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Brandwynne, the assistant news director at Channel 5, gave $2,000 to Sen. Barbara Boxer's reelection fund, RonFineman.com says. The pay site also cites a newsroom source saying that she solicited donations for John Kerry and asked the staff to pray for Kerry before one of the debates, and a second source says that she has been "disrespectful" toward President Bush. Fineman has decided to actively pursue this one, sending certified letters to Brandwynne and KTLA General Manager Vinnie Malcolm and phoning Tribune headquarters bosses in Chicago.
Also: Fineman has a leaked memo from KNBC News Director Bob Long calling sweeps periods the second-worst thing to happen to TV news, because of the way they distort news values. (News becoming a profit center for TV networks was #1, he says). Long's memo also has a few tidbits about TV news thinking:
· Viewers do not watch more than one newscast at a time and don't know what they're missing on another channel. They only demand that what they're watching at the moment have some relevance to their lives and make sense. This invites us to fight the herd instinct that enforces sameness and blandness.
· People like weather reports more than anything else we do, even in Los Angeles.
· People hate teases. It's fine to tell people what's coming up after the commercial, but we must remember that they know when we try to manipulate them and they hate us for it -- profoundly and aggressively.
Long closes by rallying the troops with a call to excellence: "Never in our lifetime has what we do been more important, and never have we had so many enemies. We must burnish our honor every day or be brought down. So, burnish on, my hearties..."