Molly Dorozenski of Scribner’s well-oiled publicity machine sets us straight–Pauline O’Connor wrote the NY Times piece on Stacey Grenrock Woods, and while the print edition was correct, the online version was all confused.

Earlier:
Stacey Grenrock Woods Covers Herself, Kinda Sorta

photo by Stephanie Diani

Chris Lee, LA Times writer and FBLA’s Kate Coe exchanged notes on their Theresa Duncan/Jeremy Blake stories.

When did you first get the story?

CL:I got it on Monday (7/23) but wrote and reported most of it Tuesday morning. Daily Calendar goes to the printer at 3:00 pm so it was a scramble.

KC: I pitched it to the Weekly the minute I learned she died.

Had the two stories always been the plan?

CL: No. I was heading down to San Diego to cover Comic-con the day the first one ran and there was no plan for a folo. But info kept on coming my way, some really hot stuff, and my editor made the decision to keep me on the story.

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Journo/TV-film writer/novelist Frank Coffey used to just read blogs. Now he writes one. Coffey’s Venice-based parody sports website, eTrueSports.com, is “committed to taking scraps of truth and turning them into absurdist nonsense.”

Recent headlines include: Manny Ramirez Adopts Carbon Neutral Lifestyle and Woods’ Daughter Signs With Gerber.

Let’s see how well he does with our nonsense.

1. What newspapers do you read? You mean, like, newspapers made out of paper? NYT, LAT, WSJ, Variety and VenicePaper.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading?
Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, snarling.

3. Which Web sites (aside from FBLA, of course) are on your favorites bookmark? NPR, The Daily Tube, Slate, LA Observed, G-4, Rubber Chicken Cards and, in relentless self-promotion, eTrueSports.com.

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Erica Hayasaki, whose VA Tech story was an abberation, has reverted to her usual clueless ways. In a Page One story, she breathlessly tells the LA Times readership about four women in Hooksett, New Hampshire who were fired for gossiping–in April.

Wire services carried the story–in April.

Hayasaki asserts that the story “has since spread across the nation.” (Idle thought: if the story is so well known, then why write about it now?)

She doesn’t mention that the women appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America –in May.

Two of them lost their appeal–in May.

The Hooksett town council issued a public statement–in June.

A new lawyer, representing all four, announced a lawsuit–in June.

Of course, the NY Times ran Dan Barry’s equally news-free piece on July 22. What interesting timing.

Earlier:
NYC-TV Get’s LAT’s OK
LAT in 90: Testify!
LAT in 90
LAT Rising Star Goes National

Jesse Thorn is the creator of The Sound of Young America, which has nothing to do with Up With People!. As his website says,

Think of it like Conan O’Brien on public radio, or “Fresh Air,” but more fun.

Or think of it as Terry Gross on mescaline. A grad of UC Santa Cruz, Thorn lives in Koreatown where he blogs, produces his show, and obviously agonized over our carefully crafted questions. (If we were really clever, there’d be a podcast. Sigh.)

1. What newspapers do you read? The only actual physical newspaper I get is Current, the industry rag for public media. I read the New York Times online a lot, along with the San Francisco Chronicle’s sports section for a Giants fix.

Reading the NYT (and the New Yorker) is a contractual thing for us public radio personalities… there are pop quizzes, and you can actually lose your show if you don’t remember the subject of Frank Rich’s last column or whatever.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? I actually read everything out loud as slowly and clearly as I can (to practice my gravitas).

3. Which Web sites (besides FBLA)are on your favorites bookmark? Bloglines, for the quajillion blogs and news feeds I read compulsively. I love Boing-Boing and Ask Metafilter, and the Apiary family of comedy blogs particularly. A couple of forums–my site’s, where I mingle with my really cool smart interesting listeners, Okayplayer.com, where I argue about rap music, and aspecialthing.com, where I talk about comedy with fellow comedy super-nerds. A couple of sites of questionable legality, where I make up for the fact that I don’t have cable. The usual, in other words.

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Log jam of writers at the LAT re: the Captivity party.

Paul Cullum
Babes, blood and B-listers at the ‘Captivity’ party
A dominatrix at work, the Suicide Girls and more MPAA controversy as the torture flick premieres.

(Comprehensive, if a little late.)

Patt Morrison
The scary missing-persons number game
Good news for us, bad news for ‘Captivity’ promoters– 850,000 people a year aren’t kidnapped and killed.

(Oh, look, Patt’s an adbuster.)

But poor Joel Stein–another bright idea spiked. First, the BJ class, and now this.

Earlier:
FBLA Goes to the Party: Captivity Premiere Party: Not All That Freaky

John M. Arthur says he’s not the new managing editor of the LA Times.

reports of my ascension are premature–and possibly fabricated

Or possibly not? Who’d dare to burn Rachel Sklar with a bad tip?

We’re at the edge of our seats. Is this gripping or what?

Next: What’s for lunch at the LAT cafeteria.

Earlier:
John M. Arthur Moves Up to Managing Editor, LA Times

JT Leroy’s creator/channeler Laura Albert may have made a fatal error of judgment (besides the obvious ones). She’s being sued for fraud by a film company that bought the rights to Leroy’s book, Sarah. The Washington Post quotes Marjorie Sturm, a San Francisco-based poet/musician/filmmaker (complete with Noam Chomsky as a MySpace friend) who actually caught the implications of Albert’s recent testimony:

I was wondering if Laura would show up and say, ‘I couldn’t tell the difference between JT and me. But that’s not what she’s saying. She’s saying, ‘I was in complete control.’

According to Stephen Beachy who broke this story,

She (Sturm) had been hired by JT at some point to make a documentary, but they killed it when they realized that Savannah Knoop, who played JT in public, would be recognized. Marjorie has all of this footage from early on, and she’s interviewed everyone involved with the story, with the exception of Laura.

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Tabloid Baby has the NBC memo from NBC News honcho Steve Capus and it’s a little masterpiece of ass-covering. Capus believes that Imus will take serious, meaningful corrective actions. Whatever those are.

The closing ‘graph reads:

I want all of us to be mindful of the diversity issues we have in our control. Think long and hard about the people we choose to use as pundits… for sound bites..and to help shape our journalism. Let’s make sure that our work is reflective of America. Let’s encourage a diversity of opinion in our newsrooms. Let’s do all we can to ensure a diverse workforce at all levels of our organizations. Speak up quickly when you see or hear something that is not right. That is the culture of NBC News, at our best.

So counting down–the culture of NBC News means:

a) don’t make any decisions (“think long and hard”)
b) when in doubt, pick mediocrity (“reflective of America”)
c) doublespeak is your friend (“diversity of opinion”)
d) rat out co-workers (“Speak up quickly”)

Carry on!

Earlier:
Women Journalist Take Imus To Task — Politely

Foreign correspondent, Emmanuelle Richard contributes to French daily Liberation,Swiss public radio and French Vogue. She blogs, she’s clever, and has that effortless French chic but a wicked sense of humor about the world, show biz and Los Angeles. We’re overjoyed she answered our questions.(And a word to all future 20 Questioners–she sent us all the URLs, saving us hours of valuable time.)

1. What newspapers do you read?

The New York Post, first thing in the morning since they started delivering in L.A. a few years ago. I wish I could say the L.A. Times (where her husband works) but I love too much starting the day laughing out loud or shouting: “Good Lord!” You have a sense that the people there have a blast hunting for stories, producing the pages and coming up with insane headlines. And you grow so fond of the gallery of characters, apart from the many unpleasant anti-European columnists. Then I grab the L.A. Times, starting with the Opinion section. I also check the website of the national daily paper I work for in France, the left-leaning Liberation.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? You mean, when you silently mutter WTF? More often than not, the LAT, especially when they feel the need to rephrase a paragraph three times in one story that could easily be 30% shorter. To be fair, my hometown paper also induces a lot of silent “WOW”s, and I often end up defending it in conversations in L.A. where trashing the LAT seems like a requisite sport. Coming from France where investigative journalism is as foreign as tofu, I feel very lucky to have the LAT.

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