REALLY Stop The Presses!

BobLee
January16/ 2000

…. Remember that Big Journalism shindig I was at a few weeks ago? …. BobLee has some thoughts from that as STOP THE PRESSES finally happens.  We have a heckuva Week Five amid The Color & Pageantry.  Another major NC-based bidness goes by-by.  …. Steve Bizell and a McQueen & Mary Updates.

    The last time I recall seeing Cameron Sexton he was looking like Thurston Howell’s grandson being steamrolled by three Hokies in Kenan’s East End.  Now two years later he re-emerges with a big boy body and some gristle in his gizzard.  This could all make for some quite cool storylines if it continues another 3-4 weeks.  Go Cam Go!

   Kenanites are prone to over-react (duh, ya think!) to the slightest glimpse of silver in a cloud lining.  BCS Here Comes Carolina is as premature this week as it was post-Rutgers but no reason not to celebrate.  

   Carolina, Connecticut and Notre Dame have a combined two losses so far so the next two weeks loom large.  Connecticut meets Carolina in a meaningful game and neither Jim Calhoun nor ORW will be on the sidelines.  Who’d a thunk that?

   Over at The Wally, Dave Cutcliffe and Algroh passed each other coming and going.  Cut is coming on strong and Al is deader than Mr Jefferson’s day lilies.  Dontchaknow that UVa AD Craig Littlepage is getting nastygrams that even Prince Tassel Loafer wouldn’t touch without asbestos mittens.  If UNC can’t whup the Hoos in C-ville THIS YEAR we need to go “club football”.  We WILL whup’em as I predicted a month ago.

   Duke is a late 4th quarter holding call vs Northwestern from being Four For September.  Life gets tuffer as they leave “the friendly confines of The Wally”.

   The “crowd” at The Wally may have been bigger than the one in Dolphin Stadium.  That move crosstown hasn’t done much for bringing out “U-fans”.

   The annual A>B>C>D game this year says ….. Duke beat Navy beat WFU beat Ol’Miss beat Florida …. Ergo Duke beats Florida which beat Tennessee which might offer Coach Cut his very own Rocky Top to come back to Knoxville next year.  Kevin The AD is famous for offering 10 year deals after one season so maybe he should ante up quick for Cut and give him “a Charlie Weiss deal”.  That would freak out the Gang of 88 big time!

    It was a dark & stormy night at The Carter if you weren’t wearing green.  Jim Leavitt does seem to love butt-whuppin’ our local gridders.  Remember that five years ago those USF Bulls woulda been wearing FSU, Miami and UF unis.  The rise of USF is a BIG reason for FSU and UM’s decline from the rarified air.  The Marine will right the ship …. But not this year.

   It was Anchors Aweigh in Camel City for Grobe’s kids.  Methinks the affable miracle-worker will be focusing on turnovers this week.  No loss is “good” but this one could be a wake-up call for Deacs who were getting a bit giddy.

   DownEast the Good Ship Skip has run aground.  Dreams of sugarplums no longer dance thru the heads of Pirate loyalists.  Mrs Holtz can order the new drapes cause they ain’t moving any where any time soon.

   Across the fruited plain I like to see SoCal lose just because …. They did and I liked it.  Speaking of “dark & stormy nights” …. It was REALLY DARK between the hedges for Rev Richt’s Dawgs.  Nick “Everybody hates him” Saban is giving quite a quick ROI on his $4,000,000.  Anyone but me notice that the 93,000 UGa faithful stuck around despite a 30-0 halftime shock?  Wonder how Larry Munson woulda described it.  The Tide was wearing the “hob-nailed boots” this time.

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   Catching up on some recent scallywags and scandals and loquacious sheriffs:

    Surely you recall “McQueen & Mary” …. NC State’s Dirty Dealin’ Duo.  Don “Kolchak” Carrington has peeled the next layer on that smelly onion.  Go to www.CarolinaJournal.com for the gory details.  It’s worth your time to read the details.  This is very sleazy even by “Easley standards”.

Speaking of “methinks” …. Methinks McQueen Campbell is in WAAAY over his little red-head on this.   If some others pick up on Kolchak’s clues they could take down a lot of scallywags in this.  As noted before …. I REALLY hate to see Erskine mired in this quagmire.   Solid citizens in WuffNation need to make themselves heard about this mess.  The immediate resignation from NCSU BOT should be a given by this silverspoon sleazebag.

   The Alphabet Agitators are into “candlelight vigil mode” over in Smithfield.  Sheriff Steve “No Spaghetti For Me” Bizzell was the focus of a “throng of almost 100” protestors this past weekend.  It was “Lois Lane” herself (aka Kristin Collins) that labeled 100 as “a throng”.   Subtract Kristin and her N&O pals and “the throng” becomes merely “a bunch”.  

   “A throng of 100 undocumented workers _____” ….. I could do soooo much with that phrase.  I‘ll let you guys supply your own punch line to it.

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   The past six months has been a MAJOR wake-up call to arrogantly pompous ink-stained wretches across America.  Freedom of The Press was never “free” once it grew beyond pamphleteers.  Once John Peter Zenger and William Randolph Herst and their pals learned about “selling advertising” along with their opinions and news, they linked their very existence to those ad dollars.

   At the recent 100th Anniversary of The Univ of Missouri Journalism School the weeping and moaning was only drowned out by the gnashing of teeth from imperiled ink-stained wretches from every Middlesex village and town.  That golden egg laying goose is dead.  

   MU’s J-School was THE FIRST one in America (1908) and still ranks in everyone’s Top Three along with Northwestern and Columbia.  No, I did not leave out “you-know-who’s” from that list.  We’re talking “best ones” not “real good ones”.

   America’s Newspaper industry is not just going thru a “tough time” due to, of course, “George Bush’s economy”.  The Newspaper business as we all have known it is KAPUT …. FINI …. SPLATT …. KIBOSHED …. FLATLINED. The long entrenched business model has gone the way of high button shoes and cassette tapes.

   The bulk of its long taken-for-granted advertiser base has deserted it for more tech-savvy options.  The exodus continues in droves.  Never to return.  The monopoly of reaching “the local market” is over for the folks who buy ink by the barrel.  It is bandwidth by the barrel that matters from now on.

   I know many of you will be quick to blame their rub-it-in-our-face bias for this major RIP but it is Technologically driven … NOT Ideologically driven.  Newspapers have basically printed $$$$ for decades when they were the only daily source of news.  They could ram their political bias down readers’ throats laughing all the while because it was a “like it or lump it” world.  Now there’s a “boot-up” option.  The newspapers are “lumping” it now.

   Because newspapers were arrogant and pompous to a fault for so long, it is difficult to shed but alligator tears as their life-support revenue generating systems shut down.  The prospect of one-note dweebs now out of work and peddling resumes claiming “I was an op/ed know-it-all”, or “a jackass columnist with an ax to grind” is a bit amusing.

   Many of’em are terminally clueless to the extent of their irrelevance and will wander the unemployment lines armed with no marketable skill whatsoever.  Had they stuck to “news” and left their arrogance where the sun don’t shine they might find some sympathy from Wachovia executives facing a similar fate.

  (NOTE:  Losing Wachovia is tough …. kinda like when Piedmont Airlines went by-by.  Krispy-Kreme could be next.  All three started in Winston-Salem but sorta belonged to all North Carolinians. …. sigh, sob, sniff.) 

   Had they stuck to investigative journalism and ratting out the evil-doers without regard for kindred spirits then maybe the “papers” could have postponed this terminal fate.  We do need a 4th estate unburdened by “the tocsin” of its own partisan myopia.

   Five years ago many of you claimed “I need my morning paper with my cupa coffee”.  That “need” diminishes daily as you fire up your laptop with your cupa.   

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As “newspapers” fade into the sunset of “progress” 

which names of papers were your favorites?

(lets not everyone say “Times Picayune” OK?)

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   Ava Gardner was married to Mickey Rooney.  I’m sorry but a visual of their honeymoon night is just so wrong.

   DAVE GLENN’S ACC SPORTS.com WEBSITE IS NOW ALIVE!  Click on it over there on the right.  Then sign up.  Tell DG you are a BobLeeBuddy and he’ll cut you $10 on your sign-up.  It’s the ONLY ACC Sports site you need to visit.  ….. more later.

   Speaking of “ouch” …. former UNC Prez and well-known very rich guy – CD Spangler lost $900,000,000 from his net worth over the past few weeks.  yikes. 

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