Journalists

Watching Keith Olbermann interview his boss, Al Gore, Tuesday night for the second night in a row, I couldn't help noticing something: How much Olbermann looked like the RCA dog, head cocked slightly to the side, listening intently at his master's voice. That is, of course, when Olbermann wasn't nodding in agreement at what his master said. Check out the video at about 1 minute and 8 seconds and again at 2 minutes and 40 seconds for some of the enthusiastic nodding. This is Keith Olbermann, the guy who thinks himself worthy of Edward R. Murrow's legacy.

Rupert Murdoch is in trouble and a whole lot of folks are delighted. They are practically drooling at the mouth that the downfall of Fox News could be around the corner. Members of Congress are calling for an investigation into allegations that the Murdoch-owned News Corp. may have committed criminal acts in the U.S. by hacking into the cell phone voice messages of 9/11 victims. In Britain, News of the World, a Murdoch tabloid, was shut down and the heads of editors are rolling. It seems at the highest levels in Mr. Murdoch's British news empire, there was complicity in this hacking scandal.

In the spring of 2006, as Katie Couric was ascending to the CBS Evening News as the first woman solo anchor, Jill Abramson - who just happened to be the first woman managing editor of The New York Times - wondered aloud in a Times essay when the qualifier "first woman" would no longer be worth mentioning. We have women Supreme Court justices and women heads of corporations, and we pretty nearly had a woman president. But when Ms. Abramson was elevated early this month to the executive editorship of The New York Times, all the headlines proclaimed that she was the first woman to hold the most hallowed job in American journalism.

The cryptic email went out this week to some of the region's news media — including WMAR-TV and The Baltimore Sun — asking journalists to appear before the city's grand jury, which plans to spend the next few months analyzing the impact of crime coverage on efforts to end violence. It's a sort of term project squeezed in between criminal indictments, and a decades-old tradition for the panel. In addition to evaluating state's evidence, the 23 grand jurors in the city also examine a social issue during their four-month tenure and make recommendations for change.

An unwritten rule at every major newspaper has always been that there should be a wall between advertising and editorial, but in the June 9 issue of the Columbia Flier that rule was broken. The article on page 8, "Nelson is the new face for marketing CA" , with two very nice photographs of Columbia Association president Phil Nelson supplied to the paper by the photographer who did the ad photos, violates all rules of good journalism. The Columbia Association is a major advertiser with Patuxent Publishing, as you can see with their weekly full-page ads on the back cover of the Flier.

After a long time wandering in the wilderness, with no movie or TV production under way in Maryland, local actors, technicians, caterers, drivers, set builders and hospitality professionals are back to work with the production in Baltimore of the HBO movie "Game Change. " Here is one novice day player's account of his brief experience on the set. Most of us have learned we need to know our limitations, so it never occurred to me to think of being in the movies. But when HBO set out to tape "Game Change" and put out a call for someone to play the part of a reporter, I thought I heard my name.

The 53-year-old German journalist who had been missing from his Bethesda home for more than a week before he was found dead Tuesday in Pennsylvania took his own life, according to the trooper in charge on the investigation. Pennsylvania Trooper 1st Class James A. Wool said Joachim Rogge's body was discovered by a state transportation worker "near a scenic overlook" along Route 15 in South Williamsport. "I don't see where any suspicious details exist in this case," Wool wrote in an email to The Baltimore Sun. Rogge, who had lived in Maryland for the past 14 years while working for a chain of German newspapers, was reported missing May 30, two days after leaving his house about 1 a.m., following a dispute with his wife.

A 53-year-old foreign journalist who left his Montgomery County home after what a family friend said was a dispute with his wife early Saturday has been reported missing. Joachim Rogge, who had lived in Bethesda for 14 years while working as a correspondent for a chain of German newspapers, left the house "in a huff," said Kim Barrington, who spoke Thursday night on behalf of Rogge's French-born wife, Valerie. The Rogges have two children, ages 6 and 8. Barrington said Valerie Rogge has been in touch with Montgomery County police since learning that her husband's credit card was used to make an ATM withdrawal of $40 at a bank in Edgewood about 3:30 a.m. Saturday.

Last night I made the mistake of accidentally leaving the channel on Lawrence O'Donnell's show. This turned out to be a much greater error than I originally thought. Prior to this, I mistakenly believed O'Donnell's show would be something similar to Rachel Maddow's. I like Maddow. I don't always agree with her, but she's smart, funny and treats her guests with respect.  But O'Donnell was much, much different. He was completely humorless. He was pedantic and moralizing. He managed to be shallow, didactic, illogical and myopic all at the same time.  On the show, O'Donnell took on that toughest of opponents: the British royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton.  What followed was a meandering diatribe bashing the history of the British empire and the state of American media.

Matthew VanDyke didn't go into Libya to be in the middle of a war. The 31-year-old freelance journalist from Baltimore thought Moammar Gadhafi would be ousted from power by the time he arrived in early March. He would report on the changes sweeping the country and help friends he had met on previous visits build a new country. But VanDyke hasn't been heard from since mid-March, when he called his mother and girlfriend on a cellphone with a scratchy connection while on a truck headed from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to the town of Brega.