WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

A few years ago I wrote a very short post after reading a brilliant analysis of Carlos Mendo about the US elections.

Today I saw that my blog-meter started to get hundreds of visits linking to this post from Google.

I went to Google and I put just his name in…

And the explanation of so much traffic was there: Carlos Mendo died today and many people were looking for more information about this master of journalists.

Mendo was UPI director in Spain and director of EFE, working also for ABC and El Pais.

Carlos Soria and Esteban Morán were old friends of him.

I am sure that they are very sad.

Like many readers fans of such a great journalist.

He was a gentleman, a happy person with many friends and a terrific expert on US politics.

As we say in Spain, he was “un clásico”.

He was 77.

Rest in pace.

Barack Obama is celebrating today his own birthday (48)

Like reporter Helen Thomas (89)

So he went to White House Press Room where there she was: seating in the front row.

The oldest working journalist in Washington DC told him that her birthday wishes were “world peace and a real health care reform bill.”

Obama carried cupcakes into the room where reporters were with his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, at the daily briefing.

Watch the video here.

As a White House correspondent for the United Press International, Thomas began covering the Kennedy White House.

Thomas resigned from UPI the day after the announcement of its acquisition by the Unification Church leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Since then she works for Hearst Newspapers as a columnist

Bush didn’t like her, and she didn’t liker him either.

She wrote:

“As he leaves office, President Bush is passing on to his successor two wars and a growing economic debacle. What a way to go!”

Usually dressed in red she is invariably the first or second reporter the president calls upon.

And she is the one that still carries the tradition of closing the White House press conferences by saying, “Thank you, Mr. President”

She is the author of Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times (Scribner, 1999)

Happy birthday fierce Helen!

(Picture by Alex Wong/Getty Images)