American Newsreel » Media

Britney zones out: Stop the presses

Doug Thompson — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 23:17:44 +0000

Wow. Britney Spears can’t even catnap without it becoming a national story.
Reports The Associated Press:

Britney Spears finally appears to be acting like a new mom. The pop princess, who recently made headlines for a rash of less-than-motherly hard partying, fell asleep in a Las Vegas nightclub early Monday shortly after leading the New Year’s Eve countdown, her manager said.
“By about one o’clock, she was just done, so we took her out,” Spears’ manager, Larry Rudolph, told The Associated Press Monday. “She was not drunk. She was just tired and falling asleep.”

Wonder if she was wearing underwear?

Now that’s a downer

Doug Thompson — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:08:51 +0000

The Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association picked United 93 as their choice for best film of the year.
No, this is not a joke.

Stern Clouds on the horizon

Doug Thompson — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 10:12:50 +0000

Widespread reaction to Howard Stern’s first days on Sirius sat radio:

From Howard Reich at the Chicago Tribune:

The words tumbled out in a torrent–vulgar descriptions of body parts, bodily functions and the kinkiest sexual practices.

The speakers seemed to revel in the telling, reiterating the blue
phrases like a mantra, then laughing uproariously at each repetition.

But was it funny? Was it supposed to be?

Each listener who tuned in Monday morning to Howard Stern’s debut on
Sirius Satellite Radio answered those questions individually, for humor
remains as subjective as any other art form.

Yet to those who
work in comedy, Stern–and those who follow him into the anything-goes
realm of satellite radio–faces a steep artistic challenge. For if
anyone on satellite can say anything, will audiences be amused by
streams of profanity for long?

“My experience is that unless
you keep some kind of taboo, you lose the force of any kind of
language,” said Bernard Sahlins, co-founder of Chicago’s long-standing
comedy troupe Second City, interviewed before Stern’s satellite debut.

“If the language becomes generally broadcast, approved, misused, it becomes meaningless.

“It has neither mystery nor effectiveness,” Sahlins said.

The Detroit Free Press:

The new Howard Stern satellite radio show began Monday with all the expected hoopla.

He
put to rest rumors that he married his longtime girlfriend, model Beth
Ostrosky — in a comment complete with a federally banned expletive.

“I
am not married. It’s a nice feeling that we get along great. We’re very
happy and I don’t want to (expletive) it up,” said Stern, who is
finally free of government decency laws on Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.
(Channel 100).

Stern has promised everything from stripper poles
to live sex on his new show. Yet he maintained his show was more about
ideas. Cursing, he said, would be part of the natural progression of
speech.

“I feel this is a culmination of dreams for me,” Stern said in an on-air news conference. “The only limit is our mind,” he said.

My take:

I’ve
never found Stern funny. He’s the obnoxious kid from school who
delights in yelling dirty words to shock people, a buffoon who
substitutes obscenity for humor and then claims it’s all about free
speech.

It ain’t. Richard Pryor was both obscene and funny. Stern
is just obscene. There’s a difference and Sirius radio, in a
to-the-death fight with the much larger XM-radio network, is gambling
that it can attract more listeners by putting Stern on the air and
letting him shout “fuck” to his heart’s content.

With luck, their attempt will fail miserably.

Death of a journalist

Doug Thompson — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 10:14:41 +0000

David E. Rosenbaum, a longtime editor and reporter in the Washington
bureau of the New York Times, died yesterday after being beaten and
robbed Friday night near his home in upper Northwest Washington.

Rosenbaum,
63, died at 7:10 p.m. at Howard University Hospital, where he was
treated for a head injury suffered during the attack on Gramercy Street
NW, said Philip Taubman, chief of the Times’s Washington bureau.

Doctors had operated on Rosenbaum on Saturday to relieve pressure on his brain.

D.C.
police were canvassing the neighborhood yesterday for clues in the
attack, which occurred in a quiet section between Connecticut and
Wisconsin avenues. No arrests had been made.

“David was one of the most accomplished journalists of his generation in Washington,” Taubman said last night.

“He
could do anything, and he did so many things brilliantly,” Taubman
said. “He was an all-time great, versatile reporter who could tackle
any subject” and wrote about the most abstruse matters, particularly in
financial areas, with “remarkable lucidity, speed” and sophistication.

Rosenbaum
joined the Washington bureau in 1968 and, with the exception of three
years as an editor in New York, had spent his entire Times career
there. He retired late last month but was to continue contributing to
the Times.

Not with my daughter you don’t

Doug Thompson — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 09:38:53 +0000

Howard Stern’s daughter Emily has pulled out of
a satirical stage performance in which she appears nude, apparently
worried that enemies of her father would distribute pictures of her on
the Internet.

Emily Stern, 22, has starred since November in “Kaballah,” staged by
the Jewish Theater of New York at the Triad Theater, 158 W. 72nd St.
She has been playing Madonna, the pop singer who gained an interest in
the mystic Jewish form of study.

Tuesday, the company abruptly canceled its scheduled performances for
this week at the 136-seat theater, saying Stern had dropped out after
learning that she had become the subject of rumors on several Howard
Stern fan club Web sites.

“She’s very scared now,” said Isi Tenonbom, a spokeswoman for the
Jewish Theater, who said the company was looking for a replacement
actress.

Sad state of affairs

Doug Thompson — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 12:35:56 +0000

The Judith Miller debacle at The New York Times shows just how easily the Bush Administration manipulated the press in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq Her departure from what was once the nation’s newspaper of record shows just how badly the whole affair hurt the paper’s already damaged reputation.
Miller can keep spinning the story anyway she wants but she allowed herself to be used as a pawn of an administration that lied to the world about its reasons for invading a country that posed no threat to the United States. And the Times, already hurt by the Jayson Blair scandal, cannot escape responsibility for allowing a loose cannon like Miller to run amuck.
Sad day for journalism. Even sadder one for America.

We harass, you decide

Doug Thompson — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:18:50 +0000

Seems like the good old boys at Fox News Network just can’t leave the girls alone.
First network loudmouth Bill O’Reilly got caught making dirty phone calls to a female producer. Now the network’s VP of advertising and promotions, Joe Chillemi is under investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for a “pattern of subjected female employees to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.”
According to the EEOC complaint, Chillemi “routinely used gross obscenities and vulgarities when describing women or their body parts” and “routinely cursed at and otherwise denigrated women employees and treated them in a demeaning way.” Three women have reported being harassed by Chillemi.

The Missing White Girl Syndrome

Doug Thompson — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:46:55 +0000

Meet Taylor Behl, a 17-year-old freshman at Virginia Commonwealth University. She’s young, pretty, white and missing — ingredients that make her newsworthy in today’s 24/7 news culture.

Taylor’s case has all the ingredients for the sensationalist side of news: She disappeared without a trace, she has a “dark side” to her life that shows sign of rebellion once landing in college and she’s involved with a photographer who likes to take suggestive pictures for young girls and post them on “teen model” web sites.

The photographer, Ben Fawley of Richmond, has a criminal record and admits seeing Behl on the night she died.

Uncertainty

Doug Thompson — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 13:04:57 +0000

Like many others in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, newspapers feel the effect of tragedy. In Biloxi, the Sun-Herald reports that 30 percent of its staff is still missing after Katrina devastated the city last week.
In New Orleans some wonder is the venerable Times-Picayune will continue publishing, prompting the publisher to issue a public letter saying the paper will survive, no matter what. Others are not so sure.

Missing Reporter

Doug Thompson — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 12:46:03 +0000

This message from New Orleans Times-Picayune Editor Peter Kovacs was published this morning on Romenesko’s Media News.

The Times-Picayune has lost contact with Leslie Williams, a reporter who was to cover the hurricane on the Mississippi Coast. Because our phones failed in New Orleans, we were unable to communicate with Leslie and he may not know that we are in Baton Rouge at LSU. If anyone ran across Leslie, please contact me at 225-578-9880. My cellphone is 504-352-5550 but it is still balky. My email is kovacs70003@yahoo.com. Leslie is experienced at covering hurricanes and is a native of the Mississippi coast. His mother still lives there and he sometimes stays with her.