Well, at least Lee Zion didn't get himself killed

For those in the media who have forgotten the name, Lee Zion was the small-town Minnesota newspaper publisher and owner who, with a variety of cockamamie claims about his journalism and a couple of cockamamie reasons about why he was leaving that I dissected here, with a short follow-up here, decided he "had to" get rid of his newspaper, and as I put it in Mark Twain terms, "see the elephant" by going to fight in Ukraine.

That was just over two years ago. I don't think I had googled his name in a full year, but something prompted me to a few weeks ago.

Well, lo and behold, more than a year ago, and, less than 10 months after doubling down on his determination to head to Ukraine? In early May 2023, he became editor of a weekly paper in Haines, Alaska. No, really.

He discusses his background:

“I’ve done a lot of things. I was the business reporter at the San Diego Business Journal. And in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I was a reporter/copy editor. Then there was Bryson City, North Carolina as an editor, which I greatly enjoyed. And most recently, I was the owner and other things at the Lafayette Nicollet Ledger in Lafayette, Minnesota.

For any "community" type newspaper editor, let alone one at or over age 55, even given the situation, that's a lot of wanderlusting.

He also discusses his time in Ukraine. He said he "put his back out" shortly before he was to head over, and it bothered him the whole time, and he only stayed a few months.

No indication if he offered to have sex for free with any Ukrainian girlchik porn bots, or with any Last Frontier women, either, per his time in Minnesota. Hope you like a LOT more snow and winter overcast than Minnesota had. (Less than 30 percent sunshine for half the year would probably drive me fucking nuts.)

To be totally honest, given the number of things he likely lied about with his Minnesota newspaper — claiming no staff help is a proven lie — he's probably lying about his time in Ukraine and why he didn't stay longer, either.

New editor, fewer pages in Gainesville

 So, at the start of the month, as I had heard would happen, the Register officially named CNHI's Cleburne editor as the editor in Gainesville as well. 

But, she doesn't just run that. She's also the editor at Weatherford.

Which means she probably doesn't do a lot of editing at any of the three. And, very little writing. (That's part of why Aledo's Randy Keck saw an opening to start an online-only alternative to the Weatherford Democrat.) So, in that sense, former Register editor Mike Eads won't be replaced.

And? Those pages? The Tuesday, Aug. 6 issue? Just 8 pages. First time I've seen them do that since dropping from triweekly to semiweekly. Don't know about the weekender after that, but the next Tuesday's issue? Eight again. (Why anybody would steal it at the local library other than for crosswords, I don't know.) They did have 10 on the Aug. 17 weekender, but if they'd not nearly a page and a half of legals, they might have dropped.

Aug. 20 midweek? Eight pages again. Ditto Aug. 27.

Looking ahead? Eads fought his way through football coverage and after that, the Register did nothing with sports, other than submitted letter of intent signings, the rest of the 2023-24 school year. Nobody responded to their ad seeking stringers. And, they've yet to start running one this year. That means no sports, in all likelihood.

But, it DOES have (checks notes) an eight-page! football preview. I didn't look in detail. Just saw it had an eight-page preview. Probably almost no ads. That said, in years past, Bill Patterson's Denton Wrecked-Chronic has only had a 12-page preview.

Update, Sept. 18: And, it's being VERY inconsistent in print in sports coverage. And, weirdly so. See more below on the Sept. 17 issue.

Sept. 3 midweek: Bare football scores with presumably submitted photos. 10 pages, in part due to tax rate legal notices.

Sept. 10 midweek: One-paragraph summaries of the Max Preps kind with submitted photos.

Sept. 17 midweek: NO scores, let alone story, even though it was Gainesville's homecoming. NO photos to go with. At least it was all local news on the front page, as the homecoming stuff meant no Texas Trib. But, it was just eight pages. Seriously. They ran a four-column photo, run vertically down to the shoes, of the king and queen, that basically ate up all of the front page on those columns, then a story about the alumni being honored and something about county Democrats to fill out the other two.

But, NO score from the game, let alone other area games.

Also, nothing online or in print about the demolition of an overpass crossing I-35 and how that might affect traffic.

A McLatchKey clusterfuck in Charlotte coming up

 The Charlotte Observer, nominally owned by McClatchy but really by Alden Chatham Asset Management, is about to implode.

Per a Substack run by a presumably online-only competitor, The Charlotte Ledger — or maybe the Substack IS??? the online paper ...

The Observer is going to cut to just 3x a week in print.

And, wait, that's not all.

We all know there is no DeJoy, or rather, too much DeJoy, in the Mudville of the U.S. Postal Service.

McLatchKey in Charlotte is delivering those 3x papers a week via the USPS. No more carriers.

Sidebar: Where in the FUCK are they being printed if they have 2 p.m. deadlines? Atlanta? They've obviously gotten rid of their own press, which for a daily paper in one of the top 30-35 metro markets in the US is incredibly stupid right there.

Here's the Observer's announcement. The change starts in September.

That said, this Ledger does run off Substack, it appears. That means you're paying overhead to Hamish et al. And charging just $99/year for the half that is paid. SMH. The Way of Life sub-Substack (it's a newspaper, not a newsletter) is paid-only, with 22K subscribers. OTOH, that's $2.2 million, if those subscriber numbers are current and no churn.

They say, on the first link, that the Observer is down to less than 40 journos. OK, at $50K a year, and allowing Hamish his cut off that $2.2 million plus the partially paid biz Substack, you've got the same number yourself.

However, my back-of-envelope calculation doesn't allow for the employer share of FICA taxes, nor for unemployment insurance program payments to the state, nor any state business taxes on the Ledger, nor any property taxes if it has a physical newsroom. (Also, are these sales subject to North Carolina sales tax?) It also presumes that there's no health insurance and these employees have to Obamacare. It also leaves no room for higher pay for editorial management. 

So, while the Observer may be imploding, and may have shot itself in the foot on the printing press closure, whenever that happened, it's not like the Ledger is necessarily all that and a pack of smokes either. And, it's been around four-plus years.

Why aren't you charging for sports if you are presumably, going beyond "just the box scores"?

==

Update: Re the suggested collection, Teh Google said Chatham is going in the crapper in other ways, merging McClatchKey with the parent company of the National Enquirer. Well, maybe not. The story said that "accelerate360," Chatham's glossy mag group, would specifically exclude the Enquirer and some other mags, and also by name exclude David Pecker.

We'll see how long and well that lasts.

==

Sidebar: I appreciate the correction from Alden to Chatham, which error I shouldn't  have made. But, it reminds me ... moderation here is being flipped on.

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?