at's blog will be updated occasionally with news about PatsPapers.com, observations about the news business and comments about life and the stories in the news.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Not much news in Detroit
Newspaper coverage of the automakers' future was scarce in Detroit yesterday.
I had forgotten about the timing of this until the Wall Street Journal pointed it out. As the Obama administration pushed GM and Chrysler closer to bankruptcy yesterday, Detroit's newspapers were beginning their new system of distribution. Under the plan, there's no home delivery on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Those readers are expected to get their news online or visit a newsstand.
We’ve shut the webcast for a few days so we can focus on the re-launch of Pat’s Papers. Be sure to mark April 6th on your calendar—that’s the date we’ve picked to showcase the new and improved Pat’s Papers.
We’ve been working on the website for a couple of months and we’re almost ready to go. We plan to use the next two weeks making sure our transition is a smooth one.
But we won’t be sleeping in—we’ll continue to produce the print version of Pat’s Papers every weekday. If you scroll down on the main page, you find headlines and links to the newspaper stories that caught our eye. Again, our re-launch is set for April 6th. We hope you can come back to us that day and everyday thereafter for our carefully edited look at the top headlines from US newspapers.
Fun quote from the President in his Leno appearance last night. He said, "In Washington, it is a little like "American Idol," except everybody is Simon Cowell."
I think the President is giving his critics in Washington too much credit. Yes -- Simon is known for speaking his mind and sometimes being mean. But he's usually correct in his criticism. The same can't be said for much of the partisan bickering in DC.
The New York Times says those $200 skin treatments you've paid for may not be "required maintenance" to the degree that your local spa would have you believe.
Today’s bloated and breathless spa menus promise more than a mere facial can deliver, dermatologists say.
The story also includes a Tip Sheet that lists the components of a facial that dermatologists consider most worthwhile: exfoliation, microdermabrasion, glycolic peels and extraction.
We're working at NY1 this morning to get more information about the condition of actress Natasha Richardson after her skiing accident. The NY Post and the NY Daily News both say she's brain dead.
Her fall happened on a beginner run at Mont Tremblant. I skiied the run -- called Nansen -- several times last year and there's not much trouble to get into. The reports from the mountain indicate she didn't hit anything but the snow. But she wasn't wearing a helmet and complained later of a headache. Her condition quickly slipped from there. She was flown to New York yesterday on life support.
Highlights include the "Are Canadians funnier than Americans?" discussion, and the quirky final question that required me to assemble an all-star fantasy "Match Game 2009" panel. I got to play Gene Rayburn.
Why this wasn't part of the iPhone software from the first day it was sold I'll never understand. But Apple informally announced today that iPhone will cut and paste by this summer.
Amazing that cut and paste is a breakthrough. But it will be a big email relief.
Maybe in 2010 they'll figure out how I can search my inbox and store important messages offline.
The new operating system software, called iPhone OS 3.0, adds more than 100 new features for users. In addition to being able to cut, copy and paste information between applications, it offers support for photo, video and audio messages.
UPDATE: As Dan points out in the comments below, Apple did actually announce an iPhone search function and the ability to use the "widescreen" keyboard when sending e-mail. The people have been heard!
This might take all of the fun out of it -- but a mathematician says he's figured out a foolproof way to finish Sudoku puzzles. He's developed a step-by-step plan for completing any version of the popular numbers game. USA Today publishes complete details this morning.
Some excerpts from the much-hyped Jim Cramer appearance on the Daily Show last night.
Stewart was informed and merciless. Cramer had few good answers. The interview had more of a "60 Minutes" tone than a Comedy Central tone. "Everybody got it wrong. I got a lot of things wrong," Cramer admitted.
There's an interesting editorial in the Washington Times today -- about President Obama's love of the teleprompter. The Times goes so far as to say "... we would like to have a President who occasionally comes across as more than a TV anchor reading a script." (For the record: I strive to occasionally come across that way as well.)
The editorial suggests many Americans may not realize he rarely makes public remarks without his prompter. Even in question and answer sessions, the prompter is sometimes used to remind the President of key facts and figures. The Times goes on to say you can easily imagine the Saturday Night Live skit where "a technician with a canned set of answers" cues up the wrong one.
There's a story in the New York Times this morning about the impact of the economic bailout on "foreign workers." Companies that take government money will be restricted in any effort to hire employees who need a visa. The "Made in America" provision mostly applies to skilled foreign workers who would be hired by a bank under an H-1B visa.
I was a "skilled foreign worker" for many years before getting a green card and eventually becoming a US citizen. I like to think I made a positive contribution to the economy in the time I was on my H-1B visa.
Foreign workers aren't evil. The H-1B program is far from perfect, but it does help to bring in skilled workers in areas where there may not be enough experienced local workers.
And here's the key point for me: This is another example of a layer of bureaucracy on top of another layer of bureacracy. The immigration service already has plenty of hurdles in place to prevent large numbers of foreigners from taking jobs from Americans. This "Made in America" hiring restriction is overkill.
Overexposed Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez is headed for hip surgery and will likely be out of the lineup until May. Could he please just hide somewhere until then?
I'm really tired of the headlines. It's been everything from Madonna to steroids to divorce to hip trouble. I'm having trouble working up much energy for any of it.
There are two things I would love my iPhone to do.
1) Serve as a video camera in case I encountered a breaking news story and wanted to put it on TV.
2) Connect to my computer to give me internet access anywhere.
Turns out -- the iPhone can do both. But they're not Apple "authorized" applications. Today the Wall Street Journal takes a look at the growing industry of unauthorized iPhone applications. The new Cydia Store online brings many bootleg iPhone applications together in a challenge to Apple's official applications.
Among the offerings: the Cycorder video camera application and PdaNET, which provides the computer to iPhone data link I long for. Despite Apple's protests and legal moves, the Journal story says 1.7 million iPhones have been "jailbroken" to break the bonds of Apple's restrictive policies.
Saw a fun short film tonight. My TV business news colleague Jon Erlichman and his wife, actress Caroline Lesley, came up with the idea while spending an afternoon at a New York museum. They saw everyone walking around with those rented "audio guide" devices. At each piece in the museum, you key in the audio guide number, and a really smart guy tells you something that gives you great insight.
Which led to the concept for the movie: what if everything in life had an audio guide number?
My favorite moments were when the audio guide's emotionless explanations poked fun at our behavior in everyday events. Noting the lack of interaction between cab driver and passenger, the narrator says: "The rider and he inhabit the tiny space of his taxi and yet notice how they barely speak." Somehow that impersonal taxi moment seems more wrong when it's pointed out this way.
We used a fancy "motion control camera" to make it appear that I was standing in front of a moving, zooming picture of the actual Museum of Natural History. (The irony of this "green screen" shoot is that the REAL museum is only a few blocks from my apartment.)
Today the phone rings. Big problem with the motion control system and my shot doesn't move at the same rate as the shot behind me. Unusable. Not enough time before release date to reshoot.
Our storm coverage on NY1 is featured this morning in Richard Huff's column in the New York Daily News:
"March is coming in like a lion," Pat Kiernan said on NY1. "The city is getting pounded with a major storm."
I got plenty of e-mail and voice mail yesterday from teachers who heard me say I was "surprised" by the decision to close public schools in NYC. They accused me of having no regard for their safety and the safety of students. Not true, of course. I really was just surprised, because schools have often been open in similar storms.
Someday I hope Pat's Papers can achieve a fraction of what he did through his reach to radio listeners.
His concept was similar and it was masterfully executed: harvey and his staff searched across the country and around the world for stories that may have been overlooked or covered from a different perspective elsewhere. He was a "news aggregator" 50 years before anyone had invented that buzzword.
Harvey loved the job and listeners loved him. He signed a 10-year contract with ABC Radio in 2000 at the age of 82. His reports were picked up by more than 1300 radio stations. As mass media divides into niche media and "news on demand," there may never be anyone who matches the influence Paul Harvey packed into just a few minutes on the air each day.
