Democracy Has Prevailed.

February 22, 2019

More On John Robinson Block's Bad Behaviour

This one's gotta hurt.

From the YALE DAILY NEWS:
John Block ’77 — the publisher of the Toledo Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the family namesake of a popular Yale journalism internship — has been accused of storming into the Post-Gazette’s building with his daughter while allegedly intoxicated and berating his employees and daughter, according to a post on the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh’s website.

Block used “threatening posturing” and a “verbally abusive tone,” according to Post-Gazette web editor Marianne Mizera’s account of the Feb. 9 incident released on the Guild’s website. His daughter, who is a minor, was shaken to the point of “sobbing.” At one point, Block allegedly “forcefully grabbed” his daughter’s arm and pulled her while she tried to “pull away from him.”
A couple of things with this piece.

Above the text is a photo of the Post-Gazette Building - the OLD Post-Gazette building on the Boulevard of the Allies. John Robinson Block didn't rant and rave and misbehave there. He was drunk and slapped the wall a mile or so away at the NEW P-G building on North Shore Drive.

I would've rewritten this passage:
His daughter, who is a minor, was shaken to the point of “sobbing.” At one point, Block allegedly “forcefully grabbed” his daughter’s arm and pulled her while she tried to “pull away from him.”
From the text it's unclear whether the daughter was sobbing because Block "forcefully grabbed" her or whether she was crying beforehand - and all because of the use of the verb "shaken." Had they said that she was "upset" rather than "shaken" the ambiguity would have gone away.

But I'm just a blogger who went to UConn (Go Huskies!) disagreeing with a journalist at Yale so...

In any event, the fact that Block's abhorrent behavior made it all the back to his Alma Mater in New Haven has to be a gut punch to his Ivy League ego.

It has to be.

Learning that the drunken rant made it onto the pages of the YDN, an old memory for me popped up out of my brain.  This one:


Heaven's a Yale man!

Boola boola!

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