Torres Lands At Fox31 After Leaving 9News

Former 9News reporter storyteller Kevin Torres – who may or may not have been fired for a traffic citation that occurred in a station-owned vehicle – has landed a try-out with Fox31, according to The Denver Post’s Joanne Ostrow. From Torres’ Facebook page:

EXCITING NEWS to share: I will be staying in Colorado and joining the amazing news team over at FOX31 and Colorado’s Own Channel 2! To say I’m ecstatic would be an understatement. FOX31 was just named ‘Best Newscast’ by the Colorado Broadcasters Association this past weekend. The legacy both stations hold in this market can’t be matched.

Great Moments in Journalism

From Denver’s own Channel 7:

 

News Director Jeff Harris explained:

“It was a regrettable and embarrassing error. We are mortified this appeared during our 5 p.m. news broadcast. The editor pulled the image of the book cover from the Internet without realizing it had been doctored. We sincerely regret the error and have corrected the story to prevent any recurrence of its broadcast. We are following up internally as well, to avoid a repeat of this inexcusable oversight.”

Hat Tip: Michael Roberts at Westword

 

Bar & Grilled: Ron Zappolo

Fox31 anchor Ron Zappolo is the subject of Bill Husted’s “Bar & Grilled” column this morning. One interesting quote:

If you listen to the smart guys, they say (the future of local TV news is) not very bright. There will always be local news, but the face of it is going to change. I don’t think you’re going to see people like me anymore, people who spend 35 years in one market. You’re going to see a lot more young people with shorter deals, more turnover. I’m a survivor. People ask me what I’ve accomplished and I say, “I survived.”

Great Moments in Journalism XXVI

Ahhhh, Russia. It is so quaint how you are always 30 60 years behind us. If you were watching cable news here in the states on Monday morning, it was nearly impossible to avoid updates on the Moscow subway bombing. In Russia, not so much. As the New York Times reported, “Channel 1, a main government station, reported briefly on the attacks at 8:30 a.m., a half-hour after the first blast, but did not mention them again until noon.”

Why?, you may ask. Because, according to Channel 1’s Larisa L. Krymova, updates were unnecessary: “The majority of people who are not journalists leave the house before 9 in the morning. After that, the majority of people who watch TV are housewives.”

CBS4’s Leigh Discusses Pregnancy, Engagement

The rumors have been circulating for a little while that CBS4 lead anchor Karen Leigh is pregnant, so I’ve been curious if there would be any backlash to the fact that she is not married. Most people wouldn’t care, of course, but TV news viewership tends to skew a little old and cranky.

But so far, there hasn’t been much noise. And credit Leigh for getting ahead of the story with this blog post. She smartly humanized her situation in a way that should take the air out of those who might criticize her.

Gregg Moss Returns to 9News … Again

Good news if you are a fan of business reporting. The rumors swirling the past week that former 9News business reporter Gregg Moss would return to the Denver NBC affiliate have proved true, but with a twist. The Denver Business Journal reports Moss will return to 9News in a part-time role, while continuing to work as a business strategy consultant for the company that previously had lured him away, Alem International Management. Over the past decade, Moss has bounced between 9News and positions with the Fort Worth Business Press, Wiesner Publishing and Alem.

Obama Address Bumps ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’

When preschoolers across the country tune in to ABC tonight to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” they may wonder why Franklin is getting all the air time. Imagine their disappointment when they finally realize that President Obama’s prime-time address on the war in Afghanistan has bumped the Charlie Brown tradition until next week. But not everyone is happy about the scheduling conflict.

Great Moments in Journalism XVIII

If you spent any time in the Bay Area during the good old bubble days, you probably remember Sasha Foo from KPIX-TV. She’s since landed in San Diego, where she anchors the local evening news and insults child skateboarders.

This “Great Moment in Journalism” is brought to you by Genevieve Miller and Denver Center Attractions.

Pew: Web Passes Print as Primary News Source

Pew Research Center has released a new study that shows that the Internet has passed newspapers as a primary source of news. Both still lag television, however. Details of the study are here. Incidentally, my own survey has found that 100 percent of Pew executives think it is a waste of money to hire a graphic designer to make graphs look better than something you could create in Microsoft Excel.