revistionist journalists - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - Well, I told you so. The top 10 of 2007 lists are pouring out. They are proving that journalists are as revisionist as everyone else. We tend to remember things as we want to remember them not as they actually are. When asked what the top stories of this year were we'll tell you the meaty hard news stories. But what did we really cover? Will we remember or admit that we spent our time and energy chasing down stories on Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, Jamie Lynn Spears, and Anna Nicole Smith? Take a look for yourself. Here are 2007's top 10 stories, as voted by AP members:1. VIRGINIA TECH KILLINGS: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, who had avoided court-ordered mental health treatment despite a history of psychiatric problems, killed two fellow students in a dormitory on April 16, detoured to mail a hate-filled video of himself to NBC News, then shot dead 30 students and professors in a classroom building before killing himself. It was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.2. MORTGAGE CRISIS: A record-setting wave of mortgage foreclosures, coupled with a steep slump in the housing market, buffeted financial markets, caused multibillion-dollar losses at major banks and investment firms, and became an issue in the presidential campaign.3. IRAQ WAR: The "surge" that sent more U.S. troops to Iraq was credited with helping reduce the overall level of violence. But thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of U.S. personnel were killed nonetheless during the year, and Iraqi political leaders struggled to make meaningful progress toward national reconciliation.4. OIL PRICES: Oil prices soared to record highs, at one point reaching nearly $100 a barrel. The high prices, which burdened motorists and owners of oil-heated homes, nudged Congress to pass an energy bill that ordered an increase in motor vehicles' fuel efficiency.5. CHINESE EXPORTS: An array of Chinese exports were recalled, ranging from toys with lead paint to defective tires to tainted toothpaste and food. Despite the high-profile problems, America's trade deficit with China was running at record-high levels.6. GLOBAL WARMING: Warnings about the consequences of global warming gained intensity with new reports from scientific panels and a Nobel Prize to Al Gore for his environmental crusading that included the film "An Inconvenient Truth." Across the U.S., many state governments sought to cap emissions blamed for global warming.7. BRIDGE COLLAPSE: An Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during the evening rush hour on Aug. 1, killing 13 people and injuring about 100. The disaster fueled concern about possible structural flaws in other bridges nationwide.8. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: In a yearlong drama with shifting subplots, large fields in both major parties battled for support ahead of the caucuses and primaries that will decide the 2008 presidential nominees. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama led among the Democrats; some polls showed five Republicans with double-digit support.9. IMMIGRATION DEBATE: A compromise immigration plan, backed by President Bush and Democratic leaders, collapsed in Congress due to Republican opposition. The plan would have enabled millions of illegal immigrants to move toward citizenship, while also bolstering border security. The issues remained alive in the presidential campaign.10. IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM: Worried that the ultimate goal is a nuclear arsenal, the United States and other countries pressed Iran to halt uranium enrichment. Iran said it never had a weapons program. A U.S. intelligence report concluded there was such an effort, but it stopped in 2003.

retrospectives - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - It's that time a year again. The turn of the new year always brings two things to TV. They are: talk of new year resolutions and retrospectives of the previous year. Both inevitably involve lists. Top 10... top 100... etc. These stories appeal to the list makers in all of us as well as tap into the nostalgia we feel when reminded of things we witnessed but forgot about. Even resolutions, which on the surface seem to be forward looking, are really nostalgic. They are way to toss out half hearted promises to correct a previous wrongs. Even an apparent look forward is really a look back. I have another theory about the lists. They are an easy way to fill TV time in a traditionally slow news week. Rehash the file video, do a few man-on-the-street interviews and you have a bunch of fresh looking stories... even if they're not. Don't get me wrong. I don't comdemn the practice. In fact i'm making my lists now. Kent Ninomiya

where are the big 3? - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is predictably throwing Afghanistan into turmoil and further destabilizing West Asia. What was not so predictable is the relative apathy demonstrated by network news organizations. None of the big three network news anchors bothered to return from their vacations to cover the assassination and fallout much less travel to the region to field anchor. I can only imagine that they concluded it just wasn't important enough to the American audience. The reality is... the story is important to Americans... they just don't realize it. Few would argue that the war in Iraq impacts us all. We spend billions of our tax dollars there and our soldiers are dying in a conflict with no apparent end. What happens in neighboring Afghanistan impacts Iraq. Any withdraw or peace in Iraq would involve our reluctant friends in Afghanistan. Supporting Benazir Bhutto was our government's attempt to bridge the gap between Pervez Musharraf's hard line authoritarianism and our democratic ideals. The Bush administration hoped to plant a democratic seed in Afghanistan that would take root and someday spread to neighboring Iraq. She was quite literally our only hope. There is no one else of her stature or influence who could have pulled it off. Many of our government's democratic dreams died with Benazir Bhutto. The assassination may have doomed us to a longer and more bloody involvement in the Iraq war. Add to that the mystery of who killed Bhutto and why... and you have a intriguing story that impacts us all. So why didn't the networks dispatch their top dogs to the scene? I believe that it is the job of journalists to put stories in context and explain why people should care. Most Americans believe Benazir Bhutto's assassination has no impact on them. We should help them understand why it does. Kent Ninomiya.

street side studios - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya. On Sunday night a man drove his minivan into the street side studios of WLS-TV during the 10 pm broadcast. No one was hurt but the anchor practically wet his pants when the minivan crashed his show. Police suspect the driver did it intentionally. My surprise isn't that the incident occurred, it's that it hasn't occurred more often. Since the Today show pioneered street side studios decades ago, stations all over the country have tried them. They're fun and allow fans a peak at how the news is put together. However, there are a lot of crazies out there and most of them have access to guns and cars. Considering how close they can get to live television broadcasts and the fame associated with disrupting them, why don't more disturbed people try? I worked for WLS for five years at a time before they installed the ground level studio. Even then we were all very concerned about security. Working the streets of Chicago is a dangerous thing. You drive around in giant vehicles with circle 7's painted on the side. Everyone knows who you are but you don't know who the psychos are. You learn quickly to keep your eyes open for trouble. Security guards at WLS take their jobs seriously and are always ready to deal with troublemakers. As a result incidents are rare, but they can't do much about a car hurling toward the building without warning. So again, I am surprised things like this don't happen more often. Maybe it's time to add cement barriers outside studios similar to the ones around government buildings. Just a suggestion. Kent Ninomiya

Merry Christmas Everyone! - Kent Ninomiya

Since I can't send a Christmas card to everyone, i'd like to use this blog to hand out my best wishes to all of you this holiday season. Thank you all for your support and interest. May you have a happy and fruitful new year as well! Take care, Kent Ninomiya

Christmas message - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya. I'd like to pause and take a moment to reflect on this holiday season. As I get older I gain a greater understanding of the importance of Christmas as a family experience. Young adults tend to discard the ritual of family gatherings and togetherness for independence. However, once new children enter the equation the holiday regains it's place. Christmas is all about the children and how their faces light up when they open their gifts. That look is the parents' gift. There are also important lessons in Christmas. Delayed gratification is perhaps the most torturous of the lessons for kids. Waiting to open gifts is both painful and rewarding for them. Gratitude is another lesson. That's a tough one. With the bounty of gifts before them it's hard for children to think about others. They just want the presents. It's the parent's job to link the two together. It's not always an easy task. Of course the most important lesson of all is family. The act of doing everything together is what Christmas is all about. So enjoy the holiday everyone! Merry Christmas! Kent Ninomiya.

Queen Elizabeth II - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya. Queen Elizabeth II will give a Christmas Day speech over YouTube. In just two years YouTube has gone from nothing to world wide legitimate communication medium used by royalty. Wow! I remember a few years ago, a general manager telling me that he didn't want to put resources into the station web site because it would compete with our on air product. Huh? What legitimate television station doesn't have a state of the art web site today? In many ways the public didn't take the internet seriously. It has revolutionized the way we exchange information. On the other hand the internet has not taken over our world as many predicted. Remember all those dot com businesses that failed? We are not living our lives on line after all, and the internet did not kill television. Instead it's turning out to be a bridge of convenience. It's something used in tandem to television not as a replacement. These days the internet is seen as a great cross promotion tool. It's more of an interactive link for the one way medium of TV. Who can imagine the ways it will grow from there? Whatever happens it will be unexpected and fast. Kent Ninomiya
(AP) Just call her Queen e-Lizabeth. The 81-year-old British monarch launched her own video site on YouTube Sunday, featuring old news reels and film snippets of daily royal life. Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth II keeps up with new ways of communicating with people and was hoping to reach a wider, and younger, audience through the popular video-sharing Web site.The palace began posting archive and recent footage of the queen and other royals on the official Royal Channel on YouTube on Sunday, with plans to add new clips regularly.The queen will use the site to send out her annual televised Christmas message, a tradition that she began 50 years ago."The queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people," Buckingham Palace said in a statement. "She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries."The royal page — which bears the scarlet lettered heading "The Royal Channel - The Official Channel of the British Monarchy" — features a picture of Buckingham Palace flanked by the queen's Guards in their trademark tall bearskin hats and red tunics.Palace officials said the queen's Christmas message this year will urge people to care for the vulnerable and those excluded from society. She will also pay tribute to the sacrifices made by the armed forces.The queen chooses a different theme for each annual address, the one occasion in the year when she writes her own speech without government advice.In a preview of this year's speech, the monarch is seen standing in Buckingham Palace, watching black and white footage of herself delivering her first televised broadcast.Dressed in an apricot colored dress, the queen can be seen walking into the palace's opulent 1844 Room, which is filled with lights and production equipment, and preparing to start her address.The speech remains confidential until it is aired, both on TV and radio, on Christmas Day.YouTube, which allows anyone to upload and share video clips, was founded in 2005 and bought by Google last year.

Kent Ninomiya - comedy central

Kent Ninomiya. The dominos are falling in the entertainment industry writers strike as more shows return to the air.
From New York and Richard Huff at the NY Daily News: Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report return to Comedy Central - Funnymen Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are going back to work at Comedy Central whether they have writers to come up with jokes or not. "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and the "Colbert Report" will resume production Jan. 7, the network revealed today.Comedy Central follows NBC's "Tonight Show" with Jay Leno and "Late Night" with Conan O'Brien in announcing they'll go back to work even if the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike remains unsettled.
Kent Ninomiya. This could be just what the negotiations need to get going. It will be interesting to see how funny these guys are without a staff of writers behind them.

Kent Ninomiya - the economy

Kent Ninomiya. Where are the stories about our flailing economy? Stocks are not getting their typical year end bump. That caps off a horrendous year that saw portfolios shrinking, houses sitting unsold, and families suffering. Is there any story that impacts more people than our economy? Yet I don't see journalists focusing the attention on the subject that it deserves. There are an infinite number of ways to personalize the story and provide people interesting and practical information on the subject. Jamie Lynn Spears announced that she's pregnant today. My guess is that there will be a thousand times more coverage of that than the economy. Let's get on that economy story. It's news worthy and can be interesting.Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - steroids

Kent Ninomiya.The release of the Mitchell report reveals an unfortunate side effect of news. Lives and reputations are tarnished and even permanently destroyed with a single spicy headline. While news organizations move on the next day to the next story, those affected are left to deal with the fallout for years or even the rest of their lives.This happens even when the headline is a mere accusation not supported by any proof or due process of law. This happens to people who have decades of positive accomplishments to their credit and no previous blemishes on their record. This happens to people who are completely innocent of the accusations and have no way to defend themselves other than to say they didn't do it. Of course that doesn't matter in the court of public opinion. In fact, often the more someone denies something the more guilty they look.The public tends to believe what they hear and blindly accept TV news reports as fact. Many Americans still believe Saddam Hussein attacked the United States on 9-11 because it was suggested to them early on. It doesn't matter that subsequent reports contradict this. Many Americans believe Barry Bonds tested positive for steroids and that there is overwhelming evidence of his guilt. This is not true. We still don't know what, if any, solid evidence prosecutors have linking Bonds to steroid use. However, since we have heard so much about Bonds and steroids, people assume his use of them is fact when it is not.Now we have the Mitchell report. Many are wondering why it is being released now since the supposed evidence contained in it is years old and talks about many players long retired. It is suggested that it is more about prosecutors' political agendas rather than cleaning up baseball. Regardless of the motivations, the collateral damage is clear. The Mitchell report names names. Big names. The likes of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. The report sites the testimony of a single individual, a trainer who worked with Clemens and Pettitte, who claims to have injected them. Once the report was released and the media reported it, Clemens and Pettitte and everyone else on the list were damaged forever.It doesn't matter that many of them were never accused before of steroid use. It doesn't matter that the individual claiming he injected Clemens and Pettitte is making a deal because he is being prosecuted for crimes himself. It doesn't matter that the accused were never arrested, charged or confronted with any tangible proof they committed a crime. A lifetime of exceptional accomplishments instantly evaporate with a single unsubstantiated accusation. Immediately there is talk in the media of suspensions, bans and rejection from the baseball hall of fame for the accused. Pettitte says he was injected with human growth hormone to help in the healing of an elbow injury, not to improve performance. He says this was done years before MLB banned the substance. If this is true then he did nothing wrong, but will that matter to a public already condemning him?You didn't even have to be on the Mitchell report list to feel the wrath of irresponsible media reports. Albert Pujols was the subject of intense media coverage about alleged steroid use in St Louis where he plays. Never mind that Pujols isn't even on the list. Oops! News outlets can apologize and move on, but the damage is done. Many people will only remember the accusation and assume there is truth to it. It wont matter that a correction was reported later.If it turns out that Bonds, Clemens, and Pettitte are innocent will there be the swarm of media coverage on that equal to that which accused them? Of course not. It will be buried on a back page or B block and no one will remember it anyway. It truly is a shame that our celebrity culture loves to tear down its heroes more than it enjoys lifting them up. Perhaps it makes us feel better about ourselves when the beautiful and famous have bigger problems than we do. Does it pull us up to drag them down? It is sad commentary on the state of our society.Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya. Thank you to everyone who wrote to me with words of support. I am back and new posts will appear on my blogs starting tomorrow. Thank you for your backing and patience.Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya.I want to thank everyone who wrote to me concerned about my family emergency. I appreciate your words. Just know that it is not a matter of life or death. I am just taking care of some business. My blogs will be updated in the next few days.Thanks again,Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya. I regret to report that due to a family emergency there will be no posts on this blog for the next several days. I apologize for the inconvenience. New posts will be back by next week.Thanks,Kent

pictures - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya.Images of the 19 year old gunman in the Omaha mall shooting are released today by police. They show the shaggy haired, bespectacled teen holding an AK-47. These images give this tragic story new life and ensure it will stay in the headlines and A-block for at least another day. There is a perverse curiosity that drives us to peer into the abyss of the unsavory. The more despicable a villain is the more we want to know what makes him tick. We not only want to know what this gunman looked like, we want to know where he lived, who his friends were, what kind of music he listened to, and especially what he wrote or taped before he committed his dastardly crimes. If you want to give us the benefit of the doubt we can claim that we need to know him to figure out why he did it. However it is far more likely that it only pacifies our sick desire to revel in other peoples tragedy. Did we really need to see the tape of the Virginia Tech shooter over and over? Did we really need to see the 9/11 planes crash into the World Trade Center over and over? I'm not saying that providing these images is wrong. It's what we do in journalism. Of course the viewer has the right to turn the TV off or switch the channel if they don't want to see it. The truth is, there are far more people tuning in to see the images than are tuning out. That is why we do it.Kent Ninomiya

accounting error - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya. Controversy can make a career. Take beauty queens for example. Quick... name a former Miss America. Does Vanessa Williams come to mind? Name another. Exactly my point. We remember Vanessa Williams because of her famous pictures. The new Miss California may end up benefiting from an accounting error. Here's the story if you haven't heard it: (ap) In the business of crowning beauty queens, there's one thing you'd think they'd get right: crowning the right beauty queen. Miss California USA organizers say they got that wrong, but corrected themselves Thursday by crowning Miss Barstow, Raquel Beezley, a 21-year-old waitress they said rightfully earned the title.And they tried to put an end to a kerfuffle that began last month when they crowned Miss Los Angeles, Christina Silva, only to backtrack days later, blaming a vote tabulation error.Silva hired a lawyer, booked an appearance on "Ellen," and won support from a Los Angeles Times columnist who murmured in print of hanging chads. Silva, 24, lives in L.A.'s Koreatown and is of Ecuadoran and Mexican descent. Was she too ethnic? Too urban? Did judges find some dirty secret in her past at the last minute?California pageant executive director Keith Lewis stared out at cameras in a Beverly Hilton conference room hoping to tamp down speculation."This was a human error. We have apologized for it," he said. "I believe in the integrity by which we must stand. I'm here today to right that wrong of crowning the incorrect person."To that end, last year's winner Meagan Tandy emerged wearing a black dress, and placed a tiara on Beezley's head to the sound of cheers from her parents and brothers."It is bittersweet," Beezley said of her win. "I just want her to know that it was not my fault nor her fault. This has been very hard for the both of us."At any rate, it's another hit for Donald Trump's Miss USA pageant, which in the past year has seen state-level winners lose their titles for appearing in risque pictures and getting pregnant. Trump personally gave the overall winner, Tara Conner, a second chance after she was seen boozing at New York clubs and agreed to enter rehab.Judges approached Lewis immediately after the Nov. 25 pageant finals in Los Angeles, concerned that their votes hadn't been correctly tallied. He asked for a re-count, and it turned out the points assigned to finalists had been reversed. He said he broke the news to Silva in a "lengthy, heartfelt, truthful" conversation, then the two of them called Beezley.Beezley interrupted her waitress shift at DiNapoli's Firehouse Pizza restaurant in Barstow to take the call from the two of them on speakerphone. Beezley said Silva told her about the error and congratulated her, saying, "I do not want this crown and sash if I didn't rightfully win it."The pageant let Silva, now listed as second runner-up, keep all her accouterments — the sash, the crown, the necklace — and gave her $1,500 entry fee back. But Silva now says she felt unfairly pressured to relinquish her title, and feels something is fishy about the "accountant error" reason supplied by organizers."Everything's inaccurate and it's not consistent," Silva told Ellen DeGeneres during an "Ellen" show broadcast Thursday. "All I could do was shake and cry, just cry in my mom's arms."Beezley's mother Christine Parrish said she was upset about speculation her daughter, was bumped up because she appears less ethnic. "I heard somebody calling her a whitey! It's sad," she said, noting that Beezley is one-fourth Filipino, had won a pageant in Mazatlan, Mexico, and judged a pageant in the Phillipines.Beezley, who hid her shaking hands behind a desk after being crowned, was disappointed that she and Silva would be lumped in with other scandals in Trump's pageant empire."The thing is, we didn't do anything wrong," she said. "We're both innocent in this case. It's crazy."Beezley, who attends Barstow Community College, will represent California in April in the Miss USA pageant, and hopes to become a correspondent for "Access Hollywood."There was also a happy ending for Silva. DeGeneres crowned her Miss Ellen and gave her a yearlong modeling contract and year's worth of styling by Ken Paves or Prive hair salons.Kent Ninomiya. Remember that Miss Teen USA contestant who referred to US Americans? She got a stint on Entertainment Tonight. Life isn't fair when the stupidest among us are rewarded for that stupidity.

Kent Ninomiya - mass shootings

Kent Ninomiya.A man opened fire today at an Omaha mall killing 8 people. On the surface this may appear to be a big story. The sad truth is that events like this are somewhat commonplace in America. They are so common that most of us who don't live in Omaha will forget it ever happened in a few weeks. It's so common that I couldn't tell you how many stories like that I've covered in my career. Is it 40, 50 , 100? I have no idea. Mass shootings are all about the body count. Virginia Tech was a big deal because so many people died. This Omaha mall shooting was barely noticed. Does that make the deaths any less tragic? Of course not, but media attention devoted to the event is directly proportional to the body count.There was a mass shooting I covered in Los Angeles I remember well. A man walked into a grocery store and shot up the place before killing himself. When police went to his apartment they found his dead parents on the bed. Apparently he murdered them two years earlier and left them there. He told neighbors they moved away and nobody bothered to check. I have no idea why they didn't smell the bodies. By the time the cops got there the parents were skeletons. I remember this story so vividly because of the sordid details, not because of the people who died in the supermarket. It's unfortunate but true.Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - election season

Kent Ninomiya.The Iowa caucuses are in a month. January 3, 2008 to be precise. It's the state's once in four year opportunity to justify its existence. Iowa has a mandate to be the first in the country to influence the presidential election. So every four years presidential "wannabees" pour money, time and resources into the modest sized Midwestern state in an effort to get out of the starting blocks well. About a nanosecond after the vote they head off to New Hampshire and other early primary states. They rarely return to Iowa after that. By my observations Iowans don't seem to mind. They're the first ones asked to dance then they wait patiently for the next party to come along. A homely Midwestern state is happy to be asked to dance at all much less be first. The candidates and the media know the routine and are happy to play along. It's engraved in tradition and ritual by now. Is this the best way to elect our president? Wouldn't it be better to all vote on the same day as in the general election? Like with the BCS bowl system and a college football playoff... the answer is yes... it would probably be better. Will it change? The answer is no. Too many people are vested in the current system and too many profit from it. Journalists get an extended presidential "playoff" system of primaries and caucuses to cover... candidates can focus on a few states at a time instead spreading themselves across the country all at once... and Iowa gets to be the belle of the ball... at least for a while.Kent Ninomiya

Lou Grant - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya. The groundbreaking television series 'Lou Grant' premiered 30 years ago. AP television writer Frazier Moore wrote a tribute to the landmark show. It got me thinking about my interaction with series star Ed Asner. When I was primary anchor at KSTP, Asner came to Minneapolis to shoot a series of promos with the news staff. He was very much the professional actor hitting all his marks and nailing all his lines. Asner was also a very kind and friendly man to all who approached him. However I did not meet Asner the activist. He was there doing a job, earning a paycheck, selling his image as the character Lou Grant. I'm not condemning the man for making a living, but I wish I could have met him in another setting where it wasn't all business. I know there is more to Ed Asner than a couple of cheesy promos. Then again, he only met me in that context and I hope there's more to me than a couple of cheesy promos. Here's what Frazier Moore has to say about the show Lou Grant: When everyone but idiotic anchorman Ted Baxter was fired from WJM News in 1977, Mary Richards and her fellow casualties were left reeling. It was a classically bittersweet finale for the beloved "Mary Tyler Moore" show after seven hit seasons. Then Mary's crusty boss, station news director Lou Grant, made a smooth transition. Within weeks, he had blown Minneapolis and snagged a good job in Los Angeles as city editor of The Tribune.That's right: Lou went from the glamour and glitz of TV news (such as it was at bumbling WJM) to embrace print journalism.At the Trib, the formerly comic Lou (still played by Ed Asner) got serious about news. What resulted was "Lou Grant," a superlative drama series that premiered 30 years ago this fall.Now "Lou Grant" is worth noting for how vividly it captured a singular era in journalism, while somehow preserving that long-ago time in 114 episodes in remarkably relevant fashion. (Though not widely available, it can be seen in 10 million homes served by cable's American Life network, airing Wednesdays at 9 and 11 p.m. EST.)"Lou Grant" arrived in the blazing afterglow of Watergate coverage by newspaper rock stars Woodward and Bernstein, and the 1976 movie version of their book, "All the President's Men," where Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman played them.The bracing message of that era: Two dogged reporters (and a newspaper that backed them up) could change the world — and earn the public's adoration.Anti-press fulminations from the Nixon administration were largely nullified by scandals and disgrace in the White House. It was only later that an anti-media crusade took hold, drawing battle lines between the press and government, and breeding suspicion among much of the citizenry.It was later, as well, that newspapers were obliged to adapt to emerging, unimagined challenges: new media platforms, "citizen journalists" and information-dispersing gadgets with global reach that anyone could buy.The Trib reporters were spared these distractions and identity crises. For them, news still took the form of ink on paper, preferably with comics, horoscope and crossword puzzle part of the deal.The zeitgeist of "Lou Grant" was set forth in the clever opening titles. The cycle began with a twittering bird up in a tree about to be felled and processed into newsprint. By the end of the sequence, the published Tribune has reached its destination — a typical reader — and, then fully read, is slid into a cage to catch the droppings of a twittering pet bird. A newspaper was a cozy, closed system, and "Lou Grant" celebrated it.Sure, it may seem primitive that, in the first season, Trib reporters were still banging out their stories on typewriters. But "Lou Grant" was breaking ground from its debut on Sept. 20, 1977.Reconfiguring a half-hour sitcom into an hour drama was risky. The show dared to populate "Lou Grant" with a full-out ensemble — a casting format that, while proven in comedy, was largely untested in dramas, which were typically built around a single hero or a pair of co-leads.Lou was the hero in the title, but Asner shared that fictitious newsroom with a wonderful cast.Robert Walden played the driven young investigative reporter Joe Rossi. Mason Adams (up to then best-known, unseen, in commercials intoning "With a name like Smucker's, it's got to be good") was Managing Editor Charlie Hume. Linda Kelsey was reporter Billie Newman, determined to make good in what was still primarily a male domain. The glorious Nancy Marchand (later, of course, Tony's craven mother on "The Sopranos") was Mrs. Pynchon, genteel owner of the Trib.Taking full advantage of its news-oriented setting, "Lou Grant" dealt with social issues that ranged from nuclear accidents to religious freedom, from dog fighting to (often) media ethics.It was a big-hearted series with a humanistic streak (which, as the culture shifted, was sometimes blasted as "liberal"), a drama-comedy hybrid that emerged naturally from the series' creators: James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, writer-producers from "Mary Tyler Moore," and Gene Reynolds, a principal behind the TV incarnation of "M-A-S-H," itself an innovative half-hour blend of laughter and tears."Lou Grant" won 13 Emmys, two Humanitas Prizes and a Peabody Award, among many other honors. And although never a ratings smash, it drew an average audience of about 22 million viewers in those days of Big Three network dominance — routinely matching the viewership of "Dancing with the Stars," last week's top-rated show.Then, in May 1982, CBS announced "Lou Grant" would end.Did CBS make a business decision based on a ratings downturn (as the network always insisted)? Or did Asner, who had stirred up negative attention for his activism, spook network execs by bringing them increasing political headaches?Recently, the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television & Radio) in Los Angeles hosted a reunion of "Lou Grant" stars and producers. It didn't take long for the discussion to turn to why "Lou Grant" got axed."There was a really concentrated effort on the part of the right-wing to torpedo this show," said Burns.Seated beside him, the 78-year-old Asner recounted one durable version of the show's demise. It dwells on then CBS magnate William Paley as the fall 1982 schedule was being nailed down."They had `Lou Grant' on the (schedule) board," said Asner. "Mr. Paley came in and said, 'What's THAT doing up there? Get it off! Get it off!' And with that, `Lou Grant' was erased off the board."Whatever the circumstances, press reaction to its cancellation was harsh. There was some picketing. But there were no bloggers or e-mail crusades. "Lou Grant" was a lost cause, however immortal.

Directory of News Blogs