Did you all see this guy this morning during his rant outside the Crandall Canyon coal mine disaster?

The screaming bald guy would be Robert Murray, president and CEO of Murray Energy Corp. I didn’t get to see him on live TV today, but did listen on the car radio to 90 percent of his news conference in Huntington, Utah. My first thoughts were to cut the guy some slack because he is in shock, is sleep-deprived and deeply worried about the fates of the six coal miners trapped some 1,700 feet below the surface of the caved-in mine. But then…

… He spent the majority of his time berating the news media for trying to report whatever tidbits they could grab on tight deadlines, and highly limited by Murray’s own staff and security goons who my reporter friends tell me have been very stingy in sharing information. He blasted geologic experts for discussing the cave-in as the reason seismic equipment may have registered the event as if it were an earthquake. “IT WAS NOT AN EARTHQUAKE,” Murray bellowed, a couple of times.

At least the seismic experts are holding back a bit, telling reporters they need more information before they make a complete statement on the cause of the catastrophe.

After 27 years in the news business, and having been on site at a few natural and human-made disasters myself, I know the information can be spotty and the scene chaotic. But reporters do their best in these situations, and have no interest in making the case worse for anyone — victims, families, mine bosses, cops and emergency workers. As adrenaline-inducing as these assignments can be, it’s always a horrible spot to be in. Because you can’t win. If you report everything that comes at you, and it isn’t enough to satisfy a rightfully curious and confused public, you’re being lazy or soft. If you get even slightly aggressive, and seek out family members or officials to interview on your own, you are being insensitive and sensational.

In these cases, the press can only work with the information that’s coming to them as a herd, at least until a little time passes and more people are talking.

But Murray had no trouble talking. And talking. The fact that this clown would be jumping all over the liability question (don’t you sense a battle of the experts already brewing to determine damages or insurance payouts in a courtroom?!) while those men are stuck underground, suffering, maybe dead, is the most disgusting and callous form of corporate spin control I can imagine. In fact, I really can’t imagine it — it’s just that bad.

What a dick.

In the news business, we never lack for sources to stuff into our stories.

Take, for instance, those who are willing to help children suck up the expected dark ending to “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final volume of the schoolboy wizard series. The book goes on sale at 12:01 Saturday morning.

The book is said to involve such scary topics as death and dying. For some kids (and thank God we have a specialist in this day and age to sort it all out for them), the book’s affects could be downright debilitating.

Heavens, how did my generation survive the endings of Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Yearling and The Red Pony? But then, maybe we didn’t.

Be strong, children of 2007.

I’m here, bloggers. I’ve been in Portland, Ore., since last Thursday, attending the annual convention of the Association of Alternative Newspapers. More about that later. I went to a panel discussion led by three behemoth bloggers and/or journalists: Arianna Huffington, Matt Taibbi, and Jane Hamsher.

Of the three, I would highly recommend Taibbi, a political editor for Rolling Stone who made his name with deeply insightful (and hysterically funny) coverage of the 2004 Bush/Kerry presidential race. Not to mention that Taibbi came off with a couple of ounces of humility about himself and his work, which honestly, the other two did not.

Anyway, the topic was how bloggers and other alternative media might bring a little Tabasco to the 2008 presidential election. I asked the three of them a question about Mitt Romney and that Mormon thing. I told the crowd that here in Utah, mainstream reporters have lost all bladder control about Mitt and the possibility that a guy who spent six minutes in our state might become president (yeah, when H-E-double hockey sticks freezes over). I mentioned how his Mormonism crops up in every story, from Newsweek to The Salt Lake Tribune, and did these experts think religion would play a big role in the upcoming race?

Hamsher pushed her bangs out of her eyes a couple of times and said she isn’t interested in religion in politics and that a person’s faith shouldn’t matter. Huffington encouraged all the altie journalists at the convention to take up that topic in their own papers. Taibbi appeared to want to weigh in, but didn’t get a chance before the next question.

What I found most intriguing, what actually bugged me, was Huffington’s description of a new feature she’ll be offering soon on The Huffington Post. Teaming with New York University journalism professor and blogger Jay Rosen, Huffington will start “Off The Bus” on her site in mid-July. The plan is to round up 100 or so bloggers around the country who can post comments and coverage of the presidential race from a fresh (that is to say non-mainstream media) perspective. “Off The Bus,” as opposed to the official “On The Bus” press corps of the major outlets who get spoonfed everything from campaign operatives, get it?

It’s a great idea, and worthy. And I expect if it’s done well, if the goal is for the “uncovered” story, it will take some interviews and leg work from the bloggers. So here’s the part that bugs me: Huffington was quite clear and proud of the fact that these “citizen bloggers” will get no financial compensation for their efforts. None. See, the way she explained it is it’s a privilege to be part of this big electronic neighborhood and that writers like Jamie Lee Curtis and Nora Ephron, who contribute regularly to The Huffington Post, don’t do it for the money anyway. Well of course not. But if the Off The Bus crew is supposed to be average citizens, doesn’t that mean people like your kid’s third grade teacher, your grocery store checker and the guy who comes to fix your plugged-up sink?

Hey, Arianna! How about walking the walk of the good leftie who talks the need to raise the minimum wage and health care for all and throwing these folks $50 a post? Or $100?

She’s a multi-millionaire, after all, with best-selling books, assorted talk show appearances and a wildly successful blog. Honestly, it just seemed a bit hypocritical to me. If you ask me, it’s downright mainstream newspaper mentality — asking for more but paying less (or in this case, nothing at all).

I’ll post some impressions of the beautiful city of Portland later, including my thoughts — and I hope yours, too — on what Salt Lake City could do to poach a little piece of that grand city to make ours more livable.

I’ve spent more time than I should admit publicly reading day-after stories on-line about “The Sopranos” damn fine final episode.

Here is a fairly pedestrian story from the Associated Press, which in the best wire story style tracks down the usual “expert quote” to sum up the existential ending to the HBO gangsters-doing-life series.

I’d say that ending the show the way creator David Chase did was masterful, and a lot of the critics agree. We Tivo-ed the show last night because we had evening plans, so we watched it after 10 p.m. Sunday. I went to bed with that last image of Tony Soprano’s face and then the blast-to-black image on the TV screen that ended it all for us. I tossed and turned and kept replaying Steve Perry’s voice on Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” in my mind every time I woke up.

This is what good television does. It keeps you replaying it all, summarizing it all, thinking it over and trying to make sense of it. If TV could produce a great American novel, I’d say it came in the form of “The Sopranos.” That’s just how powerfully it affected me and obviously, millions of other viewers who pay premium prices to zoom in weekly on the human condition–however violent and deeply touching it might be in the very same episode.

This is the best analysis of the long-running show I’ve read. Remnick never writes a bad column, and this is one of his finer pieces.

So now it’s on to–yeehaw–”Big Love.” City Weekly TV god Bill Frost says this, in its own charming way, is the replacement for “The Sopranos.” A great season is in store, Bill says. Don’t hang your hats on “John From Cinncinatti,” which seems very strange and takes too long to explain to us why strange is a good thing. (Bill has seen the first few episodes and says the strangeness won’t be explained quickly enough to keep people interested in a whole season.)

Let me and the rest of mullentown readers know what you think of “The Sopranos” arrivederci episode. And if you love “Big Love” as many of we mullentown readers do, what did you think of the season premiere?

I quit the The Salt Lake Tribune last December after nine years of full-time employment as a news reporter, then sports editor, then metro columnist. Naturally, I still hear tidbits of gossip through the local media grapevine. And now that I edit the city’s best alternative newspaper, gossip from my former colleagues flows to me like spring runoff from the Wasatch Mountains.

In the past month, editorial staffers have been leaving the Trib in greater numbers than anyone can remember. In the month of May alone, business writers Carrie Hamilton and Linda Fantin tendered their resignations. Set to leave the paper as well are Michael Westley, a police and justice reporter; Michael Yount, editor of In Utah This Week, the newspaper’s cynical version of an alternative weekly; and Nicole Stricker, an education reporter.

All have given various and fascinating reasons for jumping ship. Fantin is joining her partner, Phil Miller, who quit the Trib’s NBA beat this spring and took a job at the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota to cover the Twins and major league baseball. Westley has decided to devote full time to a side business he’s built brokering used cars. Yount, a talented graphic designer who has been badly miscast at In Utah, says he will be leaving to be a full-time dad to a toddler and a new baby due in October. Stricker is returning to Idaho Falls to get married, but will likely leave newspaper work altogether.

Then, the following e-mail landed in my in box on June 1. Actually, I got four copies of it from staffers who asked not to be identified. I tell you, it isn’t just leaks coming out of the Gateway 7th floor office tower. It’s a regular opening of the floodgates.

The resignation notice is from Ryan Galbraith, a longtime staff photographer who did not make his decision lightly. He gave up medical benefits for his young family and has told co-workers he’ll try to build up a freelancing business. It’s almost unheard of for a photographer to leave a newspaper job like this one. When you read Ryan’s e-mail, you might understand the gravity of the situation many people are living at Utah’s largest daily paper.

Colleagues,

Sincerely,
Ryan Galbraith

A former Trib colleague has been keeping track of the resignations and terminations since Media News, under the leadership of Dean Singleton, bought the newspaper and replaced former editor Jay Shelledy with Nancy Conway in 2003. More than 80 people, full- and part-time, have jumped ship.

Managers argue with those numbers. But I’ve seen the list, and I knew the people. All of them. Hell, it’s probably more than 80.

The paper is becoming increasingly “Singletonized,” which in this industry means cutting drastically on compensation and raises, while requiring more time on the job (e.g. contributing to blogs and zoned neighborhood editions without extra pay or comp time) increasing insurance premiums and/or cutting benefits. Ryan’s disgust at a 3 percent raise is typical of many employees at mid-career there. Actually, under the Conway regime, 3 percent is generous. Two and 2 1/2 percent annual raises (if they come at all) are more typical — not even equal to a cost of living increase.

It took a couple of years for the Singleton model to take hold in Salt Lake City. His modus operandi (I watched him gut daily papers in Dallas and Houston in the ’90s) is to cut staff as deeply as possible while defending his penny pinching as “the industry standard.”

And here is where it leads: To a newspaper that will keep losing its best and most loyal employees, who take with them institutional knowledge of Utah’s political, cultural and business institutions and yes, its important and unique nuances.

It’s scarcely a fun place to work anymore, staffers have told me. And in the newspaper biz — known for long hours and low wages — if it isn’t at least a little about fun, why bother?

OK. Let’s move on.

I plan on ignoring any further ttstark posts, unless they get so over the top as to cause me a migraine (a malady I’m not given to, so I don’t expect he’ll be much of a future problem). Thanks for all your comments on the topic.

Snarky dweebs like ttstark however, are on my mind of late. City Weekly staff writer Stephen Dark is finishing up a cover story about a cyber-squatter-conman who has a criminal record as long as my arm. The guy has a record as a sex offender (a late 1990s federal conviction for on-line possession of kiddie porn). This little transgression landed the guy on the Utah sex offenders database, so he finds it a challenge to find and keep a regular job. He’s limited to where he can live (restrictions on proximity to schools, child care centers, etc.) so he he resides in his sister’s basement in Utah County. He fills his days with harassing people via the Internet and extorting them by demanding money to clear their names (once he’s tried to destroy them). It’s like the guy has a virtual pen and mucho time on his hands to scrawl insults and threats all over one big bathroom wall.

That’s all I can reveal right now. The story is scheduled to run next issue (May 23). It’s sort of a cautionary tale for people who might not know how closely these creeps operate among us.

If you’re one of the many who read this blog and can’t get a paper copy of CW, you can always bookmark our site: http://www.slweekly.com

If you haven’t read my weekly column in this week’s CW, it’s here. We had a good laugh on Tuesday of this week — the day we run around like crazy chickens to get the paper out. This issue reads like the “All Mitt, All the Time” edition. My main point was to get away from the dominant theme among Utahns these days: that poor Mitt is being persecuted for his LDS membership. I’ll give him that, to a small degree. But as a journalist and something of a social/cultural/political critic, I’m not about to give him a hall pass on his waffling and lukewarm positions.

As I point out in the piece, Americans appreciate flexibility in their president AFTER the election, not BEFORE. A presidential campaign is all about drama. What we want from our candidates during the campaign is guarantee of a spine. And Romney shows nearly every day that he’s in search of his. If he’s found his backbone yet, he really ought to let the voters know.

No, I can’t take credit for that headline. It’s the work of Bill Frost, a City Weekly staff writer whose writing always makes me laugh out loud. He gets all the credit.

Go here for Bill’s blog post on the silly, overhyped debate between Hannity and Anderson. It’s the best review I’ve read anywhere of last Friday’s event, and believe me, I read more criticism than than my gut could take.

A lot of you have posted on my previous blog entry about the Hannity-Anderson thing. I’m all but finished with writing/talking/thinking about it now, as the story is going on four days old and has just about grown fur at this point. I did, however, hear an amusing take on the whole drama while listening to KSL radio’s Doug Wright on the car radio this morning.

(My husband always asks why I listen to Wright’s talk show, and I always tell him it’s my best yardstick for measuring the way our garden-variety Utahn who marches in lockstep with authority thinks. For me, the show is a cultural magnifying glass. Today’s show did not disappoint.)

You’ll recall that KSL has been blowing every gasket since it learned the debate was a go. They went all wacky with promotion, including billing it as a “smackdown.” Those who watched it either live or on TV know it was anything but. Anyway, this morning Wright was doing his usual “woe unto us” hangdog analysis of our wretched, values-crossed society. The horribly insensitive audience, he said, was the real loser.

Wright simply couldn’t believe how rude, uncouth, how positively barbaric the crowd was. What with their heckling, interruptions and catcalls, why, the two narcissists on stage could barely get a word in edgewise. How, he asked, does an audience get off on behaving this way? What possible excuse could those people have?

Naturally it never dawned on Doug that his very own Sean Hannity has built a whole industry on interrupting callers he disagrees with, on name-calling and heckling and on pushing public discourse lower than an earthworm’s abdomen. You reap what you sow, Doug, and KSL has cultivated quite a garden of idiocy and social intolerance by choosing to syndicate Hannity year after year. Even though many of the outbursts came from pro-Rocky forces, we have a whole society that feels it’s perfectly fine to belittle others and cut them to their quick in a disagreement. I’d have to say both sides have learned the technique from the master: Hannity.

Hey, it’s always worked for him. So why not a crowd of heckling hayseeds at Kingsbury Hall as well?

It’s getting crazy as all getout in this town, leading up to the big Rocky Anderson/Sean Hannity debate tomorrow night at the University of Utah. Smart U. students, who got tickets for $5 a pop, are selling them on eBay for more than $75 a piece. Now that’s free enterprise.

Anyway, at City Weekly we have this thing in perspective. Resident funny man Bill Frost has made it easy for people intent on keeping score between our mayor for life and Hannity the showman. If you missed Bill’s take on the frenzy, check it out here.

Speaking of promoting my newspaper, I’m regularly pimping each week’s issue on FOX-13 here in Salt Lake City. For the next nine weeks, I’m on live with “Good Day Utah” anchors Kerri Cronk and Dan Evans each Thursday at approximately 8:50 a.m. We talk, we laugh, we act vapid just like the best morning show people do everywhere. Check it out.

Besides a fabulous office that overlooks Salt Lake’s gritty and largely abandoned Main Street at the Gallivan Plaza TRAX stop, I get other goodies. It amounts to some pretty impressive swag, all right.

Today my mail slot yielded two small boxes of “compressed tobacco lozenges” — trade names Stonewall and Ariva. Manufactured by a firm with an absolutely perfect “Thank You for Smoking” sort of name — Star Scientific Inc. — the little white nuggets are nothing more than dissolvable chewing tobacco. Kind of like pillows of Pepto-Bismol, only addicting and cancer-causing.

I gave them to Brandon, the smoker who sits closest to my office. “Will they help me quit smoking?” he asked.

Well, the press kits says no. Neither one is a “smoking cessation product.” The packaging and brochures do point out in giant typeface, which if it could talk would be SCREAMING RIGHT OUT LOUD: PRODUCT IS SPIT-FREE!

Yum. And, as the company’s website points out, their spitless property should make Ariva and Stonewall attractive to “both genders.”

I gotta say, it’s one big cheer for our government-subsidized tobacco industry. Like any good business model, Star Scientific isn’t content to rest on old technology and is eagerly seeking out new users and promising demographic groups. Also noted: Star has hired a new addition to its product development team, Richard Milam, formerly of tobacco leviathan Brown & Williamson. He has a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Auburn University.

Now that’s assuring.

Besides, this company has big goals. It emphasizes that “smokeless tobacco sales have been a minimal part of the company’s revenue stream, by the end of the second quarter Star expects to increase its national distribution to include all three of the largest U.S. drug store chains.”

Where there’s a will there’s a way, by golly. High-minded marketing goals and merchant of death all at once. And isn’t this all that’s right about America?

Did anyone watch the first two-hour episode of “The Mormons” on PBS last night? Your thoughts?

In brief…The production values and interviews were excellent and well-edited. I did find myself dozing a bit on the couch during some scenes, including the early history of the LDS Church (Smith’s first vision, his death and martyrdom, etc.). This may have more to do with the fact that we first watched the Utah-Houston playoff game (hey, priorities!) and then “The Mormons” on a Tevo recording.

But growing up in Mormondom as I did, most of the background was familiar.

One small question: Why, in the visuals for the Saints’ trek into the Salt Lake Valley, did we see countless scenes of Monument Valley, Goblin Valley and other spectacular red rock formations of Southern Utah? A shot of the mouth of dry and scrubby Emigration Canyon would have done nicely.

Perhaps the “Life Elevated” team from Utah’s tourism office got hold of the early cut? Ha.

Tonight’s installment will feature more of the call of culture on Mormons, the political influence and business holdings of the church and the push-pull its doctrine and demand for strict obedience has on its members. Look for our friend, Jim Clayton, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Utah. He’s interviewed about the church’s mix of theology, politics and revisionist history that leads many faithful but questioning members to drop out of the fold.

I’m looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, any thoughts?