TRIB CUTS IN EL LAY
 Tribune's
KTLA-5-CW in Los Angeles (Market #2) dropped the axe on seven
veteran newsroom employees yesterday in what many believe will be the
first of continuing cuts at the station.
ERSNews
reports that Gerry Ruben (executive producer since 1976), Joe
Russin (executive editor of planning), and John Hensley
(morning news executive producer) were given their walking papers.
Four reporters....Walter Richards,
Bill Smith, Willa Sandmeyer, and Janet Choi....were also cut.
Last month, Tribune moved KTLA News Director Rich
Goldner to sister station KSWB-69-CW in San Diego (Market
#27) to prepare it for the shift to Fox in August.
<<<>>>
 Raycom
Media chopped 13 off-air jobs last week at WOIO-19-CBS /
WUAB-43-MyTV in Cleveland (Market #19). Ohio
Media Watch reports that the cuts involved master control
operators and studio crew members.
<<<>>>
CHEAP LABOR
 Amy
Sweets anchors the news on the
High Plains View newspaper website in Colorado Springs. She
works cheap....costs the paper just $9.95 a month.
"Readers enjoy what she brings to
the table," says
Toni Gibbons, founder of the year-old newspaper. "She
brings something new, something fun."
Sweets is an avatar with attitude.
"We tried her once to go cowboy, but it was so urban cowboy we were
embarrassed," Gibbons admits. "If I weren't such a
cheapskate we could go the $19.95 package and probably have more
clothing to choose from."
 Christopher
Fox, the paper's webmaster, chooses her outfits and jewelry from a
virtual wardrobe. "If you ever saw me, I'm the most unlikely person
in the world to dress a woman," he says. "I'm a big farmer,
rancher guy."
Sweets has limitations. "I
can't make her smile," Fox says. He puts words in her mouth
using a text-to-speech function and has to spell words a certain way,
otherwise she's prone to call Limon "Lie-Moan."
"I wish I knew how to get her out to
the rodeo," Gibbons says. "These cowboys would really
enjoy meeting her."
Cowboys must be lonely. Very lonely.
<<<>>>
LONDON CALLING
 Dallas-based
London Broadcasting
Company announced plans yesterday to buy four crappy little TV
stations in Texas and Oklahoma from Drewry Communications.
Financial terms of the deal were not revealed. Pending FCC approval, London
Broadcasting will take control of KXXV-25-ABC in Waco (Market
#95), KFDA-10-CBS in Amarillo (Market #131), KSWO-7-ABC in
Lawton, OK (Market #149), and KWES-9-NBC in Midland, TX (Market
#157).
London Broadcasting was formed in
2007 to purchase KYTX-19-CBS in Tyler, TX (Market #111), from Max
Media. The company website says it "plans to acquire 10-15
television stations in the small to medium size markets."
<<<>>>
LIN TV veteran Ed Munson is
the new general manager of Meredith's (news director-less) KPHO-5-CBS
in Phoenix (Market #12). He succeeds Steven Hammel, who suddenly
"resigned" on Friday.
Paul
Karpowicz, president of the Meredith Broadcasting Group,
worked with Munson during his 20 years at Lin TV.
<<<>>>
 Blogger
Ed Bark reports that Fox-owned KDFW-4 in Dallas
(Market #5), which has a history of suspending reporters, last week
placed veteran (12 years) medical reporter John Hammarley on
suspension.
His "undisclosed activities"
are being investigated. According to Hammarley, whose
bio remains (for now) on the station website, "All I can say is
that I'm still at the station. I'm employed by Fox4 and I don't
know any different."
<<<>>>
 Terry
McElhatton, former news director at KNTV-11-NBC in San Jose, died
Saturday of a heart attack while on his way home from a day of
windsurfing with his son. He was 52 and had no history of heart
problems.
In recent years, McElhatton has
been a teacher at Valley
Christian High School in San Jose and was scheduled to join San
Jose State University in the fall as a professor of new media. His
dad is Dave McElhatton, longtime news anchor at KPIX-5-CBS
in San Francisco (Market #6).
<<<>>>
 Do
some news anchors “slip” and mix up Obama and Osama on
purpose? Yes. Do many of them work at Fox News? Yes. Do others
accidentally mix up the two names because they actually do sound
similar? Yes. Matt
Lauer,
who referred to America’s most hated terrorist as "Obama...excuse
me, Osama bin Laden," likely belongs in the latter
group.
<<<>>>
 Steve
Wilson, the rotund investigative reporter at WXYZ-7-ABC in
Detroit (Market #11) who has made a meal out of harassing troubled
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, was
waltzed around the block yesterday by some of the mayor's hired
muscle. Video
of the arm-in-arm two-step proves that white guys CAN
dance....if there's a black guy leading.
<<<>>>
Soup
Cans has a Q&A with ABC's Dan Harris, a
self-described "fashion dyslexic." "There is no
cure for this condition," Harris admits.
<<<>>>
 Depending
on which version of Diann Burns's bio you happen to find on Wikipedia,
she was either "the first African-American woman to anchor
the prime time news in Chicago" or "was not the
first African American woman to anchor prime-time news in Chicago"
or "was one of the many African American women who anchored
the prime time news in Chicago."
A NewsBlues reader reminds us that
Edwina Moore was a primary (black, female) anchor for WBBM-2-CBS
in the early 1970s.
Extensive editing continues on the Wikipedia
page.
<<<>>>
The
Washington City Paper asks, "Isn’t anyone
bothered by the Lara Logan sex scandal coverage?"
<<<>>>
BOUNCE BACK
Times are tough in the TV biz. Tougher
still when you make a misstep that seems to sink your career.
Some...not all...bounce back.
We learned yesterday that Thomas
Forester has been freelancing on the sports desk at KMGH-7-ABC
in Denver (Market #18), while the station looks for a replacement for Phil
Aldridge, who left for a gig in Minneapolis.
Forester, you may recall, is the
guy who got
into a hallway fracas with his news director Bob Clinkingbeard
at Fox-owned WOFL-35 in Orlando (Market #19) last
September. He compounded his misery by calling Lake Mary cops and
insisting that his boss be arrested for assault and battery. Clinkenbeard
escaped prosecution (and remains at last-place WOFL). Forester
was suspended without pay and eventually left town.
We were also reminded of Erin Davis,
a former news intern at Sinclair's WICD-15-ABC in Champaign, IL
(Market #82), who
faced DUI charges last year after she slammed into two parked cars
and kept driving until cops finally pulled her over. Davis argued
that she HAD to drive drunk to avoid being sexually
assaulted by WICD news anchor Kent Ninomiya and reporter Emily
Carlson. Davis testified in court that she bolted from
the apartment when Carlson suggested they have three-way sex.
 Davis
was acquitted of the DUI charges and, after that, we don't know what
became of her. But Carlson and Ninomiya, who both left
Champaign following the trial, have each resurfaced.
Carlson (left) began her
new job this week as a consumer reporter at Local TV's WHO-13-NBC
in Des Moines (Market #71). She is now an "Advocate for
Iowans." On
her personal blog, she says she stepped away from TV for a while
because "I made a deliberate decision to spend as much of that quality
time with my children as possible."
Ninomiya, a former fellow of
journalism ethics at Poynter, whose TV career has taken him
through Los Angeles, Chicago, DC, San Francisco, San Diego, Fresno,
Minneapolis, Springfield, Champaign, and Eureka, is now, according
to his website, a "journalist, writer, (and) world
traveler."
He is "senior Southwest U.S.
correspondent" for the China Daily, the national English
language newspaper of China. He's also managing editor of EmergingDragon.com,
a website for Americans looking to benefit from an emerging Asia and
Pacific Rim.
Think of it as a Rim job.
<<<>>>
 MRS.
BLUEZETTE'S GRAMMAR YAMMER
"A PBS mind in an MTV world."
A reader in Flint Hill, Virginia, writes
to Mrs. B:
Someone told me about you because I
was complaining about the new generation's pronunciation of
contractions. It drives me berserk. They pronounce "didn't"
as "did-dn't" and "couldn't" as "could-dn't"
and
"student" as "stu-DENT" (not that
"student" is a contraction). Even Anderson Cooper does this.
Kathleen Murray
The emphasis in contractions is on the
first syllable, and there is no "d" sound at the beginning of
the second syllable.
Didn't is DID-nt; couldn't is COULD-nt; shouldn't
is SHOULD-nt; hasn't is HAS-nt; hadn't is HAD-nt, etc.
Student is correctly pronounced STEWD-nt.
This question came to Mrs. B from an
anchor in Yuma:
There is a debate in our newsroom.
What is the correct pronunciation of the word "often"? Do we
use the "t," or not?
As Bryan Garner, author of A
Dictionary of Modern American Usage, puts it:
"The educated pronunciation is
AW-fen, but the less adept say AWF-ten."
Pretty snobby sounding, huh.
But who wants to be "less adept"?
God forbid.
Mrs. B hopes you'll see how often you can say often today,
without pronouncing the "t."
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