In 2011 CofA is at CofA11

... Not Just L.A., The City of Angels Is Everywhere...

I was age five when the bishop stood over me and said, "Stop babbling about what the priest did to you." Then, forty years later... I started babbling.
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Re Missing Link collection below: Email editor Jay Nelson of Albuquerque at jay@sarabite.info CLICK IMAGES to enlarge

Monday, April 5, 2010

Contact Michael Moore, Easter Week Photos and Reports from around country, CNN Caves to L.A. Archdiocese, and More


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POST IN CONSTRUCTION
Update Tuesday 10:40 AM, I've got an appointment, now trying to round up reports on vigils etc around the country last week, for this post, still being constructed.
UPDATE Tuesday 4:15 AM (still in construction)
I was saying to them, "Two buildings over are thousands of documents. They describe the 510 cases that settled in 2007."

Their eyes glazed, two reporters started angling their necks in another direction.

"I'll help any reporters who want to find the files. There are thousands of pages that describe felonious activity by these guys."

They were not listening. At the end of the Good Friday press event in L.A. I took the mic and first made the mistake of trying to talk off the top of my head, and was wandering all over bringing up three other topics, because this material, the crimes of pedopihle priests, is so convoluted and overlapping and multi-faceted.

We did end up with a good report on KNBC, maybe the others, I don't know. I went out. I have the KNBC report on VHS and my boss if I can corner her, can make me it a digital file, then I can post it. This might take me a while as we have real work again, that's why I am up at 4:00 AM on Tuesday wishing I had time to do a post right.

CNN packed up and left when they found out we hadn't arranged the press event on Good Friday in advance with the Archdiocese. I said, Why would I do that? I'm not doing PR for the Archdiocese. From now on Snap Los Angeles events are going to take place at federal buildings around town, and Congressional offices, etcetera. We are not going to arrange anything in advance with Roger and Tod.

The reporters who turn up for a media event like this are only interested in sound bytes. What am I even doing here, I realized as I was standing in the middle of it. I am contributing to this change in news reporting that I truly abhor.

My God, I'm turning into the Holly Hunter character from Broadcast News, I think I even used one of her exact lines just then.

The TV and radio reporters point their cameras, they want a good 1-2 minute report with visuals and ... sound bytes. This is not good PR, this is just PR with no substance. Not one of the guys at a press event like that is interested in going in depth on this issue.

We are a bit sleepy and wiped out from the whole thing. Just looking at the Pope exhausts me, usually I stay away from him, but he was all over the place last week, and City of Angels ended up posting a whole lot about pedophiles, instead of staying totally off the topic in honor of Holy Week as we had tried to do.

We had a pretty successful event in L.A. Good Friday, with news coverage from KTTV-Fox 11, KABC, KNBC, the two main news radio stations and two Hispanic language stations, plus a young girl from her college inhouse station. We got good coverage, I think.

Jim's relatives from Ireland were the pick of most media people who ran coverage. His aunt's plaintive cry, "We are from Ireland, (get this quote right..).

More projects are in the works, to lobby for Federal investigations. These photos need captions. I'm exhausted, will finish tomorrow...

Meanwhile here are pics from New York, with more on the whole shebang last week in an upcoming post. Ebeling has to get up to go to work at 3:30 AM Tuesday morning, so can't do too much more reporting until late tomorrow or even later...






*****NEWS FROM BOSTON
Globe's church-abuse coverage makes decade's top journalism list

By Globe Staff
The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer-Prize winning series on clergy sexual abuse has been named one of the top 10 works of journalism in the United States over the past decade by New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
A team of university and outside judges ranked the Globe series No. 10 on the list.



BACK TO TUESDAY 4:50 AM
Lucky me, I get to transcribe an interview with a Las Vegas hooker, excuse me, professional hostess in Las Vegas, today on my job...
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She said of her first time, "It was a red chip, he gave me a five hundred dollar chip."

And I thought, man, that's our future American currency. Poker chips.
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