Blurbex

From Daily Pulp:

What New Times reported last week is now official: The Herald is cutting 17 percent of its workforce, or 250 positions, which is actually 2 percent more than we expected.

“These next few weeks will be some of the most difficult and emotional we have faced,” Editor Anders Gyllenhaal wrote to staff in an email this morning. “We will do our best to work through these changes at the same time as we try to keep our focus on our work.”

Some will be laid off, other will be offered buyouts. Buyouts were in fact extended this morning to numerous reporters, according to sources, which Gyllenhaal wrote will “first be made on a voluntary basis and then an involuntary basis.”

It is part of a 10 percent across-the-board staff cuts at McClatchey Newspapers, as the AP is reporting this morning:

McClatchy Co. said Monday it will cut 10 percent of its work force in a move to save $70 million a year as the newspaper publisher continues to struggle to attract advertising dollars.

McClatchy, which publishes The Kansas City Star and The Miami Herald, will trim about 1,400 employees. The staff reductions are part of a plan to reduce overall expenses by $95 million to $100 million over the next four quarters.

“The effects of the current national economic downturn — particularly in real estate, auto and employment advertising — make it essential that we move faster now to realign our workforce and make our operations more efficient,” said McClatchy Chief Executive Gary Pruitt, in a statement.

McClatchy said in April that it swung to a loss in the first quarter as a weakening economy and competition from online rivals led to a 15 percent plunge in advertising revenues at its newspapers.

In related bad news, some staffers at the Tampa Tribune expect the hammer to drop this week as involuntary layoffs follow a voluntary buyout that saw a handful of newsers leave last Friday. One source told me late last week: “The end is near.”

(Crossposted from The Political Whore.) 

For those who (like me) were distracted by the whole Father’s Day thing and forgot to set their DVR to tape PoHo on Brendan McLaughlin’s Sunday public affairs news show, here’s a link (unable to embed the video so far) to me and Renee Dabbs of The Victory Group on Segment 3 of this week’s show.

Crossposted from The Political Whore. 

Teared up during Meet the Press, one of my favorite shows for years, which is saying something since it airs 10 a.m. Sunday and my Saturday nights typically don’t end until about 4 a.m.

Watching Brokaw, Carville, Ifill and others lovingly remember their old pal was truly moving. And the closing montage, with Russert’s favorite rocker, Bruce Springsteen, doing “Thunder Road,” yeah, that’s when I had to wipe my eyes.

Russert was the high priest of objective, illuminating broadcast journalism. He was one of the few good men left on television, a medium dominated by blow hards, hams and agents of misinformation.

Sunday mornings won’t be the same.

On a lighter note, it’s Father’s Day, and like Russert and Big Russ, my dad and I are very close. We will celebrate the holiday by going to lunch and then by attending the The Three Stooges screening that kicks off 3 p.m. today at Tampa Theatre.

Here’s to great fathers and great men like Russert.

June 13th, 2008 by Ben Fry

The shortage of trees in the bay area got a little shorter recently when former Tampa Bay Buccaneer/Cleveland Browns/Baltimore Ravens/New York Jets/Dallas Cowboys/New England Patriots/Carolina Panthers quarterback Vinny Testaverde cut down a few on his new lakefront Odessa property.

By a few I mean around 40 or so (not Vinny’s ex-trees pictured at left; the actual trees are now appearing in a mulch bag in a Lowe’s near you). They could have filmed an episode of Ax Men at his house. Sheesh, Vinny, why so many? There are people around here that would freakin’ kill for that many trees on their property.

The Hillsborough Environmental Protection Commission came to the rescue and cited him for cutting down the cypress trees because they were in a protected wetland area. Testaverde said he didn’t realize it was a big problem. He apparently had a landscaping company cut the trees down and they never said anything about it being illegal.

“You’ve got to rely on the advice of these people. Whoever cut down the trees didn’t do a very good job of informing him,” Clayton Studstill, Testaverde’s attorney, told the Tampa Tribune. (We did not make up his attorney’s name, we swear. Studstill.)

OK, getting bad landscaping advice is understandable. It’s puzzling that he would want to de-tree his property to any extent, but I guess I can believe he didn’t realize he was doing something illegal. And putting aside any environmental implications caused to the waterway next to his house, or any possible deed-restrictions he may have violated, or the pissing-off of his new neighbors, it is his place after all. He should be able to cut down any trees not located in a protected wetland area of his property.

As punishment, the EPC ordered Testaverde to plant 40 15-gallon cypress trees on the property within 30 days and make sure they all survive for one year. Testaverde didn’t want to replace all the trees, so the EPC caved and said he could plant 20 30-gallon trees instead, along with some herbaceous plants along the shoreline.

If he doesn’t like that, the EPC will probably let him plant a single 600-gallon tree, only mow the lawn every third week, and do the edging only in a month that ends in a ‘y’ or a consonant.

That’s wetlands mitigation for you. You know what they say, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

It will probably be a few years before Testaverde’s new trees mature enough for the property to be returned to its previous ecological state. Understandably, Testaverde’s neighbors aren’t happy about the whole mess.

I wouldn’t eat any of that house-warming pie, Vinny.

photo by saveena(AKA LHDugger)

It’s good new/bad news this afternoon:

Good news: Fans of horrific R&B ballads can breathe easy as pop-pisser R. Kelly is free after a Chicago jury found him not guilty on all 14 charges related to child pornography and a famed sex tape.

Bad news: NBC News icon and Meet the Press host Tim Russert is dead of an apparent heart attack.

Actually, maybe that’s bad news/bad news.

You may want to invest in a good pair of walking shoes, because we will all be walking a lot more in the near future.

The website Walkscore.com lets you input an address and calculate a score for a neighborhood based on how close it is to grocery stores, restaurants, entertainment, schools, parks and a host of other amenities. The results are listed under their respective categories on the left side of the screen along with their distance in miles. Scores range from zero (Driving only — you can only walk to your car) to 100 (”Walker’s Paradise”).

Click on an entry and it will show you where it is located on the (Google) map, as well as provide a bubble complete with an address, phone number and a clickable link to a Google search of that entry.

Walkscore.com is especially helpful if you are moving to a new neighborhood because it helps to know the likelihood of being able to leave the gas-guzzler (aren’t they all nowadays?) at home and walk.

My own Pinellas Point neighborhood got a meager score of 51, which means that some places are close by, but a car or public transportation is still required for most trips. I could easily walk down the street to a restaurant or a drugstore, but if I was feeling picky I would need the car.

On the upside I did discover a number of restaurants in my area I didn’t know of that are within easy walking or biking distance. On the downside, plenty of the listings were for places in downtown St. Petersburg, about seven miles away, that may be within walking distance by European standards but that I wouldn’t walk to myself often.

Another major drawback, and a factor that could seriously affect walkability, is that the ratings don’t take crime statistics into account when factoring the scores. The site searches under plenty of relevant categories that would be moot if the neighborhood isn’t safe enough to walk around in.

With gas prices on the rise, however, it certainly helps to know if your new neighborhood is walkable.

(photo by alexandralee).

From CIA secret prisons to the Bush administration’s “secret plan” to stay in Iraq, Huffington Post has the news the mainstream media forgot to report.

According to Cockburn, the U.S. is “holding hostage some $50 billion of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing” the plan, under which U.S. troops “would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law” for years to come.

And the Washington Post lays out what’s at stake in this year’s presidential election:

Differences over Iraq policy are among the sharpest distinctions between the two U.S. presidential contenders. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) advocates continuing the current strategy, with no timetable for the withdrawal of what are likely to be about 133,000 troops remaining in Iraq by the November election. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has said he would begin an immediate withdrawal of combat troops, to be completed within 16 months.

You probably know comedian Doug Benson as a Last Comic Standing 5 finalist, where he was among the show’s top six performers. Or maybe you’ve seen him on VH1’s Best Week Ever, where he provides amusing commentary on the week’s pop culture news and events.

But there’s more to Benson than his TV appearances. In collaboration with comics Arj Barker and Tony Camin, he wrote, produced, and starred in a successful off-Broadway comedy show in NYC, The Marijuana-Logues, and enjoyed a year run of shows as well as several national tours, an original live cast recording and even a supplementary book, The Marijuana-logues: Everything About Pot That We Could Remember.

Most recently, he co-produced and starred in Super High Me (due out on DVD June 17).

The idea was originally spawned from a joke in Benson’s stand-up routine, where he mused on Morgan Spurlock’s documentary, Super Size Me, and wondered what would happen if he applied the same 30-day health regimen to marijuana. Filmmaker/comic Michael Blieden seemed to think it was a viable idea and the resulting documentary opened in more than 850 cities nationwide on April 20.

In the film, Benson stops smoking pot for 30 days to clean out his system, then indulges near-constantly for the following 30 days to test the effects on his mind and body. The film follows his “journey” but it’s more than just a silly tale of a comedian’s quest to get super high. The film also offers an earnest examination of California’s current medical marijuana law and the Federal government’s ongoing efforts to challenge the state’s law via the seemingly arbitrary busts of medical marijuana dispensaries. I sat down and had lunch with Doug on Thursday — he plays Tampa Improv through Sunday — and what follows are portions of our long and rambling conversation.

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Here at the Loaf, we have Dance Party every Friday, usually beginning around 4 p.m. (with tunes selected by yours truly and resident PoHo, Wayne Garcia. Good Morning Cincinnati has one, too, after a fashion. This guy does a mean Billy Idol.

Boston.com recently launched its Do Good site, in an effort to get readers involved in their local communities.

Bloggers hold Fox News accountable for its use of disparaging screen text to describe Michelle Obama.

Thanks to CL reporter Alex Pickett for passing on this story about the surge in popularity of alternative newspapers in suburbia.

Among the highest reaching alternative newsweekly in the country, Madison Wisconsin’s Isthmus has moved to the top of the list, reaching 37.4% of all adults in Madison, compared to 34.6% a year earlier.

• Spokane Washington’s Inlander ranks second in the study, reaching 36.1% of the market
• San Diego Reader (35.6% reach)
• Tucson Weekly (33.2% reach)
• New Haven, Connecticut’s New Haven Advocate (32.4% reach)
• Columbia, South Carolina’s Free Times (30.6% reach)
• Eugene Weekly (29.7% reach)
• Reno News and Review (29.2% reach)
• Madison, Wisconsin’s The Onion (28.7% reach)
• The Austin Chronicle (28.6% reach)

Pearl Jam killed. After this long in the biz, I don’t often use the word “great” to describe a show, but it fits here. My esteeemed colleague Wade Tatangelo will be writing more about the concert, but let me make a coment on two on on Eddie Vedder. Except for PJ’s transcendent Bay area debut at Jannus in the early ’90s, this is the best I’ve ever seen him — committed, in great voice and, most of all, having fun. Ed seems to have gotten past the rock star angst and is just enjoying it. No longer head-fucked about being the voice of a generation, he seems free to just do what he does: be the best singer/frontman in rock. Like he sings: “I’ve tasted, I life wasted,” and he’s never going back again.

Got home and clicked on the NBA finals and saw that Boston had come back from a 24-point lead. They held on to win and go up 3-1 in the series. I never thought I’d be this enthusiastic about the fellas in green — I was a definite hater growing up, a Knicks fan and then a Sixers fan — but here I am pulling for them. Yes, a lot of my passion comes from a virulent hatred for the Laker and Bryant, but I’m geniunely enjoying the Boston run for the ring.

 Most of all, I’m pulling for Ray Allen. If you grew up a sports fan, you’ve had this feeling: there are some guys you just like, you don’t know why, but you’re a fan. That’s Ray Allen for me. He’s never played on one of my fave teams, but there’s something about the way he handles himself on the court — that sweet release on his jump shot, his straight-faced way of going about his business, just the classy way he carries himself — that makes me glad he’s in a good spot to get a ring. I admire the way he went through a terrible shooting slump in the Cleveland series, got his head straight and started knocking ‘em down against L.A. Plus, he’s playing better D than I thought he could, a lot of the time on Bryant, of all things.

 Three superstars coming together as a team: You gotta love that. Celtics in 5?

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has an insightful breakdown of the media’s coverage of the Democratic and Republican primary races, focusing on the candidacies of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

The report puts to bed the notion that Obama received more favorable coverage in the press than Clinton. However, it also points out the unfortunate preference by journalists for “horse race” analysis:

Looking beyond the master narratives about the candidates personally, coverage overall in 2008 has so far focused largely on the horse race. Fully 78% of the stories studied between January 1 and the first week of May have focused on political matters, such as who won the latest primary. By contrast, policy stories made up 7% of the stories, personal matters 7%, and the candidates’ public record, 2%. And few major storylines stand out.

In a blog post 10 days ago, I referred to the Tampa Bay Rays’ nine-game road trip (just-completed) as maybe the most crucial in the team’s history. Come back 7-2 or 6-3, I reasoned, and they could anticipate a sold-out Tropicana Field. Lay a 1-9 or 2-7 egg, and “the air’s out of the balloon,” the fickle crowd will have figured that the team had reverted to its old losing ways.

Neither scenario happened, although the team’s 3-6 road jaunt was more of the egg-laying variety. But here’s my spin on keeping fan interest up.

• The Rays got swept by Boston 3-0, but Boston is the defending champs, and, plus, there was that cool brawl.

• Then they went into Texas to play the Rangers and took the series 2-1.

• They went 1-2 against the Anaheim Angels, but routed the team in one game, and besides, the Angels are one of the top teams in the American League. (On the rather bleak side, James Shields and Scott Kazmir took back-to-back losses).

So at risk of being a rah-rah guy, despite the 3-6 road swing, I didn’t see anything from the Rays that suggested they were reverting to their macabre history. Sure would be nice to see the Trop rockin’ when the Florida Marlins come in for a three-game stand starting Friday.

When I was a graduate journalism student at USF St. Petersburg, my most rewarding course focused on constructing user-friendly websites. The main text we used as our guide, Designing Web Usability, was written by Jakob Nielsen, whose useit.com is an essential resource for improving your site’s interactivity. Simplicity seemed to be Nielsen’s mantra, and his strategy is echoed in Jon Friedman’s 8 rules for designing a media website.

ABC ready to give its World News webcast a do-over.

Which newspaper has the best online financial coverage? No surprise: It’s the New York Times.

USA Today draws high traffic with its Candidate Match Game.

“Do you have a lock on your gas cap?” asked my buddy Buck.

“No,” I replied.

“Well, you better get one,” he scolded. “When gas hits $4-a-gallon people are going to start stealing it.”

This was a few months back. I blew Buck off. Thought the odds of guys in ski masks running around siphoning gasoline out of cars with a garden hose was pretty slim.

But this morning I went for a walk around my SoHo neighborhood and spotted a black Mercedes sedan with its open fuel cap dangling in the wind — and had to wonder. Did someone suck the gas from the tank, or did the owner simply forget to put the cap back on after he hit the petro station?

Am I being paranoid or is Buck right about me needing to invest in a fuel cap lock?

A friend e-mailed a YouTube video to me today, showing a group of folks popping kernels of corn with their cell phones. There are actually several of them spiking everybody’s interest, and here’s a typical one:

Here at the office, we were intrigued and a little freaked out. If a few cell phones could pop corn in seconds, just imagine what cell phones are doing to our brains (and that would actually explain a lot).

We had to try it, but after an exclusive Creative Loafing investigation, as well as consulting other investigations, it has been confirmed this is indeed a hoax. You may proceed trying it at home.

In the interests of good (pseudo) science (performed by non-scientists), we recorded the entire experiment from the beginning:

As you can see, it didn’t work. It is possible we did something wrong, but that is unlikely. We may be journalists, but we know how to put cell phones in a circle, drop corn kernels in the middle and coordinate four people to call those cell phones simultaneously.

So for help, I called a physicist.

“I have no idea what the energy density of a cell phone is … (but) the energy probably isn’t high enough to pop a kernel,” said Matthias Batzill, a professor of physics at the University of South Florida.

A certain amount of heat is required to pop corn and the minimal amount created by a cell phone would quickly dissipate, Batzill said. It wouldn’t get hot enough to pop the kernel.

The YouTube videos look pretty convincing, but so does David Copperfield’s magic and I know that the Statue of Liberty is still in New York. A part of demystifying the hoax is figuring out how it was done.

“I have no idea” how they are doing it, said James Randi, of the James Randi Educational Foundation, a group that investigates pseudoscientific claims.

He suggests some type of heat source was placed under the table that pops the corn. That seems like the most obvious explanation; however, the cell phones would likely melt or the table cloth would get too hot.

Batzill said it may be possible someone could take a microwave apart and use the parts to heat the corn, although he said he doesn’t believe anyone could actually do it. In addition, he knows of no types of waves or heat sources that could pop the corn but not damage human flesh in the process.

Randi said he thinks people produce these types of videos to get media attention and then they go away after the media gets bored with them. He said he has been getting calls all day about the popcorn videos but he hasn’t seen them yet and doesn’t know how they are made. He is sure the producers have used some kind of sleight-of-hand and this is another scam.

“Videos like this aren’t hard to make,” said Randi. “You can produce a videotape to prove anything you want.”

The July issue of Esquire has a funny and insightful series of stories on epithets, with an intro by Roy Blount Jr. pining for the return of “son of a bitch” over “asshole.”

The package’s last feature is a hilarious flow chart called “A Taxonomy of Epithets,” and runs on a continuum from More Respectable to Less Respectable, giving examples of each. Here’s a taste, starting with the Most Respectable. After a consulting with my asshole colleagues, I’ve added a local name (in bold) to each category. Of course, we welcome any and all nominations to the list — local or otherwise.

Son of a Bitch: Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Bob Dylan, Bill Parcels, Vladimir Putin. Jon Gruden.

Prick: Rudy Giuliani, Bill Maher, New York Yankees. Steve Duemig.

Asshole: Bill Belichick, Barry Bonds, Mitt Romney. Hulk Hogan.

Nutjob: Larry King, Ty Pennington. Bill Keller.

Jamoke: Matthew McConaughey, Jimmy Kimmel, Charlie Sheen. Schnitt

Jackass: Carlos Mencia, Kid Rock, Brett Michaels. Buddy Johnson.

Windbag: Bill O’Reilly, Tim Robbins, Hannity. Omali Yeshitela.

Twit: Ryan Seacrest, Ira Glass. Don Germaise.

Putz: Wesley Snipes, Eliot Spitzer. Paul Tash.

Knob: Dane Cook, Rob Schneider, Dr. Phil. Brian Blair.

With all due respect to Joe Bardi’s post of the obnoxious anti-Republican video, I think this makes the Democrats’ case much more succinctly:

Word from the BBC is that ’80s cartoon faves The Smurfs are headed to the big screen in a film that will mix animation with live action. No word on if the Smurfs themselves will be portrayed by actors or drawn by animators, but I’m pulling for real people. Ah, but who would you cast? Here are my suggestions:

Papa Smurf = Steve Carell in Evan Almighty

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Smurfette = Paris Hilton

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Gargamel = Antonin Scalia

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In this week’s Food Issue, I take a look at my favorite summer treat: iced coffee.

Unfortunately, finding a decent cup of iced java in the Tampa Bay area is a frustrating venture. Read about my findings here and then add your own comments.

Left Coast alert: Silver screen siren Scarlett Johansson is pen pals with Democratic nominee Barack Obama. No surprise, since she can be seen in Obama’s Yes We Can video. Seems Barack is a “huge movie lover” — well, who isn’t? — and loves Johansson’s Lost in Translation.

So what are Barack’s favorite movies? Well, after a quick Google Search:

Casablanca

The Godfather

The Godfather Part II

Lawrence of Arabia

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

No word on where the films of Scarlett’s fiance, Ryan Reynolds, fall on Obama’s list.