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.)

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.

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

The latest Texas Observer #fail — Bellingcat

That would be, per this piece, pairing with Bellingcat.

For the unawares, Bellingcat is, contra how the Observer describes it, a Cold War 2.0 and Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ facilitator. See this Mark Ames Tweet, for example. Or see this retweet by Ames, noting that Bellingcat has gone radio-silent over Gaza. Wiki glosses over most of the challenges to Bellingcat reporting. Shock me; in related news, Wiki also glosses over Alexei Navalny's alt-right nationalism, Islamophobia and more.  Update, March 1: Per this Ames Tweet, yep, Bellingcat hunting down left-wing German grannies instead of talking about Gaza is a hoot. Yes, per the NYT story, Daniella Klett was a fugitive. But, she'd done nothing in 40 years. Bellingcat could have bigger fish to fry if it wanted. And, a response Tweet to Ames notes that Bellingcat employs an ex-Stasi agent.

On Bellingcat in general? Read this for more. Even the New Republic notes that Bellingcat gets money from The National Endowment for Democracy, for doorknob's sake.

Was the Southern Poverty Law Center and its oft-overinflated (and pimped out) claims of "X is a hate group" not available as a reporting partner?

I would repeat the old joke about Bernard Rapoport turning over in his grave over the Observer, but that's been used by me so often that he would have bedspins. (Also, I don't know, vis-a-vis the Ames retweet, if he was a Zionist or not.)

Update, March 2: Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat has now blocked me, so, I can't, via Jeet Heer, see just how bad of hasbara he's spouting:

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

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 2, 2024

There you go, if you can see it.

"Congrats" to the Observer, and any staffers who follow this blog still, or follow me on Twitter.

Let me add that an Internet search shows that MANY organizations besides Bellingcat have written about, and researched, the "Active Club movement." My comparison to the Southern Poverty Law Center didn't just come out of nowhere.

And, one Observer staffer who had followed me on Twitter, and perhaps was a follower of this blog by RSS? 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, hs 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. More in a separate post. That is now up. And, I wonder if wrangling over the Bellingcat partnership is part of what led Arana to get the boot.

George Polk Awards #fail

This:

The award for Foreign Reporting goes to the staff of The New York Times for unsurpassed coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas

— George Polk Awards (@PolkAwards) February 19, 2024

Is all you need to know. (Well, if you dno't already know the actual facts in the responses, you need to know them too, of course.)

Well, yes, it gets worse. Read this thread by Zei Squirrel.

Is it any wonder that most people don't trust the MSM on many issues, nor their guardians and puffers? (Usually, with wingnuts, the mistrust is for the wrong reasons on the wrong issues, but they have mistrust too.)

The reality, per those responses, is that the Slimes, which truly lives up to that nickname in this case, has  been a reliable hasbara mouthpiece.

As Gannett guts the Austin Stateless ...

 That's of course, in my media world of alt-naming, the Austin American-Statesman.

The Monthly notes how many other outlets are rushing in to fill the vacuum being left by the ongoing gutting. (That said, with the Trib headquarted in Austin, some have a leg up.)

I find it "funny," as in a mix of sad and disgusting, that the vacuum-fillers include Hearst, which cuts away at its own newspapers and hides how much it continues to make by being privately owned and not having to report to Wall Street.

The Monthly does note, contra newspaper union-hater Jim Schuetze, that the one thing that has stopped Craphouse (the tail wagging the dog of the "new Gannett") from even deeper cuts is that Stateless editorial staff is unionized. (Sidebar: Has there been a bigger wasted media space in some ways in the past five years than Schutze?)

That said, even as the union and Craphouse battle over a contract? That contract will almost certainly only cover full-time employees. Like I am sure will happen in Cowtown at the StartleGram, now that their union got a new contract a year ago, any fulltime employees who leave in the future will be replaced by freelancers.

Online only newspaper + monthly print mag = cheapness?

 I was down this road a little over a year ago with Maricopa, Arizona, and it not wanting to pay the ME anywhere decent, as I nosed around. (Set aside that the co-owner sent me a Walgreens clerk type standard two page application form as part of the initial round of the interview and potential hiring process [no, really!] and you lost me.)

I had forgotten that a certain newspaper in the Metromess had gone this same route, and I believe pre-COVID. But, a chance to move back into the Metromess itself, if other thingswere OK.

Well, this position was for an assistant editor. Which I found out means staff writer-plus, really. Then, we eventually got to potential pay. And an "-ish" at the end of what was discussed made me realize that the position was being "sold." Of course; part of the D Mag stable.

And, they did hire somebody else, which is fine, because I don't need to be paid in exposure-plus, along with a possibility of graduating to D Mag itself. (Say hi to Jim Schutze for me.) I think, per what the gist of things were, a generational talent was OK with exposure-plus pay.

Does the newbie get a cut of the advertorial stuff you're running, too? (Looking at the PDF version of the mag, there's more than one piece.) Dunno if that would be happening were Wick still alive.

And, no paywall on the monthly mags? And, wasting print pages with a month's worth of crime logs, even if this area of the Metromess is low-crime (not counting state-level or federal-level fraud cases, since that involves money.) I clicked more than half a dozen individual stories and no paywall there, either; D Mag doesn't, either, I think. Of course, magazines are a bit diff.

That said, I'm not sure we should call this a mag. Unlike Maricopa, both Park Cities People and Preston Hollow People (there, you're named) are in tabloid format, and I figure are as likely to be printed on newsprint as magazine slick.

As for content, other than already noted? They do a "person of the year" issue in January. ONE tabloid page, and that's it. Counting photos. Text is only half the page.

Wow.

Even if they had more money, and better website management, I'm not sure I'd want to be there.

==

Basically, they sort of remind me of a lot of Colorado papers in the heart of the Rockies and the start of the Western Slope: A real estate mag with a few pages of other newspaper stuff as fishwrap. Now, People has more non-real estate ads, tis true; the resemblance isn't total. But, sort of? At least in my book, yes.

More "fun" with New Mexico magazine

 I've written before about some of the foibles at the magazine, most in the name of New Agey-type pseudoscience. Well, time for a new round of that and more, from that magazine's last three issues.

The November 2023 issue has Christina Selby, who says she's been going to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge to see the sandhill cranes for years, talk with refuge staff about how drought is affecting how much food the refuge can have on site (seeding NWRs with grains for birds gets my goat in general and is a whole other topic), how climate change is affecting their migration and more.

So, Selby talks about other birds that can be seen there, including "dowagers." Now, I know a dowager can be called an "old bird," but I don't think they migrate to Bosque del Apache every winter.

Maybe long- and short-billed dowitchers do, but Selby can't be that ardent of a birder if that's not even spelled correctly. I webmailed her about that; we'll see if I get a response. If so, I'll add it here.

A week later, no response. I suspect that because she bills herself as a freelance science writer and other things, there won't be one.

==

December's issue had an interesting story about rock-hounding. The most interesting part is that it put the east side of the Rio Grande, north of White Sands, to the WEST of Socorro, saying that the rock-hounding group north of White Sands had to travel east to get back to Socorro. Maybe one too many beers at San Antonio's Buckhorn along with a green chile burger?

==

Then, directly tying to that older piece? One story in the "Lowdown" section is called "Star Maps." It then has this extended kicker header:

This year, let the zodiac chart your travel plans to a captivating, mystical, or iconic New Mexico destination.

And yes, it was travel "horoscopes." And, as generic, other than mentioning NM travel spots, as horoscopes in general. I assume the Katy Kelleher who wrote is minor book author, with a Tweet like this.

I complained on Facebook, then blocked a nutter who had a nutter response.

==

Just as the state, riffing on its motto, is often "The Land of Disenchantment," so it is with the magazine.

More local news isn't the (total) answer for local newspapers

Good piece here from two academics. The TL/DR is that more local features stories and things like that has to be part of the issue.

And, yeah, corporate media can sort of do remote stories about city council meetings and other local government meetings, getting agendas off websites and emailing city managers, county executives and school superintendents.

But, the only way to do a feature story about someone who has biked across the country for a cancer fundraiser is to interview them. The only way to do a story about a business' 100th anniversary is to get history out of local archives and talk to people.

And, this says nothing of photos for things like this.

Nor does it consider local lifestyles type stories from or about clubs and organizations. Even if that is submitted, somebody local and onsite will know how much, or how little, play a particular submission needs.

And, that takes people power, on site. Period.

The pair even cite statistics that coverage of local elections does NOT spike local news readership.

Tell me you're a capitalist without telling me ...

 I recently was interviewed by a recruiter. (Whom I may name here at some point later.)

Asked about why did I leave job X after 2.5 years, job Y after 1.5, job Z after 2, etc.

First, as I noted, every move but one of mine in the last 15 years has been related to the turmoil in the newspaper industry. Guess I should be putting that more up-front on the resume, but, nonetheless, I have no problem explaining it.

Second, I not only kept my head above water but in general (in nominal dollars, at least) moved forward financially. That's not a nothingburger in today's newspaper world.

And, said recruiter said she had decades in the newspaper business before setting up shop as a recruitment and placement company for various media companies. Mentioned Wick (meh), Hearst (blech) and others.

But, of course, the recruiter's spiel was "newspapers don't want to pay to relocate you" etc. if they think you'll leave in a couple of years. 

Rather than asking right away if these changes were because of newspaper industry turmoil and decimation.

Oh, I understand. 

That said, if the job is good enough, I'll be staying. And, by that, I mean not only pay, but in general.

No bosses who got to be the boss allegedly per one old-fashioned way, which, sadly, still happens. (And, it does take two to tango.)

No going back to places where, if books weren't actually cooked, they did seem to have been padded on how advertising was treated.

Anyway, said recruiter mentioned she represented Wick, among others, and I mentioned one interview. Probably why no follow-up. Oh, well.

Part of me says, "Yeah, it sucks."

Part of me, besides, "It's capitalism," says this whole idea of being "first," on news that doesn't necessarily warrant it, is an issue itself.

Part of me looks at companies phoning shit in and says "Peter Principle."

Part of me notes that said recruiter looked at town where I lived, not actual location of the two newspapers and takes that into account.

I did learn some resume tweak ideas, even if the recruiter didn't email me the ideas in detail because they wrote me off. But, what makes a "good" resume seems to change every five years. Isn't that itself part of capitalism? Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to make you stumble into the furniture?

Beyond that? I decided to go halfway "in your face" with the new one for newspaper journalism jobs.  Nothing to lose.

Finally? This is also a reminder that recruiters ALWAYS work for employers first, employees second.

Giving Focus Daily News and Marlon Hanson a good kick

 The Daily Snooze (not to be confused with the Dallas Morning Snooze) still claims to be a five-day daily, but, what would you get with that?

Archived as well as current e-editions are all paywalled, so I don't know.

That said, the last freebie "special section" available for view on the website? And, this is why "special section" is in scare quotes! A four-page 2020 Veterans Day "special section," where P1 is a full page editorial cartoon and 2-4 are listings of restaurants that give discounts to veterans. Oops, that's a three-pager, not four, so it was "special pages," not a section. Unless Marlon ran a blank fourth page.

That said, at least on the website, in this restaurant review, The Colony is in the Best Southwest along with Cedar Hill, DeSoto, Duncanville and Lancaster. 

And, he's running unedited press releases as news.

This all said, I don't know if his wife passed, or what. She's not on their "about" page. Don't know why he's still running it, then. He's over 70 — in fact, guessing by his LinkedIn, over 75 — and can surely retire, unless scraping digital newspaper floors for cigar butts still drives him along. Maybe it's the car reviews, and the free test-drive cars, that keep his motor running, so to speak.

I gave it the label of "fake news" because, while not in a pink slime sense, I think it is little more than fake news by press release any more. Take the T-Mobile press release. If Marlon's running that instead of getting a T-Mobile ad ...

And, also on fake news? I believe even less Marlon's claim of a 15K circ today than an 18K circ 15 years ago.