BREAKING: Feds investigating overtime practices at Scranton Times-Tribune

Letters have started landing in the mailboxes of former Scranton Times-Tribune staffers -- letters from the federal government inquiring about how the newspaper handled overtime. At least two former reporters have received letters, we're told. More as it happens.

Welcome Roja Heydarpour to the Scranton Times-Tribune

Well. The New York Times to The Times-Tribune of Scranton isn't a career track you see every day. But welcome to Roja Heydarpour, a Columbia University grad school product who has her own real Wikipedia page. Kudos.

Update: Lest anyone think Heydarpour was exiled to Scranton, read the glowing memo circulated in the Times newsroom upon her departure:

Roja Heydarpour is jumping from the NYT ship to become a full time reporter at the Scranton Times-Tribune. Today (Nov. 16) is her last day.

As Sewell Chan pointed out in an e-mail, "Northeastern Pennsylvania had better watch out."

Roja came to us almost two years ago, while still pursuing her master's at Columbia, and has been a rock solid anchor on the Metro desk ever since. No matter what chaotic news event broke out around here, she was there to calmly keep the desk humming along, providing a patient, steady presence for Metro reporters and editors. You never saw her sweat.

Take a moment to reflect on just how many phone calls Roja has answered during her dayside Metro tenure.

Most recently, she began contributing blog postings to City Room and moderating reader comments, gracefully incorporating new web duties into her often hectic day. "Roja has been a vital part of the city room blog since it launched in June," Sewell said. "She juggles blogging and comment moderation with her other duties in a way that seems effortless."

True. So let's toast her, shall we. Come raise a glass in her honor today at 4 p.m. in the conference room near my office. Just wander over toward Margaux's desk and you'll find it.

And that's just the appetizer. Roja asks that you join her afterwards, any time after 5:30, at Cafe Andalucia on Ninth Avenue between 39th and 40th. She'll be there into the wee hours.

Steven

Christopher J. Kelly goes to Wal-Mart

Have you heard of these "Bratz" dolls? They are dolls that look slutty. They are called "ghetto dolls" by some, Christopher J. Kelly reports in his Times-Tribune column. Crazy! We stopped reading at the word "anyhoo."

Richard Connor: Debit-card story is overblown, competition is overrated

Rich Connor's Sunday column is a keeper. How would you like to work all week on the big story in town, pick up the Sunday paper and read this from your boss?

• "We lost focus."

• "My fear has been that we might rush either another story or an editorial into print to avoid being “beaten” by other media.

• "It is difficult and perhaps unfair to criticize debit card users when there was no set of rules to follow."

Slurp. Guzzle. And so on. The accompanying staff editorial minimizes the story, and includes this gem: "Skrepenak should think back to his football days. Right now, the county’s in the fourth quarter with little time left on the clock. Will he retreat to the sidelines? Or will he make the big play and lead the county to fiscal responsibility?" Calling Joe Pulitzer!

Open thread: Advice for Jeff Sonderman

Sunday's Times-Tribune carried a story (click above) announcing Jeff Sonderman's promotion to metro editor. For no reason, an assemblage of such stories:

"Jeff Sonderman has an outstanding track record as a reporter and editor and will do a great job as The Times-Tribune continues to expand its local news coverage in print and online at www.thetimes-tribune.com." – Larry Beaupre on Sonderman, 12/07

"Stephen Daily is an outstanding journalist who has been instrumental in the development of one of the best newspaper business sections in the country.... We look forward to his leadership as The Times-Tribune and Citizens’ Voice continue to expand business and personal finance coverage in Northeastern Pennsylvania." – Beaupre on Daily, 4/06

"We were looking for someone with experience in business news and strong editing skills with imagination and leadership ability." – Beaupre on Fred Reinecke, 1/05

"It is a pleasure to turn over responsibility for local news coverage to an editor with the experience, background, talent and integrity of Ken Knelly." – Beaupre on Knelly, 10/04

"Mr. Knelly comes from a newspaper with a distinguished business section and he, himself, has an outstanding reputation as a business editor and journalist." – Beaupre on Knelly, 9/03

Any management advice for the new editor? Career advice? Job leads?

Scranton Times-Tribune names new metro editor

Jeff Sonderman has been named the new metro editor of The Times-Tribune of Scranton. Kudos. His linkedin resume (click above) has already been updated. Impressive. His Wikipedia page (!) (click below) has already been deleted. No word on a successor for business editor.

Jeff Sonderman's Wikipedia page

Hazleton is en fuego

First, the penis on the high school football field is picked up by Gizmodo, Gawker Media's gadget blog. Then Gawker's consumerist blog inexplicably runs an awful vintage commercial for the Game Store at Laurel Mall in Hazleton.

Watch the commercial at consumerist.com

Corbett: I love, love, love the TL

We understand that Corbett posted this blog piece a cool two weeks ago. But "I’ll always be part of the Times Leader" is too good to pass up. Corbett blogs about his love for the paper at the same time as the big birthday party, though it seems he didn't attend.

Joe Sylvester leaves Scranton for the Times Leader

Longtime Pittston reporter Joe Sylvester, who had recently been covering Old Forge and surrounding towns, has left The Times-Tribune of Scranton for the copy desk of the Times Leader. Kudos.

Kudos to the Voice and reporter Michael Buffer

Kudos to the Citizens' Voice, which broke the story this week of the prison official who put his trip to a Vegas nudie bar on a county debit card. Reporter Michael Buffer has been on the case from the beginning, and in Monday's editions writes about how another $2,700 in charges from the same guy - Sam Hyder - are also suspicious. The story has been on the state wires.

It's been funny to read the CV lead the story, read Steve Corbett credit the Voice, and then read the TL credit Corbett.

Court upholds firing of Scranton Times-Tribune source

A state attorney general's agent who fed information about a grand jury investigation to the Scranton Times-Tribune has failed in his bid to get his job back. The Commonwealth Court ruled that James Kolojejchick -- who was fired and later jailed because of information he shared with newspaper editor John Murphy -- knew what he was doing when he told investigators that he hadn't been in contact with the newspaper. The contact was about a story the newspaper wrote that generated a still-pending libel suit.

The court writes: "The newspaper editor needed a second source to confirm the story
published in January 2004 in order to mitigate the newspapers’ exposure in the
lawsuit. The newspaper editor met with [Kolojejchick] in December 2004. [Kolojejchick] told the editor that he had heard from the OAG attorney conducting the grand jury investigation that the Commissioners had testified in an evasive manner. In response to a further plea from the editor, [Kolojejchick] put this information in the form of an affidavit."

Kolojejchick was fired, and his union took the case to arbitration and lost. This case was an unsuccessful appeal of that arbitrator's ruling.

Read the Commonwealth Court ruling in full

Hazleton penis made famous by Google Maps

Has everyone else noticed that Google recently upgraded their northeastern Pennsylvania images -- and now you can see the penis vandals created on high-school football field in Hazleton a few years ago. The Standard-Speaker wrote about this in a story Saturday that will undoubtedly make it's way through the Internets in the coming days. A tipster passed along this bigtentailgate.com item.

Read the S-S story

Richard Connor on what makes a good publisher

The only reason we're posting this three-week-old column from Fort Worth is because Times Leader Publisher Richard Connor holds forth on newspapers and publishers. Regarding the new publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Connor writes: "The first test of common sense and business acumen for new publisher Gary Wortel will be to see how long he puts up with the lunacy emanating from the newspaper’s third-floor newsroom." Nice!

Richard Connor sees dead people

The Times Leader editor writes (in a rerun of a 1994 piece) about how his first news job was writing obits. Why do these columns run in Fort Worth but not Wilkes-Barre?

A little story about little WGBI-AM of Scranton

While hunting for art for the WEJL item (see below), we found a wonderful item from the radio site flybush.com about radio station WGBI, which started broadcasting in 1925 from a tiny building on Davis Street in Scranton -- between Colliery Avenue and McCarthy Street. It's a fun read by a guy who clearly knows about and loves radio. He visits the top of the Times-Tribune building in the process.

Ode to the antenna atop the Times-Tribune building

Cheryl Kashuba of the Lackawanna Historical Society writes a nice piece about the history of the Christmas lights on the WEJL tower. Did you know: Santa used to arrive atop the Times building in a helicopter?

Photo: Erin Nissley's flickr page

How lazy is too lazy?

At the outset we'll say that we don't think this is plagiarism per se. But. Still. The Times-Tribune's Christopher J. Kelly wrote today about how the vintage Sesame Street episodes coming out on DVD carry a parental-warning label. Kelly, like many people, read this in the Sunday New York Times magazine a week ago. Kelly pretty much credits The Times and reporter Virginia Heffernan when he lifts a few lines from one of Heffernan's interviews.

But he goes on to write generally about the news -- and hits most of the same points Heffernan does in her writing.

Heffernan: "Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes."
Kelly: "Cookie Monster is not exactly a model of healthy eating and self-control. [...] And his diabetes risk? Let’s not even go there."

Heffernan: "Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but... well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies."
Kelly: "The “Sesame Street” of yore was a place where a nice neighborhood man might ask a young girl to come to his house for milk and cookies. Imagine such a scene being judged anything but sinister these days."

Heffernan: "The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating."
Kelly: "What about Ernie and Bert? Two guys living in a basement apartment for 40 years with no signs of girlfriends is the kind of thing that raises eyebrows...."

Like we said. This doesn't constitute plagiarism per se. But it's lazy as hell.

Read the NYT piece in full

Son of Wilkes-Barre goes on to fame in media and academia

There should be a Northeastern Pennsylvania Journalism Hall of Fame for people who got out. Former Scranton Times reporter Jane Jacobs could be one. Sanford Ungar would be another. The W-B native has worked as a reporter and book author and host of National Public Radio's All Things Considered before taking over a small college in Baltimore. Today's Sun has a lengthy profile of the guy.

Times Leader sets world record for self-aggrandizement

Jesus. Where do you start? There's the relentless reminding of readers that the Times Leader loves Wilkes-Barre so much that it's giving away $100,000, $25 at a time. There's the over-the-top Web coverage -- one story, two video clips, three photo galleries. There's reporter Bill O'Boyle, whose "story" is the biggest wet kiss yet for the man who signs his paycheck, Richard Connor. And, finally, there is the lead art both online and above the fold: Connor blowing out birthday candles. This dude makes Allison Walzer look like the most humble motherfucker ever.

Times Shamrock weekly drops racy back-of-paper escort ads

Orlando Weekly, the Florida alt-weekly owned by the Lynetts, has dropped the "escort" ads from the back of the paper. Three Orlando Weekly staffers are facing prostitution-related charges after undercover cops allegedly placed prostitution ads in the paper. Question: What effect, if any, does this have on similar-looking ads in Electric City?