Howard Owens

Five days ago, San Diego Padres pitcher Brian Lawrence took a shutout into the ninth inning. He blew the game. You couldn't blame him entirely. There is no Trevor Hoffman in the Padres bullpen this year. It wasn't a bad idea to let him try and finish the game.

Tonight, the Padres have a new closer in Rod Beck. Lawrence again carried a shutout into the ninth. A 1-0 lead. So why didn't Bruce Bochy bring Beck in for the ninth? Well, since Lawrence had thrown only 94 pitches, why not give him a chance to close out the game? Even after Lawrence gave up a leadoff single, I would still give him a chance to close the game. But what I don't understand is why Bochy didn't make a pitching change after Lawrence gave up a second hit, especially with Detroit's best hitter coming to the plate?

And the next thing you know -- the Padres are down 3-1. That's when Bochy lifts Lawrence, after it's too late.

This, my friend, is the most frustrating season of my baseball life.

BTW: The Padres are playing the Detroit Tigers. They should call this series the Toilet Bowl. The Tigers and Padres. It ain't no rematch of 1984. It's a race to the bottom. Vince and I should have some sort of bet on this series.

At the beginning of 1977 I was listening to KCBQ-AM, then a thoroughly Top-40 radio station in San Diego. I knew little of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin or Yes. I knew a lot of Carpenters, Boston and Peter Frampton.

By the end of 1977, I was punk. I was well into the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Elvis Costello and the Ramones. That other stuff, both the FM pretension of Yes, and the boring conformity of AM pablum had passed me by or lost its appeal. To me, Zep was a dinosaur band, and certainly groups like Boston could be seen for what the were (in my now maturing musical vision) -- bubble gum crap, over-produced and under felt.

I held onto my prejudices for many years.

Then one day (circa 1990), after the tape deck in my car conked out, I was forced to listen to a classic rock radio station. And I really listened. These Zeppelin guys were really pretty good musicians, I discovered. And good songwriters. And passionate. Hey, Zeppelin ain't half bad. Within a month of that little epiphany, I owned all of their CDs.

As evidence of my much more refined musical taste, my collection does include all of that Zep stuff, as well as some Floyd and Yes. But certainly no Boston or Frampton or Foreign, which was crap in the late '70s and remains crap today.

My friend Bruce McLean, however, never lost his love for Zeppelin, which makes his review of the new DVD and new CD set so compelling. Also, be sure to read his sidebar about his journey with Robert, Jimmy, John Paul and John.

Speaking of music, my interview with Tony Kinman of Cowboy Nation is also out. Do yourself a favor, buy this CD.

Eric Janssen thinks I'm going places. If you think the Town and Country Lounge is a place worth going, then maybe he's right. Anyway, Eric, one of the suspects behind webraw, thought I was worth interviewing, so I consented. Here's the result.

The Cubs are cheating, says Derek Zumsteg of Baseball Prospectus. They're cheating Major League Baseball and the fans.

Baseball has in place a revenue sharing agreement. What is supposed to happen is that richer teams share revenue with small market teams. Revenue sharing is supposed to ensure some level of competitive balance.

The Cubs already have a broadcast contract that helps them under report revenue, now they're scalping tickets. What the Cubs have done is set up a separate entity to sell tickets at broker prices, well above face value. For example, a $45 ticket might go for $1,500 from the broker.

This is plain and simple cheating. Fortunately, there's a lawsuit aimed at putting a stop to this practice.

Here's my Knoxville slideshow. It includes pictures of downtown, old town, North Knoxville, a dive bar, a honey merchant, green trees, rivers, a Johnny A. show (not that you can see JA in the picture), a giant cross, a giant golf ball, old buildings and Glenn Reynolds and Bob Benz.

On April 17, it looked like the Padres might have a decent year. They probably weren't going to be a playoff contender, but the team was hovering right around .500 and the team ERA was among the best in the National League. The young pitchers, such as Jake Peavy, Adam Eaton and Brian Lawrence were throwing well.

Then Dodger Brian Jordan slammed into Padres' catcher Gary Bennett at home plate, spraining his knee.

Over the next month, the Padres probably didn't even win five games. The team ERA soared and a bullpen that was already suspect wore down, making it pretty much impossible for the Padres to protect a lead. And given the Padres lack of offense, they rarely get leads, and they never build up big leads.

Bennett played his fourth game tonight since returning from the disabled list. In those four games, Padres starters (with the exception of the washed up Charles Nagy) have lasted at least six innings and given up no more than three runs. Brian Lawrence threw a complete game, giving up only one run to the Diamondbacks on Saturday.

Tonight, Peavy had his strongest outing of the season. For 8 1/3 innings, he didn't give up a run. From the 7th inning on, he struggled. He had a couple of hanging sliders get smashed, but fortunately, they all stayed in the ballpark and were caught. Bennett called a good game, getting Peavy to cut back on his slider when it started to fail him and move the ball in and out well. When he put runners on first and second in the 9th (solid singles), it was the kind of jam that a manager might let him pitch out of it the 7th, but not in the 9th. Bruce Bochy had little choice but to go to the Padres' pathetic and tired bullpen. The result, a 4-2 loss.

Losing Gary Bennett seems to have totally changed the fortunes of the 2003 Padres. It will be a long time before this sinking ship stops taking on water.

Tennessee is great. I look forward to going back there again some day, maybe even for a long-term residency, but it's good to be home.

KNOXVILLE, TENN. -- Rough day. Staying up until 4 a.m. laughing at Jayson Blair and scheming on world domination with a cigar in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other, is not conducive to hiking in the Smokies, meeting Instapundit and then going to a Johnny A. concert on the Tennesse River ... but that's my day.  I'm  sure Glenn Reynolds thought I was totally one brain dead individual, but by the time we made it Charlie Peppers, I was brain dead.

Meeting Glenn was really cool, though. He's a hell of a nice guy. He is real. I'll have pictures later to prove it.  We had a good converstation and he seemed to enjoy meeting Bob Benz .

Tomorrow, I'll see if I can catch a plane out of Nashville and start working my way back to California.

Knoxville is a great town. I hope I make it back.

More laterm.

KNOXVILLE, TENN. -- On the I-75 out of Atlanta and into Tennessee ... trucks, trucks everywhere and not a cop in sight. Don't do less than 85, or you'll get run over. No wonder the stereotypical trucker is a southerner; half the people down here own a big rig.

And when people aren't putting the hammer down, they're eating. I've seen fewer sparrows in San Juan Capistrano than I've seen of restuarants around here. Knoxville is a literal smorgaboard of culinary treats -- good old southern fixin's, BBQ (of course), Italian, Mexican, Indian, Chinese ... I don't think I've seen a sushi bar yet, I'm sure there must be at least one in this town. Chow is Knoxvillian for "something to do."

If people aren't eating, they're going to church.  And they like big churches. Full blown campuses cover acres. About 30 miles outside of Knoxville is the biggest cross I've ever seen. Fully illuminated and whiter than Julia Roberts' teeth.

But you know you're back in civilization when the hostess asks you, "Smoking or non-smoking." God, how I've missed that question.  After I finish this bit of Kinkosblogging (Yes, Instaville is progressive enough to have a Kinko's (five of them in fact), I'm going to hunt down a bar and have a cigar.  Well, let me rephrase that -- I haven't seen a bar yet in this town.  I hope to find one.  There are lots of bar/restaurant type places, and huge liquor store down the road, but I haven't seen a good neighborhood bar -- the kind of place Bukowski would call home, the kind of place you see on every corner in Los Angeles, and every other corner in Ventura or San Diego.

And why did I fly into Atlanta and rent a car and drive to Knoxville?  Because my original connection to Nashville was canceled and there was nothing else available until late at night, and nothing available directly to Knoxvegas. My best bet was to fly into Atlanta. What I didn't count on what the difficulty in renting a one-way car this holiday weekend.  That kept me in Turner Town about an hour longer than I would have liked.

Dinner on the road last night -- my first meal at a Cracker Barrel.  Um, good.  In fact, good meals all the way around here so far. Even Senor Taco wasn't half bad (good tortilla chips, even though no salsa).  If all the food here is as good, I see why people eat out so much.

Meetings all day to day. Meetings all day tomorrow. There's a good chance I won't have a chance to post again until Monday.  But we'll see.

(P.S. Please excuse typoes and spelling errors. I accept full responsiblity, but I'm not proof reading or spell checking -- Kinko's does charge by the minute. Pictures, I hope, if I get time to take some Saturday, when I return home.)

Ken Layne has a very important question for you.

Mark Insley is coming to town while I'm in Knoxvegas. Too bad for me, but good for anybody in the area ... 'cause if your in Ventura on the 22nd and you ain't at Zoey's, you ain't nowhere.

Here's my article for the Star on Mark.

There's even a Real Audio file for you to listen to. It's a great honky tonk song called "Deep End of the Bar," written by Ventura-based songwriter Dave Holster.

If you can't make Insley's show, you should buy his album.

The theme of our weekend trip to San Diego was food. Billie and I had a nice romantic dinner at Kelley's Steakhouse on Thursday, dinner with my parents Friday, dinner with her parents Saturday, and big breakfasts Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I haven't eaten that much food in a long time.

The primary purpose of the trip was to attend a new media conference at Paradise Point, but since the weekend coincided with Mothers' Day, we wound up doing a lot of eating.

On Thursday we stayed at the Town and Country. We got to stay there because my company was paying. I chose the Town and Country because I've always thought it looked like a neat hotel, with its ranch-style courtyard rooms, '60s chic styling and central location in Mission Valley. Besides, both Billie and I have known the hotel's general manager for years. We got to know him as reporters for the San Diego Business Journal (when Billie took a leave of absence from the SDBJ, I took over her tourism beat).

So the first thing we did after we checked in was give Duke Sobek a call. It was good to talk to him. He's a heck of a nice guy.

One thing I remembered about Duke was that he had a son who played baseball. Randy Sobek, like Jim Abbott, has the functional use of only one arm, but he's a good athlete. Duke updated me on Randy's collegiate career. He's a sophomore at Whittier College, where he went 5-1 this year with a 2.57 ERA. Keep an eye on the LAT for a story about Randy.

Friday was also an eventful day highlighted by running into another person I haven't talked to in a long while.

Near the end of our dinner with my parents and grandmother at the Brigantine, Billie leaned over to me and said, "I know the guy in that booth from somewhere, but I can't place him." Well, one glance, and I knew who it was. I fairly jumped out of my chair, "My God, it's Doug Brunk!"

Doug and I went to college together. We were on the college paper together. We were part of a trio (with Keith Finley) who spoke to each other primarily in MASH dialog ("Soldier, I want you out of that dress tonight!" "Not for you or any other man alive.") Later, Doug and I shared a shithole apartment on El Cajon Blvd. He was an usher in my wedding.

And my wedding is the last time I saw him. Shortly after that, he moved to New York, and by the time he moved back to San Diego, I was in Ventura, and we lost contact with each other.

So, now, we're in contact again and vowing not to let another 10 years go by without getting together for a visit.

As for the new media conference, I picked up an award for our Lewis and Clark site (which I didn't work on at all) and sat through one very good session on e-mail newsletters. I got to visit with some industry buddies and, of course, ate some damn good food (nice lunch, free sweets).

I don't think this proposed legislation goes far enough. I vote for summary executions.

The San Diego Padres think they might be able to pick up Camarillo High star Delmon Young with their #4 pic in the June draft. I don't think he'll be available. What do you think?

Corporate co-worker Eric Janssen is co-conspirator in a great group (and great looking) blog called webraw.

He's written a thoughtful essay on how blogs are killing media gatekeepers. We're all gatekeepers now, seems to be the bottom line. Bloggers, and I think this is true, filter our lives now through our bloggy lens. Everything is a potential blog post. And as we blog, we are voting on what's worthy for other people to know about, just like real media types. Of course, I would add, some bloggers are bigger gatekeepers than others.

There's a few journalists who read this blog. I have a question -- were you or were you not taught that you should

• use anonymous sources judiciously and rarely;
• use anonymous sources only when other methods for gathering the same information are unavailable;
• use anonymous sources only for factual information, not for opinion, conjecture, observation or speculation;
• always question the motivation of sources who don't want to be identified;
• never use information from an anonymous source unless it can be verified by a second source.

I was. Not only was I taught that in college. I was taught that in HIGH SCHOOL, for gawd's sake!

As I've watched this whole Jayson Blair scandal unfold, I can only conclude that this basic journalistic guideline was not followed nor enforced by NYT editors. There were numerous points of failure by the Times in its oversight of Blair, but when Howell Raines protests that the newspaper isn't really set up to catch serial fabricators, I want to remind him that making sure reporters adhere to basic journalistic standards is a good way to begin.

It's a lesson a number of large and prestigious newspapers need to learn. The use of anonymous sources has become an epidemic.

Think back to the lead up to the war and all of the stories about what the U.S. military was going to do or not do -- shock and awe, build up here, build up there, attack in November, attack in Febuary, etc. All of those stories were based almost entirely on unnamed sources.

Now, ask yourself this -- is a professional military man ever going to give away the battle plan to some Washington Post reporter?

If these sources were even real, I can think of only three plausible reasons a Pentagon official would want to be an unnamed source in such a story:

• Use the media to spread disinformation and confuse the enemy.
• Undermine the political standing of a rival.
• Puff up one's own ego by cozying up to a big-time reporter.

I'm dismissing out of hand as plausible any reason that might suggest magnanimity of spirit or altruism. A person possessing military secrets with a real concern about the well being of our troops or the prospects of victory, no matter his political doubts about the cause, would never discuss war plans with a reporter, on or off the record. Setting aside, then, the implausible, we have to ask: Why trust any unnamed source motivated by deception, ambition or ego?

Yet, if the basic rules of using anonymous sources were followed, none of the war plan stories, nor many of the "quagmire" stories that made print during the war, ever would have been published.

It's not that I'm against these stories per se, because such stories can impart important information to the great national debate, but unless the stories are credible they are worse than meaningless, they are downright harmful. And stories sourced by people who have less than pure motivates, and sourced by people who are not double checked, and sourced by people who engage in conjecture and speculation under the cover anonymity, lack even a shred of credibility.

Yet, such stories see print in major newspapers every day.

I wish somebody like Howard Kurtz, or better yet Howell Raines or Leonard Downie Jr, would read this post, because I would really like to ask them one question: Why have your papers abandoned basic journalistic standards in favor of the sensational stories anonymous sources give you?

Ryan Pitts, who did a great war blog for the paper in Spokane has entered the world of private weblogging, having joined with some compatriots to creat The Dead Parrots Society. It's a damn good group blog. Check it out.

A while back, I auctioned off my opinion.

Vince Kern won that auction and paid handsomely for my opinion.

He then offered up as a gift to his readers the chance to create the subject on which I would opine.

The winner of Vince's little drawing was Andrew DIMN. His topic: "What will be the state of the newspaper industry in 2013?"

Well, there are worse topics for me to opine about.

In some ways, newspapers will be about where they are now. The major cities will have newspapers, most communities will have newspapers. I don't think newspaper readership is going to decline so much over the next 10 years that many newspapers will be put out of business. But in order to survive, newspapers will need to develop new revenue streams.

The Internet is going to play an increasingly major role in the health and survival of print publications. Most newspapers are now finding ways to be profitable. These programs and innovations will continue to bear fruit and online profits will become increasingly important. Right now, online revenues are a slim part of any news operations overall revenue stream. In 10 years, electronic media will generate at least 40 percent of all revenue for a well-run news organization.

Newspapers are going to expand more into direct marketing and direct retail operations to help shore up losses in advertising, particularly classified advertising.

Regional newspapers, starting out with targeted e-mail newsletters, will also expand into niche and speciality publications. This will be a growing market segment as newspapers learn that the only content they can charge premimum prices for is specialized content. Newsroom staffs will grow accordingly, but content generators (reporters and editors) will remain woefully underpaid. In other words, more jobs, but no wage growth, and probably a wage decline. This will remain necessary to maintain profit margins on the more diverse, but smaller ROI product categories.

Within 10 years, it is possible that newspapers will no longer be printed on paper, though. They may become totally customizable, printed on electronic ink or offered in a format that can easily be output on a home printer. If this happens, the trend toward specialization, specialized, niche journalism will grow.

The future of newspapers isn't as a newspaper so much as a centralized community resource. Newspapers need to stop thinking of themselves as just a daily blitz of local news. Newspapers are the local experts, the local aggregators, the trusted source, and local news operations need to expand their businesses to become the content and community centers of their regions.

If I won the lottery, I'd buy the Mayflower Theater.

The Mayflower is nothing but a burned out shell of a building now. Nobody is doing anything with it. Everybody realizes, I think, it's too beautiful of a building to tear down, but there's no profit in restoring it either.

Just before it burned out a couple of years ago, two young women were planning to remodel it and turn it into a big band-swing lounge. A place to lindy hop, drink martinis and pretend you were Martin or Sinatra at the Sands for an evening.

But then some homeless dreck got uncareful with some matches or a cigarette and the Mayflower became what it is today. Empty and forlorn.

But if I bought it, I wouldn't make it a club or a theater or a dinner house.  I'd make it my home.

It would be a home shaped like a theater, with a big screen for entertainment, a foyer for greeting guests (free soda and popcorn for all), and a master bedroom for me and Billie next to the projector room. I'd fill that shell back with life that paid tribute to its former luster.

I want to live in the Mayflower Theater.

This is likely my last post until Sunday, at the earliest (though I reserve the right to post something later tonight or tomorrow morning, but don't count on it).

See you on the flip side.

Have you ever thought, "Gee, I should would like to get Google search results in e-mail?" Well, now you can. Just use this address (google@capeclear.com), put your search terms in the subject line and hit send.

Now, why anybody would want Google via e-mail, I can't figure out. I mean, if you've got the web access to look at the URLs returned, why not just use Google? But at least the Google API is being used for something.

Cathy Seipp said she'd never do a blog. Then Matt Welch threatened her with meat cleavers, or something, and she started one. And it's amusing, always. The best new blog, I think, of 2003. She's droll, to say the least. But then, I thought I had the best new blog of 2002, and we all know where that got me.

Near the close of Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom, he discusses blogs:

In the world of journalism, the personal Web site ("blog") was hailed as the killer of the traditional media. In fact it has become something quite different. Far from replacing newspapers and magazines, the best blogs -- and the best are very clever -- have become guides to them, pointing to unusual sources and commenting on familiar ones. They have become new mediators for the informed public. Although the creators of blogs think of themselves as radical democrats, they are in fact a new Tocquevillean elite. Much of the Web has moved in this direction because the wilder, bigger, and more chaotic it becomes, the more people will need help navigating it.

Zakaria's only half right, I think. The best blogs are an elitist project of defining and refining what deserves our attention, but the shear number of blogs also makes it a democratic process.

BTW: Think this is the first mention of blogs in a general-interest non-fiction book?

One of the charms of taking in a Padres game on the radio is listening to Jerry Coleman. Coleman is well known for his malaprops.

Here's a new one from today's game: "I was once in a parade with Connie Mack. It was great. We were going down the road and they were throwing out windows."

Long-haired commie cajun cowboy crooner Ken Layne is threatening us again.

Yes, the propaganda is true, Pierce, Welch and Smith met me at a secret undisclosed location last night where we plotted our schemes for world domination and an endless supply of dodger dogs and watery, stadium-filtered beer. Then Pierce, at a location so secret I can only refer to it as the Rustic Room, plied me with gin and tried to pry loose my confidential strategy for winning in roto. Welch even tried to warp my mind by re-introducing me to some crazy, drum-thumping, tennis-playing rock star.

You should sign this petition. (thanks to Pete)

Report on CNN just now: New newspapers are springing up, some with a narrow political focus, some clearly supportive of the old regime, but here's the entertaining bit -- a commander quoted (I think  I got this accurately): "We had a guy in here the other day who said he wanted to start a newspaper, and I said, 'Great,' and he said, 'Well, who do I have to see to get approval.' 'You don't.' 'Well, who approves my scripts, my stories.' 'Nobody. It's called freedom.'"

In response to this, I just sent the following e-mail to the readers' rep, Karen Hunter, of the Hartford Courant (link via Ken Layne, who wrote a few words you should read on the subject as well).

To put my comments in context, you should know I've been a reporter, editor, publisher and currently work as an online coordinator for a newspaper. I've spent most of the 20 years of my adult life in or around newspapers. I've been president of an SPJ chapter and served that chapter for nearly 10 years.

In other words, I'm not just some blowhard out to defend bloggers.

Brian Toolan made a serious ethical blunder when he forced Denis Horgan to stop blogging.

The First Amendment is more than just a law, it is a principle. While Toolan may have had the legal right to shut down this site, he didn't have the ethical right to do it. What an employee does on his own time, with his own resources, is his own business. If that hobby happens to include expressing one's own opinion, that activity should be especially protected, especially by someone who calls himself a journalist.

Furhtermore, Toolan's reasoning doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If it be true, than Dave Barry shouldn't write books or publish a blog (which he does); furthermore, if a columnist's reputation rest entirely on the masthead of the newspaper that originally published him, then no columnist could ever ethically change papers, publish books, give speeches for fees, create blogs, participate in e-mail discussion lists, or even print personal business cards.

Denis Horgan's reputation did not rest on the name of the Hartford Courant. It rested on the byline of Denis Horgan. The HC was merely the vehicle by which Horgan was able to make his name, but whatever audience Horgan amassed from his time as a columnist for the paper, he did through his own talent and hard work, not because of anything Toolan did, or anything the press operator did, or anything the circulation director did. It was Horgan, and he should be able to reap the benefit of that hard work as he sees fit.

Toolan's heavy handedness is another black eye for our profession, where we say we cherish a free press, but operate quite differently.

Too bad Toolan doesn't understand our profession or our society better.

Fortunately, I work for a media company where even bosses have blogs.

I'd buy this record.