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. 

More critical thinking, Corey Hutchins, on Colorado new media?

Especially about a hasbara-lying Zionist sack of shit? 

I have followed Hutchins' Substack, Inside the News in Colorado, for about three years. I came across it when noticing all the Berliner-like newspapers on the west side of the Rockies on the I-70 corridor out to the Western Slope, and learned more via him.

Anyway, he's fairly solid fairly often, but sometimes a bit of a miss.

Take his Aug. 8 issue, Five New Colorado Niche Publications. One of them is "The Shomer," on Beehiv. Purports to hunt out antisemitism, but the "about" makes it pretty clear that David Flomberg deliberately swings a big butterfly net to catch anti-Zionism in his antisemitic net.

Flomberg first denies that Israel is committing genocide. And, while he doesn't repeat the mass rape allegations against Hamas (why not?) he does overblow other issues related to Oct. 7, 2023. He of course doesn't tell you that the government of Israel helped create Hamas. 

He DOES, and did at his previous stop, the Colorado Times Reporter, in his last piece, repeat Eretz Israel bullshit:

“Anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism!” they [liberals, versus traditional right-wing antisemites] proclaim loudly and proudly, reminding everyone within earshot how many Jewish friends they have who “also” hate the State of Israel, just like they do! “We denounce antisemitism in all its forms!” they’ll remind us in the same breath as they educate us on why Jews have no right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

There you are. 

And correct the strikethrough above. In a previous piece at the CTR, he repeats the mass rape bullshit too, from August 2025, after they'd been refuted:

I had a close friend, a woman who had been the victim of sexual violence on multiple occasions. She’s a fierce and outspoken feminist who I admired for her courage and willingness to share her personal stories. And yet, when there was a tidal wave of propaganda flooding social media denying the accounts of women who came forward after the attack, she didn’t bat an eye. She rushed to defend Hamas, embracing the lies; she demand I personally provide her with video evidence of these “so-called rapes.” I was stunned. And it was far from an anomalous experience. It took nearly two years for the United Nations to acknowledge sexual violence was wielded in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and has been inflicted on many hostages since. And in that time, the prevailing sentiment I witnessed in the pro-Palestine movement and its associated Leftist spaces was: “Believe all women. Unless they’re Jews.”

Lying sack of shit. Indeed, just two months after he wrote that piece, Mondoweiss demolished the claims behind it, including the UN work. Indeed, just TWO MONTHS after the Hamas insurgency, Mondoweiss said there was no evidence for this claim.

Sadly, per his editorial tagline there:

David Flomberg is a 7-Time Society of Professional Journalists Award Winner for his editorial and feature writing over the 20+ years he’s been covering Colorado and beyond. His credits include Yellow Scene Magazine, Westword, Boulder Weekly, Downbeat Jazz Magazine, and the Rocky Mountain News, where he was a columnist for the final 7 years of its run.

He has a journalism history and presumably people willing to not research the facts. 

This spring in the CTR, he had a gaslighting definition, full column version of Zionism and anti-Zionism. While he doesn't engage in pseudo-etymology about the name "Palestinian" in that piece, he does use other Zionist tropes about shoving them to the back of the bus.

Here, he claims anti-Zionists try to impose collective guilt on all Jews for actions of the state of Israel. Bullshit in two ways. First, that's what Israel does with Palestinians, so it's projectionism. Section, I certainly don't. And anti-Zionist Jews, nowhere mentioned by him, certainly don't. 

Scratch that, too, as he does mention them in another piece, complete with more gaslighting and strawmanning:

[I]t’s further exacerbated by Jews who are all-too willing to tokenize themselves as “anti-Zionist” and then are trotted out by pro-Palestinian organizations as a “gotcha!” in their anti-Zionism campaigns. And while the numbers of these self-tokenizing Jews are a fraction of the world’s Jewish population, they are highly visible, distorting the perception of uneducated onlookers and making anti-Zionists feel as though their position must be valid because some Jews support it.

Ye fucking gads. "Tokenize" is of course "othering."

Elsewhere, he accuses Palestinians of culturally appropriating the sudra into the keffiyeh. Actually, per Wiki's piece on it, the keffiyeh only largely replaced the fez in the 20th century. As for the sudra itself? Wiki reminds us that the name comes from the Koine Greek "σουδάριον" which in turn comes from the classical Latin "sūdārium." Oops. It adds that the Mishnaic and early-Talmudic era sudra was not worn the same way as a keffiyah, and also that headdresses are attested in the greater Middle East as far back as 2600 BCE. I await Flonberg claiming modern Iraq, as successor to ancient Babylon, is actually part of Eretz Israel.

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.

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?

If you publish seemingly AI-driven gambling slop, you're not a newspaper

 Judd Legum doesn't directly say that, but, at least with the stable of Advance "products," I am ready to make that call myself, based off his story. Gambling slop, prediction markets slop and more.

That's only the tip of the iceberg. A "product affiliate" disclosure, like the ones for, say, outdoor gear websites, that say, "if you buy this product via this link, we may receive a commission," show what's up:

Advance Local’s Executive Director for Communications, Christine deWit, said that the company considered everyone who produced this gambling-related content a journalist. 

DeWit also said that Advance Local disclosed how it was compensated for promoting the promo codes. At the very bottom of these articles, in small print, is a disclosure: “If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation.” 

The history of the program reveals more details of how the scheme works. Initially, Advance Local outsourced the production of this content to third parties. A March 2024 news release by Catena Media discloses that the company “published content in collaboration with media partners including Advance Local, owner of NJ.com and other news websites.” Catena Media describes itself as an “affiliate marketing specialist.”

Oy. 

Even worse than the AP partnering with Taboola. 

Judd says that Catena is basically buying Advance newspapers', or ex-newspapers', past history:

Crucially, Catena Media says it attracts players to gambling sites by “leveraging the visibility we gain from… high rankings on popular search engines.” This is why Advance Local is such an attractive partner for this kind of operation. Publications like The Oregonian and The Cleveland Plain Dealer rank very highly in search results because of the authority they have established through decades of producing high-quality journalism. These articles leverage that authority, and high placement in search engines, to attract new bettors.

Sounds about right. 

That said, is Advance the tip of the iceberg in other ways? It was early to "pivot to digital," and to use that to union-bust. USA Yesterday/Craphouse and its ilk surely are eyeballing something like this. 

Once again, WHAT is up with Hearst's hiring process?

 Consider this a second payment on a piece of mine 3.5 years ago about looking at the assistant managing editor's position in Beaumont, Texas. I said then that Hearst's hiring process was worse than Gannett's.

OK, now to the current scenario.

Six weeks ago, while I was on vacation, a Hearst recruiter tagged me on LinkedIn. Position? Managing editor in Midland, Texas. Presumably she had seen that I worked long ago at Midland's twin city, Odessa, for the Odessa American. This was before Freedom's post-Chapter 11 breakup into multiple smaller entities.

I'm not from Odessa. I had never before worked for Freedom. Not enamored of the pre-breakup company. That said, its libertarianism in politics on the editorial page was social, not just government regulatory and fiscal.

Anyway, the disclaimer above is to note that back then, I, along with longer-term staffers, thought the OA was superior to the Midland Reporter Telegram, and with evidence. More than once, the MRT asked for OA editorial bailout on a story that was on Midland's half of the dividing line, though not in Midland itself. Both were seven-day print dailies back then; hold on to that.

(For a totally non-partisan background, the OA, and NOT the MRT, won a Pulitzer for "Baby Jessica" coverage, on photography, even though the well she was trapped in was in Midland.) 

With this background, I decided to agree to start the process anyway. Culturally, politically and sociologically, Midland is definitely not my cup of tea. But, it would have been a big pay raise. And, although not truly "West," would have gotten me enough further west to be worth it that way. I could have toughed it out three years and dealt with the future after that. 

Anyway, I was interviewed for the first round this time by someone directly at Hearst papers, not a person from Local Edge, in 2022 at least, a separate HR division for all Hearst properties, per the link.

OK, the usual questions both ways, and comments both ways. I said I was plenty familiar with Wilks and Dunn, as well as the oil patch. Per the above, I asked if there was any cooperation with the OA.

"We consider them a rival," said person said.

I later checked the annual Texas Press Association yearbook. Fifteen years ago, the OA was ahead in circulation. A decade ago, it was still in hailing distance. Today, it's one-quarter of the MRT. Yikes! (On the print side, MRT is now a five-day daily, while OA is a semiweekly. Yikes!) That said, TPA and Wiki don't 

OK, near the end, I ask about the interview process. I think he said nine or 10 rounds. I know he said at least six or seven, itself too many for a position at this level.

To me, that bespoke two things, which aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. You either have bureaucracy trying to justify itself, or you else have people scared of making bad hires, which in turn means they've likely made recent bad hires.

I am told the second interview will be in a couple of days. Before it happens, said recruiter sends me one of these "Predictive Index" bullshit items, which, when I get them, I've taken to deliberately Poe-ing them on answers. I didn't do it until after the second interview, a few days after.

Then comes "an invitation to officially apply." Did not address that immediately, either. I figured I'd wait until after not just the second, but the third interview if there were going to be six or seven, let alone nine or more.

There has been no third interview, not even after I completed the predictive index.

Let's get back to the first and second interviews.

In the second, especially, I asked more about workflow between ME and reporters, and it's "interesting." They lean into AI a fair amount. It doesn't write stories, but it does kind of frame them, especially on things like government reporting. Now, the ME can override its guesses as to what goes at the top of AP's inverted pyramid, and presumably staffers can, too.

I'm still old-school enough that that doesn't totally enamor me. Anyway, this is loaded into a system. The ME makes changes. Presumably they tell the staffer to look at the changes, and the "why" is explained, or else the staffer is flagged. But at that point, it's pretty much nonlocal. The pagination hub right then gets the edited version of the story. Eventually, they get the budget for A1 and inside, B1 and inside, etc.

Sports? It's Midland, home of Midland Lee, archrival (or they were at one time) of Odessa Permian. Friday night lights. Etc.

Second interviewer said sports interest is not high.

Figured out why.

They currently print IN MEXICO.

Used to print with Gannett — I thought he said the Valley, but teh Google said Lubbock — but when that printing plant closed, they hopped the Rio Grande. 

I'll tackle this part more in a separate piece, as that's still Gannett printing, in Juarez.

Anyway, there's basically a three-day time lag between when news and sports are sent to the pagination hub, then the printing press, and a print product comes to Midland.

SO, Friday night lights is Tuesday or Wednesday in print.

Given Max Preps, especially if they aggressively market themselves on the photo side, or even more if there's a third party "Basin Sports" website or something (hold on to that thought and a related one), well, no shit Sherlock, you're not going to have high interest.  

OK, pick up the thought.

First interviewer said there's no sports editor, just two reporters. AND, he indicated that he thought the new ME needed to justify having two sports reporters, even.

Well, definitely no shit Sherlock on second guy and why nobody is interested in Midland Lee coverage. It's late, outdated, maybe even in web version, it's outdated, with limited art.

OK, pick the thought up again. Everybody shoots their own on photos, both sports and news, and there's no photo editor to even help out, or to edit product.

So, if it's not one of the Midland public high schools? Submitting info and photos is the only way you get in the MRT, print or online. Back to Max. If they have good and aggressive local reporters, let alone if there's a "Basin Sports," nobody in Crane is reading your ass. Ditto for news; you're not sending a reporter there and if the city of Crane or Crane ISD doesn't have a live video stream, you're not writing.

Anyway, I'm good, Hearst. I semi-fooled myself the second time around. I'll do my best to avoid that happening again. 

Wrong move by NOTUS on trying to be the new WaPost

The New York Times reports that NOTUS, the political news site, kind of like a junior Politico, and in fact started by Politico's founder, plans to add more general news, and also sports, in June under an expansion.

From what I found before the paywall dropped:

NOTUS, a Washington political news website with ambitious plans to fill a void it says was left by deep cuts at The Washington Post, will be renamed The Star and relaunch in the first week of June, the editor in chief, Tim Grieve, said on Thursday. 

NOTUS started in 2023 as a publication tied to the Allbritton Journalism Institute, a nonprofit that trains young political journalists. Its name stands for News of the United States, a play on the nickname for the President of the United States. It was created with a $20 million grant from Robert Allbritton, the billionaire co-founder of Politico.

Yes, the Post had some kewl sportswriters, but sports is a mug's game. Newspapers of any size have ditched high school and even college sports reporting long ago. The nearest newspaper to me of any size, the Denton Wrecked Chronic, does basically nothing on University of North Texas coverage, and did fairly little pre-COVID. In a high school football preview, with Denton itself having two large high schools and the county several smaller ones, they had a 12-page broadsheet one post-COVID year, in which ads must have been sold as a package. Some car dealer had a 6x2 or something like that, bottom strip ad on every page but the cover.

My pair of weeklies, in conjunction with one other? Still does a 48-page, tab, so 24-page broadsheet equivalent, football preview every year that runs about 40 percent ads. 

That said, the Slimes is a month behind the curve. Semafor covered this in mid-March. So, too, did Nieman Lab, which noted that Albritton backed the flop TBD, which tried to cover DC suburbs several years ago. Nieman also reminds us that dad Joe

Albritton himself is a media mogul with a less-than-saintly earlier life history. Expanding NOTUS, even more than the founding of Politico, may be a move at greenwashing. Open Secrets has no campaign donation information on him; it does note his dad, Joe, gave money to Texas ConservaDem Ken Bentsen, GOP Congresscritter Mike Schneider, who doesn't even have a Wiki page, and twice to the RNC.

No more Las Vegas Sun

At least not in print. 

A federal court last week officially killed the decades-old JOA it has with the Review-Journal, the paper of Adelson Zionism, John Ralston's often-bullshitting political takes and more.

Why?

Because a US District Attorney forgot to officially sign the JOA. No, really.

Here's the details:

The now-rare joint operating agreement required the Sun to be printed as a daily insert in the Review-Journal, the state’s largest newspaper. Both companies remained editorially independent with separate newsrooms and websites. 

A lower court found the agreement was unenforceable because a 2005 update was never signed by the U.S. attorney general, and in February the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Sun’s appeal.

Several thoughts.

First, was that "forget" or was that, "nah, not signing"?

Second, how did the Sun not notice that at the time?

Third, will the Sun maybe actually be better off?

Fourth, without the Sun inside, will the Review-Journal maybe be worse off? Their between-the-lines cackling may not hold up. 

Mutually passing on Community Impact

 I got told last week I didn't make the cut for an editor position at a new outpost.

They claim that I didn't have quite the specific experience they wanted in some ways. Yeah, it's been several years since I've managed one or more staff writers.

But I have.

The initial interview was called a Google Phone screen. I took that as meaning a telephone interview.

I was surprised to see a link, that was supposed to be video. I pleaded tech difficulties (true, as my office computer doesn't have a video camera built in the monitor, and my Microslob-backbone laptop doesn't want to fire up its video half the time, and don't get me started on the Mac laptop I bought on eBay), and they interviewed me anyway.

Made the cut. They sent me a writing and editing test. Did fine.

Then, second interview, which was video and I was ready.

Maybe the lighting at home was too diminished for them. Maybe they thought that was part of me trying to mellow out being older, too, which might have surprised them. Nothing I can prove, but ....

That said, I'd forgotten about CI's "pay to play" angle and other things, until Googling after the first interview. How they're doing in places like Plano, where Local Profile may be better in some ways? I don't know? How either one of those does vs "traditional" media when they don't cover crime, or in-depth politics, I don't know.

There's also the issue of no opinion items. No editorials, no op-eds, etc. I didn't realize that; I had forgotten the pay-to-play, or buy a bigger ad, get a bigger story, angle, but teh Google refreshed me.

But, I didn't know at all about the no opinion angle. 

Anyway, per the above? Age discrimination is still the most insidious major version of employment discrimination in the US, and abroad in the modern world, too. It may not be the worst, as in, versus racial discrimination for sure, but it's the most insidious. 

Bild, Die Welt, Politico owner to buy British Telegraph

 Axel Springer, the German publishing giant, is buying the semi-carcass of one of Britain's top publishers. And, yes, it bought Politico a year or two ago and is a behemoth in German journalism.

The Telegraph has often been called the "Torygraph" and is considered "Eurosceptic," but it's not populist wingnut trash like the Daily Mail, which had been attempting to buy the paper itself.

Axel Springer head Mathias Döpfner says he wants to expand its reach into the US. Of course, the Daily Mail and its populist wingnut trash have long had a presence here. Building off ownership of Politico, he has an entree to challenge The Guardian's presence here.

Why are you "holding" the print version of your weekly newspaper?

 I am writing from Texas. A nearby newspaper, owned by a friend, who's also a journalism/mass communications prof.

This last Tuesday was Texas primary election day. Tuesday is his press day, and mine as well. 

Our press normally likes our newspapers at 5 p.m. or so.

The only statewide race in real doubt was the Democratic Senate primary. I think we were pretty sure the Republican Senate primary was going to a runoff, AG, Comptroller and RRC were going to runoffs, Gov and Lite Gov were blowouts, and that Dems would likely have a runoff for AG as well. 

There was one closely contested county commissioner race in his county. A district judge and the county clerk were also contested, but not closely. 

And, you do have a website. 

Plus, we all know that in a county of any size, county elections officials will post the results quickly on the county's website. 

I would have printed at normal time.