Warm thoughts for Jerry

          Good evening, 919 Gang. Best wishes to Jerry Marcus after his surgery.

          JERRY MARCUS writes:

I had my right lung removed a week ago, and I am now in rehab. I am grateful that the malignancy was caught in time, and I will try to find something to devote the rest of my life to a day at a time.

-----------------------------------------------------

  Queen Victoria

        REX SALMON writes:

A memorial service for Alma Victoria Dietrich, 86, will be at 12:30 p.m. today (Tuesday) at the Miramar National Cemetery. She was the wife of 919er Bob Dietrich.

She was Queen Victoria for 45 years for the San Diego Renaissance Faire. She was the organizer and sewed many costumes, including hers pictured here.

---------------------------------------------------------

          CARL LARSEN writes:

Like many 919ers, I was riveted recently to the TV, watching "The Roosevelts," perhaps documentarian Ken Burns' best effort.

          Burns is one of the few to explore our nation's rich history on television. His long-time colleague, historian Geoffrey Ward, a Roosevelt scholar, played a larger role than usual in this series. Together, they have ridiculed Henry Ford's observation that "History is bunk."

For those interested in San Diego history, there was an important takeaway from "The Roosevelts," shown in the final episode.

I almost missed the significance that San Diego played in the narrative of FDR's declining health, which was so evident during the 1944 Democratic convention, when he ran for a fourth term without appearing at the convention in Chicago.

Instead, FDR delivered his acceptance speech by radio from his train, parked on a railroad siding right here in San Diego. He had taken a transcontinental rail trip that ended in San Diego before boarding the USS Baltimore at Broadway Pier to meet in Hawaii with those leading the Pacific campaign.

His wife, Eleanor, returned to Washington from San Diego, while Fala, his devoted Scottie, accompanied him on the sea trip, which included a stop in Alaska before returning to Seattle.

The attached picture -- taken on the presidential train -- may rank as one of the most important ever taken in San Diego.

According to the Burns-Ward narrative, it showed the American public for the first time the degree to which Roosevelt was diminished by heart disease. It shows a "slack jawed," enfeebled Roosevelt -- at the microphone -- seemingly listless aboard the observation car of his train. Some say it was taken while he was suffering a minor stroke.

To the right are his son James Roosevelt and his wife. White House Press Secretary Steve Early was so appalled by the photo and the impression of a weak President it engendered that he ordered the photographer off the tour, Ward-Burns reported. Of course, there had been a years-along agreement, with news photographers especially, not to show the President as being disabled from polio.

Another key thing about the photo is how it was cropped for use in newspapers. In the full view seen here, a man in a naval uniform is shown just feet away from the President. It turned out that he was a cardiologist -- Dr. Howard Bruenn -- who accompanied Roosevelt. He was on hand when FDR died in Warm Springs, Ga. Those who saw the full frame photo -- and who knew who the doctor was -- had no doubt about the severity of Roosevelt's condition. But Dr. Bruenn didn't appear in many newspapers.

          In Ward's words: "An Associated Press photographer caught him looking especially gaunt and slack-jawed. The picture startled newspaper readers across the country, and the president's press secretary kicked the photographer off the train." It was the Chicago Tribune's Walter Trohan who noticed the naval doctor in the uncropped photo. "Rumors that Roosevelt was even sicker than he looked began to spread," Ward writes in the companion book to the TV series.

Two more notes: A few years back, a neurologist and journalist argued in a book that Roosevelt actually was suffering from a melanoma that attacked his brain ( "FDR's Deadly Secret."). Watching the TV series, my eagle-eyed wife noticed the subject of their concern -- a discolored patch of skin on FDR's forehead that mysteriously disappeared in photos taken after 1940.

The import of this is summed up in an Amazon review. "Anyone reading this fascinating and disturbing book will have to reassess Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose insistence on remaining president despite an arsenal of illnesses subjected his country to grave danger in the most perilous of times. FDR’s Deadly Secret makes us wonder how much different history would be had Roosevelt been healthy, and how catastrophic a turn it nearly took because he was not."

And for those who have been fascinated by the mountain of work on the JFK assassination, there's more ground to cover: A group of conspiracy theorists believes that Roosevelt was assassinated by poison at his Georgia retreat.

Why? One theory: Because the Brits, fearing his desire to dissolve what was left of the British Empire after the war, including India, wanted him dead.

And who was supposed to be a player in this alleged scheme? None other than popular British children's writer Roald Dahl, who was a military officer assigned to the British Embassy in Washington during WWII and who has been documented in a recent book -- "The Irregulars' -- to have been an agent for British intelligence. Before and throughout the war, the Brits orchestrated a clandestine effort to sway American public opinion.

Dahl had a close relationship with the Roosevelts, and was a frequent guest at the family's Hyde Park estate and at the White House as well as the boudoirs of any number of influential American women, including Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, wife of Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Life. After complaining to superiors that Booth Luce had worn him out after three torrid days, Dahl was told to "close your eyes and think of England," the Daily Mail reported.

Dahl today is the subject of a revival: He is the author of "Matilda," the musical now on Broadway and in London, as well as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

All this may sound preposterous, but given the fact that there was an ongoing top-level conspiracy to hide FDR's disability from the public -- aided by the press -- and to hide the fact that his mistress -- Lucy Mercer Rutherford -- was present at Warm Springs when he died, it's not hard for many to ask, "What else was covered up?" After Ken Burns, we need to bring in filmmaker Oliver Stone.

Uncropped photo, cardiologist at left, in San Diego

Cropped photo that appeared in papers.

          REBER: I think that 14-hour series, covering Theodore, Franklin, Eleanor and others, is the best thing I have ever seen on TV. Hearing their voices and seeing movie footage was great.

----------------------------------------------------------------

          PRESTON TUREGANO writes:

Long before I left the U-T, I was ordered to put those boxes of documents related to stories about questionable expenditures and management practices at the San Diego Museum of Art in the office of an editor. I assumed he kept them or stored them some place. That may have been due, in part, to David Copley's resignation from the museum board after he was asked by trustees and museum administrators to stop my investigation. Or it may have been because of some of the expenditures that never got reported, such as the museum director charging his hair piece weaving to the museum, or the cost of his mother-in-law's hearing aid to the museum.

          CARL LARSEN writes:

A few days ago, Dick Barnes asked Hal Fuson, the former Copley chief operating officer and chief legal officer, to chime in about how long notes should be kept by reporters after stories have been published.

Perhaps Hal missed the request, because I saw a contribution from him on another topic after Dick had asked for his opinion. Or maybe we 919ers need to put Hal on retainer when it comes to legal issues.

I'll be presumptuous enough to stand in for Hal, by citing his handy 118-page guide, "Telling It All: A Legal Guide to the Exercise of Free Speech," written by Hal in 1995 and published by Andrews and McMeel. His take then on the issue was crystal clear.

From Page 44: Most journalists assume that it is better to keep too much documentation than too little. Lawyers divide on the question. Those who prefer packrats believe the copies of notes, tape recordings, or research materials will help establish that news reports were written carefully and statements accurately quoted. Those in the Dumpster school -- including the present author -- believe that the report itself is the best evidence of what the reporter knew at the time it was written. Notes, and especially early drafts, do little other than open a foggy window into the sausage factory. Dumpsterites urge reporters to regularly (weekly is fine, daily is better) dispose of notes and other materials, unless they relate to a continuing project and will be needed again soon. If it is important to keep material, then it is also important to devote the time necessary to make sure that old notes are legible and organized and that files are orderly and readily retrievable. Given a choice between using a wastebasket and spending time on what they regard as clerical chores, most reporters opt for the trash.

What is critical, Hal argues earlier, is to have a well thought-out system in place to dispose of these materials.

Writing at an earlier stage of the Digital Revolution in 1995, he also wrote: "Do not assume that computer files you thought you had erased also are gone from a system manager's backup tape... The details of your practice are less important than that it be followed religiously."

It still would be nice to hear from Hal, and have him bring us up to date on this topic. And I'm glad I didn't shove his book into the trash when I retired.

-------------------------------------------------

          PRESTON TUREGANO writes:

On the topic of travel insurance, my spouse, who works for Carefree Vacations/San Diego Travel Group, sells it. He once had an elderly client who declined to buy travel insurance for a cruise around South America. The client became ill and had to be hospitalized in Buenos Aires. She was hospitalized for almost three months before being flown back to the USA in an air ambulance. That flight cost her $100,000! Bob doesn't know how she or her family paid that.

----------------------------------------------

          REBER: As September fades, we wish Happy Birthday (Sept. 30) to Ann Jarmusch.

---------------------------------------------

          GENE CIECHANOWSKI forwards:

You raise me up. Listen to this presentation by a 6-year-old girl.

http://tinyurl.com/mcvz9l9

Jack Justus Reber

P.O. Box 2239

Ramona, CA 92065

U.S.A.

Author! Author!

          Good evening, 919 Gang. Here’s a reminder that the internment  for Bob Dietrich’s wife, Victoria, will be at 12:30 Tuesday (9/30) at Miramar National Cemetery.

---------------------------------------------------

          DON HARRISON writes:

In case anyone likes to read mostly light-hearted material now and then, I've just published on Kindle a new book, "Schlepping Through The American West: There's A Jewish Story Everywhere."

http://tinyurl.com/kphmr83

          REBER: You can find it on Amazon here:

http://amzn.to/1yuYCJs

---------------------------------------------------

          REBER: Here are more thoughts on how to handle reporter’s notes:

          JAMES RICHARDSON writes:

Bob Green, the editor at Newsday who used to lead IRE workshops, used to recommend tossing notes after 30 days. I was never so organized as to know which notebook was how old, so notebooks tended to pile up on top of, underneath and inside my desk until I did a major cleanout. I do appreciate that some notes/documents are worthwhile keeping for future stories, and some might even have historical value.

          BOB WEAVER writes:

          When I was working as an investigative reporter at the Mercury, I made it a habit to save only the most important notebooks. In most cases, other information that was likely to go to court was filed under misleading titles, i.e., ajax trucking, ace lawn inc., etc., in some out of the way cabinet far from my desk or home. Nothing worse than being asked to explain what they meant, who your sources were, etc. Better to be able to truthfully say such material no longer existed.

          PRESTON TUREGANO writes:

My reporter's notes may not have hung around a long time, but I did keep significant documents that were used for some stories. I ended up with several moving boxes full of documents (expense accounts, vouchers, copies of canceled checks, copies of memos, government forms, etc.) for a few arts investigative pieces and as far as I know they were still in a filing cabinet when I retired. As for internal U-T documents, those boxes are no longer at the U-T.

          REBER: Please don’t encourage anyone to leave that material behind. When the U-T moved out of the Crabtree Building, there were stacks of boxes of notes, clips, etc. I couldn’t find anyone to claim them, so we filled many dumpsters. When one of the department heads left the U-T he abandoned drawers full of stuff, including performance appraisals and salary histories on about 30 people he was responsible for. Not good. When Rolla Williams retired he left several file cabinets containing, I suspect negatives of every photo he took in a long career. Nothing was identified, so I couldn’t judge their value. I hated to throw away someone’s life work, so I called and asked him what to do. He said pitch them.

LEONEL SANCHEZ writes:

I'm one who has kept all my clips, and the thought was to put them in order someday and figure out their value and how best to use them. I covered Latino affairs from 1992 until 2004 and that is where I am starting. It's a gradual process that basically comes with cleaning out my garage while looking for the clips that had to do with Latinos, immigration and cross-border relations.

I've considered doing this as a crowd-sourcing project through Kickstarter in the hope of generating funds to cover the costs of curating and binding these clips properly. I too have thought of donating these clips to SDSU or a Latino nonprofit interested in preserving the history of the Latino population in San Diego County.

------------------------------------------

          GLENN GRANT writes:

I failed to heed my own advice about travel insurance. My wife and her daughter went to their hometown Chicago two Fridays ago for a wedding and to see old friends. Neither had been back in more than 20 years. I completely forget to get travel insurance for them. It would have only been about $115. Their flight back was among the many canceled last Friday so they weren’t able to catch a plane back until tonight. I’m pretty sure travel insurance would have covered the first extra night they had to stay at a hotel (about $300) under travel delay or interruption. Luckily, they were able to stay the second extra night with one of the friends. I vow to never travel again without being insured.

          REBER: We were marooned in Chicago many years ago when weather effectively shut down O’Hare. American Airlines bused the five of us to hotel and paid that bill. Given the gouging airlines are doing today I suspect that might not happen now.

-------------------------------------------

          REBER: Tonight we wish Happy Birthday (Sept. 29) to Logan McKechnie.

-------------------------------------------

          HAL FUSON forwards:

Worth a look by 919ers.

The newsonomics of auctioning off Digital First’s newspapers (and California schemin’)

http://tinyurl.com/qjzpef5

Jack Justus Reber

P.O. Box 2239

Ramona, CA 92065

U.S.A.

Keep or toss?

          Good evening, 919 Gang. David Farmer introduced the topic of reporters’ notebooks, and Preston Turegano added some thoughts on when to get rid of them. There is a difference of opinion on that. What a surprise.

          DANIELLE CERVANTES writes:

In reply to the notebook-keeping thread: What a fascinating idea to toss away notes as soon as the story is written! My last five years at the newspaper were spent on the watchdog/investigations team. I was a data journalism/computer-assisted reporting specialist. I was taught to hold onto my data, notes, notebooks, interviews, etc. indefinitely because a story could come back to bite me, and I would need to show explicitly how I arrived at a fact or conclusion from that material. In fact, for several big stories, we kept enormous, 3-ring binders with copies of our final stories and back-up documentation to every fact and number that were in the story. We kept those until I left, and couldn't take them with me. In addition, on our beat it was essential to keep sometimes dozens of names and connections on the tip of our brains, so I liked that I could do a meta-search across all of my documents to see if I'd already done some work on a person or business before, or if the entity had ever been mentioned in an unrelated interview. Similarly, I found that my interview notes were good to look through again for leads on new stories. In fact, I still have electronic notes from stories that I worked on almost 10 years ago. Good thing, too, because what if I want to write an update? I couldn't dream of relying on only the published material because the stories used just a fraction of the actual analysis and reporting.

          DON BAUDER writes:

For scams, Hal Fuson wanted me to destroy notes within a couple of weeks. He would get mad when I didn't. Yes, reason was lawsuits.

PRESTON TUREGANO writes:

Yes, mainly for protection in the event of a lawsuit, but also because of inadequate storage space. After a while, a dozen or more notebooks could fill a drawer, and over a year or more there could just too many making clutter.

GREG GROSS writes:

I started out keeping notebooks forever, a practice I soon realized was pointless, because I couldn't read my own handwriting after three weeks. I stopped worrying about having my notes subpoenaed for essentially the same reason.

          ELIZABETH GABRIEL writes:

In general, I kept my notebooks for a year -- but would tear out pages for files if I were covering something I knew would be ongoing or if it were an annual event. But the problem, of course, was deciphering what I had written in my odd, personal shorthand even a few weeks down the line. Even with the advent of laptops, when I took my shot at reporting again after I left the U-T, I still used paper notebooks.​

CLARK BROOKS writes:

Have laws changed in the last 15 years or so? At the Greenville News, from which I retired last month, all interviews had to be recorded and kept for years.

DICK BARNES writes:

The question of how long reporters should keep their notes is an interesting one. I say forever, or at least a damn long time. We used to argue about this in the libel workshops I attended as a deskhand at The Times. The lawyers would not give specific advice, other than to say “Do what you usually do.”

My take, then and now, is that if reporters want to be considered “professionals,” as they insist they are, then they need to adopt the standards of other professions. Doctors, lawyers and accountants all keep their records. They get sued all the time and cough up the records, if subpoenaed. Why should a reporter be any different?

But enough from an old hack. I’d like to hear Hal Fuson’s view.

REBER: This is a bit off subject, but I know some also keep clips of everything they write. Don Freeman said he had clips of all his columns, certainly a huge volume considering how many years he worked and his productivity. One day Don entered my office and deposited himself in the guest chair. I knew by the look on his face he was happy about something. He told me he had just donated that huge collection of clips to San Diego State.

---------------------------------------------------------

          MARK MONDAY writes:

Can any of you -- particularly those who are teaching journalism in colleges and universities -- tell me who has classes in how to use the Internet to gather material for stories? Are there discrete classes about this or is it rolled up in some more general journalism class?

More and more stories that I see have some obvious Internet interactions. Often there will be a story about something that was pulled from YouTube or mentions of material that was on someone's Facebook page. Obviously there is increasing use of the various parts of the Internet to gather information. I'm interested in seeing how much is taught and how much comes from reporters who are just young enough to have grown up learning by trial and error how to get information from various on-line resources. Answers appreciated here -- I'm sure other may find this new addition to journalism interesting -- or if you want to contact me offline use my address at safeteam@cox.net

          REBER: We have several members who can address this, and I hope they will.

-------------------------------------------------------------

          REBER: Here are big Happy Birthday wishes for Greg Gross, Sept. 28.

--------------------------------------------------------

          MICHELE DAVIS forwards:

          A familiar site to U-T folks.

From Vintage San Diego Facebook page:

Jack Justus Reber

P.O. Box 2239

Ramona, CA 92065

U.S.A.