Didn't realize new Gannett / old Craphouse sucked THIS bad in NM

Per the Reporter, Santa Fe's alt-weekly, it has ZERO in-person reporters at its Ruidoso and Alamogordo, New Mexico papers. Alamogordo was a print daily pre-COVID. And, it, at least (dunno about Ruidoso) was Gannett's before the merger. So, can't even blame Craphouse.

Thankfully for Land of Disenchantment journalism, it sold off the Deming Headlight and the Silver City Sun-News to the owner of the Silver City Daily Press. It closed its old rival, but it has local reporters, which neither of those Gannett papers did. And, it's hired back a long-time Deming writer.

Oh, both those papers were also pre-merger Gannett; can't blame Craphouse there, either.

And Cruces itself sucks, as noted. The El Paso Times is also Gannett, so its lack of non-local environmental and border reporting is coming from there. Problem? Yes. They're in two different states, which affects reporting on Rio Grande and Pecos water rights, for starters.

And, barf me on El Paso staff titles.  There is is an "executive editor," still but NO "managing editor." There IS a "content strategist" and a "content coach." There's also NO "city editor." There's ONE government reporter. Two staff photogs, which means reporters are likely expected/required to shoot pix off smartphones.

Note this quote from Jay Rosen about Gannett et al:

“It’s more of a financial firm. It’s more in the category of a private equity company or a hedge fund than a newspaper company,” Rosen tells SFR.

About right.

RIP Michael Lindenberger

 Until I saw the Chronicle's obituary story for its former deputy opinion editor, I never put the two and two together that it was the former Snooze editorial writer and columnist. 

I can't recall having direct run-ins with him, unlike a couple of the, er, THE Morning News' neoliberal columnists, who weren't even left-neoliberal, but who, under the dynasty of Keven Ann Willey, talked about how librul they really were. They weren't, even before going further right with Brendan Minitur as her replacement. And, what can you expect from a paper that couldn't get ancient history right?

But, I digress.

Per the Louisville Courier-Journal obit story, he was really sick if he dropped 50 pounds in just several weeks. I would say stomach cancer, but the story said his primary doctor couldn't nail anything down and he was scheduled to see specialists. Had to have been sad last days for him, wondering if he really was dying just months after getting a journalism dream job.

Hold on to your dreams, even if they're fleeting.

Harvey Yates grifts his oily hands onto New Mexico newspapers

I didn't realize that Yates, scion of THE Yates oil and gas plutocrats, had bought Española's Rio Grande Sun earlier this year. (Of course, it had been a semi-laughingstock itself long ago, goosing its circ by selling in Santa Fe and Duke City so that the big city folks could get their jollies laughing at the drug crimes in one of the Land of Dis-Enchantment's armpits.

That's part of the discussion in this New Mexico Searchlight piece about Yates widening the spread of his oily talons across the state.

Contra the new publisher there, Richard Connor, it sounds like Yates has exacted control of at least the editorial page of the paper. If not, then Connor is one helluva lapdog. Either case, probably not trustworthy.

His ultimate goal, per the piece, seems to be a drive into browbeating the Valencia County Commission into changing various zoning laws so he can drill — and frack — in the Albuquerque Basin.

As for his claims that NM Media is dominated by Gannett? Laughable. Hobbs is owned by a small scale company, or was. The Albuquerque Journal's Number Nine Media dominates print media in the Albuquerque Basin, including the Valencia County Bulletin in Belen, and No. 9 is semi-wingnut. Carlsbad and Cruces are Gannett, tis true. Duke City teevee? KOB is a smaller chain. KOAT is Hearst. KRQE is Nextstar.

It's also laughable, is his implication that Gannett, now Craphouse of course, is run by a bunch of wild-eyed bomb-throwers. However, I'm sure he hates even the slightest mention of climate change on its news pages.

Dallas Observer must be really desperate for bucks

Its Dec. 1-7 issue (just 24 pages at about a 50 percent adhole, not counting house) had a quarter-page ad from Robert Jeffress. Yes, THAT Robert Jeffress, wingnut Trump-schlonging pastor at Dallas First Baptist. Rexella Van Impe, wife of the late Jack Van Impe, and herself 90 years old, is also tied in.

At the same, Bob Jeffress, Rexella, and Jack Van Impe Ministries have to be just as desperate to advertise in an alt-weekly that also carries ads from all the major DFW titty bars.

The Observer's desperation may explain why Simone Carter is gone. It was at least as much a layoff, if not entirely so, rather than anything for cause.

An insider hire in Decatur and other TPA tidbits

 I had heard the Wise County Messenger would be looking for a new ME as Richard Greene was moving on. Apparently they already have one, as on editorial flag box thumbnail photos, Austin Jackson has "editor" under his name. Interestingly, having eyeballed TPA's job bank after I heard of the potential vacancy, I saw no ad. I saw none in their print paper, either. And, after that, taking a look, I saw none on Journalism Jobs, either. 

Now, the EEOC does not require you to advertise every job. It's still interesting, though.

==

I saw Keith Domke is new editor in Brenham. That means old acquaintance-not-really-friend Jason Chlapek has wandered on again after little more than a year. He's now "general manager" at Fairfield and Teague. Jason said long ago that he wanted to be a publisher some day, and GM is closer on the title hunt. Can't believe it's more pay, though. That area is not THAT much better economically than Marlin of days past. And, per TPA's directory, it's two weeklies with combined circ of 2,220 and change, while Brenham was still triweekly in print with circ of 3,700.

==

Enola Gay Mathews has ditched the radio station in Sulphur Springs and is at the News-Telegram now.

==

Meanwhile, Texas newspapers want to hire. They don't want to pay. New Braunfels, for example. Wants an ME for its monthly mag who will also be an AME for its paper. $38-42K. If it had been on salary, Fort Bend was offering $30K a year, a dozen years ago, at a paper 2/3 the size, on today's circ, of New Braunfels.

Another CNHI fail in Gainesville

On Tuesday, the Gainesville (Tex-ass) Register ran an op-ed column by Jim Zachary, editor of The Valdosta Daily Times and also CNHI's director of newsroom training.

End of the first column of the print version, we have:

How many children and their parents can't hardly wait until the honor rolls are published so they can cut the page out of the paper and paste it into a scrapbook?

True today?

No. School districts have websites and Facebook pages and parents can print them out or do screengrabs on their smartphones or whatever.

Sad but true.

But, that's not the big fail.

The big fail is that I don't think I've seen a Gainesville ISD honor roll in the Register in 3 and 1/2 years.

Bet Jim Zachary's Valdosta Times doesn't have them either.

Then there's this:

Speaking of advertisements, which stores have sales promotions? Where can you get the best deals? Check out the ads in the paper.

Erm, Jim, the Register runs the CNHI/RSA semi-house ads for golfing in Bama more than it does any single local ad.

The Texas Trib is neoliberaling on with Ev Smith's replacement

 That's the case with Evan Smith's CEO replacement, Sonal Shah, per the Gray Lady's profile. She worked in Dear Leader's White House and later on Mayo Pete Buttigieg's prez campaign. She also squeezed in a stint at Goddam Sachs. Probably gives her an in on finding people for those oh-so-vaunted Trib Talks.

So, we should probably expect the Trib to continue to pull punches on environmental, financial and other types of news, despite its claims that it doesn't, of course.

Did the Dallas Observer fire Simone Carter?

 And, if so, was it over her coverage of the PRO Gainesville protests?

Or, did she just quit?

In either case, I found it weird that, even before that, she was doing reporting on exurban areas not even part of the Metromess, and also found it weird that she wasn't being more reined in to Metromess reporting, as I told the Observer when applying for an ME opening a year or more ago. (It was Meredith Lawrence, not her, though, that wrote, even more bizarrely, about a wind farm in my neck of the woods.)

In either case, it's six weeks and counting since she had a byline there. She has been pumping out volumes of bloggy stuff for Newsweek since then. (IMO, listing ALL of them on your Muck Rack profile is a good way to undercut your bona fides.) There, she does list herself as "former" of the Observer. The fact that she has nothing but Newsweek blog posts listed on her profile says it was either a firing, or a downsizing for Observer fiscal reasons, but not her quitting.

==

Update, Feb. 26, 2023: She's back at the Observer as of late January.

I disagree with Dick Teufel on paywalls

In a recent post at Second Rough Draft, he doesn't say "abandon them entirely," but does say that most papers that aren't "national," ie, WaPost, NYT, WSJ, and maybe the LAT, should pretty much abandon them, starting with this thought:

Where paywalls work: Broadly speaking, I think we now know that paywalls work only when a publication is producing high quality content in high quantity. This is the through-line from the Wall Street Journal (the earliest major adopter) to the Financial Times (where the idea of the meter was developed) to the later-adopting but now very successful New York Times and Washington Post among newspapers and Atlantic and New Yorker among magazines.

He goes on to add:

Relatedly, the problem for the vast majority of metropolitan newspapers is that while many continue to produce high quality content on occasion (their best stories are in many cases their best ever), they do not now do so in sufficient quantity to attract a large enough group of paying digital subscribers. (The average Gannett or Lee chain paper, for instance, has about 6000 paying digital subscribers. That’s not enough to make this economic model work in the long term.)

But, he doesn't address the issue of paywall development and history, by and large, outside these national sites.

For instance, the Dallas Snooze, after its CueCat failure, went through two different paywall iterations before hitting on a third.

My answer? 

As I said in comments there, Counterpunch recently added a Counterpunch+ set of paywalled stories. It's no more than 15 percent of its total, so in Teufel's terms, it's NOT "quantity." So effing what? I think the idea is great. Regional daily papers could and should do similar, with a harder paywall on the "quality" stuff. You get NONE of that free, while getting your five free monthly peeks at other stuff only.

Otherwise?

Some money is better than none, and as long as the paywall money isn't costing yet more ad money? Some money is better than none.

He then goes Joe Biden:

There are big equity issues here: Paywalls are ultimately for richer people. Journalists may be willing to pay for a passel of digital subscriptions, but most civilians don’t feel like they have the money to do that, even if they have the time. To put some numbers on this, fewer than one out of five Americans pays for online news, and the median number of subscriptions among that group is two. 

When you target high income and wealth in this country, unfortunately you end up with an audience that is disproportionately white, while Black and Latino people are underrepresented. That is especially problematic in our cities, where paywalls therefore have the effect of furthering the historical pattern of underserving these communities, even when they represent a majority of residents.

Sorry, not buying it.

Back when print was print, some community papers offered a senior citizen discount, and that was it. AFAIK, Black and Hispanic papers, as well as mainstream ones, didn't ask your socioeconomic class, and the advertisers that made the bulk of the paper's profits didn't ask, either. Just if you had money, period. And, he's been around long enough to know that.

Then, there's this:

Bigger subscriber revenues have costs as well as benefits: Paywalls have been great for the businesses of the news organizations that have the largest number of paid online subscribers, especially as print advertising has continued its secular decline and the platforms have monopolized digital advertising. But the growing economic dependence of these publications on their readers is having increasingly troublesome editorial consequences. 

This dependence, I think, is the principal source of the rising tide of consumerist features and the increasing celebration of luxury items and trends. Even worse, at least in my view, is what I am starting to see as a reluctance to challenge readers’ preconceptions, even when those may not be deeply rooted in fact. What is sometimes denigrated as “political correctness” is often, I fear, actually a reluctance to discomfit paying subscribers.

As I asked semi-rhetorically in a comment, is that any different or any worse than 20, or even 30 or more years ago, newspaper publishers being afraid of editorial content pissing off a major advertiser, even as it was claimed the wall between editorial and advertising was as high as Jefferson said the church-state wall should be?

I doubt it. Beyond that, pissing off a "class" is different than pissing off one individual company.

You want papers to be like Vox, or something, then, pandering to venture capitalism? Being even worse than the NYT's consumerist stories?

Finally, there's his hinting about community papers.

As I told him in comments, without mentioning a Tex-ass community newspaper group like Jim Moser's by name .... the paywall there should be even firmer. Just like the WSJ, but no exception. You see 50 words, if that, including the headline, period. And, that's what you see at the start, not a slowly descending gray screen which can still be beaten at times by Apple-A + Apple C.

"Pink Slime" is now officially bipartisan

 We all now about wingnut "Pink slime" fake news sites. Some are blatant, with almost no actual local news, and only regional, state and national news release type stuff from PACs, etc. masquerading as news, like the Metric Media stable. A few, like the paper in DFW that adopted the name of a now-defunct Black newspaper, and part of Metric's allies will have some local "reporting," but that will be more hatchet job than actual news. (More on it and Monty Bennett's nuttery here.)

Well, Democrat-affiliated PACs, etc., per Axios, have decided that, if you can't beat them, join them. And, with all the same excuses, like "these places are news deserts already anyway, so ...."

Oh, and shock me that #BlueAnon thought leader David Brock is behind some of this.

Why does the Texas Press Association partake of some of these press releases?

 TPA has a subdivision called Texas Press Service, through which companies can run press releases to TPA member newspapers.

Yesterday, a company headquartered in Mississippi announced five larger and five smaller charitable donations totaling $394,000.

None of the 10 recipients is in Texas.

This is not the first time Texas Press Service has puzzled me, but it is the biggest to date. It's also not the first time TPA in general has puzzled me, and in this case, this is NOT the biggest to date. Its legals website partnership with Column.us, and their unbridled sales push, remains the biggest.

KERA to buy dead carcass of Denton Record-Chronicle

Or, the Denton Wrecked-Chronic, per my inimitable style of naming newspapers.

WHY is KERA buying it?

It's a shell of itself, and as I said on Twitter, it was a shell of itself pre-COVID.

I live north of Denton, and pre-COVID, you couldn't find it here. You could find the StartleGram, and the Snooze. And, in parts of this county, the Sherman (Denison in the back seat) DumpACrap. But, no DRC.

Bill Patterson, publisher of the DRC, or DWC, clawed it back from Snooze parent A.H. Belo in 2017 after his family sold it in 1999. More on that here. As for Belo's hack job? This is like what the Austin Stateless did to non-daily papers it owned, and even pre-Craphouse, under Cox.

But, Patterson had three years pre-COVID to try to expand some of its old circulation range in print, while also tightening up paywalls more. The latter happened to some degree. But not totally. The former? Never happened. The idea of a Cooke County bureau, or even a dedicated freelancer? Never happened.

Texas Press Association lists circ at 8,403 in 2016, and plummeting to 5,463 in 2019. Now down to 4,697. It was 9,647 in 2013, so the decline accelerated during the handoff time and after, before slowing again.

Then, before the end of 2020, Patterson had already whacked in print from daily, not down to a smaller five-day daily. No. Not even to a tri-weekly. No, it was already cut to semi-weekly.

Then, last year, cut to weekly. That means you lose all the money from print versions of your grocery inserts, for one thing.

Jay Rosen claims the deal "rescued" the paper:

Meanwhile https://t.co/ySmFataYfL — which is PBS and NPR for North Texas — will absorb the Record-Chronicle, the local newspaper in Denton County, thus saving the paper from private equity crocodiles, and gaining a 13-person newsroom staff in the bargain. https://t.co/LebbPFcD25

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) September 28, 2022

To which I responded:

Jay, private equity probably didn't give a damn about the Denton Wrecked-Chronic, er Denton Record-Chronicle. It's down to weekly in print, with an average adhole of only about 25 percent even though it's down to weekly.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) September 28, 2022

Seriously, unless for pennies on the dollar of whatever this brokered deal was, no private equity company would touch it. If it really weren't profitable, Patterson could have shut the damn thing.  Rather, I suspect that he's gotten five years older, five years less interested, no kids with interest, and this was the closest thing to a golden parachute. The National Trust for Local News' announcement, which looks like it was written in 15-year-old Courier font if not on an actual fucking typewriter, kind of confirms this train of thought.

There's other questions.

First, what does KERA know about print journalism? Uhh, about nothing.

Second? Print ad sales, especially since being NPR/PBS, it just has pledge drives and no ad sales in general? Uhh, about nothing.

Third, is Patterson staying as publisher? At the same salary? And, for just a transition period, or something longer?

Let's close by heading back to the half-dead carcass.

Oh, and an editorial staff of 13? Stretched. But, it still partnered with the Snooze for some content, as well as a nonprofit in Fort Worth. So, not stretched THAT much, assuming that 50 percent of what was local and in print was worked up well before Friday print time. 

VERY stretched if they're still doing a daily e-edition. Why? That means 5 copy edit staff. ME, AME and sports editor leaves five other people to write and shoot. If the copy editors aren't part of staff, it's not quite so thin, but still.

Before Denton went non-daily, there weren't even any semi-weeklies in Denton County. A couple of small weeklies, and that's it. So, pretty much a print monopoly. City of Denton is today about 190,000. Denton County 900,000. Lots of cities, all growing. That means LOTS of legal advertisements.

With ALL of that, its weekly print edition, almost without exception, no more than 32 pages, and usually, an adhole no more than about 30 percent or so. Classifieds, counting all those legals, outnumber display ads 3 to 1, if not more. Maybe a full 4 to 1.

Vulture capitalists would care about the paper only to the degree that there's all those legals, and nothing else. But, right now? There ain't a lot else, Jay. Trust me. Usually, I grok it every other week at a Denton Library branch. They have had some decent reporting on the Denton County Appraisal District hot mess, but not a lot else. 

And, let's get back to those missing ads.

A more specific example.

Its football season preview? In an area that big?

TWELVE pages, broadsheet. That's it. I can't remember what, if any, ads were on page 1. Page 2-11? All 6 column x 2 inch strip ads. Full page ad on the back. By the same company that had most, if not all, those 6x2 strips. With that? One semi-stock photo of one top player from each team in the preview.

I know all your big regional dailies, or former dailies, like the Snooze and StartleGram, have had major dropoffs in retail advertising the past few years. Denton shouldn't have had that much of a dropoff, but it did. That said, papers smaller than it have had that much or worse. But not all of them.

As for news coverage outside Denton County that wasn't wire stuff, to tie this to circulation? It covered the trial of the PRO Gainesville trio but not, that I am aware of, any detailed coverage of their protests. I also don't think that it's done any real coverage into Wise County.

Finally? Nonprofit status isn't a panacea. KERA ownership will surely not have conflict of interest issues like the Huntsman family's nonprofit shell for the Salt Lake City Trib. But, beyond that, nonprofit status isn't a panacea.

==

Update, Oct. 22: Somebody actually sold ads this week, even allowing for some being Halloween specials. Adhole of more than 30 percent and more display than classified.

==

Update, Aug. 28: Two months ago, more than half its ads were what HAVE TO BE frequency rate ads for the annual "Best of Denton." Really, advertisers go that all in? Why.

In one issue, throwing those out, and throwing the extra pages they created out as well, you had an adhole of 3 1/4 pages on 18. Less than 20 percent, for a paper just weekly in a city of 180,000 and county of 900,000.

Of course, if you got rid of running six days worth of comics and various puzzles in a weekly newspaper, you'd have 3 1/4 pages of ads on, say, 12 pages of print. That's almost 30 percent.Of course, nobody this side of being a true idiot would pay Bill Patterson $2.50 or whatever for that. Nor would KERA be half as interested in acquiring that. (And, why are you anyway, and are you paying attention to the Trib, and between this and WRR are you biting off more than you can chew?)

RIP Iowa Park Leader

A stalwart within Texas community papers shut its doors in July, saying that it not only wasn't making enough money, but saying it wasn't making money period.

The Leader had been in the hands of the Hamilton family for decades, so this is kind of a stunner. Long time ad salesperson, and I believe on editorial staff before that, Kari Collins reminisces.

At the same time, maybe not.

I don't know what their ad numbers were like, but their circulation had been declining for years. COVID and related issues were just the final nail in the coffin.

Pre-2010, per TPA annuals that I've got in my office, there had been a moderate decline from the 1990s, but nothing I'd call traumatic. About 400 customers over 15 years. Things then stabilized for the next feew years.

But, another decline hit. They lost 300 more in the next three years, between 2013-2016,

However, their circulation then went back to the previous pattern and held steady until 2019, or supposedly. Listing the exact same circ in 2016 and 2019 has me wondering. EXACT same.

Anyway, from there, it fell off a cliff. The 1,636 of 2016 and possibly 2019 was under 1,000 in 2021. That in turn dropped another 100 over the next year.

Assuming 2019 circ numbers aren't correct, I don't know how much of the 2019-21 fall was COVID-related and how much was not. I'd like to get more granular, but I don't have a 2020 directory and I can't find one online.

At the same time, since their last e-dition is not paywalled? Even if all obits on the back page are paid, they still have about 1 3/4 pages of adhole. If they're not paid, we're at barely 1 1/2. Even throwing out the non-insert local grocery store ad in the larger of my two weeklies, and since all obits are free other than a surcharge on massive ones, I still average about 2 1/4 pages a week in a smaller community.

The population has held flat over the last 20 years, which is not fantastic, but not horrible.

Gannett sucked long before it became the new Craphouse

People in the newspaper biz will of course understand who Craphouse is, like they'd understand the reference to Alden's newspaper empire, Dead Fucking Media.

Anyway, the WaPost had a story this week about the latest round of editorial staff cuts at the new Craphouse. The writers noted how Gannett keeps cutting, cutting, cutting, and how this is nothing new, and went back to when it was just Gannett, not the new Craphouse.

But, they miss a few things.

They talk about this paper in Guernsey County, Ohio, for example, and mention that the only full-time editorial staffer at this daily paper was one of Gannett's latest cuts.

Now, for a real newspaper, how do you run it without a local-(ish, these days) editorial staffer? New Craphouse, like other groups big (Can't Nothing Help It [think about it]) and small (Cherry Road Media) just more and more resort to non-local staff mixed with regional content, or in Tex-ass, supplemented by the Texas Trib. (Not even supplemented; replaced would be a better word.)

BUT ...

That ignores something else, because I Googled Guernsey County.

If the "daily" is referring to print, why the hell does a county of less than 40,000, even allowing for the small geographic size and density of Ohio counties, still have a daily paper in the post-COVID world? The Daily Jeffersonian should be the Tri-Weekly Jeffersonian. But it has a circ of 12,000, Wiki claims. Yeah, and I've got palm trees on Lake Erie to sell you. That said, as I said on Twitter, community journalism in Ohio, both small daily and non-daily, puzzle me in many ways.

(Let's ignore the question for now of why many print non-dailies in counties that size still build a daily e-edition, or in CNHI's case, why they put a full week's worth of daily comics, puzzles, etc., into two days of paper and waste money on print costs and on syndication money, when surely COVID would have let them modify such contracts if they're still operational.)

That's the real biggie. 

At the time Dean-o Singleton had the half a light bulb come on with the idea of clustering (idea was good, could have been much better implemented and certainly not in a "Chainsaw Al" way), Gannett was one of the few other chains really positioned to do something like that, and it did bupkis.

That's of a piece, and a 15-years or more timespan with Guernsey County, Ohio, still having a daily paper.

That said, I tried to look at their adhole by e-edition. I forgot Gannett does one of those head fakes, offering to let you sign in with Google or Hucksterman, then telling you you still need a subscription. That's why I don't use my real name with Google.

Sidebar: I blogged last fall about the employee-cutting at the new Craphouse.

CherryRoad Media part deux, with the Morning Snooze

My earlier suspicions about CherryRoad "Media" being a stalking horse for its data vacuuming parent have been confirmed by others. One person has said that they're buying up newspapers to target selling services to local governments. That led me to speculate that maybe they're also wanting the data off subscription lists to package and resell for spammy marketing purposes.

And, yes, I get to kick two birds with one foot!

Here's the Hello-DumpACrap running an op-ed from the Dallas Morning News recently, and one that's timely and about local as well as state issues. How many cents on the dollar was paid for that? And, given that, theoretically, the Snooze still circulates outside the Metromess, why is it doing this? Even more ass on both parts, the DumpACrap has no backlink to the original.

InMaricopa recruited me — and then ...

For the first time, I think, I was recruited for a job, and no, not by one of those recruiters.

It was by the former top editor, now transitioning out to a job at Politico, at a combination online “newspaper” and monthly print magazine, InMaricopa, in Pinal County, Arizona.

That said, for people with some of my bent in reading, or knowledge of the Southwest, you’ll understand the partial quote and the idea, when I say that a picture of Maricopa, Arizona, should be in a phrase dictionary next to Cactus Ed Abbey’s “Growth for growth’s sake …” (Update: The new water cuts that BuRec has talked about ARE COMING. And, a day after BuRec announced them, InMaricopa has zip on its website.)

So, I was ambivalent from the start. But, agreed to talk further. After a phone call with transitioning editor, he had me talk briefly on the phone with the publisher / co-owner, who then set up a Zoom.

Meanwhile, he emailed me an application. (More on that in a sec.)

Before the Zoom with him and the ad manager, I emailed back about “salary range.” Him: “We don’t really have a range.”

Well, before the Zoom, I googled “Apartments for rent in Maricopa.” Got Apartments.com, I think as first hit. NO Apartments. Just houses. That means, even compared to North Texas, utilities will be MUCH HIGHER for electricity (not even counting water problems as noted by BuRec). I also hit one of those cost of living comparison websites. Between this? I was asking $20K more than currently, and had no problem saying that on Zoom AND saying that was on the low side.

Two days after that, I looked at the application and finished it TO MY SATISFACTION, but forgot, or passively-aggressively, didn’t send it.

I’ve not filled out a standard “application,” at least not before actually being hired, in more than a decade. So, another turnoff right there. Yes, this was just like applying at Walgreens or something.

Seriously. Way to turn off potential applicants.

Second, I don’t put dates of college attendance on my resume, for obvious reasons, so they weren’t getting them either. Ditto on salaries. I just scratched through them.

Well, Monday, when I was in county commissioners court, publisher calls. When I get to office, I first finally email him, with note if you can’t read anything, ask, but NO note explaining my scratch-outs.

Then, off  my voicemail, call him back.

He picks up, has a kind of garbled response rather than a “hello” then either drops his connection or else cuts me off.

Didn’t call back since.

There were other hesitations about this job too.

First? No paywall on the website.

Second? Boasting about Facebook "likes." Facebook don't feed the bulldog.

Third? I don't have a problem with it in an occasional newspaper special section, but when you openly admit a fair chunk of stories in your mag are the old "buy an ad, get a story," yes, we do have some concerns. As for the mag itself? It's more than 40 percent ads on one sample issue, but 25 percent of that was biz director ads that I've not seen before in monthly community mags. It's either smart aggressive advertising, or deep discounts on TFN ads. My guess? The latter. Also, it's delivered by mail, but I don't know if that's free or paid subscription. Can't tell from the editorial masthead.

Said masthead DOES mention the word "prosperity," which the publisher emphasized as part of its mission when he asked if I'd visited the website. I'd guess that prosperity doesn't trickle down a lot.

Fourth, the Pinal County newspaper, headquartered in Casa Grande, may (or may not) suck, though it does have a dedicated Maricopa reporter, and apparently a separate edition or paper for Maricopa, but running it down in public?

As for the mag itself? OK, no more than that.

CherryRoad Media does NOT impress me

I first blogged about the new entrant into the Texas newspapers biz in March. Among their titles, in my area, is a (I think?) still-daily in print Sherman Herald-Democrat.

Took a gander at recent issue last Saturday at my local WallyWorld. This was their Friday issue.

Twenty pages? OK, decent size.

But? About zero local content. The one locally bylined story on page 1? It was about trying to prevent "summer learning loss" among K-12 students. Nice concept. But, the local follow-up was limited. Asking a superintendent, not an assistant, about the idea of year-round school as an antidote would have made it better. Getting a comment from TEA Commish Mike Morath to that end, or even asking him about a longer school year, like other developed nations, would have been better. (It was made worse by the study being from 2017. If you're going to try to localize something off the Net, it probably should be fresh.)

That was a small problem, though, compared to the adhole.

Or rather, the lack thereof.

NO ROP. That's right, NONE. As in NO DISPLAY ADS!

Page and a half of classys with half page of filler on the second page of them.

That's it, in a 20-page paper.

I don't know if Cherry Road has any plans beyond an Advance-type wind-down, or per my original post, if they bought this paper from Craphouse to data-mine subscribers for more nefarious purposes, or what?

And, as a data company? The dotted lines that pop up around most links? Looks like ass. If that is part of "ADA compliant," pass.

There's no emails for publisher, ad manager, managing editor or staff writers. The one bylined person doesn't have their name as an active link. The "about" has names for none of the top people, which leads me to be suspicious about two paragraphs above. A "community rules" link is NOT CherryRoad's community rules, but eType Services, their CMS. I can't even find, under popular stories, a link to the then-new ME introducing herself two months ago. Very likely, she ain't there.

So, Lee Zion got somebody to take his paper off his hands

 For my original, and skeptical, take on the small-town Minnesota newspaper owner who wants to go fight in Ukraine so badly that he wanted somebody to take his newspaper off his hands, go here.

For a story of his success, with more of his background, go here.

Interestingly, like me, he's single, no kids. He's done his share of bouncing around.

My impression? Per an old Civil War phrase popularized by Mark Twain, he hasn't seen the elephant yet and wants to go see it.

With no significant other or children, “it’s just me and the newspaper,” he said.

That kind of reinforces things.

This only reinforces my take more.

“I do not want to die,” Zion said. “I am not afraid of dying.”

Then he paused. 

“I’m 54,” he added. “It’s not like I have a long life ahead of me.”

I feel a bit sad for him. It's like he's living through his love for Ukrainian music to the point of it becoming a fixation. (I exchanged emails with him before my original post; I still wonder, per it, if there's not business reasons behind this decision as well.

And, this story raises new issues. The Guardian reported, just days after my blog post, that he had someone else lined up to take it over. That fell through, I guess; Robert Lawson was listed as a "prospective candidate"in initial coverage of Zion. Also, he was a former newspaper editor; the actual "winner" is a former radio DJ. This also makes me think we're not getting the full story. Zion, in the new piece, doesn't tell WHY the original deal fell through.

I tweeted my original piece to CJR, Nieman, etc., asking somebody there to do a longer piece. Never happened.

Is the Texas Press Association shooting itself in the foot on legal notices?

Worried that the next time the Texas Lege considers a bill to remove the requirement that legal notices (both ones by governments and ones that government requires of private entities, like letters to creditors on wills, oil injection wells, etc) be published in newspapers, the Texas Press Association has partnered with a company called Column to have all member newspapers post copies of their legals on a Column-maintained TPA sub-website.

Several things?

One, my newspaper pair is in a small but nonexistent minority of weekly papers around the country that still doesn't have a website. Period. So, the Texas Lege could use us as Example A on why posting on any website is good because we don't have one; we are still old-fashioned print only.

Even if this weren't the case with my pair of weeklies and a few others, the existence of Column, above individual newspapers doing public notices both online and in print, is no guarantor (none, zip, zilch, nada, TPA) that the Texas Lege won't still pass a public notices bill. Ditto for other state press associations already partnered with, or considering partnering with, Column. 

(Update, July 5, 2023: Per the newest TPA Messenger, in a bill that flew under the radar screen because TPA officially supported it, the devil's deal with Column is complete. Per SB 943, now signed into law, TPA members are required to post to the state's legal notice website. And, until SB 943 is modified, which it never will be, that site CANNOT be paywalled, per the bill:

The association must ensure that the website: (1) is accessible to the public at no cost.

So, it's free, and also MUST have an email alert sign-up and other things? What's to stop the Lege, two years from now, from saying something to the effect of: "This is working great; we don't need no steenking newspaper notices in individual papers"?)

Second, Column itself doesn't impress me in some ways, and even worries me in others.

First of all, one of their staffers was sending out one or more emails a week to newspapers that hadn't yet done a Zoom meeting with them. I explained our situation and said I don't see the benefit, and I was told that this could be in violation of TPA bylaws. Well, bring a stick down on me that may or may not be true anyway. (Update: Now that I've grokked through the bylaws, with link, Ms. F. appears to have been full of crap on that claim, whether it was more from ignorance, or more from a willful misrepresentation as part of a lead-in to her sales pitch. I uncharitably am assuming the latter.)

Secondly, the Zoom meeting told me that this was of little benefit otherwise to small, rural papers.

Third, it was sales pitch as much as anything. And, I VERY MUCH didn't like that.

Column's rep said it had three options for uploading legals. One was paste (words) or drop-and-drag PDFs (and RTF docs?) onto the appropriate webpage. Second was using an FTP server.

Third? They offered a full proprietary system where, using your standard font, column inches width, etc., they format PDFs for you on text-only legals, and maybe on PDF legal displays, too (didn't ask about that), then do affidavits, billing, the full 9 yards. No extra cost to you the newspaper, but yes, an extra 10 percent to the city, county, school district, lawyer, oil driller, etc.

No use to me. It would take more time for me to work with that than the time I spend now.

Daily paper? Sure, useful. Bigger daily, useful enough for it to shit-can a classified ad salesperson, clerk, whatever. And, no, no entity is going to place a legal in my newspaper via TPA's web portal for placing legals.

Anyway, HALF of what was NOT "a few minutes" or "10 minutes" but a nearly 40-minute meeting was devoted to the Column rep explaining Option 3 in detail. I know sales pitches and this was a sales pitch with full spiel and all.

Hard pass even if I were repping a daily.

Related to that, as part of the early part of the meeting, I got a thumbnail version of Column's origin story. Was informed that it's a public benefits corporation.

Big fucking deal. Hucksterman and Chan created a public benefits corporation, and when I saw some alleged Skeptics(TM) types touting it, I looked at California's public benefits law. RIDDLED with Mack-truck sized loopholes. 

I don't know if Florida's public benefits incorporation laws (where Column is physically located) have as many loopholes as California does for a California benefits corporation, but here's some things I noted elsewhere about the Huckstermans' move.

Some pseudoskeptics claimed that that a California benefits corporation, which is the type of LLC the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is in California, will keep him in line.

Per California's enabling statute, I don't see it that way.

That's in part because, per that same lawyer, and contra one neolib pseudoskeptic, Zuckerberg's money can be used for lobbying purposes, too.

The only way to "enforce" whether such a body is living up to its charter, etc., is through a "benefits proceeding."

However, such proceeding is all "inside baseball":

(a) No person may bring an action or assert a claim against a benefit corporation or its directors or officers under this chapter except in a benefit enforcement proceeding.
(b) A benefit enforcement proceeding may be commenced or maintained only as follows:
(1) Directly by the benefit corporation.
(2) Derivatively by any of the following:
(A) A shareholder.
(B) A director.
(C) A person or group of persons that owns beneficially or of record 5 percent or more of the equity interests in an entity of which the benefit corporation is a subsidiary.
(D) Other persons as have been specified in the articles or bylaws of the benefit corporation.
(c) A benefit corporation shall not be liable for monetary damages under this part for any failure of the benefit corporation to create a general or specific public benefit.

So, that would mean the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative corporately, or any shareholders or directors named Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg or cronies thereof, of such persons unlikely to hold more than 5 percent of the Initiative's stock, are the only people who can do anything about its performance.

Speaking, what is a “public benefit”? In California’s enabling law, it says it is:

(D)efined as a material positive impact on society and the environment, taken as a whole, as assessed against a 3rd-party standard, as defined, that satisfies certain requirements. 

But, that “third party standard” is undercut by lack of third-party enforcement.

Wikipedia’s article itself notes this, too:

Benefit corporations need not be certified or audited by the third-party standard. Instead, they use third-party standards solely as a rubric a company uses to measure its own performance.

A “rubric.” Is that like a “goldbrick”?

But, I didn’t yet answer what that “specific public benefit” is. Hold on, we’re there:

(e) “Specific public benefit” includes all of the following:
(1) Providing low-income or underserved individuals or communities with beneficial products or services.
(2) Promoting economic opportunity for individuals or communities beyond the creation of jobs in the ordinary course of business.
(3) Preserving the environment.
(4) Improving human health.
(5) Promoting the arts, sciences, or advancement of knowledge.
(6) Increasing the flow of capital to entities with a public benefit purpose.
(7) The accomplishment of any other particular benefit for society or the environment.

Look at No. 7. Ain't THAT a Mack truck-sized loophole?

 

OK, more analysis time.

And, again, per Pro Publica, Hucksterberg gets to save on his tax bill while doing all of this.

So what are the tax implications? They are quite generous to Zuckerberg. I asked Victor Fleischer, a law professor and tax specialist at the University of San Diego School of Law, as well as a contributor to DealBook. He explained that if the LLC sold stock, Zuckerberg would pay a hefty capital gains tax, particularly if Facebook stock kept climbing. 

If the LLC donated to a charity, he would get a deduction just like anyone else. That’s a nice little bonus. But the LLC probably won’t do that because it can do better. The savvier move, Professor Fleischer explained, would be to have the LLC donate the appreciated shares to charity, which would generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax.

Let’s remember that by him paying less tax, you and I have to pay more for the same government services.

I have no idea if Florida's public benefit organization is anything like California's. But, if it's even close, Column is getting to run a for-profit corporation as a quasi-charity, claiming its "public good" is protecting newspaper public notices, and with that 10 percent off the top on its "let us do it for you option" on legal notices, laughing all the way to the bank while possibly getting some tax write-offs, too. And, per a piece by the Orlando Sun-Sentinel about the creation of Florida's law, it sounds like that is in the same ballpark as California.

So, I now wonder how much of a hard (and fast paced) "sell" TPA got in the first place.

Update: To put it more bluntly, riffing on Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo? For Column:

1. Column is first;
2. State press associations are second;
3. Individual newspapers are third.

That's the way I see it.

So, how much does TPA get from Column for the "privilege" of it working hand-in-glove to undercut individual member newspapers? Since TPA is not a government (and ditto for other state press associations) it/they aren't subject to state public information / open records laws. And, since I'm not a TPA board member, I can't find out that way. If anybody knows .... 

As for Column's origin story? Well, newspapers shot themselves in the foot as much as anything, Jake. When Dean-o Singleton touted the "TV model" for online newspapers, even though pay cable channels (HBO and Playboy came to mind when I first critically examined Dean-o's md-1990s statement while chairman of the board at AP) had existed since the 1970s, maybe his idea was partially excusable. But, without any benefit of hindsight, it was not totally excusable. Nor was it totally excusable for newspapers to dawdle without paywalls not only into the early 2000s, but even after the Great Recession hit, and started gutting whole classes of display ads, like cars and real estate, beyond the classifieds that Craigslist had already hit. It was even less excusable for Dean-o to trot out I-News, a "lather, rinse, repeat" of the Dallas Snooze's CueCat, after it had already flopped. I also don't get how Jake Seaton could not only be part of a multi-generation daily newspaper family but, even after being a reporter at their newspaper himself, still not know what a public notice was. (I've gotten the occasional story out of a public notice, for doorknob's sake.)

And, speaking of all of this? Column's public notices webpage for TPA is of course ...

NOT PAYWALLED.

Also of interest? Column is NOT a TPA associate member, as of a check just a month ago. Such caring.