Year: 2007

As mentioned here a couple days ago, Deborah Rybak, most recently media reporter at the Star Tribune, has consented to join forces with me here at Slaughter Central. To be very clear, this is not Ms. Rybak joining The Rake. (The mind boggles at the bloody, bruised-knuckle negotiating it would take to make that happen.) This is simply a couple old pros, neighbors and inveterate gossip-mongers getting together for a little fun. Her presence here also adds much overdue journalistic sobriety, insight and dignity to my vacuity and adolescent raging.

Somewhere back last winter I recalled my former employers at the Pioneer Press swatting me across the back of the head and slamming the latest edition of the Strib in my face every time Rybak scooped me — usually as a result of something she dragged back from her regular round of power lunches. I still wonder, Why do the famous and fatuous want to be seen in public with her and recoil in horror at the thought of lunching with me? Did I answer my own question?

Anyway, the inference of the head-swatting was that, “THIS” –whatever Rybak had covered — “is what you are supposed to be doing. Our readers don’t care about Bill O’Reilly? Get over it!”

I never learned.

In addition to the types of coverage I’ve been doing here since January 1, together we hope to build in some dialogues and more of the media basics; hirings and whackings, with or without further comment.

Separately, our experience has been that daily newspapers see very little value in covering the media universe and none at all in analyzing and commenting on it. Media, to “right-sizing” newspapers is primarily a celebrity gossip beat, with extraordinary emphasis on the comings, goings and ratings of local TV anchors. Deborah and I believe that view is almost completely backwards. Readers, i.e. people who read to acquire knowledge, want more media information, not less, and regard empty-headed gossip “coverage” as valueless.

We both see a literate, critical audience for coverage that uh, declines, to play press agent to the stars and anchors and, like good sports columnists, sees fun to be had in throwing back the curtain on the machinations of what is, let’s face it, a weird, woolly, often silly, vast and omnipresent facet of modern American life.

We plan to devote X-number of hours and posts talking to and about those who control, create and populate Minnesota media–sometimes farther afield than that. We’ll talk about who is schtupping who, figuratively speaking, (or maybe sometimes in actuality). And we will be covering TV, cable and Internet programming, movies and whatever else flickers and interests us.

There is interesting stuff on television, and we have different tastes. She may be bored to tears by “Ice Road Truckers”, and I may not agree that “Californication” perfectly captures Hollywood’s moral malaise. But we see opportunities to gas on about, for example, what in the hell drugs David Milch was using when he wrote, “John from Cincinnati”.

Everyone of course invited to join in, commend us, vilify us and test our vast knowledge of all things media-related … which when you get Alan Greenspan on Jon Stewart’s show is damned near everything under the sun. And yes, we will both rant from time to time. I wouldn’t want to disappoint my Fox News Kool-aid drinkers.

So, by way of introduction …

LAMBERT: Deborah, I’d welcome you, but really this is more of a salvage project, a reclamation effort on your part. You are the cavalry riding to the rescue. But the news late yesterday is that, as was heavily rumored, Par Ridder will NOT be returning as publisher. How shocked were you by this news?

RYBAK: Do I need to drag out that old “Casablanca” line? Since we more or less predicted it Wednesday, I would venture to say, not breath-intake shocked, nor even eyes-slightly-widened shocked. I guess when you called me yesterday evening my shock was of the “It’s almost cocktail hour, what are you bugging me for?” variety.

Here’s the phrase that interested me most in the Strib story, “Par is ‘likely’ not to return to the paper.” That tells me that lawyers are talking and I’m sure that exit pay is a major topic.

So how much more is Par going to take home from this misadventure in addition to the “relocation” money we hear he received to move about 5 miles from Sunfish Lake to Kenwood? I wonder if his lawyers want extra because he was so successful in whacking the staff down to size and saving Avista so much money, (well,until those legal fees started piling up).

I wonder if the “national search” for a publisher that interim publisher/Avista concierge Chris Harte mentioned to his staff will also include scanning for bodies to fill the other empty management positions that have turned the formerly executive-stocked fourth floor suites into a ghost town?

Or will everything–including the website–continue to be overlorded from New York?

LAMBERT: So the paper currently has no CFO, no director of high technology. What else am I missing?

RYBAK: Don’t forget there’s no Mike LaBonia, aka “Mikey Bones,” who just bailed on his sales and strategic planning gig to go to the San Francisco Chronicle. Oh yeah, and no director of niche publications, although Jennifer Parratt is getting paid to sit at home and wait for her non-compete to run out. Wonder if she’ll ever come back, now that the guy who hired her is out. Sorry, “likely” to be out.

Plus, during his staff meeting, Harte also clarified that it would be Avista money used to pay everyone’s legal bills …not Strib dough. Does it really matter?

LAMBERT: I’m sorry, Chris Harte telling the staff it’ll be Avista, not the Strib budget paying the $10 million-plus in Par Ridder-related legal fees is not something that would quiet my concerns were I employed there. The overriding issue is that the parent company — Avista — is bleeding out its eyeballs with this Minnesota newspaper deal and the twit they hired to staunch all that has turned out to be a very expensive pain in the ass.

Just as you heard from your sources, the word I heard Thursday morning was that Ridder would not be back. My first question upon hearing the court decision putting him on the beach was, “What is the upside to this guy hanging like a dark cloud over the paper for a year? He has no credibility with his staff. Anecdotally, he’s a joke around town. Who continues to love him, and why?”

I still say, and I’ll take bets, that there is Ridder family money in Avista somewhere, somehow.

I confess of course that I’ll miss Par. I think of him as my Nixon.

RYBAK: You have the weirdest crushes. First Mick Anselmo, now Par. I confess that I’m obsessed right now with Billy Dean Singleton. When he rode into town, the Star Tribune was almost arrogant in its rejection of Singleton’s favorite pasttime–creating joint operating agreements between former newspaper rivals (see Denver Post v. Rocky Mt. News).

Now I wonder if JOA might be the settlement that will satisfy Singleton in his lawsuit. Look at his remarks to the Pioneer Press’s John Welbes: “There are many things that the two newspapers could do together without crossing legal barriers, but that would depend on who we’re working with.”

Now that Par’s gone, and Avista’s investment needs some serious shoring up, what’s standing in the way?

LAMBERT: A JOA would have to be seen as an interim step to a full merger. Until now a merger has been viewed as unlikely because of anti-trust issues. But given the precipitous collapse of newspaper revenue, what DC regulator would oppose the argument that a two-paper universe here in the Twin Cities is no longer sustainable, and that the only possibility for continuing full-scale community “service” is to merge and seriously reduce overhead.

It may be a largely bullshit argument, but I’m thinking it is one that plays better with each passing quarter.

But welcome aboard, dear.

RYBAK: Thanks doll, nice to be here…

We interrupt the latest episode of L’affaire Par, (note the corrected, improved gender-appropriate French), for a comment on Dan Rather bringing a $70 million lawsuit against his old bosses at CBS over their shabby treatment of him in the wake of the infamous “60 Minutes II” National Guard story.

The early consensus among marquee pundits is bewilderment at why Rather would do this now, 15 months after getting the axe, (and there is no doubt he got the axe, velvet-sheathed or otherwise), and that it demonstrates a degree of muddled, misguided thinking on his part.

In my limited interactions with Rather — barnstorming through Minnesota, press tours, a brief chat in NY — he always struck me as an odd duck. A little too tightly wound for a high-profile job like his and very old school with his almost jingoistic respect for the hierarchy of journalism, where he was very near the top. Which isn’t to say he was arrogant. In person, he was almost overly self-effacing. But he was stiff even when trying to be casual, and self-consciously aware of his place on the landscape.

There was never any comparison to say, Tom Brokaw, who remains my idea of the gold standard for network anchor unflappability and gravitas. Brokaw, who has a memory for names and details worthy of Hubert Humphrey, is a listener — an absolutely vital quality to any journalist — constantly absorbing clues and cues which translates into a remarkably deft touch for both individual and group interaction. Rather … not so much.

Anyway, as I follow the legal assessments in this latest twist, it appears Rather may be able to make some head-way on the issue of whether CBS was contractually obligated to return him to the Sunday night version of “60 Minutes” after departing the anchor desk, and feature his work at least as prominently as Lesley Stahl, Steve Kroft and Morley Safer, etc.

But no one thinks Rather is in this for the money. (His lawyer says he’ll donate any awards.) This is about his legend, and odd duck though he might be, Rather is a big time student of history and has to know that that George W. Bush draft deferment/Alabama Air National Guard story will be in the second paragraph of his obituary if not on his tombstone. For a guy who did everything any big company could ask of a major player — running around Afghanistan with U.S. armed Taliban-types firing rockets at Russian tanks and strapping himself to a street lamp for every hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast — Rather has a right to be … real … pissed off at the way CBS buckled and how he was led out the door.

But the whole case will turn on Bush’s service record, and whether the story was as screwed up as is popularly believed. Or whether CBS, which had been taking big-time anti-Rather fire for years, simply didn’t want to deal with him/it anymore — what with Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone’s eye on good relations with the freshly reelected Bush White House — and instead of defending him concocted a clubby, wallpapering investigation to get themselves off the hook and Rather out of the building.

Rather says that based on some kind of new evidence his own private investigators have dug up he is now eager to force CBS in to court and get them under oath over who knew what when and what was said to whom? Personally, I think that would be real interesting.

Three things have always stood out with regard to what I’ll call the Bush AWOL story.

1: Even the so-called independent investigation ordered up by CBS held back from saying that the essential story, that Bush got preferential treatment to avoid Vietnam and then never showed up in Alabama, was false. The investigation’s much narrower focus was on the validity of type-written 30-some year-old letters and the reliability of Bill Burkett, the very funky guy who delivered the letters to Rather’s production team.

On one fundamentally relevant level — whether CBS accurately represented the opinions of professionals who examined the letters — Rather and his (very) veteran producer, Mary Mapes, will have to convince everyone watching that they did indeed seek out and accurately reflect the best opinions of the best professionals available. If they can’t do that, they risk sinking even deeper than they already are, just for the chutzpah of bringing a suit with so large an unpatched flaw in it.

But … if they’ve come up with some kind of exculpatory evidence that makes their explanations to date credible and returns the focus to the essentials of the story — and, who knows, CBS-Viacom’s discomfort with running it weeks before an election — we’re off and running again.

2. I was never comfortable with the speed at which the response/backlash to CBS’s Bush AWOL story erupted in the blogosphere. This astonishingly rapid response was led by Atlanta lawyer, Harry MacDougald, a.k.a. “Buckhead”, a very well connected Republican partisan.

And by “rapid”, we are talking almost instantly, and not only that very night but already with a laser-like focus on the bogus letters and the era of the typewriter involved. Even allowing for the intensity of animosity constantly pressing on Rather, and on CBS for having Rather around, that combination of speed and specificity always seemed much too convenient for my tastes.

The conspiracy theory that has floated on this one suggests the bogus letters were planted, via Burkett, by pro-Bush partisans aware of the avidity of CBS’s interest and investigation. Moreover the plan was linked to a tactical hair-trigger set among conservative bloggers to scream “foul” in a highly specific way the second Mapes and Rather bungled so badly they actually used the fake letters. (If that is true the fact Mapes and Rather used them at all once again consigns the two gullible old pros to the scrap heap.)

3. On the validity of the essential charge and the heart of the story — that Bush got preferential treatment to avoid service in Vietnam and then never even bothered to honor his Alabama Air National Guard commitment, while other guys his age were dying for what rock-ribbed conservatives like Ronald Reagan called, “a noble cause”, I found always found it remarkable that no one ever stepped forward and provided evidence of Bush’s presence in Alabama to pick up the $10,000 “prize” offered by “Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

New Yorker writer and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was on Terry Gross yesterday talking about his new book about the US Supreme Court, “The Nine”. The most provocative chapters concern the starkly partisan division within the court over Bush v. Gore, the 2000 re-count fiasco. Toobin’s point was that the Justices hated the specter of their fundamental partisan beliefs being betrayed so publicly and in such an epochal decision. They prefer to think they are bigger than that, different from mere mortals and other people of influence.

The same, I strongly suspect, is true down deeper in this Rather-CBS story.

CBS News and Viacom live and succeed or perish in nothing close to a vaccum. Most of the time they have the finesse and connections and mouthpiece to deny partisan influences. But when the heat really comes down, when access to and political favor from a freshly reelected administration with enormous power over the growth strategies of the corporate parent are hanging in the balance, “objective” players give service to who and what butters their bread.