Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy in the JFK assassination

The most accurate account of who killed JFK. So serious, the History Chanel has been stopped from showing the TV series by a lawsuit from LBJ’s family and Democratic Party lawyers.

 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is November 22, 2013. Yet, in a half-century, we have just a fraction of the truth published.

file://localhost/Users/gregmichael/Desktop/The%20Men%20Who%20Killed%20Kennedy.JPG

Any deep coverage of the assassination didn’t come from major newspapers. The best investigations have come from book authors and movie directors. The reputation of newspaper journalists has fallen from its peak in the early 1960s. The botched coverage of the Kennedy Assassination followed by decades of one-sided news stories coming from Democrat talking points has taken it’s toll on newspapers. In the early ’60s, the top 50 cities had two or three competing newspapers. Today, only New York, Boston and Chicago have two newspapers still publishing.

Was it color television that came in the late ’60s, or was it the content and ethical character of the newspapers editors and journalists?

Oliver Stone’s “JFK” presented many pieces of one of the most corrupt high crimes in U.S. history, but it failed to investigate the dangerous loose ends.

Within a week of the assassination, LBJ established what would be called the Warren Commission. Ten months later, the Warren report was issued with the “magic dancing bullet” and no mention of dozens of odd deaths.

With the Internet, authors, citizen journalists, and bloggers are doing a much better job uncovering the cover-ups than the elite media. How could that be? A rule of economics is choice. We had much fewer choice in news media until the internet came of age.

Take for example the assassination of JFK. Testimony has been hidden from the public for decades.

“Yeah, I had the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself!”

These were the words of Carlos Marcello, the Mafia godfather of Louisiana and Texas. And he was talking about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I believe he was played by John Candy in Oliver Stones “JFK.”

Marcello’s admission is in uncensored FBI files at the National Archives, detailed for the first time in a new encyclopedic book “Legacy of Secrecy,” by Lamar Waldron.

Waldron’s 848-page blockbuster was published in November, 2008. It involves 20 years of research that began in 1988 when he didn’t know that Mafioso Marcello had confessed to JFK’s murder back in 1985. The FBI kept this fact a secret for more than two decades. The Warren Commission released its cover-up version of the death of JFK at the hands of a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald and a magic bullet.

IN 1963, only weeks after JFK was killed, the FBI questioned 14 Marcello mob associates. Yet the godfather’s name doesn’t even appear in the Warren Report. This secrecy shows that the government all the way up to LBJ had a hand in the cover-up at the very least, he appointed the Warren Commission and never had any questions directed to him.

Such as have you ever met Jack Ruby? Do you know Carlos Marcello, what do Mr. Ruby and Mr. Marcello do for a living?

In their war against organized crime and essentially the Mafia, President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy were never able to convict any members of the Marcello crime family. And Marcello didn’t make his admission of guilt until he was serving a long prison sentence as a result of an FBI sting.

The FBI groomed an informant who became Carlos Marcello’s cellmate. These tapes have never been released but they reveal the godfather standing in the prison yard, flying into a rage and cussing the Kennedys.

Marcello confessed that he’d also met Lee Harvey Oswald and brought him into the plot via that Louisiana character David Ferrie, played by actor Joe Pesci in Stone’s  “JFK.” Now it is coming to light that the movie was very close to the truth.

A fictional account of the JFK assassination titled “Deadly Delusion” by Jim Jarman is also very close to the real truth. Jarman describes how Oswald had been groomed to be a patsy for a couple of years by a special rogue unit of the CIA with a dotted line to the Mafia. Oswald was not a marksman, but the perfect fall guy.

Marcello also admitted that it was he who had set up Jack Ruby “in the bar business in Dallas.” Ruby did his bit for the Marcello plot when he killed Lee Harvey Oswald before he could implicate anyone else. Later Ruby died in his cell just two weeks before he was scheduled to give new testimony before a Congressional investigation.

Leading up to the crime of the century was the crime of the decade. Marilyn Monroe was found naked facedown on her bed, dead. The mass media chimed in immediately with stories of her drug use. The LA coroner’s report stated that the starlet died from an overdose of barbiturates. Yet, her stomach is nearly empty with no pill residue and no vomit on her bed of floor.

The story not widely circulated for decades, was that Sam Giancana (with CIA connections) had Monroe murdered by a team of four hit men who entered her home, taped her mouth shut with duct tape and squirted a lethal suppository of barbiturates and chloral hydrate into her rectum so there would be no vomit or deposits in her stomach. Like Marcello, Giancan lost millions in casino holdings in Cuba and was enraged over the failed “Bay of Pigs fiasco.” Adding insult to injury, Bobby Kennedy was going after the Chicago and New York mafia. Let’s not forget that the Kennedy family made its fortune from Papa Kennedy, a mafia drug and rum runner from Al Capon’s days.

Marcello does not care who knows that he help orchestrate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The former mobster boss also claims that he knew Jack Ruby, and he had him kill Lee Harvey Oswald.

Malcolm Wallace who was on LBJ’s payroll for special projects for more than 10 years.  He was a “hit man” and a expert marksman who had murdered as many as 18 or 19 people for Lyndon Johnson, according to the testimony of Johnson’s mistress, Madeleine Duncan Brown. There was one unidentified fingerprint at the time of the initial investigation of the sixth floor Texas Schoolbook Depositor. Finally in 1998 this fingerprint was identified as belonging to Malcolm Wallace.

Many crucial witnesses were brutally murdered right before their scheduled appearances to testify under oath before the House Assassination Committee. On 9th August, 1984, Billie Sol Estes’ lawyer, Douglas Caddy, wrote to Stephen S. Trott at the US Department of Justice. In the letter Caddy claimed that Billie Sol Estes, Lyndon B. Johnson, Mac Wallace and Cliff Carter had been involved in the murders of Henry Marshall, George Krutilek, Harold Orr, Ike Rogers, Coleman Wade, Josefa Johnson, John Kinser and John F. Kennedy. Caddy added: “Mr. Estes is willing to testify that LBJ ordered these killings, and that he transmitted his orders through Cliff Carter to Mac Wallace, who executed the murders.

“Madeleine recalled that ” after Johnson emerged from the Murchison meeting he walked up to her, and grabbed her by the arms and whispered in her ear, “After tomorrow those S.O.B.’s, the Kennedy’s, will never embarrass me again – that’s no threat – that’s a promise.”

The next morning Kennedy and Johnson got into a heated argument over the motorcade seating arrangements. Johnson insisted that his friend Connally and his wife ride with him in the rear vehicle. When Kennedy refused, Johnson stormed out of the room in a rage.

The next morning, Johnson’s Secret Service men came up to the motor cycle police and told them that the parade rout had been changed. It would no longer be going straight down Main St. but it would be making a turn onto Houston Street. They also told the motor cycle police not to ride next to the Presidents car, but to make sure that they stayed back behind the car, so that the crowds of people (and the assassins) would have a unrestricted view of the President. Johnson also changed the order of the cars in the motorcade, instead of his car being second, he put a car load of Secret Service men between his car and the President’s.

Sleepless in Seattle — The Post-Intelligencer shuts down — lives online

Last week: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has told employees they “might” lose their jobs as soon as next week after a deadline for Hearst Corp to sell the newspaper passed last Monday. 

The news is out, the  146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer prints its last edition tomorrow.

The P-I will continue to “live” on the Internet with a much smaller staff.

I like it. It’s a mix of current and archival. Mikey likes it!

http://www.seattlepi.com 

Owner, the Hearst Corp. reports it has failed to find a buyer for the newspaper, which it put up for sale in January after nine years of financial losses. There are no more suckers left with enough trust fund money to waste.

The end of the print edition leaves The Seattle Times as the only major daily newspaper in the city. 

The TV stations will be there tonight and tomorrow capturing the historic day.

Seattle has been counting TV, and now the internet as their favorite news sources. Do you think people will wait for the Seattle Times to find out?

 

 

Last week:

Read between the lines: Boxes for removing personal items and shredding bins are scheduled to be delivered to the PI floors this week.

Clues suggest Hearst plans to close the P-I shortly

Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on its own demise

Just after Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer claimed that “we are still evaluating our options,” Post-Intelligencer staffers learned that boxes and bins are scheduled to be delivered to the newsroom later this week — some for materials to be taken home, others for notes that require shredding. “It would be nice to have some clarity,” says business reporter Joseph Tartakoff. “It’s really hard to plan your work when you’re not sure if you’ll be around the next day.”

The New York Times sold off the majority of its new sky scraper in New York and has a long-term rent agreement. The company no longer owns the roof over its head.

Next, McClatchy announced massive layoffs, and Hearst’s Seattle PI is about to turn into a shadow, online only edition. Meanwhile, back at Hearst’s figurative flagship, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Media Guild has accepted big cuts just to keep most jobs. The Denver Rocky Mountain News shut down a week or so ago. 

McClatchy Co. is shearing another 1,600 jobs in a cost-cutting spree that has clipped nearly one-third of the newspaper publisher’s work force in less than a year.

The latest reduction in payroll announced Monday follows through on the Sacramento-based company’s previously disclosed plans to lower its expenses by as much as $110 million over the next year as its revenue evaporates amid a devastating recession.

The layoffs will start before April. No fooling.

 Several of McClatchy’s 30 daily newspapers, including The Sacramento Bee and The Kansas City Star, already have decided how many workers will be shown the door. Close to 2,000. 

 

Only 33% would miss their local paper if it folded

Pew Research report
Just 43 percent  of Americans say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot,” according to a Pew Research poll. And even fewer, only 33 percent say they will miss their local newspaper if it folds.

Back to the West Coast

Negotiators for the Guild and the San Francisco Chronicle reached a tentative agreement Monday night changes to the collective bargaining agreement in line with cost cuts planned by Hearst. 

The agreement will require approval by Chronicle Unit Guild members. (They will approve or lose their jobs wholesale). 

A ratification meeting will be scheduled as early as Thursday of this week. Time and place will be announced on Tuesday as soon as a large enough facility can be secured.

In view of the latest terms agreed today, the Guild Negotiating Committee recommends membership approval.

The terms reached late Monday include expanded management ability to lay off employees without regard to seniority. All employees who are discharged in a layoff or who accept voluntary buyouts are guaranteed two weeks’ pay per year of service up to a maximum of one year, plus company-paid health care for the severance term, even in the event of a shutdown – which today’s agreement is designed to avoid.

Guild membership will remain a condition of continued employment for all employees. However, new hires in certain advertising sales positions will be given the option of membership, even though they will retain Guild protection under the contract.

On-callers will be limited to no more than 10 percent in any classification or department.

Pension changes are not part of this agreement, but are being discussed by pension authorities and must be implemented under terms of the Pension Protection Act, due to the recent declines in investment markets. Because those changes may affect the decisions of many members concerning buyouts, we are attempting to reach some key understandings now as to the nature of the changes and when they will take effect.

A lunch-hour meeting on Wednesday March 11, with our pension plan’s lawyer will be held at the Guild Office, 433 Natoma, Third Floor Conference Room.

A bulletin summarizing all the proposed contract changes will be issued Tuesday. A set of the complete proposed amendments will be available on the Guild’s Web site (mediaworkers.org) as soon as possible.

Management is seeking to change the union contract as part of an attempt to cut costs and keep the paper operating under the ownership of the Hearst Corp.

The company said Feb. 24 it would sell or close the paper unless the Guild agreed to changes in the labor agreement in effect through June 2010.

The leaders in the former cash cow industry thought they could just transform to their pages of expensive advertising to Web pages. Sorry. The Web is very competitive and readers will not put up with page after page of ads to follow the news. 

McClatchy is down for the count. The stock is hovering below $1 and will soon be kicked out of the New York Stock Exchange. 

The The Sun of Myrtle Beach and the  Macon Telegraph — McClatchy papers, announced last week that they were outsourcing printing, they joined what one experts are calling the last stage of the dying industry.

Chuck Moozakis, editor-in-chief of Newspapers & Technology, found in a December survey piece that the flight from printing includes mid-sized papers like the two last week, small papers, but also very big ones like the San Francisco Chronicle. Dow Jones has already closed plants in Denver and Chicago and could shutter 10 of the 17 around the country that have printed The Wall Street Journal.

 

“There is a lot of iron sitting out there now,” Moozkis reported.  

“What’s more sobering is the amount of press capacity now available within operations with relatively new presses” like Detroit and Denver. Losing the Rocky Mountain News press run — when it closes (not if) — won’t help, and some of the same impact will come as the two Detroit papers have reduced distribution of a smaller print product most weekdays.

 

 The carbon footprint of newspapers is enormous. At least the unemployed “progressives” can be happy that they are no longer contributing to the worst global warming industry on the planet. 

Ike — the cleanup. FEMA is a perfect example of U.S. Congressional oversight — FEMA semi-trucks filled with ice sit for days in staging area

The largest hurricane to hit Texas in recorded history exposes heroes and losers. Free enterprise, private sector businesses are the heroes. No. 1 – HEB supermarkets were open within 24 hours of the storm throughout Houston with truckloads of ice, food and water.

Walmart and Sam’s Club gets the No. 2 award for full service within 48 hours.

FEMA is a disgrace and should be shut down. There are hundreds of generator trucks parked at Sam Houston Race Track with no apparent system to distribute them. A new report by “Pat and Ed” on 700 AM radio has the FEMA ice trucks sitting idle at the Reliant Stadium stageing center for nearly a  week, then sent to an air base in Sagine, Texas to melt out of sight at an air force base.

This is an example of the waste of the Congressionally managed FEMA project.

Joke of the day: Callers were giving advice on gas station openings, supermarkets with ice and FEMA POD locations.

A joker called in to report that FEMA was handing out $500 checks for those who arrived at the George R. Brown convention center at 5:00 a.m. Hundreds showed up to find it was a hoax. (This ain’t New Orleans).

Instead of free money, some aggressive “victims” were arrested for disorderly conduct and out during the dawn to dusk curfew.

Despised San Francisco attorneys in dog-mauling death of their neighbor Diane Whipple are liberal Democrats

UPDATE: Sept. 22, 2008

A judge has sentenced a dog owner to 15 years to life in prison, seven years after her canines fatally mauled her neighbor in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood.A judge had reduced a jury’s conviction of second-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter and Marjorie Knoller was sentenced in 2002 to four years in prison.

But the California Supreme Court last year ordered the second-degree murder conviction reinstated. She was sentenced on that conviction Monday. Knoller’s lawyers plan to appeal.

The conviction stemmed from the 2001 death of Dianne Whipple. She was attacked by Knoller’s two Presa Canarios in a hallway of their apartment building. Each dog weighed more than 100 pounds and inflicted at least 77 wounds.

Here are some details that you may have missed becuase of the media coverups:

The case of the San Francisco dog owners who kept a killer bull mastiff in an apartment are Democrat activists. You might remember this grusome case: Marjorie Knoller was convicted of second-degree murder in the dog-mauling death of her neighbor Diane Whipple. Her husband, Robert Noel was convicted of a lesser charge because he wasn’t at the scene when the killing took place. Both lawyers were and remain active Democrats and also were ‘friends’ of a felon in prison, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. The case came up again because a liberal judge cleared the Democrat fundraisers of the serious charges. Here is the rest of the story:

By Mick Gregory

The case of Knoller and her husband Robert Noel attracted worldwide media attention, but many of the unique details of the case were filtered out by the press. Did you know they were Democrat activists? They even had witnesses testify to that in their defense, they hate Republicans. (That makes it OK to have killer dogs the size and temperment of lions in a city apartment that end up tearing the throat out of a young woman). They hate Bush and Cheney!

When liberal and openly gay San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren threw out Marjorie Knoller’s second-degree murder conviction for the dog-mauling death of her neighbor Diane Whipple, the judge justified his controversial decision by explaining that Knoller did not know her conduct had a “high probability of death to another human being.”

More history on Warren: he is the son of the famous JFK assassination coverup, Earl Warren of the Warren Commission. Two death-bed confessions early this year have brought to light that that VP Lyndon Johnson was behind the assassination. But that is a story for another time.

Knoller and Noel were keeping the two massive dogs for Paul Schneider, a life inmate and member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang who bred and sold the Presa Canarios using people outside the prison. The couple later adopted Schneider, then 39 years old. And Mrs. Knoller was having sex with him on prison visits.

Days after the attack, Knoller appeared on “Good Morning America” and showed no remorse. Noel also publicly insulted San Francisco’s then-DA Terence Hallinan and partly blamed Whipple for the attack.

There were sex pictures of the cute couple and their adopted son and news reports of thier anti-Bush activisim. The “journalists” scrubbed that out of their reports.

While at the Getty home in Pacific Heights (San Francisco), Obama calls small-town whites, Bible thumpers, gun-loving bigots

By Mick Gregory

Here is why I’ve created this blog on citizen journalism: to expose the cozy relationship between the mass media and Democrat political machine, and let you into the mansions and “elegantly casual” settings. Here is a prime example. Who, what, where and why? The basic questions a reporter asks are often glossed over to protect the politician.

Sen. Obama, while speaking at the Getty’s private mansion in Pacific Heights, San Francisco, the richest enclave of society in America, condemns small-town, lower middle class whites in suburban America for their belief in God, Second Amendment rights and being bigots and idiots. Let me tell you a little bit about Getty. He bought the mansion next door to his to garage his 12 luxury sports cars.

No talk of a carbon footprint among friends. Did Sean Penn attend the gathering? I’d like to know, because his movie “into the Wild” (a very good movie and book) is about a rich kid who graduated from Emory University and was accepted to Harvard Law School, but instead he burns and gives away $20,000 and goes off to live off the land.

Penn is also a big supporter of Hugo Chavez, who is a de-facto dictator of Venezuela and is one of the key OPEC members behind the recent spike of oil.

Here is the report on the citizen journalist from the Huffington Post who attended the “gala.”
Ms. Fowler, who graduated from Vassar in 1968 and had dabbled in writing, became a “citizen journalist” last summer when the Huffington Post started “OffTheBus.net,” a new venture that has now expanded to a network of about 1,800 unpaid writers and researchers. I wrote about O.T.B. in October, by which time editors at the Huffington Post had already identified Ms. Fowler as one of O.T.B.’s “emerging star correspondents.”

Ms. Fowler has spent a lot of time (and her own money) following the presidential campaign– and participating in it. She has maxed out at $2,300 to Mr. Obama, starting in increments last fall. She said she has also given money ($100) to Mrs. Clinton, because she is roughly Mrs. Clinton’s age and liked the idea of a woman president and she attended two Clinton fund-raisers with her sister, a devoted Clinton supporter. And she also gave $500 to Fred Thompson, of Tennessee, even though he is a Republican, because that’s where she is from and her family has been steeped in Tennessee politics since the 1790s (that’s not a typo).

As a supporter who had made donations, Ms. Fowler had been invited before to Obama fund-raisers — and written about them on O.T.B. After the Ohio and Texas primaries, she was back home in the Bay Area and heard that Mr. Obama would be holding four fund-raisers there on April 6. She had not been invited but asked a friend if she could go. She was put on the list for the last of four events, this one at a mansion in Pacific Heights.

There’s a bit of a brush fire in California about how Ms. Fowler got in, and Ms. Fowler is protecting the person who secured her a ticket. That person has since called her and said that fund-raisers are always off the record.

“This was never conveyed to me,” Ms. Fowler said. “I was invited to the event, I had written on fund-raisers in the past, why wouldn’t I this time?” She said the Obama campaign had never objected before to her having written about fund-raisers (though admittedly, nothing much of interest had happened). And the invitations said nothing about being closed to the press. Besides, she said, several guests brought people and children and who had not been invited.

Please write me if you see this reported in the San Francisco Chronicle or New York Times.

Did you read that Jimmy Carter is going to meet with Hamas leaders, a group of terrorists headed by Khaled Meshal. A group that killed hundreds of Americans and thousands of their own people and Jews in a blood-thirsty drive to wipe out Israel and Christians in the Middle East?

Did you know that Carter already met with Hamas a year ago?

It should be front page news today. It’s not any different than if FDR had gone on a trip to visit with Hitler and his inner circle in 1942.

More…

A look at the mind set of newspaper columnists and journalists as security boxes their belongings

By Mick Gregory

After the spring break/Easter holiday retail promotions, newspapers have a long, low period of advertising drop off, followed closely by subscription and single-copy sales declines. That’s when the next big wave of head-count cuts usually hits. It’s as predictable as a 2-hour commute in So Cal. The newsrooms don’t see it coming any better than hogs at a Bakersfield slaughter house. I take that back, hogs do get the picture about five minutes before the drill.

UPDATE:
(CAN YOU IMAGINE? WRITERS COMING UP WITH THEIR OWN HEADLINES?)

Word out of the Los Angeles Daily Journal newsroom is that the legal paper lopped off its copy desk last night — the whole thing. I’ve heard it from a few sources, one of whom emails that deadlines will be pushed earlier in the day, writers are being asked to suggest their own headlines and line editors will back read each other’s edited copy. The editor staffing was already thin, with recent departures not replaced. Emails one staffer:

Honestly, how do you put out a paper without a copy desk? We’re all very shell-shocked. The lay-offs included a veteran copy-editor who had been at the paper for 15 years, and who was completly unaware she was on the chopping block. We’re all scrambling around, trying to figure out how we’re going to keep doing our jobs without copy editors. — Kevin Roderick of the LA Observer

TIP TO PUBLISHERS: TRY USING WEB-BASED CONTENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE AND HAVE COPY EDITORS IN PUNE, INDIA DO THE EDITING FOR 20 PERCENT OF THE EXPENSE. THOUGH, GIVE YOUR WRITERS A CHANCE. ALL THEY NEED IS ABOUT A WEEK OF PRACTICE.

Here are the latest cuts:
The Seattle Times –175 to 200.
The Dizzy Dean Singleton cuts in California — bottomless.

Here is some open grieving from what was once a real fluff position, sports columnist in Southern California. Free food in the press box, jokes about the sports stars, great seats for all the best games, somebody had to do it. Well, not any more.

I have a suggestion for your exit interview, say “Pull my finger!”
And blow one a burrito/beer fart that they will remember.

…
‘We’re Eliminating the Position of Sports Columnist’
It took me, oh, about three seconds to process the meaning of the call from the newsroom secretary.

“Steve wants to see you in Louise’s office.”

Steve would be Steve Lambert, editor of The Sun/Bulletin/Titanic. And Louise is Louise Kopitch, head of personnel for the same foundering entities.

These days, your editor wants to see you (in tandem with the HR boss) for one reason only. And it’s not to congratulate you on being named Employee of the Year.

It was about noon, and I was in the new, north San Bernardino offices of The Sun to do my weekly IE-oriented notes column. I was going to lead with several paragraphs on Don Markham, the mad genius of Inland Empire prep football who, at age 68, is attempting to put a maraschino cherry atop his “mad genius” credentials by starting up an intercollegiate sports program (and, more importantly, to him, a football team) at something called American Sports University (current enrollment, about 30). A school planned and created by a Korean mad-genius businessman who either is about to fill a niche in academe or lose a boatload of money.

As it turns out, American Sports University is located in downtown San Bernardino in the very same collection of buildings occupied until October of 2006 by The Sun. The same buildings I reported to for my first day of work, Aug. 16, 1976, and then spent the next three decades of my working life. Later, I found that meaningful.

When the phone rang, my colleague, Michelle Gardner, had been talking to me about Cal State San Bernardino basketball, the aspect of her beat that most interests her. As usual, she was highly animated and barely paused for breath as I took the call, said, “OK,” and hung up. Michelle resumed describing the permutations of the CCAA basketball tournament and what it meant for the Division II NCAA playoffs. She was just getting warmed up. I basically had to walk away from her to answer the summons. Michelle does love her beats, and I admire her for that.

I may have laughed aloud as I went down the stairs. Certainly, I smiled. It seemed so silly. “They come for me at a random time and a random day. A Thursday. At lunch. Huh.”

I walked down the hall, looking for the personnel department offices. All the doors were closed, so I had to glance through the glass to find one occupied. I noticed a guy sitting across the walkway, a guy whom I once had worked with on a daily basis, when he was in the plate room and I would run downstairs to build the agate page. Mark Quarles. I remember wondering if he knew what I was doing down there, Thursday afternoon, and whether he might actually call out to me. Or whether it’s politically dangerous to acknowledge a Dead Man Walking.

I pushed open the door to Kopitch’s office, was invited in, and there was Lambert, looking smaller and thinner than I recalled him. Not that I had seen him often the past year, between my doing so many L.A.-oriented columns and him doing whatever it was he does. Corporate stuff, meetings off site, whatever.

I said, brightly, “I’ve been trying to think of a scenario in which this meeting is a good thing.”

Lambert said something like, “It’s not a good thing.”

I sat on the other side of Kopitch’s desk. As did Lambert, but he was turned slightly toward me and was about six feet away. Maybe that’s the way you do these things? On the same side of the desk but a bit removed? I remember a managing editor, name of Mike Whitehead, telling me, 20-odd years ago, that you never fire someone in your own office because if they insist on talking/complaining you can’t get up and leave. It’s your own office, see? So you fire people somewhere else.

Anyway, Lambert had a bit of a preamble. Something we hate to do, forced on us by economic realities, sorry … “but we’re eliminating the position of sports columnist for the Inland group.” I remember that fairly clearly, and I recall thinking “hmm, they leave it to me to grasp that I am not just a columnist but “sports columnist for the Inland group,” a title I’d never heard, let alone used. There was a flicker of “what if I were really dim, or contentious, and made him say it more directly? Like, “you’re fired.”

Lambert may have said he was sorry another time or two. How often he said it doesn’t matter because I don’t believe he meant it in the least. He could have said it 20 times or not at all and it wouldn’t have mattered. The guy hasn’t liked me since, oh, 2004, and I bet whacking me was the easiest call for him, of the 11 Sun newsroom people he fired that day. Dump a big salary (by Singleton standards) and a guy you don’t like at the same time? Easy. Fun, actually.

Journalism — not just for the ‘professionals’ any longer. Was it ever?

By Mick Gregory

Instead of a lecture from a biased liberal reporter who dropped out of college, citizen journalists create conversation. How often have you heard liberals attacking Dr Laura Schlessinger‘s credintials?

How about the credentials of your everyday journalist hack?

Peter Jennings didn’t go to college. Come to think of it, how about Dan Rather? I believe he attended Sam Houston State. Not much bragging about that.

Those are liberals, that’s why you don’t hear about their lack of education.

Michael Savage has multiple degrees including a doctorate. Bill O’Reilly has a BA and Master’s Degree. You don’t read much about that in the mainstream media.

Journalism is no longer a career left just to the “professionals,” author and media entrepreneur Dan Gillmor said Tuesday at ASU.

Gillmor, founder of “the Gillmor Gang” and the Citizen Media Law Project with Harvard University and the University of California-Berkeley, said journalism is shifting as digital technology allows readers to become spot-news reporters.

“We can all be media creators now,” Gillmor said. “With everyone walking around with a digital camera in their cell phone, it changes things.”

He pointed to the recent bridge collapse in Minnesota for an example.

Gillmor said many people fled the scene in the moments after the collapse Aug. 2. But others pulled out their cell phone cameras and ran toward the catastrophe to take pictures.

“That person did what I like to call a random act of journalism,” Gillmor said. “Professional journalists or not, all of us will have a chance to do these random acts at some point.”

He said digital technology has empowered citizens to document some of the most historic events in recent years. Flight passengers on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, made phone calls and sent text messages minutes before crashing in the World Trade Center.

“Just imagine if they had the technology to send video from inside the plane,” Gillmor said.

He also said the authentic sound of gunshots fired on the Virginia Tech campus were captured by a student recording with a cell phone.

“The change in media is fast and amazing,” Gillmor said.
Should citizens sit on their hands and wait for the “professional journalistis?”

He said the process and order of print journalism has already changed. Newspapers that used to hit driveways once a day now publish minute-by-minute reports online. And he said citizen or community journalists are furthering this change, with major contributions.

Gillmor defines citizen journalists as everyday people who serve as their own reporters and contribute to traditional news by setting up Web sites and capturing videos or pictures of newsworthy events.

The emergence of citizen media is transforming news from lecture to conversation, Gillmor said. Internet, cell phones, digital cameras and immediate access to computerized tools are transforming how, and by whom, news is made and consumed.

“The question we should be asking is not so much who is the journalist anymore, but more so, what is journalism?” Gillmor said.

Many of us are questioning why journalists are considered professionals? Are bus drivers and garbage collectors professionals?