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Tag: Media
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David Simon returns to police beat
He may have left the Baltimore Sun many years ago, but Emmy-Award winning writer David Simon still burns with righteous indignation over the injustices of urban life.
So after learning that an unarmed, 61-year-old man in East Baltimore had been shot to death by a cop Feb. 17, the author of Homicide and The Wire was first stunned, and then outraged to find so little information about it in the local newspaper. Not the name of the cop who used lethal force, not the circumstances under which it happened.
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(requires Java)MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.“At which point, one old police reporter lost his mind and began making calls,” he wrote in an op-ed column in the Washington Post.
It didn’t take Simon long to run headlong into a brick wall, though – a new policy by the Baltimore police commissioner to withhold the identities of officers who shoot and kill people.
Needless to say, he was not going to accept that, especially since the policy violated state sunshine laws.
Simon unravels the story himself and finds that the 29-year-old police officer, Traci McKissick, had had a similar episode involving a struggle over her gun in the past. That the officer, who is described as physically diminutive, had drawn her weapon in the passenger seat of a suspect’s car in 2005, and the suspect grabbed for it. In the ensuing struggle, a shot was fired into the rear seat, and eventually the suspect got the weapon and threw it out of the car window.
“And so on Feb. 17, the same officer may have again drawn her weapon only to find herself again at risk of losing the gun. The shooting may be good and legally justified, and perhaps McKissick has sufficient training and is a capable street officer. But in the new world of Baltimore, where officers who take life are no longer named or subject to public scrutiny, who can know?” he wrote.
Simon uses the case – a response to a domestic call gone bad – as a sort of morality tale to explain what it means that cities like Baltimore no longer have vigorous daily news papers.
There is a lot of talk nowadays about what will replace the dinosaur that is the daily newspaper. So-called citizen journalists and bloggers and media pundits have lined up to tell us that newspapers are dying but that the news business will endure, that this moment is less tragic than it is transformational.
Well, sorry, but I didn’t trip over any blogger trying to find out McKissick’s identity and performance history. . . .
I didn’t trip over a herd of hungry Sun reporters either, but that’s the point. In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.
It is a story to make you weep.
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Bailed-out banks are still big political donorsMarch 6, 2009 at 12:16pm
Companies that have been awarded billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money continue to donate large sums to political campaigns.
Can Arthur G. Sulzberger III go from cub reporter to savior?
Following in his father’s footsteps, Arthur G. Sulzberger III reports to work Monday as a Metro desk reporter at The New York Times.
The 28-year-old son of publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. will start off as a contributor to the City Room, a local blog.
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(requires Java)MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.Beyond his duties as a junior reporter and writer, the fifth-generation Sultzberger is clearly being groomed to inherit the reins of the struggling newspaper company, which in addition to its flagship publication, publishes The Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune.
Like his father before him, the younger Sulzberger begins at the Times after developing his reporting chops at The Oregonian and The Providence Journal. (His father began at The Raleigh Times and then reported for the Associated Press before taking a job in The Times’ Washington bureau and eventually moving over to the business side in preparation for his promotion to publisher in 1992 and then, company chairman in 1997).
Those who have worked with Arthur Gregg Sulzberger – his middle name is the maiden name of his mother, Gail Gregg, who separated from Arthur Jr. last year – give him high marks.
“He’s incredibly down-to-earth, modest and eager to learn the right way,” one Times newsroom source told the New York Observer. “If you look at his journalism, it’s journalism that people here would produce.
“When I looked at his clips, I said ‘Oooh! This guy ain’t bad!’” the source added. “I was actually very pleasantly surprised.”
While the younger Sulzberger was at The Oregonian, he wrote under the byline, Arthur Sulzberger, breaking a series of stories that led to the resignation of the sheriff of Oregon’s largest county.
“Sheriff Bernie Giusto was the longtime and greatly admired sheriff here, and there was a two-year investigation that was relentless, and Arthur’s work helped push Giusto from office,” said Sandy Rowe, editor of The Oregonian.
But at the start of the 21st century, being a dogged reporter and a decent guy may not cut it for the heir apparent to run a beleaguered multimedia company which faces competition not just from other media companies, but from Internet giants like Google.
As business blogger Henry Blodget noted yesterday, New York Times stock now costs less than the Sunday paper, and it’s getting cheaper all the time amid a stampede of readers and advertisers to the Internet.
And even with a $250 million cash infusion from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the Times’ debt is estimated at $1.1 billion and some investors are restless. On Thursday, the paper suspended dividend payments to shareholdersfor the first time in four decades as a publicly traded company.
Still, the Times’s family-controlled stock structure seems likely to protect the company from most challenges from outside investors. And few doubt that “Pinch” Sulzberger, as the Times’ chairman is nicknamed, would like to see his son take over.
In the 1992 book The Girls in the Balcony, which documented a sex-discrimination suit against the Times, author Nan Robertson quotes Sulzberger telling a female executive, “I want to leave my son a different newspaper from the one I’m inheriting.”(It wasn’t until later that the executive thought to point out that Sulzberger has a daughter as well.)
Annie Sulzberger shows little interest in the Times, however, pursuing a career in art preservation while “aspiring to be a Daily Show correspondent,” according to New York magazine’s description of her Friendster page (which also features a photo of her and her brother smoking a hookah while watching a Woody Allen film).
So Arthur Gregg Sulzberger III steps up to the plate, where he can expect to be scrutinized like virtually no other reporter.
That may be good preparation as he auditions for the daunting role of newspaper savior.Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
This post is tagged with: Annie Sulzberger, Arthur G. Sulzberger III, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Gail Gregg, Media, New York Times, Recent StoriesRead related stories: Media · Recent Stories
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Citigroup’s Pandit plays game of musical chairs with fedsFebruary 25, 2009 at 1:46pm
Vikram Pandit is still working out a rescue plan that would turn over as much as 40% of his bank to the U.S. government. The question is whether he will manage to hold onto his job – and whether he will want to.
SI’s Selena Roberts scoops the competition
Score one for Sports Illustrated.
In November 2007, the weekly magazine hired sports columnist Selena Roberts away from The New York Times.
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(requires Java)MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.It got its money’s worth last week when Roberts and colleague David Epstein came through with an exclusive report revealing that baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids while playing for the Texas Rangers in 2003.
On Monday, Rodriguez confirmed the story in an interview with ESPN’s Peter Gammons.
During the interview Rodriguez, who now plays for the New York Yankees, accused Roberts of stalking him during the course of her reporting.
The third baseman said that Roberts had been thrown out of his New York City apartment and that she had trespassed at the University of Miami in an attempt to get access to him.
“And four days ago she tried to break into my house where my girls are up there sleeping, and got cited by the Miami Beach police,” Rodriguez said. “I have the paper here.”
Roberts immediately denied the accusations. “Everything that came out of his mouth was a fabrication,” she told Newsday.
Subsequently, Rodriguez has produced no proof of inappropriate or illegal conduct by Roberts. Police agencies allegedly involved have said they have no records of any break-ins or acts of trespass.
Rodriguez and Roberts do have history, as she wrote about him, sometimes critically, when she was at the Times.
In addition, she’s finished a book on Rodriguez, Hit and Run: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez, scheduled for publication on May. 19.
Roberts told Newsday that there would be things in the book that Rodriguez probably won’t like.
But, by all accounts, she and Epstein got their story the old-fashioned way. The worked their sources and kept digging and digging until they had things pinned down.
Roberts then confronted Rodriguez about the test results.
“You’ll have to talk to the (players’) union,” Rodriguez said. He added the comment, “I’m not saying anything.”
Roberts, 42, is a journalism graduate of Auburn University who worked at The Tampa Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and the Minneapolis Star Tribune before joining the Times in 1996 to cover the New Jersey Nets.
She went on to cover a variety of topics and beats, including the Olympics, before becoming a columnist in 2002.
Epstein, Roberts’ colleague on the Rodriguez story, worked at New York’s Daily News and Inside Higher Ed before joining Sports Illustrated.
He has a Masters degree in journalism and a Masters degree in environmental science from Columbia University.
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Feds probe firms close to Rep. John MurthaFebruary 13, 2009 at 10:46am
Another possible pay-to-play arrangement appears to be unraveling under public scrutiny – this one involving Rep. John Murtha, the powerful defense appropriator from Pennsylvania.
David Gregory in line to succeed Tim Russert on ‘Meet the Press’
David Gregory is in talks with NBC News to become the next moderator of “Meet the Press,” the popular Sunday news show.
If the deal is consummated, the baby-faced White House correspondent and fill-in “Today” show host will face an enormous challenge to fill the shoes of the late Tim Russert, a widely respected journalist who died last June of a heart attack.
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(requires Java)MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.NBC has insisted there is no deal yet. But the Washington Post reported today that the network could announce a decision as early as Sunday, when Tom Brokaw is expected to end his temporary stint as moderator with an interview with President-elect Barack Obama.
Other leading contenders for the job have included NBC News correspondents Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell, PBS host Gwen Ifill, MSNBC host Chris Matthews and former Nightline host Ted Koppel, who recently ended a long-term contract with Discovery.
One reason the 38-year-old Gregory may have pulled ahead of the competition is his long-term value to NBC. He is often described as its first choice to one day succeed Matt Lauer as host of “Today.”
“Today” is the most profitable show on television, and therefore, hugely significant to Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC’s parent, NBC Universal, according to the New York Times. That show is also personally important to Zucker, a former executive producer who led “Today” to its current ratings’ dominance.
Gregory, the son of a Broadway producer, has been the network’s chief White House correspondent throughout the years of the Bush administration, where he had a reputation as a relentless questioner who would engage in verbal sparring with White House press secretaries when he felt his questions were given short shrift.
After Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a hunting companion, for instance, Gregory admonished press secretary Scott McClellan: “Don’t tell me you’re giving us complete answers when you’re not actually answering the question.”
On another occasion, Gregory said: “Don’t be a jerk to me personally when I’m asking you a serious question.” Gregory later apologized to McClellan.
Yet he also maintained relationships with those he covered. He famously celebrated his 30th birthday aboard George W. Bush’s campaign plane eight years ago – with the cake provided by the candidate.
Bush nicknamed the 6-foot-5 reporter “Stretch” early in his tenure and later downgraded him to “Little Stretch,” according to the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz.
It hasn’t hurt Gregory that he is well-connected to parts of the Washington power establishment through his wife, Beth Wilkinson, a prominent attorney. The two met when Gregory was covering the Oklahoma City bombing as a reporter and Wilkinson was serving as prosecutor on the case.
Besides having worked as a Justice Department prosecutor, Wilkinson is a former Fannie Mae executive, who resigned from the beleaguered mortgage agency Sept. 19 after the government assumed control. (She had been recruited to help the mortgage agency rebuild its relationship with regulators after a series of accounting scandals in 2006.)
Among the visitors attending the baby shower for the couple’s first child was then-Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff whom Wilkinson worked with at the law firm Latham & Watkins as well as at the Justice Department.
Gregory attended American University in Washington, where he also began working as a journalist. As an 18-year-old freshman, he cut a deal with the ABC affiliate in Tucson to use him as a Washington correspondent. He joined NBC as a Chicago-based correspondent in 1996.
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Michael Moore defends the car guys, sort ofDecember 4, 2008 at 5:18pm
It wasn’t so long ago that Michael Moore devoted an entire movie to nailing the CEO of a Big Three automaker.
Christopher Buckley Burns Conservative Bridges With Obama Endorsement
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NY Times gig is a sideline for Nobel-winning Paul Krugman
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