> Did you hear the bird? We did it on Skype, which has better sound quality
> than a regular phone, but does flake out now & then. (I had to edit around
> a few of those flake-outs.) Thanks to the video, I could see that he had a
> cockatiel on his shoulder for much of the interview. Doug
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Yes I did hear the bird, but didn't know what it was. Cockatiels are nasty pets. I class them with neurotic Chihuahuas. Only their owner can love them...
Maybe news is like art in the sense it has to be constantly re-invented to avoid the perils of commodification or something like that. I mean in the old days, the Examiner and Times had their respective identities from Hearst and Chandler and their imperial wars, crime, traffic accidents and human interest. They set a style for news etc.
My father hated the Times like it was an obnoxious neighbor or something. When the daily closed or was merged with the Mirror, the old man had to either go to the Times or move out of LA. He toyed with the idea of coming up here and working for the San Jose Mercury. Instead, he swallowed his pride and loathing, and went into to talk with the managing editor of the Times. He got hired in a week and the money started flowing again, to the great relief of my stepmother. I could just barely understand him back then. The Times was dominated by an old strict Republican and business friendly producer, somebody in the Chandler family.
Although pops was a bigot and anti-union, he was also an FDR democrat to the core and grumbled constantly about the Times management. In a couple of years after I moved out and was in college, hard times struck again. The old editor who hired my old man retired and the new editor was all business and no news sense. He was constantly on the old man to crank the work out. So, the old man quit on the spot...
He worked out the rest of his years at the Valley News doing uninteresting copy about mostly local bullshit. Several of his friends from the Examiner moved out there so a 1930s-50s generation died out following each other from paper to paper.
CG