Table of Contents
Essays, Reviews, News & My Beats
INTRODUCTION: See the bottom for my Reporter’s Notebook and Business Card (but my substack is free). See the Beats section from the web interface and below for bullet points to each of my 20 beats (and growing, all on things I know about or care about)! My beats provide a veritable news clipping service, but my updates to each beat (each post) do not produce an email, so if you sub, your email box will not be very full on my account.
Also, to adapt the title of a book, Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Beat! I am very much hoping that the working press will feel free to follow my beats and consider writing a news analysis or news story to follow up on unanswered questions. BTW, as discussed in a book on the Underground Press, Abbie, Jerry Rubin, Ray Mungo and I, to protest the purging of Marshal Bloom from the United States Student Press Association, did a hilarious guerilla theatre skit at its plenary session. I have journalism in my veins.
I am working on a piece, How I Became a Re-Reporter, about my early days with Michigan Daily, Student Communications Network, National Guardian, PM, and Liberation News Service. I’ll link to it here. But I have journalism in my blood, believe me.
AN INVITATION TO THE LOCAL AND VISITING PRESS
This re-reporter hangs out from time to time, nursing a non-alcoholic beer or diet Coke and perhaps substacking, at the Bistro at Bratenahl Place, which I am hoping will become a hangout for the working press. It is a great great place to have a private drink or meal, especially outdoors weather permitting and/or to talk and walk, as customers or guests of residents can walk to the lake on our 18 wonderful acres.
Take a break from the grind! At a recent Cleveland Press Club panel, I made a public offer to the working press to join me at the Bistro, with a first visit, first drink free. I’m going to try to convince the Bistro to itself provide such a first visit, first drink free policy to the working press. To take me up on it, just ring me at 216-645-1555 or email me at michaaelalandover@gmail.com and stop by for quick visit (North from the I-90 Eddy Road exit).
But I have a lot to re-learn, having taken only one jouralism course at Michigan, on libel law. I may take another course or two, using the free 60-plus policy. And I attended a Press Club event recently, where I learned a lot from the panelists.
First, “don’t be a gotcha person as a journalist.” Second, someone quoted Carl Berstein about: “The best version of the truth you can get to.” Third, exercise curiosity to you can get to understand the story you are working on. Fourth, “Talk a lot less,” and listen to the people you are interviewing. Fifth, when a source says, “That’s a greal good question,” careful, they may be flattering you to cover up the fact they aren’t really answering it! Be sure they answer it. Sixth, read Pro-Publica, Politicact, WSJ, NYTimes, and have an RSS feed (which can unclutter you remail but give you a searchable repository. Seventh, do not give up on a story because you can’t get anything to let you interview them. Do it without them using public documents!
Tip from ye olde former social welfare policy prof: Set up a Google Group to which you send reports by oodles of key organizaitons in your beats, which can be set to be publicly searchable: see this example with 57,000 items on social welfare policy, including well over 1500 on a hot story: Medicaid. It is making me wish CSU had an integrated degree on social work and jounalism, as that is a beat that is often downplayed and where I have some real expertise to offer.
NOTES When I comment on another substack or re-stack with a comment, it goes into Notes.
BEATS The home page link is here: https://michaelalandover.substack.com/s/lagniappe-a-little-bit-extra. This is because before I called it BEATS it was Lagniappe, a Cajun term from my NOLA years. My beats, also listed unde About, include:
Senator Michael Bennet Watch: A Progressive and Pragmatic Voice of Reason
Artic Antics, Revanchism and a Democratic Left Foreign Policy
SOSS: Save Our Social Security
Anti-ZionISTism and Anti-Palestinianism
2024 Election analysis, including commentaries and a bibliography of over 500 of the best 2024 Election analysis pieces (essay coming soon).
Middle East Peace with Justice, commentaries and links to over 1500 sad and infuriating and incisive pieces read/watched since 10/07/03 (essay coming soon).
Jazmir Tucker, Age 15, shot by an Akron police officer with is own AR-15
This is for reviews of Books, Music, Films. Giselle Dover and I used to contribute film reviews in NOLA to a magazine called Dialogue. I use film in my teaching and we’ve watched approximately 5000 films since 1972! No book reviews yet but one is coming soon of Jonathan Foiles’s Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room and Wendy Brown’s Nihilistic Times: Reading with Weber. https://michaelalandover.substack.com/s/reviews. This section also has a link to Social Justice Songs (suggestions welcome): htttps://tinyurl.com/socialjusticesongs
From Home Page on web, visit lower right of page for Other Work links, such as to my op-eds and key publications. My two recent op-eds in established publications have been my fall 2024 piece Richard Andrew’s Real Deal Press Lessons of Dr. King’s Drum Major Instinct Sermon, which addresses the xenophobic demagoguery directed at the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio, and my December 4, 2024 Cleveland Plain Dealer piece Now is the Time for a Unilateral Israeli Ceasefire in Gaza.
Contains original for Substack work such as my two Surviving the Next Four Years essays, with a third coming soon, and key work published elsewhere: https://michaelalandover.substack.com/s/essays.
Only one item so far: namely Voices of the Palestinian Community, an assigned reporting piece for Washtenaw Jewish News. But this is where I may decide to regularly publish Original News Items, News Analysis, Investigative Reporting: https://michaelalandover.substack.com/s/get-the-news-straight. That is, if I decide to truly go back to my first love, journalism. But I have the bug again.
