Category: default || By jt3y

A correspondent wants to know: If Our Fair City rode out Friday's deluge with relatively few problems, why was Walnut Street closed in the Third Ward on Saturday and Sunday?

Brandy Brubaker had the story in Monday's Daily News:

In McKeesport, a collapsed sewer line caused headaches on city streets. Walnut Street between Eleventh and Thirteenth Avenue remains closed because of a buckled roadway. Part of Twelfth Street is closed due to a large sinkhole. Officials were unsure when the roads would re-open.

Alert Reader Alycia, aka "StuntViolist," promises flooding pictures soon from the Mon-Yough area, while our Washington County correspondent has photos from the Canonsburg area, which was especially hard-hit. Photos of flooding in Picksberg are available from kruckewitt.com (tip of the Tube City hard hat to Dave Copeland).

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The News' Pat Cloonan writes a bi-weekly media column and has a recurring feature that he calls (I think) "McKeesport Media Watch," in which he elaborates on a theme we sometimes allude to here. Namely, that the Picksberg media only find their way to Our Fair City when something bad happens: a flood, a murder, a big fire.

Their Mon-Yough myopia (is that "Monoypia"?) was on view during the flooding coverage, when they kept mixing up "McKeesport" and "McKees Rocks," among other laughers. I also enjoyed how WTAE-TV kept running lists of streets that were closed without specifying in which town. The "crawl" at the bottom of the screen would say something like "CLOSED: ELM STREET." Gee, thanks a lot. That narrows it down.


One anchor introduced a segment on flooding Saturday with the voiceover, "Down in the Mon Valley, where they always have a lot of flooding after a bad storm, the pictures are pretty bad. Our so-and-so was in Slovan, and he has this report."

Slovan? The one in Smith Township, Washington County? The one that's on the way to friggin' Star Lake Amphitheater? (Oh, excuse me, the "Post-Gazette Pavilion.") That's about as far west as you can go from the "Mon Valley" and still stay in Pennsylvania.

Can someone buy the TV news people a map and a ZIP code finder, please?

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Speaking of flood coverage, the Journalism and Media Dept. at Tube City Online --- better-known as the Poyntyhead Institute --- has been following the stories closely. Our head media researcher, Dr. Pica Pole, has a rule of journalism that dictates that by the third day after a disaster with no new developments, the newspapers will be scratching the bottom of the barrels for folos. Dr. Pole points out that we're now in Day 4.

According to Dr. Pole, Day 1 was "Flooding!"

Day 2 was "Tallying the Aftermath!"

Day 3 was "The Cleanup Begins!"

Day 4 was "The Cleanup ... um ... Continues!"

Today's elucidating stories in the local prints include an expose on the losses that car dealers suffered (a direct lift, as one of my tipsters points out, of a suggestion made by a TV news consultant at the Poynter Institute in Florida), and the scintillating news that people are buying a lot of stuff from hardware stores.

Has anyone done a story yet on how pets are suffering in the flood's aftermath? It's coming, believe me. Alert me if you've already seen one.

No one will be around in a few months, when people are still suffering the aftereffects ... or when their homeowner's insurance gets cancelled.

Still, thank goodness for severe weather. Otherwise, what would TV news report on besides car crashes and crime?

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Aaron Barnhart, writer for the Kansas City Star and proprietor of TVBarn.com, is one of a few TV critics --- the great Tom Shales and Marvin Kitman are among the others --- who elevates TV criticism to something more than the standard celebrity fawning and showbiz poofery that so many newspapers and magazines do.

Check out this paragraph in Barnhart's review of the new Jason Alexander vehicle, "Listen Up":

So why do the wheels fall off this show so quickly? Hey, do I look like I work for cheap? Let the geniuses at CBS figure out why every new show of theirs that doesn't have the letters "CSI" in it is so terrible.

Don't hold back --- tell us what you really think, Aaron.

By the way, Barnhart says that CBS "heads should roll" over the faked memos, and he reviews the fall TV schedule from "first" (Fox's medical drama "House") to "worst" (NBC's boxing reality show "The Contender").

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Get ready for a long wait if you use Route 30 in North Huntingdon Township. Craig Smith writes in the Trib that beginning Monday, Lincoln Highway will be restricted from Stewartsville to Circleville as part of a road-widening project that could take up to a year.

This would be a good time to buy your bumper stickers: "Pray for me, I still drive Route 30." Plenty are still available at less than $5 each (OK, a penny left, but cut me some slack).

The turning lane on 30 is desperately needed, but this could still be a real headache for people who live in the township. According to PennDOT, about 30,000 cars use Route 30 daily. There is no assigned detour, but I'd expect most people to wind up on already-clogged Lincoln Way, which should turn that congested two-lane cow path into a parking lot during afternoons and evenings.

If you don't live or work in the township, and just use 30 as a through route, you might look for other options. Nobody asked me, but Route 993 or Route 136 might be better detour alternatives, if you don't mind going out of your way.

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Requiescat in pacem for Myles Zeleznik, a longtime basketball coach at Duquesne and West Mifflin North high schools, who died at UPMC McKeesport hospital on Sunday at age 89. Dave Brown wrote a solid obit in the Trib.