The Grinch Behind 415 Media

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• "Lieberman said he treats women with respect, decency and admiration and said some of his best friends are women."

  Treating women with respect, decency, admiration and friendship must be going around. Even the country's favorite felon is on the bandwagon.

  Who to believe?
  (A) both
  (B) either
  (C) neither

• If you had to pick out one cringe moment of Lieberman's interview with ex-KTVU anchor Frank Somerville yesterday (9/29/24), it might be when Lieberman stated that people thought Somerville and Haener were the Ken & Barbie of tv news and posed the question: "Did you ever have any intimate feelings about Julie Haener..." Awkward!

• We sometimes bang these stories out, in order to be 1st. But, someone needs to remind Rich Lieberman to pay close attention to spelling and grammar. 415 Media is a tough read for those reasons.

  • He cannot he only has a high school education and sells used fords in alameda CA.

• Right. He doesn't incur hosting fees, domain fees, costs for themes/apps, subscriptions to newspaper archives for info, web/logo design or SEO.

• I came late to this discussion, and was it a kick to read.
  I have been reading RIch's blog for a long time. For all the scurrilous items and fabrications and vitriol, it is, I have to admit, fun to read. Though not so much lately, for his dim view of things in Bay Area media seem to have gotten even dimmer. I have followed him on Twitter and Facebook. I occasionally have left comments on the blog; there aren't many forums for local-television-news followers and local-radio listeners like me to opine. I'm one of the few who uses his actual name, for I don't insult people (or Rich or other commenters) and, not being in the media business, I neither have an axe to grind or anything or anybody to promote.
  I think he sees himself as a kind of "man about town" persona and almost a Herb Caen-like observer of media, dressed well and fedora-ed, someone who has seen it all with a big roster of contacts. I'm guessing that is a stretch. I mean, a real stretch. He has a few ongoing "themes." First, the "corporate suits" from FOX, Viacom, DIsney, Audacy, et al are making weekly visits to the affiliates, making their audits, and they are stunned by how bad things are. "You mean THESE are your anchors?" etc. Heads will roll, people will be thrown out. It never happens.
  Every television newsroom is in chaos with feuding, backbiting and backstabbing and people KTVU in particular is a toxic place. At every station every anchor wants another anchor's job. Most male anchors are sleeping on the sly with female co-anchors or have "been spotted" for intimate dinners and cocktails. The female anchors are all trying to destroy one another.
  If you are female and a news director, you are the wicked witch of the west, or from any direction. Tracy Watkowski, Amber Eikel, Jennifer Seelig. In fact, when writing about women in general, there's an almost incel-like resentment alternating with fascination That might be a little harsh, but consider that letter, co-written by many women of eminence in the Bay Area media. I wonder what Raj Mathai, Julie Haener, Larry Beil, and poor Eric Thomas think about the blog. If they read it.
  He was first with Frank Somerville's story, but boy did he quickly go from being his defender to a detractor. He makes some good arguments that earlier decades offered a higher-quality product, but if this were 1963 he'd probably be writing that John Weston and Wanda Ramey were "spotted" nuzzling in a back booth at Grison's between KPIX newscasts. Someone once said on the TVNewsTalk.net forum that "Rich is always begging us for money and donations. I told him look, you use Blogger, which is free. You own a television, a radio, and a computer. Your phone or Internet bill isn't a penny higher because you do this. How is it you're going out of business if we don't help you out?"

• I work for KGO radio and I can tell you that everyone knows who Rich’s source is in the building, because that person mentions his blog every other day. That source only feeds Rich information in the hopes that he will write flattering pieces. When that person is not in the loop, nothing leaks.

  Other staffers don’t talk to Rich because his stories are either completely fabricated or centered around that one person who used to “donate” money to him. Surprise plot twist, Rich ended up turning on that person and now constantly rails on him.

  Rich has acknowledged that he doesn’t have access to the paid ratings data, but then he uses public 6+ Nielsen numbers (which would include weekend infomercials), and pretends like it gives him insight into how the weekday shows are doing. He says that certain successful shows don’t have good ratings, because most people can’t fact check it.

  He won’t post any comments that contain corrections, because he wants to paint a narrative that puts hosts in a bad light. One of those hosts signed the sexism letter, one stopped giving him money, and a third doesn’t do the traditional newstalk he likes. Ironically, that last host has the highest ratings.

  So yeah, some of his stories at other stations are true, but he uses that as cover for the yellow “journalism” that is peppered throughout the blog.

• Rich comes dangerously close to getting himself sued sometimes. But I guess what protects him is he has no money! His is a gossip site with a little information and NO understanding of how a newsroom works or how news is gathered. His writing seems to be more of a vendetta against people who have either fired him in the past or wouldn't hire him now. Yes, the contemporary news scene is a mess. He never points out the obvious, though: the internet has taken advertising dollars from the once-mighty broadcasting networks. They will never dominate again because people are throwing their advertising dollars away on click-farm sites, so the commercials on TV news are for ambulance chasing lawyers and that store in the south bay that sells cut-rate diamonds that are probably cubic zirconia.

  So how can they maintain the level they had 20 years ago? Answer: they can't. But even if they could, come someone as illiterate and ill-tempered as Rich get a job in that world? Hardly. This is why I don't get why he's bothered so much. Bay Area TV has finally sunk to his level. Okay, that's cruel. Bay Area TV still gets (most of) its facts right and spells (most of) its full screens and supers correctly. That puts it above Lieberman, who typically has at least one error per sentence in every post and whose idea of "reportage" is to say "Bay Area news is getting worse and worse" over and over again. You don't say?

  If would be interesting if he could use his blog to educate people on the seismic shift that's happened in TV news and advertising in the past decade, similar to what Bob Hoffman does in his excellent, award-winning blog. This degridation of news has happened because of people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, not because of Aaron Pero and Amber Eikel, though I'm no fan of the latter two. Maybe if he explained that his blog would serve a purpose greater than venting and personal vendettas. Maybe.

  • Bob Hoffman's newsletter, writing, etc.

• Where do I begin? He's the saddest joke in the "blogosphere." He's always predicting things—ten posts a day—and when you say enough and are vague enough eventually a few do happen. That's how Nostradamus works. Every newsroom goes through upheavals periodically and people leave per the normal course of affairs, but ten times a week he says, "A top anchor was seen having lunch with the suits from New York" or whatever. Eventually someone leaves and he says, "You read it here first! I called it six months ago!" Yeah, well, that's like saying someday it's going to rain. And then it rains. Wow. He also likes to stir up the pot over the slightest things. There is no *major embarrassment* at KTVU for not hiring Kyla Grogan. It does them no credit, but this sort of oversight happens all the time in the business everywhere. I doubt anyone at the station cares today that she landed at KRON. And to top it off, when she was at KTVU he didn't advocate for her. He wrote openly about how he didn't like her and didn't think she was anything special, yet as soon as they didn't hire her f/t he acts as though it's the biggest tragedy since NBC nixed Conan O'Brien.

  He *did* score big with the Frank Somerville DUI story and the local papers took away some of his glory by not crediting him. I did feel for him for that, but that's the rare scoop for someone who's too fast to hit the "publish" button before he's paid any attention to all the squiggly red lines under the words in his posts. I seriously think he skipped grade school because he can't spell words any ten-year-old should be comfortable with, and he mixed metaphors and twists meaning to the point that he sometimes ends up writing the opposite of what he means. Just trying to decipher the "grammar" in some of his posts make me sympathetic for the plight of Jean-François Champollion.

  As for his claim to cover up his sexism that TV is a visual medium, I'll point out that he's talked about female anchor and reporter boobs, clothing and hair but never male bellies or hair. He never praises anybody except ever so slightly once in a while, and pines for the days of Evan White and Van Amburg, but I'll bet if there was blogging back then he would have dissed them as well, and longed for...what, Edward R. Murrow and Herb Morrison? Ida Tarbell and Silence Dogood?

  Lieberman is sad and embittered—unmarried, unsuccessful (he could not get hired as a fill-in writer at one of the stations he deplores) and dependent on scrapings from his 415 Media "business" and some form of public assistance. But he writes fantasy pieces where he's in a swanky bar quaffing an expensive drink while some hot woman is hitting on him. I was about to say what a joke, but it's not a joke. It's sad, really. He sometimes talks about his trips to a therapist. That man or woman must be rich.

  • Many,many years ago Mr. Lieberman achieved his 15 minutes of fame as a result of appearing in a Round Table pizza commercial. Since then he has tried to leverage this brief moment of success into somehow positioning himself as a Z-list celebrity. However, the true essence of Mr. Lieberman exists in a truly sad and pathetic clip of him being interviewed as he’s working as a salesman at a used car lot (search for Big Vinnie Documentary). It’s no wonder that he’s constantly begging for money on his blog.

    • Here is a video blog from 2014 featuring Rich Lieberman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRO4EuvC3NA

      • He’s just sad, bitter, and irrelevant.

  • To be fair to Rich, FTVLive has turned the Nostradamus BS into an art form in ways Lieberman never has. Scott will say something is going to happen and maybe a year later it actually happens and then he takes credit for being "right". News flash: Things don't take a year to happen in the TV News business. If an anchor is on the outs, they get jettisoned. If some executive is on the ropes, they get taken out. TV Newsrooms, particularly at the national level, can't afford to wait a year to pull the trigger if the trigger needs to be pulled. So whenever Scott takes credit for something he prognosticated a year earlier, my eyes roll back so hard they do a 360.

    But back to Lieberman...

    I can't believe anyone subscribes to his blog. He does not churn out real news frequently enough to justify a subscription. Most of the time it's him just recycling his talking points (Ryan Yamamoto sucks, Amber Eikel is in trouble, etc) A couple of years ago it was Trixie Watkowski that constantly got the Lieberman treatment but I guess he got bored or something because he's stopped talking about her. He's really rode roughshod over Sarah Donchey which I just do not understand at all because I've seen her in action and she is fully capable and doesn't give off a whiff of L.A. TV the way others in the Bay Area do (Audrey Asistio for example). And he's been hyper critical of Heather Holmes too, especially her wardrobe which, honestly, in a world of Darya Folsoms, Amanda Starrantinos, and Audrey Asistios, is actually kind of tame by comparison.

    While some of the comments on his blog are undoubtedly Rich himself, I'd say most aren't. But boy can some of them be mean bastards. Some of them rake long time anchor Jessica Aguirre over the coals for supposedly having facelift/Botox treatments when it's patently obvious to anyone who has watched her since she came to the Bay Area in the 90s that she's had nothing of the kind.

    The site isn't a very nice place to visit, in all honesty...

  • Wiki References, for the rest of us:

    Ida Minerva Tarbell was an American writer, investigative journalist, biographer and lecturer. She was one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and pioneered investigative journalism.

    Mrs. Silence Dogood was the pen name used by Benjamin Franklin to get his work published in the New-England Courant, a newspaper founded and published by his brother James Franklin. This was after Benjamin Franklin was denied several times when he tried to publish letters under his own name in the Courant.

• Where do I begin. He's the biggest joke in the "blogosphere." He's always predicting things—ten a day—and when you say enough and are vague enough eventually a few do happen. That's how Nostradamus' "predictions" work. Every newsroom goes through upheavals periodically and people leave per the normal course of affairs, but ten times a week he says "A top anchor was seen having lunch with suits from New York" or whatever. Eventually someone leaves and he says "You read it here first! I called it six months ago!" Yeah, well, that's like saying "Someday it's going to rain." And then it rains. Big deal. He did score big with the Frank Somerville DUI story and the local papers did try to take away some of his glory by not crediting him. I did feel for him for that but that's a rare scoop for someone who's too fast to hit the "publish" button before he's paid any attention to all the squiggly red lines under many words in his posts. I seriously think he skipped grade school or something because he can't spell words any ten-year-old should be comfortable with. As for his claim that TV is a visual medium to cover up his sexism, I'll point out that he's talked about female anchor and reporter boobs but never male bellies or gray hair. He never praises anybody except slightly once in a while, and pines for the days of Evan White and Van Amburg, but I'll bet if there was blogging back then he would have dissed them as well, and longed for...what, Edward R. Murrow and Herb Morrison.

  Lieberman is an embittered joke—unmarried, unsuccessful (he could not get hired as a fill-in writer at one of the stations he deplores) and dependent on scrapings from his 415 Media "business" and probably welfare or social security. But he writes fantasy pieces where he's in a swanky bar and some hot woman is hitting on him. I was about to say what a joke, but it's not. It's sad, really.

  • "...and pines for the days of Evan White and Van Amburg, but I’ll bet if there was blogging back then he would have dissed them as well, and longed for…what, Edward R. Murrow and Herb Morrison."

    LOL! Herb Morrison. Clever line. Thanks for that one.

    • I revised it to add "Ida Tarbell and Silence Dogood," as well as add several other points, but for some reason the software published the original. Ah, technology!

      • Initial comments are held for moderation and the second copy went to Spam folder. Adding your revised comments to compare and contrast.

• Lieberman's entertaining, but much of what he writes is clearly made-up, especially the nonstop catfights between female anchors and the imminent departures of local reporters heading to New York, Los Angeles or Washington, D.C. (They never go anywhere.) Many of the anonymous comments on Lieberman's blog saying how great he is seem suspiciously as if they were written by Lieberman himself. And comments that are critical of Lieberman rarely get published.