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APC Salutes America’s Veterans

Happy Veterans Day from the Atlanta Press Club!

Nichols’ Death Penalty Trial Begins

Today is the day that a jury begins deciding whether Brian Nichols lives or dies for murdering four people during a shooting spree in March 2005 that began at the Fulton County Courthouse.

I still have vivid memories of that day, as I started my morning with coffee with some other freelance writer friends. As I was heading home in my jeans and sweater, my editor from The Washington Post national desk called: there had been a shooting…could I make it? I almost turned around on the highway but was there in a flash. I spent that day and subsequent ones covering the frightening events for The Post and Newsweek. One of the most upsetting moments of that March 11 was watching court reporter Julie Ann Brandau’s best friend wandering around in tears, asking us reporters if we’d heard anything about who had been shot. (At that point, we had not.) I was later standing beside her when someone whispered quietly that her friend was a victim.

As this trial finally — finally winds down and we soon learn the fate of Brian Nichols, I’ll take a moment to remember that frightening few days surrounding the shocking events. I trust many others who covered those events will, too.

What was it like?

I would imagine I am not the only Atlanta Press Club member curious to hear from fellow journalists about what it was like to cover this historic presidential election. If you were out there in the thick of it — whether it was covering local reaction to the presidential results or following local or Congressional races, please share your thoughts about being part of this Election Day of a lifetime. You can comment or, if you’d like to share your views in a “longer” format, perhaps you’d be interested in being a guest blogger! Please let us know!

Election countdown…

Coverage of Election Day is becoming more urgent and — in some instances — a bit shrill. Many of the local stories are focusing on problems and issues associated with early voting (which, for full disclosure, I did this week with zero problems during the two-hour wait). As that is a “new” and relatively unexplored angle, I’ve found much of the coverage interesting. I could do without the coverage of the annoying local robocalls (we know they are annoying) and the continued interest in the nastiness of each presidential candidate’s campaign.

Please remember there are LOCAL races going on, and one more set of Atlanta Press Club debates, scheduled to be taped and air on November 2. Visit atlantapressclub.org for more information.

Good luck covering — and voting in — these crucial elections!

Female Newscasters, Kicking A**

I love this article in Salon about the rise of women journalists and commentators during this presidential campaign. “While pondering the meaning of this year’s 18 million cracks in the White House ceiling, we might easily have missed the shower of shards falling from other glass domes, like those atop television newsrooms,” writes Rebecca Traister.  

Horrifying Crime Against Ark. Anchor

After hearing about the murder of 26-year-old Arkansas TV anchor Anne Pressly this weekend, I was just horrified. This young woman — the same age as my brother — was in the prime of her life and career. Though it seems the police believe it was a random robbery, my first thought was that she was targeted by a stalker-ish fan (perhaps I watch too many cop shows on TV). Regardless, we all know how close media consumers can feel toward us journalists. They watch us on TV, listen to us on the radio, read our words. We’re not as “popular” as movie or rock stars, but I’d like to think that those who follow our careers — our “fans,” if you will — do so because they believe in what they were doing. As colleagues at Arkansas station KATV and Ms. Pressly’s family mourn their loss, our hearts and thoughts go out to them. You can watch some video clips of Anne Pressly’s work, courtesy of KATV, here.

Coverage of “The Race Card”

With such a short time between now and the election, I’ve been intrigued by how much of the current coverage focuses on race, and how the two presidential candidates are “handling” the issue. I caught a bit of Campbell Brown’s show on CNN last night (if you click the link, check out the video excerpts on the right) and was struck by some of the comments of the politicos. Their general take: it seems race can’t NOT be an issue.

Congressman John Lewis went so far as to compare McCain and Palin’s rhetoric to the late Alabama Gov. George Wallace, whose hateful segregationist agenda permeated much of the Civil Rights movement. McCain shot back. Then the Obama camp stepped in with its own statement, which Fox News calls “the middle path,” disagreeing with the comparison between McCain and Wallace but not with the overall message of Lewis’ remarks.

Though I am disheartened that the color of someone’s skin appears to be a “hot-button” issue in this day and age, I am pleased that at least there is discussion of the topic of race…some of it even deep! What are your thoughts about media coverage of “the race card”?

Debates and social media

I admit I had not anticipated a TV event as much as the VP debate last night since the season finale of Friends. As soon as it ended, I switched around to the various networks to see which wonks they had on “analyzing” Biden and Palin, then promptly turned off the tube. I decided I wasn’t all that interested in other opinions, as I had my own to ponder.

Then this morning, I logged onto my Facebook account, as I do several times a day. Seeing how many of my friends weighed in on the debate made me change my mind: I WAS interested in what others thought. Some of my friends’ comments made me laugh; others made me angry; others I vehemently agreed or disagreed with. And it made me realize how vital the social media world is in this election. We can’t ignore that sites like Facebook and MySpace, and message boards both political and general are the virtual kitchen tables the candidates spoke about last night. Social media is where public opinion is formed and debated. I’ve known that conceptually; this morning I saw its richness in action.

Where are you sharing your opinions about the debate? Obviously, as journalists, we have to appear objective, but none of us truly is…do you feel comfortable commenting on these sites, either as yourself or anonymously? And if you’re not commenting, where do you like to read political comments from others?

CBS News Legend Bob Schieffer Speaks at Newsmaker Luncheon

Bob Schieffer was giddy as a school boy. His kind, interesting and weathered face lit up like a Christmas tree when he spoke at the September 29th Atlanta Press Club’s Newsmaker Luncheon.

In between hosting Face The Nation and moderating Presidential debates, Scheiffer swung by the APC to promote his new book, Bob Schieffer’s America.(http://www.amazon.com/Bob-Schieffers-America-Schieffer/dp/039915518X) If the book is half as engaging as Schieffer was for his guests at the APC luncheon, then get out there and buy it.

Schieffer first mentioned how he was talked into forgoing retirement by the suits at CBS News, ensuring that he and his fifty-plus-year career as a news reporter would be around long enough to cover the historically-rich 2008 Presidential election.

Scheiffer’s raw enthusiasm for the work he’s been doing for over fifty years straight was cold water in a desert to journos in Atlanta (or gas to a station right now I could say) - a town as beaten and bruised by changes to the journalism industry as any on the planet.

He induced rounds of laughter over the Commerce Club’s amazing bread pudding dessert course, starting with a story of how his first presidential “interview,” with President Nixon, came to pass… with a lot of goading by Helen Thomas apparently. (Schieffer’s admiration and respect for women in the industry, historically and otherwise, was almost as amazing as the bread pudding.)

Back to the story though… dispatched on a ho-hum weekend to keep an eye on the inglorious, un-newsworthy Sunday church service at the Nixon White House, Ms. Thomas, also in attendance as press that Sunday, urged Schieffer to get in line to talk to Nixon with the invited worshipers after the service was over.

Schieffer protested, saying reporters weren’t supposed to queue-up with the general public. Thomas told him to just go do it anyway. And while there to, of course, ask some questions when he got to Nixon in the receiving line. To which Schieffer replied to the chronically-formidable Thomas, “But I don’t have any questions!”

Schieffer managed to make-up a question on the fly, some loopy vaguely along the lines of “Mr. President, where are you going to put your in-house advisors?” To which President Nixon replied, and Schieffer recounted to the delight of the Press Club with a dead-on Nixonian accent, “I’m going to put my in-house advisors in the outhouse.”

I could have listened to Schieffer recount funny war stories of back-in-the-day all afternoon, but as is typical at APC functions nowadays, the Q&A part with any veteran journalist soon turns to a rather dreary, state-of-the-industry conversation, with everyone posing questions about the survival chances of, say, network news in the age of the Internets.

Although admitting that the advent of the Internet did “change everything,” Schieffer didn’t seem the least bit worried about the condition or prognosis of network broadcast news, given that millions of people are tuning-in to watch this year’s historical, political process play out, at last count 30-million combined viewers for the three networks nightly news shows.

He even managed to laugh-off the now-predictable, dreaded “credibility” issue (of journalism in the digital era) by likening some Joe Blogger-type to the dude on the street corner with one of those “The End Is Near” signs, noting that, “Well yes, that very well may be (that the end is indeed near), but where’s your evidence?”

And just that very thing, the ability and the resources to provide the factual in a wickedly rapid newsmaking cycle, would be the conditions under which broadcast network news will continue to survive… in the humorous, easy-going, perennially-delighted world of veteran newsman Bob Schieffer at least.

Grayson Daughters
APC Member

Creative Loafing Files Chapter 11

Creative Loafing Inc., publisher of Atlanta’s Creative Loafing alternative newsweekly and five others (including Washington, D.C.’s popular City Paper), has filed for bankruptcy protection, CEO Ben Eason announced to company leaders in a conference call today. The company, based in Tampa, Fla., holds more than $40 million in debt, according to a blog item on its website.

“It is a reorganization, not a liquidation. Everybody gets paid,” Eason said during the call, according to the blog.