By: E&P Staff In today's edition, the Houston Chronicle prints a special "extra" cover for the verdict in the Enron trial, Jack Shafer doesn't think the press are "lapdogs," and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman is reportedly fuming over his portrayal in a former editor's memoir.
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Special 'Houston Chron' Extra Printed for Enron VerdictNews of the pending decision reached the Chronicle newsroom about 10:20 a.m. The verdicts would be announced at 11 a.m. The editor of The Chronicle, Jeff Cohen, suggested an "extra," or a two-page edition that would wrap around Thursday's paper, which was already on newsstands. (That paper's lead headline: "D.C. in Tug of War on Immigration.") So the newsroom went to work, piecing together the outlines of the special edition. Forty minutes later, the guilty verdicts were returned, and photos, illustrations, an article and a graph were put in place. By 1 p.m., the editorial staff was finished, and by 1:30 p.m. the presses were rolling. Before 2 p.m., 10,000 copies of the special edition had rolled off the presses.
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New York 'Daily News' Owner Zuckerman Seething Over Ex-Editor's Book?Mort Zuckerman is apparently infuriated by his portrayal in a new memoir as a tight-fisted, mercurial meddling owner with no feel for the paper and its readers. "It's News to Me, the Making and Unmaking of an Editor," by former Daily News Editor Edward Kosner is due out in the fall from the Thunder Mouth imprint of Avalon Publishing Group. Sources say a quietly fuming Zuckerman is trying to force pre-publication changes in his former top editor's memoir.
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Are Washington's Political Reporters 'Lapdogs'?"The Washington press corps -- the thousands of reporters working within a two-mile radius of my M Street NW office -- deserves every ugly thing written about it," writes Jack Shafer. "Taken collectively, they kowtow, fawn, and grovel to the powerful. They allow their sources to compromise their independence. They're glib. They're lazy. They possess no sense of history and little sense of scale. They often get the story wrong."
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Mixed Reviews for 'Wash Post' Managing Editor Bennett"Nineteen months ago Phil Bennett took over as Washington Post managing editor with two guns to his head: declining circulation and distrust by staff members who had preferred Eugene Robinson," writes Harry Jaffe. "He?s now second-in-command of a newspaper that is undergoing such turbulent changes that it appears to have a split personality. Support for Bennett in the newsroom is thin at best. He has fans such as Dana Milbank, Anthony Shadid, and Peter Baker, who says, 'Phil is very engaged, very involved. He's trying to save the franchise in difficult times.' His detractors describe him as 'icy,' 'defensive,' and 'moody.' Says one veteran writer: 'He's a kind of remote figure. A lot of people don?t know him.'"
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Small-Town Papers Have Big PotentialLong derided as fish wrappers, small papers were the original "micromedia," and have persisted in America ever since ornery colonists started cranking out broadsheets. While the big boys win the Pulitzers and attract the top journalistic talent, the little guys do the everyday grunt work of covering City Council meetings, reporting high school football scores, and interviewing the local Elks Lodge members about what these darned kids today need to do to shape up. Small papers still enjoy a much tighter grip on that asset which is rapidly slipping away from larger ones: a virtual monopoly on local news and information, especially in towns too small to have much of a radio and TV presence aimed specifically at them.
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Rivals Protest BBC's Web AmbitionsAs the British Broadcasting Corp., the world's oldest public-service broadcaster, seeks to adapt to the Internet age, its ambitions are raising the ire of newspaper publishers and broadcasting rivals. They say the BBC's deep pockets -- it is mostly funded by a fee levied on every British home with a television -- are giving it an unfair advantage in competing with their own online services. Adding to the controversy: The BBC, which is barred from all advertising in its home market, is considering selling ads on its Web site that would be seen by viewers outside the United Kingdom.
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Remaking the Front PageAs newspaper circulation continues to drop, editors are desperately searching for ways to win back readers, or at least hang onto the ones they still have. It's a daunting ? most analysts predict losing ? proposition, as the audience for printed news shrinks in most large markets. But since page one is the first thing that readers see, it's getting everything from simple cosmetic changes in some cities to expensive, full-fledged makeovers in others.
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Front-Page Survey Compares Denver Dailies"Based on front pages from twelve days in May, the paper seems like a slightly off-kilter relative who's prone to the occasional rant but is seldom boring, whereas the Post comes across as a steadier, more solid member of the community, albeit one apt to drone on drearily at cocktail parties," writes Michael Roberts. "Of course, we all know that we shouldn't judge books by their covers. But newspapers are another matter entirely."
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Russian Journo Under Investigation for Mocking Putinn official says prosecutors are investigating a journalist for publishing an article mocking President Vladimir Putin over his call to pay Russian women to have more children. Andrei Galchenko of the regional prosecutor's office says the article, which poked fun at Putin's recent state of the nation address calling for economic incentives to boost the country's plummeting birth rate, was published by Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor of the online newspaper Kursiv.
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