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September 28, 2005

Crowder's Rule

Over the years I've developed a maxim that helps me put local news in perspective. I call it "Crowder's Rule."

To wit: "The lower the stakes, the higher the emotions."

Let's give this some context. In recent weeks, we've had two catastrophic hurricanes, possibly a result of global warming. A U.S. city was destroyed. The body count in Iraq is approaching 2,000, with no end in sight, and Afghanistan appears on the verge of again descending into violence. The Senate is considering a new Supreme Court chief justice who could someday provide crucial votes on issues important to Americans. The GOP Speaker of the House was indicted in Texas. Closer to home, a state senator resigned and was indicted on federal corruption charges. In his parting shots he referred to himself as the "Moses" of his people and blamed his woes on the media and racism.

That's a lot of high-stakes news.

But for weeks on end, one issue has dominated the Connecticut Post's letters section: The Stratford mayoral race.

Granted, it's a big deal -- in Stratford, at least, where people actually care.

In today's newspaper, reader Joe Pedoto of Stratford writes that "some people in town" -- surely not himself, natch -- are calling Republican candidate Dominic Costello "the Stealth Candidate from Bridgeport," which in Stratford is apparently akin to saying something unpleasant about someone's mother.

There have also been vituperations and cross-vituperations over various candidates' habits as taxpayers and whether or not they own property in town. Local politics makes one long for the more civilized sort of discourse found in daytime TV and professional wrestling.

All of this public mudslinging, of course, is just a taste of the frenzied backstabbing that's doubtless going on behind the scenes. One wonders if the bloody mess that emerges from this political free-for-all on Nov. 8 to become Stratford's first mayor will be in any shape to govern.

Posted by edcrowder on 2:05 PM | Comments (242)

September 21, 2005

Those strolling bones

The Rolling Stones have been looking long in the tooth lately, but age itself shouldn’t be their biggest concern.

Even as they make the transition from sex symbols to sexagenarians, Mick, Keith, Ron and Charlie still know more about rock ’n roll than any band currently in rotation on the airwaves. And they’ve got more than enough money to buy off the Grim Reaper for a few more years.

But it had to hurt the geriatric rockers to be edged out of the limelight by a new band that’s sweeping the world’s young people off their feet.

I speak, of course, of the Wiggles.

The Wiggles, if you haven’t already had the pleasure, are four utterly wussified men who are supposed to be in a rock band, accompanied by the world’s least threatening pirate. They’re from Australia but their TV show is the hottest thing going with the milk-teeth set.

From what I gather their best-known song is an ode to fruit salad.

(ASIDE: I recently goaded federal court reporter Mike Mayko into singing this aloud in the newsroom.)

Leave it to Australia to come up with something dumber than Barney.

The first time I set eyes on the Wiggles, in a photo in this newspaper’s Preview section, I had an experience akin to my very first taste of Vegemite.

Not having kids, I’d never heard of these guys before. So I asked a friend of mine, a guy who’s currently weathering an infestation of toddlers, what he thought of the Wiggles.

He responded with the hollow stare of a man recalling his years in the gulag during Stalin’s reign. “God,” he said, shaking his head. “I think they’ve finally gotten over that whole thing.”

I still didn’t have an idea of how much of a phenomenon this was until the Wiggles took their world tour to Bridgeport a few weeks ago.

I confess: I wasn’t there.

Somehow, after a lot of pleading and a few well-placed bribes, my superiors instead chose me at random to cover the Rolling Stones, who were playing that night at Rentschler Field in East Hartford.

Alas, I could not also cover the Wiggles. Some other lucky reporter had to do that.

The Stones, by the way, rocked. From the seven-story stage setup to the giant inflatable lips to Keith’s burning vamps on “Miss You,” they put on the biggest, wildest, most spectacular, most explosive concert I’ve ever seen. For the first time, I completely understood why they’re called “The World’s Greatest Rock ’n Roll Band.”

So guess who made the front page the next day?

Posted by edcrowder on 9:18 PM | Comments (1202)

September 19, 2005

Positive spin

There’s an old maxim that if a discipline has to call itself a science, it’s not. Thus, we have "library science" and -- great chieftain of the oxymoron race -- "political science," but no "astronomical science" or "biological science".

Journalism, alas, does not aspire to such a lofty status, and there’s little risk of it ever being labeled as such.

Granted, we take pride in a certain precision in the presentation of facts. Indeed, we like to think ourselves the intellectual progeny of Newton in terms of the discipline of our inquiries. But there remains some small percentage of what we do – I’ll hazard 90 percent – that falls into the slightly less rigorous category of wild speculation.

One of these areas in which we occasionally find ourselves on factually shaky ground is finding the proper mix of “positive” news versus “negative” news. This came up recently when an East End community activist took issue with me over the Connecticut Post’s coverage of recent events in that Bridgeport neighborhood. Without going into details, the gist of the conversation is that we seem to delight in reporting negative news from that neighborhood while failing to focus on the positive news.

I listened, and indeed he may have a point. But my mind keeps turning back to an observation a wiser colleague once made: “Negative news is when your kid ends up in the police log. Positive news is when it’s your neighbor’s kid.”

Which brings to mind an experience I had literally in the first few weeks as a professional journalist, working as the editor of a glorified shopper in the greater New Haven area.

The paper had just come out, and I was feeling pretty good about it because of the expose (so I thought of it at the time) on teenage pregnancy in the community. I walked into the office and the phone was already ringing. I made the mistake of answering.

“Why isn’t there any good news in the paper anymore?” asked the caller, a woman.

“Well, I—”

“It’s all bad news. All gloom and doom. It makes it sound like our city is falling apart. It’s sensationalism, that’s what it is!”

That, at least, is the much-abridged version. She pointed out from memory every story upon which the “negative” label might remotely be slapped.

At long last I found my voice.

“Ma’am,” I said, “how about the story on the front page? The one about the school kids raising money for the Special Olympics. Surely, you can’t find anything negative about that?”

“That?” she said. “Oh, well I didn’t read that.”

Posted by edcrowder on 10:52 PM | Comments (1489)

September 14, 2005

Misc.

Lacking any genuine inspiration today, I figured I'd just post a few odds and ends that made me chuckle.

“So, like I was telling Bishop Lori: We don’t take a vow of poverty or chastity in journalism, it just works out that way.”
-- overheard at an awards dinner

“[T]he fight broke out on Oak Avenue between Bridgeport Avenue and Wall Street...”
-- from the cop log (... and to heck with you and your stinkin' potholes)

ANSSTORY: 8-10 inches. Story from Ansonia. Details to come.
-- news budget item

"We’ve got all Portuguese people around here. We’re going to need a Spanish-speaking officer."
-- heard on the police scanner

Today, Sunday, Feb. 6, the Connecticut Post made me happy. What wonderful stories and writing from Michael Mayko and Michael Daly. The Connecticut Post made me laugh and cry a lot this day. Also, Frank Keegan’s look at the death penalty was insightful, and I learned something from Ken Dixon’s Capitol View. Even the sports section was full of human interest. It makes me happy to receive my Connecticut Post, delivered so early every day. OK, what really makes me happy is my good health, good family, good friends and good sex.
-- voice mail left by a very, very enthusiastic reader

Posted by edcrowder on 12:23 PM | Comments (2142)

September 9, 2005

Stop the presses

My workspace -- it has too few sides to be called a cubicle -- is pretty much the same as those found in any other newsroom. I have a beige Compaq computer and a black Lucent phone and a tape dispenser. I've got an AP style book, a Connecticut blue book, a Webster's New World Dictionary (Third Collegiate Edition), assorted other volumes, a few stackable plastic shelves, a precariously leaning tower of old newspapers and somewhere, buried under a mound of paper, a shamefully neglected desk calendar.

Clutter, to varying degrees, is a nearly universal feature on reporters' and editors' desks. I know only two journalists who don't have cluttered desks. One is an ex-Marine. The other sits next to me. He also keeps a bottle of hand sanitizer within reach, opens doors with a paper towel and won't let you reach into the bag to grab a handful of his potato chips, but insists on pouring them out into your hand. His name is Dieter. You get the idea.

Clutter has many causes. In newsrooms, the prime culprit is press releases.

Press releases arrive in newsrooms in great numbers by mail and fax; no matter how diligently you ignore your mailbox and fax machine, they always wind up on your desk. How, no one knows. There, they procreate and multiply. I've never actually seen this happen, but every time I turn my head for a second, it's clear they've been knocking boots behind my back.

Sitting in front of me is a press release that I can't bring myself to throw away. In fact, I want to frame it. It describes, quite clinically, a product aimed at people who have had gastric bypass surgery and have developed an unfortunate side-effect: "highly malodorous flatus" -- or, slightly less euphemistically, the tendency to pass gas offensively. The patented product, "The Flatulence Deoderizer," we're informed, consists of an "activated charcoal pad" which is placed where the sun shineth not. We're informed it's "military technology."

I would have though the Pentagon has bigger fish to fry these days. Then again, I've never been stranded in a Humvee for days at a time with a bunch of Marines who've been eating frank-and-bean MRE's. Maybe there's an explosion risk.

I suppose they sent this press release figuring I'd write a story about this wonderful product. I'm actually tempted, if only because I'd' like to see the copy desk trying to wrestle the word "flatulance" into a headline, knowing perfectly well there's a much shorter -- but alas, forbidden -- word available.

By the way, this product is available online, Dieter, at www.flat-d.com.

Here's another one: It's on letterhead from a pension and actuarial consultant in Southington, Conn.

"Dear sir or madam," it reads. "My name is S." -- I've withheld the name to protect the chuckleheaded -- "and I am the Press Secretary for P---- Inc. I am a graduate from Central Connecticut State University, graduating in the top of my class with a marketing management degree. in brief, I have held managerial positions and have excellent communication skills."

That's becoming more doubtful with each word I read. Let's skip ahead: She modestly goes on to boast that she works "side-by-side" with the company's president, which I suspect is true, depending on which side is "working" with which side.

She then sort of gets to the point, or as she puts it, "the purpose of this correspondence," which is to "provide us with a press release" -- my eyes are glazing over -- about the aforementioned company. She says this, however, using a great many more words, although she still somehow manages to say nohing useful or informative about the company.

But lest we fail to comprehend the urgency of this communication, we are told: "This particular press release is an important aspect in all our lives."

And to think I was this close to filing it in the circular bin.

Posted by edcrowder on 9:13 PM | Comments (463)

September 8, 2005

A few gems

Some days, when the stars are properly aligned, a single edition of the Connecticut Post yields a bumper crop of bizarre stories. Thursday was such a day ...

Dumbest bank robber ...

Kevin Morris' plan was a boiler-plate bank robbery. He'd walk into the Bank of America branch on Main Street in Bridgeport, hand the teller a note claiming he had a gun, demand some money, and high-tail it out of Dodge.

But plans went sour for the 26-year-old Bridgeport resident when he approached the teller and handed her the note -- which read: "Give me all the hundreds out of your drawer, no funny money. I have a gun but don't want to use it, so let's make this easy."

He'd signed the note, "Kevin."

The teller asked Kevin to have a seat, which he patiently did, hands folded over his chest, as the teller called police.

As he waited, another bank employee asked what he was up to. He grumbled: "I'm trying to rob the bank, but nobody's paying me any attention.

He got two years in prison.

Luckiest dude ...

OK. Normally you don't win any accolades for your good luck when you get shot. But if you're shot 13 times with a .45 -- essentially a portable cannon -- and there's enough of you left to survive, you've got to count your blessings.

Under most circumstances, the Connecticut Post doesn't identify crime victims. But we do identify suspects when they're arrested. Matthew "Keil" Langston, 23, of Bridgeport, was charged in a warrant this week with attempted murder and other charges in the incident outside a Bridgeport housing project.

Most precocious kid ...

If you believe her lawyer (and given his profession, that's not necessarily a good idea), Tammy Imre's prepubescent paramour was an underage Don Juan.

So suave was this kid that he had poor little Imre, 30, of Stratford, half-convinced he was a 30-year-old midget rather than an 8-year-old boy. According to police, Imre maintained that the boy was the aggressor in their sexual relationship, which actually started when the boy was 7.

He allegedly coaxed her to ditch her boyfriend and stop taking birth-control pills.

"This is a savvy young kid and it's clear that he knew what was going on," said the lawyer, Donald Papcsy.

Under a plea agreement reached Wednesday, Imre is expected to be sentenced to six years in prison.

Posted by edcrowder on 10:36 PM | Comments (114)

September 7, 2005

Jargon alert

A debate erupted at the Post's Page One meeting Tuesday over a term that has become part of the education jargon: "special-needs," as in, "Bridgeport's public schools need to do more to help special-needs kids."

It's a euphemism, of course -- a supposedly more polite way to say that a child has some sort of unpleasant difficulty: a mental or physical disability, or a social disorder, for example.

One side argued it's part of a larger attempt by the PC folks to denude the English language of nuance and meaning. To say a child is "special needs" provides no information about the child's actual situation. It lumps together people with all sorts of difficulties, without distinguishing among them.

The other side felt that, while vague, it's a commonly used term that's well understood by those who follow education. Besides, "kids with physical, mental and social disabilities" is a beast to fit into a headline.

The debate brought to mind an anecdote -- possibly apocryphal -- about a well-known (and now retired) sports columnist who used to work for a rival Southern Connecticut newspaper.

This occurred during the Special Olympics World Games, held in 1995 in New Haven. The organizers had gone to great lengths to educate the media as to the proper way to refer to the athletes in print, presumably to avoid embarrassing them (or more likely, their parents or coaches). Media outlets received almost daily reminders from the World Games organizers that the athletes were "challenged," not "disabled," and certainly not "retarded."

I should mention here that sports columnists are not well known for their delicate natures, and this particular one had all the diplomacy skills of a bichon frise.

Anyhow, when the games finally began, he -- like other sports staff at that newspaper -- was assigned to go to the Games, find an athelete and write a profile. So he marched into the bullpen, surrounded by athletes, parents and coaches, and asked who was in charge.

"I need to speak to a retard," he bellowed.

Posted by edcrowder on 12:55 PM | Comments (13)

September 2, 2005

The wrath of God

I promised myself I would stay away from religion and politics in this forum, aside from taking an occasional lighthearted jab at the president.

But, dash it all, some rules are made to be broken. Case in point: the letter in today's paper claiming Hurricane Katrina was God demonstrating his wrath against the sodomites and gamblers of New Orleans.

The author should go out and buy a copy of the Bible and crack it open someday. Instead, he selectively quotes to support his conclusion.

I would refer him to Genesis 8:21. Here's the scene-setter: Noah and his family (and their, ahem, menagerie) have just emerged from the Ark to repopulate the flood-ravaged earth. Noah builds an altar, and an apparently remorseful God speaks to him. The Bible tells us:

"And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart [is] evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done."

Later, in Isaiah 54:9-10, God repeats the promise.

"For this [is as] the waters of Noah unto me: for [as] I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.

"For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee."

To suggest that God personally ordered up this tragedy to punish the sinners is more than just a slap in the face to the many good people who have lost everything they had in the last week.

It's also bad religion.

Posted by edcrowder on 3:16 PM | Comments (3)