Media Reporting, Blog Style

East Coast provincialism was on embarrassing display Monday night, when former Nashville Scene reporter Willy Stern appeared on CNN’s Nancy Grace show to talk about the Perry March case, on which he reported exhaustively in a 1997 two-part series. Both the hyper-talking blond—who is, somewhat astonishingly, a former prosecutor—and her production staff kept confusing Nashville and Bowling Green, and even Kentucky and Tennessee. Stern’s brother, who hosts a blog, http://www.davidm.blogspot.com/, quickly made note of the national TV blunder: “One of the two feature stories was about the Perry March case—a Tennessee murder where the body may have been dumped in Kentucky. Grace teased it as a North Carolina story. Oops. You know how those Southern states all seem alike to us New Yorkers. Then she asked a guest about the police looking for the body in Lexington. The guest politely corrected that the body was allegedly in Bowling Green, not Lexington. At least she had gotten the state right this time.” David Stern goes on to note that the production staff three different times posted a map reversing Kentucky and Tennessee. “And what a performance by that Nashville Scene guy!” he writes. And while CNN identified Willy Stern (the transcripts spell his name “Willie”) as a Scene reporter, Stern is no longer a Scene staffer, having traded his investigative gig several years back for an elbow-patch role as a college journalism instructor. Not that we wouldn’t love to claim him. We can’t really talk, but… After the Scene’s explicit and somewhat controversial Sex Issue last week, we really have no room to cast stones. But just by way of reporting, the local blog Thursday Night Fever, points out that Gannett’s weekly entertainment tab, All the Rage, posted a picture of a long black dildo on a birthday cake—and another of a girl licking the icing off of it. And speaking of oral gratification… How about that uninspired two-day series in The Tennessean on the (abstract) idea for a new convention center? The paper failed to find any news and instead used the Sunday and Monday stories to make the case for why the city needs a new big box to host conventions. No wonder. The paper’s former publisher, Leslie Giallombardo, chairs a “Community Support Working Group” committee whose members include the most heavy-hitting public relations pros in town. In the face of incessant and overwhelming flackitude, The Tennessean couldn’t find the will to do real reporting. Giving voice to Dilbert There’s something to be said for a keyboard’s delete button. Or for a good old-fashioned, smart-ass one-liner. If readers ever wondered how a reporter toiling in a corporatized newsroom responds to critical emails from elected officials, we’re about to show you. When one of the Metro Council’s dimmest bulbs, Michael Kerstetter, recently sent Tennessean reporter Lee Ann O’Neal an email, asking her in the subject line, DO YOU EVER SAY ANYTHING POSITIVE ABOUT THE COUNCIL?, she responded this way—copying the entire council, as Kerstetter did in his initial volley: “Councilman Kerstetter, thanks for your note. I'll try to respond to your question as best I can by e-mail, but if you or any member of the council would like to have a more thorough discussion, that would probably work better over the phone or in person. It is positive for the public if our officials are held responsible for their actions. It is positive when government operates in the light of day, where not just the people in power but also ordinary citizens can view and evaluate it. And I don't think it’s unrealistic to expect members of the Metro Council to meet a deadline that they themselves set into law two months ago. If I didn’t genuinely have respect for your office, I wouldn’t think so. I don’t propose stories to my bosses at the paper based on whether they reflect positively on the people in them. We are trying to serve the public's interest first, and holding officials accountable is one way to do that.” Email tips, comments and gripes to lgarrigan@nashvillescene.com.