Newstradamus

Michael Kountouris/Cagle Cartoons

The Hawaiian pidgin language is full of descriptive words, such as “huhu,” which describes a state of agitated anger.

The North Coast blogs have been all huhu since before the supervisor elections over the campaign’s hot-button issue: Johanna Rodoni’s shadow candidacy for 2nd District county supervisor.

The name of her husband, Roger, remained on the June 3 ballot after he died in a car crash just before the election. Johanna was appointed by the governor to fill out his term, and rather than asking voters to write in her name, she and her supporters encouraged a vote for Roger in hopes she would be reappointed.

The conventional wisdom was that if Roger didn’t attract 50 percent of the voters plus one, Johanna was out of luck. Everybody knew that even if Roger was in the top two of three candidates, because of his death he could not be the Nov. 4 runoff, nor could Johanna be a write-in in the fall.

One bit of tongue-in-cheek advice given to young journalists is, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” meaning that a healthy skepticism about what “everybody knows” is a reporter’s best friend.

So our reporters started with the county’s top elections official, Carolyn Crnich, who said she would have to do some research, but was too swamped with election preparation for a quick answer, which was understandable.

Our Editorial Board had an opportunity before the election to ask Johanna Rodoni whether she could be a write-in candidate Nov. 4, and she said: “Not as far as I understand it. There is some question about that still. We haven’t even pursued that. We’re just going to get through June 3, and then we’ll look at the options for November.”

So when our editorial endorsement of Clif Clendenen was published on June 1, it hedged a sentence that it was “possible” Johanna could be a November write-in. While there were hints that the door wasn’t closed, we didn’t know for sure. Plus, we didn’t think it was fair to put pressure on Crnich publicly to make a ruling at such a stressful time at her office.

That sentence, however, was enough to throw gas on the flaming huhu. How could the “Substandard” be so stupid? Don’t they know the law? A write-in by Johanna Rodoni? What outrageous incompetence to suggest anything of the kind. Sub-sub-sub!”

That’s why online political opinion gives you the most for your entertainment dollar — especially since it's free.

Of course, the Times-Standard wanted to have the question answered by election night, especially if Roger Rodoni did not win outright. Which is what happened. He got 36.7 percent of the vote, only 16 more votes than Clendenen. Estelle Fennell was another 644 votes back, but she’ll be on the runoff ballot in November.

So it was with some satisfaction that we published a story that night quoting a spokeswoman at the California secretary of state’s office — which oversees elections — saying one of their attorneys found no legal obstacles to a Johanna write-in on Nov. 4.

Of course, the huhu continued unabated, as I’m sure it will after today’s front-page story about Crnich saying a county legal opinion confirms that.

We look forward to more huhu ha-ha’s for months to come, especially if someone has pockets deep enough for a legal challenge.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

Hillary Clinton does a mea culpa for RFK assassination comment/Associated Press

The uproar last weekend over Hillary Clinton’s glancing reference to
Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination is an example of how the dynamic of
journalism is being changed by the digital medium.

For those who don’t watch much TV, and might have missed it, Clinton
was campaigning in South Dakota last Friday and stopped in to talk
with the editorial board at the Argus Leader newspaper in Sioux
Falls.

About 20 minutes into the interview, which the Clinton campaign made
available via streaming video, she was asked why she was continuing
her campaign in the face of Barack Obama’s insurmountable dominance
in elected delegates. In an analytical tone, noting that long primary
seasons have not been unusual, she said, “My husband did not wrap up
the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere
in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was
assassinated in June in California.”

The remark drew little attention from the reporters following her
campaign, who were watching at the New York senator’s next stop, a
supermarket in Brandon, S.D. But back east, a New York Post writer
picked up on it and slapped it on the Web. It was quickly linked to
by the Drudge Report, then Politico and other political Web sites
grabbed it.

Back in Brandon, while reporters were sitting through Clinton’s
standard stump speech, their Blackberrys started buzzing with calls
from editors asking them, “The Web says Hillary admitted waiting
around in case somebody shoots Obama — get reaction!”

Clinton issued a brief regret that her remarks may have been misconstrued,
followed up later by a more detailed mea culpa, but by then it was
the lead story on television and front pages, continuing to be a
white-hot topic through the weekend.

The story at first was little-noted by reporters on the scene (the
initial story by the Associated Press, which is where the
Times-Standard gets most of its national political news, didn’t even
mention it), and the editor at the Argus Leader said it was clear her
remarks to them referred to the time line of Kennedy’s primary
candidacy, and not to his assassination.

But that didn’t stop pundits from saying that while Clinton may not
be wishing for something bad to befall Obama, it indicated some
psychological obsession that would effectively end even outside
chances of her nomination, not to mention hopes of a
vice-presidential spot on the ticket.

Some observations:

• With online news, the highest value is in getting other Web sites
to link to yours, driving traffic and thus enhancing advertising
value. Thus, the emphasis is on speed, not context, and on what’s
hot, not what’s necessarily important.

• Thus, it’s the Web that is increasingly driving the American news
agenda, not print or broadcast media. Where once the campaign
narrative was framed by in-depth stories that may have taken months
to gather, it is now dominated by the trivial. (The examples this year
are too many to list.)

• John Harris of Politico, a political Web site — in noting that
elite media such as the New York Times and ABC News that once set the
agenda “now take their cues from the newer, more daring ones” —
doesn’t think the story was worth the hype. “If this really was a big
story,” he wrote, “then the media has blown it for months. Clinton
made similar remarks to Time magazine back in March.”

The truth is, as Harris notes, Clinton’s mistake was not in saying
something beyond the pale, but in saying something that if pulled
from context would sound as if it were beyond the pale.

Meanwhile, serious and relevant stories, such as Obama’s foreign
policy views, or McCain’s health report, or Clinton’s financial
crisis sink with barely a notice.

The Times-Standard ran a modest story about Clinton’s apology on our
inside campaign page, which is where it should have been.

But on our Web site, we also recognize driving traffic is important.
That’s why we upload breaking stories throughout the day, and know
that stories attracting outside links — a mountain lion attack on a
hiker, a killer whale’s seal raid on a Trinidad beach, giant oysters,
or any story related to marijuana — result in thousands of hits.

It’s uncertain where this trend toward hyperactive media consumption
may lead us. But when it comes to important issues such as choosing a
president, it does not seem conducive to wise decisions.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

St. Louis Globe-Democrat's famous photo of Harry Truman with infamous headline.

Everybody was expecting another volley in the "Obama's an elitist" flurry when Hillary Clinton addressed the nation's editors and publishers on Tuesday. However, she turned her criticism on the Republicans — first on George W. Bush to critique his presidency and then on John McCain, to show how the likely GOP presidential candidate would be more of the same if elected.

Unlike the speech by Barack Obama yesterday (which had tickets for specific tables, with mine ending up way in back), this time it was first come, first served, and a little waiting in line paid off with a front row seat.

Hillary had music for her entrance — "Our Country" by John Mellencamp, which unless I am mistaken is also used in commercials for Chevy trucks. Has she been using that song for a while, or is its selection a metaphor for her non-elitism? Since questioning Obama's electability following his analysis of small-town Pennsylvanians as being "bitter," she has downed a shot of whisky in Indiana and talked of how she learned to shoot from her Scranton granddad.

(On Tuesday, the big screen image of her in the hall clearly showed the gleam coming off her necklace. I asked the woman sitting next to me if they were real diamonds. She replied, "Oh, yeah!)

Like the other candidates, Clinton played up to the editors. She started off by jokingly declaring the speech off the record, expressing admiration for a group of people used to getting calls at 3 a.m., and declaring her support for a federal reporter shield law, now before the Senate.

She also thanked the editors for a headline she has thought about recently, "Dewey Beats Truman." Actually, the premature headline that appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1948 was "Dewey Defeats Truman," but we understood what she meant. It also underlines how the speed of news has accelerated so much since those days.

Before taking on Bush in the main part of her speech, and doing a short Q&A session, she praised the mission of newspapers, which "predates our country. It is essential that we have you to inform an active citizenry.” She noted the dangers faced by journalists in the world (citing the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Iraq), and praised investigative efforts such as the exposure of conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital, which won a Pulitzer Prize last week for the Washington Post.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Marine Corps Band plays before McCain arrived to speak at AP's annual meeting.

• McCain audio, video and transcript
• Obama audio, video and transcript

WASHINGTON — Being able to attend speeches by two presidential candidates is rare enough, but hearing them back to back — as I did on Monday when John McCain and Barack Obama visited the national convention of editors and publishers here — was a great opportunity to observe the differences between the two campaigns. And Hillary Clinton will make it a trifecta with a speech Tuesday.

And there certainly were contrasts. Both spoke at Associated Press functions, McCain at the AP annual meeting at 10:30, and Obama at the AP annual luncheon at 1:30. McCain spoke immediately after the opening general meeting of the convention, which featured a (frankly) boring panel of newspaper/web journalists on the theme of "Making Journalism Matter."

Since I was able to snag a front-row seat for that session, I had dibs on the same seat for McCain. There was no security check, either for me or the people who arrived following the panel session to hear McCain. The room was packed, for sure, but by Washington Convention Center standards it wasn't that huge of a room.

By contrast, the AP luncheon where Obama spoke was held in the cavernous main ballroom, and even with "by invitation only" tickets costing $75 each (for rubbery chicken), the event was told out — for the first time in AP's 162-year history, according to the current president of AP, who happens to be Dean Singleton. (Singleton owns MediaNews Group, which owns the Times-Standard.)

I am no good at crowd estimates, but my guess is that at least twice as many people attended the lunch featuring Obama. Not only that, but everyone at the lunch had to go through airport-type security, including random wanding. I can only surmise that it's because Obama has had Secret Service protection for a while (no doubt because of threats), while McCain so far has refused it, although he reluctantly has said that he would have discussions this week about accepting protection.

I will note, by the way, that those at the Obama luncheon were not all editors and publishers. I saw many tables set aside for AP employees, and because the newspaper trade show — NEXPO — is being held at the same time, there were many vendors and their spouses there.

My table (which was toward the back because I bought a late ticket when I learned Obama would be speaking) was filled with people who had NEXPO booths, such as one guy from Montreal who is involved in the installation of new presses in Fremont for the San Francisco Chronicle, and another who works for a clipping service. (He contracts with businesses to send them clips of every mention of his clients in the media; the media get a copyright cut.) To my left was the VP of operations for the Chicago Tribune.

There were a ton of working journalists at both speeches, because of the latest tempest over comments Obama made about some voters being "bitter." Hillary Clinton has taken the opportunity to try to drive a wedge between Obama and superdelegates by charging Obama is "elitist."

McCain weighed into the fray himself here Monday. Being interviewed onstage by AP reporters Liz Sidoti and Ron Fournier (who accompany him on the campaign trail), McCain wouldn't bite on several questions asking him if he thought Obama was an elitist. But he said he thought the Democrat's comments were elitist.

In his prepared remarks, McCain also said if the vote for a federal reporters' shield law (to protect them from being jailed if they did not give up confidential sources, such as whistleblowers) were held today, he'd be narrowly in favor of voting yes. That drew applause from the audience.

When he sat down with Sidoti and Fournier, he loosened up and showed some of the bonhomie he's said to employ with reporters on the campaign trail. He lit up like a kid at Christmas when Sidoti preceded the questioning by offering him "your favorite" — donuts. "With sprinkles!," McCain said when he opened the box.

Obama, after zinging Clinton yesterday, didn't mention her at the AP lunch. In his prepared remarks, he talked up front about the elitism charge, admitting that he hadn't expressed himself clearly. But he said he was looking forward to a debate with McCain about who was more in touch with the American people.

Dean Singleton followed up with questions from the audience that had been submitted earlier. One asked whether Obama thinks Clinton — who trails in votes, delegates and states won — should drop out of the race. He credited his rival with toughening him up by hitting him with all the strategies he'd be likely to face in a campaign against McCain.

In another question asking about the candidate's strategies in going after al-Qaida, Singleton referred to "Obama bin Laden." Obama did a double-take, then grinned at the red-faced Singleton and said, "This is part of the exercise I've been going through over the last 15 months — which is why it's pretty impressive I'm still standing here."

We'll see what Hillary brings us Tuesday. She's also speaking at a $75 lunch with full security checks. Last time she spoke to us, a few years back, there was no security check, but she wasn't running for president then.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lisa Williams blogs while sitting on a panel at the editors' convention in D.C.

The national convention of editors and publishers got under way slowly on Sunday afternoon as attendees trickled slowing into the nation's capital. The big deal over the weekend was the NEXPO newspaper trade show, but there also were some educational sessions.

Over the years, I have found many of these types of sessions are people singing to the choir — i.e. editors (often the more innovative ones, to be sure) offering "best practices." They are good places to steal some ideas, but these types of panels don't offer many "aha!" moments. These moments often come from outsiders, or heretics if you will, who approach communication and information from a totally different point of view.

Two of sessions I attended Sunday were typical, "Dynamic Web Strategies for Small Newspapers" and "Building Audience in a Fragmented Media World." There were many bits of advice that could be swiped. But a speaker at the second one offered some of these "aha!" observations.

She was Lisa Williams, who founded H2Otown.info and Placeblogger.com in Watertown, Mass. She comes from a tech background, not a journalistic one, and thus offered some advice to editors. Like not to get to upset by layoffs. In the dot.com world, she said, layoffs are the only time you get vacation. And showing photo of icebergs, she offered this metaphor: "Fewer Titanics, more kayaks." Listen to her talk here.

The welcoming reception was at the new Nationals ballpark. Unfortunately, the Nats left town after a game Saturday with Atlanta. Bummer. But I had a chance to reconnect with many old friends.

Monday brings more sessions designed to cheer up editors and publishers during one of the worst economic times for the business in a while. Plus John McCain and Barak Obama will speak back-to-back at the Associated Press annual meeting and luncheon, so stay tuned to Newstradamus.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 02:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As it happened, after two hours sitting at the gate, our plane from Denver to D.C. finally got under way after the electrical problem was fixed. Nevertheless, the friend I was meeting for dinner waited for me, and we had a great meal at an Italian place called Luigino's at 1100 New York Ave. NW. I had mezzaluna pasta with artichokes and pine nuts in a cream sauce. Linda was in the mood for linguine putanesca, but it wasn't on the menu. The chef made her day by making it for her anyway.

As noted in my last entry, Linda Hosek is a multi-talented journalist, having worked in print, television and now online. She also is an accomplished photographer, and is setting up a business called Blueye Productions. Check out some of her work http://blueyeproductions.com

Meanwhile, the NEXPO trade show got underway Saturday and continues Sunday. I'll try to cruise through and see what may look innovative and interesting. Also, some early topics for editors on Sunday include Web strategies, how to get and keep young readers, and trying to attract readers in a fragmenting media world.

These topics may not be interesting to most people, but they're of concern as mainstream media strive to survive. Those with an interest in journalism will want to follow my rolling posts over the next few days. Those without, tune back in next week.

For baseball fans, the welcome reception this year will be held at the new Nationals Park baseball stadium tonight. I wonder if they'll be serving hot dogs...

Posted by Rich Somerville at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (244)

Larry Wright/The Detroit News

This was supposed to be an entry to kick off what will be a running blog about my attendance at the newspaper convention in Washington, DC, with details about what is on the program for the next few days. Instead, we're living through the travel nightmares that thousands of others have been suffering in recent weeks because of canceled flights due to FAA safety checks.

I was grateful that I was flying on United instead of American. But United — or at least my connecting flight from Denver to D.C. — is having its own problems. After everybody was loaded on board (wall-to-wall, every seat filled, many of them by transfers from American), it was found there is some sort of electrical problem. So we are sitting in the plane at the gate, waiting to hear whether we can get the OK to fly on auxiliary power (highly unlikely!), or solve the problem, or unload us and find another plane.

At least I get a chance to try out my Verizon laptop uplink — seems to be working OK!

I'm bummed because I had dinner plans this evening with a longtime journalism colleague from Hawaii days who is now working on the Pentagon's news Web site, believe it or not. (Bet you didn't know they even had one...) It's possible that we'll have to try to reschedule — if I can even get to Washington at all today.

If I do, there are some interesting things going on at this convention, which because it's an election year is a combination of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Newspaper Association of America (the publishers), and the industry's trade show, called NEXPO.

I'll fill in details of the upcoming program later today, but all three remaining presidential contenders will be speaking — McCain and Hillary Clinton on Monday, and Obama on Tuesday. Plus, the welcoming bash will be at the brand-new Nationals baseball park, and a trip is planned to the Newseum on the Mall, which opened officially yesterday.

Meanwhile, things are getting claustrophobic in here. Pray for us...

Posted by Rich Somerville at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bob Englehart/The Hartford Courant

Before I head off on vacation, a few thoughts about the recent fuss regarding the New York Times story about John McCain:

— For those who are McCain supporters, or former Republican McCain haters now rallying around their guy, I can see how this might be considered a calculated smear campaign. It’s not, of course. This is what good news organizations do: Dig deep and write about what they find. It’s like the story of the frog carrying the scorpion across the river. As both are drowning after the scorpion stings the frog, the frog asks why, and the scorpion answers, “Because it’s in my nature.” Any public official who thinks the press will go easy because they’ve gone easy before is whistling past the graveyard.

— The Times isn’t just picking on McCain. They’ve been tough on the Clintons in the past, and have been trying to pry the lid off the source of their recent wealth, and who is giving money to the Clinton Presidential Library. Obama has had to explain his dealings with a shady Chicago supporter, and as his candidacy grows more successful, so will the scrutiny.

— Why release the story now, rather than, say, last December when rumors were flying that a story was in the works? For the reason the Times says: It hadn’t been nailed down to the Times’ satisfaction. It could be argued that a story in December, at the nadir of McCain’s campaign, could have knocked him out for good. At this point, he may be strong enough to overcome the blow.

— Is it all a pack of lies? I doubt it. There are more anonymous sources than many journalists would like, but I don’t think the Times is making these sources up. It is understandable that former McCain campaign aides would prefer not to have their names known, although at least one has come forward to admit he was one of the sources.

— It’s notable that despite the denials by the candidate that there were sexual relations with that woman, the substance of the story (as well as the Washington Post’s, which followed on its heels) has not been refuted, which is that his aides feared the senator was tighter with telecommunications lobbyists than was seemly for the chair of the Commerce Committee. I was surprised to learn that telecom lobbyists are running his campaign — for free — but that one is also running his Senate office while he’s on the campaign trail.

— Some say evidence of a setup is that the Times endorsed McCain late last year at the same time reporters were working on the story. However, it is typical of large newspapers, as well as small ones, to keep the writers of opinion — the Editorial Board — away from the writers of news. Most editorial writers want to base their opinion what is known to the public, not what might be in various stages of verification. And reporters prefer not to have their news stories tainted by personal opinion. (That’s newspaper reporters — those rules go out the door when it comes to cable news.)

Even at a small newspaper such as the Times-Standard, we make every effort to separate our editorial position from the news staff. Whoever writes the editorials on behalf of the Editorial Board (usually but not always me) may ask reporters about facts regarding an issue, but reporters don’t write editorials.

— My main complaint about the Times story was that it framed the “lead” of story around the question of whether the senator had a romantic relationship with an attractive lobbyist. It was a distraction to the main issue about McCain’s ethics regarding lobbyists. That will be the angle that will be have legs as the campaign moves forward — unless, of course, there is a blue dress in a closet somewhere.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 07:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Ward Bushee

Hardly any time elapsed after my blog about a former colleague, Jim O'Shea, being bounced as editor of the Los Angeles Times than another — Ward Bushee — was tapped to be editor at the San Francisco Chronicle.

At one time, Ward and I were editors in the Gannett group, and in fact he was my predecessor as editor of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D. Interesting story: Ward editorialized that National Guard maneuvers were dangerous, and was persuaded to go along on a training flight so he could see how safe it was. The pilots, who I suspect were showboating, clipped wings and crashed. Ward — strapped in his seat — was catapulted through the canopy and a ball of flame. He survived, but had severe burns and a neck injury.

The incident prompted Gannett to institute what came to be called the Bushee Rule, which was that (for liability reasons) Gannett employees had to get permission from the corporate offices before flying on military aircraft. Some years later, when I was working in Honolulu, this was a bit of a pain in the butt because reporters and photographers often hitched rides with Coast Guard choppers on rescue missions.

Ward has been editor at a lot of papers since then, including Reno, Cincinnati and — most recently — Phoenix. But his return to the Bay Area is a homecoming. His dad was a longtime editor of the Watsonville paper, which has one of the strangest names — the Register-Pajaronian. (I know what an Argus is, but have no clue about a Pajaronian.)

In fact, his father, Ward Bushee Jr. (the son is Ward III) became the youngest daily newspaper editor at Watsonville in 1951, and under his leadership the paper won a Pulitzer Prize for public service for exposing a corrupt district attorney — the smallest paper ever to win the prize up to that time. The elder Bushee died in 2002.

The younger Ward, a graduate of San Jose State, also worked for the Salinas Californian and the Marin Independent Journal. He replaces Phil Bronstein, who moved into a corporate job with the parent Hearst company. Phil was most famous for being married to the actress Sharon Stone, and for having his foot chewed on by a 10-foot-long Komodo dragon at the L.A. Zoo.

Another interesting side story: Randy Lovely replaced Ward as editor of the Arizona Republic, making him the only openly gay editor of a major U.S. newspaper, and the first one to be appointed while out of the closet. (Roy Aarons, who died in 2004 of cancer, came out in 1990 after he had been editor of the Oakland Trib for seven years. Bill Cox, who was managing editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin a couple of years before I joined that paper, revealed he was gay in a column in 1986. He died of complications of AIDS in 1988.)

Bushee has his work cut out for him at the Chronicle. It is the poster child for newspaper circulation decline, with a drop of about 20% since 2004 to less than 370,000 weekdays. In response, staff cuts have been severe (more than a quarter of its newsroom was let go last year).

Part of that is due to increased competition from the San Jose Mercury News to the south and the Contra Costa Times and the Oakland Tribune in the East Bay, not to mention the Internet. Yet the Chron remains the second-largest paper on the West Coast after the L.A. Times, and there are some who say the circulation drop has a profit motive, at least in part. (With a fewer but more upscale readers, a paper can earn more advertising dollars.) Plus, SFGate is a strong newspaper Web site.

San Francisco is still a great city for a news organization, and I know first-hand that Ward is an innovative editor. (Ironically, considering the Chron is in serious competition with the MediaNews papers that surround it, Ward was a featured speaker at last summer's conference of MediaNews editors in Colorado. He talked about what Gannett and the Arizona Republic were doing with their Information Center concept. (The Times-Standard is a MediaNews paper.)

It will be interesting to watch the changes he will bring to the Chron.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Jim O'Shea

The newspaper business is very homogeneous. If you're in it long enough, you get to know a lot of people. Jim O'Shea, who has been getting a lot of attention this week after being fired as the editor of the Los Angeles Times, is one of them.

Somebody asked me a few weeks ago what I thought would happen now that Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell had bought the Tribune Co. I didn't guess that one of the first casualties would be O'Shea, who was at the Chicago Tribune for 30 years.

He and I first met as young journalists in Des Moines in the early 1970s. When I bought my first house, he helped me wire it for 220 to accommodate a huge window air conditioner. (As I recall, he had put himself through college as an apprentice electrician.)

He went off to the Chicago Tribune as a business reporter and in the ensuing years he worked his way up the ladder to become managing editor. We kept in touch in a casual way, seeing each other at conventions, or when I would occasionally stop at the Tribune where I have a number of friends.

In 2006, he was sent to take over in L.A., and now has become the third editor there in as many years to leave or be fired over budget issues. Apparently, instead of cutting his budget 1% as requested, he proposed to increase it in order to meet the demands of covering the presidential campaign and the Olympics. So it seems that even though Jim was fired, it could be ruled a suicide. But he went out with his head up, getting in some licks at the state of newspaper journalism today.

I'm sure he'll land on his feet, as his two predecessors have. John Carroll became a visiting lecturer at Harvard, and Dean Banquet is now the New York Times Washington bureau chief. (Michael Parks, who preceded Carroll, became dean of the journalism school at USC.)

Now today we learn that Phil Bronstein is out as San Francisco Chronicle editor, bumped upstairs to what sounds like a corporate figurehead position. It follows close on the heels of Carol Leigh Hutton's departure from the San Jose Mercury News.

These are tough times to be a newspaper editor, although those of us toiling at smaller community papers have a tough time identifying with editors who have staffs of hundreds, get six-figure golden handshakes and leave for jobs as good or better.

However, we all face difficult decisions during tough economic times, which we're going through these days. The best way to deal with it is to help your staff put out the best news product with the resources you have, and be willing to walk away when it stops being fun. As O'Shea said in his comments to his staff in L.A., "There are plenty of other challenges out there for me and I don’t intend to sit around idle. There are bike rides to be had, books to write and hopefully another opportunity or two to make a difference."

It is hard to generalize about the news business; L.A.'s messy situation is unique in many ways. I prefer to think about what's going on as a painful birth process of a new journalism, with a business model rededicated to the role of the Fourth Estate in a democratic society. On the other hand, maybe Woody Allen was right:

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

Posted by Rich Somerville at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dario Castillejos

I've long believed that we are in the middle of a decades-long reconfiguration of how journalism is practiced, and how people make money at it.

Take a look at some other businesses, like the film industry. It used to be highly vertically integrated, with studios owning the whole process — actors, screenwriters, directors, production, marketing and distribution. Now pretty much everything is contracted out on a project-by-project basis. That's why we're paying $10 for movie tickets soon — everybody offers their skills on the open market, and the best at what they do get top dollar.

Or professional sports — once the players won the right to claim free agency, the best of them before long became multi-millionaires, and even the journeyman pros did a lot better than before.

As technology has pushed change at all levels of journalism, it seemed that this sort of caste model could be possible. Early signs came years ago, in television news, when handsome or beautiful talking heads started drawing down huge salaries based on their Nielsen numbers.

Then, in print journalism, Bob Woodward parleyed his "All the President's Men" fame into a career as both a newspaperman and a millionaire author of investigative books. Bob Barlett and Jim Steele, former investigative reporters with the Philadelphia Inquirer, leveraged a couple of Pulitzers into fat contracts — first with Time Inc. and now Vanity Fair — and seven books.

More recently, just in time for the presidential campaign, Washington Post writers John Harris and Jim VandeHei jumped ship and created Politico, which disseminates its political journalism via TV, the Web, newspapers and radio.

The latest evidence of this trend, in a New York Times story, shows the latest hot commodities are top sportswriters. The story notes that ESPN and Yahoo Sports "are on a furious hiring binge, offering reporters and columnists more than they ever imagined they could make in journalism."

How much? At ESPN, $150,000 to $350,000 a year for several writers, the story says, and far more for a select handful.

Some magazines like Sports Illustrated, have tried to keep up, but newspapers don't have a chance — they don't make that kind of profit. One of those who has profited is the SF Chronicle's Mark Fainaru-Wada, one of the duo who uncovered key info in the steroid scandal. He's how with ESPN, and says it's amazing considering what's happening elsewhere in the business: "We just went through a 25% newsroom cut at the Chronicle,"

The assistant ME for sports at the Washington Post is quoted as saying, "We're used to being a destination, not a stepping stone." That may be changing — starting with an elite few in hot-commodity beats like sports and politics.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Sacramento Bee and the Miami News, both owned by the McClatchy Co., say they are going to outsource some of their advertising production work to an outfit in New Delhi, India, called Mindworks.

The story said that Mindworks also would monitor reader comments posted to the Herald's stories online. That created an image in my mind if the Times-Standard did that — somebody in Delhi trying to make sense of some weed-raddled raving from Humboldt County about Jesus, Bush and Arkley.

This is all fallout from the tight advertising squeeze being faced by newspapers. I suspect on some of these routine types of computer jobs, they can save a lot of money by doing this — and digitally it's quite easy to do.

Except for the language problem. Yes, people in India speak a British-inflected English from the days of the Raj, but as someone who was on the line getting some advice on a home network setup yesterday, I had to say "Pardon?" a lot. He got it fixed for me, though.

Newspaper outsourcing is not all that new in other parts of the world. Years ago, a friend who works at the New Straits Times in Singapore said his paper had a copy desk in Australia and a graphic design desk in (as I recall) Hong Kong.

In this country, it may work for graphic design but not for news content (or web comments), especially at community papers where a deep understanding of local issues and lifestyles is crucial to success. The Herald's story hinted at this when it noted that www.pasadenanow.com, a news Web site, was flamed after it hired two reporters in India to cover the L.A. suburb. Admittedly, one was a Berkeley grad, but still . . .

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Los Angeles Times' David Lazarus focuses on the guillotine hanging over the head of the news business in his article about free information in the digital age. He interviews a bunch of teens who say they would never pay for news online.

He quotes Phoebe, 15: ""My grandparents subscribe to a lot of newspapers. If I want to read a newspaper, I go online, but I wouldn't pay for it. Our generation doesn't pay for things on the Internet."

Says Lazarus: "What Phoebe meant, of course, is that her generation doesn't pay for information on the Net. Music, movies, games — all those things have clear monetary value. Anything you take in by reading, not so much. 'Information should be free,' declared Corey, 18, echoing a sentiment I encounter a lot online, particularly among bloggers, who feel a perverse sense of entitlement to other people's work."

People think advertising sustains news online, but far from it. While a few daily newspapers make as much as 15% of their overall revenue from Web ads, most are in the 5% range. Sure, there are free print dailies that can make a profit on advertising alone, but they are either in large metro areas or non-competitive markets, or — because the greatest expense at news-gathering companies goes for people who do the gathering — have bare-bones staffs.

"Rely solely on the Net for circulation and revenue, as some pundits have argued, and the unavoidable fact is that you can't support a news-gathering operation this large or resourceful," says Lazarus, one of 890 on the L.A. Times editorial staff. "You'd have to make do with significantly fewer people, fewer (if any) overseas bureaus, fewer investigations, less original content, less of the watchdog sort of thing that readers consistently say they rely on newspapers to provide."

People will pay through the nose for a broadband connection, but not for the information that is accessed on that connection. The New York Times seems to have been unable to sustain a payment plan for its unique content, and the Wall Street Journal may give up making people pay for its Web site. If they haven't figured it out, then a revenue model that can sustain professional news-gathering operations in the digital age remains to be found.

If there isn't an answer soon, then by the time Lazarus' teens are in their 40s and their parents and grandparents are gone, professional news organizations may be, too. What will that mean for the free flow of information that is the lifeblood of a democracy? I shudder to think. The blogosphere says fine, the "people" will provide the news. Sure ... between doing their regular jobs, I suppose.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Like every field, journalism has its internal catfights, and there is one going on now about a story on page one of the Washington Post by Perry Bacon Jr. on right-wing rumors about Barack Obama and whether he has a secret Muslim past. First a Boston University journalism prof (and former Post free-lancer) named Chris Daly blogged about how awful a story it was and wondering why such a young reporter was writing about a national campaign.

Daly's comments hit Jim Romenesko's journalism news blog, Washington Post editor Len Downie sent a letter to Romenesko asking why he posted junk like that, and the Columbia Journalism Review campaign bloggers had their shot at Downie. Daly did a half-hearted mea culpa. The Post's ombudsman and Slate also threw in their two cents on the whole stinkfest.

My 25 cents (worth more because, of course, this is my blog):

— The Bacon story WAS lame in that it seemed to give credence to the smears rather than clearly debunking them. This, however, is the usual detritus of horse-race campaign coverage.

— Youth (or lack of it) has nothing to do with the quality of a person's journalism. If you've got what it takes, age doesn't enter into it. Rightly or wrongly, Daly's crack sounded like sour grapes because he wasn't hired on full-time by the Post when he was a youth — a tone which Daly recognized and apologized for.

— Daly's wondering whether Bacon was being "fast-tracked" by the Post seemed like its own smear, especially to those who know the details of the New York Tims/Jason Blair scandal. Like Blair, Bacon is black. Unlike Blair, nobody claims Bacon makes things up — and in fact, he received vocal support for his skills.

Jihad, anyone?

Posted by Rich Somerville at 08:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm no fan of media consolidation. For much of my career as a journalist, I have worked for family-owned newspapers or groups rather than big corporations, and much prefer it that way. (That's not to say, however, that some family owned newspapers or broadcast stations aren't penny-pinching, low-quality efforts. It differs community to community, company to company.)

However, the action this week by the FCC by a 3-2 vote along party lines (with the GOP appointees prevailing) raises some interesting questions. Basically, it voted to ease in the 20 largest cities the 32-year-old ban on ownership of a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in a single market. Thirty-six newspaper-broadcast combinations grandfathered in under the earlier law will be exempt, as will six applications that were pending before the FCC.

There was a roar of protest from consumer groups and some members of Congress, guaranteeing that the last hasn't been heard about this law. But it made me wonder:

— Considering that so many people say that MSM (mainstream media) are dying, who cares who owns newspapers and TV? Heck, broadcast TV is hemorrhaging viewers faster than newspapers are losing readers. That's why media companies wanted the rule change — they need every edge they can get to stave off threats from Internet and cable.

— Do we REALLY want government telling the news media how to run their businesses? Seems like a slippery slope. Look how well it worked for broadcast TV — I predict their news operations will all switch over to cable within the next 5 years. Will anyone care about monopolies for cheesy sitcoms?

— Everybody is worrying about newspapers and TV, but what about radio? There are no limits on the radio stations you can own in a market — Clear Channel practically has a stranglehold nationwide, not to mention there are just two satellite radio networks. Cable television? Ninety-nine percent of the cable markets in the U.S. are served by only one cable company. Internet? If they wanted to, Microsoft, AT&T and AOL Time Warner could shut it down tomorrow.

There is no doubt, however, that media consolidation is scary. The Media Reform Information Center points out that Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" in 1983 when he pointed out in"The Media Monopoly" that 50 corporations controlled almost all the U.S. media. By 2004, his revised and expanded book showed it was down to five: AOL Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS).

However, none of them own American newspapers except for Murdoch, and he only has two — both in New York City. So what's the fuss over this FCC rule change about again?

Posted by Rich Somerville at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1882)

Dave Lewis

I am at the age where many longtime friends are reaching milestones in their lives. Retirement is fine; death just seems too soon, especially for friends younger than I am.

Dave Lewis was the deputy director of photography at the Baltimore Sun. He died a few days ago from a heart attack while receiving kidney dialysis. He was 57 years old.

He and I worked together for years at the Des Moines Register, and moved on from there about the same time. We both grew up in Des Moines — he graduated from North High and I went to Roosevelt, but we both got degrees from Drake University. He was a terrific photographer, but his claim to fame was as one of the earliest pioneers and a leader in electronic picture editing.

But my strongest memory is of Dave's presence — a big man who always had a huge smile on his face. My highest accolade for any journalist is that he or she is a professional — always eager and willing to do whatever is needed to get the story or photo out to the readers. That was Dave Lewis.

Although I only saw him once (when I attended a conference in Baltimore) since he left the Register 22 years ago, none of his former colleagues, including me, could ever forget him.

Posted by Rich Somerville at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)