Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
April 25, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

THEY CALLED A DEMO BUT TRIED TO KEEP IT A SECRET

Cal (Recruitment) Day at Cal, Saturday, April 20.

A group calling itself BP (British Petroleum) Off Campus, began inviting me, last week, to their action. I told my Berkeleyside editor about this last week. BP Off was a no-show on that one.

They seemed not have shown up Saturday during Cal’s major recruitment event. I interviewed a campus police officer, who said university police were watching the group on-line.

We agreed it was another no show. Still, I asked them several more times about where on campus I might cover them.

Apparently I made a good decoy. One of the event organizers said I was “a travesty” as a journalist.

I blew up when I found a video of the anti BP demo on-line, a small guerrilla-theater melodrama in Ludwig (Von Schwartzenburger), fountain (1961) named after a homeless german short-hair, where the dog spent its life frolicking in froth.

I thought the small protest would make a good side-bar for the day of hot and heavy recruiting.

After I missed it, someone advised me to use the Facebook photos.

Tuba meets . . . Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Berkeley Protests: When the Whole World Isn’t Watching” »

by Steed Dropout
Apr. 10, 2013

CREATIVE JOURNALISM, AND EDITOR ANGST

Berkeley, Ca

“Buried at Safeway” was to have been an inspirational tale of synchronicity and remembrance.

Even if the funereal memorial marker in the Safeway parking lot was not a grave.

When Safeway excavates its parking lot for an over-due renovation this Spring, what will become of the memorial planted in a well-groomed wedge near the store?

My editor at Berkeleyside was interested until “creative differences” threatened the little yarn.

This is a story of something that didn’t happen. The source for my story was nothing more than a little perceived synchronicity with some half-baked spiritualism thrown in as an after thought.

This is what I call “creative journalism,” a hybrid of journalism and creative writing.

Funeral marker, lower right. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Buried at Safeway?” »

by Steed Dropout
April 8, 2013

He thought so, but he admitted that his doctors had been less than candid about the downside to his survival.

Was Ebert a medical experiment or worse, an advertisement for surgeries the rest of us would decline?

In a Ted talk shortly before he died, he described five deaths he survived.

Everyone in the humanities and computer sciences — in fact, every American should see this and ask what would you have done?

The incidence of thyroid cancer might seem low (1.03%) but it is rising according to the New York Times.
Continue reading “Saved From the Grave (5 times); Was it Worth Ebert’s Travails?” »

by Steed Dropout
April, 2, 2013

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT I WAS BAD I GOT WORSE

Criticisms of me as a person are picking up steam, online. Our marketing department here at Berkeley Reporter loves it.

I’ve been called, online, “a wannabe reporter,” by a former editor, who also said I was a second rate Matier and Ross, (Chronicle political gossip writers), the “world’s worst reporter,” more than once, and the worst slur of all in Berkeley, “a conservative writer.”

“We wonder about you,” one radical leader told me.

I’ve confessed in Berkeley Reporter (here) about manipulating stories, spinning them, preconceiving, but not inventing them.

My last editor suspected I had invented stories. “Did you even interview Running Wolf,” she screeched.

I can’t make these stories up. They’d sound made up.

Photo credit: Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Corrupt Journalist” »

by Steed Dropout
March 27, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

[Editor’s Note: the Berkeley Daily Planet was an award-winning print publication — now online — founded to fill the gap when the Berkeley Gazette (1894) quit thirty years ago, leaving Berkeley with only the student’s Daily Californian.

Enter the on-line Planet (1999), which has changed owners twice and is presently owned by award-winning Editor-in-Chief Becky O’Malley, a fiery and controversial muckraker.]

A PLEA: BECKY O’MALLEY FIRE ME AND PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY

I first intuited that I was through at the Berkeley Daily Planet in a Berkeley Reporter piece. That piece, about branding myself into digital extinction was the beginning of the end and I knew it months before the actual end.

I foresaw my demise at the on-line rag that has been my home for more than two years, more if you include my commentaries. Not long, but long enough to build Google creds.

Larry Blake's closes after sixty years on Teley. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Berkeley Daily Planet New Content” »