Where have all the grown-ups gone?

Click for video

This video is up here because I needed to cleanse my mental palate.

You see, I just read the police report about the football riot at LSU. The one that fanboy enablers dismiss as just another "bar fight" and has Tiger quarterback Jordan Jefferson and three others in such legal hot water.

You may read the initial police report here. I don't intend to spend any more time -- at least in this missive -- on a mob of wannabe London rioters who were so stupid as to break team curfew, head to a bar, yank a guy out of his pickup, beat him senseless and do it all while "wearing official LSU Football shirts."

Who'll notice? What's the worst that could happen?

NO, FORGET that and forget them. One is hopeful Five-0 will remember well enough for the lot of us.

Remember the video above, the story of something good that descended upon Baton Rouge for more than half a century. Someone who came to WAFB television in 1960 and really built something over the next 30 years, and did it unpretentiously while, to my knowledge, not causing any mass mayhem at local barrooms while wearing Channel 9 swag.

Another grown-up has left the scene in my hometown, and in American journalism. Another grown-up from "the greatest generation" has departed America and moved to a better neighborhood, one where the streets really are paved with gold.

There will be no more Newsline 9, News-Scene or Channel 9 News for Carlton Cremeens to anchor or orchestrate. There will be no more talent for him to find, hire and develop. There will be no more insistence on stellar writing. (Turn on your local TV news tonight. I dare you.)

And there will be damned few mid-market TV anchors who can, for example, hold his own with someone like Walker Percy and then get the interview published in The Southern Review.

Another grown-up gone. Now we return you to our regularly scheduled bar brawl.

Fox 8, you have a headline-writing problem

I'll bet the president's not fazed, either.

I can see enraged Republicans in New Orleans, though, bombarding Fox 8 with outraged protests of bias, being the GOP has been trying to paint Barack Obama as being 180-degrees out of phase with the American public for years.

Increasingly, it seems to me that local TV is becoming out of phase with literacy and basic journalistic competency. After all, it was just July 29 that Fox 8 sent this lulu out onto the Interwebs.

Sometimes, I wonder why I don't just do this blog as a series of grunts, yelps and belches.

Embarrassing moments in journalism

If you're over 30 and still toiling away at a one-lung TV station in Hastings, Neb., there's probably a good reason for that.

Headline of the year

I'm thinking up tons of dirty jokes and bon mots right now. Unfortunately, I can't use any of them.

I'll bet Channel 8 in New Orleans posted this item using Internet Explorer 6.

Well, it's OK if you like big towns

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So, the Today show thinks a one-man town in Wyoming is small.

In the realm of Population: 1, however, Buford is a freakin' metropolis. It even has a skyline . . . sort of.

And it's on the dadgum interstate highway. It has traffic. The store there is full of people pulling off I-80 for gas and sundries.

When is a town of Population: 1 not really all that small? Look at Buford, Wyo.

Unfortunately, the folks at NBC News didn't look much farther than an interstate exit . . . much less its own archives. In the NBC archives, and on the 'Net, is a 2005 piece about a one-woman town in Boyd County, Neb.


MONOWI, by God, Nebraska puts the Population: 1 back into Population: 1.

Not that you can tell that -- again -- to them slicksters in New York City.


READ that last sentence like this.

Simply '70s: Because I'm a geek

Because I'm a geek, here's a look inside a radio station.

In Detroit.

In 1970.

Because I'm a geek, I miss stuff like radio in Detroit in 1970. And because I'm old, I remember radio in 1970 pretty well.


ALSO because I'm a geek, I liked it when television news featured, uh . . . news.

And because I'm a geek, I liked it when you could distinguish, back in 1970, the network news from the network soaps.


AND BECAUSE I'm a really big geek, I like to watch stuff like this on YouTube.

Some people see a guy getting all worked up over an old cassette recorder, and their weirdo alarm goes off. Geek that I am, I'm thinking "Why does this guy have all the fun and not me?"

It's not an old, never-unboxed radio-cassette deck. It's a time capsule from 1970 -- and you get to play with it because it was built much better than anything you'll find in 2011.

Now, if it could pull in radio stations from 1970, you really might have something there.

Says the geek.

Apocalypse Night in Canada

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot rage in all thy sons command.
With flaming cars we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.
God help our lads burn Vancouver, B.C.!
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.

Simply '70s: The tornado of '75

Thirty-six years ago this month, it was Omaha's turn to be devastated by a major tornado.

It wasn't a good year. What became known hereabouts as "the tornado of '75" followed by four months (almost to the day) what became known hereabouts as "the blizzard of '75."

Both extreme-weather events became Omaha touchstones for "just about as bad as it gets around here."

ABOVE is a 1985 TV report on the 10th anniversary of the great storm -- the F-4 twister, not the paralyzing blizzard. We'll call that the "short version" of what befell Omaha on May 6, 1975.


THIS IS what we'll refer to as the "long version" of Omaha's tornado horror story, produced back in the day by the City of Omaha.

IF YOU really got into those 16-millimeter Encyclopedia Britannica educational films in grade school and junior high, you'll love this. Lots of useful information, but it's kind of like a filmstrip, only without the "Booong!"

You may be too damned close when. . . .

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This KFOR-TV storm-chasing crew's first indication it might have been just a little too close to a killer wedge tornado Tuesday came . . . when?

Not only should you not try this at home, you shouldn't try this professionally, either. This is one case when "killer video" almost really was to die for.

As it were.

As this recent outbreak of deadly weather so painfully points out -- again -- you have to have guts to live in Oklahoma. That's not a football insult coming from this Nebraska fan, either.

God help the Midwest

The Storm Prediction Center, a weather service division, said a repeat of the deadly April outbreak across the South could be setting up, with a possible large outbreak on Tuesday and bad weather potentially reaching the East Coast by Friday.

"This is a very serious situation brewing," center director Russell Schneider said.

-- MSNBC

Every picture tells a story

If, as it is said, every picture tells a story, the book on what has befallen the small city of Joplin, Mo., will not be one of happy endings -- not anytime soon.

It will read as a tragedy, an almost unspeakable tragedy.

Early reports from the tornado-ravaged city put the death toll at 24. The Joplin Globe says officials fear the death toll will surpass 100, this in a city of just over 49,000. The stories of scores of lives in that corner of southwest Missouri will read as tragedies -- tragedies that climax in terrifying and horrific fashion.

What story does the above photo of St. John's Regional Medical Center tell? A shattered building once filled with the sick, and with doctors and nurses. A crumpled, upended medevac helicopter, tossed into a sea of crumpled cars -- this symbol of mercy and hope turned into one of devastation and mayhem.


WHAT STORY did the camera capture here, amid the rubble, the flames and the newly homeless? How many stories does this one news photo tell?

How great is our illusion -- our human delusion -- that we are in control of anything in this life. Just a day ago, a self-important hack "theologian" in Oakland, Calif., had the world focused on an Apocalypse that never came. On a Rapture that lifted no one unto heaven.

Today, this apocalypse came in an instant, unheralded and unforeseen. The "Rapture," in a real sense, came for many in the twinkling of an eye when hell touched down upon God's country.

Where is Harold Camping and Family Radio now? Can we recover the $100 million a vain and foolish man spent on spreading false prophecy and apply it instead toward God's mercy upon a small city in a far corner of Missouri?

LOOK HERE. What story, this?

All the king's forces and all the king's men . . . reduced to two brave souls, a sole injured one, a salvaged mattress and a commandeered pickup truck?

How a disaster can come so suddenly and be so big as to overwhelm the capability of civil society, or municipal government?

The ingenuity and grace of citizens in the middle of America amid unthinkable horror and unending devastation?

The triumph of the human spirit?

The desperate fight for life?

Every picture tells a story. Some tell several.

A new, horrible chapter in the story of Joplin, Mo., is being written before the camera's eye. May God have mercy on those who climbed out of the rubble . . . and on the souls of those who did not.

Remembering

Before we end this anniversary night, let us remember. . . .

Genius is fleeting, stupidity persistent

You know how I was telling you earlier about how dumbth has overcome local TV news?

Well, Channel 7 here is nothing if not persistent in its ignorance. Here's a brand new promo -- with the main-man anchor, no less -- repeating the same idiotic error on tonight's upcoming antibiotic-resistant "virus" story.

Consider that a news promo has to rely on information from the original reporter, who got it wrong. It then is shaped by a promotions copywriter who didn't know any better than the reporter.

Then the Cro-Magnon mess goes to the TelePrompter operator, who sets it up for the "talent" -- the ones who do other promos telling you what great journalists they are . . . "the ones you trust" -- who also don't know a Petri dish from a pot to piss in.

THEN IT gets put together by an editor who also doesn't catch the glaring Biology I error, and then (presumably) gets signed off on by some "grown-up" at KETV.

And there you go . . . you're sitting in front of the boob tube, beer in hand, watching boobs tell you about those scawy, scawy "viruses" that antibiotics can't put a dent in.

In other words, the idiots are ascendant and we are doomed.

TV news . . . for dummies, by dummies?

This is a partial transcript of a news promo aired on an Omaha TV station Sunday night:

"Microscopic . . . and deadly. A new virus that's resistant to almost every antibiotic."

A new virus that's resistant to almost every antibiotic is a piss-poor virus, indeed. What, is Barack Obama going to launch a No Virus Left Behind initiative?

Repètez après moi: Antibiotics are for bacteria; antivirals are for viruses. I think Bert and Ernie have a ditty that explains that to your average 6-year-old.

I DON'T KNOW what to say about the future of democracy when "professional journalists" are about on the ball as your average high-school dropout. And I am pretty much despondent about the state of American education, being that the vast majority of these nincompoops came to ActionNewsWatchOnYourSide with college degrees.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of dumbth . . . I will be scared spitless. For the idiots are with me. Thy rod, thy staff, they provoke prurient giggles during the happy-talk segments of ActionNewsWatchOnYourSide. Because somebody said "rod." And "staff."

My cup runneth over. Film at 11.

Simply '70s: Defund public broadcasting

Broadcasting magazine, Oct. 25, 1971, Page 14

If you hadn't noticed, there was a hell of a fierce debate going on about federal funding of public broadcasting. In 1971.

Why, we could have the specter of taxpayers funding a fourth network! Both on television and on the radio. We hear they're very liberal. Not friendly at all to conservative values.

And what about localism?

Tsk, tsk. There's something very un-American about this whole pointy-headed enterprise, I tell you.

Simply '70s: The day the music died

Back in 1976, the music really did die in Omaha.

That's when, on Sept. 2, just after midnight, the Federal Communications Commission ordered legendary Top-40 blowtorch KOIL off the air. As in canceled its license.

According to the commission, Star Stations owner Don Burden did very, very bad things. According to Burden and his employees, political and business enemies railroaded the Omaha radio tycoon.

Nevertheless, the flagship Star Station -- KOIL -- was toast after 51 years on the air. So was its sister FM station, KEFM. So were Top-40 giants in Portland (Vancouver, Wash.) and Indianapolis.

THE FEDERAL "death penalty" made news across the country. It was all over Broadcasting magazine (here and here) and the other trades.

And the Mighty 1290 was no more . . . for a while.

KOIL came back to the Omaha airwaves in December of '76, with a new owner. But never again was it truly mighty.

And soon enough, all that was left were the call letters, parked by corporate owners on another frequency, a robostation spitting out whatever the satellite and the automation dictates.

See, some things are worse than death.

Another grown-up exits the scene

Now it's Bill Monroe who has passed from this mortal coil, another media grown-up who hasn't been -- and can't be -- replaced.

Monroe died Thursday at age 90, leaving behind a legacy as the first news director of Channel 6 in New Orleans, and as Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press for NBC television.

The Times-Picayune's obituary tells the story of a career defined by integrity . . . and guts:

In 1950, The New Orleans Item, one of the city's two afternoon papers, hired him as an editorial writer. Mr. Monroe had had print experience as a New Orleans reporter for the United Press wire service before he went to war.

Four years later, when WDSU was looking for a news director, Mr. Monroe applied for the job -- and landed it. When he joined the NBC affiliate, it was six years old.

The news staff amounted to "three or four people who just read the news," he said in a 1998 interview. "Early television reporters were converted from newspaper reporters."

Mr. Monroe hired a fleet of seasoned journalists, including the reporters Alec Gifford, Ed Planer and Bill Slatter, and the photographers Mike Lala and Jim Tolhurst.

By that time, the station had already made a name for itself in 1951, when it covered U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver's organized-crime hearings in New Orleans. Five years later, after Earl K. Long was re-elected governor, Mr. Monroe sent Gifford and Lala to Baton Rouge to show what he felt would be an interesting legislative session.

This was long before open-meetings laws, but nobody said anything, Mr. Monroe said in the interview, because everyone seemed to believe that someone had given them permission.

"We were there a week and a half before we were challenged," he said.

Long tried to have them removed, but the New Orleans delegation resisted because they had become stars.

"That experiment "put people in touch with the Legislature in a way they hadn't seen before," Mr. Monroe said in the interview. "The Legislature came alive. We got more letters for that than any other thing we did."

During that period, the station started airing editorials that Mr. Monroe wrote and delivered. The station stirred up controversy when it called for calm during the civil-rights period, when New Orleans' public schools were facing desegregation.

There were about 50 editorials related to the civil-rights movement, Mr. Monroe said.

The station's call for calm "appealed to the common sense of a lot of people in New Orleans," he said, "but that mild message, in the context of the times generated a bit of hatred toward the station."

Mr. Monroe said he received death threats, and advertisers threatened the station with financial ruin if it didn't back off. But station owner Edgar Stern Jr. stood firm.

For the editorials, WDSU won a Peabody Award, broadcasting's most hallowed honor, and a national award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association.

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: First, picture a television station running regular editorials, thoughtfully delivered. In many markets -- despite the death of the "Fairness Doctrine" decades ago -- that's difficult enough right there.

Then picture a news director adamantly advocating for a wildly unpopular position . . . just because it's the right and responsible thing to do. Picture him doing this some half a hundred times over the course of a year or so, despite hate mail and death threats.

Now picture the station's (most likely) corporate owner stand behind the station's wildly unpopular editorial stance despite advertisers' threats of an economic Armageddon.

I lost you a step or two ago, didn't I?

That's because the grown-ups have left the building. The loss is all ours.

Happy now, Rush?

I'm sure Lara Logan of CBS News is bearing up stoically in her hospital room knowing that she damn well deserved her fate at the hands of an Egyptian mob.

What would we do without Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to give us clarity on these things?

FROM the CBS News website:

In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.

Bubba made a funny

You know how people are always asking "What were they thinking?" when something incredibly stupid happens somewhere?

In this case, I think we know exactly what the chyron operator at Louisville's WLKY television was thinking when he -- or she -- did the sports graphics Sunday night. And that, friends, is the problem.

I admit, I bust a gut over this one, though the sentiment that would prompt some alleged television professional to type in "Jew York Jets" isn't funny at all. The ROTFLMAO factor in this probably has something to do with a) it's Kentucky, b) the responsible party's name is Bubba, isn't it? and c) picturing, in your mind's eye, the aftermath of this one.

But the more I think about this thing, the madder I get.

FOR ONE THING, it's 2011. "Jew York Jets"? Really?

For another thing, it's 2011 -- do you realize how many people there are out there flat-ass out of work? Do you realize how broadcasting has been shedding jobs like it's the newspaper industry or something?

Do you realize how lucky the jackwagon idiot responsible for "Jew York Jets" was to have the job he (or, again, she) used to have (one hopes) and so cavalierly threw away (again, one hopes)?

You know how parents of a bygone era used to tell their kids to think of the starving children in China and clean their plates? In other words, be grateful for what you have and don't waste it.

Well, some jackass at WLKY never got told that by his or her parents. And a lot of "starving kids in China" probably aren't amused . . . except, perhaps, about the position that might be opening up at a TV station in Louisville.


P.S.: Do you think this thing just might cost WLKY a sponsor? Just wondering.

Simply '70s: The odd couple

No, not The Odd Couple, the odd couple -- Sally Quinn and Hughes Rudd on the CBS Morning News.

What were they thinking upon the debut of this . . . thing on Aug. 6, 1973? "They" being the people in charge of CBS News.

Was this a backdoor attempt at a precursor of the Jerry Springer Show? Were the network producers thinking they could slip one by William Paley, taking on the mantle of plausible deniability and feigning total surprise when Rudd inevitably snapped and began to stub out Lucky Strikes on Quinn's forehead as she affected her way through the day's headlines?

Would she have name-dropped her way through the aftermath, saying she once had provoked the Great Man himself, Edward R. Murrow, to do the very same thing during a junior-high field trip?

Sadly, none of the nefarious plans for prematurely lowering the television IQ (assuming there were any nefarious plans, as opposed to a plain-old screw up) came to fruition, and neither did the ratings that would have generated. The Quinn-Rudd era of the CBS Morning News ended -- mercifully -- in February 1974.

Notable appearances this day: Jay Silverheels' anti-litter PSA and a young Pat Buchanan, flacking for "Tricky Dick" Nixon.