Here’s an interesting look from Slate’s Jack Shafer into the notorious incident up in Minot, North Dakota a few years ago when a train derailment threatened the city with a poisonous vapor cloud, but authorities couldn’t alert the population because all the Clear Channel-owned stations were on robot control …
I don’t know who looked less credible on last night’s edition of “60 Minutes”, George W. Bush or the president of Duke University, but the CBS News crew deserves a shout out for allowing both men to present their case regardless of how anemic each was. It is fashionable to avoid ever complimenting bigfooting mainstream … Read more
A nagging techno-glitch has had the mighty Lambert mainframe down for a few days. Anyone out there who knows a sure-fire, never fail fix for preventing a router from crashing the cable internet connection, drop me a line. As on election night, I spent the post-Bush “surge” speech with MSNBC. Since Fox is … well, … Read more
The report Friday that The Fox News Channel, (“FNC” in acronym argot, or “Faux News” if you aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid), was the 8th highest-rated cable channel of 2006 wasn’t exactly a press-stopper. But for those who don’t follow this stuff, #8 may seem low considering the tankers of ink media types dump into re-cycling … Read more
Already a little light in the reporter-body department, KSTP-TV lost another one when Ross Kirgiss, a 13-year vet, abruptly cleaned out his desk, apparently over the New Year’s weekend, and vacated the Hubbard ranch. Colleagues who have tried to contact him since say they’ve heard nothing back. I’m told Kirgiss had several months to go … Read more
Difficult decision tonight. Watch the premiere of the new series, formerly titled, “Let’s Rob Mick Jagger”, (now known as “The Knights of Prosperity”), or catch a screening of the Judi Dench-as-crazed-repressed-lesbian flick, “Notes on a Scandal”? I hear Jagger is actually pretty funny in the former, but, damn, I’m a sucker for psycho grand dames. … Read more
As someone who never tired of railing at copy editors sucking the life — the precious bodily fluids — out of my copy, I realize this blogging thing has the downside of requiring me to re-re-read my own stuff. Brutal. But I’ll do my best to keep the corrections coming, promptly. “Par” Ridder. Not Parr.
Is it me or has the eulogizing of Gerry Ford now gone on longer than his presidency? Let enough be enough or at least let someone on the air who attempts to put Ford in some kind of rational perspective. By the 24 hour mark after his death, I was maxing out on the “decency” … Read more
The surprise sale of the Star Tribune to a recently-formed private equity partnership has left reporters and other mid-level employees in a full churn of speculation, almost none of it good. There just isn’t handy model for these things improving the service to community or the professional/personal lives of working stiff journalists. Nick Coleman got … Read more
According to conventional mythology a new blog is born every second, each with an average readership of … one. I hope to do better than that, if only for the sake of Rake publisher, Tom Bartel, who, after months of brutal negotiations has finally consented to attach my idle, crackpot meanderings to his otherwise sober-minded … Read more