Moni Basu is an animal. The AJC reporter is on her fourth? fifth? tour of Iraq now, embedded with the Army’s Third Infantry Division. Her front-page piece today is really good, describing the jitters at a Forward Operating Base near Baghdad. Her first-person account of a mortar attack– catching her in the shower– is harrowing [...]
Archive for March, 2008
29 Mar
WXIA’s backpack journalists
About a year ago, WXIA launched a somewhat revolutionary concept in the Atlanta market. It began using what it calls “backpack journalists,” reporters who tote and shoot their own cameras, as well as write and produce their own stories. It’s revolutionary, all right. Kinda like 1979 Iranian revolution. It’s disturbing, destabilizing, and nobody wins except [...]
27 Mar
No Comparison
LAF is not necessarily a timely blog. By mistake, we just dialed up and watched WAGA’s version of the Wednesday 6pm show. That’s the show we found so underwhelming on WSB. What a difference, at least on this particular day. While WSB was lamely leading with the Tom Jones men’s-room “exclusive,” WAGA’s Morse Diggs broke [...]
27 Mar
Ugly. Shameful.
WSB led its 6 o’clock news Wednesday with a story that would have been laughable, were it not so destructive and shameful. Tom Jones was live at the Clayton Co. Courthouse with “exclusive” coverage of a trial of a former FBI agent. He was charged with a misdemeanor, accused of making googly-eyes at men in [...]
27 Mar
The rest of WSB at 6
Do normal people actually watch an entire hour of local TV news? After the shock of watching 2′s lead story, we were too stunned to leave our seat. Maybe that’s what they intended. Observations: Rachel Kim had a forgettable story about a killing that won’t be news for much longer. The family declined to talk [...]
26 Mar
Morgan v. Jones
Last week, WAGA’s Dale Russell did a piece that linked DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones to the DeKalb judge who awarded attorney fees to the lawyers for admitted perjurer (and prolific baby-daddy) Bishop Earl Paulk. The story showed that Jones and Judge Mark Anthony Scott are friends. Jones contributed to Scott’s campaign for Judge. Scott’s ruling [...]
25 Mar
Barbie Bandits
Everybody covered the sentencing of the “barbie bandits” yesterday. All four stations have the stories on their web sites. The story sells. Every station had the same video– mug shots, courtroom, file tape. The difference was in the style of the storytellers. The best was Ross Cavitt on WSB. Cavitt grasped what made the story [...]
25 Mar
Chasing the AJC
Give the AJC credit for a nice scoop Sunday. After Gary Hilton pleaded guilty to the murder of hiker Meredith Emerson, it was inevitable that the court records of the case would become public. Most news organizations would have kept abreast of that release on a daily basis. But the AJC somehow got it first, [...]
24 Mar
Sneaky
In a column Saturday, the AJC admitted that the Jeremiah Wright story “did sneak up on us.” Supporters of Barack Obama are worried that Wright’s pulpit pronouncements could derail Obama’s campaign. The AJC’s decision to downplay this significant development at its inception fuels conspiracy theorists who see “the media” as a liberal monolith. The controversy [...]
22 Mar
Secret Squirrel
Close your eyes and listen, as the reporter tags his story: “We were told the suspect, through the sheriff, declined to be interviewed by us.” The passive tense, the fractured syntax, and the sheer audacity that any freshly-arrested suspect would consider being “interviewed by us” signals the presence of one man: WSB’s Mark Winne. This [...]
Recent Comments