By Richard Lee
When it comes to politics, New Yorkers mirror national patterns, differing on most public policy issues.
But when the topic is baseball, the state’s residents are in agreement.
According to a March 28 Siena Research Institute poll, nearly twice as many respondents (40%) identified as Yankees fans than Mets fans (21%). Seven percent were fans of other teams, and 29% were not fans of any team.
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By Richard Lee
Motion pictures such as La Bamba, The Buddy Holly Story, The Doors, Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody tell the stories of some of rock’n’roll’s most influential artists.
In these films and other rock’n’roll biopics, audiences see individuals growing into celebrity and coping with all that fame and fortune brings – the good as well as the bad.
What audiences do not see are the issues entertainers confront when they grow old and struggle to remain successful and relevant in an industry whose biggest stars often are its youngest.
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By Richard Lee
Last week, CNN reported that Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been receiving media training from Mandy Grunwald, a political consultant and media advisor.
Outside of the political and media worlds, Grunwald is not a household name. But in 1992 she was instrumental in a strategic decision that altered the dynamics between politicians and the press.
Continue readingBy Richard Lee
Patricia Kennealy-Morrison was one of journalism’s first female rock critics and the author of numerous books, including a memoir about her relationship with Doors lead singer Jim Morrison and two fiction series — one science fiction/fantasy; the other, a collection of murder mystery novels.
And the time she spent studying journalism at St. Bonaventure University in the 1960s played an influential role in her career.
“Russell Jandoli, then head of the department, was a role model and a teacher in the true sense of the word,” Kennealy-Morrison wrote in a blog post several years ago. “He taught me how to think the story like a reporter and feel the story like a reader and write the story like a witness on oath and edit the story like a hanging judge. Without his influence, I would still have become a writer and editor, but not the writer and editor I became because of him.”
Kennealy-Morrison died earlier this month at the age of 75.
“She loved St. Bonaventure, and she loved Dr. Jandoli,” Lee Coppola, retired dean of what is now the university’s Jandoli School of Communication, recalled.
As dean, Coppola brought Kennealy-Morrison to campus to work with journalism students, and the two developed a long friendship.
“She was such a fantastic erudite woman who had all kinds of stories,” he said.
Kennealy-Morrison attended St. Bonaventure from 1963 to 1965 and then transferred to Harpur College (now SUNY Binghamton), where she earned a B.A. in English literature in 1967.
She joined Jazz & Pop magazine as a writer in 1968 and eventually became editor-in-chief. While working as editor-in-chief, she interviewed Jim Morrison. They developed a relationship, and in 1970 they exchanged vows in a Celtic handfasting ceremony.
Years later, Kennealy-Morrison’s religious practices brought her to St. Bonaventure’s attention when she told a New York Post columnist that her religious practices were influenced by early Celtic mythology that she learned about from materials in the university’s library. According to Sister Margaret Carney, who at the time was the university’s president, an alumnus wrote “a blistering letter” who took offense at the departure from traditional Catholic ways.
Carney decided to learn more about Kennealy-Morrison and asked Coppola to try to contact her. Coppola reached out to the columnist, who declined to share Kennealy-Morrison’s contact information but did offer to relay a message.
“Three minutes later she called,” Coppola said. “She was all excited that someone at St. Bonaventure was interested. We had a wonderful conversation about her two years at St. Bonaventure.”
Carney, who had a trip New York on her schedule, wrote to Kennealy-Morrison and arranged to meet her in the city.
“We met over coffee, and we just hit it off,” Carney said, noting that their conversation focused on common interests such as Celtic literature, not on Morrison and the time she spent with the Doors.
The conversation led to an invitation for Kennealy-Morrison to visit St. Bonaventure to speak about her career and work with journalism students.
“From that first visit, Patricia developed friendships with several of us at Bona’s,” Carole McNall, an assistant professor in the Jandoli School, said. “We didn’t get to see her in person too often but stayed in touch online via email and social media.”
Kathy Boser, administrative assistant in the Jandoli School, said Kennealy-Morrison donated several of her books to the school, along with a large jeweled cross that hangs outside the dean’s office.
“She shared a genuine love for our area, for St. Bonaventure University’s journalism program and its founder Dr. Jandoli,” Boser said. “She credited him for helping to develop her writing skills, as well as her being ‘the eternal proofreader,’ which she reminded me of just earlier this month when I had inadvertently used the word tic for tick.”
Boser’s daughter Beth also kept in contact with Kennealy-Morrison via social media.
“I will definitely miss her comments and am now picturing her and Jim dancing the night away,” she said. “I hope somehow, as she once requested, that her ashes can be spread at Merton’s Heart, which was one of her favorite places.”
Kennealy-Morrison’s bond with St. Bonaventure also includes women she knew while she was a student at the university. Kathleen Brady said Kennely, as she spelled her name back then, made an immediate impression when they met.
“Shoulder-length hair fell down across one half of her face, and cigarette smoke veiled the other,” Brady, an author, said. “Whoever she was, she seemed very sophisticated, very Greenwich Village, and somewhat intimidating, but that afternoon, and certainly over the years, I knew that however dramatic she might be, she was also very real and when it counted, very down to earth.”
In the years that followed, Kennealy-Morrison became a pioneering journalist, traveled with rock stars, was portrayed in — and appeared in — Oliver Stone’s movie The Doors (a film she strongly criticized), and was invited into the New York Mets clubhouse in 2000 because the team had adopted a Doors’ song as a rallying cry.
Yet when the president of a small Catholic university asked if she wanted to meet for coffee, she not only accepted the invitation, but forged relationships with the school and its personnel that lasted years.
“It’s one of those adventures of a college president,” Carney reflected. “You can’t make this stuff up.”
Richard Lee, executive director of the Jandoli Institute, is a former music journalist who often writes about the intersection of music and current events.
By Richard Lee
In a career that has spanned more than six decades, Bob Dylan has written songs of every size and shape. Dylan, who turns 79 today, even wrote one that follows the traditional structure of a news story.
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” which appeared on Dylan’s 1964 The Times They Are a-Changin’ album, tells the story of a barmaid who died after a drunken patron assaulted her. Continue reading
By Richard Lee
Five years ago, when a U.S. diplomat used a four-letter word to express her frustration with the European Union, most media reports did not include the word she used.
Lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower was troubled by the omission, and in a New York Times opinion piece, he argued that the media was behind the times and that read more
My interview with Trenton Thunder General Manager is below.
Part 1
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