Post-Journalism

"In short, we live now in the Age of Post-Journalism. All that was before is now over, as this generation of journalists voluntarily destroyed the hallowed notion of objectivity and they will have no idea quite how to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again."
- Victor Davis Hanson

In the 3rd book of his history, Thucydides has some insightful thoughts about destroying institutions in times of zealotry—and then regretting their absence when there is a need for refuge for them. The mainstream press should have learned that lesson, once they blew up their credibility in the past election by morphing into the Team Obama press agency.

There will come a time in the year ahead when either Obama's unexamined past will come back to haunt him, or his inexperience and tentativeness in foreign affairs will be embarrassingly apparent, or his European-socialist agenda for domestic programs simply won't work. And as public opinion falls, what will MSNBC, the New York Times, the editors of Newsweek, a Chris Matthews or the anchors at the major networks say?

Not much—since they will have one of two non-choices: (1) either they will begin scrambling to offer supposed disinterested criticism, which will be met with the public's, "Why should we begin believing you now?" or "Why didn't you tell this before?", or (2), They can continue as state-sanctioned megaphones of the Obama administration in the manner that they did during the campaign. They will lose either way and remain without credibility.

------------------------
In truth, they don't care to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. That isn't their purpose.

Newspapers lost their credibility decades ago. Like the Disney Discorporation trading on the Disney name and flaunting teenage skanks, the joy is getting away with the outrage. One of the favored tools of the Left has always been to appropriate an image or ideal and then ride the wave as long as it served a purpose. But there's no going back for another crest because there's no talent left to achieve or create. That's why Pixar makes the Disney movies. Because Disney is incapable of producing anything but rot.

And it's why newspapers will never again serve as a balance in a democracy. There's no talent or creativity. Just a will to dominate and subjugate. They will, of course, tell themselves that the subjugation part is wrong, but no freedom long survives such a crush.

An industry that found no particular fault in Stalin, championed Fidel Castro's fanatacism and bloody revolutions thoughout South America, and think of despots and terrorists are "Romantic Revolutionaries" are not enamored of freedom. Why would anyone in their right minds expect otherwise? Freedom is an anathema to those whose existence would be voted away in a free marketplace of ideas.

That's what cancelling your subscription to the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times meant. And having cast your vote for honesty and fairness, you're now Enemy Number One.

Don't expect to be given another chance to veto them. You won't hear of Obama's gaffes or be able to link to that list of pardons Bill Clinton dispensed before leaving office. And you'll no longer be able to fact check the casualty count of 800,000 dead in Rwanda. Anymore than you will be given a fair and accurate assessment of the world under Joe Biden's laughably clueless hand.

Their next step will be to remove collective memory. Once they have restocked the courts with their political allies, legal terrorism will remove any freedom on the Internet. And you won't be able to preserve history either. You can take that prediction to the bank.

No one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

If you want to read the obituary for the mainstream media, it's here.

Columnist Michael Malone "Looks at Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why"
--------------------------
Malone doesn't attempt to understand why. It's suicidal, yes. But, it's more than that. It's just plain visceral hatred because they blame everyone else for their demise.

The unfaithful readers. The Internet unleased by George H.W. Bush. Advertisers who are abandoning them. American citizens who can't stand them. Talk show listeners who prefer a dialogue on the issues than issues framed by the media.

They hate everyone. In their death throes, they would gladly, happily skewer an election and compromise democracy. An act that will forever label journalism and freedom of the press as liars and a lie.

And that is absolute proof that they think they are terminal. And why we should think the diagnosis is true. Few know the real state of the media like those who own it and control it.

We will blunder along without them. But we will be less grievous for the loss. For those of us who grew up loving newspapers, the death was not of late. The corpse has been cooling for a while. It's only now that the stench demands we bury it.

Newspaper Circulation Losses

The latest FAS-FAX figures from the Audit Circulation Bureau show another decline for U.S. newspapers. The reporting is for the six months ending September 2008. Overall losses were - 4.6% on daily circulation. Last year, the overall circulation decline ending September 2007 was -2.6%

The list of losses, as presented by Editor & Publisher
was by circulation.
USA TODAY -- 2,293,310 -- 0.01%
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,011,999 -- 0.01%
NEW YORK TIMES -- 1,000,665 -- (-3.58%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES -- 739,147 -- (-5.20%)
DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK -- 632,595 -- (-7.16%)
NEW YORK POST -- 625,421 -- (-6.25%)
THE WASHINGTON POST -- 622,714 -- (-1.94%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE -- 516,032 -- (-7.75%)
HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 448,271 -- (-11.66%)
NEWSDAY -- 377,517 -- (-2.58%)
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC -- 361,333 -- (-5.51%)
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- 339,430 -- (-7.07%)
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS -- 338,933 -- (-9.28%)
BOSTON GLOBE -- 323,983 -- (-10.18%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS -- 322,360 -- (-4.26%) 2
STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK, N.J. -- 316,280 -- (-10.40%)
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES -- 313,176 -- (-3.94%)
PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND -- 305,529 -- (-8.58%)
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER -- 300,674 -- (-11.06%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS -- 298,243 -- (-6.84%)
THE OREGONIAN -- 283,321 -- (-8.45%) 4
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION -- 274,999 -- (-13.62%) 1
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE -- 269,819 -- (-3.00%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES -- 268,935 -- (-6.88%)
THE SACRAMENTO BEE -- 253,249 -- (-4.22%)
(At this point, they cut off one of the worst losses - by the Orange County Register. 3)

That same list rearranged by losses (high to low.)
There are five in double digits.
(The -15% loss at Orange County Register should be here at the top.)
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION -- 274,999 -- (-13.62%)
HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 448,271 -- (-11.66%)
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER -- 300,674 -- (-11.06%)
STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK, N.J. -- 316,280 -- (-10.40%)
BOSTON GLOBE -- 323,983 -- (-10.18%)
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS -- 338,933 -- (-9.28%)
PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND -- 305,529 -- (-8.58%)
THE OREGONIAN -- 283,321 -- (-8.45%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE -- 516,032 -- (-7.75%)
DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK -- 632,595 -- (-7.16%)
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- 339,430 -- (-7.07%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES -- 268,935 -- (-6.88%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS -- 298,243 -- (-6.84%)
NEW YORK POST -- 625,421 -- (-6.25%)
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC -- 361,333 -- (-5.51%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES -- 739,147 -- (-5.20%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS -- 322,360 -- (-4.26%)
THE SACRAMENTO BEE -- 253,249 -- (-4.22%)
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES -- 313,176 -- (-3.94%)
NEW YORK TIMES -- 1,000,665 -- (-3.58%)
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE -- 269,819 -- (-3.00%)
NEWSDAY -- 377,517 -- (-2.58%)
THE WASHINGTON POST -- 622,714 -- (-1.94%)
USA TODAY -- 2,293,310 -- 0.01%
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,011,999 -- 0.01%

Not on their list but shown in an another E & P article.
--- (Arranged by losses, high to low.) Three are double digit.
The Daily News in Philly, daily circ down 13.2% to 97,694
Miami Herald daily circ was down 11.8% to 210,884
The Detroit News’ daily circ down 10.0% to 178,280 copies
Daily circ at the Denver Post down 6.5% to 210,585
Rocky Mountain News daily circ down 6.6% to 210,281
The Orlando Sentinel lost 3.3% of its daily circ to 206,363
The San Jose Mercury News was down 1.9% to 224,199

Losses reported elsewhere.
The Boston Herald circ down 9.9% to 167,506.
Orange County Register circ down 15% from a year earlier to 236,277. 3

WINNERS, so to speak, in circulation gains. From E & P article.
Notice that all are small newspapers.
WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL -- 97,012 -- 10.61%
TRENTON (N.J.) TIMES -- 53,303 -- 5.34%
DESERET NEWS, SALT LAKE CITY -- 71,133 -- 2.09%
ERIE (PA.) TIMES-NEWS -- 56,124 -- 1.81%
THE QUAD-CITY TIMES, DAVENPORT, IOWA -- 50,820 -- 1.66%
BATON ROUGE ADVOCATE (LA.) -- 92,030 -- 1.35%
HUNTSVILLE TIMES (ALA.) -- 50,998 -- 1.27%
COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE (COLO.) -- 96,515 -- 1.16%
OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER (UTAH) 60,907 -- 0.93%
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL -- 165,010 -- 0.85%

Top 25 Daily Circ Gainers can be found at Fitz & Jen. (E & P blog.)

The Chicago Tribune article on the latest figures was titled "New newspaper paid-circulation figures out -- thanks for reading this ... somewhere"
They reported their own circulation losses for the six month period ending September 2008 at -5.8% while they said the Chicago Sun-Times paid-circulation averages fell 3.9 percent weekdays, year-to-year.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported their average weekday circulation rose 0.3 percent to 313,174 copies.

THE FUTURE? The worst is yet to come: "Newspapers are currently more worried about even steeper, double-digit reductions in advertising revenue caused largely by the weak economy." And despite cheerful observations that "Declines are expected given the ongoing migration of readers to the Internet." by the Canadian Press, online readers are unpaid readers. And advertisers will not be paying large rates for unverifiable visitors to a newspaper web site.

From October 27, 2008 "Selling Papers" by James Erick Abels in Forbes.

"[Newspapers] draw most of their advertising from the local economy," says John Puchella, a newspaper analyst with Moody's. As recession sinks in across the country, many of the local businesses that constitute newspapers' biggest ad buyers could disappear, he says--and an industry can't rebound if its market ceases to exist.

Read the whole thing.

And, too, their regular readers may decide that in a tight economy they no longer want to subscribe.

Worse for newspapers, the capital to keep them afloat is no longer guaranteed. Those private equity firms that made billions on real estate speculation are no longer flush with money. They've propped up newspapers across the country in the last few years. And those foreign investors aren't there to prop up the equity funds anymore either.
-----------------------------
FOOTNOTES
1 To put it in perspective, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution latest circulation figure is 274,999. They lost 13.9% from the same period a year ago. This latest drop comes after a 8.5 percent decline in circulation in the previous six month period ending March 31, where circulation numbers were 326,907, and a 9.1 percent decline in the six month period before that. Since April, the AJC’s daily circulation figures have fallen by 51,908.

2 The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is in the midst of a restructuring. Its owner, private-equity owner Avista Capital Partners, has skipped debt payments as its health worsens. In October, the Star-Tribune skipped a $9 million payment on a $432 million debt. Avista Capital Partners, a New York private equity firm, paid $530 million for the Star Tribune in 2007. In July 2008, the paper failed to make a quarterly interest payment to holders of its lower-level debt - some $96 million owed to Avista, money Avista raised last year when it acquired the paper. In May 2008, Avista Capital Partners wrote down the value of its $100 million investment by 75 percent, reflecting the falling value of newspapers such as the Star Tribune.

LEGAL WOES: The Star-Tribune paid $3.8 million just in legal fees to the Pioneer Press. This was after settling a lawsuit that mandated that Par Ridder can't return to work (so ordered by a judge) at the Star Tribune or its parent company, Avista Capital Partners, until Sept. 18, 2008. The Star Tribune reported that Ridder resigned, and in return, the Pioneer Press agreed to drop a lawsuit against Ridder and the Minneapolis-based paper. See previous entry. Even the union wanted Ridder gone.

FINANCIAL CONNECTIONS: You could spend a day clicking though the holding companies and financial connections of Avista. The founder is also a partner in DJL Merchant Banking Partners, which is a private equity investment affiliate of Credit Suisse.

3 The Orange County Register is owned by Irvine-based Freedom Communications and is rumored to be for sale. The rumor monger? The Financial Times. link

Blackstone and Providence Equity, which own about 45 per cent of Freedom, are "eager to reduce their exposure." In October, the Register revealed that Freedom Communications is in "technical violation of the terms of its loan agreements but generates sufficient cash to meet payroll, pay its vendors and make its loan payments and other financial obligations." They were "in discussions with their lenders."

The lenders are fascinating. Blackstone bought out Sam Zell's national Equity Office Properties' portfolio buildings for $36 billion and quickly flipped nine of the San Francisco buildings to Morgan Stanley Real Estate for $2.6 billion. Sam Zell quickly bought the Tribune Co. (Chicago Tribune) and with it, the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times, for $8.2 billion. He later sold Newsday to afford the debt payments on the $13 billion owed. And the LA Times building and the Tribune Tower are likely to go up for sale. That is, if anyone in this depressed real estate market wants them. To cut costs, the Zell's Tribune Co. dropped AP stories. And we all know what happened to Morgan Stanley. And it isn't over yet as investors continue to withdraw their money market accounts from the firm.

Blackstone isn't doing well either. Their shares have collapsed as "Over the past year, the stock price has plunged from $29.38 to a recent low of $6.88." One of it's big investors? AIG and you don't even want to know how badly they are doing even with the government bailout.

When the going gets tough, someone sues

This unusually candid story from the San Diego Union-Tribune about the economic decline of newspapers gives a more realistic view of the state of the industry than any take by Editor & Publisher.

Things haven't gone smoothly in Minneapolis, either. In May, the Star Tribune reported that Avista had written down $75 million of the $100 million it invested in the purchase, reflecting the estimated decline in the paper's value.

Then in June, the company skipped a payment to secondary debt holders as it sought a restructuring plan with the senior creditors who hold the largest chunk of the debt. The company said it had enough money to make the payment, but chose not to as it worked to restructure the debt while also cutting costs and trying to boost revenue.

There's worse.

• Family-owned Landmark Communications put itself up for sale at the start of the year and succeeded in selling the Weather Channel to NBC Universal, but it has yet to announce a buyer for its nine daily newspapers.


• Investors have fled publicly traded newspaper companies in the past year, driving down the stock price of McClatchy about 80 percent, Gannett about 60 percent and The New York Times Co. about 20 percent.


• Standard and Poor's reported in June that the group, Philadelphia Media Holdings, had missed a payment on secondary loans and was in talks with senior creditors for relief. The group reportedly fell below the debt-to-cash-flow ratio required by its senior lenders, who then blocked a payment to a secondary group of lenders.

Philadelphia Media Holdings bought the Philadelphia newspapers dumped by McClatchy after they bailed out bought Knight Ridder.

Copley is trying to sell the San Diego Union-Tribune. Without much success.
---------------------
Oh, and Sam Zell is being sued by present and former employees in a class action lawsuit in which they call the sale to Zell "a scam." That sale has mired the company in $13 billion of debt. The litigants are worried about their pension plans that are saddled with Tribune stock.

From Fortune magazine: "For Zell, more Tribune hell" Subhead: A suit filed by his own employees re-opens the question of how the billionaire bought so much for so little

In a more interesting vein, the suit also alleges that the Tribune's board was seduced into approving the deal in April 2007 by the allure of $25 million in incentive payments to top management and that it therefore overlooked more attractive alternatives and the fact that Zell's plan would foreseeably gut employees' pension benefits.

The plaintiffs are Dan Neil, a Pulitzer-prize winning auto critic who is still employed at the Times, while former writers Corie Brown (a food-and-wine critic), Henry Weinstein (legal affairs), Walter Roche, Jr. (a Baltimore Sun as well as L.A. Times veteran), Myron Levin (consumer affairs), and Jack Nelson (once a Pulitzer-prize winning D.C. bureau chief) are the other proposed class representatives.

Tribune Woes

In an August 14th article in the Wall Street Journal, on the Tribune Co. shows they're still deeply troubled. They took a $3.8 BILLION accounting charge in the second quarter.

Gannett Co., New York Times Co. and other publishers have taken similar charges, an acknowledgment that newspaper assets are worth less than the value shown on the companies' books.

In Tribune's case, the charge shows the company overpaid in the $8.3 billion deal in 2000 that united Times Mirror Co.'s Los Angeles Times, Newsday and other papers with Tribune's Chicago Tribune and TV stations. More than $3 billion of the second-quarter charge was to lower the value of that merger.

Tribune remains heavily in debt. The company still owes nearly $600 million by June, but the pending auction of the Chicago Cubs baseball team and related assets is expected to bring roughly $1 billion.

Tribune went private in December with the a leveraged buyout engineered by real estate magnate Sam Zell. But the debt-heavy company continues to disclose its results, because some of its bonds continue to trade publicly.

Gannett recorded a $2.8 billion charge to write down goodwill and impaired assets in the latest quarter, and E.W Scripps took a $779 million goodwill hit. (Goodwill = companies list on their books not just the value of their tangible assets, such as buildings or printing presses, but also intangible factors such as a strong brand name.If circumstances change enough to reduce the value of the goodwill on its books,a corporation is obliged to take a non-cash charge to reflect the lower value. )

And, yes, the Tribune has picked two brokers to sell their buildings that include Times Mirror Square and the Tribune Tower in Chicago.

Prices for the properties have not been set, but the Times headquarters was valued at about $150 million and Tribune Tower might garner about $230 million, according to industry trade publication Real Estate Alert. Money raised by any deal is expected to be used to pay down debt.

And it's likely to get worse. Shares of nearly all publicly traded newspaper companies have lost as much as 80% of their value in the last year -- but they haven't hit bottom yet, says a blistering report on the sector released Monday by Morningstar.The Chicago-based independent research firm calls newspapers "the market's most overvalued stocks.

Morningstar singled out five newspaper stocks that it says are trading at "significant premiums" to its estimates of their fair value.

(LINKS ARE TO LISTS OF THEIR PUBLICATIONS)
McClatchy Co. fair value estimate is $1.95. Traded at $4.26.
Gannett Co. (USA Today) fair value estimate is $1.61 a share. Traded at $19.99.
Lee Enterprises fair value estimate is $1.63 a share. Traded at $3.56.
New York Times fair value estimate is $1.27. Traded at $13.94.
GateHouse Media Inc. was, they said, essentially worthless. Traded at 69 cents.

Who would buy them? This is a good clue.

What's the Press Coming to?

The former president of the Dallas Press Club is being sued, accused of rigging several prestigious journalism competitions. Elizabeth Albanese denies the accusations She was president of the Press Club August 2005 until March 2007.

The lawsuit was filed by the press club and the Press Club of Dallas Foundation.

At the center of the case is the question of whether Albanese rigged the Katie Awards, a contest for journalists and communications professionals in Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

Albanese won 10 Katie Awards from 2003-06, which is also the period in which she was active in organizing the competition. Earlier this year, press club members learned that Albanese couldn't name any of the judges involved from 2004-06. The club's leaders have concluded that no one judged them.

And then there is those other things to explain.

Albanese has been arrested in Texas and Virginia on charges of passing bad checks and in Maryland for fraud, theft and forgery, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

Press club members say she has claimed to be teenage graduate of the University of Texas, a Harvard Law School graduate and a former New York Times reporter. The Associated Press was unable to verify those claims.

Albanese was once described as "one of the most most honored journalists in North Texas." She even invented a rich husband who declared bankruptcy in 2003.

She had criminal records in three states. Sounds like she found just the right career.

Also see "Kiss Me, Katie"

FINALLY - Nov 30 - The Press Club of Dallas has dropped their lawsuit.

The Press Club decided to drop the lawsuit after concluding that it was a waste of money at a time when the club was trying to rebuild its reputation and fund scholarships.

They still want the awards back though. (As if they mean anything.)

Tiny Ridder Testifies

Par Ridder (former publisher of the Pioneer Press) claims he didn't intend to harm the St. Paul Pioneer Press when he took confidential computer files from his job there to his new post as publisher and CEO of the rival Star Tribune of Minneapolis.

The spreadsheets contained sensitive data on advertising, finances and personnel. He was only, he claimed, going to reproduce the forms. Of course, he shared the spreadsheets with at least two other Star Tribune officials but only so they could re-create the spreadsheets using Star Tribune data, adapted to how the Star Tribune conducted business. If you believe that.

From the Washington Post:

"I had profit numbers, revenue numbers, expense numbers" and sensitive information on advertisers and personnel, he said.

He also took a folder of noncompete agreements, including his own agreement.

Par Ridder is the son of Knight Ridder Chairman Tony Ridder who sold the Pioneer Press to McClatchy newspapers who sold it to MediaNews.

There were other witnesses.

Two of Ridder's new bosses also testified by video. OhSang Kwon, a partner with Avista Capital Partners, which owns the Star Tribune, said Ridder had told him when they were hiring him that his noncompete agreement had been repealed, and he wasn't sure if it was valid in the first place. James Finkelstein, another partner at Avista, said Ridder should not have brought the confidential computer documents with him to the Star Tribune.

Par Ridder, 38, testifed that Art Brisbane released them from the noncompete agreements, but Brisbane said he couldn't recall discussing the matter. Furthermore, Brisbane testified he was sure that he would have consulted with other Knight Ridder executives before canceling Ridder's noncompete agreement, including Tony Ridder.

The Houston Chronicle: ""I didn't plan on using the Pioneer Press financials," Ridder testified, because it would have given him and the Star Tribune an "unfair advantage" in the competitive Twin Cities newspaper market."

The Star Tribune is, of course, denying that tiny Ridder and two executives violated employment agreements by coming to work at the paper. The Pioneer Press wants the three executives - Paul Ridder, Kevin Desmond, the Star Tribune's senior vice president of operations, and Jennifer Parratt, its director of niche publications, banned from working for the Star Tribune for at least a year.

THIS IS probably not important unless you follow the media business, but Tiny Ridder was always a major loser who oversaw an intentially non-competing newspaper. The fact is that he wanted to continue to cripple any possible competition.
------------------
FOR UPDATE on how this turned out, go here. (Short version: The Star Tribune paid $3.4 million legal fees to the Pioneer Press. The union voted to ask Tiny Ridder to quit. A judge finally ordered him to leave the paper for a year and the judge had some juicy comments to make about it.)

Our Peter Pan Press

Headline on an AP story from Editor & Publisher: "Whoops, They Did It Again: 'NYT' Reporter Describes Video of Another Grisly Execution in Iraq"

Whoops??? Like, in we're dancing in the aisles over the grisly execution video leaks? Yes, that's Editor & Publisher, the self-described America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry.

Greg Mitchell actually finding something morally repugnant besides war????!!!! To be fair, he doesn't claim repugnance. He reserves that for President Bush. And morality is something his spell checker makes sure he never uses in case he might be asked to explain his standards. But at least now we know why he's such a screwball. It's that goosing from high school.

Media Race Card

Philadelphia Weekly is playing the race card in reporting the layoffs at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Deepening the wound at a paper already struggling for readers, advertising dollars and some kind of identity, the layoffs represent a major step backward for diversity.

Of those laid off, 16 employees—or 22.5 percent—are black.

“It’s a very unfortunate situation,” says Inquirer reporter Vernon Clark, who’s been at the paper for 20 years, and last week helped many of his colleagues carry boxes to their cars. “It’s devastating to see 16 African-Americans walk out the door when we’ve struggled so hard over the years to increase the number of minorities here. Those efforts have been wiped out in a day.”

It's predictable that when media layoffs occur for journalists to claim it is because of a A) greedy bastard parent company is B) obsessed with profits and C) could care less about quality.

The accusation was most often made against Knight-Ridder before it bombed was sold. This, despite of the fact that Knight-Ridder Foundation invented the diversity index for newsrooms, substituing numbers for quality or even qualifications.

The only minority representation at Knight-Ridder papers was conservative opinion. The newspaper chain was so unprofitable that only one bidder - McClatchy stepped up to buy it. The Philadelphia Inquirer was among 12 newpapers McClatchy sold almost immediately. The new owners are said to be exploring the sale of the 82-year-old landmark that houses The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.

Playing the race card is hardly likely to elicit the sympathy journalists seem to expect. But, that's all right. They write enought sob stories about themselves to fill Romensko's blog for days on end. And these two papers in particular played that same card for over thirty years which is why the The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News had to be sold in the first place.

And the second time.

It's a game no one is interested in anymore.

Where's Jamil? (Continued)

Look who's asking the question now. None other than, the Columbia Journalism Review. Paul McCleary, writing in CJR, is asking the Associated Press to "Produce the Phantom Iraqi Source." It's significant that "phantom" isn't even in quotes in the headline.

McCleary credits Editor & Publisher's Strupp for challenging the AP. However, what set E&P thinking (at long last) was Easton Jordan's questioning of AP after his independent investigation.

McCleary, however, thinks it's time to fess up.

Either the captain exists, or he does not, or the name is a pseudonym for someone who fears for his safety -- a very real possibility in chaotic Baghdad. But whatever the truth is, the AP is hurting itself every day it refuses to acknowledge its critics. It's time to present its case, for better or worse.

And the fact that I found the link to the CJR story was through Romenesko's blog at Poynter is telling.

Update: I know I feel better now that the AP has written a definitive story on Capt. Jamil Hussein. The AP interviewed the Interior Minister who previously denied Jamil existed. You see, Jamil could be arrested for talking to the media, the AP says, despite the fact that they claim Jamil has been a source since 2004.

And now they think they can sign their own excuse cards? I DON'T THINK SO!!

Update; So now bloggers are responsible for endangering the life of Jamil Hussein despite the inconvenient fact that Jamil Hussein was a named source for over 60 AP stories. That isn't going to wash either.

Look for the Union Label

When I wrote about the sale of the Minneapolis Star-News, I thought it looked odd that Dutch-owned Editor & Publisher mentioned union contracts more than once. A new story today infers that McClatchy sold it off because it was union in "With 'Strib' Gone, McClatchy Sheds Another Union Paper -- Coincidence?"

Seems the Star-News was the next to the last newspapers McClatchy-purchased Knight-Ridder paper, that had union newsrooms. (The contracts will, of course, be honored. It was part of the negotiations.) The one former paper with a Guild newsroom that McClatchy kept was the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.

Of course, selling such papers might be an issue of (shhhhh) p r o f i t a b i l i t y. As in, union papers are more (shhhh) c o s t l y to produce and union troubles are (shhhhh) a n n o y i n g and (shhhhh) t h u g g i s h. (Just ask the folks who bought the Philadelphia papers from McClatchy.)

But realism (or honesty) has never been a watchword for union organizations.

It is my contention, and I have written about it, that newspaper unions and newspapers dependence upon them is another factor in their liberal-leftwing politics. It is also my contention that in the 1960s the unions helped drive other newspapers out of business with long and costly strikes so that the public was left with only liberal-leftwing papers in major cities. (Think Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.)

And as they are trying to do in Toledo.

The sky is falling (or maybe not)

The Globe & Mail, Canada's lunatic leftwing newspaper - (think U.K.'s Guardian as opposed to the Independent) - has daily polls to test their readers susceptibility to their various campaigns.

They must be gnashing their teeth after a prominent story, "Giant ice shelf snaps free from Canada's Arctic," and their poll question hasn't the desired effect.

Question: If the unusual weather patterns observed in much of Canada this fall and winter are a byproduct of global warming, do you believe the change is caused mainly by natural events or human activity?

Natural events (49%) 13598 votes
Human activity (51%) 13911 votes

Thanks, Santa

The guys at Power Line have long maintained that the Minneapolis Star Tribune, their home newspaper is one of the worst in the country. It's a view shared by many of us who have visited the newspaper.

Today that view was shared by the marketplace and Goldman Sachs.

"While McClatchy will "generate a tax benefit of about $160 million," Goldman observes, it is also taking a hit on the sale price, having paid $1.2 billion for the paper in 1998, now selling it for $530 million. "The substantial loss on the sale is a vivid reminder of the industry's declining fortunes ove the last several years," Goldman declared.

And THAT quote was found at Editor & Publisher, the leftwing rah, rah, rah cheerleaders for the industry that are helping lead American newspapers off the cliff into la la land with Greg Mitchell, the frequent-flashbacks-to-Vietnam prone editor.

[For the record, note that Editor & Publisher, whose masthead says they are "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry" is Dutch owned.]

Not surprisingly, another article at the Editor & Publisher site, quoted Nick Coleman, "a metropolitan columnist for the paper."

"It was like, who? Everyone knows the whole industry is in play and that just about anything could happen, but nobody thought we could get sold. There’s a real sense of betrayal ...“At a fire sale,” he said, “people get discounted, so we’re very concerned, worried and anxious.” But he added, “maybe it takes someone from outside the newspaper business to see the way forward.”

Nick Coleman is one of the most egregious examples of a political hack with total unsuitability for the newsroom. A some-time host at Air America, he is, simply, a hack for the Democrat party, a tradition he shared with his father who was a Democrat party big shot in the state. The Power Line guys systematically took him apart a dozen times for his columns.

The power of the union at the newspaper was another leftward factor that made the newspaper so bad. It was acknowledged by E&P staff when they stated that union contracts will remain in place no less than two different times in the writeup of the sale.

But for the rest of us it's a belated Christmas present. That is, if you believe the newspaper will change. The day they fire Nick Coleman, you can believe the fairy tale. Until then, the likelihood is that the private equity firm is just there to prop up one of the worst newspapers in the country.

See Captain's Quarters entry and Power Line's take. Fraters Libertas isn't optimistic about the equity firm that bought the paper.

Frankly, I am basing my pessimism on the fact that the equity group "was formed following the separation of most of its partners from the former DLJ Merchant Banking Partners unit of Credit Suisse First Boston in July, 2005."

Reality Check

Finally! A reality check for the New York Times reporters who portray U.S. intelligence agencies everyone in the U.S. government as jack booted thugs.

New York Times adjusts language on Iraq

This just in: From the self-adulating, ant-war, anti-Bush, Dutch-owned Editor & Publisher, stark news that the war in Iraq is now a "civil war".

In the wake of the highly-publicized NBC and MSNBC decision to start referring to the conflict in Iraq as a "civil war," other media outlets, which have long used phrases such as "sectarian violence," are re-considering their language in this regard.

Quick to embrace the phrase, Bill Keller of the anti-war, anti-Bush, America-bashing New York Times, happily agreed. No other paper seems to have scurried to make that choice. And for good reason.

"Words have power, and naming it a civil war does begin to shape people's perception of what's happening there," Thomas Hollihan, a professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication who studies political rhetoric, told the Los Angeles Times.

But is it true? Shouldn't that be the criteria? You'd bloody well have thought so.

But, then, the New York Times' Walter Duranty failed to even notice a deliberate famine in the Soviet Union that killed an estimated 20 million because he was so enamored with the grand new experiment of communism. It's likely he, too, stayed in the green zone in Moscow all that time.

We're Not Biased

An Associated [with terrorists] Press story, "Newspaper Stocks Fall After Analyst's Warning on Profits" notes that some, ah, disturbing losses.

Shares of Gannett Co. . . . shed 8 cents to $58.99.
Shares of Dow Jones & Co. . ..were flat at $34.44
Shares of Tribune Co. . . . slumped 13 cents to $31.65
New York Times Co.,. . . dropped 26 cents to $23.64
News Corp. . . . fell 31 cents to $21.11
Media General Inc., . . . added 11 cents to $36.46
McClatchy Co.,. . . , tumbled 30 cents to $41.10
EW Scripps, . . . lost 10 cents to $48.33

Notice the descriptions. The biggest loser is News Corp (fell) while McClatchy (tumbled), but you'd think the New York Times (dropped), would have been described as "slumped" at least. The AP reserves that for the hated Tribune Co.  

BBC

Is the BBC biased? Yeah. They admit it.

Will it make a difference? Probably not. Like the Drive-By Media in the U.S. the BBC isn't constrained by the need to make a profit or demonstrate fairness. Or even pretend honesty. That's the trademark of the Left. Indifference to decency. In the name of the greater good, mind you!!!!

The End of 'Times'? Let's bloody well hope so

Eric Alterman, notorious Leftie, writing in The Nation, the ultra-left publication, on The End of Times?.  There's gloom in them thar newsrooms and in media conferences.  Except when the journos are reminded that they are Guardians of Democracy and an "intermediary and an interpreter between society and knowledge," as a Carnegie presenter in an "inspiring" lecture at the conference reminded them.  

I don't call that inspired.  I call it meglomania.   And then there are the excuses for the gloom.  It's the filthy profit margins demanded by Wall Street expectations that are costing jobs.   Not, of course, because those "consumers", ah, citizens, who resent the media assumption that they need an intermediary to knowledge just don't buy crap like The Nation (if you want to make a donation...) and the idiot savants like Eric Alterman.    Alterman works for MSNBC, the network that is hemorrhaging money like, as Dan Rather would say, a stuck pig on a buzz saw blade.  

Could it be that MSNBC is such a failure because of writers and thinkers like Alterman?  He seriously believes that every blog, every quasi-news outlet, every "fake" news site is parasitical on information gathered by newspapers and newsweeklies.  

Excuse me, but such outlets are the techno equivalent of the Letters to the Editor that used to -- used to -- provide the kind of feedback to newspapers and media outlets that made damn sure clueless meglomaniacs like Alterman never got beyond delivering the mail in the newsroom.  To better writers.  To people who could think.  To people who lived their lives outside of a Washington, D.C. cocktail party or a New York celeb event.

MSNBC is a colossal failure partly due to their reliance on the Eric Altermans and the Keith Obermann's who haven't a clue.  You can damn well believe that Alterman would want anyone, especially leftwing universities, buy out newspapers.  Lack of accountability is a trademark of both.  

Jack Shafer (see below) might have been responding to Alterman directly.

Endless love

Jack Shafer on Journalist's endless love -- for themselves

Newspaper people have enormous egos, if you get my drift, and don't mind massaging the big hairy things in public. Yet the press is hardly the sentry and bulwark of society that reporters imagine it to be. I don't mean to disparage reporters who put their lives on the line to file from Iraq, nor the sleuths who sift through databases to uncover wrongdoing by pharmaceutical companies, or any other enterprising reporter. But too many journalists who wave the investigative banner merely act as the conduit for other people's probing, as George Washington University professor and former investigative journalist Mark Feldstein suggests in a paper-in-progress titled 'Ventriloquist or Dummy?'

Turns out those investigative reporters are massaging government investigations and reports while simultaneously painting themselves as truth crusading investigative journalists and inferring that they are looking where the government isn't.  

And downsizing at newspapers only confirms what those who run and own newspapers think of the originality of that investigative report that -- isn't.

Fifth Columnists is a good choice of words.  Dailypundit on the New York Times apology.  He doesn't mince words.   (As Instapundit would say, HEH)