Live and Lively

Me and the Pauls get together once a month to disagree about stuff.

The three of us gather at the AMP studios with Catherine Bowie on the second Wednesday of each month. Our little discussion is aired live on Comcast's Public Access Channel 24.

Bowie serves as host, and the Pauls are Paul Wilner, editor of the Monterey County Weekly, and Paul Miller, publisher of the Carmel Pine Cone. The one-hour show is simulcast at 5 p.m. on KNRY-AM and is produced by the Vossens, Jim and Mary Lou.

The daily Your Town show is a great community resource, an opportunity for local groups, agencies and chambers to get their messages out to whomever happens to be watching or listening at the moment.

But when me and the Pauls are on the show, a quarrel is sure to follow. During our monthly appearance, Bowie asks the collected media jackals about local issues our respective newspapers have been following and, as one can imagine, the three of us tend to disagree a lot.

The show last Wednesday heated up almost immediately.

Paul Miller and the Pine Cone have taken great delight in tweaking both The Herald and the Weekly for its coverage of the Rich Guillen controversy in Carmel, where the council recently settled a harassment lawsuit with nasty implications about Guillen for $600,000. In an editorial last week, Miller accused us, with some dripping sarcasm, of naively accepting the veracity of the claim filed by Jane Miller against the city. He also furiously defended Guillen — and then advocated that Guillen should probably be terminated from his job as city manager.

Bowie wasted no time to seize on the controversy, unleashing the trio of fuming journalists to rant at one another for the rest of the hour. Feelings were probably hurt and professional integrities were impugned. Nerves frayed.

We were jaundiced and frothing by the first break, but Bowie informed us that we had engaged in "great television."

Oddly, we'll be back in the studio next month.