Once a Newsman…

Jeff Bercovici of Forbes has penned an encomium to journalism as being the best job ever.

Listen up, people, the man knows whereof he speaks.

Jeff is a reporter and columnist, so he comes closest to being what we mean when we say journalist, but there are a lot of other hands-on jobs in “journalism” that carry the same perks of variety, travel, learning, excitement, meeting interesting people, etc. You may never get rich, but you’ll never wake up on Monday morning thinking “another week of the same old same old.

I for one never studied Journalism, but, nevertheless, spent the sixties at CBS News, entering through the production portal (where my prior expertise lay), progressing from production supervisor to special events producer to news operations executive, over what turned out to be the most rewarding decade of a highly rewarding professional career. I left it only because ambition to move up the TV industry ladder eventually got the better of me.

Through daily exposure to the editorial side, and by osmosis, I gradually absorbed the ethos of news-gathering and distribution which, if it didn’t turn me into a capital-J journalist, it certainly made me into a newsman with all the curiosity and healthy skepticism that come with the job, and which remain with me nearly a half-century later. Bloggo, ergo sum.

The job market may be tough at the moment, and the print media fighting for its life, but I’d urge my contemporaries to encourage their grandkids who may be entering the job market -- if they have the inclination and talent –- to go for what may indeed be the best job ever.

NIMBY© Copyrighted by Save Our Sound

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound today filed with the U.S. Copyright Office to protect the acronym NIMBY from unauthorized use by individuals, publications or organizations other than itself.

Claiming precedent, APNS president Audra Parker cited a statement made by Alliance board member, William I. Koch, in 2006 when –- in reference to the proposed offshore wind farm -- he told Forbes’ reporter Tim Doyle, “I don’t want this in my backyard” [emphasis added].

Multi-billionaire Koch made further headlines in 2011 when he purchased at auction for $2.1M the only authenticated photograph of William McCarty aka William Bonney aka Billy the Kid, an unflattering tintype that belies America’s longstanding romanticized image of the Kid as portrayed by Robert Taylor, Paul Newman, Kris Kristofferson, Donny Wahlberg and countless other Hollywood sex symbols.

Save Our Sound views “Not in My Back Yard’ “as a rallying battle cry reflective of the contemporary zeitgeist”, said Parker, shrugging off suggestions that it is more often perceived as the credo of the insular privileged.

Reports that this column intends to copyright the disclaimer, “lirpa loof” are unfounded.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

How wry is it that the much ballyhooed star of Disney’s new all time worst box office debacle, “John Carter”, is a guy named Kitsch.

“Creative” Writing

For those of you more than casually interested in the journalistic considerations inherent in the ongoing saga of monologist Mike Daisey vs. the truth, the surprisingly compelling non-fiction book, The Lifespan of a Fact, might be worth a read.

In it, a doggedly earnest young magazine fact-checker named Jim Fingal goes mano a mano with the essayist John D’Agata over D’Agata’s casual approach to matters of actual fact in a non-fiction piece he wrote about a Las Vegas suicide.

The book consists of 122 pages of an often acerbic e-mail dialog between Fingal and D’Agata, interspersed with excerpts from the essay in dispute.

“What emerges,” per publisher W.W. Norton’s blurb, “is a brilliant and eye-opening meditation on the relationship between ‘truth’ and ‘accuracy’, and a penetrating conversation about whether it is appropriate for a writer to substitute one for the other.”

I well recognize that this sort of thing is not everyone’s cuppa tea; one man’s “compelling” is another man’s meh, but you’ll know after a few pages whether or not it’s something you’ll want to stick with to the end. Spoiler Alert: the writers do not — en fin — resolve the issue for you; the work is, as blurbed, a meditation from which you may draw your own conclusions.

Six Degrees of Separation

I guess you have to be a retired media exec with lots of time on his hands like me to have noticed (or cared) that Limbaugh’s syndicator -- who may well have provided the arm-twist necessary to generate an apology –- is Premiere Networks, owned by CC Media Holdings, owned by Clear Channel Communications, owned by Bain Capital, which has close ties to a well-known Republican presidential aspirant.

Death of a Blogger

Wish I had the words to properly convey my respect and admiration for Rami Ahmad Al-Sayeed, a Syrian video blogger who so capably earned and richly deserved the designation “citizen journalist”, an epithet claimed by many but merited by few.

Rami was killed by mortar fire this week while trying –- via his video blog syriapioneer -- to get the word out to the world about the genocide that is taking place in Homs while society looks on, seemingly helpless to arrest it.

Those of us who follow the profession of journalism, either as practitioners or as acolytes, might pause a moment to honor his selfless devotion to his chosen calling. For details see: http://blog.bambuser.com/2012/02/we-mourn-loss-of-very-brave-syrian.html

Ars Gratia Artis

We note in The Barnstable Patriot that the management of the “new” Barnstable Municipal Airport is throwing a bash on February 15 for the Hyannis, Yarmouth and Cape Cod chambers of commerce. Also invited is the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.

No doubt some Cape Cod artists will see this invitation as a shallow make-nice gesture to an organization which is helping to facilitate the decoration of the airport by encouraging local artists to loan their work gratis.

This corner has no dog in the fight, but we suggest that as a step to help diffuse the contretemps, the airport might also invite the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, repository of a contrary view, as a show of good faith. They might even go so far as to re-cast the event as an art-acquisition fund-raiser.