Classic scoundrels: Rocky and Mugsy

The story is about an entity that purports to do good work but, I’m told, is doing things that are whacky and craven and borderline abusive.  I’m gathering evidence of this behavior, mostly through interviews with folks who have had first-hand experience.  The story is a project that will probably air in a couple of weeks.

To a lot of folks, this is garden-variety investigative reporting.  I like to say that all reporters are investigative reporters, because we all have to research stories.  But this story has an element of exposing the alleged bad behavior of people who probably don’t want to get caught (or who may not realize their behavior is aberrant) .   This is the stock in trade of some reporters for whom I have much admiration.  I do it rarely.

I’m aching to talk to the perpetrators of this allegedly bad behavior, though I can’t until I’ve gathered my evidence.  Once that happens, I need a strategy. On the one hand, I need to give them a civilized opportunity to discuss their issues and offer their viewpoint.  On the other hand, I need to maximize my ability to question them and to document their facility, which operates on private property but has a public presence.

What’s the best way to approach them?  I have several options.

Write them.   “We’d like to visit your facility,”  an email could begin.  It probably wouldn’t say much more than that, though they’d undoubtedly ask why and I’d have to tell them.

An email would probably give them their fullest opportunity to weigh the pros and cons of allowing a TV crew on the property and telling their side of the story.  Email would also allow them to share their potential dilemma with advisers.  Given the widespread distrust of the news media, this would most likely result in a “thanks but no thanks.” Email is also very easy to ignore.

Call them.  “We’d like to visit your facility.”  A friendly-sounding human voice might flatter them into agreement.  Nuances of conversation can be shaped to soothe concerns, while still being as truthful as I need to be about my intent (and by that I mean:  Fully truthful, but without necessarily exposing every detail of my evidence during an initial phone conversation).

Yet asking permission in advance — by phone or by email — runs the risk of them admonishing us to stay off the property.

Classic scoundrel: Elphaba

Visit them.  We pull into the parking lot.  I visit the office while a photog waits in the car.  Or does the photog start shooting outdoors before we get kicked off?  A visit might make them feel cornered.

Confront them.  Pretty sure I wouldn’t do camera-rolling visit without taking a more civilized approach first.  But it’s an option if they decline  or ignore my initial queries.

Bait and switch. Enlist a coworker to make an innocent-sounding pitch for a visit, implying that the coverage will be bland or flattering.  After they agree to allow it, show up and give ‘em hell.

This last option is certainly tempting, and would give me instant access to the alleged scoundrels.  Though I don’t know this, I suspect it’s done by TV reporters with some regularity, justified with it’s the best way to expose the truth.  Yet it’s fundamentally dishonest.  If I did it in this instance, it would make me a hypocrite. So it’s ruled out (and is submitted here merely as food for thought).

Frequently, the on-camera explanations / evasions of alleged scoundrels are as enlightening and as interesting as the airing of the allegations against them.  In this instance, I suspect that the folks I want to interview would have enough hubris to try to justify what they do.  Or perhaps they’d try to set me straight, and portray my eyewitnesses as liars and sheisters.

So far I’ve only heard one side of this story, and it’s kind of harrowing.  I won’t know the other side until I ask.

Who’s out of line?! is the wildly unpopular game started in this space earlier this week!  In it, we examine actual moments of confrontation between competing Atlanta news crews, based on this blogger’s second-hand knowledge.  If you missed the first round of Who’s Out of Line?!, you overlooked an exciting judgment made in this space that, based on the subsequent comments of a participant, may very well have been flawed.  You can find Round One here.

Because these events are poorly researched and the blogger doesn’t know what he’s really talking about anyway, the names and TV stations have been omitted!  Unless the principals decide to out themselves in the comments section!

Let’s press on with round two!

DeKalb DA Robert James announces police indictments

The situation:  Atlanta TV stations are at the DeKalb County courthouse, covering a news conference announcing the indictment of three police officers.  TV crews are parked directly in front of the courthouse, accessing the main entrance of the building to cover the story.

The scenario:  Following the news conference, a reporter at Station B conducts an interview on a sidewalk outside the courthouse.  The interviewee had nothing to do with the news conference.  Observing this, a reporter from Station L walks within earshot of the interview to listen in, presumably to discern whether he too should interview this particular individual.

The confrontation:  The reporter from Station B, who had apparently arranged the interview with the unknown individual, accuses the reporter from Station L of “stalking” her, and sternly invites the Station L reporter to take a hike.

The call:  Like the reporter at Station B, I might have resented the intrusion of the reporter from Station L.  Had the Station L reporter interrupted my interview, I would have barked.  However, Station B‘s reporter should have chosen another location to conduct a “secret” or “exclusive” interview, when she knew that her competitors were on the property covering the same event.

DeKalb County Courthouse

Station L‘s reporter walked on public property to overhear a conversation taking place in full view of the public and assembled news media.  Had I been the Station L reporter, I likely would have done the exact same thing.

Perhaps Station B‘s reporter knew she was being silly by accusing her competitor of “stalking” her– figuring it wouldn’t hurt to try to chase him away.  But “stalking” is a loaded allegation.  And given the fact that “stalking” is kind of part of the job description of TV reporters, the characterization was pretty laughable.  Given the location, she should have kept it to herself.

Who’s out of line?  The reporter at Station B blew up for no valid reason.  Next time, don’t do a “secret” interview within eyeshot of your competition.

Thanks for playing!

Good news!  Today, this blog launches a service called Who’s Out of Line?  It’s a service nobody wants, and does no good whatsoever, designed to resolve the occasional disputes that arise in the field among competing TV news crews.  Because most TV news crews in the Atlanta market behave professionally and get along reasonably well, this service will appear irregularly at best.

Last week, there were a couple of unusual conflicts among competing TV crews in the Atlanta market.  I will mediate them ex post facto in this post, and another post tomorrow.   

Disclaimer:  My knowledge of these disputes is second-hand.  I’m leaving out names and TV stations.  Do I really know what I’m talking about?  Absolutely not!  Ready?  Let’s play!

Aimee Copeland

The situation:  TV stations are covering a meditation / prayer vigil in Carrollton on behalf of Aimee Copeland, a young woman who is fighting a life-threatening flesh-eating bacteria.  The vigil is indoors in a too-small room, and begins about 5pm — shortly before each station’s 6pm newscast.  The attendees arrive at the appointed hour, immediately take their positions and begin a semi-structured, mostly-silent vigil.  TV crews are awkwardly maneuvering in the tiny room, documenting the event.

The scenario:  A reporter for one station — Station X, we’ll call it — awkwardly requests an interview with one of the principals.  He whispers the request, pointing out that he is bumping up against a 6pm deadline.  It has the effect of interrupting the vigil, and is exacerbated by the principal loudly a) agreeing to the request, but b) proclaiming that “the media” is ruining the vigil.  Irritated, he invites the TV crews to immediately complete their interviews, so the group can resume the vigil uninterrupted.

The confrontation:   A reporter for another station — Station A, we’ll call it–  loudly admonishes the reporter at Station X in front of the group.  The reporter at Station A is working nightside, and has no 6pm obligation.  The reporter at Station A then follows the Station X reporter to his live truck, berating him for interrupting the vigil (which resumed following the interviews).

The call:   Unfortunately, TV folk routinely have to insert themselves into ongoing events in order to gather deadline information and other elements for their stories.  Usually, the events are big enough that the interruption of one participant doesn’t scotch the entire event.  In this case, the organizers of the event invited the news media to cover it.  The request for an interview shouldn’t have surprised the organizers.  The request, and the overreaction by the participant, made the interruption a bigger deal than it should have been.  The reporter at Station X had to do his job.

That said, the reporter at Station A was given a golden opportunity to do a bit of grandstanding, and he took advantage of it.  His competitor’s clunky behavior in a sensitive situation probably annoyed most of the participants.  The Station A reporter took an opportunity to appear to be sensitive, caring and respectful, a rare thing in local TV news.  His absence of an immediate deadline made that possible.  Yet, had the Station A reporter faced a 6pm deadline, he probably would have done the exact same thing the Station X reporter did.

I too might have been unable to resist the opportunity to grandstand. But I would have made the point, then stayed on the high road (and probably winked at the Station X reporter, because I would have respected the fact that his awkward situation could have easily been mine instead).  I certainly wouldn’t have followed the station X reporter to his truck, berating him while he was trying to make his deadline.

Who’s out of line?  The reporter from Station A should have kept his grandstanding down to a dull roar, then shut up and let it go.

Join us later in the week — maybe tomorrow — for another edition of Who’s Out of Line?!

But we ain’t dead yet.  And the writer of this piece — a twentysomething who became the number two manager in the newsroom at WXIA– thinks reports of our demise may be exaggerated.  I hope he’s right.

By Ben Mayer

A friend of mine often asks me, “What’s new with the water skiing squirrel? Did he rob a bank?” This is as cynical as it is naive, of course. Squirrels don’t have opposable thumbs. This is the ninth biggest news market in the country, not Medina, Ohio. Even if they did, they would probably have to hold a SWAT team at bay for a few hours before surrendering peacefully at 5:05 to make an evening rundown. Or maybe not.

But when I ask him how he found out about the Hemy Neuman case or the new Falcons stadium, he shrugs, “I just heard about it.” This is bad news for news barons. It is even worse for advertisers.

Doug Richards asked me to think aloud about the state of Atlanta news. It’s not like I haven’t before. I lay in bed at night wondering when I’m 65 and have a prostate the size of a squash ball will there still be a job for me? But it’s hard to think about your passion, your profession without sounding equal parts jaded, sanctimonious, and these days, fatalistic.

Five thoughts about local news:

1. We really need local news. Outlets are only as powerful as politicians and bureaucrats who consume them. We are only as relevant as the communities that watch us, read us, share us, tweet us. Traditional media outlets (which I extend to their new media arms) hold all the cards right now in Atlanta, with two notable exceptions. This will not always be the case.

2. The intertubes didn’t kill TV news. If you don’t believe me, ask 60 minutes, CBS Sunday Morning, Nightline, and MSNBC. They are all growing. They are all doing it without gas card giveaways and TV parlor tricks. As we say in the business, content is king.

3.  What makes you turn on a TV? What makes you turn on a PC? What makes you check your phone? If the answer to number 1 could be replaced by 2 and 3 it’s time to rethink news strategy. People pay $1,500 for televisions. They pay $200 for iPhones. They expect quality on the bigger screen and convenience on the smaller one.

4. Local news has to start giving people something worth watching. Every time someone changes the channel an anchorman gets his wings, hanging up a shabby blue blazer muttering, “this business has changed too much.” TMZ has justified their seat at the MSM dinner table with big breaks on Tiger Woods and Michael Jackson. What has your local news station done for you lately?

5. Social media isn’t a pyrrhic victory. Every time WAGA breaks an Eddie Long story, it raises the #failwhale from Twitter’s briny depths. That’s power, eyeballs, and viewership. And Social media hasn’t replaced news. It took Twitter to break the Trayvon Martin case. It took MSM to get people to do something about it.

Mayer concluded this with “amazing ending here!” but got distracted by his move to New York and never wrote the conclusion.  I kinda don’t think it needs one.

Mayer left WXIA in April to become a segment producer on Morning Joe at MSNBC.  He departed quite the beloved figure in our newsroom, a guy who is easily bright enough to succeed in any number of moneymaking industries that aren’t on the proverbial precipice, but opted to work in news anyway.  I’m proud to have been part of his illustrious career, and I’m gonna miss his… insight.

And there’s a plain, rectangular grey brick onto which I inscribed “4-30-92″ in green magic marker.  It marked the most dangerous day of my career, twenty years ago today.

The previous day, a Los Angeles jury had acquitted four police officers — three white, one Hispanic–  for the videotaped beating of African-American motorist Rodney King.  That night, rioting (or “civil unrest,” if you  prefer) began in LA.  The following day, it spread to other cities.

Maynard Jackson, April 29, 1992

I worked a night shift on April 30, 1992.  By the time I’d gotten to work, violence had already broken out in downtown Atlanta.  Storefronts had been smashed by crowds of angry folks.  The State Patrol ringed the Capitol with troopers and cars.  News folk were dispatched to document it.

Helen Lester was one of my go-to nightside photogs, talented and thoughtful and interesting to be around.  The desk dispatched us downtown, backing up legions of WAGA dayside personnel already covering the violence.  I remember seeing a crowd of people on Mitchell St., a few blocks west of City Hall.  There were a lot of angry voices.  A few rocks flew in various directions.  Aside from smashed storefronts, at least one marked TV news vehicle had an ugly hole in its rear windshield.  Police were around but chose not to engage the crowds, for the most part, until the following day.

We cautiously shot some footage before the desk dispatched us to the Atlanta University Center, where Mayor Maynard Jackson was going to give a speech, aimed at calming the city.  When we arrived, another crew was already set up.  We left.

Helen got into the passenger seat of our marked news car and held a Betacam in her lap.  I drove east on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive toward downtown.  As we passed the Busy Bee Cafe, we spotted Garnett Sumpter.  He was the husband of one of WAGA’s EPs, a familiar face who worked at a mortuary on MLK.  I stopped the car, got out and approached him.  Helen stayed put.

I was a white guy wearing a white shirt, exiting a white-colored car marked “Eyewitness News.”  At that moment in that neighborhood, few people fit that description.   At first blush, the vehicle may have also represented a symbol of authority, one of the few in town that wasn’t protected by police in riot gear.

As I walked toward Sumpter, I saw a crowd of people cresting a hill on a sidewalk walking toward me, a half block or so away.  Then I saw a juice bottle fly in my direction.

After that, the air seemed to fill with rocks and bricks, all of them in my direction.  The crowd ran toward me.  I ran to the car.

By the time I got to the car, the rocks began spraying the windshield.  Helen was inside, holding the Betacam to her face as the glass broke in front of her.  Getting into the car wasn’t an option.

I ran back toward Ashby St. (now Joseph E. Lowery Dr.), but I lacked speed and had no place to go.  The crowd overpowered me.  I found myself crouched face down on the sidewalk, hands covering the back of my head, pummeled by feet and hands and God knows what else.

I don’t know how long it lasted — less than a minute, pretty sure.  I heard somebody say “let’s go, let’s go” and suddenly they were gone.

Later, Garnett Sumpter told me had run to his pickup truck, retrieved a .22 pistol, and brandished the weapon to implore the crowd to move on.

The AJC reported that some 41 people were hurt, most of them reporters, photographers and police.  (Back then, the AJC actually found local TV news sufficiently interesting to write about it critically.  I pulled a piece about TV coverage from the AJC archive and have posted it here.  There’s also a brief piece here about Sumpter’s heroics.  Both links require the password “ajc”).

The previous day in Los Angeles, truck driver Reginald Denny was pulled from his truck and beaten, nearly fatally when a man smashed a large piece of concrete on his head.  I remain thankful I didn’t get the treatment Denny got.

My right eye was already starting to swell (it blackened quite nicely the following day).  I had abrasions on my forehead.  Bruises were forming from the back of my head, down.  But I was in better shape than Helen.  She successfully avoided injury to her face, thanks to the shielding qualities of her Betacam.  But the trauma of the implosion of the windshield in front of her, the rocks flying into the car and hitting her elsewhere, appeared to send her into shock.  Sumpter and I carried her to safety to his mortuary, where she was eventually treated by paramedics.  She walked unsteadily for several days afterward.

The attack seemed to happen in an instant.  Helen’s camera wasn’t powered up when it started.  She got no footage of it.

At Grady Hospital

After the paramedics left, another WAGA crew showed up and drove our car out of NW Atlanta.  They took me to Grady Hospital, where I had volunteered to do a live shot describing the incident.  That night, Shirley Washington interviewed me about it in our newsroom.

The next day was a Friday, and the TV station gave me the day off.  That day, May 1, was even worse.  The unrest had spread to the AU Center, where Atlanta police aggressively worked to contain it.

The anniversary comes to mind as coverage continues of the 2012 Trayvon Martin case in Florida, another incident of violence that has fueled race-based suspicion and distrust.  We haven’t advanced much in the last 20 years.

That night, I saw Helen’s news car in the lot, its windshield and other windows destroyed.  The interior was loaded with rocks and bricks.  I pulled one out, took it home, and inscribed it with the date.   I also kept and never washed the white shirt I wore that day.  There’s blood on the collar.  The back is covered with footprints.  Weird, I know.  It’s stashed in a closet.

Postscripts

- During the attack on the sidewalk, somebody swiped my wallet.  After removing the six dollars cash and credit cards, the wallet ended up in a mailbox.  It was delivered to my home address a few days later via US Mail.

- Within a few days, I got a some letters.  One was from a writer who said I deserved to get my white ass kicked, and that the crowd should have hurt me worse than it did.  Others were more thoughtful, sympathetic and even awkwardly apologetic.

- About a week later, an Atlanta police detective called and notified me he was investigating my assault case.  ‘Did you get any video of it?’ he asked.  I said no.  He answered with an ‘all right.  Let me know if you get any leads.’  I never heard from him again about the case.

- I thanked Garnett Sumpter by inviting him and his wife Sidmel to my home for supper, and giving him a bottle of booze.

- For years afterward, strangers would ask me:  Aren’t you that reporter what got his ass kicked downtown?

There’s a creepy character who targets children in shopping malls at this time of year… I began.  So far so good.  It was the Monday before Easter.  The heads of a few of my coworkers snapped in my direction, hoping to actually learn something they hadn’t already known.

Although the pitch was dead accurate, I was overselling the story.  That was a problem.   I don’t like to waste people’s time.  Within a few seconds, they realized I was talking about the furry man-sized Easter Bunny characters who occupy shopping malls before Easter.  There were groans, plus an acknowledgement or two of a “nice try.”  The first time I pitched it, I also had a political story in my back pocket that I pitched as a backup.  That day, I did the political story.

For the next two days, I pitched the same story the same way.  By the third day — the day a coworker taped my pitch, which I incorporated into the Suspicious Package video below — everybody in the editorial meeting could almost recite my pitch word-for-word.

The story was more than a figment of my imagination, more than an inspiration from various web sites depicting awkward moments with Easter Bunny characters.

"No comment."

I had produced such a story at WAGA 15 or so years ago.  I found it to be memorable, capped by my effort to actually interview the mute Easter Bunny character at Northlake Mall.  He wouldn’t speak.  (Moments before posting this, I located the video, embedded below.  The paisley Jerry Garcia tie, and the “fox five eyewitness news” outcue, date this piece to about 1997– which means the crying children in this piece are exiting high school / entering college right about now.)

In the next few days following the shoot, I got — no joke — ten or more voice mail messages from a gravelly-voiced man with an Asian accent:  Mr. Richards! You want real scoop about Easter Bunny?  Call me up!  Hahahaha!

By then, I’d already produced the story.  But it inspired a potential sequel — a story as yet untold.

Maybe next year.

Blayne Alexander, WXIA

Recently, an Atlanta TV reporter told me that she had been offered a job in Washington DC.  She said she was interested in the market — Our Nation’s Capital has some uniquely intriguing qualities, certainly — but she declined the job and opted to sign another contract in Atlanta.

“They wanted me to shoot my own stuff!” she lamented.

No doubt, that Washington TV station had a large stack of resumés from applicants.  Perhaps more than a few of them were from reporters eager to be one-man-bands in the nation’s eighth largest market.

I suspect my employer, WXIA-TV, has plenty of applicants for reporter positions.  With few exceptions, our new reporters are introduced as “multimedia journalists,” or backpack journalists or one-man-bands.

In March, Lionel Moise produced a behind-the-scenes piece on Blayne Alexander, a one-woman band hired a year ago out of Augusta, Georgia.  Blayne is smart, sturdy, hard-working and is extraordinarily blessed with natural talent.  I fully expect her to leapfrog the rest of us, career-wise, by the time she’s 30.  And I’m not kidding.

No pressure, kid.

Given Blayne’s relentlessly (and authentically) cheery disposition, the question might be:  Why would one balk at becoming a one-man-band?

What, are you afraid of a little hard work?

WSB and WAGA have resisted hiring one-man-bands, apparently concluding that a) day-to-day TV news coverage in Atlanta requires a team performing specialized functions, and b)  America’s ninth-largest market can still support two-person crews.  When Blayne goes solo out into the world, she encounters competitors who typically bring two-person crews to their stories.

Blayne and numerous other one-man-bands from WXIA and WGCL show this conclusion isn’t ironclad.  Many of them, like Julie Wolfe, Jerry Carnes and Matt Pearl, show that one-man-bands can shoot and edit lovely, stylish stories.

Perhaps those of us accustomed to the specialized work of two-person crews are spoiled.   In two-person crews, reporters are able to work the editorial content of stories (and schmooze newsmakers) while photographers handle armloads of gear.

Reporters in two-person crews can use the internet, make phone calls, fact-check and access contrary viewpoints while photographers safely drive vehicles from point A to points B, C and D.

Reporters in two-person crews can write (and sometimes even edit) stories in transit as a photographer drives.  Note the moment in the above video at 1:47.  Blayne isn’t the only MMJ out there who manages to write and drive at the same time.

There are many stories that are well-suited for one-man-bands.   They tend to be controlled, less news-y, less competitive, more one-stop.

There are also many instances where it makes sense for reporters to edit their own stories.  If the reporter is with a photographer, and there’s material that has to be shot close to deadline, the reporter needs to be capable of deadline editing.   Any reporter who can’t edit is very handicapped.

Likewise, a reporter ought to be able to shoot.

Perhaps one-man-bands are, in fact, the future of local TV news in Atlanta.  Certainly, those who manage TV station payrolls want to believe it.  As a reader calling himself Savannah Bob pointedly commented on this blog recently: “It’s a good thing I’m not your boss. I’d trade you for three MMJs and a cheap camera.”

But WXIA-TV just hired a photographer, an actual shooter from Asheville.  It’s a very, very encouraging development.

Monty G. White, Jr., news warrior

Monty’s company drew some deserved attention from the Better Business Bureau, and Randy Travis of WAGA.  Travis produced a piece on it five years ago, outlining its sketchy practices.

It was solid reporting, but it could have easily been lumped among the many scheisters exposed, then forgotten, on local news.  But five years later, Travis’s piece still resonates — especially with Monty White Jr.

Monty is now a man in a cyberbunker, waging war on reporters like Travis, and on customers who go public with their unhappy experiences with his HVAC company.

Monty’s company is now called Mechanic’s Heating and Air Conditioning.  It currently has an “F” rating with the Better Business Bureau.  Travis reports he’s done business under several names.

Monty has lots of web sites (I’ll provide no links), all of them within the umbrella of his HVAC company, and an LLC awkwardly called Mechanic’s Responds.  The latter is his “news” organization (with a logo for what he calls “the F team”).  Its purpose is to answer Monty’s critics.

So far, so good.  Monty White Jr. has as much right as anybody to use the internet to talk about whatever he wants.  A genuinely aggrieved party might take issue with news coverage or customer complaints by detailing the issues faced in the disputes, and making his case.  Monty does a little bit of that.

But he does much more.

Using public records, he has posted Randy Travis’s home address in Lawrenceville.  Monty has also posted the names of Travis’s wife and children, and the property tax records of his home.

He has done the same to customers.  In a wickedly perverse twist, Monty has purchased URLs that mimic the names of his targets.  For example, Simon Weinstein is a former customer who spoke with Travis years ago.  Go to simonweinstein.com, and you’ll see Monty’s hit on Weinstein, listing his home address, its tax records, and links to Weinstein’s divorce records.  There are a dozen or so other examples.

What Monty has done to Wendy Saltzman is even worse.  Saltzman, of WGCL, conducted a hidden-camera sting in February that snared Mechanics among a number of sketchy HVAC dealers.  Saltzman has told her viewers that Monty retaliated by posting her home address and phone number on one of his web sites.

Monty has supplemented his attack on Saltzman.  He has a page calling her a “lying bitch,” and is loaded with sexually explicit innuendo that could be used to smear anybody.  Except he doesn’t do it to Travis.  Monty, a twice-divorced father of four girls, appears to save his ugliest attacks for women.

Saltzman has made an impact in her seven years in Atlanta as an investigative reporter.  It would be easy to suggest that she dismiss Monty’s nasty missives, posted on sites nobody reads.

But Monty plays the search engine game with a measure of skill.  Saltzman values her reputation and plays hardball.  She’s talking with defamation attorney Lin Wood, who reportedly reached settlements with NBC, CNN and the New York Post over the Richard Jewell libel case.

That may make the hairs on Monty’s neck stand a bit.

On one hand, nobody in the news biz wants to set up First Amendment roadblocks.  If you try to curb a guy like Monty, you curb free speech.  On the other hand, legitimate news folk don’t play “news” the way Monty does, with an utter absence of a conscience or ethics.  Got a beef with a reporter?  Make your case.  But post a reporter’s home address?  It’s not relevant.  It’s mere harassment, designed to have a chilling effect.

I produced a story about Monty’s curious customer relations this month, interviewing Weinstein.  The piece lacked the hidden-camera heft of Saltzman and Travis’s pieces.

Monty responded with an email crowing that, because of all of the fab news coverage his company has gotten, he would post “as seen on TV” emblems on his Mechanics trucks.

Since then, Monty has written some dark emails to me demanding this-and-that, while ignoring my interview requests.  I fully expect him to post my home address, which is 602 N. Highland Ave. NE, Atlanta GA 30307. Maybe he’ll buy dougrichards.com, which is currently owned by a domain broker who wants $1800 for it.

Since I’m not female, I doubt he’ll disparage me sexually.

What won’t he do?  According to Fred Elsberry of the Atlanta Better Business Bureau, improving his business methods doesn’t rank high on his to-do list.  He’s got lots of time to create numerous web sites that slam customers and reporters.  He even wrote a song about Simon Weinstein.

But actually improving his “F” rating?  That would take real work.