BEST OF THE B&C BLOGS

July 11, 2007

This just in: WMAQ reporter Amy Jacobson, caught swimming in the pool of a man whose missing wife is a major news story in Chicago, can stay in Craig Stebic's pool for as long as she likes. WMAQ reports that Jacobson is leaving the station. (She'd been covering the Stebic story for WMAQ.)

A memo circulated around the station read, “We are sorry to tell you that Amy Jacobson is leaving NBC5 News, effective immediately. Amy's contributions as a reporter over the last 10 years are numerous. Her hustle and passion for news have given us an edge on many top stories. She's worked long hours on many days, and we appreciate all she's done.”

Jacobson's departure was expedited by video on rival WBBM's site of her in a bikini in Stebic's pool, along with her children. The six-minute video shows, among other things, a sliding door being open and shut an extraordinary number of times. —Michael Malone

July 9, 2007

The Sportsman Channel, which is all hunting and fishing all the time, will be in Washington for the CTAM cable marketing show in a couple weeks, where it will help hand out 400 pounds of venison donated by local hunters.

The channel is partnering with Sportsmen Against Hunger to serve the meat—in the form of meat loaf, sadly—to the homeless July 22 via the Central Union Mission, which is not far from the convention center hosting the annual show.

It is the first time the channel has teamed with the Safari Club's hunger initiative, but it plans to launch a 15-city bus tour to push the “hunt, fish, feed” program which connects “hunters, meet processors and shelters” so that more sportsmen and women can donate some of their “harvests” to the homeless. That “more” would be on top of the almost 250 million meals annually the Safari Club says its hunters and fishers (“fisherers”? “fisherfolk”?) already supply.

I'm told that a number of cable operator executives will be at the mission to help serve up the meal.—John Eggerton