I guess Tom Benson was no longer available

When Tom died, the DuBoses figured they were running low on people to sell out to. (Oh who are we kidding, Clancy sold out a long time ago)  Luckily John Georges exists.

Gambit, New Orleans’ signature weekly news and entertainment paper, has been purchased by the parent company of The New Orleans Advocate.

Advocate owners John and Dathel Georges purchased the weekly from Margo and Clancy DuBos, native New Orleanians who have owned Gambit since 1991. Terms were not disclosed.

John Georges said the purchase was in line with his vision of preserving iconic Louisiana brands and creating a locally owned media company dedicated to traditional journalistic values, in print and online. Besides The Advocate, which they purchased in 2013, the Georges own the St. Tammany Farmer and weekly newspapers in Zachary and East and West Feliciana parishes. The Advocate is the state’s largest newspaper.

Anyway, in addition to this...

Do you love the buggy JavaScript ads that crash @theadvocateno ‘s ancient, jerry-rigged CMS? Well then you’ll *really* love those same buggy JavaScript ads crashing @The_Gambit ‘s ancient, jerry-rigged CMS.

— Newman (@helleaux_newman) April 9, 2018

... It is comforting to know that the Alt-Weekly home of "40 under 40" and music/nightlife listings and the College Student's Guide to New Orleans and various other signifiers of  youth-oriented liberal type content will be owned by the sometime politician who is upset about  the "Dangerous People On The Internet" who criticize him.  

Just think of how many floodwalls we could stuff with these

This is a recent article in The Atlantic by a local printmaker who came to own a collection of some 30,000 editions of New Orleans newspapers dating back to the 19th Century.

There were papers from the The Daily-Picayune dating back to 1888, some from the The Times-Democrat, and many more from the first decade and a half of The Times-Picayune,  which was created by the merger of the Daily-Picayune and the Times-Democrat in 1914. Reading a book on the history of the Picayune, I learned of Eliza Jane Nicholson, the first female proprietor of a major American newspaper. Much of the collection, it turned out, contains her innovative publishing legacy. So I named the archive after her: The Eliza Jane Nicholson Digital Newspaper Archive.

There's much more to this.  Check out the archive's website here. It had been in the news previously, but I'm sorry to say this is the first time I've read about it. It's a fascinating project.

I’ve recruited archivists, artists, curators, graphic designers, grant writers, media history experts, and am building a team of volunteers. We're designing prototypes that re-imagine this material for the modern market. Preserving an archive like is not enough. Today's technologies and analytical tools will allow us to revisit these newspapers and extract more meaning from them than was ever possible when they were first printed. 

It reminded me that I've got a little digital newspaper archive of my own going. It's come about kind of by accident but it's there nonetheless.  Over the better part of a decade I've been taking shapshots of newspapers from time to time.  My collection marks significant events such as:

Hurricanes approaching.. or "eyeing Louisiana" .. or ending a lull.







Prayers being answered



The Gambit getting smaller



Papers going to war



Certain special events being advertised



BTW: Rising Tide 9 is coming September 13.  This one looks to have a surprising amount of heavy substance. It's a great time with some OK people and terrific deal.  Sign up here.

"7th Ward Roosters" running wild



"Jeff" doing various things







There's more.  Not sure these are.. you know.. printmaker quality or anything but at least they are free to access.

Blake flaked

The "Blake Pontchartrain" column might be Gambit's most popular running feature. It's a weekly docent for a city that loves nothing better than reading about its own trivia.  The column can't be the easiest thing in the world to write. I'm sure the inbox is always full and the more interesting questions can require some extensive research.

But then presenting the results of that research shouldn't be too difficult. All you really have to do is point readers to where they can find more information.  Ideally this means citing sources which, as it turns out, may not have always happened. 

Over the weekend, a Gambit reader noticed that some recent Blake Pontchartrain columns contained passages that hewed closely to materials that were published elsewhere. In some cases, passages in the Blake columns were identical, or nearly identical, to the work of others.

So far the only specific examples of the plagiarism that have been made public are the ones noted in this Romenesko post.   It's worth pointing out that one is a case of some facts about Fort Pike copy/pasted from a state tourism website while the other is the definition of a word. So it's perhaps not the most scandalous lifting of original work the world has ever seen. But then this just raises the question, couldn't they insert a single "according to so and so" line in there somewhere and easily solve everyone's problem?

The other interesting fact about this is the "discoverer" of this scandal happens to be a Times-Picayune reporter. So it's worth remembering that as the cutbacks at the T-P have become the major media story of 2012-13, Gambit has provided the most thorough coverage of those events.

Not that any of that excuses plagiarism.  As an interested reader, I'd like to go back through the "Blake" archives and determine for myself if there's anything more egregious than the two examples of laziness highlighted in the Romenesko piece but Gambit has flushed them down a memory hole, at least for the time being. 

In any case, I hope this doesn't lead to the permanent discontinuation of the column. I know I'm not alone in saying it's one of my most anticipated weekly reads.

Robust arms race

Digital media technology faces off as NOLA Media Group's memory hole goes up against Gambit's wayback machine.

Failed "Alternative"

The New Orleans plutocrat consensus already has several media outlets which present us with its point of view. The Times-Picayune editorial page, WWL radio, New Orleans Magazine, everything and everyone in local TV news... I could go on. Suffice to say that the wealthy establishment or at least those who buy into the party line of the wealthy establishment of this city have ample airtime and print space with which to celebrate themselves and their agendas in this town. One would think the supposedly "alternative" weekly would endeavor to offer some semblance of counterpoint to all of that but one would be mistaken.

Irony is dead

Gambit kills Suspect-Device. Guess it wasn't edgy enough to keep up with the dark brooding stylings of Chris Rose.


Note: Link fixed. Sorry.

I've been too nice to Gambit lately

In fact, my next post will recommend two items from that paper. So it's only fair for me to say here that I could not possibly give less of a fuck about 40 social-climbing Yurps. Please can we do away with this annual embarrassment to everyone involved?

I'm gonna consider this Sunday my funday; My I-don't-have-to-run-day, if you will

Yesterday's RT4 was another success. A quick glance at the usual places this morning gives me the impression that people are waiting a while before trying to post comprehensive re-caps. I'm tired too and intend to spend my Sunday reading. I bought some great looking books yesterday but I won't get to that until I've finished picking through a likely-to-be disappointing T-P interview with the President, and a certain-to-be outrageous Best of New Orleans survey result.

Meanwhile, Leigh has collected some of the initial reaction on the RT blog here.

More later... but don't wait up.

This week in Gambit

Some time ago this site would periodically produce a "Gambit Preview" post consisting of whatever articles of interest the site author wanted to highlight from that week's Gambit which he had happened to read on either Sunday or Monday before the issue was made available online. For reasons that remain unclear, the tabloid's online and print publishing schedules remain oddly out of sync. But we no longer feel obligated to provide a "preview" post since the editor has made a habit of putting one of his own up on the Gambit's blog each week.

Except, again for reasons that remain unclear, no preview of this week's Gambit appeared on the blog site. After flirting briefly with the idea of canceling our subscription (the paper is free) and then organizing a boycott of Gambit's advertisers (alas, Green Parrot Nursery and Funky Monkey Vintage Clothing, I don't know how to quit you) we've decided instead to once again preview the paper ourselves... on Wednesday which, of course, only makes sense.

• Noah Bonaparte Pais writes about the long-awaited publication of Josh Neufeld's webcomic A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

  Now a hardcover graphic novel — courtesy of Pantheon Books, which also published Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical 2000 account of the Iranian Revolution — the 13-chapter volume is being held up as one of the definitive accounts of the catastrophe, both by the media and the story's subjects. Novelist Dave Eggers, who spent much of the same period researching and writing his own Katrina report, Zeitoun, called A.D. "one of the best-ever examples of comics reportage, and one of the clearest portraits of post-Katrina New Orleans yet published."

  
  
  Earlier this week, A.D. received an uneven review from Newsweek and gets a far more favorable treatment from the T-P's Susan Larson today. Neufeld will be signing copies of A.D. on Saturday at The Maple Street Book Shop from 1-3PM and at Octavia Books beginning at 3:30. On Sunday there is another signing scheduled at Beth's Books/Sound Cafe for 1 PM. Also this Saturday, Octavia Books will have copies of A.D. available for sale all day at the Rising Tide conference (more on this in a minute).



• The appropriately named Alex Woodward profiles local artist Lance "Varg" Vargas and his folk art creations made from recycled wood and found objects.

  Vargas moved to New Orleans in 2004 to find affordable housing following a graphic design gig at a newspaper in California.
  
  "I just said, 'I want to do it all myself,'" he says. "I'd rather make $8 an hour than $12 or $16 an hour working for someone else when you're just going to get let go." But he never takes himself too seriously.
  
  "It's asinine to me now to think, 'I'm going to take these chopped up pieces of wood, nail some stuff to it, spray-paint it and call it art, and go out projecting myself as an artist.'"
  
  His work — found at local art markets, galleries and amid street art vendors at Jackson Square — draws from folklore, music, anatomy textbooks, bottlecaps (Abita and Miller High Life), and voodoo. ("I'm not versed in voodoo or anything. It's voodoo-'inspired'. The voodoo people will get on your ass when you get something wrong.") Vargas, who writes his blog The Chicory (www.thechicory.com/blog), also promotes his art through his Web site (www.leveeland.com).

  
  Menckles and I are the proud possessors of a pair of Vargas originals we received earlier this year as wedding gifts. Here. I'll photograph one for you right now.
  
  
  
  Varg sells his work in Jackson Square on most Saturdays... weather permitting. It's the closest thing he's come to figuring out a decent "racket".



• On page 22 of your Gambit there is a full-page psychedelic-looking advertisement for Irvin Mayfield's "The Love Sessions" These are a series of shows Mr. Mayfield is playing next week at his club in the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Proceeds from these shows will go to benefit Unity for the Homeless, The New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, Boys Town Louisiana, The New Orleans Public Library, The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, and the LSU Health Sciences Center Department of Psychiatry. We applaud Mr. Mayfield's effort to put on these performances... so long as we don't have to listen to them. If you would like to support any of these worthy charitable concerns and can find some poor soul to palm your ticket off on you may purchase it here.



• David Winkler-Schmit previews this weekend's fourth annual Rising Tide Conference.
  

  Under normal circumstances, and even catastrophic events like Hurricane Katrina, the blogging community is a virtual one: It's not face-to-face, but screen-to-screen. That won't be the case this Saturday, Aug. 22, however, when New Orleans bloggers get together for their fourth annual conference, Rising Tide, with comedian and writer Harry Shearer as the featured speaker. The event takes place at the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center in Central City, and the main thrust is to provide and share information. It's not just for bloggers, but for anyone interested in New Orleans.
  
  "We're trying to morph from a conference that was heavily about blogging to one that is more about the city, its culture and its past, future and present," says Rising Tide organizer Peter Athas, who writes his own blog, Adrastos.

  
  
  For the record, Rising Tide has always been more about New Orleans than about blogging in my mind. The previous conferences have hosted discussions on flood control, education, the local literary scene, and of course, politics. All of this should be of interest to anyone who cares about the status and future of New Orleans. Winkler-Schmit explains a bit of the history in his article.
  
  

  By late 2005, local bloggers were finding each other. An Internet discussion group began, giving bloggers a chance to share tips and news. Someone suggested a conference, and Mark Moseley, aka Oyster, who writes Your Right Hand Thief spearheaded the effort with others, including Athas and Maitri Venkat-Ramani (Maitri's Vatul Blog). The inaugural Rising Tide conference was held Aug. 25-27, 2006, the weekend before the storm's first anniversary.
  
  "The Rising Tide Conference will be a gathering for all who wish to learn more and do more to assist New Orleans' recovery in the aftermath of the natural disasters of both Hurricane Katrina and Rita, the manmade disaster of the levee and floodwall collapses, and the incompetence of government on all levels," (Mark) Folse wrote on the first day of the conference.
  
  Though local bloggers organize these conferences and the central theme is New Orleans' recovery and future, Rising Tide isn't for bloggers only, nor just for locals. Since the first conference, there has been an effort to get the information to a wider audience through live blogging, YouTube and other new media. (George "Loki") Williams says he is promoting this year's event via Facebook and Twitter, two popular social media networks. Even if these efforts don't attract more attendees to the actual conference, it will create a permanent online record for anyone to access. Williams does, however, think this year's attendance could be the highest ever.

  
  
  This year's conference has adopted the theme "Sinking to New Heights" It examines the state of the city as the recovery era begins to transition toward the "new normal" whatever that might be.
  
  The agenda (schedule here) features a keynote by the aforementioned Harry Shearer, as well as presentations by NetSquared Nola and The New Orleans Institute. There will be a panel on New Orleans cultural folkways moderated by Mark Folse. Mark writes,

  I am working with NOLA Slate on a panel on the state of New Orleans culture, with panelists who will speak on the state of parading, food and music culture in the city in Year Four after the Federal Flood. Speaking on parading culture will be Edward Buckner of The Porch Seventh Ward Culture Organization and the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club Our food panelist will be Susan Tucker, editor of New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories. Our music panelist will be Bruce Raeburn of the Hogan Jazz Archive and author of New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History.

  
  
  Holly Scheib will moderate a health care discussion. Leigh describes the panel here.

  The health care panel at this year's Rising Tide conference will explore this sad fact of post 8-29 living, as well as many other related subjects. Moderated by public health Ph.D. candidate and local blogger Holly Scheib, the participants will be: Cecile Tebo, crisis unit coordinator for the NOPD and one of New Orleans magazine's Top Ten Female Achievers; Dr Elmore Rigamer, medical director of Catholic Charities; and Sean Fitzmorris, local EMT and administrator of New Orleans EMTs Sound Off!(CORRECTION: Fitzmorris will, in fact, be unable to participate)

  
  
  Peter Athas will once again moderate the always entertaining politics panel this year featuring, Gambit publisher Clancy Dubos, cartoonist and radio commentator John Slade, Louisiana politics blogger Lamar White Jr, and writer Ethan Brown.
  
  Additionally, the organizers of this year's event have been prevailed upon to allow a panel on the local sports scene.
  
  Panelists include:
  
  Alejandro de los Rios reporter/blogger for the Gambit
  
  Leo McGovern Editor/publisher of ANTIGRAVITY Magazine which is the only local alternative music zine I know of that features a regular sports column. Leo is also a character in Josh Neufeld's After the Deluge (see above)
  
  Chris Wiseman (AKA Mr. Clio, AKA Dilly, AKA Lee De Fleur) Long-time local blogger, ever-enthusiastic member of the Black and Gold Patrol and locally famous Crescent City Classic participant.
  
  The big-picture discussion will be about the role of sports in the local cultural fabric and how that has helped sustain civic identity in the years after the flood. The rest, I'm sure, will be a knuckle-headed argument about the upcoming football season. It should be a fun way to finish the day. Unfortunately they've got the same guy running it who moderated last year's journalism panel which everybody hated.... so keep your fingers crossed.
  
  If you're interested in attending Rising Tide this year, you can still register at risingtidenola.net/

Thanks to the Gambit for covering these stories this week. Let's see if we can get them online faster next time.

We should pay attention

At some point in the very recent past, it seems that the The Gambit finally settled on calling itself simply the Gambit. Which, while less amusing to type, is probably the way to go. When was the big announcement and how did I miss it?

This week's The Gambit complaint *

By now most The Gambit readers should be familiar with editor Kevin Allman's affinity for pun-making. Or.. at least... most of us have deduced this from following Allman's posts to the The Gambit blog for a while and from noting a significant increase in the frequency of punned headlines atop The Gambit features and articles since the advent of his editorship there. (Perhaps this is a coincidence. I don't know, it's just something the readers have noticed) In any event, concerned The Gambit readers who follow and care about such things were disappointed this week to find Allman's cover story.

The article itself, on the long lonely saga of Louisiana's thankfully underutilized Covenant Marriage law, is both informative and hilarious. Not to mention timely since, it points out several times that none other than Governor PBJ (so much in the news this week for his earnest and forthright style of political leadership and moral example) was among the first... and still few... to take advantage of the covenant option. ** Jindal and his wife Supriya now enjoy the blessings of the impossibility of no-fault divorce.

Unfortunately, despite all this, we find ourselves forced to deduct points from Allman for failing to title his feature, "Arc of the Covenant Marriage". We've come to expect better.


* We reserve the right to levy further complaints about this week's The Gambit regarding "Rex Duke's" atrocious reviews of this year's Carnival parades. But such complaints would have to accompany our own Carnival wrap-up post which is itself currently sprawling out in the drafts folder and may not see the light of day without much much further work.

** This reminds me of an election day post that appeared here on the Yellow Blog waaaaay back in 2003 when we lodged the following complaints against then-candidate Jindal.

1) He believes he has personally confronted Satan. 2) He wants to teach creationism in public schools. 3) He used to work in the Bush Administration. 4) He and his wife have a covenant marriage. 5) All of this is downright nutty.

Eventually it all comes back.

Unnacceptable

Despite this Sunday post promising an "afternoon delivery" I still do not find this week's The Gambit in any of the regular Uptown distribution points.

How am I supposed to horde hoard (I am a fricking idiot) extra copies for the library if the coffee shops aren't adequately supplied by Monday morning?

Gambit's gambit

It's a banner week for New Orleans's formerly "needed alternative". (The annoying "Because New Orleans needs an alternative" tagline is thankfully no longer in use.) In addition to a laudable decision to honor Karen Gadbois as one of its New Orleanians of the Year, Gambit Weekly sorry The Gambit has undertaken a total redesign of its weekly print edition. There are several noteworthy changes most of which I like and some of which have me scratching my head a bit.

First of all, the look of the paper has been significantly scaled down from the high-production, oversized, near-magazine style format you see here on the left to the more understated pamphlet sort of thing on the right.



I like this change. In the past, I have often criticized the Gambit as a sort of glorified vehicle for targeted hipster boutique advertising. And since a smaller, lighter looking paper means smaller, lighter advertising pull-outs, the new format can be seen as a small symbolic step away from the dress shop abyss. The new Gambit has the look and feel of a grittier, simpler, but somehow more serious paper. It's very punk rock.

This is not to say that the alternative weekly has magically shed itself of the constraints within which it operates. The Gambit and its readership will always encapsulate the fears and yearnings of the so-called latte swilling, white, hip, pseudo-liberal hipster to one degree or another. But even on that limited playing surface, there's plenty of room available to run a decent newspaper. And, for what it is, Gambit manages to be a pretty decent paper... with some persistent flaws.

The new print format slightly reduces the space devoted to in-depth arts and entertainment coverage. However, this comes at a moment when Gambit has greatly improved the searchable online event listings on its website and has launched a companion blog that theoretically provides ample space for much of what gets left out of the print edition. I understand the print and online Gambits reach different and differently sized audiences. I guess deciding whether to relegate certain items to the blog is sort of the new above-or-below the fold. I, for one, appreciate the fact that the Gambit blog features sports coverage. And, of course, if you're looking for more arts and entertainment, there are excellent alternatives to the alternative available.

The food coverage does not appear to have suffered. And it would have been an unforgivable mistake if it had.

The new crossword is fun... but I still do the one in the T-P because it's usually easy enough to finish during my lunch coffee.

And, of course, there are few better ways to apprehend the je-ne-sais-'tard of Louisiana politics than through regular installments of Greg Peters' Suspect-Device cartoons.

The local affairs and political reporting is always useful in one way or another and at times is very very good.... even if we still have to put up with Clancy Dubos.

On the other hand, I find myself once again scratching my head at something Jeremy Alford has written. BSJD has already posted on this but it strikes me as peculiar that anyone who reports regularly about the politics of Louisiana hurricane recovery would have missed this Salon piece... or at least not be aware of its contents. Keep in mind, this isn't the first time Alford has baffled us in this fashion.

Finally, I can't help but notice that although the Gambit has retained its weekly "Bouquets and Brickbats" feature it has done away with the accompanying bouquet and brickbat clip-art replacing it with stylized plus and minus signs. Florists and masons everywhere demand an explanation.

Grown-up media

Surreal is one way to describe it.

Congratualations, Kevin Allman

Because New Orleans's "needed alternative" needs a good guy.

Outrage

The most egregious offense committed by the incompetent mob who organized (to use the term loosely) this year's Rising Tide conference has yet to be touched upon by any of the critics I've read yet. Sure the education panel was hopelessly biased against privatization, the politics panel was a stooge platform for Jason Williams to make a campaign speech, and we all know that media discussing media can only amount to a pointless, "tragi-comic circle jerk"

These things are obvious... well... obvious to anyone who isn't a biased, narcissistic, political shilling RT organizer, that is. But worse than any of this is the fact that the fucktards in charge of doling out the "Ashley" awards at the end of the day could have been so blind to the true champion of the local blogoshere. While the RT Circle Jerk committee was wasting its time acknowledging this inspirational rhetorician, activist, and philosopher, or this one-man scourge of the ACOE, and this tireless civic watchdog/gadfly/media queen the one blogger truly deserving of the title "Best Blog of 2008" was utterly snubbed.

Fletcher Mackel, on behalf of all the rest of the hapless children who worked on the Rising Tide conference this year, I would like to extend my sincere apologies. Thankfully the enlightened readers of Gambit Weekly have corrected this injustice through their overwhelming support for your work at "Offsides with Fletcher Mackel" in this year's "Best of New Orleans" poll. We'll try to get it right next time.

Worse than a buffoon. A businessman.

Dambala has more (much more in fact) on photographer Bernardo Wade's background. Bernardo is believed responsible for organizing the "leadership award" banquet planned for Mayor Ray Nagin next weekend.

Meanwhile, tomorrow's Gambit will feature a Clancy Dubos column which goes a bit over-the-top, perhaps, and compares Nagin's sham award with the many medals Idi Amin gave himself. I like the column but I also think that comparing Nagin to a monster like Amin (even in jest) can be read as a bit shrill.

Besides the analogy misses the mark. While Amin's ceremonies play as the acts of a delusional buffoon, events like this "Excellence in Recovery" party are a much more subtle form of institutional control. An event like this is more like a company banquet or staff party where everyone is assembled for the implied purpose of demonstrating the social order of the office. Often there is the pretext of minor business. A new policy is announced, perhaps. Or the CEO makes a speech. Or... in many cases... meaningless awards are distributed. Often the employees in attendance are told that management always "values their input" but also that "it's important that we all act as a team".

It's a tried and true corporate method of soft bullying. It reminds everyone that disagreeing with the decisions of those in charge would be an inappropriate breach of the sense of camaraderie and "teamwork" established by the phony party. And since everyone's reputation and/or job depends on it, they end up just gritting their teeth and applauding through the event.

Seeing a "businessman" like Nagin who ran in 2002 as a "reformer" with "business credentials" (not to mention the endorsement of Gambit) involved in this kind of soft-bullying phoniness only reaffirms that we are indeed "running the government like a business". Comparing Nagin to an evil buffoon like Amin obscures that point... although it is revelatory of what the Dragonslaying types like Clancy always imagine they are up against.


Update: Please see also the comment thread below Clancy's post for several interesting points from Carmen re: Stewart Juneau. And also note that Clancy has managed to work Rising Tide III into his schedule. If this excites you, now would be a good time to register.

Words and the things they mean

Below, I have reproduced long passages from the text of T-P reporter Jan Moller's 4th grade Social Studies "current events" assignment titled "Jindal hacks budget earmarks" and interspersed it with Clancy Dubos's actual reporting and analysis of the very same event titled "Veto Showdown Coming" It makes a fun exercise in comparative literature. Moller's project is on the front page of today's Times-Picayune. It appears above the fold and is accompanied by a photo of a pleasantly smiling Governor PBJ. Dubos's piece is a post on the Gambit blog.

Moller:

BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal used his line-item veto authority to cut more than $16 million in proposed state spending Monday, killing hundreds of earmarks added by legislators for projects in their districts and signaling a new aggressiveness in dealing with the state budget.

The 258 vetoes in House Bill 1, the state's nearly $30 billion operating budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year, is more than double the combined number of line-item vetoes in the past 12 years. Coupled with Jindal's veto of $9.3 million in spending from a previous budget bill, they suggest the new governor is serious about curbing a cherished legislative tradition of sprinkling the budget with items for constituents, often with little or no oversight.

So right here in the first two paragraphs of a front page article, we have Moller swooning over PBJ's "aggressive" stance toward legislators' "cherished" unsupervised "sprinkling of the budget with items" Moller also makes certain to point out that Jindal has even managed to set a new statistical record for aggressive daddying of the budget. I'll bet those numbers would make a neat addition to next week's "Viewpoint" page.

Meanwhile....
Dubos:

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s “record-breaking” 258 vetoes seem contrived to give him some cheap headlines while actually having a miniscule impact on the overall state budget. The political backlash from lawmakers, however, could be huge. There is open discussion among lawmakers — including some of Jindal’s top legislative allies — about the possibility of a veto override session.

THE CONTRIVANCE — A press release from Jindal’s office proudly proclaims in the first paragraph: “Governor Jindal’s 258 vetoes in HB1are more than double the vetoes for all the state’s previous 12 budgets combined.”

Just in case we didn’t get the point, the release continues in the very next paragraph: “Previously, Governor Kathleen Blanco had 39 line item vetoes in her house budget bills during her entire four years in office. Governor Mike Foster had 81 line item vetoes in house budget bills during his term, and over the last 12 years combined, there was a total of 120 line item vetoes in state budget bills.”

A key question with regard to Jindal’s vetoes is whether he achieved that “record” number by accident or design. A very knowledgeable source tells me that Jindal’s Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell asked Senate Secretary Glenn Koepp’s office before the vetoes were announced how many vetoes the last two governors had exercised. That pretty much tells us what Team Jindal’s priorities were in this little exercise: headlines, not fiscal accountability. It’s all about the resumé, folks.

Among the other highlighted items in that passage, please notice the way Clancy actually cites the Governor's own press release as a source before analyzing its content. Moller merely reports it as a neat fact.

Moller:

While critics have long derided such earmarks as pork-barrel spending, defenders say they pay for critical needs that otherwise wouldn't be financed. Gone is money targeted for museums, church groups, festivals, youth programs, nonprofit groups and economic development initiatives, including millions of dollars for the New Orleans area.

"For too long, state government has spent and spent, with little regard for taxpayers' money," Jindal said. ". . . We are striving for an efficient state government that operates transparently, and wisely invests taxpayer money in state priorities."

But the vetoes could also serve to deepen the wound that Jindal opened when he killed a pay raise for legislators last month after promising lawmakers he would stay out of the matter.

Here Moller acknowledges that funding for some vaguely defined programs in the New Orleans area are affected but makes sure to frame this as a delicate and balanced dispute between "critics" and "defenders" of "earmarks" Moller then gives Jindal the last word in this dispute before wrapping it all up by reminding us how Jindal saved us all from the very scary pay raise.

Meanwhile, Clancy, continues to provide us with actual information.

Dubos:

THE NUMBERS — Jindal is focusing on the number of items vetoed perhaps to draw attention away from the overall fiscal impact — or lack of impact — of his line-item vetoes. When he talks about 258 vetoes, it sounds as though he took a buzz saw to the budget. However, $16.14 million out of a state budget of $29.5 billion is barely 1/20th of 1 percent of the operating budget. Put another way, it’s less than 6/10,000 of the state budget — the proverbial spit in the ocean.

To be sure, Jindal sliced some questionable “NGOs” from the budget. At the same time, he gutted the budgets of Boys and Girls Clubs statewide, not to mention money for the Jazz Fest, several YMCAs and YWCAs (including the Dryades YMCA, which takes kids off some of the meanest streets in New Orleans), the homeless in New Orleans and several senior citizens’ programs.

THE IMPACT — Jindal appeared to spread the pain statewide. Still, more than $6 million of $16 million in cuts come from the greater New Orleans area (Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and the Northshore). The real impact, however, will be measured in unfunded local social service programs that affect everyday people.

In once case, Jindal cut operating money for a local senior citizens program that had been funded by the state for three decades. The state had already spent roughly $1 million to rebuild the senior citizens’ community center — then Jindal cut the money they needed to move in later this summer.

One of the biggest items that Jindal cut was $500,000 for the Jazz & Heritage Festival. According to one source, the administration felt that the Jazz Fest was “too local” to satisfy the governor’s “statewide or substantial regional impact” criteria. Huh? The Jazz Fest too local? Apparently the governor has never been to the Fest … or looked into its financial impact.

Moller's project does not mention any of the affected items by name. Not even the Jazzfest. It allows that some of the money "would have paid for things such as playground equipment" but makes sure to attribute that to Sen. John Alario, D-Westwego.

Both Moller and Dubos go on to discuss the likelihood of a legislative veto session. The analysis there also differs greatly and includes conflicting reports on the possible intentions of Senate President Joel Chiasson. I'm not going to quote from these sections because 1) You should go read the rest of Clancy's post and 2) I think I've made my point.

Dubos concludes:

No matter what the outcome, this will look good on his resumé — like so many of his contrivances.

And given what we've seen from the T-P, Jindal will not lack for aid in padding that resume.

Note: The print edition of the T-P also attributes Ed Anderson on its current events project.

Update: Don't miss BSJD's comments... which he has presented as a full post here where he looks at the specifics of which political foes Jindal may be acting against with these vetoes.

Also: more fun follow-up from Clancy here.

Upperdate: Moller and Anderson take another look at the possibility of a veto session in this morning's T-P

Uppestdate: Clancy Dubos also takes another look at the possible veto session adding some of the patronage angle suggested by BSJD.

Whatever you do, don't drink the " free Pepto"

Varg reviews the Gambit's big list of bars.

They make comments

Some unruly folks are giving Clancy a hard time over his paper's increasingly relevant endorsement of Bobby Jindal. Apparently (if Sam Winston's response is any indication), it's the Gambit's position that there's really no reason for anyone to keep harping on something the paper did way back in the dark ages of "LAST OCTOBER". But, as I've explained previously, reserving critical reporting and commentary that could just as easily been done before the election until a time when it is far less useful to the readership is... well it isn't "Ahead of the game" whatever it is.

Of course, we're all glad to see Gambit bring more of a "Mike Tyson" than "Pee Wee Herman" approach (to borrow Clancy's inexplicably 80's themed terminology) to its reporting of late. But the mere fact that it is capable of doing this makes us even more suspicious of the embarrasing Jindal hagiography it displayed during the election.