Monsoon's Update on Weekend Snow Potential, Arctic Cold
Friends,
An update on the weekend snow potential, and beyond…
Look for temperatures to rise into the low 40s this afternoon, melting most of what laid yesterday, then plummet down toward 20 overnight.
Saturday will be colder with a high reaching only 36 as a strong cold front moves through in the afternoon. Look for snow flurries and showers in the afternoon and through the evening, perhaps extending overnight. But this area of precipitation now appears as though it will deal us only a glancing blow, so I’m not expecting more than a dusting to an inch in our area.
The call for Saturday, then: overcast with widely scattered snow showers; winds increase during the day. High 36, low 18. Evening and overnight wind chills will reach into the single digits, so bundle up!
Sunday will see clearing, persistently windy conditions, and extreme cold. High 21, low 9.
Cold again, partly cloudy and breezy on Monday with a high of 25 and a low of 15.
Next chances for snow are Tuesday throughout the day and evening; this has the potential to drop a few inches in our area, so stay tuned on that one. Thursday the 24th is looking rather like Saturday with light snow and scattered snow showers. On Tuesday the 29th, there’s a major system that could drop some serious-assed snow in our area. I know that will be music to many of your earholes!
Have a great extended weekend…
Monsoon
Monsoon's Weather Alert for Thursday, 17 January 2008
Friends,
There have been some alarming forecasts that as much as four inches of snow could accumulate in our area today into tomorrow. I have reexamined the latest meteorological indicators and here’s what I think it going to happen:
Look for flurries and light snow beginning late morning and continuing through the late afternoon, accumulating a coating to an inch and a half at most (more in northern Berks and the Lehigh Valley, where the changeover will take longer; less in Lancaster County, where the changeover will happen more rapidly).
As our region is gradually infused with warm air aloft, we’ll see precipitation mix with sleet at first; expect a snow-sleet mixture as precipitation gets steadier, anytime from 3pm to 9pm. Freezing rain is also likely late in this period.
Toward midnight we should start to see rain mixing in with the sleet, then precipitation should change over to all rain after midnight—washing away what little accumulation may have lain.
Rain will taper and end by the middle of Friday morning at the latest, and then we may even see some sunshine in the afternoon.
Driving conditions should be fine this afternoon, but use caution because even the merest coating on the roadway can cause periodic slippage.
The period from roughly 4pm to 10pm—when the temperature aloft is rising, but the surface temperatures are still pretty cold—is the period I’m most concerned about. Sleet and freezing rain can cause problems with icing on roads, especially less-traveled ones. Use the most caution during this period.
The Friday morning commute should be just fine, but be aware of slick spots that may appear, as temperatures will still be hovering just above freezing as we make our way giddily to our places of employment.
Highs and lows: Thursday 36/30; Friday 44/21; Saturday 36/15 with scattered snow showers possible; Sunday 22/9.
Cancellations: Early dismissal Thursday 35%; delay Friday 25%; cancellation Friday 10%.
Drive safely!
Monsoon
Monsoon's Quick Weather Update for Thursday, 16 January 2008
My friends…
Just a quick update about tomorrow’s winter weather(ish) event and beyond…
[A note to my readers outside the immediate Dutch Country region: My forecast area is roughly the central and southern Berks County and northern Lancaster County region, with periodic comments on an expanded area including Philadelphia, the Lehigh Valley, and other parts of central Pennsylvania.]
Wednesday 1/16: sunny and clear after some AM flurries; light and variable winds. High 41, low 27.
Thursday 1/17: overcast with a chance of flurries or brief snow showers (with rain mixed) in the late morning and afternoon. Snow mixing with rain in the evening, changing to all snow overnight and accumulating perhaps an inch to an inch and a third. High 38, low 32.
Friday 1/18: brief morning snow showers turning to rain as temperatures warm up slightly and ending gradually by late morning. Temperatures will then plummet in the evening as the “arctic freeze” sets in; we won’t get above freezing again until the middle of next week. High 44, low 23.
Probability of delay Thursday: 10%
Probability of cancellation Thursday: 5%
Probability of early dismissal Thursday: 20%
Probability of delay Friday: 25%
Probability of cancellation Friday: 10%
Probability of raining frogs: 5%
Saturday 1/19: partly cloudy with a flurry or brief snow shower or two throughout the day. High 31, low 15.
Sunday 1/20: partly sunny, brisk, and very, very cold. High 22, low 11.
Monday 1/21: partly to mostly sunny and continued cold. High 28, low 19.
Tuesday 1/22: partly cloudy. High 29, low 15.
Wednesday 1/23: partly cloudy and a bit less frigid. High 34, low 23.
Thursday 1/24: partly sunny; then becoming overcast with snow developing in the evening and continuing overnight. This has the potential to be a measurable event, so stay tuned for updates. High 32, low 18.
Friday 1/25: tapering to flurries early, then partly cloudy and less frigid. High 37, low 23.
Next weekend: partly to mostly cloudy with highs in the low 40s and lows in the 20s.
Beyond: some sleet and/or snow for Monday the 28th and/or Tuesday the 29th. Otherwise rather cold with highs around freezing and lows dipping into the teens…
Monsoon
"The Wire" episode 53 notes & observations - contains spoilers
“The Wire” – episode 53
Notes and observations; episode 53 is on HBO On Demand only and will air on Sunday, January 20th at 9pm. Please be aware there are spoilers present below.
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Episode 53—tagline, “They’re dead where it doesn’t count” from Fletcher—was one of the best of the series so far, in any season—the writing, the plot twists, the character development were all stellar.
The episode focuses on a wide range of topics, from Marlo’s money laundering to Michael’s tension between childhood and his responsibilities to his corner; from the Clay Davis Grand Jury to upheaval in the commissioner’s office; from cuts at The Sun to McNulty’s concocted serial killer.
The episode begins by concentrating on the aftermath of the murders by Snoop and Chris in episode 53, namely the ink it receives. Alma Gutierrez’ article, headlined “Three killed in west side home invasion,” was originally 35 column-inches and appeared destined for the front page. Instead it receives 12 inches below the fold in the Metro section. Alma runs from store to store at around 5 in the morning looking for the paper, then finally ends up at one of the printing plants to get a look at her first “front,” or front-page story for which she has the sole byline (so-called because it contains “By” and the reporter’s name). Gus apologetically says, “your piece took a bad bite,” acknowledging that Alma’s article was cut considerably; though it wasn’t his fault, he says “we messed up” in not giving the story a more prominent place.
The problem, according to Fletcher, is that “they’re dead where it doesn’t count,” and speculates that it’s the “wrong zip code.” If three had been killed in Timonium, an affluent, 90% white suburb of Baltimore, it would have received front-page status and at least 35 inches.
Soon the troops are gathered in The Sun’s newsroom (they’re even fetched from across the hall in Features and Sports) for announcements by the managing editor and the executive editor, James C. Whiting. Gus and some veterans of the newsroom speculate that “maybe we got sold again,” a reference to the fact that first the LA Times then the Chicago Tribune have bought The Sun in recent years. Gus observes sardonically that “we’re the minnow” because they keep getting swallowed up by media conglomerates. There’s also speculation that Whiting might be poised to announce Pulitzer Prize wins for the paper, but these are not due out for a week—and besides, Gus notes, if he were about to deliver such news, he would be sporting an unmistakable erection.
Whiting begins by using vague, euphemistic language to hint at what’s to come: buyouts and layoffs. “The news hole is shrinking,” he says, and advertising dollars are down. The news hole refers to the news content to be produced, increasingly dictated by the amount of space that needs to be allocated in each day’s paper. The bigger the ad space and other peripherals, the smaller the news hole. Because circulations are generally down, advertisers are being more and more stingy with their advertising dollars at newspapers. Whiting goes on to say that “technology is driving distribution” and that the internet has become a free source of news content. As I’ve discussed before, and others have picked up on, the newspaper industry has, by and large, allowed technology to control the gathering and dissemination of news, rather than harnessing technology into a profitable and affirming tool. In other words, the newspapers have gotten played by the internet rather than playing it, to borrow one of the show’s many taglines.
As a result of all this, Whiting says that “hard choices” had to be made in order to meet “budgetary targets” set by the Tribune company. Five foreign bureaus—London, Beijing, Moscow, Johannesburg, and Jerusalem—are to be shuttered immediately. (See my post on episode 51 for a more in-depth exploration of this trend.) There will also be a fresh round of buyouts involving veteran workers, along with layoffs. For the first of two utterances in the episode (and his third over all this season), Whiting says they need to “find ways to do more with less.”
Then managing editor Thomas Klebanow (David Kostabile) is thrown to the wolves by Whiting as he reads a prepared statement and fields their questions. He talks about a “voluntary separation plan”—a euphemistic way of saying “buyouts” that is laughably antiseptic in tone. Under a VSS (voluntary separation scheme), the corporate entity eliminates the positions of those who “volunteer” to take buyouts, saving the company lots of money in the long run. Essentially, veteran workers are “voluntarily” separated from their jobs, the jobs themselves are separated from the newsroom, and the newspaper is separated more and more from the quality on which it once prided itself. Some employees will be “moving on to other opportunities beyond The Sun.” Aside from the celestial implications of such a move, this is another euphemistic way of saying that there will be firings.
Gus Haynes (Clark Johnson), the conscience of the newsroom and the voice of true journalism in the show, asks of Klebanow, “How come there’s cuts in the newsroom when the paper’s still profitable?” It’s a valid question, since the profits of most newspapers, though down, are still the envy of many ordinary corporations. But the managing editor only offers corporate doublespeak and bottom-line apologetics in response. Gus is later pulled in to a meeting with Whiting and Klebanow during which he’s told that “we’re counting on you to transition the new team” and Gus shares his frustrations and concerns that he is being left with a gutted staff.
The word “cooked” is used a couple of times in this episode. It occurs to me that one of the themes of this episode and season in general is becoming the idea of “cooking,” a term with origins in accounting; to “cook the books” means to falsify financial records to cover up wrongdoing, inflate profits, or hide deficits. In the school plot, the jump in numbers (test scores are up 15%, apparently) is likely the result of “cooking”—though this isn’t stated; Burrell has “cooked” his crime statistics, for which his job is in jeopardy; McNulty is “cooking” the cases to produce a phony narrative about a serial killer targeting the homeless; Scott Templeton is “cooking” his pieces, it’s becoming clear (more on that later); and Prop Joe is “cooking” (really, laundering) money for Marlo, which also tangentially involves Clay Davis.
Speaking of “cooked” crime statistics, the mayor’s office is planning to “leak” the real statistics to The Sun. This term means to give out information surreptitiously, usually for personal or professional reasons involving strategy or retribution. (The Valerie Plame CIA “leak” case comes to mind here as a particularly nefarious example of this phenomenon, but ordinary leaks happen all the time, usually involve little harm, and are quite indispensable to both the political and journalistic systems.) Cut to a scene with Carcetti’s chief of staff and political voice of reason Norman Wilson (Reg E. Cathey) sitting at a bar with city editor Gus Haynes, who had been summoned via text message by Norman. It’s revealed that Norman used to work at The Sun before getting into politics; Norman goes on to “leak” the information that Mayor Carcetti is planning to “shitcan” Commissioner Burrell and that Chief of Detectives Cedric Daniels is the “frontrunner” for the position after a likely interim period with Rawls in charge.
Roger Twigg (Bruce Kirkpatrick) is featured prominently in this episode, primarily because he’s offered one of the buyouts. Twigg is a veteran reporter who has worked police cases for years. According to Twigg, “they can hire one and a half twentysomethings for what it costs to keep me in print.” This sort of crystallizes the problem with modern journalism and the rampant buyouts—an inexperienced staff with high turnover is replacing entrenched, established, veteran journalists who have become masters of their craft.
Gus goes to Scott with Norman’s leak, offers the young reporter the story, and asks Scott what he knows about Daniels, but Scott’s never heard of Daniels. Gus poses the same question to Twigg and receives a litany of information—all off the top of his head—based on years of working sources, knowing the players, and doing good journalism. Twigg gets the story. Again, this scene sums up many of the points the show is trying to make about modern journalism: Twigg, who is an undeniably valuable resource and stellar reporter, is being bought out, while the floundering the comparatively clueless Scott is taking his place, in a sense. In fact, when Scott is told by Gus to find “react quotes” (reactions about the story’s subject from local lawmakers, political movers and shakers, police sources, and the like) to accompany Twigg’s piece, he simply fabricates or pipes a quote. When pressed by Gus Haynes, Scott says that the “high-ranking city hall source” is actually Nerese Campbell (Marlyne Afflack). As I stated in my episode 52 posting, I fear Scott’s fabrications will only get more outrageous and brazen, with disastrous consequences for The Sun and for the subjects of the paper’s legitimate stories.
The good news here, if there is any to be had, is that Twigg’s police department reporting is being picked up by the dedicated, hard-working, and intuitive Alma Gutierrez. When concocting the serial killer story, McNulty decides to “leak” word of these linked homicides to The Sun and calls Alma. When the two meet at a coffee shop, he tries to charm and flatter her (saying that he’s read her stuff, and that it’s very good; flirting with her) but she’s having none of it (“bullshit,” she answers when he compliments her writing; “I’ve got a boyfriend, detective,” she fires back when he openly flirts).
In a scene at a bar, Gus and Roger Twigg chat about their lives and careers, clearly yearning for a simpler and purer time in journalism. Gus recalls watching his father read the paper raptly each morning before departing for work, and wanting to be a part of something so important that it held his father’s undivided attention. Roger remembers seeing a man on a train folding his “broadsheet” meticulously and examining it rapturously, looking every bit the smartest man on the train; that was the moment he knew he wanted to be in the newspaper business.
(A broadsheet is the most popular newspaper style, consisting of long, vertical pages folded in half; a full broadsheet contains four pages—front and back—while a half broadsheet contains two pages—a single sheet printed front and back. Tabloids are newspapers that are folded only once in the center. Examples of broadsheets include The Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The New York Times; tabloids include The New York Post and the Philadelphia Daily News; “tabloid” has also come to mean sensationalized or gossipy rags, but not all papers that appear in this format fall into the derogatory “tabloid” category.)
The scene with Roger and Gus is a touching scene, one that says a lot about both characters and about the newspaper business as a whole. Roger bids farewell by repeating H.L. Mencken’s epitaph: “If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.” Henry Louis (H.L.) Mencken was known as the “Sage of Baltimore” and was a journalist, essayist, and satirist active during the first half of the twentieth century. He is noted for his coverage of the Scopes trial (he coined “Scopes Monkey trial”), his incendiary editorials, and his pithy one-liners. A few of my favorites, some of which I’ve shared with my students…
“A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”
“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
A great scene in this outstanding episode—and my notes here have covered mainly the journalistic aspects, leaving out provocative material with the likes of Omar and Prop Joe and Michael and DuQuan, for example—is when McNulty is anxious to see the splashy article he expects based upon his leaked information about the spurious serial killer. He runs to an honor box (the coin-operated newspaper boxes, so-called because it is only on one’s “honor” that one takes only one newspaper, rather than several) as the paying customer is getting his newspaper. As McNulty says “hold it!” and reaches in to retrieve a newspaper he hasn’t paid for, the man mutters, “you cheap motherfucker” as he walks away. McNulty is crestfallen to discover that the story about the fact that the murders of homeless men may be linked was positively buried on a deep interior page of the Metro section and received the briefest of treatments. Landsman later describes its position as “back in the girdle ads.”
Most riotous of all is the scene in which Bunk has brought Lester into “the box” to talk some sense into McNulty regarding his scheme. Much to Bunk’s amazement and indignation, Lester actually begins to counsel McNulty on how to improve his scheme. A classic scene.
END OF EPISODE 53 NOTESMonsoon's Winter Weather Update - Sunday 1/13 to Monday 1/14 event
My friends…
The forecast models are in wild disagreement about the Sunday night into Monday winter weather event; one suggests a foot of snow will fall, while most others are in the range of a dusting to a few inches’ accumulation. I’m going to lean toward the conservative side for the first time in my life and say that it’s not going to amount to much of concern for our area. The breakdown…
Sunday 1/13: cloudy with rain showers developing toward evening, changing to wet snow before midnight. Wet snow will continue on and off overnight, with up to two inches of accumulation likely by the morning commute. High 46, low 29.
Monday 1/14: snow tapers to snow showers and flurries, perhaps mixing with a bit of rain toward afternoon. High 36, low 27.
Accumulations:
Extreme northern Berks, Allentown, Poconos: 4-5 inches
Bucks County, northeast Philly: 6-8 inches
Northern New Jersey and into New England: up to a foot or more
Most of Philly, Chester, Delaware Counties: slushy coating to an inch; majority rain
Central and southern Berks, northern Lancaster, Lebanon Counties: 1 to 2 inches
Dauphin County, Harrisburg, southern Lancaster County: slushy coating to an inch; mixed bag
School closing predictions:
Forecast area (in bold above): 10% cancellation; 35% delay on Monday
Tuesday 1/15: partly cloudy with increasing clouds late; flurries or a brief snow shower possible.
Rest of the week and looking ahead: pretty quiet with highs in the 30s and lows in the 20s, then the deep freeze sets in (temperatures below freezing for a week or more, perhaps) for the weekend and beyond. I’m looking at January 23rd through 25th as a potentially active period in terms of snowfall.
Take care…
MonsoonMonsoon Martin's "Open MRI," My Fifth Vertebra Forecast
Weather-friends,
First, I want to say regarding Sunday night into Monday that there is still the potential for snowfall and the slight chance it could accumulate, but I’m leaning heavily toward a storm track that will miss us altogether, bringing only snow and rain showers to our area during that time. I will post an update in this space if the situation changes dramatically over the weekend.
Second, I’d like to submit “Open MRI” to the pantheon of particularly cruel or egregious oxymorons, or contradictions in terms, of which some of the most famous and appropriate are “jumbo shrimp,” “open secret,” “peacekeeper missile,” and “military intelligence.”
Why? Because yesterday, I became the victim of a medical bait-and-switch of the cruelest sort. I was sent for an MRI by my doctor to take a look at my lower back, which as many of you know has been hobbling me for some weeks now. Knowing of my claustrophobic tendencies, not to mention my … generously apportioned physical stature, my doc sent me to Ephrata Open MRI. Open MRI, I thought. Sweet. In a regular MRI, in case you’ve never had the pleasure, the patient is loaded onto a slab and shoehorned into a massive structure like a round peg in a square hole—where the patient must stay, unmoving and unable to move any part of the body, for up to an hour. (I had an MRI way back in high school when I was getting severe migraines but was somehow not all that affected by it then.)
An Open MRI, I imagined, would be an absolute dream. There would be no shoving my immobilized self into a space no bigger than a morgue drawer. Surely in an Open MRI I would be free to move about gaily as I wished. I would be forced to sit (or perhaps lie) still for a short, pleasant enough period, during which time some sort of machine would take some sort of picture of my lower back. It would all be over in mercifully brief fashion, and I would experience none of the claustrophobia associated with the typical MRI experience.
My people, what followed instead at Ephrata Open MRI was 50 minutes of meta-claustrophobic torment. (For those of you who are new to the Monsoon weather list and/or weblog, it should be noted that my accounts of personal turmoil and inconvenience are not without their liberal pepperings of hyperbole and histrionics. I admit this now, only in a moment of weakness, and will never do so again.)
I was told to “gown up” and led into the MRI room by a technician who was, to her credit, extremely patient and understanding. I was laid on a table, facing feet first into a gargantuan, ringed structure that resembled a sort of brick oven (like at Carrabba’s in Lancaster, which is totally good) but instead of creating scrumptious northern Italian cuisine, it created only vise-like pressure and shrieking terror. (I told you: hyperbole.)
The technician (I forgot or blocked her name; let’s call her Hazel) then told me I had an array of music choices to accompany my ordeal. A few radio stations came in fine, she said, though two—94.5 (the evangelical Christian station) and a country music station—came in best. Need it be said here that I declined to listen to either station? She also said she had a few CDs to choose from: Enya, some philharmonic thing, and a Sting CD which she said was called All the Hits. Now, Enya takes me back to the days at Albright when my roommate would play the purportedly soothing—but actually numbingly bland—music of Enya and Yanni (I am dead serious) and make me want to jam hot knives into my earholes. I typically shun classical music as aggressively European and staid; it’s the white man’s music. And I used to be quite a Police fan, and Sting’s early solo work was quite good (the later period, when he was doing guest vox on vapid hip hop tunes, not so much). So yes, I said, let’s crank up the Sting!
Soon my torso was swathed in some sort of heavy wrap and I was then inserted, like a tongue depressor, into the gaping maw of the Open MRI machine, forcing the air out of me like I was a sad Tupperware container. I stared up at the ceiling of the “Open” MRI machine, which was about an inch and a half from my face and ended at about eye level (the top was open, so I could look up, to the side and out, and my feet were hanging out the other end, which mattered not at all, though I suspected contributed to their being able to use the meaningless term “open” in describing the MRI).
I began to wonder if I was going to make it through this—laying there uncomfortably for the better part of an hour, unable to take a full breath, the world closing in on me. Hazel observed that I was getting a little “wigged” and said gently, “This isn’t supposed to be stressful, you know?” to which I responded with a weak chuckle. Hazel handed me a small, rubber ball connected to a wire that looked like the end of a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure taker); I was told to squeeze it if I needed anything. This offered me little solace.
As the machine began its work, a few realities quickly became apparent: first, that my mild claustrophobia had evolved considerably; second, that the machine makes an irregular, intervallic death rattle that sounds like an excavator is operating on top of me, or some sort of undulating Lex Luthor death contraption; and third, that the Sting CD was one of the most wretched collections of aural ineptness ever put to record. The fact is that Sting had dramatically reworked many of his most well-known songs (including “Fragile,” “When We Dance,” and “Fields of Gold”) and performed them in front of an exclusive audience in Tuscany for an album that was actually called All This Time. His arrangements are whitebreadedly affected and ponderous, his delivery sloppy, the instrumentation languorous. The overall effect of listening to this was infuriating: snippets of the work sounded familiar, refrains seemed nearly recognizable, and yet it was all so foreign, so poorly executed…so icky. Sting even—unforgivably—included the (wreckage of the) song “Dienda,” with lyrics inexplicably added, on his CD. “Dienda,” composed by the late Kenny Kirkland and included on Branford Marsalis’ seminal Royal Garden Blues, is an evocative, gorgeous gem—probably my favorite song of all time.
The ensuing 40 minutes or so are a blur of near-panic, existential crisis, and strange, maniacal thoughts. A sampling:
What in the hell is that picture supposed to be?
One, two, three, four, Mary at the kitchen door…
Breathe…breathe…whew…haa…whew…haa…
I’m gonna lose my shit…I’m gonna lose my shit and eject myself out this bitch.
Keep it together keep it together keep it together.
Maybe I’ll try a little visualization…I can visualize my ass right the hell out of here…yeah, I’m not in this machine; I’m in a happy place. A…happy…place. Where’s my happy place? Hoff, are you there? OK. Yeah, a real happy place. Oh, this would be good: I’m back in Rhode Island, it’s last Christmas, and I’m walking with my lovely wife on the Cliff Walk. That was a happy time, and it’s a nice, open vista…yep, I’m on the Cliff Walk. No, I’m still here in Ephrata. I can’t visualize a god damned thing. Jeez, maybe I should take up yoga or something.
I wonder how much time is left?
What does MRI stand for? Oh, that’s right: Magnetic Resonance Imaging. I wish it had taken me longer to figure that out. M…R…I. Am, are, I? Oh, holy crap it’s an existential puzzle. Am, are, I? If I am not, how can I be? And if I be not, am not, whither me? What the hell am I saying?
Why, oh why, did Sting sully his songs so?
How much time could really be left? Oh damn, I wonder if it just seems like a half-hour has passed but in reality it’s only been three! Nah, that’s not possible…
They make bombs that can be programmed to fall on a postage stamp but I have to lay my ass here for an hour and wait for this machine to do its work. Isn’t that a fine how-do-you-do?
“The Wire” soundtrack is really good…oh, I know…I’ll think about my favorite songs on it. That’ll get my mind off things…well, the dialogue snippets are great, especially the Snotboogie material and the “Omar comin’!” piece. The songs are a mixed bag… “Ayo” and “My Life Extra” from the B-more hip hop scene are strong, really hypnotic…and it’s nice to see Michael Franti on there…the Solomon Burke song is outstanding, and I like the “Gilded Splinters” song…I even like the Greek song…The Pogues and Tom Waits, not so much. OK, that’s it. What’d it take, two minutes?
How much longer??
Finally I couldn’t resist any longer and squeezed my little rubber doober to summon Hazel. She came in: “Yes?”
“Oh, hi! Liiiiisten…I was just wondering how much more time?”
“You said hi…that’s cute! Most people don't bother saying hello. No, we haven’t got much more time. One more vertebra, so another nine minutes.”
[long exhale] “Whew. Thanks…I needed to hear that.”
[leaving] “You’re welcome…not much longer!”
“Oh…and could you turn off the music? It is so, so horrible.”
[sniggering] “Sure.”
After this, there’s not much to tell. The end of the test went off without a hitch, as I spent the last nine minutes counting. When it ended, I extricated myself from the machine and happily made my way out of the room. I had one final question for Hazel:
“Why would Sting ruin his music like that?”
“I know, right?”
Monsoon
Monsoon Martin's The Wire - Episode 52 Commentary
“The Wire” – episode 52 (focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on the show’s journalism-related content)
Please note that this episode has not yet aired on HBO (it is available only on HBO On Demand) and therefore contains spoilers for most viewers. Please observe the spoiler space below to avoid gaining unwanted information about a show you haven’t yet seen.
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The tagline on episode 52 is again from Bunk, who says “this ain’t Aruba, bitch.” The statement occurs during a barstool conversation among Bunk, Lester and McNulty about why the 22 murders of African American Baltimoreans now are not being investigated, and why the media have not made more noise about that fact. The conclusion is that the bodies were “the wrong color” and that if 300 white folks were killed each year in Baltimore (or wherever), the National Guard would be brought in. Finally, McNulty makes a reference to the Natalee Holloway case in which a southern teen on vacation in Aruba disappeared, earning the media’s (led by the likes of Nancy Grace) fixation, prompting Bunk’s apropos comment. I couldn’t agree more.
My first observation from this episode deals with the scenes involving Steve Earle and Bubbles (whose first name, apparently, is Reginald). Now, Andre Royo is a breathtaking actor who can convey volumes of feeling, of experience, regret, guilt, weariness, etc., all with a shrug of the shoulder or the dizzying, herky-jerky delivery of his lines. Steve Earle, who plays Bubs’ sponsor and the leader of a twelve-step group of recovering addicts, is not an actor. He’s a singer, and he’s not even very good at that. Earle’s lines are delivered with a distracting woodenness that strikes a discordant note in otherwise moving and successful scenes. He’s one of the very few Wire actors I have ever felt were miscast (the others being Anwan Glover as Slim Charles and Aidan Gillen as Councilman—now mayor—Tommy Carcetti). Given the sprawling nature of the story and the hundreds of faces that have appeared and spoken onscreen, that’s not a bad ratio, I suppose…
There is a sense of foreboding with McNulty in the opening scenes of the show, in which he makes angry, misdirected comments at Rhonda Pearlman and Kima observes after his departure, “he’s a pissy little bitch today.” (A comment that could be—and has been—said of me on more than one occasion.) It doesn’t help matters when his car has a flat so he nearly breaks his foot kicking the car, then has to take an MTA bus to the crime scene of his homicide investigation. I have to say I’m glad McNulty (played by Dominic West) is being featured more prominently this season. He’s the perfect example of the working class in a postmodern city—stuck in the system, yet smart enough to know what parts of the system are screwed. McNulty’s impotent anger—hitting out at the wrong targets because the problems are bigger than can really be addressed—is the driving force of this show. It’s telling that even Bunk, who has abetted many of McNulty’s misadventures both on and off the job, is horrified by his partner’s actions at the end of the episode.
In another memorable scene out by the loading docks of The Sun, where Gus and some other veterans go for smoke breaks, Gus tells the oft-repeated story of a young reporter in a news conference with 1950s Bawlmer mayor Tom D’Alesandro who meekly (and rather spinelessly) says several times that “the city desk wants to know” this and “the city desk asked me to clarify” that. Without a word, the mayor finally puts his ear to his own desk, looks up and says, “My desk tells your desk to go fuck itself.” The old-timers agree that the story is too good even to verify, but it has been repeated and printed in several sources.
The Sun’s Executive Editor James C. Whiting (played with oily corporate aplomb by Sam Freed) begins a meeting in the conference room by stating that he wants The Sun to go for its Pulitzer. The Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism have been awarded for more than 90 years from an endowment left by famed newspaper publisher, editor, and pioneer Joseph Pulitzer. The most prestigious awards in the field of journalism, Pulitzers are awarded annually by Columbia University in 22 categories including reporting, editing, criticism, feature writing, and editorial cartooning. When Whiting says he wants the paper to go for its Pulitzer, it’s the equivalent of a studio head insisting that a Holocaust drama be made starring Meryl Streep in the hope of snagging Oscar nominations. It’s a craven and short-sighted statement that subverts the art it purports to celebrate, and Gus Haynes quite understandably rolls his eyes.
Whiting’s big idea is to produce a “Dickensian” series about the lives of city children—which will show “clearly and concisely where the school system has failed them.” The wording and construction here are priceless for both fans of “The Wire” and those who have spent some time around the field of journalism. First of all, “The Wire” has itself been called Dickensian by critics, who praise its resemblance to a nineteenth-century novel by Dickens like Bleak House in which the socioeconomic realities of the day are explored in a sprawling narrative, sweeping in disparate segments of population and experience. (A recent NY Times article on the last season of “The Wire” was even headlined, “No Happy Ending in Dickensian Baltimore.”)
Whiting’s statement is absurd because he is simultaneously calling for the Pulitzer-baiting series to be both “Dickensian” (passionate, thorough, expansive, detailed, naturalistic) and “concise” in focusing only on how the school system has failed children. To be truly Dickensian, the series would have to focus on children, parents, institutions, and everything in between—which “The Wire” does but newspapers almost never have the courage or dedication to do. Because Scott Templeton, the young hotshot reporter who wants to work at a “real” paper like the Post or Times someday, agrees with Whiting that context isn’t that vital to telling such a story—and thus earns himself the lead on the series. Whiting says they need to “limit the scope, not get bogged down in details” and an unnamed reporter pipes up and says, “There’s more impediments to learning that a lack of materials or a dysfunctional bureaucracy.” Whiting’s response: “But who wants to read about that?” Again, The Sun is pandering to the lowest common denominator, which has been the case for the field of journalism in general. Reporters are instructed on most pieces to assume their readership is at a sixth grade reading level, a short attention span, and little initiative or natural curiosity. And the product reflects that.
The meeting ends when Whiting asks what the “budget line” (the “pitch” line in the budget, or roster of articles, that summarizes what the article will be about) will be and Gus responds, “Johnny can’t write ‘cause Johnny doesn’t have a fuckin’ pencil.” Whiting angrily insists the paper does not want “an amorphous series detailing society’s ills” (god forbid) because “if you leave everything in, soon you’ve got nothing.” This kind of double-talk is reminiscent of the managing editor’s statement in episode 51 that “you’ll just have to do more with less.”
The storyline here is intriguing on several levels. First, it’s another example of an institution that is set up to do good (journalism is designed to keep a public well-informed about its world) getting dragged down by short-sightedness, lack of funds, arrogance and incompetence. Second, it provides another point of entry into the schools, which were the focus of last season (will we see Prez this year?). And finally, it ties the whole thing up nicely; as Simon himself said in one of the introductory shows about this season of “The Wire”: if we’ve gotten any of this right, why are we the only ones paying any attention to it? In other words, where and why have the media failed?
That night, Gus has a “deadline nightmare” which occurs when one has put a piece “to bed” but later questions whether he or she might have made an error. Once the ink hits the page, it’s difficult to take the words back; the “Corrections and Clarifications” portion of a newspaper is usually buried on page A2 and seldom read. Gus is worried about the fact that he may have transposed (inadvertently switched) some numbers on a port article and wants to copy editor to check his “nut graph” (sometimes spelled “nut graf”). A nut graph is a usually the second paragraph in an article, and it details what the piece is about. Some reporters “bury” their nut graphs (put them too deep within the article, obscured by quotes, background, or set-up) and have to be reminded to let them breathe.
The managing editor soon singles Scott out for his loyalty by awarding him a leading “color” piece in a story about the opening day of the Baltimore Orioles’ baseball season. A color piece (from “local color”) is a human interest story that provides a personal angle on an otherwise straight-ahead story. Scott says, “I’d really like to find some chaw-chewin’ old timer who’d rather die than miss an O’s opener.” What he finds, however, are only cynics and casual fans: one older man laments the steroid scandal and says the sport is in disarray, another disinterestedly says that his son kinda likes baseball, and another punctuates his failure to get usable material by saying “Fuck baseball!”
The problem arises for Scott when he goes into his assignment with an idea of what he would find when he started asking questions. Journalists should go into any story well-informed, but otherwise wide open to the possibilities of the story’s path. When one starts an interview with an idea of what’s going to come out of the subject’s mouth, one begins to ask “leading questions” or those designed to elicit a specific answer. Then you’re “putting words in someone’s mouth,” as the dreadful Lesley Stahl does week after week on “60 Minutes.” (An example of a leading question that stands out in my mind from a Stahl interview: “And that made you feel really resentful, didn’t it?”) Because Scott knew he wanted a chaw-chewin’ old timer, he couldn’t use the material he did get from the cynics and casual fans, and therein lies the problem.
Scott magically arrives back at the newsroom and tells Gus about the story he did get—about a 13-year-old kid in a wheelchair (put there, evidently, by a gunshot would, though details are sparse) who did not have a ticket to the game. The boy would only give his name as “E.J.” (ostensibly because he was truant from school) and there is no art (no photograph to accompany the article) because a photographer was unavailable. Gus’s journalistic instincts cause him to question the piece, and rightly so. The background is shady, they don’t have a last name so there’s nothing to verify or fact-check, and Scott’s claim that there was no photographer is questionable (wouldn’t there have been at least one at the ballpark for opening day?). Moreover, Scott couldn’t locate the boy when he went back to try to get “art.”
None of this matters much to Whiting, though. He sees it as a solid piece that captures the disparity of the city—the upper crust, enjoying a ballgame, while a 13-year-old gunshot victim is stranded outside, pitifully listening to the roars of the crowd. He awards Scott the “lead” (it will appear front page, despite the lack of “art”) and Gus must capitulate.
I have a feeling I know where this storyline is going: Scott made the whole damned thing up. He wandered around outside the ballpark, failing to get the story he wanted, and finally got desperate and concocted this young boy out of thin air. In future episodes I think it’s going to come out gradually: there never was a boy named “E.J.” shot in Baltimore; the schools have no record of this child; the photograph never received a call requesting “art” for Scott’s article. The end result is a scandal—and I don’t think Scott will stop there. In his Pulitzer-baiting series on the failure of schools, he’ll fabricate information, pipe quotes (invent or embellish direct quotes from sources), and the like.
It may be surprising to many outside the field that reporters could or would make shit up; we assume that every word we read in the paper is precisely as it went down. But it happens far more than one might think. Milder examples include quote piping (cleaning up, rearranging, or even creating out of thin air, supposedly direct quotes from a subject so it fits more cleanly in the piece). More extreme examples are the cases of Janet Cooke, Jayson Blair, and Stephen Glass. Briefly, Janet Cooke was a reporter for the Washington Post in 1981 who had to return a Pulitzer she won for a piece on an eight-year-old heroin addict who did not exist. Jayson Blair invented interviews, quotes, and places for the New York Times in the late 90s; he submitted expense reports for trips that never happened, and described places he’d never been. He also plagiarized (took pieces of other people’s articles without crediting them). His actions were a serious “black eye” for the newspaper and several editors resigned in the wake of the scandal. Finally, Stephen Glass was an associate editor and writer for the New Republic magazine who was perhaps the most audacious fabulist of them all—he invented people, corporations, commissions, and conventions, and created a sloppy paper trail to back it all up.
How could this have happened? Aren’t reporters’ articles fact checked? Yes, they are, but there’s at least one huge hole in the process. In cases like those cited above, the fact-checkers are relying mainly on the reporter’s notes for confirmation, because they involve privileged or fleeting conversations, confidential sources, or the like. And this is, I’m afraid, what’s going on with Scott.
END OF EPISODE 52 NOTES
Monsoon Martin's The Wire - Journalism Terms Glossary (episode 51)
My Weather-Friends,
As many of you know, I consider “The Wire” the finest television show in the history of the medium. It has just begun its fifth and final season on HBO, and the focus this go-round is the media and its struggles and failures. The season will be centered around a newsroom (a fictional Baltimore Sun) while still following some of the other plot threads (schools, drug trade, police activity, city hall) that have developed over the previous four seasons. Since there was a lot of jargon being thrown around in Episode 51, and because I have some background in the field of Journalism, I thought I'd put together a sort of running glossary/guide for the terminology used. I am, of course, open to corrections or clarifications on any of these points. (I would also like to thank the members of the Yahoo! Wire group in advance for the fine-tuning this list has already undergone.) The show airs Sunday nights at 9 on HBO with episodes appearing On Demand the Monday previous to airing.
Enjoy!
Monsoon
“The Wire” Journalism terms
Episode 51
The Baltimore Sun is the newspaper of record for the state of Maryland, having been founded in 1837. It is now owned by the Tribune Company in Chicago, which also owns the LA Times, the Orlando Sentinel, and other papers in addition to its broadcast media holdings.
The open floor plan layout of the Sun’s newsroom on “The Wire” is very true to life. It was designed as such to maximize interaction among a newspaper’s various departments and desks, unlike a traditional office, which is usually fragmented by a series of high cubicle walls. As the Sun’s City Editor Gus Haynes (played by Clark Johnson) says, “I’ll tell you what a healthy newsroom is. It’s a place where people argue about everything, all the time.” More competition, overworked and younger employees, and lack of job security have dampened this free and spirited exchange of ideas in modern newsrooms. Though the (real) Sun’s TV critic pans the portrayal of his newspaper on “The Wire” as simplistic and mired in jargon, I think it’s nuanced and brilliant.
The Managing Editor referred to in the first conversation is the second-highest in rank after the executive editor, and is directly responsible for most of the day-to-day operation of the newspaper.
A Foreign Bureau is physically located in a foreign country and usually includes reporters and an administrative staff (whereas a Foreign Affairs Desk is dedicated to foreign reporting but is physically located on the premises of the publication). In the first news scene, the three gentlemen are discussing the rumored closings of all foreign bureaus, including Johannesburg and Beijing. Foreign bureaus are typically expensive to maintain, so cost-cutting measures target them aggressively, opting to rely instead on foreign reporting by the
Associated Press (AP) or other foreign bureaus.
The three gentlemen by the newspaper loading dock are also discussing impending layoffs and buyouts, “as bad as in Philly.” This refers to the recent downsizing of staff throughout layoffs, early retirements, and buyouts at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. This is endemic to mid-size to large newspapers throughout the country, which are still profitable—but less so, due to declining circulation, loss of readership and ad revenues, etc. The publishers and managing partners of the news outlets panic because profitability is down—though still fairly robust compared with other industries—and begin laying off workers. It has been argued that profitability is down as well because content is made freely available online, which is not the case in other countries. Buyouts began in earnest in the 1990s and in most cases, when a worker is “bought out,” the job itself is eliminated as well. David Simon himself took one of the initial buyouts at the Sun. Many departments are now expected to churn out the same quality product with half its former staff size.
An illustration of this phenomenon is when another, smaller paper “scoops” the Sun on a transportation story the Sun should have gotten. While Haynes reminds the managing editor that the Sun has not had a transport reporter since the last round of buyouts, the managing editor reminds his staff that “just because Chicago does a little belt-tightening is no reason for us to fall down,” referring to the Tribune Company’s ownership of—and immediate and incessant cost-cutting measures at—the Sun. He then utters the famous phrases (which resonates through the police subplot as well), “You’ll just have to do more with less.” In one of the HBO documentaries about the fifth season, David Simon adds, “Of course you don’t do more with less; you do less with less.”
Haynes complains to a reporter that he’s always having to rework his lead. The lead (sometimes spelled lede) refers to the first sentence or two of a news piece, which conveys as much of the 5W and 1H (who, what, where, when, why and how) as possible. Particularly in today’s world of short attention spans, the headline and lead are often the only things a reader will actually read as he or she peruses the newspaper. Here is a very good example of a lead from the January 2nd edition of the Washington Post: “Candidates for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations rallied supporters in Iowa today on the eve of the state's caucuses, as new polls showed tightening races among the leading contenders in both parties.”
Later in this exchange, Haynes asks the reporter to get him material by the “e-dot deadline” and later mentions a “double-dot deadline.” According to a Yahoo! Wire group member: “Dots are also called bugs. They're tiny marks you see at the top of the page if the page has been reworked for a later edition. Pages for the first edition (also called Four-Star) have an 11:30pm deadline (approx) and have no extra mark on the page. Five-star, or E-dot, is marked with one dot and would be the the five-star (next edition, the deadline is around 12:30am). Five-star chase, or double dot, is the final, marked with a letter F or C or a dot and a letter F or C and that close is anywhere from 1:15am to 2:30am depending on what kind of news day is happening.”
A deadline, of course, is the time set by which a step of the reporting process must be completed—copy deadline refers to when a story’s finished draft must be submitted to a copy editor; print deadline refers to the moment an edition must be finished and laid out to be sent to the printer. An article is often referred to as a “piece.”
From another Yahoo! Wire group member: “The path is story creation, then source editing (do the facts make sense? too much or too little of something in the story), copyediting (correct typographical errors), slot editing (does it fit on the page space allotted to it? plus putting in the headline, pull quotes and so on), then the page is checked and approved. You can't have all the stories done at the same time, because then your various editors would have too much to do all at once.
“Similarly, they can't send all the pages at once, because there is a limited number of plates that can be made at once. If they want to change ten pages on deadline, it's a really big deal, and they may let the pages go if they're not actually erroneous and do a ‘chase.’ This is where they replace the plates on the press after printing the first few, or if it's multiple presses they hold back on one press and put on the new ones, then stop the first and replace the old ones, all so they won't miss the press deadline for first good paper out of the pressroom.
“Color pages require multiple copies (cyan magenta yellow black) and every page has to have two plates because they put two copies on the drum, so plate A impresses and then plate B. Unless it's a "collect" run, but that doesn't happen very often.”
A columnist is a newspaper employee who is paid to write periodic (usually weekly or biweekly) columns for the paper, which can be humorous, lifestyle, related to politics or civic life, business, sports, or any number of niches.
It’s one of the few places in the newspaper (the other being the op-ed page, or opinion-editorial page) where a newspaper employee may offer his or her opinion. Haynes derisively remarks that columnists are “paid to sit on [their] asses.”
The Associated Press (AP) is a news organization that employs a vast (though shrinking) network of reporters to produce stories that will be syndicated throughout the country—and sometimes the world. Sometimes the AP will “pick up” a story that is of wider interest from a local or regional newspaper and syndicate it to other news outlets. On these occasions, the local reporter receives additional pay and his or her newspaper is highlighted as one that is producing quality journalism. Newspapers must pay to use AP articles, of course.
Haynes shouts on a couple of occasions that he needs “budget lines.” He’s looking for shorter pieces of background relating to the developing city budget. Another theory from a Yahoo! Wire group member: “The budget is the list of stories scheduled to be printed that night. Without more context I'm not sure what Haynes is asking for, but he's probably asking to be allowed to put more stories in.”
A reporter asks, “What about art for the Hopkins press conference?” Art here refers to photographic illustration of a story, which is essential for prominent pieces. Because downsizing occurs among the photography staff of a newspaper too, though, it’s difficult to get a photographer to every newsworthy event.
A couple of things related to newspaper “art”: first, a “grip-and-grin” is a derisive term for a photograph of a civic event that features participants shaking hands and posing—as the announcement of a new initiative, the donation of funds, etc. Also, Haynes is incensed when he receives the “art” for an East Baltimore row house fire because it features a charred doll in the foreground. This composition is a common—and lazy—way for a photographer to convey the sense of loss and the ways in which a fire may have affected a home’s children.
Haynes speculates that since all of the photographer’s fire photos have a burnt doll or singed toy in the foreground, he must have a trunk full of them and some lighter fluid so he can stage the photograph just right.
Various desks are mentioned—state desk, metro desk, city desk. These are dedicated “departments” whose reporters cultivate knowledge of, and write pieces about, civic affairs in the city, metropolitan area, and state. The reporting in these areas has suffered mightily as a result of cutbacks, particularly at a place like the Sun, because older reporters with lots of contacts and expertise are being “bought out” and inexperienced recruits fresh out of “j-school” (journalism school), who will work cheaply, are hired.
Another cost-cutting measure that has been used for years by newspapers is the use of floaters and stringers. A floater is a part-time or full-time reporter who is not bound to any particular desk or specialty. The problem here is that one becomes mediocre at lots of different things, but not excellent at any of them. A stringer is a freelance writer hired by the newspaper on an as-needed basis and paid per article. Stringers sometimes have specialized knowledge (like the “College Park stringer” mentioned in the episode) and are often used to attend municipal meetings, cover local sporting events, and the like.
The editors discuss “20 inches” and “15 inches” at different times here. This refers to the length of an article, and is technically measured in “column-inches.” A column-inch is a one inch deep (long) and one newspaper
column wide. Reporters—particularly ambitious ones, or those for whom brevity is difficult—are forever trying to get more inches.
Some stories “go national” (are picked up by the national press because their appeal or newsworthiness transcends regional considerations, as with the 22 bodies story). Another reporter, however, contends that this story did not “have legs”—meaning that it did not become the source of ongoing follow-up pieces or deeper investigation. The ultimate story with “legs” was Watergate.
The ambitious reporter Scott Templeton (played by Tom McCarthy) is chagrined at being sent to “pull clips” and “check the morgue files” so he can write the “A-matter” on Ricardo’s history. He is being asked to check through the Sun’s archives (electronic files, physical clippings, and possibly even microfiche or film) to find previous articles about the principals in this story so he can provide the background material (which will be presented “up front”) against which the story can be told. It’s essential but unglamorous work that young reporters often draw.
The editors, late at night, determine that the Ricardo story “deserves a front” and will appear on the “front page, below the fold.” This means that the story is newsworthy enough to merit inclusion on the “jump page” or front page, but will not appear “above the fold” where screaming headlines and attention-grabbing images are shown. The “jump page” is so called because this is typically the only page in the first section from which articles “jump” (are continued on a subsequent page, indicated by a “jump line”—please see Ricardo on A12). In this configuration, six or seven articles can be included on the front page, with probably only one or two above the fold, and they all jump to the inside pages. Note that there has been some discussion about whether the jump page actually might refer to the page to which many of the jumps go.
Alma Gutierrez (Michelle Paress) is complimented on her ability to secure a quote from the article’s subject when Haynes says to her, “Good pull.” For her efforts, she receives a contributing line (or contrib line), which doesn’t
impress Templeton, but means she’ll receive something like “with additional reporting by Alma Gutierrez” under the main reporter’s byline (name) or (usually) at the conclusion of the piece. A “pull quote” is also the name for a quote that is featured in larger font surrounded by rules (lines, or a box) in an article to draw the reader in; Alma may have contributed a quote from the subject that was used in a pull.
Templeton states that he wishes to get out of Baltimore because it has “shit news,” but Alma is clearly invigorated by her work and feels that “the Sun is still a pretty good paper.” Templeton wants to move up and out—when asked
where, he answers, “The Times or Post, where else?” He’s referring to the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two most respected newspapers in the United States, widely considered the pinnacle of the profession.
“When did this break?” is asked of the Ricardo story. Bill Zorzi’s character (is he playing himself?) is asking when the story “became” news—not only when it occurred, but when someone realized it was newsworthy.
Finally, Templeton asks Haynes who is “doing the react piece” on the Ricardo story, because he sees that it could be a story that “has legs.” A react(ion) piece seeks to broaden the story by talking with associates of the principals, political figures, and others to assess the impact of the original story.
END OF EPISODE 51 NOTES.