October 11, 2007
Catching Up with Former KTVU Anchor Leslie Griffith
We last heard from Channel 2 news reader Leslie Griffith about a year ago. 2006 was certainly quite a year for her. M&R reported on the controversy surrounding a column from the March 7th, 2006 Oakland Tribune entitled, "How long do we put up with Leslie Griffith?''
(Don't go looking for this somewhat mean-spirited article online kids - it's been electronically dissappeared. Or rather, it does not appear where one would expect to find it on the any of the Internets. It must be tough to read an article like that when you are used to coverage like this)
So, then there was this whole Leslie Griffith Watch thing, and then she left the station. But not after expressing some disillusionment with the state of the broadcast news industry, as ably recorded by the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club.
O.K. then. But now it's "balls to the wall time" for her fellow Texan Dan Rather, so she penned a rousing column that got picked up on the Huffington Post. Details after the jump
So Leslie has read up on nutty Dan Rather's legal brief and she's all for it. Well, that's fine. But we know what we saw. Have you seen the animated gif? If you want to get into this, click here. And if you really, really want to get into it, click here.
Now it's very possible that the larger point being made about George Bush and corporations and the media is "true"- it's basically up for you to decide of course. But if you don't need some iffy documents to make your point, why use them? Maybe CBS wanted to get rid of Dan for other reasons as well. We might find out as the lawsuit continues.
But back to Leslie. Her campaign is getting some local support, so good for her. She maintains a somewhat self-laudatory website here and she's working on a book entitled Shut Up and Read. Lovely.
Now, you're caught up with Leslie Griffith!
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didn't she try and play the "i'm worth so much more" card at salary negotiation time and lost?
i was so happy to see her go
dennis richmond is hopefully about to retire too and then we'll have the best news team in the bay area on fox
it was so time to put her out to pasture, just like dennis
We've got the BBCNews website, SFGate and of course, SFist (toot your own horn)... who is old fashioned enough to watch news programs on TV anymore? The sheer number of pharmaceutical & geriatric aid adverts you'll notice when channel flipping onto them should give their target demographic away.
As for Leslie Griffith, the only notable thing I can remember about her being on air was the bizzare hairstyles. Local anchors are overrated, pompous celebrities who speak from TelePrompters and get credit for the work done by reporters (who do the real work of going out, developing & covering stories and interacting with people).
good point, MM.
although i have to admit enjoying the occasional dennis richmond deep-voiced item.
I like Cantonese news on chan 26.
I have no idea what they are talking about, so I don't ever have to worry about wars etc. They have great commercials too.
In Britain, they call these folks "newsreaders". I love that.
But their job is not as easy as it looks. Being on camera requires a certain talent that few people have. It's not the most awesome superpower of a talent ever, but still, it's something that not everyone could roll out of bed and nail.
For sheer volume of hairstyles, no one could beat Terilyn Joe. You could judge the state of the economy based on TJ's hair height; I swear that bouffant 'do would rise and fall with the Dow Jones index.
Whatever happened to her, anyway?
Wait, Leslie Griffith is a real person? I thought she was some animatronic wax figure. There is no way that hair and makeup job belongs to an actual human.
But I had no idea she was gone. Between her and the press releases for various companies disguised as "news" I gave up on network news a long time ago. That's what Salon, et al., is for.