I’ve got a bag that looks like these. It’s the travel bag. The one that contains everything you’d need to do your job while you’re on the road. You know…all the necessities – power adapters, software CDs, extra batteries, passport, frequent flier cards, Euro coins, British Pounds, a couple of Korean WON, and 5 Ringgits. Cat5 cable, and various phone adapters just in case you’ve got to dial-up (yuck). Oh, and a couple of floppy disks, just in case.
I won’t be showing you mine though.
Two to go. I’ve just been through two of the busiest, most stressful days I can remember in a long time. Yesterday, with the funeral and all, and today with two 120 mile treks in the vehicle, and 4 children stuck in high gear. Sheesh. Tomorrow, another couple of 120 mile treks, then we clean out and remove items from my grandmother’s home. Don’t know what we’re gonna find. It’s always strange when you have to clear out the belongings of someone who isn’t alive anymore. A few years ago, I had a cousin who died suddenly. We had to go to his apartment and clear out his stuff. When people don’t expect to die, they don’t clean up, they don’t get rid of things they don’t want people to see, they don’t secure anything. Like clicking a stopwatch, everything is frozen in time. When you start rummaging through their belongings, you discover a lot of things. It’s a little peek into a life. Some might consider it a treasure hunt. To me, it’s not. It’s an invasion of privacy.
I’m not looking forward to it.
No blogging today. I’ll be attending my grandmothers funeral and spending time with family. I’ll check in Friday evening.
Rather’s goodbye video.
CBS News transcript.
NBC’s Brian Williams tribute.
ABC’s Peter Jennings tribute.
Courage.
My take? He wasn’t as classy as Brokaw, but…Dan didn’t do a bad job. I expected him to talk more about how he spent years being the consummate reporter, blah blah blah. No, he spent most of his time saluting others, and I think that’s OK. It doesn’t mean I give him a pass for any bias he’s shown in the past. It just means that he went out in a decent way. Now, he should do the right thing and disappear.
Via TVNewser:
“Dan Rather’s departure tonight as the anchor of the ‘CBS Evening News’ provides Viacom Inc. with the opportunity to remake a broadcast that has the lowest ratings in 24 years and garners 13 percent less for advertisements than competitor NBC,” Bloomberg reports. The CBS Evening News has lost 73,000 viewers in the past year. And Tradition Asiel Securities analyst Paul Kim estimates Viacom “reaps $200 million a year from news, about half as much as NBC News.”
The 129th Carnival of the Vanities is up over at Solomonia.
Warning to CNN Employees: What’s said here, STAYS here.
Via CableNewser – Rather Signs Off: Amid “A Particularly Trying Time For CBS News”
On Dan Rather’s final broadcast, Dan Rather will briefly talk to viewers about the end of his tenure, the AP’s David Bauder reports. “It is a particularly trying time for CBS News and the CBS Evening News, ” EP Jim Murphy says. “We would just like to do our jobs well and have our work graded on the strength of the newscast. This sideshow that is going on with the media who want to have fun picking on Dan … It’s not good and it’s not fun for us.”
RatherGate was not about “picking on Dan”, Mr. Murphy. No, the controversy was born from a job NOT well done, and CBS was graded. You got an “F”. Come to grips with it, and most of all, learn from it. Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Rebuild the culture at CBS News so it will be impossible for it to happen again. Only then will CBS regain the credibility it once had.
Over at Slate, Jack Shafer is giving out advice:
If they continue to play by the current set of evening news rules, they’re destined to to lose,” Shafer writes. “Unless they want future news archaeologists to find them frozen alive in pack ice, they need to stop thinking about who is going to be their next anchor and start changing the news environment. Without subscribing to his news values, they need to ask themselves, What would Rupert Murdoch do?”
Yeee-ouuuuch.
This is your brain on drugs.