Change in the News

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Yes, news on TV has changed. I get a lot of info just viewing the website news.....at least that way you can pick and choose your news. I agree they don't show too much international info.

360 isn't the same without Anderson.....he does add to the agenda.

Oh well, there's always the paperback edition...the one called the newspaper......I always check that out too.

Aaron Brown leaving??????

I'm going to have to start keeping a scorecard.

:eyebrow:
 
he looked great w/ the glasses but..:drool:


Hemmer pumped up about move to Fox News
By Rick Bird
Post staff reporter

When Cincinnati native Bill Hemmer debuts on the Fox News channel at noon Monday there will at least be no controversy over his eyeglass habits.He won't be wearing them.

During his time off this summer, moving from CNN to Fox News, Hemmer had laser eye surgery. In the last few years on CNN, Hemmer took to wearing glasses and some media critics wondered if it was a ploy for Hemmer to add a little age and wisdom to hide his trademark boyish good looks.

"Some people thought it was a cosmetic thing, but I honestly couldn't see," Hemmer said. "I had the surgery this summer and can see now. It's an amazing procedure."

Hemmer (an Elder High and Miami University grad), who started his career as a sports and later news reporter at WCPO-TV (Channel 9) in the early '90s, begins his new midday job Monday anchoring "Fox News Live" after spending 10 years at CNN, where he traveled the world reporting for the network and becoming one of its new stars.

Hemmer abruptly left CNN in May and it was announced last month he had signed on with Fox. Hemmer said he's ready to get back to work.

"I had a great summer, but I got to get the bat off my shoulder and start swinging away."

Hemmer said he could not comment about the contractual circumstances surrounding his CNN departure.

"I had a fantastic 10-year run. I had the opportunity to witness a lot of history first hand. I covet that opportunity. But now I'm focused on the future at Fox."

Reportedly CNN offered him the job of White House correspondent after three years of co-anchoring CNN's "American Morning," first with Paula Zahn, then with Soledad O'Brien.

The New York-based Hemmer would only say about the move to Fox: "I love New York City and I was not prepared to leave."

Hemmer said this summer he bought new digs in New York (Fox is based there). He spent his time off redecorating but "Martha Stewart has nothing to worry about," he laughed about his summer remodeling efforts.

Hemmer also sounded happy about his new hours in which he doesn't have to report to work in the wee hours of the morning as he did at CNN.

"What's better than not getting up at four in the morning? It changes your whole outlook. You aren't walking around in a daze. Geez, I could have fallen asleep anywhere. It's a wonderful thing to sleep until 7 in the morning."

While based in Atlanta much of the last decade, Hemmer became a rising CNN star - once dubbed the "chad lad" for his coverage of the disputed presidential Florida vote count in 2000. CNN would send him to many hot spots - Afghanistan, Jerusalem, Kuwait - in the next years before he settled in as a prime morning anchor.

Hemmer said the Fox News gig is a great fit for him. Despite persistent media criticism that Fox has a right-wing bias, Hemmer said his new boss, Roger Ailes, has given him no agenda.

"What impressed me is he told me Fox programs itself like a newspaper. The news is in the 'A' section and in the back of the 'A' section is where you get your opinion."

Hemmer, who turned 40 last fall, said the job change represents no mid-life crisis.

"I thought my mid-life crisis came when I was 27 and backpacked around the world," he laughed. Indeed, Hemmer suddenly quit his job as a reporter for Channel 9 in 1992 for the global adventure and ended up writing about it in a series published in The Post. He would parlay that experience, combined with his natural, easy-going on-air persona, into a CNN gig by 1995.

For now, Hemmer is enthused that his first big anchor story will likely be the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.

"Viewers have locked into this network the last several years, but one of the keys I've come to learn is people aren't sitting around on their hands here," Hemmer said about Fox News, which has become the highest-rated cable news network over the last four years. "They are constantly pushing it forward to figure the next innovation. How can we make this fresh? Cable news viewers will be gone in a second if you aren't fresh."
 
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Thanks for that info MrsSpringsteen, quite interesting.

See Anderson is back out in the wind and rain again.......:shrug:
 
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Three questions...

1. Why does Paula Zahn never leave the CNN studio?

2. Whatever happened to the reporter who used to cover the Washington DC segments?

3. When will Katrina 24/7 cease and the reporters finally keep their feet dry? I mean why stand in polluted waters of New Orleans to tell the news? I just don't get it??

:huh:
 
I think gawker.com is possibly making "I [heart] Anderson Cooper" shirts. Go over and see if you can vote for that one.
 
I didn't see the shirt there, but he is seriously one of the sexiest men on earth

It is SO WRONG to say that when he's down there covering the hurricane..

Geraldo inserting himself into the rescue operations however = not sexy
 
great article about Anderson

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/14301/index.html

"His non-anchor appeal has exerted a strong pull on some of his viewers. Later that night, as we are leaving the Time Warner Center, a security guard appears to escort Cooper from the lobby to the Town Car waiting just across the sidewalk. Cooper explains that a couple of months before, a woman who had made contact with him in the past grabbed him when he was coming up out of the subway one morning. Then, two nights earlier, another woman turned up. She had sent Cooper a teddy bear dressed in a suit and tie in the colors that he wears on the air: gray and blue. Angry that he didn’t respond, she turned up outside the building to see him. CNN doesn’t want to take any chances, hence the bodyguard."
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
great article about Anderson

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/14301/index.html

"His non-anchor appeal has exerted a strong pull on some of his viewers. Later that night, as we are leaving the Time Warner Center, a security guard appears to escort Cooper from the lobby to the Town Car waiting just across the sidewalk. Cooper explains that a couple of months before, a woman who had made contact with him in the past grabbed him when he was coming up out of the subway one morning. Then, two nights earlier, another woman turned up. She had sent Cooper a teddy bear dressed in a suit and tie in the colors that he wears on the air: gray and blue. Angry that he didn’t respond, she turned up outside the building to see him. CNN doesn’t want to take any chances, hence the bodyguard."

Thank you, that is a great article :up:.
 
A lot of people don't know that Nelson Mandela's son died of AIDS a few months ago either.

Sorry, I hate to tell you guys, but I don't watch news on TV, except for Nightline if one is on, and I don't go checking the TV Guide to see if is going to be on. I discover them by chance. Except for 2 weeks ago when I knew they are going to be on. I find that reading newspapers, on or off the Net, is more enlightening and less distracting. JUst the same as I never watch televised Election season coverage....esp the dabates. I find that looks often distract from a good story. JFK ruined the News genre forever with that debate in 1960.

Sorry, just relating my habits, not opining.
 
now on CNN they have that screen going that is split like 6 ways :huh:

this made me laugh, wonkette.com

Never having been a fan of Jack Cafferty's grumpy granddad schtick at "American Morning," we are the last people we thought would say this: What he needed was more time on camera. Given the debut of CNN's "The Situation Room" network, Jack has given his crotchetiness full flower, allowing him to turn it onto the show itself. Just now:

WOLF BLITZER: That's fascinating, watching a friend or relative flying some place, you go there at flight explorer.com and you can see it almost realtime. Thank you. Useful information in "The Situation Room." Let's get more useful information, Jack cafferty. I almost said useless information, Jack, but i corrected myself.

CAFFERTY: Has that been a Freudian slip? How many hours have you been on your feet? Too many? They should pay you by the hour. This show is a telethon without a disease. It goes on and on and on.
 
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Anderson Cooper out in the wind and rain again.

Why do I feel like I keep on repeating myself?

:|
 
another article about Anderson, from Yale

http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=30071

"Despite his heavy commitment to crew and his academics, his friends remember him for many of his other qualities: his ability to sleep through anything, his propensity to borrow clothing, the toys he accumulated, the impressions he could do of people, the way he always had a bevy of girls with crushes on him, his generosity -- upon graduation, he gave his motorcycle to Card -- and, above all, his wit."
 
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This is an interesting comment:

But Cooper said he will continue to stick to his convictions and report on what he sees.
"In my view, to artificially remove yourself from a story is as big of a mistake as to artificially insert yourself in a story," he said. "I don't believe in doing that. I don't believe in making yourself part of a story, but at the same time, I don't believe in pretending that I'm not there."


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I noticed another chance, katrina did blow the fear of making critical reports about bush away. Not to much 9/11 patriotism anymore,...
 
My interpretation of what Anderson is saying is that you'd have to be subhuman to be reporting on a story like Katrina and not become emotionally involved-that doesn't necessarily make you biased. The question is to what extent are you involved..for example, I think Geraldo crossed the line by helping to rescue people and filming that. If he wants to help, that's great, but don't film yourself doing so..that is tacky and makes it about him and his ego, not the people he's reporting on. That is inserting yourself into the story.

Hopefully Anderson has never done that, has he? :shifty:
 
God I love him

by Anderson Cooper, my husband :wink:

Some call it salt-and-pepper; others call it newfound gravitas. But face it -- your hair is going prematurely gray.

The good news: Losing color doesn't make you an old man. Just don't wear it like Phil Donahue.

Going gray is like ejaculation. You know it can happen prematurely, but when it actually does, it's a total shock.

I had brown hair until I was 20. Then the gray began to sprout.

Today, 15 years later, it's spread like some mutant melanin virus and now completely envelops my head.

I still refuse to admit I'm gray. Salt-and-pepper is about all I'll cop to.

Of course, I'm just about out of pepper. We all cling to delusions. This is mine. Leave it alone.

Did you know that according to legend, the guy who became Buddha decided to seek enlightenment the day he got a touch of gray? "Gray hairs," the would-be Buddha said, "are like angels sent by the god of death."

Translation: Gray is nature's way of whispering "You're dying."

I may not like the way my gra... I mean, salt-and-pepper hair looks, but I can't honestly say it's done me any harm.

In the TV news business, gray equals gravitas. In fact, in just about any line of work being prematurely gray is an advantage.

On a guy, gray hair says, "I'm mature, stable. I can be relied on." Think George W. Bush.

Even the Bible promotes the myth. "Gray hair is a crown of glory," one proverb states. "It is gained in a righteous life."

Premature gray means you reap the benefits of living the righteous life without having to actually live the righteous life. You get to cut in line. So consider yourself lucky.

On the other hand, women don't get a free pass.

When was the last time you saw a sexy gray-haired woman in a movie? Rogue and Storm don't count; they're cartoon characters.

"It's not fair," says Diane Harris, a media image consultant, "but men see gray on a woman and they think she's old."

My friend Cathy went gray in her early thirties. She was attractive and successful, but guys backed away.

"Men instantly assumed Birkenstock-wearing, protest-rally-organizing cat lover," Cathy says. "You could see it in their eyes."

Needless to say, Cathy's no longer gray.

For men, of course, it's a different story. I don't get it, but gray on guys drives a lot of folks wild.

Think Bill Clinton. Huge head of gray, not to mention a monster-truck tire around his waist, and he had an intern pizza-delivery service.

There are millions of follicle fetishists out there, and at the first hint of tint they find you and ogle your albino tresses like a hot pair of buns.

The other thing that happens when you start getting gray: You begin checking out every other gray-haired guy.

It's a Darwinian survival response -- the need to check out the competition.

This can deteriorate into something of an obsession. For a while, every time I saw Phil Donahue, I had to reassure myself: It's okay. I'm not as gray as he is.

Note to Phil: Big white hair was fine for the Snow Miser, but again, cartoons don't count.

The most important thing about going gray: Keep it short. Grow it long and all of a sudden you look like a roadie for Peter, Paul & Mary. Not the image you want to go for.

You can, of course, dye. Plenty of guys do, but if you ask me, you might as well advertise your desperation.

Why not just wear a button that says "I sit in a salon once a month with silver foil in my hair"?

You can also try dying your hair at home, but isn't there something sad about habitually locking yourself in the bathroom and doling out dye into your trembling hands like some aging junkie?

My advice? Give in to gray. Make the most of it while you're still young.

Remember, there will come a time in the not too distant future when you're no longer prematurely gray. People will stop using the word distinguished.

By then, you'll have a wattle, baggy eyes and sagging skin, and pretty young things won't even notice your hair. Only other guys will.

Bald guys.
 
My brother's suicide

By Anderson Cooper

Editor's note: Anderson Cooper anchors CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360°," which airs weeknights at 7 p.m. ET. He also is a regular contributor for Details Magazine. This article was published in the September 2003 issue.

I try not to imagine him hanging from the ledge. Try not to imagine him falling.

Did a couple out for an evening stroll catch a glimpse of him before he let go? Did a family gathered around the dinner table see him plunge past their window?

That's the thing about suicide. Try as you might to remember how a person lived his life, you always end up thinking about how he ended it.

My brother killed himself on a warm summer night in New York. I was 250 miles away, in Washington, sitting on one of those silent subways the city is known for.

You always hear tales about brothers who can feel each other's pain. This isn't one of them.

When my brother died, I didn't feel a thing.

Carter Cooper. I rarely say his name out loud anymore.

Strange. He was 23 at the time, two years older than I was. I'd always considered us close, though now I'm not so sure.

As kids, we were together all the time. He was fascinated with military history and always led our childhood campaigns.

Carter went to Princeton and seemed to thrive amid the ivy walls and green lawns. After graduation, he wrote book reviews and started editing a history magazine; he talked about writing a novel.

Politics was a passion, but he wasn't suited for the rough-and-tumble of the game. He felt things too deeply.

"There's no wall between Carter's head and his heart," a friend of his once said. That was true.

He was gentle. Which makes the violence of his death that much more incomprehensible. "He was the last person I'd imagine doing this" -- after his death, I heard that a lot.

Looking back, there was only one hint that something was wrong. He'd broken up with his girlfriend, but having never been in love, I didn't understand how tough that can be.

It was the April after he graduated college. I'd come back to New York for a weekend, and my mom told me he wasn't feeling well.

We spoke on the phone, and he seemed anxious, distracted, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.

That night he slept in my mom's apartment, and I remember going into his room and talking with him in the darkness. I can't recall what we talked about, but it was frightening to see him like that.

When he went back to work, back to normal, a few days later, I was glad to forget the episode.

I ran into him three months later on July Fourth weekend.

He was a little disheveled, but that was nothing new. He was vain enough to have nice clothes but not organized enough to take care of them.

"The last time I saw you, I was like an animal," he said.

I knew he'd started seeing a therapist, and I took it as a good sign that he could joke about things.

It was only later, after I met his therapist, that I learned Carter hadn't really confided much to him.

I can't remember if we hugged that day or not. He said he'd see me later that weekend. I never saw him again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He was dead when I got there. A young boy in the arms of his mother and father.

I'm fast-forwarding now, a couple years. Somalia, 1992.

Famine is creeping across the country; in a town called Baidoa, dozens die every day.

Roving bands of kids armed with AK-47s ride around in tricked-out "technicals," pickups with heavy machine guns mounted in the beds.

I'd come here to be a reporter. At least that was the excuse.

The only thing I really knew is that I was hurting and needed to go someplace where the pain outside matched the pain I was feeling inside. Somalia seemed a good place to start.

My final year of college had been a blur. I'd spent most of my time trying to figure out what had happened, and I worried that whatever impulse drove my brother might be lurking out there, somewhere, waiting for me.

On the outskirts of Baidoa, in a hovel of twigs, I watched the mother lift a kettle. Squatting, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, pouring what little water she had left over her boy's head.

His eye sockets were hollowed out, each rib clearly visible. The parents had already watched three boys die.

This was their last, he was 5 years old. He was just one boy, just one death -- in Somalia it happened every day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was July 22, 1988. Friday.

My brother returned home sometime in the morning. He had his own place but said he wanted to move back into my mom's penthouse apartment.

It was hot, a day made for air-conditioning, but he asked that the sliding glass door to the balcony be kept open while he napped.

My mom checked on him several times throughout the day.

In the early evening, he woke and went into my mom's room. "He seemed disoriented," she would later tell me. Agitated.

He asked her, "What's going on?" "Nothing," she assured him, but he moved quickly down the hall.

My mom followed as he passed into my room and through the sliding glass door.

Outside, he sat on the ledge of the balcony, his feet dangling over the edge.

At some point he tilted his face skyward as an airplane passed high above, a glint of silver in a late-summer sky.

I still wonder: Was a voice audible only to him urging him forward? Could he even hear my mom a few feet away, begging him to come back?

"Like a gymnast." That's how she would describe my brother's swing over the ledge. He clung on for a moment, then he just let go. "Just like a gymnast," she'd say, over and over.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fast-forward. Sarajevo, 1993.

Somalia seems like forever ago. Back then I didn't mind waiting around for weeks in dingy African hotels.

I practically lived in Nairobi's Ambassadeur, where evangelical Christians met in the Sarova Room every day, singing "Jesus, God is very, very wonderful," while a man on the street with steel hooks for hands and plastic prostheses for arms waved them wildly in the air, screaming passages from the Old Testament.

At night, the bar opened, and sweaty red-jacketed waiters served frosty Tusker beers, weaving between black businessmen and prostitutes in shiny emerald dresses.

But now, a year later, in Sarajevo, I couldn't stay still for long.

If I started off looking for emotion, now all I wanted was motion. Like a shark that forces water through its gills to breathe, I believed that if I kept moving, I could stay cool.

Keep the camera rolling, the truck gassed, a Clash tape in the dash.

Sprawled on the floor of the Holiday Inn, listening to the thud of mortars on nearby buildings, watching tracer fire shoot past the blown-out window.

The pain was all around: houses, whole towns, nothing but rubble, roofs blown off or burnt down, walls crumbling, half-starved dogs skulking in the streets, women running for cover clutching the tiny hands of their kids.

And the smells: Charcoal fires, cooking fuel, mud, blood, human waste, musty and sweet; the smells stick in your throat, weave into your clothes -- they become part of the fabric.

When I first arrived in Sarajevo, I wore my flak jacket all the time, slept with it near my pillow. Now I hardly ever put it on.

You're surrounded by people who don't have Kevlar vests and armored cars. You're in their homes, asking for their stories.

You want them to risk exposing themselves to you. You can't ask that if you're not willing to expose yourself, feel the closeness of another, the sense of loss in their embrace.

When the airport was shut, you'd arrive in Sarajevo pumped with adrenaline from the tumble down Mt. Igman, a winding road that for a time was the only way in and out of the city.

When the fog lifts, the snipers can see you.

You've got to start early, drive fast. Whipping down the road, "Charlie Don't Surf" blaring from the cassette player, you hold on to the dashboard and hope the road isn't so wet you lurch off, hope the morning mist holds long enough, hope the Serbs are still asleep or too hungover to aim straight.

The first time down, I quizzed my driver at every turn: "This stretch coming up, is it dangerous?"

He'd just smile. After a while you stop asking questions. Just sit back and watch, like it's happening to someone else.

The last time, halfway down, I caught a glimpse of myself in the side mirror. Drained of color, eyebrows furrowed, my mouth frozen in a lunatic grin.

When I finally made it into the city, all I could do was laugh.

It was all about the motion. I'd get back home and find I wanted to leave again.

It was like I could no longer speak the same language. I'd go see a movie, out to a club -- and a few days later I'd be rushing back to the airport.

I saw on one of those Jacques Cousteau programs that they'd discovered some sharks who don't have to keep moving to breathe. I found it hard to believe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the weeks following Carter's death, I could no longer sleep in my room. The sliding glass door to the balcony remained open, though I never set foot out there again.

For a few days reporters and cameramen milled about, following the comings and goings.

I stayed inside, leaving only once to go to his apartment and pick out a suit for his burial.

The place was just as he'd left it. A half-eaten turkey sandwich sat on the kitchen counter. The air was stale, the bed unmade; it still smelled of him.

I can't remember the smell anymore, can't even think of how to describe it. But I knew it then, and bent down to inhale him once more.

There was no note.

On his desk I found a piece of paper with a single sentence in quotes. "The cuticle of common sense that had protected him over the years from his own worst tendencies had worn away, leaving him increasingly vulnerable to obsessions."

It was from a book he was reviewing, but I wondered for weeks if it had spoken to him in some secret way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You smell the bodies before you see them.

Rwanda, 1994. Over three months, 800,000 people will be killed in a genocidal bloodletting. Rebels will take over the country and end the slaughter.

On the outskirts of a town, along the side of a road, a bus has overturned. A half-dozen bodies are splayed in a ditch.

Nearby, a pickup has run off the road. It is silent except for the flies buzzing and the vultures circling overhead, waiting for me to leave.

From the truck's windshield, a man's torso sticks straight out, his legs emerge from the open passenger door. From a distance he appears to be moving. Up close, I realize it's only maggots.

I couldn't tell you if he was a Hutu or a Tutsi, couldn't tell you about the rest of the dead lying in the ditch. Did it really even matter?

There had been dozens of bodies that day, dozens of deaths. Each one a mystery, a tragedy to someone.

I stopped trying to make sense of it all. We are trained to ask why. Why did he do it? Why did he have to die? I no longer need to ask those questions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My brother is buried next to my dad. I like to think of them together.

I used to think suicide was a conscious act. A plan made, then carried out. I know now it's not always like that.

My brother was a sweet young man who wanted to be in control. In the end, he simply wasn't.

None of us are. We all dangle from a very delicate thread.

The key is not to let go.
 
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Noticed another change in the news......perhaps just a temporary move...Aaron Brown and Anderson Cooper dueting a two hour evening segment.

:|
 
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