Saturday, August 18, 2012

Aug. 13-19 | Your News & Comments: Part 5

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32 comments:

  1. Were people wondering where Robin Pence ended up? She's with Choice Hotels International now.

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  2. With all the Chiquita chatter of late, from either Larry Beaupre's retirement announcement or the new movie GONE BANANAS, it's important to remember this about the Enquirer scandal:

    1. Back in 1998, the courts were still sending very mixed signals about whether listening in on a voicemail/answering machine constituted theft of corporate property.

    2. Mike Gallagher listened in on voicemails from a payphone around the corner from his house. Had he made the phone calls to retrieve the messages from ACROSS the Ohio River, at a payphone in the sovereign state of Kentucky, Ohio laws would not have applied. Changing the outcome and legal ramifications quite a bit.

    3. If a source hands you a key to his filing cabinet in HIS office, then leaves but says in the meantime you ought to open the cabinet and check out files because there is a great story there ... Is this WRONG? Well, the Enquirer was given the proverbial key to the filing cabinet (the executive gave his voicemail passcode to the reporter), so what is the difference here? Other than the medium by which the info was conducted -- by the transfer of info using phone lines, it became a wiretapping beef as well as alleged theft of company proprietary internal intelligence.

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  4. Re: Chiquita.

    Yeah, I think that everyone has realized by now that Gallagher's actions were arrogant and poorly thought through. It is sad, though, since he never really needed to hack the emails to produce the story.

    Does anyone know what he's doing these days? I heard he lives in a small town in Michigan and runs a Segway rental store ...

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  5. I would work for a year for free if Gary Watson was here. Don't give a damn about personality, we are desperate for someone like him. Gannett is known for shedding the best and keeping the mindless cheerleaders.

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  6. Yes, and Gary Watson was the BEST at shredding the best which is why GCI is in the shape it is today.....All that is left from the bench is the mindless cheerleaders you refer to. Gary and SCJ are the main culprits to blame for the GCI talent drain. For about a decade they ran off anyone with talent and rewarded heavily the yes Sue's you are wonderful Sue and let's go get a drink Gary's of the world.

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  7. As for Gallagher -- I'm trusting my memory here -- wasn't the person who handed over the "key" a FORMER Chiquita exec? Disgruntled at that? Worked with both of the project's reporters and Larry Beaupre in Westchester and I'm not buying that Beaupre didn't know the means Gallagher used to get the information. Beaupre was so detail-oriented that he'd send editors notes when a third-class city in the Midwest wasn't in the AP temperature report. He was so hands-on that there's no way he wouldn't ask about how the information was obtained and its source. Beaupre was and probably remains too good an editor to skip asking those questions of Gallagher.
    The shame is that as good an editor as he was, Beaupre was that lousy a person. There are hundreds whose careers and lives he and his buddy Mark Silverman ruined in Westchester who find some justice in Beaupre living out the last decade of his career in Scranton.

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  9. Gannett stock is only a few dollars away from Facebook's current price. hmmmmmmm

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  12. FACT: 'BANANAS' DOOMED FROM START

    Consider the 'leader' -- read carefully --

    http://tinyurl.com/8tqztl6

    ROTF, LOL. Possibly worse than Janet Cooke's time at "The Washington Post." Utterly laughable.

    As to federal v. state jurisdiction of the ILLEGAL acts -- is Kentucky law MORE SEVERE than the federal law? (Yeah, facts -- those annoying things that get in the way of ranting.)


    Hacking voice-mail not illegal? Isn't that what has torn apart Murdoch's empire?

    And two of Murdoch's top executives, under CRIMINAL indictment? Facing YEARS in JAIL?

    What would happens to law enforcement, who are caught doing that to YOU? Without a court order?

    OK, if you're not smart enough to understand, here it is in headlines --

    Immediate suspension
    loss of job
    arrest
    trial
    JAIL

    Gad, there is some real Einsteins, posting here.


    Got a beef with the banana boys?

    Bring it. Prove it.

    FACT: USDOJ already went through their files -- twice.

    Want to do something useful -- find out how U.S. Sen. Reid manages to get a net worth of $10MM on a salary of $180K/year. There's a real challenge.

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  13. You can blame Gary Watson for handing over USAT to Craig Moon. That's when the shredding began and the start of the end for the nations newspaper. Bet Moon and his "financier" Al Neuharth aren't so chummy any more.

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  15. GANNETT GONE BANANAS

    After reading this (pre-Web) --

    http://tinyurl.com/8tqztl6

    (note 7th graf)

    what is amazing that the 'banana idiocy' actually happened. Absolutely ridiculous, insane, and idiotic.

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  16. LOL. Every time I see comment after comment "deleted by blog administrator" I know the subject must be about ole GLW and SCJ....what a pair they were. In a poker game they always had a pair of 2's that would always beat 3 aces. They made the rules.

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  17. "I have news for all the journalists out there: It's a lot harder to go out and ask someone to spend their money or their company's money with your publication than it is to drive out the a fire, ask the who, what, when, where, and why and then drive back to the paper to write it up."
    -8/17/2012 2:56 PM

    Asking is easy. Getting the client to say yes is the hard part.

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  18. Watson was long gone after Moon was elevated to run Usa Today. Watson was a candidate for CEO until Mckorkindale,mthe consummate non news,an, selected boy wonder Craig (not in my backyard) Dubow, one of the worst To run a public company.

    and as we all know, Dubow begat the worst publisher in the history of national media. The one,the only David L. Huckster.

    Cannot wait to see the salutations at the 30th anniversary party. How he can look at himself in the mirror for the diaster he created, I will never understand.

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  19. Gary Watson may have had the personality of a wolverine, but he was a journalist who knew the news business inside and out, not a bean counter. When he was passed over for the top job in favor of Craig Dumbo, Gary picked up his marbles (and millions) and went home to sulk. The company has been in the clutches of klutzes ever since.

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    1. Cannot believe Watson, no matter his personna, was passed over for Dubow. dumbest move ever. and thats saying a lot for this company. can you imagine what he would say about this winning team?

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  20. 3:50 is right. Plus, Gary Watson loved to smoke and flick ashes around during site visits. Especially in non-smoking areas. Bully who surrounded himself with the same. Good riddance. He's living the good life with all his money. Bet he does not have many friends, though.

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  21. I can hardly wait for the paywall in Shreveport. That will probably jumpstart me to call and cancel my subscription. Why? It has been Aug. 18 for 7 hours now and shreveporttimes.com has one story from today's paper online. Everything else is from yesterday or before ... I've read those stories ... or at least some of them. Yes, I can keep checking in, but I like to start my morning reading the news ... and I have a full day ahead - one reason I like the printed product. Truthfully, though, shreveporttimes.com has been an epicfail on many levels for a long time. No longer are there consistent updates throughout the day (check out the web pages of ABC and CBS affiliates here folks - they do a nice job of that) and it really is not userfriendly. I digress though. Cancelling subscription and not paying for online. That's that. And, BTWw, Mr. Bailey, the letter we got about the paywall and all the extra The Times recently implemented to justify that - Watchdog is not new - it began with the redesign a year-and-a-half ago as did some of the other features you mentioned. Not only do you need to get out into the newsroom and community more, you need to familiarize yourself with your newspaper.

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  22. BANANA-GATE, REDUX

    To the non-professional journalists posting their "thoughts" about Banana-Gate --

    1) if you have so much evidence,

    2) and USDoJ has drilled through this twice with no indictment,

    please post your signed/sworn letter to Mr. Obama, asking for a special prosecutor in this matter.

    The proof is in the pudding. Either put up -- or STFU.

    Looking forward to your posting of the signed/sworn letter to Mr. Obama.

    BTW: hope your "evidence" was gathered in a matter better than this J-mess that the Gannettoids obviously missed --

    http://tinyurl.com/8tqztl6

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  23. Tennessean as stories that are headlined on the papers website that are just links to blogs like mine....actually have less info than mine.... OMG!!!

    http://data.tennessean.com/Tennessean/cobrand/index.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Fblogspot%2FwYHZ%2F%7E3%2FdKbSKeSh4e8%2Fb.html&h=9ae7094022d381ef218287dd90d852f0

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  24. PURPOSE V PORPOISE

    GLW and Big Al v the TV/CPA crew --

    IMHO, if you have to struggle to figure out what your "porpoise" is -- you are real trouble.

    You deliver eyeballs -- $tuff eyeball$ care about -- advertiser$ will follow. Advertisers don't advertise for any reason but RESULTS.(Be sure to write that down, Gracia)

    Reportedly, Big Al was especially clever in Miami with BIG stunts that got headlines. Luckily, none of them blew up on him, big-time.

    This is hard work. If it were easy, the CPAs and bankers wouldn't need content-creators.

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  25. Isn't it peculiar that GCI is run by that Little Rock mafia that was chased out of town? With whom did Susie sleep with . Just hookers and whores....

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  26. Is there a party planner in da house? Marketing cant even handle a 30th anniversary celebration. Amateur hour, as usual. How long has this been on everyone's plate?

    Unfucking unbelievable. I guess they're too busy not selling ads.

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  27. It would be rather awesome if the USAT 30th anniversary bigwig gala was potluck.

    Company would still provide ice cream. This is McLean, after all.

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  29. This place will go into lock down about 2 weeks before the 30th anniversary shindig because we know they can't handle two or three things at once.

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  30. No refreshments - but each attendee will receive complimentary foot massage DealChicken certificates.

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Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

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