corrente

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.... Mainly we are dealing with a profoundly degenerate world, a living web of foulness, greed and treachery . . . which is also the biggest real business around and impossible to ignore. You can't get away from TV. It is everywhere. The hog is in the tunnel. ~ Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine, 1988

Mike James, May 31, 2003:

What Sinclair boss Mark Hyman also doesn't tell you is that Sinclair has been in the process of shutting down or emasculating many of its local newsrooms.

KDNL, Sinclair's ABC affiliate in St. Louis, fired THE ENTIRE NEWS STAFF last year.

Shut it down.

The News Director, who had just finished writing a book on GOOD JOURNALISM, moved to Texas and got a job in cable.

At KOKH-25-Fox in Oklahoma City, Sinclair canned the entire sports department, the entire weather department, one photog, one reporter and 6 other full and part-time to make room for the corporate centralcast.

Sinclair's Rochester WUHF-31-Fox fired the entire news, weather and sports anchor team…and 50% of the remaining staff.

About a third of the Raleigh WLFL-22-WB news staff was fired.

25% of the staff at Pittsburgh's WPGH-53-Fox was fired earlier this month…including a veteran weathercaster and several key reporters. The News Director quit to take a job in local radio.

Now, Sinclair station viewers are left with a centralized, cost-efficient "local" news product…out of Baltimore…which, unfortunately, has a pretty difficult time covering…or even understanding…news events in its outlying markets. Viewers are left with centralized sports coverage and centralized weather forecasts.

Earlier this month, while tornados swept through the Midwest and south… and REAL TIME warnings were needed….Sinclair's WEATHER CENTRAL ran a pre-taped weathercast that….as it turned out…was the wrong tape and was two days old.

NATIONAL WRITERS' CONFERENCE
Saturday, May 31, 2003
Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Sponsored by the Poynter Institute
Text of speech by Mike James, Editor - NewsBlues

Last Year At This Time:

OCTOBER 16, 2003
Less point
Will Sinclair squeeze the "local" out of local news?
BY DUSTY RHODES

If you thought you were hearing things when our beloved local news anchor announced a "one-on-one interview" with President George W. Bush, well, obviously, you weren't. This week, Springfield got a taste of NewsCentral, the "revolutionary news model" created by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which bought WICS-TV Channel 20 about four years ago.

Proudly promoting itself as "the nation's largest commercial television broadcasting company not owned by a network," SBG was among a handful of "regional broadcasters" invited to privately interview Bush. According to a story in the Washington Post, Bush sat for five eight-minute interviews with broadcasters who don't regularly cover the White House in an effort to take his message directly to the American people, thereby avoiding the cynical, "analytical" filter of the national media. The regional interviews came two days after Gannett News Service revealed that letters purportedly written by American soldiers in Iraq and published in letter-to-the-editor sections of newspapers across the country were actually not written by the soldiers. One soldier didn't even know the letter existed, Gannett reported.

WICS ran the Bush interview, conducted by NewsCentral anchor Morris Jones, in two segments, Monday and Tuesday night. Jones' interview technique included questions with helpful suggestions like, "I don't think you're getting your message out. . . "

DEAD BUG! - HST:

George Bush: "He has the instincts of a dung beetle. No living politician can match his talent for soiling himself in public. Bush will seek out filth wherever it lives... and when he finds a new heap he will fall down and wallow crazily in it, making snorting sounds out of his nose and rolling over on his back and kicking his legs up in the air like a wild hog coming to water." (Generation of Swine, 1988)

Sounds familiar huh? Like father, like son.

legacy n. 2. Something handed down from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.

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