Ïîïóëÿðíûå ñîîáùåíèÿ

воскресенье

John S. Carroll, a former editor of The Baltimore Sun and The Los Angeles Times, which he led to 13 Pulitzer Prizes in his short tenure — has died at age 73.

The LA Times describes Carroll as "a courageous editor [who had an] instinct for the big story and unrelenting focus" said he died today in Lexington, Ky., of Creutzfeldt-Jakob, a degenerative brain disease.

In his long career, Carroll also spent time at The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Lexington Herald-Leader and The Baltimore Sun.

He joined the Sun as a reporter and covered the Vietnam War for the newspaper. Later, during his time as the paper's editor, it "won two Pulitzer Prizes for an investigation into the dangers of shipbreaking and a series about a major league umpire's children who were dying of a genetic disease," according to the Sun.

"For a publisher, John was a dream to work with, always trying to improve the paper," Michael E. Waller, publisher of the Sun from 1997 to 2002, was quoted by the newspaper as saying. "He was a genius at spotting small stories that he thought might hide bigger truths. He'd assign a reporter to check it out and often would wind up with a significant investigative project, such as the dangerous ship-salvaging business."

The 13 Pultizers the Times won in his five years there compare to a total of eight won by the paper in the whole of the 1990s.

According to The Associated Press, his departure at the LA Times "came amid increasing tensions over newsroom budget cuts and the paper's direction with corporate owner, the Tribune Company."

"He received a standing ovation from the staff when he announced his resignation, and the Times' then-publisher Jeff Johnson told The Associated Press that Carroll left behind an 'extraordinary legacy of journalistic excellence.'"

Baltimore

Newspapers

Los Angeles Times

obits

Kathy Griffin has spent her career going for the joke. The comedian has developed a style that eviscerates celebrities, while sharing delightfully bizarre stories that could only happen in Hollywood.

Along the way, she's won fans who feel she tells it like it is ... and enemies who think she goes too far.

On her new tour, called "Like A Boss," Griffin will be traveling to 80 cities between June and December. And, she tells NPR's Rachel Martin, no topics are off-limits — even Caitlyn Jenner.

"In fact, it's all I can do to not just talk two hours about Caitlyn alone," Griffin says.

Interview Highlights

On how to poke fun at sensitive subjects, like transgender issues

Here's how you do it. I called my friends in the community — and you know, I've got all the awards. I've got the Human Rights Campaign Lifetime award, the GLAAD, I've gone canvassing — like, don't talk to me about the LGBTs, these are my peeps. So the terminology has gone from, of course, back in the day, the F-word, which was never cool; then it was "homosexuals" and then "gays," and so I'm used to the names and the letters changing, and that's fine.

What I find amusing is when there are essays going around the Twitterverse telling people that they are transphobic. And so I started looking into, like, OK, what is, as of today — because this is changing by the minute — what is and isn't transphobic? But you wanna have fun with it. And by the way, Bruce Jenner, when Bruce was Bruce, said to Diane Sawyer, the first line of that interview — "You know, Diane, the most important thing is that we keep a sense of humor about this."

And I took that very seriously. I am very much keeping a sense of humor about this. Because you have to!

Related NPR Stories

Kathy Griffin's Life: All D-List, Even This Interview

On whether her idea about what's funny has changed over time

You know, things change, and they evolve, like the world does. For example, if you were to look at my body of work, I guarantee you there's one of my old specials where referring to the gay community, I might refer to myself as an "F-word hag." OK? And over time, you go, "All right, I know more than I knew; that community has changed. It's not cool. If gay men wanted to call each other the F-word I couldn't care less." I personally made the choice to go, "You know what, I'm not gonna say that anymore."

On whether celebrities are fair game, and why Oprah hates her

Celebrities are more than fair game, but I will tell you, I tend to go for celebrities that don't have a sense of humor, that are doing really really well. You know, I'm always going to make fun of, obviously, people like Ryan Seacrest and Oprah. And Oprah hates me, but Ryan Seacrest and I are actually friends now. ...

I would suggest that Oprah does not have a good sense of humor about herself. Oprah has an incredible life. I mean, she won. OK, honey? You won. So take a joke now and again! I'm laughing at when you do My Favorite Things, and you choose gifts that you feel are essential, but especially when you do military families, and gave them various kinds of truffle and truffle oil — I find that amusing. And I will point that out.

On a 2010 joke where she mocked Bristol Palin's weight gain to a crowd of soldiers

Griffin: Tell me what's factually incorrect about that joke? I'm sorry, this is a young woman who has gay-bashed and it is fair game now to ...

Martin: So it's retribution?

Griffin: Yes! Yes. Do not come after the LGBTs without thinking that Mrs. Kathy is gonna give you an earful. There's the big academic background for that one.

On embracing the "boos" that audience gave her

Bring it! Look, after having performed in Iraq and Afghanistan, you really think, like, these people were shocked? I actually learned it from my good friend Joan Rivers, who truly was fearless. You can't hold back! You gotta go for the joke. And also, the way military folks talk to each other is a, let's just say, no-holds-barred situation.

On whether she could always have handled a booing crowd that way

No. I'm so glad you asked me that, because it takes decades of being in the trenches and in the clubs and the theaters and all over — it takes decades of being a woman, alone with a microphone, and it's all on you. We're a pretty small club, you know, women that just are out there alone. I mean, I've never had some big producer back me up. I've never had a Lorne Michaels.

It's just me, girl. I'm out there trying jokes, many times for the first time, sometimes in front of 10,000 people, sometimes in front 1,500, sometimes a casino, sometimes the Kennedy Center, sometimes Carnegie, sometimes a performing arts center in Roanoke — you know, that's how it goes.

stand-up comedy

In downtown Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, Nelson Armeto and his brothers run a seafood restaurant called Pisces. Like other businesses owners in Juarez, they met with trouble beginning in 2008, when the drug cartels began demanding a monthly extortion fee.

"We received calls telling us we had to pay a quota, otherwise we'd get the business burned down, or a car passing by would be shooting up the place," he says. "They even threatened kidnapping us and even sometimes killing the employees."

With narcotraficante threats day and night, most people just stopped going out in Juarez.

"The fear, the terror, not a soul on the streets," recalls longtime Pisces patron Velia Contreras.

The city has suffered decades of violence, as hundreds of women working in factories there were murdered in the 1990s. Then came violent turf wars between drug cartels.

At the height of the violence in 2010, the official toll in Juarez was more than 3,000 killings. Many restaurants and clubs closed down or moved across the border to El Paso. The once-thriving nightlife ground to a halt.

But now, people are once again partying in Juarez.

i

The Mariachi Imperial serenades the crowd at the renowned Kentucky Club in Juarez. Frequented in the past by Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and a pantheon of Mexican movie stars and boxers, the club managed to stay open during the recent years of violence. Mandalit Del Barco/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Mandalit Del Barco/NPR

The Mariachi Imperial serenades the crowd at the renowned Kentucky Club in Juarez. Frequented in the past by Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and a pantheon of Mexican movie stars and boxers, the club managed to stay open during the recent years of violence.

Mandalit Del Barco/NPR

After a few years of fear, Armeto says, he and his friends became numb to the violence. They decided to start going out on the town like they used to.

"YOLO," he says. "You only live once. It's kind of a religion where you go out and each day you live most you can, so if you don't have a memory that day, it's a wasted day."

"So let's go," I tell him.

This is something I definitely wouldn't have done a few years ago. But with the official death toll down to 434 last year, it seems safer.

With Armeto and his party posse, we head out to Avenida Juarez, just blocks from the border crossing. It's now dotted with bars and clubs — some new, others newly reopened. The oldest and most famous, the Kentucky Club, lost business but managed to stay open.

Related NPR Stories

Borderland: Dispatches From The U.S.-Mexico Boundary

Parallels

On The Mend, But Wounds Of Violence Still Scar Juarez

Latin America

In Mexico, Indiscriminate Violence Shatters Lives

NPR News Investigations

Mexico's Drug War: A Rigged Fight?

Latin America

Grief, Rage Fuel Juarez Mothers' Search For Justice

Music Articles

Narcocorridos: Ballads Of The Mexican Cartels

Music Articles

AK-47s, Accordions And Angels Of Death: Narcocorridos Hit The Big Screen

Aurora Silva and her band, Mariachi Imperial, are performing covers of hometown favorite Juan Gabriel. The club is so packed we have to squeeze past the band to get to the bar for a margarita, which locals boast was invented here.

This is the bar where Marilyn Monroe is said to have famously ordered a round for everyone to celebrate her divorce from Arthur Miller. Frank Sinatra used to party here. So did a lot of famous Mexican movie stars and boxers.

Now that Juarez is once again a party town, I bump into Juan Fernandez, a member of Colectivo Wagon, an artist collective.

"I don't know if the city's less or more violent," he says. "But what I do know is I'm not afraid anymore. Not afraid of being here, of walking to my house. Probably two or three years ago, it was different."

No one can say for sure why violence diminished. There are lots of theories: One cartel gained control. The local police became militarized. The violence just moved on to a different part of Mexico.

Next, we head to Tres Mentiras, on another avenue that is once again alive at night. Live bands can only play traditional, brass-based banda music. It's now illegal in the state of Chihuahua for narcocorrido — or drug ballad — bands to go onstage with AK-47s, singing about the exploits of the drug lords.

On our way out, we pass a tough-looking private security guard with an automatic rifle, something you see a lot in Juarez. That may be another reason people feel safer going out, though all the weaponry is unnerving.

Before the night is over, we hit up four more clubs playing electronica and hip hop. We see teenagers from El Paso, college students from all over the world, and many, like Nelson Armeto and his friends, who just want to party like it's 2007.

But Armeto says they do have one fear: getting stopped by the police.

Police bribes — the mordida — is a tradition that began long before the narco wars.

"They are looking for every minor infraction. I mean, they are going to try to bribe us," he says. "Every time we go out, that's the No. 1 concern we have."

Cuidad Juarez

Mexico's drug wars

Mexico

Foo Fighters lead singer Dave Grohl fell off a stage during a concert in Goteborg, Sweden — but went to the hospital and was back to finish the gig.

In videos of the incident, a seemingly calm Grohl, tells the crowd at Ullevi Stadium: "I think I really broke my leg."

"I'm going to go to hospital. I'm going to fix my leg. And then I'm going to come back," he says.

After a visit to a doctor, Grohl — the drummer in Nirvana before Kurt Cobain's death — "was carried back on stage on a stretcher with his right foot bandaged, and continued the concert on crutches. Grohl told the crowd he wouldn't leave the stage unless given orders by a doctor to do so," The Associated Press writes.

Thank you Gothenburg. That was amazing. pic.twitter.com/BXvuxIfVEv

— Foo Fighters (@foofighters) June 12, 2015

Later, however, the band issued a statement:

"While the full extent of Dave's injuries are still being determined, it was confirmed at a post-show hospital visit that he sustained at least one fracture.

"As a result Foo Fighters have been forced to cancel their June 14 appearance at the Pinkpop Festival as well as their June 16 show at the AFG Arena in St. Gallen, Switzerland."

Music

Blog Archive