Posts Tagged ‘Post-Dispatch’

As elected officials from Jimmy Carter to Geraldine Ferraro have learned, one cannot always plan for ther activities of one’s relatives.  Still, the columnist wonders what wind wizard Tom Carnahan‘s pro-union siblings – a Democratic U.S. Representative and candidate for Dem nomination for U.S. Senate – will say at Thanksgiving about a reputed tussle between Tom and the local unions over non-union construction at the $1.5 manse in the 5700 block of Lindell Boulevard., owned by Tom and Lisa Carnahan… Young and bright scribe Jeremiah McWilliams will ankle the Post-Dispatch in early December for a post at the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  McWilliams penned the Lager Heads colum in addition to other chores. . .Former St. Louis County Police commissioners chairman Brainerd LaTourette, 79, remains hail and hearty as a barrister with Lashly Baer.

I learned there’s trouble in paradise at the Post-Dispatch. A group of Newspaper Guilders from newspapers around the midwest had a conference over the weekend in our town. A handful of guilders from the P-D also attended. At the end of the conference, the group of midwestern guilders made their way down to the North Tucker Boulevard HQ of the P-D. There, they took sidewalk chalk and wrote over the entire sidewalk in front of the P-D building and across Tucker on concrete barriers. The general message: “Go St. Louis Post-Dispatch Guilders.” Human resources veep Astrid Garcia got so angry she fired the security guard, who was working that day, and told the other guards, that they are not to get involved in union politics as the fight over a new contract (expired last June) goes on. Garcia also ordered her minion to go down and write-up everything that was written and then Garcia ordered workers to wash off the chalk. She’s still trying to figure out who is responsible. The columnist has photos of the P-D’s Deni Fleming and Jeff Gordon looking on as the messages were written.

Went to visit my old friends in the newsroom at the P-D – just saying hello, reminiscing, a few smooches and hugs. Three weeks after my innocent visit, I received a letter from the Post banning me from the building! So,. to my old friends there, if you’d like to visit with me while downtown, I’ll be in the second booth from the door at the McDonald’s across the street on Tucker Boulevard. By the way, please bring the stapler I left on my desk… Guess there goes my chance of being Santa at the P-D’s Christmas party. (Awww!)

Tensions between the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Dept. and KSDK (Channel 5) eased a little Friday.  Station sources aver that the parent company forked over $3,000 to settle fines and penalties assessed on several vehicles.  Unpaid parking tickets had grounded some of the station’s vans and attracted the attention of the city’s boot crew.  Soreheads on both sides of the simmering dispute point to a story by newsie Leisa Zigman detailing overtime parking around Police HQ with setting off a flurry of ticketing to the station vehicles parked illegally.  Bosses at both the Police Dept. and Channel 5 have been mum about the situation. . . Catherine Werner, widow of former Post-Dispatch editor and former dean of the U of Nevada’s J School’s Cole Campbell, will join Mayor Francis Slay’s administration next month as an advisor on sustainability issues… Five and three.  Those are the numbers of new charter school proposals that Slay has accepted and rejected since asking for proposals for “best practices” charter schools from around the country. That was a factoid offered up by hizzoner at a State of the City meeting last week in WashU’s Fall Assembly Speaker’s Series. . .The campaign to make emergency radio communications in St. Louis county more reliable has received an infusion of cash from a predictable donor.  The Missouri Ethics Commission reports that Motorola Corp. a maker of two-way radios, has sent a last-minute contribution of $15,000 to Citizens in Support of E-911. Crepes in the City and Espresso Mod, two downtown stores popular with the sometimes fickle tight jeans crowd, have shuttered in the last week or so.  The Crepes folks blamed slow weekday business; the coffee people cited competition from the immensely popular Culinaria.  Meanwhile, rumors continue to swirl that south St. Louis landmark Chris’s Pancake and Dining is scouting for a downtown satellite location, most likely near Police HQ. (insert joke here!)… And St. Louis author and N.Y. Times best-seller) Laurell K. Hamilton is a very busy woman. Her latest, “Divine Misdemeanors” (8th in her Merry Gentry series), is due to hit the bookstalls in early December, and she has promised publishers (and, according to her fan blog, is toiling away on ) two new books (18th and 19th in her Anita Blake series) next year.

Money’s been tight at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – so tight that the company is considering removing the free bottled water provided in water coolers that almost everyone uses. Top managers think that it could save Lee Enterprises $13,000 a year. Yet, it could take much more than that to resort to water fountains. Earlier construction work has blocked pipes that would have to be repaired to power up the fountains. And, with the epidemic of swine flu, who’s going to want to use the fountains anyway? Speaking of construction, Post-Dispatch publisher Kevin Mowbray has spent more than $160,000 to outfit his new office on the sixth floor. Costs include $48,500 for his private bathroom, that includes black fixtures. More than $2,000 was paid to install light switches. Then, there is the matter of a plasma, wide-screen television price-tagged at about $3,000. Finally, after repeatedly changing the paint color in his office, using at least 30 gallons, the color is now almost identical to the original color. All that at the same time Mowbray has ordered layoffs of more than 70 employees in low-paying positions at the city’s daily.

The saga that won’t end. Since Lisa Zigman‘s story about illegally parked cop cars at headquarters, the the police officers got wind of it and began ticketing ticketing the illegal KSDK, Chanel 5 vans. The station got tons of them. Then, it seemed the station was stiffing the penalties. It now appears that Channel 5 has had registrations revoked on four vehicles due to unpaid tickets. The vehicles have sat unused in the parking garage because management refuses to pay the fines that the news crews received. It appears the station is so short of vehicles, that one news crew has to wait for another to return before they could use the wheels to get a story. Zigman? Nice going!. ..And, what changes will local viewers notice after style consultant Patti Shayne‘s meeting with the Channel 5 reportage staffl? Well, for one thing, most female anchors there are now wearing a lot more purple . . . The investigative team at the Post-Dispatch has been wiped out as the last few investigative journalists are ankling the paper. At its height, the Post had five full-time investigative reporters. After four years there, Joe Mahr is leaving to join an investigative slot at the bankrupt Chicago Tribune. Data guru Kevin Crowe, who handled databases for the newsroom, is headed for greener pastures at the Watchdog Institute, a data-driven investigative reporting agency in San Diego. Jaimi Dowdell,  the computer assisted-reporting editor, went to work for Investigative Reporters and Editors, as a training director for computer-assisted reporting. Meanwhile, a columnist is currently grieving a one-day suspension for allegedly not attributing information she used in her column. The staff had to be reminded about the rules of attribution in the paper’s rule book. The editors wrote, “We recently had a violation of our sourcing and attribution policy in a blog post by a staff member, that included information (including direct quotes) that was previously published in an article elsewhere and not credited.” But, some things are looking up at 900 N. Tucker Blvd. The newsroom – after unloading more than one-third of its staff in buyouts and layoffs – is now hiring: a feature writer; a healthcare reporter and a data specialist to fill Crowe’s slot. . . And, metals guru Ben Fixman says his autobiography will hit the bookstalls any day. Titled “From the Ghetto to Gold,” the book to be turned out by Artful Tale, LLC, includes his landmark, $105 million judgement against AT&T.

A Jesuit priest working in a prominent south St. Louis parish has been admonished for a letter to the editor he penned to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dissing the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). So sez Msgr. John Borcic in a private email to an upset SNAP member. The injudicious (OK, offensive!) missive signed by the Rev. Edward R. Goldian, associate pastor of St. Mary Magdalen parish on South Kingshighway, includes this snarky line, “SNAP might also be translated as Swiftly Neuter Accused Priests.” The matter is being taken up by “an authority in the archdiocese,” said Fr. Borcic. (Fr. Borcic himself is no stranger to hyperbole. Several years ago, he used a website of the local archdiocese to accuse “the ACLU and others of the secular society” of being part of a movement to “destroy Christmas and just about anything Christian.” Christmas has survived, thank God!)

Those who remember Heywood Broun, who co-founded the Newspaper Guild in 1933. In his name, a competition is staged annually among print people to celebrate those who best expose injustice using printers ink. But, Broun’s bugbears, newspaper managers, are still around. Over at the Post-Dispatch, Mike Hammett, the retired human resources guy, went off to roam the country in his and wife, Linda’s, mobile home. He recently underwent a bypass surgery and said he feels great. However, it appears his memory might have been adversely affected. (I’m not a doctor, so what do I know?) The local inkstained wretchs’ union is involved in a federal suit to compel arbitration over a grievance concerning an expired (1994-2004) contract.

At stake is whether members who retired under that contract will be able to receive their medical benefits free-of-charge. Many people were told by Hammett that they would have free healthcare for a lifetime. However, they recently learned that Hammett could no longer remember the conversations. One staffer commented, “We might not be able to restore his memory, but we can all gather with flashlights some evening at the local and go out and help find it”. . . Another P-D note – this one about the late, beloved scribe John McGuire, who was remembered by co-workers at a pouring over at McGurk’s saloon. After some opening remarks from Bill McClellan and lawyer/publician Jim Holloran, a portrait of John was hung in the bar’s main room – a rare honor indicating the esteem in which he is held by the Irish drinkers (too many words?) in our town. On hand were Martin Duggan, Ray Hartman, Wendy Wiese, Joe and Judge Carolyn Whittington, Kevin Horrigan, Joe “Sherpa” Holleman, Joe Pollack and Ann Lemons, John McGuire Jr and chef Josh Roland, a colleague of John McGuire, Jr . The Swing A Way Manufacturing Company on Chippewa, one of the city’s several threatened Mid-Century Modern buildings, will be getting face-lift, instead of demolition. A writer whose period of major significance dates to the same era is glad to report a design compromise that seems to please everyone.