Schizophrenia at the Texas Trib: Creating local newsrooms after previous layoffs

 The Trib has announced it will:

(C)reate, partner or merge with local, community-based newrooms that inform residents more deeply about their communities. We’ll start this effort in Waco by creating a new local newsroom, which we anticipate will launch in early 2025, followed by an Austin newsroom. The models for these newsrooms won’t be the same, because the needs of our different communities aren’t the same. In some places, we’ll create new newsrooms. In others, we will build newsrooms based on strategic partnerships with other outlets to leverage existing resources that can provide a broader and stronger news product. If there’s an opportunity to acquire a news outlet in transition and build on its work in support of a community, we will do that.

Interesting.

We know the Austin Stateless under Craphouse sucks. Why don't you just buy it instead?

Waco? The Trib under Lee Enterprises, after Warren Buffett's handoff, is struggling but not totally crap.

That said, this later part:

We are excited that the American Journalism Project has made a $2.75 million investment to support the transformation of our business model, as well as our revenue generation capabilities in both Waco and Austin.

Why isn't the AJP working directly in those cities? How much of a cut does the Trib and its Goddam Sachs backgrounded CEO get?

And, didn't you lay off people just a year ago?

Another fail at the Gainesville Register

 This time, it's the Gainesville (Texas) Register actually having local news of importance, but burying it in print.

The town of 16,000 had a shooting late last week. They had a story about it in the Tuesday, Nov. 5, print edition — and buried it on page 3. On the top spread in front, they ran something about local polling places and the election. That's fine. On a two-column, or wide one-colum, rail at the right? They ran something either from CNHI Texas-wide, or else the Texas Trib, about election security. And ran it all the way down the page. (An oversized football photo from one of the smaller schools in the county, not Gainesville, and a brief blurb about the end of the regular season in high school football coming up filled the four left columns of the rest of the front page).

That's NOT fine. The shooting had the additional angle of being a dispute between two brothers that boiled over. I'm not totally of the "if it bleeds, it leads," but that should have been on the front page.

It's also buried on the website. As of Thursday afternoon, when I was writing this, it was in the "most popular" tab at bottom right. But, not on the top half of the website at all. The only local "article" is raw numbers from local voting and it's not clearly identified as local.

CNHI sucks. It sucks so much it has one editor over this paper, Weatherford and Cleburne (maybe Greenville will fire its current editor eventually and expand this) who made that decision. Yeah, they're stretched thin, but it was still a dumb decision.

Texas Tribune: How to write stereotyped religious journalism

The Texas Tribune recently offered a pointed comparison-contrast to Tim Dunn's political-religious quasi theocratic compound just down the road, by profiling Connection Christian Church in Odessa, Texas. Here's co-pastor Dawn Weaks: 

"Christian Nationalism is an example of this kind of arrogance parading as Christianity,” she said. “There is nothing Jesus-like about that."

That's the bottom line.

All very good so far.

The church, a member of the Disciples of Christ, has a history far beyond the Dunns' independent church. And, that itself is important. That said, the Trib perpetuates some stereotypes. I lived in Hobbs for a little less than two years, and nobody asked me my religion at H-E-B. That said, I didn't introduce myself to others. (I still think it's a stereotype or cliché; I'm sure that even when two strangers introduce themselves, it comes up far less than 100 percent and probably less than 75 percent. Maybe less than 50 percent, which definitely makes it stereotype, not generalization.)

The story is nowhere near perfect. It's got clichés or beyond, not limited to the above.

There's also a BIG contextual failure on this:

This year, Pew Research reported that 80% of Americans believe religion is losing influence in American life. And nearly half of those who say religion is losing influence said it is bad for society.

That means, as I told the Trib and Nic Garcia on Twitter, that MORE than half find such change either a neutral or to the good, counting "no opinion" and "don't know" as "neutral." (The Trib also didn't link to the Pew piece, a big, BIG no-no in today's world.)

In fairness, it later cites this from the same survey:

In the same survey, less than a third, 27%, of white Evangelical Protestants wanted Christianity declared the official national religion.

While that's not the same as "losing influence," it does offer some framing. But, it's a further one-third the story down. In addition? NO URL for the Pew story. THAT's not acceptable.

And, reporter Nic Garcia's not a newbie. These things aren't excusable.

Beyond that, since Texas Christian University IS AFFILIATED with the Disciples of Christ, beyond and before running a disclaimer at the end, why is there no profile of the denomination? Since this is about two pastors from the denomination, where is a mention of, let alone a discussion of, Brite Divinity School?

Metric Media is now pretending to be Catholic Tribune

 Yes, Metric Media, the king of the pink slime hill, and the Timpone Brothers, are hard at it. Actually, these "Catholic" journals, reports Pro Publica, started in 2020. But, per the story, they appear to have really ramped up this year.

Sadly, as PP notes, the Timpones have the backing of nutbar billionaire Peter Uehlein, owner of the Uline box and packaging company with the environmentally unfriendly doorstop catalogues.

Big weirdness at the Albuquerque Journal

 Its executive editor, Patrick Ethridge, was arrested for shoplifting in late August. The case was eventually dropped, per Searchlight New Mexico, which has a long story on the case, Ethridge's background, the Journal's reporting on this and more.

Chronologically, from earliest to latest, starting with the background, here's the issues.

1. Ethridge came from Beatrice, Nebraska. That's nowhere near the size of Albuquerque. Plus, being just 40 miles away from Lincoln to the north, and with either Abilene, Manhattan or Topeka covering everything south of the Kansas line, and Saint Jo probably splitting SE Nebraska with Omaha, it would be purely a community newspaper there, unlike some place out west where a newspaper in a town of less than 20,000, at least years ago, might have news coverage of 12,000 square miles.

2. When Ethridge's kids were detained for shoplifting themselves, and for general hooliganism, but before he was arrested, one of the cops knew who he was. Was it just because his mugshot is on some editorial columns, or due to something else? The story doesn't have anything further from the Rio Rancho PD.

3. Why did he cop a plea without a lawyer? Did he think this would go unnoticed? Rio Rancho isn't as big as Duke City itself, and the Journal acquired the Observer a couple of years ago. BUT, I think the alt-weekly Alibi is still around. And obviously the Searchlight and other papers are. I recently told Colorado media biz editor Corey Hutchins that I wondered if he had been Mirandaed or not, but that was because I was misthinking he'd been arrested in Albuquerque itself.

4. Speaking of? The Journal took nearly a month to report on it. Yea, a misdemeanor case, but a guy making an easy six figures doesn't need to shoplift, period. That said, per the pictures of him in the story, he doesn't look like the stereotypical executive editor for the daily paper in a city of more than 500K and metro of 750K.

That gets back to point 1.

WHY did the Journal hire him? I've emailed the Searchlight reporter to ask if any folo is forthcoming.

The Texas Observer whitewashes its Abby Rapoport history

Gus Bova does a puff-piece profile of Bernard and Audre's granddaughter and her time at the Observer ...

And ...

Totally ignores alleged issues in the run-up to the Observer nearly going belly-up, including her allegedly clashing with then-editor Tristan Ahlone during her time as chairman of the board.

That said, given that Abby Grimes has deleted her Substack but yet puts out on her LinkedIn that she still has an affiliation with the Observer? Your piece, for those who keep receipts, actually is a reminder that the Observer still has wounds beneath its band-aids.

It's part of the Observer's 70th anniversary celebration, a milestone that isn't often commemorated. Probably not bad for the Observer to do this, though, because who knows if it will hit 75.

StartleGram contines to implode and 3x a week print is pissing off many

 The Fort Worth Report has the details on the Star-Telegram's announcement that it was going to just three times a week in print, and those delivered by the USPS, not carriers.

Given that the Charlotte Observer announced similar plans this summer, I venture this is happening across the McLatchKey chain, owned by the vulture capitalists at Chatham Capital.

First, man that's ugly if they're down to 13K print subscribers. And, 40 or less in the newsroom.

Second, beyond the reaction of people in Cowtown? The StartleGram still delivers up here on the Red. I don't know of any subscribers, but they are on a few racks. Is that being killed?

Third, but of course you're being charged the same price for print subscriptions as before.

Fourth, on the future? Why would you hire someone from New York City to be a community-type columnist? Did they come cheap due to cost of living?

Fifth, speaking of the Snooze? That dinosaur has a new trick or two ... including partnering with the Fort Worth Report for expanded Cowtown coverage.

Sixth, it's pretty hypocritical for a former StartleGram publisher who now is a consultant for Advance, the newspaper company that pioneered schedule-cutting, and union-busting in places like Cleveland, to row his oar like this:

Wes Turner, a Fort Worth civic leader who was publisher of the Star-Telegram from 1997 to 2008 and now serves as co-chair of the board of directors for the Fort Worth Report, said the Star-Telegram’s print reduction “is very disappointing for print subscribers.”

“The reduction in the frequency of the print edition is going to result in much less timely news in the print edition,” said Turner, a consultant for Advance Newhouse publications that owns publishing companies like Condé Nast and American City Business Journals. “Personally, I’m very skeptical that this will help turn things around.”

GTFO.

Seventh, are you saving THAT much getting rid of carriers and going to the USPS?

Your hometown newspaper editor won't miss you, Drew Springer

 I'm not sure when the last time was we got an email about an event or something at my newspaper from Springer's office. On the personal side, I don't think I've gotten a snail-mail mailing in at least two years, unless it was something specifically election related in 2022. (His successor in the state House, David Spiller, is much better.)

So, I noted with interest that a week ago's midweek edition of the Gainesville Register had a story about a Springer retirement event in G'ville. (I don't know if the more-than-a-shopper Cooke County Weekly News will have anything or not.)

Searching Drew's Facebook page would be about No. 10 on the list of local and area Facebook pages to check for news issues, especially knowing his retirement. The Register? Doesn't cover sports, barely covers Cooke County Commissioners Court meetings, doesn't cover the Gainesville Hospital District board meetings, etc. Even without an in-house editor, their staff writer has time to do that. Maybe he's even bookmarked.

Beyond that, I had a school board meeting that Wednesday. More important. You know, the school board at the public school district in Springer's home town.

New Mexico's wrecked media landscape and calling Harvey Yates' bullshit

I halfway pay attention to media world news in the Land of Disenchantment.

I knew that Gannett's, I mean Craphouse's, southern NM papers sucked. Still, with oil-related legal notices and stuff, I was surprised to read that they sold Carlsbad as well as Alamogordo and Ruidoso. I guess they figure they'll hold on to Las Cruces and it will now totally be an El Paso bureau.

The "who" of the buyers and the backstory is interesting.

Really interesting.

Two years ago, the buyers bought the Rio Grande Sun in Española. I remember, in the days before "internet was king" in the media world, the former owner and publisher having several store or rack sales spots in Fanta Se, and one in Duke City, just for people in the big cities to get their jollies and smugness fed by all the drug arrests and general corruption news in Española. He wouldn't admit that, but that's what it was.

Here's where it gets more interesting.

The next step? A year ago, they bought the Artesia Daily Press. 

My big question?

If it was publicly known it was for sale, WHY didn't the Roswell Daily Record, which more and more I think is a craphole itself, buy it?

Did they consider it? And were outbid? I mean, the oily, oleaginous Harvey Yates Jr., born in Artesia, IS part of the new ownership group. As in, deep GOP Yates. The Record is owned by the daughter of long-term owner, and often publisher, Robert Beck, who died in 2018. AFAIK, that's the only paper she owns.

And, per Searchlight New Mexico, while Española may have no oil, there's other reasons to view askance Harvey Yates.

So, per the opening paragraph of the Sun's news release at the top link:

Two years ago, a group of Republicans and Democrats, contrarians all, formed El Rito Media, LLC for the purpose of undertaking an experiment. Their question was whether a formula could be devised for saving local newspapers? Local newspapers were disappearing, but the members of El Rito considered local newspapers to be vital to the wellbeing of local communities.

I call bullshit. Yeah, state Rep. Joe Sanchez may be involved, but I think he's a ConservaDem. He IS, by his own words, a big supporter of the oil and gas industry. So, the "contrarians"? That's code for "anti-regulations people."

After all, at the time of the Sun's purchase, Santa Fe's alt-weekly, which 18 months or so ago wrote about how craptacular Craphouse was in southern New Mexico, called this buy a "GOP gambit."

Per the Searchlight piece, apparently Artesia was being eyed at the time of the Española buy. It goes even further than the SF Reporter on the background:

Besides Yates, a former national committeeman for the Republican Party of New Mexico and chair of the RPNM, other investors included Ryan Cangiolosi, former Republican state party chairman; cousin Peyton Yates, owner of Santo Petroleum; Jalapeño Corp., represented by Emmons, Yates’ son and the company vice president; and Francisco Romero, Jalapeño’s accountant.

Another investor is the company Los Mocositos — which translates to little snotty brats — located at the Santa Fe address of Richard Yates, a cousin and real estate developer. There’s also Tom Wright, the global outreach director of Christ Church Santa Fe and an avid op-ed writer about conservative issues; Bryan Ortiz, a former lobbyist; and state Rep. Joseph Sanchez, a conservative Democrat from Alcalde, near Española. (A tenth investor, the new publisher, Richard Connor, came on board months later.)

Yates was the unifying force and biggest investor. “Because I put in more money than anyone else, I’m involved more,” as he described it. A second newspaper buyout is in the offing in the 3rd Congressional district, largely located in northern New Mexico; he declined to name the publication until the deal is finalized.

All scum of the produced water.

In the story's next paragraph, Connor claimed he'd be running the news side straight up.

Connor, the publisher, said he made things clear to the new owners. “You’re not gonna run the newspaper. I am. And you’re not gonna make decisions. I am,” he recalled telling them. “And I gotta say that there has been absolutely not one ounce of interference, not one.”

More bullshit. As one of the investors with the rest of this group,and with what Yates just said? You have no credibility. If that much. Besides, if you're with the rest of the bagmen, no "interference" is needed.

The Searchlight also calls bullshit on both Connor and Yates as the story continues:

Yates makes no bones about wanting to chip away at Democratic dominance in the area. In 2018, his political action committee, New Mexico Turn Around, ran an internet ad aimed at convincing northern New Mexicans that “ultra-progressives” in the Democratic Party were “wolves in sheep’s clothing” who wanted to strip poor people of their land and water. “Progressives are destroying our culture,” it proclaimed.

Democrats, Yates believes, have been in power for far too long, and news outlets don’t express the conservative point of view.

Editorials and op-eds at the Rio Grande Sun have crept farther to the right since the buyout, and transparency, a cornerstone of journalism, has not always been evident. One op-ed, titled “Life and forgiveness after Roe v. Wade,” asserted that “The Common Law accepts the Creator as being the giver of life and forbids the taking of human life.” The June 29 piece failed to disclose that Tom Wright, the author, is one of the investors who bought the paper.

I can only imagine what the southern NM papers will look like with an audience more sympathetic to this. Don't forget that convicted Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist Couy Griffin comes from the Alamogordo area.

Basically, as I see this, this is going to be — and apparently already is in Española — pink slime with a "community journalism" veneer.

I am surprised the group didn't buy the Farmington Daily Times, which instead went to Durango, Colorado's Ballentine Group, which owns the Herald, the Cortez Journal, and had started an online-only competitor to the Daily Times. But, I then realized that, while Yates has a lot of oil and gas land, none of it, AFAIK, is in the Four Corners.

Back to Yates and his flunkies. 

They're surely already eyeballing GOP gov candidates for 2026, and maybe even looking at a ConservaDem on that side of the aisle. If Sanchez seeks that, you heard it here first.

==

More on the Roswell Daily Record. Per the "about" on its website, it's like Jill Stein trying to pretend to not be an antivaxxer while actually being one. In this case, it's trying to pretend not to push 1947 UFO conspiracy theory while actually doing so.

In July 1947, something streaked out of the sky, hitting the ground outside of Roswell, New Mexico, beginning years of ongoing speculation as to what the object was. According to initial information provided to the Roswell Daily Record by the Roswell Army Air Field, the startling headlines claimed that the military had recovered a flying saucer from a nearby ranch.

Overnight, the story changed from a flying saucer to a weather balloon, and over the ensuing years, that explanation morphed into a military high-altitude surveillance program. Over decades of conspiracy theories that the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public interest and fascination with this story.

Wrong. 

And, Beck daughter has a reason to peddle this, as did daddy, assuming he did, too.

The paper owns its own UFO store.

Of course, here's the reality.

"Congratulations" to the Gainesville Register

 You can do a semi-puff piece about a combo therapy-rescue dog program at the Gainesville State School, but, two months ago, can't do anything beyond the Texas Tribune's generic story and report on specific issues the feds found with child sexual abuse at the same place?

That thing needs to go down to weekly in print.

It probably will in two years, and then after that, because there's no nearby CNHI paper, become either a fully ghost paper or a semi-ghost run out of Greenville.

The Guardian goes into the AP cesspool and gets Orwellian

 Two stories whose bare links I dumped on Twitter when they were "live" but that deserve more attention.

First, the "cesspool."

The Guardian has announced that, like the Associated Press, it's going into the e-commerce world. Who the partner is, I don't know. But, since it has a strong presence in the US, could it be Taboola, like AP? Or is there an exclusivity deal between those two?

That said, the cesspool is that it has no paywall and continues to indicate it won't adopt one. Neither does the AP, though it, like the Guardian, shoves out the tip jar requests.

The piece says:

Chief financial and operating officer Keith Underwood has revealed The Guardian will begin making product recommendations “based on the trust that we’ve got within the brand” with the aim of making revenue through affiliate links.

Isn't that the way these things always work? Like the Sierra Club offering a backpack for memberships, and this nearly 20 years ago, and when people like me asked its provenance and Sierra Club said "trust us" and of course ... already 20 years ago? Made in China.

So, no, Keith Underwood, why would I trust you? Old man Stott is surely turning over in his grave.

==

The Orwellian?

The Guardian, as part of the 30 or more people it's kicked to the door recently, as part of cuts mentioned at the first link?

Martin Chulov, who won the Orwell Prize a couple of years ago, has not only been shit-canned, his byline has been erased at the Guardian website.

That shit-canning apparently was for more than or other than cost-cutting, though. The link mentions an "internal investigation" along with Chulov's categorical denial it found anything. An internet search led to a link that said it was for "hitting women," but the link for Press Reader says the story is gone. That appears to have been Daily Mail, but it's referenced by sites like this that have still-active links, and indicate the allegations are of sexual as well as physical assault. Chulov was questioned by British police. The Guardian investigation reportedly sustained the physical assault but not sexual assault claims.

It's still Orwellian to erase his byline.

The Onion vs AP: Which is more likely to give you real news?

 The Onion, under its new ownership that acquired it from G/O, among other changes for the better, has ditched its ties with Taboola.

The Associated Press? Was running Taboola's news-lite, sort-of-news crap at least seven years ago, then, this spring, announced it was entering the e-commerce world with guess who?

So, the question is more than rhetorical, and it's more than Onion snark.

Pinch Sulzberger, gutless wonder; Keven Kruse, pressing for problems

 It is weird — or laughable — that the New York Times publisher and owner chose to write the op-ed mentioned in this Substack in the Washington Post and not his own paper.

The jokes aside?

The substance?

"Both sides" reporting is still good, Pinch says. Well, sure. It prompts subscribers.

That said, the Substack IS Kevin Kruse, a good librul Democrat type who has no problem with his party putting thumbs on scales against third-party and independent candidates. Having 2-starred his most recent book, I know that.

The complaints against the NYT are valid, and on a LOT more than electoral politics.

For example, beyond not doing "both sides" on climate change, how seriously does the NYT report on and about and from climate scientists more alarmed than climate change Obamiacs Michael Mann, Katharine Hayhoe and their ilk? You know that.

How much does it really report about the reality in Gaza? You know that.

The reality of American exceptionialism that Kruse accepts? You know that.

This is Kruse working the refs first, with serious concerns about journalism a distant second.

But, this is about journalism, not BlueAnon and duopoly politics, which I did elsewhere.

What issues get covered, as well as how many sides of them get covered, is itself an issue.

There's a multitude of sins the NYT commits and I'd be typing out 5,000 words if I enumerated them all in detail.

As for Kruse, he either knows that, which shows his piece is about working the refs, or he does NOT know that — which, per his book, may be the case, at least in part — and that's an even bigger problem.

Internet Archive loses its appeal

The Second Court of Appeals upheld a district court ruling earlier this month over copyright issues, filed by the book giant Hatchette (Hatchet!). The Archive had claimed fair use rights in the initial case and on appeal. It's unclear if it will appeal again to the Supreme Court or not. Full ruling here.

It should be noted the suit was against just one of the Archive's programs, one started in 2020 in response to COVID called the National Emergency Library. This, the Wired piece linked up top notes, was an expansion of its old Open Library. That had a one-to-one lending policy. The NEL did not.

The Second Circuit did offer what Wired calls a Pyrrhic victory, ruling that the Archive is non-commercial.

I don't understand why Archive staff is so puzzled by the ruling.

Had I read the district court's ruling when it came out, I would have seen this as correct. The story also notes the two sides negotiated terms of a settlement while the Archive filed the appeal.

And, I don't know who Ben Werdmuller is, but he's wrong.

Per a link in the story, the Archive probably should cut its losses and settle the lawsuit by music companies before it goes to trial. If it wants to lobby for cutting back some of the recent extensions in length of copyright? Fine. This is different.

Will Texas Observer's new head do more than rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic?

 So, the Observer's new executive director, Loren Lynch, worked at The Nation? Will she learn from it and her time there to get the Observer off its purity potty and start a paywall, online ads, or both? Anything else from her remains nothing more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

I discussed these issues in MUCH depth 18 months ago re the Observer, and specifically compared it to The Nation, as well as Counterpunch. It can either learn, or not.

In fact, as I noted in another piece, the Observer has even gone backward in this respect in the last year, removing its "please become a contributor" Javascript screen. I wouldn't be surprised if it went belly-up by the end of 2025.

Move over, Texas Trib; heads up, Texas Monthly and Observer

There's a new player in Texas statewide verbal media. (Verbal replaces "print" as I assume they're online-only.)

The "they"?

The Barbed Wire, per story last week by Semafor.

The players?

The Barbed Wire is a new state digital news outlet that on Monday will begin churning out Texas-focused stories on culture, politics, and entertainment. The project was the result of almost a year and a half of planning by Jeff Rotkoff, the Texas state director of Democratic-aligned super PAC Forward Majority, and Olivia Messer, a former Texas reporter and alumna of the Daily Beast (and a former colleague of this Semafor reporter at the Beast).

Big stuff.

And, they're swinging their weight:

The publication will be a mix of aggregation, essays, columns, and original reporting, including some statehouse coverage and longer-form investigations. The outlet will launch a newsletter called “Wild Texas,” which was influenced by Messer’s time working on the Daily Beast’s news roundup, the Cheat Sheet. The publication is launching with several columnists, editors, and reporters already on board who will cover entertainment, culture, food, and politics. Brian Sweany, the former editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly, and Jamil Smith, the opinion writer and editor-in-chief of The Emancipator, are both signed on as advisors.

There you go.

The timing of of additional interest with the Monthly having just dropped a paywall. The dollar amount for start-up is a lead-in, as with all such paywalls anymore. The intro appears to have been done subtly and ramped up.

The target appears to be primarily the Monthly, secondarily the Trib, and the Observer just getting any blow-by.

Well, at least Lee Zion didn't get himself killed

For those in the media who have forgotten the name, Lee Zion was the small-town Minnesota newspaper publisher and owner who, with a variety of cockamamie claims about his journalism and a couple of cockamamie reasons about why he was leaving that I dissected here, with a short follow-up here, decided he "had to" get rid of his newspaper, and as I put it in Mark Twain terms, "see the elephant" by going to fight in Ukraine.

That was just over two years ago. I don't think I had googled his name in a full year, but something prompted me to a few weeks ago.

Well, lo and behold, more than a year ago, and, less than 10 months after doubling down on his determination to head to Ukraine? In early May 2023, he became editor of a weekly paper in Haines, Alaska. No, really.

He discusses his background:

“I’ve done a lot of things. I was the business reporter at the San Diego Business Journal. And in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I was a reporter/copy editor. Then there was Bryson City, North Carolina as an editor, which I greatly enjoyed. And most recently, I was the owner and other things at the Lafayette Nicollet Ledger in Lafayette, Minnesota.

For any "community" type newspaper editor, let alone one at or over age 55, even given the situation, that's a lot of wanderlusting.

He also discusses his time in Ukraine. He said he "put his back out" shortly before he was to head over, and it bothered him the whole time, and he only stayed a few months.

No indication if he offered to have sex for free with any Ukrainian girlchik porn bots, or with any Last Frontier women, either, per his time in Minnesota. Hope you like a LOT more snow and winter overcast than Minnesota had. (Less than 30 percent sunshine for half the year would probably drive me fucking nuts.)

To be totally honest, given the number of things he likely lied about with his Minnesota newspaper — claiming no staff help is a proven lie — he's probably lying about his time in Ukraine and why he didn't stay longer, either.

New editor, fewer pages in Gainesville

 So, at the start of the month, as I had heard would happen, the Register officially named CNHI's Cleburne editor as the editor in Gainesville as well. 

But, she doesn't just run that. She's also the editor at Weatherford.

Which means she probably doesn't do a lot of editing at any of the three. And, very little writing. (That's part of why Aledo's Randy Keck saw an opening to start an online-only alternative to the Weatherford Democrat.) So, in that sense, former Register editor Mike Eads won't be replaced.

And? Those pages? The Tuesday, Aug. 6 issue? Just 8 pages. First time I've seen them do that since dropping from triweekly to semiweekly. Don't know about the weekender after that, but the next Tuesday's issue? Eight again. (Why anybody would steal it at the local library other than for crosswords, I don't know.) They did have 10 on the Aug. 17 weekender, but if they'd not nearly a page and a half of legals, they might have dropped.

Aug. 20 midweek? Eight pages again. Ditto Aug. 27.

Looking ahead? Eads fought his way through football coverage and after that, the Register did nothing with sports, other than submitted letter of intent signings, the rest of the 2023-24 school year. Nobody responded to their ad seeking stringers. And, they've yet to start running one this year. That means no sports, in all likelihood.

But, it DOES have (checks notes) an eight-page! football preview. I didn't look in detail. Just saw it had an eight-page preview. Probably almost no ads. That said, in years past, Bill Patterson's Denton Wrecked-Chronic has only had a 12-page preview.

Update, Sept. 18: And, it's being VERY inconsistent in print in sports coverage. And, weirdly so. See more below on the Sept. 17 issue.

Sept. 3 midweek: Bare football scores with presumably submitted photos. 10 pages, in part due to tax rate legal notices.

Sept. 10 midweek: One-paragraph summaries of the Max Preps kind with submitted photos.

Sept. 17 midweek: NO scores, let alone story, even though it was Gainesville's homecoming. NO photos to go with. At least it was all local news on the front page, as the homecoming stuff meant no Texas Trib. But, it was just eight pages. Seriously. They ran a four-column photo, run vertically down to the shoes, of the king and queen, that basically ate up all of the front page on those columns, then a story about the alumni being honored and something about county Democrats to fill out the other two.

But, NO score from the game, let alone other area games.

Also, nothing online or in print about the demolition of an overpass crossing I-35 and how that might affect traffic.

There's probably a reason you readvertised that position

 Managing editor job, five-day daily. Kind of isolated, Western state. 

That doesn't reveal too much, as towns big enough to be small cities can be kind of isolated in any Western state due to population and climate controls on it out there.

So, I won't say more, so I don't alienate the publisher if this is read by that person. Well, sort of; hold on to that thought.

Job advertisement was on JournalismJobs in early June. Apparently nobody bit, or nobody good enough for their ask, or nobody cheap enough for their offer sheet or some combo of the above. (Job listing says that pagination as well as website content management experience is required, which means no pagination hub, and who knows how much help, to boot. Also weirdly, it uses a Siri-type app to do voice versions of all stories. Can't be for the visually impaired, as you have to see to hit the "play" button.)

So, it was readvertised a month or so later, early-mid July.

So, I applied, to kick the tires as much as anything. In addition to the notes above about a spot being advertised again, per not wanting to alienate the publisher, I told them in my cover letter and email that I knew more about the place than the typical out-of-state applicant, and hinted it was a fair chunk more, but didn't go into detail, lest I risk alienation.

I did not tell them that I also knew the previous ME had stuck only a year or just over.

Anyway, the publisher did make me a bit green with anger, not envy.

Said I needed clips along with cover letter and resume. I said I have a Google Docs link, open to public, at the end of the resume. Publisher said no bueno. 

So, with no more than medium effort, I gave them a police story about a drug and alcohol sales to minors sting, a column related to that, as no more than medium effort, and then a 5,000-word, or more, long feature story about the retirement of the previous priest at the Catholic church here. I wanted something that long deliberately.

Month later? Haven't heard back and I sent no queries. My tire kicking was not high-level interest even before the personal interaction.

==

And, what the hell. Let's name names.

It's .... the ....

Roswell Daily Record. Per the "about" on its website, it's like Jill Stein trying to pretend to not be an antivaxxer while actually being one. In this case, it's trying to pretend not to push 1947 UFO conspiracy theory while actually doing so.

In July 1947, something streaked out of the sky, hitting the ground outside of Roswell, New Mexico, beginning years of ongoing speculation as to what the object was. According to initial information provided to the Roswell Daily Record by the Roswell Army Air Field, the startling headlines claimed that the military had recovered a flying saucer from a nearby ranch.

Overnight, the story changed from a flying saucer to a weather balloon, and over the ensuing years, that explanation morphed into a military high-altitude surveillance program. Over decades of conspiracy theories that the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public interest and fascination with this story.

Wrong. 

The publisher, and owner, is the daughter of a long-term owner who died in 2018. AFAIK, it's the only paper they own.

And, Beck daughter has a reason to peddle this, as did daddy, assuming he did, too.

The paper owns its own UFO store.

Of course, here's the reality.

And, I knew that reality long ago. I also know that, 25 years ago, Roswell boosters were talking about when the city would hit 50,000. Never happened. Population's been basically flat since 1990 and Farmington has just about caught it, while the Farmington metro area is much bigger.

Basically, it's a High Plains/edge of desert community, that has, or it was when built, the largest mozzarella cheese plant in the US if not the world.  But climate change and water owed to Texas on the Pecos and no aquifer of note in the area will ding that. There's some oil there, but not like in the Permian. New Mexico Military Institute is the only other major or semi-major business driver.

A McLatchKey clusterfuck in Charlotte coming up

 The Charlotte Observer, nominally owned by McClatchy but really by Alden Chatham Asset Management, is about to implode.

Per a Substack run by a presumably online-only competitor, The Charlotte Ledger — or maybe the Substack IS??? the online paper ...

The Observer is going to cut to just 3x a week in print.

And, wait, that's not all.

We all know there is no DeJoy, or rather, too much DeJoy, in the Mudville of the U.S. Postal Service.

McLatchKey in Charlotte is delivering those 3x papers a week via the USPS. No more carriers.

Sidebar: Where in the FUCK are they being printed if they have 2 p.m. deadlines? Atlanta? They've obviously gotten rid of their own press, which for a daily paper in one of the top 30-35 metro markets in the US is incredibly stupid right there.

Here's the Observer's announcement. The change starts in September.

That said, this Ledger does run off Substack, it appears. That means you're paying overhead to Hamish et al. And charging just $99/year for the half that is paid. SMH. The Way of Life sub-Substack (it's a newspaper, not a newsletter) is paid-only, with 22K subscribers. OTOH, that's $2.2 million, if those subscriber numbers are current and no churn.

They say, on the first link, that the Observer is down to less than 40 journos. OK, at $50K a year, and allowing Hamish his cut off that $2.2 million plus the partially paid biz Substack, you've got the same number yourself.

However, my back-of-envelope calculation doesn't allow for the employer share of FICA taxes, nor for unemployment insurance program payments to the state, nor any state business taxes on the Ledger, nor any property taxes if it has a physical newsroom. (Also, are these sales subject to North Carolina sales tax?) It also presumes that there's no health insurance and these employees have to Obamacare. It also leaves no room for higher pay for editorial management. 

So, while the Observer may be imploding, and may have shot itself in the foot on the printing press closure, whenever that happened, it's not like the Ledger is necessarily all that and a pack of smokes either. And, it's been around four-plus years.

Why aren't you charging for sports if you are presumably, going beyond "just the box scores"?

==

Update: Re the suggested collection, Teh Google said Chatham is going in the crapper in other ways, merging McClatchKey with the parent company of the National Enquirer. Well, maybe not. The story said that "accelerate360," Chatham's glossy mag group, would specifically exclude the Enquirer and some other mags, and also by name exclude David Pecker.

We'll see how long and well that lasts.

==

Sidebar: I appreciate the correction from Alden to Chatham, which error I shouldn't  have made. But, it reminds me ... moderation here is being flipped on.

AP wants to raise $100M for community journalism

That's per Axios.

Thoughts?

1. On the most serious angle, is this not just another allegedly big-hearted organization or individual chasing after the same bigger-pocketed organizations and individuals for seed money to distribute? Dick Tofel has covered this plethora (how many in a plethora, jefe de la prensa?) of such organizations.

2. Related? How much of this money is going to get laundered through the AP? This push isn't seed money to help community papers hire more reporters. Rather:

The new funds will be used to support AP's local journalism efforts, as well as the work of other organizations or services that support local newsrooms, per Veerasingham.

So, "laundered" might be harsh. "Recycled" is not.

And, obviously, this isn't going to go to non-weeklies, at least not to ones that were already non-weekly pre-COVID. So, the AP won't be helping the Marion County Record, raising a new round of hell (Word doc at link) over water quality public notices or lack thereof, not quite a year after being subjected to the folding, spindling and mutilation of the First Amendment.

3. Less serious but not totally unserious? Since AP recently reversed course from several months ago, and said, at least indirectly, that it WILL miss Gannett and McClatchy, and since more than 80 percent of its revenue stream is still from story (and video) licensing, when one stops limiting the scope to US newspapers, is this going to compete with the tip jar on its website?

4. Since it is e-commerce partnering with Taboola (that after clickbait webpage partnering with it years ago), is there going to be any quid pro quo on this help?

Good luck Gainesville Register, bye Mike Eads

The newspaper's editor has gone to Fort Smith, Arkansas, a Gannett/Craphouse paper that was old Craphouse pre-merger.

Per a pull-out before I clicked the link to its Wiki page, on this search for who owned it:

The Southwest Times Record is a daily newspaper in Fort Smith, Arkansas and covers 10 counties in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. It is owned and published by Gannett. The newspaper has not published a local story since Aug. 17, 2023.

OK, now.

It does run stuff like this:

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

which obviously isn't actually localized.

A sinecure job, as any local news will be more than none. That said, having applied for a Gannett editorial job in Northern California, before they yanked the plug on the process, last year? It probably doesn't pay fantastic. Not horrible, but not fantastic. But, probably more than I make now.

But?

#JournalismIsDying

How the Register got a second in its class in "general excellence" in this year's TPA awards, unless at least one of the two was from before summer of 2023, when their sports guy left and they didn't replace him, and if not both from them, the other was from before the end of football season 2023, when they then stopped covering sports, I don't know. I'm sure that won't repeat.

(Reportedly, they're looking for a reporter to replace him, not an editor, and Cleburne's ME will be a multi-paper editor. We know how well that works. And I bet they still don't cover that much sports, certainly not outside football. And, I bet they take a while to find somebody to fill that.)

Biden's fitness: Why the MSM, especially DC insiders, are rightly loathed at times

Nepo mommy / DC media insider Susan Glasser on Twitter at the start of the week, presumably with the nodding silence of her husband, nepo dad and insider Peter Baker, ignored that they knew, or should have known, about Joe Biden's problems long ago, and never wrote about it. Then, after last week's debate, said, in essence, "where were all these folks," not counting themselves in "all these folks."

Nepo mommy / DC Media Insider Susan Glasser (& hubby, nepo dad / insider Peter Baker?) ignoring they either knew, or shld have known, abt Dementia Joe's problems long ago & never wrote about it, & now are saying,
"Where were all these folks?"
Hypocrisy alert .@NathanJRobinson https://t.co/Rt1vj7c3t0

— TheRealSocraticGadfly 🍉☢️🌻🌲 (@real_gadfly) July 2, 2024

Here's the tweet I was quotingthen it's explainer time:

This is such a key point. Where were all these folks when Biden’s decision to run again could have been headed off? When so many took a pass on thinking about the implications of someone asking for a second term that would have him serving to age 86… https://t.co/AHwglJOXyB

— Susan Glasser (@sbg1) July 1, 2024

There we are.

Susan Glasser, per her Twitter bio, is a staff writer for the New Yorker. Hubby Peter Baker is chief White House correspondent for the New York Times. Nepo baby offspring is Theo Baker, who has written for both mom's and dad's sites, as well as The Atlantic and elsewhere. He's a work, a tool, a knob, a piece of shit, and a bigger piece of shit on Zionism issues after Oct. 7, 2023.

And, as screengrabbed by someone else in response to Glasser, here's her running flak for Dementia Joe five months ago:

That's who these people are. And, they're unapologetic about wiping their hands, Pilate-like, while throwing people under the bus, or Roman chariot, or on a cross.

And, journos like Rick Perlstein, who should know better, expect me to not duopoly exit, or to never have done it 24 years ago, per yesterday's post? Really? Or, the likes of Will Bunch salute the Philadelphia Inquirer's call for Trump to resign while pretending Biden's new clothes are still splendiferous?

That said, the non-columnist types like Glasser and Baker will claim we're just here to report, not opine. Yeah? Well, your reporting didn't dig that deep, did it, and that was presumably willful, wasn't it?

Related, at least tangentially?

The Philadelphia Inquirer, in a house editorial touted by the likes of its often-good, but BlueAnon, columnist Will Bunch and Blue MAGA shiv slinger Yashar Ali (who's been quiet this year, maybe due to his financial problems), in the wake of Joe Biden's catastrophe at last week's debate, called for Donald Trump to withdraw from the Republican nomination contest.

And, that's a big swing and a miss.

Large chunks of the GOP, sotto voce, as well as the Never Trumpers who have spoken out, yes, want an alternative. But, pretending that many Democrats don't want an alternative to Biden is the whiff, part one. Why not call for BOTH to resign? 

As is, this invites a doubling down of perceptions that the mainstream media is all Democrats.

Ted Van Dyk at the WSJ got it non-partisanly right: "Biden Should Withdraw and So Should Trump." If you're wondering who he is? He's a Dem insider back to the days of working for Vice President Hubert Humphrey. As an advisor on the Hump's 1968 presidential campaign, he knows how things play out.

The reality, deeper than that?

Tim Alberta gets it, and since he's a blue check with more than 280 words, I'm quoting the whole damn thing, with link here in case I misposted:

Okay folks. This stuff is no longer just nauseating; it's downright dangerous.

Joe Biden limped his way past a fractured 2020 primary field, the party finally coalescing around him because 1) he was the safest pick against an opponent they feared to an existential degree, and 2) his explicit promise to be the “bridge” (wink, wink) to the next generation of Democrats, several of whom flanked him on stage in Detroit as those words left his mouth and interpreted them exactly as Dem primary voters did.

Then he won in November by 43k votes against a spiraling, self-sabotaging incumbent who talked about injecting bleach as the country was falling apart.

Biden’s 2020 campaign was not some strategic masterstroke; there were no tactical or messaging breakthroughs that serve as blueprints for Poli Sci 101 lectures. The guy barely left his house between March and November! Sorry, but squeaking past the Bad News Bears doesn’t make you the ‘27 Yankees.

And yet the people around him have spent 3.5 years hailing the president as some sort of Jedi master: supernaturally tuned to the psyche of the electorate, singularly equipped to govern the country, uniquely able to save democracy from Donald Trump in 2024.

It’s nonsense.

Joe Biden is not Barack Obama. He's not Ronald Reagan. Heck, he's not even Bill Clinton. Spare us the lazy ahistorical comparisons and the romantic underdog narratives.

The truth is, the president is old, unpopular, and trapped by a dilemma of his own making. He picked a vice president in whom he’s lost confidence; is facing an opponent who insults him and his family in ways that his Irish pride can’t get beyond; and has surrounded himself with sycophants who refuse to tell him the truth.

Joe Biden has a distinguished record of public service. He has, in certain important ways, been an effective chief executive. But this mythologizing of the man is an insult to the public’s intelligence—and, in and of itself, a threat to our democratic institutions.

The reason for panic right now isn’t because a bunch of pundits and elites are oblivious to the thinking of regular people; it’s because those regular people always had a hunch the pundits and elites were lying to them about Biden’s capacities and now it’s been confirmed. https://t.co/IOfApjXDYw

— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) July 1, 2024

If only others would, too.

Yes, I also ran this yesterday, but, it needs to be read again.

New Mexico Press Assn errorfest

 Among member newspapers, it lists on its website the Lincoln County News out of Carrizozo.

Problem?

Oh, just a small one.

The link is to the Lincoln County, MAINE newspapers.

In reality, the Carrizozo paper closed years ago and Gannett's Ruidoso paper sucks.

Other eyebrow raisers? Is the Gallup Sun really a member but the Independent is not? If that's actually the case, what's the story behind that.

Then, there's their job bank. Roswell Daily Record was looking for an ME as of end of May. Job not listed.

Of course, when much of the upper Rio Grande is under the thumb of the Albuquerque Journal's parent while Gannett/Craphouse continues to wreck multiple southern-half papers, what can you say?

The Texas Observer: still treading water, still pretending otherwise

 More than a year after nearly imploding itself to death, the Observer (under an interim executive director; I don't know if the last permanent one quit at some other time, or got shit-canned at the same time as editor-in-chief Gabriel Arana did) pretends it's back to normal by passing out Molly Awards. (Aug. 10: They now have a cartoon Molly introducing the most recent Strangest State piece.)

First, per Jim Hightower, how much of a real populist are you if you go to Smith College, re Molly Ivins?

Second, weren't these awards in the past, passed out in the fall?

Third, per my first link on what's wrong with the Observer business-wise, there's still no paywall and still no ads, and surely still hypocrisy about the latter. What's to celebrate?

Fourth, they've got Gus Bova as Arana's interim replacement.

Goddamit I'm agreeing with Jeff Jarvis

But, he's RIGHT. These "media bailout laws," to call them what they are, in Canada, California and New York, and possibly elsewhere in the future? They're pushed by big legacy newspaper companies. You know, the ones being raped by the hedge funds that own them.

They do nothing for your community newspaper, your start-up, your nonprofit newspaper, etc. (AdCouncil advertising, like "This is your brains on newspapers," per the old over-fried egg of "this is your brain on drugs," is one idea that would actually do that.)

And, carve-out loopholes like that in New Jersey make clear who's pushing this stuff.

AP hedges its bets on "we don't need McClatchy and Gannett"

A few months ago, when the two chains said they were either pretty much or entirely spitting the bit on using Associated Press services, the AP said, in essence, "good luck and we don't need them."

Among claims at that time was that the AP only got 10 percent of its bucks from traditional wire feed money.

Er, not zacktly, as AP itself admitted earlier this week.

That 10 percent is from US newspapers only. The total? A "biiitttt" different:

In 2023, 82% of AP’s revenue came from content licensing with 5% from its software solutions business AP Workflow Solutions, 4% from its business providing broadcast facilities and journalists to global broadcasters, and 9% from other streams.

Wow.

No wonder AP, after hinting a few months ago that "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out," is now going Tom Bodett and saying "we'll keep the light on," to translate chief revenue officer Kristin Heitmann:

Heitmann said: “Gannett and McClatchy are important customers for the AP and we never like to lose customers. We are in contract through the end of this year and hope they remain customers of ours for many years to come – and certainly will in some way through the election and beyond in other services we provide.”

She added that “thousands of media” around the world use AP content and they “sometimes test not using us and come back. If that’s the case with Gannett and McClatchy, we have an open door…”

Something tells me that things like that e-commerce biz AP plans probably won't play out well, and will also raise issues about the First Amendment of Journalism's "wall of separation" between editorial and advertising. You gonna do an investigative journalism piece on something you're touting?

Of course, it was running semi-fake news on its website already seven years ago. (That was with Taboola just like the e-commerce dreck, which means AP's been semi-full of itself for years.) Don't forget, AP self-screwed its pooch back in the 1990s when then-board chairman Dean-o Singleton touted the "teevee model" of online advertising.

Of further interest? A year or two ago, the Salt Lake City Trib dumped the AP for: The NYT's wire. If that now includes The Athletic on sports, too?

Gainesville Register trying to kill print subscribers?

 That's the only thing I can think of for their latest stupidity, which came from at least the regional level of CNHI, if not headquarters.

The semiweekly paper — which doesn't even have the largest Texas Press Association circulation numbers of a TPA member newspaper in its own county — raised its newsstand price to $1.50 for midweek and $2.00 for weekend, from previous of $1.25/$1.75.

Those are prices for a 10-page newspaper with no sports other than signing days and one other story, since the end of football season; 10-page newspaper WITH one of those full-page CNHI HQ infographic pages every issue; AND with what all CNHI papers — and some other idjits like the Denton Record Chronicle also continue to do — and with a full three pages of black/white comics, and other comics section material each issue. (On this last item, I assume it's part of CNHI still trying to "puff" or "fluff" its papers in hopes some sucker believes them that they're worth their 1990 values. With Bill Patterson in Denton, since the KERA takeover is already in progress, I have no idea what's in his mind doing six days of that for a print weekly.)

Then, there's pure stupidity on the editorial side.

OK, April 30 issue? Gainesville is known beyond the local area for the Medal of Honor parade and events. Paper runs a couple photos up front, then a HALF page photo page on the back page. Was there a paid color ad on the bottom half? Nooooo .... there wasn't a PAID at at all. Rather, CNHI's "Golf in Bammy" half page ad runs — in BLACK AND WHITE.

And, all this with the presumed luxury of a pagination hub.

Anyway, comp papers in this region to the Register?

Bowie News and Wise County Messenger both have 1.5-2x as many pages each issue, as semiweeklies, than Gainesville. Both have full local sports coverage. Both have 3x the amount of local news coverage, if not more. Both still priced at $1 both issues.

That's why I laughed when TPA asked regional publisher Lisa Chappell to be one of the featured speakers at last year's convention. What insights did she have to offer?

Whether 1.7% or 3.8%, online newspaper disinterest is HORRIBLE

Psy Post talks about research in which people were given a free subscription to the online version of their closest regional daily newspaper, in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Note that I said regional. Not the nearest local five-day daily (or smaller). But, the regional paper. In Pennsylvania, either the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette or the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Raleigh News & Observer in North Carolina.

More than 2,000 free subscriptions, over several weeks, in Pennsylvania. Only 44 signed up to renew paid on their own. That's 2.2 percent if out of an even 2,000. Actually, there were enough beyond 2,000 in the offer that the story says the 44 were 1.7 percent.

Actually, that's not true, in part because of a slight misreading by me originally, that makes the hook better yet. Or worse.

That wasn't churn. Over 13 weeks, those more than 2,000 were offered a free subscription for 13 weeks. Only 44 said yes.

But wait, it gets worse!

The unexpectedly low response led to the second phase of the experiment, where the researchers shifted strategies to direct content promotion. In this phase, the researchers created sponsored posts on Facebook that promoted specific articles from the two state newspapers. These articles covered prominent state-level issues like COVID-19 policies, the governor’s political activities, and fiscal challenges. 

Each Monday over several weeks, the team identified and promoted a new article, aiming to boost engagement with regional issues. This intervention resulted in thousands of targeted Facebook impressions, allowing researchers to see whether directly delivering news content through social media feeds would effectively increase engagement. 

Despite generating tens of thousands of impressions, this strategy did not significantly improve participants’ political knowledge or engagement. The researchers found those exposed to promoted local news stories on Facebook did not demonstrate any significant increases in local political knowledge compared to the control group. 

Similarly, the interventions did not significantly affect measures of civic engagement, such as participation in local elections or activities, or attitudes toward local governance. The surveys administered before and after the interventions showed that participants’ levels of engagement and their attitudes remained largely unchanged.

In a sense, this is no surprise. The story's already given more confirmation to what appears apparent otherwise: Contra the old cliché, all politics is national, at least for Republicans. When state House and state Senate candidates in contested GOP primaries are groveling for a Trump endorsement, what else could it be?

And, they're not disengaged. A survey said 92 percent voted in the 2018 midterm general election. Rather, they're SO engaged, in all politics as national, that the regional paper can't make a dent.

North Carolina? Similar if not quite so bad:

A similar study conducted by Andrew Trexler at Duke University found strikingly similar results. About 500 registered voters in North Carolina were offered a two-month free digital subscription to the Raleigh News & Observer. But uptake was exceptionally low, with only 3.8% of those who received the offer activating their free subscription.

Ye gads. And, the kicker at the end is right. Even if you could get people to read, what can you get them to do?

CJR/Tow has its own Arlie Russell Hochschild

CJR would be Columbia Journalism Review. Tow would be Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

And, its Arlie Russell Hochschild, promoting the newspaper version of a librul listening tour, would be Doron Haussig.

Taussig ignores that, a la Twitter, many of the bitchy conservatives want to "own the libs," if not just troll them. Those with more brains see this as a local-level version of Overton Window shifting.

Another reason I'm a leftist — but a skeptical one! — not a librul, and within this biz, still wanting out while eyeballing certain finish lines at the same time.

Gainesville Register vs Weekly News of Cooke County

The Register is a CNHI paper in Gainesville, the county seat. The Weekly News is a (former?) shopper. It's not all classifieds; it has more local news than the Register. But, it has historically been a non-subscription third-class mailer. That said, I have the "former?" in parentheses because it had gradually been cutting back what ZIP codes were non-subscription within in the county and, as of the first of this year, eliminated Gainesville itself, so it's now a second-class mailer subscription newspaper, or will be, when it changes permits.

At some point, though not until next year, at least if it goes to a second class permit, it will need to file a postal report, and we will see what's on there.

OK, the "versus."

For years, as in, going back a decade, even though a third-class shopper, the Weekly News had and has been running legals from various local governments. And, in the case of Gainesville and Cooke County, the aggrieved party would be the Register. (Indirectly, other newspapers in the county might also be aggrieved parties.)

But, the Register did nothing.

Until about a month ago, it started running information on its classified page that its the official newspaper of both entities.

You know what? 

Since that time, the Weekly News has run a Cooke County Sheriff's Office tax sale legal notice. We'll see what, if anything, the Register does besides run another notice in its paper. (Sidebar: The Register legally was running a legal notice from the city of Sherman, so there's that, too.)

Note for KERA and the Denton Record Chronicle

A similar merger has already been completed in Chicago between Chicago Public Media and the Chicago Sun-Times. The DRC/KERA merger, which I have written about before, was completed last summer.

Nieman Lab notes that more people are reading, more staff have been hired, but ....

But management departures and rocky union negotiations have also marked the transition. And a membership drive last fall noted that membership revenue wasn’t covering the losses that occurred after the Sun-Times’ digital paywall was dropped.

Oops.

The bottom line is the bottom line.

For the DRC, there's also another issue. If you go digital-only? You're no longer a "paper of record" for government legal notices. And, there is another print paper in Denton County. Now, the small weekly Pilot Point Post-Signal would look almost like a caricature if it had city of Denton, Denton County, Denton ISD and other legals, as it would be 50 percent classified ads some weeks.

But, the paper has a history of being aggressive on legal ad chasing.

So, watch out what you wish for, Bill Patterson. And, I've written before about Pilot Point doing just that. I've also noted the Wrecked Chronic looks in print kind of like a CNHI paper.

The NYT can't stand the internal Gaza blowback

 It probably also doesn't like the external media scrutiny from another media powerhouse, in this case, the Wall Street Journal training guns on the Old Gray Lady, but, given how often the Times has done exactly this to places like the Washington Post, turnabout is fair play.

As a lot of us know, a lot of the NYT's reporting on Israel-Gaza is shaky at best. (That's why happens when you hire someone with no previous journalism experience, Anat Schwartz, apparently for hasbara-related reasons, and what she and the team with her report doesn't have solid support even in terms of hasbara as journalism.)

So, besides outside pushback, over this and other things, the Slimes (like the Dallas Snooze, Fort Worth StartleGram, etc.) is also getting blowback internally.

And, in a word, from the top down — the top being Executive Editor Joe Kahn, as Pinch Sulzburger keeps himself out of the picture or else the WSJ doesn't rope him in — the brass hats are pissed:

“The idea that someone dips into that process in the middle, and finds something that they considered might be interesting or damaging to the story under way, and then provides that to people outside, felt to me and my colleagues like a breakdown in the sort of trust and collaboration that’s necessary in the editorial process,” Executive Editor Joe Kahn said in an interview. “I haven’t seen that happen before.”

Beyond that "pisses," there's a stereotypical hypocritical airing of grievances.

“Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about than may have been the case in the past,” he said, adding that the onus is on the Times to instill values like independence in its employees.

Hey Joe, just maybe? Just maybe it's people like you who have that problem.

Seriously, to me, that's exactly what this reads like. You're in the journalism version of a stereotypical ivory tower, a stereotypical part of the "Establishment," you've long been in bed with what I call the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ on foreign policy (Judith Miller ring a bell?) and now, you're finding out that younger hires aren't so much.

And so no, looking just like the US government in similar situations (remember the Dobbs leak?) rather than looking at how and why you published hasbara, you're looking for leakers. And, of course, this gives Kahn the perfect opportunity to sideline a promised internal investigation as to how this got run in the first place.

And, that all said, the WSJ participates in the hasbara. Re the story at issue, it says it was written by "Jeffrey Gettleman and two freelancers." Anat Schwartz, Ms. Hasbara 2024, isn't even mentioned by name.

A Today Newspapers blast from the past

Today Newspapers was a group of suburban Dallas newspapers, where I worked several years, that closed during the Great Recession. Competition with a five-day daily with crap for editorial content but bullshitting about circ numbers, combined with some stupid ownership and management decisions and the Great Recession itself, did us in.

Well, my first couple of years there, in addition to a news editor for each paper in our group, we also had a sports editor for the whole group who did about half or so of the total sports coverage, in combo with us individually. 

He was Brian Porter. I saw his face on this piece, about him going into the world of, if not full pink slime, then semi-pink slime, journalism at the Rocky Mountain Voice. And, per the Colorado Press Association announcing him as a board of directors member, it is the same guy.

I was led to all of this by a new Substack I follow. A number of members objected to what appeared to be a conflict of interest with Porter running that organization, which is a specific advocacy-based site. But, then, a bigger issue came up. RMV is not a CPA member, and org bylaws say he needs to be, to be its president.

Porter did resign the CPA board presidency. But, if he had more than six months left in his term, would he have? (That said, if it's like TPA, it was probably a one-year deal anyway.)

Brian Freaking Porter. Per the CPA announcement of him joining the board, I see how he got out there — the luck of being with a major newspaper group and wanting to go to that location. I'm envious of the luck; my attempts to get out west, albeit in a place more to my interest than Fort Morgan would be, have all failed.

Dear StartleGram: Do NOT ever again try to make me a part of a story

 Ditto for other papers writing about this contretemps.

Ditto for the StartleGram trying to pull the same trick with other small town newspapers.

"Don't become part of the story" is a baseline tenet of journalism. It means not only don't make yourself part of your own story, but also don't make yourself part of someone else's story.

At the same time, it SHOULD mean not trying to make another journalist a part of your story.

Either Mr. Bach wasn't taught better in J-school, wasn't coached better in Cowtown or previous stops — or else an editor told him to ask. None of the above comes off very well.

Per his bio at the StartleGram (and at the Trib) he should know better.

Knowing the timetable, he apparently called me AFTER he talked to the locals, which appears to have been by personal drop-in, and without a heads-up in advance.

Sidebar: The other side/round two of the story about the contretemps has dropped. Not posting, not linking.

Sidebar two: This is another reason I'm glad my current newspapers have neither website nor social media presence.

(I once mentioned the name of a reporter from another paper in a story. Ironically, she was at the StartleGram. But, that's because the PR mouthpiece for Voluntary Purchasing Groups in Bonham, Texas mentioned her name in a direct quote. She got pissed when she heard it. But? This happens all the time, at least today. PR spox and politicos call out individual reporters by name, not all the time, but not 100 percent infrequently, either.)

==

Part two: There's weird things about the Startlegram's website. Most online media, whether web versions of print newspapers and magazines, or other things, you click on an author's name and it takes you to a mini-bio page with a list of other stories. Not the Startlegram. That's an email address link. Weird.

"Access Twitter" form of "access journalism"

Access journalism is Beltway access, whether to the President, an executive branch Cabinet agency, or in the case of Joan Biskupic, to the Supreme Court. I suppose that with a Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi, there's some sort of access journalism there, too.

Access Twitter is a riff on that, but it's an intra-journalism angle.

I was blocked by Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat two weeks ago. I discovered that when Jeet Heer was quote tweeting over just how bad of hasbara he was spouting:

I remember when the hasbara was better. They're not even trying anymore. https://t.co/nKCvUmi9h5

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 2, 2024

And realized I couldn't see just how bad it was.

Obviously, Higgins hadn't blocked Jeet. I don't know if he's yet blocked Mark Ames, who, in my blog post a few weeks ago about the Texas Observer jumping in bed with Bellingcat, had two Ames tweets about Bellingcat, though neither was a quote-tweet of Higgins or other top brass. That said, per the official Bellingcat Twitter account, yeah, as of the start of March, it was radio-silent indeed. Plenty to say about Russia, naturally, with the likes of Fukuyama being advisors. Nothing about the Gaza Genocide. One post in the first half of February about Rafah and .... using tools adapted from Ukraine to track bombing in Rafah. No moral comment at all. A post at the start of February about a Beeb show talking about the "disinformation war" in the Middle East. No use of the word "hasbara" in the tweet. The Beeb podcast itself at least tilt toward he said, she said twosiderism.

And, that's the only two tweets about Israel-Gaza going back to before Christmas 2023. Before that, on Dec. 20, there was a tweet with the gist of the Feb. 13 tweet about Rafah, but before the creation of the Rafah pocket. A Dec. 18 tweet talked about the "environmental damage" Israel was causing in Gaza. No, really.

Before that? A Dec. 12 tweet about "unraveling" the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Her death had been unraveled well before that, given that she had been killed seven months earlier. The piece itself has a big data cram, lots of videos, analysis, etc., then says, in essence, "it appears," without making a call. This itself looks like hasbara, in that somebody prodded Bellingcat to do "something.

The Texas Observer's near-demise, one year later

Apparently the Texas Observer's attempted recovery from its near death experience one year ago, mainly due to financial mismanagement, but with bits of other mismanagement and other general problems, as I wrote about at the time, isn't going so well.

At the start of this month? Editor-in-chief Gabriel Arana is now "the former," allegedly to help the Observer as it still loses money, and being replaced by fundraising staff apparently paid off what was his salary. Well, his salary and two other editorial staff also canned. They were explicitly canned to free up money for fundraising staff. The first piece hints at unspecified additional reasons for Arana getting the boot. The two other staffers have spoken in support of the Observer. At the time, at least, Arana had radio silence. 

The Observer and its parent, the Texas Democracy Foundation, continue to cause their own problems on the financial side, as I noted a year ago, for the holier-than-thou attitude of refusing to accept ads mixed with the stupider-than-thou refusal to paywall. I have no sympathy. And, if the recent changes are just the surface of an iceberg, re Arana, will other editorial staff be jumping ship? And, will the fundraising staff broach some Trib-like "pay to play"?

Maybe, re just Arana, wrangling over the Bellingcat partnership led him to be canned? The timing is right, for sure. (He's now at The American Prospect in some way, shape or form, per his Twitter bio.)

==

Update, Aug. 10, 2024: I don't even get their Javascript "please become a member" screen now. That's after clicking to read more than half a dozen stories. Instead, there's a "plea box" down at the bottom of each story.

So, the AP is going to sell us shit now?

 

I remember, a year or so ago, when I first saw the AP's "donate" button at the upper-right corner of its website. The Associated Press has shat in its own foxhole for years (I just love the occasional use of "shat"!) and wanted bailing out? Hah.

Well, I guess not enough people were sending it couch change.

Or else, so many people were that it figured it could grift off them.

It's now going into the e-commerce world, partnering with Taboola.

The shatting (past participle/gerund) in its own foxhole goes back 30 years to then AP board chair Dean-o Singleton, who convinced the rest of the board that the so-called "TV model" was a thing and AP did not need to worry about Internet 0.5, including not needing an early version of a paywall. AP then proceeded to undercharge news aggregators like Yahoo (remember when it was a "thing"?), not anticipate Reuters, then AFP, expanding their American presence, not adjust membership tiers and fees for U.S. member newspapers, and much more.

And, now, it wants to sell us shit.

What do we get?

A digital version of Dean-o's autograph? 

Options to buy into Alden Global Capital?

A model of the "TV model"?

==

Update, March 19: Whatever AP does with e-commerce, that won't be the end. Gannett and McClatchy are both cord-cutting at the end of their current subscriptions. AP told the NYT this "would not have a material impact on our overall revenue." 

Bullshit. 

As much bullshit as Gannett's claims, here if you hit the Slimes paywall:

“Between USA Today and our incredible network of more than 200 newsrooms, we create more journalism every day than The A.P.,” Kristin Roberts, the chief content officer of Gannett, wrote in a company memo.

More bullshit. Gannett was crappy before being acquired by Craphouse, and has done zero in investments since then.

You know American newspaper journalism is in the toilet when you can't figure out if Gannett or AP is the bigger liar.

One interesting note?

Gannett's not dumping wire services entirely.

Instead, it's going with Reuters.

Since Deano screwed the pooch long ago, both Reuters and AFP have expanded their US presence, and by a large amount. I'm sure other current AP members are going to come knocking on Reuters' door pretty quickly. 

"Can I have the Gannett deal?"

THAT will affect your bottom line indeed, AP.

==

Weirdly, Dick Teufel, on his Substack, missed that Gannett isn't getting rid of wire services in general, just dumping AP (in part, not totally, in fact) for Reuters. (And, despite me noting that in comments, he hasn't updated.)

He does note, of relevance to the first half of this piece, that AP claimed a year ago that traditional newspaper memberships were only about 10 percent of its revenue stream. (AP itself confirms, per that Poynter link above about Reuters.) That said, most pieces don't discuss how much Gannett was paying. Well, surely some of the video licensing it touts is to newspapers, and I assume Craphouse and McLatchKey are ditching that, too. And, that's not discussed anywhere.

Update, Aug. 20: We've found out that's a lie, and a humongous one. Hence, per my semi-rhetorical question above, we know AP is a bigger liar than New Gannett aka Old Craphouse, and that's a HUGE bar to clear, to reverse the old cliche. Per that, AP's worried that non-US newspapers will ditch the AP for their US newsfeed and look at the likes of Reuters instead.

Update 2, Aug. 20: Meanwhile, the AP is looking into yet new avenues for grifting or money-laundering, pick your word choice.

On the First Amendment, cybersecurity law is not media law

I just got done reading a book that sounded interesting, and even was good at the start, but, had a surface-level treatment of background history behind our current level of First Amendment law, and worse, was surface-level in discussion of tweaks, including but not limited to Section 230 related items.

Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation by Jeff Kosseff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Good, but not quite great, and ultimately, not quite not quite great, as it slumped at the end. Let's dig in.

The best way to describe Kosseff’s thrust in the first half to two-thirds of this book, is by analogy with the old lawyers’ joke.

(Well, WHICH old lawyers’ joke?)

That’s the one where a person says, of Lawyer X, usually of the famous type, “Boy, they’re a jackass,” but down inside says, “If I ever need a lawyer, I want them.”

That’s the way freedom of speech is, per Kosseff, or one way to think of it: “Boy, I hate THEM getting to spew that, but I want that same level of protection myself.”

First, Kosseff says, after separating truth from legend in Holmes' "crowded theater" (which I already knew) the marketplace of ideas meme is good but not great, is not the only 1A protection, and cannot stand by itself. First, different actors have different size stalls in the marketplace. Second, the “informed citizenry” argument bolsters it. Beyond people vending ideas, people simply needs to see ideas. Re the marketplace, cites Bill Brennan that there needs to be buyers as well as sellers, and thus, restraints on speech are harmful both ways.

Then Kosseff notes the difficulty of establishing “truth.” Things like predictions aren’t simple empirical statements, but they’re more than opinions. Weather forecasts an example. Next, publishers of ideas, unlike makers of products, don’t have an express liability for the ideas they publish. That would kill publishing. Then, notes that what once seems untrue might be true; Kosseff cites the lab leak theory on COVID. Ironic even as Team Biden now faces suit over its attempt to put a thumb on the social media scales, even if that’s not direct censorship.

Re Washigton Gov. Jay Inslee’s bill, 183ff, The Baffler suggests another option vis-à-vis Trump: That either the original 1870s Ku Klux Klan Acts, or a modern equivalent, would disbar him. Just one problem: the KKK Acts, all talk about a “conspiracy” of … “two or more” or similar. Whether these acts are constitutional or not (and Thomas Geoghegan acknowledges they could be ruled unconstitutional) good luck proving a conspiracy of two or more.

The “self help” chapter in part 3? Kind of naïve. And, from here on, the book is kind of "meh." It shows not only a surface-level treatment, but by its lacunae, that Kosseff has particular ideas of what he favors or not. We'll get to the lacunae in a minute. 

First? The idea of retraction statements being a defense against at least punitive damages in defamation cases and that this could be extended to social media? Laughable, on the "extension." What’s to stop them from being pulled down again? And, does FB, Twitter, etc. want to be engaged in locking such posts? If they are, what if the defendant quote tweets to say “I repudiate this.” Fact-checker orgs like PolitiFact as self help? Per earlier chapters by Kosseff, I’ll bet it called the lab-leak theory “mostly false” in the early days of COVID. It’s been wrong plenty of other times, in framing for sure, if not actual facts. And, per other themes of Kosseff, should be called “PolitiOpinion.” Snopes is not always incredibly good either.

The next chapter? Quite timely, given SCOTUS now debating the two NetChoice (lobby arm for social media) vs states lawsuits, and re “jawboning,” the Murthy vs. Missouri scheduled for March. (Rick Hasen, "interestingly," doesn't mention it.) 

That said, re Section 230, I do favor amending it. Indeed, social media companies do act like publishers. Maybe not totally. But, there’s enough that’s analogous that we should carefully amend it. (I oppose starting over with new law; a big old bag of worms would be opened.) The big problem is that it’s not that Facebook, the biggest of all, can’t do more as a publisher. As anybody who’s read about the “content moderation farms” in the Philippines knows, the real issue is that Hucksterman is too damned cheap. Kosseff doesn’t address that. Nor does he engage with media and media law orgs. My link above discusses a piece by Nieman Lab, and to extend the analogy of social media to media, they talk about “monetization” as a “trigger.” In fact, other than his one reference to PolitiFact, there’s no index listings not only for Nieman, but Columbia Journalism Review, Jay Rosen (not that I totally agree with him, but he's a known standard), Dick Teufel formerly of ProPublica, etc. Indeed, per my discussion of his mention of PolitiFact, there as IS NO SUCH THING as one unified Politifact. And, in the point of dropping in that last link, I realized he was going to go down to three stars after all.

As for his suggestion that perhaps things like Net Nanny should be rolled out? Facebook Purity already exists and Hucksterman does everything he can to sabotage it. Next? Kosseff overly romanticizes Mastodon. Related? Bluesky? Started within Twitter. And, Jack Dorsey is good only in comparison with Elon Musk.

Another three-star reviewer talks about much of Kosseff’s solutions as “milquetoast.” I’d have to agree. Finally, it should be noted that he's in cybersecurity law. That's probably a big deal at the Naval Academy; I'm sure that media law is not. 

Finally, Kosseff is wrong, elsewhere, in book-length form, about Section 230. It is NOT "the 26 words that created the internet," but rather, "the 26 words that created the internet as we know it today." That's a big difference, per one reviewer of his book.

Given both these, I think you can take a pass on reading him, folks.

View all my reviews