Chicago divorce attorney sues Playboy

Former Miami Herald reporter Sara Olkon - who's now with the Chicago Tribune - has written a great story today about Chicago divorce attorney and former Playboy advice columnist Corri Fetman who's suing the magazine claiming "that an executive of the publishing empire sexually harassed her."

Fetman, as the story points out, once posed nude for the magazine.

Hmmmmm, let's check the Random Pixels B.S. detector on this one. Yup, just as I thought!



Make sure you read the story comments.

A taste of things to come?

Monday was the "first day of [Detroit] newspapers’ new strategy for surviving the economic crisis by ending home delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays," reports Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times.

Instead, on those days, [the papers] are directing readers to their Web sites and offering a truncated print version at stores, newsstands and street boxes.

“This morning, I felt like something was missing,” said Nancy Nester, 51, a program coordinator at a traumatic brain injury center who is from West Bloomfield and has subscribed to both papers for four years. “There was this feeling of emptiness.”

[...]

Howard Waxer, 60, dropped his longtime Free Press subscription in anticipation of losing seven-day delivery and said he would not read online. He leafed through The Free Press while eating a club sandwich at Country Oven Family Dining restaurant in Berkley and said this would be his approach from now on — pick up a copy and read it over lunch.

“There’s always going to be this,” he said, holding up the paper. “I can’t picture this city without a paper coming out.”

Today's Fidel Castro Fun Fact

Fidel Castro has outlasted 10 American presidents.

And now you can add the Sun-Sentinel Havana bureau to the list of other things that the Cuban dictator has outlived.

Ray Sanchez of the Sun-Sentinel, "the only U.S. [newspaper] reporter based in Havana," is leaving and the bureau is being closed.

The closing of the bureau may only be symbolic.

The Associated Press, which provides news to just about every American newspaper, still has a bureau in Havana.

And many large newspapers including the Miami Herald and New York Times still send reporters to Cuba periodically.

But frankly, there's really just one story left to report from Havana.

And after that we can bring all the reporters home.

Until then we can only wonder whether or not Miami will still have a newspaper when it comes time to report Castro's death.

The "Raven" can't stop running

Anyone who knows the Raven, South Beach's unceasing long-distance runner, knew ahead of time there was never a question of whether or not he would complete his 100,000th mile yesterday.

The real question was: would he show up the day after?

Indeed, the sub-head on yesterday's Herald story was "At 100,000 miles is it time to call it quits?"

A few weeks ago as March 29th neared, I asked the Raven if he planned to keep running.

"No one knows," he said with a sly smile.

A small knot of people gathered around the 5th Street lifeguard station this afternoon.

By 5 o'clock, there were about a dozen of his faithful, talking quietly in groups of two or three. No one seemed to know if the Raven would show.

At 5:07, with an ESPN camera crew in tow, the Raven made his way across the beach to the lifeguard stand.

And as a formation of 15 brown pelicans flew overhead the Raven spoke, "Well, I guess you all wanna know."

"Yeah," the faithful answered.

"I'm gonna run," said the Raven.

Applause.

"But," he added, "if i don't feel good one day, I might just do six miles instead of 8."

The Raven, it seems, can't stop running.

Miami Herald's new guest columnist: Fidel Castro

As if the Herald didn't have enough problems, they've now been caught red-handed by right-wing, Herald-hating blogger Henry Gomez; publishing commentary "written" by Fidel Castro.

Articles from the government-run Cuban News Agency, also inexplicably appeared on the Herald's website.

The articles and columns have now been deleted.

The Herald doesn't bother to cover its own funeral

"The Miami Herald is not going anywhere." -Miami Herald executive editor Anders Gyllenhaal
...

Gyllenhaal testily uttered that line yesterday at a panel discussion with the foreboding title, "Miami: A No-Newspaper Town?," held just a few blocks from One Herald Plaza.

The same Anders Gyllenhaal, by the way, who told Broward New Times blogger Bob Norman last October when asked about further job cuts at the Herald, "I just don't see that happening."

Of course, two weeks ago, we learned that Gyllenhaal's hunch was a little off the mark, as the Herald instituted a third round of staff cuts in less than a year.

At yesterday's discussion Gyllenhaal seemed to blame others for the current state of affairs at the Herald:

"Constant worry about the Herald's longevity isn't helping, he said, citing online speculation that his newspaper is destined for failure.

" 'It hurt us, it hurt our advertising,' Gyllenhaal said. Advertisers are thinking, 'Maybe I shouldn't be advertising with them because they're not going to be around,' he said."

Sounds like Gyllenhaal is blaming Random Pixels and other bloggers for the Herald's current predicament.

We just want to help. Really!

Gyllenhaal's appearance on the panel comes just days after Herald publisher David Landsberg took part in a little damage control of his own.

(Today the publisher of the Charlotte Observer - also a McClatchy paper - posted a letter similar in tone to Landsberg's letter on the Observer's website.)

Meanwhile Miami Monthly publisher Elena Carpenter brought up a point that I've been hammering at for some time. According to the AP story, she "chastised Gyllenhaal for giving away stories, photos and extras such as video for free online. People need to be reminded that good reporting costs money and retains its value among blogs that don't adhere to traditional journalism standards, she said."

Carpenter is right. I strongly believe that when all is said and done and they write the obits for printed newspapers; somewhere in the first few grafs will be the a line about the fact that newspapers hastened their own demise by giving away content for free one day and then trying to charge for it the next.

But former Miami New Times reporter Rebecca Wakefield summed the Herald's problems in one sentence: The Herald's challenge, she said, is surviving "as a general interest publication in a community with no general interest."

(One puzzling side note to yesterday's panel discussion. Despite the fact that it was held in close proximity to the Herald's headquarters; the paper apparently didn't bother to cover it, relying instead on the AP.)

UPDATE: One panel attendee sent this email to Random Pixels:

"funny they had a Herald reporter there, but i have yet to see a story.

"my take is that the reason Anders asked to be on the panel (after he found out the name of it "Miami: A No Newspaper Town?") was to quash the whole notion.

"These guys are running scared bigtime.

"Nothing he said indicated that they have a workable plan to save what's left of the paper...just rearranging the deck chairs so to speak."