Just in time for Christmas, a couple of New York Post reporters have come out with a game that can make you — yes, even you — a tabloid-headline-writing machine. From Editor & Publisher:

“The one thing we really noticed in developing this is that most people who played the game, including journalists, ended up trying to make funny headlines, and not even worrying about points,” [retired crime reporter Mike] Pearl said. Released this month, Man Bites Dog has sold out (at about $10 a game) from many online distributors.

I don’t even need to try this to know it’s great. A bunch of years ago, Dick Stolley (founding editor of People and master hed scribe) ran a session at the Stanford Professional Publishing Program. He showed a dozen or so students a bunch of photo layouts and challenged us to shout out heds and deks, based solely on the picture. We had so much fun the session ran far beyond the allotted hour.

Keep a tabloid reporter from starving. www.areyougame.com

My friend Angela Gunn points out Keith Olberman’s public apology to pretty much anyone he’s ever worked for and with.

It’s an impressive list, and an impressive piece. Olberman, best known for anchoring ESPN’s SportsCenter, is ex-UPI, ex-ESPN, ex-NBC, and not-yet-ex ABC. Along the way, he gained the reputation of being the new Howard Cosell — a man whose intellect and talent encompasses far more than sports but who drives everyone who knows him more than a little nuts.

This is not an apologia; it’s a genuine and specific act of public repentance. Well worth reading.

The NYTimes has suddenly discovered that cell service sucks because bandwidth demand is outpacing supply. Good story, except it’s been true since at least 1994…

If you’re concerned about the way your government conducts wars in your name, you need to read this unbelievable piece about the First Gulf War.

Here’s why I believe it:

• I know and am proud to have worked with Leon Daniel. When he asks a question, it’s a good one, and he rarely stops until he gets a good answer.
  
• Patrick Sloyan, like Daniel, is a UPI vet with impeccable credentials — like a Pulitzer Prize from 1992, back when a story had to be true in order to win a Pulitzer.
  
• Why else would the U.S. Government take such pains to hide a war from its own people? From the SF Chronicle:

More than 150 reporters who participated in the Pentagon pool system failed to produce a single eyewitness account of the clash between 300,000 allied troops and an estimated 300,000 Iraqi troops. There was not one photograph, not a strip of film by pool members of a dead body — American or Iraqi.

Unbelievable. But not nearly unbelievable enough.

Ken Cron was the guy running CMP Publications when I was Editor of NetGuide. He was also the guy running it when I left. Read into that what you want.

Somehow, according to the New York Times, he has wound up at the right hand of Barry Diller, running the media properties that Vivendi couldn’t figure out: its Universal film, television, music, theme park and game businesses. Annual sales amount to $12.5 Billion. With a B.

The paper asks, quite rightly, Who is this guy? and attempts to dig out the answer. They do get some good background, but miss the guy’s naked opportunism. This is the guy who. as Michael Wolff tells in his book Burn Rate, spent $1 million in 1993 in the apparent belief that he was buying the Internet. (What he bought was a list of AOL “Go” words and the right — which wasn’t Wolff’s to sell — to start a magazine called NetGuide.)

If you want an unbiased opinion of Ken Cron, you’re at the wrong weblog. From what I understand, Barry Diller and Ken Cron deserve each other.

(Ten points if you laughed at the headline, by the way.)

Yes, I know I’ve been among the absent. Two reasons:

1. I’ve been busy. Truly.


2. I’m so disheartened by this Fall’s elections that I scarcely know where to begin, and (relatedly)


3. I’m talking to some interesting people about some interesting jobs, and the last thing I want to do is blog myself out of employment. I wrote in 1995 about a friend who broke off a budding relationship because she didn’t like what she saw about the guy in question on Altavista; this is a lesson I take to heart.

Nonetheless, there’s some stuff worth writing about and pointing out. It follows.

 debacle ð \dee-BAH-kul or dee-BACK-ul\ ð (noun)
1 : a tumultuous breakup of ice in a river
2 : a violent disruption (as of an army) : rout
3 a : a great disaster *b : a complete failure : fiasco

I’m sure the timing was a coincidence, and had nothing at all to do with Tuesday’s events.

Something very odd and disturbing is going on near my old stomping grounds….

They were filming a movie over on the next block last night: Mona Lisa Smile, it’s called. Looks like a chick flick. It’s apparently scheduled for release this time next year.

A flyer from the production company said they were doing one scene: a woman walking down a rainy 1950s street and going into a building. It was about 40 degrees and windy last night. I wouldn’t have wanted to be out in the rain, fake or otherwise. Trailers took over parking places for about two or three blocks surrounding the set, and the entire block where they were shooting was blocked off.

The last major film to be made around here was Two Weeks Notice, coming to a multiplex near you next month. That one took over the Fulton Ferry landing for most of a week; apparently there’s a big party scene with Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. Most production companies are good about telling location residents what they’re up to and how long they’ll be up to it. This one didn’t, and there were lots of steamed neighbors and tourists. Also a lot of disappointed Asian newlyweds, a steady stream of whom get wedding pictures taken at Fulton Ferry.

Sometimes, the speed of global commerce takes my breath away.

IBM just replaced a hard drive for me under warranty. (IBM’s warranty service, by the way, is a thing of beauty.) I shipped them the busted drive around the 10th of this month; the replacement arrived today. It’s a remanufactured unit, not unusual for a warranty replacement. It was re-built earlier this month in Hungary, and found its way to Brooklyn by way of Malaysia and Union City, California.

Best I can tell, the drive left Asia on the 16th — two days after IBM got the defective unit. And remember, cargo still isn’t moving off the West Coast very easily these days.

When I was Deputy Editor of Time Digital about four years ago, I tried to order up an infographic map illustrating the delicate global supply web that results in the delivery of a home PC, pinpointing the most vulnerable links. Reporters there rejected the idea, saying it was just too much work. Slackers. It’d make a hell of a piece.