Beyond Landra Reid’s broken neck: A psycho trucker almost killed Carly and me. Tougher regs, anyone?
Landra Reid, wife of of Harry Reid, U.S. Senate majority leader, suffered a broken neck and back when a truck rear-ended the Honda minivan she was in. Good luck to Mrs. Reid in her recovery.
The Reid incident wasn’t scary just because it happened on I-95 here in Northern Virginia. A psycho trucker almost killed my wife and me five years ago on Route 77 in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’d love to know the fate of the automobile driver in the Australian video shown here.
In the Reid case, the trucker may or may not have been guilty of reckless driving; he deserves a fair trial. If nothing else, I’d like to know more about his safety record.
First-hand, however, I can tell you that the driver on Route 77 was a gung-ho psychopath, and I hate the thought of his zipping around in a scooter, much less driving a truck many times bigger than our 1988 Honda Civic. “An American Taliban,” a relative of mine described Mr. Monster Truck.
I wonder what MMT’s driving record was like. More importantly, could deregulation in the trucking industry have encouraged him to throw out the rule book—an issue that just might apply in Mrs. Reid’s case, too? Deadlines and speed and fatigue at work on I-95? Whatever the case, according to Public Citizen, nearly 5,000 Americans a year perish in “truck-related” accidents. An AAA photo illustrating the risks to motorists, especially in mountainous areas, is to the left—also see research from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
Google IS killing newspapers—but not in the way you might think
I mourn the decline of traditional newspapers, like The Telegram in The Solomon Scandals, despite their many flaws.
How many paper dailies—not just individual copies of them—will end up as trash?
And, yes, as many in the industry believe, Google is responsible to a great extent, but not in the way you might think.
Google’s news site actually draws traffic to newspapers. It isn’t Google’s fault that they’re not smart enough in many cases to monetize it. As a long-term retirement investment, I own a tiny speck of Google but would say precisely the same if I didn’t.
Here’s the real newspaper-killer. As noted yesterday by Hal Varian, Google chief economist, online news readers are spending an average of 70 seconds a day on this activity, compared to 25 minutes for a daily physical newspaper. I believe him. Online newspapers still are not interactive enough.
Danny Bloom’s newspaper obit song: Praise from Carl Bernstein and at least 1/2 an Ear
In the newspaper love department, I’m a piker compared to Danny Bloom, an American journalist living in Taiwan.
Check out a YouTube of a song he wrote, I Just Can’t Live (Without My Snailpaper). I linked to it earlier from my semi-traitorous post telling how my old factory town newspaper in Ohio could use the Internet more effectively.
Now I hear that Danny’s song has two new fans from the old Washington Star, for which he was a freelance cartoonist. “Delightful,” says Carl Bernstein, mentioned in the song, which in effect is an obit for the paper editions that the Web is imperiling.
The other fan is Diana McLellan—half of The Ear, the memorably impish gossip column at the Star. The Ear was a partial inspiration for The Elephant in The Solomon Scandals. Louise Lague was the other half.
“I bet you’re the only writer of a musical obit for newspapers in the world,” Ms. McLellan tells Danny, shown at right. “What energy! What rhythm! Long may you wave.”
So far, All Things Considered has not acted on Danny suggestion to play Snailpaper. That’s a mistake. Perhaps Danny can score at On the Media. Ideally, too, he can hear from someone else in his song, Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post in the Watergate days.
Related: Ning site for Washington Star alumni (where I found the newsroom photo) and a Facebook group and blog called “Overheard in the Newsroom.” Also see how Chris Meadows of the TeleRead e-book site reacted to Danny’s song.
Washington Post iPhone app panned by gutsy WaPo technology writer: Symptom of worse woes?
Seymour Solomon, the real estate magnate in my D.C. newspaper novel, is among the Washington Telegram’s biggest advertisers and pals around with both the publisher and the top editor.
But that doesn’t stop Jon Stone, the reporter in The Solomon Scandals, from investigating Sy’s Kong-sized political donations and federal office leases.
At the real-life Washington Post—not to be confused with my imaginary daily—who’s the equivalent of the intrepid Stone?
I nominate Rob Pegoraro (photo), the Faster Forward tech columnist. On consumer issues, Rob never seems to flinch, and yesterday he panned the Post’s new app for reading the paper on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad. Even with the app selling for just $1.99 for a year of use, he is telling his Post readers to “save your money for now.”
Rob—I met him a few years ago when he was checking out an early version of the One Laptop Per Child computer—is once again right. In overall aesthetics and usability, the New York Times reader for the iPhone shreds the Post app, which is just one more example of the L Street’s online woes. If the Post is still into “Creative Tension,” why not take it beyond the traditional newsroom? As a rule I prefer a gentle, friendly, nurturing management in the Theory Y style. But on presentation issues, the Post’s Net operation is really that bad. Time for some firings, even?
‘What Would Google Do’ with my old steeltown newspaper in Lorain, Ohio? Here’s what I’D do.
Related: Media critic James Fallows and Google News’ Josh Cohen will discuss digital-era journalism tomorrow, Wednesday, at 6:30 p.m., in D.C.
What if reporters didn’t take over from newspaper publishers, the tease I posted earlier? Suppose someone else did, Google. One old newspaper alum, Jeff Jarvis, has even written a book called What Would Google Do?
Guess which newspaper conglomerate has just bought copies of WWGD for “all publishers, editors and sales directors.” None other than the Journal Register Company, once singled out by a disgruntled ex-peon as “the most evil newspaper company on the planet.” It owns The Morning Journal, in Lorain, Ohio, fictionalized as “Marseilles” in The Solomon Scandals, my Washington newspaper novel. Eons ago, when the Journal thudded against doorsteps in the afternoons and lacked the M word in its name, I worked the poverty and public housing beats and wrote front-page features quaintly known as “blockbusters.” It was a time of black ink in the ledger, not just in the Lorain Journal’s news columns.
Well, good-bye to all that. In the early ‘70s when I was in Lorain and the Journal Register takeover was years off, daily circulation might have been around 35,000 and Sunday readership was heading toward 45,000. A quick, er, Googling showed the daily figure at 25,334 and the Sunday one at 27,248 for a six-month period ending in March 31, 2008. Thirty miles west of Cleveland and the hometown of Toni Morrison, Lorain is a classic Rust Belt city whose population has shrunk to around 70,000 from a peak of maybe 100,000. U.S. Steel’s pipe mill remains, but Ford has retreated to an existing plant in near-by Avon Lake. During the 2000 census, when the U.S. economy was healthier than today, 17 percent of Lorain’s people lived below the poverty line, compared to 12 percent for individuals in America at large. Just earlier this year, Barack Obama visited nearby Elyria and spoke on jobs and the Great Recession.
How to run a newspaper in a plucky but rundown town like Lorain and use Google-style strategies to stay solvent? In fact, the Journal Register Company, currently the owner of 19 dailies and more than 150 other publications, did enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company is out of of bankruptcy now, and in his blog, John Paton, the CEO since February 1, not only talks up the Jarvis book but also says the company has bought Flip video cameras for all reporters. The first Flips are already in use, with some spectacular results. Paton also promises an advisory board “to bring the outside to the Journal Register Company,” a stellar idea.
As part of the “outside,” then—and as a very small Google shareholder who has stuck with the company through the stock’s ups and downs—let me share my own thoughts.
