Talent drain on Fountain Street

Has anyone noticed the hemorrhaging of large numbers of staff over at the Other Paper? As the labor troubles between Belo and the Providence Newspaper Guild grind on with no end in sight, the Guild Leader, the union's newsletter, published a list of the people who have left the Urinal's news department since the contract dispute became a major issue. According to the newsletter, 54 workers from all departments have split in the past 18 months (for a complete list, go to www.riguild.org).

Of particular note is number of first-rate journalists whose bylines are no longer found, including C.J. Chivers, Jody McPhillips, Ken Mingis, Maria Miro Johnson, Keren Mahoney-Jones, Chris Poon, Bill Donovan, Jon Saltzman, Russ Garland, Carl Senna, Chris Rowland, Doug Chapman, Nora Tooher, and Ellen Liberman.

As the Guild Leader indicates, "It's a rate of attrition that Joel Rawson, the paper's executive editor, once called `normal,' but that, in the memory of the staff itself, far exceeds the pace of past departures." Certainly, not all of the departed scribes have left because of the intransigent position of management during the prolonged battle for a new contract, and the attendant plunge in newsroom morale (Chivers, for instance, got an offer from the New York Times). At the same time, the work environment hasn't been a plus in retaining staff.

In some cases, there appears to be a direct connection between the management/union struggle and the decision to leave. Ellen Liberman departed just two months ago to become an editor for One Union Station, the news-and-ideas program on WRNI, the local National Public Radio station, which also features Jon Saltzman, another former scribe for the Other Paper. Liberman believes she was passed over for numerous promotions, in favor of reporters with far less time at the Other Paper, because of her work as a member of the Guild's executive board. "I didn't really want to leave," she tells the Guild Leader. "I thought I deserved a promotion, and I thought I earned one."

McPhillips, who along with her husband, former sports editor Dave Bloss, left the Urinal in February 2000, told the newsletter, "I fault both sides in this, by the way. As newspaper management grew more truculent, the Guild's leadership became more angry, radical and more polarized from the rank-and-file. Yet while that rank-and-file was happy to complain about its leadership, not too many stepped forward to help."

McPhillips adds that this wasn't the final straw for her. Reporter Brian Jones and she approached Rawson to set up a joint management-Guild committee to deal with problems associated with integrating the paper's on-line edition, belojo.com, with newsroom operations. This move toward cooperation, in an area that had been rife with confrontation, was rebuffed. "I must assume [Rawson] was overruled by someone higher up the food chain," McPhillips told the Leader. "In retrospect, that sealed it for me . . . rational constructive solutions that benefited both sides could not be possible as long as someone in the management hierarchy persisted in blocking progress."

The concerns clearly aren't limited to former staffers. As Peter Lord, ace environmental reporter, told the Guild Leader, "I just heard of someone from a smaller paper who was offered a job here and decided not to come. When she looked over the situation of unrest and ill will, she decided not to take the job. People never used to hesitate to come here."

If all that isn't enough, word recently reached Casa Diablo that Rachel Ritchie, a finalist in photography for this year's Pulitzer (she was aced out by Elian-mania), will be leaving, moving to Israel.

Mad cow disease

The quotes of week come from state Representative Suzanne "Mad Cow" Henseler (D-North Kingstown), chief majority whip and toady to House Speaker Pucky Harwood, who used official state stationery, with her title included, to send fund-raising letters for her son's participation in the recent Boston Marathon to major State House lobbyists. Although the charitable beneficiary of the marathon pledges (a cancer fund) is obviously a good cause, the use of the state stationery represented a blatant misuse of authority -- as one of the lobbyists who Henseler put the arm on anonymously told the Urinal. In addition, the legislator used her State House secretary to type the letter, which is a flat-out illegal violation of public resources.

Henseler's defense of this nuanced extortion? "I didn't see a problem with it. The question didn't cross my mind." While the journey across Mad Cow's mind is no obviously great hike, this was just another example of the supreme arrogance of Harwood's Smith Hill mob. But wait, it gets even better. Asked if she would repeat this unethical shakedown if her son runs the marathon again next year, she told the Urinal, "I don't see that I did anything wrong . . . So I wouldn't do anything different."

Now was that Mad Cow Disease or Foot-in-Mouth we were talking about?

Guilty parties

P&J are sickened by the atrocious attempt to publicly lynch former Senator Robert Kerrey because of his actions in the Vietnam War. Thank all gods, we never had to take part in that American tragedy, but we certainly admire the men and women who took on that charge, with most of the front-liners being minorities who didn't have the privilege or escape routes open to many: for example, Bill Clinton's machinations with the Arkansas National Guard, and Dubya Bush's uninvestigated no-show when he was supposed to be with the Alabama National Guard.

Kerrey was a Navy SEAL, part of an elite -- and by that we don't mean they were dining with the American ambassador in Saigon -- fighting force whose members operated without support behind enemy lines. As such, they had to do whatever they could to get in, do their job and, get out alive. It's unfair and unconscionable for Kerrey's actions in the war -- in the middle of the jungle at night and with his platoon in their own nightmare scenario -- to be judged, especially when the arbiters are a chattering class of journalists who never saw battle in their lives.

Meanwhile, the real guilty parties thrive without interruption. War criminal Henry Kissinger continues to swan around society circles, having drinks with Mike Wallace, et al. at Baba Wawa's New York parties, while Bill Safire, Nixon apologist and former speechwriter, is still allowed to trot out his retro-conservative, clapped-out opinions in the New York Times and on Meet the Press. These are the real outrages.

P&J would vote for Kerrey for president in a heartbeat, given opposition by any other of the pontificating gasbags that currently own or aspire to that position. And when they really do come for the guilty, Herr Doktor Kissinger would best be indisposed.

It's a jungle out there

We don't care what Marlon Perkins or Mark Trail have to say. Nature is simply dangerous. And no more so than in the past few weeks, when we've witnessed what seems to be a revolt in the Peaceable Kingdom.

First, Phillipe had a hilarious thing happen during his weekly golf league play at the Jamestown Golf Course (Jorge hangs at the caddy shack doing magic tricks with the young fellows while P is on the links). He was halfway around the course on the fifth hole, and there was a baby squirrel frolicking right near the tee. Instead of running away, it just hovered, and Jake, one of Phillipe's teammates, bent over like he was calling a cat and summoned it forward. The squirrel inched over, and in a lightning move, ran right up inside Jake's pant leg, with only its little tail sticking out from the cuff of his pants. Needless to say, the poor fellow was hollering and hopping all over the place before he yanked it out. Our foursome was dying with laughter, but the squirrel started heading back toward us. So yours truly put his hand down, and Rocket J. Jr. nearly performed the same trick, ending up with everyone dancing around like a demented whirling dervish festival, trying to avoid either being attacked or stepping on the wee critter.

The kicker was when this group of humanoids got to the clubhouse. Before we could even get inside, a guy from the foursome ahead of us came up laughing, and said, "You'll never guess what happened! A squirrel ran up Joe A's leg when we were on the fifth hole and nearly bit him in the nuts!" Just inborn instincts at work in both cases, we suspect.

Meanwhile, two of P&J's favorite teachers, both Casa Diablo regulars, have been bagging the big game of late. Mr. Jim "Deerslayer" Etchells, who stamps out ignorance at East Greenwich High School, recently bagged his first trophy near Black Point in Narragansett, as a Bambi impersonator committed suicide by jumping out in front of his vehicle as Etchells headed home from dinner ("Guns don't kill deer, Toyota trucks kill deer"). This followed Mr. Jerome "Leatherstockings" Gorman's picking off another jaywalking doe en route to Beavertail in Jamestown a few weeks back, with our furry friend giving him no chance to stop before ending up on the hood.

Needless to say, The Deer Hunter will be featured all weekend in the Boom Boom Room at Casa Diablo, as Jerry and Mr. E weep into their Pernod and grapefruit after viewing the car repair estimates.

All that jazz

Your superior correspondents didn't give it much thought when we noticed early on in Robert "Skip" Chernov's BeloJo op-ed piece ("Assassination of greatness") on Friday, April 27 on Miles Davis that Bix Beiderbecke's name had been misspelled as "Biederbecke." In this newspaper racket, after all, we all live in glass houses when it comes to being imperfect. But as we proceeded, the Skipster kvetched that Ken Burns's PBS documentary, Jazz, was "false and misleading, because so many of the very greatest names in jazz have been excluded."

Unfortunately, the misspelling in this article of so many of the very greatest names in jazz was what struck struck us as more immediately as false and misleading: Yussef Latieff (Yusef Lateef); Errol Gardner (Garner); Jerry (Gerry) Mulligan; Keith Jarett (Jarrett); and Lambert, Hendericks and Ross (Hendricks).

Near the end of the article, George Wein, longtime head ramrod of the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals, showed up misspelled as "Wien." Twice! Unless it's really funny, P&J try to lay off this kind of stuff. But the sheer number of mistakes in one piece was enough to make us wonder if Belo's latest move in countering the union is hiring chimps to do the work formerly done by writers. We can only imagine what Al Johnson, the legendary Urinal editor, would have to say about this.

Send rants, reels, repartee, and Pulitzer-worthy tips to p&j[a]phx.com.

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