First the NFL Replacement Refs, now INC Screws Packer Fans

The Maven and his lovely dinning companion were nestled comfortably in a cozy booth at a favorite restaurant/bar eagerly anticipating the Saints/Packers game Sunday afternoon.

All was going swimmingly until the barmaid had difficulty finding the game on TV. A quick scan of MyFox Fort Wayne's usual hiding places on Comcast cable revealed a Bare Minerals infomercial on both Comcast 18 and 252. But the screen guide indicated the Saints/Packers game on the Fox network. Hmm.

As time passed, the audio from the infomercial went up, then down, then away, then back to full volume. The video remained on the infomercial. 

Then, with a minute or two left in the first quarter, and the game tied at 7, viola! The NFL on Fox appeared and the disgusting Bare Minerals infomercial was vanquished to annoy us on another day!

One has to wonder if the error would have been corrected earlier if the station personnel (probably just the one person in the building at the time) had not taken time to Tweet about the screw up, rather than fix it immediately. Hey, at least they acknowledged the error (whether it was, in deed technical, or just someone busy doing something else and neglecting something as unimportant as a measly football game, we will never know). A screen crawl might have been a nice touch....but it that might have been asking too much of the poor flunky running multiple TV stations in multiple cities from the Butler Road bunker.

It's clear that INC, the current Fox affiliate, does not take their affiliation seriously and only holds the affiliation so that another Fort Wayne station can not get their grubby little hands on it. And brickbats also to Comcast for moving MyFox Fort Wayne around on their line up. With MyFox Fort Wayne on Comcast 18, where the hell did the put the Weather Channel? Well, that's a search for another day.....

There Will Be One Less…

In a town where there are, at best, only a handful of credible, likeable and trustworthy TV anchors and presenters, we will now have one less.

The AWB blog,  http://www.angrywhiteboy.org is reporting that INC’s Ryan Elijah will be leaving the friendly confines of Butler Road for an evening anchor position at the Fox owned and operated station in Orlando. Elijah previously had worked as sports anchor at a Jacksonville, FL TV station before his return to Fort Wayne to anchor a morning newscast.

In a sea of self importance and faux authority, Ryan Elijah never allowed his “position” to cloud his genuine interest is the people and the stories he covered. Many of us, who watch Fort Wayne media, literally and figuratively, are losing one of the good ones.

AWB's story can be found here:  

http://www.angrywhiteboy.org/2012/09/25/fort-waynes-loss-is-orlandos-gain/

NBC's "Boobs" Take the Heat Off The Journal Gazette

9/12 Update:
Not really sure if it was planned or not, but the Journal did feature a nice "follow up" this morning about how people remembered the 9/11 attacks on the front page of the paper. While the skeptical among us may use the familiar phrase of  "a day late and a dollar short", the Journal recovered from yesterday's affair nicely. One of our friends, who called the publisher's office yesterday to complain reached a rather rude gentleman who asked "how did you get this number", to which our friend replied: "it's printed in the paper". "Oh" was his response. I guess they ivory tower isn't used to taking reader's phone calls. 

Original post:
Fort Wayne's "progressive" newspaper, the Journal Gazette, did not print one word or picture about 9/11 on their front page this morning. Social media types caught this insult and after a number of calls to the publisher's office, the JG felt compelled to tweet a message to their followers that their 9/11 coverage could be found on page 3A inside the paper. Then, magically around 10:30am the JG website was revised to direct readers to their 9/11 stories. While the Maven was amazed that nearly every newspaper in the country found space on page one for 9/11, the Journal, ever the contrarian, stuffed their 9/11 stories inside. At least they avoided placing them deeper inside with the auto repair, pest exterminator and handjob parlor ads as they did with the Pearl Harbor observance stories last year. How nice. 

But, the Journal really owes a debt of gratitude to the  NBC Today Show. Why? Well NBC found an even better way to trivialize this day of quiet reflection and memory. 

As has been the tradition, the nation pauses for a moment of silence at around 8:46am, the time the first hijacked airliner struck the north tower of the World Trade Center. Every major news network showed images of the President and First lady with head bowed appropriately. Other images showed a silent New York Stock Exchange trading floor, still, other images showed a Marine standing at attention. 

Then, there was NBC......who chose to ignore those somber scenes and instead,  proudly aired an interview with “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star Kris Jenner, who talked about the new season of the reality show, and proudly showed off  her brand spanking new breast implants. Hooters vs heroes. Must be an NBC thing.

Real class, to say the least. Just another example of how far journalism has fallen from the ivory towers of truth and enlightenment to the gutter of filth and lowest common denominator. 

Fire the Proofreaders....Oh, We Already Did That

There was a time when the daily newspaper was held up to children and adults as an example of correct spelling and good grammar.  Those days have apparently passed us by, as illustrated in a Sunday Journal Gazette article written by the usually dependable Dan Stockman.

In discussing the issue of Roundabouts planned in our fair city, an expert on the subject commented about the public's aversion to them:

Note the use of the word "complains" as opposed to the correct word "complaints".

Rather than trying to influence the outcomes of local political elections, as evidenced by their recent smear of announced mayoral candidate Mitch Harper, the publisher of the Journal Gazette might want to focus the attention of her managers and editors upon the quality of the product they publish. That reputation used to be worth defending. 

The Agenda - Politics of Publishing

It didn't take long for a Republican to step up and announce his intentions to seek the office of Fort Wayne Mayor before the phone rang at Tracy Warner's desk at the Journal Gazette. The voice at the other end of the line must have heard the rumor and now Tracy was tasked with beginning the painstaking process of destroying the character of this upstart candidate in order to protect his newspaper's political interests. How dare someone challenge the long held agenda of the Journal Gazette ownership by wishing to unseat a perfectly good Democrat who has enjoyed a prosperous and well-oiled, symbiotic relationship with the paper and it's "community involved" ownership? Say what you want about media ownership - private vs corporate. Both have their negatives, and locally owned erudite "do-gooders" are a prime example.

Here's Mr. Warner's "work":

 http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120904/EDIT0502/309049998/-1/EDIT01

Make no mistake, Mitch Harper is a big boy and an experienced politician. He can take care of himself. The rub is that Mitch, unlike Tom Henry, will not have the advantage of a loyal media ally on his bench. Sure, the News Sentinel is often referred to as "the Republican" paper, but their corporate ownership, hidden away somewhere in the hills of West Virginia, are more concerned with lineage and readership rather than supporting local candidates who share their political philosophy. Activists they are not.

So, the first salvo has been hurled. Mitch will, and should ignore the barb, and we voters and the few who still subscribe to the local papers, will be in for another round of negative campaigning spearheaded by local millionaires who diddle and daddle with politics from their ivory towers overlooking the Courthouse Green.....which, you will recall, was built because daddy's office view of our stately Courthouse was blocked by a few old buildings.  The joys of owning a newspaper.