The Political Whore

Ouch. This one goes into the “I-don’t-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry-or-both” file. Correspondent Jason Jones intones, “You guys are like a walking Colonial Williamsburg.”

See the video clip after the jump.

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Great article in our Washington City Paper sister pub last week by Andrew Beaujon about how the changes to adult-use ads at Craigslist could affect the alt-newspaper industry.

From the article:

Last year Craigslist, which lists 18 employees on its “about us” page, made somewhere between $20 and $80 million dollars. So why is its CEO, Jim Buckmaster, so p.o.’d about sex ads in alt-weeklies?

Because these bottom-feeding free publications are making an erotic comeback in the classifieds biz, with an assist from law enforcement.

Buckmaster has even taken to the blogosphere to air his frustrations with alt-weekly encroachment. In a recent post, he lists several titles of adult ads he found on backpage.com, a collection of classifieds sites owned by Village Voice Media (VVM). “Cum lay your hotdog on my bun for memorial day” (Dallas); “Let me put you to bed backdoor available $80? (Columbia, S.C.); “An Irish blowjob and a cum showering rainbow” (New York). He links to a screenshot of the last ad, which has photos of a woman performing fellatio.

“It’s worth noting that these ads’ TITLES ALONE contain more explicit content than you will find in all craigslist adult service ads combined,” he writes in the post.

It goes on to say that adult advertising in the Washington alt-weekly has increased since the craigslist change. Read the full ‘Will Craigslist’s New Stance on Adult Ads Save Alt-Weeklies?’

It is an interesting subject given the historical use and reliance on adult-use advertising by publications such as Creative Loafing. It always pits free speech (free love?) advocates against those who have concerns about the objectification of women and the violence that can result.

In our new CLTampa.com, the hottest-growing section seems to be the often explicit Sex & Love articles, to the point where some readers (and CL staffers, in internal discussions and e-mails) have raised questions about the balance between news and erotica/porn/sex coverage. Our publisher and classified ad manager tell me, unlike in Washington, that our adult-use advertising hasn’t seen a bump upward since the change in Craigslist policy.

Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio

The shocking assassination of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller on May 31 has brought back the volatile issue of abortion on to the national landscape.

Of course, it’s never gone away. But the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor by President Obama to the Supreme Court — and her relatively scant record on abortion issues — has elicited analysis that, perhaps unlike every previous Supreme Court nomination over the past few decades, her nomination won’t be heavily focused by her thoughts on Roe v. Wade.

Pro-choice advocates were stunned when Gallup reported last month that for the first time since it began asking the question, a majority of Americans now call themselves pro-life vs. pro-choice (although a review of other similar polls taken over the past year continue to reflect a majority pro-choice America.)

If that wasn’t at least a soft blow to those reproductive rights advocates, Tiller’s death by the hands of 51-year-old Scott P. Roeder absolutely was.

And for a portion of the public, upon learning of Tiller’s death, thoughts immediately turned to Bill O’Reilly, who focused relentlessly on the controversial doctor’s status as one of just a handful of M.D.’s in the country who continued to perform late term abortions.

Some liberal commentators and bloggers immediately blamed the cable news analyst for inciting Roeder to commit murder.  O’Reilly, predictably, pushed back, and used the opening moments of his show last week to argue that his foils, NBC News and company, were just as responsible for the murder of U.S. soldier William Long in Arkansas by a Muslim convert.

For many in the abortion rights movement, Tiller’s death brought back the dark days of the 1990’s, when doctors David Gunn, Bernard Slepian and John Britton were killed for their work as abortion providers.

Sarasota resident Sherry Svekis received a late-term abortion from Tiller in 1985. Not being a regular Fox News viewer, she was unaware of the very public campaign O’Reilly had wrought against Tiller over the years until his death.

Read the rest of this entry »

Big Oil’s offshore drilling scheme appears to be making a comeback. A start-up political group is looking to gather petition signatures and put the idea on the ballot, bypassing the politically sensitive Legislature.

From the Fort Myers News-Press:

Claiming that offshore drilling is the answer to the nation’s addiction to foreign oil, conservative activists are gearing up a constitutional drive to lift Florida’s 20-year-old ban.
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Sponsors of the drive, FloridaOil.org, are exploring a unique approach to getting around what has long been considered the third rail of Florida politics, one so charged that a last-minute attempt in the Legislature this spring quickly died when Senate President Jeff Atwater, a Republican from North Palm Beach, put his foot down.

“Atwater proved that we can’t rely on the Legislature,” said the group’s chief organizer, Dan Baldauf of Bradenton. “Legislators actually prefer that we do it this way, because it helps them keep their hands clean.”

This sounds like it is more about folks who want to procure some spending cash from the oil and gas companies than a legit movement with any legs. The story notes that the group has raised just $2,000 so far but expects a lot more once it attracts the attention of the oil-producing companies.

Although carefully worded polls will show support for offshore drilling, this is a big loser at the ballot box.

I never really talk about it much or pimp it to you, but indulge me for a sec: Our News & Politics section page is a great companion to this blog and has lots more headlines, video, Twitter feeds and podcasts than you will find here on any given day.

Here’s how it works:

NEWS HEADLINES: All the important news in Tampa Bay and Florida politics and public affairs that we don’t have time to expand upon with a separate story in PoHo ends up being aggregated into our News & Politics section, with links to the original articles. In other words, I find the news so you don’t have to. Just read the headline and blurb, or click on the link and read the whole thing. Plus, headlines from PoHo posts automatically feed into the News & Politics section, so if you miss checking on PoHo you won’t miss a blog post.

TWITTER FEED: If the word “Tampa” or the hashtag “#cltampa” is in a tweet, it will show up on our Twitter Feed panel. Sort of a cross between micronews and voyeurism.

PODCASTS: Our streaming podcast player for the Political Whore podcast is always on the News & Politics section front, so if you missed an episode and can’t find it in the blog archives you can get it easily.

USER COMMENTS: The most recent three comments on PoHo blog roll up here, no matter which post they were posted on.

CL TV: I scour the best political videos and news bites on YouTube and elsewhere and post them here, so that you can get lost in the joy of streaming video and screw off for another 2-3 hours at work. Wanna see Tom Tancredo call La Raza the Latino equivalent of the KKK? This is the place to do it.

CONTRIBUTORS: Click on each PoHo contributor’s picture to learn more about them and see their latest posts.

If you haven’t checked it out, give it a shot and let me know if you like, dislike or want me to add new features or types of news to it.

So far, so good…

Today is the first day of the 2009 hurricane season but a new poll has found that very few people on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts are ready for a bad storm.

Mason-Dixon’s survey found, for instance, that two-thirds of the respondents didn’t have a hurricane survival kit at the ready. The shocking results?

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Because Creative Loafing Political Editor Wayne Garcia would be far too modest to tell you himself, I’m reporting that this here blog, “The Political Whore,” won first place in the category of Blog-Affiliated last night in the Sunshine State Awards, the Florida-wide prizes given out by the Society of Professional Journalists/ South Florida. New Times Broward Palm Beach’s “The Juice” and the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel’s “Broward Politics” came in second and third, respectively.

And Wayne wasn’t alone in bringing back first-place honors for the Loaf. Food Editor Brian Ries won the top spot in Food/Beverage Writing for “Anywhere But Here,” his story on the lack of healthy food options for Florida families on public assistance. The Miami Herald and MIAMI Modern Luxury took second and third places.

Brian also took a third place in Criticism for his review of MJ’s tapas menu when it was under the direction of Domenica Macchia. And CL’s theater critic, Mark E. Leib, took second place in the same category for his review of the innovative American Stage production of Hamlet. The Naples Daily News‘ Harriet Howard Heithaus took the first-place spot.

Finally, the entire staff of Creative Loafing won kudos for our website, cltampa.com, placing third in the News Web Site category. I like the judges’ citation: This is not your typical news site. cltampa.com represents a new way of presenting news and information to its reader/user. Through a simple design, Creative Loafing offers a wide collection of headlines from just as many distinct sources. (Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers and the Orlando Sentinel took first and second in this category, respectively.)

More judges’ comments follow after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a tease to this week’s Straight Dope column in the print edition of CL:

With the dearth of good real estate on Earth, I’ve been considering alternatives. One obvious candidate is Mars. However, in its current orbit, it’s too nippy and the air is too thin to satisfy anyone except Sherpas. How much energy would it take to move Mars into Earth’s orbit? Would it work better if we moved Venus instead because of its similar size to Earth? Please answer quickly as I need to finalize my retirement plans. –James Borowiec

I have to tell you, I admire the balls behind this concept. We’ve already got one planet pretty much hosed. Why not go for two?

Read the rest of Straight Dope and don’t miss it in our weekly print edition, as well.

A small but vocal group of protestors, both gay and straight, stood at the busy corner of 66th St. and 49th Ave. N. in Pinellas Tuesday night, armed with handmade signs and the passionate conviction that the California Supreme Court decision upholding the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage was a slap in the face to gays and lesbians everywhere. With storm clouds gathering above, they stood their ground and talked to CL.

Beth Fountain, a writer and former lawyer, questioned the dense language of the decision, in which the court essentially contradicted its position from a year before.

Like Fountain, musician Lisa Noe of the band Karmic Tattoo wondered why gay marriage could be “OK one minute, then it’s not OK the next.” And Rick Boylan, president of the Pinellas chapter of Stonewall Democrats and the secretary of the state Democratic party, pointed out that, even with the setback in California, the state is still years ahead of Florida in its recognition of gay rights: “We’re still dealing with issues that are left over from Anita Bryant days.”

More interviews after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

From our sister blog, News Bites, at the Chicago Reader, comes a good wrap-up of the story gripping that city and making onto the third or fourth story on the morning news shows: the smoking gun in the case of Senator Roland Burris and whether his appointment by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich is tainted:

The Sun-Times and Tribune both ran partial transcripts Wednesday of a conversation between Roland Burris and Robert Blagojevich last November 13 about the Senate seat president-elect Obama was vacating and Burris longed to be appointed to.

But the transcript in the Tribune ends at roughly the point where the Sun-Times’s transcript begins. As a result, the Tribune version of the conversation supports the idea that Burris did nothing improper — an impression reinforced by the headline to the page-one story accompanying the transcript: “Burris talks cash, Senate on recording / Senator: Wiretap backs his denials of pay to play.”

The Tribune transcript has Burris making it clear to the brother of the then-governor: “I’m very much interested in, in trying to replace Obama,” and then fretting about appearances. Burris says, “I’m a high-profile person….I’m trying to figure out how in the hell, and since you called me I will be honest with you….And I’m trying to figure out how to deal with this and still be in the consideration for the appointment….And, and if I do that I guarantee you that, that will get out and people said, ‘Oh, Burris is doing a fundraiser,’ and, and then Rod and I both gonna catch hell….And if I do get appointed that means I bought it.”

Having just spent some time in the Florida Keys snorkeling a few reefs I have to say this is good news: a huge, decommissioned U.S. Navy vessel, the Hoyt S. Vandenberg, was sunk seven miles off the Key West shore to provide a new artificial reef.

KeysNet reports:

After a decade of planning, it took less than two minutes Wednesday for the 522-foot USS Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg to sink as the Keys’ newest artificial reef. It was under water by 10:23 a.m. — held up 23 minutes by a sea turtle that needed time to swim out of the way.

The ship now rests in 140 of feet of water at 24.27 north latitude, 81.44 west longitude.

The former U.S. Navy and Air Force vessel, which sat in the government’s mothball fleet in Virginia from 1983 until she was moved to Key West in April, was towed to the scuttling site from her berth at the East Quay Wall just before 7 a.m. Tuesday.

View a Google Map of the ship’s location

Video of the sinking after the jump:

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More newsroom cuts at the Media General news outlets in Tampa have been announced from the News Center on Parker Street. From TBO.com:

The Florida Communications Group today laid off 25 full-time positions from its newsrooms at The Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and WFLA News Channel 8.

The reasoning is familiar to those following economics of the news industry: The continued downturn in advertising revenue across nearly all media outlets.

“This is unfortunately the same song in the sixth verse,” said Janet Coats, executive editor and vice president at FCG who oversees the combined newsroom. “Conditions have not changed in advertising.”

Two sources tell me the cuts include reporters Rich Shopes and Valerie Kalfrin and political editor Tom Arthur.

UPDATE: More of the journalists who were affected in the Comments section below.

Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad name for a law firm, “Welcome to Niemann, Sullivan, Leto & Schweitzer, how may I direct your call?” But back to the job at hand: I have four new contributors to announce. I am excited about the knowledge and qualities they bring to PoHo, including some indepth writing on historic preservation (Leto) and the intersection of religion and public policy (Schweitzer).

Here are their bios, after the jump. I will have some more to announce by the end of this week:

Read the rest of this entry »

With a h/t to Tampa Bay political consultant Gregory Wilson, here’s a contrarian view on scoring yesterday’s pseudo-debate on terror, Gitmo and national security. I agree with Congressional Quarterly’s assessment of Barack Obama on conventional political terms. It is a truism: When you’re ’splaining, you’re losing. And I believe Obama made no headway with the crazy left who wants to shutter Guantanamo immediately and just cut loose the terrorists or bring them on down to circuit court for good ol’ U.S. justice system trials.

But Obama won the day, make no mistake about it. He was historic, clear in his ethics, determined in his purpose that we can win against terror without becoming terrorists ourselves. He may have lost in terms of short-term public opinion but he wins the longer war. And that is what CQ, in its traditional wisdom, fails to grasp.

Having said that, reading the full CQ article makes ya think…

Excerpts from the article after the jump:

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With three Tampa Bay locations, BankUnited is not most ubiquitous of Tampa Bay thrifts, but today its customers have discovered that the failing bank was seized overnight.

The AP reports:

The federal seizure of struggling Florida thrift BankUnited FSB is expected to cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $4.9 billion, representing the second-largest hit to the FDIC’s insurance fund since the financial crisis began felling banks last year.

The costliest was last year’s seizure of California lender IndyMac Bank, on which the bank insurance fund is estimated to have lost $10.7 billion.

The Office of Thrift Supervision, a Treasury Department agency, said Thursday that BankUnited FSB reported $1.2 billion in losses last year as defaults on loans piled up. The thrift “was critically undercapitalized and in an unsafe condition to conduct business,” the agency said in a statement.

Coral Gables, Fla.-based BankUnited FSB is the 34th federally insured institution to be closed this year, and the biggest.

With a hat tip to Peter Schorsch at his blog, it appears the St. Petersburg Times local politics blog Bay Buzz had a post late Wednesday, about St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Paul Congemi and an incident at a KFC restaurant. The post was subsequently pulled from the blog (and restored after further reporting on Thursday). But thanks to Google Reader (and Google is forever) the original can be shared here.
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Tampa Bay’s leading freaky celeb Terry Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan, has asked the judge in case brought against him and his family (including fellow reality-semi-star wife Linda Bollea who is trying to divorce him) by the family of accident victim John Graziano to ban us stinkin’ news media types from sitting in on the wonderfully delicious depositions in the case.

The Times reports:

The motion, filed last week in civil court, claims that allowing news media or the public into the proceedings could damage the family’s right to a fair trial and create “annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense.”

Terry Bollea, who wrestled under the name Hulk Hogan, and his family are facing a multimillion dollar civil suit from the August 2007 car crash that severely injured Graziano, a family friend. Graziano was a passenger in a sports car driven by Terry and Linda Bollea’s son, Nick Bollea.

Here’s the latest tweak of our enormously popular governor, from his friends across the aisle in the Florida Democratic Party. It’s the first online ad with the “Cut and Run Crist” theme that the party has been drum-beating since Crist announced his Senatorial bid last week.

See the full video after the jump.

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By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.

Another Sickles’ goof or goof-up?

When I first heard about the bare vagina on display in the pages of Sickles High School’s 2009 yearbook, I laughed out loud.

One of those deep belly laughs that last for five minutes. My tongue hangs out. I grab my sides. The works. I could just picture the yearbook advisor catching shit. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Oh yes. Another grand example of a Tampa teacher’s piss-poor judgment.

Funny stuff.

Suddenly, I stopped laughing.

A 16-year-old had posed for a club picture without underwear and her hoo-ha was on display for the world to see. That’s what I’d been told. Who in their right mind would greenlight such a spread? Why would someone in the district support distributing the yearbook and suggest the Sickles junior “laugh it off?”

A few years ago, someone spotted a kid with the word “Fuck” on his shirt in a Sickles yearbook. Administrators went apeshit and demanded final say over all future yearbook editions.

Well, I thought, this changes things. What was going on at my old school?

See the photo in question after the jump.

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What else are you going to do after you cut daily home delivery to an entire county? Raise your rack prices.

The Tampa Tribune will increase the price of single copy newspapers – those sold at stores and in boxes — starting Monday.

Single copies of the newspaper will now cost 75 cents Monday through Saturday and $1 on Sunday.

“Most metropolitan newspapers charge in these price ranges for their newspaper as single copy purchases. We publish a fresh, unique, local paper every single day,” said Denise Palmer, publisher and president of the paper in a prepared statement.

wow.

The shockwaves from the government-labor takeover at Chrysler is reverberating in the Tampa Bay area, as seven dealerships are set to be closed as part of nearly 800 dealer closings across the nation.

The local dealerships are:

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I came to Tampa Bay in 1988 to work for the Tampa Tribune in Pinellas County, then on the front lines of the newspaper war with the St. Petersburg Times. So it is with sadness I read this story about the Trib finally giving up the fight, from the Times:

The Tampa Tribune will be ceasing daily subscription service in Pinellas County after this weekend, according to a flier distributed in the newspaper this morning.

The flier said that weekend or daily subscription will change to Sunday delivery only, beginning Sunday, May 17. It offers a courtesy subscription to USA Today through May 22, and tells readers to “watch your mailbox for a special offer” for the national publication.

So wrong. So very wrong.

(As penance, here is the link to the American Association for the Deaf-Blind. Go there and you’ll feel better.)

By Jim Johnson
PoHo contributor and founder of The State of Sunshine blog

Jack Shafer has an excellent piece on Slate.com about the real impact Americans will see when newspapers across the country stop.
Read the rest of this entry »

Guess who is NOT going to get the St. Petersburg Times editorial recommendation in the mayoral race later this year?

Yeah, Jamie Bennett.

From today’s opinion page:

St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Jamie Bennett is pitifully ignorant or disappointingly complicit when it comes to a series of campaign mistakes and second-rate dirty tricks. He has fired the campaign manager he never should have hired, but if he stays in the race that will not end the questions or remove the stains.

Sorting out who knew what when between Bennett and his former campaign manager, Peter Schorsch, may be an exercise in futility. But some of their maneuvers cannot be dismissed as low-grade sleaziness. At least one neighborhood president was given campaign literature and requests for contributions along with free baseball tickets to the city’s Tropicana Field suite. Candidates cannot legally use public resources to benefit their campaigns. Bennett said Monday he did not know that happened and has apologized for “a blurring of lines and lack of oversight on the baseball tickets.” But he continued to distribute the baseball suite tickets he receives as a City Council member to neighborhood association presidents even after the issue was publicly raised.

“Some politicians support trillions in reckless spending…” is one of the attack lines from the Marco Rubio campaign as it launches a full spread of phaser and photon torpedoes (yes, we’re staying with the Star Trek theme until the movie drops below $10m a week at the box office) at Charlie Crist just minutes after the governor declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

The ad, predictably, ties Crist at the hip with President Barack Obama.

Watch the full video after the jump.

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Former Creative Loafing reporter and mensch Max Linsky (picture, above, in the good old days in Tampa, moonlighting as a freelance restroom attendant) has an exciting new gig: Managing editor at The Stimulist, an Internet news start-up being headed by MSNBC’s Carlos Watson.

From Business Week:

Another personality who first made a name in traditional media is putting the final touches on an ambitious online destination. Carlos Watson, an MSNBC anchor who also hosts a weekend show on talk radio network Air America, and a small band of staffers are readying The Stimulist, a news and opinion site slated to go live on May 12.

Watson bills The Stimulist as being aimed at what he terms “the change generation;” that is, an audience of young professionals between the ages of 25 and 49. Watson is still on the shy side of 40 and counts himself as a card-carrying member of this cohort, and freely uses the words “we” and “us” to describe his intended audience. “People in their 20s, 30s, and 40s—educated but edgy,” he says. “I don’t think of us as the same as the yuppies of 20 years ago. We are more down to earth, more digitally savvy, and more diverse.” And more global: The Stimulist aims to draw 30% of its traffic from outside of the U.S., which would be significantly more than even a site like nytimes.com gets.

Obviously, the Web is a very crowded place, and many who have succeeded in more traditional precincts of media have encountered less success online. The ultimate success of The Stimulist may hinge less on its precise editorial positioning than on whether Watson can supercharge his career and to what degree his personal brand takes root in the market. There is chatter regarding his roles being expanded at both Air America and MSNBC.

… Watson, who worked for McKinsey & Co. and started and sold an educational company before beginning a media career, is the sole bankroller behind The Stimulist, though he expects to lure outside investors eventually. The site’s managing editor is Max Linsky, a former editor in the Creative Loafing chain of alternative-weekly newspapers. Its chief operating officer and chief revenue officer is Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu, who has worked closely with Watson on his TV shows.

Frank Gorshin in a 1969 "Star Trek" episode referenced by Dave Itzkoff.

In more proof that the blockbuster Star Trek movie has tapped into the zeitgeist, or at least the hype-geist, the Week in Review section in today’s New York Times includes three count ‘em three Trek-inspired stories. Surprisingly, only two out of three use the now-obligatory Obama-as-Spock trope.

• Columbia J-School prof and pop historian David Hajdu on Star Trek as “an early manifestation of our contemporary absorption with the pop culture of the past.”

• Dave Itzkoff’s “Ideas & Trends” piece on the socio/political climate of 1966 (when the TV series debuted) vs. that of 2009

• Maureen Dowd’s dream that Spock/Obama swoosh in and use the powers of logic to save newspapers. (I especially liked the  ‘red matter’/'read matter’ pun, though it may work better if you’ve seen the movie.) Read the rest of this entry »

From NBC Chicago:

Former Illinois police sergeant Drew Peterson is set to be arraigned for murder today in the drowning death of his third wife Kathleen Savio after Illinois State Police officers arrested him about mile from his home Thursday evening.

Savio’s body was found in a dry bathtub in their home in 2004. Her death was initially ruled an accident, but later classified as a homicide after a second autopsy was done. Last month, Savio’s family filed a civil suit against Peterson, claiming he caused her wrongful death.

“I guess I should have returned those library books,” a handcuffed Peterson told police as he was escorted out of his home, the Daily Herald reported.

They still haven’t found Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy, who disappeared in October 2007. Best news out of this is that Peterson is being held on $20 million bond and won’t be appearing on The Today Show any time soon.

By Ben Luongo
PoHo contributor

It seems as though the threat of swine flu has died down. Despite that Florida has five confirmed cases and 22 probable cases, Florida high schools reopened their doors this week. This is because were finding out more and more that the swine flu isn’t all that different than a typical seasonal flu. If that’s the case, did the media and goverment overhype the threat of swine flu? Read the rest of this entry »

CNBC’s reputation-damaged investment show host Jim Cramer just told The Today Show that the “banking nightmare” is over as a result of the stress tests on banks being released today.

His point? That even though a few banks still need billions to shore up their balance sheets, they are making money and likely can raise those extra funds in the market – not from taxpayers.

Bloomberg reports that the market indeed likes the results of the financial stress tests:

Stocks rallied after the news, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index to its highest level in four months. The results are the culmination of weeks of investigations, led by the Federal Reserve, into the banks’ lending practices, funding strategies and securities and loan portfolios.

“The markets are telling us we’re in a recovery and the banks are beginning to heal,” William Isaac, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said in an interview today. The end of the stress tests after “three months of water torture” is providing investors some relief, he said.

The regulators put an emphasis in their reviews on tangible common equity, and will give firms needing bigger reserves six months to meet their requirements. Citigroup’s assessment reflects the New York-based bank’s previously announced plan to convert some of its preferred shares into common stock.

Swine, errrr, H1N1 flu worries will keep kids out of three public schools in Hillsborough County this week, after students reported symptoms that health officials believe are from the fast-spreading influenza.

From ABC Action News:

An 18-year-old male student at Freedom High School and an 11-year-old male student at Wilson Middle School are among the latest suspected cases of the H1N1 virus reported to the Florida Department on Health.

Both schools will be closed starting Monday, and will not reopen until next week. Liberty Middle School will also close, since it shares its cafeteria with Freedom High School, officials said.

Students are being asked to stay home and avoid public places like shopping malls or movie theaters.

None of the five Hillsborough victims of the flu have been hospitalized, and all are recovering.

The Poynter Institute, the nonprofit media educational facility and think-tank, owns the St. Petersburg Times in a unique relationship in U.S. newspapers, one that allowed it to avoid being snapped up by Wall Street (and then ruined) or other ownership succession entanglements. The Poynter, located just south of downtown St. Petersburg, does great work to forward the state of knowledge in news media and once was flush with cash, as its lush offices demonstrate.

But with revenues down at the main money generator, the Times, the Poynter is tightening its belt. Poynter officials today said they are following up a January pay freeze with voluntary retirements packages for all employees 55 and older.

Details after the jump. And here’s Dean Karen Brown Dunlap’s memo to the Poynter staff.

Read the rest of this entry »

The news story that helped set the tone for the public discussion about torture and waterboarding during the Bush Administration was (you guessed it) bullshit, as it turns out.

A high-profile 2007 story by ABC News and correspondent Brian Ross was wrong when it reported that an Al-Quaeda suspect broke after a brief waterboarding.

The Plum Line reports:

The original 2007 story aired former CIA officer John Kiriakou’s unverified and second-hand claims that suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah broke after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds.” The story was suddenly the focus of renewed attention when The New York Times ran a big story earlier this week pointing out that the extensive waterboarding detailed in the torture memos sharply contradicted ABC’s widely-cited tale.

ABC News’ correction appears almost in passing in the network’s new story. It mentions that the new memos show that waterboarding was used far more often than originally thought, adding that Zubaydah was waterboarded “at least 83 times.” It continues:

That contradicts what former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who led the Zubaydah capture team, told ABC News in 2007 when he first revealed publicly that waterboarding had been used.

ABC doesn’t mention the huge role played by original story in shaping the subsequent debate, and to my knowledge the network hasn’t said it regrets the error. While it’s good that ABC corrected the record, the damage of the original story has long since been done.