Morning News, ie Dallas Snooze, hits new level of cheapness

 A week ago, in the pages of the Snooze, I saw a "tip your carrier" coupon. I was just grokking to see if the exurban issue, still weirdly delivered to the Fort Worth side of the north exurban Metroplex, ie, WEST of I-35, had surpassed the 15 percent mark, or even the 10 percent mark, on Thursday adhole. (NOT counting obits, it was right at 10 percent.) Because I was just grokking, I didn't check the details, so I don't know if you returned a check with your name and your subscription address or what. (What about people who don't have checkbooks?)

Anyway, the Snooze obviously can't be bothered to give a few extra red cents itself to its paid contractors, and is trading on some "Christmas Story" type legend that teens on bikes are delivering the newspaper, I guess.

Having lived in the Metroplex for almost all of the 2000-aughts, I can attest that such a coupon was NEVER in the Snooze back in the day.

And, it certainly never was a half page. (Which at least tied, if not ran solo first, for the largest ad in the Snooze.)

Alden Global Capital gets another black-eye profile

 Even for me, there's new things to learn.

I had run into "Mugger" Russ Smith on Twitter via Ken Silverstein ... did not know until reading this new Atlantic profile that he's the brother of Alden founder Randall Smith. Nor that Randall was a Grinch with his own family at Christmastime. Nor that he had Metroplex connections, per a linked D Mag piece primarily about son Caleb. That Alden was financed in the Trib takeover by the same people that paid for training of the Saudis who killed Jamal Khashoggi.

Wowza.

I did tag Ken in a Tweet and he said he's not disowning Russ because of his brother.

I don't know him online close to as well as Ken, who said they never met in person, so, I can't "disown" him even if I wanted to.

I will give any retweeting Ken does of Mugger more scrutiny. And, more thought on how he may have gotten the nickname. Probably something related to the larger Smith family story.

==

That said, as for that story? Since Randall does appear to have been an all-around Ebenezer Scrooge, the Alden treatment of newspapers isn't about newspapers, it's about him.

"Commie" paper's "owners" get sucker-punched, in part by selves

That's my take on what appears to be the definite hiatus and possible death of the Akron Devil Strip, as reported by Laura Hazard Owen at Niemen Lab.

It billed itself as Akron's first "community-owned magazine," hence the "Commie" in scare quotes. More specifically, per a presumed quote from its website by Owen?

It claimed to be the “first community-owned local news cooperative in the United States.”

OK, we'll get to those "owners" being in scare quotes in just a minute.

Whoever runs its Twitter said on Oct. 15: We ain't got money. Oh, and our founder took a self-imposed sabbatical a month ago.

NOW, per Owen, we get to those "owners," who allegedly owned the "means of production," but in reality?

In becoming a co-op in 2019, The Devil Strip said its “vested co-owners” (each of whom had donated at least $330) would be able to “vote on important issues” about the magazine, following “the ‘one person, one share, one vote’ principle.” But those co-owners — there were 94 of them — weren’t told The Devil Strip was in financial trouble, much less consulted on a path forward.

Oops.

I put out a trio of Tweets when reading this. First:

"Get it in writing" is a mandate in both law and journalism and it sounds like the Akron Devil Strip, and its alleged "co-owners," failed on both counts 1/x thread .@akrondevilstrip .@NiemanLab .@laurahazardowen .@mediagazer https://t.co/BRF6hpIdKX

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 19, 2021

Many of the "owners" were whining, per Owen:

In the comments of The Devil Strip’s Facebook page, readers expressed confusion: “What’s the point of a co-op if the people have no say?” one wrote. Another: “What? Not even a chance for us owners to help raise additional funds?” 

“No indication at the annual meeting over the summer of 2021 that there was concern, but no financial recap despite my request before the meeting,” another co-owner recalled.

Gee, if you'd thought of something like my first Tweet, in advance?

The three remaining Devil Strip board members launched a Go Fund Me. (Of course they did.) And, despite many people saying "Fool me once ..." 60 suckers ponied up nearly $5K in the first six hours.

Tweet 2 gets to that and that sabbatical by Chris Horne.

Why would these "alleged co-owners" invest more? That said, if they DO invest more, and without contractual paperwork, alert P.T. Barnum. And who let Chris Horne get to this point in the first place? Did Knight Foundation, Lenfest, etc. have no paperwork-based accountability? 2/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 19, 2021

But wait, it gets better, per Owen:

In addition to revenue from its members, The Devil Strip had received a total of $589,652 in philanthropic funding as of the end of 2020, according to its Donors page. Some of the larger contributors to that pool of funds included the Knight Foundation, which gave a total of $225,000 as of the end of 2020, and the Lenfest Foundation on behalf of the Facebook Journalism Project, which gave $100,000. Any 2021 donations are not listed on The Devil Strip’s site.

Gee, I'd like some of that, I said.

.@knightfdn .@lenfestinst Will you send me money to start a co-op newspaper? I'll give you the details later. 3/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 19, 2021

So, Knight, Lenfest etc. got suckered by someone who probably has bipolar disorder as part of what's behind him, and at the same time, were apparently suckers themselves with their seed money? Got it.

Meanwhile, who would trust the three remaining members of the board of directors, the ones who organized the Go Fund Me? Presumably, they had a hand in persuading Hodge to escort himself out the door and said nothing. Presumably, they had at least a glimpse of the financial problems and said nothing. (Or else they knew nothing, troubling itself.) They talk about recovering access to emails. Had Hodge locked them out? They say nothing. They promised the 60 new suckers nothing new in terms of legal language, AFAIK.

And, was there a need for it? Sure, the Beacon Journal is Gannett, but there's some sort of weekly, an alt-weekly, I guess, and a monthly lifestyles mag, per Wiki. Well, no, the Journal was a Black paper, not an alt-weekly, Google says, but it may have folded. There's also a non-alt-weekly which looks pretty decent on its website, AND a university paper.

That's a crowded journalism environment to be entering in today's world.

And, speaking of that apparently now shuttered Black paper? In the second menu bar, the black-stripped one, the Devil Strip has a link to "Black-owned businesses in Akron." But, on the "About" page? The staff you're invited to meet are all White. And, judging by them mainly having humanities degrees if not journalism ones? Upper-middle class parents. City-Data says Blacks are 30 percent of Akron itself and 15 percent of Summit County. People of other races or identifying as multiracial are another 12 percent of the city and 10 percent of the county. (There are no Hispanics or Asians on the Devil Strip staff, either.)

The "mag"? Its content at its website? From what I saw, it was written for exactly their own community, not the Akron community.

That would lead to the final question, and one purely rhetorical: What community were you expecting or wanting to "own" this paper? Back at Nieman, Joshua Benton has your number.

Seriously. Sounds like a whole lot of suckerdom out there.

I'm White myself, and have a professional graduate degree, but by money, economic class? My parents were nowhere near upper middle class. And, I don't identify with those people.

Details of how the new Craphouse — Gatehouse — guts papers, with maybe a touch of naivete?

An Atlantic staff writer, Elaine Godfrey, checks in from the scene of the crime, Burlington, Iowa, where she grew up.

The Burlington paper is still a daily since the new Gannett, aka the old Craphouse, started running it. But, in things I saw when Craphouse started paginating a paper as big as the Dallas Morning Snooze, it doesn't look so good. Bigger fonts? Check. Not even flowing the jump to fill all the space on the jump page? Don't know if that's the case in Burlington, but likely.

Being owned, not just paginated, by Craphouse?

If your paper's late (it's printed in Peoria, Illinois) you're given the number for a call center. In the Philippines.

Op-ed stuff is state and national. None regional to eastern Iowa. Local columnists mainly gone. Godfrey doesn't guess at the likely cause ... regional paginating means combo editorial pages. (Burlington is paginated down in Austin, and other pre-merger Craphouse papers from Iowa also certainly are, and possibly many post-merger "old" Gannett ones, too.

And, filling the void? As at an exurban Pittsburgh paper, Facebook groups. Largely inaccurate and rumor-driven.

OTOH, per the demographics of Burlington and Des Moines County, I had originally written that if that paper is still six-day daily, it should be cut to five-day and maybe to tri-weekly, with a well-paywalled website. Did the previous owners do that? No, Craphouse did a year-plus after buying it. County's under 40K; city under 25K; both shedding population for decades. Problem is from Craphouse's POV, any national ads or inserts it runs are harder to get for a non-daily paper. But, it should still cut to a tri-weekly. Some of this makes me wonder how proactive on web issues the Harris chain, the previous owners, were. Or were not. And, Harris owned enough decent sized dailies (started in Hutchison, Kansas) it had the money to do more earlier.

Related? Godfrey talks about being trolled by friends for a "puritanical tween" revelation in the article. What if that, re things like Burlington's demographic decline and her not discussing it, is actually part of nostalgic naivete of some soft?

Plus, the current version's website is light to nonexistent on paywalling. (I clicked around the website on different stories under four different verticals, all of them local stories, at least 10 times, and hit no paywall warnings.) If the pre-Craphouse version was that way, that also explains part of the problem. I've seen this failure for years. It STILL is, at some places, despite the ongoing decline in print ads, the ongoing price decline in digital, and computer digital dimes now being gutted by mobile digital nickels.

Also, in the past half dozen years or so, smaller family-owned chains have also been consolidating printing operations.

So, it's easy to blame all of this on Craphouse. And, a large part of it is. But, not all of it. Sorry, Elaine. And, while not justifying smaller family owned chains cutting back as well, it's part of the reality.

So, if you write another story about newspapers, Elaine, either don't focus on your own (while learning more about today's industry in general) or else take off the rose-colored glasses.

Small town Texas editors and reporters, get a non-football life, year 2!

I wrote about everything in the header, minus "year 2," a year ago.

If you click the link, you'll see the details of what prompted me. TLDR version? Small town Texas newspaper editors whose god is football, not school board meetings, thinking they need to make sure their own stats at games are more accurate than the team's.

Get a life.

Even more, get a life, since a staff assistant, even at small schools, now has an iPad tracking EVERY SINGLE PLAY with software that will produce a box score page complete with FULL stats. You'll ALSO get a complete drive-by-drive page, as good as college and pro games on ESPN.

Get a life!

Trump freak flag socks not flying this year at Texas small-town football

 

Last year, at Friday night football, one Friday, at a small Texas school, I saw what you see pictured at left.

Apparently, reality has set in this year. The same student is enrolled at the same school this year, out for football again, but in the last game I saw, injured or otherwise wearing a jersey shirt but not fully suited up. In that game, he was wearing shorts, as in the photo last year, but was wearing normal socks.

I am curious if other small-town newspaper reporters and editors have seen these.

On a related, semi-journalistic note? I had two Trump 2020 flags flying from balconies at two units in my apartment complex a year ago. Both stayed up until February or early March this year, when one came down. The other finally did in, I think, April. 

That said, the one that came down first has occasionally popped up again for a couple of days at a time. I'm not sure why.

Good-bye to Media Myth Alert

I liked W. Joseph Campbell when I first added him to my blogroll here and elsewhere.

But, he's become tiresome. Then worse.

The tiresome? Self-alleged, self-proclaimed media corrector Campbell loves falling back on a couple of tropes, namely, how the media get it wrong that Uncle Walter Cronkite forced LBJ out of Vietnam and how the media get it wrong about the media, not John Sirica, the Supreme Court and Congress, forcing Nixon to resign.

I'm sure there's plenty of other media myths. Campbell rarely touches them, though he has discussed early era Yellow Journalism reality and myth.

That's bad enough.

The worse?

Some of his recent posts seem to have one foot in wingnut world, or at a minimum, one foot in fellow traveler world.

His post about Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan, in which he chides USA Today for calling Afghanistan Biden's Katrina, with Campbell then saying it's much worse, is the last straw.

Campbell can't be bothered to mention that Trump negotiated the withdrawal, Trump met with the Taliban for these negotiations, Trump set the withdrawal date, then Trump accelerated the originally planned pace of US troops withdrawing.

Unions at Texas papers: an update

Newsrooms at the Dallas Snooze, Fort Worth Startlegram and Austin Stateless all opted sometime back to join the News Guild and fight for unionization. Surprisingly to a degree on first read, by its past history, but really, not, negotiations are going best at the one-pony Snooze, versus Craphouse/New Gannett in Austin and McClatchy/hedge fund in Cowtown, reports Gus Bova.

The Snooze may figure, with the former Belo owning only it and its limping offspring like Al Dia, that it's got nothing to win by pissing off remaining staff as it continues to work to become 21st century digital first after multiple past failures on that front.

McClatchy, for all its good stuff on not following other major chains on all foreign policy reporting, appears to have been a bit red-ass on labor stuff even before the hedge takeover. Craphouse (Gatehouse), the real driver of "New Gannett," is notorious as a crappy workplace, so no surprise there.

Waiting for CJR and Jay Rosen to do some self-reporting

 Columbia Journalism Review is often a very good overseer over what's what in today's media world.

But, it's not perfect, as I've blogged about more than once. That includes earlier this year noting that it went down a post-truth rabbit hole over COVID, had claimed last year that early-days Voice of America did NOT engage in propaganda, had language non-maven Merrill Perlman commit a paired doozy of etymological-related errors and ... that's not all.

In 2019, I accused it of pulling its punches on Zionism issues. Long ago, I issued a shark-jumping accusation about its bromance for I Fucking Love Science. 

Some of those aren't too bad, but some are. The VOA and Zionism ones in particular are serious.

And, it's getting dinged again, and will further in the future if it doesn't write about its own journalism school's massive grifting at the master's level, and that's per the journalism school's own website, via part of a Slate story on master's-degree grifting in general. Slate, in turn, referenced a Wall Street Journal piece on MFA programs in general.

First, the first degree offered? Laughable, and laughable for even more reasons than Slate lists.

NO master's degree in journalism should be an MS rather than an MA. Journalism ain't a science. Period and end of story.

OK, now, the stuff that Slate did list, starting with that More Shitty degree.

NO "master's degree" should be a nine and one-half month project. Period. But, as Slate notes, there's little regulation for what lipstick you can paint on something and call it a master's degree.

Third, $80K for tuition and "fees" which probably aren't itemized is laughable even with NYC costs of living.

BUT! Per the WSJ piece, if you're running low on money, university president Lee Bollinger will hire you as a dog walker. No, really!

But, it's not just Columbia.

Across town, at NYU, home of media critic Rosen, the WSJ piece notes a master's in publishing had enrolled students with an average debt of $116K and income of $42K. The piece was July 8 and as of 10 days later, bupkis on Rosen's Twitter feed.

And, Rosen, I've kicked you in the past, too, most recently over naivete on ideas for COVID coverage. Long before that, I kicked his ass for kissing Yascha Mounk's tuchis. And, long ago, we had Rosen the paywall hater.

In reality? Rosen and CJR ain't biting the hand that feeds them while impoverishing students. (CJR and the individuals involved in the past have never offered the slightest apology.)

An A for marketing in Spokane but not much else

The Spokane Chronicle, which hasn't been published since 1992, has been resurrected.

Except not really.

The Spokane Spokesman-Review is doing what a number of other papers have done recently: fluffing out its e-editions. Part of the fluff includes adding breaking afternoon stories, whether local or regional from the Inland Northwest. Part includes PUZZLES! Just fucking shoot me there. I've blogged before, focused on the print side, about how they too are NOT a "savior." And, they're not digitally, either. Example? I can do the NYT Crossword myself online, no e-edition newspaper needed.

And, it's branded as ... the Spokane Chronicle.

The news release says nothing about how the Chronicle will be editorially different from the S-R, like in the "good old days," because it won't. No new editorial staff is being hired for this.

Dear newspaper publishers: About those legal notices

Yes, I know many of the reasons state legislatures continue to entertain, and to sometimes pass, laws allowing local governments to avoid posting legal notices in their newspapers of record are far less than pristine. In many cases, the local governments as well as the legiscritters are perfectly fine with hiding away such information.

(Then you have schizophrenic, in its non-technical, "split personality" use, bodies like the Texas Legislature. Here in Tex-ass, the Lege will entertain, every other year, in our banana republic not-every-year body, bills to kill public notice. UNLESS it's for setting local tax rates. In that case, the Lege has EXPANDED public notice requirements over the last decade. They call it "truth in taxation," but what it really is, is trying to egg on local wingnuts to file rollback elections and other stuff.)

But, I digress.

With fewer and fewer people reading print newspapers, local governments argue back, "why should we have to pay for print notifications?" Some would just want to post it on their city, county, or school district websites (and probably eighty-six it if they could). Others, more honestly, would argue that posting on a website for a newspaper meets requirements of getting out of local government, while still saving money and potentially addressing more people.

That argument's not all wrong.

And, some local governments might argue that their local publisher wants to nickel and dime them, or even gouge them.

And, THAT argument's not all wrong.

I've seen one arguable "gouging" and a couple of "nickel and dimings."

As newspaper budgets and revenue for many of them get tighter, publishers are going to more and more start running the risk of clutching the public notice brood of eggs so tightly that they smash it.

What's to stop newspaper owners from pocketing money from the Local Journalism Sustainability Act?

 The Local Journalism Sustainability Act has been reintroduced to Congress. Full bill here.

And, given that it would use taxpayer money to help people buy subscriptions, and its pricing level is clearly targeted to help six-day community dailies of 3,000 circulation or above, up to small seven-day dailies, rather than focusing on smaller daily and non-daily papers, then sliding out to partial support of larger community dailies, my question is not facetious.

On the second credit, for hiring journalists? A 100-hour per quarter standard for an employee's work is WAY too low. Remember, there's 13 weeks in a quarter. A newspaper owner would get a tax credit for hiring any new employee that works more than 8 hours a week.

The advertising tax credit? There's a loophole there. I presume lawyers could use this money to run the "notice to creditors," "letters testamentary," etc. that they have to already.

I don't know what, if anything, could be done to fix the first credit.

Second credit, I do. 250 hours a quarter would be about 20 hours a week for an employee. I mean, 8 hours a week? That's an invitation to reverse-loophole your "independent contractor" delivery drivers for a print newspaper. And, yes, people who run hedge funds and also own newspapers would work on a way to do that.

Address the loophole on the third credit.

(I Tweeted America's Newspapers CEO Dean Ridings at his personal and the America's Newspapers Twitter accounts raising in brief the issues on No. 1 and 2. And, have heard bupkis back.

Update, Aug. 27: I have just tweeted this to the National Newspaper Association. We'll see if I get any more response.)

Also, "local newspaper" needs to be made smaller than "750 employees" on max size. That current definition would allow just about any paper up to Dallas Morning News size (and maybe including the Snooze by now) to qualify. Most Alden-owned papers, including Dead Fucking Media/Media Snooze papers would qualify. Most of New Gannett/Craphouse would qualify. McClatchy papers, now also also hedge-fund owned, would qualify. Yes, "regional or local" is in there, but, you know what? Per media analysts, anything smaller than the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today by default and just maybe the L.A. Times is considered by them to be "regional" and not "national." And, unless that number is moved down to, say, no more than 500, the Aldens of the world would use it as an excuse for further job-slashing to qualify for the payola.

I mean, in the ad credit section, it restricts THAT to small businesses of less than 50, the standard federal definition.

And, speaking of? I see nothing in the language of the bill that says something like: "This offer shall not include any newspapers owned by hedge funds." (Since this is not criminal law, it's not a bill of attainder and carve-outs are totally allowable.)

So, in the end?

Hard pass, as both an informed taxpayer in general AND an informed taxpayer who's also a newspaper editor. Because, the answer to my rhetorical question above is "nothing."

Besides, there's a much, MUCH better way to do this, and to actually target real community newspapers. (It's by no means original with me.)

And, that's to increase funding to the Ad Council and to require it to buy spots in community newspapers. This was first mentioned at the height of COVID. Could be done right now with things like reminders not to leave kids and pets in hot summer cars. Or don't drink and drive paid PSAs.

Sidebar: It IS interesting to see that the bill's cosponsors are almost totally Dems.

Some TPA love, some questions for judges

 Got a third and two fourths at the most recent Texas Press Association Better Newspapers Contest.

And, while it's not that I think I should get firsts in everything, it's not the first time I've had questions for judges.

Column writing seems the most fraught category. Submit humor columns and not every judge may like your sense of humor. Submit serious ones, and who's to say a judge's POV isn't enough different, and deeply enough held, from yours as to undercut you? (One of my two column submissions this year was about Confederate monument removal. Al Cross liked it when he saw a copy. But, if a more conservative contest judge was in on the reviewing? I might have been screwed.)

As for notes on two of my three "places"?

A commenter on my feature stories said he didn't like one of them being placed at bottom right. Sir or madam, perhaps you didn't notice that I had two feature stories in the same issue, and the one at top left went there because it had a better photo. And, last I checked, this was the "feature story" category, not "page design."

On feature photography, a judge said "crop closer." Now, while my photos as submitted weren't airgap-tight, they weren't loose, and I had good reasons IMO to crop every one as I did. This isn't obit mugshots.

AND, I've won a few TPA awards. Never a first in feature writing, but I've won first in page design more than once, re the feature story judge's comments.

So, suggestions duly noted.

The Dallas Snooze slouching further? Dodging NYSE delisting?

Earlier this month, A.H. Belo said it was leaving the New York Stock Exchange for NASDAQ. Specifically, it's headed for NASDAQ's Capital Market. Why?

Reading between the lines, and learning more about that Capital Market is, I think it was in danger of being delisted.

NASDAQ Capital Market, per Investopedia:

The Nasdaq Capital Market is one of Nasdaq's U.S. market tiers containing early-stage companies that have relatively lower market capitalizations. Listing requirements for companies on the Nasdaq Capital Market are less stringent than for the two other Nasdaq market tiers, which focus on larger companies with higher market capitalization.

More on the Capital Market here further confirms this idea.

In short, Belo, a one-newspaper (Dallas Morning News, aka the Snooze) with adjuncts like Al Dia, and a digital marketing agency that must not be doing THAT well, doesn't have much money on tap. This is kind of like NASDAQ's "penny stocks" wing.

One thing that I'm kind of curious about: why didn't it go to the former AMEX instead? Is the bottom tier of NASDAQ even weaker?

Sidebar: I've long speculated about a full JOA between the Snooze and the Fort Worth StarleGram. Between this by Belo and McClatchy now under hedge fund ownership, that day is probably yet closer — if the two owners see that as the next best step.

RIP David Klement

Klement, a Pulitzer Prize winner with the Detroit Free Press, and for many years, editorial page editor of the Bradenton Herald, has passed away at 81.

As editor of the Muenster Enterprise, I appreciate getting to know David by phone and email, as well as through his book, over the past year. His thoughts and skills as a journalist, as well as his personal insights, were all appreciated.

My connection of sorts to Bill Hartman

I saw a week ago that the founder and owner of Hartman Newspapers had died.

I'm not really an "ear to the grapevine" person on Texas newspapers. I'm here in a job and if a non-Texas newspapers, or non-newspapers, position comes along that's better, sign me up!

Anyway, this goes back to 2009.

Suburban Dallas' Today Newspapers was not long for the world and I knew that.

The Fort Bend Herald (and Texas Coaster!) had an opening. Kind of a hybrid position. And, a "too much" position," to be honest.

It was hybrid between the newspaper and some planned new magazines AND hybrid within the newspaper.

The first half? In addition to doing semi-regular work for the then-daily Herald (six-day daily back then), the person/position was responsible for producing three quarterly magazines, one a month for each of three different upscale, presumably gated, communities on the west side of Fort Bend County. No writing involved, but editorial solicitations, copy editing and proofreading of submitted material, photo solicitation or shooting or assigning to the paper's staff photographer, and all the layout. And, that was hybrid with work for the newspaper.

The hybridization within the newspaper? Doing a couple of pages of copy editing/layout every day plus a news beat.

It was a newly-created position, and, IMO, a "too much" position. Look, COVID has dumped shit on all of us, but not by choice. And, this was long enough ago, even in the early part of the Great Recession, though I hadn't realized yet how bad it would get, that, I wasn't ready to volunteer for "too much."

In addition, if I recall correctly, the ME said it was salaried and one of Fred's beancounters said hourly. On a "too much" position that's helluva different. If salaried, they WILL beat you like a rented mule. If hourly, they'll not pay overtime but yell at you for not doing more.

Besides, it's greater Helltown.

Hard pass. I eventually came out all right but not great, like a cat with nine PTSD-ed lives.

Anyway, I did meet Bill himself, and being a big baseball fan, ogled his office memorabilia and shot the shit with that on him a bit.

I can't remember how much, if at all, we discussed Roger Clemens and roiding, given his having covered the Astros long ago as well as being a BBWAA voter but my general impression of Bill on that was that he was totally "old-school" and opposed him, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, etc. getting into the Hall.

Dear newspaper publishers: About those postal rate hikes

Per the poll at top right, let's dig in.

First, I know the periodicals mail rate hikes aren't likely to fully stand as is. But, they're likely to at least 50 percent stand. The old days are over. (Note that first-class mail, for the first ounce, faces approximately the same hike.)

So, per that poll, if this truly improves service on out-of-county delivery, will you accept it?

That said, in challenging the Postal Regulatory Commission, what will they actually do with that nearly 7 percent other than just cut a deficit?

Third, are you continuing to challenge Congress to end the pension prefunding requirement? (Actually bipartisan legislation could do just that, but Postmaster General Louis DeJoy facing a subpoena over campaign finance violations at a former private business of his could screw the pooch.) If not, why not?

Unfortunately, no amount of Googling will reveal the cost to mail newspapers as a percentage of a non-dailiy newspaper's overall expenses. 

I know from my own experience as an editor-publisher at two small papers, though, that mailing expenses are not THAT much of a newspaper's overall budget.

Once again, yes teevee folks, you're in trouble too

 I've said this myself, starting three years ago, on the ratings decline of local teevee news. Now, Dick Tofel of Pro Publica says that national teevee network news, which can be a big anchor for the second of the two local evening network news broadcasts, has been and continues to be in even bigger trouble. What I, via Pew, noted for local TV and Tofel for national, has one other commonality with each other and with newspapers: the younger the person, the more likely they've tuned you out.

Tofel offers some suggestions for them to avoid the print world's head-in-the-sands decades of mistakes. Whether they'll be adopted is anybody's guess.

And, as with papers, the reader/viewer decline has one other decline: ad dollars.

And, with that, plus, the possibility of bots taking your job, comes staff declines.

The ambulance chasing gets personal, but the story winds up hollow, abetted by bad editing

OK, last month, Pocket gave me this story from The Atlantic: "We Should All be More Afraid of Driving."

Summary? Joshua Sharpe works for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Reports on "police scanner news," to put it bluntly.

That includes car wrecks.

Of which he's had two himself.

The first? Hit a woman standing in the middle of I-75. Here's the intro: 

I thought I saw something in the road.

Meth addict, as it turns out.

Much later, he makes contact with her. The accident allegedly scared her straight, but it's unclear whether that lasted or not.

OK, for a while afterward, Sharpe peeled back on ambulance chasing. We're being blunt, remember. But eventually, he picked it back up again.

Two years later? Second accident:

I thought I saw a car veering toward me. 

It was a bright morning in February 2018. I was driving to work on Clairmont Road when a car suddenly appeared to be merging into my lane from the right, bound to hit me. This time, I did swerve. I wrenched the wheel and turned into oncoming traffic.

Note the parallel in the opening?

That said, as he eventually did after the first accident, he contacts the others involved. (Well, some of them.) The driver of the truck basically half hates him. The passenger fully hates him.

What's missing from the story?

No attempt to contact the swerving driver. No attempt to find out who it was, in fact. (Hold on to that idea.)

So, I DM'ed Sharpe on Twitter after tagging him, then seeing his account was open to messages.

Here's what I asked:

One thing about your Atlantic piece on accidents I just DON'T GET! You said the 2nd accident was caused by a swerving driver, but ... you never talk(ed) to him. Did you never even try? Or was the "thought I saw" not actual, and itself an artifact from PTSD from the first accident? (I've been in one wreck bad enough to have a plate in my left forearm, so I get the background.)

No response yet, for three-plus weeks.

To me, beyond the basic warning of the story, not having this information just leaves it limp to me.

Maybe Sharpe did "hallucinate" a swerving driver? Maybe he's afraid to say that, even though that could be part of his message? Or even, arguably, "should" be, not "could" be. Or per highway traffic engineers, there's the lack of mention just how big today's pickups are. Whether the accident was his fault due to a PTSD episode, or an actual swerving driver's fault, it might have been less severe had he not swerved into a monster F-250.

And, that's why I've posted it here.

The tale is designed to be cautionary, but for whatever reasons, Sharpe pulls multiple punches on that. And, it can't be him having a journalistic concern about "personal involvement," as Sharpe mentioned his having PTSD early on. 

It's also bad editing. This IS Atlantic Monthly, after all. And, it's a journalistic magazine, not a repository of modernist or post-modernist short stories. Either Sharpe really saw a driver swerve (and was unable to identify him or whatever), or he thought he saw a driver swerve due to PTSD. Sharpe's editor should have insisted on Paul Harvey's "the rest of the story" or else rejected it.

Dear TPA: Was there nobody local?

 I recently saw this year's Texas Press Association directory.

I noticed two things when I turned to page 1.

First is that they got a Texas Parks and Wildlife staff photog to do the cover picture. I looked back and see that it's been at least three years now since TPA's been doing that, and abandoning the old cover photo contest among member newspaper staff.

I stopped entering it after whoever the judges were chose a picture of an OK but not great sunset with a silhouetted Prick of Huntsville (you know what I mean, Texans) in the foreground. (I had entered a picture from a recent Big Bend vacation that year.)

Second, I noticed this year's directory was printed by a company headquartered in ...

(drumroll)

(dramatic drumroll)

Ontario, Calfornia!

OMG, the TPA directory has been Californicated!

Wrecking two newspapers

 This is a follow-up to my previous post about Dennis and Theresa Phillips and a sidebar of Jim Moser.

Just saw the latest TPA directory.

I knew Marlin and Rosebud had been bleeding subscribers, but didn't realize it was THAT bad.

One-third of the level of when I was there six years ago.

Yes, all newspapers have lost subscribers, but most small-town papers haven't lost them like THAT.

 Sadly and interestingly, I got a call on my cell a month ago. A lady thought it was still the phone number for the Marlin Democrat. Dunno if she had that from my original time there, or my brief return. I vaguely remember the caller by name, having web-searched the number.

CJR falls into its own post-truth rabbit hole

Michael Schudson, a Columbia journalism prof, no less, and his PhD student, I presume, Jueni Duyen Tran, have an overall good article at Columbia Journalism Review about whether and how much the media should have explicitly called Donald Trump a liar. (Their argument is that because Trump is indeed often detached from reality, "lie/liar" actually shouldn't be used that often.)

But, re Trump and his reaction to the coronavirus, and his many lies and reality field distortions on this, about halfway down the piece we have:

Similarly, in September 2020, as Bob Woodward published his book Rage and along with it recordings of his interviews with Trump, revealing that the president had knowingly downplayed the pandemic throughout the early months of 2020, the L-word was noticeably absent from the Times’ reporting. In several articles, the paper observed that the president “privately understood how deadly the coronavirus really was even as he was telling the public the opposite.” This qualifies as “lying”—even if, as might be argued in this case, there could have been good reason to lie to avoid contributing to a public panic.

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. 

This is journalistic malpractice, to put it bluntly. Journalism should NEVER co-sign the old Platonic noble lie. And, we have non-Trumpian evidence of that in the past year.

As noted elsewhere, specifically with Fauci, Platonic noble lies almost always get outed. In Fauci's case, it's led wingnuts to quote Fauci against Fauci. 

That said, as per my Merrill Perlman post that's often been the featured post here, this is not the first foul ball from CJR.

Mineral Wells: Another CNHI paper shuts, leaves news desert

 The Mineral Wells Index, in Palo Pinto County, Texas, closed as of the first of the year. It had cut to semiweekly either at the start of, or maybe before the start of, the pandemic. I remember it 20 years ago as a five-day daily.

Even then, CNHI was cheap. No separate publisher for it; it shared one with six-day daily Weatherford, the Democrat, 20 miles east.

Even then, CNHI was also dumb, lazy or both. At the tail end of the old century, as the Fort Worth StartleGram pulled in its horns from circulating west of Abilene (and the Dallas Morning Snooze filled a gap by going all the way out to New Mexico), I thought CNHI had a more localized opportunity to fill in a gap.

Do a Sunday paper for Weatherford-Mineral Wells combined, and treat the Weatherford Saturday paper as a "bulldog" for it. Ditto on the weekend Mineral Wells paper.

With Weatherford College in Weatherford, you could run local sports news in that Sunday edition, for example. And, if CNHI had thought to do its Texas regional reporters, or even borrowing a page from USA Today and Gannett way back then, a weekly "roundup" of stuff. 

But, it didn't.

And, CNHI won't sell papers at market cost today.

Instead, even as the Retirement System of Alabama claims it wants to sell CNHI, and CNHI claims it wants to sell individual papers, it "can't," not at market value. Nor can the RSA cell CNHI at market value.

This would cave the entire value of its pension system, assuming that its value, in terms of the percentage that's invested in CNHI, is based on some stated value written by the RSA 20 years ago. In short, if not actual pension fraud, there's something like the spirit of it going on.

As for Mineral Wells? The old Palo Pinto paper in the county seat closed some time ago, so a county of 25,000 is officially a news desert. Given the degree that CNHI has staff whacks and its quarterly furloughs, no way Weatherford is filling all the vacancy out of its coverage.

No idea if Jim Moser has toyed with expanding Jacksboro's coverage into Mineral Wells or not. All he has to do is print weekly, and grab the Mineral Wells, Mineral Wells ISD, and Palo Pinto County legals away from the Democrat.

Theoretically, you'd get the Mineral Wells Chamber to help on a subscription drive and get, say, 500 people to precommit.

Weekly paper, 10-12 pages, or if you get the ads, eventually, semiweekly at 8 pages per? You can make a profit on that. Run a joint biz card directory with your other papers in that area, Moser.

Peter Principle or something in Sulphur Springs

So, the News-Telegram hired a managing editor in June 2017.

Less newspaper experience than I. Half of it explicitly listed as advertorial writing, on the writing and editing.

Less desktop publishing skill than me, both on speed and on design quality.

And a control freak. (I can be at times, but not like that.)

Other issues.

At a dysfunctional place, where the previous managing editor / general manager had somewhat let things slack off in the past, as well as exhibited intermittent communication skill usage, from what I can tell.

I am out of there now, Southern Newspapers has sold that paper to Moser, and the publisher in Paris who pushed for her to be hired, along with the possible reasons he pushed for her to be hired, is no longer in Paris, in part due to a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Well, enough butt-kissing. I'm past the two-year mark in my current position and moving on down the road. This time, the move worked out well enough, although overworked I am. And I'm not working for the control freak, nor dealing with the mess of a fellow publisher possibly committing illegalities, like last time I moved, back to Marlin and Moser, nor either company that hired and tolerated either person. (That's not to mention Moser selling Marlin to Dennis and Theresa Phillips, who surely will finish destroying it soon. More here. Interestingly enough, last month, I got a call from Marlin; didn't ask who it was from, but someone who thought my cell number was still the one to call. Also interestingly, I told her I hadn't been there in 4-5 years, which was actually too short for the span from when I was really there, but too long for the span of my brief return.)

Oh, after Moser bought the News-Telegram, she was eventually fired. Shock me.

Three years since Dennis Phillips and Jim Moser screwed me over

Three years ago, I "tried to go home again."

I had been at the Marlin Democrat longer than any other paper besides my nearly nine years at Today Newspapers in suburban Dallas.

In the summer of 2016, Brandi Chionsini of Granite Publications sold the Democrat and Rosebud News, with me as editor of the Democrat and publisher of both, to Jim Moser of Moser Community Media.

Well, Jim had his own person in mind as editor and publisher, and it wasn't me. So, enter Hank Hargrave. I landed on my feet as editor of The Light and Champion in Center, Texas, so I didn't die.

Hank stayed about a year, and found commuting from Normangee too much. So, off he went.

That was just about the time that The Light and Champion downsized, the publisher there decided to become a publisher-editor (and falsely claimed I was editorializing in a news story, and I later found out just how wingnut he was), and sent me out the door. (I did, to be fair, get a couple of weeks of severance pay.)

This would have been at the time, or shortly after, Hargrave left Marlin.

Did Moser call me then? No.

Instead, Hearne-Franklin publisher Dennis Phillips, a person no stranger at all to alcohol, and probably not to wacky tobaccy, either, from what I know, was made publisher over Marlin and Rosebud as well.

And, proceeded to commit felonies in advertising sales, per what I've heard. (Credit or debit card abuse is a felony no matter the amount, and charging people with credit or debit cards on file for ads they did not run and did not authorize would fit the definition, Dennis.)

OK, I didn't know any of this coming there. I didn't know that, under the excuse "that text won't fit in that ad size" (sometimes that IS true, sometimes not) he would upsize ads without contacting the customer first.

I didn't know his and Theresa's daughter was the bookkeeper at all four papers, to clean up any messes.

As a result of all of the above, I didn't know that I couldn't trust the financials Jim provided me, courtesy of Dennis. They were tight as is. They were lies in reality.

(This also sets aside that the ad salesperson had been getting paid as contract labor, and that Theresa was allegedly horning in on some accounts she was landing. The former is definitely unethical, possibly illegal; the second is "just" unethical.)

So, presumably, enough people had gotten tired of Dennis that they begged Jim to hire anybody else. So he called me.

OK, a couple of weeks in, he's yelling at me for not producing magic on ad sales. Well, Jim, Dennis had 18 months to crap all over the place, and Rome wasn't built in a day.

Anyway, I sold a few ads myself. One, I gave a deal on a 6-month placement for a business card in the business review.

A day later, Moser's yelling at me about that.

"We sell to the rate card."

Really? I later found a flyer from Dennis that had a "half-off blowout sale" three months earlier in January. So, you're either ignorant of what he did or else lying. Given how long Dennis has worked for you, given that he allegedly had an ownership stake in Hearne that was going to go to Marlin as well, and given that he's likely done such sales before in Hearne ....

Let's not forget that Dennis, Theresa, or darling daughter snitched to you on this, too.

Let's add in that the Marlin office was a shambles and that there was no computer for me the day I got there, and that Dennis "offered" to have me build the paper in Hearne. No chance, Jack. No way I was going to sit under his thumb and eyeballs, and if the term publisher means anything, then it means that at least.

In all of this, I suspect that you, Jim, were either hoping I would get stuck in a lease and have to knuckle under, or something like that, or else that I would eat the lease for my apartment or something and you'd tell the community that you had tried.

Well, because my short-term landlord was one of the people who'd reportedly been credit or debit card abused by Dennis, he got his ownership company to let me out of my lease no harm no foul other than losing the deposit.

So, it was bye-bye. You're going to claim I quit.

I still claim you fired me.

Thank doorknobs I'm not still there, though. Reportedly, Dennis is expanding or has expanded the ownership stake he had in Hearne/ Franklin, Marlin/Rosebud and Cameron/Rockdale. He might even be taking them over. 

I would throw up in my mouth if Dennis Phillips were my company owner. I would then puke that sloppy seconds on him.

A part two is ahead.

Dallas Morning News not a "top 10"

I don't read everything in Editor and Publisher's roundup of headlines, but I do hit a fair bit. 

And, its piece on COVID-related circ declines was certainly of interest. The full story, at the British Press-Gazette, had several items of interest. One, beyond circ declines, caught my eye.

So, the Dallas Morning News, aka the Snooze, has a smaller circ than the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, even though the Dallas half of the Metroplex is as big as ALL the Twin Cities? Wow. 

 That's just sad.

A LESS THAN 10 PERCENT adhole at the Morning News

 A week ago, I blogged about how the Dallas Morning News, aka the Snooze, had a 10-percent or so adhole in its issue the Thursday before that.

Today? Even worse. 

Despite MORE obits than the week before (and I count obits as part of the paid adhole), LESS THAN 10 PERCENT.

By my quick eyeballs, an even three pages on a 34-page paper.

What makes this even worse?

In today's world, if the Snooze still insists on printing this issue, it should not be distributed where I live. 

I live in the north exurban Metromess on the west side of I-35.

In other words, Fort Worth StartleGram territory.

What the hell the Snooze is even doing out here I have zero idea.

As I said last week, Belo's got more to worry about than A.H. Belo's Confederate past. With no papers outside the Snooze, Al Dia and anything else Dallas-based, and having hived off the digital marketing department ...

What's left there?

Their alleged paywall (third shot at doing one) is leaky, if it's even on half the time.

Facebook group pretending to be newspaper: Been there, done that

 I remember a Facebook group in Marlin running rumor as fact, but NOTHING like what is reportedly happening in Beaver Falls and Beaver Township, Pennsylvania.

I had a pair of regular weekly papers in a county of less than 25,000 that did a reasonable job of actual news reporting. It's a shame that the paper there, in a county of 170K, was sold to Craphouse.

The rest of the story is totally unsurprising, even though the paper says it's hiring two new staff.

When in Marlin and Falls County, I probably ran three or four op-ed columns that shot down the worst of the rumors. Problem is that, there's sometimes solid info on such a site. The real problem is that when the actual newspaper reports a story and a fair chunk of the populace doesn't want to accept it, and then spins new rumors. Like police in Chippewa Township, I've been accused of being part of a conspiracy.

That then said, we had plenty of bad cops in Marlin. But, the conspiracy thinking on the Facebook group wasn't just about policing matters.

A 10 percent adhole at the Dallas Morning News

 And, on a Thursday, not a Monday paper (if Belo is still publishing the Snooze in print seven days a week).

Yes, you read that right — a 10 percent adhole on its March 25 issue, a week ago. That's on Belo's normal 34-page run on Thursdays. And, as usually with papers of any size, it counts obits as part of the adhole. 

They only had one-quarter page of obits. Still, a full page would have pushed the ad margin to, what? A whopping 12.5 percent?

With no other papers left besides the stable in Dallas, and with the digital marketing division now theoretically walled off, the "Rock of Truth" has truth to worry about far beyond A.H. Belo's Confederate past.

And yes, I know today's date, and no, this is no joke. 

The big question is, since investors forced the hiving off of the digital marketing division, how long before somebody either forces a sale or else swoops in? With all the other papers they sold in the past, Belo probably still has some cash reserves that would make it a tempting takeover target.

Streaming services gutting TV more and more

 Back in 2019, I had one blog post, then a follow-up, refudiating claims that teevee was about to face anywhere near the future financial problems of newspapers.

The initial post was based on a comment on Quora by a local-level TV programming engineer claiming "we're doing fine." I had multiple links showing local TV news viewership, a prime source of local TV ad dollars, was already declining. I had another link showing the age demographic for local TV news watching wasn't that much different than for newspapers.

In the follow-up, I noted how job cuts have affected local TV news broadcasting.

Meanwhile, national TV has had a new threat arise since then: streaming by Netflix and others. (COVID has brought yet another possible threat — movie streaming. Yeah, it's primarily a deal for movie theaters, but if it jacks movie viewing higher than before, that's extra personal entertainment time that has to be lost by another entertainment source.)

I update these ideas because streaming has come to pro sports.

And, not just any pro sport but the NFL.

And, and not just any streaming outlet but Amazon, otherwise known as Yellow Satan.

So, production engineer guy? Stop whistling in the dark.

A.H. Belo is getting woke?

 The parent company of the Dallas Morning News, known here as the Snooze, of course, and parent company of not much else any more,  wants to officially rename itself because of its founder's Confederate Army past. Wiki, though, doesn't mention relatives' slave-owning past.

A renaming of a company like Belo, though, is like a renaming of a company like, oh, Monsanto, Exxon or Philip Morris. This is putting lips on a pig when it won't address that, through things at the Snooze such as an editorial page editor who used to work at the Shrub Bush Library, it remains part of the problem in contributing to factors that continue to contribute to adjuncts to racism, at least, today.

Nor will it address, per the likes of a Jim Schutze, its news coverage's continuing sense of paternalism toward South Dallas. 

Or real problems, like not selling newspaper ads.

Sulphur Springs: Screwing up a downsizing

The Sulphur Springs News-Telegram was a six-day daily until September, 2018. At that time, Southern Newspapers, having acquired it from Scott Keys 17 months earlier, cut it to tri-weekly.

Tri-weeklies are kind of neither fish nor fowl. Also, even when a downsizing is needed, I think it smart to downsize the least amount needed. You're less likely to lose customers, IMO.

Outside of circulation, I am going to lay out for you the basic parameters of the paper pre-downsizing and post-downsizing, then lay out an alternative scenario for going to five-day daily instead.

At six days a week it normally ran 10 pages Monday-Friday, with it occasionally being 12 on Fridays. Fridays also had a local tab-sized TV guide in it. Saturdays were normally 14, sometimes 16, in two sections.

The paper was priced at 50 cents Monday-Thursday and $1.25 Friday-Saturday. That's $4.50 for 64-68 page a week.

Editorial-side staff was an ME, two news writers, a hybrid writer/copy editor/photographer (and eventually galley slave for a week ag newspaper, tab-sized), and a staff photographer. Web was at 46 inches.

Downsizing cut to 18 pages in 12 A and 6 B all three days. A puzzle book was inserted on Tuesdays and color comics on Saturdays. The TV guide moved back to Thursdays. Cost was set at $1.25 for each of the three issues. The web was cut to 42 inches.

Print run didn't really change. B sections ran M/W/F and A sections ran T/Th/S, so the move didn't really help the press.

The one news writer was shit-canned. (He was over 70, but age discrimination is hard to prove. And, while he was a good person, he was kind of phoning it in, and had been for a few years on things like non-attendance at city council and commissioners court meetings.) The other writer and the hybrid/galley slave picked up his slack as best as possible.

That's $3.75 for 54 pages a week on a slightly tighter web.

My solution?

Five day daily, tossing the Monday, of course.

Eight pages on Tuesday-Thursday. TV guide on Friday. Insert the Country World ag newsletter as well. Eighteen pages on Saturday, with the color comics and puzzle book there.

Sports guy gets 1 page instead of 1.5 Tuesday-Friday. Classifieds gets made one page even, not 1.5, by cutting font/leading to 8.5 on 9 instead of 10 on 11. That means you only lost one page, not two, of newshole pages compared to old six-day daily. And, you're going to run lifestyle and community columnists all on the weekend. (Columnists ran Friday in old six-day format.)

Of the four extra pages on Friday, one is the 3/4 page religion ad with local church calendar material on top, and the other is a national religion and spirituality roundup. People will read that. The other two are two outdoor pages; we're doing three with the triweekly and had done one before. Sports guy can build those in advance. ME can build the national religion page in advance.

Saturday is 20 pages total, either as eight/six/six or two tens.

I'll give you an eight/six/six layout. That's eight pages in the A section just like on weekdays. B is three sports plus three outdoors. With the Matt Williams stuff, those can be built in advance, especially if sports guy is just building one page on weekdays. C opens with a national religion page. Local church calendar/briefs/sig ad on 2. Lunch menus on 3. Extension agents and other ag news on 4. Lifestyles etc. on 5-6. Filler as needed, including county courthouse records if they won't fit in A.

On a 10/10 layout? Your two religion pages go in A and the rest of the C section in B.

Price Tuesday-Thursday at 50 cents. Friday and Saturday at $1.50. That's $4.50, same as before, for 52 pages a week, two fewer pages than the triweekly. (Given that the average paper, post downsizing, when the galley slave left, was an adhole of 20 percent or less counting obits, my version of a downsize would have helped there as well.)

And, you could have tweaked otherwise.

Cut the phone-in staffer to 32 hours a week. (That's at 20 percent but not more than, so he couldn't file for unemployment.)

Sports editor is off Mondays with no Monday paper. And, Tuesday-Thursday, at least, are just one page of sports, not 1.5. So ... maybe trim him 3 percent?

ME is working less. She might need a half-day on Monday afternoons to edit stuff the two staff writers turn in. (Phone-in guy was Monday-Friday, other staffer M-W and F-S, and galley slave was Tues-Sat.) But, she doesn't need a full day Monday.

And, press is consolidated to five days. You got any contract jobs that had been printing Monday? They move to Tuesday or they say bye-bye. Cost of losing them is worth the press consolidation.

Maybe you don't need to cut the sports guy at all. You're saving enough elsewhere. Keep him flat, keep the ME flat and give the other, still full-time, news writer and the galley slave a 3 percent raise. Not nothing, but it is something.

Given the scenario I presented, Southern is making MORE money on savings than the actual cuts they did. Cutting the one staffer rather than firing him is offset by less stress, better quality, and keeping more subscribers by staying daily.

But, from what I've seen of Southern, first, they probably never even thought of this, and second, they'd reject it anyway if presented from outside.

That's their problem. Until they inflict it on staff at member papers.

Ask Lawton.

==

Another option would have been had Moser bought Sulphur Springs six months earlier. He could have made it a five-day with the weekend paper being a combo one with Mount Pleasant and also done a weekly combo entertainment guide that inserted in the Friday issue of both.

I wonder if he kicked the tires when Scott Keys was in the process of selling, and saw through some Scott BS, and didn't have a JD, as in the former Paris publisher, loading on his own BS.

That said, it wasn't necessarily a bad buy in the first place. Sulphur Springs has a growing population; not rapidly, but growing. Paris is on a slow decline. It also has a younger population and higher per-capita income.

Dennis and Theresa Phillips take over stable of Moser papers

Dennis and Theresa Phillips, publishers of the Hearne/Franklin, Cameron/Rockdale, and Marlin/Rosebud papes, are now reportedly also owners of all of the above as well.

I knew, when I tried to go back "home" in 2018, that they had a small minority stake in Jim Moser's ownership of the three pairs of papers.

Rumor last year was that they are becoming or will be becoming majority (sole?) owners of said papers. And, I've gotten confirmation on that last month.

Sounds like Jim is cutting bait, like Big Jim Chionsini wanted to do with some of the less profitable papers in Granite Publishing's purview when he came back and shoved daughter Brandi aside.

Given Dennis and Theresa's already demonstrated lack of ethics and possible illegality on the Marlin paper, things will surely go even further downhill. (I'd also expect the Rosebud paper to be shut down.)

Sorry, folks.

The only good news that MIGHT come out of this is pure schadenfreude. IF Ty Clevenger eventually publicly surrenders on the vile Seth Rich conspiracy theory bullshit and goes back to his Central Texas roots of chasing Booger County Mafia, him fighting Dennis without Moser around to wade in anymore could be fun.

A few thoughts on the weenies at the Tyler Morning Telegraph

 And, no, I'm NOT talking about the one weenie who actually rewrote the caption on the AP photo of the Trump Trainers storming the Capitol in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Per discussion at the Dallas Observer and elsewhere, I'm talking about the weenies in the newspaper version of C suites who have tolerated this.

First, per the links above and elsewhere, NOBODY believes the bullshit in the unsigned editorial at the second link, from Jan. 20, or the bullshit comments by the paper's publisher and others, from Jan. 12 in the first link.

Here's the full Jan. 20 editorial. Let's quote from the bullshit in detail. It's very necessary to do so.

We made a promise earlier that we would make a full investigation into the matter, and we have. These are our findings.

Let’s start by answering the question that many of you have asked us since the false caption ran: How did this happen?

We have spoken with the staff members working that night to gather as complete an account as possible. We have also compared those accounts to both the newspaper’s production system, which logs all of the changes made to the paper as it is put together, and to the paper’s internal messaging system, which staff members working on the paper use to direct changes and edits to pages as they are proofed.

How did this happen? To the best of our belief, it was a joke taken literally. We found that no staff member acted in a malicious manner to deliberately put misinformation in your paper. Instead, what we found was a misguided and misunderstood joke put on the page when it should not have been.

The correct photo caption was put into our production system with the photo and sat untouched for more than an hour until it was changed by one of our page designers. That page designer had submitted a draft of the page to our messaging system so that others working that night could read over it and check for mistakes and typos. A message on our system from another page designer directed that person to change the caption to the false one that ran. A third page designer also commented on the thread, saying the page looked good. The original page designer made the requested change and sent the page to be printed.

There were several obvious issues raised by this. First and foremost, no one looked at the final revision of the page before it was sent. Had an editor or a designer looked at the page to OK the final revisions, this error would have been caught and corrected. There was no person acting as a final fail-safe that night.

We must also address the specific request from a designer to change the caption. We believe that request was intended to be a joke based on the conversations we had with staff members working that night, but we must also acknowledge that the designer made no special effort to distinguish the joke from an ordinary request. There was no “LOL.” There was no special emoji used to denote sarcasm. There was nothing to let on to the fact that a joke was being made.

One of the first rules most page designers learn is to never put a joke on the page as a placeholder or otherwise, because it will invariably end up in print.

We also know that sometimes it can be hard to distinguish tone from the written word. One of our page designers has learned these lessons the hard way.

We also want to address the fact that the page designer who made the actual change on the page did not push back against the requested revision. We know sometimes, in the busyness of our work schedules, things can slip past our brains and mistakes can happen. It is incumbent upon us to stop and examine the things we are being asked to do. Had that page designer taken a beat to remember what the Associated Press was actually reporting, this would not have happened.

Disciplinary measures have been taken with those involved in this mistake, but ultimately we feel there is a larger issue beyond any one individual. This was a collective failure, and it’s one for which we take full responsibility as a newspaper. We are supposed to have protocols in place to prevent such things from happening. We did not. That has been changed.

Here is what we have put in place to hold us accountable: Between the time a story or story element is given to a page designer by an editor, placed on the page by that designer and then printed, it will have at least two people looking over the actual page before it is sent to press — with one of those people responsible for checking the final revision for all of that day’s pages and signing off on the issue.

Our new protocols call for page designers, once they have finished laying out a page, to provide a copy of the page to the rest of the newsroom for viewing. Any proposed revisions can be made at that time, and the page’s designer will make them. The page designer will then provide a revised copy of the page for approval no matter how small the change.

Each night, we will have one person acting as the designated person who will send pages.

OK then. First, an initial big big picture response, also posted on the Telegraph's Facebook page:

Nobody who knows how a paper works, or should work, on the copy desk, even with any additional cuts you've had in the past 9 months, believes this bullshit editorial. When are you going to tell the full story, then fire somebody (or more than 1) over the "antifa" cutline?

I mean, do you really expect people to believe the Telegraph's news editor didn't take final look at pages in the first place, previously, especially since this was P1? Second, the particular copy editor didn't write, on the printed out version of P1 that got sent to whomever did look at it, "Hey, here's what that cutline really should say," or some other jokey comment?

Bullshit on top of bullshit eventually becomes a shit sandwich.

Now, some details.

First, an aside on firings. Even if the copy editor who did this had only been on the job two days, he or she should know that you don't do such shit without flagging it, per my comment to the Telegraph's comment it had no flagging. On a story of this magnitude, yes, the economy sucks, and the newspaper economy sucks even more. It's still fireable and the person should be fired. (I assume that "learned these lessons the hard way" does NOT include a firing as part of that "hard way," or the newspaper world would have heard about it by now.)

Now, is that believable? Let's start with the word "believe" in the Telegraph editorial.

I don't believe this. Per the "additional cuts," even if an actual news editor wasn't running the copy desk that night, you're telling me you had no designated replacement? (I'm assuming the Telegraph still had a local desk and that this isn't a Craphouse-type outsourced operation.)

And, on the other elements that are now being put into place? What, they weren't already there? Having worked at a seven-day daily of similar size (albeit before another decade of cuts at daily papers), that was SOP where I was at.

Maybe it's time for the Telegraph to cut its page count or number of days of print editions, if it hasn't already. (And, no, I'm not a big fan of e-editions.)

Orwell in the newspaper biz: Some diversity is better than others in San Antone

 Shortly before Christmas, I applied for an editorial writer position with the San Antonio Express-News. I easily met most the experience criteria (other than maybe a relative lack of video experience, but that, for an editorial page?), but it had one other stipulation: 

A hard push for diversity candidates.

I responded that I was a white male, but that I had two types of diversity that should be valued on an editorial page today.

Specifically, to quote from my cover letter:

I have to confess that I’m a white male, so I can’t delivery that kind of diversity.

Please note the boldface, though. Diversity goes beyond race and sex.

For example? I’m a third-party voter. I exited the “duopoly” at the start of this century on presidential voting. And, that’s a diversity directly relevant to your editorial page.

I’m also a secularist. That’s a diversity directly relevant to some First Amendment editorials.

And, there you are.

The editorial page editor, Josh Brodetsky, was out of pocket on an early start to Christmas and had an auto-reply on his email.

OK. Figured no action before the New Year.

Lo and behold, on Jan. 17, browsing Journalism Jobs again, noticed basically the same job re-advertised, only with a new title of associate editorial page editor.

Translation? They didn't get the diversity candidates with the skill level they wanted. So, whether or not they'll offer much more pay, Brodetsky, presumably along other top editorial management, turd-polished the old description with a shiny new title.

I found the previous email I had sent and did a "forward" with a brief statement in the new email, to the effect of "please consider me for this new job."

Brodetsky said: "We're already down to two finalists."

Really?

I was born at night, but not last night, and I've been in the papers biz —including writing columns and editorials — well beyond your five years of experience desired. I can smell Shinola rotting like a mackeral.

No way you got down to half a dozen semifinalists, let alone two finalists, by Jan. 15 (assuming you didn't screen any applicants over the Jan. 16-17 weekend, Josh), with a Jan. 6 job announcement.

You probably had at least one semifinalist, if not more, tell you they'd only be interested with the additional title, and perhaps whatever modicum of additional power comes with this, if you goosed things. So, to make sure you cleared EEOC hurdles, you ran a new job ad.

Should you see this, Josh, you can tell me if I'm wrong. I'll appreciate honesty.

And, since I'm here in Tex-ass, via the TPA, I'll know who you hired.

I've seen the Snooze repeatedly be full of crap on editorial hirings, while we're here.

The bigger picture, as a leftist, is that there's yet other diversities. A Black woman (let's say that's who Josh hired) might have come from a much richer family than I did — let's say, a family to help her get a master's in journalism (a degree about as overrated as an Ed.D.) from Columbia or something. So, income diversity is yet another diversity.

I could think of more, with more cogitation, but having done the bulk of this writing Monday night, after getting word of "you're too late" from Brodetsky just that morning, this will do nicely for now.

Top 10 of 2020

 So, what did readers like on my blog during the past year? Let's take a look. (Top 10 is as of Jan. 4, 2021.)

Note: These were not all written in 2020 (and I don't know if Blogger can be set to do that), just the 10 most read in the last year.

No 1, in fact comes from six years ago. Long before Craphouse bought the Austin Stateless, I blogged about newspapers dying in Austin, at least by adhole.

No. 2 was Warren Buffett's decision a year ago to bail on newspaper ownership. I guess the man who took a chainsaw to the Buffalo News long, long ago realized that he couldn't pull that at smaller papers without an even cruder chainsaw.

No. 3 was about Southern Newspapers appearing to make some false claims about printing presses it allegedly owned.

No. 4 was about the Rio Rancho Observer, ethically challenged a decade ago, semi-biting the dust. (I wrote a few weeks earlier, and it's linked within, about the differently ethically challenged Los Alamos Monitor fully biting the dust.)

No. 5 was my hot take on ABC suspending David Wright for telling the truth about corporate media.

No. 6 was from 2018, telling potential applicants to take a pass on working at Wick Communications. Maybe it went even further downhill after that?

No. 7, interestingly, was from that same month. Sadly, newspaper publishers and owners who need to read this truth probably won't — newspaper magazines are NOT "the answer" to what ails you.

No. 8 was rhetorical. I asked readers if they would pay more for NYT subscriptions after the Old Gray Lady announced last February that it would start increasing their cost.

No. 9? In September, I blogged about the Times again, wondering if its change in CEOs meant "sponsored verticals" were around the corner.

No. 10? I told fellow small-town Texas editors to get a fucking life and stop thinking they had to be the omnipotent god of small town high school football statistics.

Surprisingly, none of these were about CNHI or any of its individual newspapers.

Gainesville Register goes semi-weekly, still makes CNHI and local mistakes

 I've written about the Register more than once. I've written about The New Republic writing about its parent, CNHI. Last summer, accepting the inevitable, the five-day daily converted to triweekly.

And, the start of this year, it went to semiweekly.

The CNHI mistakes continue.

The biggie is continuing to run a print TV guide section that eats of four pages of ads-free print. 

WHY?

It can NOT be comprehensive, given the plethora of cable channels. 

Plus, it doesn't include streaming from folks like Netflix.

It's simply stupid.

Also stupid and also presumably at CNHI orders?

Running two-three days of comics in a semiweekly's pages. (It includes not just comics, but the full normal syndication — advice column, crossword, etc. Three full pages of ad-free space.)

The ONLY reason that should be done is if either individual CNHI papers, downsized, or CNHI corporate, with a corporate package, is stuck in a daily comics syndication package it can't escape.

So, right there, the Tuesday, Jan. 12 paper has at least four if not six pages of ads-free print that is being wasted. Let's be UN-charitable, because this is CNHI, and assume six.

That's in a 14-page paper that has 1/2 page of display ROP ads, 3/4 page of classified and about a page of paid obits. With obits, that's an adhole of about 16 percent. NOT counting them, that's a 10 percent adhole in a 14-page paper, if that.

Slash that to eight pages, and counting obits, you're approaching 30 percent.

===

OK, on the Register side? I'm not counting running out-of-date weather news, but am going to mention something else.

They cut their width by another half inch or more, it seems, when they went semiweekly. But? It looks like they're still printing on the same web width. 

AND?

They're printing the PDFs' registration marks, and on all pages. I shit you not. If you can't get your printing press to adjust its web, why have you narrowed the pages?

VT Digger: is it "real"?

 The Boston Globe looks at both no-longer-alt newspapers, both of which I have read semi-regularly in the past for Bernie and Jane Sanders news. 

But, are they always as "investigative" as can be?

Take this:

“VTDigger is a solution to the black hole of no news,” says Orton. “And it’s not beholden to anyone because it’s nonprofit.”

"Orton" would be Lyman Orton, owner of Cabot Creamery, who gave VT Digger founder Jane Galloway $7K in start-up money long ago, then with his partner, provided $1 million in a "growth fund" and asked other companies to join in.

If Cabot pollutes Vermont groundwater with runoff from a cheese plant, does it get investigated? Especially since Cabot gets "Sponsor Spotlight" puff pieces? And, when something mildly critical is published, it gets full rebuttal space. Betcha Bernie Sanders, b´ete noire of both VT Digger and Seven Days, wishes for similar.

I included Seven Days at the top (while eventually deleting it from the header) just because the Globe story is about both. But, it follows a "traditional" alt-weekly ads-based model, along with donations, but not the Digger/Texas Trib model. And, contra Seven Days' claim:

VTDigger and The Texas Tribune are similar, but not the same.

“My understanding is we’re the only online nonprofit that publishes breaking news, policy reporting, and investigative work,” says Galloway. “I believe all three are important for a statewide organization to gain the readership necessary to sustain operations financially.”

While the Trib may not do much in investigative journalism by itself, it does partner with Pro Publica on it. Policy reporting? Probably not much, though Evan Smith gets into that at his roundtables.