Redbird's Drive-by

Here's some raw video from a private reception prior to The Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis event honoring broadcaster Joe Buck. This event was Wednesday night at the Ritz in Clayton.

What is extremely troubling is how a person at the event, Joan Quicksilver,

obstructed local television crews from doing their job. The crews were at the event to talk with St. Louis Cardinals manager, Tony LaRussa. Earlier in the day LaRussa plead guilty to drunk driving. Here's a link to the police video from the arrest. Back in March, police in Jupiter, Florida found Tony asleep at the wheel of his SUV at an intersection. His foot was on the break. The video speaks for itself.

Back to the Ritz. Reporters wanted to talk with Tony about his plea. Joan Quicksilver had other ideas. This is a woman who's bio says she was honored by The National Federation of Press Woman with its Quest Award for Outstanding Professionalism in Journalism at ceremonies in 2005.

The bio also says, In 2001, she received The Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis’ “President’s Award” for outstanding performance in media and community relations. She was inducted into The Catfish Club, the highest honor bestowed by the Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis, for distinguished service in the public relations field.

So how does a woman so recognized for her work as a journalist explain her obstruction to journalists working on a story? To make it worse, her actions took place at a Press Club event. Why is this woman trying to quiet and stop the press? Isn't the press club about building a better press? In fact the press club says,

The Press Club is a professional, social and charitable organization of people who make, cover and influence the news.

It is right there on the website.

This isn't the first time Quicksilver has played the heavy at a press club event. I found this item from Romenesko at poynter.org.

In the 2003 column it says, "When the journalists arrived, they were met by one of the event's planners, Joan Quicksilver, a Press Club official and local public relations person.

"Quicksilver told the journalists they could not enter. She backed that up by producing Ritz security guards to escort the journalists from the party in the hotel's main ballroom."

So let me get this straight, so long as the local journalists agree with the press club, or award winning journalist Joan Quicksilver, then it is fine to publish, but disagree and no access allowed. Sounds more like China or Iran than St. Louis.

Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Hostess Sno Balls, America's most famous pink snack cakes, are celebrating 60 sweet years as one of America's favorite treats.

Since being introduced in 1947, Sno Balls have become an enduring icon enjoyed by generations of snack cake lovers who can't get enough of the delicious and distinctive marshmallow, coconut and chocolate cake combination.

-- Over 25 million Sno Balls are sold each year.

-- With flour and sugar rationing during WWII, Sno Balls became an instant hit with Americans looking to indulge in a sweet treat.

-- Sno Balls were not always the pink creme filled treats we know today. Original Sno Balls were white marshmallow and shredded coconut covered chocolate cakes - it wasn't until 1950 that the creme filling was added.

-- Not long after the creme filling was added, in an effort to add a little pizzazz to the humble white Sno Ball, Hostess decided to tint the shredded coconut pink. And for added effect, each Sno Ball package included one white and one pink Sno Ball. Later, for efficiency's sake, two of the same color were coupled.

-- Today, the original white Sno Balls are produced mostly around the winter holidays.

-- Sno Balls are now produced in different colors for different seasons

- You can find Glo Balls (glow-in-the-dark Sno Balls) for Halloween, Lucky Puffs (green Sno Balls) for St. Patrick's Day and Hoppers (lavender colored Sno Balls) in the Spring.

--Even though St. Louis is not known for record snow falls, residents of the Gateway City love Sno Balls. St. Louis residents eat more Sno Balls per capita than any other U.S. city. Rounding out the top five Sno Ball-loving cities are: -- Louisville, KY -- Grand Rapids, MI -- Roanoke, VA -- Hartford, CT

-- Sno Balls are no strangers to celebrity. The marshmallow-and-coconut snack has had supporting roles in episodes of The X-Files and Gilmore Girls and in the film The Mirror Has Two Faces.

To learn more about Hostess and to find Hostess Sno Ball recipes that are sure to sweeten any occasion visit www.hostesscakes.com.

Interstate Bakeries Corporation, the maker of Hostess products, is one of the nation's largest wholesale bakers and distributors of fresh baked bread and sweet goods under various brand names including Wonder(R), Hostess(R), Dolly Madison(R), Baker's Inn(R), Home Pride(R), Merita(R) and Drake's(R). For more information visit www.interstatebakeriescorp.com.

Website: http://www.hostesscakes.com/
Website: http://www.interstatebakeriescorp.com/

Please share your favorite Sno Ball stories.

A FEW months ago, Stephen Ironside, a student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, confronted a minor but modern tragedy: the iPod that filled his life with song stopped working.

The device was out of warranty, and Apple would not fix it free. So he left it in a drawer until he happened to read a blog posting on CrunchGear.com that described how he might fix it — with a small, folded piece of paper. Mr. Ironside celebrated by posting thanks on the blog: “I’ve been on CDs for months. You saved my life (and my iPod).”

The author of the blog post, Matt Hickey of Seattle, says that using paper as a shim to put pressure on the hard drive has worked on about 70 percent of the failed iPods he has encountered — even though he is not sure why it works.

Gadget-fixing is adapting to the modern era. Neighborhood repair shops are all but gone, and along with them the repairmen who could offer casual advice, even when that advice was whether it was worth repairing the device. But Web sites can help users find and share solutions that can save a device from the landfill. If the job is too tricky, a number of Internet-based firms offer highly specialized repairs via overnight mail.

Here's a link to the rest of the article. 

Every year Beloit College in Wisconsin puts out a Mindset List which lists what the students entering college would be familiar with and NOT familiar with. For example, students entering this fall, who will – maybe, hopefully – graduate in 2011 have never “rolled down” a car window but have always had bottled water.

The phrase “off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone and music has always been “unplugged.” MTV has never featured music videos; and stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names. High definition television has always been ubiquitous.

Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil. Burma has always been Myanmar. The Berlin Wall never existed for them but Humvees, minus the artillery, have. Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.

Wolf Blitzer has always been serving up the news on CNN and Katie Couric has always – as list compilers Tom McBride and Ron Nief put it – “had screen cred.” And the World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

This video has attracted lots of attention on the web.

What do you think?

By Al Tompkins (more by author):

The Associated Press reports this story, which has lots of local angles:

Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It's starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Family Dollar Stores Inc. 

Food pantries, which distribute foodstuffs to the needy, are reporting severe shortages and reduced government funding at the very time that they are seeing a surge of new people seeking their help.

While economists debate whether the country is headed for a recession, some say the financial stress is already the worst since the last downturn at the start of this decade.

From Family Dollar to Wal-Mart, merchants have adjusted their product mix and pricing accordingly. Sales data show a marked and more prolonged drop in spending in the days before shoppers get their paychecks, when they buy only the barest essentials before splurging around payday.

"It's pretty pronounced," said Kiley Rawlins, a spokeswoman at Family Dollar. "It seems like to us, customers are running out of food products, paper towels sooner in the month."

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said the imbalance in spending before and after payday in July was the biggest it has ever seen, though the drop-off wasn't as steep in August.

  
Food banks say the wave is just the beginning of what's to come.

The same AP story referenced above says:

"The reality of hunger is right here," said the Rev. Melony Samuels, director of The BedStuy Campaign against Hunger, a church-affiliated food pantry in Brooklyn.

The pantry scrambled to feed 5,000 new families over the past 12 months, up almost 70 percent from 3,000 the year before.

"I am shocked to see such numbers," Samuels said, "and I am really concerned that this is just the beginning of what we are going to see."

In the past three months, Samuels has seen more clients in higher-paying jobs — the $35,000 range — line up for food.

The Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, which covers 23 counties in New York State, cited a 30 percent rise in visitors in the first nine months of this year, compared with 2006.

Maureen Schnellmann, senior director of food and nutrition programs at the American Red Cross Food Pantry in Boston, reported a 30 percent increase from January through August over last year.

Find a food bank near you.

Related resources:

• Hunger and Poverty Statistics
  
  
• Child Hunger Facts
  
  
• Hunger in the Suburbs
  
  
• Rural Hunger
  
  
• Senior Hunger
  
  
• Working Poor
  
  
• Low Income Families

Click here for state-by-state hunger statistics from the 2007 Almanac of Hunger and Poverty.
  

• In 2006, nearly one-third (30 percent) of all people living in renter-occupied housing units lived elsewhere a year earlier. The moving rate for people living in owner-occupied housing units was 7 percent.

• For the population 16 and older, 24 percent of those who were unemployed in 2006 lived in a different place a year earlier. This compares with 14 percent of those who were employed in 2006 and 10 percent for those not in the labor force.

• Most movers stayed within the same county (62 percent), while 20 percent moved from a different county within the same state; 14 percent moved from a different state and 3 percent moved from abroad.

London - British couples spend less than three hours a day on housework, including preparing meals, according to a study published last week. Research involving people in 34 countries shows that the average couple in Britain spend 19 hours a week on household tasks - the fourth-lowest figure.

Full story: The South African Star

Much has been written and speculated about the exact date and time newspapers died. Reading the newspaper is not what it once was.

Do you still read a the paper? Do you subscribe to a local newspaper? How has your local newspaper changed? Do you still rely upon your local newspaper? Are newspapers old news by the time you see 'em in the morning? Do you have time to read the paper or do you go online?

Several websites provide a link to images of various newspaper front pages from around the world. It's an interesting way to see what's going on.

Front Pages (Newseum)
NAA's NewsVoyager
(Newspapers)(TV)(AJR)
(TV)(Radio)(Gebbie Press)
US Newspapers

Here's an extensive list of stories on the Future of Newspapers found on Sree Sreenivasan's site detailing the changing media landscape:

• Your Duty to Read the Paper by Roy Peter Clark, Poynter, Oct. 11, 2007
  ("It is your duty as a journalist
  and a citizen to read the newspaper -- emphasis on paper, not pixels"...) | Reax
• Can the Washington Post Survive? by Marc Gunther, Fortune, July 26, 2007
  
• Goodbye to Newspapers? by Russ Baker, NY Review of Book, July 16, 2007
• How Newspapers Can Thrive On the Web by Robin Miller, OJR, July 24, 2007
  
• Newspaper On Track to Lose $2B in Ads by Alan Mutter, Newsaur, May 28, 2007
  
• The Scarborough Newspaper Audience Report, April 2007  (PDF) - print, website  ratings for 135 newspapers across 74 markets
• A Modest Proposal to Save the Newspaper Trade by Anya Kamenetz, Fast Company, April 2007

• US Newspapers Deliver Slower Growth by Robert MacMillan, Reuters, April 20, 2007
• Do Newspapers Have a Future? By Robert Kuttner, CJR, March/April 2007
  Listen to a panel discussion (mp3)
• Editors optimistic about future of print 
  ETP on results of worldwide survey, March 28, 2007 
• Words of Advice for Small Newspapers
  by Steve Outing, Poynter
  Jan. 2, 2006
• Who Killed The Newspaper? The Economist, Aug. 27, 2006 | associated editorial
  Reax: John McNaughton | blogosphere
• Can Times Quality Be Preserved Online?
  By Byron Calame, NYT,
  Nov. 19, 2006
• Are Newspapers Doomed?
  by Joel Achenbach, WashPost.com's Achenblog, Dec. 3, 2006 

• Get Me Rewrite
  by Michael Hirschon of VH1
  Atlantic Monthly on the future of newspapers
  
• Winning Online: A Manifesto by Tom Mohr, E&P, Sept. 4, 2006
• Web Use Overtakes Newspapers and Magazines in Europe by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, FT, Oct. 8, 2006

• They Wrap Fish, Don't They?:Internet News Isn't What It's All Wrapped Up to Be by Robert X. Cringely, PBS, July 24, 2006

• Thoughts About the End Game for Newspapers in a Fully Digital Age
  

  by Scott Donaton, Advertising Age, July 23, 2006

• Ellen Foley’s State Journal Her mission is to keep the paper relevant in an era of declining readership. How’s she doing?

  By Jason Shepard, TheDailyPage.com, Sept. 12, 2006

• The Newspaper of the Future  -  profile of Lawrence, Kansas, newspaper, by Timothy O'Brien, NYT, June 26, 2005
• An industry task force:
  NewspaperNext.org - from the American Press Institute 
• This Boring Headline Brought to You by Steve Lohr, April 9, 2006

Michael Devlin's appearance has changed in the past 10 months. He's lost the beard, cuit his hair and dropped a lot of weight. He looks very average. But he's not.

Devlin perp walk into the Fanklin Co. Jail.

Devlin's Franklin Co. Mugshot.

Initial court appearance via video.

Washington Co. mugshot

Arriving at courthouse in Franklin Co. for guilty plea.

This does not look fun to me.

The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune says:

Sales at the Himalayan Institute, a major U.S. neti pot manufacturer, have increased more than 400 percent in the past 10 years. And in the first eight months of 2007, they've seen a 100 percent increase over 2006, thanks in part to a plug from Dr. Oz on Oprah Winfrey's show early this year.

Local natural foods stores, including Mississippi Market in St. Paul and the Wedge and Whole Foods in Minneapolis, all report a steady rise in year-over-year neti pot sales.

"I've heard some pretty excellent feedback from [customers] that it's a nice alternative to taking a lot of medication," said Mindy Hauge of Whole Foods. After the Oprah show, "there were just multiple people a day coming in really wanting one, and now that it's getting to be the fall season, we still have at least one person a day."

Park Nicollet Clinic allergist Brenda Guyer, M.D., has been recommending the nasal wash to patients for about six years. "Neti pots are really effective," she said. "They help with a host of problems."

AMERICAN NEWS IQ:  A quiz created by the folks at the Pew Research Center showed that most Americans are familiar with key facts in the news about politics and Iraq.  Only 6% of those surveyed could answer all 12 of the questions, but a quarter (26%) could answer 10 out of the 12 questions. 

Men (7.6 correct answers) scored better than women (6.3). College grads (8.2) not surprisingly scored better than high school grads (5.5). 

Interestingly there was a clear ascending scale in news knowledge that correlated with age with 18-29 year olds scoring the lowest (5.5 correct answers); followed by 30-49 (7.1); 50-64 (7.4) and 65+ (7.6).  

You can take the quiz yourself.  You can check your own news IQ and then compare yourself to others by going to  http://pewresearch.org/pubs/601/political-knowledge-u
pdate. 

BONUS Pew Material:

A survey by the Pew Research Center found Americans evenly split on the belief that the country is divided along economic lines.  Nearly half (48%) say we’re a country of “have’s and have not’s” while the same number (48%) say we are not. 

This is a dramatic increase from nine years ago when only a quarter of the American public (26%) believed we are a country of have’s and have not’s.  Even more interesting, the number of Americans who see themselves as ‘have not’s’ has doubled in that time from 17% to 34%. 

Another survey by the folks at Pew, this one by Pew Global Research, finds that nearly as many countries (17) consider the United States to be an enemy as consider the country to be an ally (19). 

Internet giant Google has put up a prize of $30 Million to the first private enterprise that that can land a rover on the moon and beam back a gig of high definition images. 

A father-son research team has released a report that shows studying improves grades.  I know this sounds like a Homer Simpson “doh” but apparently no-one has quantified the issue before.  In an article published in the National Journal of Economic Research, they found that studying an hour a day increases student GPA’s by an average 0.36 points while playing video games for an hour each day led to a 0.24 drop in GPA for males and a 0.13 drop for females.

This is an interesting examination of Jena 6 coverage from Al Tompkins. Here's Al's bio.

What are your thoughts?

Decoding 'Jena 6' Myths

From Al Tompkins

The Poynter Institute

There is, of course, no defense for hanging nooses from trees. There is no excuse for students who beat one another out of hate. There is still much to be explained about why some students are vigorously prosecuted while others are not. All this poses a challenge for journalists, who have reported and repeated many popular myths in what has come to be known as the "Jena Six" case.

Think about how many times journalists have reported about the "white tree" or the "noose incident" directly connected to the December 2006 attack. It turns out that much of what you may know about this case is wrong.

The Associated Press ran a piece on some of the subtle complexities of the story:

• The so-called "white tree" at Jena High, often reported to be the domain of only white students, was nothing of the sort, according to teachers and school administrators; students of all races, they say, congregated under it at one time or another.

• Two nooses -- not three -- were found dangling from the tree. Beyond being offensive to blacks, the nooses were cut down because black and white students "were playing with them, pulling on them, jump-swinging from them, and putting their heads through them," according to a black teacher who witnessed the scene.

• There was no (direct) connection between the September noose incident and the December attack, according to Donald Washington, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department in western Louisiana, who investigated claims that these events might be race-related hate crimes.
  

• The three youths accused of hanging the nooses were not suspended for just three days -- they were isolated at an alternative school for about a month, and then given an in-school suspension for two weeks.

• The six-member jury that convicted Bell was, indeed, all white. However, only one in 10 people in LaSalle Parish is African American, and though black residents were selected randomly by computer and summoned for jury selection, none showed up.

• In July, the first to be tried, Mychal Bell, was convicted after two hours of deliberations by an all-white jury on reduced charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit it. It was widely reported that Bell, now 17, was an honor student with no prior criminal record. Although he had a high grade-point average, he was, in fact, on probation for at least two counts of battery and a count of criminal damage to property. In any event, his conviction was overturned because an appeals court ruled he should not have been tried as an adult.

This is the "Color of Change" Web site, which asserts the "facts" of a white tree to be true. The site also makes the case for why the local prosecutor acted unfairly when prosecuting the black students but not criminally charging white students who were also involved in fights.

What I do not understand (maybe those of you who have covered this story can clarify), is why the feds don't prosecute the noose incident and the fights (involving both sides) as federal crimes. Even if the state prosecutor says he has no state law that would make the hanging of a noose a crime, there is federal legislation that says:

Those who put up the nooses seem to have filled every criteria. There were more than two of them, and they clearly were meant to threaten, injure and oppress others. The oppression seemed to have to do with the black student's First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.

Some have suggested the noose incident would be a candidate for federal hate crimes, but as I read the federal crime law, passed in 1994, I saw that it requires the hate crime to be focused against an individual or an individual's property as opposed to a generic spewing of hate against a group of people.

Public Law #103-322A, a 1994 federal law, defines a hate crime as:

a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person.

Read more about what federal hate crimes say.

Here is Yahoo.com's constantly refreshed collection of Jena Six stories.

Click here for the Anti-Defamation League's interactive map, which links you to individual state anti-hate laws. Would the Jena noose incident have been considered a hate crime in your state?

Here comes the 10pm news - The FOX 2 News Edge at 10pm.

Click here for the free preview.