Category Archives: media news

media news

Time of My Life, Part 42: I met him before he was famous

Chris Matthews is celebrating 20 years as host of an MSNBC news/commentary talk show, “Hardball.” He has been getting salutes from fellow media stars, politicians and entertainers.

I don’t qualify as any of those categories of individuals, but I want to offer a salute of my own.

You see, I met Chris Matthews once before he was, well, “Chris Matthews.”

It was the summer of 1992 in sweltering Houston, Texas. Matthews and I worked for the same media corporate employer, the Hearst Corporation. I was attending the Republican National Convention at the Houston Astrodome while working as editorial page editor of the Beaumont Enterprise; Matthews was there as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. He hadn’t yet made his big splash on cable news TV, although Matthews was a frequent guest — as I remember it — on the PBS program “The McLaughlin Group.”

The Hearst Newspapers had a work station deep in the bowels of the Astrodome. We all had our areas where we could organize our notes and send stories back to our newspapers through the primitive computer systems we used at the time.

One morning, I went to the small coffee bar we had set up in our work stations. Who do you think joined me there? Chris Matthews, that’s who. We chatted for a few minutes. I told him I enjoyed publishing his column in the Beaumont Enterprise; he thanked me for the exposure was getting in Southeast Texas. We had a laugh or two about what we had seen the previous day. Then our encounter ended.

My recollection of this guy, whose media personality is loud, brash, borderline rude is that he was much quieter when he was chatting with a fellow Hearst-oid. Yes, he is a gentleman.

OK, I admit to being a bit star struck as I recall that brief meeting. I doubt Chris Matthews would remember it, given the journeys our respective lives took after that encounter in the Houston Astrodome.

If he would remember, I would be flattered to the max. If he doesn’t, that’s all right. I do.

media news

Happy 40th birthday, NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’

I am a giant fan of National Public Radio. My staple most mornings is to listen to NPR’s “Morning Edition” broadcast while traveling in my car while running errands.

I learn more from that broadcast than I ever learn from the morning drive-time idiocy I hear on commercial radio channels. For instance, I learned this week that “Morning Edition” has turned 40 years of age.

Its first broadcast occurred the morning after the Iranian militants captured those 53 Americans at the embassy in Tehran.

But during the discussion of “Morning Edition’s” 40th birthday, I heard a fascinating discussion of how politics has changed since NPR first went on the air with its morning talk show.

It came from Ron Elving, a contributor to NPR, who noted that in 1979, Congress was full of “liberal Republicans” and “conservative Democrats” who liked each other’s company. These days, according to Elving, both major political parties have been hijacked by ideologues on both ends of the spectrum: liberals are now called “progressives” and occupy much of the Democrats’ congressional caucus; conservatives have done the same thing to the Republican’s congressional caucus.

What’s more, neither side wants to commune with the other. Members of Congress, particularly those on the right, bunk in their offices at night. They choose to make some sort of goofy political statement, rather than becoming involved socially with their colleagues in their own party, let alone those in the other party.

Politics has become a contact sport, the NPR talkers said to each other, lamenting the demise of a kinder, gentler time in D.C.’s political life.

So it has gone over the past four decades.

NPR itself has become a whipping child for those on the right, who accuse the network of harboring a sort of “liberal bias,” in my view is a creation of those who want the media to present the news with their own fiery bias. NPR takes great pain to ensure that it presents the news straight down the middle lane.

As I listened to the “Morning Edition” talkers this week reminisce about how much politics has changed over the past 40 years, I found myself longing — yet again! — for a return to the way it used to be inside the halls of power.

It well might return if Americans awaken on Election Day 2020 to the damage that the politics of resentment and anger is doing to our public institutions.

media news, national news

WH press secretaries: from bad to worse to utterly abysmal

I never thought I would see the day when a White House press secretary could make Sean Spicer look good.

Consider this:

Spicer was the first White House press flack hired by Donald Trump. Spicer “distinguished” himself at his first press briefing by challenging media reports about the size of Trump’s inaugural crowd, contending that the president drew the largest such gathering in the nation’s history. It didn’t go well for Spicer after that. He resigned and now he’s on “Dancing With the Stars.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders succeeded Spicer and became a shill for the serial liar who hired her. Sanders ended up suspending the White House press briefings altogether. She quit, too.

Now we have Stephanie Grisham, who this weekend said that former White House chief of staff John Kelly was — get ready for this one! — “totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.”

Wow, man!

The “genius” of Donald Trump? She’s saying the president is a “genius”? The guy who cannot spell his way out of a third-grade lunchroom? The individual who conducts presidential policy nearly exclusively via Twitter? The candidate who launches into nonsensical, irrational, incoherent tirades at campaign rallies? The guy who cannot string two sentences together?

I know next to nothing about Stephanie Grisham, other than she has yet to answer questions in a roomful of reporters assigned to cover the White House.

Her statement about John Kelly — the decorated combat veteran, the retired four-star Marine Corps general, the Gold Star dad whose son died in combat in Afghanistan — confirms to me that her bulb is as dim as the one burning inside the skull of the president.

media news

Happy Trails, Part 173: Back in the game, kind of …

This retirement journey on which my wife and I have embarked has taken its share of peculiar and surprising twists and turns. They’ve all been good and have brought us joy.

This latest twist compels me to tell you that I am returning — in a manner of speaking — to where my print journalism career began 40 years ago.

I am back to reporting on community news. It’s not a full-time gig by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. It’s a free-lance affair. I get to choose the stories I want to cover for a group of community newspapers in Collin County, Texas. The publishers are giving me free rein.

I have informed them that my wife and I might not be available all the time. We plan to be on the road during RV traveling season — which is essentially every season except winter, during which time we’ll have our fifth wheel parked, winterized and in a state of hibernation.

But this new gig figures to be a great ride for as long as it lasts. I do not yet know when I’ll call a halt to it. Maybe I’ll check out of this world with my notebook and pen in hand.

I started my professional journey in late 1976 on the copy desk of the Oregon Journal, which was Portland’s evening newspaper. I gravitated in early 1977 to the Oregon City Enterprise-Courier, an after suburban daily newspaper about 15 miles south of Portland. I took a job as a temporary sports writer, replacing the sports editor who was on maternity leave after the birth of her first child.

I covered high school football, baseball, basketball, wrestling, track and field.

The editor who hired me said there was a chance I could stay on if an opening occurred. It was a gamble to leave a permanent full time job for one that might end in a few months. It worked out. An opening occurred. I got hired permanently.

I got to cover police news, the courts, city councils, school boards; I wrote feature stories and I developed pictures in a dark room.

I gravitated eventually to opinion journalism, working on editorial pages in Beaumont and Amarillo in Texas. However, reporting and writing news stories is like, well, riding a bicycle. You do not forget how to do it.

My task now will be more limited. For one thing, dark rooms no longer exist in newspaper buildings; it’s all done digitally. I’ll take pictures with my I-phone and send them in via e-mail.

But I get to cover community news in Princeton, where we now live and in neighboring Farmersville, a town of about 3,200 residents just east of us.

I will have to learn a bit more about these communities as I work my around them, learning the names of the movers and shakers, gadflies and assorted soreheads.

I am grateful to my new employers for this opportunity to (more or less) get back in the game.

Am I living the dream? You bet I am.

media news

About to set a blogging record

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I am going to boast for a moment or two about this blog. Forgive me if I sound a bit self-serving.

Probably in the next 24 hours or so High Plains Blogger is going to set a record for page views and unique visitors for a single calendar year. What makes this bit of news boast worthy is that we still have two months left in this calendar year.

2019 will turn into 2020 soon. By the time it does, this blog will have shattered to smithereens the record it posted in 2018, which beat the mark it set in 2017, which was greater than the readership it had in 2016.

That’s the good news.

The not-so-good news (I refuse to call it “bad) is that I will have set the bar extremely high for the next record to be broken by the time 2021 rolls around.

My hope is that 2020 proves to be a banner year, too, for High Plains Blogger. I enjoy writing it. I thoroughly enjoy being able to spend the time that full-time retirement allows me to spend.

I am likely to have just a tiny bit less time over the next year. I have taken on a freelance writing gig for a local newspaper group. I will continue to write for KETR-FM, the public radio station based at Texas A&M University-Commerce.

My interest in maintaining my personal blog remains high.

I had two stupendous months earlier this year, in January and again in March, that enabled me to set this record. I cannot predict what events will transpire during the remainder of this year or next year that might send blog traffic through the roof.

I’m just proud of the record I am about set. I am hoping to maintain interest in this blog.

What’s left now is merely to offer a word of thanks to those who read these words and those who find them worth sharing with their own social media network of friends and acquaintances.

As for what’s ahead, well … let me at ’em.

local news, media news

Happy Trails, Part 172: The road takes another surprise turn

The reporter’s notebook you see here is meant to illustrate the surprise turn my retirement journey has taken.

I happened to be in the right place at the right time this week. I now shall explain.

We took out a subscription this past week to the Princeton Herald, a weekly newspaper that covers the community where my wife, myself and Toby the Puppy live. I asked the circulation clerk for the editor’s name. She gave it to me and transferred me to her desk; the voice mail machine picked up the call and I left a message.

I inquired as to whether the newspaper needed any freelance help from a retired journalist who has moved into this community, and made a few contacts here and there.

It turns out the Princeton Herald has such a need.

So, I am now working very part time for a newspaper … again! The editor, who runs the Herald and several other publications in this part of the Metroplex with her husband, is giving me considerable latitude. I will be able to sniff out my own stories whenever I feel like it. I might get be handed an assignment to cover a city council or another governmental entity. No sweat, right?

Of course, all of this hinges on availability, given that as retired folks, my wife and I might be unavailable, as we would be on the road to hither and yon pulling our RV across the continent.

But … that’s OK with my new boss.

Meanwhile, this retirement journey goes on. Life is so very good.

media news

Time of My Life, Part 40: Sharing experiences with students

One of the many joys of working as a journalist — and I had too many of them to count — was being given the chance to tell young people about the challenges of my craft.

Those opportunities came in the form of “career day” events at local schools. Whether in Oregon or in Texas, there was a time when educators thought enough of journalists and journalism to invite us into their classrooms to talk to students about career potential and what it takes to do what we did.

Over many years standing in front of students, I eventually developed a sort of pre-determined formal introduction. I usually would begin by telling students that “I have the best job in town. I get to report on our community and I get to foist my opinion on thousands of newspaper readers every day.”

I’d get a chuckle out of the students. Perhaps from their teachers, too.

I don’t know these days, given the pummeling that newspapers are taking in the current media market, what print journalists are telling students. I suspect it has something to do with the myriad pressures being exerted on newspapers, how they’re having to compete with the Internet, cable TV and assorted other media outlets.

One particular career day stands out among all the times I got to speak to students. I want to share it with you.

It was in 1983. I was working as editor of a small afternoon daily, The Enterprise-Courier, in Oregon City, Ore. My phone rang one day and on the other end was a gentleman named John Eide, who was the shop teacher at Harvey W. Scott Elementary School in Portland, where I attended as a boy. Mr. Eide invited me back to Harvey Scott School to give a career day presentation.

I hadn’t darkened the door at that school for 20-plus years. For this gentleman to call me and invite me back was a singular honor. It blew my mind.

So, I went back to Harvey Scott School for the day. I walked into the office and got reacquainted with my fifth-grade shop teacher. He then took me to Carl Hendricksen’s classroom. Mr. Hendricksen happened to be my sixth-grade teacher back in the day. To see him, with his hair turned snowy white, absolutely knocked me out!

I spent the day there, talking to students about newspapers, telling them about the challenges I faced each day publishing a newspaper that competed with the then-mighty Portland Oregonian.

Arguably, the highlight of the visit was walking into the school cafeteria. Perhaps others have experienced the same thing. This was a first for me: The cafeteria smelled precisely as I remembered it two decades earlier. It was as if I walked through a time portal and stood in a sort of parallel universe.

Career days such as that one routinely offered me the chance to share the joys and challenges of a career I was privileged to pursue. I hope my successors in the business are able to speak with as much enthusiasm about journalism as I did.

media news

Shepard Smith leaves Fox News … but how did it happen?

Let’s see if we can connect a few dots regarding Shepard Smith’s stunning departure as a lead anchor on the Fox News Channel.

  • Smith went on the air and bid farewell, thanking Fox for giving him the opportunity of a lifetime.
  • He has been critical of Donald Trump, while the network that employed him became a presidential favorite.
  • Smith’s departure apparently caught his colleagues by surprise. Business news anchor Neil Cavuto was stunned into speechlessness.

My thoughts: Was the anchor’s departure totally of his own volition? Was it totally as he presented it today on the air? I’m just asking here.

There seems to be a good bit more to this story than we’ve been told.

Whatever. Shepard Smith is a pro. He’s a first-class broadcast journalist. I am almost willing to bet real American money he ends up on another broadcast/cable network … soon!

media news

Media performing stellar job reporting on this scandal

Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump has introduced a new mantra to describe the news media.

He calls them the “corrupt media.” It’s no longer, he says, just the “fake news media.” He says the media are corrupt and are trying to bring down the presidency.

I want to extend a word of praise for the job the media are doing in reporting on the march of the pending impeachment of Donald Trump.

The president has admitted to soliciting help from a foreign government to get him re-elected, along with finding dirt on a potential political opponent. Trump has actually acknowledged that he is seeking foreign “interference” the likes of which occurred in 2016 when Russians attacked our electoral system.

The media are reporting on all of it. They are telling the nation and the world what we all need to know about the president and the administration.

Donald Trump’s epithet toward the media ranks as just more hysteria from an individual who is sounding as if he is getting frightened at what might loom not far into the future.

The media are doing their job. They are performing magnificently.

media news, national news

Hold on with the ‘Civil War’ criticism

Donald John Trump went on a Twitter rampage over the weekend, blasting out a seemingly endless string of messages expressing rage over the threat of impeachment coming from the U.S. House of Representatives.

One of his many tweets said the following: “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,'” Trump quoted pastor Robert Jeffress as saying.

As you can imagine, it drew plenty of brickbats. It’s the “Civil War” reference that has drawn the most fire.

But let’s hold on here. The president didn’t say there would be a civil war that mirrored the actual Civil War that erupted in 1861. He said there would be a “Civil War like fracture” in the country. Do you see the difference? I hope so. Because I generally am not prone to taking up for Trump on these rhetorical outbursts.

However, he has called the whistleblower essentially a traitor because, according to the president, this individual committed an act of “treason” by alleging that the president conspired with the Ukrainian government to help him win re-election while digging up dirt on former Vice President and U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., a potential 2020 political rival.

Hold on here! The whistleblower is not a traitor. He or she didn’t commit a treasonous act. He or she simply reported to the nation allegations that are sounding more credible with each passing day, if not each hour.

Trump’s Twitter appetite is now threatening to swallow him whole as he seeks to defend himself against charges that he broke faith with the sacred oath he took when he became president of the United States.