Letter of the day

Great letter in Sunday's ProJo:

Snobby pictures consume space

The Journal keeps running pictures from the National Museum of American Illustration, in Newport, on its Commentary pages. Consider the recent F.X. Leyendecker illustration of two well-dressed boys golfing. I rather suspect it is an image of how members of The Journal editorial board view themselves, and in that respect they are undoubtedly correct.

Hahahahahaha!

However, bear in mind that every time The Journal consumes valuable real estate with these images, it has deprived its readership of one of my brilliant letters.
CHARLES PINNING
Providence

You're wrong, Mr. Pinning. Rather, those images deprive their readers of yet another random letter from Mr. Saul Ricklin of Bristol, who has had approximately seventeen published in the last twelve months.

On edit: I remembered an Achorn column that had talked about how they choose which letters to run, and I finally found it here. Honestly, it seems like their policy gives the layout editor a lot of power. Perhaps that's why Ricklin gets published so often -- the short comments are easy to fit into leftover spaces.

Got Spellcheck?

My guess is that whoever is currently writing the headlines for the ProJo does not use Spellcheck on them. Perhaps they don't think it makes sense to use it because many proper names appear in the headlines, so it would just slow things down to use it. But...maybe it's because Mercury is retrograde, or perhaps the usual headline writer is on vacation or something. But whatever the reason, there is an inordinate number of typos in the headlines of Wednesday's ProJo, at least the web version. I suspect they may correct some of them in at least some of the print editions. But for now, we read:

• Crantson tax revenue at stake it talks with Water Supply Board


• Garabedian seeking way to halt concret plant


• Judge Dmitri, rest in peace [it's actually spelled Dimitri]


• In a letter to the philanthropist, Coucnil President John J. Lombardi describes the "monumemtal problems" facing the city's schools and asks for help. [this was in a sub-headline]

Having collected these, I realize that they are all from either the letters section (which has lately been notoriously bad about typos in headlines) or from the various local sections that are not distributed statewide except on the web. So perhaps a different person is responsible for writing those headlines. But no matter what, sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

He said what?

Looks like the Boston press corps actually does their job, unlike the Washington press corps. I enjoyed reading about how Romney squirmed in response to press questions at an event he staged in support of a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriages. The whole thing is worth reading, but check out this excerpt:

“I believe the ideal setting for raising a child is where there’s a mother and a father, and the development of a child is enhanced by having the attributes of a male and a female part of their parents. . .”

"A male and a female part"? Really, that's kind of dirty, if you think about it. Why are some heterosexuals so obsessed with sex? And why won't they let my bowling teammate and her wife live their lives in peace? (Of course I don't mean all of you, and probably not even a majority of you in Massachusetts. We're still working on it in RI, though.)

On edit: oh yeah, I forgot about this picture of Romney, from around the time he declared that he could decide whether same-sex couples from Rhode Island could marry in Massachusetts:

Local media oddness

A news story that normally wouldn't really interest me has me noticing and pointing out curious things about how the local media work.

Here's the deal. A Warwick city council member was arrested over the weekend for shoplifting. I previously lived in Warwick, but I was not in his district and don't really know much about him, so I just sort of shrugged when I read it on Channel 12's website on Saturday. I assume they ran a story on the broadcast news, but I try very hard to avoid watching local news because it all seems pretty annoying and mostly useless to me (all channels, not just 12.)

The story stayed on Channel 12's website all weekend (not sure what time it was posted Saturday, but Google news says it was Saturday.) On Monday, the Providence Journal ran an article about the incident. Interestingly, the original story on Channel 12's website had a piece of information which the ProJo story did not report, namely that the police said that "this may not be the first time they have caught Councilor Gallucci in a shoplifting incident."

So, later Monday morning, Rhode Island Law Journal, an interesting local blog, posted a brief note about the incident, with a link to the ProJo story. In the comments, I posted a link to the Channel 12 story and mentioned the additional information it had. Then I went to bed (I usually sleep during the day, for those who don't know). When I got up, the owner of the blog had posted a response saying that the Channel 12 link didn't work, that the story Channel 12 now had on their website didn't mention anything about a possible prior incident, and that he couldn't find a mention anywhere of a report of a possible prior incident. So I clicked on the link that I had posted earlier, and sure enough, the original story was gone. In its place was an error message saying, "The page you requested is currently unavailable. Pages on this site are constantly being revised, updated, and occasionally removed. You may have followed an outdated link or have outdated pages in your browser cache." Elsewhere on the site, they posted an AP story which had summarized the ProJo story, and Channel 12 had interjected into it that the Providence Journal is their "news partner." The news partnership entails some sort of setup between them where Channel 12's late night newscast has someone from the ProJo come on for a moment to give a preview of what will be in tomorrow's paper. I think they also do a news scroll type thing of ProJo headlines at other times. (I don't know for sure because as I said, I rarely watch broadcast news.)

Anyway, I was rather flummoxed by this turn of events. I was afraid it might make me look like one of those anonymous commenters who post false rumors to stir up trouble, like so many people over at the Rhode Island's Future blog. So, I set out to try to find the original story. It had been wiped from Channel 12's website, and clicking on the Google cache of it did not work. However, I was able to reconstruct parts of the story by Googling phrases I had remembered being in the story, and I posted the results in the comments of the Rhode Island Law Journal post (saying I wanted to prove I wasn't crazy or lying!) Early Tuesday morning, a story appeared on the Warwick Daily Times website about the incident, and this story did mention the possible prior incident. (It also got Gallucci's name completely wrong in the headline, but the paper is new in Warwick, after all.)

So, what does all of this signify? Could be any number of things. Could be that Channel 12 reported the possible prior incident without enough evidence to back it up. They did hedge by saying "may," and I don't know what the broadcast story was like (probably sensationalized.) Perhaps they got a call from legal counsel asking them to take it down for that reason. It is interesting that the ProJo surely must have been aware of this information but did not report it. Did their editor feel that there wasn't enough evidence to justify publishing it? Are they perhaps collecting evidence for a future story, keeping their powder dry? Are they annoyed that Channel 12 scooped them? (Perhaps not since they are "partners," but who knows.) Is there a political motive, i.e., someone trying to protect Gallucci? I doubt this given how the ProJo generally hates Democrats, but there's obviously stuff going on behind the scenes that is not being talked about.

I am annoyed with Channel 12 for basically attempting to throw the original story down the memory hole. I cannot be the only person who saw it given that it was on their site for days and probably broadcast as well. But now they are trying to cover their tracks, it appears. If they reported incorrect information, they should post a retraction. But given the subsequent story in the Warwick Daily Times, with an officer on record, it appears that there is indeed at least suspicion of a prior incident. So the information appears to have been correct. Did they pull the story from their site because their "partner" the ProJo is working on their own followup story? If so, that is a good argument against these news partnerships. We need news reported by more sources independent of each other, not fewer. If you need proof of this, compare the ProJo's coverage of the court decision about ballot questions with that of Jim Baron of the Pawtucket Times and its sister papers. I think Baron's coverage is better, and even if not, it certainly adds information not in the ProJo story. (Anyone serious about following RI politics should make a point of reading Baron's work regularly, and likewise that of Joe Baker of the Newport Daily News.)

So those are my reflections on the local media's strange coverage of this incident. I wish no ill upon Mr. Gallucci and hope that he is able to work out whatever problems he may be having.

On edit early Wednesday morning: the Warwick Beacon, which comes out Tuesdays and Thursdays, has a story in Tuesday's edition. Meanwhile, the ProJo has another story about it in Wednesday's edition, in the West Bay section, so it may or may not have run in the print version in other parts of the state. (They usually pick one or two stories from the regional sections to distribute statewide, I think.) This story does mention the possible prior incident and I think goes into more detail about it than other sources did. Meanwhile, Channel 12 has removed the AP story from its main page although you can still access it via a direct link. Meanwhile, they still have at least one out of date story about another topic on their main page ("Judge to hear arguments on ballot questions," but the decision has already been rendered.) Make of that what you will.

Yet another rotten move by AOL

Yes, I know you've probably heard the story of the hell the guy went through recently trying to cancel his AOL, but that's not what this post is about.

I run an email list with about 600 subscribers, so naturally I get bounces from time to time as people cancel their email accounts without unsubscribing from the list first. No great shakes. But I just now got the daily bounce report, listing a now-former AOL user, and the bounce message included this:

Last error: 5.1.1 550 We would love to have gotten this email to [username]@aim.com. But, your recipient never logged onto their free AIM Mail account. Please contact them and let them know that they're missing out on all the super features offered by AIM Mail.

And by the way, they're also missing out on you...
(16 bytes suppressed)

(The cutoff means that I don't know what the rest of their bounce message said because the machine which runs my email list kindly spared me from having to read it.)

Amazing. AOL is putting ads in its bounce messages now. Not a good way to win friends and influence people to use your products, guys. Geesh.