Orwell in the newspaper biz: Some diversity is better than others in San Antone

 Shortly before Christmas, I applied for an editorial writer position with the San Antonio Express-News. I easily met most the experience criteria (other than maybe a relative lack of video experience, but that, for an editorial page?), but it had one other stipulation: 

A hard push for diversity candidates.

I responded that I was a white male, but that I had two types of diversity that should be valued on an editorial page today.

Specifically, to quote from my cover letter:

I have to confess that I’m a white male, so I can’t delivery that kind of diversity.

Please note the boldface, though. Diversity goes beyond race and sex.

For example? I’m a third-party voter. I exited the “duopoly” at the start of this century on presidential voting. And, that’s a diversity directly relevant to your editorial page.

I’m also a secularist. That’s a diversity directly relevant to some First Amendment editorials.

And, there you are.

The editorial page editor, Josh Brodetsky, was out of pocket on an early start to Christmas and had an auto-reply on his email.

OK. Figured no action before the New Year.

Lo and behold, on Jan. 17, browsing Journalism Jobs again, noticed basically the same job re-advertised, only with a new title of associate editorial page editor.

Translation? They didn't get the diversity candidates with the skill level they wanted. So, whether or not they'll offer much more pay, Brodetsky, presumably along other top editorial management, turd-polished the old description with a shiny new title.

I found the previous email I had sent and did a "forward" with a brief statement in the new email, to the effect of "please consider me for this new job."

Brodetsky said: "We're already down to two finalists."

Really?

I was born at night, but not last night, and I've been in the papers biz —including writing columns and editorials — well beyond your five years of experience desired. I can smell Shinola rotting like a mackeral.

No way you got down to half a dozen semifinalists, let alone two finalists, by Jan. 15 (assuming you didn't screen any applicants over the Jan. 16-17 weekend, Josh), with a Jan. 6 job announcement.

You probably had at least one semifinalist, if not more, tell you they'd only be interested with the additional title, and perhaps whatever modicum of additional power comes with this, if you goosed things. So, to make sure you cleared EEOC hurdles, you ran a new job ad.

Should you see this, Josh, you can tell me if I'm wrong. I'll appreciate honesty.

And, since I'm here in Tex-ass, via the TPA, I'll know who you hired.

I've seen the Snooze repeatedly be full of crap on editorial hirings, while we're here.

The bigger picture, as a leftist, is that there's yet other diversities. A Black woman (let's say that's who Josh hired) might have come from a much richer family than I did — let's say, a family to help her get a master's in journalism (a degree about as overrated as an Ed.D.) from Columbia or something. So, income diversity is yet another diversity.

I could think of more, with more cogitation, but having done the bulk of this writing Monday night, after getting word of "you're too late" from Brodetsky just that morning, this will do nicely for now.

Top 10 of 2020

 So, what did readers like on my blog during the past year? Let's take a look. (Top 10 is as of Jan. 4, 2021.)

Note: These were not all written in 2020 (and I don't know if Blogger can be set to do that), just the 10 most read in the last year.

No 1, in fact comes from six years ago. Long before Craphouse bought the Austin Stateless, I blogged about newspapers dying in Austin, at least by adhole.

No. 2 was Warren Buffett's decision a year ago to bail on newspaper ownership. I guess the man who took a chainsaw to the Buffalo News long, long ago realized that he couldn't pull that at smaller papers without an even cruder chainsaw.

No. 3 was about Southern Newspapers appearing to make some false claims about printing presses it allegedly owned.

No. 4 was about the Rio Rancho Observer, ethically challenged a decade ago, semi-biting the dust. (I wrote a few weeks earlier, and it's linked within, about the differently ethically challenged Los Alamos Monitor fully biting the dust.)

No. 5 was my hot take on ABC suspending David Wright for telling the truth about corporate media.

No. 6 was from 2018, telling potential applicants to take a pass on working at Wick Communications. Maybe it went even further downhill after that?

No. 7, interestingly, was from that same month. Sadly, newspaper publishers and owners who need to read this truth probably won't — newspaper magazines are NOT "the answer" to what ails you.

No. 8 was rhetorical. I asked readers if they would pay more for NYT subscriptions after the Old Gray Lady announced last February that it would start increasing their cost.

No. 9? In September, I blogged about the Times again, wondering if its change in CEOs meant "sponsored verticals" were around the corner.

No. 10? I told fellow small-town Texas editors to get a fucking life and stop thinking they had to be the omnipotent god of small town high school football statistics.

Surprisingly, none of these were about CNHI or any of its individual newspapers.

Gainesville Register goes semi-weekly, still makes CNHI and local mistakes

 I've written about the Register more than once. I've written about The New Republic writing about its parent, CNHI. Last summer, accepting the inevitable, the five-day daily converted to triweekly.

And, the start of this year, it went to semiweekly.

The CNHI mistakes continue.

The biggie is continuing to run a print TV guide section that eats of four pages of ads-free print. 

WHY?

It can NOT be comprehensive, given the plethora of cable channels. 

Plus, it doesn't include streaming from folks like Netflix.

It's simply stupid.

Also stupid and also presumably at CNHI orders?

Running two-three days of comics in a semiweekly's pages. (It includes not just comics, but the full normal syndication — advice column, crossword, etc. Three full pages of ad-free space.)

The ONLY reason that should be done is if either individual CNHI papers, downsized, or CNHI corporate, with a corporate package, is stuck in a daily comics syndication package it can't escape.

So, right there, the Tuesday, Jan. 12 paper has at least four if not six pages of ads-free print that is being wasted. Let's be UN-charitable, because this is CNHI, and assume six.

That's in a 14-page paper that has 1/2 page of display ROP ads, 3/4 page of classified and about a page of paid obits. With obits, that's an adhole of about 16 percent. NOT counting them, that's a 10 percent adhole in a 14-page paper, if that.

Slash that to eight pages, and counting obits, you're approaching 30 percent.

===

OK, on the Register side? I'm not counting running out-of-date weather news, but am going to mention something else.

They cut their width by another half inch or more, it seems, when they went semiweekly. But? It looks like they're still printing on the same web width. 

AND?

They're printing the PDFs' registration marks, and on all pages. I shit you not. If you can't get your printing press to adjust its web, why have you narrowed the pages?

VT Digger: is it "real"?

 The Boston Globe looks at both no-longer-alt newspapers, both of which I have read semi-regularly in the past for Bernie and Jane Sanders news. 

But, are they always as "investigative" as can be?

Take this:

“VTDigger is a solution to the black hole of no news,” says Orton. “And it’s not beholden to anyone because it’s nonprofit.”

"Orton" would be Lyman Orton, owner of Cabot Creamery, who gave VT Digger founder Jane Galloway $7K in start-up money long ago, then with his partner, provided $1 million in a "growth fund" and asked other companies to join in.

If Cabot pollutes Vermont groundwater with runoff from a cheese plant, does it get investigated? Especially since Cabot gets "Sponsor Spotlight" puff pieces? And, when something mildly critical is published, it gets full rebuttal space. Betcha Bernie Sanders, b´ete noire of both VT Digger and Seven Days, wishes for similar.

I included Seven Days at the top (while eventually deleting it from the header) just because the Globe story is about both. But, it follows a "traditional" alt-weekly ads-based model, along with donations, but not the Digger/Texas Trib model. And, contra Seven Days' claim:

VTDigger and The Texas Tribune are similar, but not the same.

“My understanding is we’re the only online nonprofit that publishes breaking news, policy reporting, and investigative work,” says Galloway. “I believe all three are important for a statewide organization to gain the readership necessary to sustain operations financially.”

While the Trib may not do much in investigative journalism by itself, it does partner with Pro Publica on it. Policy reporting? Probably not much, though Evan Smith gets into that at his roundtables.

Arizona Republic puts Snooze to shame

 I still continue to peek at the Dallas Morning News for adhole count. On vacation, out to my sis then SoCal, I looked at the Republic in Phoenix.

First, they appear to have cut a couple of days a week of print run???

Second, the "midweek" Dec. 23 issue at her family's place? More than 40 pages at an adhole of almost 40 percent counting obits as paid adhole. That's contra the typical Thursday Snooze running 32-34 pages, at least in exurban issues, at an adhole of under 20 percent and at times under 15 percent.

Texas Observer sells its soul to Google

 Even as Google, along with Facebook, face new rounds of antitrust scrutiny, including a joint restraint of trade one, the Texas Observer, is getting 11 months of funding from Google as part of its GNI Innovation Challenge.

So, the plutocratic, snoopocratic Google is paying the Observer to hire reporters to "embed" in communities of color? That's the same Google that muzzled, then fired, Black AI researcher Timnit Gebru.

Once again, Bernard and Audre Rapoport, or at least him, are surely turning in their graves.

Surely Google is looking for some sort of data-mining as part of this. Maybe an upgraded version of Google Analytics, with special add-ons reporting direct to Google, embedded in the website, for ad targeting purposes.

Good New Republic piece on CNHI

The mag notes that vulture capitalists like Alden may be worse than pension funds, but that pension funds themselves, notably the Retirement Systems of Alabama, are bad enough. Here's the details, but, it missed several points.

Basically, Rachel Cohen missed some of the problems specific to CNHI — AND, how long it's run amok like this.

First, like some other chains, it prolly should have declared bankruptcy and done a "rinse" several yrs ago, but as owned by a state pension system, it CAN'T.

Second, being owned by a state pension system leads CNHI to lock in overvaluation of its assets in its newspapers. Because, if it sells one for market value, what's that due to the valuation of all others, and hence, to pension funding? Tanks it, of course. So, while you'll see CNHI close or consolidate papers, that's why you'll almost never see them sell them. Nobody will pay their asking price.

Third, and ergo, so, instead of either a "rinse" bankruptcy, or sale of member papers (OR the company as a whole!!!) #CNHI continues to use the quarterly furloughs it started in the Great Recession. Really, it's an El Cheapo version of what Advance is doing.

CNHI is arguably WORSE than Craphouse or Dead Fucking Media. (See, I know their names.) That's because it's been doing this for more than 20 years. And I have direct experience. My first paper was a 5-day daily. CNHI bopught it 1 year after I left. 20-plus years ago. It made it a semiweekly, which, to be honest, was probably the right thing..

BUT! It refused to adjust subscriptions. Not even at the equivalent of 50 cents on a dollar (as in extending six months left on a subscription to 9 months, not a full year, even at the claims that they were printing more pages) let alone fully. So many people cancelled subscriptions they closed it within a year after buying. 

If you see a CNHI paper in a place like Texas running ads for Alabama golf courses and wonder why? If they're Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail courses, that's because its parent, RSA, owns them. Running stuff about Mobile tourism? Owns one semi-luxury hotel there, as well as, I believe, at least one of the golf courses being there. So, the golf course ads? House ads. The Visit Mobile ads? Semi-house ads, and don't forget that there is a state tourism board with a vested interest in promoting tourism, which has state employees hoping for pensions. (To be precise, per this PDF of the Golf Trail, they own two courses in the greater Mobile area, of 36 and 54 holes, and four hotels of various amenities levels.)

Meanwhile, RSA said three years ago it was going to sell CNHI. Still hasn't. Nobody will pay its inflated price. 

Question? At some point, does this involve pension system fraud or something?