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WHY DOES LA EXAMINER SUCK SO HARD?

In the LA Examiner, of course.
- posted by Amy @ 5/09/2003 11:30:00 AM

 

Tsar Alert
My favorite band, Tsar, is out of the studio and starting to play shows again, Tony Pierce reports.
- posted by Amy @ 5/09/2003 11:08:00 AM

 

War & Peace Reporting
Check out the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, where my friend Stacy Sullivan is filling in as the bureau chief in The Hague for a few months. It's a nonprofit that seeks to shore up local reporting in areas of conflict.
- posted by Amy @ 5/08/2003 06:46:00 PM

 

Big Friggin' Deal?
I've just booked a West Coast tour for late June that will take me from Seattle to Long Beach to see five, count 'em, five new babies, one college graduation, possibly one bridal shower and a date with my old bedroom in Bakersfield that needs to be cleaned out to make way for Grandma. A got a bunch of great one-way deals on JetBlue, Southwest and Amtrak that makes the trip pretty cheap. But my news of the day all comes courtesy of Amtrak:
1. When booking online, first go to Amtrak's specials page to find a code that will save you at least 25 percent on any ticket. If you don't check the specials page, there's nothing later in the reservations process to tip you off to the savings.
2. The little farm town of Martinez apparently invented the martini.
3. The Amtrak city code for my hometown is, appropriately enough, BFD.
- posted by Amy @ 5/08/2003 02:34:00 PM

 

Click the Ads
Kind readers, especially my freelancer friends, take a look over in the right column for information about health insurance for freelancers. I'll be glad you did.
- posted by Amy @ 5/08/2003 12:09:00 AM

 

Tunnel Talk
At least with Sprint, cell phone service is now available through the entire length of the Lincoln Tunnel. Why is this more than mildly significant, you wonder? Because after 9/11, long after I stopped getting nervous about normal things, I still got sick to my stomach every time we drove through the tunnel. No cell phone service at all. No radio. Stuck in traffic. Auto fumes and who knew what was going on outside. And if something happened, would I run to New Jersey or Manhattan? Would I have a choice? I don't think about those things much anymore, but I'll say it definitely feels better anyhow knowing the cell phones work through the tunnel again.
- posted by Amy @ 5/08/2003 12:04:00 AM

 

Where No News is Local
Tony Pierce gently points out that the LA Times, always desperate to cast itself as a national newspaper, usually chooses to bury the local angle of a story if it notices it at all. Well, OK, Tony isn't gentle at all.
- posted by Amy @ 5/07/2003 11:52:00 PM

 

If You're Thinking of Parking in ...
My home office is situated just a few feet above sidewalk level, with a window affording me a shocking view of New Yorkers' parallel parking habits. I had no idea how many people make absolutely no attempt whatsoever to stop before hitting the car in back, then in front, then in back, then in front. I'm certain some of them just listen for the crunch and then shift gears and listen for the next crunch.
- posted by Amy @ 5/06/2003 01:34:00 PM

 

More Deep Throat
This site got a little more traffic than usual after I posted some links below about Deep Throat. I got an e-mail from Kathe Cunningham in Chicago who offered a defense for the journalism students who said they determined the identity of Deep Throat. She says (reprinted with her permission):

The U of I team does stress on its sight (which seems to be evolving and expanding on a regular basis) that Woodward has commented in the press in the past that Deep Throat has denied his identity to his colleagues and the public. The fact that Fielding has denied the charge, therefore, is a factor for the U of I's case, rather than a contradiction of it.

The sheer lack of mention of Fielding's name in "All the President's Men" is also seen as strong evidence toward (rather than against) his being Deep Throat. Woodward and Bernstein named names in the book. Apparently, Fielding sticks out like a sore thumb by the fact that his name was always shielded in the book ("a White House aide"), while others were so blatantly identified.

Over the past weekend, WNYC's On the Media took on the topic in an interview with two-time Pulitzer winner William Gaines, the journalism professor who led the student project to determine the identity of Deep Throat. I thought he came off like jerk who didn’t understand he was violating his own principles. From the interview transcript:

“I teach my students you never, ever reveal a source. What we have here is a situation where a source has been revealed and by Woodward and Bernstein. They've told us that he smokes and he drinks Scotch and so forth. They've made a, a movie character out of him. That's not how you treat a-- a source! You treat-- you, you keep it absolutely in confidence. So-- what they've done is made a guessing game out of it. A lot of people who have not - are not Deep Throat have been wrongfully named over the years and it's caused quite a stir! And I think that our investigation was more or less driven by public opinion, because people don't like questions of that nature -- they don't like the idea of a journalist saying I know something you know and I'm not telling you. They want to know the answer.”

So Gaines sounds like he’s trying to teach Woodward and Bernstein a lesson? And to hell with Fred Fielding if he happens to get hurt in the process? (Because Fred Fielding gets hurt in this regardless of whether he is, or is not Deep Throat.) Another flaw in his reasoning is that he says he took on the project because it was considered one of the great mysteries of the 20th century. So Gaines takes a team of J-students and spends four years to figure out a source who he claims wasn’t very well protected by the Washington Post journalists because they left too many clues to his identity?

Another thing he doesn’t address – though I admit I haven’t thoroughly read his report – is that Woodward and Bernstein may have come to an agreement with Deep Throat about whether they can reveal his identity after death, or weather it was OK to mention certain details about Deep Throat in “All the President’s Men.”

Gaines probably shouldn’t be taking the moral high ground on this – that he somehow owes it to society to reveal deep Throat’s identity to prove that Woodward and Bernstein were sloppy in protecting their sources. Plus, Gaines himself has left no room for the possibility that he’s wrong:

“I, I, I know! I know who Deep Throat is! It's Fred Fielding! There's no question about it. Nobody else could be Deep Throat but Fred Fielding. He had access to all the information. He's the only person who fits Woodward and Bernstein's description, and not coincidentally, he has access to all the information that Deep Throat had, some of it almost exclusively. So it just cannot be somebody else.”

Maybe next year Gaines can get his students to go track down people in the witness protection program. What are J-schools for anyway?

- posted by Amy @ 5/06/2003 01:11:00 PM