Editors Still Out of Touch In Denver and St. Paul
One of the tightest newspaper owners in the biz has just lost his marbles. This is the same owner who built a new building for a press on the strict guidance that it not be built for the long term. He asked for a cheapo building. At the same time, these newspaper companies are reducing staff to cover LOCAL, meaningful news, the owners are going whole hog to impress the party bosses and elite that newspapers are still relevant.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune in the past 18 months has trimmed its staff substantially through buyouts and layoffs and has frozen wages for some workers. The Rocky Mountain News has lost more than 12% of its weekday circulation in the past two years. Both MediaNews and Avista Capital, the private-equity owner of the Star Tribune, are laboring under steep debt loads.
“You forget about the P&L for this,” said Dean Singleton, chairman of MediaNews Group, which publishes both the Denver Post and Pioneer Press, among its 54 daily U.S. newspapers. “This is a week to really showcase what we do best.”
The no-holds-barred coverage comes even though broadcast and cable news television, national newspapers and a cadre of political bloggers — an estimated 15,000 people in all — are planning to blanket the proceedings at both conventions. Critics also say the proceedings are news-free events hardly worth all the media attention.
Put me in the category with Jon Stewart and that last sentence above. Political conventions are not news.
Jon Stewart took after the “established” media for getting too cozy with candidates and regurgitating campaign spin when it comes to political coverage.
Stewart said politicians in recent campaigns are “animatronic” because all of the “humanity has been managed out of campaigns.” He referenced the back-and-forth during the Pennsylvania Democratic primary over Obama’s lack of bowling skills.
Of course, I won’t be reading the Denver or St. Paul newspaper coverage, but here’s what they should do: focus on the impact locally. Forget the politics of the event.
CNN Grill (across from the Pepsi Center) Was Packed After the Convention Shut Down for the Day
Treat it like a four day siege of the city.
- Traffic can’t move,
- restaurants overflowing with undesirables,
- armed patrols on the street,
- dissent is stifled.
To quote my favorite weather cliche: It’s a War Zone.