Ramble On ... Emptying out the Misc. Files

NEWS ITEM #1 - Barack Obama's op-ed in today's NYT:

If you haven't read President Obama's op-ed piece in today's New York Times, I recommend you click here and take a second, then - PLEASE - come on back.

Here are a few of the issues that stand out for me in President Obama's opinion piece:

This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.

The long and vigorous debate about health care that’s been taking place over the past few months is a good thing. It’s what America’s all about.

But let’s make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another. We are bound to disagree, but let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate.

And, the key issue:

In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain. But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary — truly risky — is the prospect of doing nothing. If we maintain the status quo, we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people.

TL View: The last item in italics is where the whole issue stands in my view. Do we stand around, talk and debate and DO NOTHING (as has been the case since the early '90s and before)? Or, do we support the President and begin to take dramatic (and risky) steps, yes very difficult steps with difficult choices and dangerous forks in the road, to begin to institute some change that might not pay dividends until our children's children perfect a nationwide system for healthcare.

Taking it to a distant comparison that I remember from my days at the NBA, I can remember the criticism that followed our implementation of the very first Anti-Drug program in professional sports when the NBA announced its plans with a signing ceremony between then-Commissioner Larry O'Brien and then-President of the NBA Players Association Bob Lanier. That step, taken in 1983, has led to a very comprehensive Anti-Drug Agreement that is widely recognized as the best in sports. It began with small steps - legislating against the use of cocaine and heroine by NBA players and it included steps for education, prevention and a clause that allowed players to come forward without the risk of being penalized.

That program did not include a program against the use of marijuana and it did not address the steroid issue that has dominated the anti-doping issue of late, but it did put a very significant tent-pole in the ground for the NBA and its players and it sent a HUGE message to the youth of the world, that being, "If you want to be an NBA player, you better believe that the use of cocaine and heroine will eventually stop you from playing in this league. Now, it took the death of Len Bias to truly drive home the point, but - at least - in 1983, the first steps were taken to bring some type of system into the professional sports workplace with the goal to protect the players while all the while, other union labor leaders were burying their heads in the sand and doing further harm to the very players they represented.

Shame on Donald Fehr and Gene Orza. They should both realize the damage they've done to their clients and to the American sports psyche. Shame on them both.

***

In the past week, we've celebrated the 70th Anniversary of the "Wizard of Oz" and the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock. I've enjoyed posting some Monday Morning Maniac Music over the past month to recognize and celebrate the concert that defined a generation of Americans.

I will continue the 'tradition' for a few more weeks, at least. But, would love to get some suggestions for music links and the like. Please send them in as comments to The Blog @ TerryLyons.com

***

News ITEM: Globe to make online readers pay for boston.com content?

According to the cross-town rival:

The Boston Globe will soon begin charging for its Web site, publisher P. Steven Ainsley told the paper’s union bosses yesterday as the Globe’s parent New York Times [NYT] Co. confirmed in a regulatory filing that the money-losing Hub broadsheet is for sale.

News of the Globe’s intention to charge for Boston.com came a day after News Corp. [NWS] Chairman Rupert Murdoch announced his company would start charging for content at all of its news Web sites, including the New York Post, The Times of London and The Sun, a popular British tabloid. News Corp. already charges for some access to The Wall Street Journal’s Web site.

Globe spokesman Bob Powers said charging for Boston.com appears inevitable.

“It’s going to happen one way or another,” Powers said. “We are looking at several different options, and the goal would be to generate revenue.”

Ainsley also told Globe union bosses the combination of price increases and labor cost reductions, including $20 million in union concessions, have put the paper on better financial footing.

He said union concessions, plus $8 million in Globe management givebacks and the $18 million the company expects to save by closing its Billerica printing plant, have all helped, sources said.

The Times’ quarterly report filed yesterday shows the company spent $30 million to close its Billerica printing plant. Sources have told the Herald that at least one outside party was interested in the plant, but was rebuffed.

Ainsley refused to answer questions about the potential sale of the Globe at yesterday’s meeting, saying his Times Co. overlords had ordered him to keep mum.

TL View: I'll continue to pick up the paper everyday, but will be more apt to log into the Boston Herald site for free online content. Face it, the newspapers of the world have screwed up monumentally when you look at the way they fumbled over the changes in journalism since the advent of TV and the Internet. And, while they provided today's most interesting, newsworthy and thought-provoking piece of content, the NYT and its companies, trying to the industry leaders, have consistently proven that they have absolutely no clue as to where the future might be in terms of online business success and the revenue it promises to generate. It seems funny to me that the sports sites figured it out quickly (generating revenue and users via interactive fantasy games and online video clips (see Cinesport) and, I won't even go into the world of online gambling/porn/etc/etc, but the great collection of the world's most prestigious news gatherers proceeded to watch the bus go by at 60 mph.

xxx

Klores ... Black Magic

I rarely make postings of articles or op-eds from the NYT, figuring many of my readers see the paper each and every day. But, with a growing number of readers coming from outside the NYC area and an even more impressive readership group coming from outside of these United States, I will re-think that and post some of the very good stuff from the paper of record (losses).

Here's an interesting piece that my father-in-law suggested for posting:

May 16, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Treasures Lost to Time

By BOB HERBERT
Shaquille O’Neal, already a basketball legend, was speaking in his soft, husky voice about men with names like Woody Sauldsberry, Cleo Hill and Ben Jobe.

“Some of these guys, I’d never heard of in my life,” he said. “So I guarantee you the younger players have never heard of them.”

Dan Klores’s stunning four-hour documentary film, “Black Magic,” which will receive a Peabody Award on Monday, opens with a scene from America in 1944 that will seem for some people as ancient and backward as the Middle Ages.

It was a Sunday morning in March in Durham, N.C. A team of white basketball players from the Duke University Medical School who had bragged that they were the best players in the state had agreed to play an illegal game against an equally proud team from the North Carolina College for Negroes.

There is no way to overstate the danger of such a meeting. Black people in Durham were not even supposed to look too closely at white people. Some would step off the sidewalk into the street as a white person approached. For these two teams to play a basketball game was considered improper contact of the highest order.

As the white players walked toward the North Carolina College gym, they pulled their jackets over their heads. The game was to be kept as secret as a meeting of criminal conspirators, which is what the participants actually were. In addition to the coaches and the players, there were two referees and a timekeeper. No spectators. No cheerleaders. Just two teams going at it in an otherwise empty (and securely locked) gym.

North Carolina College won 88-44, but the participants needed very little urging to keep their lips sealed. The fact that the game was played was kept secret from the public for half a century.

Klores’s film is about the many great players and coaches from the nation’s historically black colleges and universities who fought their way through tremendous obstacles, racism chief among them, to make outstanding contributions to the game of basketball. Men like Ben Jobe, a brilliant coach whose fast-breaking, high-scoring teams won more than 500 games. (“I didn’t know how to lose,” he said.) And Cleo Hill, a scoring wizard at Winston Salem State Teachers College who was viewed by many as the best college player in the country in the late 1950s and early ’60s.

“We’re talking about absolutely phenomenal players and coaches,” said Klores, who directed “Black Magic,” which was televised last year by ESPN.

I don’t have room to list even a handful of the astonishing basketball feats pulled off by the world-class talent at those colleges and universities. But for some odd reason, despite the undisputed greatness of so many players and coaches, they have not been welcomed into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

Players and coaches from black colleges who excelled in the National Basketball Association have made it to the hall (which is not run by the N.B.A.). But those blacks from earlier years who were denied a full opportunity to display their talents because of their color deserve recognition, as well.

The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., opened its doors to the greatest players of the old Negro leagues. What’s wrong with basketball? With very, very few exceptions, those doors at the Basketball Hall of Fame have remained closed.

Hall officials, including the president of the board of directors, Mannie Jackson, who is black, have said that they would establish a commission to look at this issue, but nothing has happened yet.

Fran Judkins, the hall’s director of development, told me that she felt “anyone who had made an inroad in basketball should probably be considered.” But I’ve detected no real enthusiasm at the hall for doing the right thing by these most deserving athletes and innovators, which is a shame. They played in an era in which signs on a general store could read, “No Negro or Ape allowed in building,” and when the N.C.A.A. would not let black colleges compete in its tournament.

They are growing old now, and many have already passed on. They are in danger of being completely forgotten.

The list of famous basketball names joining with Klores in the clamor for the hall to reach out aggressively to the greatest names from this fast-receding era is growing: Shaquille O’Neal, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe (who was a producer of “Black Magic”), Willis Reed and Julius Erving, among others.

“I just think it’s an injustice that those who really deserve a shot at being in the Hall of Fame are not getting it,” said Monroe, who played for historically black Winston Salem State University. “We’re watching all that knowledge and history leave us. And the longer we wait on this, the less history we’ll have to go back to.”

FT's on My Mind

Loyal The Blog @ TerryLyons.com reader - aka- "Spy" - passed this along and thought that it deserved some attention from Blog readers this week. I agree wholeheartedley.

Check it out.. no changes in 50 years, although everyone thinks "the kids today" are not as efficient on the line.

Must give the NYT credit for the great work:

CEDAR CITY, Utah — Basketball in the United States has changed in myriad ways over the decades, from flat-footed set shots to dunks, from crotch-hugging uniforms to baggy knee-length shorts, from the dominance of American players to the recent infusion of international stars.

But one thing has remained remarkably constant: the rate at which players make free throws.

Since the mid-1960s, college men’s players have made about 69 percent of free throws, the unguarded 15-foot, 1-point shot awarded after a foul. In 1965, the rate was 69 percent. This season, as teams scramble for bids to the N.C.A.A. tournament, it was 68.8. It has dropped as low as 67.1 but never topped 70.

In the National Basketball Association, the average has been roughly 75 percent for more than 50 years. Players in college women’s basketball and the W.N.B.A. reached similar plateaus — about equal to the men — and stuck there.

The general expectation in sports is that performance improves over time. Future athletes will surely be faster, throw farther, jump higher. But free-throw shooting represents a stubbornly peculiar athletic endeavor. As a group, players have not gotten better. Nor have they become worse.

“It’s unbelievable,” Larry Wright, an adjunct professor of statistics at Columbia, said as he studied the year-by-year averages. “There’s almost no difference. Fifty years. This is mind-boggling.”

There are measures in other sports that have shown similar consistency, like golf scores or batting averages, but none of them are as straightforward as lobbing a ball toward a basket.

The consistency of free-throw percentages stands out when contrasted with field-goal shooting over all. In men’s college basketball, field-goal percentage was below 40 percent until 1960, then climbed steadily to 48.1 in 1984, still the highest on record. The long-range 3-point shot was introduced in 1986, and the overall shooting percentage has settled in at about 44 percent.

Utah is as good as anyplace to untangle the numbers. It is home to three of the top 10 free-throw shooting teams in men’s Division I — No. 1 Southern Utah (80.5 percent), No. 4 Utah (78.5 percent before Tuesday’s game against New Mexico) and No. 7 Utah Valley (77.0 percent, but not officially recognized by the N.C.A.A. because the program is in its final season of provisional status as a Division I team).

In the middle of Southern Utah’s high-paced basketball scrimmage here last week, Coach Roger Reid stopped everything.

Players knew what to do. Their chests heaving in exhaustion, they silently lined up and shot free throws. A miss meant a sprint around the court.

“A lot of coaches give it lip service, but when you say that games are won and lost at the free-throw line, you better back it up,” said Reid, who understands that individual players and teams can improve free-throw shooting through better technique and repetition. When Reid arrived at Southern Utah two years ago, he inherited a team that ranked 217th in free-throw percentage.

There is little correlation between free-throw percentages and winning percentages. Only one of the 25 best shooting teams, No. 2 North Carolina, is also in the latest Associated Press top 25 rankings. Southern Utah has a losing record.

That is why, despite accounting for more than 20 percent of scoring in men’s college basketball and just below 20 percent in the N.B.A., free throws receive a fraction of the attention from coaches, players and fans. That is, until something considered free proves costly.

Last season, Memphis was 38-2 despite making only 61 percent of its free throws, missing an average of nearly 10 a game. The Tigers lost the national championship game after missing 4 of 5 free throws in the final 72 seconds against Kansas, which had made a late 3-point shot to tie the game and won in overtime.

This season, Utah outshot opponents from the line in overtime victories over Brigham Young and Colorado State, and 1-point victories over Gonzaga and New Mexico. Those victories will probably carry Utah (20-8) to the N.C.A.A. tournament.

Ray Stefani, a professor emeritus at California State University, Long Beach, is an expert in the statistical analysis of sports. Widespread improvement over time in any sport, he said, depends on a combination of four factors: physiology (the size and fitness of athletes, perhaps aided by performance-enhancing drugs), technology or innovation (things like the advent of rowing machines to train rowers, and the Fosbury Flop in high jumping), coaching (changes in strategy) and equipment (like the clap skate in speedskating or fiberglass poles in pole vaulting).

Those factors can help explain why swimming records seemingly fall at every international event, runners broke through the four-minute-mile barrier, field-goal kickers are more accurate than ever, bowling a 300 game is not as unlikely as it once was, and home run numbers surged in major league baseball.

“There are not a lot of those four things that would help in free-throw shooting,” Stefani said.

Strength, for example, is not a significant advantage. W.N.B.A. players have outshot their N.B.A. counterparts twice in the past three years, and women in college have been close to the men’s average for two decades.

There has not been a serious innovation in the way free throws have been shot for 50 years. The few still using a one-hand set shot from the chest, or even an underhand style, generally gave way to a flat-footed version of the burgeoning over-the-head jump shot. And although international players have helped the free-throw rate — Wright, the Columbia statistician, calculated that foreign-born players in the N.B.A. this season are shooting about 1.4 percentage points higher than their American-born counterparts — it cannot fully explain why the league is threatening the record high of 77.1, set in 1974.

Equipment, too, is virtually unchanged from 50 years ago. There have been only slight alterations to the ball, the rims and the backboards.

That leaves only one of Stefani’s four factors that might reasonably affect free-throw averages: coaching.

Coaches admit to baselines of acceptability for their players and teams. The average, apparently, is about 75 percent in the N.B.A. and 69 percent in college basketball. When numbers slip, time is devoted to improvement. When they rebound, the game’s other facets take precedence.

“A lot of coaches don’t want to spend time on it in practice,” said Blake Ahearn, a former Missouri State player who is the N.C.A.A.’s leader in career free-throw percentage (94.6) and now leads the N.B.A. Development League as a guard for the Dakota Wizards. “They want to work on defenses and offenses and schemes.”

But even practice has never made perfect. The general rule is that players, in games, shoot 10 percentage points below their practice average. The difference is pressure and fatigue, hard to replicate in an empty arena.

Utah Valley and Chicago State were tied with a minute left in last week’s game in Orem, Utah. About two-thirds of a winning team’s points in the final minute typically come from the free-throw line, which is why Utah Valley wanted the ball in Ryan Toolson’s hands. His career free-throw average is 94 percent.

Toolson was fouled on a drive with 51 seconds left. Swish, swish.

He was fouled with 18 seconds left. Swish, swish.

He was fouled with 9 seconds left. Swish, bonk.

The crowd murmured. The game was momentarily in doubt. But after Utah Valley escaped with a victory, thanks to two more free throws, Coach Dick Hunsaker praised Toolson as Mr. Clutch.

“Except that free throw,” Toolson whispered to himself.

***

Care to Make a Bid?

From wire service report (Photo by T. Peter Lyons):

The New York Times Company Retains Goldman, Sachs & Co. for Potential Sale of Ownership Interest in New England Sports Ventures

NEW YORK--The New York Times Company today announced that it has retained Goldman, Sachs & Co. as its financial advisor to explore the possible sale of the Company’s 17.75 percent ownership interest in New England Sports Ventures, LLC (NESV). NESV owns the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park and adjacent real estate, approximately 80 percent of New England Sports Network, the top rated regional cable sports network in the country delivered to more than four million homes throughout New England and nationally via satellite, and 50 percent of Roush Fenway Racing, a leading NASCAR team. The Times Company acquired its interest in NESV in February 2002. Interested parties should contact Gregory Lee at Goldman, Sachs & Co. (telephone 212-902-7584).

The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), a leading media company with 2008 revenues of $2.9 billion, includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 16 other daily newspapers, WQXR-FM and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

Where's Mark Cuban when you need him?

Obama Reaching Out for Counsel...

From The New York Times....

Interesting viewpoint on a new theory and mechanism for change:

Obama Reaches Out for McCain’s Counsel

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON — Not long after Senator John McCain returned last month from an official trip to Iraq and Pakistan, he received a phone call from President-elect Barack Obama.

As contenders for the presidency, the two had hammered each other for much of 2008 over their conflicting approaches to foreign policy, especially in Iraq. (He’d lose a war! He’d stay a hundred years!) Now, however, Mr. Obama said he wanted Mr. McCain’s advice, people in each camp briefed on the conversation said. What did he see on the trip? What did he learn?

It was just one step in a post-election courtship that historians say has few modern parallels, beginning with a private meeting in Mr. Obama’s transition office in Chicago just two weeks after the vote. On Monday night, Mr. McCain will be the guest of honor at a black-tie dinner celebrating Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.

Mr. McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues “that many of these appointments he would have made himself,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close McCain friend.

Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, said: “I don’t think there is a precedent for this. Sometimes there is bad blood, sometimes there is so-so blood, but rarely is there good blood.”

It is “trademark Obama,” Professor Greenstein said, noting that Mr. Obama’s impulse to win over even ideological opposites appeared to date at least to his friendships with conservatives on The Harvard Law Review when he was president.

For Mr. Obama, cooperation with his defeated opponent could also provide a useful ally in the Senate, where Mr. McCain has parlayed his national popularity and go-his-own-way reputation into a role as a pivotal dealmaker over the last eight years. But on the subject of Iraq, in particular, their collaboration could also raise questions among Mr. Obama’s liberal supporters, many of whom demonized Mr. McCain as a dangerous warmonger because of his staunch opposition to a pullout.

Mr. Obama arrived for their Chicago meeting on Nov. 16 with several well-researched proposals to collaborate on involving some of Mr. McCain’s favorite causes, including a commission to cut “corporate welfare,” curbing waste in military procurement and an overhaul of immigration rules.

“The corporate welfare commission and military acquisition reform are two things the president-elect wants to do very soon,” Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff and a participant in the meeting, said in an interview. The new administration is already preparing to introduce legislation echoing a previous McCain bill on the commission idea, Mr. Emanuel said, adding, “We have been very respectful and solicitous of his ideas.”

Mr. Emanuel said he did not remember any discussion of Iraq. “Barack has been clear that he is going to stick to his responsible reduction in forces, and he hasn’t changed from that,” he said.

But Mr. Graham, who accompanied Mr. McCain to the meeting, said Mr. Obama took a notably different tone toward Iraq than he had during the campaign, emphasizing the common ground in their views.

“He said that he understands that we had differences but he wanted to let us know that he also understands that we have got to be responsible in how we leave Iraq,” Mr. Graham recalled. “What the Obama-Biden administration has talked about is not losing the gains we have achieved. ”

He added, “Obama does not want to be the guy who lost Iraq when it is close to being won.”

Olympic Moments (of truth) ... visas and 63% occupancy

The New York Times ran a very interesting piece on access and visas to Beijing, China in the months leading up to the Olympic Games. If you didn't see it on Monday evening, be sure to read on:

China’s Visa Policy Threatens Olympics Tourism
By DAVID BARBOZA

BEIJING — The plush lobby of Beijing’s Kerry Center Hotel is usually crowded with foreign guests, many of them listening to jazz and sipping martinis in Centro, the hotel’s fashionable bar, or lining up for taxis after dinner at the Horizon restaurant.

But Thursday evening, Centro had only a sprinkling of guests in a hotel whose occupancy rate is typically close to 100 percent this time of year. That night, the duty manager, said it was 63 percent.

“Something strange has been going on,” said Sun Yin, the duty manager. “I really don’t know what happened.”

With the Beijing Olympics less than two months away, hotel operators, travel agencies, and foreign businessmen say new Chinese visa restrictions are proving bad for business, casting a pall over Beijing during what was supposed to be a busy and jubilant tourist season leading up to the Olympic Games.

Chinese authorities acknowledged putting new visa restrictions in place in May — after foreign embassies reported fewer visas being granted and tighter, sometimes seemingly arbitrary, restrictions. The government did not release guidelines detailing the changes in policy; it often does not. But a foreign ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said in May that they would be temporary.

On Monday, Hu Bin, a visa official at the foreign ministry, said the ministry had no statistics on the number of visa denials, but that the new policies were put in place for “security considerations.”

Travel business analysts had forecast that the Games would bring 500,000 foreign visitors and an extra $4.5 billion in revenue to Beijing this summer. But now, even though some five-star hotels are fully booked for the Olympics, many economists are beginning to doubt the city will get the kind of economic windfall it was hoping for.

Many hotels in Beijing are struggling to find guests; some large travel agencies have temporarily closed branches; and people scheduled to travel here for seminars and conferences are canceling. The number of foreign tourists visiting Beijing fell sharply in May, dropping by 14 percent, according to the city’s statistics bureau.

Beijing residents, meanwhile, are complaining that heightened security measures could spoil what was supposed to be Beijing’s long anticipated coming-out party. Despite years of careful preparation — including teaching taxi drivers English and instructing locals in how to wait in a line (not common here), and spending billions on mammoth building projects for these Games — Beijing is starting to appear less welcoming to foreigners.

“Business is so bleak,” said Di Jian, the sales manager at the Capital Hotel in Beijing. “Since May, very few foreigners have checked in. Our occupancy rate has dropped by 40 percent.”

Many other cities in China are also feeling the pain of fewer tourists, including Shanghai, where some hotels say occupancy rates are down 15 to 20 percent.

The government has publicized its determination to combat possible threats to the Games, including suicide bombings, bus hijackings and chemical attacks. In April, Interpol warned that a terrorist attack during the Beijing Olympics is a “real possibility.” And in a year plagued by riots in Tibet, protests of the Olympic torch relay, a terrorist plot to kidnap journalists covering the Olympics (according to Beijing officials) and the Sichuan earthquake, the government is stressing public safety above all else.

But Beijing appears to be less concerned about hosting a global party and more concerned with making sure no one spoils it. Officials announced Thursday that 100,000 commandos, police and army troops would be placed on high alert during the Games.

The heightened sense of alert over security threats in the capital has done something else too: it has spawned a huge number of rumors about other actions the government may or may not be taking.

Among them: a border region with North Korea has been closed to prevent security risks; foreign students and migrant workers are being asked to leave Beijing during the Olympics; all volunteers need to register with the police; bars will be forced to close early; and all outdoor parties planned for the three-week-long Olympic celebration have been banned, putting the hex on some of the entertaining events that had been planned for the Games.

The Beijing police and security officials denied some of the reports, but also, at times, insisted in telephone interviews last week that they could not disclose some security matters. Poor official communication about regulations and restrictions in Beijing may be contributing to public uncertainty and feeding the rumor mill.

Nothing is more of an obstacle than the new visa policy. Businessmen, particularly from the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan, have complained that new visa restrictions have prevented business meetings from taking place and crimped deal making.

Many Hong Kong-based businessmen, for example, say new visa rules require frequent and complicated applications, often including proof of a hotel booking, round-trip airline tickets, and in some cases, a letter of invitation.

“It’s kind of draconian,” said Richard Vuylsteke, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, which represents American companies doing business in the region. “But politics and security trump economics, especially during the Olympics. We just hope that after the Olympics things will change.”

The European Union Chamber of Commerce in Beijing has also complained to China’s foreign ministry.

Chinese hotel operators are also frustrated. A hotel construction boom in which the number of four- and five-star hotels in Beijing jumped from about 64 in 2001 to 161 as of the end of April, according to government figures, is beginning to look overly optimistic. Many hotels are still under construction in a city that now has over 5,000 hotels.

Hotel operators also say the earthquake and Olympic torch relay protests may be having an impact on tourism. “Usually May and June are the busy season for our hotel,” said Jiang Zhiqiang, a spokesman for the New Otani Changfugong Hotel in Beijing. “This year is quite unusual. I think several natural and man-made disasters happened subsequently, which hurt our business.”

With the opening ceremony of the Olympics just seven weeks away, only 44 percent of the rooms in four star hotels and 77 percent of five-star hotel rooms are booked, according to the Beijing Tourist Bureau.

If visitors cannot get visas to enter the country, many of those hotels may be forced to slash rates, which had jumped as high as $2,000 a night when prospects were brighter.

In some ways, the hotels are also on the front lines of the security crackdown. They typically share lists of their guests with the government, on a daily basis. But now they are being asked to supply photographs of all their employees too, as well as help the government in visa approvals, some hotel managers said.

Many large tourism agencies have already given up. “Now most of my colleagues for inbound tourism don’t come to work,” said Wang Ge, director of the inbound tourism department at the Beijing Tourism Group. “We have no clients this month.”

Indeed, when an American called the China Travel Guide Tourist Agency last week, a sales clerk even discouraged the person from visiting Beijing during the Olympics.

“You really don’t want to go there,” said Lorna Liu, the sales representative at China Travel Guide. “Why don’t you try Xi’an or Shanghai and visit Beijing a little later?”

More NYT info on the crane collapse ...

Helicopters everywhere. I am as concerned about the hovering helicopters as I am about the remaining scraps of the crane. If you are seeking the latest reports as of 11:19am: Here is the NYT report:

Updated, 11:05 a.m. | Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is expected to speak shortly at the site of the accident. Eyewitness accounts are continuing to come in. Tevon Griffin, of Bronx, a union laborer who was working on the 13th floor passing up equipment, said he saw debris falling, and “heard everybody screaming and running, so I started running.”

He added, “I thought the floor above us was coming down that the 30-story high-rise they were constructing was collapsing.” Mr. Griffin said was baffled when the large horizontal crane arm began circling. They saw the operator was trying to steady it and gain control, Mr. Griffin said and that when it fell, the perhaps 90 workers at the site began fleeing down stairs and ladders. “If the crane would have hit our building, I think everyone would have died,” he said. Workers said city inspectors had visited the site frequently. We will have audio interviews soon with witnesses at the scene.

10:30 a.m. | The authorities now report that only one person has been confirmed dead, not two, as officials had earlier reported.

10:27 a.m. | Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, a Manhattan Democrat whose district includes the site of today’s fatal crane collapse as well as the site of a March 15 crane accident that killed seven people, said the Azure condominium building, where today’s accident occurred, was to have housed a new home for the East Side Middle School.

“This building is an Education Construction Fund project,” she said in a phone interview. “It’s supposed to house a new East Side Middle School on the bottom, with residential units on the top. This was a way to get a private developer to build a new school, a $40 million, state-of-the-art middle school. We broke ground in September of 2007.”

Ms. Lappin said that many people now cross the street to avoid construction sites. “A lot has changed since March 15, the most obvious being that there is a new buildings commissioner,” she said. “A lot of the focus since then has been changing crane protocols.”

10:20 a.m. | Officials initially said that at least two people, including the cab operator, were killed in the collapse of a crane on the Upper East Side this morning. [The authorities later revised that to say just one was confirmed dead.] The crane, which was being used at a construction site, crashed into another building at East 91st Street and First Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, moments after 8 a.m. on Friday.

The crane operator “was still in the cab of the crane” when it came down, a law enforcement official said. One of the two victims was pronounced dead at the scene, while the other was taken to Metropolitan Hospital, where he died. At least two other people were reported injured.

The crane’s top piece apparently broke off, the law enforcement official said. “It’s a confirmed crane collapse,” the official said. “It snapped at some point along the crane and stuck a building on the other side of 91st Street and First Avenue.” The official said the crane was working on a “new construction” site on one corner of East 91st and First and that when it broke, the broken piece cascaded down and fell into a building on the other side of the street. (See a slide show of images of the accident.)

The Fire Department got the first 911 call at 8:06 a.m., with the caller saying a “crane was down,” said Firefighter Chris Villarroel, a spokesman. Scores of Fire Department trucks and emergency medical workers responded to the scene. He said units rushed to the scene and found the wreckage. “We pulled out two people,” he said.

First Avenue was closed to traffic between 86th and 96th Streets. Vehicles traveling between 79th and 86th Streets may not turn on to First Avenue. On East 91st Street, traffic has been closed between York and Second Avenues. “All side streets in the general area are subject to closure,” the Police Department said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority reported that several bus lines — the M15, M31, M86 and the X90 — have been rerouted because of the accident.

The building under construction was the Azure, a high-rise condominium tower at 333 East 91st Street; about 12 of the 34 planned stories have been completed. The crane apparently crashed into a white-brick apartment building at 1749 First Avenue, which houses a Duane Reade drug store on the ground floor.

According to city records, the company that is building the Azure is the Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corporation of Elmont, on Long Island. A call to the sales office of 1765 First Associates L.L.C., a subsidiary of DeMatteis, was not immediately returned.

City records show that the building has been the subject of several complaints from residents who have called the city’s 311 hot line.

On May 7, an inspector issued a partial stop-work order after observing a defective or inadequate safety guard rail. The work order was fully lifted by May 29.

On May 13, a caller complained of unsafe construction practices, saying that bricks, sand and wood had fallen from the site onto the sidewalk and street. An inspector determined on May 17 that there were no violations.

On May 20, a caller complained about the crane, saying that its platform extended across the sidewalk and well into traffic. A Buildings Department inspector responded but determined there was no violation.

Joe Quinn, 25, a member of a lathers union, had started work at 7 a.m. as part of a crew of about 25 workers on the roof of the building when the accident occurred. The turntable, which was attaching the crane to the tower, “came right off,” Mr. Quinn said in an interview “Boom. There was no weight on it. It boomed up, then just boom! There was no load on it. It wasn’t hooked up to anything. The disk came off where it attaches to the tower.”

After the crane fell, “I ran like hell,” Mr. Quinn said. He used ladders and stairs to get down from the roof.

NY Times report on the UES Crane Collapse ...

Thanks for everyone's concern and all the phone calls. Everyone in our family is safe. Prayers go out to those who died or were injured in this disaster.

***

At Least One Killed by Crane Collapse in Manhattan

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

A crane toppled and collapsed onto a high-rise apartment building on East 91st Street on the Upper East Side on Friday morning, tearing off balconies and raining broken brick and shattered glass onto the street below, in the second Manhattan crane collapse in two months. At least one person, the operator of the crane, who was sitting in the cab as the structure fell, was killed, officials said.

At least two others were injured and taken to local hospitals, according to a fire department spokesman.

The crane, which was apparently being used for a construction project at 354 East 91st Street, snapped apart moments after 8 a.m., sending the top piece onto the white-brick residential building at the southwest corner of 91st Street and First Avenue.

The cab of the crane smashed into the top floor of the building, about 20 stories up, and cascaded down the north facade, knocking off balconies and leaving a swath of pockmarks down to a Duane Reade drug store, which sits on the building’s ground floor.

One person died at the scene; the other was taken to Metropolitan Hospital and died there, according to the police.

The accident occurred just two months after a tower crane collapsed on East 51st Street between Second and First Avenues, killing seven people and prompting an extensive review of the safety of the city’s cranes.

Just this week, city officials said they would no longer require inspectors to be on hand at construction sites when a crane is erected or made taller, ending a policy put in place after the Midtown accident. The Buildings Department said on Wednesday that it would switch to a system of spot checks and “safety meetings” where workers would be briefed on proper procedures.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, speaking Friday morning in a previously scheduled radio interview, said the accident “is just unacceptable and we’ve got to figure out what happened here.”

“The construction industry obviously and real estate developers, they don’t want you to shut it down,” the mayor said, though he did not appear to have been fully briefed on the details of Friday morning’s accident. “But the bottom line is, number one is public safety, and we’re not going to tolerate any rate of accidents any higher than it has to be.”

The wreckage from the crane lay in the intersection, where a camp of ambulances, fire trucks and police personnel sprang up minutes afterward. Traffic was blocked off for 20 blocks around the accident. Some residents of the building peeked their heads out from windows to survey the damage.

Caitlin Reeves, 25, who lives in a corner apartment on the 10th floor of the damaged building, said she was in her bathroom brushing her teeth when she felt and heard an enormous rumble shoot through her apartment — the effects of the broken crane shearing off her balcony.

“I turned around and ran into my room and there were pieces of the wall and debris everywhere,” she said. “Then I turned around and yelled at my roommates to get out.”

One of her roommates, Hadley Jensen, a 23-year-old Los Angeles native, said she assumed the sound stemmed from an earthquake. “It sounded like there was a huge crash on 1st Avenue, but then we felt something shaking the bottom of the building,” she said.

As remnants of the crane continued to rain down on the street, the women fled their apartment and bounded down 10 flights of stairs to their dust-filled lobby, where dozens of residents were shouting and sobbing as they streamed out onto 91st Street. Ms. Reeves said the building was mostly occupied by families with small children. Like other residents interviewed on the street, she said the sight of the crane towering over her building each day gave her an uneasy feeling.

“Every morning I woke up and I could see the top of that crane pivoting and I kept thinking we’d be lucky to make it out of that apartment without it careening into us,” she said.

The building under construction was the Azure, a high-rise condominium tower; about 12 of the 34 planned stories had been completed. According to city records, the company that is building the Azure is the Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corporation of Elmont, on Long Island.

The Fire Department received the first 911 call about the collapse at 8:06 a.m., with the caller saying a “crane was down,” said firefighter Chris Villarroel. He said units rushed to the scene and found the wreckage.” We pulled out two people,” said Mr. Villarroel. “We don’t know their condition.”

It was unclear immediately if those rescued were construction worker or pedestrians in the street or in the building.

Al Baker, Carla Baranauckas, Sewell Chan, Michael S. Schmidt and Anahad O’Connor contributed reporting.

Bag It ...

I agree there should be a limit for the amount of luggage a passenger takes on a commercial airliner, but maybe the limit should be two bags rather than just one? See the NY Times yesterday:

Airlines to Charge for Second Bag

By MARTHA C. WHITE
Five of the six major airlines in the United States plan to start charging coach passengers as much as $25 next month to check a second bag, the latest move in their quest to offset high fuel prices.

But while the airlines, and even some industry specialists, say they expect the fees will primarily affect leisure travelers, business travelers beg to differ.

“For people traveling with samples or trade show materials, they’re going to find their costs are substantially higher,” an airline industry analyst, Robert Mann, said. “It’s really not limited to leisure travelers.”

Pete Mitchell, director of business-to-business sales for the luggage manufacturer Samsonite, said he often traveled with one-of-a-kind items he is reluctant to send via a shipping service. “We’ll bring them prototypes and production samples,” Mr. Mitchell said. “Sometimes we’ll bring things that are handmade. These are things that we can’t just send out another one if we lose it.”

Because many of the samples are quite sizable, Mr. Mitchell said it is not feasible to try to carry them in his own luggage. “I just don’t have any other choice. You’ve got to be able to let the client touch it. I have to bring them with me even if it costs $25.”

Jerry Bower, an entrepreneur who recently started a company, Wine Galaxy, that offers wine-of-the-month memberships for corporations to give to employees or clients, said he, too, often travels with more than one bag. “I have to travel quite a bit in order to build relationships,” he said. “I do carry a lot of different literature and presentation pieces, and sometimes wine samples.”

The new fee of $25 for a second bag is being levied by Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways. The low-fare carrier AirTran has announced that it will charge $10 for a second checked bag. Airlines have long levied fees for checking a third bag. Some carriers have recently increased those as well, and the fees on the major carriers now run as high as $100.

As the airlines struggle to stay in the black, charges for amenities formerly included in the ticket price are on the rise. Depending on the carrier, travelers now can wind up paying extra for everything from food to curbside check-in to bulkhead seats that offer extra legroom.

As for the extra-bag fee, even those who say they pack lightly for their trips foresee problems caused by price-sensitive fliers overfilling their carry-on bags and using large amounts of scarce overhead-bin space.

“The thing that scares me about this is that it’s just going to encourage people to lug more stuff onto the plane,” Mr. Mitchell said. “For those of us that have only one bag, if I don’t board early, there’s no place for my bag.”

A few More "Ramble On" items, too good to wait for next Sunday...

More Ramble On...

Did you see Maureen Dowd's column in this morning's NYT? I enjoyed this passage:

“A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me,” the unamused former president said Thursday night in Boonville, Ind.

He’s absolutely crazed, and not just because he feels that he never got the sort of incandescent press coverage that Obama gets — except maybe when he and Al Gore were on that bus, hailed as “Heartthrobs of the Heartland.” Bill is also crazed about the ineluctable fact that he isn’t Obama.

“He can’t compute that he’s not the new kid on the block,” said a former Clinton adviser. “It’s about his mortality — and immortality. He needs her to win because if she doesn’t become president, he goes down as a minor president. If she wins, it’s the Adamses and the Roosevelts and the Clintons.”

But he knows it’s going down the drain, and that Obama is the hot new thing and they’re the establishment retreads.

The 22nd Amendment — not to mention his dwindling political skills — prevents Bill from doing what he truly wants done: the demolition of the Obama phenomenon. Instead, he’s stuck propping up a candidate who is not a natural. (See the video of Hillary dancing at a seniors’ aerobics class at a Philly Y.M.C.A. Awk.)

Bill’s horse whisperer, Doug Sosnik, a former White House aide who was dispatched to keep him calm and play Hearts and Oh Hell with him, has been out of the country recently. His other personable aide, Matt McKenna, left to manage Hillary’s Montana campaign. The Big Dog was unguarded.

***

Who said I wouldn't bring luck to Boston?

BC Wins NCAA FROZEN FOUR TITLE:

DENVER (AP) -- Nathan Gerbe no longer has to be a gracious runner-up.

Twenty-four hours after missing out on the Hobey Baker award, the nation's leading scorer led Boston College to the NCAA hockey championship that had eluded the talent-laden Eagles the last two seasons.

"Who needs the Hobey Baker? I've got the national championship," exulted Gerbe, who scored twice and added two assists in B.C.'s 4-1 win over Notre Dame on Saturday night.

***

I will write more about this thought in the week to come, but the Utah Jazz look pretty good going into the NBA Playoffs.

-30-

The Tale of the Sports E-Mail and assorted junk ...

I admit, I sign up for automated emails and breaking news flashes on a far too regular basis. I think the acronym RSS doesn't stand for 'really simple syndication' but rather 'really stupid sign-up.'

My MacBook Pro email inbox is clogged with feeds from four different emails, including: terrynba, terryelevate, tl at terrylyons and my, new, official work email.

Here are a few of the culprits, all soon to be eliminated:

Jerry Remy's Remdog report;

CNN's Breaking News;

The New York Times' PLAY... NY Times' CIRCUIT, and Stuart Elliot's marketing and advertising email;

Wall Street Journal's THE FIX and THE DAILY WRAP;

Boston.com's @Bat Insider;

New York Times Ticketwatch which is a listing of ticket discounts and opportunities for Broadway plays and other New York City music and theatre events. I tried to unsubscribe and opt-out, but it the NYT doesn't recognize the entry.

I get "ALERTS" from Google (Anything on Covert, Bob Delaney); and anything on Elevate Communications; From the NYT, anything and everything on USA Basketball and a few others.

Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama are regularly dropping emails into my box, or at least I pretend the correspondence is from the candidates, along with an occasional email blast from Howard Dean, God Bless his heart. And, my new best friend seems to be David Plouffe, the Campaign Manager for Mr. Obama.

Senator Schumer recently wrote:

Dear T

One of the DSCC's most important responsibilities is to keep you, our most dedicated supporter, up-to-the-minute on all the latest developments from Senate campaigns across the country. This job is especially significant during this critical election year, when so much media attention is focused on the presidential race.

That's why the DSCC's Amy Rubin is traveling to all our key states - video camera in hand - to give you the inside story on how we're going to expand our Senate majority in November.

For her most recent video, I dispatched Amy to New Orleans where she toured the devastated Lower Ninth Ward with Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. This new clip captures the real connection between Senator Landrieu and the people she serves.

Click here to take a look at our new video from New Orleans. It's just the latest dispatch from our new series, The Road to Victory.
www.dscc.org/roadtovictory

I like the fact that he calls me, "T" and I remember signing up with just the single initial wondering if it would qualify as a first name.

Moving right along ...

FIBA sends a few press releases and I consider myself very informed when I know the schedule of the women's Olympic qualifying tournament that will take place this June and the fact that Ubekistan is the 51st ranked womens team on the planet.

Media Bistro sends a couple emails to me each and every weekday with the Media Bistro Fishbowl for NY and DC. I enjoy reading it - at least - three of five days.

The Marketing Daily from MediaPost always gets a few minutes of my time in the morning, as does The Sports Business Daily, of course.

My favorite email is the Boston Sports Media pushed to my account and it is accessible by clicking on the Tale of Sports Email headline above.

Boston Magazine sends a few emails per week, many of them useful.

I get ads from ITunes and Pottery Barn, from Dell and from Fresh Direct. When I see the Fresh Direct, I daydream, thinking how nice it will be to go to a real grocery store in the suburbs, a Stop and Shop or a "Star Market" and shop for things, put them in the car (or CR-V or Rav 4) and drive them back home.

Gibson Guitar sends the greatest emails which feature their newest and classic guitars. The emails have me thinking about purchasing guitars and I can't even play the instrument.

Madison Square Garden, Live Nation, Nokia, Ticketmaster, the Bowery Ballroom and the Merc Lounge send emails and monthly calendars for concerts, sporting events and shows, often tempting me with advance sale offers and VIP seating arrangments. And, the ABB sends the wonderful "Hitting the Note" emails with links to the Allman Brothers Instant Live CDs that I love so much.

Since I am starting to ramble on and sound a bit like Andy Rooney, I think I'll cut it off now, as I am sure you get the picture. If not, I might pick it up with the next...Ramble On.

Can they run a campaign or run a country?

I stashed this NYT article in my file a few days ago and thought it was important enough to highlight. I think the media often overlooks the 'managerial' aspects on the campaign trail. Here is an interesting look into the Clinton campaign:

Sniping by Aides Hurt Clinton’s Image as Manager

By ADAM NAGOURNEY, PATRICK HEALY and KATE ZERNIKE
This article is by Adam Nagourney, Patrick Healy and Kate Zernike.

WASHINGTON — The morning after Senator Barack Obama shook the Clinton campaign by winning five contests in one weekend, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new campaign manager — Maggie Williams, who had taken over in a shake-up the night before — assembled the curious if demoralized staff.

“You may not like the person next to you,” Ms. Williams told dozens of aides who ringed the conference room at the campaign’s Virginia headquarters last month, according to participants. “But you’re going to respect them. And we’re going to work together.”

Ms. Williams’s demand was dismissed as wishful thinking by some in her weary audience. But in the view of many Clinton supporters, it accurately reflected the urgent need to overhaul a campaign that at that point had set itself apart for its level of disorder and dysfunction.

The divisions in her campaign over strategy and communications — and the dislike many of her advisers had for one another — poured out into public as Mrs. Clinton struggled in February to hold off Mr. Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But even as Mrs. Clinton revived her fortunes last week with victories in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas, the questions lingered about how she managed her campaign, with the internal sniping and second-guessing undermining her well-cultivated image as a steady-at-the-wheel chief executive surrounded by a phalanx of loyal and efficient aides.

“She hasn’t managed anything as complex as this before; that’s the problem with senators,” said James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University who is an expert on presidential management. “She wasn’t as decisive as she should have been. And it’s a legitimate question to ask: Under great pressure from two different factions, can she make some hard decisions and move ahead? It seems to just fester. She doesn’t seem to know how to stop it or want to stop it.”

Over the last month, Mrs. Clinton, of New York, has become much more involved in the day-to-day operation of her campaign. In addition to Ms. Williams, she brought in two experienced political hands from her husband’s White House: Doug Sosnik, who was a political director, and Steve Ricchetti, a deputy chief of staff.

And Ms. Williams has sought to calm tensions in the headquarters through steps like opening the morning conference call to more aides to foster a greater sense of teamwork. One of her first acts, aides said, was to instruct Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist and a polarizing figure in the campaign, to stay off television.

Still, interviews with campaign aides, associates and friends suggest that Mrs. Clinton, at least until February, was a detached manager. Juggling the demands of being a candidate, she paid little attention to detail, delegated decisions large and small and deferred to advisers on critical questions. Mrs. Clinton accepted or seemed unaware of the intense factionalism and feuding that often paralyzed her campaign and that prevented her aides from reaching consensus on basic questions like what states to fight in and how to go after Mr. Obama, of Illinois.

Mrs. Clinton showed a tendency toward an insular management style, relying on a coterie of aides who have worked for her for years, her aides and associates said. Her choice of lieutenants, and her insistence on staying with them even when friends urged her to shake things up, was blamed by some associates for the campaign’s woes. Again and again, the senator was portrayed as a manager who valued loyalty and familiarity over experience and expertise.

Mrs. Clinton stood by Mr. Penn and Patti Solis Doyle, who was until last month her campaign manager, even as her campaign was at risk of letting Mr. Obama sew up the nomination. When some of her closest supporters pressed her to replace them, arguing that the two were clearly struggling with their jobs and had become divisive figures in the campaign, she responded by saying she would “think about it.”

When Mrs. Clinton finally pushed out Ms. Solis Doyle, she chose Ms. Williams, like Ms. Solis Doyle, an old friend who had never before managed a presidential campaign.

Mrs. Clinton’s ability to manage the one person with whom she spoke most often, former President Bill Clinton, was also questioned by some of her advisers and supporters. Mr. Clinton moved in his own orbit — he heatedly argued with his wife’s advisers who wanted to write off South Carolina, defying them to campaign there — and took no direction from the campaign about what to say or where to go, some of them said. (Mr. Obama defeated Mrs. Clinton in the South Carolina Democratic primary by nearly 29 percentage points.)

Several aides, donors and supporters, who requested anonymity to recount private conversations with the candidate, said they had warned Mrs. Clinton that her husband’s attacks on Mr. Obama were demeaning to her and hurting her campaign. Mrs. Clinton replied that her husband became “carried away” at times but that she did not see any real harm from his approach, they said.

Mrs. Clinton’s top advisers said that while her management style might be untidy, it showed her to be comfortable with conflicting ideas among her aides. They said she had pronounced herself “ready to learn” from her mistakes and was resistant to placing too much power in the hands of a single political adviser in the mold of Karl Rove in President Bush’s two campaigns for the White House.

“She thinks the way to manage effectively is to get a lot of smart people around who don’t agree and let them work out their differences creatively,” said Howard Wolfson, her communications director. “Let them hash through things, and as a result, you come up with the best process.”

A senior adviser, Harold Ickes, joined the campaign full-time in January as Mrs. Clinton’s aides began to realize that the contest was not going the way they had planned. Mr. Ickes cautioned about drawing firm conclusions about her from this period, when she faced the demands of being a candidate.

“It’s hard to draw conclusions about her management style,” he said, “because she is, in fact, not the manager of her campaign.”

Still, some of her senior advisers said Mrs. Clinton was left with little option but to become more assertive in getting her campaign back on track, a shift highlighted by her decision to push out Ms. Solis Doyle, one of her closest and longest-serving aides. Her husband changed his advisers at regular intervals as he faced various troubles and shifting political demands while president; Mrs. Clinton, in contrast, has relied on a relatively unchanging cast since she was first lady.

For all her years on the public stage, Mrs. Clinton has never come close to assembling and running an enterprise like the 700-person, $170 million-and-counting campaign organization that she has created. At times, her aides made assumptions about tactics and voters that turned out to be wrong. They nearly ran out of money at all the wrong times, like just after Mrs. Clinton’s victory in the New Hampshire primary and right before the 22 state nominating contests on Feb. 5.

The day after her loss in the Iowa caucuses, Mrs. Clinton took command of a long meeting in New Hampshire. “I’ll do whatever you guys need me to do,” she said, a participant recalled. “I get the message.”

But a month later, she described herself as stunned to learn the campaign was nearly broke — notwithstanding financial reports sent to her every week by e-mail — and was all but conceding the 11 contests that were to come over the next month.

Unlike Mr. Bush, Mrs. Clinton has shown no interest in having one strong person running all aspects of the campaign operation. And unlike her husband during the early part of his 1992 bid for the presidency, she does not try to keep a hand in everything, with lines of communications all through the campaign.

Instead, she talked daily to a few people: Mr. Penn, Ms. Solis Doyle and, now, Ms. Williams. Even Mr. Ickes, her longtime friend and adviser, says he speaks with her infrequently.

This approach, many of her associates said, had the effect of breeding resentment at campaign headquarters. Since there was no one person in charge, they said, it was hard to make decisions, and Mr. Penn would frequently use his personal connection with Mrs. Clinton to block the campaign from moving in directions he opposed, like putting an increased emphasis on trying to present a human side of Mrs. Clinton.

Ms. Williams had been among those who lobbied Mrs. Clinton to remove Ms. Solis Doyle, arguing that the campaign lacked a plan or a message despite starting out with an overwhelming advantage in money and name recognition, campaign officials said. After resisting for much of the winter, Mrs. Clinton, before the vote in Iowa, told aides that she would replace Ms. Solis Doyle but that she wanted to wait until after New Hampshire.

But when Mrs. Clinton won the New Hampshire contest, the decision was pulled back. Ms. Williams was brought in to work alongside Ms. Solis Doyle, but without an obvious portfolio. The move was widely seen at campaign headquarters as a slap at Ms. Solis Doyle.

Offended, she threatened to leave and had to be courted to return, agreeing to do so only on the condition that she would be in charge. She was finally dismissed after more losses and the news that the campaign was running out of money.

Adam Nagourney reported from Washington, and Patrick Healy and Kate Zernike from New York.

Such a Long, Long Way to Go ...

Most postings on my blog have been upbeat and forward-looking. I encourage positive thinking and vision. When I'm down in the dumps, I tend to look for the bright light on the horizon and I've shared many of the methods I use to encourage positive thinking.

But, as we all know, not all is good in this world.

Protesters attacked the US Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, and the United States is sending home any and all non-essential staffers.

The war on drugs along the Bolivian border, throughout South America and the US, is as bad as the war in the Middle East and Afghanistan, never mind the bleak picture on the North Korean border.

So, what's the point of this dismal post?

This story stands as a reminder that we have a long, long way to go.

The recession in the USA focuses people on the problems within our own borders, but the truth of the matter is that world peace, world economics and the USA's international (not foreign) policy is as important today as anything on the presidential agenda and the political landscape.

USA voters want to hear things about how the presidential candidates will shore up the 'ole US of A. My point, we have to start by strengthening our international standing and create a whole new "international" policy. It's not foreign. It is not foreign to me, to my neighbors and to our fellow citizens of the world.

We owe the world a new United States of America. A country that will make a stand against the threats to society.

We need to combat drug abuse, worldwide and in the States. Read on - in theis NYT story from today - and you'll see why:

Cocaine Floodgates Open Into Argentina and Brazil, Consuming Lives

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
BUENOS AIRES — Bilma Acuña has two drug-addicted sons and roams the streets of the Ciudad Oculta slum here with a purpose: to save others from the same fate.

She and the group of mothers she helps organize have become the only bulwark, it seems, against the irrepressible spread of paco, a highly addictive, smokable cocaine residue that has destroyed thousands of lives in Argentina and caused a cycle of drug-induced street violence never seen before in this country.

The scourge underscores a significant shift in both Argentina and its larger neighbor, Brazil, which in just a few years have become sizable cocaine consumers. Brazil now ranks as the second largest consumer of cocaine in the world after the United States, the State Department says.

The surge in drug use has been fueled by porous borders, economic hardship and, more recently, the rolling back of restrictions on coca growing since President Evo Morales took office in 2006 in neighboring Bolivia. The result has been the democratization of cocaine in this part of South America, which has become the dumping ground for cheaper, lower-quality cocaine.

In the five years since residents first began noticing the crude yellowish crystals being smoked on the streets of Ciudad Oculta, a neighborhood of 15,000 people within Buenos Aires, paco has become the dominant drug that dealers are peddling.

Just weeks after first trying the drug, Mrs. Acuña’s son Pablo Eche began selling everything he owned to feed his addiction. He committed violent robberies. In a drug-fueled rage he destroyed his house and then sold the land that was left, ending up freezing and alone on the streets until his grandmother took him in.

“The majority of the kids are using here,” said Mrs. Acuña, 46. “My son saw what was happening with the kids in the streets that were using paco, and he always said he wouldn’t get caught up in that. But he did.”

The challenges to stopping the flow are immense. Fewer than 200 federal police officers patrol Brazil’s 2,100-mile border with Bolivia, though the Brazilian government says reinforcements are on the way. Only 10 percent of Argentina’s airspace is covered by radar, leaving traffickers free Argentina and Brazil have surged in the past two years. The influx of raw cocaine paste used to make crack, from both Bolivia and Peru, has been particularly acute. In Brazil, such seizures by the federal police nearly quadrupled from 2006 to 2007, to 2,700 pounds from about 710 pounds, according to the police.

In Argentina, the deep financial crisis of late 2001 turned places like Ciudad Oculta into what are known here as villas miserias, or towns of misery, easily exploitable markets of impoverished people looking for escape.

“Cocaine is no longer the drug only of the elite, of high society,” said Luiz Carlos Magno, a Brazilian narcotics officer in the São Paulo State Police Department. “Today kids buy three lines of cocaine for 10 reals,” or about $6. For about $1 in Brazil and about $1.50 in Argentina, users can buy enough of the cocaine for a 15-minute high.

Paco is highly addictive because its high lasts just a few minutes — and is so intense that many users smoke 20 to 50 paco cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger. Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine, Argentine and Brazilian drug enforcement officials said.

The surge in lower-quality cocaine hitting the streets has resulted from a crackdown by both countries on the chemicals needed to transform cocaine paste, or pasta base, as it is called, into powder form.

Tougher customs rules to track the flow of the chemicals, manufactured in large quantities in both places, have limited access for Bolivian traffickers seeking to refine the base cocaine into higher-value powder, said Gen. Roberto Uchõa, Brazil’s national drug secretary.

As the quality of Bolivian cocaine has fallen off, the European market, in particular, has rejected it, the general said. So more of it has gone to Argentina and Brazil.

In São Paulo, the police say the cocaine on the streets is less than 30 percent pure. “Every year they are producing more, and that is driving down prices,” said Mr. Magno, with the state police.

Traffickers are cutting the cocaine powder with everything from boric acid to lidocaine to baking powder, leading to severe health effects like infections and blood clots, health officials said. “It is the garbage cocaine that is coming here,” Mrs. Acuña said. “The kids here are smoking garbage.”

Mrs. Acuña, a soft-spoken Paraguayan native, is battling paco’s spread to save the barrio, but also to save her family. Tragedy first struck in August 2001 when two drug dealers shot and killed her 16-year-old son, David, one week after he was believed to have witnessed a murder. The dealers are now in prison for his death.

A few years later Mr. Eche, her eldest son, and her younger son, Leandro, 20, became addicted to paco. That was when she helped form a Mothers of Paco support group.

With less than three dozen members in Ciudad Oculta, the mothers have few ways to counter the armed dealers who hold sway over the neighborhood. Instead, they find safety in numbers.

On one recent afternoon, Mrs. Acuña led a walk through the Oculta with some eight women in tow. As she walked along the mostly unpaved streets, Bolivian and Paraguayan music blaring from open windows, she pointed out kiosks and red brick homes where dealers were known to sell. A teenager strode by at one point, a pistol stuffed in the front of his shorts.

A tiny police station the size of a one-car garage sat in a makeshift plaza. A police car was parked outside. “The police haven’t entered here much since 2001,” Mrs. Acuña explained.

Argentine government officials have increased money in recent years for drug education, prevention and rehabilitation, but they have yet to announce any major plans to tackle the paco problem, which has left local law enforcement officials overwhelmed.

Instead, led by the mothers, residents are largely taking matters into their own hands. Mrs. Acuña fields dozens of calls a week from mothers seeking help with their children’s addictions. She refers some to government-run psychiatric clinics, and urges others, some of them recovering from addictions themselves, to join the group.

Mrs. Acuña operates a small diner with a bare concrete floor where the mothers hold many of their meetings. At one meeting on Jan. 28, Liliana Barrionuevo blurted out that not enough was being done to crack down on the dealers. Some mothers cast their eyes around nervously, fearful of reprisals.

“Before there were codes,” another mother, Andrea Cordero, chimed in angrily. “The dealers would never sell to young kids, and the users would never use in public. Now there are no codes. We need to stand up and stick it to two or three dealers.”

The descent of Mrs. Acuña’s son Pablo Eche parallels that of his neighborhood. His addiction began in 2003, when he was 21. His girlfriend at the time, six months pregnant with their son, left him and moved to Italy. Argentina’s economic crisis was still ravaging the country, and Ciudad Oculta was gripped by hopelessness.

Every day seemed to be worse. “The lack of money isn’t the nightmare,” Mr. Eche said of the economic crisis. “It’s the pressure that it causes in a person, the desperation and the depression.”

He said he “was looking for a way to not feel anything, to not feel sadness, to find a way not to cry.”

For months he had passed the kiosk on a corner near his house where he knew dealers were selling a new drug, one, it was whispered, that could cheaply fill that hollow place inside. “I always passed it, but never bought anything,” he said.

Then one day he did.

From the first 15 minutes, paco seized his soul. Soon, he could no longer hold down a job, even at his mother’s diner. And he could never have enough. At one point he went on a three-day paco bender without a wink of sleep, he said.

Three months after smoking his first pipe, he sold anything he could to turn into cash for paco. Finally, in a drug-induced hysteria, he destroyed the one-bedroom house his mother had given him, tearing down the roof and walls and ripping out the flooring. Eight months into his addiction, he sold what was left for about $315, one-quarter what his mother had paid.

His relationship with his mother was in shambles. He had stolen from her, and stolen from other family members as well. “I had turned into a nobody to her,” he said. “I caused her a lot of pain.”

He was homeless, starving and suffering from severe drug-induced chills when his grandmother finally took him in. His mother later came around.

These days, his eyes are clear, his voice steady. Interned at a drug-dependency clinic some 40 minutes from Ciudad Oculta — his fourth rehabilitation stint — he said he had been clean of drugs since October.

Now 25, he is again writing poetry, something he had not done since before he discovered paco. “The future is uncertain,” he said. “But I am getting back my dreams.”

But he worries about his brother Leandro, who is still prone to all-night paco benders. “I hope he finds a way to stop,” he said. And he mourns for Ciudad Oculta. “Right now I can see all the little kids lining up to buy,” he said, closing his eyes deeply. “Paco is a plague. Somehow we need to protect them from this.”

Joao Pina contributed reporting.

Sense or Nonsense of Humor?

What was the big story stemming from media day at The Super Bowl, the most important sporting event of the year in the USA?

A wedding proposal to New England quarterback Tom Brady from a TV Azteca (Mexico) entertainment reporter, dressed in a wedding gown, no less.

That is not good.

The issue that I bring-up to the blogosphere today is whether the NFL public/media relations department should have stepped-in and denied access to the 'bad excuse' of a reporter, who was obviously calling attention to herself while having fun (a.k.a. making mockery) at an official media session. (Also, the outside chance that TV Azteca was doing a little outbound PR blitz of their own, as another branch of the station had a reporter dressed as "Carnac the Magnificent" in order to 'predict' the outcome of the big game.)

Now, everyone knows that the NFL media day has become a joke. It is a shame, as the average 'working' stiff of a reporter actually needs a half-hour to 45-minute period of decent access to be able to provide fans with some insight into the big game.

The NBA All-Star Game media session - held the Friday before the game - has turned into a similar circus, but at least it is a media session for an exhibition game. The media availability sessions around the NBA Finals remain large, but very professional and the game is the center of attention, not the media circus.

So, what's a PR guy to do?

I tend to think the TV Azteca folks took it a bit too far... make it, way too far.

"Okay Sherlock," you say? "What would you do about it?"

Well, the NFL has the hammer. They can deny future access or they could seek out a new TV partner in Mexico, possibly losing some revenue in the process, as TV Azteca is a major player and has been doing the NFL regular season and playoffs/Super Bowl since I can remember.

One thing is for sure, even though the reporter (I am choosing not to use her name) was acting in fun, I would politely inform her of the fact she is welcome to remain in Arizona at the media hotel, but she would no longer be in possession of a media credential, nor would her crew.

Maybe I would be called "No Fun League" names, branded as a "suit" without a sense of humor. But, I would take the heat with knowledge that the day-to-day NFL media need a professional working atmosphere and, as crazy as the Super Bowl media day has become, I would hope that taking a stand and getting the word out on a 'professional' atmosphere would be the result nearly everyone 'really' wants to see.

To that fact, we'll see what the fallout will be, if any? The NFL 'rep' is as strong as the "Teflon Don's." The media tend to let alot go, knowing it's not in their best interest to knock the league and its operation.

My view, in the end, is that the true fans enjoy insightful stories like NYT reporter Karen Crouse's cover story take-out on the Manning family in the 1-29-08 paper and I would put stock in the reporters who want to get quality time with the players, rather than with the "Ms. Look-at-Me's" who want to become the story themselves at the expense of their working colleagues.

So, tell me a little more about this game? How the coaches will address the match-ups, how the Giants will look to blitz Brady and limit the time he usually gets to throw? Don't tell me who is dating who and that a QBs girlfriend has any connection to the outcome of the game.

Thanks, Roger.

Slate and the NYT on ESPN...

A few items you might have missed in the pre-Christmas crunch. I clipped a few things to make note of this week while everyone is busy with the holidays... read it or delete it...


PRESS BOX
ESPN's Print Fetish

The Wall Street Journal misreads the sports network's hiring philosophy.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Friday, Dec. 21, 2007, at 6:12 PM ET
This morning's (Dec. 21) Wall Street Journal thinks it's news that ESPN is "raiding news organizations for sports journalists."

The "poaching," which has been going on for "more than a year now," as the Journal reports, has recently netted the network Rick Reilly and Jeffri Chadiha of Sports Illustrated, Kristin Huckshorn of the New York Times, Mark Fainaru-Wada of the San Francisco Chronicle, T.J. Quinn of the New York Daily News, Dwayne Bray of the Dallas Morning News, Howard Bryant of the Washington Post, and Larry Starks of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

According to the Journal, "[T]his is more than a competitive shopping spree—it is a step toward reinventing the franchise."

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sure, ESPN needs more bodies because it has more media appendages today, but the aggressive recruitment of accomplished print journalists has been ESPN Executive Editor John Walsh's favorite play since he started at the network back in 1988, as Michael Freeman's 2000 book, ESPN: The Uncensored History, explains. The résumés of ESPN journalists listed on the network's Web site indicate Walsh's longstanding hiring practices:

Chris Mortensen, acquired by ESPN in 1991; previously at The National and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

John Clayton, acquired by ESPN in 1991; previously at the Tacoma News Tribune.

Sal Paolantonio, acquired by ESPN in 1995; previously at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Wrote a biography of Frank L. Rizzo.

Shelley Smith, acquired by ESPN in 1997; previously at Sports Illustrated.

Tony Kornheiser, acquired by ESPN in 1997; still writes for the Washington Post.

Ed Werder, acquired by ESPN in 1998; previously at the Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and other newspapers.

Tim Kurkjian, acquired by ESPN in 1998; previously at Sports Illustrated and various newspapers.

J.W. Stewart, acquired by ESPN in 2000; previously at the Poughkeepsie Journal.

Andy Katz, acquired by ESPN in 2000; previously at the Fresno Bee and other newspapers.

Michael Wilbon, acquired by ESPN in 2001; still writes for the Washington Post.

Skip Bayless, acquired by ESPN in 2002. Previous gigs at newspapers in Dallas, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Jose.

Stephen A. Smith, acquired by ESPN in 2003; wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer until earlier this year.

Pedro Gomez, acquired by ESPN in 2003; previously at the Arizona Republic and other newspapers.

Rachel Nichols, acquired by ESPN in 2004; previously at the Washington Post.

Terry Blount, acquired by ESPN in 2006; previously at the Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle.

Angelique Chengelis, acquired by ESPN in 2007; previously at the Detroit News.

Other print journalists who work or have worked for the ESPN organization and are unnamed in the Journal article include Len Pasquarelli, Woody Paige, Jayson Stark, Andrea Kremer, Pat Forde, Pete Axthelm, John Feinstein, Dick Schaap, David Aldridge, John Papanek, Christine Brennan, Vince Doria, Gregg Easterbrook, recent arrival J.A. Adande (Los Angeles Times), and others. (Apologies to any and all print wretches turned ESPNers that I've missed.)

(TL Note: That means you, Ric Bucher, Mark Stein, Chris Broussard, J.A. Adande and Chris Sheridan).

Walsh, as if you have to ask, was a print guy, too—Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Inside Sports, where he was founding editor.

More than other journalists, sportswriters regard themselves as eternal free agents—pens for hire to the highest bidder. When Walsh and ESPN first started poaching print journalists, the operation was just a cable channel. Now it's several cable channels, a magazine, a Web site, and a national radio network, making it sports journalism's equivalent of the Yankees, a destination for those with talent, ambition, and a love of dollars. How to forgive the Journal for whiffing the money angle in a story like this?

******

Maybe Rupert Murdoch should invest in a daily Journal sports section. Send your proposals to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2179942/


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The Saturday, December 24, 2007 New York Times had this to say:

The Top Player in This League? It May Be the Sports Reporter

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
A few teams are rich and getting richer, hunting more avidly than ever for talent, raiding the less-endowed leagues, poaching free agents and bidding the prices of star players to unheard-of heights.

But the high-paid objects of desire are not pitchers, running backs or point guards — they are sportswriters.

ESPN and Yahoo Sports are on a furious hiring binge, offering reporters and columnists more than they ever imagined they could make in journalism. And ESPN, in particular, has gone after the biggest stars at newspapers and magazines, signing them for double and triple what they were earning — $150,000 to $350,000 a year for several writers, and far more for a select handful.

Some print publications, notably Sports Illustrated, have selectively tried to keep up with the lucrative ESPN and Yahoo offers, to retain some of their writers or attract new ones. But for the most part, newspapers, though they are being forced to raise some salaries, cannot keep up. Several say they are suffering through the worst talent drain their editors can recall.

“My counteroffer usually comes down to asking them what kind of cake they want at their goodbye party,” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, assistant managing editor for sports at The Washington Post, which has lost three writers to ESPN in the last year and a half. “The numbers they throw around are out of reach.”

The competition for writers has even produced bidding wars, especially for big-name columnists like Rick Reilly (from Sports Illustrated to ESPN), Howard Bryant (from The Post to ESPN) and Selena Roberts (from The New York Times to Sports Illustrated) — but also for less widely known reporters. People who were briefed on the deals said that Mr. Reilly’s contract, easily the biggest of the recent signings, was worth more than $3 million a year.

“It’s the exact same model as what happened to athletes,” said Leigh Steinberg, a top sports agent. “We’re seeing free agency for sports journalists.”

He and Scott Boras, the agent for Alex Rodriguez and other stars, said that change had no doubt already produced an unnoticed milestone: In a sports locker room somewhere, in an interview between a prominent reporter and a low-level player, the scribe is the better-paid person in the conversation.

Rising demand for star sportswriters, driven by rising television and Internet revenue, coincides with the declining fortunes of newspapers, which has left fewer jobs and less money to go around for most journalists. The paradox is not lost on the lucky few who benefit.

“This hiring at a high level, I know how amazing it is, given what’s happening everywhere else in the business,” said Mark Fainaru-Wada, who uncovered steroid scandals as a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and a co-author of the book “Game of Shadows.” He was recently hired by ESPN. “We just went through a 25 percent newsroom cut at The Chronicle,” he said.

On most topics, nearly all of the news offerings from Yahoo are collected from other sources. But not in sports, where the company has made its first major foray into being a creator of original material. It has more than 20 sports staff writers, up from 4 just two years ago, in addition to sports celebrities who write columns for the site.

Many staff members at Yahoo Sports are less prominent — and less well compensated — than the people signed by ESPN, and many of them cover niche topics like mixed martial arts and fantasy football. But Yahoo Sports has shown it intends to play in the big leagues, hiring David Morgan, former deputy sports editor of The Los Angeles Times, as its executive editor. It is also making lucrative offers to some of the journalists hired by ESPN and Sports Illustrated and signing a few sought-after people like Mike Silver, a football writer who was lured away from Sports Illustrated.

The biggest engine behind the competition for writers is ESPN, owned by the Walt Disney Company, a financial juggernaut that is a leading force in sports on television, the Internet, radio and in print. Mr. Garcia-Ruiz echoed a commonly held view when he called ESPN “the single most successful sports enterprise in the world.”

ESPN declines to reveal precise numbers, but in the last 18 months, it has hired at least 15 writers and editors from major newspapers and magazines, most of whom are expected to feed material to all of its platforms. Vince Doria, senior vice president and director of news, says that ESPN has 80 to 100 reporters and producers, not including its many columnists, where “five years ago, that number was closer to 50.”

Analysts say it generates far more profit — about $2 billion a year — than any other business built around a cable network.

ESPN consistently draws one of the largest audiences in cable, and it charges cable system operators more than $3 a subscriber for the right to carry its programming, by far the highest such fee in the industry. It also charges some of the highest advertising rates on the Internet and on cable.

ESPN.com is one of the most popular sports sites on the Web, with 20 million visitors in November, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, behind only Yahoo Sports, with more than 22 million. The Web site holds the vast bulk of what the writers produce, much of which is never seen on printed pages or heard on the air, including news, features, analysis, commentary and articles to accompany segments produced for television.

ESPN The Magazine sells well over two million copies every other week, more than twice as many as in 2000, and is gaining steadily on the leader, Sports Illustrated, a weekly magazine with circulation of 3.3 million. And ESPN The Magazine sells more ad pages per issue.

For some newspaper reporters, the appeal of a place like ESPN is not just the money but the vastly expanded audience, the ability to became a brand name, available through several media formats. “It’s like going from a guppy to an octopus,” Mr. Boras, the sports agent, said.

Based in Bristol, Conn., near Hartford, ESPN began in 1979, and quickly became a hit. But for much of ESPN’s history, the knock on it was that it was little more than games, highlight reels and banter — a reflection of the less-than-penetrating treatment sports news receives at many newspapers and television stations.

“I was the first guy that was hired here with a print news background,” said John A. Walsh, the executive editor of ESPN, who joined the company in 1988, after working at U.S. News & World Report and The Washington Post, among other places.

The boosterism of the old days is still evident at times, especially in game coverage and highlight shows, and ESPN’s competitors complain that it is too close to the leagues it covers (and broadcasts). But Mr. Walsh ticks off a list of instances when his network has embarrassed those leagues, from uncovering elements of the football star Michael Vick’s dog-fighting, to articles arguing that performance-enhancing drugs are a much bigger problem than has been acknowledged by either baseball executives or the much-publicized Mitchell report.

If anything, the proliferation of money and outlets in sports news has intensified the competition to break news. Even a new operation like Yahoo Sports has had its firsts, like revealing the existence of taped conversations that might show improper gifts to another football hero, Reggie Bush, when he was a running back at the University of Southern California.

The changing market for sportswriters has been felt by regional papers, but it has not been a drastic shift because those papers were often way stations for young reporters who later headed to bigger papers, said Mike Fannin, managing editor for sports and features at The Kansas City Star. His paper lost two writers to Yahoo Sports last year, and two to ESPN this year.

“We’ve had to step in and pay more money to folks to keep them,” he said. “But my feeling is there are too many talented journalists out of work right now for us to be too worried about losing people.”

The change has been more jarring for the biggest newspapers, like USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. They have always lost the occasional writer to a better offer from a magazine or from television, but not on this scale.

“When you lose an established star like Howard Bryant, it’s a terrible blow, because they’re not easily replaceable,” said Mr. Garcia-Ruiz of The Post. “We’re used to being a destination, not a stepping stone.”


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