FW MediaWatch

Fort Wayne media we no longer endure

2008-10-10T14:26:00.001-04:00

At some point, human beings have to winnow some things in their lives just to remain sane.

And that’s what we’ve had to do, as far as Fort Wayne media goes.

For instance, we rarely watch WANE-TV in the morning or at noon. Terra Brantley is so awful – not as a person but as an anchor – with that inflected delivery, guttural laugh, and bizarre hair stylings. It’s too painful.

We don’t catch Indiana’s NewsCenter’s morning offerings either. Mary Collins is too effervescent, and Chris Daniels too funereal. Viewers like us need a hefty cup of caffeine to stomach either Collins or that goofy-face Daniels.

We always use the remote when INC promotes its tiresome Vipir Pinpoint radar, which has become hackneyed.

And if piggy-face Curtis Smith shows up on screen or skeletal Jason Meyers, we shut the television off.

Smtih’s ramblings, which are incessant, are more than offputting. They are grating to the nth degree and rarely weather-pertinent to this part of Indiana.

The Ken and Barbie of NewsChannel 15 (WANE) – Mark Mellinger and Heather Herron -- don’t aggrieve but they lack gravitas, so we often read something when they’re on.

And Sandy Thomson? It’s time for her to retire…..puh-leeze.

We skip reading the morning paper – The Journal Gazette -- since we’ve gotten all the news we need the night before (from CNN and the networks) and the network morning TV shows.

When we do grab a Sunday edition of JG, we scan the supplements and eschew restaurant reviews by Ryan DuVall – they don’t pertain to normal eaters-out – and we skip Steve Penhollow – too intellectually corny.

Ben Smith and the sports guys get a pass. (What does sports have to do with anything?)

During the week we read The News-Sentinel – well, read isn’t exactly the right word. We check out Dilbert but skip the Divorce segments (just as we skip them and Bankruptcies in JG) because that’s not news, but gossip.

We crumple the Features pages that hold readers’ snapshots. The pics are invariably banal.

And Leo Morris’s editorials or Kerry Hubarrt’s musings? Not worthy of our time or eyes.

We don’t listen to any Fort Wayne radio station. (One MW fellow wakes up to Majic 95, but that’s a groggy habit that he hasn’t shorn himself of yet.)

We used to make it a point to hear WBNI, but no longer. Its signal is poor and the music programming is ersatz classical.

(We do catch WLKI when we’re at the lake areas of Steuben County. That station still resonates with listeners, and us.)

We look forward to Greg Perigo’s LAKES magazine, but don’t make it a point to seek out Fort Wayne magazine, WhatzUp, or any other peripheral publication. They just don’t hold a candle to magazines with substance – The New Yorker, Seed, Wired, PC World, et cetera.

We never access local blogs or web-sites. (Mitch Harper’s blah-blog examples why.)

Excising these Fort Wayne media things has given us time to meditate on media items than enlighten or enhance our lives.

Most Fort Wayne media doesn’t enlighten or enhance. That’s just the way it is….for us.

Winners or a Loser?

2008-09-26T09:28:00.000-04:00

Fort Wayne Newspapers has provided its advertising supplement “2008 readers’ picks best of…Winners” – a culmination of a “readers” poll asking newspaper readers to select the best businesses and services (et cetera) in Fort Wayne and Allen County.

But when we find that Maui (Hawaii) was chosen as the one of the Best Vacation Destinations and also one of the Most Romantic Places – obviously not in Fort Wayne or the immediate surrounding area, we’re wondering just how many people “voted” in the Fort Wayne Newspapers advertising ploy.

That is, how legitimate was and is FWN’s passel of so-called Best places to go for medical care, real estate, nail and hair care, pet supplies, and everything else that the “winners” poll ostensibly delineated?

The Readers’ Picks seemed a little too selective, and not very representative of an objective cross-section of enterprises in Fort Wayne and Allen County.

The winning businesses and services, and people, came about from a selection or nominating process several weeks back.

Those nominated enterprises and people then were proffered for votes by the public, the reading public evidently.

So, how many readers actually provided the nominations and how many readers actually voted for each category listed in the 9/25 supplement?

Okay, the Fort Wayne Newspaper effort is rather bogus, but does it do any real harm to journalistic credibility?

After all, local media, both the newspapers and television news, are not seen by cognoscenti as purveyors of truth and facts.

Rather they are seen as vehicles for advertisers, and cater to those advertisers, letting journalism – pure journalism – go by the wayside if necessary.

Therefore, we may be over-reacting to the “Best of…” supplement, but it does strike us as one more example of how shoddy local media has become when it comes to presenting accurate information to the citizens of this “fair” community.

INC Stinks (again), et cetera

2008-09-14T22:55:00.004-04:00

Saturday Night Live’s season opener on NBC33, 9/13 (highlighted in newscasts Sunday because of the Tina Fey impersonation of VP nominee Sarah Palin) was screwed up by Indiana’s NewsCenter, not an atypical occurrence we’re sorry to remind you.

INC botched the funny, key opener by first inserting some station promos for Regis and Kelly Live then going black for over two minutes, so that the skit was eviscerated until its final seconds.

INC can’t get a handle on airing NBC late-night shows. Its newscasts often cut into the opening of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno because of runovers.

And then the HD signal is so weak that viewers with antennas generally get break-ups and pixel mixes instead of broadcasts.

NBC33 has got to be purchased by a consortium of persons who will air NBC’s primetime and local television news that isn’t marred by incompetence and unprofessionalism.

VP and GM Jerry Giesler can’t seem to get his staffers to produce unglitched programming for NBC33.

It’s time to let a new owner or owners take the helm.
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The weather?

As usual, INC’s Curtis Smith and WANE’s Sandy Thomson, plus the second stringers, 21’s Chris Daniels and Jason Meyers, along with 15’s Greg Shoup, missed, by a mile, the rain, winds, and temperatures for the weekend (9/13-14).

These weatherists predicted normal temperatures, and some rain Saturday that might intrude on Sunday’s a.m.

They didn’t (and couldn’t) factor in the remnants of hurricane Ike.

When there was a near drought several weeks ago, these same “meteorologists” dismissed the lack of rain by saying how beautiful the weather was for Labor Day partiers.

We’re in an area where farmers, persons with lawns and gardens, landscape nurseries, and other water-needing enterprises that need heads-ups about any serious lack of precipitation.

But INC’s Curtis Smith caters to golfers, Meyers to runners, Thomson to picnickers, and Daniels to no one. (Greg Shoup did give a nod to farmers, but that nod was miniscule.)

The USDA just reported that farmers will lose much of its corn and soybean yield because of that drought, but the local weather-asses missed the boat and playing catch-up now doesn’t cut it.

How much longer do local citizens have to put up with newscast weather segments that are bogus? How much longer do any of us have to contend with weather-phonies who do not serve the public good or the art of meteorology?
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The News-Sentinel continues to waste newsprint on snapshots that its general readership couldn’t care less about: cute kids and animals, vacation shots that are banal (and we’re being generous with that epithet), and other photos that any person with taste would eschew.

It’s no wonder that the paper is losing subscribers by the dozens each week.

The Media Cloud

2008-09-05T09:51:00.000-04:00

How much more amorphous can Fort Wayne media become?

Watching television news, Indiana’s NewsCenter and NewsChannel 15 (especially), one is befuddled by the content; it’s without context and done at such a breakneck speed that any meaning is lost in the hurry to move on to other capsules of anorexic information.

The News-Sentinel has become a tabloid for entertainment. News – real news - is secondary or non-existent in the afternoon paper.

The Journal Gazette is so haphazardly formatted that what little news it provides is diffuse to the point of obfuscation.

Radio in Fort Wayne – WOWO included – is virtually useless as a news medium.

People are going to blogs for the skinny on what’s really happening in the Summit City. But Fort Wayne blogs, in toto, are bereft of professional journalism, and mostly geared to promote the egos of those who’ve set themselves up as the “new media.” (Mitch Harper’s “Fort Wayne Observed” is archetypal in that regard; his blog is a vehicle to aggrandize him.)

Media managers in Fort Wayne are older white guys pretty much. They are waiting to retire or die. And they do their waiting on the golf course when they can.

They don’t want to excel at their craft or jobs. They just want a retirement nest egg or surcease from the daily grind.

WANE’s Alan Riebe, and INC’s Jerry Giesler, along with JG’s Craig Klugman, fall into this category.

These old, white guys can’t be watching their newscasts or reading their print copy. If they are, and they’re allowing the dreck that is being produced, they should be drawn and quartered for abdicating their journalistic duties.

Fort Wayne radio has become non-relevant, as a news operation but even as an entertainment medium. Some deejays and radio hosts – Majic 95’s Dirk Rowley for instance – have taken to shilling for local businesses since their radio careers have become lackluster.

The Bear jocks have even gotten to the point where they have to show up at dives, like one in Waterloo, that no one with a real radio gig would ever frequent.

Who would have thought that going into radio would require selling one’s soul for advertisers or biker bars?

Reporters in Fort Wayne – print and television (and we’re being gratuitous with the latter) – are just going through the motions. Watch a Jeff Neumeyer (INC) report or read and reporter in the area dailies and you’ll find an enervated attempt to appear diligent and thorough.

But an actual scrutiny of what a Neumeyer is saying or what a Caylor (N-S) or Shawgo (JG) is printing will show a complete lack of context and relevance. What they’re reporting is a gloss, and not a very good one at that.

It’s just a matter pf getting through the work-day for these people.

Exceptions do occur, and Evan Goodenow or Kevin Leininger at The News-Sentinel provide those exceptions, as does Dan Stockman at The Journal Gazette.

But those exceptions are not the norm or rule.

The half-hearted stabs at journalism are befunked by deadlines (for print) and time-constraints (for television).

Thus, the Fort Wayne community is devoid of media that provides substance and meaning, and in radio a real attempt to enlighten or entertain/

Media her has become hazy, a cloud of evanescent information that keeps the Fort Wayne community in that stupid category that the rest of the country envisions.

Maybe when the old guard managers retire or die, this will change, but we’re not holding our collective breaths as you know.

What Fort Wayne media lacks

2008-08-25T10:33:00.000-04:00

Culture, refinement, class, sophistication….

Aside from INC’s Melissa Long, media in Fort Wayne is without, in toto, esthetic sensibilities.

Media persons here are boorish, and media output reflects that, each and every day.

It’s not intelligence that is lacking, but intellectualism.

When one reads the local papers (The News-Sentinel, The Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne Business Weekly, Frost Illustrated, INK, and Fort Wayne Reader), one comes away with a sour, lower-class taste in the mind.

(WhatzUp actually has a few cultured writers, but they find themselves in a publication that is not mainstream, and get a load of this unrefined cover, not atypical).

Local magazines (Business People, Fort Wayne Magazine, et cetera) miss the nod to refined living that Greg Perigo brings to fruition in his Lakes magazine.

(Sure, lake people are the biggest boors of all, but Mr. Perigo manages to extract those elements of refinement that lake intruders can’t dilute by their weekend shenanigans and raucous behavior.)

Print reporters are notorious for being shallow, but their callous output pales in comparison to what transpires in television reportage.

And radio? A haven for some real low-lifes, even at the co-called classical station, WBNI. And radio’s audience?

Network and especially cable news is also rife with those who cater to the lowest common denominator, but one can find a Diane Sawyer amongst the riff-raff.

Here, in Fort Wayne, Melissa Long provides a break in the rough and ready TV crowd.

But who in the newspaper biz does the same? We can think of no one.

Take a gander at the sports writers. Or the Editorialists. Who among them is refined and writes copy that examples?

JG’s Steve Penhollow is an intellectual bloke, but has wallowed so long in the murky waters of JG’s journalistic endeavors that his once refined demeanor has been replaced by hokey humor and a cavalier cynicism.

JG’s Frank Gray is tepid and without grace, and N-S’s Kevin Leininger is coarsened by his Lutheran predilections. (Martin Luther was a theological slob.)

Cindy Larson (N-S) is an everywoman, and we love her for that, but refined? Not so much.

JG’s Sylvia Smith has been hardened by Washington D.C. so the eloquence of Wordsworth poetry is lost on her.

Who in TV news knows what artistic artifacts and creations impact society in edifying ways, so that they may be provided to the Fort Wayne television in a way that uplifts, and subdues the desire to fritter away life with walks for every inane cause extant?

Sit trough a half-hour of Terra Brantley’s [WANE-TV] anchoring and you’ll get a fill of guttural journalism that passes for news and sophistication hereabouts.

Take a listen to the patter at INC’s morning newscasts and you’ll get a feel for how superficial life and its happenings are as presented by Mary Collins and the funereal Chris Daniels, a weatherman who makes dark whatever élan may be present in a sunrise.

Look carefully at the Fort Wayne newspaper formats and print. Actually reflect on what you’re seeing: brooding blots of black cascading over a murky white background. And then compare that to the exhilarating colors of Lakes magazine.

One is foreboding and depressing, the other fraught with life and exhilaration.

Listen to radio stations in Bloomington or Ann Arbor and compare them to what you hear in Fort Wayne? The Fort Wayne contingent of radio hosts are either foul-mouthed or callow, more often than not, banal and insipid.

Doc West at Rock 104 can offer a litany of rock and roll values and trivia, and there is a kind of rough and ready sophistication in that, but does it replace a whiff of Mahler or Schoenberg?

Fort Wayne is a locale where casual types, criminals, and hillbillies settle. So media here panders to them.

But isn’t media supposed to edify besides inform?

Does Fort Wayne media edify? Not a whit…..

INC does it again

2008-08-12T14:26:00.001-04:00

During a patter segment of INC’s nooncast Tuesday [8/12], Corinne Rose and weatherguy Chris Daniels engaged in a colloquy about rainfall, and how it is .25 inches above what is usual for August.

Ms. Rose went on to say that farmers are doing well then, and will have bumper crops.

That is not the case, as anyone familiar with farming knows.

Many area farms are in a kind of drought….they need rain.

This, again, is how Indiana’s NewsCenter handles news or information: cavalierly.

It doesn’t surprise us therefore when viewers eschew the INC stations, their reporters, anchors, and weather people.

A few good things, however....

2008-07-29T20:32:00.001-04:00

We really like the Journal Gazette’s Abby Slutsky and Anne Gregory. They are go-getters, and will move on to larger print press venues eventually.

The News-Sentinel doesn’t have energetic reporters like Gregory or Slutsky, and we wonder why it doesn’t.

Sure N-S has some good old-timers – Boen, Leininger, Caylor, Hayes, Larson, et al.

But the afternoon paper reeks of mildew, even though reporters give it their all, which is often not very much.

Is it because N-S is moribund, and read by fewer people than Frost or INK, or even WhatzUp? And that enervates reportage or produces tepid editorials?

JG isn’t a ball of reportorial fire, but some writers there – newbies mostly – try to provide journalistic acumen and zeal.

Is it the fact that staffers work at night, mostly, and need to make work their entertainment of some sort?

Or is the pay better? (No, that can’t be it.)

In television news, you know we love INC’s Melissa Long, who is Fort Wayne’s only true celebrity.

And WANE’s Megan Stembol is a TV reporter who will be seen on a network, coming to a High Def screen near you, sooner than later.

The other TV mokes? They’re okay. Nothing special. But okay for Fort Wayne.

Radio doesn’t enthuse us as it once did.

The personalities are tired and routine nowadays.

No one needs to tune in to any of them….not one.

Yes, radio people are swell, and we like many of them, but they don’t excite, or shock, or enlighten. They just are…

Are we jaded? Perhaps. But our views aren’t ours alone. We get the same feedback from persons who love Fort Wayne, and live here out of choice or for a very long time (making choice less than it could be).

As noted in our material this past weekend, people hereabouts don’t give a fig about news media, or media generally, not even national media.

But studies show that citizens are usually favorably inclined toward their local media.

In Fort Wayne, there’s a small, hard-core media audience that is semi-rabid about news or radio, but that tiny group is almost infinitesimal.

The vast group of locals don’t follow media, don’t know what reporters they’re reading, and they have no idea who they’re watching on television.

Well, they do know Long, and Sandy Thomson, or Greg Shoup, or Linda Jackson, but that’s about it.

And news content? Does anyone reading this think that the rabble understands journalism or reportage?

And radio listeners? Have they heard vibrant deejocks or engaging personalities who know things, about music or politics, or anything at all, other than partying?

Fort Wayne media is sluggish, but then so are the people who live here.

So maybe we’re casting pearls before swine, as it were…..

Dull Media

2008-07-19T08:41:00.001-04:00

Sheesh…there’s just no there there!

That is, Fort Wayne media is drained of energy and enervated to the nth degree.

Do we look forward, with any kind of anticipation, to local news, via the daily press, television, radio, or even local blogs?

Nope.

If we want some information about any issue that may concern us, we go to the source; local news doesn’t gratify our needs.

For instance, if we have a query about water, garbage pick-up, taxes, police issues, government machinations, entertainment, and a whole lot more, we seek out those connected to the matter and ask them what’s going on.

Fort Wayne news media is almost always too late, with too little.

In the Canyon Cliffs brouhaha for example, we got information from the proposed developer and a few persons against the development. And we visited the site(s) to see what exactly is going on, rather than rely on some out-of-context video from TV stations or dim-witted reportage by print reporters (who haven’t been to the site as far as we can tell).

Then there are the mini-crime waves, which media touches upon, usually by way of law enforcement pronouncements and/or hand-outs.

Asking cops we know about a crime (or accidents) doesn’t give us everything but what we do get is a whole lot more than we get from media.

Then there’s the half-hearted presentation of news.

TV stations (WANE and INC) whoop it up about silly things (like the TRF bed race of fireworks) but drag viewers into important stories with lots of hype but little substance.

TV stations will spend oodles of time on some family’s weight-loss problems, but a smidgen of time on issues that impact local citizens’ pocket books or overall existence.

And the print press? We have yet to read any story or news item that gets the context and facts together in such a way that we are enlightened.

We sometimes get an interesting story from the News-Sentinel’s Kevin Leininger or the Journal Gazette’s Frank Gray, but usually their stories end with no denouement - -they just peter out.

(In television, Ryan Elijah recently had a story for INC’s “On your Side” about an elderly lady whose bank had misplaced a rather large amount of money she had in an account -- $88,000 plus interest over 40 years! The story was effective but ended with no resolution. The lady’s money hasn’t been found, and Elijah’s efforts came to naught.)

As for print, Cindy Larson (N-S) holds us in tow, but she deals with piddling matters, such as food and fun. Ryan Duvall (JG) is even less pertinent.

The reporters with joie de vivre (Larson and JG’s Penhollow) are relegated to reportage that is geared to nonsense items – fluff.

And editorials? Almost always they are myopic, singling out a tree but missing the forest.

Fort Wayne radio is even less sparkling.

Those of us who’ve been raised on FW radio for many years, have no need to tune in for music or gab, since what is offered is tepid – half-hearted – and singularly trite and boring.

In the “old days” we got controversy and dynamic personalities, many of whom have moved on to other venues, such as the Real Scott Miller or Paul Phillips.

Yes, life was enhanced once upon a time in Fort Wayne by engaging and enthused reporters, deejays, and media.

Nowadays, we get TV personae that have charm but lack gravitas, and in the print press we have a slew of unknowns who do their jobs by rote, then go home to swill a beer as they sit in their Lazy-Boy chairs, watching sports.

Yes, Fort Wayne media is dull, or maybe comatose….either way, the local audience is made soporific.

We hate after-holiday media!

2008-07-07T07:13:00.000-04:00

Getting back to MediaWatch after a holiday is always aggravating since we have to pay attention to the morning TV news shows, and they really grate.

Indiana’s NewsCenter’s a.m. efforts, with Ryan Elijah and Mary Collins rush through news items, almost breathlessly, providing no details or context so what that team is reporting makes little or no sense.

And weather-person Chris Daniels just has a voice and demeanor that viewers hate to wake up to. The guy’s a stiff. (Why is he still employed here.)

WANE-TV, this Monday [7/7/] morning was without Pat Hoffman, whose mellifluous voice is always a nice offset to Terra Brantley’s “hammer-pounding-a-nail-in-viewers-heads” voice, which has been, lately, even worse than in the past.

Ms. Brantley over-inflects (as we’ve noted many times) everything, and reads news accounts as if they were drama auditions by a really bad actor.

Brantley ain’t going anyplace, even though she’s tried often enough, so viewers are stuck with the up-and-down and in-and-out, over-enthused verbal thrusts by her, until they go back to INC where the meaningless newscast is less awful, by a smidgen.

The morning paper (Journal Gazette) sits in driveways, and will until near noon, and then will remain unread for hours after that.

Monday morning radio? A hodge-podge of what deejays and hosts did or didn’t do for the 4th of July, all inane and hokey humored.

(Try Majic 95 for an example.)

And network news (The Today Show, Good Morning America, and CBS’s Morning Show)? Just as bad or worse, since those people are supposed to be professional broadcasters but are only better than Fort Wayne’s broadcasters and media in the salary department.

Back to bed, for us…..

Why WANE beats INC during Sweeps

2008-06-12T08:41:00.000-04:00

Why has WANE-TV (generally) beat Indiana’s NewsCenter in the Nielsen ratings for several years now?

The news from WANE isn’t any better than that from INC, so that’s not the reason.

And some of WANE’s anchors and reporters are no better than those at INC, so that isn’t the reason….or is it?

INC’s news-team, except for Nicole Pence and Jessica Toumani, seems old, tired and just going through the motions, whereas WANE’s news-team seems constantly energized and vibrant.

It’s not content but style evidently.

Viewers who see lethargic Jeff Neumeyer show up with an INC report, or catch Jennifer Blomquist doing her tired takes on canned (generic) stories for women, get the idea that INC is half-hearted about news gathering.

Yes, INC has gone whole-hog in its promotion of viewer input, but that isn’t news and normal viewers want news not self-aggrandizing items from their peers.

WANE also seeks viewer input but less so than INC.

And WANE’s reporters evoke élan when they’re on-air.

There’s a kind of excitement when WANE does stories, while INC’s reportage is staid, which was how news used to be done or was told how news should be done, but that’s changed nowadays.

News today needs punch in a society that has seen everything and expects a touch of wildness in the news it seeks.

That’s not wholesome, but that’s how it is, and WANE provides a spate of energy and INC’s reports seem enervated.

Also, INC has partnered with The Journal Gazette, a boring, tired newspaper that has all the values of the 1950s and none of the spark of the 21st Century.

WANE has recently partnered with The News-Sentinel, a dying newspaper but one with the appearance of a little more life in it than JG.

(N-S isn’t substantial by a long shot, and its format is dark and brooding, but JG’s image in the community is petrified – a traditional newspaper that just is, with no current redeeming qualities.)

So, INC will continue to come in second to WANE, so long as INC management maintains the status quo, which it seems determined to do.

INC and the 6/6/08 Storm(s)

2008-06-07T10:59:00.000-04:00

Indiana’s NewsCenter covered the storms that hit Fort Wayne, Friday, 6/6/08.

The coverage was intrusive, wiping out programming on ABC, NBC, the CW, etc. for over an hour, but the coverage was necessary as one can see from this capture of INC’s radar:

And this is a rundown of storm damage by Linda Jackson:

Of course, Curtis Smith was the over-reaching weatherist during the storm…

But he rambled for the hour plus that INC was on the air, providing discursive and manic accounts of the fast-moving storm.

Here’s a snippet of his patter:

Of course INC’s coverage seemed to be warranted; the storms in the Midwest all week were tragic and this one in our area was pretty bad.

WANE’s Sandy Thomson provided more judicious coverage, not disrupting CBS programming to the extent that Smith ravaged the INC stations.

But we’re not so sure that Smith and INC were remiss.

And here is an INC snap of the storms denouement. Nice…

It's nuts -- and not in a good way

2008-05-13T09:40:00.002-04:00

Yes, the Komets won the Turner Cup but did media (and does media) have to go as crazy as the Fort Wayne/Indiana fans?

INC was particularly gaga, while WANE was a bit more subdued, until the station’s sport segment.

(Melissa Long was enthused and Linda Jackson was hysterical. Even Dean Pantazi wasn’t as nuts as Jackson.)

The Journal Gazette provided ample coverage, as did The News-Sentinel on its web-site, from which we culled Ellie Bogue’s photo above.

What does it mean when the Komets or any other Fort Wayne sport team (such as the Wizards) win a contest?

Does it mean that Fort Wayne is a primo city, and its residents primo citizens of America, or the world?

No, the fanaticism of sport is a neurotic syndrome – an escape from reality to a faux reality: sport.

But it has always been thus, as it was in the heady days of Rome when the Coliseum harbored contests involving Christian martyrdom and/or other inhumane activity.

The early Greeks liked sport also. But what else did those societies have to do, just out of primitive antecedents.

Today, there are a multiplicity of problems for Fort Wayne: unsolved murders, high gas prices, failing infrastructure. Mitch Harper’s self-aggrandizing blog, but the rabble choose to identify with the Komet hockey team, as if the team’s win was the rabble’s win.

Such behavior isn’t unique to Fort Wayne or media here, but it sure is indicative of a populace that has its priorities all wrong, and media, unfortunately, goes overboard to exacerbate the lunacy.

Former JG intern/reporter

2008-05-09T13:27:00.001-04:00

From ThePhoenix.com

CHARLIE SAVAGE TO NYT

Big loss for the Boston Globe: Charlie Savage, who won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Bush Administration's sweeping expansion of executive power, is headed to the New York Times. He'll start there later this month.

"I'm very sorry to lose Charlie," says Peter Canellos, the Globe's D.C.-bureau chief. "There's nothing more to say about that. But we will be replacing Charlie in the bureau, which is good--and we're going to take a look at internal candidates first."

"Charlie's been terrific for us," adds Globe editor Marty Baron. "He did great work in Washington--he won a Pulitzer, as you know--and it's no wonder that the New York Times is interested in him. But he's not the first talented person from the Globe that's been hired elsewhere. And in the same way that we found the talent of Charlie Savage, I trust that we'll have another talented person in Washington."

The impending end of the Bush presidency may make it a little easier for the paper to cope with Savage's departure; even if John McCain wins in November, he probably won't push the Unitary Executive the way Bush has. Still, an unfortunate development.

5/8/2008 2:53:30 PM by Adam Reilly

That damn Indiana’s NewsCenter

2008-05-04T23:51:00.000-04:00

During a crucial scene in ABC’s “Brothers and Sisters” Sunday night [5/4], a blurb for the upcoming newscast at 11 p.m. interrupted and destroyed an important denouement for viewers.

This happens all the time with INC; the stations here (NBC33, WPTA, CW) often cut into openings (of the Tonight Show for instance) and interrupt programming to accommodate advertisements or self-serving promos.

VP Jerry Giesler doesn’t seem able to curb the gaffes. And it’s not as if the engineers and staff are underpaid.

It’s just sloppy television broadcasting, and we don’t see any corrections in sight.

On a lighter note, at least Greg Perigo’s Northern Indiana LAKES magazine brings relief from such things as the above.

Mr. Perigo lets readers know and see that there is surcease from Fort Wayne’s crime, stupidity, noise, and over all stink.

The lakes, while not perfect (being inhabited by some human slugs), allow moments of beauty and quiescence that soothe high blood pressure and city aggravations.

LAKES is a wonderful respite for those who seek something more than the cacophony of a town (FW) that is short on aesthetics and enjoyable living.

Seek it out, even if you don’t have a lake place. (And we bet you’ll want a cottage after you get a copy of Mr. Perigo’s really excellent periodical.)

And we also find a nice escape from the journalese and TV reportage that is humdrum in Fort Wayne media.

It’s a little column in WhatzUp called “Lip Service” – a spunky, but not snarky read by a writer (unknown to us) but unique and quite marvelous.

Walking (and running) to nowhere

2008-04-29T09:36:00.000-04:00

Fort Wayne is obsessed with walking, because there is little else to do here.

What is pathetic is that walking and walkers pretend that the effort of walking is for some good cause or another.

Walks for AIDS, walks for cancer, walks for diabetes, walks to support “trails,” walks to curb violence, and so on.

Media exacerbates the nonsense by covering the activity, television more than the print press because there’s some movement involved.

But take the recent walks to protest shootings in the city. Will carrying banners and asking for surcease in the criminal community, with banners and speeches, actually curtail the gang activity and random shootings or purposeless killings?

No, but people want to do something to assuage their irritation with the felonies committed. (Outrage isn’t what they feel, or else they’d come up with something substantial to attack the crime waves that sporadically occur here.)

Walking in Fort Wayne is a social activity, an excuse to get together with other do-nothings.

Making walks cause-oriented provides a cover for the inane strolls. (It might be better if persons walking used calorie-burning as their motive; that would at least have a ring of truth to it.)

But walking has become endemic to the town, and Fort Waynians are nothing is not habitual in their minor insanities, so we expect to see a raft of more walks, for more causes, along streets and by-ways that may no be suited to ambling yet are used for such.

And we suspect media will be right there, ready to capture the petty promenades.

And while on the topic of walking, how about running?

Fort Wayne is suffused with runners – persons trying to stay thin in a city of obese residents.

But some runners have gone to far with their jogging.

Ian Rolland is a runner, and it seems to have given him longevity.

Steve Shine is a runner, but that hasn’t kept him free of various controversies; it has just kept him moderately thin, in body and hair.

However, take a look at some of Indiana’s NewsCenter’s runners….

Morning anchor Mary Collins is a runner, but she looks cadaverous:

Weather guy Jason Meyers is a runner, and he is skeletal:

Chris Daniels, another weather guy, is a runner? He sure has the physiognomy of one:

Noon anchor Corinne Rose isn’t a runner:

And WANE’s Greg Shoup isn’t a runner either:

Going Green (in a way)

2008-04-22T10:27:00.003-04:00

Fort Wayne needs a media clean-up

Media in Fort Wayne can’t go on as it has for the recent past.

Media, like Fort Wayne itself, stinks.

Some will e-mail us saying if we don’t like Fort Wayne, we should leave – a position that only fools present.

Fort Wayne and its media may be likened to a toxic waste dump, and we, upon discovering it, could walk away or we can alert the public to the thing, hoping that the dump can be eradicated, or made harmless in some way.

If Craig Klugman were removed as Editor of The Journal Gazette, the paper, with a new Editor (Sherry Skufca or Tracy Warner) might make the morning sheets into a vibrant journalistic effort, rather than the staid, and oh-so-boring rag that it is now.

Removing the encrusted Leo Morris from the Editorial section of The News-Sentinel, replacing him with someone who is attuned to the 21st Century, might keep that paper alive for a few more years, instead of the six or seven months it now has as a life-line.

Getting rid of Dean Pantazi and the other scummy-looking sport guys at Indiana’s NewsCenter might help that “group” of cloned television stations get back its once dominant cachet.

Forcing(?) Sandy Thomson out of WANE could provide a younger patina to that TV station, which, with her and Randy Schiffman, is mired in the past, to the point that INC is gathering some viewers who are a bit tired of the elderly smell that WANE evokes when Sandy and Randy show up.

When Candy Wendling leaves Sarkus Tazian’s WAJI and Oldies stations, and Lee Tobin takes over, that’s one fetid radio operation that may go green, and we mean monetarily.

If Federated Media was fumigated, from the top down, that bevy of passé radio stations might thrive and the re-invigorated pastiche might thrill Fort Wayne listeners, as some of the stations (WMEE, K105, WOWO) did in the past.

Going “green” or cleaning house, either way, Fort Wayne media might just be vehicle by which the town can move from a crappy persona to one with a environmentally friendly façade.

That might not help intrinsically with improving the lot of Fort Wayne’s intellectually deficient citizenry, but it’s a start.

Entombed in Fort Wayne media

2008-04-08T09:29:00.000-04:00

It may be repressed but being stuck in Fort Wayne media has got to be awfully depressing for those who have some intellect and cultural sensibility.

By that we mean it is a sad thing to have a journalistic or radio career only to find yourself in a city where media is irrelevant, and you’re going to die here, without making a mark on society and won’t (or can’t) leave a personal legacy that your spouse, children, and friends can point to as significant.

Take Steve Penhollow, the Journal Gazette entertainment reporter for instance; a writer of eminent qualifications who has been relegated to ruminating about tawdry performers (and entertainment), with a Friday stint on 21Alive’s newscasts where he tries to be funny and erudite but falls flat as a Aunt Jemima pancake.

Penhollow was destined for better things in journalism we think, but he ended up marrying Bonnie Blackburn. A former JG editorialist then reporter, who now is an adjunct editor/writer for Fort Wayne magazine.

This has ensconced Mr. Penhollow in Fort Wayne, and kept him in a job that pays the bills but surely has to irk his desire to be something more than a JG hack.

His wife is a terrific writer also, but has succumbed to the Fort Wayne “vapors” and finds this town worthy enough to sap her talents too.

Then take a journalistic quidnunc like Derrick Gingery who writes (or tries to) for The Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly.

He’s slogged through a few years in his job, having come here from Chicago where he didn’t make a mark, and married, not long ago, a JG business reporter, both now happy to make Fort Wayne their home and journalistic resting place.

Like Mr. And Mrs. Penhollow, they are relatively young, and already cretaively atrophied.

They’ll die in Fort Wayne, and no one will care, not even their offspring we imagine.

The old-timers in the print press (and you all know who they are: Ben Smith, Leo Morris, Craig Klugman, Reggie Hayes, Jennifer Boen, Bob Caylor, et al.) have already accepted their journalistic fates, and have figuratively died, at least career-wise (as one might put it).

TV newsies move on usually.

There are some who’ve been raised in this area and like it: INC’s Melissa Long and Linda Jackson, and WANE’s Heather Herron, for example.

But the go-getters – WANE’s Niccole Caan or Megan Stembol or INC’s Jessica Toumani – will leave Fort Wayne and head down career paths that bring satisfying personal reward and substantial remuneration.

The rest, such as WANE’s Randy Schiffman and Sandy Thomson or INC’s Dean Pantazi, have mouldered here, so they no longer care that they are only earning a living and not making a media mark.

As we wrote earlier, this would be depressing for most people but those named have inured themselves of their failures – measured in qualitative terms not quantitative (materialistic) terms – and just put in a days work (or something like that).

In Fort Wayne radio, Doc West, Dan Austin, Weasel, Melissa Montana, Dirk Rowley, Billy Elvis, Charly Butcher, Jim Reed, and a whole lot more, have settled into moribund routines and FM careers; they don’t care that they matter not to the world outside (and some of) Fort Wayne.

They earn a paycheck, and have a few fans, so what’s not to like they may ask?

Being a big fish in a small pond can be rewarding. It isn’t transcendent in any way but it keeps food on the table, and for many media folks here that’s enough.

Nonetheless, taking an objective view – and we are being objective here regardless of the quasi-rant – for most Fort Wayne media people, their careers aren’t going to lift them to notable heights.

And while that’s sad, in many ways, it is not as bad as just dying with nothing worthwhile to put a tombstone, but it’s damn close.

WLKI in Angola has new owner

2008-04-01T08:20:00.002-04:00

[From WLKI.COM]

Lake Cities Broadcasting has been sold. Pending approval by the Federal Communications Commission, the company will become known as Swick Broadcasting Corporation on or about June 1st.

Businessman Steve Swick of Coldwater will take over ownership of WLKI in Angola, WTHD in LaGrange, WLZZ in Montpelier, Ohio and our two Sturgis, Michigan stations; ESPN-AM1230 and Oldies 99.3.

Swick says he has been interested in buying the stations for several years. In this era of corporate and satellite radio, Swick intends to keep a local presence on all of the stations. Swick is taking over ownership of the five stations from Tom Andrews who helped sign WLKI on the air in July of 1974.

Andrews says it's time to be semi-retired but he will be available to Swick in whatever capacity he is needed.

Our bad...

2008-03-21T08:29:00.000-04:00

A response from Indiana’s NewsCenter has corrected the MediaWatch impression (in the March 17th posting below) where we said INC was suffering “dismal ratings.”

(We didn’t get the February 2008 ratings this time around so our observation was flawed it seems.)

The February Nielsen ratings book showed that INC’s 21Alive gained viewers in the morning, at 5 pm, 6 pm and at 11pm and the rating jumped three household points and 7 share points.

At the same time, WANE lost 3 household points and 13 share points at 11pm and
also showed a loss at 6 pm.

21Alive is one point behind WANE at 5 pm, and has now tied them at 6 and 11.

This is the second ratings book in which WPTA/21 has steadily gained viewers.

Indiana's NewsCenter thinks it's radio

2008-03-17T09:20:00.001-04:00

We’ve wondered why the INC stations (particularly NBC33 and 21Alive) suffer dismal Nielsen ratings.

And we think we know why.

INC has come to be a radio station with TV credentials.

Why a radio station? Look at some of the staffers and the set, which is cluttered, non-esthetic:

The people look grubby, not clean, as if they were in a radio studio, not on television., and the set has a radio feel to it.

(Even Linda Jackson, whom we love, has become somewhat dowdy.)

But the sloppiness isn’t just confined to staff. Look at this video from Sunday night [3/16/08] on 21Alive:

Whatever “photojournalist” (and we use the term photojournalist advisedly) shot this video should be fired; they besmirch the epithet “photog.”

And look at what happens when INC incorporates a Journal Gazette staffer:

Why is this guy on television? He’s got a face that only a mother could love.

And what about the two skinny weather guys and this a.m. anchor?

They look emaciated, as if they were in the midst of a famine, which is not what TV fare likes to present to viewers.

Then there are the gaffes, ongoing, as when NBC33, because of advertising and poor engineering, cut into NBC’s Nightly News Sunday [3/16], which isn’t atypical.

But 21Alive, which refuses to curtail its thirty-minutes newscast because it believes it is sacrosanct and should remain intact, in toto, also cut into ABC’s network news Sunday [3/16] at 6 :35 p.m.

WANE shortens its newscasts to accommodate network broadcasts, and they do it on the run.

And WANE’s on-air people look clean, and spiffy, not disheveled like this new WPTA sport guy, Kark Mandik:

INC is a mess, as if it is a radio station where unkempt people are typical and ingrained.

That’s why INC has lost so many viewers

The Bad Penny

2008-03-12T09:48:00.001-04:00

Nancy Nall hasn’t been in Fort Wayne for years, having been fired from her job at The News-Sentinel long ago. But she continues to haunt this town, because she thought she was something here and hasn’t been able to become something elsewhere.

Nall is no lady. A check of her blog continues to show a particularly vulgar woman, with bad taste and self-promotion of an egregious kind.

A local editor once told us that he met Nall at an Ohio campaign rally many moons ago; she looked awful and didn’t smell too good either.

Her recent outing of Tim Goeglein was a coup for Nall. She takes sexism and stands it on its head, giving men columnists a thrashing every chance she gets, and she got Mr. Goeglein good (and rightfully so apparently).

But Nall still tries to impact Fort Wayne, even though she now lives in a lower, middle-income suburb of Fort Wayne,

(She pretends to live in Grosse Pointe, but she’s far from that exclusive community, in distance and class.)

Nall still has a small contingent of Fort Wayne sycophants, but she visited the city a few weeks ago, calling for a gathering of those lackeys for a dinner confab. Few showed up, but Nall didn’t bring up that fact on her blog, where she had touted the get-together for several days beforehand.

(She also brings up pending job interviews but doesn’t provide their denouement. She doesn’t get the jobs she seeks, and you can guess why – remember that Ohio rally.)

We though we’d never have to contend with Nall once she left here. But that’s not the case.

The woman will not leave fort Wayne alone, always talking about it on her blog, and revisiting the city that was glad to see her leave.

She is, indeed, the proverbial bad penny.

The Goeglein Aftermath

2008-03-03T11:45:00.000-05:00

Tim Goeglein is not a journalist or a professional (for pay) writer, so his plagiarism – in Catholic parlance – is a venial sin not a mortal sin.

Mr. Goeglein is (or was) merely a political hack.

Ms. Nall excoriated Goeglin’s writings because they reeked of a Hoosier drippiness, but it turns out that the writing wasn’t from Tim (or any Hoosier) at all but a raft of eminent scholars and writers.

So much for Ms. Nall’s acute observation(s).

Ms. Nall’s exposé is fine with us but, as it is with blogs and bloggers, the comments, which Nall moderates – she selects them for inclusion on her blog – got away from the core of the issue – Goeglein’s text stealing – and degenerated into rants about the Bush administration, conservative Republicans, and other liberal targets.

The mob became like that of the French Terror in the 1790s, full of hate and vengeance but, fortu- nately, of a symbolic kind rather than a lop-off-their-head kind.

And finally, the News-Sentinel isn’t totally blameless in all this.

The paper selects its op-ed writers. We, at Media- Watch, have never been allowed to enter copy for the page. The Editors (Leo Morris in particular) hate us.

But they do allow the chosen few (like Tim Goeglein) to ramble on for inches of space, without editorial scrutiny, and this time they got bit in the ass.

Oh, one more thing…Nancy Nall may be gloating now, but her fifteen minutes of fame will come back to haunt her…..and we’ll explain why upcoming.

Oh that Melissa!

2008-01-16T13:55:00.000-05:00

Melissa Long, getting ribbed by Harlem Globetrotters for missing free throws:

Score Two

2007-11-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Indiana's NewsCenter presents, on 21Alive, each Friday night, its commercial free sports segment, The Score.

Lately, INC has taken to opening the segment with some schtick.

Here's the 11/9/07 effort:

Fort Wayne's Weather-Ass

2007-10-19T11:08:00.000-04:00

Yes. storm notification is important, and television stations should (and are required to) provide alerts.

But Indiana's NewsCenter, which provides broadcast feeds for three networks -- ABC, NBC, and the CW -- interrupts programming when the National Weather Service issues weather cautions.

And INC uses beaver-faced Curtis Smith -- their "Chief Meteorologist" -- who takes weather alerts, pads them with redundant and unnecessary information for protracted periods of time, and makes a mishmash of the alerts and network programming.

This excerpt -- from our YouTube video -- is only part of the first 7 minute interruption by Smith, who continued to insert himself and weather nonsense for the whole evening of October 18th, 2007:

The full interruption can be viewed at our Google video account -- RRRGroup Videos.

Smith is not informative, as you can see. His spiel is laced with what-might-be and what isn't.

Those viewers who need information that might keep them from harm will not get that information from Smith. He babbles, and viewers tune him out.

INC management won't curb this overpaid golfer. He has carte blanche to ruin network programming and put viewers in dire straits with his unclear and rambling weather diatribes.

For him it's ego -- not public service.