Kasich: Read no evil, see no evil

IT'S A LITTLE EARLY to be Ho-Ho-Ho-ing, I know, but it's the only way I know how to respond to the latest utterance from Gov. Kasich. I refer to his comments in a Columbus speech in which, with straight face, he declared that he never reads newspapers. That's a politician's standard cover-up when things are not going well - no curiosity at all to know how he's doing in the media. The other cover-up for the pols is that they will tell you they never look at the polls. Particularly when they don't favor you. To repeat: Ho-Ho-Ho.

In his rejection of the media, our governor, with straight face, informed us: "You should know that I don't read newspapers in the State of Ohio" because one doesn't need to be "aggravated by what I read in newspapers." This is spoken in a town where the daily newspaper, the Dispatch, helped him get elected by endorsing him, thus aggravating to this day a whole lot of other folks who have a dismal view of him.

He also complained that he doesn't find newspapers to be "uplifting". Uplifting?

Here's one former newspaperman who will tell you that I never once heard that word applied to a newspaper's mission, which is to be "informative". However, sadly I do find that to be less so today. So go ahead, governor, read the papers. You might help somebody in the newsroom save his or her job.

Newspapers and Grassley-roots protests

LIFELESS ALONG THE HEALTH CARE FRONT:

Although the health-care reform issue has been hotter than your outdoor grill this summer, the hometown newspaper coverage leads me to wonder about the papers' priorities. In today's Beacon Journal, for example, there was no mention of it at all. It didn't exist in the news columns although one letter writer on the editorial page did have something to say about it. (As we used to scream when a baseball fan in the stands caught a foul ball, "Sign her up!")

Incidentally, the paper's omission occurred at the time when a new development in the noisy debate over "death panels" was being reported in the Plain Dealer and other media. The misstated panel has been omitted from the bill being written in a Senate Finance Committee.

Perhaps even worse than the absence of a story was the lopsided story published by the Zanesville Times Recorder that reported the comments by a group called the Zanesville Patriots who were protesting at the Zanesville office of U.S. Rep. Zack Space. They raised the usual number of ill-informed questions about the issue, with one quoted as worrying that if her father has a third heart attack, "they'll just tell us to pull the plug."

The problem here is that the reporter never added a line or two to balance these attacks with what reform proponents have said to set the record straight. At this point it's questionable whether the complaints will fade away even with the the so-called death panel withdrawn. When they run out of questions in the assault on President Obama, they'll simply invent some more.

Health-care footnote:

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican serving on the Senate Finance Committee preparing a reform bill, is a stand-out recipient of the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award after reporting the withdrawal of the "death panel" language in the draft, saying:

"We dropped the end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.

Senator, a reasonable question: And who has been, eh, "misinterpreting" the language of the bill with death-panel warnings in your public speeches more than you, sir?"

The bill should include medical insurance coverage for incoherence.

On Bush, baseball and balloting baloney

FROM A FRIEND comes a report of a speech by ex-President George W. Bush to a loving business group in Erie, Pa. in which he first asserted that he would not criticize President Obama - and then spent the next hour attacking Obama's policies on a wide range of issues from the plan to close Guantanamo Prison to the stimulus package. (I'll assume that he didn't also attack his one-time military guru, Gen. Petraeus, for supporting the closure.) The conservative audience responded gleefully to Bush's non-assault assault. As for me, it has often occurred to me when I see Dubya that his mien is much like what inspired Lillian Hellman to say of Norma Shearer: "A face unclouded by thought."

* * * * *

FROM ANOTHER FRIEND comes word from Baseball America, the go-to publication for all things baseball, that the shrinking newspaper world is impacting on how BA gets its reports from the beat correspondents on the hometown newspaper's sports pages as newspapers shut down or the baseball writers resign for other jobs. This is not the sort of shifting sand that would help us cope with melting glaciers. But it does add another downside piece to the fallout from the industry's melt-down.

On that point, Journalism.Org reported earlier that while the number of Washington-based reporters for American newspapers has shrunk dramatically by more than a third since 1985, the number of foreign media based in DC has increased ten-fold since the late 1960s. There has also been a huge increase in so-called niche newsletters and magazines of interest to special audiences. The decline in the mainstream media has been accompanied by less accountability for whomever is running the government. "Symbolic of the state of this relationship, George W. Bush is the first president since Theodore Roosevelt not to address the National Press Club during his his years in office," Journalism.Org. noted. In this instance, I'd say all's well that ends well.

* * * * *

It's conclusively OVER! In response to a column by the Beacon Journal's Steve Hoffman, on the recall campaign against Mayor Don Plusquellic, former Councilman Warner Mendenhall, the messy effort's icon, declared "success in many ways." That being the case, should there still be a costly election on Tuesday by Akron's voters? In years of covering elections , I found this one to be the first that failed to connect any of the dots. Could it be that the dots were never there in the first place?

Biden at the opera

That big photo of Joe Biden on the front page of the Beacon Journal today looked like he was reaching for an operatic high C or warming up to bay at the moon.  Considering the shrink-wrapped glamor pictures that the media have been running of Sarah Palin, one wonders how the unflattering Biden photo was pulled from the batch. (And it isn't solely because Biden lacks her glamor and the editors had no choice!)  Even the headline raised a question (Where is Obama? some fans asked)  that was mentioned in no more than a single paragraph in the lengthy  article about Biden's appearances in Akron and Canton.  Can't say the negatives were deliberate.   Maybe they simply didn't occur to the layout editor.   If so, why didn't they?

On the other hand, the BJ outshone the Plain  Dealer by a mile in its coverage of the Biden  events hereabouts.  The PD, not long ago the paper of record in Northern Ohio, settled for a short story on the back page of the first section with a Youngstown dateline. The story reduced Akron to two paragraphs.   This is worth mentioning only because it is simply one more bit of evidence of the decline and fall of the print media.   

More evidence?  Five reporters at the BJ have been given layoff notices and must decide by Nov. 14 whether they will accept buyouts.  In addition, the hit list includes three copy  editors, one artist, one clerk and one photographer.  The word from the front is not pretty and the battleground will soon be strewn with more victims.   Sadly, the print industry is in panicky retreat and is doubtless past the point of no return.  Drastic reductions in staff,  other cost-savers and price increases will only delay the inevitable.  Among the latest "innovations" is the sharing of stories by several papers.   It is not unusual nowadays for the Plain Dealer, Beacon Journal, Columbus Dispatch to carry articles with bylines  from the other papers.  It's a takeoff on the retailing practice of reporting one story, get one free.    Get used to it.