All these wonderful things

The Great Christopher Glenn Retires

All these wonderful things wants to note the retirement of the journalist Christopher Glenn from CBS News.

Glenn spent the last 35 years at CBS, primarily known for his anchoring of the CBS Radio programs World News Round-Up and The World Tonight. For the past ten years, he has produced, written and narrated the CBS Radio broadcast What's in the News.

But, for me, Christopher Glenn will be best remembered for the Saturday morning news-for-kids show In The News, which aired on CBS television from 1971-1986. Notable both because the program covered news from around the globe and because Glenn never talked down to his pre-teen audience, In The News was one of the things that got me interested in journalism and in telling true stories.

For the two decades since, it's been great to turn on the radio and hear that same voice (if you're wondering which voice I'm talking about, you can click here and here) with the news from around the world and around the country. Not only did Christopher Glenn have, in my opinion, the best voice on news radio, he also was one of the best writers. Clear, concise, intelligent.

"I've been doing it, in the business, at least, for about 50 years, 35 here. Done it all, seen a lot, had a very good time, very few disappointments, very few bad days if you want to put it that way, and I'm sorry to go, but it's time now."

Tim Russert, Keeping Quiet for All the Wrong Reasons

Meet the Press' Tim Russert, who for months talked about the CIA leak case as if he knew nothing about it, and who later got testy with Don Imus when the I-man asked about Andrea Mitchell's drunken comments about Valerie Plame, fought against testifying in the CIA leak case because he knew that his testimony would contradict that of now-indicted VP aide Scooter Libby, the Washington Post reported today.

Even though Libby, Russert's source, had released Russert from any promise of confidentiality, Russert and NBC's lawyers initially announced that they would fight the subpeona to testify on the grounds that it might harm relationships with other sources (not to mention his cozy relationship with administration sources). The lawyer's arguments had been sealed until now, apparently released after a NY Times request (Arianna Huffington wonders why the Times got scooped again on this story).

The 10 Least Wonderful Things of 2005

Everyone has their year-end lists. Pitchfork's got their top 50 albums of the year, the Voice has their 7th annual film crix poll, Movie City News keeps a critics scorecard of their own, and the Indiewire kids pick their favorites - kudos to Jonny Leahan for leading his list with Jem Cohen's Chain.

For my own take on the year that is almost past, I wanted to pay due reference to my blog's title. So, herewith, my (first) annual, highly subjective, randomly considered list of ten of the least wonderful things of the past year (the most wonderful things will be unveiled in the next day or so). The usual caveats apply:

10. The Demolition of Busch Stadium
More than just the ballpark of my youth, Busch was the last of the so-called "cookie cutter" stadiums, built for baseball, football, concerts, revivals, you name it, and as such, was thought to be a dinosaur. (Where are the luxury boxes? Where is the swimming pool?) Most of the folks who like the new back-to-classic stadium designs couldn't understand why anyone would be sentimental about the place. But as St. Louis has always been a mecca for baseball (with some of the best and most knowledgeable fans going), the stadium has had its own sense of hallowed ground.

These days, the life cycle for stadiums appears to be three or four decades, and fans (mostly) seem OK with demolishing the old ones for better seats, snacks and atmosphere. But there was history in that place, from McGwire's home runs, Brock's stolen bases, Gibson's pitching, Buck's play-by-play. And while the history remains, the actual site is no more, destined to be a mixed-use, "entertainment-dstrict".

Where's Linda Hamilton When You Need Her?

     "In his career as a professional body builder, in
     competitions, as an actor and certainly as a politician,
     Arnold Schwarzenegger has never suffered a night
     like this. This appears to be a stunning defeat for the
     Governor of California. All four of his measures, it
     appears, headed to defeat, for a special election that,
     according to every poll state-wide, most people did
     not want, cost 50-60 million dollars and 250 million in
     campaign contributions. And what was accomplished?
     Frankly, nothing.

     KNBC-TV Los Angeles Reporter Conan Nolan

OK, sure, it was a bad night for Arnold, but never suffered a night like this? Have we all forgotten Last Action Hero? Or for heaven's sake, this day could not possibly be as bad as the day his agent called to say that his co-star in Jingle All the Way was Sinbad (who is, by the way, available for your next corporate booking...oh wait, so is Arnold...).

Nightline: The Long Goodbye (or Forget About That Nonsense, We're All Going to Die)

Ted Koppel made me want to be a journalist.

I don’t remember a specific moment when I realized this, but I do remember that at some point I began to tell everyone that I was going to be a journalist like Ted Koppel and work on a show like Nightline. One of my teachers even wrote in my Sophomore yearbook, “See you on Nightline”. She might have been joking, but I wasn’t.

I went to Missouri to study journalism. I worked at the NBC affiliate in Columbia, Missouri, reporting news and feature stories, and occasionally anchoring the noon and weekend news. By the end of this run, I began to realize that I wasn’t interested in doing 90 second stories on “what can we all do to cool off in this hot weather” or “localizing” (making a national story somehow relevant to the local audience) the latest news from Washington.

When Ombudsmen Attack

Byron Calame, the NY Times Public Editor, criticized last week for not writing about the Judith Miller mess, weighs in Sunday with a blistering attack on Miller. This comes on the heels of a Maureen Dowd column in Saturday's Times and Friday's aforementioned Bill Keller what-have-we-learned email.

If you want to get a ringside seat for the battle that is brewing within the Times' newsroom, read these three items.

Society of Professional Huh?

Back in my days at the Missouri School of Journalism, I got involved briefly with the campus chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. It seemed a fine organization; they had a decent magazine that usually could be counted on to both defend and critique journalism, its successes and flaws. [You can download their current issue as a PDF here.] Their motto - "Improving & Protecting Journalists" - a lofty and admirable charge.

But the SPJ, like many others within the national media, has administered a self-inflicted wound with their recent feting of the compromised (former?) NY Times reporter Judy "the aspens are glorious" Miller.

Last week, at their National Journalism Conference in Las Vegas (!), the SPJ handed Miller their "First Amendment Award", then had her join a panel entitled "The Reporter's Privilege Under Siege".

This Week at the NYT: Oops, We Did It Again

After months of praising self-made martyr and co-conspirator Judy Miller, the editor of the New York Times - Bill Keller - has finally, finally realized that perhaps the paper's blind allegiance to its most compromised reporter was a bad, bad, bad idea.

In a devastating email to his employees (sent apparently after numerous staffers have complained about the Times' defense of Miller and the subsequent revelations that Miller had, how to say, not been truthful to her editors about her role in the Plame affair and her chumminess with Scooter Libby & Co.), Miller, at long last, admits that perhaps standing by their woman wasn't such a great idea.

Some of the key portions, via Crooks & Liars:

A Nightline Trio Platter

It was announced last week that ABC News has named three (count 'em, three) anchors to replace the departing Ted Koppel on its signature news program, Nightline. The three anchors are ABC's White House correspondent Terry Moran, Prime Time Live co-anchor (and executor of the Katherine Hepburn estate - I shit you not) Cynthia McFadden and Brit documentarian-cum-20/20 correspondent Martin Bashir (most famous for his questionable Michael Jackson documentary of a few years back).

While I'm generally pleased that Nightline has included a documentary filmmaker in this mix (whatever the issues regarding the Jackson piece, at least he's no Nick Broomfield) and it makes sense that they reached into their own stable, I'm still puzzled by the choice of these three. What of Chris Bury, Koppel's regular substitute, or John Donvan, who has the foreign policy chops to handle a tough gig like the Nightline chair.

About to Drop Redux

The whirling, swirling torrent of rumors related to indictments in the CIA leak case went into overdrive tonight with The Huffington Post reporting that both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that indicate that none other than Vice President ("I never met you before tonight") Cheney may be a target of Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

It's been accepted for a while that if anyone is to be indicted, Cheney's chief of staff "Scooter" Libby is a likely target, but no one had yet tried to claim that good ole ("last throes") Dick might be tossed in the slammer. Prior to this, the closest anyone came to implicating Cheney was HuffPost's Lawrence O'Donnell, who predicted last Thursday: