Teen angst, plus a real teen

I have a love-hate relationship with syndication. On the one hand, common newspaper columns and TV shows provide even faraway people with something to discuss over a virtual water cooler. On the other hand, it is killing commercial radio, leaving hordes of on-air talent to scavenge for voiceover work as the content increasingly originates from stations in other cities.

When John Hughes died suddenly last week, it seemed most news outlets carried their own tributes, which seems only fair. The sheer diversity of our country’s media critics — ordinarily a good thing — also revealed some problems in columns that rehashed the same IMDB factoids or were just plain boring. Roger Ebert’s writing is syndicated to over 200 newspapers in the country. A.O. Scott writes for the New York Times and is well-spread in his own right. Both writers excel because their work and wordplay is simply fun to read, even if one has no intention of seeing a particular film or talking about a certain director. Both wrote well crafted Hughes tributes, though Scott touchingly proved that he “got it,” and reminded us that some people just don’t.

None of that matters now. The most important tribute to date came from way outside the media system, which makes me wonder what kind of future media, information and entertainment have. This is the only John Hughes tribute you need to read. Its facts did not come from a hasty IMDB search, they came from someone who knew him. It is just as well written as what came from the big hitters. It should have appeared in every newspaper in the country.

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Silence is not always golden

Thank you to New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow for his piece on the self-destruction of the record industry. It’s quite possibly one of the most truthful assessments to come out. It’s fairly well thought-out, and simply put, although he gets one thing wrong and skips one important point.

Putting a face on it

Ever since the economy “soured,” as the New York Times tends to say, we’ve had many opportunities to hear about countless layoffs, “tough choices,” and vacant glass storefronts. This week, we received two rare and unusually personal and frank stories about corporate comings and goings.

The first actually came from Gizmodo on Feb. 4 in textual form. Gizmodo solicited writings and reflections from Circuit City employees as an independent liquidation firm led the company into shutdown. The folks at This American Life produced a radio version with actual former employees telling their stories.

The second comes from a former employee of the American International Group’s Financial Products division. He sent a copy of his resignation letter to the New York Times, providing an analysis of events the rest of us simply did not catch via the papers or TV news. Check out the readers’ comments for an even more telling counterpoint.

Both stories provide surprising glimpses of personal strength, a healthy dose of good old American bad behavior and some of the shocking ways in which we fail each other.

Notes from your legal anal-ist: California’s Same-Sex Marriage

Many of you have probably already read analyses and overviews of the California State Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. After all, the court has since denied a stay on the decision and hundreds of couples across the state have already gotten married since last Monday evening. Allow me, though, to offer my own coloring. Some of it even remains in the lines.

The Cult of Accountability

I’ve been thinking a bit about how difficult it can be to make anybody do anything. We live in a culture where lots of people simply don’t do their jobs. These people don’t take responsibility for their actions and it seems like nobody is holding them accountable, either.

An open memo to my journalism colleagues

I believe, and this is a paraphrase of someone else’s quotation, that there are three things that make a newspaper worthwhile: Accuracy, accuracy, and accuracy.

My inner copy editor can take no more. There are lots of common misconceptions among journalists, whether one’s medium is print, radio, TV or the Web. Most people do not know the difference between usages but, for those who do, news media could be constantly damaging their own reputations.

Please refrain from using the word “gridlock” as a term to describe garden variety vehicular congestion or traffic, during rush hour or otherwise. Gridlock describes a specific type of congestion where competing elements are preventing everyone’s progress, and was first used to describe a situation where vehicles blocking intersections “locked” a grid of streets by preventing throughput. Since most vehicular congestion is caused by elements including collisions, slow drivers and bottlenecks, the area surrounding Times Square can experience gridlock; CA-880 cannot.

I invite all your questions and suggestions for other common usage mistakes.

The Yellow Menace has already sent a letter to the editor at theyellowmenace1@gmail.com