Category Archives: Press

L.A. Times to cut 250 Jobs: Less Free Press; More Need for a Free Internet

lat_logo_inner.gif There’s good news and there’s bad news:
The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday announced plans to cut 250 positions across the company, including 150 positions in editorial, in a new effort to bring expenses into line with declining revenue. In a further cost-cutting step, the newspaper will reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15%.

“You all know the paradox we find ourselves in,” Times Editor Russ Stanton said in a memo to the staff. “Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money.”

— Los Angeles Times to cut 250 jobs, including 150 from news staff, By Michael A. Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, July 3, 2008

One reason for these cuts is the housing downturn in California: fewer real estate ads. But there are deeper reasons:
Announcements of hundreds of reductions were issued only last week by dailies in Boston, San Jose, Detroit and elsewhere. Among Tribune newspapers, the Baltimore Sun said it would cut about 100 positions by early August and the Hartford Courant announced plans to cut about 50 newsroom positions. The New York Times and the Washington Post both instituted layoffs or buyouts to reduce their staffs this year.

Besides the changes in the newspaper industry, Tribune carries the burden of about $1 billion in annual payments on its debt, much of which it took on to finance the $8.2-billion buyout.

Sure, it’s happening everywhere. But the L.A. Times is one of the best sources of journalism around. Why did somebody find it worthwhile to buy it out just to load it up with debt and force layoffs?

Whether this newspaper was targetted or not, the handwriting is on the wall for fishwraps. They’ll either adapt to the Internet or die. I suspect many of them will die. That means we’ll lose many of our traditional sources of real reporting. Fortunately, some new sources are arising, such as Talking Points Memo, which bit into the Justice Department scandals and hung on like a bulldog. Yet blogs like that thus far have a tiny fraction of the resources of big newspapers like the L.A. Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. There’s going to be a time of unsettlement of the fishwrap plains while the new shops in cyberspace put down roots into the old country.

And we won’t have ready access to either the remaining existing newspapers worldwide or to the new online sources of reporting unless we have a free Internet. Yet another reason that net neutrality is important.

Yet another reason not to let the telcos get away with retroactive immunity. Remember, the telcos currently paying off Congress are the same companies that want to squelch net neutrality. If they can get away with handing over every bit to the NSA yesterday, why would they stop at squelching your P2P today?

-jsq

Speeches: McCain and Obama, TV and the Internet

al_office.jpg
Al Gore’s home office.
(Time Magazine)
John McCain’s speech in Kenner 3 June 2008 got truncated by the news media when they switched to Obama’s speech that same night. The versions on YouTube reflect that problem, since they were made from TV. They also suffer from TV network labeling and chyrons chatting about the opposition.

Barack Obama’s speech that same night has network logos and chyrons, but at least it is complete. However, when Al Gore endorsed Obama on 17 June, the networks all cut away immediately after Gore finished talking, because only the endorsement was news, and they weren’t interested in what the candidate himself might have to say. But Gore sent out email to supporters earlier that day, and numerous blogs posted it (Huffington Post, DailyKos, Washington Post, etc.). And Obama’s campaign streamed the whole event live, so nobody had to watch network logos, chyrons, commercials, or talking heads, and they could see all of both speeches. Although, oddly, neither the Gore nor the Obama speech seems to be on YouTube yet.

Political campaigns can use the Internet to bypass the traditional media.

-jsq

Postal Hikes and Time Warner’s Role Discovered by New York Review of Magazines

ben_scott_140x140.jpg The New York Review of Magazines catches up with Time Warner and the postal rate hikes it lobbied for and got. First, the bottom line:
…the true price of letting corporations shape government policy: free speech.

— Going Postal, Callie Enlow, New York Review of Magazines, 2008

The NYRB gets into some of the underlying political machinations:
Even Time Warner was taken aback. Halstein Stralberg, co-creator of Time’s rate proposal, said, “There was a new chairman at the commission and there was a totally new environment, and they adopted it, to my surprise.”
The NYRM noted the sudden parachuting in of a new chairman just before the decision as unusual:
In the corporate world, The Progressive Populist would most likely be forced out of business. But should the same rules apply when the product is ideas and the conduit is a government-owned monopoly? To the current administration, the answer is yes, said Cullen. The president appoints the five commissioners that compose the Postal Regulatory Commission. Between the 2005 Time Warner complaint, when the PRC rejected the corporation’s proposed rate restructuring, and the 2006 rate hearings, when the PRC adopted the suggestions almost verbatim, two new commissioners joined the PRC. One of them, Dan G. Blair, replaced George Omas as chairman just one month before the end of the rate cases, a move that Bob Cohen described as “pretty unusual.”
However, the NYRM didn’t follow up on the other chairman, the chairman of the Postal Board of Governors from January 2005 to January 2008, James C. Miller III, and his 27-year-old theory:
“…none should be favored and none benefited. Each party pays the cost of service it consumes, not less, and does not bear the cost of others’ consumption.”
Curious how someone with that philosophy should be chairman just at the time the decision was made.

The NYRM does say what happened, why it was unusual, and who it affected: Continue reading →

Murdoch Wants Another NYC Newspaper

murdoch2_AP_2.jpg
Rupert Murdoch AP Photograph
Four months after Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal, the editor quit. Murdoch already owns the New York Post. Now he wants to buy Newsday. Nevermind that such a purchase would be illegal. The good money is on Kevin Martin’s FCC letting it happen anyway. After all, if he doesn’t need a law to enforce, what’s to stop him not enforcing the laws he’s already got?

Despite having had no success at preventative or forensic oversight of the FCC, Congress is going to give it another go:

However, the looser ownership rules the FCC passed in December – over an outcry from many interest groups – has stirred criticism from many in Congress, suggesting that Murdoch’s Newsday bid faces the first stirrings of a backlash.

The commerce committee in the Senate yesterday approved a “resolution of disapproval” measure that would overturn the new ownership rules, creating more of a hurdle for Murdoch.

Senator Byron Dorgan, the measure’s leading sponsor, said: “We really do literally have five or six major corporations in this country that determine for the most part what Americans see, hear and read every day. I don’t think that’s healthy for our country.”

Dorgan is backed by 25 senators, including Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and is confident it will pass the Senate. A similar bill has been proposed in the House.

— Murdoch’s Newsday bid faces hurdle, Elana Schor, guardian.co.uk, Friday April 25 2008

We’ll see if the Senate or Democrats have a spine this time.

Meanwhile, the entire mainstream press, except the New York Times, ignores that the president of the United States admits he personally authorized war crimes. Except for ABC, which broke the story, but then couldn’t be bothered to mention it during a “debate” it hosted between the remaining Democratic presidential candidates.

If every other major paper in NYC (and 3 out of the top 10 in the U.S.) is controled by Murdoch, how long before the NYTimes falls prey, too? With net neutrality we can still know about stories like this. Without it?

-jsq

Lemmings: What Bell Canada Thinks of Journalists

20080329-kix2kjp3t1isifpks9w2fbpwht.png Heh:
Bell Canada Associate Director of Media Relations Jason Laszlo made a real boner move, boasting on Facebook of his ability to snow journalists with his network management bafflegab, referring to journalists as “lemmings” in a recent status update. [DIGG] Clearly a super-fun guy in real life (note colourful hat and armband tattoo), he further demonstrated the Bell Media Relations department’s apparent unfamiliarity with modern web tools by leaving his Facebook profile wide-open to the public to see. Oops. [UPDATE: Profile is closed now.]

— Bell Canada hands Net Neutrality advocates a gift! Mark Kuznicki, remarkk! 29 March 2008

The blogger goes on to list half a dozen net neutrality developments, all positive.

-jsq

PR in China: Monks Burst Into International Press Briefing

monks.tibet.uk.reuters.com.jpg This is what you have to do to get media attention if you don’t have a free press:
A group of uninvited young monks at the Jokhang Temple, one of the most sacred in Tibet and a top tourist stop in central Lhasa, stormed into a briefing by a temple administrator.

“About 30 young monks burst into the official briefing, shouting: ‘Don’t believe them. They are tricking you. They are telling lies’,” USA Today Beijing-based reporter Callum MacLeod said by telephone from Lhasa.

— Monks burst in on Tibet news briefing, By John Ruwitch, Reuters, Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:59pm GMT

This may be an extreme, but it is what controled media lead to.

-jsq

Censored News 2007

phillips_photo.jpg As usual, net neutrality was the top censored news story of 2007:
Throughout 2005 and 2006, a large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to as “network neutrality,” the issue has become a tug of war with cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet service providers on the other. Yet despite important legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions throughout 2005, the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines until 2006.1 And, except for occasional coverage on CNBC’s Kudlow & Kramer, mainstream television remains hands-off to this day (June 2006).2

Most coverage of the issue framed it as an argument over regulation—but the term “regulation” in this case is somewhat misleading. Groups advocating for “net neutrality” are not promoting regulation of internet content. What they want is a legal mandate forcing cable companies to allow internet service providers (ISPs) free access to their cable lines (called a “common carriage” agreement). This was the model used for dial-up internet, and it is the way content providers want to keep it. They also want to make sure that cable companies cannot screen or interrupt internet content without a court order.

— #1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media, Top 25 Censored news stories of 2007 Project Censored, The News That Didn’t Make The News Sonoma State University, 2007

This is the first I’ve heard that “Internet service providers” other than cable companies are on the side of consumers. Doubtless AT&T will be gratified to hear that version. Oh, wait: later the same writeup refers to “cable supporters like the AT&T-sponsored Hands Off the Internet website.” Also, what’s this about free access? Continue reading →

Consolidation Flood: What Will Really Stifle Internet Innovation

monopolist.jpg Advocates of the “exabyte flood” political campaign against net neutrality claim they are for innovation and that the coming flood of Internet usage will stifle innovation unless they get their way.

What will really stifle innovation on the Internet is this:

The Federal Communications Commission, at the urging of Chair Kevin Martin, voted 3-2 on Tuesday to relax longstanding rules that block corporations from owning a broadcast TV station and a newspaper in the same city.

— Uproar Over FCC Vote on Media-Ownership Rules, By Frederick Lane, Top Tech News, December 19, 2007 10:14AM

No, not specifically newspaper and television consolidation. Further consolidation of media and information distribution in the hands of a tiny number of companies. This December the FCC lets newspapers and TV stations consolidate. Last December it let SBC buy Bellsouth. Internet access is already in the hands of a tiny number of companies (typically at most two in any given area) that are increasingly moving to control the information they carry on behalf of a small number of companies including themselves and movie and music content producers.

The exaflood politics isn’t really about how much infrastructure the duopoly has to build out. It’s about maintaining the duopoly and extending its control of information, to the duopoly’s short-term profit and the long-term detriment of of us all, including the duopoly.

-jsq

FT on FCC: SOP

apparatchik.jpg From London, it appears the emperor’s apparatchik has no clothes:
The commission, under Mr Martin, has turned US media policy into mere political theatre, while technology marches on apace, revolutionising media markets without any serious input from the regulators in the public debate about the implications.

Big Media control of the airwaves is simply not the threat to democracy and choice that it once was (in the days before cable or, for that matter, bloggers and MySpace). This is yesterday’s battle. It is time to move on to the tougher challenge: how to ensure that quality news survives the YouTube era.

— New rules for yesterday’s problem, Editorial, Financial Times, Published: November 14 2007 19:15 | Last updated: November 14 2007 19:15

Well, the first step would be to ensure that people get to look at it, for example that they are able to view the Financial Times. Economic models would be good, too. Some traditional news media seem to be developing those.
But it is not clear how one troubled industry (newspapers) can be helped by grafting it on to another one (the broadcast media), when both have essentially the same problem: the internet is stealing their advertising revenues.
Well, the New York Times has discovered can make more money by advertising if they don’t charge for articles. And that didn’t involve merging with a TV station. With real ISP competition, somebody would also develop a real first-mile ISP business plan.

-jsq