indifference to human life is manslaughter in the first degree, not Jack McKoy's ubiquitous murder in the second degree. So, for now, it's a homicide. You want to know more? Look it up.

By the way, I had little to do with the coverage. It wasn't planned that way...it just worked out that way. My old boss at the Journal-Courier of New Haven, Bob Granger, used to say that even the biggest story is still only one story out of many. I covered some of the rest. Some were pretty exciting, others routine.

Therefore, I feel I can comment about the coverage without patting myself on the back. Just so you know.

Marcia Chambers, who runs the Branford Eagle, which is part of the Independent family, broke the story about the suspect's former girlfriend telling the cops he made her have sex.

The story was well-documented and sourced. But the next day, it became "Yale hell-raiser's sex shocker" in the New York Post, complete with photo of the suspect dressed as the devil taking up Page One of the tabloid.

The latest is that paper's story saying that the victim's bones were crushed to get her into the utility space where her body was found. No basis in fact, the cops said.

The definition of a newspaper story I've always used is: The best possible version of the truth.

Getting it on the street first is good; getting it right first is better, getting it first and right is best.

That's what the Independent folks did. First and right. I'm as proud to be associated with these folks as any I've dealt with in my long practice of the craft of journalism.

That's saying something.

Apologies to New Jersey, New York and Maryland

Often in the past, l have excoriated drivers from New Jersey, New York and Maryland for being selfish, unskilled, witless -- you get the idea. I feel I have to apologize.

They have nothing on New Haven drivers. I'm not sure if they always have been this way and I hadn't noticed, or if some spore from the planet Stupidity has come to Earth and infected drivers around New Haven.

The light turns red. Traffic stops, but only after four cars have flown through the intersection. The light turns green. You had better count to five slowly before proceeding. Cell phones...sorry, Dick Roy, but yours is the least obeyed law in the state, including that against adultery. Dick Roy, by the way, is a Milford state legislator and former newspaperman who campaigned for years to get the cell phone ban enacted.

Stand at any corner. If the number of drivers not talking on cell phones exceeds the number gabbing while driving, you are witnessing a rare event. Phone in one hand, sandwich in the other. Wheel being grasped by two fingers, or perhaps one. Or that one is reserved for other drivers.

State law says pedestrians have the right of way at crosswalks. Ha!

Just stop for a pedestrian at a crosswalk. You're lucky if all you get is a klaxon blast from the car in back of you. And, of course, the dolt trying to cross the street takes his or her sweet time talking -- you guessed it -- on a cell phone.

Drive along Whalley Avenue east of Westville Village. Crossing of the street is done everywhere EXCEPT at the crosswalk. Walk a few feet along the sidewalk to the corner, dear pedestrian, and YOU have the right of way. Cross in the middle of the block, and you don't. Laziness or stupidity. Or both.

Speaking of stupid

We have been entertained in the past few weeks by a flock of wild turkeys in our yard.

Five turkeys live nearby and spend a couple mornings a week in our garden.

Today was especially entertaining. Two of the turkeys -- I think they are all hens -- got into our garden and couldn't figure a way to get out. They strutted down one length of fence, maybe 10 feet, and when they hit the corner, they reversed course, oblivious to the opening in the fence perhaps five steps away.

I thought I'd have some fun, so I got my wife's duck call (used in office pranks, not hunting) and sounded off. Now they really got nervous and they bumped into each other, walked along the fence opposite to the opening. My wife finally want out onto the deck and pointed to the opening.

No sale. But two others came along and must have said something like, "Hey, did you forget you could fly?" One flew over the chicken wire fence, which is all of three feet high. The other paced for another minute, then flew off.

The flock was last seen heading for another yard.

I guess they come to our yard because the word is out we don't cook or eat meat at home (or anywhere else if we have a choice) and they know we're not eyeing them for Thanksgiving.

Or maybe they just don't want to take a chance cross the street. After all, this is New Haven.

Until next time, soon...

Guest blog; I'll be back soon

This guest column is by Susan R.A. Honeyman

I'm saddened by the death of Mary Travers. We saw her group earlier this year in Waterbury -- one of her last performances was a benefit for public radio. She was hooked up to an oxygen tank and so weak the she would often gesture for the audience to sing her part while she rested. Her singing no longer mattered, though. Instead her voice was the honesty and conviction in how she lived her life. The audience was so appreciative of the courage of this valiant woman. Instead of concert, we were just 2,000 friends singing together for a better world.
When the gracious depart, the world is diminished.

This is the Lens back again.

It's been a month since this blog appeared, and yet some of you have come back from time to time to see if that guy has anything worthwhile to say.

Thank you. Keep it up.

There were a number of things that demanded my time. I'm not to kind who can dash off a column in 15 minutes and have it make sense. So, if you can't say anything well, don't say anything.

One hopes that some of these demands on my time will end soon. Then again, i hope that other demands on my time never end.

I'll explain further when I come back -- soon. I promise.

In the meantime, to those in the Tribe, a wonderful new year, 5770. May you be inscribed and sealed for a good, happy, healthy and satisfying year.

And by the way, if you have been following the Annie Le case in any other place except the New Haven Independent, you are missing out. Find it here.

Until next time...

This one is hard to Digest

There are a lot of magazines in the nation, some big, some small.

The biggest used to be the Readers' Digest. No more. Now, it's about to meet all its old friends in Bankruptcy Court.

For someone of my generation, that's hard to fathom.

Let me be perfectly clear here. I never liked it.

The Digest always had a right-wing approach, and the articles often were shadows. Writers were not able to develop plots or themes with the precis they were required to submit. But the Digest always paid well, either for the silly Humor in Uniform slices or Americana, many of which I suspect were fabrications wrapped around nuggets of truth.

But the articles were about the right length for bathroom reading. Don't get me wrong: I never subscribed, but my parents and in-laws did. But the Digest always was highest in circulation of any magazine with the possible exception of TV Guide.

The Digest also had Condensed Books, in which rewrite people turned novels into Pablum for those without the attention span to read the real things. There also were record collections, some of which also were condensed.

The Digest was printed in many languages, with the same condensed version of life.

I think the bankruptcy will be prepackaged, like the one from which the Journal Register just emerged.

Let's see -- The Readers' Digest Condensed Bankruptcy. It fits, doesn't it?

Page 2

Robert Novak died Tuesday of brain cancer. He was 78.

Like the Reader's Digest, I never liked him, either.

His politics was just a bit to the right of Attila the Hun and he wasn't a nice man.

How do I know? Let me tell you a story.

Back in 1970, I was a neophyte in the news business, first a reporter then managing editor of the Wethersfield Post weekly newspaper in Connecticut. I had been working in news about a year when I was invited to a luncheon in Hartford.

Thomas J. Dodd, the sitting Democratic U.S. Senator from Connecticut, was up for re-election and he was in trouble. He had been accused of using campaign funds for his own purposes and censured by the Senate. The accusations, by columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, had all but ruined his chances for re-election, but he decided to fight on.

The luncheon to which I had been invited was a last-gasp effort by Dodd, father of current U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, to retain his seat.

I was seated at a table near the back and found myself sitting next to Bob Novak, part of the famous columnist team of Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. He dutifully ignored me and everyone else at the table.

After the meal, Dodd rose to speak, tearfully all but begging for his seat. It was painful to see. But even more painful was the reaction of Novak. He stood, made rude noises, catcalls, everything but the Bronx cheer. It was disgusting.

I said something like, "Look, Mr. Novak, you are this famous columnist and I am working for a weekly paper in Connecticut, but don't you thing that after eating his food, you owe Dodd the courtesy to listen to what he has to say?"

He told me to shut up and mind my own business, or words to that effect. I was mortified.

That was the only time I met Novak in person, but as far as I was concerned, he was a rude person who didn't deserve the success he enjoyed.

And now he's dead. And so is Tom Dodd, who died the next year. And his son is having ethics problems tied to a mortgage he got for one of his homes.

And the world goes round and round.

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I am concerned with the thinking process, of lack thereof, of some of my fellow citizens.

I was listening to public radio, when the host was airing some comments from listeners about the health-care debate.

One would think that listeners to public radio are a bit more intelligent and informed than watchers of Fox News and listeners to the radio crazies like Rush Limbaugh. But based on today's performance, you might not be correct.

For example, one fellow from Tennessee was saying that he was dead set against any government role in the reformed health-care package. Dead set against.

He did say, however, that he was for making the insurance companies cover people with pre-existing conditions and making them cover people who now have no insurance coverage. He also did say he wants the premiums to be set low enough so poor people can afford them.

But no government interference. How can capitalism function if we keep fooling around with it?

I have a question. Who is it that is going to assure that the insurance companies cover the people they don't cover now, for less money than they charge now? Who if not the government?

Others say they don't want government bureaucrats deciding who gets coverage? Who, then? Would you rather have insurance company functionaries whose marching orders include saving the company money in any way possible? That's what he have now, which is why you have stupidity like no pre-existing conditions and sick people kept out of the system.

And, please, let's leave the Death Squad silliness to people like Sarah Palin, whose rhetoric shows what happens to the brain if one uses too much hairspray for too long of a time.

I have modified Medicare. I love it. Bring on government single-payer system.

Page 4

Thanks be to God and some great doctors, we had a bris for my grandson on Sunday, Aug. 16. And I can now introduce you to him by name: Aaron. He's named after my grandfather, Aaron Honeyman, who used the name Harry in his working life but was called Aaron.

The affair went perfectly. For those who are unfamiliar with Jewish practice, a bris, or more correctly Bris Milah, is a ceremony in which he is circumcised and he is officially welcomed into the Jewish people. In Genesis, God tells Abraham to circumcise himself and his sons as a perpetual mark of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. The bris is a continuation of that covenant. If you don't know what circumcision is, look it up.

It's an occasion of great joy, except perhaps for the guest of honor, who cries for a few minutes and then is just fine.

Aaron was born on the Sabbath, which ordinarily would have meant his bris would have been on the following Sabbath. Although the bris includes actions usually forbidden on the Sabbath, it is considered so important that for this one ceremony, these actions are not only allowed by mandated.

But Aaron's first few days of life were not ordinary. He was diagnosed with a condition that required surgery. You cannot give a Bris Milah to a sick child.

Aaron recovered, however, and last week, the doctors and the mohel, the person who performs the bris, all said he was healthy enough. So, with great joy, I can now report that Aaron, son of daughter Malka and son-in-law Josh, is officially welcomed as a member of the Covenant of Abraham. Mazel Tov!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For a video of the ceremony.

Until next time...

Dark, dark days for former colleagues

Happy Thursday.

There was some vexing news in the New York Times this morning.

The Journal News, the Gannett paper from which I retired a few years ago, is slicing, no make that gutting its newsroom.

According to the story, everybody in the newsroom and advertising departments is out of a job. They will have to apply for their jobs, many of which have been reconfigured so their own mothers wouldn't recognize them.

When all is said and done, there will be 50 fewer newsroom jobs and 20 fewer advertising jobs. Last week, 57 jobs in information technology, production and finance. That makes a lot of sense in an outfit that is heavy on information technology and the Web.

This from a newspaper that has already sent advertising layout jobs off to India.

Those who follow this blog will remember that in July, Gannett cut some 1,400 jobs across the 80-plus daily newspapers it still owns, with USA Today not sharing the hit At the time, it said The Journal News, which circulates in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties would have to wait until August to find out its bad news.

It's August, and they found out the bad news this week.

The word out is that Gannett, in spite of slightly increasing advertising sales, may have to declare bankruptcy in 2011 because it won't be able to satisfy its obligations to its bondholders.

Gannett is the nation's largest newspaper chain. USA Today alone circulates more than 2 million copies a day, although many of them are either given away or sold for a pittance to hotels and airlines.

Back to the Journal News. According to the story, 25 percent of the newsroom jobs will be eliminated. Usually, one figures that a lot of open jobs will just go unfilled and that could be counted as part of the layoffs. But here, where they are taking all the the jobs and reshuffling them, I'm afraid that 50 newsroom people will be forced out the door.

The fact that 50 workers will lose their jobs is bad enough. But these are journalists, and this is a newspaper. People count on the newspaper to bring them the news, not necessarily the public relations releases that the government and business interests want them to read.

Good journalism shines a light on goings-on that some want to take place in the dark. Fewer journalists means fewer lights. There's also the BBI, the boring but important stuff, like, for example, if your garbage is going to be picked up this week. That's important, too.

I'm sick about this stuff. So many of the greats have already taken buyouts or early retirement offers, people like Dan Murray, who make sure the news got in the paper and Jeff Canning, who made sure it was accurate. People like Geoff Giordano, who put together the Twin Towers coverage and made it impactful but still full of facts. Folks like Mike Taylor, who knew everybody and everybody knew him. He knew stuff.

They're gone, and folks like Mike von Steenburg and Toni Maconi and Gary McGriff and Dan Donovan and Yaron Steinbuch and Reisman and Baird and Nancy Cutler have to work double duty to make sure readers have what they need. Yeah, I know I left out dozens of good and great reporters, editors and photographers and graphic artists and layout people and copy editors. The problem is there won't be titles like that. Who knows that there will be.

What there will be is 50 fewer people to assure that the reader gets his or her news.

Page 2

The crazy season is well along.

I remember when WTIC radio and WELI radio actually had news. Now it's the crazy screamers saying that the president of the United States intends to set into motion a strategy that could lead to the elderly being euthanized.

Think about that. It doesn't make any sense. Yes, people die because insurance companies and doctors and other professional screw up. But to schedule a meeting with life of death on the agenda? Please.

The screamers are ranting about government-run health insurance. The government will decide whether you get your surgery or your physical therapy or your wheelchair or whatever.

So, now an insurance company bureaucrat, supervised by a nurse, decides those things.

Look, I am under a government single-payer system. It's great. When I paid more in premium for a private insurer, I had a higher copay, higher fees and worse treatment. I have never been turned down for anything.

I remember, vaguely, the McCarthy era. A communist under every ashtray. Good people's lives ruined by hysteria. Here we go again. And who is in back of this stuff: insurance companies and others who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo.

People, citizens, screamers: You are being used and you are too scared or dumb or whatever to realize it. Wake up. Think. Ask yourself: Why would they do this? Conspiracy theories are fun, but not if they cost people's lives and health. Think, damn it.

Until next time...

A long time between posts, but a lot going on

Well, hello again.

It's been about a month since I've written in this blog, but what a month it's been.

First of all, thanks to all of you who have looked in from time to time. Thanks for your interest and patience. I'll try to be a bit more consistent.

Things have been happening around here and that's the main reason I haven't had time for this blog. Let's start with the most important thing.

About a week after the last time I wrote here, daughter Melanie gave birth to an 8-pound baby boy, her fourth and our seventh grandchild. Here he is with grandpa.

It occurred the same way many of the births in our family have -- timing unexpected. She went to the midwife that Friday and was assured that she had plenty of time before the baby was to be born. We had a fine Sabbath eve dinner and went to bed.

At 6 the next morning, there was Mel knocking on our door with the news that she was in full labor and headed for the hospital. It's the Sabbath so there would be no phone calls or other information until after the Sabbath ended, after 9 that night.

Needless to say, it was a tense time.

The phone rang after 9, and it was her husband, Josh, saying it was a boy and Mel and the boy were doing well.

Well, daughter Esther and I went flying down to St. Vincent's hospital near Greenwich Village to see the baby and pick up Josh.

There was, however, a problem. The baby wasn't behaving quite right. But the next day, Mel and Josh talked us into heading out on a planned week away. Josh was home from work, Esther was available at least one day and, frankly, we would have been in the way. Besides, we had promised my step mom, who lives in Maryland, that we would visit and didn't want to worry her by not showing up.

Of course, we kept in touch from the Washington and Philadelphia areas. A diagnosis was arrived at and the news was the baby needed surgery, which was to be performed at the end of the week. We returned to New York and waited.

The surgery went well and the baby is home from the hospital and, as far as we and the doctors can tell, is doing beautifully.

That was some three weeks. We are grateful to, first of all, God, and the doctors and other medical professionals.

A couple of days after being born, the baby was transferred to the Morgan-Stanley Children's Hospital at Columbia Presbyterian. This is one great place. The NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) is designed beautifully and the staff are angels.

One thing we learned, although we knew it before, was why young people have little kids. I don't know how Mel and Josh do it, chasing after two boys, 5 and 2. Tamar, their 7-year-old daughter, is a joy and helps as much as possible.

My job most days was to take the 2-year-old to the playground. There are a number of really great playgrounds in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. So, Avraham Moshe, the 2-year-old and I go off and swing on swings and play on playscapes and I chase him around, then come home in time for his lunch and nap. It's amazing how fast a 2-year-old's legs can carry him.

Of course, the others have to be taken to camp in the morning and then picked up from camp and taken to all the places kids need to be taken. My pal is Raphi, who is 5. I got to spend a lot of time with him and he's a joy, too. So, that's what I have been doing the past three weeks.

Page 2

Word came Friday that the Journal-Register Co., the parent of the New Haven Register and 18 other dailies in the East and Midwest, had emerged from bankruptcy. What that did was cancel a lot of mistakes the JRC and its predecessor, Ingersoll Corp., had made in buying up a bunch of newspapers for, basically, promises to pay at sometime in the future, and then being unable to pay off those debts.

Much of that choking debt has been canceled and JRC now has financing to the tune of about $225 million, which a lot of experts say it should be able to manage.

The company has promised to pay much of the tax debt it owed to Connecticut. Unfortunately, the judge allowed it to pay a group of executives about $1.3 million for firing workers.

Some of the people who ran JRC before it filed for bankruptcy weren't really nice people. Ralph Ingersoll II, who bought the Register from Stewart Jackson and family, squandered a lot of money on failed schemes such as the St. Louis Sun, which never shone and set very quickly, taking scores of millions of borrowed dollars, and the hopes of a lot of journalists, with it.

I truly hope the new JRC will learn from the mistakes of the past and has the wherewithal to offer its readers the kind of news and other information it hasn't been able to lately.

I have a history with the company. I worked there for 14 years was laid off in 1990, four years after Ingersoll bought the paper, because the finances were in such horrible shape. But that sent me off to other adventures, including stints at some of the nation's largest and most famous newspapers, so I guess they did me a favor.

So I truly do with them the best in their renaissance. The Register has some talented and hard-working journalists who deserve a chance to do their best undeterred by the financial woes caused by past owners.

Page 3

Higher on this page, I mentioned a trip to Maryland and Pennsylvania. In the next few days, if things stay calm on the baby front, I plan to talk about those and some tips on how to get superior hotels for not much money, as well as some other travel hints.

Until next time...

Woe and more woe for print journalists

"You certainly picked the right time to get out of the newspaper business," a friend said to me last night.

He's right, in a way. I am out of the newspaper business, but not out of the news business. I took a buyout from Gannett a few years ago. But I write and occasionally edit for the New Haven Independent, consult for newspapers and do this blog, which is more commentary, but commentary on the news.

But he's right as far as the newspaper business is concerned. In many ways, we are our own worst enemies.

A few examples. Hearst, which now owns four newspapers in Connecticut (Connecticut Post in Bridgeport, the Stamford Advocate, Greenwich Time and Danbury News-Times), announced that it is laying off 11 newsroom employees around Albany, N.Y., including the reader advocate. That's never a good sign. OK, that paper is located in Colonie, for geographic sticklers like the Rev, but who outside New York's Capital Region knows where that is.

The Journal-Register Co., which this week got permission to emerge from bankruptcy protection, got into trouble by, among other things, buying up newspapers willy-nilly, then having to close them because they could not pay the debt-service tab for having bought them.

I hope Hearst isn't repeating the pattern. I have some friends and acquaintances in some of those papers, and I am hoping they won't lose their jobs. Many have been working, as most journalists do these days, long hours for relatively little pay.

I heard from Tony Doris, a former New Haven Register-Journal-Courier reporter who is grinding it out at the Palm Beach Post in Florida as city hall reporter. He read my story about the Journal-News bankruptcy and wrote to bemoan what's going on in the newspaper business.

In Hartford, the folks at the Hartford Courant-Channel 61 amalgam ended up with egg on their faces over a sex and age discrimination lawsuit filed by veteran Channel 61 political reporter Shelly Sindland. In a story by Connecticut News Junkie editor Christine Stuart, the dirty laundry is hung out. Romenesko comments on the story to say, parenthetically on July 8, that it looks as if the Courant pulled the story.

On July 9, however, there's a complete story by Courant reporter Matthew Kauffman airing the dirty laundry, with comments from Courant execs that the other stories didn't have.

Better late than never. I'm glad that the Courant still has a sense of shame. And good for you, Christine Stuart, for getting this out there so the Courant needed to respond. On the other hand, kudos to the Courant for putting the masthead back on top where it belongs.

But I will be watching to see if the shirts get tighter. That's one of Sindland's complaints, that Channel 61's bosses wanted a younger and more sexy look on camera.

At places such as E News Now, bust lines are falling. I'm not complaining, mind you. You expect that at fluff sites where the "reporters" trumpet their inside sources among the celebrities.

But there is no room for that in the news business. Give me news judgment and institutional memory over exposed mammaries any time.

Things have certainly changed from the time that Channel 61 went on the air, trumpeting its anchor team of Pat Sheehan and Susan Christensen because they said they were better than the competition because of their experience and knowledge of the state and the region.

Page 2

In California, where nothing that goes on should surprise anyone, officials in Los Angeles are turning over rocks, trying to fix blame for the millions it cost taxpayers for Michael Jackson's memorial.

So, if I read the New York Times story correctly, the teary-eyed mourners, many of whom make more money in a day than the average Los Angeles taxpayer earns in a year, won't pony up for the security to keep them far away from their fans.

That's a shame. Not surprising, but a shame. The Jacksons, to whom the city was more than kind, don't feel they need to help pay for this. Somebody did pony up for the Staples Center, where the event took place.

But the charge for the police, the other security providers and the rest, should not be borne by the city taxpayers. We're not talking about a poor family trying to collect enough to ship a loved one back home to be buried. We're talking about a couple of dozen of these pampered ones sticking their hands into their pockets and coming up with what amounts to walking-around money for them.

If that doesn't happen, then the city should make sure the next such event is prepaid.

Page 3

I guess you don't have to be bright to be able to swing a tennis racket.

Ask Anna Kournikova. Enough said.

Until next time...

More of the same old story

Happy Monday. I hope you all had a good Fourth. Couldn't go out to fireworks Saturday night because the Jewish Sabbath ended about 9:30, a half hour after New Haven's fireworks party started. Ah, well. Next year, it's on a Sunday, so we can have the same fun.

Well, well. About 20 minutes after I posted my blog entry saying Al Franken should be confirmed as the senator-elect from Minnesota, Norm Coleman, the one-term sitting senator who had been appealing the vote count, finally packed it in and conceded.

I didn't realize he read the Lens. (Just kidding...unlike some, I not that conceited.)

More of the same...

My former employer, the Gannett Corp. has announced 1,400 more layoffs from its approximately 42,000 international staff members. Most of the layoffs will come this week, the company has said. Many experts say Gannett will have to file for bankruptcy protection in 2011 because it will not be able to meet its obligations to bondholders,

All the layoffs will come from its Community Newspaper Division, which means that USA Today staffers won't be affected. I guess it helps to be in the same complex as the executives.

The folks at the Journal-News in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties of New York will have to wait until August to find out how many of them won't be working there when the buzzards leave Hinckley, Ohio, for the winter.

I've been through this layoff business a few times. It's a horrible time for the employees and their families who get the boot, but also is horrible for those who "survive." It's counterproductive for the company as well, since much of the workers' time is spent either polishing resumes, worrying or talking among themselves about the upcoming event.

It doesn't stop there. After the chosen ones have left, the "survivors" face a period of mourning and know the work is not diminished by the fact that fewer people are left to do it. The bosses' expectations are not lessened--if anything, they are heightened. So people who now are looking over their shoulders and are depressed by those empty desks now have to face larger workloads and more ridiculous demands.

It would be good to pin the need for layoffs on the bubble-headed bosses. After all, they created the situation in which the company finds itself. But you can't blame them for the economy's tanking and advertising, especially classified advertising, heading to the Internet.

They haven't found an answer to Craigslist taking so much of the classified ads, which were the backbone of local advertising revenue, but neither has anyone else.

I don't think I would recognize the place if I went back to Westchester. Much of the advertising design is being done in India. Personnel issues are done somewhere else. There is a television studio in the middle of the newsroom where Web casts are produced most days. I hear that isn't working out that well either, but that's hearsay.

The copy desk, which had designed and edited only news pages, now has to design and edit most of the newspaper's sections, plus weekly magazine-type publications, with fewer people than a couple of years ago when they only had news to worry about.

The top executives are still there in the newsroom. There's still an executive editor and managing editor and executive news editor. Same number of chiefs, just fewer worker-bees.

A few words

I suppose I should say a few words about Michael Jackson. Strange, talented, sick, driven, consumed. That's a few words.

Sarah Palin is another story. She could have had a big influence on the way this nation is run. She also is another one with many issues. Thank heaven the election came out the way it did. Could you imagine: the vice president rushing into John McCain's office, screaming that she is quitting because the press and those pesky Democrats were picking on her.

She didn't have much to say and spent a lot of time saying it. She didn't have any original ideas and spent a lot of time hawking old, in many cases bad, ideas. Her family is a near-perfect personification of dysfunctional. She is anything by a role model.

She's gone from the national stage, or soon will be. I hope the Republican National Committee realizes the bullet they dodged and allow her to sink into the tundra. Alaska is better off without her, as are the rest of us.

Until next time...