AP wants to raise $100M for community journalism

That's per Axios.

Thoughts?

1. On the most serious angle, is this not just another allegedly big-hearted organization or individual chasing after the same bigger-pocketed organizations and individuals for seed money to distribute? Dick Tofel has covered this plethora (how many in a plethora, jefe de la prensa?) of such organizations.

2. Related? How much of this money is going to get laundered through the AP? This push isn't seed money to help community papers hire more reporters. Rather:

The new funds will be used to support AP's local journalism efforts, as well as the work of other organizations or services that support local newsrooms, per Veerasingham.

So, "laundered" might be harsh. "Recycled" is not.

And, obviously, this isn't going to go to non-weeklies, at least not to ones that were already non-weekly pre-COVID. So, the AP won't be helping the Marion County Record, raising a new round of hell (Word doc at link) over water quality public notices or lack thereof, not quite a year after being subjected to the folding, spindling and mutilation of the First Amendment.

3. Less serious but not totally unserious? Since AP recently reversed course from several months ago, and said, at least indirectly, that it WILL miss Gannett and McClatchy, and since more than 80 percent of its revenue stream is still from story (and video) licensing, when one stops limiting the scope to US newspapers, is this going to compete with the tip jar on its website?

4. Since it is e-commerce partnering with Taboola (that after clickbait webpage partnering with it years ago), is there going to be any quid pro quo on this help?

Good luck Gainesville Register, bye Mike Eads

The newspaper's editor has gone to Fort Smith, Arkansas, a Gannett/Craphouse paper that was old Craphouse pre-merger.

Per a pull-out before I clicked the link to its Wiki page, on this search for who owned it:

The Southwest Times Record is a daily newspaper in Fort Smith, Arkansas and covers 10 counties in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. It is owned and published by Gannett. The newspaper has not published a local story since Aug. 17, 2023.

OK, now.

It does run stuff like this:

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

which obviously isn't actually localized.

A sinecure job, as any local news will be more than none. That said, having applied for a Gannett editorial job in Northern California, before they yanked the plug on the process, last year? It probably doesn't pay fantastic. Not horrible, but not fantastic. But, probably more than I make now.

But?

#JournalismIsDying

How the Register got a second in its class in "general excellence" in this year's TPA awards, unless at least one of the two was from before summer of 2023, when their sports guy left and they didn't replace him, and if not both from them, the other was from before the end of football season 2023, when they then stopped covering sports, I don't know. I'm sure that won't repeat.

(Reportedly, they're looking for a reporter to replace him, not an editor, and Cleburne's ME will be a multi-paper editor. We know how well that works. And I bet they still don't cover that much sports, certainly not outside football. And, I bet they take a while to find somebody to fill that.)

Biden's fitness: Why the MSM, especially DC insiders, are rightly loathed at times

Nepo mommy / DC media insider Susan Glasser on Twitter at the start of the week, presumably with the nodding silence of her husband, nepo dad and insider Peter Baker, ignored that they knew, or should have known, about Joe Biden's problems long ago, and never wrote about it. Then, after last week's debate, said, in essence, "where were all these folks," not counting themselves in "all these folks."

Nepo mommy / DC Media Insider Susan Glasser (& hubby, nepo dad / insider Peter Baker?) ignoring they either knew, or shld have known, abt Dementia Joe's problems long ago & never wrote about it, & now are saying,
"Where were all these folks?"
Hypocrisy alert .@NathanJRobinson https://t.co/Rt1vj7c3t0

— TheRealSocraticGadfly 🍉☢️🌻🌲 (@real_gadfly) July 2, 2024

Here's the tweet I was quotingthen it's explainer time:

This is such a key point. Where were all these folks when Biden’s decision to run again could have been headed off? When so many took a pass on thinking about the implications of someone asking for a second term that would have him serving to age 86… https://t.co/AHwglJOXyB

— Susan Glasser (@sbg1) July 1, 2024

There we are.

Susan Glasser, per her Twitter bio, is a staff writer for the New Yorker. Hubby Peter Baker is chief White House correspondent for the New York Times. Nepo baby offspring is Theo Baker, who has written for both mom's and dad's sites, as well as The Atlantic and elsewhere. He's a work, a tool, a knob, a piece of shit, and a bigger piece of shit on Zionism issues after Oct. 7, 2023.

And, as screengrabbed by someone else in response to Glasser, here's her running flak for Dementia Joe five months ago:

That's who these people are. And, they're unapologetic about wiping their hands, Pilate-like, while throwing people under the bus, or Roman chariot, or on a cross.

And, journos like Rick Perlstein, who should know better, expect me to not duopoly exit, or to never have done it 24 years ago, per yesterday's post? Really? Or, the likes of Will Bunch salute the Philadelphia Inquirer's call for Trump to resign while pretending Biden's new clothes are still splendiferous?

That said, the non-columnist types like Glasser and Baker will claim we're just here to report, not opine. Yeah? Well, your reporting didn't dig that deep, did it, and that was presumably willful, wasn't it?

Related, at least tangentially?

The Philadelphia Inquirer, in a house editorial touted by the likes of its often-good, but BlueAnon, columnist Will Bunch and Blue MAGA shiv slinger Yashar Ali (who's been quiet this year, maybe due to his financial problems), in the wake of Joe Biden's catastrophe at last week's debate, called for Donald Trump to withdraw from the Republican nomination contest.

And, that's a big swing and a miss.

Large chunks of the GOP, sotto voce, as well as the Never Trumpers who have spoken out, yes, want an alternative. But, pretending that many Democrats don't want an alternative to Biden is the whiff, part one. Why not call for BOTH to resign? 

As is, this invites a doubling down of perceptions that the mainstream media is all Democrats.

Ted Van Dyk at the WSJ got it non-partisanly right: "Biden Should Withdraw and So Should Trump." If you're wondering who he is? He's a Dem insider back to the days of working for Vice President Hubert Humphrey. As an advisor on the Hump's 1968 presidential campaign, he knows how things play out.

The reality, deeper than that?

Tim Alberta gets it, and since he's a blue check with more than 280 words, I'm quoting the whole damn thing, with link here in case I misposted:

Okay folks. This stuff is no longer just nauseating; it's downright dangerous.

Joe Biden limped his way past a fractured 2020 primary field, the party finally coalescing around him because 1) he was the safest pick against an opponent they feared to an existential degree, and 2) his explicit promise to be the “bridge” (wink, wink) to the next generation of Democrats, several of whom flanked him on stage in Detroit as those words left his mouth and interpreted them exactly as Dem primary voters did.

Then he won in November by 43k votes against a spiraling, self-sabotaging incumbent who talked about injecting bleach as the country was falling apart.

Biden’s 2020 campaign was not some strategic masterstroke; there were no tactical or messaging breakthroughs that serve as blueprints for Poli Sci 101 lectures. The guy barely left his house between March and November! Sorry, but squeaking past the Bad News Bears doesn’t make you the ‘27 Yankees.

And yet the people around him have spent 3.5 years hailing the president as some sort of Jedi master: supernaturally tuned to the psyche of the electorate, singularly equipped to govern the country, uniquely able to save democracy from Donald Trump in 2024.

It’s nonsense.

Joe Biden is not Barack Obama. He's not Ronald Reagan. Heck, he's not even Bill Clinton. Spare us the lazy ahistorical comparisons and the romantic underdog narratives.

The truth is, the president is old, unpopular, and trapped by a dilemma of his own making. He picked a vice president in whom he’s lost confidence; is facing an opponent who insults him and his family in ways that his Irish pride can’t get beyond; and has surrounded himself with sycophants who refuse to tell him the truth.

Joe Biden has a distinguished record of public service. He has, in certain important ways, been an effective chief executive. But this mythologizing of the man is an insult to the public’s intelligence—and, in and of itself, a threat to our democratic institutions.

The reason for panic right now isn’t because a bunch of pundits and elites are oblivious to the thinking of regular people; it’s because those regular people always had a hunch the pundits and elites were lying to them about Biden’s capacities and now it’s been confirmed. https://t.co/IOfApjXDYw

— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) July 1, 2024

If only others would, too.

Yes, I also ran this yesterday, but, it needs to be read again.

New Mexico Press Assn errorfest

 Among member newspapers, it lists on its website the Lincoln County News out of Carrizozo.

Problem?

Oh, just a small one.

The link is to the Lincoln County, MAINE newspapers.

In reality, the Carrizozo paper closed years ago and Gannett's Ruidoso paper sucks.

Other eyebrow raisers? Is the Gallup Sun really a member but the Independent is not? If that's actually the case, what's the story behind that.

Then, there's their job bank. Roswell Daily Record was looking for an ME as of end of May. Job not listed.

Of course, when much of the upper Rio Grande is under the thumb of the Albuquerque Journal's parent while Gannett/Craphouse continues to wreck multiple southern-half papers, what can you say?

The Texas Observer: still treading water, still pretending otherwise

 More than a year after nearly imploding itself to death, the Observer (under an interim executive director; I don't know if the last permanent one quit at some other time, or got shit-canned at the same time as editor-in-chief Gabriel Arana did) pretends it's back to normal by passing out Molly Awards. (Aug. 10: They now have a cartoon Molly introducing the most recent Strangest State piece.)

First, per Jim Hightower, how much of a real populist are you if you go to Smith College, re Molly Ivins?

Second, weren't these awards in the past, passed out in the fall?

Third, per my first link on what's wrong with the Observer business-wise, there's still no paywall and still no ads, and surely still hypocrisy about the latter. What's to celebrate?

Fourth, they've got Gus Bova as Arana's interim replacement.

Goddamit I'm agreeing with Jeff Jarvis

But, he's RIGHT. These "media bailout laws," to call them what they are, in Canada, California and New York, and possibly elsewhere in the future? They're pushed by big legacy newspaper companies. You know, the ones being raped by the hedge funds that own them.

They do nothing for your community newspaper, your start-up, your nonprofit newspaper, etc. (AdCouncil advertising, like "This is your brains on newspapers," per the old over-fried egg of "this is your brain on drugs," is one idea that would actually do that.)

And, carve-out loopholes like that in New Jersey make clear who's pushing this stuff.

AP hedges its bets on "we don't need McClatchy and Gannett"

A few months ago, when the two chains said they were either pretty much or entirely spitting the bit on using Associated Press services, the AP said, in essence, "good luck and we don't need them."

Among claims at that time was that the AP only got 10 percent of its bucks from traditional wire feed money.

Er, not zacktly, as AP itself admitted earlier this week.

That 10 percent is from US newspapers only. The total? A "biiitttt" different:

In 2023, 82% of AP’s revenue came from content licensing with 5% from its software solutions business AP Workflow Solutions, 4% from its business providing broadcast facilities and journalists to global broadcasters, and 9% from other streams.

Wow.

No wonder AP, after hinting a few months ago that "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out," is now going Tom Bodett and saying "we'll keep the light on," to translate chief revenue officer Kristin Heitmann:

Heitmann said: “Gannett and McClatchy are important customers for the AP and we never like to lose customers. We are in contract through the end of this year and hope they remain customers of ours for many years to come – and certainly will in some way through the election and beyond in other services we provide.”

She added that “thousands of media” around the world use AP content and they “sometimes test not using us and come back. If that’s the case with Gannett and McClatchy, we have an open door…”

Something tells me that things like that e-commerce biz AP plans probably won't play out well, and will also raise issues about the First Amendment of Journalism's "wall of separation" between editorial and advertising. You gonna do an investigative journalism piece on something you're touting?

Of course, it was running semi-fake news on its website already seven years ago. (That was with Taboola just like the e-commerce dreck, which means AP's been semi-full of itself for years.) Don't forget, AP self-screwed its pooch back in the 1990s when then-board chairman Dean-o Singleton touted the "teevee model" of online advertising.

Of further interest? A year or two ago, the Salt Lake City Trib dumped the AP for: The NYT's wire. If that now includes The Athletic on sports, too?