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When I walked into my Landmark Theatres auditorium over the weekend for a showing of "Page One: Inside the New York Times and the Future of Journalism," the usher down front was already introducing the film. So I hurried up a bit. As I was climbing to my row, the usher called out my seat number — turns out I had won (randomly, he said) a copy of the film's companion book, edited by NPR media reporter David Folkenflik and containing essays by the NYT's David Carr, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, USC Annenberg director Geneva Overholser and others. Anyway, the documentary became the subject of my KCRW column this afternoon. Listen or download at KCRW.com
Dumb luck: That's two raffles I've now won in movie theaters. A few years ago my seat in Westwood's Majestic Crest was called and I got a basketball. I donated it back to the kitty. I've only won one other contest: a free ski trip to Vail in the 1980s off a mail-in entry form in a magazine. That one I kept — once I accepted that the phone call wasn't a hoax by the reporter in the next cubicle — and my future wife and I went to the Rockies and got acquainted.