Circulation "fraud" by Hearst?

 I put the "fraud" in scare quotes because:

First, even in the old Audit Bureau of Circulation days, newspapers cheated and;

Second, annual postal statements aren't notified and have only a requirement to certify that, if you're not a free throw, and are on a second class not third class permit, at least 50 percent of your copies have some charge.

With that said ...

I have heard, secondhand, that Hearst is inserting print copies of its weekly Jasper (Texas) News-Boy in the Beaumont Enterprise and using Beaumont's circ to count for Jasper's.

I do know Jasper does not have a separate website now and instead rolls to a webpage on the Enterprise. 

I'm surprised Cox didn't think about this with Pflugerville and other regional outposts off the Austin Stateless; I do know it did what Hearst did and folded it, Round Rock and Bastrop's websites, and social media sites, into the Stateless even before selling to Craphouse. Maybe they WERE doing this as well. Since Hearst now owns the Stateless, it would have gotten the idea from there.

Plus ça change? 

In any case, since Chris Tomlinson is no longer on Shitter, I don't have to worry about him running flak for Hearst any more. (Surprisingly, the person who told me this didn't know Hearst had bought the Snooze.) 

Robert Wilonsky is back in the journalism saddle

 I knew he had been battling kidney cancer, but didn't realize he had recovered so well as to have returned to the Snooze a full year ago. The Texas Observer reports, as of mid-June.

Personally, I wish he were back at the Dallas Observer. They could surely use another older presence. 

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.