First of all, I want to apologize to my fellow orcas, my trainers and all the people at Sea World who have been so supportive through all this. I realize that I cannot undo the damage that I have done to all the great things they have worked for so many years to achieve, and I am very sorry.

I also want to apologize to Dawn and to her family and friends. We had worked together for several years and I had no intention of doing anything to harm her or the relationship we had built. She was very special to me and will be impossible to ever replace, although I understand there are applications in the back of the room.

And I'd like to thank the ownership of Sea World for being so understanding throughout this ordeal and for supporting me at a very difficult time. They have gone out of their way to help me to do everything I can to make amends for this tragic event by filling the seats of Shamu Stadium as often as I possibly can in the weeks, months and, I hope, years to come.

However, before I resume my work here, I need to take some time to reassess my responses to certain stimuli and to undergo some impulse control therapy, and I hope that my fans will understand if it is a week or two before I am able to perform for them again.

Finally, I'd like to thank my wives and 14 children for standing by me. I want to apologize to them for the hurt that I have caused them through my own thoughtless actions, and I'd like to ask the press to please respect the privacy of my family throughout this difficult process, except when they are performing, at which time I hope you will take many photographs that can be licensed for promotional uses.

Thank you all for coming and, again, I am very sorry for everything that has happened and very eager to put this behind me and get back to work making Sea World the most exciting display of captive marine mammals anywhere in the world. Don't forget to stop in the gift shop on your way out.

And now, this message ...

Okay, it's a commercial. But it's a pretty interesting commercial from a guy who, until a couple of years ago, never did interviews or talked about his work. I know this because I did a series of interviews with cartoonists who were carried in the paper where I was then working, and he was the only one who turned me down, though he did so very politely.

Which means that I look at things like this and think, "If I'd only done that series about three years later, I'd have had the complete set of artists ..."

In any case, it's a commercial for something my handful of readers might actually want.

Moderate schools of Islam face pressure

It's worth remembering that not all of Islam is militant. In fact, most Muslims are not. In this report, students at a Sufi school in Yemen talk about their studies, and about the pressure their schools face under the eye of a critical Western world that sees the growth of al Qaeda in the area and does not understand or differentiate between types of Islam.

Here's a graphic I did just after 9/11 as part of my educational work at the Post-Star in Glens Falls, NY. We offered it to other papers and several published it in the days following that disaster. I don't know if it will blow up enough in a new window to be legible, but, if you click on it, you'll at least have a better chance of reading it.

 Your Time Will Come

Johnny Clegg and Savuka (1993)

WAQAMB' AMANGA MUS' UKUQAMB' AMANGA

[you were lying, do not tell lies]

WANGI QAMBELA AMANGA UFUNA UKUNGILAHLISA

ITHEMBA LAMI WEMAME!

[You told lies, trying to mislead me,

so that I would give up my faith and hope.]

WASHO NJALO! WATHI IKUSASA LETHU

SELIMNYAMA HAWU WASI QAMBELA AMANGA

[that is what you said -- you said that our future is hopeless,

our tomorrow is bleak, you were lying,

trying to mislead us]

NGEKE SIVUMA -- NGEKE SILAHLA ITEMBA

[No can do! we will never relinquish our faith]

Chorus:

KUZULONGA UKUTHI NINI? ASAZI!

[Everything will be all right --

It's just when this will be, we cannot know]

KUZOLONGA WENA 'MNGANE WAMI

[Everything will come right, I tell you friend]]

MASUKU LAHLA ITHEMBA LAKHO

[Do not throw away your hope]

MINA NGAPHA WENA NGAPHA SIZOYI BAMBA

[Me holding on one side, you holding on the other side

together we will pull through]

THINA NAWE, THINA NAWE

[you and me, you and me]

UMOYA WAMI ONAKELE

[my spirits are down]

WENA WEMTAKA ANTIE HAWU WANGI SHAYISA UVALO

[I say to you child of my aunt, you have caused me great fear]

WASHO NJALO! WATHI IKUSASA LETHU

SELIMNYAMA HAWU WASI QAMBELA AMANGA

[You told lies, trying to mislead me,

so that I would give up my faith and hope.]

WASHO NJALO! WATHI IKUSASA LETHU

SELIMNYAMA HAWU WASI QAMBELA AMANGA

[that is what you said -- you said that our future is hopeless,

our tomorrow is bleak, you were lying,

trying to mislead us]

NGEKE SIVUMA -- NGEKE SILAHLA ITEMBA

[No can do! we will never relinquish our faith]

Chorus:

KUZULONGA UKUTHI NINI? ASAZI!

[Everything will be all right --

It's just when this will be, we cannot know]

KUZOLONGA WENA 'MNGANE WAMI

[Everything will come right, I tell you friend]

KUZOLONGA 'MNGANE WAMI NGIYAKUTSHELA

[It will be all right my friend, I'm telling you]

WOZA WESIBINDI! UYAPHILISA UYABULALA

[come true courage, for it is you who gives

life and takes it away

MINA NGAPHA -- WENA NGAPHA SIZOYIBAMBA

[me on this side, you on the other,

we will hold it together]

UNGALALLELI LAW' AMANGA 'MNGANE WAMI

[don't listen to the lies of my compatriot]

OH SIZOBAHLULA THINA NAWA

[we will be victorious in the end, just you and me]

OH THINA NAMA

[just you and me]

I saw the Berlin Wall fall

I saw Mandela walk free

I saw a dream whose time has come

Change my history -- so keep on dreaming

Dream on dreamer, dreamer

In the best of times and in the worst of times

gotta keep looking at the skyline

not at a hole in the road

Your time will come, sister, your time will come

nobody's gonna rush history, we have to ease it along

-- just ease it along

http://johnnyclegg.de.vu

http://www.johnnyclegg.com

Soft opening

I'm still tinkering around with this new website, but I'm at the stage where I could use a little feedback before I try to promote it to a larger world.

It's a pretty simple idea -- just put up a strip each day, provide a little entertainment and maybe point two or three people a year to some of the collections that are available out there.

Comic strips, and their creators, are in an odd kind of bind. People like comics. They clip them out and put them on their refrigerators or tape them to their cash registers or pin them on their cubicle walls, but not enough people make the next step and actually support the artists by visiting their web sites or buying their collections.

So how do you try to raise that consciousness? It is a puzzlement. If they pursued comics more rabidly, they would find the collections on their own. But people tend to be passive. They see what is in the paper and they often like what is in the paper. They'll even bombard the editor with complaints if the cartoon is left out of the paper or, lord help us, dropped from the line-up.

But they don't see what is not in the paper, nor do they think much about it. And I don't know that this will help. But it will make me feel like I'm doing something, and, after all, isn't that what it's all about? The appearance of action?

Anyway, come visit www.comicstripoftheday.com and let me know what you think.

(We will now commence a stretch of 10 consecutive days during which there will be no funny or remarkable comic strips at all.)

Remembering a neighbor

Not me. I just got here, and I live about 25 miles too far away anyhow. But plenty of people down the road a bit lost a good neighbor recently.

Here's how they'd help him out.

Here's how they remember him.

Folks around here make good neighbors. And, yes, sometimes good fences come into it, to reference another New Englander. I think even Frost must have known, as Jerry clearly did, that you can always reach over, even climb over, a good fence.

If you throw a tantrum and nobody notices, does it count?

There is a lively and worthwhile discussion going on this week about CBS's decision to accept a Super Bowl advertisement from Focus on the Family that is reputed to carry a strong anti-abortion message. The issue isn't over the actual message of the ad so much as it is that networks have, in the past, rejected advocacy ads for the Super Bowl.

Specifically, CBS turned down an advertisement from the United Church of Christ in 2004 that showed minorities and gay couples being turned away at some churches but being welcomed to services at a UCC church.  According to this article, the reason given was a policy against any advertisement which "touches on and/or takes a position on one side of a current controversial issue."

CBS apparently has admitted to loosening the restrictions in light of the current economy, but still rejected an advertisement for a gay dating site, reportedly because the ad showed a gay couple celebrating a touchdown by kissing.

So the question is, has CBS decided to accept controversial ads, or just the ones somebody in their power structure doesn't consider controversial?

And, to be fair, the other question is, does the Focus on the Family ad say the things its critics claim? I add all the "reportedlys" to this because I happened to be working at an NBC affiliate when Donald Wildmon, a conservative clergyman noted for protesting indecency and blasphemy in the media, launched a campaign against a planned miniseries on the life of Christ, threatening sponsors with a boycott because the story was blasphemous, based on wild and baseless rumors of what the script contained. Today, Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth" is a staple of Christian broadcasting around Easter.

But let's assume the advertisement is what it is said to be: Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother saying how glad they are that she didn't choose to have an abortion when she was pregnant with him. I don't see how this ad is less controversial than an ad from the UCC saying, "All people are welcome here" or an ad for a dating service that suggests that gay couples kiss when they are happy. No more controversial, but also no less. And thus the question of why CBS is airing the ad deserves to be asked, and the question of fairness answered.

I would go farther and say that I approve of boycotts as a way of expressing displeasure, and, if people want to write to other Super Bowl sponsors and express their anger, individually or collectively, I would encourage them to do so.

However.

The comments section of the above-linked article on HuffPost contains threats by a number of outraged readers to not watch the game. I strongly dislike reading these comments because I kind of like to cherish the notion that  liberals enjoy some intellectual advantage over conservatives. This "that'll show'em" response makes it impossible for me to hold onto an attractive idea which I already knew wasn't true.

Yeah, don't watch their damn Super Bowl. That'll show'em!

But ... that'll show who?

Small gestures matter, even if they are only personal ones. But they have to carry some weight, however light. I carry on my own personal boycott of Arizona Iced Tea and its affiliated products, because they had proposed bringing out "Crazy Horse Malt Liquor" over the protests of his family, who asked them not to use the name, noting the damage alcohol has done to Indians, and, in particular, the staunch temperance views that their famous ancestor had held. The proposal fizzled anyway, but I'm not buying their damned drinks. Now, I don't think that's going to cause any comment in the board room at Arizona Iced Tea because (A) I haven't told them and (B) my dollar a month canned beverage habit isn't going to nudge their P/L by a whole lot one way or t'other. Still, it's money they aren't getting from me and to hell with'em.

That said, how on earth does not watching the Super Bowl show anybody anything? There is, in these outraged statements, a sense that, if we don't watch, their ratings will fall. Now, unless you happen to be a Neilsen family this week and are keeping a ratings diary, the only way this will happen will be if it turns out that television ratings are the result of magical spy satellites that track all our viewing habits.

Let me just say that nobody who believes that is in any position to make jokes about tin foil hats.

If you don't want to watch the game, don't watch. But don't claim you're making a statement, because you are not costing CBS a single ratings point or a single penny of revenue. You are not having an impact on Focus on the Family. You are not advancing the cause of women's right to privacy or to control of their bodies.

You are simply having a very private, very quiet hissy fit that will have no possible effect on anyone except, perhaps, those who have to hear about it at the office. Either do something or do nothing, but don't be silly.

And, finally, for those who wonder where God stands on all this, I submit this Owen Dunne cartoon, which ran in January, 2000, after the Rams won the Super Bowl over the Titans in a squeaker. (Click on it for a more readable size.) Of course, we all know that, if God doesn't give the New Orleans Saints a victory, it means He really did strike down the city as divine punishment for the pro-choice policies of America, just like Pat Robertson said.

Interview with Elfego Baca

(I was updating "Two Years Before the Mast" and needed to find pictures of well-off Mexicans, as the chapter I was editing involved Dana's first impressions of the locals. While poking around, I came across a reference to Elfego Baca (1865-1945), a lawman, gunfighter and attorney who was born in the US, in New Mexico, and thus completely wrong from both a geographic and temporal point of view. But so what? I began to read about him and was led to this interview done by Janet Smith for the WPA Writer's Project in 1936. The gunfight to which he alludes was an occasion when 80 cowboys surrounded a house he was in and poured lead into it for two days, at the end of which someone came and negotiated his surrender. He was unharmed, four of the cowboys were dead. He was an interesting chap, even more interesting than the fictional version of him that Walt Disney created. And if anyone would like to re-create the WPA as part of our economic recovery, I'd happily go out and get some oral histories like this for the next generation to enjoy.)


"I never wanted to kill anybody," Elfego Baca told me, "but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first."

Elfego Baca belongs to the six-shooter epoch of American history. Those were the days when hard-shooting Texas cowboys invaded the territory of New Mexico, driving their herds of longhorns over the sheep ranges of the New Mexicans, for whom they had little liking or respect. Differences were settled quickly, with few words and a gun. Those were the days of Billy the Kid, with whom Elfego, at the age of seventeen, made a tour of the gambling joints in Old Albuquerque. In the words of Kyle Crichton, who wrote Elfego Baca's biography, "the life of Elfego Baca makes Billy the Kid look like a piker." Harvey Ferguson calls him "a knight-errant from the romantic point of view if ever the six-shooter West produced one."

And yet Mr. Baca is not a man who lives in his past.

"I wonder what I can tell you," he said when I asked him for pioneer stories. "I don't remember so much about those things now. Why don't you read the book Mr. Crichton wrote about me?"

He searched about his desk and brought out two newspaper clippings of letters he had written recently to the Albuquerque Journal an local politics. The newspaper had deleted two of the more outspoken paragraphs. Mr. Baca was annoyed.

I tried to draw Mr. Baca away from present day politics to stories of his unusual past, but he does not talk readily about himself, although he seemed anxious to help me. Elfego Baca is a kindly courteous gentleman who is concerned to see that his visitor has the coolest spot in the room.

He brought out books and articles that had been written about him, but he did not seem inclined to reminiscing and answered my questions briefly. "Crichton tells about that in his book" or "Yes, I knew Billy the Kid."

Finally I asked him at random if he knew anything about the famous old Manzano Gang which I had frequently seen mentioned in connection with Torrance County.

He replied that he broke up that gang when he was Sheriff of Socorro County.

"There were ten of them," he said, "and I got nine. The only reason I didn't get the other one was that he got over the border and was shot before I got to him. They used to go to a place near Belen and empty the freight cars of grain and one thing and another. Finally they killed a man at La Jolla. Contreros was his name. A very rich man with lots of money in his house, all gold. I got them for that. They were all convicted and sent to the pen."

Mr. Baca settled back in his chair and made some remark about the late Senator Cutting whose photograph stood on his desk.

I persisted about the Manzano Gang. "I wish you'd tell me more about that gang. How you got them, and the whole story."

"Well," he said, "after that man Contreros was shot, they called me up at my office in Socorro and told me that he was dying. I promised to get the murderers in forty-eight hours. That was my rule. Never any longer than forty-eight hours."

Mr. Baca suspected certain men, but when a telephone call to Albuquerque established the fact that they had been in that city at the time of the killing, his next thought was of the Manzano Gang.

Accompanied by two men, he started out on horseback in the direction of La Jolla.

Just as the sun was rising; they came to the ranch of Lazaro Cordova. They rode into the stable and found Cordova's son-in-law, Prancasio Saiz already busy with his horse.

"Good morning," said Elfego, "what are you doing with your horse so early in the morning?"

Saiz replied that he was merely brushing him down a little.

Mr. Baca walked over and placed his hand on the saddle. It was wet inside. The saddle blanket was steaming. He looked more closely at the horse. At first sight it had appeared to be a pinto, white with brown spots. Mr. Baca thought he remembered that Saiz rode a white horse.

"What happened to that horse?" he asked.

The man replied that the boys had had the horse out the day before and had painted the spots on him with a kind of berry that makes reddish-brown spots. "Just for a joke," he added.

"Where's your father-in-law?" asked Mr. Baca.

Saiz said that his father-in-law had gone the day before to a fiesta at La Jolla and had not returned.

"I understand you're a pretty good shot," said Sheriff Baca. "You'd better come along, and help me round up some men I'm after for the killing of Contreros in La Jolla."

Saiz said that he had work to do on the ranch, but at the insistence of Mr. Baca, he saddled his horse and rode out with the three men.

"About as far as from here to the station," went on Mr. Baca, "was a graveyard where the gang was supposed to camp out. I rode over to it and found where they had lunched the day before. There were sardine cans and cracker boxes and one thing and another. Then I found where one of them had had a call to nature. I told one of my men to put it in a can. Saiz didn't know about this, and in a little while he went over behind some mesquite bushes and had a call to nature. After he came back I sent my man over, and by God it was the same stuff -- the same beans and red chili seeds! So I put Saiz under arrest and sent him back to the jail at Socorro with one of my deputies, although he kept saying he couldn't see what I was arresting him for."

Mr. Baca and his other deputy proceeded in the direction of La Jolla. Before long they saw a man on horseback coming toward them.

"He was running that horse like everything. When we met I saw that he was a Texan. Doc Something or other was his name. I can't remember now. But he was a pretty tough man."

"You a Sheriff?" he said to Mr. Baca.

"No," replied Mr. Baca, "no, I'm not a Sheriff. Don't have nothing to do with the law, in fact."

"You're pretty heavily armed," remarked the man suspiciously.

"I generally arm myself this way when I go for a trip in the country," answered Baca, displaying his field glasses. "I think it's safer."

"Well, if you want fresh horses, you can get them at my ranch, a piece down the road," said the Texan.

Mr. Baca figured that this was an attempt to throw him off the trail, so as soon as the Texan was out of sight, he struck out east over the mountains for Manzano. Just as he was entering the village he saw two of the gang coming down the hill afoot leading their horses. He placed them under arrest and sent them back to Socorro with his other deputy.

It was about two o'clock in the morning when Mr. Baca passed the Cordova ranch again on his way back. He roused Lazaro Cordova, who had returned from La Jolla by that time, and told him to dress and come with him to Socorro.

"The old man didn't want to come," said Mr. Baca, "and kept asking 'what you want with me anyhow?' I told him that he was under arrest, and on the way to Socorro I told him that unless he and his son-in-law came across with a complete statement about the whole gang, I would hang both of them, for I had the goods on them and knew all right that they were both in on the killing of Contreros. I put him in the same cell with his son-in-law, and told him it was up to him to bring Saiz around. They came through with the statement. I kept on catching the rest of the gang, until I had them all. All but the one who got himself shot before I caught up with him."

"If you ever go to Socorro you ask Billy Newcomb, the Sheriff down there now to show you the records. You might see the place on the way down where they buried a cowboy I shot. It's a little way off the main road though.

"That was a long time before I was a real Sheriff. In those days I was a self-made deputy. I had a badge I made for myself, and if they didn't believe I was a deputy, they'd better believe it, because I made 'em believe it."

"I had gone to Escondida a little way from Socorro to visit my uncle. A couple of Texas cowboys had been shooting up the town of Socorro. They hadn't hurt anybody that time. Only frightened some girls. That's the way they did in those days -- ride through a town shooting at dogs and cats and if somebody happened to get in the way -- powie! -- too bad for him. The Sheriff came to Escondida after them. By that time they were making a couple of Mexicans dance, shooting up the ground around their feet. The Sheriff said to me 'Baca, if you want to help, come along, but there's going to be shooting.'"

"We rode after them and I shot one of them about three hundred yards away. The other got away --- too many cottonwood trees in the way.

"Somebody asked me what that cowboy's name was. I said I didn't know. He wasn't able to tell me by the time I caught up with him."

I asked what the Sheriff's name was, and when Mr. Baca said it was Pete Simpson, I said, "The one you were electioneering for the time of the Frisco affair when you held off about 80 cowboys for over 36 hours."
This is the one of Mr. Baca's exploits that has been most frequently written about.

"Hell, I wasn't electioneering for him," he said. "I don't know where they got that idea. I couldn't have made a speech to save my life. And I didn't wear a Prince Albert coat either. They didn't have such things in this country in those days."

"Is it true that you ate dinner afterward with French and some other men who had been shooting at you, and talked the affair over," I asked.

"I ate dinner with some men afterward but I don't remember who they were now. I don't think that man French was there at all, although he must have been in the neighborhood, as he seemed to know all about it. But I don't remember him. Jim Cook was one that was shooting at me though. He was a pretty tough man, but he came near getting it."

He showed me a photograph which Jim Cook had sent him recently. The picture showed an old man who still looks as though he could not be easily trifled with. It was inscribed "To Elfego Baca in memory of that day at Frisco."

"Did you see the letter that Englishman wrote to Crichton? He wanted to hang me. 'Why don't you hang that little Mexican so-and-so?' he asked. I said, 'Why don't you be the one to do it?' and pulled my guns, and wooo, he wasn't so eager. You know I surrendered only on condition that I keep my guns. They placed six guards over me, but they rode 25 steps ahead of me all the way to Socorro.

"Those were great old days. Everything is very quiet now, isn't it?" said Mr. Baca looking up. "I think I'll run for something this fall, but I don't know what yet."

 

Abandoning the Creeping Meatball

Having little to risk, and still less to be grateful for at their hands, I recently began the process of transferring my banking from a large, interstate, TARP-gobbling megabank into a small community bank.

When the housing market first began to go into the tank, 18 months or so ago, I happened to be in Farmington, Maine, the same town as a fellow who sits on a national board of bankers that advises the Fed. He was a good source to interview as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began to fall into chaos, but he really had very little doom-and-gloom to talk about for the local Maine banks. They had not behaved foolishly and had not exposed themselves to extraordinary risks with subprime loans and the like.

"We lend money to people who will be able to pay it back," he said, and it seemed like a good policy to this old business writer.

It was not just his bank that stayed aloof from the more speculative mortgage ventures, but the bulk of small community banks. A year later, when TARP funds were being distributed, I was in New Hampshire and did an article on that. Of four local banks, only one had requested TARP funds and they had apparently done so to make sure they could get them if they needed them; they almost immediately assessed the situation and turned them down as unnecessary. Again, a lack of speculation on their part had left them on relatively solid financial footing.

Of course, we're all subject to the effects of the overall collapse, but I've seen minimal impact on community banks. Is that a reason to transfer your money to them? Not really. We're all protected by FDIC, and you're not anymore likely to lose your life savings at one bank than another.

There is an issue of passing the whiff test and of whom you choose to do business with, however, and after viewing a few documentaries on the financial collapse, I decided I'd rather not be in bed with the people who had not only created the subprime mortgage debacle but whose credit card policies were geared to exploiting the lower middle class.

I like to choose with whom I do business. I also went years without eating table grapes and I stopped drinking Coors before I had developed a more sophisticated taste in beer anyway. My reasons aren't as good as the Rotarian who, during a discussion of foreign automobiles, remarked, "I don't buy Japanese cars. They used to shoot at my airplane." But they're good enough for me.

I will admit, however, that, just as nearly any beer made is better tasting than Coors, there are benefits to dealing with community banks that go beyond the warm glow of having abandoned the creeping meatball of heartless capitalism.

For instance, I maintain two bank accounts at Bangor Savings, more than a year after leaving Maine. Why? A big reason is that I can use a Bangor Savings Bank card in any ATM in the country and never pay a fee. Okay, I sometimes pay the fee. But it is instantly credited back to me by my bank. This negates the disadvantage of working with a community bank -- not having a branch available when you're out of town.

But I do have to deposit checks, and it's a pain to mail them to Maine. So a few days ago, I opened an account at Mascoma Savings Bank here in town. It was a Thursday morning, which I mention because I walked out with the little folder of starter checks, but, the following Tuesday, I received my debit card in the mail. And then my printed checks arrived on Saturday, nine days after I opened the account.

In the same mail was a hand-written note from the customer service rep who had dealt with me when I opened the account, thanking me for my business.

As I see it, I'm making a statement, and, in so doing, I'm also getting to work with efficient, responsive, personal bankers who appreciate my business. Oh, and I'll apparently be able to move money back and forth between New Hampshire and Maine easily because Mascoma Savings offers free online bill paying. The larger banks charge fees for that.

It's a little hard to find the downside to all this.

The Chamber of Commerce Express

The upstairs bathroom in the rented home I'm sharing with my son and his family has wallpaper with a pattern of old advertising posters, several of which I've been able to track down. This is one of them, and, until I got a large version with no overlapping posters, I hadn't seen how many commercial plugs it contains. If you click on it, I think you'll see what I mean.

The Hamilton plant of the Mosler Safe Company, which was headquartered in Cincinnati, can be seen through the window of the dining car, but there are plenty of plugs within the car itself, most of them wildly irrelevant to the theme of travel, unless they are suggesting that people will choose a train not just for the comfortable Pullman cars (a common and sensible thing to promote), but for the fact that it serves Cabinet Whiskey and Peebles Perfectos, both by the Joseph R. Peebles' Sons Company of Cincinnati, though apparently the chap with the Burnside sideburns would prefer to sip an Aurora Export beer from the Crescent Brewing Company of Aurora, Indiana (less than 40 miles from Cincinnati).

And there is more, as you will discover. This 1894 poster is a feast of product-placement, which makes me wonder if the good old Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad paid anything out of pocket to have it printed.

And you thought it all began in 1982 with that trail of Reese's Pieces.

The story's written. I just need a quote.

Wish I had a link to the video, but Houston Texans' Coach Gary Kubiak's final press conference of the season was live on-line, and live for an undisclosed number of reporters who attended in person. I don't know how many people were in the room because it's pretty bare-bones -- a single camera trained on the podium, with Kubiak taking questions from off-camera writers who don't bother to identify themselves because they cover the team all season and he knows who they are.

What I found funny in today's conference was the way one or two reporters phrased their questions. It was clear that they had already roughed out their season wrap-up and simply wanted the coach to provide a quote that would validate their central thesis. It was something like, "Coach, would you say that the third-and-down run by X___ in the sixth week was the turning point of this season?" or "Coach, did the passing game finally fall into place with the addition of Y-factor?"

I'd love to have the video because I can't remember the actual questions -- they were so precise and convolutedly pointed that they defied off-the-cuff recall. But they were similar to those English exam questions that force you to agree with the instructor's point of view: "In what ways does Turgenev depict Uvar Uvonovich as an out-of-date, irrelevant remnant of Russia's old guard, pre-1848 social order?"

Given that we're talking the sports section, this was pretty funny. In the newsroom, sports is referred to as "the toy department" and given little credibility. Sportswriters work different hours and, at many papers, they don't attend the meetings, briefings and trainings that other reporters come in for. There is a general sense that they aren't really covering "news."

On the other hand, sometimes the comic view is simply a clearer view. A clumsy sportswriter fishing for pre-determined quotes is funny, but, having been on both sides of the interview, much of my laughter comes from experiences that didn't provoke giggles.

I've been interviewed by reporters who already had the story written in their minds and only wanted quotes to flesh it out. The first few times, I was horrified when I saw the story that resulted, but, after awhile, I began to recognize it when it was happening. Unfortunately, even staying relentlessly on message doesn't always thwart a reporter who isn't listening, who is only scribbling down the parts he wants to hear, and use.

This is not an issue of "the mainstream media," a foolish phrase used by conspiracy buffs. But it is something you kind of wish you could leave behind when you climb from small papers and tiny TV stations into the Big Leagues. You would like to think that it all stays in the minor leagues, along with (no joke!) the local TV reporter who, at a murder scene, asked the lead investigator, "How was the perpetrator able to get through all this yellow tape?"

Not so. Watch the next time a more important coach, Coach Obama, has a press conference. Listen for the questions that are based on what the reporter has already decided to write.

(Addendum: They have posted the press conference, though I can't imagine anyone who isn't a Texans fan sitting through it. However, it did allow me to find one of the questions I had in mind: "Gary, if you had to point to one thing with regard to (quarterback) Matt (Schaub), would you say that the way he came back from the shoulder injury in that Jacksonville game propelled this team and showed them what leadership is all about?")

My dad's work -- 1951 

(That's me on the left)

Nothing says "Happy Holidays" like a puppy!

Funniest card I've had in years, this comes from the breeder of several of my ridgebacks. (I can assure you that no puppies were harmed in the making of this card -- it is common for the big dogs to be extremely impatient, but extremely gentle, with puppies not their own. The comedy for owners is watching the frustration of the big dogs and the utterly innocent insensitivity to it of the pups.)

I like John Tenniel, I like Clay Bennett, and I really like this cartoon.

What lead time does Hilary Price work with?

I'd say, given this evidence, that Rhymes with Orange has a lead time of about four weeks. (But I'm waiting for the model with the three-hour buckle.)

My Hero!

Why can't we have more compassionate, public-spirited guys like this in the Senate? For someone like me, laid off before I was old enough to qualify for Medicare, the cost of insurance is simply prohibitive. And we've been watching for some leader who arise who will help us. Here's what one Senator told his local paper about his views on health care reform this past September:

“When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group — post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare.
“What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. If you’re 55 or 60 and you’re without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it, because you’re older … you’re rated as a risk so you pay a lot of money.”

And who is my new hero???

E&P folds after 125 years

My past life as a business writer makes me believe in the tortoise, not the hare. I've seen people who don't have the patience for long-term marketing efforts, preferring to make giant strides in a short time. They give great breakfast speeches and they earn a lot of plaques, but most crash and burn, or leave town in a blaze of glory just before the house of cards they've built collapses behind them.
I think it's time for our industry to decide which approach we want: Short-term numbers to prop up a hurting industry, or long-term investment in a medium that can remain vital and prosperous?

-- Mike Peterson
Editor and Publisher, January, 2005

Thursday's announcement that Editor & Publisher, long the bible of the newspaper industry, would cease publication set off a lot of pontification on What It All Means.

Never one to be left out of a good bloviation, here's What It All Means:

A magazine has gone out of business, in part because of bad decisions, in part because of the economy, in part because that's the way it goes.

Here's what Virtually None of It Means: E&P went out of business because print is dead.

Print isn't dead. It's just different than it was.  E&P didn't adapt.

In 2007, I reprinted a cartoon and news item from 1923, about the struggle to adapt the new medium of radio into a viable business model. The situation closely mirrored that which would come along three-quarters of a century later as the Internet flails to master the same transition from geek hobby to mass medium.

But there are significant differences. While radio got news out faster than newspapers, it wasn't all that much more efficient, and, certainly, newspapers continued to offer more depth. However, the bigger factor was that communities and their media continued to be tightly linked. The local paper used wire services, but was still the local paper. Local radio stations might have network news and entertainment, but they continued to maintain a strong local identity.

As chains built over the years, they continued to be chains of newspapers or radio stations. The people running them, while certainly out to make a buck, were in the business their chain was about. At the local level or at the chain level, you had newspaper people or radio people, who made decisions based in part on the idea that they were building something worth passing along at some point.

That is, of course, no longer true. Today, owners are looking to maximize profits and are neither knowledgeable about the actual business of the businesses they own, nor are they terribly interested. A company that owns newspapers can bring in a CEO from a soap manufacturer because the "job" is to look at spreadsheets and figure out how to change the numbers. You don't have to know or care about newspapers or soap.

Last month, Warren Buffett purchased Burlington Northern Railroad amid much media confetti about how it meant railroads are a wonderfully viable business. I didn't hear anyone say, "Railroads next industry to be gutted by profiteers." It would be like going to someone's fourth wedding and saying, "I wonder how long this poor bastard will last." Not exactly in the spirit of the celebration.

But why ignore the obvious? Buffett bought the railroad because it was cheap and he saw ways to increase its profit margins. There's no "til death do us part" about it. He's planning to get out before they collapse, whenever that may happen. And with his thumb in the pie, you know he'll leave with most of the plums.

Newspapers were vulnerable to takeover artists because they were in a slump. And they were in a slump because of some factors that could have been controlled -- like old owners who couldn't adapt to changes in the media universe, who continued to have their email printed out and put on their desks so they could read it. But Rupert Murdoch has his email printed out and put on his desk so he can read it. That's obviously not a fatal flaw in the news trade.

What's frustrating about the death of Editor & Publisher is that it was so unnecessary. The magazine was owned and run by Robert U. Brown for nearly half a century, until 1999. It was on the desk of every editor and senior reporter in the trade, as well as those of their bosses and all department heads at every paper. It wasn't sparkly, but it was how you kept up with the newspaper business. It was necessary to subscribe, and everyone did.

Brown picked a good time to sell, because the changes were in the air. The first nail in the coffin may have been the ability of newspaper people to communicate directly with each other. It was no longer a choice of going to a convention or reading about it in E&P. You didn't need either, because editors and ad directors and circulation managers each had their own listservs and newsgroups where they could swap ideas and keep up on trends.

Today, there are places for syndicated cartoonists to swap news, places for press operators to keep up with trends, places for editors to gather. That doesn't mean E&P couldn't still be vital and even necessary. But, as with many print vehicles, including many newspapers, it sat on the sideline and watched the erosion of its basic mission without acting to make itself necessary.

And, as with the newspapers they covered, E&P lost the classifieds. The magazine was once the primary place to look for work, to the point where, if a reporter were seen looking at E&P, it was a sign of restlessness. Better to sneak it into the bathroom or go read the copy at the library than be seen thumbing through it in the newsroom. But my last two jobs came from www.journalismjobs.com, not from the back pages of E&P.

There are other on-line sources for jobs, including at the web sites of the various corporations. But what really hurts is that journalismjobs.com is not free, and, while it was building itself up, E&P's on-line classifieds were being turned into a new-and-improved mishmash that was clumsy and unpleasant to try to work with. They didn't lose their franchise to the free ads. They lost to a competitor who focused on quality performance in a well-understood core business.

Conservative observers have made much of Editor Greg Mitchell's somewhat relentless flogging of leftwing politics, a very sharp contrast to the staid, three-piece-suit conservativism of Robert Brown. But it's not Mitchell's politics that created a content problem for the magazine. Rather, it was that he led the journal away from coverage of the business side and the production department and focused on the newsroom. In many ways, he duplicated what Columbia Journalism Review and American Journalism Review were doing.

On the one hand, then, he was making the magazine less interesting to a large segment of the industry, while, on the other, he pursued a type of coverage that has those two non-profit magazines seeking infusions of cash. If you're going to refocus the mission, focus it on something that can be self-sustaining.

Unfortunately, the journal became much like the rest of the industry -- being led by newsroom types who have never sold ads, never run a press, never thrown a route and don't understand what happens elsewhere in the building. At least the seven blind men each had a grasp of a different part of the elephant -- in this case, they were all grouped around the trunk, making pronouncements about the maintenance of a fire hose.

My final observation is this: For all the loss of focus, for all that people were able to get industry news elsewhere, for all the money lost to journalismjobs.com and similar sites, E&P could have survived if they had looked at the Wall Street Journal, which chugs along despite the fact than anybody with a computer can track their own portfolio in real time.

The WSJ is often held up as a newspaper that has a pay wall for its core on-line information and that survives in print as well. But it's not a real newspaper. It's an industry journal, and most of its subscribers are vouchering their subscriptions, whether on-line, print or both.

Editor & Publisher was in a position to do the same. The demise of the magazine is not a failure of the medium. It's a failure of a specific magazine that didn't have to die.

But that is, sadly, a pretty good summary of the newspaper industry in general: Failing because of their own lack of vision rather than all the outside factors being cited. Most of what E&P did wrong is being echoed at newspapers throughout the country.

But I'll save that rant for another day. This is already too long.

If you'd like to see the context of the quote at the top, click on this illustration for a larger version. It's a lot of inside baseball, but if you've read this far, you've obviously got a taste for that sort of thing.

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As an old business reporter, all I can say is, well, um, I guess if my opinion mattered, I'd still be working, right?

A final thought, before the memories fade ...

The morning after the murders at the Ecole Polytechnique, CHOM-FM's normally jocular morning DJ had a very subdued program that ended with this song. Whatever I thought of it up to that moment, it was transformed then into a sort of recessional.