Former LA Times theater critic, Laurie Winer, has ostensibly written a review of James O’Shea’s book, The Deal From Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers, in which he chronicles real estate tycoon Sam Zell’s raping and pillaging of the Tribune Corp. in general and of the Los Angeles Times in specific.

But really, Winer has done something that is far better and more informative than a mere review: She has recapitulated for us—in a releavingly graspable way— the catastrophe for newspapers that was/is Sam Zell, and the events leading up to his wrecking ball tenure that made Zell’s takeover possible. Into all of this, Winer has interwoven her own front row remembrances and observations. We get to feel what it was like to watch the madness close up.

Winer’s essay/review appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books. For any of us who care about journalism, it’s a BIG must read.

Here’s an emblematic clip:

…Zell addressed the staff of the Orlando Sentinel, one of the Tribune newspapers, on January 31, 2008, which was the first time most of the journalists in the Tribune family got to see the man himself. As part of a whistle-stop tour of his new properties, Zell took visible delight in showing off his iconoclastic style to a new industry that, before now, had not had the pleasure. He was primed and ready for his close-up. He took the stage and stood at a lectern, a leprechaun-sized, wizened, bald man with a white goatee and gravelly voice.

According to Zell, “the eleventh commandment is Thou shalt not take oneself seriously.” His public posture was combative but laced with impish mischief; the gleam in his eye suggested he enjoyed being challenged. This may have misled Orlando Sentinel photographer Sara Fajardo, or perhaps she had seen the new employee handbook rewritten on orders of Zell. One of its entries read: “Question authority and push back if you do not like the answer. You will earn respect, and not get into trouble for asking tough questions.”

In any event, there Zell is in Orlando, telling his staff about the necessity of making money, how that would be our top priority going forward. Fajardo did what none of us attempted with Mark Willes; she stood up and asked her new boss about his view on “the role journalism plays in the community, because we’re not the Pennysaver, we’re a newspaper.” Zell placed both hands on the podium and bent his elbows, as if he wanted to push it forward. “I want to make enough money so that I can afford you,” he said, his irritation mounting. “It’s really that simple. You need to in effect help me by being a journalist that focuses on what our readers want and that therefore generates more revenue.” Fajardo immediately broke in, “But what readers want are puppy dogs,” she said, as the courage drains from her voice. “We also need to inform the community.” Zell cut her off, his right hand gesticulating forcefully. “I’m sorry but you’re giving me the classic, what I would call, journalistic arrogance, by deciding that puppies don’t count. … What I’m interested in is how can we generate additional interest in our products and additional revenue so we can make our product better and better and hopefully we get to the point where our revenue is so significant that we can do puppies and Iraq. Okay?”

The audience, some of whom applauded, might have been momentarily perplexed by Zell’s concept: That, like a kid who must endure being “grounded” before he can go to parties again, a newspaper would have to sell its very soul so that, at some undetermined point in the future, it might be allowed to go back to being a newspaper again. If anyone was busy contemplating the conundrum of Zell’s argument, he might have missed the day’s dramatic high point, which occurred when Fajardo turned around to sit back down. Zell had two more words for her. They were: “Fuck you.”

Fortunately, it lives on YouTube.

I watched the video of this event over and over. What mesmerized me was the sight of a man so unprepared for his come-to-Jesus moment that he had no idea it had arrived. Where Murdoch had his ducks in place in a formation that any dictator might envy, Zell had only his anger at everyone who had ever criticized him, who had ever doubted that accumulating wealth, by itself, was proof of ethics, intelligence, or general marvelousness.

Now read the rest. Immediately, if possible.

Raging Against the LA Times Book Section cuts, an upbeat story about helping Foster Car kids get to college, a seemingly unnecessary court decision, a weird move by the City Attorney….and more.

RAGING AGAINST THE CUTS: TOM LUTZ CALLS THE LA TIMES BOOK REVIEW “FREELANCER” LAYOFFS FOR WHAT THEY ARE

It literature is important to you at all. Read this, damn it! Here’s a clip:

The Los Angeles Times proudly announced last week that it was as dedicated as ever to book coverage — “we have not changed our commitment,” said Vice President of Communications Nancy Sullivan. Sullivan was speaking to Publishers Weekly’s Wendy Werris, explaining that a new round of layoffs in the section and the cutting loose of the book section’s freelancers was not to be taken as a sign of what it clearly was: a further contraction of the section’s purview.

“Freelancers” in this case means not just those of us who have written the occasional review for the Times over the years but the new class of non-employees, the many people who used to be on staff and were laid off before being rehired as freelancers, like Susan Salter Reynolds; book columnists Reynolds, Richard Rayner, and Sonja Bolle were among those let go. Reynolds is a prime example of the new class of the gradually dis-employed: she has been writing succinct, insightful reviews for the Times for the last 23 years, usually three pieces a week, although often adding a fourth or even fifth in the form of a more in-depth review or feature (she is a woman who clearly does not sleep). For the first 21 of those years she was a staff writer, but for the last two she’s been a freelancer. The difference was a deep cut in pay, the loss of health insurance and a retirement plan, and the outsourcing of her office to her own house. The workload remained the same.

BREAKING THE CURSE OF FOSTER CARE TO HELP KIDS IN THE “SYSTEM” GET TO COLLEGE

This story by Martha Groves of the LA Times will both break your heart and give you hope. Here’s how it opens:

For foster children, the prospect of ever completing college is remote: 24% of the general population will someday wear a university cap and gown, but fewer than 3% of all foster children ever earn a degree.

But a privately funded pilot program at UCLA hopes to improve the odds.

The First Star UCLA Bruin Guardian Scholars Summer Academy is a 5 1/2-week program that sponsors and fundraisers hope will one day develop into a year-round boarding school for college-bound foster children in Los Angeles County.

On Friday, 14-year-old Thalia and 23 other foster youth celebrated their “graduation” from the program’s first session.

The incoming ninth-grader brushed up on math, wrote poetry, learned to meditate and visited Disneyland, Universal Studios and a Nickelodeon TV set. In the bargain, Thalia and the other participants each got a laptop computer, a flip cam — and four University of California college credits.

“This program took me to another place,” Thalia said….

Read the rest here.

SO WHAT REALLY IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN HOT WEATHER AND VIOLENCE?

Wired Magazine takes a look at what science has to say about rising temperatures and rising crime stats and how one may or may not affect the other.

A HIGHLY POLITICAL (AND POSSIBLY ILLEGAL) MOVE BY CITY ATTORNEY CARMEN TRUTANICH?

The LA Times’ Jack Leonard reports on Carmen Trutanich’s $2 million check caper and DA Steve Cooley’s reaction.

DEAD PEOPLE CAN’T BE SUED FOR PUNITIVE DAMAGES

Okay, this probably doesn’t rise to the level of a Must Read. Rather it is an interesting oddity that the Iowa Supreme Court got dragooned into having to render a ruling on this seemingly obvious issue. The Des Moines Register has the story. Here’s how it opens:

The Iowa Supreme Court Friday affirmed a long-standing prohibition on winning punitive damages from dead people and issued a two-month suspension to a Des Moines lawyer with a track record of mishandling clients’ money.

In the case of Estate of Johnny Vajgrt vs. Bill Ernst, justices ruled 6-1 to affirm a Marshall County court ruling that blocked Ernst from obtaining more than $2,300 from the estate of Vajgrt.

The case involved a 2005 incident where Vajgrt sought and received permission from Ernst, a neighbor, to enter onto Ernst’s land and remove a fallen tree near the confluence of Burnett Creek and the Iowa River. Vajgrt removed both the tree, which he feared would serve as a dam and cause flooding on his land, and roughly 40 other live trees on Ernst’s property.

Vajgrt died in 2008, nearly five months before Ernst sued to recover damages for the diminished value of his property. A district court judge awarded $57.50 per tree but refused to grant punitive damages because Vajgrt had died….

Read the rest here.

SUPREMES CONSIDER WHETHER BLOGGERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR WORDS (AND CAN BE SUED FOR DEFAMATION)

Uh, yeah. Of course they can be and should be. And it’s time the issue was addressed.

UPI has the story.

A high-profile defamation suit by a former U.S. Department of Agriculture official against a prominent conservative blogger may test the role of libel laws in the brave new world of the Internet, as one newspaper writer suggests.

Or it may be just an opportunity to reinforce the notion, shocking and strange as it may seem, that bloggers should actually be held legally accountable for the truth of what they say — like trained journalists.

The case in the District of Columbia Superior Court involves former USDA official Shirley Sherrod and conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who posted a video online purporting to show Sherrod’s prejudice against whites as she addressed the NAACP in Atlanta.

Sherrod was forced out of her job, but the NAACP released a full video of the speech showing the portion posted online was taken out of context. Sherrod was actually making the case that all people need to be helped, regardless of color.

Of course if bloggers are eligible to be sued successfully for defamation, then they should also be eligible to be protected by journalist shield laws.

I’m just sayin’.

LA’S RANK AND FILE CITY WORKERS AIM TO TELL MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL WHERE THE BUDGET CUTS ARE HIDING

On Sunday, a group of city employees who are fighting being furloughed ” sent out an informational press release, which they stated was” a direct effort to bring to public light, the true cause of the City’s budget crisis…”

The group listed a bunch of areas the city could look to for additional funds rather than laying off city workers (like, say, themselves.) This list includes things like collecting those half a billion in back taxes that the city is owed and a similar amount uncollected fees.

The group includes employees from the Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), the Department of Transportation, Department of General Services and Department of Public Works. They have, they said, made this move apart from their unions.

AN ADVOCATE FOR “JURY NULLIFICATION” IS INDICTED FOR JURY TAMPERING

File this under Prosecutors Gone Wild. Benjamin Weiser for the NY Times has the story.

Julian P. Heicklen sat silent and unresponsive as his bail hearing began one day recently in federal court in Manhattan; his eyes were closed, his head slumped forward.

“Mr. Heicklen?” the magistrate judge, Ronald L. Ellis, asked. “Mr. Heicklen? Is Mr. Heicklen awake?”

“I believe he is, your honor,” a prosecutor, Rebecca Mermelstein, said. “I think he’s choosing not to respond but is certainly capable of doing so.”

There was, in fact, nothing wrong with Mr. Heicklen, 78, who eventually opened his eyes and told the judge, “I’m exercising my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.”

Indeed, it was not his silence that landed Mr. Heicklen, a retired Pennsylvania State University chemistry professor, in court; it was what he had been doing outside the federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street.

Since 2009, Mr. Heicklen has stood there and at courthouse entrances elsewhere and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience.

That concept, called jury nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance violates a law against jury tampering.

Since Mr. Heicklen didn’t target any particular jurors or in any way try to influence the outcome of any particular case, the jury tampering charge seems a bit of a stretch. (cough) firstamendmentviolation (cough, cough)

In fact it seems that Heicklen didn’t even give his leaflets specifically to jurors but to random people going in and out of the court building, hoping to hit some jury members among those he approached.

If you read the rest of the story you’ll see that Heicklen is something of a character. But fortunately for many of us, being quirky isn’t, as yet, a federal offense.

FACEBOOK AND JURIES

It seems that Facebook is being used by attorneys—both defense and prosecutors—to determine whether or not individuals are suitable for jury placements. The Wall Street Journal has the story. Here’s a clip:

Prosecution and defense lawyers are scouring the site for personal details about members of the jury pool that could signal which side they might sympathize with during a trial. They consider what potential jurors watch on television, their interests and hobbies, and how religious they are.

Josh Marquis, district attorney of Clatsop County in Oregon, did background searches on Facebook to help pick a jury for a penalty trial last summer to determine if a convicted murderer should get the death penalty. He was looking for clues on how potential jurors might feel about the defendant, a man who killed a couple as a teenager in 1988. The jury imposed the death penalty.

Jury consultant Amber Yearwood in San Francisco found that one potential juror in a product-liability case last year held strident opinions on a host of issues, and dispensed unsolicited medical and sex advice. “Often juries offer opinionated people like that the perfect opportunity to wield their influence,” said Ms. Yearwood. The prospective juror was bounced….

The hysterical reactions by seemingly sane people on the topic of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange grow ever more deeply disheartening.

But there are, fortunately, a few people talking sense, among them Ron Paul and Tom Hayden, two men who would find themselves at opposite ends of many questions. But on this crucial issue they agree. Similarly, Salon’s lawyer/columnist Glenn Greenwald finds a kindred spirit on the matter on former Bush administration lawyer, Jack Goldsmith:

LYING IS NOT PATRIOTIC

Texas Congressman Ron Paul spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives on Friday where he passionately defended Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

Here’s a clip from reporting by the Atlantic Wire:

“Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?” asked Paul. He went on to compare WikiLeaks to the Pentagon Papers, explaining how both exposed American wars that were based on “lies.” He also asked his colleagues which events caused more deaths, “Lying us into war, or the release of the WikiLeaks papers?”

At the end of his speech, Paul asked his listeners 9 questions, which are as follows:

Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?

Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?

Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?

Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?

Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?

Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed’

THE LYNCH MOB MOMENT

Tom Hayden is just as impassioned as Paul, although his approach is calmer. Here is a clip from the analytical essay that he sent out to friends on Wednesday about what he calls The Lynch Mob Moment.

We know that conservatives are extremists for order, but why have so many liberals lost their minds and joined the frenzy over Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? As the secrets of power are unmasked, there is a growing bipartisan demand that Julian Assange must die.

Once-liberal Democrat Bob Beckel said on FOX, “there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son-of-a-bitch.” Center-liberal legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said on CNN that Assange is “absurd”, “ridiculous”, “delusional”, and “well beyond sympathy of anyone”. The Washington Times called for treating him as an “enemy combatant”; Rep. Peter King of the Homeland Security Committee who wants him prosecuted as a terrorist; and of course, Sarah Palin wants Assange “pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders”, or a wolf in Alaska.

This is a lynch-mob moment, when the bloodlust runs over. We have this mad overreaction many times since the witch-burnings and Jim Crow, including the Palmer Raids of the 1920s, the McCarthy purges of the 1950s, the Nixon-era conspiracy trials, the Watergate break-ins, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11.

Most Americans now know that those frenzied periods of scapegoating did nothing for our security, which instead damaged our democracy and left in their wake a secretive National Security State.

There is wisdom in expecting calmer heads to prevail in the WikiLeaks matter, but what can be done when the calmer heads are going nuts or hiding in silence?

Do the frothing pundits remember that we have a legal system in which the accused is entitled to due process, legal representation and the right to a defense? The first obligation of our threatened elected officials, bureaucrats and pundits is to calm down.

Hayden acknowledges that wholesale release of the WikiLeaks documents could do damage:

I can understand the reasonable questions that reasonable people have about this case. It is clearly illegal to release and distribute the 15,652 documents stamped as “secret.” Why should underground whistleblowers have the unlimited right to release those documents? There is a risk that some individuals might be harmed by the release. There is a concern that ordinary diplomatic business might be interrupted.

But he also reminds us what we have thus far gotten from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks:

1. WikiLeaks disclosed 390,136 classified documents about the Iraq War and 76,607 about Afghanistan so far. No one died as a result of these disclosures, one of which revealed another 15,000 civilian casualties in Iraq which had not been acknowledged or reported before;

2. Fragmentary orders [FRAGO] 242 and 039 instructed American troops not to investigate torture in Iraq conducted by America’s allies;

3. The CIA operates a secret army of 3,000 in Afghanistan;

4. A secret US Task Force 373 is assigned to nighttime hunter-killer raids in Afghanistan;

5. The US ambassador in Kabul says it is impossible to fix corruption when our ally is the corrupt entity;

6. One Afghan minister alone carried $52 million out of the country;

7. US Special Forces operate in Pakistan without public acknowledgment, apparently in violation of that country’s sovereignty;

8. America’s ally, Pakistan, is the chief protector of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

9. Following secret U.S air strikes against suspected al-Qaeda militants, Yeme’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh told General David Petraeus, “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.”

10. U.S. government contractor DynCorp threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment. Bacha bazi is the Afghan tradition of “boy play” where young boys are dressed up in women’s clothing, forced to dance for leering men, and then sold for sex to the highest bidder. DynCorp has been previously linked to child sex trafficking charges.

CORRECTING THE MEDIA FALSEHOODS

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald (who also happens to be an attorney trained in Constitutional law) has been stalking the absurd inaccuracies put out by major media outlets—like, for example, Time magazine— when they report on the ongoing WikiLeaks story.

Read and grow angry.

IF ASSANGE IS GUILTY WHAT ABOUT THE NY TIMES? WHAT ABOUT BOB WOODWARD?

On Friday, former Bush administration lawyer, Jack Goldsmith, posted 7 “thoughts” on the matter of WikiLeaks. They are all worth reading, but here are the first three:

* I find myself agreeing with those who think Assange is being unduly vilified. I certainly do not support or like his disclosure of secrets that harm U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. But as all the hand-wringing over the 1917 Espionage Act shows, it is not obvious what law he has violated. It is also important to remember, to paraphrase Justice Stewart in the Pentagon Papers, that the responsibility for these disclosures lies firmly with the institution empowered to keep them secret: the Executive branch. The Executive was unconscionably lax in allowing Bradley Manning to have access to all these secrets and to exfiltrate them so easily.

* I do not understand why so much ire is directed at Assange and so little at the New York Times. What if there were no wikileaks and Manning had simply given the Lady Gaga CD to the Times? Presumably the Times would eventually have published most of the same information, with a few redactions, for all the world to see. Would our reaction to that have been more subdued than our reaction now to Assange? If so, why? If not, why is our reaction so subdued when the Times receives and publishes the information from Bradley through Assange the intermediary? Finally, in 2005-2006, the Times disclosed information about important but fragile government surveillance programs. There is no way to know, but I would bet that these disclosures were more harmful to national security than the wikileaks disclosures. There was outcry over the Times’ surveillance disclosures, but nothing compared to the outcry over wikileaks. Why the difference? Because of quantity? Because Assange is not a U.S. citizen? Because he has a philosophy more menacing than “freedom of the press”? Because he is not a journalist? Because he has a bad motive?

* In Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward, with the obvious assistance of many top Obama administration officials, disclosed many details about top secret programs, code names, documents, meetings, and the like. I have a hard time squaring the anger the government is directing toward wikileaks with its top officials openly violating classification rules and opportunistically revealing without authorization top secret information….

Forget what you think about Julian Assange. It doesn’t matter whether you like him or loath him. Nor does it matter if you think Assange and company were wrong to have distributed the leaks, or alternately if you think he’s the champion of transparency and democracy…..

None of this is the point. Not anymore.

The issue now is the dangerous nature of the campaign launched against Assange and WikiLeaks and what it points beyond itself to portend. This is about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. And it is a scary business.

My friend Marc Cooper has it right when he points to the column by Dan Gilmore at Salon as mandatory reading on the matter. Here’s the opening:

Journalists cover wars by not taking sides. But when the war is on free speech itself, neutrality is no longer an option.

The WikiLeaks releases are a pivotal moment in the future of journalism. They raise any number of ethical and legal issues for journalists, but one is becoming paramount.

As I said last week, and feel obliged to say again today, our government – and its allies, willing or coerced, in foreign governments and corporations — are waging a powerful war against freedom of speech.

WikiLeaks may well make us uncomfortable in some of what it does, though in general I believe it’s done far more good than harm so far. We need to recognize, however, as Mathew Ingram wrote over the weekend, that “Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity.” What our government is trying to do to WikiLeaks now is lawless in stunning ways, as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald forcefully argued today.

These are also acts of outright censorship. No, Amazon is not bound by the First Amendment. But if it’s bowing to government pressure, it’s helping a panicked government tear up one of our most basic freedoms.

consitutional lawyer/columnist Glenn Greenwald, who has taken the lead on a lot of this, also has a column on how so much of the mainstream media has been recklessly repeating falsehoods and misinformation about the leaks and their affect.

Yet, at the same time, a small but growing number of journalists and editors are speaking out with a rising sense of unease.

For instance here’s what senior editor Amy Davidson said at the New Yorker:

…Beyond Assange and his own legal situation, there is something disturbing going on: Joe Lieberman hounding private companies (before any legal actions has been taken); the way the site was repeatedly taken down; calls by politicians and journalists to kill the leakers or have them treated as enemy combatants (what does that mean? Guantánamo?); the Swiss bank account frozen (the Swiss say Assange had a false address on his form; but our ambassador there has also said some heavy-handed things to them); Visa and MasterCard stopping all transactions related to WikiLeaks. One could say that this is part of the bargain WikiLeaks signed up for—what did they think would happen? But, if it is permissible to use these measures against the site, why couldn’t they be used against any media organization that published classified information? Why WikiLeaks and not the Times, Guardian, or Der Spiegel (or The New Yorker)? If it’s because they and we are more respectable—what does that even mean? Any talk of creative uses of the 1917 Espionage Act, as by Senator Dianne Feinstein, should make one wary. (Glenn Greenwald has been following the legal side of the story.) Not that that much due process seems to have been involved in efforts to shut the site down. Does it just take the Administration saying something is illegal for it to be illegal?

Good question.

ANNENBERG’S GENEVA OVERHOLSER TALKS ABOUT KEITH OLBERMANN, JOURNALISTIC BIAS AND ALL THAT JAZZ

Geneva Overholser, director, University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, was on the PBS News Hour on Tuesday night, talking about Keith Olbermann and the whole realm of journalistic ethics.

(The students in my Monday journalism class at USC and I were talking about that very thing.)

Here are a few clips from the News Hour.

GO: Well, objectivity has been a central ethic of journalism in the modern era. And the thinking, Jeff, is kind of, as you know, that, if we can show that we have approached a story with a completely open mind, and been fair-minded about it, then people will have a stronger sense of the story’s credibility.

The trouble is that we are in a new kind of Wild West atmosphere now. It’s never been totally clear that the public thought about this as a safeguard with the same strength — strength that we did, as journalists, you know?

But, in this current environment, it’s kind of an anything goes. We’re headed toward a different mode of being transparent or figuring out what the new ethics are. And so, right now, we’re kind of looking at little thin slices of defending the turf.

We have Keith Olbermann saying: Oh, you know, I’m paid to give my opinions.

Or people are saying it’s no surprise that Keith Olbermann is giving his opinions, that he works for a larger corporation, NBC, which is still kind of hewing to the traditional standards of objectivity. It is a very interesting time.

[SNIP]

GO: I think it really is going to be more and more about transparency, this is who we are, but not trying to stuff everybody into the same sock, because they’re not in that sock anymore.

Yep, exactly.

DEPORTATIONS HAVE INCREASED UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION—SO HAVE ATTEMPTS TO DEPORT THE WRONG PEOPLE

This is from ProPublica based on new data from Syracuse University. Here are some clips:

As deportations have increased under the Obama administration, immigration judges have also increasingly denied requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport people who were legitimately entitled to stay in the country [1], according to new data obtained by Syracuse University’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse.

From July to September of this year, for instance, almost a third of all deportation cases brought by ICE were rejected by immigration judges—up from twelve months earlier, when the rate was one out of every four. According to TRAC, judges have rejected removal orders for more than a quarter of a million individuals in the past five years.

Read the rest.

Of course, the irony of all this is that the president has repeatedly been painted as soft on immigration by people in a position to know better—even as the Obama administration, in its quest to be tough on immigration, has enthusiastically been gathering thousands of people into its net who don’t belong there, with all the attendant expense, stress, and upending of lives.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF IMMIGRATION—THE SUPREMES CONSIDER GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN IMMIGRATION CASES

Do mothers have an advantage over fathers when it comes to getting citizenship for their kids born out of the US? The court may think so but will it do anything to fix the inequity?

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post has the story:

A majority of Supreme Court justices may be bothered by an immigration law that treats American fathers differently than American mothers. But it seemed unlikely after an hour-long oral argument Wednesday that a majority of justices thought they could do anything about it.

The court was considering a challenge to a federal statute that makes it easier for unmarried mothers than unmarried fathers to convey American citizenship to children born outside the country.

Ruben Flores-Villar, who was born in Mexico but raised by his father in San Diego, says he is a victim of the double-standard. Fighting criminal charges, Flores-Villar, now 36, was denied citizenship and deported because his father did not meet the requirements of the law.

FRED— I AM LOATHSOME ANTI-GAY NUTCASE—PHELPS BRINGS HIS HATE CAMPAIGN TO THE OC

See, now here’s someone whom it would be genuinely good to deport. If only we could find even a flimsy pretext.

Matt Coker at OC Weekly has the story:

Fred Phelps’ “God Hates Fags” crusade comes to Santa Ana Saturday night for another demonstration of a play about the murder of Matthew Shepard, whose funeral was infamously picketed by the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.

The threat has prompted a downtown Santa Ana business leader to essentially warn merchants: steer clear of Bible-thumping nutbars.

“Please show great restraint and don’t allow the media an opportunity to once again depict Santa Ana in the ignominious manner they have portrayed us in the past,” Downtown, Inc. executive director Vicky Baxter writes in a letter to merchants…..

I continue to be astonished when reporter/editor colleagues tell me with a roll of their eyes that they “don’t use Twitter.”

“I don’t really have the time,” they will say.

Right, I find myself thinking. Good luck to you, then.

Another illustration why if one expects to continue to make one’s living in the news business one would be wise to find the time to master Twitter may be found in the WaPo story excerpted below about how the news that a gunman was holding hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters broke, as more and more stories have, on Twitter.

…The news of a gunman at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Silver Spring indeed traveled fast on Wednesday, but none of it came through radio, TV or newspaper Web sites, at least not at first. As it has with other breaking news events — the landing of a jet on the Hudson River in 2009, the 2008 massacre in Mumbai — the story unfolded first in hiccupping fits and starts on Twitter, the much-hyped micro-blogging service that has turned millions of people into worldwide gossips, opinion-mongers and amateur news reporters.

Before camera crews and reporters could race to the scene, a shot of alleged hostage-taker James Lee was flashing around the world via Twitpic, Twitter’s photo-sharing service that lets people see whatever a cellphone camera captures seconds after the shutter snaps. The shot — full of menace and dread — was apparently taken by an office worker peering from a window several floors above the Discovery courtyard

Read the rest here.

Okay, on Monday when CBS radio head, Harvey Nagler sent out the memo to all of the network’s reporters, he didn’t actually use the word “DIE,” but he was pretty emphatic.

Below you’ll find a copy of the emailed memo itself:

From: Nagler, Harvey
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 3:09 PM
To: @CND Radio
Subject: Twitter

Field reporters, beat reporters – it’s time to tweet.

More and more news consumers are turning to places like Twitter to keep up with the news, and we want to be there for them. That means that if you cover a beat, or if you regularly go into the field to cover stories, we want you to tweet. No exceptions.

If you haven’t joined Twitter yet, do so now, and start tweeting. If you’re already on there but you’re not tweeting regularly – please tweet more.

What should you tweet about? Breaking news, your observations when you’re out on a story, retweets of stories from other CBS News accounts…anything that can help inform our listeners and help them connect with you. Listeners love it because they have a connection with a knowledgeable news reporter that up to now has only been a voice on their radio. And you will have the opportunity to engage with them, and get feedback.

Twitter also is a great place to monitor sources…whether they be on breaking news or on your beat. Politicians tweet. Representatives of medical schools and journals tweet. And people in the middle of a developing news story tweet, to share what’s happening around them. It can work for you to give you a jump on your story.

In-studio anchors, we’d love your participation as well, when relevant.

See me if you have any questions about this new effort. See Dustin or Aliah if you need tips or if you need help creating your account.

Harvey

Here are two more stories from the Boot Camp projects from the Annenberg Master’s in Specialized Journalism Program.

The two featured below each take different angles on Skid Row, the 55-square block area just east of downtown Los Angeles where one of the nation’s largest homeless populations resides.

Homelessness is one of our city’s most pressing problems. In the present economy that fact truer than ever. Yet it is a problem that is so complex and difficult to solve that, after a while, many of us simply tune the issue out. It his challenging, therefore, for a reporter to find a way to focus the reader/viewer’s attention on this important topic.

Christin Davis addressed the challenge by looking at one of Skid Row’s expanding demographics: single dads, which she examines through the lens of a newly-homeless father who sees Skid Row as a helpful place that may be used as a “great stepping stone” back to stability.

(Note: Kristin’s report first appeared on Neon Tommy.)

Jussi Jormanainen’s approach to humanizing the homeless issue was to do the first of what he imagined as a series of personal portraits, with the pilot portrait focusing on Skid Row’s best known (and arguably best-liked) cop, LAPD Officer Deon Joseph.

REPORTERS’ BIOS

Christin Davis, B.A. in Journalism from California State University, Fullerton (2008). As an undergraduate, she lived abroad each summer and spent her time teaching English, running kids’ camps, and facilitating soccer game showings. Through her work with The Salvation Army’s magazine Caring, she has covered stories abroad, including The Salvation Army’s community involvement in the 2006 World Cup in Berlin and on their involvement in the education system in Hong Kong. Additionally, she has overseas Journalism experience in New Zealand, Romania, Scotland, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Italy. As the managing editor for Caring, she continues to travel for news stories while maintaining responsibility for all phases of editing and production of the magazine. Davis lives in Long Beach, California.

Jussi Jormanainen, Master’s Degree Studies in Journalism from University of Tampere in Finland (2000). Since 1999, he has been a freelance director and documentary director for the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) where he has directed and helped to film, edit, and produce over 50 documentaries or documentary series. He has worked as a freelance television reporter with MTV3 and as a freelance news reporter with Finland’s national newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat. Also, he lectures and leads workshops on screenwriting for television and visual storytelling at the University of Tampere. Jormanainen speaks Swedish and Italian and resides in Helsinki, Finland.

By the way, I was on vacation when the LA Times ran its wonderful four-part series on Project 50,
the LA County initiative sponsored by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, to find and house the 50 most at risk Skid Row residents. If you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and take a look.

Tuesday morning I attended the presentations of projects by the brand new class of 21 candidates for master’s degrees in Specialized Journalism at USC-Annenberg.

Unlike the 2-year master’s program (where I taught last year), the SJ grad program is compressed into an intensive 9-month period. The students accepted are by-and-large working journalists who have decided to go back to school for specialization and/or to generally crank it up a notch or five. (To give you an idea, one of the new SJ candidates is Rebecca Schoenkopf, who was the editor-in-chief of at Los Angeles CityBeat and, before that, she wrote the popular Commie Girl column for the OC Weekly.)

In August, before the school term begins, the SJ students participate in a two-week “multimedia boot camp” to jump start the program —at the end of which they are required to research report and produce a four-minute multimedia story on a specific topic.

For this final boot camp project, they were divided up into 7 teams of three and each team was given a content adviser/assignment editor.

I was one such adviser.

Many of the students came to Annenberg from out of state–and in several cases—from out of the U.S. Thus most had little on-the-ground knowledge of Los Angeles.

Yet they plunged with enthusiasm into topics that included Skid Row, LA gangs, Farmlab, the canceled elections in the city of Alhambra, the new LA literary magazine “Slake,” issues surrounding the show “So You Think You Can Dance,” and the gifted LA architect, Alice Kimm—who designed, among other buildings, the LAPDs new fabric-draped parking structure.

Tuesday all 21 presented their finished stories.

(I’m sure you can’t possibly guess which topic I oversaw. Hint: it was not “So You Think You Can Dance”—although those three final projects were inventive and loads of fun to watch.)

Over the next few days, I’ll be posting some of the projects here. So stay tuned.

PS: One of the joys of university teaching is that it is simply impossible to teach and remain pessimistic about the future. While some of my non-teaching colleagues grow increasingly—and understandably—saddened by the belief that journalism is going to hell in a handbasket, I feel stupendously lucky because I get to spend time around the generation who will freshly reinvent journalism for the rest of us.

And that’s a good thing.