An awful story out of Dubai. A 5-year-old boy fell out of an eighth-story window, and his disconsolate mother then jumped out of the same window moments later. Both died, and a 14-year-old girl, the sister and daughter of the deceased, saw it all happen from the pavement. An awful story. What turned it into […]

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Sports movies are nearly all horrible. They are. Horrible. Not just bad. Awful. I was reminded of this while watching the ridiculous sports movie named Wimbledon, starring Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst and apparently made by a bunch of people who have zero idea how a tennis tournament … or a tennis match … or […]

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The guy who laid me off 3.5 years ago had his own moment with the sharp end of the “consolidation” side of print journalism last week. That is to say, he’s out of newspapers and apparently is unemployed. Here is the typically code-riddled e-mail to the people who worked for him:

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When you are the visiting team in Beirut, you know your night did not go well when some of the local citizens let off a few rounds of celebratory gunfire after the score goes final. It probably also was not a good night when your coach is fired about 90 minutes after the game. Which […]

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I’ve known Andy Baggarly since he was a kid from Upland who was going to school at Northwestern. He was good right out of the box, like so many Northwestern J School people are. Maybe we gave him some room to grow, back in the L.A. market, but it wasn’t like we had to mold […]

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I was prepared to dislike Steve Horn. I was a serious college newspaper editor, by gosh, and he was president of Long Beach State University, and that is the natural order of things. Student newspaper/school president: mongoose/cobra. I arranged an interview with him in the fall of 1975, when I was editor of The Forty-Niner, […]

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It’s a planet with 7 billion people on it whose agenda is “it’s all about me.” Or, OK, maybe 6.9 billion people living with that myopic world view (many of whom would like to deny it), and maybe 100 million people who are saints or grandmothers or both. So, it was with profound self-focus that […]

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For non-Muslims in the UAE, Eid al Adha is the most notable for this: It is the longest holiday on the calendar. At The National, this was a one-day work week. Sunday. Eid al Adha then began on Monday, hit a zenith today and continues on for two more days, at least in the governmental […]

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Even 15 years ago, keeping track of a U.S. sports team from the other side of the world would have been a dicey proposition. The first sport-specific bloggers were just firing up. (This was even before Bill Simmons.) Not every newspaper paid close attention to its website. (I worked at a place where the managing […]

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Anyone who has edited copy has pet peeves. “Ironically.” Split infinitives. “Stamping ground vs. stomping ground” and “gauntlet” vs. “gantlet.” Well, and “pet peeves” is more than a little worn, isn’t it? Many of these peeves we editors share. Some are primarily personal. One of mine: The reckless use of the word “surreal” — a […]

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