Newspaper rally? Curb your enthusiasm

After some notable newspaper publishers this month reported better-than-expected gains in their second-quarter net profits, Wall Street responded by bidding up their battered shares. But let’s not get carried away. The improved earnings reflect one-off events that for the most part cannot be replicated if sagging ad sales fail to rebound really hard, really fast and really soon. In other words,

Texas Trib, one man’s journalistic mitzvah

Looking at the news business from the hard-nosed perspective of a venture capitalist, John Thornton rapidly concluded that “serious journalism is never going to be a good business again.”But that didn’t stop Thornton, a successful partner at the Austin Ventures investment fund, from putting $1 million of his own money into starting the Texas Tribune, a non-profit online news organization that has

Realtors repudiate newspaper ads

If the near-term prospects for the housing market are grim, the outlook appears to be even worse for an eventual recovery for real estate advertising in newspapers.That’s the impresion left from a survey released today by the Aim Group, a consulting organization that used to be known as Classified Intelligence. Being intelligent enough to see how rapidly the classified business is wasting,

Why there won’t be another Cronkite

There never will be another journalist with the stature, authority and power of Walter Cronkite.We were lucky to have him at the CBS anchor desk during the 1960s and 1970s, two of the most turbulent decades in modern history.But the accelerating disintegration of the media assures that no one ever will emerge again as a single, almost-universally trusted source of straight-up, down-the-middle

Not BusinessWeek as usual

The newsweekly model is so badly frayed that operating BusinessWeek as usual probably won’t be possible for whoever coughs up the putative $1 it will take to acquire the magazine.Assuming a buyer materializes, an extreme makeover will be required to steer BusinessWeek toward profitability at a time when diminishing readership, slumping revenues and shrinking relevance are perhaps more severe for

I can’t help it. I know every major media publication is providing massive coverage for Michael Jackson. I know there are timelines, retrospectives, etc available at every major media and news website. I feel like I have to write about Michael Jackson though. A little something at least.

By Chris Monigle, The Lost Blog
Published: June 26, 2009

His music was the music of my childhood. That’s no exaggeration. It was Michael Jackson, The Jackson 5, or the Jacksons. I listened to his music before I ever became aware of rock ‘n roll, before I purchased a Marcy Playground or Matchbox 20 CD in ‘97 or 3EB in the summer of 1998. His music informed what my later tastes would be as well. There’s really no going back once you hear “Off The Wall” or “Thriller.” Those two albums are near perfection. “Thriller” suffers from one weak track. The rest is gold after gold after gold. I opened a piece I wrote on Carolyn Leonhart with a quote from Shakespeare about the charms of music. There really is magic in music. There’s some intangible transcendental quality to music, in music. It exists within the creation. On those early solo albums, he combined disco (but good disco not that ABBA nonsense) with the soul of Motown and R&B. We all know “Thriller,” “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “Rock With You” and a bunch of other songs that are too many to list. We can throw out adjective after adjective to describe the power of his music but in the end his music is indescribable and that’s what makes it as great, magical, and transcendent as it is. He just had the ability to tap into that part of our brain, something that is inherently within us and open it up (i hope you followed me there and understand what I mean). . . --NewsHammer 13/07/2009

Continue reading the June 26, 2009 article [plus more Jackson videos] from West Chester University's The Quad on their sister site, Quad Blogs.

Check out The Quad here.

I can’t help it. I know every major media publication is providing massive coverage for Michael Jackson. I know there are timelines, retrospectives, etc available at every major media and news website. I feel like I have to write about Michael Jackson though. A little something at least.

By Chris Monigle, The Lost Blog
Published: June 26, 2009

His music was the music of my childhood. That’s no exaggeration. It was Michael Jackson, The Jackson 5, or the Jacksons. I listened to his music before I ever became aware of rock ‘n roll, before I purchased a Marcy Playground or Matchbox 20 CD in ‘97 or 3EB in the summer of 1998. His music informed what my later tastes would be as well. There’s really no going back once you hear “Off The Wall” or “Thriller.” Those two albums are near perfection. “Thriller” suffers from one weak track. The rest is gold after gold after gold. I opened a piece I wrote on Carolyn Leonhart with a quote from Shakespeare about the charms of music. There really is magic in music. There’s some intangible transcendental quality to music, in music. It exists within the creation. On those early solo albums, he combined disco (but good disco not that ABBA nonsense) with the soul of Motown and R&B. We all know “Thriller,” “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “Rock With You” and a bunch of other songs that are too many to list. We can throw out adjective after adjective to describe the power of his music but in the end his music is indescribable and that’s what makes it as great, magical, and transcendent as it is. He just had the ability to tap into that part of our brain, something that is inherently within us and open it up (i hope you followed me there and understand what I mean). . . --NewsHammer 13/07/2009

Continue reading the June 26, 2009 article [plus more Jackson videos] from West Chester University's The Quad on their sister site, Quad Blogs.

Check out The Quad here.

Papers shouldn’t shy from for-profit events

The dicarded plan to sell seats at dinner with the publisher of the Washington Post shouldn’t be taken by newspapers as a reason to avoid hosting profit-making events that deliver journalistic and public-service benefits to their communities.The key in organizing for-profit (and pro bono) events is to keep your commercial and ethical priorities straight. The Post, which aired its errors here,

Jacko-mania tarnished media credibility

The mainstream media may have covered the bejabbers out of the death of Michael Jackson, but they hardly covered themselves in glory.The sudden death of the pop star overshadowed all manner of truly significant national and international news for nearly two weeks. And coverage of his memorial service dominated television for much of Tuesday while generating near-record traffic on websites

Inland issues ‘reworked’ profit study

The Inland Press Association today reissued an online summary of a newspaper-profitability study after questions were raised about it.The original summary of the findings was the basis for this Newsosaur post, which stated that Inland found newspapers with circulation greater than 80,000 suffered a 100.1% drop in operating earnings since 2004 but that they had average profits of 12% in 2008.Tim

The media storm around Michael Jackson is less about him and more about the media monster that makes and breaks our pop icons. We still don't know how or why he died. All we have is a lot of confusion from a lot of insane coverage.

Armies of journalists swoop down on him again. Drugs and death, the new postmortem, not quite as sensational as ruining him and his reputation with unsubstantiated charges of extreme moral depravity, the boy-man-god a pedophile, but drugs and death a suitable followup and a glorious media fire for the final end of a fallen star.

Questions, a lot of questions and conflicting and misleading answers and more doubt and misery. A lot of really great friends who weren't there for him. A lot of questions nobody asks. Journalists paid to ask them, but they don't.

Police slow to see that a simple death of the King of Pop doesn't make sense. Joe Jackson apparently, always say apparently when covering Michael, Michael's father ordering 2 moving vans to remove Michael's effects from the scene of his death, a rented mansion belonging to the Nation of Islam, rented at 3 or 4 times the going market rate for $100,000 a month. Janet, Michael's sister, dropping by the same day, but what was taken away from a possible crime scene two days after Michael dies? Does she know, does Joe estranged from Michael to boot, have any authority to mess things up for the inevitable police investigation?

Then a belated appearance by LA police confiscating 2 large bags of drugs after the moving vans have been long gone.

Then later still, the DEA shuffles in after nobody knows what happened at Michael's mansion before, during and after Michael's death, what was removed, what might have been planted later.

A lot of Diprivan found by the DEA, missed by the LAPD, unlabeled, IV anesthesia used only to knockout a patient for an operation, but what was it doing there? Michael couldn't sleep without it sometimes?

What doctor would prescribe it for insomnia when a small overdose is easily fatal, when ordinary doses are also sometimes fatal? It happens under ideal conditions in hospital operating rooms with an anaesthesiologist present monitoring vital signs.

Some very close to Michael say he wasn't a druggie, abhorred and never used recreational drugs and only took prescription drugs like anyone else would. Started with Pepsi, the hair on fire commercial, later a broken leg, broken vertebrae, performance injuries, then the painful cosmetic surgery and possibly skin cancer. And beat up badly twice for months by the media on unsubstantiated child molestation charges that would depress anyone. More and more people close to him thought he had a prescription drug problem. If he did, no one seems to have actually caught him doing drugs. One of his former bodyguards, Matt Fiddes, says he and Uri Geller often confiscated drugs and needles lying around. And Michael was in rehab once though what for exactly? The same people who say he was addicted to prescription drugs like the TV journalist Diane Dimond who broke the pedophilia allegations, say he also had a big drinking problem back then.

The more you repeat a story, the more people believe it, true or not, as the media and psychologists must know. If that's hard to swallow since we think we're not so easily fooled, remember when disinformation and propaganda were a daily routine made famous by Lenin who invented the formula: Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.

Even easier to smear anybody if you use unnamed sources. According to a close, but unnamed member of the Jackson family Michael took daily shots of the super-painkiller Demerol and had a shot an hour before he died.

Anyone see needle tracks on Michael's arms? An unnamed Jackson family source did. Noted on the autopsy? No info released yet. An unnamed source commenting on the body, "surprised at how healthy Jackson was."


Unnamed sources always seem to be very sure of themselves. Some very close to Michael say he lived on prescription drugs. Look how thin he was, how little he ate. Then one of the people he knew best, Grace Rwaramba from Rwanda on staff as an assistant and promoted to nanny his kids was reported as saying by Times Online that she often had to pump his stomach when he mixed his drugs. On a news video later she denied she ever said that she did, didn't know how to pump a stomach either. Then she went further in print, saying she never even spoke to Times Online. Her full rebuttal to the long and juicy Times Online article was published in The Huffington Post.

The two autopsies and the lab tests will finally tell us something about the cause of death when they're released in a month or so. For now, who and what can you believe?

Could Michael have been saved? The AEG concert promoter for Michael's comeback series in London, Randy Phillips and the tour's director, Kenny Ortega, both said he was in great shape the night before he died. The AEG This Is It video of Michael's rehearsal at the LA Staples Center 2 nights before he died [also at the above link] confirms he wasn't on a doped-up downer going into London. If he could have been saved, the only one who could have done it on the spot was his cardiologist, Dr Conrad Murray, who tried to resuscitate Michael when he found him collapsed in bed that catastrophic day in LA's Holmby Hills, still alive.

But Murray the cardiologist failed at CPR, and there was some delay in calling an ambulance. How long was that? 40 minutes until the ambulance arrived says The Guardian. Murray couldn't find a phone, but he had his own cell phone, but he didn't call because he didn't know the address where he himself was living, doctor in residence at Michael's Holmby Hills Estate, that any goofball at 911 would be able to track down by a street name or 5 blocks from you know where. Stupid shit if you're Michael Jackson's doctor and you're doing CPR on Michael's too soft a bed for CPR when Michael should be on the floor as the 911 Operator reminded him on the phone when Michael's security guy finally called 911. Stupid shit when you're supposed to be a cardiologist and you're not Board certified, letting that lapse last year, when you don't pay your debts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to creditors who were after you because your heart clinic was flatlining, like Michael who died under your care.

If CPR doesn't work it's a bloody emergency and you get help. Murray said he never gave drugs like Demerol to Michael, but if Michael took an accidental overdose himself of something or other, CPR isn't going to help. You pump his stomach, you get him to a hospital for life support, a heart-lung machine, maybe a total blood transfusion when you suspect poisoning by unknown drugs, but when the ambulance came the paramedics still did CPR for another 45 minutes, though the nearest hospital was 6 minutes away. Stupid shit, but shit happens when you're stupid.

The LAPD tow away Murray's BMW that same day, oddly not really his anyway. Great. Smart. Could be full of AMA Journals. Why not check the mansion first before 2 vans clear out a mountain of potential evidence in broad daylight with news cameras rolling?

The first sensible thing Murray does is he gets a lawyer. Then he talks to the LAPD for 3 hours. No one says what happened, just that he was cooperative. Not a suspect. Yeah, great.

A little later Dr Deepak Chopra talks to Larry King on CNN. He says Michael asked him for Oxycontin, another major painkiller back in 2005 and Deepak refused. Deepak warned Michael about getting hooked on prescription pain meds, but Michael didn't want to talk about it, didn't return his calls later. Deepak talked around the problem with Michael so he could stay in touch with him. Said to Larry that there were plenty of enablers in LA, doctors who liked to hang around celebrities and prescribe whatever narcotics they wanted. No shortage either of plastic surgeons I'd add, who turned Michael into a freak.

With all the bullshit flying, was Deepak right about Michael? If Michael had his own enablers would he bother Deepak about an easily obtainable prescription drug? With a lot on his mind, with things going badly since the embarrassing Bashir documentary and new allegations suddenly surfacing, Michael then was in over his head in the biggest fight of his life. $18 Million in legal fees for the child molestation case that consumed the nation and Michael too. Not guilty on all counts. Maybe all Michael wanted was a little help from a friend he was staying with to numb his pain? Michael was a child after all, as everyone who knew him well always said.

But then there's another screaming media report I saw on TV a few days ago, but oddly not archived on the corporate website, that said Michael was spending $48,000 a month on prescriptions and owed his pharmacy $100,000 when he died. But if true why isn't this big story plastered everywhere? Hope somebody at the DEA has been watching the megaTV investigation for leads. Can't be sure of that either after the LAPD apparently missed the televised Big Joe Jackson Moving Day.

If that's really $48,000 a month for Michael's drugs that's way more than 2 bags full collected by the LAPD. Enough to stuff an SUV every month and even so, how much can a single human being consume? 20 tabs of Demerol per day would turn you into a cataleptic couch potato for less than $1200 a month.

What's known? What's proven? Nothing really. Dead like Elvis.

Michael was married for awhile to Elvis' daughter Lisa Marie Presley. She said Michael told her years ago he was worried he'd end up dead like Elvis. "He Knew" she wrote on MySpace the day after Michael died. A premonition, a guess, or fate? More questions, no answers.

Michael Jackson's public funeral/ceremonial is set for tomorrow Tuesday 10AM Los Angeles time at the Staples Center. 1.6 million people applied for 20,000 free tickets, but all the major U.S. TV networks are covering it. If you're abroad and don't have access, you should be able to catch it on the Internet, on E! Online and CNN Live.

--Alan Gillis

Michael Jackson Videos

Moonwalkers from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo. Toronto, the night after Michael's death.

From AEG, a hot promo video in advance of the London shows on the casting and rehearsals for This Is It [alternate link] at the LA Staples Center.



From AEG, a last look at Michael [alternate link] from the LA Staples Center rehearsal 2 nights before he died.


*****UPDATE July 10, 2009

BBC: Jackson foul play 'not ruled out'

The head of Los Angeles police has refused to rule out murder in the investigation into the death of singer Michael Jackson, two weeks ago. . . .

*****UPDATE June 25, 2010 One Year Later

LaToya 2009 Tribute to June 25, 2010

A day in the life of the Michael Jackson Legend lights a fire on TV with a dozen tribute shows and interviews starting 8AM Friday. NYC Radio kicks in right through the weekend with live shows from the Apollo Friday afternoon with the Rev Al Sharpton's Tribute on WBLS 107.5 FM (listen live), then at 9PM "Throwback Comes to Harlem" on WRKS 98.7 FM (no Internet live feed, but watch their MJ videos on KISS FM TV).

Try MTV in between for "Michael Jackson Top 10 Video Countdown" 5-6:30PM, and "Michael Jackson's Influence" 6:30PM. Here's the full Jackson Friday TV/Radio schedule.

In Los Angeles fans will be making a quiet pilgrimage to nearby Forest Lawn cemetery, though the mausoleum will be open only for family and their guests.

In Gary Indiana, Michael's mother Katherine will dedicate a monument to her son outside the old family home where the Jackson Five started out. A candelight vigil follows with the song "We are the World".

Michael Jackson: A Second Life

From the patchy, inconsistent and conflicting media reports on the death of Michael Jackson, that were better at knocking him down while destroying his reputation in a similar frenzy not so long ago, what do you get? Enough confusion to spin out his tragic death for million$ more. Sorry Michael. A year later and "What's Left Behind" we're nowhere near the truth. But the legend lives on.

See Jackson perform in this clean no yakyak video 2 nights before his death at the Staples Center LA rehearsal.

Since then Jackson videos on Youtube and even official promos of the Staples rehearsals have been taken down by the moneymen. Buy the CD, see the movie, get the the DVD. But Jackson fans keep uploading new stuff like this Jackson concert mix (sorry deleted) but watch this one.

On the official This Is It movie site, there's a nice surprise. Watch a clean stack of Tributes and oldie Jackson videos like They Don't Care About Us, Thriller, Beat It and more.



On michaeljackson.com there's another bonus. Listen to some great audio demos on this link that starts up with a fabulous a cappella Beat It and then click for more tracks from the new This Is It CD. Finally everybody's right. The London show would have been impossible to beat.

--Alan Gillis/ NewsHammer

The media storm around Michael Jackson is less about him and more about the media monster that makes and breaks our pop icons. We still don't know how or why he died. All we have is a lot of confusion from a lot of insane coverage.

Armies of journalists swoop down on him again. Drugs and death, the new postmortem, not quite as sensational as ruining him and his reputation with unsubstantiated charges of extreme moral depravity, the boy-man-god a pedophile, but drugs and death a suitable followup and a glorious media fire for the final end of a fallen star.

Questions, a lot of questions and conflicting and misleading answers and more doubt and misery. A lot of really great friends who weren't there for him. A lot of questions nobody asks. Journalists paid to ask them, but they don't.

Police slow to see that a simple death of the King of Pop doesn't make sense. Joe Jackson apparently, always say apparently when covering Michael, Michael's father ordering 2 moving vans to remove Michael's effects from the scene of his death, a rented mansion belonging to the Nation of Islam, rented at 3 or 4 times the going market rate for $100,000 a month. Janet, Michael's sister, dropping by the same day, but what was taken away from a possible crime scene two days after Michael dies? Does she know, does Joe estranged from Michael to boot, have any authority to mess things up for the inevitable police investigation?

Then a belated appearance by LA police confiscating 2 large bags of drugs after the moving vans have been long gone.

Then later still, the DEA shuffles in after nobody knows what happened at Michael's mansion before, during and after Michael's death, what was removed, what might have been planted later.

A lot of Diprivan found by the DEA, missed by the LAPD, unlabeled, IV anesthesia used only to knockout a patient for an operation, but what was it doing there? Michael couldn't sleep without it sometimes?

What doctor would prescribe it for insomnia when a small overdose is easily fatal, when ordinary doses are also sometimes fatal? It happens under ideal conditions in hospital operating rooms with an anaesthesiologist present monitoring vital signs.

Some very close to Michael say he wasn't a druggie, abhorred and never used recreational drugs and only took prescription drugs like anyone else would. Started with Pepsi, the hair on fire commercial, later a broken leg, broken vertebrae, performance injuries, then the painful cosmetic surgery and possibly skin cancer. And beat up badly twice for months by the media on unsubstantiated child molestation charges that would depress anyone. More and more people close to him thought he had a prescription drug problem. If he did, no one seems to have actually caught him doing drugs. One of his former bodyguards, Matt Fiddes, says he and Uri Geller often confiscated drugs and needles lying around. And Michael was in rehab once though what for exactly? The same people who say he was addicted to prescription drugs like the TV journalist Diane Dimond who broke the pedophilia allegations, say he also had a big drinking problem back then.

The more you repeat a story, the more people believe it, true or not, as the media and psychologists must know. If that's hard to swallow since we think we're not so easily fooled, remember when disinformation and propaganda were a daily routine made famous by Lenin who invented the formula: Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.

Even easier to smear anybody if you use unnamed sources. According to a close, but unnamed member of the Jackson family Michael took daily shots of the super-painkiller Demerol and had a shot an hour before he died.

Anyone see needle tracks on Michael's arms? An unnamed Jackson family source did. Noted on the autopsy? No info released yet. An unnamed source commenting on the body, "surprised at how healthy Jackson was."


Unnamed sources always seem to be very sure of themselves. Some very close to Michael say he lived on prescription drugs. Look how thin he was, how little he ate. Then one of the people he knew best, Grace Rwaramba from Rwanda on staff as an assistant and promoted to nanny his kids was reported as saying by Times Online that she often had to pump his stomach when he mixed his drugs. On a news video later she denied she ever said that she did, didn't know how to pump a stomach either. Then she went further in print, saying she never even spoke to Times Online. Her full rebuttal to the long and juicy Times Online article was published in The Huffington Post.

The two autopsies and the lab tests will finally tell us something about the cause of death when they're released in a month or so. For now, who and what can you believe?

Could Michael have been saved? The AEG concert promoter for Michael's comeback series in London, Randy Phillips and the tour's director, Kenny Ortega, both said he was in great shape the night before he died. The AEG This Is It video of Michael's rehearsal at the LA Staples Center 2 nights before he died [also at the above link] confirms he wasn't on a doped-up downer going into London. If he could have been saved, the only one who could have done it on the spot was his cardiologist, Dr Conrad Murray, who tried to resuscitate Michael when he found him collapsed in bed that catastrophic day in LA's Holmby Hills, still alive.

But Murray the cardiologist failed at CPR, and there was some delay in calling an ambulance. How long was that? 40 minutes until the ambulance arrived says The Guardian. Murray couldn't find a phone, but he had his own cell phone, but he didn't call because he didn't know the address where he himself was living, doctor in residence at Michael's Holmby Hills Estate, that any goofball at 911 would be able to track down by a street name or 5 blocks from you know where. Stupid shit if you're Michael Jackson's doctor and you're doing CPR on Michael's too soft a bed for CPR when Michael should be on the floor as the 911 Operator reminded him on the phone when Michael's security guy finally called 911. Stupid shit when you're supposed to be a cardiologist and you're not Board certified, letting that lapse last year, when you don't pay your debts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to creditors who were after you because your heart clinic was flatlining, like Michael who died under your care.

If CPR doesn't work it's a bloody emergency and you get help. Murray said he never gave drugs like Demerol to Michael, but if Michael took an accidental overdose himself of something or other, CPR isn't going to help. You pump his stomach, you get him to a hospital for life support, a heart-lung machine, maybe a total blood transfusion when you suspect poisoning by unknown drugs, but when the ambulance came the paramedics still did CPR for another 45 minutes, though the nearest hospital was 6 minutes away. Stupid shit, but shit happens when you're stupid.

The LAPD tow away Murray's BMW that same day, oddly not really his anyway. Great. Smart. Could be full of AMA Journals. Why not check the mansion first before 2 vans clear out a mountain of potential evidence in broad daylight with news cameras rolling?

The first sensible thing Murray does is he gets a lawyer. Then he talks to the LAPD for 3 hours. No one says what happened, just that he was cooperative. Not a suspect. Yeah, great.

A little later Dr Deepak Chopra talks to Larry King on CNN. He says Michael asked him for Oxycontin, another major painkiller back in 2005 and Deepak refused. Deepak warned Michael about getting hooked on prescription pain meds, but Michael didn't want to talk about it, didn't return his calls later. Deepak talked around the problem with Michael so he could stay in touch with him. Said to Larry that there were plenty of enablers in LA, doctors who liked to hang around celebrities and prescribe whatever narcotics they wanted. No shortage either of plastic surgeons I'd add, who turned Michael into a freak.

With all the bullshit flying, was Deepak right about Michael? If Michael had his own enablers would he bother Deepak about an easily obtainable prescription drug? With a lot on his mind, with things going badly since the embarrassing Bashir documentary and new allegations suddenly surfacing, Michael then was in over his head in the biggest fight of his life. $18 Million in legal fees for the child molestation case that consumed the nation and Michael too. Not guilty on all counts. Maybe all Michael wanted was a little help from a friend he was staying with to numb his pain? Michael was a child after all, as everyone who knew him well always said.

But then there's another screaming media report I saw on TV a few days ago, but oddly not archived on the corporate website, that said Michael was spending $48,000 a month on prescriptions and owed his pharmacy $100,000 when he died. But if true why isn't this big story plastered everywhere? Hope somebody at the DEA has been watching the megaTV investigation for leads. Can't be sure of that either after the LAPD apparently missed the televised Big Joe Jackson Moving Day.

If that's really $48,000 a month for Michael's drugs that's way more than 2 bags full collected by the LAPD. Enough to stuff an SUV every month and even so, how much can a single human being consume? 20 tabs of Demerol per day would turn you into a cataleptic couch potato for less than $1200 a month.

What's known? What's proven? Nothing really. Dead like Elvis.

Michael was married for awhile to Elvis' daughter Lisa Marie Presley. She said Michael told her years ago he was worried he'd end up dead like Elvis. "He Knew" she wrote on MySpace the day after Michael died. A premonition, a guess, or fate? More questions, no answers.

Michael Jackson's public funeral/ceremonial is set for tomorrow Tuesday 10AM Los Angeles time at the Staples Center. 1.6 million people applied for 20,000 free tickets, but all the major U.S. TV networks are covering it. If you're abroad and don't have access, you should be able to catch it on the Internet, on E! Online and CNN Live.

--Alan Gillis

Michael Jackson Videos

Moonwalkers from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo. Toronto, the night after Michael's death.

From AEG, a hot promo video in advance of the London shows on the casting and rehearsals for This Is It [alternate link] at the LA Staples Center.



From AEG, a last look at Michael [alternate link] from the LA Staples Center rehearsal 2 nights before he died.


*****UPDATE July 10, 2009

BBC: Jackson foul play 'not ruled out'

The head of Los Angeles police has refused to rule out murder in the investigation into the death of singer Michael Jackson, two weeks ago. . . .

*****UPDATE June 25, 2010 One Year Later

LaToya 2009 Tribute to June 25, 2010

A day in the life of the Michael Jackson Legend lights a fire on TV with a dozen tribute shows and interviews starting 8AM Friday. NYC Radio kicks in right through the weekend with live shows from the Apollo Friday afternoon with the Rev Al Sharpton's Tribute on WBLS 107.5 FM (listen live), then at 9PM "Throwback Comes to Harlem" on WRKS 98.7 FM (no Internet live feed, but watch their MJ videos on KISS FM TV).

Try MTV in between for "Michael Jackson Top 10 Video Countdown" 5-6:30PM, and "Michael Jackson's Influence" 6:30PM. Here's the full Jackson Friday TV/Radio schedule.

In Los Angeles fans will be making a quiet pilgrimage to nearby Forest Lawn cemetery, though the mausoleum will be open only for family and their guests.

In Gary Indiana, Michael's mother Katherine will dedicate a monument to her son outside the old family home where the Jackson Five started out. A candelight vigil follows with the song "We are the World".

Michael Jackson: A Second Life

From the patchy, inconsistent and conflicting media reports on the death of Michael Jackson, that were better at knocking him down while destroying his reputation in a similar frenzy not so long ago, what do you get? Enough confusion to spin out his tragic death for million$ more. Sorry Michael. A year later and "What's Left Behind" we're nowhere near the truth. But the legend lives on.

See Jackson perform in this clean no yakyak video 2 nights before his death at the Staples Center LA rehearsal.

Since then Jackson videos on Youtube and even official promos of the Staples rehearsals have been taken down by the moneymen. Buy the CD, see the movie, get the the DVD. But Jackson fans keep uploading new stuff like this Jackson concert mix (sorry deleted) but watch this one.

On the official This Is It movie site, there's a nice surprise. Watch a clean stack of Tributes and oldie Jackson videos like They Don't Care About Us, Thriller, Beat It and more.



On michaeljackson.com there's another bonus. Listen to some great audio demos on this link that starts up with a fabulous a cappella Beat It and then click for more tracks from the new This Is It CD. Finally everybody's right. The London show would have been impossible to beat.

--Alan Gillis/ NewsHammer

Hardest hit: Profits slid 100% at big papers

UPDATED 4:21 PM - July 7, 2009: The Inland Press Association today reissued the summary of the study on which this post was based. The major change is that 12% is the average profitability of large newspapers in the last five years, not solely in 2008. Although the original post is published below, it should be read in connection with the follow-up post here. The bigger newspapers are, the harder

Christian Bible Goes Digital

Christian Bible Goes Digital

Time is never kind to paper manuscripts, particular those written more than 1600 years ago. Some 800 pages remain of the Codex Sinaiticus, a version of the Christian Bible written in the fourth century, and the original text is thought to be nearly twice as long. Historians believe the book may be world's oldest Christian Bible.

to today's online publication of the Codex Sinaiticus, scholars can examine the entire book from the comfort of their desks. Curious? You can explore the document yourself. Stephen Bates of The Guardian explains the significance of the online edition:
". . . so sophisticated is modern technology that scholars will not only be able to read the document on their screens using a standard light setting, but also separately by a raking illumination that highlights the texture and features of the very parchment on which the 800 surviving pages of text were written."
It's fair to say the online edition of Codex Sinaiticus won't have mainstream appeal. But the project does illustrate the power of the Internet to advance educational pursuits.

Macy’s halved newspaper ad spend since ’05

Macy’s has cut in half the amount of money it spends on newspaper advertising since 2005, depriving the struggling industry of some $616 million in sorely needed revenues.The drastic plunge has hit particularly hard the metro papers that used to rely on sumptuous and highly profitable schedules from the likes of Famous-Barr, Filene’s, Foley’s, Hecht’s, Kaufmann’s, May, and Marshall Field &

why you'll want to play Batman's gritty upcoming adventure

Batman Fans Will Go Bat-Crazy ..
Kevin Conroy possesses the kind of voice that could probably part the Red Sea. It's only fitting that his acting prowess from Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and five seasons of the Justice League series would bring the Caped Crusader to life in Arkham Asylum, and it's good to have him back. That deep, baritone pitch has been something that Christian Bale likely weeped at his inability to mimic, although it probably doesn't help that Conroy's normal civilian speech sounds like the voice of God with a touch of Clint Eastwood (also God).

On the other end of the spectrum, Mark Hamill, who is arguably more famous for voice acting than his lightsaber skills, is providing the voice of the Joker. It doesn't get much better than that. Unlike goofy incarnations of Batman's less threatening foes, Mark Hamill makes the Joker sound straight up psychotic. How psychotic? Expose some small children to Batman: The Animated Series, and it's 90 percent certain that they'll develop a sudden, volatile fear of clowns.
Play with Insanely Cool Bat Tools like Explosive Jelly and Razor-Sharp Batarangs
Even if they don't always get the combat right (cough, Batman: Dark Tomorrow), most Batman games don't skimp on those wonderful toys. Arkham Asylum's no slouch either, as you've got everything from grappling hooks, mid-flight-controlled Batarangs and explosive Bat-Jelly that can pretty much turn anything into rubble. Heck, even the Joker's packing some heat, and by heat we mean face-searing, skin-melting acid. Oh, and he has a gun. Just in case the acid wasn't painful enough.

Enough already with ‘mediums’

Hey, fellow armchair copyeditors, do you see anything wrong with this sentence at the Los Angeles Times website?“Two senior Los Angeles Times editors were given new responsibilities today as part of an effort to create a 24-hour newsroom serving multiple mediums.”The blunder, of course, is the inappropriate use of “mediums” as a plural of the word medium.As everyone in the media business ought to