Undercover bummer

One of my favorite blogs, Undercover Black Man, is going out of business. UBM didn't talk much sports, but he had every other aspect of the culture covered. Read this interview with The Wire creator David Simon.
One of his last posts is about sports--reviewing Siskel & Ebert's role in promoting the classic documentary "Hoop Dreams." I started reading in late 2007. I'll have fun going through the archives.

Roidger

A copy of "American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime" arrived yesterday, and I'll be digging into it this weekend. Full disclosure: Two of my best friends in the business, Teri Thompson and Mike O'Keeffe, wrote the thing, along with Christian Red and Nate Vinton, and, if I ever write a book, I'd expect a plug from them. (I doubt I'd get one. That's just how they are.)
But this plug isn't just personal. The book, excerpted in SI and in the Daily News, has the added advantage of being the real deal, promising the most thorough look at all things Clemens, from his juicing to his womanizing to his less-than-credible testimony before Congress. From the beginning of the Clemens saga, Teri and her investigative team killed on this story, week after week, for the better part of two years. They're still killing it.
Personally, I'm interested in the reporting on Brian McNamee, a man I've never met but whom I feel like I know.

Murphy's in. Did Little start her campaign?

Scott Murphy beat Jim Tedisco. And in what is likely the first move in the 2010 race to unseat the new congressman, State Sen. Betty Little comes down firmly against gay marriage. Because even though North Country politicians and media support it, she has to nail down the GOP base to win the nomination, and that means forbidding people to marry.

The Future

I was waiting for this (scroll down to the letter from Newton, MA):
Charles P. Pierce's evisceration of Daily Kos founder and Brave New World deity Markos Moulitsas. I believe the term of art is pwned!
In their weblog dialogue lie some lessons about the demise of the newspaper and the rise of whatever is, or isn't, replacing it. With apologies to Pierce...
Lesson the First: In any battle of wits with Mr. Pierce, we are, all of us, poorly armed.
Lesson the Second: The growth of this newfangled Internet, which is all in all a great thing (thank you, Al Gore!), inevitably leads to old-fashioned hubris. Last week, Kos drank deeply from a pixelated goblet of self-regard, and then proceeded to vomit all over the crumbling newspaper industry, a Caligula-esque display of blogo-triumphalism. Kos speaks to us in a parable:

At one of those conferences, however, a nice editor approached me. He had tracked the growth patterns of this site and was wondering what he could do to help his mid-sized newspaper become better acclimated to the web.My answer then, same as it would be now, was to embrace the audience and make them feel like part of the endeavor, create tools that would allow greater engagement and discussion between editors, writers, and readers. As a first step, why not add comments to your stories?
The editor sighed. You see, he told me, they had tried that already. The reporters hated it of course, since I doubt I've met a more thin-skinned group of people in my life than beat reporters. They're expected to become instant experts on any number of issues on a day-to-day basis, so they're touchy when they screw up, which is often. But the experiment in user feedback persisted until the newspaper's "star columnist" stormed into the editor's office one day.

The columnist in the parable demanded the "graffiti" come down or he would quit. The newspaper caved and took down its comments. And here's the O. Henry ending:

What newspaper was this? The Rocky Mountain News, which completely ceased publication Feb. 27, 2009.

My reaction to the Kos post, after first thinking, hey, I was a beat reporter, followed by my catty attempts to to ID the jerky columnist, was, Have you ever read newspaper online comment threads? You'll save time by going directly to Stormfront or Ayn Rand fan sites.
But Pierce gave the issue some thought. And he called Markos out, for all the right reasons.

I'm sorry, this and this are examples of what John Peter Zenger would've called, "just being a prick."
I admire what Markos has accomplished. But, despite his pale and worthless disclaimer late in that first post--Spare us your pity--if this isn't gloating, I'd hate to see what he thinks gloating would be. A few points:
a) this is minor, but handing along a pivotal anecdote about the behavior of a "star columnist" without naming that columnist is what we in the old media refer to regularly as "chickenshit," and setting that story at a place where recently a couple of hundred people lost their jobs is graceless and cruel...

It goes on from there. And predictably, it inspired a characteristically humble Kos rejoinder.

The times are changing, and the culture with it. And consumers are getting increasingly sophisticated about how and where and from whom they consume their news. Shoot the messenger, Charlie, but it doesn't change anything.

To which my immediate reaction was, well, this.
Anyhow, it led to Lesson the Third: Insult Pierce at your peril. He quotes Kos:

"For Charlie Pierce and many of his journalism friends, this debate is about how they continue to get paid. For me, I don't give a shit who gets paid or how much, but whether people get the news they need to make informed decisions in a democracy. If people get paid in the process, great! If they don't, but people still get good information, then great!"

Then Pierce schools him:

I would argue that there are a great number of people in a great number of professions having a great number of conversations about how they will continue to get paid. Auto workers come immediately to mind. I give a shit about all of them, including the people in my profession. I would argue that giving a shit about whether or not people should get paid a decent wage for an honest day's work is what progressive populism used to be about. I don't recall any legitimate progressive determining on his own which work is worthy of having a shit given about it. I would argue that my friend in Chicago, who was a decent and honorable sportswriter with two young kids and a mortgage, and who was laid off this week because the Chicago Tribune is owned by a vicious vandal named Sam Zell who needs to have his balls in the mouth of a shark right about now, is worthy of having a shit given about him. I would argue that the cafeteria workers, security guards, printers, drivers--and the newsroom staffs--at the newspapers in Seattle and Denver that went under are worthy of having a shit given about them. Here, from the invaluable Ms. Jane's place, is a story about which The Future, by his own admission, probably doesn't give a shit.
Of course, I do not understand the new world of progressive activism, where some professions are unworthy of having a shit given about them. I weep at my ignorance, of course.

There's another lesson in all this, one which Pierce knows but the blogosphere too often misses as it ghoulishly watches the business of print journalism, my business, sink.
Lesson the Fourth: It is easy to be a pundit. Opinions are free, technology's cheap, and really, anyone can do it. Even me. Look at me now, I'm punditing! I'm king of the world! But not everyone can do it well. In many quarters of the media, especially in some of the most rarefied precincts, celebrity is mistaken for ability, and people are allowed to run on the fumes of reputation. That is what the blogosphere triumphalists howl at, correctly, and they rightly unmask frauds. But the frauds usually aren't laid off. Those are the grunts. The workers. The people who go to the council meetings and the courthouses and fires and crime scenes and farms and high school games and deliver the world, or a part of it, to the doorstep.
And they're dying. And no amount of first-person diaries and second-hand blogging and media critiques will replace them. Real news is a service, like working sewers or functioning schools or reliable power grids or effective garbage collection. It's the kind of service that separates a good society from a primitive one. If nobody does it, and does it well, you live in a lesser place. But doing it well is hard work. The kind of work that, as Pierce says, nobody should do, and most likely, nobody will do, without being paid a decent wage for it.

Good for Janet Duprey

She changes her stance, for the better, on allowing people to marry. She's not alone. And another North Country legislator, Teresa Sayward, did the right thing first. But Duprey is part of a trend.

Click here, and try not to laugh

I'm on the road, but this demands to be seen. And heard. Now!

Your tax dollars at work

Juan Gonzalez of the NY Daily News shows how the new Yankee Stadium has evicted the baseball team from All Hallows High School in the Bronx, an institution I'm quite familiar with, and quite fond of, having written my master's paper on the school's basketball team in 1990. Promised a new field to replace their old one on the site of the Bombers' new playground for the rich, the Gaels will have to wait until 2011. Oh, and pay to play.

To accomplish all this additional traveling for the varsity and JV teams, even for practices, the school has been forced to buy two small buses and order a third. The total cost, says school President Paul Krebbs, has been more than $100,000.

But the Yankees, with all their revenue from the new park, stepped up and did the right thing, right?

Krebbs figured that since the new stadium made them homeless, the Yankees should help bear the school's additional cost.
He applied for a $40,000 grant from the Yankees Community Foundation to pay for one bus. That amounts to less than one inning's pay for CC Sabathia. "We were rejected," Krebbs said. "They told us they don't pay for vehicles."

Beware the ides of April

Technically, the ides of April is the 13th, but we're in the ballpark, and horrible, awful tragedies seem to happen this time of year.
And it's already been a terrible spring.

My dying industry

First, a friend sends me this unfortunate headline about the Saints coach:

Sean Payton beats the Easter bunny but not his wife in Crescent City Classic

Then the Washington Post emails me a NEWS ALERT! No, it's not about the American rescued from the Somali pirates. It's this:

News Alert: The First Puppy Makes a Big Splash

I ran across the clincher catching up on Undercover Black Man, who is noted for his unflinching roll call of MBP's--Misidentified Black Persons:

“In Sports on Monday, a photo accompanying articles about Sunday’s Lakers-Clippers game pictured Laker Lamar Odom trying to shoot over the Clippers’ Fred Jones. The caption misidentified Odom as Laker Kobe Bryant.”
Yes. The L.A. Times. Kobe frickin’ Bryant. Unbelievable.

Collapse is funny, except when it's sad.
ht/tt

R.I.P., Mark Fidrych

It is hard to overstate the phenomenon that was "The Bird," though plenty of media will make the effort. I think younger people will have a hard time understanding all the gushing over Fidrych, because unfortunately they haven't ever seen anything like him--an athlete who played, in the truest sense of the word.
It wasn't just a job for Fidrych, and though he put on a show, by all accounts it wasn't an act. He really enjoyed what he did. He wasn't cutting an opponent's throat, or humiliating them, or cheating, or aggrandizing himself for profit. He just played a game to the best of his ability, and his ability was rare. "He could throw a baseball through a keyhole from 60 feet," is how one competitor remembers it.
I had a conversation with Filip Bondy of the Daily News not long ago about the lack of playfulness among modern athletes. He lamented the departure of the Mets' Pedro Martinez, who had fun with the press and the fans, and knew never to take things too seriously, best exemplified, of course, when he was asked how he'd pitch to Babe Ruth: "I'd drill him in the ass."
Those kinds of quotes are as rare as the Bird nowadays, replaced by the premasticated mumblings of a class of people who (publicly anyway) want nothing to do with fun. It's what we've sown by turning kid athletes into de facto professionals before they turn 12, with every public utterance purposely boring, a la Jordan or Tiger or Tom Brady, or purposefully, and artificially, "outrageous," a la Terrell Owens and Bill Romanowski. In both approaches lie the same goal--to be marketed, or to use one of the dreariest words of the age, "monetized."
Maybe, as we enter a time more like the 1970s, another era where Mammon failed us, the monetization of the self will no longer be the paramount goal of life. And maybe the monetization of sports will be seen for the boring, joyless pursuit that it's become.

Donut (a-)holes

Some morons decided to carve donuts into the U.S. Oval soccer fields Friday night. City gym employees say the cops caught them, though. Few things worse than an idiot in a car.

Is it Evil Congressman Maffei?

The Tupper Lake bank robber's fake beard raises questions.
In other Star Trek parellel universe news, ever notice how much this guy resembles this guy?
ht/tg

Coach K's tears

For those into statistical analysis (and who isn't?), this is CyphersSpace post No. 100! Now go celebrate by taking a look at the favorites (hint--a prominent Polish-American is in the mix) for March Madness 2010--on ESPN Insider. Subscribe today!

If you liked Pulp Fiction...

...click on this YouTube video, wherein Brad Richter proves he's a really good guitarist.

Hatchet interment?

Unfortunately for fans of political cat fights, the current and former mayors of Plattsburgh appear intent on consigning their public little war to the dustbin of history.

"I hope it's behind us," Stewart said.
Reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, Kasprzak said, "I appreciate Dan's comments on moving forward with putting things in the past."

This is good for the city. We're all in the same gang, and all that. But admit it: A nasty state senate race would have been more fun.

Awesome Ultimate Race story

An ex-NFL player-turned-developer plans a walkable solar city.

The idea is to create a self-contained community where people can live and shop and work and go to school and have fun without long car trips. Kitson's construction plans start with a walkable and bikable downtown that will include a magnet school, a wellness facility and sustainable retail as well as 8,000 homes - including affordable homes for local workers. "In Florida, everyone has to drive everywhere they want to go," Kitson says. "And everyone thinks the solution to congestion is to build more roads. I think the solution is to design communities so you don't need more cars on the roads."

Yes, it could end up a pipedream, and it's a drawback that he's killing open space to do it. But a viable prototype of a new-grid city could have far-reaching effects. And it's also proof that retired football players have more to offer than dreamt of in "Heathers."

Damn Yan'ees

Because so far, they're missing the Ks.

Yankees starters in two games have yet to record a strikeout.

R.I.P, Marvin Webster

Growing up a Denver Nuggets fan, the Human Eraser was a favorite. His obit is sad.

Cut

I do not think that word means what John McHugh thinks it means.

Cool

Vermont lets people marry. Also, if you missed it, check out ESPN Insider Nate Silver, wearing his other hat, providing predictive statistical analysis.

Across the pond

Let's hope Vermont lets people marry. Because letting people suffer like this is unconscionable, and denying people rights is un-American.

Stoned

Seems libertine Tricky Dickster Roger Stone has hopped a boxcar north, perhaps, as The Albany Project surmises, to perform his black arts for James Tedisco in the 20th CD count.
Will be interesting to see if he feeds talking points/insider info to the AP's Michael Gormley. In late 2007 the Albany wire-service writer seemed to get a heads-up on Stone's, uh, wet work, regarding Eliot Spitzer. In a Gormley story from Nov. 24, 2007, just five days after Stone sent a letter tipping the FBI to Spitzer's hooker habit and three months before Spitzer's downfall, there was this:

"He's done,” said Roger Stone, a Washington political consultant who worked on President Nixon's re-election and worked for presidents Bush and Reagan. “I don't think he'll be re-nominated.”

Of course, Stone, according to Stone, had a lot to do with that. If he's launched a sneak attack on the 20th race, though, it hasn't started well. A judge says they can start counting the absentee ballots Wednesday, which isn't what the GOP wanted.

Mass killing and the new normal

This piece posted Friday in the wake of the Binghamton tragedy notes the numbers of lives claimed in mass shootings--50 in a month, and nearly 30 in one week. And that was before the three police officers in Pittsburgh and whole family slain in Washington state. Fifty-eight dead, and no media trend stories? Oh, right, I forgot, there was important stuff going on. Michelle Obama touched the queen.

Just do it, then, or shut up

The mayor came out and threatened bad stuff for the city, and unless he's able to do something about the taxes, or something, something bad will happen, like, like... like... dissolving the city.

"Although I did talk about the idea of dissolving the city during my first campaign for mayor (2006), I don't think we are at that point. But we may have to look into it in the future if the tax burdens continue to increase," Kasprzak said. "We are landlocked, and we have no place to grow and get more revenue to help deal with these problems."

Go for it. Because if the mayor can't see that rewriting zoning laws so they're more open to density and mixed commercial/residential use would go a long way to improving the city's attractiveness and business climate, then he should just shut the whole thing down. No, we don't have room for a mall or suburban subdivisions in the city. That doesn't mean it can't grow. There are plenty of vacant storefronts around. But the city won't grow unless attitudes change (sorry to disappoint all the glibertarian Ayn Rand cultists, but we do need taxes if we want things like roads) and the governance improves. The current city leadership can't perform simple tasks like watering the grass on playing fields. How can we trust it to figure out tough budget issues?
So take the mayor's advice. Kill it. Dump the strong mayor city-government system, since its only function is to air strange local factional grievances that are beyond earthly understanding. Then get a city manager, or shut the city down and merge with the Town of Plattsburgh. Of course, it's doubtful the town would have us.
Guess we're stuck with listening to people elected to do a job bitch about it.

Ring ding-a-lings

It's not my district, but...
When the counting's all done, the first thing constituents of NY-20 should do is tell their new Congressman, whether it's Jim Tedisco or Scott Murphy, to quit wasting breath and precious time talking about bringing back the Olympics. It can't happen, and even if it could, you wouldn't want it to--unless you want to bankrupt your already bankrupt government. See, the IOC doesn't give Olympics away without massive government support, read, subsidies. And there are better things to spend massive government funds on than rare, elite sports. Don't believe it, then read this and this and this.
Jayzuss.

Nate Silver on Murphy-Tedisco

In between baseball preview posts, he beats back some b.s. thrown against the wall by a Roll Call pundit.

Precious fluids, salty dogs

The always-good Eric Alterman delivers another scary, decline-of-the-news-biz column, which focuses on how already-poor business reporting, particularly health reporting, is likely to deteriorate.

...in “Revealing How Dentists Profit by Abusing Children,” Roberta Baskin earned one of the highest honors in broadcast journalism for her reporting on real-life little-shop-of-horrors dentistry at a chain of Medicaid clinics called Small Smiles. That same winter, she found out that her investigative unit had been axed by WJLA-TV because it was “’a luxury’ they could no longer afford.” She asks:

Is it a luxury when our reports convince companies to reform bad business practices? Is it a luxury when regulatory agencies suddenly are motivated to enforce laws already on their books?

Evidently, yes.
Meanwhile, bad reporting allows all sorts of health hokum to gain traction. I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Gen. Jack D. Ripper, er, the Plattsburgh City Common Council, which is seriously considering removing fluoride from public drinking water. And while they waste time on this, nobody talks much about an actual health threat that affects the North Country's large population at risk for heart disease: too much salt in the diet. Why? Because there's a Big Salt lobby, which bullies government agencies that release accurate information.
-ht/dmc

The Betty factor

If the Republicans end up losing the 20th Congressional District race, their leadership may rue the day the party went with the old boy and stood up their best gal, State Sen. Betty Little. Check out this map: Jim Tedisco lost in the northernmost three counties of the district to unknown Scott Murphy, which just happens to constitute a huge chunk of the area Little represents and where she is quite popular. Assuming Republican machinery in Saratoga and other points south would have kept her numbers competitive with Tedisco's, the GOP would have gained a House seat by choosing Little.