At first, the television spot looks like standard political fare. Congressman Tom Perriello is talking earnestly into the camera about jobs. Then you notice something a little different as he strolls through a dairy barn.

Is he really stepping into a cow pie? And why is Perriello under a desk stringing broadband cable? And, whoa, while riding in a cop car, he’s getting broadsided by a cup of coffee.

The spot ends with a dirt-streaked, coffee-stained Perriello again talking earnestly into the camera: “I’m Tom Perriello, and I support this message because I guarantee no one will work harder to bring jobs to Virginia.”

The 5th District Congressional race is one of the most hotly contested re-election races in the country, and it includes hard-hit Southside, which suffered deep unemployment even before Perriello snagged the job away from his predecessor, Republican Virgil Goode, by 727 votes in 2008. So do voters really (more)

The marketing email is nothing new, and if you’ve ever purchased anything online, you’ve probably gotten ‘em, probably deleted ‘em.

That’s what Zach Carter usually does, until one from the Daily Progress caught his attention June 16 with this subject line: “Tell President Obama YOU Support Arizona’s Enforcement Law! –Paid Advertisement by NumbersUSA.”

Carter calls the subject line “obnoxious” and describes the ad’s content (more)

The Newshour with Jim Lehrer host was in Charlottesville yesterday, speaking at a luncheon for WHTJ PBS top donors at the Clifton Inn about the importance of public television and the changing forms of journalism, according to Josh Wheeler at the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. Today, Lehrer turns 76.

National news media get primo parking in front of UVA’s primo landmark.

Marsha Garst, the commonwealth’s attorney who raided the office of the James Madison University student newspaper, the Breeze, on April 16 and threatened to take all of its computers and equipment, essentially shutting it down, has been denounced by the Libertarian Party of Virginia, which calls for her resignation. “This is absolutely chilling,” said Bill Wood, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Virginia in a release. He compares the Harrisonburg/Rockingham County prosecutor’s actions to those of the former Soviet Union. “Based on her actions, she is unfit for public office,” he says. ” Any government official who violates the Bill of Rights should be removed and prosecuted.” Garst came in with a search warrant and police officers and demanded unpublished photographs of the April 10 Springfest riot, and took more than 900 photos. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli tells the Breeze he doesn’t believe the raid is a First Amendment issue and that he supports Garst’s actions. “I support any and all legal means to gather information to build a case against people who allegedly harmed or intended to harm law enforcement officers,” Cuccinelli says in a statement.

Harrisonburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst, bolstered by a search warrant and at least six or seven cops, shows up April 16 at the James Madison University student newspaper, the Breeze, and demands all photos taken of the Springfest riot the previous weekend. Garst threatens to seize all computers, which would essentially shut down the paper, if the photos weren’t turned over, the Breeze reports. Breeze editor-in-chief Katie Thisdell complied, but says she believes the warrant violates the federal Privacy Protection Act that prohibits law enforcement from seizing news reporting materials for criminal investigations. The Student Press Law Center is representing the Breeze and its lawyers reached an agreement with the prosecutor to temporarily seal the 926 confiscated photos. UPDATE 2:30pm: The Society of Professional Journalists condemns the raid and sends a letter to Garst expressing the organization’s outrage and demanding the return of all materials taken. UPDATE 1:45PM April 20: Spelling of Katie Thisdell’s name corrected.

Eric Lund was having a hard time figuring out in which of the many baseball leagues his athletically inclined offspring should play. From that frustration was born YouthSportsNow.com, a content aggregator for the myriad sports available in the area for kids age five to college.

“We’re covering 23 sports,” says Lund, including squash, rowing and cheerleading.

For content, he relies on parents and coaches to report scores— and on other media. “Instead of a reporter, we’ll link to a story on the Daily Progress or on Scrimmage Play,” says Lund. “We linked to a Hook story on the ice park.”

In 2007, Lund launched a shelter mag called Charlottesville House and Home and Garden, and followed that in 2008 with (more)

The Bristol Herald Courier won the top prize for journalism— the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for public service— for reporter Daniel Gilbert’s series on natural gas royalties. The paper’s managing editor, J. Todd Foster, was editor of the News Virginian in Waynesboro for four years before joining the Herald Courier in 2007. While working as a contributor for People magazine, Foster also got the jump on the identity of Watergate’s “Deep Throat,” Mark Felt, in 2002, three years before Vanity Fair broke the story in 2005. Foster abandoned book and magazine projects with Felt’s family because, he says, of ethical and money matters. This is not Foster’s first brush with a Pulitzer. In 1992, he was an investigative reporter for the Oregonian and part of a team that was a finalist for the prize for breaking news.

“Tiki Barber dumps pregnant wife for hot blonde” screams the New York Post headline about former UVA football/New York Giants superstar and NBC Today Show correspondent. Barber met his wife, Ginny, who is eight months pregnant with their third child, at UVA. The alleged other woman, Traci Lynn Johnson, is an NBC intern, according to the Post. FILE PHOTO BY JAY KUHLMANN

The Hook solidified its position as Charlottesville’s most award-winning weekly newspaper, as it was honored by its peers in the newspaper industry by winning 24 prizes from the Virginia Press Association— including two entries named “Best in Show.”

The awards were bestowed Saturday, March 20 at a banquet at the Association’s annual conference in Roanoke. There, the announcer lauded as “riveting” the Hook’s account ill-fated Piedmont Flight #349, a commercial airliner which crashed near Crozet in 1959. Bestowing the top statewide writing prize among specialty publications, the judge wrote, “I felt like I was on that plane.”

The Hook’s other Best in Show award went to Allison Sommers for her design. “It’s a pleasure to look at,” the judge commented, “and a pleasure to read.”

The awards, for content created (more)

When Tom Morgan packs up his up Chevy Cavalier February 27 and heads north with Led Zeppelin blasting, he’s leaving behind his morning drive time gig with 99.7 WCYK “Your Country.” He doesn’t have a job waiting for him in Philadelphia, but he does have a woman, and leaving a payin’ DJ job in a tough economy for love sounds a lot like the country tunes Morgan has been playing since 2006 at “Your Country.”

“I’m moving for love,” declares Morgan, 27.

The Roanoke native grew up with a father who “lived and breathed radio” and worked in the business for 30 years in Norfolk.

Morgan cut his country teeth in Knoxville, and that experience got him back to Virginia, where he started doing afternoons at Charlottesville’s only country station.

He says “Your Wake-Up Call with Tom and Pam” is the number one or two morning show in the area.

Monticello Media general manager Dennis Mockler can’t confirm that— as the station no longer (more)

Dear Readers, Even though the Hook always bears a Thursday publication date, many of you have grown accustomed to picking up copies on Wednesday afternoon at some Charlottesville locations. Not this week. The near-Philadelphia plant where the paper gets printed has experienced near-blizzard conditions today, so the Hook can’t begin hitting the streets until mid-day tomorrow. We apologize for the delay. Sincerely, Hawes Spencer, Editor & Publisher

Authors and media watchers John Nichols and Robert McChesney discuss the state of American journalism at the Miller Center on February 19 at 11am. Nichols, a correspondent for The Nation, and McChesney, who teaches in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, co-wrote a book called Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (New Press, 2006)

The parent company of the Daily Progress, which struggled with red ink in the year-ago fourth quarter, is reporting a profit of $27.4 million, or $1.18 per diluted share. This compares well with a net loss of $85.5 million, or $3.86 per diluted share, for this Richmond-based company that owns a slew of television stations and papers including the Tampa Tribune and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In a release, the company cites cost-cutting and stronger ad sales for the quarter’s profit.

After a nearly 120-year run, there’ll be no University of Virginia yearbook for sale this year, say UVA officials.

“The Corks & Curls yearbook is traditionally published by UVA students, but the group is currently not active,” says Karen Shaffer, UVA’s director of student services. “While they may choose to regroup and publish a yearbook in the future, there is no plan to do so in the 2009-10 academic year.”

The news came as a shocker for historian Coy Barefoot, who says he drew heavily on archival copies of Corks & Curls in compiling his own book, The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia.

“It’s a prime historical resource,” says Barefoot, who is teaching a local history course this semester. “This is just awful from a historian’s standpoint.”

However, according to Cavalier Daily editor Andrew T. Baker, the yearbook hasn’t been making much of an impression on current UVA students.

“I haven’t seen much publicity or presence from the yearbook around Grounds in the four years I’ve been here,” he says.

“I’ve tried testing the waters with some of my friends, casually mentioning that the yearbook isn’t going to be published,” says UVA student and Hook music writer Stephanie Garcia, “and no one seemed to really care.”

An even bigger shocker, according to Aaron Josephson, who serves on the executive committee of the Class of 2009, was that the historic treasure wasn’t (more)

Air America, launched by the likes of former funnyman Al Franken, was supposed to be a progressive counterpoint to conservative talkmeisters like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Instead, the radio network abruptly pulled the plug January 21, leaving a lot of dead air including a big weekend hole at Charlottesville station 1450 WVAX.

“Our weekday line-up— Monday through Friday 6am to 1am— is not going to be affected at all,” says WVAX boss Jim Principi, “with the exception of 9pm to 10pm, Hollywood Clout.”

Principi, the general manager of the Charlottesville Radio Group, which also includes WINA, 106.1 The Corner, Z95.1, and 3WV, says the hole can be plugged (more)

Meg Richey, 9, a student at Meriwether Lewis, is a semi-finalist to be NBC Today’s next kid reporter. She needs votes– online or by text– by 5pm today.

Under the Hook’s recent post about the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority discussing the idea of adopting a flow-control ordinance, one disgruntled commenter suggested the idea of creating “Dump RSWA” yard signs. That slogan seems to have caught the attention of conservative radio show host Rob Schilling, who is now offering “Dump RSWA” bumper stickers for sale on his blog.

Newsplex reporter Liz Palka seeks reaction to Playboy’s naked ladies of the ACC, pictured in this week’s Hook, which seems to have caused a bit of a kerfluffle for some readers.

When the latest issue of Playboy hit the stands last Friday, UVA students got a revealing glimpse of one of their own: Jenna Arianna, a blond linguist who eschews Greek in favor of Latin.” In fact, the lovely Jenna Arianna (whose last name is Llewellyn) is a Fourth Year art major who kept her audition a secret from even her sorority sisters until she’d been selected.

“I didn’t want to jinx it,” she says, adding that encouragement from both parents and one of UVA’s previous “Girls of the ACC” convinced her.

“She made it sound like the coolest thing ever, and she was right,” says Llewellyn, who was flown to Chicago by the magazine for her photo shoot last spring.

Jenna’s encouraging Playboy predecessor is Amanda Paige Gellar— who first appeared in the magazine’s October 2004 edition, went on to (more)

Less than two months after its founder shut it down, two-year-old Charlottesville social gossip blog cVillain.com is back with new webmasters but the same mission.

“What built the concept was the active reporting, restaurant reviews, getting people excited about what’s going on in Charlottesville today,” says Ian Saul, 28, an IT consultant who, along with his business partner Jeff Parsons, took the site over from founder Kyle Redinger.

Saul says he’d long enjoyed reading cVillain and participating in some of the social events the site organized. But over time, he says, the online atmosphere strayed from its original purpose as comments grew more personal and off-topic.

“People in their mid-to late 30s found it to be kind of hipster-ish,” he says, adding that he and 45-year-old Parsons “want it to be much more accessible to all age-ranges– to try to get better sense of overall community rather than the one specific hipster-esque ideology that it got tagged with.”

Much of the site’s future content, Saul hopes, will be the product of its readers-turned-reporters. (more)

Like so many first dates, this one took place at a coffee shop– Café Cubano, to be exact. But like many a romance, this one also includes its share of fireworks— including worries that letting a group of growth watchdogs write stories for the daily newspaper could skew coverage.

The cash-strapped Daily Progress had been eyeing Charlottesville Tomorrow’s form, and admired the nonprofit’s passion for covering government meetings. And Charlottesville Tomorrow, mired in the internet-only zone, couldn’t help but be excited about getting read by a much larger audience.

The pair’s backgrounds were so different. How would the parents of the growth watchdog feel (more)

As the economy has tanked, traditional print media is gasping for air. So why not start a new niche magazine? That was the thinking of two former Daily Progress sports writers. On Thursday, August 27, the high school sports-centric Scrimmage Play hits the stands.

Bart Isley and Ryan Yemen, both 25, know all too well the dire predictions for print publications.

“Print is failing because news can be covered so easily on CNN,” says Yemen.

“Our theory,” says Isley, “is print media can still work if it’s of high quality and focuses on certain things. Our coverage is local and very specific.”

With the help of stringers, Isley and Yemen plan (more)

More than a year ago, Mac McDonald abruptly left his job doing sports radio play-by-play on WINA radio. Almost as unexpectedly, he’s back on the air starting Monday, August 31, not for UVA nor his old pals at WINA, but with his own drive-time syndicated show airing on the competition AM station, WKAV Sports Radio 1400.

McDonald says he was about to move to Orlando after working on a book for the past year. “I had people pushing me to get back on radio and do (more)

Congressman Tom Perriello wasn’t the only lawmaker to get forged constituent letters trying to sway his Cap-and-Trade vote, reports Brian McNeill, who broke in the Daily Progress what’s become a national story. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which hired the D.C. lobbying firm– Bonner & Associates– that sent out the fake letters, says it’s a victim, too, and “outraged.” Not since Dems 4 Day in 1995 has such a dubious tactic electrified the political scene, and this one actually goes farther, as instead of concocting a bogus group, it involved forged letters purporting to come from real groups such as the local chapter of the NAACP. –last updated 1:12pm, August 11

First Lady Michelle Obama, First Daughters Malia and Sasha and First Mother-in-law Marian Robinson dropped in July 23 on Charlottesville’s First Tourist Attraction, Monticello, and NBC29 snagged the story– with video.

The Obama women took (more)

Media General, the parent company of the Daily Progress, has conducted such extreme cost-cutting measures that not only does it not appear to be in imminent danger of bankruptcy, but it actually (more)

Even during robust economic times, the Shenandoah Valley can be a tough market for alternative papers– or dailies.

With print publications dropping like flies, is it really the best time to launch a monthly arts-and-culture tabloid?

“The downturn in the economy is when everyone turns to local and community activities,” says Blu Magazine publisher/senior editor Jason Grogan. “The community needs (more)

Just one week after the Republican National Committee released a telelvision ad lambasting Congressman Tom Perriello (D-Ivy) for his vote in favor of the so-called “cap and trade” energy bill in the House, a national environmental advocacy group has (more)

Fewer than two years ago, WHTJ hosted a splashy kick-off party for its Terri Allard-hosted program, Charlottesville Inside-Out. Today, the public broadcasting station licensed for Charlottesville still has Allard, but the rest of its local programming has gone dormant— along with its local office space.

One of the hard-hit Community Idea Stations out of Richmond, WHTJ— which once had five employees— recently closed its office at 528 East Maint Street, across from City Hall. The payroll has shrunk to two, and they both work from home. Former general manager D.J. Crotteau left (more)

Put a blog in Waldo Jaquith’s hands, even a literary magazine’s blog, and there’s no telling what can happen. Last week, the Virginia Quarterly Review employee called out Wired editor and best-selling author Chris Anderson on VQR’s blog for lifting whole passages from Wikipedia and other sources for Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” something many other reviewers, including New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, appeared not to have noticed.

The post came with a mea culpa from Anderson— he was told before-hand that his book was going to be challenged— who claimed that it was a mistake and that he  and his publisher had “forgotten” to cite the passages.

Jaquith’s post made an immediate impact, having generated 177 comments to date from people— including Anderson— arguing (more)

The photographer who just six weeks ago was claiming $385,000 in damages for alleged theft of his work by a Charlottesville blog has settled for $750, less than two one-thousandths of the amount he initially claimed, according to Cvillain, the alleged tortfeasor. Reached by telephone at her Atlanta law office, lead attorney Carolyn Wright declined to say why she launched a lawsuit– with co-counsel in Charlottesville in the form of Tremblay & Smith– only to let it go for less than some Charlottesville lawyers charge for two hours of their time. “I’m not going to comment on litigation,” said Wright. Even when it’s over? “No.” In a surprising epilogue, just a few hours after announcing the lawsuit settlement, Kyle Redinger, operator of the Cvillain, which has been one of Charlottesville’s most active blogs with three to five posts daily (not to mention “a great party”), declared that he was unplugging Cvillain unless a suitor suddenly steps forward. –last updated June 29 at 5:37pm

Just after returning to New York from visiting Charlottesville for her 30th year class reunion at UVA, Katie Couric uploaded a handheld video she shot of the event to her YouTube channel. After introducing viewers to some of her college friends, the CBS Evening News anchor pays a visit to her old room on the Lawn, and goes for a late-night Gusburger at the White Spot.

Hook box found among the rubble at the base of the partially constructed Landmark Hotel. Hmmmm. – photo by Gordon Block

TV stations parked their trucks outside the Omni June 9 in anticipation of the Democratic primary returns and to be there when the polls closed at 7pm, should Creigh Deeds be nominated, which he was, by an overwhelming margin.

For the sixth consecutive year, Western Albemarle High School has made Newsweek’s list of America’s Top Public High Schools. The list is based on the ratio of Advanced Placement tests taken by its students to the number of total students at the school, and WAHS finds itself ranked 1,179th in the country on this year’s list. This represents a tumble of sorts for the Warriors, having come in the top 500 schools five out of the last six years.  Also falling in the rankings was Charlottesville High School, whom Newsweek ranked at #529 last year, only to miss this year’s list completely. The top ranking Virginia high school was Arlington’s HB-Woodlawn, coming in at #36.

It was a tiny picture of a tiny music venue, and it was posted just twice on a local blogger’s site, but the aggrieved photographer who snapped it says compensation needs to be made— compensation to the tune of $385,000.

The federal lawsuit filed May 15 demands as much from gossip site cVillain.com and its owner, Kyle Redinger. The litigant, Charlottesville photographer Matthew Rosenberg, claims Redinger violated his copyright by hosting and showing the thumbnail image without permission.

“If filing a lawsuit over something so trivial is not overkill,” says veteran intellectual property lawyer Sheldon Parker, “then I don’t know what would constitute overkill.”

Parker, who is not (more)

Forbes might have just rated him more powerful than President Obama (no foolin’), but that doesn’t mean Dave Matthews is beyond ridicule. On last night’s episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, the new NBC host broke out his best Dave impression to hawk the fictitious “Dave Matthews GPS,” a device that features Charlottesville’s most famous musician giving lost drivers directions to the tune of DMB songs.  Matthews seemed to take it in stride, however, crashing the sketch before duetting with his doppelganger.

In yet another sign of the media apocalypse, a small Berryville-based paper has gone out of business after 140 years.

After nearly a year of anticipation, the numbers are finally in, and a Charlottesville-based band’s debut album is officially a hit. Members of Parachute learned Thursday, May 21 that Losing Sleep entered at #40 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart.

“It’s way better than we had expected,” says frontman Will Anderson. “We had a day off, so we were all in different places when we found out, and we were texting each other like crazy.”

The news comes a week after the album got an early release on the iTunes Music Store, and quickly shot to #1 on the digital vendor’s charts. This was due in part to the strength of the band’s second single “Under Control,” which iTunes offered as a free download for the week.

According to Anderson, seeing his band’s name atop of the iTunes chart was a stunning moment.

“When we went #1 on iTunes,” says Anderson, “that was a (more)

Three years after CBS reporter and UVA alum Kimberly Dozier was seriously injured by a car bomb in Iraq, the journalist talked about her work and recovery to a crowd that included John Grisham and Congressman Tom Perriello at the May 18 Emily Couric Leadership Scholarship Awards luncheon.

“Please don’t risk my life if we’re not going to make air,” Dozier recounted her cameraman, Paul Douglas, saying. The report on what it was like for U.S. troops in Baghdad was supposed to make the airwaves on Memorial Day 2006, but a car bomb killed Douglas and soundman James Brolan, and left Dozier with her legs looking like “hamburger,” she said.

Dozier was presented the Women’s Leadership Award, which has gone to former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Caroline Kennedy, and Dozier’s CBS News colleague Katie Couric.

Hip-hop artist will.i.am is a big enough deal to star in a Super Bowl commercial with Bob Dylan, write and perform a song about President Obama that became an election-influencing Internet sensation, and even become the first celebrity to get hologrammed by CNN. Yet even Mr. “Yes We Can” himself cannot get Virginia voters excited about the 2009 election six months before Election Day. According to the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, only 30 people showed up to the Black Eyed Peas frontman’s appearance with gubernatorial candidate and former Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe on Monday, May 11. Attendance was a little better at the pair’s rally in Richmond later that day, where 80 people showed up according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. –photo courtesy Organizing for America/file photo by Lindsay Barnes

“You’re like the Yankees– before all the steroids,” exclaimed emcee Erik Murphy of Hot 101.9 radio after Payne Ross & Associates won its fourth Emma Award Monday night. The downtown Charlottesville-based firm went on to win a fifth prize out of just eight categories in the American Marketing Association’s annual awards banquet held May 11 at the X Lounge. A gold-skinned woman, who gave her name only as “Emma,” shown here with ad agency co-founder Susan Payne, presented the prizes. (Bonus photo of all winners.)

Could the world’s most infamous pepetrator of animal cruelty become the new face of the one of the world’s most famous animal rights group? That’s what trade publication Advertising Age is reporting in an article that says Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are attempting to reach an agreement with  former Virginia Tech quarterback and NFL standout Michael Vick to tape a series of public service announcements. Vick is presently serving a 23-month sentence for his role in a dogfighting ring run out of his house in Surry County, and will be released from prison on Wednesday, May 20. –file photo by Will Walker

Time magazine has released its annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, and the University of Virginia can claim two spots on the list. Both Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA, UVA Law ‘59) and comedian Tina Fey (undergrad class of ‘92) received the nod. Time commissioned famous friends to pen personal profiles of each, with California Governor (and husband to Kennedy’s niece) Arnold Schwarzenegger waxing rhapsodic about Kennedy, and Alec Baldwin offering insight on 30 Rock co-star Fey.

As daily newspapers’ sales plummet nationwide, editors and publishers are employing myriad strategies to stay afloat as readers increasingly turn to the Internet for their news. Now, the Waynesboro News Virginian is testing a new strategy to drive readers from its free website back to buying the hard copy.

On Monday, April 27, the News Virginian posted a story about a parent’s complaint about lewd music at a middle school dance on its website, corresponding with the same article which appeared in its print edition. However, after the fourth paragraph on the web version of the story, readers find a message that informs them that the text they’re reading is only “an excerpt”and instructs them to “pick up The News Virginian today at an area newsstand to get the full story.“

“It’s an experiment,” says News Virginian editor Lee Wolverton. “We’re (more)

In yet another bit of evidence of the decline, fall, and/or simply the herd-like mentality of newspapers, the Hook has begun Twittering. Or Tweating. Or something. Friday, April 24 early morning update: Overnight, Twitter appears to have deleted all our Twitter content and followers. We just may stand down for a while, as life’s too short to Twitter away. Friday, April 24 mid-morning update: A Cavalier Daily columnist confirms the wisdom of quitting the Twitting. Friday, April 24 late night update: “Twitter has been experiencing database inconsistencies for several days…. everything you see is slightly off.  We’re still working on getting everything back to normal.”

Daleville attorney James Creekmore is no longer representing the Buckingham publicist/author/chicken farmer who’s suing the Hook and two of its reporters for $10.7 million. A Buckingham judge signed an April 14 order that allows Creekmore to withdraw as Tommy Lightfoot Garrett’s legal counsel.

Garrett filed a defamation suit December 22 that contends Hook parent company Better Publications and reporters Lindsay Barnes and Courteney Stuart defamed and “lampooned” him in coverage of Garrett’s now-dismissed 15 felony forgery and uttering charges.

In a plea deal, the publicist pleaded guilty in April 2008 to a Class 1 misdemeanor of entering the property of another with the intention of damaging it. He received a 12-month suspended jail sentence, two years unsupervised probation, and was ordered to pay $3,500 to David Kimbell, the man who accused Garrett of stealing and forging credit card balance transfer checks.

There are a million reasons why a lawyer and client part ways, says legal expert Matt Murray at Allen, Allen, Allen and Allen— particularly in a civil case, which is a voluntary contract.

“It can be fee disputes, incompatibility over case strategy, personality disagreements…” lists Murray, who notes he has no first-hand knowledge of this case. “What usually happens is when one lawyer is exiting, another is stepping in.”

Garrett Smith, who represents the Hook, declined comment other than to say, “I believe Mr. Garrett will require (more)

Could Internet entrepreneur and Landmark Hotel owner Halsey Minor be horse racing’s savior? That’s what sports writer Andrew Beyer suggests in a column that ran in the April 11 edition of the Washington Post. Calling Minor a “smart, innovative optimist,” Beyer profiles Minor’s attempt to purchase the holdings of Magna Entertainment, a bankrupt company which owns several racetracks, including Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course. “Turning around American racing is my passion,” Minor tells the Post. “It’s what I think about all day. It’s a psychological weakness.” The article states that Minor spends hours each day looking for sites on which to build new racetracks, but did not mention the four different lawsuits from Minor’s creditors seeking $60 million, including a suit over $10.5 million in allegedly unpaid construction loans on the Landmark Hotel. –updated on April 13 at 5:22pm

The student newspapers at UVA and Virginia Tech won a First Amendment Award from the Virginia Press Association for just saying no to an ABC Board ban on campus newspaper alcohol advertising. Flanking VPA President Nancy Embree on March 21 are David Grant, editor of the Collegiate Times and Andrew T. Baker, editor of the Cavalier Daily.

Media General announced that it would lay off 59 employees at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in the departments of “production, circulation, marketing, business, advertising, editorial, news, operations, facilities, prepress design services and targeted solutions.” The Times-Dispatch will also eliminate 31 unfilled positions. According to the the Thursday, April 2 release from Media General, the T-D currently employs 602 full- and part-time workers, down from 772 this time last year. In a same-day article entitled “Hatchet falls deep at Times-Dispatch,” Style Weekly reported that such stars as editorial cartoonist Gary Brookins, former Daily Progress scribe Rex Bowman, and Charlottesville’s own one-man bureau, Carlos Santos, are among the employment casualties.

A week after pulling in 21 awards at the Virginia Press Association annual meeting in Norfolk, Daily Progress publisher Lawrence McConnell announces that six employees will be without jobs, including two reporters and two editors in the paper’s already shrunken newsroom. Full-time employees have been offered severance packages, says McConnell. The Progress is owned by hard-hit Media General, which closed its Washington bureau March 27 and in February ordered mandatory 10-day furloughs for all its 5,600 employees. 3/31/09: The type of jobs of those laid off in the newsroom has been corrected.

Playboy typically snaps some local beauties and publishes its Girls of the whatever conference. But in autumn 2005, a UVA Girl of the ACC made it all the way to Miss October status in Hugh Hefner’s magazine. Alas, proximity to Hef is no guarantee of success, as Trevor Moore, a Charlottesville-bred comedian, is learning.

A year after the traveling theatrical production embroiled the campus in controversy, the Sex Workers’ Art Show returns to the College of William & Mary tonight, the Associated Press reports. “For practical as well as philosophical reasons,” says William & Mary president Taylor Reveley in a statement, “I will not play the censor.” The difference this year is that Reveley has mandated that a forum take place this morning where protesting students can voice their opinions. As the Hook reported in a cover story last year, anger among some members of William & Mary’s board over the Sex Workers’ Art Show helped lead to the firing of former College president Gene Nichol.

Staffers of the Hook were in Norfolk Saturday night to receive The Virginia Press Association Award for Journalistic Integrity and Community Service. The Hook won for a series of stories about a controversial water proposal. The over-30,000 circulation winner was the Roanoke Times for a series about the effects of an aging population.

The Hook also won the VPA’s top honor in 2007. This year, staffers picked up an additional eight awards.

Several other Central Virginia publications brought home awards from the Association, such as the Daily Progress, which won 21 awards, and the Cavalier Daily, which won 17 awards, as well as a special First Amendment prize for fighting a state ban on alcohol advertising.

–last updated 10:04am March 24

On Saturday, March 21, two prominent sportswriters offered some free advice to UVA athletic director Craig Littlepage about whom he should hire to coach the Cavaliers men’s basketball team. Venerable Daily Progress scribe Jerry Radcliffe cast his vote for Minnesota coach Tubby Smith. “Don’t expect it to be an overnight process. It takes time to line up these kinds of deals,” writes Radcliffe. “But it’s the best deal Virginia could possibly make. Tubby Smith coming to Virginia would be the best thing that’s happened to Wahoo basketball since Ralph Sampson signed on the dotted line.” Meanwhile Washington Post writer and ESPN commentator Michael Wilbon devotes his Saturday column to endorsing Virginia Commonwealth head coach Anthony Grant. “Grant, 42, is smart, composed, strategically creative, a terrific recruiter,” writes Wilbon. “His resumé has it all. He spent 10 years at Florida helping Billy Donovan build the program that won back-to-back national championships. Grant was with Donovan at Marshall before that and was a high school coach in Miami before that. You think Virginia couldn’t use a coach with those kinds of recruiting ties?”

Calling the current financial plight of newspapers “disturbing,” the head of UVA’s Miller Center, Gerald Baliles, has announced that the Center will convene a symposium on the future of the industry. Specifically, Baliles said the Center hopes to discover how the shrinkage of newspaper reporting, which typically leads the coverage that follows in broadcast media, will affect government.

“Certainly, the business model is strained,” said Baliles, “and we don’t know what will replace it.”

Baliles, a former Virginia governor, made his remarks Friday, March 20, after accepting an award as “Virginian of the Year” from the Virginia Press Association during the group’s annual— but, this year, shrunken— convention.

“This is a celebratory evening, or should be,” said Baliles.

Earlier in the day, during another Association event, the business news editor for the Associated Press was asked how the struggling industry should save itself.

“I wish I knew,” said the AP’s Fred Monyak. “It’s as broken as the banking industry.”

An NBC29 news-gathering vehicle finds a new use for pedestrian space on the Downtown Mall in this 5:30pm image shot by Kevin Cox. (Can Hook reporters start parking this way?)

… as the state with the fourth most winners in the New Yorker’s caption contest. The most recent victory, a caption for a Far Side-ish mix of human and animal personae published January 26, went to Sean Delaney of Stanardsville.

The Daily Progress asked six staff prognosticators– plus actor Stevie Jay– to predict Oscar winners in 12 categories. Lifestyles editor Mary Alice Blackwell came in first with eight correct picks, closely followed by associate city editor Josh Barney and staff writer Tristan Lejeune with seven winners each. Feature writer David Maurer placed last with three winners– but was the only one to choose the little-seen Japanese movie Departures as the best foreign film.

We’ve been hearing about the switch from analog to digital television on February 17, 2009, for what seems like years now. So when Congress extended the deadline for rabbit ears, local stations just said no and went digital as planned.

The Newsplex even made the switch a day early. “The [Federal Communications Commission] contacted us over the weekend and said we had to cut off CBS analog before February 17,” says general manager Brad Ramsey.

The Newsplex CBS station, WCAV, quit the analog world at 11:35pm February 16 after the news; and the station stayed off the air for a couple of hours. Its Fox WAHU and ABC WVAW stations had already switched over during the day February 16 live from Carter’s Mountain.

“Basically we had to turn off analog on each of the stations and reconfigure,” explains Ramsey.

Although it costs thousands of dollars a month to transmit analog signals, money wasn’t the main reason for dropping analog sooner rather than later, says Ramsey.

“We didn’t want to confuse people,” says Ramsey, “and that’s happening in some markets. And our signal will be much stronger.” (more)

The Washington Post published its last issue of Book World February 15, leaving book-loving readers distraught and the New York Times as the last daily newspaper with a stand-alone section devoted to book reviews.

Book World editor Rachel Hartigan Shea promised in a note to readers that the demise of the section is not the end of book reviews in the Post. Reviews will appear in Outlook on weekends and in Style during the week, and names associated with the section, such as Michael Dirda, Ron Charles and Jonathan Yardley, will still be found.

Still, for some it’s not the same. “When I got my Washington Post, it was the first section I’d go to,” says Gatsby’s Girl author Caroline Preston, who also has reviewed books for Book World. “It’s going to be a real loss.”

The section’s absence affects not only readers, but publishers, writers and booksellers, says Preston. “It’s scary. Publishers are in terrible shape (more)

Virginia Quarterly Review, the award-winning lit mag HQ’d on the UVA Lawn, has uncorked nearly 30 years’ worth of archives, including a 1983 look at the democratizing aspects of computers and an early Larry Sabato travelogue.

If you’re looking for an epiphany– like the kind radio listeners hear on the National Public Radio documentary program This American Life every week– in the story of how its host Ira Glass came to be in radio, you won’t find it.

“It was completely by accident,” says Glass. “I was looking for a job in college, I stumbled into NPR’s headquarters in Washington, never having listened to NPR in my life, knew nothing about it, and talked my way into an internship.”

What has followed, however, is a career completely of Glass’ design. Rather than report on the news as he had learned working in D.C., he headed west in 1995 to Chicago NPR affiliate WBEZ to create a radio show based around the idea of telling the stories of otherwise unknown people and bringing their stories to the airwaves in a fresh, unconventional style.

“The challenge,” says Glass, “was to be a real reporter, but to do it in a highly produced, emotional way that was so totally captivating so that you couldn’t turn away from it.”
Nearly 15 years after that first episode of This American Life aired, the show has won two Peabody Awards for excellence in broadcasting, Time Magazine once proclaimed him “America’s Best Radio Host,” and the show is the most downloaded podcast on iTunes.

Now, he brings This American Life to the Paramount Theater stage. He spoke with the Hook from his hotel room in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The Hook: How do you go about translating what you do on the radio for a live audience?
Ira Glass: A lot of it is just an excuse to play bits of tape from the show that I love. You’d have to be an insane superfan to recognize it all, though one could ask, “Who would show up to these things except insane superfans?”

The Hook: What was it about working in radio that drew you to it?
Ira Glass: At the beginning, it was (more)

Although a January 26 Washington Post review of John Grisham’s latest book, The Associate, leads with a description of the infamous UVA 12-step apology case and says the case is “central” to Grisham’s new story, the author himself disputes that claim.

In a statement sent to local media on January 29, Grisham says, “I did not fictionalize the UVA case nor base any part of my novel on it.”

According to the review and a January 27 interview with Grisham on NBC’s Today show, Grisham’s latest protagonist is a recent law school grad who is blackmailed with a cell phone video purportedly showing him in a room three years earlier when two of his college friends have sex with a college freshman who may or may not be conscious.

The real-life 12-step apology case involves a 1984 sexual assault in a UVA fraternity house, and the assailant’s decision to (more)

Will House Republicans ever embrace the stimulus package? Will the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act make life easier for working women? Who the heck cares when the Huffington Post is getting the vote out on a far more pressing matter: who’s the hottest freshman congressman? You better believe our own hometown hottie Tom Perriello (D-Ivy) made that list! –file photo by Jen Fariello

Waldo Jaquith, the creator of Charlottesville’s longstanding news blog, cvillenews.com, was subpoenaed last week by the man suing the Hook.

Publicist and chicken farmer Tommy Garrett demands that Jaquith provide any communications that mention Garrett, a person Jaquith says he never heard of until Garrett filed $10.7 million defamation suit against the Hook for its coverage of 15 forgery counts filed against Garrett in Buckingham County.

In a plea agreement in April, the publicist was found guilty of one misdemeanor count of entering the property of another with the intention of damaging it and ordered to pay $3,500 in restitution. Through attorneys, Garrett has maintained his innocence, and the 15 felony counts were dismissed.

In what Jaquith calls “an incredibly overbroad” subpoena, Garrett demands the IP addresses of those who commented on Jaquith’s December 23 account of the lawsuit against the Hook, as well as the IP addresses of viewers of the blog post, which drew 81 comments.

According to cvillenews.com, Jaquith will act as his own attorney.

“The requested information appears to be variously irrelevant, unnecessary (more)

A month after WINA pulled the plug on the Schilling Show, former conservative talk show host/city councilor Rob Schilling is headed back on the air– at WINA.

“The last thing I told you was that I trust the market,” says Schilling. “I believe the market has spoken.”

Struggling Saga Communications, the owner of the Charlottesville Radio Group, which includes WINA, 3WV, WQMZ Lite Rock 95, 106.1 the Corner and WVAX Progressive Talk, fired two staffers around Christmas along with Schilling– the Corner’s Tad Abbey and WINA’s John Peterson.

Schilling will be back on the WINA airwaves starting next Monday, January 26. “This is the last thing people expected,” says Schilling. “This never happens.”

Outraged Schilling fans set up a Bring Rob Schilling Back blog and bombarded Saga and WINA with (more)

Look out C-SPAN! Your days of cornering the market on broadcasting live legislative action are over! With the start of the new General Assembly session today at noon, live streaming video and audio feeds from the floor of the House of Delegates and the Senate will be available online for the first time at the General Assembly’s website.

The forecast for print media only gets worse. Media General has put the Daily Progress building on the block as it struggles with a plunging stock price of $2.85, down from $27.18 a share in September.

And though two glossies are soon to disappear from local racks, a Richmond publishing company has the urge to launch Urge, a slick regional arts mag with the motto, “Try something different.”

Publication has been suspended on TheNext50, which debuted last May, and its sister pub, Charlottesville House and Home, which appeared in March 2007.

TheNext50 was doing well, but “House and Home was taking a beating,” says publisher Eric Lund. “We would have kept it going, but with ad revenue down, we would have had to cut quality.”

The Daily Progress launched a look-alike glossy shelter magazine three months after Lund, which didn’t help. Nor did the crashing real estate market.

Meanwhile, despite slowing home sales, one local real estate magazine, HomeSearch, has a new (more)

Surf’s up! Wipeout! None of these exclamations make sense in landlocked central Virginia unless you’re at a show by this local surf-rock quintet, which usually tries to channel the beach vibe exemplified by the Ventures and “Misirlou.”

Surfzilla - The Joker’s Wild
Surfzilla - The Jester
Surfzilla - GooGoo Muck
Surfzilla - Failsafe
Surfzilla - Cecilia Ann
Surfzilla - Apache

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Rick Moore interviews outgoing Hook consumer columnist Alan Zimmerman December 28 on WNRN’s Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call.
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Last January, WINA welcomed the conservative voice of former City Councilor Rob Schilling with a six-day-a-week talk show. But just before Christmas, the AM news radio station abruptly pulled the plug on the Schilling Show, and Schilling isn’t the only Saga Communications-owned Charlottesville Radio Group staffer to be let go.

Tad Abbey, a mainstay at sister station 106.1 The Corner, has also has gotten a pink slip, and at least one other familiar radio voice soon will be out of job, an informed source told the Hook before Christmas.

The latest casualty is WINA news reporter John Peterson, who is no longer employed at the station, a caller asking for him was told January 5.

“Peterson’s really troubling because he does a great job,” says former WINA sportscaster Adam Gottschalk, now hosting his own talk show with competitor WKAV. And he fears Peterson will not be replaced.

“I’m not going to comment on that,” says the operations manager for the Saga stations Rick Daniels (who also serves as co-host of the Morning Show with Rick and Jane) when asked if there would be other layoffs.

“I had no idea,” says Schilling, who found out December 19 that his (more)

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The Daily Progress reports that Buckingham publicist, chicken farmer, and alleged friend to many stars Tommy Lightfoot Garrett has filed a $10.7 million defamation suit against the Hook and two of its reporters December 22 in Buckingham.

According to the Progress, the suit claims the Hook “lampoons Garrett and one of his attorneys” and that another story made “false statements about the facts” of Garrett’s plea deal after getting charged with 15 counts of forging and uttering, but the story does not reveal what the allegedly false statements are. The Hook has not yet received the complaint. [Christmas eve update: here it is! (pdf)] [Later update: the exhibits too! (pdf)]

However, in anticipation of the jury trial requested by his defamation lawyer, James Creekmore (a bold jurist recently voted a “Virginia Super Lawyer” by (more)

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The world didn’t know that FBI associate director W. Mark Felt was the anonymous source known as “Deep Throat” for Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s coverage of the Watergate scandal until 2005. However, a recording from UVA’s Miller Center shows that President Richard Nixon had a pretty good idea that Felt, who passed away yesterday at the age of 95, was the Post’s inside man. On October 19, 1972, nine days after an article claiming the Watergate burglary was part of a greater campaign of political spying by the FBI, Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman told Nixon that an internal investigation turned up Felt’s name, to which Nixon responded, “Why the hell would he do that?” When Haldeman explains his suspicion, he advises Nixon not to retaliate against Felt for fear he’d reveal “everything there is to know.” Nixon agreed. “Do anything?” he said, “Never!” –FBI file photo
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With even the venerable New York Times teetering, the embattled parent company of the Daily Progress and the Richmond Times-Dispatch announced Wednesday, December 10, that it has successfully modified terms with the creditors who lent it over $700 million. Lately, Media General stock has been trading for a small fraction of its former value with some worries that its debt could send it into a Chicago Tribune-style tailspin.
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Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello will be a category on the December 17 episode of Jeopardy!, say Monticello officials. The category will have five video clues about Jefferson and Monticello and a brief “Spotlight” segment, which were filmed at Monticello earlier this year by the show’s Clue Crew.

In case you didn’t know, local resident, Julann Griffin, former wife of Merv and co-founder of the locally-founded online gaming company Boxerjam, which miraculously survived the dot.bomb era and had its offices in the Hook building (the company relocated to Texas, but their sign still faces the Mall), came up with the idea for Jeopardy! 25 years ago.

“We were on a plane from my hometown of Ironwood, Michigan back to New York, and Merv was writing on a pad of paper and said he was trying to come up with a new game show,” Griffin told the Hook in 2007.

A 1959 Congressional investigation had blown the lid off the scandal that had made the public and FCC reluctant to trust another knowledge-based game show: a show called Twenty One was supplying its most telegenic contestants with the correct answers.

“So I said, ‘Just give all the contestants the answers,’” recalled Griffin.

Also, since Annette Gordon-Reed’s book, The Hemingses of Monticello, won the National Book Award this year, might we see some answers involving Sally Hemings?

I guess we’ll have to watch. The episode airs locally on NBC-29 at 7:30pm

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Newsplex news director/VP Jeremy Settle, who moved to Charlottesville four years ago to work with the upstart WCAV and start news programs on WVAW and WAHU, has moved back to the Washington, DC, area from whence he came.

Thanksgiving Eve was Settle’s final night as news anchor on ABC 16, and by this week, he was already on the job with NewChannel 8, a 24-hour cable news station in Washington.

“They contacted me,” says Settle. “I had planned to stay in Charlottesville, but they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” An added bonus: he moves from a 183 media market to number 9 and back to his home town. “It was a perfect fit for them and me.”

“We’ll absolutely miss Jeremy,” says Newsplex general manager Brad Ramsey. “He put his heart and soul into this place for four years, getting three stations off the ground.”

“I kind of wanted to ratchet it down a little, but that’s not going to happen for awhile,” says Settle.

Especially not with an inauguration coming in the nation’s capital.

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As part of an urgent company-wide move which may be the biggest mass lay-off in American newspaper history, Gannett has axed 15 jobs— including laying off 10 full-time employees— at its Staunton News-Leader. With Gannett stock falling 76 percent and the Daily Progress‘ parent falling 93 percent, this has not been a good year for daily newspapers.
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PHOTO BY LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS After a year in which she won three Emmys for writing, producing, and starring in the NBC sitcom 30 Rock and put the nation in stitches with her Saturday Night Live impersonation of Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Tina Fey is raking in the year-end honors from national media. Time just named the UVA alumna one of their 25 candidates for “Person of the Year,” and she is presently running third in the readers’ poll behind President-elect Barack Obama and Harvard biologist Douglas Melton, and ahead of 14-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Michael Phelps. Elsewhere on the newsstand, an Annie Leibovitz shot of Fey graces the cover of this month’s issue of Vanity Fair which declares Fey the “New American Sweetheart!” In the Maureen Dowd-penned article, Fey reveals that while at UVA she played Sally Bowles, the female lead in Cabaret, with what she calls a “birthday-party-quality voice.”
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The Washington Post is selling its local distribution rights to the Daily Progress, leaving dozens of newspaper carriers out of a job and serving as another signal of dailies in a downturn.

“It’s a cost-cutting measure,” says Charles Leathers, who’s distributed the Post since 1992, as did his father, who started distributing the Post in 1967. He employs about a dozen people to stuff inserts and deliver the Post seven days a week in southeastern Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and Lake Monticello.

“There’s about 30 to 35 of us out of work in one fell swoop a month before Christmas,” Leathers says.

With newspaper readership falling while expenses skyrocket, Post carriers are not the first Central Virginia newspaper workers to feel some pain. In July, the Progress sent its printing operations to Hanover, laying off its entire printing staff of 25 people.

“It’s a very good business decision for the Washington Post and the Daily Progress,” says Fred Greer, regional circulation director for the Progress. “And it makes good sense (more)

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As local publisher Melissa Harris prepares to launch her second issue of Flavor, the quarterly magazine on local food and wine culture that debuted over the summer, she’s reeling from a blow delivered by the company she almost partnered with, a Santa Fe-based firm that sued her in federal court accusing her of copyright infringement, unfair competition, and breach of contract. And you thought the local food movement was a quaint, idealistic grassroots affair.

On October 8, Edible Communities Inc got Harris to agree that Flavor won’t use, among other terms, such feature headings as “imbibe,” “in the garden,” and as well as the seemingly stock phrase “What’s in Season.”

It seems that before Harris launched Flavor, she flirted with the idea of partnering with Edible Communities, a small magazine empire that began as a single publication in 2002, covering the local food scene in Ojai, California. Edible has since grown into a publishing company that claims a total readership of over 13 million with over 54 locally-based titles across the country, such as Edible Cape Cod, Edible San Francisco, and Edible New Jersey and so on.

According to a 2007 New York Times article on the franchise publishing company, it costs around $90,000 to set up an Edible outpost– $30,000 up front and $60,000 financed over five years. Fledgling publishers gets help with editorial content, production, training, ad sales, and (more)

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Print advertising revenue plummeted 21.5 percent at the Daily Progress‘ parent company, Media General, according to a story following this morning’s conference call with analysts. Strong broadcast revenue kept the publicly held, Richmond-based company from posting a loss, as it nearly did last quarter.
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Tina Fey isn’t the only UVA alumna poking fun at Sarah Palin. A week after the Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee told Katie Couric that of America’s newspapers she reads, “all of them, any of them,” a paparazzo from celebrity gossip site TMZ.com approached Couric on the street in New York and asked the CBS Evening News anchor the same question. Couric flashed her trademark pearly whites before answering, “All of them and any of them.” Finally Couric did offer that, “Everyone lies about The Economist, but I actually read it. And I read a lot of magazines and newspapers, but luckily I’m not running for vice president.”
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It turns out that not everyone in the national media was against the ban on signs at UVA sporting events. A month after his colleague Rick Reilly said Mr. Jefferson’s University was guilty of “good ol’ fashioned totalitarianism” for the clampdown on signs, Washington Post columnist and co-host of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption Michael Wilbon came down in favor of the erstwhile ban yesterday.

Responding to a question about the ban in a live chat on the Post website, Wilbon said, “I wish they’d kept the ban. Signs get in everybody else’s way, which is mostly self-indulgent. Why do people feel the need to do everything except watch the game? Drink to excess, hold up signs…for what?

“I don’t get it,” Wilbon continued. “I don’t want to have to ask some inconsiderate person in front of me to put down his stupid sign so I can see the game I paid to see. Sorry.”

On Thursday, October 2, UVA announced it was (more)

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Fans of UVA men’s basketball will hear not just one, but two new voices on the radio in the upcoming season. In addition to new play-by-play man Dave Koehn, Virginia Sports Properties announced yesterday that former Cavalier standout and 10-year NBA veteran Cory Alexander will be providing the color commentary. Alexander was the starting point guard on the UVA team that made it all the way to the Elite Eight of the 1995 NCAA Tournament. That summer, the San Antonio Spurs selected the Waynesboro native 29th overall in the first round of the NBA Draft. Alexander replaces Jim Hobgood, who called UVA contests for 12 years alongside Mac McDonald.
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We detect a viral video coming on, carrying with it an acute case of dance fever. Today, Virginia Tech’s student newspaper the Collegiate Times posted footage of former governor and U.S. Senate candidate Mark Warner (D) getting his groove on to the tune of Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” at the annual “Donkey Dance” in Salem on Saturday, September 27 (skip to 2:54 in the video). While the Hook suspects Warner won’t be on Dancing with the Stars anytime soon, it’s a valiant effort when you consider he’s on the same ticket as Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who’s been known to occasionally cut a rug.
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Fifth District Democratic congressional candidate Tom Perriello has asked television stations to stop airing an ad from incumbent Virgil Goode that contains “a flat-out lie” and is “libelous,” according to the Perriello campaign.

The Goode commercial says Perriello opposes offshore drilling, a claim the Perriello people vehemently deny.

Charlottesville attorney Lloyd Snook sent a letter to television stations citing libel law from the New York Times v. Sullivan U.S. Supreme Court decision that specifies “actual malice” and “reckless disregard” for the truth in proving libel [or in this case, slander] of a political figure.

“We do not expect you to act as a censor, prejudging all advertisements that are offered to you,” wrote Snook. “But we do expect that (more)

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Alumna Katie Couric may have left the show, but the Today show keeps coming back to the University of Virginia. As part of the NBC morning program’s ongoing series on battleground states in the upcoming presidential election, Luke Russert, son of late Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert, paid a visit to UVA yesterday to take the pulse of the student vote at Mr. Jefferson’s University.

In his analysis, “You have to remember, the smartest kids in the state go there, so it’s leaning a little bit towards [Sen. Barack] Obama [D-IL]. But it really kind of is a microcosm of the state. White males we spoke to, overwhelmingly for [Sen. John] McCain [R-AZ]; African-Americans overwhelmingly for Obama; white women kind of split right down the middle.”

The younger Russert just graduated from UVA’s ACC rival Boston College this spring, and has been covering politics for NBC News ever since (more)

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Though she’d already won two Emmys before last night, make no mistake about it, last night was Tina Fey’s night. The comedian and University of Virginia alumna took home three golden statuettes from Sunday’s Primetime Emmy Awards for her work on the NBC sitcom she created, 30 Rock. Fey took home the awards for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, and one more as 30 Rock won Outstanding Comedy Series.

While she won a writing Emmy in 2002 for her work as head writer on Saturday Night Live, and 30 Rock had won Outstanding Comedy Series last year, Fey looked truly surprised to beat out Christina Applegate, America Ferrera, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Mary-Louise Parker, for the acting Emmy.

“I’m very proud to be a writer,” she said in her acceptance speech. “I wouldn’t have had any of the other jobs I’ve had if I hadn’t been a writer.”

However, Fey’s night didn’t come off completely perfectly. When she got backstage after her third win, she (more)

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