Poor Richard's Scorecard

Murrow and Cronkite, Move Over: Mendte and Bonaduce Have Their TelePrompters Ready

AS IF local punditry hadn't already welcomed enough buffoons and clowns and charlatans to its carnival, through the open flap steps one Larry Mendte, late of CBS's Philadelphia affiliate, who:

• Was involved in a personal relationship with a coworker, which would be fine if he weren't already, y'know, married. To someone else.
• Was fired after hacking into that coworker's personal e-mail account.
• Leaked private info about her to local gossip columnists, essentially keeping the Daily News solvent for a few more years.
• Pleaded guilty to a federal charge to make it all go away.

So of course he would be a perfect candidate to deliver televised commentaries on current affairs. Mendte, it was reported last week, has been taping pieces for New York's WPIX-TV, which will syndicate them throughout the country and which anticipates hiring him full-time soon.

Whaddya Know? It Sure Did Snow a Lot! Yet the Chili Is Still Hot and the Beer Cold

We got a touch over a foot here in lower Montgomery County, and about a half-hour ago, the plow came through again. So even if I hadn't sentenced myself to an hour at Genuardi's yesterday, the roads would have been clear enough for a walk to Wawa and a whole-wheat Shorti Italian. No one here was going to starve.

Does Brian Tierney Really Think the Idle Rich Will Keep His Papers Solvent?

In a wildly self-serving Facebook post, Gothamist publisher and cofounder Jake Dobkin talked of what he hopes to address at a panel discussion for New York Times executives tomorrow on local NYC news. Dobkin is unnecessarily snarky in defending Gothamist's business model--which can be summarized as "rip off the mainstream media"--but this point got me to thinking:

Phodder: Westbrook Gets Cut, Mendte Gets Nothing

Time for a new weekly feature, friends: Brief thoughts on things I intended to write more about over the last week but never got around to. Rather than abandon them entirely, I'll try to post those top-of-the-head musings here each Saturday. Let's get started:

Once Again, Nearly Everybody *Read* the Bulletin

As if on cue, just as the Inquirer cuts itself a fat piece of birthday cake, the Bulletin takes itself off of life support. After a five-year run, the Bulletin, self-termed "Philadelphia's Family Newspaper," is shutting down. Boasting a conservative bent in a staggeringly Democratic town, the paper always faced uphill odds, so its demise is not a surprise. While I was never a fan of the Bulletin's politics, I had hoped that the competition might spur the Inky and Daily News--which, you'll recall, are owned by, like, the same company--to better performances. But, like so many conservative media outlets, it wore its politics on its sleeve, filling not merely its opinion pages but also its news hole with such family-values nonsense that it never gained credibility. And so Philadelphia again has become, to its detriment, a one-company journalism town. Maybe one of these days I'll start that online daily I've been dreaming of for a while now. Goodness knows the city could use it. Anybody have some spare capital they're looking to get rid of? | PRS

Somebody Get This Man a Bellyfiller, and Fast

He is said to make in the neighborhood of 5 million bucks a year to do nothing more than elevate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, so you'd think Chris Matthews could afford to buy himself a decent lunch. Granted, the City Avenue dining scene, while much improved in recent years, is hardly what one would call a regional culinary jewel. But still--the best the MSNBC yakker could do after delivering Saint Joseph's commencement address Saturday was Popeye's?

Maybe Larry Kane Is Available

How thin must the ranks of statewide Democrats be that the party was intensely wooing Chris Matthews to make a run against Arlen Specter in 2010? I realize that as a middle-aged white guy who makes his living talking out of his ass, Matthews would bring certain prized qualifications to a Senate campaign, but still. One wonders whether the Hardball host kept his bosses at NBC and Pennsylvania Democrats hanging for so long in order to get the best deal one way or the other. In the end, Matthews told the Inquirer the other day, "there's a wonderful power in being able to get up in the morning and do and say what you believe. As long as I'm decent and don't use bad words, I can do pretty much anything I want."

Stay Classy, CBS3, 6ABC, NBC10, Fox29, KYW NewsRadio, and Comcast SportsNet

Memo to Chase Utley: We'll give you the F-bomb you dropped in Citizens Bank Park on Halloween, but in the years to come, Vince Lombardi's immortal advice should carry the day: When celebrating future World Series victories--and there will be future World Series victories--act as if you've been there before. After all, we wouldn't want again to offend the tender ears of those so upset by your profanity that they took the time to kvetch to the Federal Communications Commission. Hilarious excerpts from their complaints after the jump:

In NBC10 We Trust?

'CAU's attempts to play the integrity card come off as clumsy pandering

Nobody ever accused TV news of being subtle, but the laughable ads being run by NBC10 during the Olympics raise heavy-handedness to a new level. In the ads, a disturbingly tanned though still quite attractive Tracy Davidson is "interviewing" rumpled weatherdork Glenn Schwartz about the station's weather coverage. They use the word "trust" about six times per sentence, presumably to remind viewers that those lying fakers at, say, CBS3, where, y'know, they had to fire not one but two anchors due to untrustworthiness, can't offer an accurate forecast to save their lives. The spots are contrived beyond belief, and given WCAU-TV's own trust issues -- anchor Vince DeMentri was suspended in the wake of his colleague Lori Delgado's car getting keyed in the station's parking lot -- its hamhanded spots are either really ballsy or really stupid. Me, I go with really stupid. | PRS

What Does Dawn Think?

The details of Larry Mendte's cyberspying raise interesting questions about his true motivation

Larry Mendte may well have been consumed by professional jealousy, but the massive scope of his hacking into Alycia Lane's e-mail account -- 500-plus times in five months, at all hours of the day -- suggests something more may have been at play. As my wife speculated this morning, perhaps Mendte's feelings toward his former coworker were more complicated than mere envy. After all, the opposite of love, it's been observed, isn't hate -- it's indifference.

Of all the sad sacks in this silly, sordid story, no one has pegged Mendte's wife, Fox Philadelphia anchor Dawn Stensland, for victimhood. But I think she has pretty good reason to feel bad for herself in the wake of her husband's extraordinarily public self-destruction. | PRS