Acid pens: From cops to Copps…

Some 25 years ago, Clint Eastwood played rogue cop Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry, a *** 1/2 movie based on a novel by Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink.

In this violent piece of Hollywood cinema, he uttered the memorable line: “Go ahead, make my day.”

Last weekend, The Star’s Patrick Corrigan borrowed it for an uncharacteristically abrasive Sunday editorial page cartoon that rubbed quite a few raw nerves.

You remember the one. It shows a cop — no police force identified — in a Crown Victoria cruiser. He dangles a handgun from the …

Shucks! Oysters are fine…

Let’s sing a song of glory to Themistocles O’Shea,

Who ate a dozen oysters on the second day of May.

– Stoddard King, The Man Who Dared

Those who are squeamish about oysters or disgusted by those who eat the bivalve molluscs in an uncooked state are excused today. The oyster rite is not for everyone.

But registered dietitian and nutrition writer Denise Beatty recently went a step further by advising LifeLine readers: “Don’t eat raw molluscs (oysters, clams, mussels).”

Why not?

The reason Beatty gave was vibrio vulnificus, a bacterium found in raw oysters, …

Like it or not, dark corners must be explored…

Editor’s Note: Last Sunday about 1,500 people came to The Star’s One Yonge headquarters to protest the newspaper’s coverage of Polish history.

Serious charges of biased reporting, perpetuation of myths, Holocaust denial and discrimination were levelled against the paper.

Hanna Sokolski, president of the Canadian Polish Congress (Toronto District) demanded an apology from The Star and several copies of the newspaper were burned in protest.

While no apology was given, The Star said the lines of communication remained open.

After the protest, The Star’s publisher asked ombud Don Sellar — who is in charge of …

Editors offer advice to newsrooms: Favre, Overholser address the industry’s problems

By M.L. Stein
Editor & Publisher © 1996

There’s nothing wrong with newspapers that a greater identification with readers’ needs and concerns couldn’t cure, two editors told their peers.

And it also wouldn’t hurt to elevate reporters’ pay scales and recruit writers with solid knowledge of such issues as tax policies, health care, child care and social security, it was added.

Gregory Favre, executive editor of the Sacramento Bee, and Geneva Overholser, who left recently as editor of the Des Moines Register and will become ombudsman at the Washington Post this month, spoke at a joint meeting of the California …

Reading into what you read…

A goodly number of the more than 200 reader comments to this office weekly support a newspaper-as-Rorschach-test theory: That is, what you see in the paper says as much about you as about the paper.

Take ideological leanings. Last week was a good week for sighting them, since The Post itself reported (Monday) another survey indicating that journalists tend to be liberal. A number of readers noted that as they cited objectivity failures. One decried the headline on Thursday’s front-page story looking ahead to two major Whitewater developments June 17 (a Senate committee report and …