Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining when you cut pages

About six weeks ago, I noted here that the Gainesville (non-Daily, change your masthead) Register was smarter than the Denton Record-Chronicle by ditching running daily comics, puzzles, advice columns, etc. for three of the six non-Sunday days each week in its two print editions.

Well, now, on to that headline.

In a house editorial in its June 16 issue, the paper says "we miss the comics, too."

Fine.

Then, we get a line of PR bullshit that I assume is CNHI-wide. (Teh Google confirms.)

They said getting rid of them meant more local news.

Bullshit.

What it means is that it LOOKS like more local news because the same amount of local news is part of a newspaper with two fewer pages.

On the front page of the Register, in the same issue, for example? A groundbreaking for a NEW SIDEWALK, a Gainesville City Council story about ongoing discussion of review of the city charter and possible amendments, and ...

A Texas Tribune story about how the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was in the process of setting standards for uses of fracking wastewater. Given that there's no fracking done in the moderate amount of oil and gas drilling in the area, that's irrelevant. They had a state Extension Service story about summer foods, on an inside page, that would have been more appropriate up front.

Oh, other than Reader's Choice "vote for us" ads, the normal almost-nothing on local ads. And, most of those were only 2x3. One one-quarter page, a back page of all 2x3 and that was it. 

Gainesville wins third for doing nothing

 At TPA's Better Newspaper Contest, the Register took third for sports coverage, primarily due to Jason Campbell's photos about Muenster's football title.

I had as many or more photos, plus more in-depth coverage, and coverage of other sports the Register basically does nothing about, and I didn't even place.

(It's not made easier by the fact that GV probably only had 4-5 newspapers in its circ class even enter.) 

SMH. 

So who's telling the journalistic truth about Palestinian journalists?

Mondoweiss, the Dissident and others have excoriated Committee to Protect Journalists for removing certain Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza from their list of journalists.

CPJ has responded in a Twitter thread. 

Before I get into the details, two notes.

One, not all Palestinian journalists have been removed by CPJ. Only those who were affiliated, officially, with Hamas or Palestinian Jihad, and actually in combat, it says in that thread.

Two, has CPJ removed any Israeli journalists in the past? It says it has removed three when they were "not on assignment" when killed. No further information provided.

Third? Wiki's page on CPJ notes controversy a couple of years ago when it killed its Global Impunity Index. On the other hand? A link there from Arab News notes that CPJ has previously cited international organizations that call what's happening in Gaza a genocide? 

So, it's complicated.

Would the allegations have been made with a different executive director than the Jewish Jodie Ginsburg? I don't know. There are a few people with Jewish-appearing names on its board, but plenty without. And, Dave Marash, one of its advisors, once worked for Al-Jazeera English, albeit while leaving two years later, but then defending it again three years after that.

Otherwise, you have a modest set of board members of advisors outside the Anglosphere. Julie Owono, from Cameroon and France, is executive of Internet without Borders. On the other hand, she's been on Meta's, aka Facebook's, Oversight Board since it was created in 2020 and so should be seen as at least potentially a Western sellout. Otherwise, there's Phil Chetwynd, news director of Agence-France Press and himself British, and Italian national Alessandra Galloni of Reuters, the board has zero presence outside the Anglosphere, and about zero presence outside of traditional-ish media outlets.

The issue is complicated, in other words.

That said, the CPJ has opened the door for Zionist liars to claim that Israel doesn't kill journalists. I reminded them of Shireen Abu Akleh. 

And that that said, in relation to that, CPJ has opened the door for Israel to redouble its "shoot first, ask questions later" about Palestinian journalists. The Mondoweiss piece notes that basically EVERY Israeli journalist has had IDF service. The rare exception, if there is one, would be an ultra-Orthodox Jew who dodged the draft. 

Life is full of shades of gray. This is one of them. I oppose the genocide in Gaza and note that CPJ has called it out. I wish they had provided more information about the three Israeli journalists and why they were removed; it might have quieted some critics. But, CPJ appears to be being consistent, setting aside concerns about the Global Impunity Index.

The Denton Record Chronicle is now officially worse than the Gainesville Register

At least on print editorial management.

The Register, about six weeks ago, finally junked the idea of running three days worth of comics and other lifestyles stuff in each of its two semiweekly issues. Instead, it cut down to one page of puzzles and lifestyle stuff while keeping comics on its website.

That's not perfect, as people who really want comics, and beyond the ones you may have there (the print edition version in the past was slim) can find various free or paid online sites, but it's a good start.

The DRC, which cut fairly quickly through all the stages from seven-day daily down to weekly, not semiweekly, in the year of COVID, still isn't there.

I looked at an issue recently in a library, after having not peeked in months.

The ridiculousness is actually worse.

They are still running comics and all. But? NOT six days. BUT, not one or two days of non-comics lifestyles either.

Instead, it's four days a week, at least in the issue I looked at, even though there are six days outside of Sunday in the seven-day print week and outside of color Sunday comics in the former seven-day print world.

Ad hole still sucks.

Throw out four-plus pages of Readers' Choice / Best Of tout ads, which surely are sold to businesses on a discount rate, unless there's a bunch of dumb Denton businesses there. (Some online-only publication, here's your chance to cut in, by the way.)

Throwing them out, and the total page count with that? Twenty pages.

Of that? Five pages is ad hole. Of THAT? Three pages is classy. You could be better on classy. You should be better on ROP.

Of course, if I toss four pages of comics et al, if I cut to two, you're 5/18, which is 27.5 percent instead of 25. Or toss comics entirely and you're 5/16, which is a bit over 30 percent.

Or if we count your Readers' Choice at 50 percent, but the space at 100 percent, you're 7/24, which is back under 30 percent even with the goose of Readers' Choice. 

And, while you're not asking for my advice? While I'm here, get rid of the daily e-edition. The Register did that too. Unless you're the Arkansas Democrat handing out iPads to e-reader subscribers and otherwise getting aggressive in promoting it, it's a waste of time. 

Scott Pelley keeps speaking out while Lesley Stahl, other vets, staying for now

Here's Pelley talking to the NYT. Let's start with the Nick Bilton hiring and his take.

Nick Bilton wrote an email to the staff, introducing himself. And it was so insulting. He told us that it wasn’t 1968 anymore, and he helpfully noted that gasoline doesn’t cost 32 cents anymore, suggested that we had all been frozen in amber in 1968 when the program first went on the air, and that nothing had improved. He said in his email that it was “strange” that “60 Minutes” is only on the air at 7 o’clock Eastern time on Sunday once a week, when we’ve been on the air 24-7 globally, online, for well over a decade. It betrayed the fact that Nick Bilton didn’t know anything about us, didn’t know anything about our culture, and yet was being imposed on us as our new leader.

Well, there you go. 

Next, like a Trump-fired federal government employee, on the video, he talks about peers who are still "trapped." 

As for the speaking out, and why him? This:

First of all, our entire senior staff had been wiped out. They’re not there. I looked around the room. I’m the only correspondent there, which surprised me very much. I learned that my colleagues were out shooting stories, as they should be in the month of June, but I’m the only correspondent. And I looked at my friends and colleagues in the room and realized I was the senior person.

Summarized it. 

He notes also the insensitivity of many staffers there being fired right after the Emmys and right before Bilton was hired. He notes the lack of experience of Bilton. 

He notes it was like losing "family." As he starts tearing up:

It was the wholesale nature of it. Senior staff wiped out after a triumphal year. One of the things Nick Bilton said in that ill-fated email to the staff was that he was excited — I’m paraphrasing here — to tell the staff about the new crop of correspondents. And when I saw that, I thought, “They’re going to fire all of us, eventually.” So that’s why I use these admittedly, for a journalist, hyperbolic terms. They capture the scale of what happened.

Again, nails it. 

More, from the video: 

When someone wipes out — murders — a large number of your family members, people are hurt and shocked and in disbelief and just desperate for some explaination.

Ouch.

I think that's what pissed him off above all. The lack of explanation. Pelley went on to refute Bari Weiss on this. 

There still has been none.

None as in no explanation. 

== 

The second half of the header? This, from Deadline.

The three remaining fill-time correspondents on 60 Minutes — Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim — said Friday that they will remain with the show. 

“We feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement of the existing power structure,” they wrote in a joint memo on Friday. “That is simply categorically not the case. Here’s why we are staying: We don’t want to see 60 Minutes die.”

OK.

Isn't "60 Minutes" as you previously knew it already dead?  And, if you're actually believing what Nick Bilton is promising, I have beachfront property in North Dakota for sale.

==

As for calls by Pelley for CBS or its Paramount parent to fire Weiss? Not happening and Scott knows.

That said, beyond the ideological agenda she's foisting on the network's news? She has nowhere to go.

She's not going to peel off significant numbers of MAGAts from Fox, and the post-MAGAts to the right — Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, etc —are already lost over the strident Zionism. I don't know about the never-full-MAGA types like Dan Crenshaw, where he's at on Israel and Gaza, but surely not totally in Weiss' ballpark at a minimum. 

WHAT is up with Hearst's transnational outsourcing? And Gannett's?

 In a previous post, I talked about interviewing for Hearst's job as ME at its Midland, Texas paper.

Either the first or second interviewer mentioned they currently print in Mexico, and I'm tackling that in more detail.

I didn't think to ask him about printing in El Paso with the Times. Duck Duck Go's search says its been printed in Juarez for five years now.

OK, Lubbock? 

ALL of Gannett's West Texas papers — Lubbock, Amarillo, Wichita Falls, San Angelo and Abilene as well as El Paso, are now in Juarez.

Is Midland there? Well, at this point, Duck Duck Go's AI had a big old fail versus a humanoid from Hearst. It claims the MRT is still local.

Google actually did better. It said the MRT went to Lubbock in 2018. So, it's now in Juarez.

Question for Hearst: Since you now own the Snooze, which is still printed in the Metromess, have you thought of moving? (Shudder the thought, but would Hearst send the Snooze down to Houston? Doubly shudder the thought, but would Hearst send it to Juarez?)

Second question: How much are you saving? Ditto for Gannett? Since Hearst is privately traded, this is hard to know.

Third, without stereotyping, this IS Juarez. Even if you fly finished papers to your various sites, both Hearst and Gannett, it still takes trucks to get to the airport, whether that in Juarez or that in El Paso. Have you worried, or thought in any way, about hijackings? (I presume Hearst's other West Texas offings — Canyon, Plainview, Muleshoe — are also printed in Juarez.)

Fourth, in terms of staff trust, which is in the crapper for sure at Craphouse, the tail that wags the dog of Gannett, I'm sorry, "USA Today Co.," do you even care what this does to morale or perceptions of integrity? In a sense, that's even more true for Hearst, which is privately owned and not under the thumb of vulture capitalism debt. 

Sidebar: Neither Google nor DDG would tell me where the OA is printed. 

On Hearst's overall profitability? Wiki notes that it long ago got a 20 percent stake in Red Satan ESPN and still holds that, and that for the overall company, beyond newspapers and mags, this is probably a major income source. 

In addition, as I already thought in the back of my mind six years ago, when my current newspapers' owner moved from a local printing plant to one he owned, but 200 miles away — or even before that, as I pondered when I first realized that here in Texas, Jim Moser was becoming more and more the king of  long-distance printing ...

What happens when continually high gas prices kneecap you? Like COVID, on the flip side of 99 cent gasoline to 3.99 gasoline? (I'm including diesel and jet fuel.)

Who knows how long Trump will refuse to admit he fucked up (and that he lied about negotiations) on the Iran war? 

The Associated Press is self-crushing it

 Crushing it, is of course, good.

Self-crushing it, if you understand that I mean you're crushing yourself, not the field, is not good.

And, so it is with the Associated Press,

I guess the partnership with Taboola (NINE years ago!) wasn't enough. I guess the selling us shit of e-commerce wasn't enough. I guess whistling in the dark when Gannett, now USA Yesterday, and McLatchKey, said they were junking most AP services, wasn't enough. 

Five weeks after offering buyouts to 120 or so staffers, and reportedly getting a yes on half those offers, the AP laid off 20 more last week. 

The AP, taking a page from Hucksterman at Blue Satan a decade or more ago, says it's pivoting to video journalism. 

The second story claims:

AP customers now are dominated by broadcast, digital and technology companies. Kristin Heitmann, senior vice president and chief revenue officer, said last month that the company had seen a 200% growth in revenue from technology companies over the same period.

Really? Didn't you admit in the past, when you tried to pretend away Gannett and McLatchKey, that you weren't really that dependent on newspapers, only to have that prove not to be the case globally?