I get that question a lot. Usually, people seem disappointed when I answer. Most people seem to think that if you work in a television station, you must be on TV. This, obviously, isn’t true. For every personality you see on your favorite channel, there are at least six or seven — sometimes as many as ten to twelve or more — that you never see, working behind the scenes in various capacities, keeping the ship going, so that the personality can shine in the …

An interesting article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch gives television news viewers their chance to have their say about why they’re tired of television news.
I provide you with the top ten pet peeves viewers there give, and I throw in my perspective:
1. Self-Promotion – You tune in for your late news and you see a segment about what happened on “Survivor” that night. “This isn’t news,” you say as you reach for the remote. The trouble is, many people don’t reach for the remote. They watch. …

I suppose that NBC’s “Meet The Press” isn’t part of the “liberal media.” Tim Russert, leading a discussion about the declaration of War on Iraq, aired quotes from two prominent Democrats who were in support (at the time) of war.
The first was from an October, 2002 speech by Hillary Clinton:
“It’s clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological, chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and …

Larry of “Larry’s Blog” left me with a grammatical challenge. He asked what words like “bow,” which have two different pronunciations as well as meanings with the same spelling, are called.
A homophone is a set of words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings. “To,” “too,” and “two” are all pronounced the same way, but each spelling carries a separate meaning.
After a little research, the best explanation I’ve found is that words like “minute,” which have different pronunciations (like “MY-NUTE” or “MIN-IT”) depending on how they’re …

We’re up and running again for another set of questions…and they’re actually posted on time this week! Don’t forget to leave a link to your journal in the comments. Either answer the questions here or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but the link you leave here gives everyone who plays a chance to visit your journal! Enjoy!
1. What annoys you more: a long line in a bank, a movie theater, a restaurant or a grocery checkout line?
2. The President calls upon you to …

Remember the story about illegal aliens who were arrested after it was learned that they were working janitorial jobs at Walmart stores?
CBS News reports that nine of them are suing the retailing giant, accusing it of discrimination. Apparently, they feel that they were payed less and given fewer benefits because they are Mexicans, whereas Americans — who have a legal right to be here — seemed to get full salaries and benefits.
So let me get this straight: these people…who aren’t supposed to be here to begin with…who broke …

I saw a news report the other night about several of the American companies who have outsourced jobs to India. Apparently, they are now having problems. It seems that the job market there is so hot, most employees stay for an average of only six months. They’re also discovering (get ready for this!) that there are often communication problems.
Cry me a river.
I’m reminded of a line from the movie, “My Fair Lady:”
If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.
We have American …

I was always involved in my high school newspaper. It wasn’t really part of my wanting to work in television, because I knew even then that I did not want to be a reporter. I just liked working on the paper…it certainly beat sports!
Anyway, at some point along the way, I participated in a summer journalism workshop at USC. (That’s the University of South Carolina, not Southern California…there’s more than one USC in the world, you know!)
Copyediting, which is basically editing stories and headlines for grammatical …

Because of (and grammatically, it’s not “due to”) technical difficulties, the “Saturday Six” this week have been delayed. It’s a good thing in a way, because I needed the extra time to answer some of these!
The questions are especially interesting this week because I didn’t come up with ANY of them! That’s right, ALL SIX of this week’s questions came from past players of the “Saturday Six.”
Don’t forget to leave a link to your journal in the comments. Either answer the questions here or put the …

I am amazed by the sheer number of people who genuinely believe that the media is out to control what they think.
They say that the the press wants you think a certain way, and that they’ll do anything to make sure that you do. I work in “the media,” and I’d like to give you the real truth: such thoughts are asinine.
Naturally, there are those separate entities within the “media” umbrella, Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken for example, who would love to have you believe everything they believe …

On Friday afternoon, as I was chatting with a friend of mine from California, I was suddenly bombarded by several IM’s from people I’d never heard of. It seems that “Patrick’s Place” had been featured at the AOL People Connection main screen on Thursday and Friday for my tribute to Ronald Reagan. I have also learned that the tribute I wrote, apparently, was “inspiring,” according to AOL’s Journal Editors.
Apparently, it was enough to inspire a handful of people to leave comments in the journal or to drop me an Email, …

Here are this week’s questions. Next week, ALL of the questions will be from you. If you HAVEN’T submitted yours, click the “E-mail” button to the left and mail it to me!
1. What color eyes do you find the most appealing?
2. What is your favorite thing to eat or drink on a cold, rainy day?
3. Name the last movie that made you laugh out loud and what you found so funny about it.
4. If you had the choice of having a custom telephone number, what would it be?
5. New technology …