TENDING THE SMALL GARDEN
 Aides
for President George Bush have reconfigured Madison Square Garden
to make it appear as small and intimate as possible, including raising
the floor nine feet, all with an eye toward presenting Mr. Bush
on an equal footing with the delegates who will surround him.
He will make his acceptance speech
Thursday night from what aides say is the lowest rostrum in modern
presidential convention history.... a deliberate move to keep him
from appearing to be "above" the other convention
participants.
 The hall was also configured so that the
dozens of television cameras lining it will pick up the message of the
day on signs strategically placed along the perimeter of the
floor. For good measure, the convention planners have built a screen
that can rise behind the podium and flash the message directly into the
camera.
That doesn't mean that the television
networks are always willing participants. David Bohrman,
executive producer of CNN's convention coverage, said he was
trying to select shots that did not include the president's campaign
slogans, though he said it was sometimes unavoidable.
"We still control where the cameras
point," Bohrman
told the New York Times.
<<<>>>
 CONVENTIONEERING
FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Michael Moore... filmmaker,
rabble-rouser, guest columnist for USA Today... wandered into a
dangerous New York neighborhood Monday.... Madison Square Garden.
For more than two hours, he created a comet's
tail of commotion. Holding a rolling news conference as he dragged a
clot of some 70 reporters past a growing wave of security officials and
hostile conventioneers, Moore
came close to disrupting the entire convention.
"Moore, you loser! Get
out!" shouted Dan Willard, an alternate delegate from
Maryland.
When Sen. John McCain called him
"a disingenuous filmmaker" during his speech, Moore
said, "Thank you, John McCain."
No offense taken. Only dollar signs.
<<<>>>
PREACHING TO THE CHOIR
 If Sinclair's ratings figures are
to be believed, roughly 1.8 million American adults watch Mark Hyman's
politically skewed commentaries every day on NewsCentral
broadcasts nationwide.
That puts him in the company of
far-better known pundits, such Fox Jazeera's Bill O'Reilly or Sean
Hannity, and far more than Joe Scarborough on MSNBC.
In fact, that audience would make Hyman one of the most widely
watched conservative television commentators in the country.
This week, Hyman, 46, is
contributing taped NewsCentral editorials from the Republican
National Convention. He did much the same thing from Boston during
the Democratic National Convention, but there was one difference: each
pummeled John Kerry or his Democratic allies for perceived
shortcomings. 
His commentaries from New York are
unlikely to criticize President Bush, who has received
significant financial contributions from the Sinclair Broadcast Group
and chief executive David Smith.
"My commentaries are my own
alone," says Hyman. "I say exactly what I
believe."
<<<>>>
The three major broadcast networks will
provide an hour of coverage tonight beginning at 10. Primetime speakers
include First Lady Laura Bush, Education Secretary Roderick
Paige and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
<<<>>>
Some Al-Jazeera staffers say they've
been manhandled by staffers for New York Governor George Pataki.
<<<>>>
Emily Pataki, the eldest of Governor
Pataki's four kids, has been hired by "Extra"
to
do convention celebrity interviews. Her first was with President
Bush's press-shy daughter, Barbara. Her second was with the
Governor of New York.
<<<>>>
Tiffany McElroy, who joined WPIX-11-WB
last week, got a plum assignment on her first day...co-anchoring the
station's "WB11 Morning News" from Madison Square
Garden with Craig Treadway.
<<<>>>
Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, Peter
Jennings, Ted Koppel, George Stephanopoulos, Mike Wallace, Dan Rather,
Bob Schieffer, Barbara Walters, Chris Matthews, Jeff Greenfield and
Charlie Rose...among others....attended
a private 68th birthday dinner for Arizona Senator John McCain
Sunday night at La Goulue.
<<<>>>
MSNBC's Chris Matthews's younger
brother Jim Matthews is a convention delegate, reports
Gail Shister.
<<<>>>
Because of security concerns, media types
are being relieved of umbrellas, slices of watermelon and, worst of all,
their cans of hair spray.
<<<>>>
FIVE STAR CODDLING
The 15,000 journalists in attendance are
getting five-star coddling from convention organizers, reports
Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post.
"We're trying to tell the press to
relax and enjoy New York," says Cindy Barshop, who runs the Completely
Bare Spa.
<<<>>>
"Who the hell are journalists to
interpret anything,” asks former CBS News reporter Joseph
Saltzman, who
now directs the University of Southern California’s Image of
the Journalist in Popular Culture department. “There is so
little good reporting. … You don’t get any information. You just get
people yelling at each other. … It’s Ebert and Roeper
going thumbs up, thumbs down.”
<<<>>>
Our peeps in Rhode Island tell us that Kathy
Gazda has resigned as news director of Freedom's WLNE-6-ABC
in Providence to become managing editor of Miami's Viacom O&O
WFOR-4-CBS. Her final day is September 15th.
<<<>>>
 New
news boss Lynn Heider has openly warned staffers at
Jacksonville's under-achieving Clear Channel duopoly WTEV-47-CBS
/ WAWS-30-Fox that anyone found contributing insider information to NewsBlues
will be summarily fired. We are told the station's internal e-mail
system is now being monitored.
 <<<>>>
Mike Nelson, longtime weather
guesser at Denver's KUSA-9-NBC, debuted
yesterday at his new home across the street at KMGH-7-ABC.
<<<>>>
KRISTYN FINDS WORK
 Yesterday
we told you that Charlotte news anchor Kristyn Hartman was
leaving WCCB-18-Fox to follow her husband to Chicago. Now we're
told that she's been hired as a per diem reporter at WBBM-2-CBS,
starting Sept. 13.
Hartman, who grew up in the
southwest Chicago suburb of Hickory Hills, graduated from Northwestern
University, near Chicago.
<<<>>>
Longtime pal Eric Deggans, who for
years has written about television for the St. Petersburg Times
and has often been criticized for allowing race to color his criticism,
now has the perfect platform for his agenda. Beginning this week, he
will serve on the newspaper's editorial board and relinquish his TV
column.
<<<>>>
SINCLAIR SPORTS CHANGES
Indianapolis insiders tell us that Chris
Denari, radio voice of Butler University and Indiana Fever
basketball, has agreed to become sports director of Tribune's
troubled WXIN-59-Fox.
In April, the station forced out main
sports guy Justin Allen in a workman's comp dispute... then fired
sports anchor Dave Benz in May for aiding Miami Heat video crew
members during the NBA Playoffs.
Chris Hagan will remain WXIN's
weekend sports anchor, a position he has held since 2001.
 <<<>>>
Sinclair's Baltimore flagship WBFF-45-Fox
has hired Amber Theoharis as its new weekend sports anchor,
replacing Brent Harris, who went to Comcast SportsNet. She
arrives from Sinclair's WSYX-6-ABC in Columbus, Ohio.
<<<>>>
SHIFTING DETROIT WEATHER
Our Detroit weather guesser friend Kim
Adams is leaving WDIV-4-NBC to follow her husband, who has
been assigned to U.S. Navy duties in Mississippi.
Kim's departure had the unexpected
result of causing veteran WDIV weather guesser Chuck Gaidica
to
give up his morning radio gig on WNIC-FM (100.3).
<<<>>>
DCRTV's
Dave Hughes reports that Baltimore and D.C. weather honey "Lexy
Hickok has gone missing from her gig at WMAR-2-ABC" and
has moved home to Minnesota.
<<<>>>
SEXY NEWS BEAST
 By anyone's standards, Anderson
Cooper is a handsome devil: those brilliant blue eyes,
the prematurely gray hair, that fine aristocratic nose. He's as far
removed from the creaky, craggy stereotype of a network anchor as might
be imagined.
Anderson Cooper is America's sexy
TV news beast, says
Canada's Globe and Mail.
<<<>>>
Jon Stewart's fake news schtick is
gaining popularity, but
is he losing his edge? How can he and his writers continue to
make fun of the very people now clamoring to get cozy on his studio
couch?
<<<>>>
PILING ON PAULEY
 Jane Pauley's debut episode of her
new syndicated talker was not treated kindly by Alessandra
Stanley in The New York Times, who wrote: "The premiere was
basically a hectic, crammed promotional ad for the episodes to follow.
And that treacly, overproduced effort to seduce viewers was more
repellent than the show itself is likely to be."
Adam
Buckman suggests in the New York Post that the perfect sponsor
for Pauley's show would be Kleenex because of all the
weepy stories.
<<<>>>
In the second episode of NBC's
prime time cartoon thingy "Father of the Pride,"
cartoon characters Siegfried & Roy make
a guest appearance on the cartoon "Today"
show....and cartoon lion Sarmoti (voiced by Carl Reiner)
says: "Katie Couric's got that
good-girl-but-probably-wild-in-the-sack thing goin' on."
<<<>>>
Major
League Baseball owners have approved financing for the "Baseball
Channel" with the expectation that cable systems and satellite
operators would start broadcasting it in 2005, most likely around the
All-Star Game or later.
<<<>>>
Golly, here it is August 31st
already and....well, this is how an Orlando anchor explained it....
"I don't know where the month has went," she gushed.
<<<>>>
 MRS.
BLUEZETTE'S GRAMMAR CORNER
"A PBS mind in an MTV world." MrsB@newsblues.com
Mrs. B addresses a subject that may have
you in a quandary the way it does one of your fellow newsies in the
great Northwest: Is the word "politics" singular or plural?
Our Grammar Corner reader checked the dictionary and says he's still
confused.
"Politics," according to both
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and the The Associated
Press Stylebook, can be either plural or singular.
Use a singular verb when you're talking about the study or science of
politics:
~Politics is the study of
government.
Use a plural verb when talking about
someone's practices.
~Her politics are awful.
Mrs. B knows that no one will ever say
that about your grammar.
But some of the people at "60 Minutes"?
Merv Block gives them a scolding at http://www.mervinblock.com/60minutes.html.
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