OK…can we finally stop saying Donovan McNabb is one of the elite quarterbacks in the NFL? He is playing on the level of a Joey Harrington. He looks scared in the pocket and he no longer has the ability to run. He is a liability to the Philadelphia Eagles.
I knew last week was an aberration. Donovan must go.
I’m really sick of the people in America with so much hatred for President Bush or the Iraq situation that they have to twist any situation into an assault on people supporting the troops. It’s to the point that even children are no longer exempt from the seemingly mindless agenda of the extreme anti-Bushians in the political arena. It’s disgusting, it’s embarassing and it’s doing nothing at all to make people change their minds on the war situation.
The latest example comes courtesy of Josh Capps in today’s Springfield News-Leader. Josh decided to smear a rally thrown by Willard Middle School students to show they supported our soldiers and to encourage them as they’re thousands of miles from home and in harm’s way. The rally wasn’t a rally to support Bush, to support the war or to stand up and say how only true Americans endorse what’s going on in Iraq. It was a group of students who just wanted to encourage the soldiers and lift their morale as they fight all over the world. It’s a noble cause for these students and they should be encouraged to be involved in the political process or to at least be aware that we have men and women who sacrifice parts of their lives in the armed forces so we all have the rights to live as we choose to live. It’s better than having them sit around and watch Spongebob Squarepants and Lindsay Lohan updates all day.
So can Josh let the rally go? Nope. He has to run to his letter writing device (either letter or computer keyboard) to say how there should be a little less “blind rah rah.” Josh can’t even let children support our troops without running in with anti-Iraq, anti-Bush babble as if everyone in the Ozarks will suddenly forget that some people don’t like the war due to a few hours’ efforts from these kids. He even went on in his letter to say that these kids would only truly love the troops if they lined up with Josh’s political slant.
Anti-Bush, anti-war extremists like Josh need to learn there are times they should just keep their mouths shut and let something progress without trying to twist it into their political views. The rally had nothing to do with supporting Bush yet Josh had to go and put that taint on it with his efforts. This was a situation where the anti-Bush people should have recognized the children for doing what they were doing…supporting and trying to encourage the troops…and just let them alone.
Now, I’m sure I’ll get the obligatory “we have the right to do it” and “who are you to tell us to be quiet” postings that come any time someone dares to stand against one of these anti-war extremists and challenge them to actually have some decency and decorum about their actions. It’s not about your right to do it because that’s not in question. Josh certainly had the right to smear this event with his political extremism and the newspaper certainly had the right to print it. That doesn’t mean Josh SHOULD have done it. (I’m not going to say the newspaper shouldn’t have printed it because I see no problem with them printing it if they receive it. I put the fault solely on Josh Capps.)
I’m sorry to be so blunt about it and saying that sometimes they need to just keep quiet. However, I’m to the point I’m sick of it with all the Code Pink stunts and people like Josh who cannot let schoolchildren support the troops without making it an anti-Iraq, anti-Bush situation. I don’t even support the Iraq war but I’m to the point that I really don’t I can support the anti-war side of the debate because of deplorable actions like Josh’s and Code Pink’s. Josh, if you and others truly DO support the troops, then you need to learn when to let people support them without trying to imply any pro-troops is pro-Bush.
… for us to see an example from the right similar to what happened in regards to the left smearing Bill O’Reilly. Click this link to see a great blog entry on Rush Limbaugh referring to soldiers who oppose the war as “phony soldiers” and some people from the far right trying to spin out of it. What Michael van der Galiën said was right on the mark and I couldn’t say it any better than he did in that entry.
I was disappointed today to see a column by Sarah Overstreet where she criticized Bill O’Reilly based on incomplete information from the far-left group Media Matters. I have enjoyed reading Overstreet’s columns and she seemed to be someone who always did her research to make sure the facts she presented were done in the correct light. I can only assume she did not have the chance to hear O’Reilly’s entire segments and that’s why she did her column based on reports by other news outlets about O’Reilly said on his September 19th broadcast.
If you did not hear it, O’Reilly was having a discussion regarding the false impression many white Americans have concerning black Americans. O’Reilly had a very legitimate point that there is a large segment of the white population in America that thinks “black culture” is what you see in rap videos and on television. In this segment, O’Reilly decided to talk about a lunch he had with the Rev. Al Sharpton as a Harlem restaurant and how that restaurant was no different than any other restaurant including those white-owned or have a majority of white customers. It wasn’t anything like you see on television or in music videos. There were not people running around using profanity and acting like buffoons like you would think happens in black-owned places if you believe the stereotypes perpetuated in the entertainment world. It was important for O’Reilly to make these points because there are many people…including right here in the Ozarks…who have that false impression of blacks. If someone like O’Reilly…whom many of those with racist leaning views listen to and believe…comes out and says there is no difference it might make them think about the issue.
Instead of celebrating that, we have Media Matters who hates anyone who is a conservative. It is a far-left wing activist group and if you go to their website you’ll even see their only concern is attacking conservatives.
This is from Media Matters’ “About Us” section:
“Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”
Progressive is just another way of saying liberal. The powers that be with Media Matters know if they say they’re liberal then what they right will not be viewed as impartial by many people. They’re not impartial, they’re not a credible source of completely truthful information and if you look closely at them you’ll see they’re not really trying hard to give off that impression. Still, you have some people who take what they say as true and believe that Media Matters prints the entire truth. Enough that, unfortunately, they will unfairly write a newspaper column that joins the criticism against a conservative person.
Then you get media outlets like CNN and others that carry this story as if it’s true. Some folks claim that there is no liberal bias in the media but watching this story get run on certain outlets as if O’Reilly was making racist statements tends to give credence to the belief there is a liberal bias at least in the reporters and editors who decide what stories make the air. If you look at the segment in it’s entirety you can see the context of what O’Reilly was saying and it would not be a story framed in the manner we are seeing it done. If you do not have liberal tendencies to your personal beliefs, you would not blindly believe what you get from Media Matters is impartial and fair. It’s hard to say that a news source which reports this story as fact does not have a liberal bias to it’s work.
It’s then that people with conservative views get mislead because they believe what they see in the news. These people have problems with racism…as they should…and they come out being critical of the person who made the supposedly racist comments without taking the time to see if what was said was truly in the context in which it’s being painted by the “news” outlet. We see the end result of that today in Overstreet’s column.
Now, I know there are far-right groups that do the same thing. This isn’t a partisan blast pretending that this only happens on one side of the political spectrum. This is coming up today because this is the latest example of it happening in the media and a glaring example of how an activist group can twist situations to create a false truth that is then widely reported as legitimate news. What should have been a story about O’Reilly taking on racism in white America and telling them their impressions were wrong gets turned into a story where O’Reilly is a racist.
I even question why this is a news story. When Randi Rhodes of the liberal talk network Air America aired a bit implying shooting the President we didn’t see coverage to this level in mainstream media. Sure, the Rushes and Hannities blew it up out of proportion but you didn’t see top stories on CNN covering it. If that wasn’t news, then this O’Reilly situation isn’t news either. (By the way, to Air America’s credit, they admitted the bit was in bad taste and apologized for the incident as did Randi Rhodes.)
Could O’Reilly have said things in a different way? Perhaps. Does that mean he was making racist statements? No. We have enough of a racially charged atmosphere in the US without false accusations being brought up just to smear political opponents in unfair ways. Let’s focus on real issues of racism and try to educate to eliminate false stereotypes of all kinds.
I know I’ve blogged a lot on KSPR the last week. Initially it was because two of the blogs that I read issued the invite to say what we thought. (One is Lost Chord, which I view now and then. The other is Ron Davis’ Chatter which is a daily must read for me.) It’s becoming clearer the more I view KSPR news that I happened to take a first view of them on an off-night. Still, I try to be honest here and post what I think and feel so I had to put the bad down with the good. I’ve taken some heat for it and had a few less than friendly messages (the most vicious reminding me my kid was a retard because his father was a retard.)
I decided to take a second look a little earlier than I planned because Mary Helen at Corner of the Sky was so insistent and because of something else I’ll mention further down this blog entry. As my “Second Tasting” blog showed I came away with a much better impression although I unfortunately wasn’t able to see more of Michelle Sherwood’s work. (I plan to view her this weekend to get my second impression of her. Given her throng of adoring fans in the blogosphere, I’m guessing that first night was an off night for her as well.)
I still wasn’t completely ready to declare my allegiance to KSPR News and leave my old standby of KY3 news. However, something happened tonight to seal the deal. A similar thing happened to jump start my second helping.
It was the fact at Michelle Sherwood and Christine Daues actually took the time to respond to my blog.
I was in broadcasting for twenty years and spent time all around the country. When I was in Minnesota, I worked at a station that shared a building with a television station and I’ve had other times where I’ve been up close and personal with television personalities. (They’re different than radio folks…I guess because they’re prettier. A lot of us radio geeks had faces for radio.) I met some good folks, some bad folks and a lot of plain, average folks (but those were mostly the camera guys and tech guys.) The one thing I never had happen in all that time was a television commentator/reporter/anchor seek me out to respond to any comments or criticisms I had made about their broadcast.
When I received a blog comment from Michelle Sherwood, I was a little stunned. I really didn’t expect to get any response from the folks on St. Louis Street. I especially didn’t expect to get any response from Michelle after being critical of her package that night! So I decided to give them a second chance sooner rather than later. I’m glad I did because I was very impressed as I hope if you haven’t you will go and read in that Second Tasting blog. (As I said before, unfortunately Michelle wasn’t working that day.)
Then tonight I received a completely unexpected message from Christine Daues. I know some people don’t think of Springfield as a big market but when you have four television stations you’re big enough. An anchor of a market this size could very easily just blow off the comments of local bloggers or more likely just not read the local blogs. Instead, Christine took time out from a busy night to read my entry and comment on it. (And respond to an e-mail.) And before you ask, I know it’s a busy night because she’s anchoring the newscasts. If you’re not someone who’s been involved in media let me just ask you to give me the benefit of the doubt when I say there is a lot of things you have to do to prepare for that half hour you’re on TV.
Christine’s comment just confirmed to me that KSPR is going to do things differently and in a good way. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes. Live debates for local political races? Local town hall meetings on issues that matter to the community? A Sunday public affairs show where local bloggers debate issues moderated by the incredibly sexy Joe Daues? (That last part put in there as a thank you to Christine.) I think KSPR is serious when they say they’re going to connect with the community. They’ve won me over tonight. I think they’ll win you over before too long.
Watch out KY3. The rookie is a five tool prospect who is putting it all together.
OK…since the first entry drew a little bit of attention and some comments, I decided not to wait to try another edition of KSPR news. I’m going to check out 4:30 and 5:30 newscasts.
The stories flowed well and the timing of Joe and Christine was excellent. I was very impressed that they came back at the end of the first segment to make a correction on the Greene County smoking story. I like when a news outlet doesn’t just go on and makes sure the correct information is given to the viewers.
The mail story was excellent. Ashley did a good job on site and the question Joe asked was exactly the one that was in my mind. The story did all the things like in a story…it provided the news and information that most people didn’t realize (i.e. that it’s not a US Postal Service employee delivering mail) but it put the personal spin on it by talking to the woman running the route. I was more than a little irritated that one man had to wait three months to get their mail mostly delivered and had to contact Kansas City to get it done.
The questionable officers story was very interesting. I like the fact they used clips obtained from the internet instead of just saying the clips are available online. Showing and telling. I loved the reference to the taser being a “five second ride.”
I really like the instant feedback from viewers regarding a topic. The reading of e-mails from viewers on the mail delivery issue was very refreshing. That’s a great way for KSPR to connect with the community and whoever came up with that idea deserves a steak dinner.
The Jeopardy story was great and I liked the fact it was admitted our local folks who qualified might never actually make the show. Transparency is a good thing!
Kevin’s weather quiz was interesting. I had the same reaction as Christine.
The “fastest sportscaster” reference to Whitney made me smile. A solid segment from Whitney.
Overall, this lends to the belief that what I saw on Sunday night was just an off-night for the team. It wasn’t perfect but as close as you can reasonably expect. I’ll watch one more with a critical eye but if the next ‘cast is anything like this one I have a new source for television news.
I was coming back from my morning exercise when I ran into a mother who is frantically looking for her child. She disappeared five days ago and outside of an e-mail to her mother and call to her father in Tennessee there has been no contact. She refuses to say where she is and what she is doing.
Here is the information that I have on her.
Name: Ashley Adams
Description: 5′ 8 1/2″, 190 lbs., dark reddish brown hair, blue eyes
Age: 17
Her MySpace page is www.myspace.com/indycoltsbabe_17 and although it’s private, it does have one public photo
.
The frustrating part of this is that because she is 17, she cannot be brought home by the police. She’s considered an adult under Missouri law. Sure, she can’t vote…or buy cigarettes…or sign a contract to rent an apartment…but she can run away and live on the streets! I’m not a fan of that law…I don’t know many seventeen year old girls that are ready to live on the streets alone without their parents. (Yes, I know there are some but the overwhelming majority are not.)
If you have seen Ashley or know of her whereabouts, contact her mother Glizabeth Peacock at 227-0782. (She gave me permission to post that number.) Springfield Police are also looking for Ashley but if they find her they can’t do anything other than tell her mother they found her.
And Ashley…if you read this…your mother loves you and wants you to come home. She said there was nothing that you have done that would stop her from loving you and wanting the best for you.
Well, as promised, I gave a second shot at City Council. Tonight’s report features a snub by Ralph Manley, some extremist activism and a realization. First, the realization.
If you’re going to a council meeting, pack a sandwich. Man, these things get long.
Now, before I get into the nuts and bolts, let me refresh those of you joining our broadcast already in progress. Last time I went to City Council it was my first time. I came away with these ratings for the Council members:
Great: Cindy Rushefsky, Doug Burlison, Dan Chiles
Good: Mary Collette
Neutral: Denny Whayne, John Wylie
Poor: Ralph Manley, Gary Deaver
Bad: Tom Carlson
Now, with an attempt to add a little color to the text, is the new ratings. Green means they went up, red means they moved down.
SPRINGFIELD CITY COUNCIL RANKINGS WEEK 2
Great: Doug Burlison
Good: Mary Collette, Cindy Rushefsky
Neutral: Denny Whayne, Gary Deaver, Tom Carlson, John Wylie
Poor: Dan Chiles
Bad: Ralph Manley
A lot of movement to the list and a surprising tumble for Dan Chiles. I’ll get to all of it but first…the reason Ralph Manley fell from poor to bad.
I went to the meeting early with the intent of meeting some of the council members. When I arrived, none of them were in the council chamber so I took a seat along the middle aisle and read the agenda for the night. After about ten minutes, some council members came in and took their seats (Whayne and Burlison) while Ralph Manley came down and started introducing himself to people sitting and waiting for the meeting to start. That really impressed me and I was looking forward to when he made his way over to me so I could meet him.
He approached a woman in front of me who was from the Willard School District and introduced himself and made chit-chat. When he finished with her I expected him to shake my hand and introduce himself but instead he went to a man across the aisle from me and introduced himself. No big deal…he’d come back over to me when he was done. Instead, he worked down that side of the aisle and worked his way back up behind me. He stopped to chat with an elderly man and his wife sitting directly behind me. Again, you would expect him to introduce himself after talking with them.
Instead, the city clerk grabbed Mr. Manley to have him meet a young man from Wanda Gray elementary who wanted to watch a city council meeting. (Hey, the kid’s interested in his city. I dig that.) So while I was disappointed not to meet the council member that represents the zone I live in I could understand. Had the situation ended there I wouldn’t have had a bad impression of Mr. Manley. However, the situation didn’t end there.
Some environmental activists took seats next to me about halfway down the row. Mr. Manley noticed these people and came to my row. I thought “now he’ll introduce himself.” Nope. Manley starts to make his way into the row and then said “excuse me” when he was halfway past me. He gave warm greetings to them, a hug to Emily Fox from the Discovery Center and even greeted the activists from Code Pink. I waited for him to come back down the row and introduce himself to me. Instead, he went out the other end of the row to talk to other people.
Now, you’ll probably say “why didn’t you introduce yourself to him?” I could have done so and had I not seen him introducing himself to other people would have likely done so. Something in my head just said to wait and see if he would introduce himself on his own. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that he thought he had introduced himself to me when he was making the rounds the first time and didn’t realize that he had not done it. Still, I felt snubbed even though I know it wasn’t likely on purpose. It was still enough to move him down in my Council Rankings.
Now, on to the meeting.
Mayor Carlson moves up because he was not the same guy I saw the first time. While not overly personable, he was efficent and even when snags ran into the running order of the agenda kept his cool unlike the previous meeting. (That lends me to think my observation he wasn’t feeling well was correct.) There was no snapping at audience members nor other council members. It wasn’t enough to get beyond a neutral feeling but that’s better than the bad he was a few weeks ago. He also asked some good questions regarding a rezoning to allow the Willard School District to build a new elementary school.
Gary Deaver moved up because he didn’t seem to annoy me quite as much as the first time. I couldn’t really justify keeping him as poor at the moment.
Cindy Rushefsky moved down only because I felt she was being a little too driving on an issue regarding the police and fire departments. While I really appreciate the fact she’s taking care of our men and women serving us in the police and fire department, she asked to hold up a vote on rezoning and annexing a land development until we could have a study about the cost of annexation versus the cost to provide police and fire coverage to annexed land over the last two years. Mrs. Rushefsky said she “didn’t have a problem with this particular development” but that she wanted to see the overall impact.
OK, I get that, Mrs. Rushefsky. I don’t have a problem with that in and of itself. However, the developer had waited an additional meeting as once requested and appears to have bent over backwards to get the approval of landowners around him. Even High Street Baptist Church came in to speak on his behalf and they own a lot of land around this rezoning. Holding up this man’s development wouldn’t really accomplish what you were hoping to do with the examination of costs to fire and police. Mrs. Rushefsky did vote for it…after Mary Collette said she didn’t think it would be fair to hold this up…but the fact she asked for the delay made me move her down a little bit. You could have made your point without calling for the matter to be delayed yet again.
Now, the reason Dan Chiles fell all the way from a great impression to a ranking of poor. First, he came over and shook hands with the environmental activists sitting next to me without introducing himself to me. However, he didn’t introduce himself to anyone else so I didn’t really hold that again him. It did, however, raise my antenna regarding his views on a particular thing…
One of the items on the agenda was a resolution to require Springfield City Government to build only green buildings and to require renovations to meet green standards. In and of itself, I do not have a problem with making buildings better for the environment. I’m sure it’s good in the long run. However, there was nothing in the resolution to say how much this standard would mean in terms of cost and how much that could raise the taxes of the average Springfield citizen. If we’re talking a significant increase in cost which is passed on to my neighbors and me then I’m not going to be in favor of such a blanket decree.
The activists had their say during comment time asking the measure to be tabled to make it even stronger and to require the city to get LEED certification even though it would be a higher cost. The restrictions that go into a green building can also drive costs because instead of being able to take the lowest bid from anywhere in the country for materials you have to take material only from a certain range. You could end up paying significantly more for materials under such a plan. These activists…all in favor of tabling the resolution to make the restrictions harder…were met with praise from Mr. Chiles who added his own views in line with the activists. It was straight down the talking points for environmentalists…which is fine and with which I don’t necessarily disagree…but there was no real discussion of the bottom line to the taxpayers of Springfield.
They tabled the resolution so if you are someone who would like to speak against such a plan until they outline how the costs would not significantly increase you should plan to be at the next council meeting or contact the city council members.
Mr. Chiles also grilled the board of City Utilities about whether or not they would agree to meet green building standards with their facilities and also on a conservation plan. Mr. Chiles talked about a “Citizen’s Task Force” who called for an “aggressive conservation program” to be put in place by City Utilities. CU spent over a million dollars last year on conservation education plans for the residents of Springfield out of their overall budget which was in the hundreds of millions. Mr. Chiles said that was less than one percent of the total cost and was that “aggressive” or not. To this citizen, a million dollars on something like conservation education is a lot of money and seemed aggressive enough to me. How much more do you want to take out of my pocket for this, Mr. Chiles? All your comments sounded like to me were “let’s raise rates on people.”
Again, I’m not against doing things to help the environment. I love Ozark Greenways and other groups dedicated to making the Ozarks environment better for all residents. I just don’t think we need to rush into things like a green building declaration without some basis to show it’s not going to drive taxes or utility costs unreasonably upward.
Finally, the extremist group Code Pink had a representative there to attempt to create a false sense of panic about invading Iran. Gary Wilson wanted the city council to draft a resolution demanding that we don’t take military action without congressional approval and made some meandering statements about how Iraq effects Springfield. He claimed that Greensburg, Kansas and New Orleans and others were suffering because of National Guard members being in Iraq. The same old tired talking points that the extreme left parrot all the time. Mr. Wilson was trying to cause an issue where none exists right now in what seemed like an attempt to get more news coverage and media attention.
However, this is where Doug Burlison kept his great rating. At the end of Mr. Wilson’s comments, Burlison challenged Mr. Wilson to back up his claim that the war cost Springfield $146 million. Mr. Wilson couldn’t back up his claim other than to say he read it on a web site. It just showed that Mr. Wilson was reading talking points without an apparent firm grasp of what he was telling the council.
Mr. Wilson kept saying “this is a local issue” when it’s not a local issue. If we were actually invading Iran, perhaps he would have a point. As it is now, we have extremists groups like Code Pink claiming we’re going to invade Iran with no solid evidence to back it up. It’s just a scare tactic intended to inflame hatred against Bush yet again. While I have no problem with Mr. Wilson exercising his right to go to council and express his views, I also think he was wasting the council’s time on something that is at the moment virtually irrelevant to Springfield.
I didn’t notice that Mr. Wilson had asked for anything in the resolution to thank Springfield area residents for their service. Why not have a part of the resolution where they praise the Springfield residents who gave their time to serve? You could claim that you’re actually interested in keeping Springfield residents from going to Iran in the event a war takes place and then perhaps you could sell the local angle to people. Then it might not look like far-left extremist talking points.
Mr. Wilson said Code Pink was going to be sending letters and calling the council members to push through this resolution. So if you are opposed to Code Pink’s methods and their resolution you need to contact your council members so that they can see both sides of this debate.
Overall, a long night with not a lot of excitement. I’m looking forward to the next meeting.
Tonight at 7pm is another Springfield City Council meeting. I plan to sneak in like last time, pull my Philadelphia Phillies cap low and take notes on what I observe. I’ll give you an update tonight with impressions and information from the meeting. One thing I will do is update my previous rankings of city council members and comment on whether or not my impressions have changed. I hope that I will be able to talk to some of the council members in person.
KSPR-TV in Springfield recently switched their formatics, schedule and even dumped the “Springfield 33″ moniker. Several members of the KSPR team who blog invited people to view and give their thoughts about it. So tonight I realized it was about ten and decided to give the new KSPR a shot. Unfortunately, I saw quite a few mistakes and at one point even something that seemed to be the newscast falling apart. Let me just run down what I took notes on and then make a general comment at the end.
I flipped over and missed the opening of the show so I jumped in the middle of a story about a local couple that bought a home on EBay for around a thousand dollars. Apparently the seller of the home is stiffing them because they were able to win the auction at just a thousand bucks. It wasn’t the kind of story I expected at the top of a newscast but it was interesting even if it felt a little gossip-like in nature. Personally, I’m kind of interested to see how the story turns out and I guess that was the point. It’s like a teaser story for a later story assuming they follow up.
I was impressed to see the main anchors doing the Sunday night newscast when the other stations have the B-teams on the air.
I started taking notes when a Michelle Sherwood story ran on CMH’s 25th anniversary. Two things hit me during the story. First, the anchors said she was “live in the newsroom.” Looking at the main set, I thought that was the newsroom. (If it was, it would explain later why I saw someone walking behind the anchors as they were live on the air.) If Sherwood was in the newsroom then where are the anchors?
Secondly, there was some audio problems in Sherwood’s story that really distracted me. It seemed that most of the time the video was rolling Sherwood was doing her voice over on top of the voices of the people in the videos. It’s hard to understand two people talking at the same time and at some points I couldn’t hear Sherwood at all. I can’t really say I know most of the gist of the story and at one point they interviewed the hospital CEO for about two seconds. The story left me more confused than informed.
In the next story, anchor Joe Daues mispronounced the name of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to Voice of America’s official pronunciation guide, it should be pronounced as Ahh-mah-dee-nee-ZHAHD and Daues pronounced it Ahh-deen-ah-ZHAHD. (I went back on the DVR to make sure I heard him right.) Now, it’s possible one of the pronunciation guides has it that way but the way Joe said it made me instantly think he said it wrong. I didn’t hear the next part of the story because I was thinking “did he say that right?”
Now, Joe rallied with his story on the World War I museum. The story was solid from start to finish and very interesting. It showed why Joe was and is one of the best television anchors in the Springfield area. (Yes, I know he made a mistake in the story before it but no one is perfect.) I especially enjoyed how they interviewed a World War II vet about the museum. The man certainly could provide a unique perspective.
Now…here’s where I think all hell was breaking loose. During the wrap-up of Joe’s story we had some audio being cued up that ended up going on the air. A few seconds later, there was someone who shouted off camera and a noise that shook Joe. He stuttered a little bit and looked off-screen with some concern but snapped back and wrapped up the story. The guy is a pro and I wonder what happened that he was shaken like that during a live shot. After that slip Joe impressed me by telling an apparently off-the-cuff story related to the World War I museum story. It seemed to me that he really knew what he was covering and it just raised my already high opinion of Joe Daues.
As they came back from commercial, there was a guy walking in the background of the shot of the anchors. Again, I wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be in the newsroom and whether or not this was a mistake. As I watch this newscast more perhaps I’ll see more people in the background. It’s not that I found it much of a problem…just out of place.
Then they ran a story on the Loft Walk on Commercial Street placing the story much lower in the newscast than their brethren in town. I was happy to see that because I think KSPR placed it where it was in terms of importance. Plus, they interviewed Paul Parker of the Commercial Club versus other stations which interviewed a city counsel member. KSPR chose someone who was more connected to the event and I liked that.
The weather came next with Kevin Lighty. My overall impression is that he was really comfortable in his position yet but he did a good job. I enjoyed the graphics and the layout of the weather forecast. I really like the way the seven day forecast graphics were arranged. The drawing circles with his finger on the weather map was a little bizarre but not entirely distracting.
Then the sports. Whitney Scott stumbled over a few words and messed up at least one time that I was able to catch referring to a third quarter NFL highlight as a fourth quarter highlight. However, I chalk it up to the fact they seemed to want to stuff eight minutes of sports into four minutes. Whitney was reading some scores and stats so fast that she couldn’t help but stumble over a few words. The placement of the college football poll between the NFL and St. Louis Cardinals score was a little weird to me…I would think the St. Louis Cardinals would still be of more interest than the AP poll to Springfield area viewers.
No disrespect to Joe with this but KSPR should realize their top talent is Whitney Scott. Cut one of the news stories and expand the sportscast especially on Sunday night during the NFL season. For example, the Commercial Street story really could have been cut in half time wise to provide another minute to Whitney. The girl has the skills and if she wants will not be long for Springfield.
Now, I’ve been critical about the newscast and brought up a few problems that I saw during my first experience with the new KSPR news. You may think that I have a really poor impression and that I won’t be turning to them again because I saw what seemed to be mistake after mistake. The off-camera shouting and distraction of the anchors seemed extremely unprofessional.
I liked what I saw.
There was just something about the freshness of the story arrangements that resonated with me. There seemed to be a life to the newscast that I don’t see with the other television newscasts in the market. I really liked how they didn’t run the Commercial street story in the first segment of the newscast. The choice of the house story to lead was a definite break from the usual way we see television news in Springfield. I liked the layout and want to see it succeed.
Joe Daues is a consummate professional and the top anchor in town. I’ll openly admit that I was no fan of his wife Christine during her previous go-round in Springfield television as Christine Bielawski but the pairing with her husband works very well. She didn’t seem like the same newscaster I remembered and that was a very good thing. I believe the pairing of these two is going to quickly elevate them to the top team in the area (if people will quit watching KY3 long enough to give them a shot.) Whitney Scott is simply the best. Kevin Lighty is likable and I think he could rise above the other weather anchors in the market. (However, I want to see how he handles some severe storm coverage.)
I have to be honest and say I wasn’t impressed with what I saw from Michelle Sherwood. The audio problems in her story really struck me the wrong way. I don’t know if she produced the story or if it was passed off to someone else to produce with her voice over but unfortunately she was the one on the story. However, I’m not one to write off someone from just one story so I’ll have to see some more of her work.
I wanted to give an overall grade to the newscast but I really can’t do it. I saw many promising parts to the newscast but too many mistakes to give a glowing review right now. Still, it’s the freshest and most exciting option in Springfield television news and hopefully in the next six months or so they can nail down the little mistakes and become a serious force to be reckoned with in this market.
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