Guardian ixnays fossil fuel ads

The British newspaper company says it will no longer accept ads from fossil fuel companies. However, as of this time, it will still accept ads for products that are major fossil fuel users, ie, CARS!

From the newspaper side, I understand still taking car ads, or travel ones. They're big sellers. Now, the idea that this will entice other advertisers? I doubt it. The Guardian is not the British equivalent of The Nation or something.

Nieman Lab comments more on both the policy and the paper's move to revamp its news language about climate issues. And on how the NYT (and presumably many other papers) talk "firewall" when called out for still running these ads. As an editor, I know that Amy Westervelt is right — readers don't see a "firewall."

And, as long as the NYT has people like John Schwartz on the editorial side, even if ads are a declining percentage of revenue, eXXXon will be OK with running those ads.

Beyond THAT, Schwartz is no idiot, even though he's currently playing one on Twitter. He knows that papers have either killed outright or modified stories before under pressure from advertisers. Big Oil doesn't have the chops to pull that off any more, but it has in the past. Other industries, either national, or local and of concentration in a city's newspaper, have successfully pressured newspapers to kill, or at least modify, stories.

(And, although not an advertiser, let's not forget that a President of the United States successfully pressured the Times itself to hold a story on domestic spying until after the 2004 election.)

Update, Feb. 12: Beyond THAT? NYT's own in-house T Brand Studio created an oily ad for Chevron, as Westervelt discusses in detail at The Nation.

Will the Guardian's call to other newspapers to follow it, either on the no ads, or even more forceful framing in news stories, have any effect? Not as long as papers like the NYT still have reporters like John Schwartz, as I see it.

Let's remember that this crosses into the news side.

Look at the ExxonMobil Foundation and the big bucks it pours into the National Math and Science Initiative, and the publicity it gets in small-town papers, and sometimes bigger ones, for the awards it makes. Well, somehow, I doubt the initiative is training high school students to know climate science enough to refute Exxon.

So, John, want a desk editor giving you a new assignment, since you're an environment reporter? Write about that.

Buffett and BH bail on media

Well, this is interesting.

Warren Buffett has apparently realized that even he can't find cigar butts worth holding onto in the cushions of medium-sized daily papers. All BH Media plus the separately incorporated Buffalo News have been sold to Lee Enterprises. Lee also got a loan, at sweetheart terms per loans made in the newspaper world today, to complete the sale. BH had refinanced old debt of Lee's in the middle of the last decade at the same 9 percent rate.

I didn't realize that Lee had already been operating them since 2018.

And, although Buffett thinks most newspapers are toast, Dow Jones apparently does not. Lee's stock quote more than doubled on the announcement.

Here in Texas, BH had the Waco Tribune and the Bryan-College Station Eagle. Lee had no newspapers in Texas before the acquisition. It also had none in Virginia or North Carolina, where the bulk of BH's operations are. The move is big for Lee in Nebraska; it already owned the Lincoln Journal Star and several smaller papers. Adding the Omaha World-Herald locks up eastern Nebraska and also ties with Lee's holdings in Iowa.

Given the terms, and the synergy in Iowa and Nebraska, and the previous operating arrangement, it seems like a good deal for Lee, and I can understand its stock price going up — although not doubling.

As for how Wall Street sees it? BH's stock was up just slightly, meaning that the papers hadn't been seen as a big drag, mainly by being such a small percentage of the BH conglomerate.

Update: The union in Omaha is pissed, claiming it had a deal with Buffett for it to buy the paper first. I guess the fact that Buffett has a history of anti-union activity going back to Buffalo News days didn't cross their minds. I agree with the union's criticisms of Lee; I've long read Bill McClellan at the Post-Dispatch. But, Warren Buffett's a businessman, ultimately.

The deal was probably that Buffett was willing to give them some sort of shot, but somebody at Lee may have gotten wind of it. Alternate? Buffett got preliminary information on who the union had lined up and figured they would either have a lowball offer or else would need financing.

And, nobody was likely to make a better offer than Lee, for the reasons I note. Yes, it's craptacular, but some of the union's whining is just that. It is headquartered out of state, but it's not like Dubuque, Iowa, is on the far side of the moon from Omaha, either. It's NOT owned by vulture capitalists, either, and within today's relatively larger newspaper chains, is on relatively sound fiscal footing.

Well, scratch that! Per Ken Doctor, the vulture capitalists at Alden (owners of Dead Fucking Media and the engulfed carcass of Media Snooze Group) have taken about 6 percent ownership. And, it did so via the back door of two intermediaries. Did Buffett know about this possibility? Have even an inkling? If so, he definitely owes the union more explanation. (That said, while Buffett is more ethical than some business honchos, there's others that pass him. The Costco owner comes to mind.)

And tie to this, this new CJR piece about how even media companies as allegedly librul as Slate are using Trump's National Labor Relations Board interpretation and backstopping on labor law to be more and more anti-union.

Paywall openings go a group wagon-circling-jerkon the question of taking gummint money

So, longtime newspaper paywalls opponent Mathew Ingram asks the question whether taking money from the gummint, per a new state of New Jersey fund, is a necessary evil or just evil.

He gets fellow paywalls foe Jeff Jarvis as one of his five panelists discussing the issue. (I don't know the stance of the other four on paywalls.)

That said, if it is a "necessary evil" rather than just evil, have you looked at and exhausted ALL other options first?

Like, uh, paywalls?

Nope. Not mentioned.

Because Ingram and Jarvis have already proven they don't work. (That's sarcasm; I've written a bit here, more than six years ago, and in detail, and lots elsewhere, about my thoughts about their thoughts about paywalls.)

The idea of a community type news site, or an alt-weekly site, going even more radical and JUST and ONLY being a newspaper, with no website? Not explored at all.

Dishonest Steve Everley and the publisher, Steve Fountain, who sought him out

Another thing that I won't miss about my stint at Granite Publications is my last publisher at my last paper there.

Steve Fountain had SOME good ideas as a publisher, (and at least a few STUPID ones) and on some aspects of editing/managing editing was good, but on others?

Politically biased.

I wrote a piece about fracking earthquakes in the Timpson, Texas, area, as a follow-up to a Shelby County Commissioners' Court meeting. Here it is, or was, until ownership change and link rot. Nowhere did I say "fracking causes all earthquakes." Nor did I even say "all waste water from oil (or gas) wells is fracking waste." I did say, in the lede:

Earthquakes due to underground injection of wastewater from fracking for oil or gas production has become more problematic across Texas, including in Shelby County.

And I said that for a simple reason. Name me a well today that is NOT fracked. (A few shallow wells may not be, but if it's a major operation, or of course a re-entry, it's fracked.)

I was told by Mr. Fountain that I was editorializing. Please.

I was then told that a "Steve Everley" was a good, neutral source to use in the future.

I thought I had heard that name before, and, voila!

Steve Everley is Manager of Policy Research at American Solutions and a contributing author to To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich. Prior to joining American Solutions, Everley worked as a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Kansas and attended graduate school at the University of Southern California. 

Erm, yes, that's a "neutral source," someone writing for Townhall and calling Obama both a secularist and a socialist, when he's neither.

Specific logical flaws in Everley's thinking can be found here, in a piece he wrote opposing the Denton fracking ban.

More Dishonest Everley here in attacking Patagonia.

Now, Mr. Fountain moved to East Texas from the fracking hotbed of northern Pennsylvania. Even though he was out of the newspaper biz, I have no doubt he was not detached from the political thought biz, and had probably read Everley before up there.

His LinkedIn profile proves that. Freelance writing for the Family Policy Alliance, a religious right group, and expressly, the 501(c)(4) advocacy arm of Focus on the Family? And, press secretary to a right-wing Pennsylvania Congressional candidate? (And one who is not only a bit of a theocrat, but also a believer in the success gospel, it would seem.) Nooo, Steve Everley's name most definitely did not come out of nowhere.

Nice try, and don't ever lecture me again about "editorializing," should we meet again. In addition to that comment itself, beyond the content, it felt to me like it was expressed in a somewhat condescending way. I've heard condescension enough that I know what it is.

Beyond that, I wish I had studied this more when or before he was hired. His current return to newspapers is not his second, it seems, but his third time around.

Besides, Mr. Fountain, the government back in your previous state of Pennsylvania says fracking does cause some quakes. And, even in quakes due to wastewater injection, fracked wells produce more of it than unfracked ones; per the USGS, how much more varies from well to well. 

And, as of February, the first fracking-related quake in Pennsylvania was confirmed. And, fracking, not fracking wastewater disposal.

And as of October 2019? TEXAS' own state-established monitor admits fracking causes earthquakes. Shock me that Everley is quoted in that piece with some spin-doctoring.

And now, here in Tejas, The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas has weighed in with detail on fracking wastewater causing quakes — and pollution from fracking, including noise pollution, not just air and water pollution.

And, Texas Vox further has your number, Mr. Fountain.

AND, wastewater injection can continue to cause quakes at least seven years later.

Mr. Fountain had the right as a publisher of a newspaper, to tell me not to write further columns on that subject. Or to write one of his own. 

However, he did not have the journalistic right to claim I was editorializing when I was not.

Meanwhile, you're now in Alpine, as the hydrocarbon haze from fracking drifts closer and closer to your Big Bend area mountainous perch.

==

There's more than this, though.

Hindsight, looking back on the issues of the last few months before I was downsized, indicate to me that Mr. Fountain is a Grade A user of other people.

I think he was crunching financials at the Center paper from the time of his interviews and already eyeballing getting rid of me. Several "out of the loop" events, in hindsight, would seem to attest to that. He needed me around enough to get a sports editor hired and get us through football season. Then, I was gone. (And, after the new sports editor got the paper through basketball and other winter sports, he was gone.)

Hindsight is 20-20, and often a bitch, as well.

==

I had originally posted this about a year ago, then hauled it down for a variety of reasons. I decided it's air-dried long enough, I'm putting it back up. I'm also curious if Mr. Fountain, whose conservativism had one foot in the Big Biz and deregulation quasi-libertarian side, but the other firmly in the religious right side, has sucked it up and kisses Trump's tuchis hypocritically, or whether he had some honesty.

Who's wrong, Southern Newspapers or TPA?

Southern Newspapers continues to run an ad in the Texas Press Association's "Messenger" newsletter advertising its printing services.

Just one problem.

As Southern sold its Sulphur Springs newspaper, and I presume the printing plant with it, to Moser Community Media nine months or more ago, the ad claiming that it has printing services in Sulphur Springs is ... not true.

Knowing enough facts, vs myth, on Southern, I assume it's Southern's fault for not updating the ad, rather than TPA accidentally pulling in an old one when it's been sent a new one. If it's on a contract of any length, it will probably be running like that another year from now.

OTOH, Moser's own website hasn't been updated since before he bought the News-Telegram.

What this really shows is that "the do more with less" of the modern, cutting, newspaper chain is not only not true, it's not true at headquarters, either. But, if you're reading here, you already knew that, didn't you? Did you go vote on Glassdoor?

Top blogging of 2019

Whether it's boredom, shock at the continuing decline of newspapers or other things, 2019 was my heaviest year blogging here. As a result, most of this year's Top 10 blog posts were from 2019.

No. 1? Skepticism about the SLC Tribune becoming a nonprofit, and discussing that skepticism in detail.

No. 2? Wondering if the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, aka the StarleGram, could survive much longer without entering a JOA with the Snooze. (This was one of several advertising-related, or rather, lack of advertising-related, hot takes about the StartleGram last year.)

No. 3? Looking at the Gannett-Gatehouse, rather the Mehness (can't even think of a good bad pun) - Craphouse merger.

No. 4? Calling out wingnut lawyer Ty Clevenger, as well as several small newspapers in central Texas.

No. 5? From 2018, advising fellow print journos not to work for Wick Communications. First time I've done a by-name callout. It started with critically examining their idiocy and "work harder AND better" vulture capitalism idea of cutting the AP wire at daily pages but not cutting the page count.

No. 6? Turning a skeptical eye to  the huzzahs and handstands on the Texas Tribune's 10th anniversary.

No. 7? In the era of conspiracy theories, "deep state" buzz, etc., calling out alleged Gnu Media for some of their pretentions.

No. 8? Saluting one vulture capitalism in the journalism biz for honesty in its rapaciousness.

No. 9? Based on some longform writing, looking at just how much the lies of Facebook, Google, et al about targeted digital advertising really were lies and how many people should have known better.

No. 10? Related to No. 3, wondering if the new Craphouse was going to inflict some godawful ginormous programmatic ad nightmare on us.