Burnettiquette

Ten things that surprise me...or maybe not

• Levi Johnston, former almost son-in-law to Sarah & Todd Palin and father of their only grandchild, exposed his junk for Playgirl magazine.
• Playgirl magazine still exists.
• In her new book, Going Rouge Rogue, Sarah Palin bit the hands that fed her. And relax, Palin fans. I'm neither bashing the GOP or hockey moms. You should know this already. But just in case, "Bit the hand" is just a figure of speech, not a comparison to a dog or any other mammal large enough to hold a hockey stick or wear lipstick. Anywho, setting aside your political leanings, you have to believe that any reining in done by McCain staffers during last fall's presidential election was done to help McCain - and therefore Palin - win the White House. To bash those staffers now over things like diet advice, wardrobe, Saturday Night Live, and media interviews is silly.
• The first missing kid whose picture was posted on the side of a milk carton is still missing 30 years later. Not making fun. It's a tragedy. But have you ever taken even 10 seconds to look closely at one of those milk carton pics and then kept an eye out for the kid? Me either. And I used to drink a lot of milk.
• In the "It was bound to happen" category: A young athlete with big potential did not drop out of college to turn professional. Nope, Jeremy Tyler broke a record. He dropped out of high school. That's right, Tyler, a 6'11" basketball phenom, quit San Diego High School after his junior year. You can't enter the National Basketball Association draft till you're 19. So the impatient Tyler stupidly signed a 1-year $140,000 (that's thousand, not million) contract with a pro team in Haifa, Israel, so he could polish his skills and raise his profile till he becomes eligible to play in the U.S. Here's the shocker: Tyler's Haifa experiment is going very badly A good crossover dribble is great. Tyler's suck-ups (parents, friends, etc.) should have told him reading is fundamental, 'cause at the rate he's going, he may never make it to the NBA.
• The U.S. Army gave a bogus story...at first about the circumstances surrounding the murders committed at Fort Hood recently by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan - everything from who took him down, to whether he'd made any declarations involving his religion, to whether he was alive or not, following the shooting. Why?
• Andre Agassi's early-to-mid 1990s power mullet was actually a pelt. I would have written about this sooner, like right after Agassi admitted it in his new book. But the shock was too great for me.
• This one falls into the Hell-must-exist-for-people-like-this category: A woman in Texas faked breast cancer, so she could collect donations and use 'em to pay for breast implants. She got the implants.
• Carrie Prejean has more sex tapes, eight total. So if the first that she admitted to was "the biggest mistake of (her) life," as she told Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel show, then where on the sliding scale of mistakes do the other seven tapes fall? Lesson: It's OK to take a moral stance on something, even if your stance is unpopular. If you're really principled, then popularity shouldn't phase you. On the other hand, before you take "principled" stands that involve finger-wagging, news conferences, and making the talk show rounds, you'd better make sure you don't have any closet skeletons that will negate your self-righteousness in the eyes of the general public. That's not caving in to popularity. That's just good sense. BTW, those of you, my friends, who always scold me for allegedly picking on sexually "free" people, leave me alone on this one. I'm not picking on Prejean for loving herself. But you gotta admit it was kind of very stupid to do it on tape, know the tapes were out there, and still go on a media blitz portraying herself as the picture of the new, modern, young "Christian soldier."
• This one from the Daily Mail in Britain: Universal Pictures, one of the film companies that frequently distributes to theaters worldwide movies so bad they might cause cancer, has been busted in the UK for deleting the images of African American actors Faison Love and Kali Hawk from promo posters for Couples Retreat. Asked to explain, Universal said it was innocently trying to "simplify" the poster for international audiences. Loosely translated, "simplify" in this context means "remove the scary black people so that our British audiences don't see the posters and get turned off to this film."

Ha ha ha ha! I shouldn't be laughing at this.

The Daily Beast has an article up right now discussing the number of advertisers who've fled Glenn Beck's Fox News Channel show recently and whether the departures hurt Beck or not, over the longterm. The hubbub was over Beck calling Pres. Obama "a racist" who "has a deep-seated hatred for white people," and then saying of the president less than two minutes later "I'm not saying he doesn't like white people."

Ruh?

But I digress. The headline above the story reads: "Beck Weathers Blows," as in Beck weathers the blows of protests and fleeing advertisers.

Clearly the Beast's headline writer hadn't heard of Beck Weathers. Seriously, Dr. Beck Weathers, who is actually a nice guy, made headlines in 1996 after he nearly died on a climb up Mt. Everest. He lost both hands and had his nose rebuilt Michael Jackson style. And now he's a well-respected motivational speaker.

So Beck Weathers does not blow. I won't pick on the Beast headline writer anymore. Truth is I'd have never known who Beck Weathers was if I hadn't written a story about another climber/motivational speaker a few months ago and came across Weathers while researching that story.

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How Not to Win Friends and Influence People

Those of you who've read my blog for more than a day know that one of my constant pet peeves is stereotyping out of context and uninformed broad generalizations.

It's a conversation killer. It's a negotiation killer. It's a healthy compromise killer. It's a trust killer, and an understanding killer. If we were talking romance right now, I'd say it - the stereotyping and broad generalizing - is a deal breaker.

I try to make it clear regularly that no one is ever going to typecast me as being "conservative" or "liberal" or all "pro" this or all "anti" that. I'm pro good sense, no matter what it "looks" like.

So, I was amused Monday evening to receive the following blog comment from a reader identifying himself as "Al Charteer," in response to my post announcing my new Metro column:

I'll be in your corner until the second you become a "black columnist" instead of a "colunist."

If you decide to be the champion of black causes or Obama or the race card, I'm out. If you decide to be the champion of all people, including whites, Hispanics and conservatives, I'm for you.

Truth knows no race or political leaning. Truth is deserving of a champion. Be that.

Hmmm, so let me get this straight, Al Charteer, in order to exhort me to not be a racist, and to not be a "black colunist (sic)," and to not play "the race card," you write me a note that assumes from its start that I fit any or all of your stereotypes.

Well, I hate to disappoint you, my friend, but you might want to get out of my corner now, 'cause I'm going to be a "black columnist."

I have no choice. Like my grandfather told me when I was a kid, there are only two things that I will always be 100% certain of at all times: that I am black, and that one day I'll die. Those are the two elements of my life that will never change, unless that machine Walt Disney supposedly slept in really does exist. And no amount of scrubbing is going to alter the color of my skin. Turning white didn't do Michael Jackson any good.

Get used to it.

Yes, I'm being coy. I know by "black colu(m)nist," you mean a stereotypical liberal who fits your description of a soldier in a vast leftwing media conspiracy, a colu(m)nist who uses his pulpit to preach that the world revolves around African Americans and African American "issues." I know that's what you meant, because your entire comment in context proved it. But what I'm trying to demonstrate to you and your ilk is that your arguments - whether baseless or legit - are indictments of culture, not color. Sadly, you don't get that because you assume that people who look a certain way are all but guaranteed to think, act, and opine a certain way.

You can't have read my prior opinions on anything. If you had, you'd know that my opinions run the gamut from right to left, and most often rest firmly in the middle. And you would know that trying to tell me that truth knows no race or political leaning is like trying to tell a golfer that his goal is to hit the little white ball into the cup: unnecessary. It's like me feeling the need to tell you that "white ball" isn't a display of my racist feelings toward white balls. It's just a common sense analogy about golf.

So, I am a black columnist, and as I've always done with my opinions, I'll cover a wide range of social issues - sometimes issues of specific interest to black people, or Latino people, or white people, or Albino people, or men, or women, or children, or porn stars with one leg, or roosters who only crow on a lunar equinox, or politicians, or people who make assumptions about writers whose work they're not familiar.

Did I say get used to it, already?

PS. Follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

Self-serving news

So, in addition to writing feature articles, I'm now adding "columnist" to my shingle. Starting Friday, my weekly column will run on the Metro section front of The Miami Herald. And if you don't get the paper, you can read it each week at MiamiHerald.com. I'll also be doing a weekly live chat on Friday afternoons with anyone who wants to question, challenge, agree, or just mix it up with me about that day's column, or anything else that's relevant in the news. Read all about it, here, or watch a short piece on it, here.

I am excited, no doubt about that. Most of you know the difference, but for the few stragglers, let me explain. In news articles you (should) find a combination of facts and details tracked down and compiled by the reporter, with context - who, what, when, where, why, etc.

In columns and editorials, and the like, a news writer gives his opinion on those facts and details, and that context.

So until now, my blog has been the only place I've bee able to share my opinion, since it was imperative to keep it out of my "news" articles. Now, I'll keep up the blog, but I'll be weighing in on life in South Florida and, when it's relevant, how life down here relates to life elsewhere.

PS. Follow me: http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

Here's how you know that Michael Jackson coverage has peaked...

When a television network does a feature on whether or not Bubbles the Chimp, Jackson's old sidekick, is aware of his former owner's death, and how Bubbles even moves like Jackson.

No joke, NBC's Today Show did this, this morning. And that's all I'll say about it 'cause Bubbles lives in a retirement home in Florida. And with my luck the Miami Herald will send me there, and tomorrow you'll be reading a story in your local paper about a Miami Herald reporter getting beaten half to death by a moonwalking chimpanzee. And somehow cellphone video of the beating will find its way to YouTube. And I'll be clowned for the rest of my life.

http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

State of Play: Worthy Newspaper Film

I have always had a love/hate relationship with newspaper movies.

And by "always" I mean the 15 years since I decided I wanted to be in the news biz and started paying attention to how it was portrayed...by practitioners and by Hollywood.

His Girl Friday? Great movie. Well acted and funny as hell.

Absence of Malice? Brilliant in how it gives the reporter a sense of humanity as she struggles with the ethics of getting too close to a story subject.

The Paper? Funny, but heroic, about a newspaper editor struggling to decide whether to stay at his gritty tabloid or take a job with the more prestigious paper across town.

All the President's Men? C'mon.

I could go on with the good ones. But then there's stuff like Never Been Kissed, starring Drew Barrymore as a school-marmish copy editor with her own office and personal assistant.

Trust me when I tell you that on the planet Earth, the only non-management copy editors with their own offices and personal assistants are those whose parents own the newspaper where they work.

And then there's I Love Trouble. I thought the chemistry between Nick Nolte, a star columnist for a Chicago paper, and Julia Roberts, a reporter for a rival paper, was great. But the newsroom scenes, the jargon, etc., was all really over the top.

So when I was asked to attend a screening of State of Play, a new film about a star reporter (Russell Crowe), a congressman (Ben Affleck), a bunch of murders, several parallel investigations, etc., I was initially reluctant. How good could a film about newspapers be, when the guy playing the star reporter sometimes seems to hate reporters in real life?

But I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The plot was good, the twists kept me focused on the film. And Russell Crowe played a good reporter.

And much of the newsroom chatter was reasonably accurate. At one point during the screening I whispered to the old guy next to me "We don't talk like that in newsrooms." He leaned toward me and replied "Son, I may have retired from the news business before you born. But yes we do!"

There were a few scenes that made me cringe and say no way that would happen at a real paper. Helen Mirren was a little over the top in her portrayal of the fictional Washington Globe's executive editor, and Rachel McAdams played the young, smug blogger to perfection. But overall the film was good. I wrote Tuesday night after seeing State of Play that one day after it grows on me, I might even consider it All the King's Men 2.0, or at least a very good effort.

That's all I'll say about State of Play, 'cause I don't want to step on the toes of one of the Miami Herald's very capable film critics who reviewed the movie.

I will say I find it ironic though, that my efforts to interview State of Play screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Tony Gilroy were welcomed but later rebuffed because someone among the several layers of publicists for Universal Pictures didn't think either man had time to participate in yet another...newspaper article.

A parting question: Are newspapers being featured prominently in film these days (State of Play, The Soloist) because Hollywood thinks consumers are interested in seeing dramatizations of fading glory, or are they being featured as curiosities, hip relics - sort of the way classic car enthusiasts show off their 50-year-old rides and rock stars strut in their 20-year-old thrift-store-bought clothes?

BTW, follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett.

Journalistic Dilemma

OK, this is one of those "what would you do, and why?" scenarios.

My hometown newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot, has a short article online today about the death of a man who used to be the general manager of the dominant local TV station.

By all accounts Mario Hewitt was a nice guy and well liked at WVEC-TV, Hampton Roads, Virginia's ABC affliate, the station he managed.

Hewitt died of cancer recently in Houston, where he'd moved in the late 1990s after resigning his job at WVEC.

The short story in the Pilot identifies Hewitt, quotes former colleagues saying he was a great guy, mentions his resignation back in the day....and mentions that while he cited "personal reasons" for resigning, he had been charged with DUI two weeks prior to resigning.

A reader commenting on the story scolded the Pilot and said they should have left out the DUI part and that the story would have still been "truthful" without it.

Since the day I started reporting full-time 12 years ago - almost 13 - readers have asked me: "Why did you leave such-and-such out of your article?" or "Why did you include this?"

In a blog post a few days ago, I used as an example a story about an article I wrote last fall, in which I mentioned that a neighborhood hotel had been visited by police more than 300 times last year.

One blog friend who commented on that post expressed sadness for the hotel owner whom my blog friend apparently believed had succumbed to the economy and was struggling to maintain the place.

But the truth is the hotel owner didn't succumb to the economy. The hotel has been overrun by prostitutes and Johns and drug dealers and abusers for upwards of 10 years. And the owner? She still lives in luxury in a wealthy community less than 10 miles aways and has rebuffed repeated police efforts to force her to clean the place up.

My point in explaining the hotel story further is there was no way for my blog friend to know there was more to the story than simply a failing hotel, if I didn't include it. There's always a back story, always something else that could be added to explain a scenario, or that could be left out.

When it comes to writing about people's deaths, I confess I used to be the biggest chicken, always that person who only reluctantly included details of the dead person's past indiscretions - unless, of course, those indiscretions define that person. If John Doe is a nice but plain guy his whole life, a devout church deacon, until at age 50 he decides to become a porn star or he decides to convert to Satanism and begin biting the heads off of goats, trust me. I'm gonna include that goat biting or porno in John Doe's obit. And if his friends and neighbors don't like it, they're gonna have to deal. Biting goats and doing porn may not be crimes, but when they're out of character for a person they become memorable.

 The other exception, of course, is when you're writing about a dead person who committed a terrible crime or multiple crimes. You have to include that stuff.

When I first started reporting, I had an editor who would read every obit I wrote - fortunately, I only had to write a few before moving on to writing mostly about living people and people who died as crime victims, not from natural causes -  and would ask "So what, this person was perfect?"

Then we'd do a dance in which I'd groan about feeling awkward about writing ill of the dead. And he'd parry my steps by arguing that if what good we do helps define us, then what bad we do helps define us too....even if it's one-time bad or just a smidgen of bad.

Eventually, he convinced me and I stopped fighting it. But to this day I still get that question: Why did you have to include that in your story?

You tell me. Don't tell me what you'd do if you were a journalist. Tell me what you think as a reader. Include the deceased gentleman's DUI, or leave it out? Why?

Real Talk: What's up with newspapers?

Do you recall that one girl in high school who was too friendly?

I mean the sweet girl who really just wanted to be liked, the girl whom all the jocks would take behind the gym after school to rehearse birds-and-bees lessons, but they would never take her out on a date or acknowledge her in a crowded room full of other students.

Nowadays, newspapers are that girl. And everyone who takes their too often free content online for granted is a jock.

Yeah, I know that this example will not convince anyone anytime soon to offer me the job of modernizing Aesop's Fables, but it's the analogy I gave a reader who emailed me several days ago to ask the question in the headline of this post. So it'll have to do.

The reader's question was prompted by news that my paper, the Miami Herald, had slashed jobs this week in order to help parent company McClatchy cut overall budget, and by news about other papers on the verge of disaster from coast to coast.

My first instinct was to reassure the reader, the way a parent who'd just lost his job (or taken a pay cut) reassures his teenager that everything will be alright and that the people still want the news done well and delivered in some form of print...just not necessarily on paper.

But then I thought about it and decided that sort of response to the reader would have been disingenuous.

Things have change inside and outside newspapers.

For example, I've been trained to shoot and edit video now. Ten years ago if an editor had asked me to even consider such training I'd probably have given a saditty answer to the effect of "I'm a writer. Let someone else do it."

Now, for the sake of maintaining until the news delivery method that will save the industry is found, I'm ready to get my commercial driver's license and add newspaper delivery truck driver to my repertoire.

So instead of coddling, I figured I'd tell the reader some of the truth...as I see it:

• The radio and TV talking heads' argument that newspapers are struggling 'cause average Americans stopped reading them 'cause papers are politically biased is bogus. I'm not saying there isn't some bias sometimes in some papers. But newspapers are struggling 'cause the economy is terrible and businesses aren't advertising as much as they used to. If it was a matter of simply reaching the public, in South Florida, for example, the Herald still reaches more consumers than any other local media outlet, print or broadcast. But it's more than reach. Businesses don't have big ad budgets. 
• Newspapers are also hurting 'cause they haven't figured out how to fully capitalize on Internet traffic. TV stations and networks haven't figured that out either. But you wouldn't know it, since they never report their problems the way we do. True, only the Googles and Yahoos and porn companies of the world are making big bucks online these days, but if I had my way every news organization in this country - print and broadcast - that has a Web site would set a date and time and simultaneously begin charging for content. It might stem the tide of content theft and "borrowing" between organizations. And if there's no free alternative online, then maybe readers will finally, even if grudgingly, begin registering on their favorite sites and setting up billing accounts. You can't get the paper at the newsstand for free. You can, but only if the guy running the newsstand isn't looking. And you can get a free subscription to some papers, but only until that trial period runs out and you start getting the bill in the mail. So why shouldn't you pay to read it online? Some working person researched, gathered, and compiled that info.
• With our society becoming one big reality TV show, where consumers like to feel they have a connection to the people on the screen, I sort of feel like newspapers failed to borrow from the broadcast news formula and offer up print journalists as "personalities," so readers could follow and establish a loyalty to their favorites, the same way they do with favorite evening news anchors. Yes, newspapers have columnists and in recent years bloggers. But they're still a minority of print journalists.

Again though, I'm not a professional analyst. I'm just a squirrel trying to hoard a few nuts in case, as Young Jeezy says, "it's gonna be a cold summer."

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get "fitted" for a mop handle and learn to operate the scaffolding that the window cleaners use.

Just kidding...I think.

PS. Follow me at http://twitter.com/jamesburnett

Drivel from Wall Street

No one has ever acused me of being a financial expert. In fact, until the past couple of years no one has ever accused me of doing a very good job balancing my checkbook.

But I (sometimes) know the difference in fog in the air and smoke being blown up my tailpipe.

And I just read at the Daily Beast what I think might be the ballsiest and whiniest and most ridiculous defense I've seen to date of the fatheads on Wall Street who helped facilitate the current financial meltdown.

CNBC's Charlie Gasparino, in an article headlined Freakout on Wall Street, defends continued big salaries for the people running the almost-failed-banks-turned-welfare-banks on Wall Street, with two detailed arguments based on the following premises:

• That little guys - waiters, cab drivers, bartenders, etc. - will suffer if high rolling folks on Wall Street don't eat out and drink out and spend money in restaurants and taverns, and so on.
• That by limiting the pay of Wall Street's top bosses at companies surviving on tax payer dollars, "we" will drive those companies' "best and brightest" to other companies that won't limit their pay. 

I know it's inevitable that some of my friends who are 1,000 times better versed in this topic than me (You know I appreciate you Monty!) will scold me and remind me that this meltdown may have well been seeded in the 1960s.

Still, this has to be the weakest appropriation of trickle down economics theory I've ever seen. Waiters will suffer if the greedy - Gasparino's word, not mine - don't eat out as much?

Waiters and the like are already suffering. And you know, that's what happens when you take government AKA tax dollars to run your business: you invite the government AKA custodians of tax dollars to tell you what you can and can't do with that money. Dance with the Devil...

And what's up with this "best and brightest" argument? John Thain, former CEO of  Merrill Lynch - the guy who spent $35,000 on an old toilet that you can't even relieve yourself in - made that argument on CNBC too.

"Best and britghtest" are usually responsible for companies' success. I want no parts of the kind of "best and brightest" that ran Citibank and Merrill Lynch, among others, into the ground.

If I'm running Bank B, a successful bank that hasn't folded and isn't operating on tax dollars, and you, former head of the now defunct Bank A, apply for a job with me, why would I want your plague on my payroll? I'm gonna avoid you like an infectious disease.

You know who on Wall Street should get megabucks? Those folks running those banks that haven't applied for welfare.

20 Questions

1. How come Wesley Snipes, after several years of not paying income taxes is probably going to jail, and Tim Geithner, after several years of not paying some of his income taxes, is rewarded with the position of Treasury Secretary? Shouldn't Kung Fu Wes' at least be offered a cabinet post?

2. Isn't it a great country that we live in, where Joaquin Phoenix can try his hand at rapping, and not get thrown into a bear trap or the lion pen at the zoo for his awful, and apparently fake efforts?

3. Is Britney Spears genuinely crazy and immaturely nasty, or just inconsiderate of her younger fans, for releasing a song titled If You Seek Amy? Say it real fast, and you'll get the innuendo. And consider a line from the chorus: "All the boys and girls want to If You Seek Amy." Tsk, tsk.

4. Speaking of bear traps, why hasn't Britney been thrown in one for making that song?

5. How is it that my anti-media conspiracy theorist buddy lectured me the other day on biased interviews in which the interviewer is an obvious fan of the interviewee, but at the same time applauded the interview Cindy McCain gave to dailybeast.com...in which her own daughter was the interviewer?

6. I don't condone picking on anyone's weight, but why is it that Hollywood types actively crave your adoration when they're svelt, but don't want you to criticize them if they gain an ounce? It's what happens when you put yourself in a glass house.

7. Why have so many national media outlets done full story segments on the Cali college student, who will go unnamed here, who's auctioning off her virginity for cash? We don't do full-feature stories on other prostitutes' first gigs.

8. Why, when people are canceling their cable and satellite TV plans to make budget, is the federal government about to mandate a switch to all-digital TV broadcasting - a move that will require all viewers to buy a digital converter box for their rabbit ears or buy cable and satellite plans?

9. How is it possible that Flo Rida, the sing-songy rapper who made the catchy hit tune Low, defied the one-hit-wonder curse and produced the Dead or Alive-sampled hit Round Round?

10. When will I be recognized as a fashion plate and creative genius?

11. How did I, a former geek - that's right, former - who's now cooler than the other side of the pillow, end up with a hot wife?

12. How did this guy pass the psych exam required by most police departments before they hand out guns and badges?

13. I know he didn't break any laws, but Portland, Ore., Mayor Sam Adams made out with a 17-year-old and then weeks later, when the kid turned 18, began having sex with the kid, and later lied repeatedly about the whole affair. So why does Adams still have a job? And why do I suspect, out of desperation to keep his job, he will eventually start accusing critics of being anti-gay?

14. Have you seen a better example of Karma lately than this headline: Racoon bites off rapist's penis?

15. Can the Black Artists Association member who criticized Michelle Obama for not wearing a black designer's dress to the inaugural balls swear that their wardrobe is populated by clothing exclusively or even mostly made by black designers? If not, can they please not whine about the First Lady's clothes?

16. Is Bart Simpson going to start sending subliminal Scientology recruitment messages across your TV screen?

17. If the death penalty is not made an option in the Casey Anthony murder trial, what message will that send to other inmates on Florida's death row - (allegedly) murder your child as opposed to a stranger and all you get is life?

18. Do Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's recorded comments about wishing to cash in on Pres. Obama's Senate seat really make him criminal or just dumb?

19. Setting aside partisan political leanings, with all the trouble this country is in right now why is Pres. Obama spending even one second verbally sparring with a talk show host? It's a question I'd also ask, BTW, if we were talking about Pres. McCain and a leftwing talk show host.

20. An aerial acrobat fell to his death yesterday in Arizona. That's an extreme sport. To the people calling for a ban on mixed martial arts and boxing: Are those sports really more dangerous than standing up and doing tricks outside a moving airplane?