News Media

Just as in life, the King of Pop in death is poised to command nearly unprecedented media coverage. Six days before he was to begin a 50-date comeback tour in London, Michael Jackson will instead be eulogized at a massive memorial service today at Staples Center. All the major networks and a host of cable news and entertainment channels, including CNN, MSNBC, E! Entertainment, TV Guide Network and TV One, plan to carry the event live at 10 a.m.

With more than $300 million in production and marketing spending on the line for the opening of "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" on Friday, Paramount Pictures has a message for critics: Go see the movie with everyone else. A spokesperson for the studio confirmed that there would be no screenings for reviewers at print and broadcast media outlets, meaning if they want to see the film, they will have to go Friday along with regular moviegoers.

You think the economy is sending mixed signals? Just look at the newspaper industry. For every "green shoot" that appears, there's a tumbleweed or two rolling by next door. On the positive side, advertising sales firmed a bit in June at major chains such as Gannett Co. and New York Times Co., enabling those companies to post unexpectedly strong second-quarter profits. Newspaper stocks rallied sharply -- Gannett shares have rocketed 156% since the end of June -- as some investors bet that aggressive cost cutting has positioned the companies for higher profit once the economy rebounds.

The cable TV channels fired their screeching engines hours in advance. A "Health Care Make or Break Moment" screamed a CNN headline. Countdown clocks at Fox and MSNBC ticked inexorably toward 00:00, the moment when President Obama would face down a joint session of Congress. This had to be really, really big, I learned all day Wednesday from the excitable people on cable TV -- a speech that likely would determine the fate of healthcare reform and, perhaps, the Obama presidency.

I've felt a bit quaint the last couple of days, toting a pen, a notepad and my old journalism notions around here at the Googleplex. I'd once thought that a journalist's (and journalism's) work ended when a story cleared the copy desk. But a two-day blizzard of power-point presentations in the heart of the Silicon Valley pounded home a notion that the media and their foot soldiers need to do much, much more to thrive in the midst of an information revolution. We're talking about media letting the audience increasingly into the middle of the conversation.

You heard all about it, in this newspaper and others, on talk radio and television and all over the Internet. The Angels had celebrated their division championship by pouring beer and champagne over the jersey of Nick Adenhart, the rookie killed in April by an alleged drunk driver, and everyone had an opinion. Tim Mead, the Angels' vice president of communications, was stunned by the wave of reaction. Surely, he thought, someone would ask him for the answer he considered essential to forming an opinion: Had the Adenhart family objected to the celebration?

Los Angeles County officials have been complaining for years about the ever-decreasing number of reporters who cover them. The county press room, once bustling with a dozen or more reporters, now looks like a ghost town, home to three reporters on a good day. Nonetheless, the Board of Supervisors has decided that the few journalists still around are causing problematic "traffic jams" during board meetings. So supervisors have decreed that reporters can no longer interview key personnel in the back rooms and corridors where the officials work during board meetings.

My 1st Amendment hero brings close-up photos of celebrity rear ends to the world, under the witty, witty headline "Beach Bums." My 1st Amendment hero delivers us the news any time someone famous looks fat, drunk or plain gaga. My 1st Amendment hero posts Mini-Me's sex tape and treats the Kardashians as if they were America's first family. And my hero also lands real scoops that the rest of the media, including this newspaper, would love to have. Yes, Harvey Levin is my 1st Amendment hero, and I'm not (that)

In the four weeks since director Roman Polanski's arrest, Samantha Geimer has once again found herself in an unwanted spotlight. Phone calls from the media besieged her at home, on her cellphone, at work, seeking comment from the woman who was the 13-year-old victim in the director's sex case three decades ago. Calls have come at all hours of the day, from as far as Germany, Israel and Japan. Every TV network's national morning show called, as did Larry King and Oprah Winfrey.

It seemed like eavesdropping on a private conversation -- or reading a rival journalist's notes. But I eagerly did it anyway out of curiosity about Jerry Brown. What I found confirmed that the California attorney general hasn't changed a lot, at least in tone, since he was governor 30 years ago (1975-83). He's still argumentative, rebellious, inquisitive, self-confident, articulate, outspoken and egocentric. A reporter's dream. And it's a big reason -- along with the surname inherited from his late father, the revered Gov. Pat Brown -- that he has managed to survive 40 years in politics and now is the early front-runner to replace Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.