Is CNHI allergic to the words "deficit budget"?

 In its last issue for September, CNHI's Gainesville, Texas, outlet, reported that the city of Gainesville's city council had approved a budget for fiscal 2027 with a deficit of more than $2 million.

But, it never used the word "deficit" or the phrase "deficit budget" or "budget deficit."

No, we had a clunker like "expenditures exceeding revenues."

So, does CNHI have a style manual that prohibits talking about "deficit budgets" or similar? Yikes. How do you report on Congress and the president? 

If their local staff writer wrote that, then their regional editor has officially abandoned her if she didn't correct that, if they don't have a style manual policy. 

StartleGram less than 30 news staff, as McLatchKey's vulture capitalist Chatham swings the meataxe

 I hadn't realized that McLatchKey had done a new round of cuts company-wide at the orders of its vulture capitalist owner, Chatham Asset Management.

Dick Tofel had a piece on it, but somehow overlooked the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, aka the Startlegram, among McLatchKey papers. 

Per a wingnut vulture "newspaper" from Dallas to whom I shall not link, McClatchy laid off more than 90 unionized journalists and media workers company-wide, including Fort Worth Star-Telegram staff. The NewsGuild-CWA said the cuts represented about 30% of the McClatchy workforce it represents.

I will link to D Mag, which links to the Fort Worth union chapter's Instagram. Down to less than 30 in the newsroom, as it notes. The guild blames McLatchKey pivoting to AI.

That said, Tofel is good for snarking on the vultures, who, he notes, essentially admitted now that less is not more:

Now, McClatchy continues, “we cannot continue investing [in the sense of spending at all, rather than increasing spending] where subscriber interest does not support the investment.” In other words, it’s the readers’ fault. “We need to listen to subscribers,” they say, so they’re going to degrade the products further. The plan is to focus on “where journalism can have the greatest impact” and on what “subscribers value.”

There you are. (And, they're right; in Cowtown, they're down to less than 25K circ, maybe 20K. This year's TPA annual says the Snooze is still nearly 120K, so, it's a 5-1 circulation ratio.)

He also picks up on the union, linking to a CJR piece from early this year talking about McLatchKey and AI.

Not linked by Dick is CJR's own post-layoffs piece, which looks much more at the AI black hole, and boy, this sure looks like union-busting. That's especially because the Miami Herald, which had been taking the lead in negotiating at least minimal protections on AI and staff, got hit the hardest.

No, scratch that. 

By percentage, the Idaho Statesman, which lost 13 of 22, got crushed. That's Boise's paper, in case you wondered. How the hell do you run a paper in a city and metro that big with nine staff? 

DIck Tofel takes a semi-double wrong turn

 I usually agree with him very much, but his late August piece is doubly wrong. And, I don't want to get into an argument with him, though he may have done so with my quote-stacking.

First is his attempt to defend Stanley Druckenmuller using AI to help write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Actually, he doesn't even defend it. He just makes a fiat statement that it's OK, links to a Shit by Semafor that other people do that and that's that. That is, ultimately, a modal variant on the old ad populum fallacy, only with it being this time, "everybody's doing it" rather than "everybody believes that."

The other is the weird hangup he has about still not linking to Wikipedia as a source. That's even though he then adds that Wikipedia is often a very good source.

The first subissue is that this gives another round of ammo to people who say "But Wikipedia."

The second is that, other than his caveat, it's a fiat statement.

The reality is that Wikipedia is generally very good. I tell people who pull out the "But Wikipedia" bullshit to look at how many footnotes an entry has and what they link to. If it's got in-depth citations of reputable sources, that's the bottom line. 

He did respond to my quote-stack:

The point on op-eds isn’t that everybody does it, but that everybody expects it. And I thought I was being self-critical on Wikipedia; sorry if that wasn’t clear.

I debated about responding, and eventually did:

Got it on Wiki, and I’ll buy that. Maybe I was being too critical of you not appearing to be self-critical. Today’s Wiki is much better than 20 years ago. For people who say “but Wikipedia,” I respond, how many footnotes does it have and what are the sources they link? 

== 

On the op-eds? I’m not part of that everybody. Maybe that’s something that’s wrong with “Acela corridor” media or whatever term you prefer, or something that’s wrong with critics of such media.  

ow, if a Druckenmiller had outsourced his op-ed to a human ghostwriter, a PR person or whatever, then stamped his signature on it? I’d expect that. I still wouldn’t find it totally desirable, but I’d expect it. And, at least it would be a human being, and one paid to be an amanuensis. 

So, starting with that sense of “expect,” no, not me — I wouldn’t expect a CEO type to have AI do that. And, I’d find it even less desirable than a human amanuensis to do it. 

I guess next, we’ll have AI memoirs “from” or “by” the rich and famous. You won’t have to pay a ghostwriter, and you won’t even have to worry about whether or not you put a second name on that.

Next, we'll have the enshittification of the AI ghostwriter, I guess.  

I did add that, a la Wittgenstein, Dick and I may not be using the word "expect" in exactly the same way. 

Marlon Hanson and Focus Daily News get one last kick

 So, Focus "Daily" News, with its almost certainly fake circulation numbers back when ABC actually semi-audited those numbers, is out of business, at least on the print side? Per the bottom of its website, the last print issue was Dec. 29, 2024.

"Good old" Marlon Hanson still claims to be its publisher on his LinkedIn page. However, per this RIP for the print edition, it's clear he's gone.

The website features some JoAnne Holt, as likely a combo editor-publisher doing a glorified blog. And HER MuckRack says that among her freelance work is ...

The EPooch Times.

VERY hard pass. 

More seriously? I didn't know Marlon grew up motherless. (Contra the RIP piece, if one of your parents is alive, especially if you're still living with them, you're not an orphan.)

He would be more sympathetic, but as I said in my previous kick to the paper, in early 2024, he was lying for sure if he claimed to still have 15K circulation. 

As for her? The news or "news" that's posted there is irregular, so this is filed under newspaper closings. 

Is there a constitutional case on Trump's Truth Social posts sale?

 I'm talking about Trump selling faster access to his dementia-laced addled comments.

The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation claim their is, in a new suit. Here's their case: 

The Intercept and the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation alleged that the Truth Social offering runs afoul of the First Amendment's guarantee of equal public access to the president's statements and also violates the Fifth Amendment by granting preferential access for "unreasonable sums." The suit asks a federal court in New York to block the president from posting official government information exclusively on Truth Social.

Let's look at both, starting with the Fifth Amendment angle, because I pulled it up first. We normally think about "Pleading the Fifth," but the amendment has more than that, being kind of a grab-bag in a sense. Here it is; note the end:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

OK.

Is it the second-last clause, the due-process clause, or the private property clause, that's being cited?

If the last clause had reverse wording, the case would be a slam dunk. But it doesn't.

Beyond that, if the last clause is the claim, the litigants shut themselves in the foot, IMO, with the "unreasonable sums" claim. They're essentially saying they WOULD pay, but only if "reasonable."

OK, now the famous First:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The only way I see even a possible shot here is if Trump charges some media more than others for the same expedited speed, or grants that to some outlets for free. 

Otherwise, like lawsuits over cutoffs in Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding (ironic because my story link is from NPR) I see no, NO constitutional angle at play. 

NM News bails out Roswell Daily News

Here's the story. NM News, also styled CTRL+P (obviously a PC guy) by its owner and founder, which is best known by me for New Mexico Political Report, decided to "rescue" it.

First, it's no longer daily, in print. 

Second, NM News is not the only people to fellate the NOT A UFO story. Publishers Auxiliary did so a year ago and got called out by me. 

Here's the details.

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.

And, I wasn't impressed with the Beck daughter's takeover, as also noted in the post from which the above is quoted.

Anyway, here's what I told Pat Davis:

It's bad enough that the Daily Record has peddled that BS with its "on the one hand, then on the other hand" comments on its "about" page. 

It's worse that it has a "merch" page part of the company's website, and that most of the merch being sold is company owned. I'm unaware of the RDN selling any coffee mugs that say "Project Mogul" on them. 

Beyond Project Mogul, I don't think Mack Brazel ever actually called what he claimed had crashed a "flying saucer," either. 

As for the paper, really? The Oily Harvey Yates (his actual name) didn't buy it, and/or isn't starting a Roswell branch of the Artesia paper? 

Best of luck, but seriously, for journalistic integrity, you all need to spin off the merch sales, and also clean up the about page.

Yep, a bushel basket of snark. But also a bushel basket of seriousness.

Craphouse/Gannett/USA Today hop in bed with Palantir?

Gee, what could go wrong with this? Plenty, starting with the "why" of the opening graf:

USA Today Co., the largest newspaper chain in the country, announced Thursday that it is partnering with technology company Palantir to better monetize its customer data.

Assuming Craphouse has little to no restrictions on what Palantir can and will do with that data, including using it outside of the bounds of the deal, shit.

Now, supposedly, all data remains Craphouse's:

[CEO Mike] Reed said that though the company will use Palantir’s tools on its data, the data will remain the property of USA Today Co. 

“All of our data remains our data,” Reed said. “It’s our data. The actions and the intelligence that we utilize takes place on our platform. It’s our (intellectual property). It’s our outcomes.”

Not mentioned? Analytics, metadata, etc.

The story goes on to note that both Fox and Politico parent Axel Springer have already partnered with Palantir. More reason to read them less, too. 

Per the bottom of the piece, it's a conscious decision to, in our AI world, chase AI "clicks" that aren't even real:

The advent of AI has meant that USA Today Co. is essentially serving two audiences — human readers and the AI platforms that surface content to those readers — Reed said. 

“We recognize that we have to create and format content for humans and for machines,” Reed said. “And while we see a change in search-driven behavior, we also see entirely new ways to license, distribute, and monetize the trusted content we produce every day.”

I've long said that "digital dimes" turned into "mobile nickels" with smartphones. To continue the alliteration, I guess it's now "Palantir pennies" coming up.