KGB Report

Earle V. Wittpenn

(Originally published on September 10, 2010.)

Earle Wittpenn died last year on my birthday. I've tried to write about him a dozen times since then.

I've failed miserably.

The problem is that I can't talk about Earle without talking about myself. What should be a tribute to the man who rescued me from potential oblivion and gave my life drive and direction, ends up sounding like self-aggrandizing drivel.

I had graduated from high school at 16 as class salutatorian and was scheduled to enter Duquesne University's journalism school in the fall. It was an exciting time. I had something most of my contemporaries appeared to lack- an actual career goal- and a clear path to achieve it.

It was not to be.

My parents' personal demons made another of their cyclical visits. I found myself with no way to pay for college and no job prospects. My paternal grandparents, who always took me in when my mother and father found themselves incapable or unwilling to shoulder their parental responsibilities, again provided shelter and encouragement.

The mother of my high school english teacher, Mrs. H., was incensed when she heard a family member of mine say "He'll never amount to anything without college." She coerced one of her relatives to give me a job as a veterinary assistant.

On the day of what should have been my first semester in journalism school, I was restraining dogs and cats and checking stool speciments for worm eggs. I actually enjoyed the work and learned a great deal. It kept me busy, provided a minimum wage income, and, as Mrs. H. noted, "it'll keep you floating until your ship comes by again."

During one of our conversations, Mrs. H. said she had seen a classified ad in the Daily Messenger for a reporter/photographer. I dismissed it out of hand. "I'm not qualified for that," I told her. "You should apply anyway," she said. "They'll probably say no. They might say yes. It's worth asking."

My interview was with Ralph, the city editor, and I could tell he was less than impressed by my meager resume. My journalism background consisted of being editor of the high school newspaper and having three articles published in Model Rocketry magazine.

I'd also written a weekly high school news column for the Messenger during my senior year, for which I received ten cents per column inch and $2 per photo. I showed the check stubs to Ralph. "Technically, I've already written for the Messenger," I said, "so I do have daily newspaper experience."

I swear I heard crickets in the ten seconds of silence that followed.

Ralph was exceedingly friendly, thanked me for coming, and promised he'd get back to me. Even at 17, I was perceptive enough to know that my immediate future would still involve furry mammals and centrifuged feces.

On the way down the Messenger's seemingly endless flight of steps I bumped into the paper's editor, Earle Wittpenn. "Mr. Barkes!" he said, "How the hell are you? How's Duquesne?" I was stunned he remembered my name, let alone my college choice.

Earle had taken me to lunch at the H&H Restaurant on Eighth Avenue in Homestead shortly before my graduation. He thanked me for writing the high school news column. He said he was impressed that I was the only high school contributor who had never missed a deadline, and that I had always submitted at least two usable photos every week.

He was also amused that I managed to include the high school honor roll in my column, which was submitted two days before the paper received the official list from the district. "How'd you manage that?" he asked. "I have contacts," I replied, in my best pre-Woodward and Bernstein conspiratorial tone.

He laughed, and said he didn't mind paying me ten cents an inch for a list of names he could get for free a few days later. "We scooped The Daily News", he chuckled. "That's worth two bucks."

As Earle paid the check, I boldly asked if there were any part-time openings at the paper. He put his hand on my shoulder, shook my hand, and told me that at 16, I was a bit too young. "See me in a year," he said.

Anyway, I told Earle about my situation and that I had just put in my application with Ralph. "How old are you?" Earle asked. "Seventeen," I replied, somewhat timidly.

"Well, I started when I was 17 and it worked out ok," he laughed. "Give Ralph a call and let him know when you can come in."

The rest, as they say, is history.

One very important lesson Earle taught me was recognizing one's limitations. "There's always someone better than you," he said. "Someone who comes up with the right words for a situation. If you can't do better yourself, then use what that person wrote, but be sure to give them the credit."

At the memorial service, Earle's nephew, Matt Phillips, ended his transcendent eulogy with the lyrics from "For Good", a song written by Stephen Schwartz for the musical Wicked. His words are far better than any I could cobble together:

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you.

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend.

As usual, Earle was right.

Categories: Earle V. Wittpenn, KGB Family, KGB Opinion

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.
-Stephen King

Who needs to watch "Falling Skies" or the apocalyptic movies on SyFy? I watch Congress on C-SPAN.
-KGB

Categories: KGB Opinion, Quotes of the day

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

I'm only going to tell you this once.

If you're one of those people who's bought into this "cloud computing" business, you're an idiot.

"The Cloud" has been around forever. We used to call them distributed systems: a bunch of independent computers connected by a network or networks, which allow programs and data to be stored and/or executed on remote machines. If the remote machines are working, that is, and if the network can reach them.

As computer scientist Leslie Lamport said a few decades ago- yes, this is a very old idea- "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable."

If you're one of those trendy types who lives in the Cloud- stores all of your photos, contacts, e-mails and critical data there- because you believe it relieves you of the responsibility of backing up and managing it yourself- wake up and smell the metal oxide being scraped off your disk drive platters.

You'll endure periods when you won't be able to get to your stuff, because the provider's website is down or the idiot next door backed his pick-up truck over the Comcast box.

And you will eventually suffer a critical data loss. I recall an ad posted by a storage company about 20 years ago that's still valid today. "There are two types of users in this world: Those who have lost data and those who will lose data."

Distributed computing is a marvelous convenience. It permits me to work for my employer in Chicago from my home in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. Someone in the office on Wacker Drive can dial my four-digit extension, and- thanks to the wonders of the Internet- four hundred miles away, the phone in my basement office rings.

But things can, and do, go wrong. Perhaps I'm a bit more paranoid because it's my livelihood, but I take no chances on data losses or communications failures.

If a call to my office phone rings more than three times, it's simultaneously forwarded to three different numbers: my cell phone, home phone, and the Onstar phone in my car. As long as the phone switch in the Chicago office is working, and I'm in my home, car, or somewhere with my cell, I get the call. The last office call I missed that ended up in voice mail was during the blizzard in February, 2010. And that was a wrong number.

Every e-mail to and from my office account gets automatically copied to a special Gmail account. Business e-mail, along with mail from my personal Gmail, Yahoo, and XO accounts, are downloaded at two-minute intervals to Microsoft Outlook on my local machine here in Pittsburgh. They're also available through the web interface to those respective services as well. If I'm anywhere near a computer or smart phone, I can get to any of my e-mail accounts. And if my business, Gmail, Yahoo or XO accounts should somehow become inaccessible or are deleted, I still have copies of everything locally.

I connect to my workstation in Chicago via GoToMyPC, which is phenomenally reliable. But when the Internet is inaccessible, I still need to work. That's why critical directories on my Chicago workstation are also mirrored on my Pittsburgh machines.

The two computers in my home office are backed up 12 times a day to two different online backup accounts. Local backup software writes changes to external hard drives every 10 minutes or so. Twice a week, I do full image backups to external drives that are identical to the ones in the machines. If the computer drives fail, I pop out the bad unit, pop in the one with the latest image backup, do an incremental restore of stuff that's changed since the last image, and in under an hour or two, it's like nothing happened.

I hear you saying to yourself, "Now this is a responsible professional." (Actually, I hear you saying "Is he a frigging lunatic? Does he have some weird form of OCD or something?" But I'll just pretend I didn't hear you.)

Yes, I'm a bit over the top when it comes to backups and redundancy, but then computers are an integral part of my life. I've been using them every day since 1982 when I fired up my first machine, a 4K Radio Shack Color Computer. My entire professional and personal lives reside on them. Literally. Except for special legal documents like deeds, titles and wills, everything is digital. And yes, I do have scanned copies of the deeds, etc. Just in case.

True, you probably don't need five copies of all of your Gmail messages (Gmail interface, Microsoft Outlook, online backup, incremental disk backup, disk image backup). But you should have at least one.

If you're a Windows user, it's simple. Keep everything under the My Documents folder. Subscribe to an online backup provider like Mozy or Carbonite, or a branded service that comes with your computer, like Dell or HP. Most are free, or relatively low cost. Make the investment.

Most experts recommend keeping both on-site and off-site copies of your data. If that's too anal for you, just go with the on-line route. Having a disk backup of critical data three feet away from your laptop isn't much help when a fire reduces them both to a pool of molten plastic and metal.

Too much trouble? Too much money? Really?

I regard people who don't back up their data with the same contempt as those who let their dogs run loose or never change the oil in their cars.

You can post photos, videos and your current wardrobe, dinner menu and GPS coordinates to Twitter and Facebook, master the intricacies of Mafia Wars and Farmville, but can't take five minutes to go through the simple, step-by-step process of setting up a backup procedure for your data?

And the horse you rode in on, pally.

I'm ashamed to say that when someone calls me with a data loss problem and they admit they haven't backed up since they bought their machine, I'm tempted to tell them they deserve their fate.

Even more infuriating is when someone has gone to the trouble to set up a backup procedure for these cretinous oafs, but it's no longer working because the disk is full or the online account limit was reached. Invariably, at boot up time there's a prominent warning window the user blithely clicks and closes without reading. Betcha they also ignore the "Check Engine Now" lights in their cars, then have the temerity to ask surprised when the mechanic tells them that instead of an engine they now have a solid block of goo-infused, petroleum-encrusted junk metal under the hood.

It's a matter of money and responsibility, pure and simple. The cloud's popular because it allows companies to shift responsibility to someone else, generally at a lower cost. But how much have you saved when you come in one day to find out that you can't get to your programs and data? How much time have you saved when your computer crashes and you spend weeks begging relatives to send you copies of family pictures? How much time and money will it cost you to replace your multi-gigabyte, 3,000-song iTunes library?

I'm a computer professional. I've been in the business 30 years. On six separate occasions, I've had major system failures and data losses that completely wiped out everything I had stored on my machines. I learned quite early that backing up my data is as essential as having auto and homeowners insurance and paying the mortgage and utilities every month. Ignore your responsibilities, and you will pay dearly for your indolence.

It's time you learn that, too.

A Google search for "cloud failures," limited to the last week, returned 379,000 results. Look at a couple of the articles. Recognize any names?

Don't be fooled. If you examine it closely, the Cloud sounds too good to be true.

It is.

Categories: Computers, Facebook, In the news, KGB Opinion, Life, Observation of the Day, Painful, Philosophy, Stupidity, The Cloud, Too good to be true, WTF?

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

...or does this little fella look like Dick Cheney?

Categories: Animals, Dick Cheney, KGB Opinion, Photo of the day, WTF?

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

I've come to the realization that gray is the mature form of blond.

Categories: KGB Opinion, Observation of the Day

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

The breathless, edge-of-the-apocalypse reporting about the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear failures in Japan by the US media is mostly wrong. For a true perspective of what's going on, I recommend watching Japan's NHK World English feed. You can reach it by going to CNN's home page and clicking on the LIVE: Coverage from Japan link. Too bad no one at CNN itself is apparently watching it.

Other more balanced perspectives can be found here and here.

I've completely written off American news coverage. Line-parroting corporate shills really come up short when there's real news to cover.

Categories: In the news, Japan, KGB Opinion, Media and Advertising

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

The 11 pm newscasts in Pittsburgh last night contained precisely three stories: the Steelers beat the Jets and are going to the Super Bowl; it was really, really cold; and some schools announced a two hour delay this morning.

And that was it. Several replays of key game moments, reporters standing outside Heinz Field and South Side bars pointing their cameras at drunk, hypothermic revelers, a few minutes of weather, and the school delay crawl at the bottom of the screen.

While the news content will be back to near normal today- if you consider static videos of auto accidents and burned houses "news"- for the next two weeks every Pittsburgh newscast will dedicate as much as a third of its time teasing, promoting, and airing inane Super Bowl-related drivel.

Please- add a minute or two to the sports segments and put your "enhanced" Steeler coverage there. We don't need to see players getting on and off planes, practicing, making predictions, and we sure as hell don't need to see more grossly overweight fans with black and gold paint covering their half-nude bodies.

Remember: ""We need to keep it in perspective. It's a very, very important game, but it's not the be all and end all of everything. The city better get its act together regardless; I'm talking politically, with its business leaders, its religious leaders, everybody's got to get back to work."

What killjoy uttered those remarks? The United States Ambassador to Ireland and Steelers' Chairman Emeritus, Dan Rooney. He made the comment when the city was going batshit crazy before the 2005 AFC playoffs.

Let's hope sane heads prevail. But I doubt it.

This is Pittsburgh, after all. And they are the Steelers.

UPDATE:

I happened to catch KDKA's News at 10 on the CW last night. The first half-dozen stories were all Steelers-related feel good pieces. The "real" news started over 11 minutes into the broadcast.

Sigh.

Categories: Football, Government, In the news, KGB Opinion, Media and Advertising, NFL, Sports, Steelers, Super Bowl, TV, Weather

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.
4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.
5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
6. Was learning cursive really necessary?
7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on #5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
10. Bad decisions make good stories.
11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.
12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection again.
13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.
14. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this- ever.
15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dang it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voice mail. What did you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?
16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.
17. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
18. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
19. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.
20. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
21. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.
22. I would rather try to carry 10 over-loaded plastic bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
23. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.
24. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
25. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?
26. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!
27. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
28. Is it just me or do high school kids get dumber & dumber every year?
29. There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.
30. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate bicyclists.
31. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
32. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey- but I'd bet my ass everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!

(This is all over the Internet; does anyone know the true author?)

Categories: KGB Opinion, Passages, Questions for the Ages

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

Maya Angelou is my friend on Facebook.

Don't ask me how; I don't remember doing it. I generally like her work- ten of her quotations, including the one she posted on Facebook today, are in the KGB Quote Database. That's pretty much an endorsement of her writing, but still, I don't remember asking her to be a friend. I only friend celebrities I know through correspondence or rare personal meeting.

Anyway, today she posted,

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

To which I commented,

"Which is one of the reasons why oral sex while mildly inebriated is so popular."

If you've read her stuff, you know she has a great sense of humor.

Hope she liked it. Plus reading all the outraged comments will make the day go faster...

(Useless trivia: Maya Angelou's real name is Marguerite Ann Johnson.)

Categories: KGB Opinion, Maya Angelou, Quotes of the day

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

If you should to see this happening at an airport, don't stand mute and permit the seemingly never-ending assault on our rights to continue. Do what I plan to do. While in a location where it would take a few seconds for a TSA agent to reach you, drop your pants, whip off your shirt and undergarments, and scream "I'm an American guaranteed Fourth Amendment Rights by our Constitution, and I'm Opting Out." While this might not be an approach that's equally effective for everyone, believe me: I  will be noticed.

I should note that to this point I've never challenged any demands made of me by airport security, regardless of their absurdity and intrinsic worthlessness as effective security measures. I've been questioned, asked to remove items from my baggage, wanded, and body scanned by the generally polite TSA folk without incident.

But what TSA is doing now is reprehensible. These scare tactics of overkill, and the blatant, willful disregard of our basic rights as citizens, are profoundly wrong and should not be tolerated by anyone who considers himself and American.

To quote actor and former National Rifle Association president, the late Charleton Heston:

"Well, the answer's been here all along. I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people."

"You simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely."

"But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey the social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom."

There is something fundamentally wrong in a society that allows people to carry concealed weapons into Starbucks but harasses attractive young women and grandmas in wheelchairs just because they make perfect participants in the theater of the absurd that TSA calls "security."

In the mid to late 90s, the Internal Revenue Service was the object of Congressional hearings when the agency engaged in egregious and reprehensible activities "for the greater good." Congress stopped the IRS' Gestapo-like tactics in short order after they were exposed. It's time for them to do it again. Stop this insult to our rights and our basic dignity. Now.

Write the President. Write your Senator and Congressman. If you or a friend are insulted or assaulted by TSA and/or local police at the airport, do what we Americans do best: bitch, at the top of your lungs, to everyone and anyone in authority. Make a scene. Get as many witnesses as possible. Get as much information as possible and contact the American Civil Liberties Union.

Don't interfere or disrupt normal screening processes. But if TSA decides to make you the star of their little security pageant, by God, make the performance a memorable one.

This is America, folks. Our service men and women are making supreme sacrifices overseas to guarantee our freedom. Let's do our part by defending the Constitution here at home as well.

Categories: 9/11, ACLU, Airport security, Charlton Heston, Civil Rights, Fourth Amendment, Freedom, Government, Hypocrisy, In the news, KGB Opinion, Travel, TSA, U.S. Constitution, WTF?, YouTube

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

I voted, then had a McDonald's McRib sandwich for lunch. Not certain which is responsible for the lingering nausea.

Categories: Elections, KGB Opinion

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

It was 53 years ago today that the Soviet Union launched Sputnik-I into orbit atop a launch vehicle originally designed to lob an intercontinental ballistic missile at the United States.

In less than a dozen years, the US responded by developing scores of new technologies, culminating in the Apollo program that successfully landed men on the moon and returned them safely to earth.

I like to use this example when I hear claims that the federal government is a huge, incompetent bureaucracy incapable of managing complex challenges.

But what would happen if we were faced with a similar challenge today?

It's difficult to be optimistic, given the condition of our schools and the loss of most of our manufacturing capability. Worse, the American spirit, once concerned with the quaint concept of "the greater good," has been transmogrified. It now seems to consist of nothing more than for-profit jingoism. Our national goal is for individuals to make a fortune with minimal effort- preferably by playing the system- while avoiding the payment of taxes.

While watching satellite tv, of course.

Categories: KGB Opinion, Things That Make You Wonder

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

"I've covered politics for a long, long time, but this is the first time witchcraft has ever come into it."
-Bob Schieffer, host of CBS' "Face the Nation", on Christine O'Donnell's candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

Article VI, paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution states, "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

The "no religious test" clause of the Constitution is pretty clear; it's the only time the word "ever" appears in the document. Which means, as strange as it may seem, that O'Donnell's "dabbling" should not be an issue in her campaign.

As far has her being an unqualified Looney Tune who appears to live in a demented reality of her own creation... well, have at it.

And thanks, Delaware Republicans, for giving the Democrats the senate seat in November.

Categories: Bill Maher, Bob Schieffer, Christians/Christianity, Christine O'Donnell, Church and State, Congress, Conservatives, Elections, In the news, KGB Opinion, Politics, Religion, Republicans, Tea Party, U.S. Constitution, Witchcraft, YouTube

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

Earle V. Wittpenn

Earle Wittpenn died last year on my birthday. I've tried to write about him a dozen times since then.

I've failed miserably.

The problem is that I can't talk about Earle without talking about myself. What should be a tribute to the man who rescued me from potential oblivion and gave my life drive and direction, ends up sounding like self-aggrandizing drivel.

I had graduated from high school at 16 as class salutatorian and was scheduled to enter Duquesne University's journalism school in the fall. It was an exciting time. I had something most of my contemporaries appeared to lack- an actual career goal- and a clear path to achieve it.

It was not to be.

My parents' personal demons made another of their cyclical visits. I found myself with no way to pay for college and no job prospects. My paternal grandparents, who always took me in when my mother and father found themselves incapable or unwilling to shoulder their parental responsibilities, again provided shelter and encouragement.

The mother of my high school english teacher, Mrs. H., was incensed when she heard a family member of mine say "He'll never amount to anything without college." She coerced one of her relatives to give me a job as a veterinary assistant.

On the day of what should have been my first semester in journalism school, I was restraining dogs and cats and checking stool speciments for worm eggs. I actually enjoyed the work and learned a great deal. It kept me busy, provided a minimum wage income, and, as Mrs. H. noted, "it'll keep you floating until your ship comes by again."

During one of our conversations, Mrs. H. said she had seen a classified ad in the Daily Messenger for a reporter/photographer. I dismissed it out of hand. "I'm not qualified for that," I told her. "You should apply anyway," she said. "They'll probably say no. They might say yes. It's worth asking."

My interview was with Ralph, the city editor, and I could tell he was less than impressed by my meager resume. My journalism background consisted of being editor of the high school newspaper and having three articles published in Model Rocketry magazine.

I'd also written a weekly high school news column for the Messenger during my senior year, for which I received ten cents per column inch and $2 per photo. I showed the check stubs to Ralph. "Technically, I've already written for the Messenger," I said, "so I do have daily newspaper experience."

I swear I heard crickets in the ten seconds of silence that followed.

Ralph was exceedingly friendly, thanked me for coming, and promised he'd get back to me. Even at 17, I was perceptive enough to know that my immediate future would still involve furry mammals and centrifuged feces.

On the way down the Messenger's seemingly endless flight of steps I bumped into the paper's editor, Earle Wittpenn. "Mr. Barkes!" he said, "How the hell are you? How's Duquesne?" I was stunned he remembered my name, let alone my college choice.

Earle had taken me to lunch at the H&H Restaurant on Eighth Avenue in Homestead shortly before my graduation. He thanked me for writing the high school news column. He said he was impressed that I was the only high school contributor who had never missed a deadline, and that I had always submitted at least two usable photos every week.

He was also amused that I managed to include the high school honor roll in my column, which was submitted two days before the paper received the official list from the district. "How'd you manage that?" he asked. "I have contacts," I replied, in my best pre-Woodward and Bernstein conspiratorial tone.

He laughed, and said he didn't mind paying me ten cents an inch for a list of names he could get for free a few days later. "We scooped The Daily News", he chuckled. "That's worth two bucks."

As Earle paid the check, I boldly asked if there were any part-time openings at the paper. He put his hand on my shoulder, shook my hand, and told me that at 16, I was a bit too young. "See me in a year," he said.

Anyway, I told Earle about my situation and that I had just put in my application with Ralph. "How old are you?" Earle asked. "Seventeen," I replied, somewhat timidly.

"Well, I started when I was 17 and it worked out ok," he laughed. "Give Ralph a call and let him know when you can come in."

The rest, as they say, is history.

One very important lesson Earle taught me was recognizing one's limitations. "There's always someone better than you," he said. "Someone who comes up with the right words for a situation. If you can't do better yourself, then use what that person wrote, but be sure to give them the credit."

At the memorial service, Earle's nephew, Matt Phillips, ended his transcendent eulogy with the lyrics from "For Good", a song written by Stephen Schwartz for the musical Wicked. His words are far better than any I could cobble together:

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you.

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend.

As usual, Earle was right.

Categories: Earle V. Wittpenn, KGB Family, KGB Opinion

KGB recommends godaddy.com.

It's time for musical theater patrons to tell producers the relentless downsizing of show orchestras must end.

The Broadway production of "The Phantom of the Opera" has 27 musicians. During its 2006 pass through Pittsburgh, the touring company had only 15 in the pit. The current production has a mere 13; 10, if you exclude the three synthesizer keyboards. There's something fundamentally wrong when the ensemble of the most successful musical in Broadway history is identical in size to The Tonight Show Band.

The show's score no longer soars majestically from the pit. It's now a homogenized emission from the theater's sound system. The diminutive acoustic levels of the emasculated "orchestra" must be augmented with the synthesized output, then processed, equalized, compressed and amplified. The end result is devoid of vibrance and dynamic range. It's like listening to an iPod on steroids.

Producers say they must reduce costs to keep a show going, especially one heavy with physical effects and costumes such as "Phantom." I can deal with a scaled-down chandelier, but eliminating the music from a musical? That makes about as much sense as cutting the overhead for "Romeo and Juliet" by ditching the unstable emo girl for an animatronic replacement with pre-recorded dialogue triggered by an infrared transmitter in Romeo's codpiece.

Roughly $3 of my $70 ticket goes to funding the orchestra. Once you reach those pricing levels, what's another five bucks to maintain the integrity of the work as it was originally performed?

The argument that the average theatergoer can't tell the difference is irrelevant and disingenuous. The average person also can't distinguish between fresh and reconstituted orange juice, but when I go out of my way to visit an orange grove, I don't want to be handed a can of Minute Maid and be told "it's just as good as the real thing."

It's a Broadway musical? I want to hear it the way it was performed on Broadway. The next time a show with an anemic, overly synthesized pit comes to town, I'll just stay at home and listen to the cast album.

Categories: Broadway, KGB Opinion, Music, Phantom of the Opera, WTF?

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Jason Togyer of Tube City Online is a journalist.

When Pleasant Hills Police refused to release the name of the driver responsible for the June 11 crash in the borough that injured seven people, he filed a Right to Know form with the department.

When police finally released the name, Jason was able to produce this story.

I e-mailed the link to the Post-Gazette yesterday.

Today, this story appeared in the P-G.

I just e-mailed the following, which you can be certain you won't be reading in the P-G's letters column:

---

So Tube City Online- which doesn't even cover Pleasant Hills- spends the five minutes your reporters couldn't spare to complete the state Right to Know form and obtain the identity of the driver responsible for the June 11 crash. I send you the link to the story, and the next day you publish your own version with slightly more detail than Tube City's online piece- but fail to attribute the web site as the source of the driver's name.

Some observations:

- If you didn't obtain the driver's name from Tube City Online, where did you get it? The article mentions Pleasant Hills Police several times, but is very carefully phrased. It doesn't credit the department with releasing the driver's name. A casual reader can't help but assume the Post-Gazette did all the legwork in this story.

- You are again ignoring the other important issue here- that local police are abusing the Right To Know law and are continuing to refuse to release information to the media that should be readily available without disclosure filings.

- If I were editor, I'd have an intern whose only job would be filing right to know requests with police departments that refuse to release information. The investment in time has potentially great rewards, as this incident proves. And over the long term, it could make local authorities more forthcoming. Police hate paperwork. If you would keep up the pressure, I strongly suspect authorities would eventually waive the filing requirements and simply release routine information like they did in the past.

- Not crediting the source of the driver's name is beneath contempt, especially considering the background on this story. This confirms my experience 40 years ago as a reporter for a local newspaper, who often saw his work appropriated by the big metro dailies:

- You guys are weasels.

Regards,

KGB

-----
Kevin G. Barkes

---

Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.-Erwin Knoll

Categories: Hypocrisy, In the news, KGB Opinion, Media and Advertising, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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I spoke with an editor at the Post-Gazette Tuesday. He called after receiving a letter to the editor I submitted based on my Monday rant.

The gist of the conversation: the P-G (and other local media which covered the incident) didn't identify the driver of the pick-up truck responsible for the Friday, June 11 crash, because Pleasant Hills police wouldn't release his name.

Some background:

In 2008, the state legislature passed the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law, which requires certain state and local government entitites, including police departments, not to withhold information from the public.

The act contains certain exclusions, including one which the editor says police departments routinely abuse.

Officials can refuse to release information if doing so would, among other things, jeopardize an ongoing police inquiry. By claiming an incident is "under investigation," the police can essentially shut out the media from obtaining the details about any law enforcement activity.

This certainly wasn't the legislature's intent. Indeed, the act specifically states, "This paragraph shall not apply to information contained in a police blotter... and utilized or maintained by the Pennsylvania State Police, local, campus, transit or port authority police department or other law enforcement agency or in a traffic report..."

A "police blotter" is defined as a "chronological listing of arrests, usually documented contemporaneous with the incident, which may include, but is not limited to, the name and address of the individual charged and the alleged offenses."

In one challenge before the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, the Pennsylvania State Police claimed it did not maintain a chronological listing of its activity. Instead, officers filed "incident reports," used to describe "investigative actions." Through this little exercise in disingenuous semantics, the state police maintained all of its actions were recorded on incident reports, which are by their very definition "investigative," and therefore exempt from disclosure.

Fortunately, the Office of Open Records and several Commonwealth Court rulings have blown away this obfuscation, specifically stating the names of drivers involved in traffic accidents do not constitute "investigative material."

Which brings me back to my conversation with the P-G editor. He noted that scores of stories which appear in his paper and in media throughout PA lack basic information due to police claims of, for lack of a better term, "investigative privilege."

How many? Click here. And here. And here.

The searches are inexact, and not all of the hits deal with non-disclosure issues, but the number is nonetheless impressive- and disturbing.

When did the police decide they would determine what constitutes news? And why is the media, including the P-G, not shouting this disturbing development from their front pages and "breaking news" chyrons?

Because of the time and costs involved, the media isn't particularly fond of dragging governments into court. But they're ignoring perhaps the best venue available for obtaining justice: the court of public opinion.

Instead of positioning the ubiquitous "police refused to disclose" notice at the end of the story- or not mentioning it at all- stick it in the lead paragraph. Or, better yet, promote it to the headline. Make the stonewalling a major part of every story.

The public is unaware that the media has been kneecapped, because the media isn't making an issue of it. A couple days of "Two shot, police refuse to name victims," "One hurt in accident, police shield driver's identity," "Police won't name burglary suspect," on every story in which authorities aren't forthcoming, and pretty soon people will start showing up at council meetings, calling their mayors and township supervisors, and asking some pointed questions of those who are supposed to serve, not conceal.

Why dwell on this?

The media- local newspapers in particular- are a major social force. They inform and educate. And, by publicizing the names of those who impugn or injure their communities- like the unidentified reckless driver who decimated a bride's family the day before her wedding- deter others from engaging in such anti-social behaviors.

By failing to pursue the matter, the media is also failing to fulfill its public function and responsibility.

---

The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors.
-Thomas Jefferson

Categories: Government, KGB Opinion, Media and Advertising, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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It seems if authorities won't release the information, it's the end of the story.

No local media source has identified the driver of the pick-up truck responsible for that horrible accident in Pleasant Hills on Friday evening.

I asked the Post-Gazette via e-mail why the driver remains unidentified, and the response was:

> ...police have not released the driver's name...

I replied:

Which begs the question: why not?

Why have the police not released the driver's name?

Is the driver politically connected, or related to someone who is?

Forgive my impertinence- but why isn't the Post-Gazette asking these questions?

The withholding by authorities of the identity of the person responsible for this horrendous incident is a valid story in itself.

You published the details of the rehearsal dinner, the postponed wedding, the name of the pastor of the church where the wedding was supposed to be held, even the fact the bride-to-be was a former homecoming queen. Her family's background is now an open book.

But the person responsible gets a pass?

The PG came back with:

> we do ask these questions. police rarely answer. they don't have to,
>> under the state's poor sunshine law.

This, from "One of America's Great Newspapers?"

I replied,

Irrelevant.

There is still a story here:

Police won't identify
driver responsible for
wedding rehearsal crash

Pleasant Hills is a borough, which means the mayor is in charge of the police department. Ask the mayor. If he won't answer, your headline is now:

Mayor won't identify
driver responsible for
wedding rehearsal crash

Now, you have a significant story.

No reply, as yet.

What's really galling about this entire incident is that all the local media have taken the lazy way out covering this story. Initial reports didn't include the victims' names, because they weren't released by the police. Yet there were 30 friends and family members at the restaurant, and several were interviewed on television (apparently to intersperse between the "bent metal" shots). It didn't occur to any of these Woodwards or Bernsteins to ask the names of those in the crash?

Failing to report the name of the pick-up truck driver is inexcusable. Basic Reporting 101: Who is involved? So far, we only have half the story.

The police won't tell you the name of the driver? That's also news. Publish it. Shortly after it appears, you'll start getting phone calls from persons who do know who the driver is. Preliminary reports indicate he was breaking several traffic laws. It occurred in a construction area, where fines are doubled.

Has anyone appeared before the local magistrate on traffic-related charges? If not, why not?

Napoleon is reputed to have said "Never attribute to malice that which can be blamed on stupidity." Or sloth, it appears. The local media have moved on to the next shiny object to attract its attention.

They could be covering up, aiding and abetting local officials in order to shield the privileged.

Nah. Too conspiratorial.

They're all just doing the minimum necessary to get by. They're bad journalists, doing a half-assed job. Reporting the name of just one driver in a two car accident? Reminds me of an old George Carlin routine: "And here's a partial score: Pittsburgh, 5."

Idjits.

Categories: KGB Opinion, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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As of 7 am this morning:

The Tribune-Review has an updated story identifying the two most seriously injured persons. The piece focuses on traffic control reviews planned for the constuction area.

The Post-Gazette has a full feature also identifying the two most seriously injured persons. The PG notes "Five others were injured, but police did not release their names or conditions."

WTAE-TV's website has a story from 7:42 pm Saturday evening that identifies the bride- and groom-to-be, but doesn't name the injured.

KDKA-TV's story hasn't been updated since 2 pm yesterday. It identifies one of the seven injured by name, based on an earlier update during the day by the P-G.

WPXI-TV's story was updated at 12:55 am this morning. It also doesn't name the injured.

KQV Radio's "local" lead story is about a Philadelphia catholic school closing. No reference to the accident at all.

Amazingly, none of the media outlets identifies the driver of the pickup truck responsible for the carnage. During my newspaper days, I'm certain I would have been inundated by calls accusing me of shielding the driver because of political or other influential connections.

I suspect nothing as insidious here. The police didn't release the driver's name, and none of the reporters apparently feel it's important enough to expend the energy necessary to obtain this critical piece of the story.

I'm through ranting. I followed this item when the news initially broke because the parties were from South Park, so there was a chance I may have known them. I was frustrated by the lack of detail in early reports about the accident and decided to track the story until all the important elements were finally published. More than two days have elapsed, and it appears we won't find out who the driver of the pick-up is until his name is released by police to the local media/stenographic pool.

As someone once said, "The word media is plural for mediocre."

Categories: KGB Opinion, Media and Advertising, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, TV

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As of 1 pm, the Post-Gazette is the only local media outlet to update its original coverage of the crash in Pleasant Hills to include the names of the injured. The PG's update came at 12:24 pm. Their "news partner," KDKA, updated its web report a half hour later based on the PG's story.

WTAE, WPXI and The Tribune Review still have their original stories online. There's nothing about it at all on KQV's "All News/All The Time" website. In fact, their "Local Newsroom" front page looks like it should belong to KYW, since the majority of the stories are AP items from the eastern part of the state.

Interestingly enough, I received a couple snarky e-mails from a '91 Bethany College grad who's apparently a local television news producer. I'm assuming they're genuine, considering the condescending tone.

This could get interesting...

Categories: KGB Opinion, Media and Advertising, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, TV

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My first job as a newspaper reporter was to haul my sorry and, even then, not inconsiderable butt out of bed every morning at 5 am to check the local police departments for the prior days' events.

This entailed actually driving to the respective station houses- Homestead, West Homestead, Munhall, Whitaker, and West Mifflin- and physically reviewing the baskets containing the incident and accident reports.

Bleary-eyed, I'd dutifully transcribe the more significant ones, getting the names, addresses, and phone numbers of those involved. I'd also check the names of the officers who filed the reports. I quickly learned who were sticklers for detail, who were rather lax in their information gathering skills, and who had excelled in their creative writing classes. ("The actor seemed nonplussed by our appearance, and could not understand our concern and consternation over his over-indulgent ingestion of controlled substances in a futile attempt to mitigate his chronic state of ennui.")

After a quick stop at Moxley's on Eighth and Amity, the source of my life-long coffee addiction, I'd listen to the morning's gossip, then head across the street to the Messenger office and my seat on the rim of the city desk.

I'd call the Duquesne Police- we engaged in token coverage there just to irritate The McKeesport Daily News, which was trying to expand into our area- and then I'd review my notes with the city editor to determine what stories to pursue.

In between taking obits from local funeral directors, typing up school lunch menus, and telling callers that no, Homestead Hannah and Munhall Millie couldn't attend their bingo in person because, well, they were fictional characters who made pithy editorial comments in the front page Valley Mirror column, I'd write the police beat stuff. This involved checking the info on the police reports and often calling the officers involved to confirm or clarify the information.

Even as a 17-year-old cub reporter, I knew I couldn't hand in a story that didn't cover the "five Ws" in the first paragraph: who, what, where, when and why (or how). The first graf had all the basic info; the remainder of the story contained additional detail.

You can appreciate my frustration, then, at the following:

Crash on Route 51 sends seven to hospital
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Seven people were injured in a traffic accident Friday in Pleasant Hills on a stretch of Route 51 where construction has made the road prone to collisions, Pleasant Hills police said. (Ok, I get it, it was in Pleasant Hills.)

Paramedics from several South Hills communities were dispatched around 7:40 p.m. to the accident involving two vehicles on Route 51 near Coal Valley Road. One car was carrying members of a wedding party, KDKA-TV reported. (Wedding party? That should have been in the lead paragraph.)

Two of the seven were injured critically, and one was flown to UPMC Presbyterian by helicopter. The remaining victims were transported to UPMC Mercy. (Wait a minute. Jefferson Regional Medical Center is less than a mile away. I can understand flying someone with severe trauma to the experts at Presby, but why take the rest to another hospital 11 miles and 25 minutes distant when there's a perfectly good hospital with an award-winning emergency department just up the road?)

The accident was the fourth to occur in that stretch of Route 51 Friday evening. The first three did not involve injuries.(Then why weren't police directing traffic? What massive bit of PennDot incompetence is responsible for this?)

Officers were still reconstructing the accident Friday night with the help of county police investigators. They said construction on that stretch of road has reduced traffic to one lane in each direction.

The accident reduced Route 51 to one lane, which was used for alternating northbound and southbound traffic.

This was the PG's second story on the accident. If I had turned this in to Earle or Ralph, it would have been bounced. And I mean literally. The paper would have been compressed into a ball and hurled at my head.

The Tribune-Review did a much better job:

Pleasant Hills wreck injures 7, including members of wedding party
By Michael Hasch
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, June 12, 2010

Dozens of people attending a wedding rehearsal dinner could only watch in horror Friday evening as several members of the bride-to-be's family were injured in a two-vehicle crash near a construction zone on Route 51 in Pleasant Hills.

Two people -- including the woman's mother and stepfather-- were flown to Pittsburgh hospitals following the crash that occurred shortly before 7:30 p.m. as the family arrived at the Primanti Brothers Restaurant.

Five others were taken to hospitals in the crash between a car and pickup truck a few yards from the point where two lanes of traffic merge into a single lane, Pleasant Hills police Sgt. Richard Painter said. (They were taken to hospitals in the crash? What year and model crash was it? And again, what's the problem with Jefferson?)

Several people at the rehearsal dinner said the bride-to-be's mother and stepfather were in a northbound car driven by her brother. The younger man's girlfriend also was in the car. (I would have said "driven by her brother, whose girlfriend was also in the car." Picking nits here.)

Two men and a woman were in the southbound pickup truck, Painter said.

"(The bride-to-be) saw it. She knew it was her family and went running over," said Jason Seal, 26, of Carroll Township, who is a member of the wedding party for the Library couple who were planning to marry this afternoon in Finleyville. "The truck hit the car really hard... so hard that the (car) battery) came out... and is lying on the road."

Allegheny County Police are trying to determine how the crash occurred. Painter said witnesses told him there was a line of slow-moving vehicles in the passing southbound lanes and that one of the motorists stopped to allow the northbound car to turn into the parking lot.

The pickup, traveling in the curb lane, crashed into the passenger side of the car, Painter said. He said the truck was going faster than the 30 mph speed limit on what has become a dangerous stretch of highway.

"We've had six accidents here since Monday, three today alone," Painter said.

There's one, massive, glaring omission. WHO ARE THE PEOPLE IN THE ACCIDENT? We know their familiar relationships, that they're from Library and were supposed to be married in Finleyville today, even the name, age, and residence of a member of the wedding party... but not the names of the people involved in the crash.

That's the first "W"- who- and in none of the print or broadcast reports are the victims identified.

And don't give me this "officials did not release the names" bull. They entire wedding party was there. Someone could identify them.

Here are the available reports:

WTAE TV

Post Gazette

Tribune Review

WPXI TV

Note the differences in details and obvious errors in some of the reports.

I suppose the names will be released later today in follow-up stories.

But this is just inexcusable. I can just hear Earle... "This isn't a news story, it's gossip, and bad gossip. Names, Barkes! Names! People care about people. Here are two families whose lives have been changed forever, and you're telling me about Hyundais and pick-up trucks and traffic patterns and restaurants. I don't give a rat's ass about that stuff. I want all the victims' names in the second graf, and I want it in ten minutes. This paper's not going out until I get it, and you can explain to Joe Buck that he lost 100 news stand sales because you were too lazy to do your job."

Categories: KGB Opinion, Media and Advertising, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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Rivers Casino's newest promotion includes the opportunity to play tic-tac-toe with a chicken. Like all gambling ads, the spot ends with "If you have a gambling problem..." Skippy, if you're playing tic-tac-toe with a chicken, you have a gambling problem.

Categories: Gambling, KGB Opinion

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Why not just turn the clocks ahead one half hour, once, then forget about seasonal time changes? The amount of time and effort required to engage in this exercise twice a year is absurd.

Categories: KGB Opinion

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