Dear Rod,

I know this is probably not how you wanted to spend your 52nd birthday. This whole FBI investigation thing probably puts a damper on that Chuck E. Cheese shindig you were probably planning. At least if you resign like everyone and their mom wants you to, you won’t have to deal with any more Congressional appointing — toooootal pain in the bleep, right?! And you won’t have to deal with that pesky Chicago Tribune editorial board, asking you hard questions, and that whole, threatening-for-good-press thing. Maybe you, like Governor Spitzer can find a way to come out of this alive in about a year…as long as you avoid jail time, which you probably will. Let’s face it — this is Illinois politics, and you’re a protected man! Anyway, have a good one!

xoxoxo

Michelle ;)

The Tribune company announced today, after a lot of speculation, that it is filing for bankruptcy. It’s horrible, but we all knew it was bound to happen, especially after all the in-fighting, and layoffs at some of our local newspapers and television stations, it was apparent from far away. Sam Zell is a real estate tycoon, a business man that entered the journalism industry basically blind, despite whatever kind of altruism he may have felt, thinking his hard-nosed business sense would make the Tribune an example of how to save the journalism industry.

Well, so the Tribune company owns a lot of assets: about a dozen newspapers including the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsday; a lot of local television affiliate stations, including my beloved WPIX-New York that used to play Yankees games; and several other websites, services, and outlets.

So after hearing about it, I figured I’d see what my adapted hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times would have to say. There was an article, which was LA-centric to make the national-scale article pertinent to its readers, and then a letter from the publisher of the LA Times.

Then I went to Newsday, because while I lived on Long Island it was our local big daily. What are they running? The SAME freaking article AND letter!!! The article starts out like this:

Tribune Co., the owner of the Los Angeles Times, KTLA Channel 5 and dozens of other daily newspapers and television stations across the country, filed Monday for bankruptcy protection…

Seemingly every other Tribune-owned paper made the proper changes to the general letter for their own audience exept for Newsday — indicative of why I left Long Island…

While the New York Times and sometimes Newsday are the only NYC Metro papers worth picking up, I do miss having ridiculous tabloid cover headlines on news stands every day. Like the N.Y. Daily News’ take on the Dow Jones yesterday:

Helen Thomas has been working in the White House Press Corps since the Nixon administration. In fact, she’s the only reporter with her actual name embedded on the chair, as opposed to the name of the news organization (she’s with Hearst Newspapers now after a 56 year career for UPI). The 88-year-old reporter is an old school, hard-hitting reporter lady, who asks the real toughies. She had to leave her beat in May after getting a stomach infection, but she returned to her beat this week. Check out this little clip of her:

According to Politico, Palin did not answer debate moderator Gwen Ifill’s questions 10 times. (!!!)

On at least 10 occasions, Palin gave answers that were nonspecific, completely generic, pivoted away from the question at hand, or simply ignored it: on global warming, an Iraq exit strategy, Iran and Pakistan, Iranian diplomacy, Israel-Palestine (and a follow-up), the nuclear trigger, interventionism, Cheney’s vice presidency and her own greatest weakness.

Not shocking considering she said she wouldn’t necessarily answer the questions how Ifill or Biden wanted and that she liked talking directly to voters without the “filter of the mainstream media.”

Doesn’t she know that people learn about the candidates and where they stand through the media? Whether they believe what the news outlets report is up to them, but that’s how the message gets out. While she’s preventing herself and the McCain campaign from looking ridiculous by avoiding press, she’s also making a mistake by keeping herself out of the news cycle, and not speaking for herself.

It’s painful.

Sooooo, she reads Cosmo and the National Review, basically?