Month: May 2007

I’ve never been able to pull off the infallibility thing. I’m genetically inclined to screwing up.

In his comment on my non-news news post on the absence of WCCO radio reporter, Eric Eskola, Britt Robson cuts me a new one:

“I’m late to the party here, but the big problem with this post is in the first paragraph. All the “media insiders” have pretty well been apprised of the reason(s) why Eskola is absent from the scene. Well, how were they apprised? Did Eskola tell each and every one of these “insiders”? Or did some of the media insiders decide it was okay and appropriate to gossip amongst themselves and are now trying to figure out “how do we explain it to the general public, if we do at all?”

That double standard is patently arrogant. Whether the reason(s) behind Eskola’s hiatus are sordid or sympathetic, what purpose does it serve to essentially say, “Us media insiders have probed enough to know what’s going on but now we’ve decided that for the sake of his privacy we shouldn’t tell you.” It sets you up as clubby and elitist. Because in this case, you are.

If you really wanted to protect Eskola’s privacy, you wouldn’t have printed a word about him. And if you REALLY wanted to protect his privacy, you would resist the temptation for behind-the-scenes sleuthing into a matter he obviously doesn’t want to publicly divulge at the current time.

Like almost everyone in the media, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Eskola’s work. I have no idea why he left his post in the front row of Capitol press conferences, but I assume it was for a good reason. If I were a media columnist, I’d like to think I wouldn’t broach the subject until I could divulge the whole story. Of course Brian has provided me with the 20/20 hindsight on how not to proceed. Because now Eskola has less privacy than before the post, with the public rabble free to speculate and appropriately believing that the media has chosen to protect one of its own.”

I probably should go into high defensive dudgeon, railing on with a lot of, “Who the f**k do you think you are calling me … “arrogant”, “clubby” and “elitist”? But Robson makes too many good points.

I think I was clear enough that I was applying The Golden Rule to what I said — and the way I said what I said — about Eskola. Yes, all (okay, “many”) of us clubby media insiders had heard the story about Eric’s situation, complete with many of the details. In most circumstances I keep a distance from the strictly personal problems of local media types. Divorces, DUIs, coke habits, seen sneaking out of Sinners on Tuesday nights … I don’t care. Call me back when it effects their work.

What got me about this story was that the clubby insider wall had been breached when I — a long ways from Eric’s inner circle — started getting asked, or rather “told” that “word was …” Eskola had screwed up professionally and was being disciplined by WCCO or someone.

Golden Rule-wise, I wouldn’t want that happening to me. As I said, in most cases sensitive personal problems are not only forgiven by the public — if it’s an addiction or something — but most often are treated quite sympathetically, especially in the case of someone like Eskola who enjoys a solid reputation for reliability and work ethic.

Did I think twice about saying anything at all. Yes, I did. So why did I write anything?

Because, A. It kind of is my beat. Even in blog world. I’m a reporter. Eskola is a high-profile media person. The last days of the legislative session are like the World Series to a sports writer, with Eskola usually playing our Roger Angell. Therefore his absence is a story. B. WCCO radio wasn’t doing anything to address/suppress the “disciplinary” rumors. C. I actually believed that saying what I said — as much and as little — would stabilize the tongue-wagging a bit to Eric’s benefit.

When he returns he may not see it that way at all. But he isn’t available for comment at the moment, and that was the call I made.

Was there a, “have your cake and eat it too” facet to my “report”? Yeah. I can see that. I walked the line on the one hand claiming to respect his privacy while on the other getting my name in the information pipeline. It’s kind of cheesy. But that’s the game some times, and I’ll apologize for it up to a point.

And that point is that on balance my concern for Eric’s well-being outweighed my desire/need to tell a juicy “celebrity” story. If I wanted to I could have.

But am I clubby elitist? You’re damn right I am. And I’m paid accordingly.

An essential part of my posts on “StribTV” is that the disintegration of the basic business model for newspapers is a harbinger of a similar breakdown of TV news. Once any source of news is available on the same screen via the same clicker as KARE and WCCO whatever “exclusiveness” those business can claim starts to melt off pretty quickly.

And it has begun.

Witness the ratings just released for the May sweeps — Nielsen’s “all important” ratings period — since the May numbers have an out-sized effect on setting ad rates for next fall’s Christmas buying season.

Every station in the Twin Cities market, with the exception of Fox 9’s 10 pm news, saw erosion in audience share (the percentage of viewers out of all local TVs in use) compared with May of 2006. KARE lost 14%, WCCO lost 15%. KSTP stayed even in share, but its ratings (percentage of viewers from all possible TVs) declined 6% over the past year.

The same trend is seen nationally, with steep dips in viewing not only of network news, but also for previously monolithic entertainment programming like “American Idol”, “CSI” and “Lost” (which, in my opinion, rallied quite nicely in dramatic terms). The Hollywood Reporter provides an analysis here.

For those of you not quite interested enough to click through, the gist is that we have arrived at that moment in the future when time-shifting by TiVo and other digital video recorders has met the video explosion on the internet with the result being a serious erosion in the way Americans’ make “appointments” with network and cable television.

Put another way, the great shift has already begun and TV is losing viewers at least as fast as newspapers are losing readers.

Jeanine Socha is a reliable TV audience analyst having tracked ratings for WCCO-TV for years before shifting across town to Comcast cable.

Her look into how what I’ll sloppily refer to as the “TiVo revolution” (the TiVo company would kill to be able to corner the market on digital recording), effects local news tells her that, “most network programming, shows like “American Idol”, “CSI”, are watched within one hour of when they were recorded, 75% within one day and 90% within two days.”

The “within one hour” part hits late local news particularly hard, and, if I’m following her correctly, there is no indication of any significant interest in TiVo-ing the local news.

Net effect? Significantly fewer viewers for KARE, WCCO, KSTP, etc.

There is some migration going on, with more viewers shifting over to cable programming (“The Daily Show” increased slightly from a 1.4 to a 1.6 share), but far more significantly, viewers have begun to use technology to rearrange their TV watching schedules to their convenience and appear to be making a value judgment on creating “special time” for the local news.

Here are the actual numbers for May ’07 vs. May ’06

WCCO…………..11.5/22…………14.3/26
KARE…………..9.5/18………….11.5/21
KSTP…………..6.4/12…………..6.8/12
KMSP…………..2.8/8……………2.8/5

Another interesting bit, also from the Hollywood Reporter, is this list of ratings for every primetime show the networks ran during the just wrapped ’06-’07 season.

In what may have been a first for a Minnesota public official soliciting media attendance at a press conference in a public building, US Attorney Rachel Paulose’s staff announced prior to the start of her Monday press conference that Ms. Paulose would NOT be taking questions off the topic of her indictment of 25 people in a prostitution ring.

Say what? No other questions? Did we just move to Uzbekistan? Not even George W. Bush has been so clueless as to dare admonish the press corps to avoid questions he might find uncomfortable. (Of course until his approval ratings cratered the boys and girls on the White House bus were thoroughly self-admonishing.)

Obviously Paulose, stepping out of her double secret probationary sanctum for the first time since it was confirmed that yes indeed her predecessor, Tom Heffelfinger, was on a list of US Attorneys considered for firing, and only two days before her friend, the equally fresh-faced and unworldly Monica Goodling, was scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee didn’t want her photo op ruined. She collared some pimps and she was orchestrating credit for herself. Control was being exerted to prevent some no doubt Democrat-voting media twit from jostling her tiara with a biased question about, you know, how in the hell did she get her job?

And if it weren’t for KARE-11’s Scott Goldberg, followed by MPR’s Elizabeth Stawicki and KSTP’s Dana Benson, she might have pulled it off.

Goldberg ran back the clock on his tape of the press conference and clocked 27 minutes before the gathered media shifted from dutiful inquiries into the prostitution bust and he jabbed at what he refers to as “the elephant in the room”, namely the details of Ms. Paulose’s
ascension and her connection to the gross politicization of the nation’s US Attorney system by stunningly inexperienced, fresh-faced ideologues operating on orders from … ? (Read Goldberg’s account of the experience on his blog. And do note the role and retrograde constitutional thinking of attorney and Powerline blogger, Scott Johnson.)

Goldberg writes:

“I apologize for breaking decorum,” I said. “But Monica Goodling is testifying Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary Committee. Is there anything you’re willing to share? Any thoughts you have about her testimony — whether your name will come up, and if so, whether we’ll learn anything about your appointment to this office?”

She declined to answer, which, certainly, is her right.

Just like it was a reporter’s duty to ask.”

Not to go all grand and macro on you, but in a well-functioning democracy with a courageous press, public officials don’t get away with red-lining embarrassing questions. Hollywood stars pull that stuff, and get away with it until they jump Oprah’s couch. But US Attorneys are not supposed to be accorded pampered, protected Hollywood star treatment by the press, even if they are so delusional they think they deserve it.

The elephant in the room should have been the local press’s first question to Paulose.

In fairness to Goldberg, before poking Paulose’s elephant he asked her what was up with her making a point of noting that the perps running the prostitution ring were illegal aliens? Last time he checked it was a crime to run a flock of hookers whether you had a green card or not. (As it was explained to me, this question threw Ms. Paulose off-script enough that she at first denied making a point of their immigration status … until it was pointed out to her that it was right there in the info packet her people handed out to the press.)

I asked Goldberg if Paulose and her team hung around for a few minutes after the official event wrapped and, you know, maybe did a little informal press mingling, something that is fairly natural with law enforcement types.

“Not really. In fact the way the room was set up there was a door right behind here. She entered from there and left through it pretty much as soon as she was finished.” Dick Cheney would be proud.

Goldberg did a few of these pressers with Tom Heffelfinger, all of which he describes as, “more in line with what you’d expect.” With Heffelfinger there was also none of the over-the-top security with the press being met for Paulose’s news conference at street level and escorted both up to the audience with her and then back down and out again when it was all over. (I gotta check this out, but I thought the Federal Court House was a PUBLIC building, not some princess’s private castle.)

There was, says Goldberg, “an overall weirdness” to the event.

“What’s the difference in working with Heffelfinger and Paulose? Well, for starters, one was accessible and the other isn’t,” he says. “Heffelfinger’s relations with the press were fairly cordial. But then he was seasoned. He was a professional.”

KSTP’s Bob McNaney, who with the Strib’s Nick Coleman, has been the glowing exception to the generally lax rule of coverage of Ms. Paulose couldn’t break off from another assignment to attend the prostitution
ring ceremony. And he regrets that.

“Its like throwing blood in the water man,” he said a few days later. “Blood in the water and the sharks are circling.”

McNaney and KSTP’s attorneys filed an FOIA request for all of Paulose’s e-mails and were initially denied. But they have persisted.