The "new Craphouse" whacks away

Yeah, yeah, the company is still called Gannett, but everybody knows the tail of Gatehouse, I mean Craphouse, is wagging the dog.

Well, the tail has started canning employees. And, please, media analysis websites like Poynter, these are firings, not layoffs.

Trump once claimed he could murder someone in Manhattan, on Fifth Avenue, and get away with it.

Well, he could now murder staff at Mar-a-Lago and it would go unreported.

New Craphouse whacked 10 editorial spots at the Palm Beach Post.

Meanwhile, Michael Reed, head of both old and new Craphouse, calling it the "integration plan," praised the number of jobs being whacked and other things.

At Nieman, Joshua Benton looks at the parts that Reed played down. Store sales dropped 10 percent over the year last year and the decline accelerated ... after the merger was announced. (That had jumped out at me in the info at the link immediately above, even before hitting Nieman.) And, digital and print advertising BOTH declined. Benton also noted that Reed turd-polished its digital marketing and events division, noting that other paper companies have also done this well in excess of reality. Having long lived near the Metromess, I can attest to this in spades with the Dallas Snooze.

The real ugly one on the job whack is the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader shit-canning its entire printing press. Beyond its own work, you can't tell me they didn't print small dailies or nondailies from places like Bolivar, Branson and Lebanon. And they're now going to print in Columbia, 160 miles away? Which surely has other papers it prints besides itself? 

So, Springfield readers? You'll have a paper that goes to bed before city council meetings are done, before high school or college sports games are done. In short, your print news will be day-old stale.

Given that Snooze-Leader PR staff have said the print paper will be delivered at "the usual time," stale news has to be the result. That paper has to go to bed by, what, 9 p.m.? Earlier yet?

And the corporate PR weighs in:

“As our industry continues to evolve and transform, we are forced to make changes that allow us to be competitive in the future marketplace. This is without a doubt one of the most difficult decisions we’ve had to make to date,” said Allen Jones, upper Midwest regional president. “We must strategically invest in quality, local journalism and the digital experience we provide our readers and business partners.”

Bullshit. It's not "most difficult decisions" for you. You're a regional president who maybe visits the Springfield paper once a year? Especially if you get performance bonuses as part of your pay, it's probably a delight for you.

I suspect this shit-canning is related to unionizing efforts by editorial staff. I don't know if the editorial staff recruited the pressroom or not (it seems like it did, per the announcement letter), but the news staff couldn't fire anybody anymore. A paper for a city of 160K, metro 300K or so and 17 staff?

So, how many $$$ will Gannett/Craphouse lose in Springfield from:
A. Further print subscription cancellations?
B. Advertisers dropping out of a crappier product that has fewer people reading?
C. No more job printing of other area papers, mags, etc?

Nathan Bomey, you're the brilliant biz reporter at the old/new Gannett/Craphouse USA Today. Instead of this:

"Print subscribers are highly profitable and would have to decline a lot" for the company to end print operations, Gannett CEO Mike Reed tells investors on an earnings call. "We don’t have any plans in the near future to do anything like that."

— Nathan Bomey (@NathanBomey) February 27, 2020

Wanna run some actual numbers for us?

And, you wanna ask Mike Reed why, if print subscribers are so highly profitable, he's so willing to screw Springfield ones in the ass?

ABC sucks on David Wright

ABC has suspended and reassigned political reporter David Wright for telling the truth about income inequality in America, offering up media analysis of the MSM's coverage of Trump, and his personal political opinions.

There were two problems.

One: He told it to someone from James O'Keefe's Project Veritas. The "heavily edited" (but of course) video then started making the rounds.

Two: He also told the truth about the corporatization of media, which ABC then promptly proved true.

Unless you're at an opinion mag, you should have the right — and the comfort level — to freely express your opinions.

And, people at opinion mags agree!

Wright's comments aren't damning at all. And the notion that journalists should never express opinions in private is absurd. O'Keefe is a fraud who operates in bad faith. Stop accepting his premise. https://t.co/JxIhPtoBr6

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) February 26, 2020

That said, I'm OK with The Nation or National Review having standards on toeing some sort of party line. (That said, why the hell is Hillbot Joan Walsh still at The Nation?)

That said, as long as corporate media and James O'Keefe are around — never assume!

I'm sure the suits at ABC also oppose national health care so that they have m ore chances of keeping the David Wrights of the world enserfed.

TV journos? Tech IS coming for you

I've written occasionally about broadcast media, to a much lesser degree so far, suffering some of the same issues as print. Had one TV guy in an exchange with me a couple of years ago, seemingly whistling in the dark.

Well, a decade ago, besides the internet, newspaper people were claiming that computers couldn't write things like sports briefs off box scores or weekly real estate sales off courthouse filings. And we now know they're wrong.

So, with Reuters announcing a virtual reality bot that can act as a sports reader (and though not mentioned) as a news reader as well? You TV folks had better be less comfortable. Early morning sports anchor guy? Paid sports guy on a 5 p.m. news broadcast? You're probably gone in five years if this takes off. That's especially true since Reuters modeled the bot after one of its own sports guys.

Right now, it says it's just social media targeted. That said, let's go there. You know the Barstool Sports and Fansided people of the world are watching. A few bots could cut a few videos a day for hundreds of sites. That, in turn, puts downward pressure on teevee sports, even if TV companies don't independently eye this. That said, a VR Barstool bot would be barf-inducing.

1619 Project: Bad journalism, as are most responses to it

I'd read bits and pieces from the New York Times' ongoing project to claim that 1619, not 1776, is the real beginnings of America. It hadn't really interested me at the time, because I thought it was too much into identity politics to lack nuance, among other things.

That said, I don't need the likes of Conor Friedersdorf to lead the opposition.

Neocentrist mush-pulper Friedersdorf of the Atlantic is the latest to call out the old black lady, citing "enemy of my enemy" support such as World Socialist (who are generally Trots) and Ibram X. Kendi, who bats around something like the black nationalist world. (Contra what you might think on the X, though, he's not a black Muslim.) They can't agree with one another why the 1619 Project is wrong, just that it is. I could tell the others are wrong from reading; I'd read snippets of 1619 pieces and knew it was less than fully right at the time it was breathlessly announced.

So, they're ALL wrong, at least to some degree. Wrong enough to set off a Tweetstorm on my part which I will expand into a blog post.

Let's start!

I just lost respect for Gordon Wood as a historian. (I didn't have much respect to lose for .@conor64) as a journo.
Many slaveholders were aware of 1774 Somerset ruling. It may not have been FOREMOST in their minds, but ONE cause for backing revolt? Yes. https://t.co/VV0M7cBbNM

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

Friedersdorf may not have directly chosen the header, but it accurately reflects his take. And it's wrong right from the header.

The Somerset decision? Writing from memory, I got the year wrong. It was 1772. But, fear of it was behind fear of Dunmore's Declaration about freeing Virginia slaves once the Revolutionary War started. So, ONE cause? Indeed. WSWS mentioned Dunmore but not Somerset; Friedersdorf mentions neither.

Next?

As for .@WSWS_Updates calling out the #1619Project, I understand why. Ppl like it, Adolph Reed, etc., believe that race issues inevitably reduce to class issues. (This is the same Reed who a few years ago laughingly said New Mexico was one of the whitest states in the nation 2/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

And, I blogged about that issue in much detail, plus a follow-up. It eventually led Reed flak and flunky Doug Henwood to block me on Twitter and vice versa. (Several months before that, possibly not wanting to believe that red states, on average, have less income inequality than blue ones, Henwood got the order backward on state Gini coefficients, not realizing that Utah has the least income inequality in the union.)

Next, let's kick the 1619 Project itself:

Does the #1619Project have problems? Hell yes. Its take on Abraham Lincoln is especially ridiculous. To the degree it works off Jill Lepore, I knew that, too. I wrote the top, AND top critical, review of "These Truths." 3/x https://t.co/I4ZCiwJ9Dn

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

Was Lincoln perfect? No, but he did "evolve," and evolve indeed, on race issues throughout his life and through the Civil War. Frederick Douglass knew that.

Meanwhile, would Trots be hypocritical? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Is a bear a Presbyterian? 

But, when it stops attacking the #1619Project as capitalist and uses Lincoln as a cudgel for that, .@WSWS_Updates & .@WSWSMedia will surely attack Lincoln elsewhere as a capitalist. 4/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

I once was a member of its Yahoo group. But, for years, I don't waste my time on Trots, any more than on conspiracy theorists.

I promised more on Reed:

As for Adolph Reed? Dave Garrow also had a nice vignette about his time with Obama — and with Alice Palmer. https://t.co/2vl4YbEIAS

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

Just a throwaway, but fun. (I'll have yet more below.)

Now to Kendi:

Re Ibram X. Kendi criticizing #1619Project? He's got wrongs himself. There was no pre-Colombian visit to America fr Africa. Claims there were by whites OR blacks are racist, based on a racist belief American Indians couldn't build temples or pyramids. 6/x https://t.co/WNItnKfqEw

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

I've called out James Loewen for promoting this BS before. And, if you do it willingly, after being called out? You're promoting racism. I don't care if you're black. Stop it.

Friedersdorf is bad enough to get two tweets, even at the 280-character length:

As for Friedersdorf's plaint re the #1619Project? A boatful of wrongs (Shock)
1. By focusing on July 4, 1776, he focuses on a snapshot, undermining all else he says about other non-1619 issues.
2. He ignores California's anti-Chinese racism while talking abt growing up there 7A/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

and then:

Friedersdorf re #1619Project also:
3. Doesn't discuss American Indian and other racial issues that, if he lived in NM beyond being born there, he should have seen
4. Re his ancestry, ignores that the multitude of Second Klan lynchings were north of the Mason-Dixon. 7B/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

I easily could have tweeted more about him. Friedersdorf epitomizes everything I don't like about The Atlantic and I'll be fine if Laurene Powell puts him (and most of Atlantic, other than James Hamblin and anything Ed Yong writes there) behind a paywall.

Now, back to Adolph Reed (and the Trots).

World Socialist interviewed him about the 1619 Project. He takes the typical left-Socialist and Communist tack of trying to reduce race — and culture — to class.

Bullshit.

A study of human evolutionary development shows xenophobia, which often became articulated in race or culture stances, existed long before capitalism. Capitalism may have intensified it, but it didn't start it. And, beyond Marxism being a pseudoscience (it is; crappy philosophy used as the framework for even a marginal social science like economics pushes you into pseudoscience), Reed's take epitomizes one other problem with it — dialectical materialism usually turns into not just reductionism but greedy reductionism. That's why it's funny, until we call it hypocritical, for him to call out critical race theory for being reductionistic.

It's not just Trots, though. Jacobin, whose editorial content sprawls the gamut between DSA Democrats and Sovietskis of some sort, of not necessarily Trotskysts, does the same as Reed and WSWS on capitalism and antisemitism.

I will give Reed credit for cooking the goose of both Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

I will also say that Reed is almost certainly right in thinking there's an element of capitalist career-hiking here. Certainly with the 1619 Project writers themselves and almost certainly with Kendi. Probably with Coates. I am reminded of the allegedly environmentalist SJW Instagram influencers last year who played High Country News for fools. (Actually, it was about 50-50 between that and a self-own by HCN, which was one of several reasons I quit subscribing.)

Teh stupidz, it burns!

And, when all is said and done, it burns least stupid, by a decent margin with Reed, but only for calling out the capitalist motives. Setting that said, it's a tie for the bottom between him, WSWS in general, 1619 folks, and the likes of Kendi.

No, it's a tie for second-bottom. Friedersdorf's gelatinous crap is still at the bottom.

==

Now, what do the opponents get right? Even more, opponents that Friedersdorf mentions but that get less airplay?

First is that the first blacks, arriving in 1619, like certain whites, were indentured servants, not slaves. Related to that is that a majority of Virginians at that time were indentured servants but that the majority was white. Nell Irvin Painter, author of "The History of White People" and other books, is one pointing this out. But, all Friedersdorf can do is attack her for not signing the letter against the project, then attack her for why she didn't sign, when instead, it's a reason plausible and logical.

If one wants a "turning point" year or years and bases it on Virginia, per Painter's piece, it would be 1676-77 and Bacon's Rebellion. The ruling class, after eventually putting it down, hardened slavery and made it more race focused, to break the ties between indentured servants, more and more of them white, and slaves, mainly black.

==

Let's tie this back to Adolph Reed's one comment to tie this to media issues more, to differentiate from my original posting.

The New York Times has already admitted, re Bret Stephens' column of Ashkenazi racism, that it doesn't edit or fact-check its op-ed staff. Given that the 1619 Project is, if not op-ed, news analysis as much as news, maybe it wasn't fact-checked or copy-edited that much, either? Maybe that was even a precondition of Ida Bae Wells and others?

Or maybe the old gray lady, with its hoary motto of "all the news that's fit to print," in its repeated whackings of editorial staff over the years, doesn't have the resources to do serious checking on something like this?

In that case, that's kind of sad. Even before reading Painter's comment that the development of a race basis for black slavery was a process, but one that accelerated shortly before 1700, I was already thinking of Bacon's Rebellion.

And, in turn, these issues turn back to the issue of capitalism. Even without opposing Marxism to capitalism, beyond career advancement issues for Kendi, Wells (and Coates), one can smell the stench of money in the morning, to rift on Apocalypse Now, coming from this whole project.

One can also whiff it coming from Atlantic Monthly; why else would it run the gelatinous crap of Friedersdorf?

So, this is ultimately bad journalism as well as bad history.

RIP Commerce Journal

I heard that CNHI pulled the plug on the Commerce Journal a while back. Ridiculous. Solid, eight-page weekly which could easily have had, I'm going to guess, 20 percent more advertising. It may have been the case that a lot retailers targeted East Texas State's A and M Commerce's student and faculty population with ads in the campus newspaper, but still.

That said, Commerce Mayor Wymon Williams said that, for these and similar reasons, he doesn't really blame CNHI. He said that about 80 percent of university staff lives outside of Commerce and that, of course, city population drops dramatically in the summer. He also indicated he wished the U could have done more to promote the paper to said staff, in part to try to get them to move to Commerce.

Williams adds that the Journal was down to about 400 paid subscriptions. So, a certain amount of U-shaming is probably warranted.

That said, in addition, the Bama bean counters never could figure out "synergies" between it and the Greenville paper, from what I saw. (They've had that problem for years at bigger places, like not getting more work-together between Mineral Wells and Weatherford. Surprisingly, the Index is still a five-day daily, but probably one as thin as other such CNHI products. Scratch that; up at the top of the listing, the Texas Press Association says that, but lower, has them listed as semiweekly. That said, most the information in the top box is out of date; having known Mel Rhodes as publisher 20 years ago, I was surprised to see him still listed, and he shouldn't be.)

Also weirdly, while CNHI has pulled the plug on the paper, it continues to maintain the website, while at the same time not posting any Commerce-specific online news to it, even though it's printing Commerce News inside the Greenville Herald. So, why not put that on the Journal's website, if you're keeping the website alive.

McClatchy going bankrupt; new owners look stink

The expected has happened.

The article is a reasonable honest company look at what happened. And why. The fact that it didn't get pension relief from Congress a couple of years ago? I suspect that's due to McClatchy being slightly less subservient than some media chains, and even more, that several of its papers are in California, including in at least slightly reddish areas, but refusing to cow-tow to Republicans, including a Central Valley Congresscritter.

OF course, this means hedge fund types likely gain control of the company.

 In McClatchy's case, it's Chatham Asset Management.

Chatham already has newspaper holdings. Like National Enquirer parent American Media. And media distributorship holdings. And it has sharp elbows. And Nieman Labs reminds us that it's the majority owner of Postmedia, Canada's largest (and only really major) newspaper chain.

What a shame.

I'm sure the post-bankruptcy carcass will be a stinky one.

Will or would you pay more for the NYT as it becomes yet-more subscription focused?

So, New York Times overall revenues are up. But, that's because digital subscription revenues have more than offset ad losses. (That's even though digital advertisers, especially targeting social media channels, can't deliver what they promise.)

Nieman reports on how the $800 million in online subscription revenue, and total subscribers, are all records, and the dollar amount hit a Times target a year early.

Percentages aren't listed, but there's two takeaways here.

One is that subscriptions as a percentage of digital revenue continue to grow, to about two-thirds of the total last year.

The other is that — albeit slowly — digital ad revenue grew again, in the face of that ongoing print ad slump.

Well, the old gray lady has decided to raise that online subscription price. The increase is 50 cents a week. Or 13.3 percent to look at it that way.

It's the first time the Times has ever done it. (Nieman adds at its link that this won't hit everybody. Basically, they'll start with the people who have subscribed the longest.)

Would or will you, whether not a current subscriber as a would or if you are as a will, pay the extra?

I wouldn't. For professional as well as personal reasons.

And those reasons largely overlap.

On the op-eds side, the fact that an editorial page editor doesn't edit individual columnists, as seen with Bret Stephens citing a racist to turd-polish "schmart as a whip" Ashkenazi Jew legends, is unacceptable on both professional and personal counts. Now, other big dailies like the Bezos Post may do the same, but, that doesn't make it acceptable.

On the personal side, the narrow range of the paper's op-ed columnists, and the narrow range of its foreign policy news coverage, especially on all things Israel and Middle East, is Reason No. 1 I don't subscribe now. But, that's also a professional issue. I see alternative papers and websites, or a mainstream paper like the Independent in Britain with Robert Fisk, doing much better on Middle East coverage. The Times chooses to color well, WELL within the duopoly lines.

Putting the professional hat on again, the Times says, per the third link, it wants to hit 10 million on digital subscriptions by 2025, compared to its current 4 million. I doubt it will. If Trump is re-elected, I think its pandering to "the resistance" will eventually plateau. And I don't otherwise see any way it can "goose" itself to 10 million.

RIP Bridgeport Index

The Bridgeport Index is closing, not because of a cheap corporate owner, but a family owner who didn't find, or maybe didn't look for, someone to take it over. On the other hand, it was thinner on ads than I recall Commerce being before I moved.

Throwing out two sports pages which had ads on the sides and might be sponsored, at least for USPS concerns, and not counting obits as I don't know if it had the circulation size to do them as paid, the rest of the paper? About 10 percent advertising on 10 pages. Counting the sports page ad inches but not the whole pages, it's at best 15 percent on 12 pages.

Cut two pages a week, maybe? Too late now, but, that should have been a decision long ago. Lots of fluff material, much of it non-local, were on those pages. The smaller of the two newspapers I currently edit runs 15-18 percent on three fewer pages, throwing out one sponsored sports page. Counting the sports ad, but not the whole page as sponsored, it's 20-22 percent on eight pages.

Also, either have a full website, and paywalled, rather than just a PDF of the front page, and nonpaywalled.

The real sad part is that Bridgeport serves a population area about the same as both of my newspapers combined and it has that small of an ad base, even with a population growing quickly. I'm guessing that's less on ownership than other things.

Even with Bridgeport's growth being sudden and recent, ad numbers shouldn't have been THAT much less than the Wise County Messenger, which is a semiweekly for the unfamiliar, running 16 pages or more both issues, and 30 percent or more on ads regularly. That includes at least one ad from a Bridgeport business that doesn't advertise in the Index.

Years ago, in Jacksboro, Bridgeport struck me as a sister city of sorts. J-boro had twin weeklies under one roof, each running, oh, 20-25 percent on eight pages? As a weekly now, it could be running the same 12 as Bridgeport, but on, say, 25 percent ads?

Or, here's a current comparison which may be a bit more fair than to the Wise County Messenger, which, as journos know, is a behemoth in its size class.

Nocona is a bit smaller than Bridgeport was pre-growth, is also not a county seat and probably has the same coverage area.

Who's wrong, Southern Newspapers or TPA, part 2?

A couple of weeks ago, I ran a brief post noting that Southern Newspapers continues to run an ad in the Texas Press Association's "Messenger" newsletter advertising its printing services.

Just one problem.

As Southern sold its Sulphur Springs newspaper, and I presume the printing plant with it, to Moser Community Media nine months or more ago, the ad claiming that it has printing services in Sulphur Springs is ... not true.

However, per Paul Harvey, .... stand by for news!

I've been told that Moser sold the press, so it's not even in Sulphur Springs.

So ... why?

I've always heard over the last few years that in many cases, papers have been bought because they brought printing presses with them. Unless Moser already had a bank shot in mind on that press, and had connections that Southern didn't as far as buying it.

Stand by.