The Political Whore

Gabe up at the front desk here at alt-central pointed this out to me this morning:

CNN.com is now selling T-shirts with its most tabloid-esque headlines on them.

Just when you think that the news biz has hit rock bottom. Of course, there will be no corporate pressure on headline-writing copy editors to come up with snappier, more tabloid headlines so that they can be monetized into T-shirts. None whatsoever.

But CNN is offering T’s for only the goofy, funny or sensational headlines, with a little T-shirt icon next to those heads (”911 dispatcher falls asleep during call,” “Mom-to-be charged with another DUI”) whereas the great meaty headlines I would want on my T-shirts aren’t featured (”Barbara Walters: I had affair with U.S. senator,” “Immigrant worker: No $$$ left for Mexico,” and the ever-popular, “Official: Two bombs at Iraqi wedding kill 35.”)

Here’s one example of the fun, witty T’s you can get:

I’m personally waiting for the “Bush: ‘Mistakes were made’” shirt.

Already, this affront to real journalism has met with criticism and spoofing, like this from the Ryan Block blog:

Bookmark It

Was just talking with a local media maven about the woes at Tampa Trib-parent Media General and the coming buyouts/possible layoffs, and he commented, “They should just put a bullet in it and be finished with it.” Reminded me of this scene:

Bookmark It

Just getting caught up from last week’s expected public spanking of the current Media General brain trust. (Deggans had a good piece on it if you want to get caught up on the details. Hinman at the BizJournal, too.) For those who don’t follow arcane public media company goings-on, even those involving the owner of our favorite whipping-boy local daily, the Tampa Tribune, three dissident board members beat out the insiders for seats on the Media General board.

Those nominations had led to a nasty proxy fight that MG lost. And what a sore loser the company’s management was. MG CEO Marshall Morton sent the faithful the following e-mail:

Subject: Marshall Morton Comments on Media General Annual Meeting

April 24, 2008

Dear Fellow Employees,

Media General held its Annual Meeting of Stockholders this morning. Based on preliminary election results, it appears that the three individuals nominated by the Harbinger hedge fund were elected to the company’s Board of Directors. Our press release has been posted to the Meganet.

We are disappointed that three very capable directors, who have contributed significantly to the Board’s deliberations, both through their ability and their experience, have been displaced.

I want you to understand that Harbinger cannot, under any circumstances, forcibly gain control of Media General, and that the three new directors cannot gain control of our nine-member Board.

We will listen with courtesy to the ideas of the new directors, but, frankly, I believe they are going to have to prove themselves worthy of their places on our Board before they will be able to earn the confidence of the remaining directors.

I appreciate the many notes of support I received during the proxy contest. Throughout, you stayed focused and continued to make a difference to our audiences, our advertisers and the communities we serve.

You deserve tremendous praise for the successes we have been achieving. Through your efforts, we are transforming the company into a new media enterprise. We know that our customers are in charge, and we are leading change to meet their needs. Employees across our company have created opportunities for us to:

• Foster a critical culture of innovation
• Adopt a successful Web-First strategy in all of our newsrooms to increase total audience and market share
• Create targeted new products to reach new audiences and attract new advertisers
• Expand our interactive advertising services to generate new revenue and cash flow streams
• Complete the transformation to digital broadcasting, launch high-definition local newscasts and use the expanded digital spectrum to offer secondary channels in many markets
• Deliver our content to mobile consumers via cell phones and other portable devices

We will succeed because we have the right strategic focus, the right tools and you are the right employees. Thanks to the relationships we’ve built with consumers and the skills we’ve developed to address their needs, when people want information about their communities, they turn to the Media General brands in their markets. Consumers value our information and we intend to continue to be the leading provider of news, information and entertainment in all our markets.

Your continued support of our mission, our values, and our strategy for success is the right way to build shareholder value for all of us.

Thank you.
Yours sincerely,

Marshall N. Morton
President and Chief Executive Officer

So, at MG, how do new board members “prove themselves worthy?” Vote to overpay for four piddling NBC affiliates in a down economic cycle? Uphold MG’s insistence on broadening the FCC’s media monopoly rules so it can do “convergence” in more markets? Lost tons of money year to year?

Seems that’s the way that the old board members made their bones.

Oh, and the buzz from 202 S. Parker Street (”the News Center”) is that it will be June before the company sorts out its buyout offer situation and plows through the stacks of those who offered to take the bullet now and those who are holding out to be Leo Di Caprio, clinging to the railing as the ship goes down.  (”Never let go.”) Said one person with knowledge of the situation: “It’s like a mauseoleum.”

Bookmark It

Insiders at the St. Petersburg Times have been relaying to me for about two weeks bits and pieces of the planned cutbacks at the larger of the two Bay area dailies, but nothing officially has been released from the HQ on 1st Street South.  Now, the word is reaching a wider audience, with former Times and Tampa Tribune reporter Chris Roush reporting in his business news blog:

The St. Petersburg Times will cut its standalone business section during the week but keep its Sunday business section, current and former members of the business desk have confirmed.

The change is expected to occur next month, likely with the paper of May 19. The business section will be combined with the paper’s metro section.

The Florida paper joins other large metro dailies such as the Denver Post, Orange County Register, Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal, Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal, Monterey (Calif.) Herald, Palm Beach Post and Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal.

The paper will also be cutting its stock listings, using three-quarters of a page for market data bassed on Associated Press modules. It will have a full page for business news and the bottom of the market data page for jumps and briefs. Business stories will also be candidates for the front of the metro section.

Business will not be alone. In addition, the Times is cutting its Floridian features section during the week. It will also have a page inside the metro section.

The changes would echo similar cutbacks already undertaken at the Tribune.

Bookmark It

In the proxy fight that Media General (owner of the Tampa Tribune and Newschannel 8) finds itself in with activist hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, two more pieces of bad news for the Richmond, Va.-based company.

First came news yesterday that a second proxy advisory service, ISS Governance Services, is recommending MG shareholders vote for 2 of Harbinger’s 3 outside directors in balloting at the company’s annual meeting on April 24. Harbinger owns a reported 18.2 percent of MG’s Class A stock. (The company is closely held, however, by the Bryan family through Class B stock, so no matter what happens in the election don’t expect changes any time soon.)

Harbinger is the second-largest outside shareholder. The largest outside shareholder in MG, investor Mario Gabelli with a 22 percent stake, today threw his support behind Harbinger. In a letter to MG, Gabelli wrote:

“In light of the ownership position of Harbinger, the need to launch a zero based budgeting approach to your decision-making process, and the clear lack of explanation as to the thought process behind the ill-fated and ill-timed NBC acquisition, particularly since our firm’s observation that the company should not make any acquisitions and reduce debt to maintain financial flexibility, was ignored. These factors tilt our decision to vote at the annual meeting for the Harbinger slate. This decision will be reviewed on an ongoing basis for future elections.”

He’s referring to MG’s $600 million purchase of four NBC affiliates in markets that some Wall Street observers have said make little sense.

So what does this mean for Tampa Bay? Clearly, the Tribune will continue to be published (in some form) if MG has its way, since the company called its Tampa properties the “Crown Jewel” of its mediocre empire in a recent SEC filing. But expect further, as George Costanza would say, “shrinkage.” Already, the movie critic is history and the Monday business tab is gone. Other sections have been shrunken or eliminated. More with less, that is the US news mantra these days.

But it could be even worse than that, with pressure from dissident shareholders and a deepening recession pointing to drastic cuts and even, at Harbinger’s veiled suggestion, the dumping of the newspaper. It would seem to make no sense, though, since we wonder, who would buy a lone newspaper these days? No Wall Street company would touch it with a 10-foot pole; perhaps citizen activists could come up with some local ownership group? Or let’s face it, the best potential buyer right here in our own backyard: the St. Petersburg Times. It could then put its Tampa Bay Times trademark to full use immediately and consolidate its reach and audience in the Bay area.

The other problem with a sale, from the standpoint of continuing to operate the Trib, is how would you untangle the newspaper from its converged status with Newschannel 8, which clearly would not be for sale and is profitable? The two share a common assignment desk and office space. Conventional wisdom has always been that a Times purchase of the Trib would be for the name only and would result in the end of the Tampa Tribune as a real operating newspaper.

(Ahhh, MG should have taken that Bert Sugarman deal for $1.7 billion back in the 1980s.)

Bookmark It

(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.

Bookmark It

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:

Bookmark It

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?

Bookmark It

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.

Bookmark It