Radio Sweethearts

Brooke is out again this week, and rather than force Bob to wade lonely through another episode, NPR has brought on a temporary co-host,  Carrie Nolan.

Is it just me, or does Brooke seem to be absent a lot lately? Does anyone know where she went? Does she even still exist? Or has Bob just replaced her with this other woman. I don’t want to call her inferior because her journalism skills are solid, but I miss Brooke.

It kind of feels like when my parents got divorced, and suddenly I had a stepmother acknowledging that no, she wasn’t my mom, but we could still have a good time together.

First up, a story on the recent Anthrax killer revelation. Apparently, the media got it wrong, like always. 

This story is followed by a short story on plagiarism and Jimmy Buffet. Jody Rosen wrote a profile of Mr. Buffet (who Carrie Nolan calls “everyone’s favorite songwriter of alcohol-themed beach singalongs). She’s kind of right. The typical Jimmy Buffet song sounds something like this: sail, sail, sail, drink, drink, drink, inappropriate mermaid relations, drink to forget, margaritas, sail sail sail.

Everything was cool, until Rosen got an email that said that his profile had been re-published in the Bulletin, a Texas alt-weekly  under the byline of Mark Williams. In the interview with Rosen, he sounds kind of baffled. Why would anyone steal an article on Jimmy Buffet?

Nevertheless, Rosen tracked down the Bulletin’s editor/publisher, Mike Ladyman (cue giggles from Matthew) to inform him of the story snatching.  After their conversation, Rosen investigated the Bulletin’s online content and found that he wasn’t the only writer being plagiarized by Williams. The tipoff? A profile of Willie Nelson was “suspiciously well written”.

Is he implying that alt-weeklies aren’t usually well written, or that this particular alt-weekly is kind of crap? I had planned to link to the Bulletin , but their site is conveniently down.

Weirdly enough, Mark Williams is the only by-lined writer in the Bulletin, and almost all of his music reviews were plagiarized. I really want to get my hands on a copy of this paper, because it just sounds so sketchy.

It’s pointed out that the paper gets its revenue from ads in the print edition, so it “doesn’t need to have a Web site”. If the Bulletin didn’t have a Web site, Williams probably would have gotten away with it.

Ever diligent, Bob contacted Mike Ladyman, who sent some articles by Williams that check out. And then, there’s a hilarious clip of Williams attempting to explain himself via open letter to Jody Rosen. Despite everything, Williams notes that his paper has done great things like keeping rogue Republicans from taking over the library in a flagrant violation of the Constitution. He goes on to point out that the Bulletin is fighting “a number of injustices in our crappy little town.” Hopefully the next one will be the injustice of plagiarism.

Like Anne Frank, despite of all of this, Rosen still believes in the inherent goodness of journalists.

Also this week: a story about a reporter with a past cocaine addiction called “A Nose for News” (clearly, Step Brooke can’t keep the puns in check) and a lengthy, informative story on 3-D movies that would probably be more interesting to recap if I was wearing some of those crazy paper glasses. 

This week’s recap was written by Kerry with occasional comments from Matthew, who is sitting next to her, giving up on learning to knit.

(photo from erglantz’s flickr.)