When Will They Ever Learn

No, this isn't an anti-war column, although I could easily write one of those. There are plenty of things people don't seem capable of learning. 
One of those is not to foul their nests. 
You would think it's pretty obvious, you don't throw your garbage on the floor or out the window, do you? I mean when that lunatic group down in Philadelphia threw their garbage out their windows in a row house, the neighbors went out and bought guns. Ostensibly because of the rats, but who knows for sure?
But people who live and fish and swim and otherwise have fun in Lake Hopatcong seem to have a problem understanding that throwing things in the lake is pretty much the same as throwing things out the window. 

About 400 volunteers took the time one chilly Saturday morning to pull the stuff out of the lake, or at least at the edge of the lake, which was lowered five feet for the five-year drawdown to allow lakefrom home and business owners to do repairs on docks and other structures without the expense of erecting a coffer dam. The volunteers, led by 40 team leaders, didn't go into the muckiest parts of the lake for safety reasons, but they still pulled out thousands of aluminum cans, glass and plastic bottles, cell phones (lots and lots of cell phones) articles of clothing, tools and many, many tires. 
Now, it's likely some of those things -- like the cell phones and some small tools -- fell out of pockets when someone leaned over while fixing a boat. It's also likely a few of those cell phones was thrown at someone during a dockside domestic dispute, probably fueled by the contents of some of those cans. 
But some of the debris was the result of carelessness. Of not thinking or not caring. And that's just wrong. The lake isn't just a playground. It's a water source for downstream. It's a mechanism to recharge the watershed that has been robbed of water by development in the Musconetcong River Watershed. It's also home to fish and other aquatic animals and provides sustenance for muskrat, mink, raccoon and other mammals. 
The Lake Hopatcong Foundation, which sponsored the clean-up, hopes the sheer about of debris found will be a wake-up call to lake residents and visitors. 

Who is a Journalist?

It used to be easy-ish to define.
We didn't call ourselves journalists, but we knew who we were.
We called ourselves newspapermen or newspaperladies. We distinguished ourselves from broadcast folk. They were a little effete, you know? They didn't speak, they intoned.And the TV people were "hairdos." We were the real deal. 
We were professional in the sense most of us at least went to college. Not everybody majored in journalism. Being a Good, Little, Italian Girl, I majored in English/Secondary Education so I would get not only a diploma, but also a piece of paper that said I could get a job. 
It lied, but that's beside the point.
I did get a newspaper job -- not exactly as a reporter, more like doing the recipe column, the Puzzlegraph, which was some sort of word-play contest I had to judge and send out the prizes for, fill-in as darkroom tech and occasionally on the stat camera and do weddings, engagements, baby announcements and cover one municipality. And a couple of municipal courts. 
You have no idea how many people light fires in parks when fires aren't allowed. Just sayin'. . .
Later, I became a reporter. Covered three towns, answered the phone, took the ad proofs to Cohen's of Washington because they wanted them on a day the ad rep was working in another town, took pictures of guys with trout on the first day of the season, took pictures of guys with deer on the first day of the season.
You know, a reporter. 
Not a journalist.
After Woodward and Bernstein, the term journalist came closer to the lexicon. Then "investigative" was added as a modifier/ A mostly unnecessary modifier, since every reporter has to dig on occasion. And it is digging, like grave digging. Not some exciting romp. 
Today, the digital revolution has produced all sorts of people who call themselves journalists. Many erroneously. 
The New Jersey Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists held a two-hour form on the question of who is a journalist. Notice I didn't say "to answer the question," because we were reasonably sure we couldn't.
What did become clear, unsurprisingly, was that people who have worked in the news business for years, who chose it as a profession in spite of the long hours and low pay, don't believe random bloggers and other "citizen journalists" fit any definition we are familiar with. 
Not because they don't have degrees. Not even because they don't have employers who are actual. publishers. But because they aren't practicing journalism the way we practice it. Some are ethical. Some can research. Some are objective. But not all of them are. Some aren't even willing to write under their own names. 
We talked -- something we love to do -- argued a little -- something else we love to do, and came to the conclusion we should do these forums more often. 

                                        If anyone knows about professional journalism, it's
                                        Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Alter.

                                         Michael Stephen Daigle has worked for traditional and
                                         new media.

                                         John Ensslin and Clay Dobosh listen to the debate on
                                         who is a journalist.

In the Company of Giants

He looks a bit frail and rambles a little when he talks, but the gentleman above is still Jimmy Breslin.
While it is incomprehensible to some of us that he was never so honored before, maybe the same year as his buddy, Pete Hamill, nevertheless, the Deadline Club chose Breslin and seven fellow journalism legends to induct into their Hall of Fame on Thursday, November 14.

                                         Here's Hamill with Colin DeVries of the Daily News

The luncheon was at Sardi's, as you can tell from the smiling faces on the wall above Breslin and Alex Tarquinio, president of the Deadline Club. I believe that is Lucille Ball in the upper left-hand corner.
Breslin talked about getting into journalism after learning the electrician who fixed things in his grandmother's basement in Richmond Hill would occasionally drive to Ossining (literally "up the river) to throw the switch on the electric chair at SingSing. He wanted to watch. Of course, but the time he was working for The Long Island Press and could go, he no longer wanted to see the spectacle.
I shook Jimmy Breslin's hand once before. When I lived in NYC, he and Norman Mailer, ran for Mayor and City Council President of the city and they announced on Staten Island, because no one had ever announced there before, not on The Forgotten Borough. So, once settled on Staten Island, they decided to announce at Wagner College, certainly one of the loveliest places on the Island, and a bit of an anomaly, a Protestant Parochial College within the city limits.
That earlier experience didn't diminish meeting him again.
I met his friend, Hamill when Alex asked me to herd the attendees to their tables. I pointed out to Pete it was above my pay grade, but asked him to find his seat.
Breslin wasn't the only honoree who brought friends.
Cindy Adams was the first honored, alphabetically. She came with Barbara Walters, who looks much more frail than Breslin.
Adams was funny. She talked about how her career started because her husband knew the Shah of Iran, who, was, at that time, dying in a city hospital. She also told of her acquaintance with Manuel Noriega ("if you're indicted, your invited"), including being cut off when he called her from prison by her Yorkshire Terrier, Jazzy.

 

Also honored was Grayden Carter, editor of Vanity Fair. Being an editor, he said little more than "thank you."

Bob Herbert worked for two of the great newspapers of the city, The Daily News, in the days when that tabloid was in its iconic 34th Street building with the giant globe in the lobby. The globe is still there, but it no longer rotates. Sort of like The Day the Earth Stood Still.The Daily News was used as The Daily Planet in the Superman movies. Herbert was also an op-ed columnist for The Grey Lady, The New York Times. Among his stories was one about expense accounts in the old days. If a reporter had to go out of town, it involved getting a cash advance from the basement finance office. It also involved a lot of paperwork. One day, Herbert was asked if he had a credit card. He said yes and was sent to Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Carol Loomis is a senior editor at Fortune and the editor of a biography of Warren Buffet. My daughter the accountant says "there are a lot of those," but hers is Tap Dancing to Work. The audience related to her talk about being afraid every day at work. "Fear is a great motivator."
Linda Mason was the first woman to work as a producer for the CBS Evening News. She worked with Walter Cronkite, which is very much like working with God. She started her career at the Times-Herald-Record in Middletown, NY.

I had the pleasure of telling Bill Moyers we have a mutual friend, Cathy Bao Bean. But, I've known her longer. Moyers is a great speaker -- big surprise, I know. He pointed out that "news is what people want to keep hidden, everything else is publicity." He also noted "getting at the truth is almost as hard as hiding it in the first place."

Norman Pearlstine, unlike several of the other honorees, started his career in broadcast and now is becoming Chief Content Officer at Time, Inc. He calls this the "second phase" of his career.
After the luncheon (which was amazing) and speeches, we sophisticated, classy journalists acted like school kids with our heroes.
Of course.
We were in the company of giants.

 

Parks and Rec

I really am not a situation comedy person. 
Ok, I kinda enjoyed Seinfeld. Friends, Will and Grace, but I haven't really loved a sitcom since Murphy Brown. and before that, Wings.
Which probably means I have a thing for "workplace" sitcoms as opposed to "family" sitcoms. Which those of my vast number of readers with a Freudian bent will undoubtedly interpret in some sinister manner. 
The point is, I have been totally loving Parks and Recreation.
For one thing, it's hysterically funny. For another, it's almost painfully real.
For those of you not familiar, P&R is about a small city in Indiana and the employees of its parks and recreation department, notably the deputy director Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler. Leslie is one of those relentlessly optimistic civil servants who takes her job seriously and works hard. In other words, she's constantly besieged by the public, her co-workers and the city council. Living proof that no good deed goes unpunished.
The other main characters are: Ron, the director of P&R, who hates government in any way, shape or form; Tom, the sleazy, womanizing co-worker; April, the depressed and Goth intern; Ann Perkins, a nurse with a giant hole int he lot next to hers; Andy, Ann's ex-boyfriend who fell in the hole and then lived in it; Donna and Jerry, two co-workers with lesser roles, but lots of fun when allowed. A few other occasional characters drop in: Orrin, a performance artist who rarely moves; John-Ralphio, a friend of Tom's with the personality of a car insurance commercial; Mona Lisa, J-R's sister who is mean as a snake. 
As the seasons moved on, there were some changes. Mark, the city planner who dated Leslie and then Ann, leaves, and the city is invaded by bureaucrats from Indianapolis. Chris is hyperactive, manic and tiresomely healthy. Ben is quieter, smart and cute. 
Naturally, various other city employees and officials drop in now and again.
Another character is City Hall which is festooned with murals painted in a more simple time. And by simple, I mean a time during which it was perfectly ok to treat the local Indian tribe like dogs. Or worse. The murals are a hoot.
In pretty much every episode, an incident arises that reminds me of something I covered as a municipal beat reporter. 
I mean, I've never covered a giant hole being turned into a park, but I have covered the rivalry among municipal departments and it does get just as weird as it does on TV. As does the rivalry between neighboring towns. 
I would highly recommend Parks and Rec to anyone, but especially to anyone who has experience with municipal government. 

We Don't Need Another Hero

I have never been one to have "heroes." 
Role models, maybe, but not "heroes."
I remember Jane Fonda once saying women have to be their own heroes. I get that. All too often we don't have anyone appropriate to look up to. More than women in the "first wave," but not so many.
Which is not to say we don't look up to people in our profession.
I had the opportunity to meet one of the people I have long admired.
Geneva Overholser has had many prestigious jobs in the newspaper business, but she first rose to fame when she took a phone call from a rape victim to wanted her story told. 
The press doesn't report the names of victims of sexual assault, but often we wonder if that actually is a good or a bad thing. Protecting their privacy is a good thing on the surface, but doesn't it also perpetuate the idea that there is something to be ashamed of?
The woman who called Overholser at the Des Moines Register thought so. Her name was published and more important, her story was told. It was told in a five-part series, after the trial of the rapist, that won the Register a Pulitzer Prize.
"When we won the Pulitzer," Overholser said, "it sounded like we were campaigning for change, but we were just telling a story."
That's the whole point of what we do as journalists, we tell stories. Sometimes those stories strike a chord and things change and sometimes they don't, but when they need to be told, we tell them. 
When I read about Overholser's decision to run the series, I was very impressed because I knew she would take some flak, but I also knew she was doing the right thing. 
Which is a hell of a thing to aspire to. So often doing the right thing isn't easy and it results in flak from unimaginative people. Or angry people. Or people with agendas. 
So maybe I have some heroes. 

 

What are We Doing to Our Kids?

I'm not one of those people who laments what the younger generation is coming to. 
I always thought that was pretty silly because every generation has trouble with the next one. 
But whenever I hear from people who still have kids in school I do worry about the generation that is running the public education system in this country. 
For one thing, the country on this subject, as on so many, the country is upside down. 
For every $1 spend on early childhood education, $7 is saved later. But, since the Reagan administration, preschool programs have been underfunded. 
It's not rocket science. If you send kids to preschool, they get a head start on education -- hence the name of the program: Head Start. 
In Italy, where pretty much all children go to preschool, there is virtually no spending on special education later because kids with problems are diagnosed early and dealt with. And considering the obscene amount of money we spend in America on special ed (which is fodder for about 10 more columns) we should really look at that. 
Then when kids get into public school, the same government that doesn't want to spend any money on preschool doesn't want to spend money there either. Unless that money goes to more testing. Teachers are inundated with paperwork for evaluation after evaluation. Kids are taught to do well on tests that may or may not have anything to do with anything else. What's wrong with that picture? Maybe everything?
When my kids were in elementary school, even in a tiny town, they had a certain number of opportunities to do projects. Egg drops, roller coasters, science fairs, talent shows. From what moms tell me, the kids in grammar school today don't get a chance to do even basic reports. Even if they had those opportunities, when would the teachers get a chance to grade their papers? 
So many experienced teachers are retiring as soon as they are eligible because teaching isn't what they went into. They are getting evaluated many times a year, even after they have proved their worth. They are bogged down in inane paperwork that has nothing to do with education. They are administering tests that are meaningless. 
They are unhappy. 
And how can the best people possibly go into teaching? Why would they be interested? People go into teaching because they like children, they like teaching, they want to make a difference. If they don't have that opportunity, they might as well find another profession. 
 
 

Farewell, Larchmont

Those of us who came of age in the era when dads went to work and moms stayed home looked at Betty Freidan a little differently than her contemporaries.
She must have scared the women who drove their husband's to the station every morning, who wore housedresses and aprons, who mixed martinis and got dinner on the table every night by 6. Not that they loved the life they had, but it was the only life they knew.
And for the ladies at Larchmont Station, it may not have been fulfilling, but it had its perks, nights in the city, shopping sprees on Fifth Avenue, summers at the Jersey Shore or in the Catskills.
Unbeknownst to them, and their children, not all women of the 1950s and 60s had that life.
It was a less connected time. We didn't have a 24-hour news cycle. We didn't know everything that happened to everyone else.
That was good and bad. We weren't bombarded by fake news, but we also didn't have a handle on people who weren't just like us.
The Larchmont Ladies may have been dissatisfied, but there were far more women who didn't have the advantages of Catskill summers and Bonwit Teller charge plates.
"The best poverty prevention is a paycheck," former Vermont Governor Madeline Kunin told a roomful of professional women at the Journalism and Women Symposium in Essex Junction, VT.
Kunin was from the generation that was scared by Freidan, but she herself wasn't scared by much of anything.
A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, Kunin wasn't prepared for the reception, or lack of it, when she applied for newspaper jobs.
She was prepared to move ahead in any career she chose, journalism, politics, academia. And now, author and speaker.
She talks about the feminist movement of Betty Freidan and its broader implications. "She asked women to make the most of their education which is asking for peace and prosperity," Kunin said. Countries that repress women are repressing themselves. They can't maintain prosperity without women."
She counts the US as one of those countries in the sense that it celebrates traditional male values.
"The business community is opposed to family friendly values," she said, even when they are multi-national companies that abide by those values in the other countries in which they operate.
Kunin inspired not only the students and young professionals int he audience, but also the experienced professional women.