The curse of Barbara Bain’s dog


Jimmy Guterman, editorial director of O’Reilly’s Radar group and the editor of O’Reilly’s Release 2.0, is parting company with the printed edition of the New York Times.

What finally made me give in to the inevitable was realizing, one barely-dawn morning last week when I was reading the paper at our kitchen table, that I had already read much (most?) of it online. For all the pleasure of holding and print, the Times on paper is just too late. In 2008, today’s paper is yesterday’s news.

The comments were interesting not only for the degree at which degree readers of this high tech blog are engaged with their printed newspaper, but for some of the newspaper trivia. You’d think regular reader of O’Reilly Radar would have gotten over their emotional attachment to news on paper years ago. But, no.

There was a newspaper tale that I had never heard from Ross Stapleton-Gray:

It’s not widely known, but Barbara Bain (“Mission Impossible,” “Space 1999”) lost a dog in a tragic accident, when a copy of the LA Times thrown by a delivery boy landed on it and crushed it to death. So there’s that.

That sent me to Google where I found a story on AllBusiness from the Hollywood Reporter written by European Bureau Chief Jeff Kaye on March 31, 1998:

… It sometimes makes me think back wistfully to actress Barbara Bain’s dog, who was killed by the Sunday Los Angeles Times in the early ’80s.

Or at least that’s what we reported over at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner — a thin but scrappy paper that was soon to meet its own end.

My fellow reporters got a tip that a newspaper boy had hurled the Times’ behemoth Sunday edition onto Bain’s porch and had accidentally killed her pooch. We recounted the sad tale in a somber tone.

We also ran an editorial cartoon. It depicted a cop, notebook in hand, talking to Bain. Beneath them was the dog, flattened, big Xs in his eyes, the Times laying atop him.

The cop was saying to the actress: “Y’know, Miss Bain, this never would have happened if you had been taking the Herald Examiner.”

Ah, yeah.

Guterman came back with:

On the other hand, Ross, a few months ago a truck driver survived a bad highway accident because his cab was full of newspapers. So newspapers can save lives, too!

I hadn’t heard that one either. And from riester rente

I also heard the story with the truck driver who survived a bad highway accident. Newspaper can save lives – but in my house the newspaper is a killing machine for the moskitos etc. 🙂

Read them all, thoughtful.