The pseudoscience-driven marketing #fails of New Mexico mag PLUS copyediting fails

I understand that, as an official state magazine, they're trying to drive tourism to the state. I still don't have to accept pseudoscience used to promote The State Different (riffing on Fanta Se as The City Different, capital of The Land of Disenchantment).

They had two new entries in the "service" of pseudoscience, in their March issue.

First, in the story "Ancient Enigmas," about pueblitos (of which I'd already read plenty by David Roberts), there's:

“We emerged as one people,” says (Timothy C. Begay, cultural specialist with the Navajo Nation Heritage and Historic Preservation Department) of all the tribes that occupied the Four Corners. “We were one culture until Chaco fell. It was one voice, one people, one belief. We have sacred places that we still visit all over this area. If we came across the Bering Strait, why don’t we have sacred places in Canada and Asia?”

OK, I know any traditionalist Indian is going to say that. No need for the author to abet with this:

The story melds with the tribe’s longer-lived sense of its history in the area, a history centuries older than archaeologists can prove. The scientific research points to Athabaskan people (Diné and N’dé, or Apache) traveling across the Bering Strait and working their way down to the Southwest around the 1400s. The Diné say they were here far earlier, emerging near a lake in southwestern Colorado, and that First Man and First Woman settled at Gobernador Knob, a sacred mountain south of Navajo Lake. Begay says his people have always been here, something that future archaeology may yet confirm.

Oy.

Begay is wrong in two ways. First, the Diné have not always been there, and as far as sacred sites, I'm sure your "cousins" in northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia have them in plenty. He's also wrong in that, no, the Navajos didn't emerge with other peoples. This, to go woke on the woke, is just another installment in Navajo cultural appropriation of Pueblo traditions and religion. 

Then, in the piece "Abiquiu State of Mind," we have the tagline of author Molly Boyle:

Molly Boyle thinks even the truest atheist can have a spiritual encounter in Abiquiu ...

Tied to the end of the third-to-last paragraph of the body copy:

I’ve had metaphysical experiences during fireside suppers in campgrounds that line the Río Chama along Forest Road 151, and while winding through the wooden Stations of the Cross on an alternate path toward the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.

Kind of like the "To the Atheist" chapter in the AA book, eh?

Ms. Boyle may be an atheist in the narrow sense, like countless millions of Theravada Buddhists. But, as it's usually used in the modern West, to imply rejection of metaphyiscal entities? She isn't, if she's claiming to be one, and if she thinks a "spiritual encounter" should include metaphysics, even for atheists, like the AA chapter, she's patronizing as hell.

And, years back, there was Roswell. In reality, from the best we can piece it together, it doesn't appear Mack Brazel ever called it a flying saucer. And, there's no indication the military forced a cover story on him of a weather balloon. That said, the story more than redeemed itself by interviewing Ben Radford.

Having grown up at the edge of the Big Rez, having read a lot about the Anasazi and a fair amount about the Navajo, and having been to Roswell as an adult more than once, including one free trip (no way I'd pay) to the UFO museum, I know this is marketing. And blech marketing when it engages in the perpetuation of pseudoscience.

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The copyediting fail? I was belatedly looking at my March issue yesterday. It's a standard 8 1/2 x 11 size magazine. Knock off 1/2 inch or so on both sides and that's 7 1/2 inches wide on the horizontal, maybe a bit more..

Who the hell had the bright idea of flowing that as 6-column text, as was done in parts of the feature story on Carlsbad Caverns? And worse, and probably necessitated by that, running rules that look to be a full 1-point wide between the columns. That and gutters knock out another full inch or so in total. So, we've got 6 1-inch and change wide columns. It's distracting reading, but most people will still gush over it.

The special travel guide advertising pages, at 5 columns, no rules, aren't horrible. But, even that's pushing it.

NO way to run a railroad or print a newspaper

 The "this is no way to run a railroad" comes from an old-school executive editor at a newspaper group I was at many moons ago. Unfortunately, he never told that to his boss, the owner and publisher of the group, who should have known better himself, but I digress.

The second half of the saying is courtesy my favorite area CNHI whipping boy.

It had a special section Tuesday for its Medal of Honor weekend.

And, were I about one-third of the advertisers in the section, I'd want my money back.

Either a bunch of ads were PDFed in low resolution, or, if the page-building work was some combination of local and CNHI's nearest printing press in Palestine, stuff wasn't embedded.

In either case, some serious pixelation/bitmapping. You know, the typical stuff, like fonts with jagged straight-line edges, that look pretty bad at 36 point or bigger.

If it were two ads instead of one, understandable. Three, even, halfway understandable.

But, I counted one FULL page ad (color, too), four half-pagers and one quarter-pager that definitely were bad and would have been noticeable to a journalist layperson reader. Some smaller ads were iffy, but probably not noticeable to others. My guess? If this was laid out remotely, it was from last year's similar special section, with unembedded ads.

Do we really need another newspaper "incubator"?

 By that, I mean a "support" company designed either to help start-ups, especially "HUB" start-ups, or else one to keep non-chain small newspapers already in existence from imploding.

We've got several of those already, don't we?

Well, Mike Orren from Pegasus News (old personal acquaintance) thinks we need another. So, News Oasis.

Here's a fuller description on LinkedIn:

As many know, I took a six-month sabbatical from the news biz to focus on family health matters. I also really unplugged in order to get a reset, in what I called my "halftime break."

I mostly stuck to that, but over the last few months, I've been working on a new startup, one that I'm taking out of stealth mode with this post.

News Oasis is a company dedicated to eradicating true news deserts in the U.S. within a decade. To us, that means any community that has no one covering local government and schools. By that definition, there are upwards of 4,000 such communities. We will not compete with any existing news operation that is already filling a gap.

We intend to do this with a hub-and-spoke model. The hub is a centralized, but geographically distributed home office covering editing, design, product and business development. The spokes will be small owned-and-operated community sites pre-funded by local philanthropy and sponsorship. The size of the local staff will be determined by community support.

This is early stage, with a lot going on behind the scenes. We're fundraising; building out product models; and selecting our alpha markets with an eye towards launching late this year or early next.

Sounds interesting, but what makes it different from others?

What does not make it different from others is that it's peddling pagination and other services. It otherwise appears to be for start-ups, or not-yet-started-ups. More on its About page.

As for $$$, can you really fund a start-up on $150K a year and have it launch with that as a turnkey?  The "About" mentions "a couple of reporters" and "incremental costs." Are you paying an ads person straight commission? Even then, there's a cut of ad sales. Office manager? Even in smaller areas, you're near $150K right there. Not discussed? Utilities, building rent and more. Not discussed? News Oasis' cut for pagination, etc. And, if the word pagination is being used, we're talking print, right? Not discussed is paper and ink costs, printing press fees, and postal.

I think $250K is closer to reality than $150.

And, beyond that, given that Orren, a dozen years ago, uncritically slurped up on non-convicted felon Joey Dauben, I'm not sure I'd fully trust his editorial judgment either.

Update, Aug. 28: Nieman Lab writes about grants to newspapers. It notes that, despite grantmakers' stated preferences for nonprofits, more of their money still goes to for-profits. It also notes that conflict of interest issues are rising. And, Dick Tofel notes that more money is going to, well, folks like "field building organizations," which to put it more bluntly, probably include "incubators" like the one created of Orren.

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.

RIP Texas Observer? Not right now, but?

Or so it seemed, as the Texas Democracy Foundation, which runs the Observer, had announced it was going to pull the plug. However, as for now, it's survived the executioner's ax. See below for details.

That said, as I've said at my main blog in the past, editorially, while they've had some great stuff in recent years, more than once, they've made me say that once again, Bernard Rapoport is turning over in his grave.

He might be turning over about non-editorial issues, either.

When you're giving away the store online, you can't afford to not take ads as a purity symbol. Dunno about the true lefties of Counterpunch, but I do know the left-liberals of The Nation take ads. And, because it's relevant to the Observer perhaps spouting purity test language, I'm going to quote from The Nation's advertising policy:

We accept it not to further the views of The Nation but to help pay the costs of publishing. We start, therefore, with the presumption that we will accept advertising even if the views expressed are repugnant to those of the editors. The only limits are those that grow out of our interest in assuring that the advertising does not impede our use of the editorial columns of The Nation to say what we want.

There you go. Period and end of story. 

(Update, March 29, 2024: In fact, The Nation now has a Javascript screen, like many newspapers, saying: We see you have an ad-blocker on. Please disable it to continue reading our articles.)

Well, no, not end of story. Counterpunch paywalls its bigger self-produced stories, and it's to the left of the Observer (which The Nation may not be). Are you going to out-purity it, too?

With that, it should be no surprise, per the Trib's story, that the shuttering itself is also being mismanaged. Kudos to Robert Frump for standing up for doing things right. BS on Laura Hernandez Holmes for her PR shtick; that said, given her Beto connections, she'll make a Peter Principle upward fail.

And, if things were this bad, why were they advertising open position(s) less than a year ago?

Because turmoil?

Boy, that's discussed in the Trib piece. A magazine devoted to racial justice issues, among other things, running off multiple American Indian staffers has got problems. Andrea Grimes has a bit more on that, as part of a much longer piece that chides the mag for looking backward, not forward.

(Update, Aug. 10, 2024: Grimes has now killed not only that Substack piece, but her entire account. Grimes still is with the Observer, as she was at that time. Scratch that. That's bad returns in part on my web search plus Grimes being too lazy to update her LinkedIn for three full years now. She hasn't done a piece there since 2021 and is NOT listed on current staff. I don't know if the Wayback Machine indexes Substack or not, but to go Shakespearean, methinks thee didst bitch too much, and with perhaps less than full accuracy.)

Are they? Bernard's granddaughter Abby is reported as clashing with Tristan Ahtone before resigning herself as board chair.

The Observer's editorial staff is reportedly fighting back. But, from the story there, I don't think this will work. And, it's probably time to pull the plug.

Former (resigned as part of all the turmoil of the last couple years) fundraising head James Canup has started a GoFundMe. But, as i said on Twitter? Unless they either start accepting ads, or paywalling at least some online content (even if that meant I couldn't read it), I'm not pounding sand down a rathole.

That said, enough other people DID pound sand, or else ignored that they were trying to fill in a rathole. In a new story, the Trib says they got over $300K. (They were at just over $200K Tuesday evening.) 

Back to the rathole, though.

The closure announcement was handled badly both for its suddenness and for the "ONE WEEK LEFT" angle as well. Given everything else noted up above, though, that bad handling, while sad, is not surprising in any way.

As for the GoFundMe raising enough to more than double the mag's reserves?

Yes, but.

That's a one-off. 

Why couldn't Canup get these types of donations before he became the "former" head of fundraising? And, can a GoFundMe be set up to allow "exit interview" type comments? As in "here's why I'm donating," or even more, "why didn't I donate before"? If not, why isn't the website set up for polling or other feedback? I mean, I had no idea things were this bad. I'm sure people who are more inside baseball on Texas Politics than me may have known something, and certainly knew the general turmoil but .... (The Trib's update story lists him as "former," still, and also notes Hernandez Holmes is still leaving the board Friday.)

If you don't have these "exit interviews" or website feedback? I'm not a development director, but I know a lot of this will be one-off donations, otherwise.

And, per the top link? You need more than that.

The Trib notes that last year's Molly awards dinner only raked half of what it used to. And, the Emerson Collective of Laurene Powell Jobs cutting off the pipeline in 2021? In terms of both proactive budget cutting and proactive searches for major replacements, what was or was not done? We KNOW that no website paywalls, no pay charges on email newsletters, and no advertising sales were done.

And, the Observer wasn't the only media site where Jobs either cut back on, or else eliminated totally, her benefice. But, if I remember rightly, there were warning signs before that, and in general, indications that she saw her money as incubator or seed money as much as anything.

More seeming evidence of bad management:

Also that month [October 2022], the Observer received what seemed like a lifeline: a $1 million pledge by the Tejemos Foundation, set up by Greg Wooldridge, a retired investor, and Lynne Dobson, a philanthropist and photojournalist whose family started Whataburger. The couple disbursed $400,000 of the gift soon after, and later asked the magazine for documentation of matching funds and other efforts in order to receive the remaining $600,000, some of which would have gone to cover public relations, marketing and other vital business operations that had been long neglected.

Seriously. It's pounding money down a rathole to give them money right now. They probably need a few new board members, too. But, this is probably all going to be too late. 

In the "we're still alive for now" story, the Trib cites Canup:

“The long-standing issues at the Observer, regardless of the personalities who fill the org chart, are structural,” Canup said in an interview before the board reversed its decision. “The board of the Texas Observer has always been informal in its operations. It’s easy for a sense of distrust to develop between the board and the staff, and similarly between the small business and editorial sides of the publication.”

There you go.

And, if it's not? If the GoFundMe staves off destruction for a few months, per everything above, that's not necessarily a good thing.

Further bad management? Hernandez Holmes said significant money had been spent in the past few months without board authorization. Frump "pled guilty," both of these in the update story.

And also there? If she's claiming this:

“My intent in voting for layoffs and hiatus was never about closing down the publication,” she said. “The actions I took as board president were intended to allow space for the Observer to be reconstituted, and reimagined in a more sustainable form, so as to develop a strong business model that could adapt to an ever-evolving media landscape.”

She needs to stay gone. That's either a lie or hugely bad management.

Rapoport notes the one-off issue of the GoFundMe:

“Can those thousands of people sustain support — not just this one big push, but over and over again, because that’s what it’s going to need?” she said. “That’s the million-dollar question.”

I agree.

And, again, nobody's talking about running paid advertising. Nobody's talking about paywalling the website.

Rathole.

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I very much don't want it to die. But, I want it to REALLY fix itself. It's kind of like the Green Party in that way. It represents, overall, some good ideas (though voter registration and third-party issues is one thing I have NEVER seen the Observer discussed), but it's been run horribly for a decade or more.

Speaking of "Green," the Observer needs to emulate Counterpunch, not The Nation, in that way, and when it writes about specifically political issues, not go down the road of duopoly tribalism. 

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Update: Shock me that other than a block-quote from Molly Ivins, John Nichols at the advertising-accepting The Nation doesn't mention the Texas Observer shooting itself in the foot with no-ads purity test.

Also shock me that Gabe Arana, in HIS Nation piece referencing Nichols, ALSO doesn't mention it. And that he gets hypocritical with this:

For those of us at the helm of progressive media, the question now is the same as it has been since Google and Facebook came along and stole all of our advertising money: How do we sustain a fiercely independent press in the age of the Internet?

Dood, if you chose not to sell ads, Facebook and Google stole nothing.

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Update, March 19, 2024: Did they get their requested $317K by the end of last year, per my one comment? They got enough to stay open, but not a lot more, I will gather. More later.

Meanwhile, editorially? They continue to shoot themselves in the foot at times, at least from this leftist-of-sorts perspective.

And, at the one-year mark, the turmoil and the financial struggles are ongoing.

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Update, Aug. 10, 2024: I don't even get their Javascript "please become a member" screen now. That's after clicking to read more than half a dozen stories. Instead, there's a "plea box" down at the bottom of each story.

The Fort Worth StartleGram strike

 An insider writes about the process for the Texas Observer. Interestingly, at other McLatchKey papers, columnists are certified/certifiable as union members. At the StartleGram, not so much. Wondering if Bud Kennedy wrote a column about this.

Getting a shift in semiweekly press days wrong, or half-assed

 I understand if you're a semiweekly and your pub days have to be Tuesday and Friday because that's when the press can fit you in, and bigger semiweeklies, or a daily or two, whether from your own ownership group or elsewhere, have first call.

Wednesday and Saturday are preferred, of course.

So, why would your parent company shift your Friday paper to Saturday, for getting Friday sports in the paper, although I think this still only gives them a Friday daytime press deadline, but not also adjust your Tuesday?

Who knows, with my favorite bad but not owned by a hedge fund chain.

Of course, other factors involved include press deadlines and more.