Whacko Obit watch - I'll be there!

USA Today's front page looked like a poster for the now-cancelled Jacko comeback concerts in London. Comedian Rob Corddry, the former Daily Show correspondent, joked: "I wish it had been Michael Jackson that broke the story of TMZ dying." So did alot of hacks. The AOL-owned TMZ claims a Demerol overdose caused the singer's heart to fail, quoting his family.
Despite the twitterati fest, it took the LA Times to do the "heavy lifting" and get a confirmation of details of the death, followed by the Associated Press, before many people believed it. "The last piece of Michael Jackson has expired!" the Onion headlined; Meanwhile, meanspirited blogger Perez Hilton, known for the premature announcement of Fidel Castro's demise, initially labelled the 911 call a "dubious stunt" and had to pull his snarky blogpost (of which a screen-capture is posted here. Magazines are "crashing" commemorative issues of the weird and tragic life of the otherwordly pop star, with images and tributes from celeb friends.

Jackson was 50, and had been in the public eye for four decades, ever since the Jackson 5 released their first hit I Want You Back. USA Today said

Jackson died after going into cardiac arrest at his rented home in Los Angeles, where he was preparing for 50 sold-out concerts at London's O2 Arena. When paramedics arrived at his home, Jackson's personal physician was performing CPR. They treated him for almost 45 minutes at his house but was in a coma when he arrived at the UCLA Medical Center. He was pronounced dead at 2:26 p.m. The Los Angeles Police Department said it would launch an investigation into the death, but cautioned that this is simply standard procedure for someone who was so famous and they have no reason to believe any foul play was involved.

Slate noted:

so many people turned to the Internet to confirm rumors of his death that Google's computers interpreted all the simultaneous searches for "Michael Jackson" as an automated attack. In a story inside, the LAT notes that the first to report the star's death was the gossip site TMZ, which announced it at 2:44 p.m. But it became clear that many outlets around the world weren't comfortable taking the site's word for such an important piece of news and, instead, credited the LAT, which bannered the death at 2:51 p.m. Interestingly enough, even though TMZ and CNN are both owned by Time Warner, the news channel didn't confirm the death until almost two hours later.

Jackson's death overshadows the passing of 70s icon, Farrah Fawcett. The LAT is alone in fronting the news that the Charlie's Angels star died yesterday of anal cancer, which she had been fighting since 2006. She was 62.

Don't count on a pay parachute if you're fired by USA Today

Now USA Today will eliminate 20 positions next month, according to
Romenesko. These absolutely mad paper cuts keep stinging.

A memo sent Sunday evening says those whose jobs are eliminated will receive severance consisting of 1 week of pay for each completed year of service, with a minimum of 2 weeks and a maximum of 26 weeks of severance.

Talk about a lead parachute! This paltry compensation is a far cry from the usual package of one month's pay for every year as a staffer.

USA Today - brief on the McPaper at 25

USA Today, which has been around now for a quarter century, is a newspaper that pedants still love to put down. Its Page One editor, David Colton, has just penned an afterword for a new edition of The Making of McPaper: The Inside Story of How USA Today Made It. The newspaper's vintage launch issue is pictured above. Colton boasts that his rag continues to add readers and attract advertizers in an otherwise-declining industry.
He writes in his blog

It took 11 years, but in 1993 USA Today hit a daily circulation of 2 million and started to make a healthy profit. It’s now the nation’s biggest-selling paper. This headline captures its early frothy approach to the news: men, women: we’re still different.

By the 1990s, stories were getting longer, resources were plentiful, and you were guaranteed that your story would be read by colleagues on the campaign trail. They had little choice—the paper was dropped at their hotel-room door every morning...At speaking engagements, I still use my reliable opening line: “I’m from USA Today, so I’ll be brief.”

Anthrax case menace to reporters' sources

Five US journalists are required to finger the sources who leaked details about a scientist under scrutiny in the 2001 anthrax attacks, a federal judge said Monday.
Once again the first amendment comes under attack. When freedom of the press may be sacrificed, it shows contempt for the US Bill of Rights. So what else is new?

Wire services reported that U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the reporters to cooperate with Steven J. Hatfill, who has accused the Justice Department and FBI of violating the federal Privacy Act by giving the media information about an FBI investigation of him.

The reporters named are Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek, Allan Lengel of The Washington Post, Toni Locy, formerly of USA Today, and James Stewart, formerly of CBS News.

Walton denied Hatfill's request to demand information from the media companies ABC, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS, The Associated Press, The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times.

Hatfill's attorneys want the reporters to reveal the identities of law enforcement officials who were cited anonymously in articles about the investigation. The journalists gave depositions under a court order but refused to reveal their sources, arguing that the First Amendment and a federal common-law privilege shield them from having to disclose the names.

Walton disagreed. He said District of Columbia federal courts have historically denied a common-law reporter's privilege and said he would not "bring into being such a privilege."

Creating such a privilege in this case would have the "perverse effect" of handicapping a plaintiff whose good name was destroyed by government leaks, Walton said. The reporters' fear that testifying would chill the flow of information, Walton said, is outweighed by the Privacy Act lawsuit.

Five people were killed and 17 sickened by anthrax that was mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news media in New York and Florida just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Hatfill, who worked at the Army's infectious diseases laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., from 1997 to 1999, was publicly identified as "a person of interest" in the investigation by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The case remains unsolved six years later. Francis Boyle, a bio-terrorism expert who worked with the Bush administration, contends that the anthrax scare, which heightened terror after the 9/11 attacks, was likely an inside job to push through the passage of the Patriot Act.

The NY Times adds:

The reporters are not defendants in the suit but are likely to face contempt sanctions if they fail to comply with Judge Walton's order.

In April, Judge Walton referred the parties to mediation in an effort to settle the case. A separate lawsuit by Dr. Hatfill against The New York Times, claiming that columns by Nicholas D. Kristof had defamed him, was dismissed by a federal judge in Virginia in January. Dr. Hatfill has appealed.

Last year, the government and five news organizations, including The Times, paid Wen Ho Lee, an atomic scientist once suspected of espionage, $1,645,000 to settle what Judge Walton, in his decision yesterday, called a "strikingly similar" case.