Big Ed’s ghost

Posted on November 4, 2009 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

[paypal-donation]

We at JOTR are firm DISBELIEVERS in any kind of occult happenings, yet the appearance of an e-mail purportedly from the Other World piqued our curiosity. Its claim to have come from the late Wayne County executive, Edward McNamara, by itself seemed to argue for its genuineness. Why in the world would someone NOT Ed McNamara claim to be him? While we make no claims for the bona fides of the actual letter, the shrewd advice it contains seems true to Big Ed’s character.

From: Edward McNamara, Chief Executive of Cloud Nine

To: Paul Anger, Chief Executive of a Stumbling Newspaper

Dear Mr. Anger:

Back when I ran the Democratic political machine in Detroit/Wayne County, which is to say, when I ran THE political machine, things sure were different. In the day, if I wanted to place a story in your newspaper, I had to really work for it. Typically, I’d have my minion make a call to one or the other of his moles at the Free Press, some reporter we paid off with hot tips that scooped your rival, the Detroit Snooze.

I’m telling you, Mr. Anger, we had to use our noggins back then. Oh sure, they called us the Livonia Mafia, but we had to make connections and wield real influence. Money helped, but it didn’t buy newspaper space.

Hell, and I don’t use that term lightly, if we saw a story coming in your paper that WE DIDN’T LIKE, well, we had to really push to keep the lid on. Believe me, we did it, but we had to threaten and cajole. You know, there were such things as tax abatements that could save you folk millions as long as pols like me pulled the strings. A hint to the appropriate editor, and some reporter would wonder where his story went.

Down the drain, dumbie!

But as I say, them was the days of hard work. It’s a hell — oops, didn’t mean that. It’s a WHOLE lot easier now that we pols can buy our stories and buy our ad placement.

That come as a surprise to you, Paul my lad?

Now that you Freepsters are coordinating news with the likes of Humana, Inc. and Target, why stop with insurance companies and chain department stores?

For every eager businessman wanting to manipulate your news stories, there must be a hundred pols like me, LIVING pols, ready to drain their political action committee treasuries straight into your advertising coffers.

I mean, come on, Paul, it’s only fair. If a business like Humana can goose its story ideas into your pages, and if Target can have its ads placed and timed like it wants them, why can’t politicians call some shots of their own?

Here’s what I’m thinking, Paul, and see if this would work for you newsies: Say one of my creatures, one of my LIVING political descendants like maybe the guv want to pressure those Republican nerds in the state Legislature. Why not drop a hint to some editor about her story idea, then have her PAC drop a bundle to pay for an ad to coincide with the story she planted?

Wouldn’t that be neat?

If anybody cries foul, you just say you get your story ideas from all over, and you don’t discriminate. Would it be fair to let businesses yank your chain but not politicians?

Don’t tell me your ethics won’t allow it.

Your ethics let you time and place ads for Humana and Target.

Not only that, Paul, but you didn’t tell your readers. Those companies bamboozled you, and you bamboozled the audience.

You opened a window, and let the devil fly in.

How can you refuse to let us politicos call the shots for our ads?

I know this could get dicey if Republicans and Democrats start squabbling for the same space.

No problemo. Remember, I was a big frequent flier with the airlines and they have your answer:

Double book those political ads.

Think about this, Paul-O, you could save a hell — excuse me — a BUNCH of bucks in payroll if you laid off your whole (excepting you!) staff and let the pols write copy for free.

If anyone complains you’re giving up your independence, just tell them the politicians are all, each and every one of them, independent operators. Each is out for Number One. Couldn’t have more independence than a House and Senate full of Demos and GOPsters scrambling to be the next guv.

Besides, Paul Baby, you have no choice: You opened the door. You sold your independence away.

You did it for not one, but two private companies.

Now you gotta give the same rights to everyone.

Only fair, Paul my son.

Tell you what, kiddo, I see a big, big mess waiting for you to clean up.

What if you say a big big NO and someone sues ’cause fair is fair? You gotta do for all what you did for two.

I liked it better when I could make a little promise here, a little threat there. Amazing how fast a story could die.

Why, we even got the FBI to wave bye-bye!

Gotta hand it to you Freepies — not many people could figure a way to make money out of being snookered.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Bad government, censorship, future of newspapers, Joel's J School | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

‘Up the Rouge!’ talk and photo exhibit

Posted on November 3, 2009 by hro50ta1

Redford District Library

 

A collection of Patricia Beck’s photos from our book, Up the Rouge!, Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River, is on display at the Redford Township District Library now through November 14. The book, written by Joel Thurtell, was published in March by Wayne State University Press.

 

On Saturday, November 7 at 1 p.m., at the Redford Library, we’ll talk about our book and the adventure on the Rouge that led to it. We’ll also show a video explaining how and why we canoed 27 miles up the Rouge River back in June 2005. We’ll talk about the environmental issues involved, and there will be a Q & A.

 

Pat is a photographer at the Detroit Free Press and I was a Free Press reporter when we made the trip. I retired from the Free Press in 2007.

 

We’ll have copies of Up the Rouge! the print book for sale. Also, we’ll have for sale copies of our 4-CD Up the Rouge! audio book, which has me reading the book narrative along with actual sounds from the river from the recording I made as we paddled the Rouge.

 

Both the print and audio book versions of Up the Rouge! may be ordered online.

 

The Redford Library is at 25320 W 6 Mile Rd. It’s on the north side of Six Mile just west of Telegraph.

 

Dearborn Historical Museum

 

At 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 2, Pat Beck and I will talk about our book, Up the Rouge! at the Dearborn Historical Society. We’ll again show our video, giving our show at the McFadden Ross House at 915 Brady in Dearborn.

 

Once again, we’ll have copies of Up the Rouge!  the print book for sale. as well as copies of our 4-CD Up the Rouge! audio book in which I read the book narrative along with actual sounds from the river from the recording I made as we paddled the Rouge.

 

Both the print and audio book versions of Up the Rouge! can be ordered online.


 

 

 

Posted in Book signings/book events | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Varnishing Detroit’s ‘Free’ Press

Posted on November 3, 2009 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

[paypal-donation]

There was a time back in the 1980s when The Detroit Free Press killed not one, not two, but THREE editorial cartoons lampooning then U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese.

Bosses were afraid those unvarnished drawings might prompt the AG to kill the coveted Gannett/Knight-Ridder Joint Operating Agreement between the Detroit News and Free Press, though as history shows, the JOA more or less killed itself.

Business trumped journalism.

Think that’s old hat?

Water under the bridge?

Sucking up lives on at the “Free” Press.

We learn from The Wall Street Journal that a private company with a big interest in the health insurance debate collaborated with Freep editors in cooking up last Sunday’s (November 1, 2009)  features on Medicare. Humana, Inc. came up with the idea, pitched it through newspaper channels to editors and bought an advertisement beside the  Medicare article, according to the Journal.

The Free Press recently was in cahoots with another business. According to the Journal, back in September, the paper collaborated with Target to synchronize the department store’s ads with Free Press articles about Detroit elementary schools.

Free Press honcho Paul Anger gave the Journal this glib story:  “One of the things I think newsrooms have to realize is we’re here to cover the news in an unvarnished way, but we’re also here to facilitate commerce.”

A Free Press publisher of yesteryear, Dave Lawrence, once cried editorially about the “I” word and the newspaper’s desperate need to be perceived as honest.

Even in the ’80s, when the Freep was pandering to pols to get its cherished shared monopoly, the word “integrity” was laden with irony.

But “integrity” is a word with substance. You don’t hear it bandied about editorially these days, and maybe there’s a reason.

Section 7 of Article XI in the labor agreement between the Free Press and Newspaper Guild proclaims that no Free Press employee “shall engagae in any activity that compromises the integrity of the newspaper.”

Editors might want to review that phrase.

Once you let advertisers dial up stories, good-bye integrity.

What happened?

Humana, the health insurance giant, somehow got in touch with the Free Press newsroom and suggested a story about Medicare, making it clear they’d buy an ad or two if the Freep ran something on that subject. Newspaper moguls claim they were already planning a Medicare spread. Hard to prove either way, though it’s common sense that once you start this kind of communication between editors and ad reps, the almighty dollar will provide its own incentive.

The Target deal involved the store chain calling the shots on timing for the education articles to — they hoped — maximize sales.

While acknowledging that news outlets often have to weigh how closely connected their ad and news operations are, Journal reporter Russell Adams wrote of the Free Press that “by taking a story idea from an advertiser and, in some cases, placing specific stories in news sections when and where an advertiser requests them, the Free Press is offering them a more direct line to its news pages than is generally seen in the industry, where relationships with advertisers tend to be more arm’s length than at TV shows and magazines.”

Adams also notes, “There was no indication in the (Medicare) section that Humana had played a role in its conception.”

A disclaimer noting the advertiser’s role in placing the story would have been the honest thing to do, but it would have cheapened the articles.

So it was left to a rival newspaper to out the supposedly “unvarnished” Free Press.

Now readers get a cynical message: Editors harken to them that has the bucks.

Anger’s comment that newsrooms need to “facilitate commerce” suggests this behavior is being forced on the Free Press by hard times in the news industry.

Nah. Pimping for advertisers is an old game.

It’s just that this time, the paper got caught.

Next step down this slope: Editors let businesses nix those “unvarnished” stories when they threaten sales.

How about facilitating a little more independence?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@freepress.com

Posted in censorship, future of newspapers, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Vanity publishing and The NY Times

Posted on October 27, 2009 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

[paypal-donation]

Far as I can recall, I started writing my book, Shoestring Reporter, 28 years ago. I’d just landed a job as a full time staff writer with the South Bend Tribune and was quite full of the fact that I’d done it without darkening the doorsill of a single journalism class.

My book was intended as a manual for other non-J-school types. The subtitle is How I Got To Be A Big City Reporter (Without Going to J School) and How You Can Do It Too.

The book would be in print now, except that I keep tinkering with the graphic elements. I have this fixation on displaying various artifacts, articles and journalistic memorabilia, and organizing the visual part of the show has been a bear.

Today, October 22, 2009, was the day I promised myself I’d send out all my permission requests. I need permission from each of the publishers of these graphic elements, and it seemed like a fairly straightforward thing.

Or so I thought.

Wrong in a couple ways.

In the beginning, things went fine. My old paper, the Berrien Springs Journal Era, said no problem.

Ditto The South Bend Tribune — just give us credit.

The Detroit News said fine, and good luck.

I’ve had permission from The Detroit Free Press for some time.

Gladly, said the Herald-Palladium of Benton Harbor.

Sent my requests out to HarperCollins to use part of a journalism textbook that reprinted one of my Tribune stories.

Got a fax off to The Indianapolis Star for use of a magazine story I wrote long ago.

The Progressive sent me written permission.

And then there is The New York Times.

The good ol’ Times.

I’d like to use a Times story I wrote back in 1979. They paid me $75 for the no-byline piece.

I filled out their online permission form and got a reply back posthaste:

Please be advised, the reuse of copyrighted material will incur a fee for the proper permission license.

Wow! They want to charge me a fee to reprint my own story!

Hard to believe.

I sent a note back:

I’ve asked to reprint an article I wrote for the New York Times in 1979. I understand that the Times will charge me a fee for reprinting this article. I wonder how much is the fee and if it is clear that the reason I want to include the article in my journalism textbook is that I wrote it for the Times. I wonder if this makes a difference in charging the fee, or if the fee might be waived since I was the author.

I understand these are hard times for the Times. But the world has gotten tight for all of us. I think I do my part by paying nearly $800 a year to have the Times delivered to my house each day. Must I now help save them from the dustbin of journalism by paying them for a story I wrote for them three decades ago?

That would give a new meaning to vanity publishing.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in From My Files, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Thou shalt not

Posted on October 26, 2009 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

[paypal-donation]

If it wasn’t evident in my essay, “Watching them die,” about the Associated Press reporter who witnesses executions in Texas, I am opposed to capital punishment.

But as I later reflected on my reaction to the New York Times article about AP writer Michael Graczyk’s “lonely beat” on Texas’ Death Row, I realized I was missing a big part of the issue: The AP reporter is really a small part of the way journalists report on issues of great societal importance like the death penalty.

I found myself recalling an experience I had in 1966, when I was a college student attending the university in Bonn, West Germany. Sixteen of us Americans in Bonn had packed our suitcases onto a bus and traveled through the Ost Zone — East Germany — for a trip to West Berlin.

East Germany was a police state, its puppet  Communist government controlled by the Soviet Union in Moscow. East Germans were forbidden to go to the West. Machine guns in guard towers, mine fields and in Berlin the Wall with its barbed wire and Sten gun-armed Volks Polizei, or Vopos, would kill anyone who tried to leave. One of us knew someone living in East Berlin, and we decided to pay this person a visit. We’d been told that East Germans were hungry for news from the West, so one of us Americans packed issues of Der Spiegel, Time and similar forbidden magazines under her sweater and we all headed for Checkpoint Charlie. There, a female Vopo detained Laney, the student with the contraband magazines, for a couple hours while the rest of us sweated whether our smuggling might land us all in some Soviet gulag. In the end, the Vopo let Laney go, and we went on to visit the East German, one of three divinity students living in an apartment house in East Berlin.

What journalism there was in East Berlin was censored, and our new friends explained to us that’s why they were so eager for western publications. They gave an example of what censorship can do. Each of them knew somebody who had committed suicide. It was a  social phenomenon known through hearsay, because newspapers were not allowed to report on suicides. But the students explained to us that life in East Germany was hard: heating fuel was rationed, apartments were cold, food was scarce and the outlook was bleak. Repression was everywhere and it led to depression which they believed was what prompted people to kill themselves.

They were making a powerful statement against the government, which probably explains why such information was blacked out. Because the media were censored, there was no way for individuals to quantify something that everyone was aware of.

I recalled that East berlin experience years ago when I encountered criticism from other journalists for reporting on the attempted suicide of an elected official. Possibly because I never went to journalism school, I simply was not aware of this self-imposed prohibition. But I was lectured by one reporter for my tasteless disregard for people’s feelings and another newspaper person sent a letter to the publisher complaining about my impudence in writing about suicide.

I realized then that my critics were correct in one regard: Other journalists were not writing about suicide. But this was not East Germany. There were no state censors or government-run newspapers weeding out certain topics and bellowing about others. Yet there was general agreement, it seemed, that deaths by suicide should go unreported.

I remembered the complaint of those East Germans that they were being robbed of knowledge about their society because this particular phenomenon — suicide — was made to appear as a non-fact, something not fit for discussion. Here in the U.S., a similar prohibition was being enforced by a sort of unofficial peer review process.

I thought of the East German censorship as I  pondered the situation of the AP reporter covering executions in Texas. The reporter is only the first point of contact in a journalistic culture that intentionally or not weeds out articles, makes choices for readers who have no idea what choices have been made about the news they see.

I’m thinking of the editorial process that directs reporters to certain stories while ignoring others; a process that rejects some stories already written in favor of others that are, for whatever reason, favored.

“We actually put in to attend [an execution], and we were granted a spot, but when the editors explained the case to me, and the local connection was minimal, I said it wasn’t a compelling enough case,” a Texas newspaper editor told the Times.

Since 1976, Texas has killed 441 people. But there are lots more data for capital punishment in this country, and I don’t see newspapers reporting on it. For that, you need to go to an organization like the Death Penalty Information Center of the NAACP. On that site, we learn that there are 3,297 people on Death Row in the 38 states with a death penalty law. Before 1976, Texas put 755 people to death. In all, the state of Texas has killed 1,196 — equivalent to the population of the town where I grew up.

The Death Penalty Information Center also reveals a number for “innocent persons freed from Death Row” in Texas: nine.

That is a powerful number, because it’s an effective argument against state killing. Mistakes are made and the wrong person is executed.

Now, to compile and report these statistics would require more effort on the part of newspapers than simply running wire stories about executions — stories the Times equates to “writing up school board meetings and printing box scores.”

An interesting box score would be one for innocents put to death, but box scores on executions won’t be found in newspapers.

Why should this be important to readers? Well, the death penalty is a part of the image the United States presents to the world. Plenty of countries don’t execute convicted criminals. Some do, like the United States and 38 of its states.

Like China, which we generally equate with state repression..

More fundamentally, this is about killing human beings, which I think is more important than covering school board meetings.When we condone killing by the state, we demean human life. The fact that people can be wrongly accused, condemned and executed not only points out the all-too human weaknesses in our judicial system, but it instills fear, because given a bad set of circumstances, any one of us could be wrongly killed. Since the federal government has a death penalty, that is true even in states like Michigan that don’t impose capital punishment.

Isn’t it ironic that, according to the Times, fewer articles about executions are published now because there are more executions?

Kill one or two, it’s a story. Kill hundreds and, well, numbers numb.

That’s an expression of bias, though it seems largely undetected.

Going back to the AP reporter’s work, there seems to be another bias that he builds into his work practice — choosing to watch the execution from the victim’s side of the gurney, rather than from the vantage point of the executed person’s friends or family.

Supposedly, that’s “because I can get out faster and file the story faster.”

So the reporter’s production needs dictate always watching from the victims’ viewpoint? His productivity — writing the story, getting it filed before deadline — determine how he will be evaluated by superiors in the AP, in turn affecting promotions, salary raises and so on. All important to a reporter’s career, but just the same, might his perspective be different if once in a while he viewed the administration of lethal drugs from the inmates’ relatives’ vantage point? By viewing the execution with the victim’s side, doesn’t he open himself to subtle prejudices? You might say, well, the executed person harmed the victim and the victim’s family, except what if the man being killed is innocent? Besides, the family of the executed person is not guilty. What are their feelings? Wouldn’t the reporter be subject to subtle pulls for or against the accused if he watched from that point of view? Either way, biases are possible, and this is a reporting system that eschews bias, supposedly.

A commenter criticized me for calling the AP stories “sanitized,” and I now see that they are far from being cleansed. Always viewing from the victims’ vantage point incorporates a hidden-from-the-reader point of view. Reporting only on the event, as if it were a school board meeting, robs the reporting of context that could fit that single fatal event into a broader context that includes those 3,297 people waiting for the needle.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Joel's J School | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

‘Objectivity’ vs. truth

Posted on October 23, 2009 by hro50ta1

By Luke Warm

Professor of Mendacity, University of Munchausen

Today, I’m going to talk about telling really huge whoppers and getting the media to go along.

Myra Megahertz, Dean of Manipulation here at U of M, asked me to give this Wakeup Lecture to remind you all that while nothing is more powerful than a well-designed lie, sometimes in propagating our scams, the truth actually serves a better purpose.

So it is with my topic today — you need to know the truth about the media in order to really pull the wool over their eyes.

I mean Big Time.

I’m giving you, here in this lecture hall at our beloved U of M, the actual Keys to the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of Mendacity.

First thing to remember about the media, Cardinal Rule, is that if you play your cards right, you hardly need to con them at all. They’ll gladly gull themselves.

Think about it: Do they go to college or university to learn about, say, history, or logic, you know philosophy broadly looked at, or even the sciences like biology, physics, chemistry, or maybe mathematics?

Negatory, good pals — they pay good moolah to learn the mechanics and politics of publishing drivel polished to a sheen to look like something society needs but is mostly useless crap.

Thinking is not their forte.

Lack of thought is their weakness and our great strength.

That is why here at the University of Munchausen we have a separate and not so equal School of Journalism — keep the lamebrains out of the mainstream!

Don’t tell them I said that. Tell them we’re going to give them some more awards for swallowing the swill we dish out to them.

One of the false tenets we preach in the U of M School of J is the sanctity of “objectivity”.

I think we’ve done a pretty good job over the decades of instilling this corker into the brains of our J students.

By the way, it’s a pretty good scam in its own right — over the years, we’ve managed to haul in huge amounts of money from the newspaper and broadcast industry as endowments to keep the University of Munchausen on solid financial ground.

The industry bigwigs love what we teach because they believe it, too. It helps them control the freaks who populate their newsroooms.

Here’s how it works.

First of all, “objectivity” is, pure and simple, bullshit.

There is no such thing.

Do you think it was hard to get our J students to swallow this malarkey?

Negatory, good buddy! It was easy, easy, easy.

Because along with indoctrinating the lie, we convinced our future journalistic practitioners that they are actually different from other human beings. By itself, that was not easy, except that we also larded the lie with the notion that J school people are somehow better than the rest of us. Kind of like a priesthood.

Hook, line and sinker!

The priesthood thing is great, because along with it, free of charge, comes the belief that not only are they superior to the rest of humankind, but because of that, like the mendicant priests of the past, they don’t need actual salaries that matter. They will be satisfied with chump change because as God’s anointed they are doing the Good Works that ordinary mortals are unqualified for.

It really is not hard to get people to swallow huge manure wagonloads once you stoke their egos.

Now, I need to keep this brief — I’ve got to catch a plane for Poyntless, you know, the pontifical institute that pretends to be the arbiter of Great Journalism. They want me to talk about “objectivity.”

Heh-heh.

“Objectivity” goes hand in glove with two other concepts. They are “straight news” and “inverted pyramid.”

They are lies, of course, but let me explain. By choosing the name — “straight” — we set the terms of any dialogue that follows. “Straight news” is orthodox, proper, accepted, the Right Way. Anything else, by definition, is Wrong.

That way, we’ve won before the discussion begins.

But let me tell you something about “straight news.” It ain’t “straight” at all.

It’s crooked as hell!

What does it mean, really?

Nothing!

Nada!

Nichts!

Zero

But hook up the pseudo-concept of “straight” with another illusion called the “inverted pyramid” and you’ve got a winner.

What is the “inverted pyramid”?

An upside down pile of rocks with the point on the bottom?

Good guess. But in Journalese, it means that you freight the pile, which is whatever it is you’re reporting, into the top paragraph so that if need be everything else could be cut and the essence of the report will remain.

In itself, that is a sheer impossibility, yet it is believed, widely believed.

In fact, it is a true pyramid, with the big part on teh bottom, as you would expect. Only the J people don’t get it. Please don’t tell them.

How can you dismember something, anything, and then declare it’s the same thing as before you started your hack job?

Complete hokum. And, of course, that is what we at U of Munch are all about.

This is a beautiful concept, though, the way “straight news” and “inverted pyramid” work.

The journalist believes that his or her report will be objective if what amounts to a form is filled out.

But what they don’t know, because we withhold this nugget from them, is that the form is really a strait jacket.

Once the reporter fills out the top part — who-what-where-when — the next requirement is to amplify on those elements and cram it all into three or eight or twelve or fifteen inches of newsprint. The top of teh story is like the narrow end of a funnel. Once the top is set, whatever follows must be clsely related or managers will call it irrelevant.

Control is the name of the game. Don’t tell the journalists.

By the time the reporter gets done filling out the form, much of whose details are not so important, any truth, any essence, any glimmer of reality, is swept aside.

The form is, well, sort of like filled with concrete, and as it’s filled out, the cement blocks actual thought.

Please, PLEASE, do not tell the J students about this.

They love “straight” reporting.

“Inverted pyramids” are their ideal.

We make it easy for them.

That way, they don’t have to think.

Posted in censorship, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Rock Star Price Guide

Posted on October 22, 2009 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell, K8PSV

Me and my 100R

Okay, this one’s not for everybody. But maybe it’s not so niche-like, after all. There’s some basic economics here, regardless that the topic is ham radio. It doesn’t hurt to remind people that prices change over time and that there are ways of computing how much yesterday’s product would be worth today. That set of letters and number behind my name is my Federal Communications Commission-issued amateur radio call sign. I got my first license in June 1959, so I’ve been licensed as a ham radio operator for more than a half century. Rock star Joe Walsh of the Eagles also is a ham. His call sign is WB6ACU. The prices were computed through 2003. This article first appeared in the October 2006 issue of CQ magazine. I could re-calculate all those prices through 2008, but don’t have time. Hope you enjoy this piece — I had fun writing it.

Rock Star Price Guide

The rock star’s question made me ponder the unanswerable: What are my old radios worth?

Easy: They’re worth whatever someone will pay, right?

That’s the only sane answer.

But what fun is sanity?

The human condition demands that we dicker or bicker about prices if only to stave off boredom.

What sparked my latest run at the old radio pricing conundrum was an email from Joe Walsh, lead guitarist with the Eagles. Joe wanted to know the price of my Central Electronics 100R ham receiver.

First reaction: Sorry, Joe, it ain’t for sale.

I mean, that’s the crown jewel of my radio collection.

Zenith promotional photo of Central Electronics 100R receiver

The Central Electronics 100R. was featured in my April 1992 Electric Radio and November 1998 QST stories and in the 1999 CQ classic radio calendar.

Central only made one.

They don’t get any more scarce.

The 100R represents the pinnacle of my collecting career.

To sell it would be, well, unthinkable.

But if the 100R were for sale, how much would I ask?

I keep telling you it’s NOT for sale!

Doesn’t anyone listen?

Including me?

Central Electronics 100-V, left, and 100-R, right

Admittedly, Joe’s 100R query is a toughie: The radio never went to market, never had a price tag placed on it. It’s a prototype of a receiver meant to match the renowned Central Electronics 100-V and 200-V transmitters. Before Central could gear up production, the parent company, Zenith, closed Central.

With no price, there’s no baseline from which to extrapolate even a guesstimate of its current worth.

And even then, its very uniqueness makes it impossible to appraise.

Does this discussion seem arcane? Well, there are practical uses for present-day values with old gear.

Consider this: After UPS mangled one of my radios some years ago, I tried to file an insurance claim. How much was the radio worth? That was easy. An old catalog told me that in 1955, my Heath DX-100 sold for $189.50.

There was extensive damage. A transformer broke free and like the proverbial loose cannon sliced through ranks of glass tubes. The complete rig at its 1955 value wasn’t worth what some of its individual parts would cost today. For instance, a new Peter Dahl Co. high voltage transformer alone would set me back $205.

Heath DX-100 transmitter

Heath DX-100 transmitter

I needed to know how much that DX-100 was worth today.

Aside from the UPS problem, the question is interesting to me because I buy and sell old ham radios and need to price them. Since most of them need repair before I can ship them, it would be helpful to know how much money I could invest in a given rig before my costs of acquisition, labor and parts for repair, advertising, warehouse rent, utilities, local, state and federal taxes add up to more than I could get for the radio. Oh yes, and I’d like a little room for profit.

True, I could track eBay prices. But they are one-time events, representing the sale price of a radio of unknown quality and unknown cost during one short slice of time. To me, it’s useless information.

There are some half-hearted price guides. Authors of some amateur radio equipment books provide price guides, but I don’t trust them. What is their database? There is no good source for price information and I don’t sense that dealers have been asked. No author has ever asked me for a list of my selling prices. And I have another concern. Since authors often are collectors themselves, they might like to have prices appear low in hopes of keeping them that way.

So how can we objectively arrive at current price estimates for yesterday’s radios?

Why not use the manufacturer’s original price, adjusting it for inflation? The original price presumably reflected the cost of production plus some markup for profit.

In the mid-1990s, when I first posted my www.radiofinder.com website, I compiled a list of present-day values for several old radios in my inventory. I used a table of inflation factors I got from another collector. For each radio, I researched its year of manufacture and original price. My inflation factor chart gave a number that I multiplied times the past price of the radio to arrive at the 1994 value.

That was okay in 1996. But by 2003, when we re-designed the Radiofinder website, the numbers were way out of date.

But by then, the remedy was easy as google.

Call up the search engine and type “inflation calculator.”

Pages of websites will appear on your screen and they let you plug in the year of manufacture and then current price. The website does the math and up pops your present price. Today, the most recent “present” year is 2003.

One site — www.usinflationcalculator.com — will do calculations based on Consumer Price Index from 1913-2013.

What an amazing tool. Now I know that my old National HRO receiver priced at $167.70 in 1935 was worth $2,846.38 in 2013. I see that my 1955 DX-100’s $189.50 price would come in at $1,644.20 in 2003 dollars.

But it would likely be worth considerably more than that. After all, the DX-100 was a kit. The buyer was expected to contribute his labor. Add in the value of labor and you have, well, a figure considerably more than $1,644.20, though a little hard to determine.

Collins 75A-4 receiver

You can get a more accurate present-day price reading by looking at a factory-made unit. Take the Collins 75A-4, popular in 1955 when it was introduced and still sought after today. It was priced at $495 in 1955.

In 2013 dollars?

$4,294.88.

But even when looking at a relatively recent classic such as the Collins-Rockwell KWM-380, the effects of overall inflation are amazing. The KWM-380 came out in 1979 priced at $2,995. In 2013, the same radio fresh from the factory would cost $9,592.70!

Try this trick on the venerable Collins KW-1, pricetag $3,850 in 1953.

In 2013?

$33,529.75

To anyone who thinks these calculations lead to outrageously high prices, consider that in 1955 not too many of us were buying 75A-4s. I dreamed of owning a 75A-4, but when I was in the market for a good ham-bands-only receiver in 1960, what did I settle for? An older 75A-2, which I could afford on my newspaper carrier’s earnings.

Indeed, one of the 75A-4s in my shack was homebrewed by a Collins technician who could not afford to buy an A-4 off the factory line. (See QST, February 2000) In other words, for many hams, $495 was as insurmountable a price in 1955 as $4,294.88 is today.

Yet that $4,294 doesn’t seem so outrageous, after all, when you consider the cost of top-of-the-line new piece of equipment. In the 2002 Amateur Electronic Supply catalog, the FT-1000-D was selling for $4,199.

Now ask yourself, when the Kenwood-Icom-Yaesu rigs are 40 years old and the 75A-4 is 90, where will the A-4 be?

Not in the landfill beside today’s rigs, I’ll bet!

But what about the 100-R? We still haven’t figured out how much Joe Walsh ought to pay me for that gem.

We can work the math just as we did for the other rigs.

The retired Zenith vice president who sold me the 100R said Central-Zenith spent $250,000 developing that one radio.

In 1961 dollars.

Let’s plug the numbers into our trusty inflation calculator, and …

The price in 2013 dollars is…

Stand back, please. One to a customer.

One million, nine hundred forty-four thousand two hundred thirty-nine dollars and thirteen cents.

In plain Arabic: $1,944,239.13

No point being picky. Let’s round it off.

Two million smackers!

Hey Joe!

Changed my mind.

Got your check book?

Basic tools for inflation calculations

To figure out those elusive current values for old gear, you’ll need some basic research tools in addition to the Internet inflation calculator.

It wouldn’t hurt to have a collection of old QST and maybe CQ magazines, because their advertisements often list prices and confirm date of manufacture.

The ARRL’s “Radio Amateur’s Handbook” during our classic period of roughly the 1930s to about 1970 had an advertisement section that gave prices.

An easier way to check those facts is to stock your library with a few handy reference works. Here are the ones I find most helpful:

“The Pocket Guide to Collins Amateur Radio Equipment, 1946 to 1990,” by Jay H. Miller, KK5IM, Trinity Graphic Systems, 1995.

“Shortwave Receivers Past & Present; Communication Receivers 1942-1997,” by Fred Osterman, Universal Radio Research, 1998.

“Tube Type Transmitter Guide; Manufactured Pre-Builts and Kits from 1922 to 1970 Using All, or Mostly Tubes,” by Eugene Rippen, Sound Values, 1995. A later edition covers 1920-1980 and is less expensive.

“Communications Receivers; The Vacuum Tube Era: 1932-1981,” by Raymond S. Moore, RSM Communications, 1987. A later edition is less expensive.

“Radios by Hallicrafters With Price Guide,” by Chuck Dachis, Schiffer Publishing,Ltd., 1996.

“The Hallicrafters Story, 1933-1975,” by Max de Henseler, Antique Radio Club of America, 1991.

“Heathkit: A Guide to the Amateur Radio Products,” by Chuck Penson, WA7ZZE, Electric Radio Press, 1995.

Rock star price chart

Maker                    Model        Year built               Original price                   2013 Price

Hammarlund         HQ-120                1938                               $117                                  $1,921.51

Hallicrafters             S-38                    1946                                   39.50                                 471.02

Central Electronics 10-A                    1953                                 159.50                               1,389.09

Hallicrafters             SX-88                 1953                                 595                                    5,181.87

Johnson                   Ranger                 1954                                329.50                             2,.848.29

Collins                       KWS-1                 1955                              1,995                                 17,309.68

Drake                        1-A                        1957                                 299                                   2,474.26

Heath                       DX-60                  1962                                   79.95                                615.59

National                  NC-303                1963                                 449                                   3,411.97

Heath                      HW-101                1970                                399.95                              2,396.93

Posted in ham radio | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Watching them die

Posted on October 21, 2009 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell 

I should have been stunned by today’s (October 21, 2009)  New York Times report about a journalist’s attempt at “objectivity” in the face of calculated killing, but I wasn’t. Thirty or so years working in the news industry have trained me to expect this kind of media cant.

Associated Press reporter Michael Graczyk has covered something like 300 executions in Texas, witnessing the killing of convicted criminals, then rushing to write a story that will be published, or maybe not, by members of The AP.

The reporter claims that watching a human being die at the hands of state officials does not affect him emotionally.

Or rather, he’s not going to admit to us that he feels anything about the killing that he witnesses.

“My job,” Graczyk told the Times, “Is to tell a story and tell what’s going on, and if I tell you that I get emotional on one side or another, I open myself to criticism.”

If I tell you that I get emotional…

He hasn’t quite said that he doesn’t have feelings about what he’s seeing.

If I tell you that I get emotional…

It’s a disingenuous remark, meant to shield him from the flak that some journalists and journalism critics would fire at him if he acknowledged that he felt something at the sight and sound of a human being put to death.

If I tell you that I get emotional…

He can’t win with this argument, because if it turns out that he DOES have emotions that he’s hiding, then he’s suppressing a signficant part of the story.

If it turns out that Graczyk DOES NOT have feelings about a fellow creature’s state-sponsored killing, then I wonder what kind of human being Graczyk is.

If I tell you that I get emotional…

He’s opened himself up to criticism either way by suggesting that he may be sanitizing his reports.

Why should not the reporter’s emotional reaction be part of the story?

Would he feel more emotions if, instead of injecting drugs into the victim, the state would have a black-hooded muscle man chop off his or her head with an ax?

Mow them down with a machine gun?

Slice off their heads with a guillotine?

Hoist them by the neck with a rope?

Pull them apart with a quartet of horses?

Wind their intestines out?

If I tell you that I get emotional…

Maybe it’s the seeming inanity of the means of killing by lethal injection of a cocktail of potent sedative and muscle-relaxing drugs that robs judicial murder of its drama. It allows Graczyk to pretend he’s some kind of reporting machine, akin to the mechanism the government uses to off its victims.  Does Graczyk think he’s an editorial robot feeding facts, just the facts, to his AP customers?

Ah yes, the chimera of objectivity, dear to so many journalists.

The act of killing in Texas and many other states has been sanitized. It has been rendered nearly painless, physically at least, to the condemned person. But lethal injection apparently has less horror for newspaper readers than, say, disemboweling, decapitating, strangling, shooting, gassing or electrocuting a person.

If I tell you that I get emotional…

“The act is very clinical, almost anticlimactic,” according to Graczyk in the Times. “When we get into the chamber here in Texas, the inmate has already been strapped to the gurney and the needle is already in his arm.”

Spectators can hear as well as see through a plexiglass window, and what they mostly hear is snoring, because the inmate has been knocked out by that cocktail of drugs.

But there is a hint that Graczyk has some feelings, after all.

Before the drugs are allowed to run into the victim’s arm, he is given a chance to speak. Once, an inmate sang “Silent Night,” and Graczyk reports that “I can’t hear that song without thinking about it. That one really stuck with me.”

Oops. I think he just opened himself to the criticism he says he doesn’t want if he tells us he gets emotional. It’s not exactly a window into his feelings. More like a moral squint hole.

Still, that “Silent Night” memory, the fact that it won’t go away, shows that the reporter has feelings, after all, even if he won’t willingly admit it.

Too bad he doesn’t believe he can reflect those feelings in his reports.

To be fair, his AP editors and their news media patrons would chastize the hell out of him if they caught a whiff of Graczyk’s feelings.

But at least we know he has not abandoned his humanity.

He does, after all, have feelings for the people whose deaths he tries so antiseptically to report.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in censorship, Joel's J School | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Race & taxes

Posted on October 20, 2009 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

“Seek not, and ye shall find” — that’s my motto.

Sporadically over the last few months, I’ve been trying to finish my journalism book, “Shoestring Reporter”, and the last stage involves selecting graphic elements.

It’s a two-stage process.

In the middle is serendipity.

First, I think of something, such as maybe a newspaper article I wrote ca. 1978, or maybe my old South Bend Tribune ID card or a photo of me doing something whacky for the old newspaper reporting job, like playing dodgeball with 20-somethings, trying to play a huge pipe organ or blowing a glass Christmas tree ornament.

The second stage involves actually trying to find the graphic things among the seven or eight file cabinets, various desks, boxes and heaps of documents that make up the Joel Thurtell Literary Collection.

This is the same motley assortment of personal and professional records I plan to sell to the University of Texas Library for several million dollars. Sorry to say, I’m only half-joking.

Already, I found something very exciting while searching through a lab drawer in quest of my old South Bend Tribune ID, which so far has not turned up. What I found on October 2, the day before my dad’s memorial service, was a photo I took of him several years ago at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum in Dayton. Dad was standing with one leg cocked up on the tire of a Republic P-47-N fighter plane like the one he flew –as he put it — “illegally” in 1945. But that is another story and I’ll write about it later.

Today, I was searching for the query letter I sent to the chief of the New York Times Detroit bureau back in 1979 when I was trying to persuade him to let me write about Michigan Indian fishing rights. He instead assigned a Times staffer to do the story, pissing me off royally. He supplied the staffer with my background information and promised (I found this in the file) to send me some “beer money” for my effort. I actually found the Times file, though not the query letter. But alongside it, I discovered something I’d forgotten all about: How I pitched a story to the Reader’s Digest back in 1984.

It was about the kind of endemic, unselfconscious racism I used to encounter in Berrien and Cass counties, where people were so confident of their own white-supremacism that they’d confide their disgusting values to a news reporter, expecting that the reporter, also white, would refrain from putting into print their ugly thoughts. When I’d go ahead and publish their remarks, they’d treat me as a betrayer.

I thought back then and still believe the story needed to be published. I also knew there was no local newspaper outlet for it, given its core issue, which was this bedrock white racism in Cass County, Michigan.

Why I thought Reader’s Digest might publish this story is beyond me.

But it’s a brave new world for writers, and we don’t need the likes of either the New York Times or Reader’s Digest.

Why, the Times just announced it’s laying off another 100 editorial staffers, or 8 percent of the newsroom.

Kiss them goodbye. We don’t need them!

We can publish these stories ourselves.

In my April 30, 1984 letter to the Life in These United States editor of Reader’s Digest, I explained that I was a South Bend Tribune reporter and had covered the April 10, 1984 meeting of the Cass County, Michigan, Board of Commissioners. A Mr. Brewster had risen and complained about his tax assessment, blaming it on race. Later, the Democratic commissioner from Calvin Township, Edwin Johnson III, gave me his take on Mr. Brewster’s complaint.

Here is the article that Reader’s Digest chose not to print:

Race and Taxes

An elderly gentleman from Cass County, Michigan, was upset because the tax assessment on his house had risen. He brought his complaint to the county Board of Commissioners, and nodding toward the only black member, made this argument: “My apologies to Mr. Johnson, but I was brought up believing that when colored move into your neighborhood, your property values go down. Well, we had a colored family move in — right next door. Now they’re fine people — the man’s a doctor and his wife’s a schoolteacher — but still, they’re colored, and it seems like my taxes should have gone down.”

After the meeting, the black commissioner, Edwin Johnson III, remarked that the old man had touched on a form of tax protest Johnson had never considered.

“Next time my assessment goes up,” said Johnson, “I’m going to tell the Board of Review they’ve made a big mistake. I’ll say, ‘Look here, not only do I have black people living right next door, but I’ve got blacks living in my house!”

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in From My Files | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Plug Nickel and my little book machine

Posted on October 19, 2009 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Plug Nickel is back.

In fact, the boat named “Plug Nickel” never went away.

But since June 2005, my columns about my adventures with the wooden Lightning sailboat hull that eventually came to be christened “Plug Nickel” came to an abrupt end.

Readers of JOTR most likely don’t know what I’m talking, or rather, writing, about. For some time, now in the distant past, I wrote essays for what many would consider a very obscure journal, the Lightning “Flashes.”

I was sad to stop writing those columns, which numbered somewhere between 55 and 60 by the time I called it quits.

For the better part of six years, I wrote monthly columns about my adventures with wooden Lightning sailboats in the magazine, newsletter, whatever, a publication of the International Lightning Class Association.

Enough columns for a book.

Enough, in fact, for TWO books.

Or that was my plan last winter.

When I was invited to sail in a wooden Lightning regatta on Lake Onondaga in New York last July, my game plan changed.

I wanted to have a book to take with me to the regatta, but lack of time and some difficulties with publishing — I was going to have to re-type many of the columns, because I’ve lost the digital copies — forced me to think of a 20-column book.

I gave that some thought and realized that if I published a series of books, each with 20 columns, I’d have enough materiial for three books.

That is now my plan — to publish a three-volume set of my wooden boat columns to be titled Plug Nicke, Volume One and so on.

The books will be published by Hardalee Press.

The first volume is now available from amazon and other on-line dealers.

“Hardalee” was the name I chose for my publishing firm back in 2001 at the time I launched “Plug Nickel” the boat.

At the time, it seemed as if I’d just picked the name out of the air. It was a good sailing term: “Hard a’lee!” is what the skipper says when he or she puts the helm over to bring a sailboat about on the opposite tack by turning the bow through the eye of the wind. 

In retrospect, it seems like a great choice of names. “Hard a’lee!” signifies a change of course, switching tacks, a new direction.

That is what Hardalee Press signifies to me.

All my life, it seems, I have yearned to write books.

And, of course, I yearned also to see my books in print.

After many, many attempts at securing an agent, sending manuscripts out to publishers, getting rejection after rejection, finally, my first book was published in March 2009 by Wayne State Uniiversity Press.

“Up the Rouge! Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River,” is part photo book, part adventure story and part environmental critique, a stock taking of where efforts to clean one urban river have gotten us.

The book was three years in production.

I’m 64 years old. I’ve written a lot of books. If it took three years for me to publish every one of my books, I’d have to live to 200. Maybe 300

The alternative is to start publishing them through my own company.

Hardalee Press.

So, you see, I have changed tacks. I’m gonna  take charge, bring these books to market myself.

The Plug Nickel series is part of my bigger plan to publish quite a few books that I’ve written.

The subtitle of Plug Nickel is: Shoestring Boat Restoration; How I Turned an Old Fiberglass Boat Mold into a Beautiful Wooden Sailboat, and What I Learned Along the Way.

I’ll write regular updates as I make progress on this series, which I think will interest sailors everywhere.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Hardalee Press, Old boats | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment