The Political Whore

(photo by epicharmus) 

Not at all good times recently for the Tampa daily, with the positive-PR-challenged Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson able to pull the wool over its editorial board’s eyes and have an op-ed piece run by one of his (apparently legion?!?) public relations consultants, according to (say it with me) the Times:

[T]he author, Mike Foerster, didn’t mention that he is not merely a retired longtime government official. He’s a consultant being paid $75 an hour by Johnson’s office for communications and public relations services under contracts that began almost a year and a half ago.

In addition, before Foerster’s column was published in the Tampa Tribune, the newspaper asked Johnson if Foerster still worked for him. Johnson denied it, according to a top editor.

Rosemary Goudreau, the Tribune’s editorial page editor, said Friday that the newspaper decided to run Foerster’s column, in which he described himself as “director of communications for Hillsborough County for 19 years,” after determining Foerster had no relationship with the elections office.

The article criticized Trib coverage of Johnson and urged the newspaper to let up on him. This after the Trib muffed a story about another Johnson PR flack, one that led to an e-mail blast from the office:

Note to Voters of Hillsborough County

In this morning’s editorial piece, the Tampa Tribune inaccurately reported that Chief Deputy of Communications, Jennifer Marks is an employee of a public relations firm. In fact, Marks oversees communications and voter outreach and education efforts for the Supervisor of Elections Office. In a busy election year with a whole new voting system, voter education efforts are paramount and required by law. (Florida Statute 98.255(2)). All press releases put out by the Elections Office are for the purpose of informing Hillsborough County residents of important election dates and other pertinent election matters, as well as keeping the public apprized of ongoing voter outreach and education efforts.

Leaving aside the pissing match with Buddy for a second, we turn our attention to the more interesting hostile maneuvers undertaken by second-largest Media General shareholders Harbinger Capital Partners. It released on April 1 (no fool’s joke to this) its plan for “Rebuilding Value at Media General,”which focuses on expanding the board to include more outside directors to its liking:

The stock has declined 59% since we first invested ten months ago. We’re here today, nearly a year after we first became a shareholder, because we believe the time is appropriate to enhance the composition of the board in order to rebuild value for all shareholders.

We believe Media General has been falling behind its peers for years, has a consistent but consistently flawed strategy, and has made some major mistakes.

Ouch. But the truth hurts; the Bryan family’s personal fiefdom is not one of the great journalism or business stories in the U.S. Here’s what amounts to a response from Media General CEO Marshall Morton, delivered to uber-investor Mario Gabelli (another frustrated shareholder):

What we are is a content company – and, more specifically – a local content company. But it’s really more than that: we are audience aggregators. The way we make money is by connecting advertisers to local audiences. We have research-based relationships with consumers in each of our individual markets. Consumers value our information, including those advertising messages by the way.

When people want information about their communities – whether that’s news, weather, general information, entertainment information or, particularly this year, political information – we want them to think of and turn to the Media General brands in their markets. If we’re doing our jobs right, we are “local” in each of our communities.

One market we’ll talk a lot about today is Tampa. Tampa (including St. Petersburg and the 10 counties around those cities) is the 13th largest DMA in the country, and it’s the largest market in Florida. It has a population of more than 4.2 million people and nearly 1.8 million households. And, every week, we reach nearly 80% of that Tampa market with our information. No competitor or peer even comes close to that.

We do this by using many different platforms to distribute high-quality local content (when I say “high quality,” that’s personal short-hand for “timely, objective and useful”). Our platforms include The Tampa Tribune; WFLA-TV (the #1 news station in the market); our Internet portal, TBO.com; and other daily and weekly newspapers in the same market. It also includes a Spanish-language newspaper and webcast, local television shows, niche newspaper and magazine products, and information packages sent to cell phones and podcasts.

The point here is that, as technology has evolved, audiences have become more and more platform-demanding, and we have had to become increasingly platform indifferent—we give it to the consumer the way they want it: some may want to read a newspaper over breakfast, but they also want continuing access to what we offer during the rest of the day, whether they’re walking, driving, sitting at their desks at work or traveling. We can give them that, and do so with branded, trusted, differentiated and value-added information compiled by editors, reporters and other information professionals who understand, importantly, that every platform is different and may require a different presentation to work well and be relevant for the consumer at that particular place and time.

Now, everyone who’s followed us knows that we’ve gotten hammered over this past year in the Tampa market because of the real-estate induced recession that continues to deepen across Florida – and a number of other key growth markets across the country. If anyone wishes, I’m happy to talk about what we’re doing specifically in Tampa to address these conditions. But the point I want to make is that Tampa has historically been a terrific market for us, and it will be again – in part because we’ll make it so.

In the meantime, though, we’ve applied the lessons we’ve learned in Tampa in all of our other, mostly southeastern, markets. So, the “audience aggregator” point carries across all markets, the need for a multiplicity of tools carries across all markets, and the value of trusted, high-quality local news and information carries across all markets.

Harbinger, however, has another, more “final” solution in mind for Media General’s underperforming in the market, especially when it comes to the company’s newspapers:

Improve Publishing Division

Cut costs more aggressively

Implement higher standards given its underperformance

Reduce spending and apply more scrutiny to cost/benefit and payback analysis

Be opportunistic but disciplined with future acquisitions and divestitures

Most urgently, consider alternatives for Florida market properties [emphasis added]

Alternatives = fire sale.

Media General, the owner of Newschannel 8 and the Tampa Tribune, is blaming its lackluster financial performance on us right here in Florida. Specifically, Reuters reports, it’s our shitty economy that is getting the finger(pointing):

Poor economic conditions in Tampa, Florida, will contribute to Media General Inc. reporting a loss when it announces its first-quarter results, the newspaper publisher and broadcaster said on Thursday.

Media General, which publishes the Tampa Tribune, said “the recession in Tampa is so deep that we will not be able to fully offset the revenue shortfalls we are experiencing there.”

The company plans to post a loss of 40 cents to 45 cents a share from continuing operations. The figure does not include five television stations it is trying to sell.

Ahhh, nothing like a nice, deep recession.

Things aren’t as gloomy, however, for the president and CEO of Media General, Marshall N. Morton, according to the AP:

The chief executive officer of struggling newspaper publisher and television station operator Media General received executive compensation valued at more than $2 million during 2007, according to a regulatory filing Wednesday.

Marshall N. Morton, who is also president of the company, received a base salary of $925,000, almost an 18 percent increase from the year before, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A large portion of Morton’s compensation came from the value of stock and option awards. The awards, granted Jan. 31, 2007, had a total value that day of $844,719, according to the filing.

He received no bonus, unlike in 2006, when he received $475,592.

Poor baby. No bonus last year. How will he make ends meet??

While the company has laid off employees (and many in the remaining staff are fearful of more job cuts), and eliminated news sections to save $$$, Media General is begging the FCC to allow it to consolidate print and broadcast news operations throughout the country as it does at the Newscenter in Tampa, which is grandfathered and exempt from cross-ownership regulations.

The good news, however, is that MG is bringing its female-oriented and wildly inappropriately named Skirt! publication to town, the Biz Journal tells us. Good news if you are a snarky columnist who writes about MG blunders from time to time (see: Orange.) Here’s the ad the Trib wrote recently looking for Skirt! advertising execs. Note the way-too-hip graphics, tres New Frontier:

McCain on the plane: Temper, temper

Crocodile Tears Dept.: “It’s sad, because clearly she’s a bright and intelligent person.”

Ashlee sings in Ybor for only 10 minutes — and that’s a problem because…?

Disappearing signs of Irvine

So will he really show up here?

Thar she blows.

• Obama aide cries “monster” in Scotland, and she ain’t talking Nessie.
• Your vote is in the mail: Another option for a Florida Dem do-over.
• Emergency: We must have the election right away because Tom Hanks is bored!
• Dean’s DNC trounced by the Republican party in fundraising
• But the Republicans had better watch out because this guy may be stealing it all
• SF Bay Guardian wins $15.6 million judgment against Village Voice Media, also known as “some libertarian assholes in Phoenix”
• ABC News: If streaker on the soccer field gets hits, why not naked tree-hugging, too?
• Hillsborough to sex offenders: Get a move on.

It’s part of a national trend of scaling back business news (which doesn’t attract much in the way of advertising), but the Tampa Tribune today announced that its standalone Monday business section is history. Business news on Monday will be tucked into the A section, and some Monday features will be relegated to running every other week on Sundays.

The St. Petersburg Times had already dropped its Monday business tabloid in favor of a broadsheet section.

Both newspapers have recently had negative assessments of their financial situations discussed in their respective newsrooms, with the Trib managers looking to cut another $3 million from its expenses. The newspaper went through a round of 70-plus layoffs last year.

The Big Picture? Former Trib business writer and UNC Chapel Hill journo prof Chris Roush writes about one assessment that says business news will survive.

My favorite Onion story ever was a piece about how Starbucks was entering a “sinister Phase Two” of its operations, published in 2001:

SEATTLE–After a decade of aggressive expansion throughout North America and abroad, Starbucks suddenly and unexpectedly closed its 2,870 worldwide locations Monday to prepare for what company insiders are calling “Phase Two” of the company’s long-range plan.

“Starbucks has completed the coffee-distribution and location establishment phase of its operation, and is now ready to move into Phase Two,” read a statement from Cynthia Vahlkamp, Starbucks’ chief marketing officer. “We have enjoyed furnishing you with coffee-related beverages and are excited about the important role you play in our future plans. Please pardon the inconvenience while we fortify the second wave of our corporate strategy.”

Though the coffee chain’s specific plans are not known, existing Starbucks franchises across the nation have been locked down with titanium shutters across all windows. In each coffee shop’s door hangs the familiar Starbucks logo, slightly altered to present the familiar mermaid figure as a cyclopean mermaid whose all-seeing eye forms the apex of a world-spanning pyramid.

Especially hilarious, and no longer online (perhaps due to copyright issues) was a doctored image of the Starbucks logo mermaid as described above.

Today, the NYT reports this true story:

At stores across the country on Tuesday night, it was time for the corporate version of re-education camp.

In its campaign to revive the intimate, friendly feel of a neighborhood coffee shop, Starbucks orchestrated the closing of 7,100 of its American stores at precisely 5:30 p.m. for a three-hour retraining session for employees.

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

From the past two or three days of media company announcements:

• The New York Times will cut 100 newsroom jobs.
• Tribune Co. newspapers, including the LA Times and Chicago Tribune, will cut 2 percent of its work force, or 400-500 jobs,
• The Tribune-owned Orlando Sentinel’s publisher up and quit.
• Even Canadian newspapers are closing and putting journos out of work.
• Readers are increasingly shifting away from print to getting news and info in a digital format …
• … yet they won’t pay for it.
• And US Weekly’s circ is up!!! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

With daily print newspapers in a revenue free-fall, some of the “luxuries” they once provided to their readers are going by the wayside. The latest? The downsizing of the Tallahassee Capitol press corps, as reported by the St. Petersburg Times:

Recent departures have left the Palm Beach Post with two reporters, the Tampa Tribune with one. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel last year reduced its staff from two to one. The Orlando Sentinel is holding at two reporters. The Miami Herald has three. Four New York Times-owned regional papers share a staff of two.

The largest news operation belongs to Gannett, which has five reporting positions for readers in Pensacola, Fort Myers, Cocoa Beach and Tallahassee.

… That brings us to the St. Petersburg Times, which has three full-time reporters based in the capital and senior correspondent Lucy Morgan. That’s down from four a year ago (what this bureau chief calls “a 25 percent cutback” to his bosses).

Those departures include S.V. Date from the Post. Date, you may recall, literally wrote the book on Jeb Bush’s terms as governor but was none too beloved by his fellow newsies. He used to write his own “Omega Blog” on state politics, but it has disappeared from his website.

Yes, young children, there was a time when the Capitol press corps was busting at the seams with hungry reporters looking to get a “pelt,” taking down a legislator who was doing wrong. The combined press offices on College Avenue was bustling. Not so much any more. We voters back home are the ones who suffer. Legislators know how much attention is paid to Tallahassee by the folks back home in the absence of any scrutiny. And finding out what is going on in the Capitol is not exactly something you can do 100 percent just by clicking on your computer screen at Online Sunshine.

Has the digital world stepped up to take its place? Let me know what you think and which blogs you read that are doing (even partially) primary source reporting of the goings-on in the state Legislature.

Hey, I tried like hell to stay away from this story yesterday as it was happening. After all, as a Sirius satellite customer for the past year, hearing Bubba the Love Sponge and his merry band of idiots on my car radio is no big deal. But for those luddites still tied to terrestrial radio, I guess it could be considered a BFD:

Bubba the Love Sponge Clem, the shock jock who drew numbing fines from the federal government in 2004, strapped on the headphones Tuesday morning, and for the first time in four years hosted a drive time show on Tampa FM radio station The Bone.

And, as expected, no one was safe from the edgy barbs. Local television and radio personalities were poked at during the broadcast from Clem’s studio in Tampa on WHPT, 102.5 FM. He also lambasted his competition and said he aims to unseat them in the ratings. His show airs in Tampa and Jacksonville from 6 to 10 a.m. each weekday. He continues his uncensored Sirius Satellite Radio show during the afternoons.

And, of course, the faux controversy industry was ready to rock right off the bat:

Clem’s return to local radio drew criticism before he uttered the first word. David Caton, executive director of the Florida Family Association, penned a blistering editorial piece printed in The Tampa Tribune on Tuesday morning,

Calling Clem a “pornographic” host whose presence on the Tampa airwaves “threatens to break a four-year period of decency on traditional radio airwaves,” Caton stood ready to call for a boycott of advertisers.

Is Bubba really that important? Does he define what it means to be “Tampa Bay?” The 110 people who voted in Sticks of Fire’s Nov. 2007 poll do. They gave Bubba a first-place win when asked what local media personality best typifies the TB area, with 24 percent of the vote. (I didn’t finish in the top listed names, thank God.)

Last week, two of Creative Loafing’s new acquisitions, the venerable Chicago Reader and the Washington City Paper, laid off nine editorial employees, including some top investigative reporters. These were moves that were not anticipated when the company bought the papers earlier this year, promising at that time that the purchase wouldn’t lower the standard of journalism practiced at those two publications.

Especially disheartening was the dismissal of John Conroy at Chicago. Conroy is not only an accomplished book author but has led a one-man crusade against police brutality in the Second City. As the New York Times’ David Carr pointed out in a story this morning:

The Chicago Reader, which had published his work for over 20 years, decided it could no longer afford to support his reporting. Citing declining revenue and a need to trim costs, Alison True, the editor of the paper, laid off four of its most experienced reporters, including Mr. Conroy. The Washington City Paper, another newsweekly owned by the same company, announced five newsroom layoffs as well.

In a week of media retrenchment — rumors of further cutbacks in network news, continuing layoffs at regional dailies and a “temporary” pay cut at an Illinois daily that became permanent — nine newsroom layoffs don’t seem significant. But of course, that all depends on whose ox is being gored, and in this instance, I felt a bit of the splatter.

At the end of the 1990s, I was editor of The Washington City Paper, a weekly with a history of excellence built by Jack Shafer (now the press critic for Slate), and owned by a group of college friends turned businessmen who also owned The Chicago Reader. In the time I worked for them, I was impressed by their constancy and their willingness to support good work in the belief that if you produced quality journalism, the business would look after itself.

In the case of The Reader, it seems like that turned out not to be true. The owners in Chicago sold out last summer to an unfortunately named outfit, Creative Loafing from Atlanta, which has mandated cuts across the organization. It is as if Creative Loafing executives bought a shiny new doll and then once they got their hands on it, felt compelled to tear its head off.

Reader media writer Michael Miner called Conroy “the canary in the coal mine” for the journalistic health of his publication and printed a longer, less corporate-sounding (than his quote in the NYT) explanation for the changes from Eason:

Eason and Creative Loafing have some interesting, and let’s hope brilliant, ideas about the future of the Reader and the CL chain of six newspapers. “It’s ultimately to me a navigation problem,” Eason told me. “How do you keep putting out a newspaper at a quality people expect and how do you migrate this stuff to the Web, which is ultimately the future? We’re in a fight over who can tell you more about the street corner in Chicago. You’ve got a mobile phone and you’re hungry or you want to rent an apartment and you’re consulting your cell phone, and its going to be Google or Yahoo and they’re getting their information from somebody. Those guys” — Yahoo, Google — “they’re not even pretending to be journalists,” said Eason. But “we’re the journalism right behind them, the stories and information that’s still the most comprehensive and best stuff out there. But the challenge is make that turn. I guess I felt that if I was doing fundamental damage to the Reader I wouldn’t have bought the Reader.”

The comments from Reader readers was harsh:

First, it’s bullshit to lay people off right before Christmas. I don’t care if it’s a Jewish or Muslim operation, it’s still crap to lay someone off right before the biggest money-guzzling holiday in America.

and:

Christ, this is depressing. So, Chicago will get less hard-news and investigative reporting during a critical time in the city’s history? I don’t know about others, but I certainly don’t read the Reader for the entertainment fluff or crappy features about struggling musicians/artists, but rather the meaty city news the dailies don’t often cover.

Is the future really [the faux alt weekly] RedEye?

Fucking shoot me now.

I’m neither going to defend nor criticize the cuts until I get a chance to investigate the matter further, except to express dismay at their timing right before the holidays. I don’t believe, however, this is a CL plot to soak the readers of Chicago and Washington for cash by slashing budgets. My company, as every other company involved in media, has to make a profit to keep the door’s open. And we’re not talking about Wall Street-demanded 25 percent margins.

We’ve been very fortunate at the Tampa Bay edition not to have to go through editorial losses, although one open position in the newsroom isn’t being filled because of the slump in advertising. Cutbacks are a reality in the alt industry and the MSM alike; newspapers are hemorrhaging, and the business model is on life support. Journalists don’t have the resources to do the job they need to do, and that is hurting our democracy.

In Chicago. In Washington. In Tampa Bay. And parts beyond.

Two things about the news that the Florida Times-Union is dropping local film criticism as a beat: First, of course, it recalls the similar event at the Tampa Tribune in which Bob Ross was shown the door and the troubling economic problems at mainstream broadsheet newspapers.

Second is the even more disturbing reality that even the Florida Times-Union, arguably the state’s worst big-city newspaper, managed to hang onto its film critic position longer than the Trib did, and even found another job in the newsroom for its critic.

Quarterlies are out and even the normally solid broadcast division took it in the shorts at Media General, which owns the Tampa Tribune/Newschannel 8/TBO.com. Profits off 26 percent over same quarter last year, according to Broadcast Newsroom.

If you’re a shareholder, you’ve got to be bummed to read that the company isn’t considering spinning off the losing newspaper division:

Media General said Thursday that it has no plans to separate its newspaper and broadcast businesses.

In its earnings release, the company stated, “Customers and shareholders alike benefit from the company’s focus on being the local multimedia leader in strong growth markets, principally in the Southeast. Media General’s integrated presence in print, broadcast and on the Web enables the company to produce better journalism, deliver a higher-quality product, draw more audience and improve its market position better than it otherwise could.”

That also means that Media General knows that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s plans to allow more duopoly cross-ownership are hardwired, because the chain is staking everything on its convergence model being demonstrated in the Tampa Bay market.

Following up on my cover story about the Federal Communication Commission’s efforts to deregulate media ownership further, today we get the news that FCC Chairman Kevin “Boy Wonder” Martin is set to spring his plan into action.

Martin has long a fan of letting Big Business concentrate media ownership further, including allowing more duopolies of newspaper-television-radio ownership in a single market by a single company. Sources tell various media outlets that Martin has circulated a plan to his colleagues to speed the review process. Those sources insist he hasn’t written his dereg plan yet; don’t believe that for a second, this whole thing is so scripted it is scary.

Concentrating media ownership in the hands of companies who absolutely have proven that they screwed up their current news products to the point where they are almost useless to a democratic society is — repeat after me — a bad idea.

I have to admit, however, to mixed feelings. The current public-company ownership model of mainstream media is crumbling. The more it snaps up, the more it will crumble. There is no guarantee that those companies will give way to more enlightened ownership (nonprofits, philanthropists, crazy billionaires).

Free speech advocates are livid over this revelation that Martin is trying to speed the process.  StopBigMedia wrote:

“We are gravely concerned that Chairman Martin would try to secretly move on such a critical issue with such a short timetable,” said Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, which coordinates the StopBigMedia Coalition. “The public is being shut out of the process so that Martin can move forward with his Big Media giveaway.”

(full StopBigMedia news release in comments section)

Because it is in their best interest to do so. Why cover politics in-depth at the local news level when the candidates are going to spend $3 billion with you anyway and your coverage could jeopardize that biennial revenue windfall.

CNN reports today that political TV ad spending will reach that total in the 2008 cycle:

The cost to try to influence the 2008 election could exceed $3 billion, according to TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, CNN’s consultant on political television advertising.

This is nearly twice as much than what was spent in 2004 when political and issue-advocacy television advertising rang in at $1.7 billion. In 2006, $2.3 billion was spent on political and issue-advocacy TV commercials.

Notice that the growth in spending on television is beginning to look exponential. That is why candidates do nothing but raise money for two years before an election, why Democratic presidential candidates are still strong-arming contributions out of Florida at the same time they are scared to death to mention any issue of importance to the state or speak with Florida-based reporters.

And what do we gain from all those :30 spots? As a democracy, not a damned thing.

Today’s news that the South Florida Sun-Sentinel is killing its national/foreign desk and coverage caught my eye for a couple of personal reasons: I grew up in Fort Lauderdale; it was the largess of the pre-Tribune Co. Fort Lauderdale News (the now-defunct afternoon daily) that paid my way through college on a journalism scholarship; and the paper’s only national/international affairs reporter is a former Tampa Tribune colleague, Tim Collie.

Cutbacks in personnel or coverage are always a bad thing to see at any level of the media. We need more accurate, skeptical and courageous coverage, not less. But I’m especially troubled by something the paper’s publishers said, as quoted here:

“Today, we’re not in control. The customers are in control,” said Howard Greenberg, publisher of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

On one level, that seems a capitalistic truism; the market decides. What a paper covers is a function of supply and demand, meeting the point of equilibrium.

But journalism, real trained reporters and editors seeking out the truths that democracy needs to remain alive, isn’t — or at least shouldn’t — be treated like any other commodity, like a can of beans on the shelf. We’re the only commodity with a constitutional protection, and that little benefit carries with it some responsibilities that transcend the marketplace responsibilities.

Even more troubling about the idea that customers should dictate the content of newspapers is that we get awfully close to the troubling concept of collective decision-making, or the “hive mind,” that is already alive on much of the Internet. Better journalism will not come about by a popular vote of the masses; they’ve already spoken along those regards and like Fox News and Entertainment Tonight more than they will ever like international affairs coverage. The collective will “vote” not to seek the truth but to seek a point of equilibrium — in other words, not choosing what is true but the slant on the facts that they can live with, akin to the online collective mind displayed in Wikipedia or digg.

So what does all this abstract theory have to do with daily newspapers? It leads publishers to abandon their mission and hand over control to the collective mob. Don’t get me wrong; I am all for opening up the newsroom to more transparency, including more and different voices, changing our focus from the pseudo-objective he said-she said dichotomy, getting more aggressive and courageous in speaking truth to power. I like bloggers; they add to the richness of the community and provide interesting new ways of framing arguments or discussions. And I’m not saying don’t listen to your audience, since your primary responsibility is to them as citizens of the democracy.

But journalism (the act of finding new information and presenting it in readable and prove-ably believable ways to consumers) is not compatible with a collective, which will seek to impose the tyranny of the lowest-common denominator. Good journalism needs individual perspectives, human decision-makers, a real name attached to it that consumers can hold accountable. Unfortunately, that idea is losing out to aggregators such as Google News (which makes news decisions based on an algorithm) and meta-aggregators such as digg or reddit, where the online collective decides what is news and what is not.

Digital thinker and computer scientist Jaron Lanier writes of the danger of the online collective making news decisions, in a piece titled “Digital Maoism”:

Compounding the problem is that new business models for people who think and write have not appeared as quickly as we all hoped. Newspapers, for instance, are on the whole facing a grim decline as the Internet takes over the feeding of curious eyes that hover over morning coffee and even worse, classified ads. In the new environment, Google News is for the moment better funded and enjoys a more secure future than most of the rather small number of fine reporters around the world who ultimately create most of its content. The aggregator is richer than the aggregated.

The question of new business models for content creators on the Internet is a profound and difficult topic in itself, but it must at least be pointed out that writing professionally and well takes time and that most authors need to be paid to take that time. (emphasis added) In this regard, blogging is not writing. For example, it’s easy to be loved as a blogger. All you have to do is play to the crowd. Or you can flame the crowd to get attention. Nothing is wrong with either of those activities. What I think of as real writing, however, writing meant to last, is something else. It involves articulating a perspective that is not just reactive to yesterday’s moves in a conversation.

We’ve devalued the job of providing news. We’ve devalued the companies that do it. We’ve devalued, then, the information itself. Any wonder why one of digg’s top stories today from around the (English-speaking at least) world is about a dying boy who was voted homecoming king?

Is that kind of news going to keep W from invading Iran before the end of his term, or create any understanding in the public about whether Ahmedinejad is a real threat or not? Or explain the complicated nature of power in Iran.

Tim Collie could do all those. But the collective mind would probably vote against it and instead assign him to cover the No. 3 most popular digg story today.

From the CL intern desk:

Florida’s first conference aimed at media reform is under way at New College in Sarasota today.

“The goal of the conference is to heighten people’s awareness to the media reform issues in the country and the state and to get everybody doing media reform work together,” said Florida Media Project co-founder and director Mark Kmetzko.

Florida Media Project was created during another conference in St. Louis in 2005. Media reform has been a hot issue since 2003, when the Federal Communications Commission moved to allow corporations to own more media and more types of media in the same markets. So when New College approached FMP co-founder Jean Etsinger, he agreed to do the conference.

Organizers said they looked at the myriad issues in media reform and, democratically, narrowed the conference down to nine panels. One will discuss Florida cable issues and Hillsborough County cable access funding.

On cable: Ever notice the Bright House Networks asterisk commercials — the ones where Bright House costumers are being “attacked” by asterisks and “fine print” from the telephone companies? They were made possible because lawmakers earlier this year allowed telephone companies to apply to the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services for statewide cable television franchises, removing oversight by local governments and opening the cable/telephone/data market to the telecomms.

On Hillsborough County funding: Howard Troxler would love that one. You can read his blog about the county’s decision to cut funding to its public-access cable TV channel to see how Troxler has turned his word processor loose on governments spending cable dollars on themselves and cutting the public’s access.

Other topics include community news outreach, media literacy, net neutrality and media ownership. In the media ownership panel, expect a lot of discussion about the Tampa Tribune/TBO.com/Newschannel 8 conglomerate and its affects on news coverage in the Tampa Bay Area.

Kmetzko hopes the conference solidifies the loosely organized Florida Media Project as a group so that when its members attend the national media reform conference in Minneapolis in 2008, they will be recognized and have their issues heard.

The conference runs until 6 p.m.

— Kat Clement

(Kat Clement is a USF-St. Petersburg journalism major. She was awarded a CL Spring 2008 internship.)

The clock is ticking on the St. Petersburg Times‘ goal “to eliminate 80 to 90 jobs companywide by the end of 2007, mostly through attrition,” as Forbes reported last year.

The Citrus County section was killed and offices in Inverness and Crystal River were closed in April. And whispers of more changes are coming fast and furious.

The Largo zoned edition of the paper could be going away, one source says. And this week, five advertising reps were off-loaded. The paper hasn’t announced layoffs, per se, but appears to have taken to letting go some employees who, in happier economic times, probably would not have been targeted for dismissal (the recent firing of Tampa bureau writer Rick Gershman, for example, after a DUI arrest).

Of course, this is nothing compared with the free-fall that is the Tampa Tribune. Many employees there expect another round of layoffs later this year.

Yesterday the Sarasota Herald-Tribune let it slip announced more details about how it is joining the long list of daily newspapers that are slashing their newsrooms, bureaus and coverage.

I say let it slip because Last month, as E&P points out, the newspaper buried the lede its woes in a broader story about industrywide problems and only deep in the story getting around to the 58 news jobs that are going bye-bye. it looks like. This week, the newspaper was more forthcoming and prominently played the changes.

(Thanks to a sharper reader than I for pointing out that my original take on this was wrong and that the E&P piece was published last month. Mea culpa.)

Why in the hell would anyone in this country — or the world, for that matter — read The New Republic or give a shit what it “reports?” You’d think that even though Shattered Glass didn’t exactly shatter box office records that at least everybody in journalism and politics knows the story of how a 25-year-old writer scammed TNR with fake articles and fake quotes. One tipoff that all wasn’t as it seemed should have been that a 25-year-old inexperienced journalist carried the title “associate editor” at a (formerly) major national publication. At least Hayden Christensen didn’t fuck up this movie like he did the three Star Wars prequels. But I digress.

In its second major journalistic scandal in the past 10 years, TNR is taking it in the chops for publishing several installments of what was billed as a diary of an American soldier, pseudonymed Scott Thomas, in Iraq that, at best, was exaggerated and didn’t fully disclose details and circumstances, or, at worst, was a complete falsehood. Here is the latest on this (and yes, I realize this story is not from an objective source, as Weekly Standard will do about anything to convince us that the war in Iraq is going just peachy — hich it’s not). Here’s USA Today’s report, and memeorandum and Rightwing Nuthouse and The Atlantic Online on what a right-wing overkill this all is. Good analysis by Shakesville, too.

Oh, TNR denies the Weekly Standard report. It has previously acknowledged that one important scene in one of the Scott Thomas reports did not even occur in Iraq; it occurred while the private was on duty in Kuwait.

The worst part of this mess is not who is going to play Scott Thomas in the movie; it’s the opening it gave the conservative movement to once again bash the press as lefty pinko jag-offs who want America to lose The War on Terror (TM) and force our God-fearing nation to bow and scrape at the feet of Islamofascists.

Then again, who is going to play Scott Thomas in the movie?

This is just in from our senior editor in Atlanta, John Sugg, who has followed the Steve Wilson-Fox 13 saga since his days here at CL in Tampa:

The Federal Communications Commission has ended one of the most bitter and protracted media disputes in the Tampa Bay area. In a July 23 ruling, the FCC found that Fox 13, WTVT did not distort news about a milk additive. Two reporters sought to have the FCC revoke WTVT’s license, claiming they were fired from the station after management caved into threats from the additive’s manufacturer, Monsanto.

The reporters – a husband-wife team, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre – had been hired by WTVT in 1997. Just about their only work for the station consisted of an investigation into the Monsanto additive, a growth hormone called rBGH. The station insisted in presenting both sides of the dispute – there is considerable scientific debate over rBGH, and the federal Food and Drug Administration approved its use in 1993. Wilson and Akre claimed only their anti-rBGH sources were truthful and that the station, in allowing Monsanto to respond to allegations, distorted the truth.

Within a year, the relationship between the station and the reporters had disintegrated and their contracts weren’t renewed. They sued WTVT in May 1998. In a 2000 trial, Wilson lost on all counts. Akre won a limited verdict, but the Second District Court of Appeal in Lakeland overturned that, ruling the reporters’ case had “no merit from its inception.” The final denouement of the legal case came in 2005, when Wilson paid WTVT $156,000 for legal expenses.

Station management and employees – as well as my reporting in Creative Loafing – contend the duo manufactured the dispute in order to capitalize potential book and movies deals (they have prominent roles in the 2004 documentary, The Corporation) by becoming media martyrs.

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Anyone else notice the ad in Sunday’s St. Petersburg Times from Ron Sanders, pastor of Largo’s Lighthouse Baptist Church? Don’t know how you could have missed it, especially if you were reading the coverage of the St. Pete Pride parade. In the Tampa edition, the ad ran on the story’s jump page; in St. Pete, directly across from it. The good reverend suggested in his missive that God sent Katrina to New Orleans to punish the city’s tolerance for gays, and that St. Pete is in for a similar disaster. Further, he suggested that gays are courting destruction: “There will come a day when they will answer to God for this… PAYDAY, SOMEDAY!” I have to assume that, if the Klan were to submit a racist threat to run on the same page as coverage of the next MLK parade, the Times would reject the submission. So can someone explain why this ad is any more acceptable?

Depressing in its sameness, the latest monthly statement from Media General, which owns the Tampa Tribune, WFLA TV and TBO.com is another bummer for the daily newspaper.

The company’s publishing division revenues are off nearly 13 percent from a year ago, mostly due to dismal performances (financially, that is) in Tampa. Media General’s news release today says:

“The economic downturn in Florida continues to hamper our Tampa operations. This situation is affecting the performance of all three divisions as a result of lower results at The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV, and TBO.com,” said Marshall N. Morton, president and chief executive officer. “We have implemented a performance improvement plan in Tampa to better align expenses with the current revenue environment, as previously announced, and we are assessing other opportunities.

(”Assessing other opportunities” translates to “looking for even more ways to cut costs” in the aftermath of 70 layoffs earlier this year.) The release continues:

“Publishing Division results in May reflected continued significant weakness in Classified advertising. We were very disappointed to see the Retail category decline, a reflection of major retailers holding back on spending in virtually every market. We saw a few bright spots in May, including increases in real estate Classified advertising in Richmond, a market that has not yet been severely affected by the national housing downturn. In addition, National revenues increased at The Richmond Times- Dispatch, the Winston-Salem Journal and in our community newspaper group; however, these increases were offset by a decline at The Tampa Tribune,” said Mr. Morton.

“To mitigate the effect of the advertising downturn, in addition to Tampa’s performance improvement plan, we have frozen hiring on most open positions, except sales jobs, which we are accelerating our efforts to fill. We are reducing discretionary spending wherever possible and have asked all of our properties to accelerate new product introductions and intensify their focus on new revenue development,” said Mr. Morton.

How bad is the Trib dragging down the Richmond-based public company? Consider this: Classified ads are off 38 percent at the Tribune vs. 3-3.5 percent at MG’s other newspapers.

And finally, for those worrying about how this will impact the quality of the newspaper, fear not, for MG tells us:

All Media General newspapers have implemented content enhancement programs to drive readership.

Since the Tampa Tribune laid off 70 employees in April, I’ve heard from some suvivors of those cuts that they expect another round this fall, that they’ve been all but told to expect it by their bosses. If the latest Media General financials for the month of April are any indication, there are indeed rougher times ahead.

The April revenue report continues to show that the Trib is a tremendous drag on Media General’s publishing division, where revenues were down 6.5 percent in April 2007 vs. one year ago. All other Media General divisions made money; the fledgling revenues of the online division even rose by more than one-third over April 2006.

Some lowlights from the report, released last week:

• Classified advertising revenues — jobs, auto and real estate mostly — at the Trib were 35 percent lower than one year ago.
• National display ads were up 11 percent, thanks to heavy spending by Verizon to tout its new fiber optic services.
• Ad linage — the number of column inches of ads sold in April 2007 — was down 24 percent over a year ago. It’s down that same percentage on a year-to-date basis.
• Tribune revenues were down 15 percent overall.

That kind of bad financial news has combined with the voluntary departure of Trib writers such as Michael Fechter, Mari Robyn Jones (night cops reporter, going to grad school after some travel) and Richard Lardner (military affairs, got a national job with the Associated Press) to create a pall among some Trib scribes.

Finally, there is digital hope:

• The good news: The Trib’s online sister, TBO.com, posted up a 35 percent increase in page views, to more than 22 million in the month of April. The downside: Online revenues are a fraction of the $$ brought in by the publishing and broadcasting divisions. In other words, readers are finding news and info online; but advertisers aren’t buying it — yet.

(Note: The St. Petersburg Times is a privately held company and doesn’t release its financial performance, so no comparison with the Trib’s numbers.)

From Romanesko comes word that the Orlando Sentinel is cutting 24 news positions and recreating its newsroom to better compete in a digital age. The memo here.

Two things are clear from the FCC media ownership hearing in Tampa last night: there’s a whole lot of people upset with the media, and Media General did a good job turning out its executives, charity partners and other notables in support of further relaxing the rules.

The crowd numbered around 250, and more than 120 people signed up to speak, although more than a few had left by the time their numbers were called in the post 10 p.m. hours. 23 panelists were allowed to speak for five minutes each; only 3 panelists were women, reflecting the lack of female ownership of broadcast media companies due to consolidation.

Even former Congressman and failed gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis was there, saying how much he thought Media General’s cross-ownership of Newschannel 8 and the Tampa Tribune improved Tampa Bay.

“I think that cross-ownership has had some benefit in this community,” Davis told the five FCC commissioners assembled at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. He went even further and asked the commissioners to consider allowing more cross-ownership (it is currently not allowed except in 40 grandfathered markets) as a means of preserving and somehow subsidizing the failing daily newspaper industry.

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With a self-serving pro-consolidation editorial and an op-ed piece from Clear Channel Radio’s Tampa Bay market manager, of course.

As Jeff Goldblum said in The Big Chill, “It’s just good investigative journalism.”

The FCC has announced the panelists for the Monday public hearing on media ownership in Tampa, and there are a few intriguing names. Former Fox 13 investigative reporter Steve Wilson is on one panel, along with Media General broadcast news division VP Dan Bradley and ABC Action News’ GM Bill Carey. A second panel will examine diversity in the market and features a broad range of minority media owners and practitioners.

Wilson and his wife, Jane Akre, were fired from Fox 13 after the station refused to run an investigative piece they reported on growth hormones used on cattle. They sued the station to mixed results, and CL’s John Sugg has detailed in numerous articles the pair’s status as left-media cause celebre’s and the story behind their court battle, including how the pair have raised money for their legal funds while buying a $1.4 million home in north Florida. (Wilson has taken exception to Sugg’s reporting.)

For more on the FCC hearing, check out my cover story here.

Here is the revised FCC agenda:

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Stop Big Media has coordinated two upcoming workshops for anyone interested in finding out more about how to participate in Monday’s FCC hearing on media ownership, being held in Tampa with all five FCC commissioners present. From their news release:

To help local residents prepare their testimony and learn more about media issues, the coalition is sponsoring a series of workshops in advance of the event. The workshops will be held:

Thursday, April 26
7:00 p.m.
Tampa Educational Channel
703 North Willow Ave., Tampa
Sponsored by the Tampa Educational Channel (http://tecc.tv/)

Saturday, April 28
10:00 a.m.
WMNF 88.5 FM Community Radio
1210 East Martin Luther King Blvd., Tampa
Sponsored by WMNF (http://www.wmnf.org/)

For more information, please visit: http://www.stopbigmedia.com/=tampa

I’ve got the cover story on Wednesday about Big Media and the upcoming FCC hearings in Tampa on April 30. Here’s a few soundbites that didn’t make the story (and I’ll post a link to it once it is online midday tomorrow):

“There seems to be a real crisis in journalism today. We seem to see lots of infotainment. Budgets are being cut for newsgathering. We have to be concerned when we see news being wiped off the dial. One possible explanation for that is media consolidation. As these companies get bigger, and they have to answer to Wall Street … and where do you cut if you are a broadcast outlet? One of the biggest line items is local news operations, resulting in a race to the bottom. We’re seeing a real downward spiral in American journalism. We have to be sure that we understand the relationship.”

— FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein

“When convergence began at the Trib, some of us expressed concerns that this would be used as an excuse to combine staffs and lay off people. That didn’t happen per se. But corporate ownership makes profit more important than product, and what has happened at the Trib and newspapers across the country is the continuing cutting of operations.

“When you have less staff, you can do fewer stories, and you have less time on the stories you do. This means you can do fewer investigations. But it also reduces diversity in daily stories. For example, reporters may call up the usual sources instead of seeking out new people and new ideas.”

— former Tampa Tribune diversity team leader Suzie Siegel

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The last of the Tampa Tribune’s newsroom layoffs, part of 70 employees let go companywide, came on Monday morning. A quick buh-bye from Editor Janet Weaver and 27 years working on Parker Street was all over for illustrator and graphic artist David O’Keefe.

“It’s a long time for a two-minute handshake and a kick out the door,” he said.

Although he did all sorts of graphics for the paper, O’Keefe was best known for his wild caricatures in both drawings and sculptures, including  Bob Dylan, Dubya and Bill Murray. His work had appeared on the covers of such publications as Sports Illustrated, Mad, and the Village Voice.

O’Keefe said he was called at home Sunday and told to expect the bad news. “They did say it was a financial decision, but more than anything it was just part of the plan they had to eliminate certain positions,” O’Keefe told PoHo on Tuesday. O’Keefe gets a severance package; he’s not certain what he’ll do know job-wise yet but welcomes any freelance work out there.

Jim Johnson over at The State of Sunshine says he’ll be on a panel at the FCC’s upcoming public hearing on media ownership rules. He’s getting some moral support online from fellow local bloggers, including Kelly Benjamin (Nabob of Nothing) and Kate Robinson (Out in Left Field). Not surprisingly, none is real happy about trying to compete in the face of media consolidation.

I’ve written our CL cover story for the upcoming week on the FCC review and Big Media. I’ll post a link on Wednesday as soon as it is posted on our website. In the course of reporting that story, I ran into some other folks who expect to be on the panels, including WBQN Hispanic radio GM Marc Vila, La Gaceta publisher Patrick Manteiga and WTMP-FM owner Dr. Glenn Cherry, who operates Tampa’s largest black radio station.

The FCC today released the agenda for the Tampa event but won’t list panelists until closer to the Monday hearing. The agenda is as follows:

(All Times EST)

4:00 p.m. Welcome/Opening Remarks

4:30 p.m. Panel Discussion 1: Market Overview / Tampa, Florida Case Study

5:30 p.m. Public Comments

7:30 p.m. Break

8:00 p.m. Panel Discussion 2: Perspectives on Media Ownership

9:00 p.m. Public Comments

11:00 p.m. Wrap-Up/Adjournment

The moderator will be Louis Sigalos, Chief of the Consumer Affairs & Outreach Division, Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau, FCC

For those not invited to be on panels, you can have 2 minutes of time in front of the five FCC commissioners to make your case about media ownership.

My old buddy from the Tampa Tribune, Bob Ross, has landed another writing job, in the wake of being laid off as media movie critic at that paper. He’s contributing posts to Sticks of Fire.

We may bemoan that the Tampa Tribune gave the axe to 70 employees, but according to Scott Freeman at our sister publication in Altanta, things are much worse at the Cox Sisters’ Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Read about the carnage here.

University of Florida journalism prof Mindy McAdams has a great take on Florida’s newspapers in the wake of the Trib layoffs. While just a tad heavy on the Poynter worship, she rightly frames the issue: If convergence didn’t save newspapers (as was promised), then isn’t it time to admit that the current corporate ownership structure of most dailies is the real problem? She finishes: “Profit seeking for its own sake can never lead to excellence.”

For those keeping score, the Tampa Tribune laid off some 70 employees companywide, with only a handful coming in the editorial department. They included longtime film critic Bob Ross, BayLife columnist Judy Hill, photographer Augie Stabler, and reporter Jim Tunstall. Far less carnage than many expected.

Other cuts included production employees at some of Media General’s weekly publications, including the South Tampa News.

The cuts were demoralizing, and editor Janet Weaver was appropriately saddened while addressing her troops yesterday. The affected employees are being given severance packages that give them additional pay based on how many years they had worked at the Trib.

The Trib calls the layoffs a realignment of its focus, moving local sections in the daily into their weekly publications, merging some sections to save newsprint, and creating “hyperlocal” websites that will eventually do the job of publishing local news.

At least one industry website posits that the Tribune is doing the right thing in moving away from print and toward a multiplatform delivery of news. Philip Stone writes in Followthemedia.com that “publishers around the world should study closely” the Trib’s new business model:

The economics of print dictate that the less copies one has to circulate or print, the lower the costs. Newsprint and circulation take up about 17% of a newspaper’s total expenditure. So reducing paper use, restricting circulation areas, goes straight to the bottom line.

But it took investment to allow all of this to happen. “The Tampa Tribune has invested approximately $16 million in capital improvements over recent years, including a new shared editorial and advertising system and tools for Web partner TBO.com. These improvements facilitate content sharing and improve reader functions such as Internet search. In addition the new tools will enable readers to contribute content and interact with the papers more easily,” a company statement said.

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