I've never been a baseball follower. I've never been to a game, and I've never watched more than a minute of it at a time on television. A couple of my Internet friends used to talk about it as we all hung out in a chat room, and the world of baseball was completely foreign to me. It seemed slightly interesting, but I figured I was too far behind.
But, on a whim, I figured I'd cheer for the Cubs, since they were major underdogs and are from Chicago. I cheer for Chicago (family loyalties, I guess) unless the Bears are playing Green Bay in football or the Bulls are playing the Kings in basketball, so I figured I might as well be consistent. Then, when San Francisco got rid of manager Dusty Baker in a rather mean manner and he signed on with the Cubs, that was another reason to root for Chicago. Oh, and my final reason was that Dusty Baker has a very cute little boy, so cheering for his team can't be bad.
Fast forward to tonight. The Cubs just won their first post-season road game for the first time since 1945. I thought I was cheering for the underdogs and I thought I didn't watch baseball. Well, 'my team' is still winning, and I just intermittently watched two innings of baseball. The sky must be falling.
Earlier this year, one of the Sacramento Bee's columnists began publishing a blog on sacbee.com. Daniel Weintraub is a political columnist, and his work often appears across the whole state (his column runs in the paper where I work). After Bee employees and members of the "Legislative Latino Caucus" complained about a Sept. 1 item published on Weintraub's blog, the Bee decided that his material will now go through an editor before being published on his blog.
I have several thoughts about this. First of all, Weintraub is a prolific blogger and has been posting nearly every single day of the week for six months. Why was his blog never an issue until race got involved? Who initially made the decision to not edit the blog's content before it was published, and who has now changed that decision?
However, if Weintraub is being paid to blog, and the blog is being published as part of the Bee's Web site, I can see why it should go through an editor. If someone sues, the Bee will be named because the paper is hosting the blog. I imagine Weintraub could start his own blog somewhere else if he really wanted more freedom.
I hope editors are available around the clock to edit the blog, because if entries aren't posted shortly after being written, the whole point of a blog is lost.
From the Associated Press news wire at 5:56 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 24:
WEED, Calif. (AP) — Charlie Byrd, the state’s first black sheriff, was found dead in his home, the Siskiyou County sheriff’s department said. He was 56.
I think everyone, especially those in the United States, should read this article. I wonder how many people know that the FBI could be looking at all the books they've ever checked out or bought, and the FBI doesn't even have to show cause before stomping through all sorts of records that are normally private.
Oh, it's nothing new. It's just the Patriot Act that was created after 9/11. What's mind-boggling is that the government really thinks would-be terrorists are stupid enough to check out "How To Make a Bomb" books in their own names.
I wonder what the FBI would think of me if they issued one of those secret subpoenas for my records. I wonder if they'd raise their eyebrows at the fact that I began checking out non-fiction World War II books when I was 8 and that I'm reading a book by Bob Woodward (one of the journalists who revealed Watergate).
Nearly a month ago, I let off some steam by posting an entry titled "Headlines." In the journalism world, it's a known fact that stories sometimes appear in the paper with headlines that have almost nothing to do with the story. Headlines are hard to write, because there's a limited amount of space on a newsprint page, and it's sometimes very hard to put words in place without leaving gaping holes. Hence, the reason bad headlines happen.
When I posted that entry, I was not happy. I put effort into my work, and I pride myself on accuracy. In fact, I still agonize over a horrible headline that is now eight months old. Not only was it completely inaccurate, but it ruined an article that I would have definitely shown to future employers.
So, nearly a month after I posted that "Headlines" entry, someone just replied. I guess he wanted to let everyone know that he was responsible for the headline. He signed himself as "The evil news editor," which reveals his identity, but for some reason, he gave a bogus e-mail address. I think that's a good example of pettiness. (I've edited the e-mail link to instead point at the newspaper's staff directory; I don't think the paper's Webmaster needs to deal with e-mails sent to no-man's land.)
So, Mr. News Editor, I have this to say to you: Don't think I was trying to talk about you behind your back; I was just being nice enough to not name names. In fact, you didn't see the photocopied, annotated postcard I put on the bulletin board at work for everyone to see. Someone above you apparently thought you'd be hurt by it. I see that person was right.
The latest from the horrible headline vault comes from a publication that is (ironically, perhaps) titled The Militant. The headline: "Tel Aviv tries to murder
main founder of Hamas." To add to matters, Google news only picked up the first half of the headline, so it read, "Tel Aviv tries to murder."
I had no idea entire cities were capable of comitting crimes. If that's the case, this crime reporter is missing out on all sorts of fun stories, including such gems as "Lodi vandalizes car" and "Lodi steals Galt's identity."
I rarely think about the power I hold as a journalist, and I don't even usually see it that way. I'm simply a reporter who gets the news and then writes it down so that others will also know. But every once in a while, I'm reminded that my proverbial pen can really affect someone's life -- even in a small city buried in the middle of California.
Because of something I wrote, a man may have lost more than one night's sleep as he worried about his safety and the lives of his family members. He wasn't the only one to worry, either.
What I wrote was accurate, and I make no apologies for it. But if that man is ever found murdered, I'll probably always think that I unknowingly gave his killer more motivation. That's a serious thing for me to know.
Baseball watching
I've never been a baseball follower. I've never been to a game, and I've never watched more than a minute of it at a time on television. A couple of my Internet friends used to talk about it as we all hung out in a chat room, and the world of baseball was completely foreign to me. It seemed slightly interesting, but I figured I was too far behind.But, on a whim, I figured I'd cheer for the Cubs, since they were major underdogs and are from Chicago. I cheer for Chicago (family loyalties, I guess) unless the Bears are playing Green Bay in football or the Bulls are playing the Kings in basketball, so I figured I might as well be consistent. Then, when San Francisco got rid of manager Dusty Baker in a rather mean manner and he signed on with the Cubs, that was another reason to root for Chicago. Oh, and my final reason was that Dusty Baker has a very cute little boy, so cheering for his team can't be bad.
Fast forward to tonight. The Cubs just won their first post-season road game for the first time since 1945. I thought I was cheering for the underdogs and I thought I didn't watch baseball. Well, 'my team' is still winning, and I just intermittently watched two innings of baseball. The sky must be falling.
Posted by Layla at 9:02 PM, September 30, 2003. Comments (0)