For Jon Corzine, it's 'Ghosts of Girlfriend's Past'

Man, would I have loved to be in Jon Corzine's office when he heard the news that his former girlfriend and labor leader leader Carla Katz is going to be doing spots on 101.5, New Jersey's most popular radio station. She starts Monday with an hour-long spot on the 'Jersey Guys' – Casey Bartholomew and Ray Rossi – one of the periodic appearances she’ll apparently be making on the station.

I wonder if she'll spill the beans on how much money Corzine actually gave her when he became governor. The New York Times estimated it at $6 million, including a $1.1 million condo, $500,000 in renovations to her home, her Lexus SUV and her kids’ tuition at a private school, just to name a few.

Most importantly, will she speak-up about the infamous email exchange she had with Corzine back when he agreed to give back the concession that CWA workers agreed to during their negotiations, which would have required retired state employees to contribute 1.5% of their pension toward their health insurance premium and would have saved taxpayers $2 million?

The Little Weekly Newspaper That Could

The New York Times has a cool story today about the TriCityNews, a weekly newspaper out of Monmouth County, N.J. Apparently, the newspaper and it's staff of 3.5 employees are prospering because they aggressively IGNORE the Web.

Their website is very minimal, mostly a little text about the paper's mission and ad rates, but nothing more (check it out here).

Dan Jacobson, the publisher and owner of the TriCityNews, explained to the New York Times why:

"I don’t understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper. Why should we give our readers any incentive whatsoever to not look at our content along with our advertisements, a large number of which are beautiful and cheap full-page ads?”

Cartoonist Name Omitted from CBS News Story

In a CBS News story about Barack Obama's monumental task to restore credibility to the White House, CBS points to an editorial cartoon that seems to sum up their entire story in one single image.

The problem is, they don't even bother to mention the artist.

"A cartoon from the Houston Chronicle caught the flavor," the story begins, not bothering to mention that the cartoon was penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Nick Anderson.

The story goes on to describe the cartoon in lieu of showing it or providing a link:

A man standing in front of a burning building labeled "the economy" is shouting into a phone: "My house is on fire, how soon can you get here?"

A fireman who looks like Barack Obama answers, "January 20th."

This story illustrates a giant pet peeve of mine as a cartoonist. Whenever a news story uses an editorial cartoon to clarify its point, they very rarely credit the editorial cartoonist by name, choosing instead to go with the "a cartoon from x publication" instead.

Would someone ever quote something out of a Maureen Down column just by saying, "In a column that appeared today in the New York Times..."

This happened to me recently in a New York Times story about a cartoon I had drawn for PolitickerNH.com about the New Hampshire senate race:

Mrs. Shaheen’s risk-averse approach to the issues helps explain why a cartoon posted on the politickerNH.com Web site ridicules Mrs. Shaheen as the driver of a car stopped at a green light, refusing to move without knowing what the polls say.

It's too bad they couldn't give me a namecheck, or even pay me for the right to show the cartoon. But I guess it's all right.

After all, I'm only a cartoonist.

The fundamentals of the McCain campaign are strong

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John Edwards and the death of mainstream media

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