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"?

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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.

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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.

Unions at Texas papers: an update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Address the loophole on the third credit.

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

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

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

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

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

So, in the end?

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

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

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

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

McClatchy: On the clock and on the block

Chatham Assess Management has made an official bid for McClatchy as it currently sits in bankruptcy court.

Of interest here in Texas is that McC owns the Fort Worth StartleGram, which has looked primed to move closer and closer to an informal, if not formal, JOA with the Dallas Snooze for some time.

The big sticking point has been, in my guesstimate, that Belo owns nothing but the Snooze, a few Dallas print spinoffs and that's that. Basically, a JOA for these two papers means the end of Belo as an independent company. Yes, it's also got that digital marketing biz, but ...

It's unclear if and when McC will get sold and to whom. Per Chatham's bid, it's also unclear if it will be accepted and on what terms, or even officially let into the mix as a stalking horse bid.

But I would be seriously surprised if the Metromess proper (excluding Little D in Denton) has more than 1 independent daily paper by Jan. 1, 2021.

As I wrote on Tuesday, the Snooze probably should be snoozing print days.

The next step closer to a formal JOA, or something like that, would be it and the StartleGram deciding, between days other than Wednesday and Sunday, who's doing a print version and who's not, since they have a certain amount of distribution overlap beyond Dallas and Tarrant counties and the inner ring of suburbs.

McClatchy tightens coronavirus paywalls back up

I totally agree that "move the ball forward" reporting, not breaking news, on coronavirus stuff, should remain paywalled. I've already said so on Twitter, using 9/11 as an analogy.

Per Stewart Brand's "Information wants to be free," which he was apparently using in the "gratis" sense, not "libre," newspapers who put too much out there for free aren't recruiting new subscribers at all; they're just increasing the number of drive-by readers and the likelihood they remain drive-by.

Other papers will have to make similar choices; some already are.

That said, material about halfway through this Nieman Lab piece reflects what I've said for years. Per the mindset behind Brand, and how long it's been out there, many people today simply aren't going to pay.

A former Denver Post and Media Snooze honcho agrees with me, in a Poynter piece. And, his reasoning is the same.

McClatchy going bankrupt; new owners look stink

The expected has happened.

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

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

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

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

What a shame.

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

The heartless mainstream media continues to filet itself

The Miami Herald lays you off. After a bait-and-switch sending your job to India.

Then, it wants you to blog about it, and about how you’re going to survive without full-time income! (Scroll down to the June 22 post, or go directly there.

And, this is McClatchy.

Outside its more thorough, non Bush-shitted coverage of Iraq, it shows again it is Just.Another.Newspaper.

McClatchy — just another newspaper company

Forget their in-depth, unbiased Iraq coverage. When outsourcing jobs to India is he least problematic of your newspaper job downsizing actions, you’re just another big conservative newspaper company at bottom line.