the newspaper business

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.

CNN has issued a formal written policy which forbids ANY employee from participating in dialogue on the web. This includes NO

• blogging
• Facebook/MySpace
• commenting in forums/chat room
• tweets

WHAT IF I DON’T WORK DIRECTLY WITH NEWS GATHERING OR NEWS REPORTING BUT ELSEWHERE WITHIN THE SUPPORTING DEPARTMENTS OF CNN?
In discussions about this issue with your colleagues across CNN, it was felt by them that it was important to have this policy apply across the board.
WHAT ABOUT FREELANCE EMPLOYEES AND INTERNS?

Supervisors should make sure freelancers and interns read this policy now — or on their first day going forward — and commit to following it.

The catch phrase that keeps repeating is “on which CNN might report.” Very broad and probably unconstitutional, don’t you think?

If you don’t follow this policy, and you are officially a CNN employee, the loss of objectivity won’t just apply to you, but could be associated with CNN.

Did I give up my right to protest or vote when I started working for a newspaper? I hope not.
Many newspapers are actively encouraging reporters to take up blogging.  Newspapers invite reporters to express opinion in the print editions. Newspapers have long held that as long as the opinion expressed is marked clearly as that of the reporter, it is acceptable.
Life would be simpler if every employee was an Eloi to the Morlock employer.

I don’t want to say that Chrysler LLC vice chairman sounds like Fox News Circus Clown in Residence. I have a lot of respect for Jim. But when asked about the economy and market volatility and plummeting consumer confidence, Jim suggested that the best thing folks could do is “stop reading the newspapers.“

(Emphasis mine)

So auto buyers read newspapers. He thinks newspapers are persuading people not to buy cars.
Taking him at his word, wouldn’t it make sense for car makers to advertise heavily in newspapers?

Can somebody explain how this logic is flawed?

In an op-ed piece some heads of Journalism/Communications schools advocate the government require TV and radio stations to carry more news if they are to retain their license to broadcast.

“The F.C.C. ought to treat a broadcast licensee’s commitment of resources to original local reporting on public affairs as a key factor in its decisions about regulatory issues,” the deans said. “Companies should be required to make a persuasive case that they will increase their commitment to local reporting if they get what they want - whether they aspire to own broadcast properties and newspapers in the same market; or, thanks to the onset of digital television, to turn every channel they control into several channels; or to expand their national market share in broadcasting or cable television.”

Here are the illustrious ivory tower dwellers that advocate more government control over the news and the airways. (It’s just so ridiculous to write that statement!)

• Roderick P. Hart, dean of the University of Texas journalism school;
  
• Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy;
  
• Thomas Kunkel, dean of the University of Maryland journalism school;
  
• Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia Journalism School;
  
• John Levine, dean of the Northwestern journalism school;
  
• Dean Mills, dean of the University of Missouri journalism school;
  
• David M. Rubin, dean of the Syracuse school of public communications;
• Ernest Wilson, dean of the University of Southern California school of communication.

So I wrote a letter to the Editor of USA Today, and it was published today:

Read the newspaper

Mark Van Patten - Bowling Green, Ken.

Don Campbell encourages USA TODAY readers to avoid polls, to watch C-SPAN and to read non-partisan websites to gather information about presidential candidates. But I find it ridiculous that he doesn’t encourage readers to read newspapers and newspaper websites to get their information.

He is, after all, a journalism professor and columnist for the largest newspaper in the USA.

Even though Campbell wrote that the Pew Research Center and Harvard University study concluded the media are writing too much about polls and campaign strategy, I still think newspapers provide some of the best information on presidential candidates.

On Saturday, 10/6/07, my Dilbert comic will only be slightly amusing. It would have been highly amusing but I had to change two words for my editors.

thought I could get away with “turtle head” because the naughty meaning isn’t universally known and an actual turtle’s head would fit Dilbert’s analogy just as well. So there was a degree of deniability built in. And turtles are cute, damn it!

Did you know that turtle head is a slang meaning for turds peeking (peaking?) out your butt?

Here’s how the comic ran today in case you missed it.

Scott Adams is right of course.

Ask your editor if he knows the slang meaning of “turtle head.” Then offer $5 cash to the first person in the newsroom who can tell you the correct answer.

Twice in a week he has censored himself, leaving the best jokes on the drawing board.