Be The Media

Al Neuharth, in Christmas column, calls for bringing troops home from Iraq

From Editor & Publisher:

"Neuharth, 80, a World War II vet, said he would happily volunteer for that kind of "highly moral duty again." But he would avoid serving in Iraq, likening it to the Vietnam war, which "many of the polticially connected" managed to escape.

He concluded that "support our troops" is a wonderful slogan but "the best way to support our troops thrust by unwise commanders- in-chief into ill-advised adventures like Vietnam and Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later. That should be our New Year's resolution."

City high schools fight to save newspapers

From the Oakland Tribune, by Alex Katz:

"Journalism class at Skyline High School got more interesting this year, with students forced to handle the business end of their school newspaper while learning the basics of reporting.

After funding for school newspapers was cut last year, students working on the Skyline Oracle will help cover costs the old-fashioned way — by selling subscriptions and advertising.

High school journalism programs across the city are scraping together money to publish papers after State Administrator Randolph Ward decided last year that the deeply-in-debt school district could no longer afford newsprint. An outside grant that paid for school papers last year is running out."

RNC pretends newspapers lean left

From Salon.com, by Eric Boehlert:

"As the mountain of newspaper endorsements pile up in favor of Sen. John Kerry, including dozens from dailies that backed Bush in 2000, the Bush/Cheney campaign is dismissing the trend as no big deal. "Look, the Republican candidate will never win the contest for editorial board endorsements. The major dailies across the country tend to skew liberal," RNC chairman Ed Gillespie told CNN last week. That spin comes straight out of the GOP handbook that insists the mainstream press tilts to the left, so of course newspapers love Democrats come Election Day.

Only problem is, it's not accurate. In fact, the complete opposite is true. Since 1940 when industry trade magazine Editor & Publisher began tracking newspapers during presidential elections, only two Democratic candidates — Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Bill Clinton in 1992 — have ever won more endorsements than their Republican opponent. That's because newspaper publishers, who usually sign off on endorsements, tend to vote Republican (like lots of senior corporate executives), which means GOP candidates pick up more endorsements. A lot more. In 1984, President Reagan landed roughly twice as many endorsements as Democrat Walter Mondale in the president's easy reelection win. And in 1996, despite his weak showing at the polls, 179 daily newspapers endorsed Republican Bob Dole, which easily outpaced the Democrats' tally by nearly a 2-to-1 margin.

In 2000, the overwhelming trend toward Republicans continued. According to estimates, candidate Bush enjoyed a huge newspaper advantage, picking up nearly 100 more daily endorsements than Gore. On the eve of the election four years ago, Editor & Publisher spelled out the newspaper love affair with Bush in a Nov. 6 article: "The nation's newspaper editors and publishers strongly believe the Texas governor will beat Al Gore in Tuesday's election for president. By a wide margin, they plan to vote for him themselves. And, to complete this Republican trifecta, newspapers endorsed Bush by about 2-to-1 nationally."

Newspapers Endorse Kerry Over Bush

From Democracy Now:

"The magazine Editor and Publisher is reporting Senator John Kerry has now won the endorsement of 122 newspapers -- 53 more than President Bush. At least 33 papers that endorsed Bush four years ago have opted not to endorse him this year. Several newspapers including the Tampa Tribune and Detroit News have opted to endorse neither Bush nor Kerry. The headline in the Time Picayune of New Orleans read "No One To Champion." Over the weekend Kerry won the endorsement of The Washington Post and the Orlando Sentinel, which gave him a sweep of major papers in Florida. Meanwhile Bush won the much coveted endorsement of the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio."

Team Bush declares war on the New York Times

From Salon.com by Eric Boehlert

"During the closing weeks of the 2000 presidential campaign, at a campaign rally, George W. Bush spotted a veteran political reporter and turned to Dick Cheney, standing next to him on the platform, to remark, "There's Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times." "Oh yeah, big time," replied Cheney. Unbeknownst to them, their locker-room exchange was caught by an open microphone. Four years later, nobody connected with the Bush-Cheney campaign appears even slightly concerned about being caught denigrating the Times; they're more than happy to do it on the record, as the White House has all but declared open warfare on the nation's leading newspaper."

In its critique of rush to war, 'N.Y. Times' does not spare itself

From Editor & Publisher by Greg Mitchell:

"In Sunday's 10,000-word indictment of the Bush administration's misuse of prewar intelligence on Iraq's nuclear capabilities, The New York Times did not spare itself in apportioning blame in the fateful rush to war. Readers had to dig deep into the massive story, and understand some of the subtleties in the self-criticism, but it was there.

The first hint of self-criticism in the Times article comes just past the midway point, when the writers observe that on Sept. 8, 2002, the top article on page one of their newspaper "gave the first detailed account of the aluminum tubes. The article cited unidentified senior administration officials who insisted that the dimensions, specifications and numbers of tubes sought showed that they were intended for a nuclear weapons program."

The next self-criticism, equally damning, appears a few paragraphs later. It describes how the Times, on Sept. 13, 2002, made the first public mention of the internal tubes debate. Did the paper play it up? No, the editors put it on Page A13. Did the article raise a red flag? Not exactly. It quoted an unnamed senior administration official dismissing the debate as a "footnote" and reported that the "best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like the Oak Ridge supported the CIA assessments."

Sunday's article ends with a damning indictment of Secretary of State Powell for giving credibility to the aluminum tube theory in his speech before the United Nations on February 5, 2003. It does not mention, however, that the Times, like most major newspapers, did not at the time dispute Powell's assertions. As the paper concludes today's story, "Six weeks later, the war began."

Growth of Wal Mart bad for papers

From the Chicago Tribune:

"Wal-Mart and stores like them don't simply advertise in newspapers the way traditional department stores do," said Paul Ginocchio, a Deutsche Bank Securities media analyst and the report's chief author. "Most troubling for newspapers is that this isn't going away. It's actually accelerating."

Since the early 1990s, as big-box stores expanded from small and midsize towns into the suburbs of major U.S. cities, they have changed the face of retailing. By extension, their success cut away at the advertising revenues of newspaper companies.

Wal-Mart, said Deutsche Bank, spends 0.3 percent of its sales—$259 billion worldwide in 2003—on advertising and allocates 3 percent of that budget to newspapers. By comparison, traditional department stores spend 4.6 percent of their sales on advertising, and most significant, appropriate 85 percent of that to newspapers.

"The newspaper community has been dealing with this for a number of years, especially the past three to four years," said Jim Conaghan of the Newspaper Association of America. "When a Wal-Mart comes into a market, the effect on local retail and local advertising is pretty apparent."`

Times reporter ordered to testify in leak case

From the New York Times:

"A federal district judge in Washington has ordered a reporter for The New York Times to testify before a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. officer.

In a decision dated Sept. 9 and released yesterday, the judge, Thomas F. Hogan, said the reporter, Judith Miller, must describe any conversations she had with "a specified executive branch official." The judge said Ms. Miller had received subpoenas issued by a special prosecutor investigating "the potentially illegal disclosure of the identity of C.I.A. official Valerie Plame."

"The decision did not name the executive branch official in question. Three journalists who received earlier subpoenas in the inquiry testified about contacts with I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney.

In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Mr. Wilson asserted that President Bush had relied on discredited intelligence when he said, in his State of the Union address in 2003, that Iraq had "sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

On July 14, 2003, the syndicated columnist Robert Novak, disclosed Ms. Plame's identity. He wrote that "two administration officials" had told him that Ms. Plame was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." Disclosing the identity of a covert officer for the Central Intelligence Agency can be a crime.

Mr. Wilson has suggested that the White House may have leaked his wife's name as retribution for his criticism of Mr. Bush. "

'Flood FCC,' says unions

From Broadcasting & Cable:

"The Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America union has broadcast an e-mail to "ordinary citizens" asking recipients to "flood the FCC" with comments on its rewrite of media ownership rules.

The commission's loosened ownership rules have been stayed by a federal appeals court, which is asking it to revamp and better justify them.

"Please take a few moments and send a message to the FCC that this time — when they look at new rules for media ownership — they need to listen to the people and not just to the corporations," the union asks, then provides them a "four click" route to the FCC."

IMAGINE PEACE

On May 23, 2004 I blogged that John Lennon and Yoko Ono paid for billboards and full page newspaper advertisements at their own expense during the heat of the Vietnam War that promoted messages of peace.

Since that time, I canceled my subscription to the NY Times, but I happened to read it while vacationing on the east coast. To my delight, in the August 30, 2004 edition - during the Republican National Convention in New York City - there was a full-page ad from Yoko Ono on page A13. All it said was "IMAGINE PEACE." An advertisement with no gimmick, no promotion, nothing to sell or buy - just IMAGINE PEACE!

For the record, John was and still is my favorite Beatle. And Yoko, THANK YOU !