Pittsburgh Media Scoops and Gossip
Welcome, newsroom pros and moles. Here's the spot for all the latest dish and debate on what's happening in Pittsburgh media. This is a forum to talk about issues affecting the Pittsburgh media scene.
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ABOUT THE DOG: Since so many have asked, the photo is simply a dog delivering the paper. He has no connection to any past advertising campaigns for any newspaper. He's a nice dog.
- Scaife in the NY Post gossip section -- Trib Reader, 03:14:54 01/02/08 Wed [15]
The King makes Page Six:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01022008/gossip/pagesix/sordid_tales_of_clinton_hater_614455.htm?CMP=EMC-email_edition&DATE=01022008
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- A laugh on the PG webcast -- Weak end, 12:52:18 01/25/08 Fri [5]
Gawd. Saw the DOA PG webcast w. Mervis babbling about weekend events. Stood there rubbing his hands & looking elderly as his taste in music reading off events then yacking about something called whammer jammer? Is it a code? Whats up with that? Even Tribbers don't make fools of themselves this way.
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- The PG's "Well duh" headline of the day! -- Midwife, 16:03:44 01/28/08 Mon [1]
"Prof says women vital to birth of America"
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- And the moronic questions keep on a-comin'! -- Don't Eat Breakfast, 00:22:18 01/28/08 Mon [2]
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08028/852708-129.stm
Maybe it'd be more interesting if Beltway Dave formulated the questions for "Starstruck" Sheridan.
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- Beltway Dave: concern with our region -- Meade E. Ocre, 14:14:38 01/27/08 Sun [2]
http://www.post-gazette.com/search/archive.asp?cCat=372
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- Pirates Cheerleader -- Dis Gusted, 09:09:33 01/26/08 Sat [5]
Bob Smizik and Jason Bay finally said today what Dejan Kovacevic, official Pirates cheerleader, would not: The pirates have not done a thing to better themselves during the off-season.
Dejan dutifully reports what the Pirates hand him. Yesterday it was the big deal facility in the Dominican Republic and the signing of two pathetic minor league pitchers with ERAs of about 5 or 6.
Does Dejan ever think of critizing the Pirates? Seems like the same old story of a man getting too close to the people on his beat and thinking he works for them, not the newspaper.
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- Trib, inept again -- Flam, 21:21:35 01/23/08 Wed [3]
Check out the head here. Trib copy editors must be some of the worst in the business, heck, they have "loost" their minds.
US Airways still loosing baggage
By Thomas Olson
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, January 24, 2008
US Airways remains the worst major airline for bag-handling performance, consistently trailing the industry average, government figures show.
The consolation for US Airways passengers here is that since the airline dropped Pittsburgh International Airport as a hub for connecting flights in 2003, most of the bag problems occur at the busy hubs of Charlotte and Philadelphia. But US Airways passengers still lodge complaints here, too.
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- Rodenbush -- Desk Guy, 12:41:36 12/31/07 Mon [9]
What happened to Jim Rodenbush at the Trib.
I heard he got fired.
Is it true Trib Kiddies?
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- trib pm (post mortem) -- Ceri Al Wect, 22:00:03 01/06/08 Sun [27]
I don't believe that the poor corpse known as Friday's Trib PM can be topped in the gaudiness category. The cover looks like the result of an autopsy performed by a drunken pathologist. Literally, there is shit strewn everywhere.
Please, put it back in the body bag and let it rest in peace.
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- Layoffs at the BCT -- Curious, 09:03:31 01/16/08 Wed [13]
So, there was word this week of layoffs at the Beaver County Times.
Does anyone know if any of those laid off were reporters or in the editorial area? What's going on over there?
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- And while the Trib runs puffery on their favorite colleges... -- L. Nino, 00:48:47 01/13/08 Sun [5]
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08013/848910-298.stm
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- New definition of Local News -- Albert Carl Sagan Hawking Einstein, 08:35:49 01/11/08 Fri [2]
The centerpiece story in Friday’s Local News section of the P-G is about a planetary collision that occurred 170 light years away.
I know, I know, a local astronomer was a part of the team that discovered the cosmic crash. Of course, that qualifies it as a local story.
Before people get all up in arms defending the journalistic integrity of One Of America’s Great Newspapers, this post is not a criticism of editorial judgment or the quality of the writing. I just thought it was a funny subject for a local news section.
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- Any copy editors in P-G sports? -- Lawrence Ville, 02:47:47 01/12/08 Sat [3]
If there are, how could they let this lead stand on Ron Musselman's story?
SAN ANTONIO -- Penn State's Joe Paterno believes his son has got the ability to be a head coach.
Has got? Ugh.
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- Self-Humiliation ala Bennett -- PG NewsNOWAY, 01:44:16 01/04/08 Fri [11]
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08003/846431-151.stm
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- Carbolic PM? -- neeno nineo, 16:14:52 12/28/07 Fri [28]
It's not as if the Trib PM is exactly highbrow, but what do people think of the new Carbolic Smoke Ball page? It's a funny Web site, but isn't it risky to print fake news alongside real news?
Try to refrain from the obvious "The Trib PM isn't real news, etc. etc." comments.
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- Why McIntire doesn't get hired -- Send MacYapper 2 D Crapper, 03:09:02 12/19/07 Wed [25]
http://www.macyapper.blogspot.com/
"Who sucks the most?" he asks, referring to politicians or the Steelers.
Does anyone want to offer up a third alternative?
And he thinks THIS is going to get him snapped up at big bucks by some local entity? Maybe Public Access Cable. MAYBE.
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- high school coverage this past week. -- prep cook, 19:13:22 11/25/07 Sun [9]
not that it is the the steelers or anything, but prep coverage in this city has a much bigger audience than most cities.
with the wpial finals this past week, it is very easy to see the PG is running laps around the Trib in this department with all the online packaging the pg does and, to be honest, the stories are just much better.
has anyone else noticed that the trib has really been taking a beating lately in prep sports? is it because kevin gorman is no longer a prep writer? what is the answer here?
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- Carl Prine's latest boondoggle -- Bored Stiff, 08:24:16 01/09/08 Wed [3]
Thoughts on this? I thought it was terribly boring and irrelevant...Over the last two-plus years we've heard ad nauseam about the "retired players' plight," so nothing new there. I just don't understand how he continues to get the time and leeway to work on these bizarre analysis pieces.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/mostread/s_545889.html
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- Bingo Bob's Blatant Boredom Bonanza -- Ty Tannik, 17:51:07 01/06/08 Sun [3]
Want to fall asleep fast? Watch this!
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07357/843575-44.stm
I think I now realize the value of the PG's video interviews: a way of battling insomnia. George may be a good writer but here, she's as dull as Hoover's column writing. Thanks, Bingo Bob, for taking sonambuism to a new level.
Does anyone have any idea how this is s'posed to save the PG?
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- Please tell me this was a joke -- Neal and Bob, 14:32:28 12/28/07 Fri [7]
This was part of Bob Smizik's chat on Wednesday. As far as I can tell, it wasn't a joke. Talk about shameless, inexusable ignorance.
Ricky_Bobby: How much will Cook's injury hurt Pitt?
Bob Smizik: As far as I know Ron Cook is full healthy.
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- She's alive! Or is she? -- Middle American, 06:02:28 01/07/08 Mon [6]
Parade magazineis never something to be proud of, particularly, but the Jan. 6 Parade inserted in the P-G should never have gone out with its cover touting a story that obviously was done and printed with lead time that left it not reflecting the fact that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in the interim. Whatever excuse may be made — it wasn't the P-G's doing, there's a contract that requires its insertion — is insufficient. The P-G could have chosen not to insert this edition of Parade and dealt with any contractual consequences — assuming someone at the P-G even bothered to look at this week's Parade.
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- What happened to Mike O.??? -- Sexy Reporter, 16:03:23 12/29/07 Sat [3]
Did Mike Orfanoupolos (spelling??) leave the Trib's sports department? I noticed in today's print edition that his name was gone. Where did he go?
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- Trib PM story missing something -- Pairass Hillton, 17:11:43 01/06/08 Sun [1]
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/tribpm/s_545292.html
Seems Dick and Ritchie should be here, shouldn't they? Wonder why they aren't.
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- Is This Story Kosher? -- B. Wldered, 09:09:23 01/01/08 Tue [12]
Page One. Thirty-six inches of copy. A three-column picture.
Did US Steel announce the closing of its Clairton Works? Did Dollar Bank declare bankruptcy?
Nope and Nope. The P-G and Steve Levin were breathlessly announcing the closing of a kosher bakery in Squirrel Hill. And sometimes the bakery sold as many as 100 loaves of bread in a day. Wow!
Only 28 years old, the bakery wasn't exactly a Pittsburgh icon. But it did give Levin the chance to plug -- and plug and plug -- the baker's Bloomfield location, his wholesale bakery business and -- whoopee! -- "an expanded selection of his baked goods" at (another plug coming) "Murray Avenue Kosher in Squirrel Hill."
Any wonder why newspapers are failing?
A final note to Mr. Levin and his editors:
It's spelled espresso, not expresso. And the plural of handful is handsful, not handfuls.
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- Someone please help Karen Price with interpretting TV ratings -- Mr. Burns, 10:57:53 01/03/08 Thu [3]
Her Winter Classic ratings story in today's Trib was a garbled mess.
The story asserts that one ratings point = 1.14 million households; but her pullout asserts it equals 1.28 million.
OK, the sidebar is about market ratings, so maybe that discrepancy is, in fact, correct. No biggie, right?
Well, then the 17.7 rating in the Pittsburgh metro market means that just a hair under 20 million households watched the game. Given that 2006 census estimates that our entire state has 12.4 million residents (and only 5.4 million housing units), you can see why NBC is so damn giddy with the ratings.
Even more impressive is the fact that the Buffalo TV market earned a 38.2 rating which, according to pullout, amounts to about 43 million households. That's 70 times more than the 636,700 TV households that Neilson estimates are in the market.
Oh, wait, the 1.114 million (or is it 1.128 million?) figure is for national ratings, you say? Even though the pullout says, "Here are the ratings for the Top 10 markets. One ratings points represents 1.128 million households"?
Then how the hell am I supposed to make sense of ratings of markets as diverse as Buffalo, Sacramento, Las Vegas and Denver?
I don't know a thing about TV ratings and markets. And stories like this one ensure that I never will.
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- While everyone's piling on the PG... -- Captain Kangaroo, 14:54:42 12/19/07 Wed [5]
Why in God's name does PG management think that ANY of their readers, and I mean ANY of them, give two tenths of a crap about the "down under" babbling of ex staffer Chico Harlan? He wasn't THAT great when he worked here!!!!
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- The Sick "Humor" of John McIntire -- Naus E. Ated, 20:20:40 12/30/07 Sun [2]
http://macyapper.blogspot.com/
Ha, ha, ha. Make fun of an unfunny situation. If blogs existed on November 22, 1963 and he were doing then what he does now, what would that look like? I think the MacYapper's about tapped out.
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- Mervis Channels Pat Sheridan -- Surfin USA, 00:17:06 12/26/07 Wed [6]
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07360/844253-388.stm
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- Kennywood's Flack generates Flak -- L. Nino, 14:38:51 12/12/07 Wed [12]
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07346/840925-28.stm
What the hell is Kennywood spokesperson Mary Lou Rosemeyer's professional background? Is it in journalism? Corporate communications? A politician's former press secretary?
Anyone briefing the media as their livelihood, while taking questions on the acquisition of her company by a Spanish firm, who responds to issues regarding local concerns over changes the new owners might make, by invoking a "taco stand" analogy has got to be beyond incompetent.
Aside from the fact tacos are Mexican, Rosemeyer gave her company a black eye for no good reason, then had to apologize. I give her credit for the on-air mea culpa, but still...
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- Point Park News Service -- young reader, 18:41:41 11/28/07 Wed [5]
This is the latest bargain basement "news" source for the Trib. It is a carbon copy of the long-standing Columbia News Service, run by Columbia's J-School. At Point Park, the service is run by "veteran newsman" Andrew Conte, a Columbia grad. The biggest difference between the two is that while Columbia News Service serves subscribers at (legitimate) newspapers across the country, Point Park's output is exclusively for the Trib, which pays for the program out of a Scaife journalism foundation fund. If the Trib runs a story, the student-writer gets a stringer fee. Whatever the Trib doesn't want goes on the Point Park website in the hope that someone, somewhere, sometime will publish it.
Between Trib summer internships and these student stories, is anyone getting paid a full-time reporter rate at the Clark Building?
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- Madden on his knees -- pigglywiggly, 07:43:58 12/22/07 Sat [2]
Thankfully, Bob Smizik writes a media column in this town. His column on Mark Madden begging for his last job was outstanding. Imagine if this had been left up to the Trib/Clear Channel gang.
Anyway, ESPN must be out of its mind not to have replaced Lard Boy with Junker and Crowe. They would've been able to trounce the hapless Joe Bendel show and return to a reasonable reporting foothold with the Steelers, while still pretending this is a hockey town.
Would've been win-win-win, as Michael Scott would say. But at least we have a reporter like Smizik keeping an eye on things.
Read any other good sports columns lately, dear elitists?
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- Now here's Rob Owen with the latest David Hollander news! -- Would Steen, 21:47:27 11/23/07 Fri [9]
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07327/835819-42.stm
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- Kudos to Sean McDowell, Scott Mervis and PG Weekend -- Dee Veeyee, 13:10:41 12/21/07 Fri [3]
www.post-gazette.com/pg/07354/843048-42.stm
Thank you, Sean, for putting on the record, in print and online for all to see, what so many true fans of real rock 'n roll have been saying and thinking since it was announced that Madonna will be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.
Thank you, Scott and PG Weekend, for publishing Sean's letter and featuring it as the lead letter this week.
The Rock Hall was a cool idea at its inception and one of the few things that made visiting Cleveland almost tolerable, but it's apparent that those in charge have lost their minds. I hope Mervis, PG Weekend and the rest of the media will factor that in to any future coverage of the Rock Hall.
And BTW, despite the handle I chose for this post, I'm not affiliated in any way with WDVE or the PG — and certainly not with the Rock Hall.
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- To quote Fred G Sanford, the "G" stands for "God What a Waste of Space.." -- Green Manalishi, 10:29:59 12/17/07 Mon [2]
"LaMont, you big dummy!"
Seriously, what's the point of this airheaded advice column? I agree Cat's Call is pitful, but while everyone piles on Ms. Specter and her grandstanding, I've not seen anyone comment on this fluff extravaganza. Why don't they just change the name of SEEN to the Post Gazette and print it daily?
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07351/842205-323.stm
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