The New York Times carried a heartbreaker of a story this weekend about old folks getting bilked on the phone by con artitsts after their life savings. The most appalling angle had to do with the corporate assist these crooks get — from the unscrupulous data companines like infoUSA who sell the lists to cons with such guiding words as “These people are gullible and want to think their luck can change,” to banks such as Wachovia that are unconcerned when unsigned third parties start cleaning out the elderly customers accounts — but the story was oddly familiar.

I had read about scams on seniors before in a book that AARP published in conjunction with the Washington State Attorney General’s office called Fraud Fighters. (That book included a CD of actual conversations recorded in a sting with some cons that have to be heard to be believed.) And in Bruce Wagner’s last novel, Memorial, a elderly woman is swindled of millions by some very imaginative con artists. And when they are gone, and have taken literally everything from her, she tells her daughter she misses them.

That was what was so haunting about the Times’s story. Richard Guthrie, a 92-year-old Army veteran, said “I loved getting those calls. Since my wife passed away, I don’t have many people to talk with. I didn’t even know they were stealing from me until everything was gone.”

My wife was similarly moved by this tale. “Couldn’t we get a list of people like that, seniors who are lonely for phone calls and just phone them up?” Maybe that could be the punishment visited on the venal infoUSA and their ilk: make them give us those lists. We could all take turns phoning up strangers and saying, “I see here you served our country in the Second World War. What was that like?” Or, “It looks like you raised five kids on a waitress’s salary — and they all went to college. How’d you pull that off?” Don’t sell them anything (keep your religion and self-righteousness), don’t even give them your name if you don’t want. Don’t give them anything but your time. Talk about random acts of kindness.

Today’s New York Times contains yet the latest piece of speculation on Rupert Murdoch’s offer to buy Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. This story, by Times staffer Richard Siklos, includes actual reporting (including at least one sit-down with RM himself) and declares that Murdoch’s interests are digital even as he makes a play for a piece of old media.

The NY media world has been abuzz since Murdoch made his offer almost a month ago, with opinions falling into two general camps: that which says he will destroy the venerable old WSJ with his meddling and tabloid tendencies, and that which says he will leave well enough alone and that, perhaps, the Journal could use a good swift kick in the pants. (Both camps agree he would probably leave the arch conservative Op-Ed pages alone, since the views expressed within so closely mirror his own: pro-war, anti-regulation and occasionally downright hysterical.)

While there is much more context to be chewed on — the eternal Aussie outsider’s need to buy respectability, his nascent news networks need for credibility — the question of his meddling if often settled by looking to the past: He didn’t muck with the Village Voice nor New York magazine when he owned them in the seventies, figuring if the publications made money, who was he to argue? (Though many Murdoch watchers also say you can read his mind by reading the New York Post — a frightening thought indeed.)

Like many who have worked in NY media for long, I too worked for Mudoch once. In the mid-nineties I was part of a team of writers, editors, producers and designers who labored on the stillborn web baby never to be known as iGuide. It was Murdoch’s first internet venture (in partnership with MCI), launched and folded in those heady days when no one had a business model that made any sense but lots of people were throwing money around. I was no different: my assistant had to show me what a website looked like (I think Word was the first one I saw) and I spent a good deal of my time trying to explain what we were doing to folks in old media.

That iGuide was doomed is apparent in hindsight but we were too busy building a ladder to the sky. Even then the question of Murdoch’s influence was on our minds — even though no one outside of our digital tent could see the content we were creating. Covering the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, which was being held in human-rights challenged Beijing in the summer of ’95, I was able to finagle a number of comments from interested outsiders such as Susan Faludi and Senator Ted Kennedy .

Kennedy’s quote, while bland and rather predictable, was my big get; though it’s doubtful he came anywhere near it, it represented creds to us. Look, Ted Kennedy on our site! We gave him pride of place, complete with a picture, on the front page of our special women’s conference coverage. So you can imagine my surprise when I came in and discovered that both the picture and Kennedy’s quote had been removed.

“Rupert hates Kennedy,” my boss, a jovial Brit named Jonathan Miller told me. When Murdoch came by the office to see what we were up to my superiors panicked, thinking that the mere sight of Ted’s flushed Irish face would send him into a fit. I can’t help but think they overreacted — we were, after all, gathering news — but iGuide didn’t last long enough for me to find out. After losing MCI as a partner, and $40M of his own money, Murdoch took decisive action. First, he came by the office to tell us there was nothing to worry about. Then, a few days later, he gave us all the sack.

Not that I have any bad feelings about the experience. I went on to several more internet jobs, most for companies that no longer exist. iGuide, of course, is gone — it’s almost as if it was never there — and so is Word and, for that matter, MCI. Only Rupert remains.

A few readers of this space have asked me why I haven’t been blogging of late (thanks, few readers). Yes, I’ve been insanely busy all of a sudden, which is good but I was also overwhelmed by the shootings at Virginia Tech. Once the initial shock had subsided I thought of writing about the elements of the story that were at least within my grasp and experience — I did a story on schoolyard shooters once, and I’ve had writing students who scared people with their prose — but each day’s revelations seemed to render yesterday’s news moot, or at least render me mute. Now it seems some of the students who survived will be writing about it. May they find courage and some meaning in the telling.

It seems that all those April showers brought us a bouquet of death, My last entry was about Vonnegut, but at least he defied the odds and lived to 82. (In a posthumous speech delivered by his son yesterday, the author told us from the grave not to fear death and credited Socrates with the line, “Death is just one more night.”) Far more disturbing was the news that Bay Area writer Chiori Santiago had succumb to cancer two weeks ago.

Chiori was a freelance writer who did some work for me when I was the arts editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian a thousand years ago. She was smart, professional, versed in topics as diverse as salsa and Japanese-American history, beautiful and generous. After I left the Guardian (which remains the worst job I ever had), I hired Chiori to write a column at Parenting magazine called “One Family.” She was a joy to work with and kind enough to ignore my unwanted advances on at least one occasion.

I hadn’t talked to her in over 15 years when I got word of her death. The last time we spoke I was working as the film and music editor at Elle magazine and she was pitching me a piece. What I recall was that I was rude to her; I’m sure there was a deadline involved and I was still drinking then, and full of that selfish behavior that some drunks think passes for honesty. I had always meant to seek her out and apologize for my boorish attitude. Which is why you should be kind to people, or at least try.

As a character in an early Vonnegut novel said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we should be careful about what we pretend to be.”

God bless you, Chiori. Please accept my apology.