Don't blindly romanticize the dying community newspaper

Great piece, to just that critical end, by Pro Publica.

This:

As they vanish, local newspapers are taking on a halo of everything that used to be good about America. They’ve come to symbolize not just halcyon days of neighborly virtues — imagine “It’s a Wonderful Life” if Jimmy Stewart played the editor of the Bedford Falls paper — but the very “bedrock of American democracy.”

Is indeed how the remnant of readership of many newspapers remembers the "golden days" of the print media world.

That remnant, as we all know, is itself older to much older, and Whiter to much Whiter, than the national population.

Daniel Golden, who worked for the Springfield (Massachusetts) Daily News and its post-merger renamed successor for more than 40 years, notes the reality was different, often far different.

Riffing on the situtation described at the top of the story, where the town of Ware was debating in government meeting whether or not to privatize the city's water and sewer system, he goes back to around the time he started in Springfield:

The same focus that inundated readers with information about every committee meeting, crime and high school football game fostered a certain coziness with the area’s power players. Boosterism and conflicts of interest occasionally interfered with telling the full story. It’s possible we would have done a searching examination of a plan to privatize Ware’s water system — unless we risked offending a powerful local figure or business interest.

That's about right.

There were other things as well, things that fortunately I never ran into when a cub or brave at a newspaper under somebody else's editorship and never tried on my own. (Springfield, Massachusetts having an ME insisting that Mount Saint Helens needed to be localized is laughable.)

OR, more seriously, things that today's digital-era reporters bitch about happening then. Not wanting your pay to be dependent on the number of clicks? But a Springfield Daily News reporter back in the 1970s and 1980s was paid by how many different small-town meetings he hit with stories filed.

That said, personally, I'd call Springfield a regional newspaper, more than a community newspaper.

Craphouse (new Gannett) really does suck

 I think most of us knew that already, but at Nieman Lab, Joshua Benton whlps out the numbers on circulation decline for 2018-22.

First, yes, COVID has accelerated problems at struggling big chains. But? Not like this, as Josh compares Craphouse to non-Craphouse medium and large regional dailies.

The real issue is that, even by modern media merger standards, the two companies took on a lot of debt, and bad debt.

That said, per one of the links in Joshua's story, did Gannett and Craphouse really have to merge after Alden's failed takeover? Probably each one could have acquired some smaller company instead. But, both — even though Gatehouse has vulture capital behind it, even if not quite as rapacious as Alden — were likely still worried about being acquired themselves.

Back in 2017, Ken Doctor talked about the "Gatehouse method" and added that he thought there wouldn't be much news left in 2022.

That said, the detritus is even worse.

Trying to find dimes under the couch cushions to service that debt, Craphouse/Gannett is now selling more and more of those merged papers. Here in Tex-ass, the most willing buyer is CherryRoad, which makes Craphouse look almost like a newspaper saint, as I told Josh. 

I wouldn't be surprised if they chase the craptacular southern New Mexico newspapers next. (Nothing I see about CherryRoad says they would also take El Paso.)

In other places, like Lafayette, Louisiana, as Josh notes, other companies are expanding to replace dying husks. In yet others, like Springfield, Missouri, digital-first or digital-only startups are launching.

Salinas should be next, if it isn't already. The Craphouse/new Gannett paper there has ZERO paid editorial staff, per this LA Times piece.

The Denton Record Chronicle is kind of like a CNHI paper

 And, no that's not good.

I blogged early last fall about the announcement that, no paper, NPR radio station KERA had an agreement to take over the Denton paper. (Since then, KERA has also taken over operations of Dallas' classical radio station, WRR, and is looking more and more like a growing behemoth in terms of legacy media today. Last Saturday's Dallas Snooze was below 15 percent adhole even counting obits as ads. I didn't even look at the StartleGram.)

And, speaking of adhole and CNHI? Let's jump into both.

When COVID hit, the Wrecked Chronic pivoted quickly to semiweekly in print, then to weekly after that. Bad moves, IMO. I don't know what the adhole was then, but, this was still after Patterson had clawed it back from the Snooze, had decided not to circ further north (I am not sure if they did or not pre-Snooze acquisition more than 15 years ago) and other things.

OK. First weekend of January is kind of slow, yes.

Still.

22 pages, 38 percent adhole IF you count the obits. Well, a page and a half of obits piled up with the post New Year's death surge (anecdotal, but other editors have seen this), and if you subtract that, it was below 25 percent.

The CNHI part? When CNHI cut its print papers from daily to nondaily after COVID, it kept running all six days a week of crosswords, comics, etc. WHY? No other newspaper chain is buying your papers individually off your hands, or CNHI as a chain off RSA's hands, at your inflated ask. You're just wasting paper and whatever you're still paying to syndication companies.

Well, the DRC does similar.

Except worse in a way.

They have two daily crosswords, not just one. The other puzzles like the Jumble, etc.

(Forgot to check if either paper still runs a week's work of print horoscopes, Wouldn't that be the beat-all of shit-ass stupidity? "If you're a Pisces today, you should take note of asking yourself why you're reading a three-day out-of-date horoscope and adjust accordingly.")

Anyway, they do NOT run all six days worth of comics! They only run part of the week's comics. WHY?

And, per the part about KERA having an agreement, at least, to take you over, you don't have to goose anything anymore.

Seriously. They could have whacked that paper to 18 pages (one page was a full-page house ad cuz you can't print odd numbers of pages) and been fine.

Now, it would be interesting to be asked to be publisher there, if Patterson doesn't stay around after the takeover is finalized.

I'd work on:

1. Moving it back to semiweekly in print, while killing the comics, one of the two crosswords and some other syndicated material;
2. Circulation north of Denton — there's room for it;
   
3. More local columnists, as well as bumping up paid in-house editorial staff, on sports as well as news;
   
4. Beefing special sections.

That's a minimum. 

I surely won't get that chance.

Bully for bulldog in Denton, I thought, but it wasn't; Denton Record Chronicle struggles, touts e-editions

Couple of Saturdays ago, when I was at a Wally in Denton, Texas, I saw a bulldog edition of the Denton Record Chronicle.

Page count was at least 28 pages, if I remember correctly. Adhole was 40 percent or better.

Then, I thought, I'd better check. Maybe it's cut to six days a week, or less.

And it had.

Twice a week in print right now.

Will it bounce back at some point?

It could, but ...

BUT ...

Not just for it, but all newspapers that have whacked print schedules?

The "bounceback" is going to have to be an active initiative. At some point, you're going to have to say, "We're just going to have to add back some of those print days."

Maybe you whack pages. Maybe you whack print run and only circulate locally (as in Denton County, no Cooke County, Wise County or elsewhere) on some of the re-adopted print days.

But, the longer you wait, the less likely you are to pick back up many of your print customers.

If I were the DRC?

The weekender, and a Wednesday with store flyers, would be the biggies.

Monday stays dead. Tuesday, a local edition. Friday a local edition and you push heavy for entertainment ads as movie theaters start reopening, etc.

That said, Poynter says e-editions, long an ugly duckling in the papers world, are the hot new thing, citing places like the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which is bigger than the DRC, and enabling it to do a statewide edition.

OTOH, the idea of making multiple e-editions per day based on things like breaking sports news? At big papers, especially, that can involve extra time. Plus, sports has never carried the freight in terms of display ads. So, IMO, editors and publishers still have a ways to go on e-edition smartness. And, as Poynter notes, it's still an open question as to how much of the freight e-edition ads can carry versus what they do in print, even if it's an e-edition only day.

==

Compare this with the Casper Star-Tribune, which I'm guessing has about the same potential circ, that is population reach area, as the DRC, but surely a higher actual circ. It is just now making the decision to contract print days, but it's only dropping from seven to five. 

==

Update: Sometime before spring 2022, the DRC went to just weekly in print.

Jack Shafer: Don't have a gummint bailout of newspapers

Know something? He's right.

Why should the government subsidize sports coverage, for example, when sports comes back? Or the funny pages?

Second, how do you write language to keep vulture capitalists from getting any of this? (I disagree with Shafer's quasi-libertarian attitude toward vulture capitalists in general, but that's another story.)

Third, how do you keep the gummint from meddling once it gives you money?

None of these are easily addressed, and given Washington's coronavirus bailout bills so far, none of them will be addressed if such a bill passes.

A lot of this applies more to daily than non-daily papers, and more to corporately than non-corporate ones. But, in a lot of rural counties, a nondaily paper owned either by a "family" publisher or a small chain, may be the only paper there is. If they get bailout money, will they be told not to criticize the local Extension agent? Or not worry about the Soil Conservation Service's old impoundment dam?

And, to go beyond Shafter, there's a reason local papers didn't get more money already, per The Hill. It's the way they're incorporated. Blame the ownership for that. As I've written before, your local newspaper is incorporated in a way your local State Farm office is, namely, so that the ownership reaps the benefits first, but the local staff shoulders the blame first.

A number of years ago, Ben Carden proposed giving all newspapers nonprofit status. But again, how do you keep the vulture capitalists from a big tax writeoff with that?

RIP Commerce Journal

I heard that CNHI pulled the plug on the Commerce Journal a while back. Ridiculous. Solid, eight-page weekly which could easily have had, I'm going to guess, 20 percent more advertising. It may have been the case that a lot retailers targeted East Texas State's A and M Commerce's student and faculty population with ads in the campus newspaper, but still.

That said, Commerce Mayor Wymon Williams said that, for these and similar reasons, he doesn't really blame CNHI. He said that about 80 percent of university staff lives outside of Commerce and that, of course, city population drops dramatically in the summer. He also indicated he wished the U could have done more to promote the paper to said staff, in part to try to get them to move to Commerce.

Williams adds that the Journal was down to about 400 paid subscriptions. So, a certain amount of U-shaming is probably warranted.

That said, in addition, the Bama bean counters never could figure out "synergies" between it and the Greenville paper, from what I saw. (They've had that problem for years at bigger places, like not getting more work-together between Mineral Wells and Weatherford. Surprisingly, the Index is still a five-day daily, but probably one as thin as other such CNHI products. Scratch that; up at the top of the listing, the Texas Press Association says that, but lower, has them listed as semiweekly. That said, most the information in the top box is out of date; having known Mel Rhodes as publisher 20 years ago, I was surprised to see him still listed, and he shouldn't be.)

Also weirdly, while CNHI has pulled the plug on the paper, it continues to maintain the website, while at the same time not posting any Commerce-specific online news to it, even though it's printing Commerce News inside the Greenville Herald. So, why not put that on the Journal's website, if you're keeping the website alive.

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.

The end of a newspaper era

It looks like Today Newspapers, a group of south suburban Dallas newspapers, and my employer for most the last 9 and 1/2 years, less an eight-month hiatus, is now history.

Editor's note: This blog was a "draft" that I saw in my "drafts" section. I saw it there, and figured I may well have published another version, at the time. But, with it being the 10-year anniversary, and change, of Today Newspapers closing, it was good to actually publish this, even if it's "again."

Causes? Many.

The recession and the newspaper economy in general.

Others in particular? South suburban Dallas is tough. The Dallas Morning News never even tried to run a free-standing paper here, other than their (subsidized?) freebie tabs they do now in different parts of the Metroplex.

At the same time, in a Tar Baby style dysfunctional relationship, many civic leaders in the “Best Southwest” suburbs have, for years, done what I call “whoring after the Morning News,” riffing on the Old Testament prophets’ comments about Israel “whoring after the Ba’als.”

Schadenfreude, in a large glass says, Fine, now you have the News, or either a small daily paper with unaudited circulation which doesn’t run school lunch menus, honor rolls and more, to cover your area.

And, some of the problems were peculiar to our staff. Without going into details, or throwing people too far under the bus, we never did get much in the way of online ad sales from our staff, who never seemed that interested in learning more about doing online sales, sales techniques for online ads, etc. (Of course, one of our ad reps claimed she could always get a job up at the News, which wasn’t likely even before all of its cuts.)

I do feel sorry for people in our area who will miss us and know what they’re missing. As for the rest, no.

Beyond that, I’ve been wanting out of newspaper journalism more and more. If I have to stay in it shorter-term, fine. But, I know there are other things that better fit my skills and acumen, even if I didn’t go to the right Ivy League or other school.

Unfortunately (perhaps) this part was sadly wrong, even as I have not only not gotten out of the papers biz, but once for sure (IMO) have faced age discrimination within it.

ADDENDUM a decade later: One other cause? Marlon Hanson's Focus Daily News. When you have your pressmen (almost all of whom, if not every one, a decade ago, probably lacking green cards and not being citizens) also do your delivery driving at a five-day daily while you own the press and its old and crappy but you don't care because you want to be a daily so you can exploit your old Dallas Times Herald national ad contacts, even while you lie about your circulation which was never audited, even with the massive loopholes it had, by the old ABC before it changed names and then went out of the circulation audit business, it's hard to compete with that. (Hanson claimed a higher circ than, by my guesstimates, the Snooze had in the Best Southwest; part of it, in my guesstimate and by what I saw on many lawns, was that he was doing a Total Market Circulation/shopper type angle, but rather than total saturation every week, was doing a rotated selective saturation. I know this because two years later, I interviewed at the Rio Rancho Observer and its owner explicitly said he did that, dividing Rio Rancho into four quadrants for his weekly and doing one quadrant each week on a TMC free throw.)

Is CJR pulling punches in the face of Zionism?

Columbia Journalism Review recently had a good piece about how, within the precariat that is modern journalism, editorial cartoonists have become a precariat squared.

The main thrust of the piece is that cheapskate owners in general, and wingnut owners in particular using finances as an excuse, have accelerated the die-off, killing off cartoonists who won't toe a MAGA line.

However, the piece was sadly spoiled in the middle by this:

In April, after the Times international edition published an antisemitic cartoon, James Bennet, the opinion editor, who oversaw cartoons, disciplined the production editor responsible and dumped the syndication service that had provided the offensive image. Two months later, Bennet vowed to never publish a cartoon in the international edition again. Patrick Chappatte and Heng Kim Song, the international edition’s two in-house cartoonists, who had nothing to do with the image in question, lost their jobs. Joel Pett, a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist, called the move “chickenshit.” 

Well, that's probably not the most chickenshit thing.

CJR showed several anti-Trump cartoons, but not this one. It wouldn't even link to a site that showed it. 

I'll do both.

Here's the cartoon as it appears in Haaretz:

Why did I go there?

Because Haaretz has it in an opinion piece which says, in essence, the cartoon isn't antisemitic and that it's run worse itself.

As much of the mainstream media (and apparently the media that analyzes the mainstream media) still kowtows to Zionist stances, it's important to call it out. Many journalists know the truth about these issues — that American newspapers still self-censor a lot on Zionism issue and self-censor a lot more than Israeli papers do.

Shame on CJR (and Sam Thielman as author) for being too cowardly or craven to not even run a link, let alone the actual cartoon.

After all, it ran pictures of multiple allegedly anti-Islamic Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Sales management issues

In small towns, many businesses don't open until 9 a.m. Therefore, a community newspaper's ad sales people can't do much business before then.

But, they can make hay for sure after the 9 a.m. sun shines.

So, if they're coming in to the office at 8 or 8:30, and you're the ad sales manager, or publisher, and you have sales meetings, shouldn't they be before 9 a.m.?

And, if they were after 9 a.m. at your previous paper, shouldn't you unlearn old habit?

Austin American-Statesman - mistakes in digital, possibly beyond

Due to some unintentional misassumptions on my part, which started after, well, a recent "conversation" in Austin, I've learned that the Statesman has a few IT/web errors that I know of with its community papers.

Those that I don't know of, who knows?

Why this happened? I have some reasonable speculation.

But first, what the actual errors are.

On the websites of six of its seven community papers — the Bastrop Advertiser, Pflugerville Pflag, Lake Travis View, Round Rock Leader, Westlake Picayune, Smithville Times — their Facebook, Twitter and G+ links are all for the Austin American-Statesman social media sites.

After raising this issue with a person with whom I had, well, "conversed," he later showed me that the Bastrop Advertiser has a Twitter feed. And, a friend on a Facebook conversation showed me a Twitter feed, too. I'll assume that all the other papers above have their own social media pages. But their websites don't link to them.

These papers all had their own websites until just over a year ago, when they were rolled under the Statesman's umbrella as subsites.

Here's my guess as to what Statesman web staff probably did. They took the Statesman "main" site pages as a template 1 year ago when doing the rollover/wrap-in, and never replaced the Statesman links. The fact that this switch took place for all on the same date reinforces that in my mind. That's doubly so since this is less than six months after a major change at the Statesman, that may be connected.

First, if I'm the first person to both notice this and point it out in a full year, how much are people going to the community papers' social media feeds via the community papers' websites? Notta lotta? At least not among people new to Bastrop since the May 8, 2013, switchover. And, you can't blame this totally on the "demise of the homepage." There's social media links on each story page, and again, they all go to the Statesman, further reinforcing my theory.

So, Statesman? If you're going to emphasize social media, perhaps you need to further comb through the community papers and make sure there aren't other bugs. The rabbit hole of apparently, unintentionally, misguided thinking in finding out these are only erroneous links, rather than that your community papers don't have their own social media feeds, has left me frustrated. That's a lesser frustration to never having my social media skills, or theories, discussed in detail during that "conversation."

Beyond that, if either the Statesman, or its Cox Communications parent, is so dumb as to say it will, and I quote, "never" have paywalls for the web versions of its community newspapers? If you want to piss money away, that doesn't help the financial bottom line.

As to why this happened, beyond the speculation of a copied, and incompletely edited, template?

As part of its money-saving, Cox canned the entire Statesman copy desk late in 2012. All of its sections are paginated at other Cox papers. As far as I know, despite Austin being the Silicon Valley of Texas, they may do some Web and IT stuff for the Statesman elsewhere. I mean, I've been in Texas long enough; I know Cox was trying to unload the Statesman, along with all its other Texas holdings, for a few years. (And, from what I've seen, without eyeballing the Statesman on too regular of a basis, I'm not a total fan of over-consolidation. Besides, if you have to still have a "bridge desk," how much money are you really saving?) That said, with the over-consolidation, Cox will never be able to sell any of its large dailies individually now. Nobody wants to buy one daily paper and start off by hunting up copy desk staff.

And, beyond that, it looks like the Statesman isn't sure what to do with its outlying editions. All of them except Bastrop and Smithville are suburban, not exurban, now, and most of them are suburban. And, because Bastrop and Smithville are exurban, not suburban, their websites, unlike the other four, shouldn't have been rolled up into new Statesman versions, IMO. The other four? Given that they, in print, may be nothing more than zoned-like pages inside the Statesman within a decade, that's different. But, those two should have been kept separate. Again, whether a Statesman decision or a Cox one, not smart.

Who knows? Maybe Cox is doing its own version of what newspaper analysts rumor is Advance's endgame ... spending out to the finish line. 

Jeeesuhus H. Christ on a crutch, it gets worse.

Try to subscribe to one of their suburban papers from that suburban paper's website, and you can't. Even if you enter the zip code appropriate to that suburban or exurban area. It tries to sign you up for the Statesman itself, and it offers the web option first.

What fucking idiocy.

As for their level, and particulars, of use of social media, I'm not that impressed at Bastrop. It's nothing really out of my pay grade, and not bad for a paper that size, but nothing to set the world on fire. If I were to be managing editor at a place like that, I might be a bit short on video skills, but  that's about it.

Finally, I had started by wondering if the Statesman, in looking for a managing editor with social media skills, but not emphasizing that desire for social media skills, wasn't flirting with age discrimination. I still haven't totally dismissed that idea, though it has certainly diminished. 

And here's why.

I was in the Metroplex when, as part of the "bleed," in 2008 or 2009, the Dallas Morning News canned a bunch of older staffers, almost all of them columnists and critics. It got sued — I haven't Googled in a few years to find the results. In the filing of the suit, the plaintiffs mentioned that computer skills, or alleged lack thereof, and ability to learn and/or improve them, or lack thereof, were among the reasons for the dismissals, and that these were "code phrases" for "get rid of the older people."

I'm not saying that's what was happening here. I am saying that, in conjunction with their Web staff's screw-up, for reasons I postulate or others, and with the background I just mentioned? It was a possible conclusion. That's even more the case since I don't recall the Statesman, in its ME for Bastrop search, being THAT interested in social media skills. So, an interview could have been more focused on that. Besides, there's this.

As for the claims of not noting my social media background? Per the top 1/4 of the first page of my resume:

COMPUTER SKILLS

• Quark  • Photoshop  • InDesign  • Office • Video • Web content  • Social media • QuickBooks

Last I checked, "social media" was spelled as, uh, "social media"! So, that's undercut right there. Plus, "Web content"? That means that, using either a house-based system or a third-party web host, I have experience (and it's extensive) in website "publishing" for various newspapers. I've done that for years.

And, discrimination can be done unconsciously or subconsciously. I recently read a great book called Blindspot, by two psychology researchers. They have online tests, using series of pairs of photos, to test for unconscious bias in race, sex, age, and sexual orientation. One of the two authors, in fact, was dismayed that the author's self-testing showed more bias than the author wanted to believe.

If nothing else, I consider this precautionary for myself and advise it to be precautionary for other print journalists who may be above "X" years of age. Even if you're not asked, play up social media skills in your interview, and even your cover letter. If you're not asked about them during an interview, raise the question yourself of how they're valued.

This is even as Facebook is continuing to choke the reach of for-profit pages, Google+ continues to look like tumbleweeds and Twitter has seemed to plateau. The newspaper biz, when it's not stuck behind the curve on things like paywalls, chases fads without asking whether the for-profit folks on the other end of the fad might not wind up doing a bait-and-switch.

Beyond that, leaning too much on Facebook, especially if you're a larger community paper, or even worse, a daily? Soon enough, you just have people reading Facebook, not your paper. And seeing Facebook ads, not your paper's. (That's if they don't have AdBlock Plus, so they don't have to see your ads OR Facebook's.) And, your web traffic drops. And, your ad rates drop more than they already do. 

In short, newspapers in general? You can hire for newspaper editors and reporters, or you can hire for social media writers. The choice is yours. Sadly, I expect most newspapers will make a choice that is at least partially incorrect. 

I'll admit that part of this is personal frustration, too.  

And, I want to say that I was shown courtesies during the interview process. At the same time, I've been shown courtesies during other interview processes that were even more "formulaic," at best.

Overall, my estimate is that is was about 40 percent no "fault" anywhere, 40 percent age discrimination, even if primarily unintentional or subconscious, and 20 percent bad interviewing. I felt a good rapport with my interviewer. But, as noted, "social media" is at the top 1/4 of the first page of my resume. And, I was never asked detailed questions about social media; in fact, I don't recall really being asked at all about it. Some, something, somehow, is kind of rotten in the state of Austin. 

As for their commitment to social media, it's been five days since I asked why, if they're so committed to social media, all their community newspapers have links to Statesman feeds, and I've not heard back yet. Sorry, Thomas Jones, but, especially since you said you like people to be outspoken, and I assume that would include "outspoken" questions, then I'd like an answer. Until then, I'll keep connecting dots in my mind, and blogging about them as desired.

I think I was likely the best candidate for the position. I've had that reinforced by knowing that I've won additional first-place awards in this year's Texas Press  Association newspaper contest. And, I wasn't given the full opportunity to show that, in my opinion. 

I hate papers that readvertise jobs

I know it happens in other job fields, too, but with a declining industry like newspapers, I'm sure more and more publishers and HR offices are more and more tempted to do it, simply because they can.

It's not the first time it's happened to me.

What I really don't like, as in the current case, is when the company does initial interviews with people it indicates it has culled down from the resumes to at least a semi-finalist list, with hints that the next step is in-person interviews for the last couple of candidates, then kind of says nothing on the first query or two about the "process," then finally, oh, about a month after that set of interviews, says ...

"Oh, hey, we went out for more resumes."

If I should actually make the cut for an in-person interview, I'll ask questions related to this.

Update, July 23: I didn't make the cut. The Cortez Journal hired somebody else.

Note to self: Next time a paper "readvertises," don't only mentally remove yourself from the running. Actually do so with the newspaper, especially if it's not only after an initial interview, but after some sort of dangling hint that I might make the cut for the next round, or whatever.

Should we subsidize newspapers?

I'm worried about benign paternalism more than actual active interference, but The Nation argues that newspapers need a direct tax infusion, as is the case in Europe.

That said, to avoid partisanship like we've had over the Corporation for Public Broadcasting budget, along with those of NEA, NEH, etc., we'd have to launch this program with a multi-year budget.

That said, while PBS is not a total lapdog, it's not the best example that could be cited, either? Or NPR. They're perhaps better than commercial networks, but not great.

Govt support can ONLY go to entities that declare themselves nonprofit, is one stipulation -- with strict definitions of what nonprofit is, like, say Pacifica.

Dallas Morning News planning more layoffs?

A source of mine says it's likely. And, sadly, it's not hard to see why.

I took a gander at today's paper, not to read a single story, but to eyeball inches on display ads. Here's a quick summary.

• Front section? About 30 percent ads, decent amount of them color.
• Metro? Almost adless, not counting obits.
• Guide section? About 10 percent, not counting the four pages of advertorial. (And, how many people, like me, wonder if newspapers will eventually take the "advertorial" tag off advertorial items, if there's any way they can?)
• Business section? It did have a full-page color Ebby Halliday ad at back. Otherwise, not counting classifieds, about 10 percent ads.
• ONE non-classified ad in the entire sports section. (That said, people who defend major daily newspaper sports coverage in general? Sure, people may read it, but it's always been below normal on display ad inches. If you are, or have been, in the journalism business and still want to try to defend it, stop. It is indefensible from a business position.)
• Overall? About 15 percent display ads.

For people who don't know, a healthy margin is about 60-40 advertising to editorial copy. And since, traditionally, major newspapers have relied 75 percent on advertising, 25 percent on circulation, now you can understand just how bad of trouble this is.

And, most auto ads? Never coming back. Real estate? Will be slow, even in a relatively "bubbleless" DFW.

As for going more and more online? People still haven't figured out how to adequately monetize online ad revenues. And, while you save trees, paper, ink and press costs, you still need (theoretically) web copy editors, online content/upload editors, etc.

Blogging? That's like the Morning News thinking it's like the NY Times editorial page during Times Select times. You see much in the way of ad revenue there?

The end of a newspaper era

It looks like Today Newspapers, a group of south suburban Dallas newspapers, and my employer for most the last 9 and 1/2 years, less an eight-month hiatus, is now history.

Causes? Many.

The recession and the newspaper economy in general.

Others in particular? South suburban Dallas is tough. The Dallas Morning News never even tried to run a free-standing paper here, other than their (subsidized?) freebie tabs they do now in different parts of the Metroplex.

At the same time, in a Tar Baby style dysfunctional relationship, many civic leaders in the “Best Southwest” suburbs have, for years, done what I call “whoring after the Morning News,” riffing on the Old Testament prophets’ comments about Israel “whoring after the Ba’als.”

Schadenfreude, in a large glass says, Fine, now you have the News, or either a small daily paper with unaudited circulation which doesn’t run school lunch menus, honor rolls and more, to cover your area.

And, some of the problems were peculiar to our staff. Without going into details, or throwing people too far under the bus, we never did get much in the way of online ad sales from our staff, who never seemed that interested in learning more about doing online sales, sales techniques for online ads, etc. (Of course, one of our ad reps claimed she could always get a job up at the News, which wasn’t likely even before all of its cuts.)

I do feel sorry for people in our area who will miss us and know what they’re missing. As for the rest, no.

The actual ending? To riff on George Santayana, both tragedy and farce at the same time. Pettiness from our webmaster, taking down all news stories off the website, because somebody else had already "moved" CDs with archived digital hardcopy pages, photos, etc.

Beyond that, I’ve been wanting out of newspaper journalism more and more. If I have to stay in it shorter-term, fine. But, I know there are other things that better fit my skills and acumen, even if I didn’t go to the right Ivy League or other school.

Google CEO Schmidt offers ideas to save papers

Gooogle CEO Eric Schmidt says he truly would bemoan the demise of the daily paper, then offers steps to prevent that.

Schmidt said Google is NOT looking at acquistions, investments or other financial help of its own.

To me, one of the most intriguing tools he did mention is going the nonprofit route. Schmidt mentions ProPublica. Britain's Guardian is an example across the pond.

Elsewhere and in response, Dan Froomkin goes Schmidt one better, suggesting Google form some sort of nonprofit umbrella structure. He also suggests that, even if Schmidt doesn't want to bail out for-profit newspapers, it consider investing in a nonprofit group like ProPublica.

That said, the problem is the Internet, not Google. Shouldn't we also be asking Ballmer what Microsoft should do? Or whomever winds up running Yahoo?

L.A. Times continues to crater

When a 21st-century newspaper cuts Internet news jobs, you know it’s floundering.

The Times’ editorial staff will be shrunk 17 percent by Labor Day. The paper will also put out about 15 percent fewer pages.

The heartless mainstream media continues to filet itself

The Miami Herald lays you off. After a bait-and-switch sending your job to India.

Then, it wants you to blog about it, and about how you’re going to survive without full-time income! (Scroll down to the June 22 post, or go directly there.

And, this is McClatchy.

Outside its more thorough, non Bush-shitted coverage of Iraq, it shows again it is Just.Another.Newspaper.