Author: Brian Lambert

Yesterday’s launch of Reveille Magazine probably didn’t send much of a tremor through Condé Nast, Rolling Stone, Spin, yadda yadda, but I regard anything that puts my buddy Jim Walsh back in a saddle, writing what he wants to be writing, a good thing. Likewise, I am favorably disposed to music writers writing like music writers — with all the occasionally indulgent stuff that goes with that.

At the get-go, Reveille Magazine is composed of Walsh, Managing Editor Andrea Myers (who is still editing HowWasTheShow.com), Steve McPherson (who is still posting to SignalEatsNoise.com), Kyle Mattson (of MoreCowbell.net), Rob van Alstyne (allegedly the world’s tallest music critic, and like several others here, formerly of the now defunct Pulse), and finally, Tom Hallett (author of the Pulse “Round the Dial” column.

In the grand tradition of start-up music mags, no one is getting paid for the foreseeable future. Labors of love, baby. And don’t you know Avista Capital Partners and Dean Singleton would love to swing a little of that action? But Myers says she’s schmoozing an advertising agent to plan for the happy eventuality of revenue. Until then, “it’ll probably be like a part-time job for me,” she says. Twenty hours a week of collecting copy and freshening the site. (My guess is she’ll have a better idea of what to do with Walsh’s stuff than the dour matrons who made life so miserable for him at the Pioneer Press.)

Myers expects to divide the news, features, and reviews (live, CDs, etc.) amongst the corps of writers listed above, with columns by Walsh and Hallett. But she has her antennae up for good writers of diverse musical persuasions. (I’m her guy if she needs 40 inches on Satanic S&M Metal.) “I have been talking to a jazz person lately,” she confesses, “so something might happen there.”

She’ll do a bit with Mary Lucia on The Current this Thursday, “a little before five.”

Cut to Jimmy Walsh, recently released from police custody after The Great FREE Freeway Caper. Walsh’s Friday night “Hoots” — free jam sessions/tag team concerts in the basement of Java Jack’s (46th and Bryant, Minneapolis) — have caught on very nicely. He’s even taking the damn thing on the road to New York in a couple weeks.

“Dude,” said Walsh, speaking of Myers, “she’s a ball of energy and really smart.”

Right. OK. But tell me, old man, what is the void a magazine like this fills in the Twin Cities market?

“The void is that there are a lot of talented, hungry writers in this town who are young and have really no place to put their stuff. Beyond that there are some pretty basic needs, like essays, which historically have been the life-blood of rock journalism.”

As Walsh knows well, “feature” arts stories in daily newspapers are basically preview/interviews or trend pieces, usually reworked for the local market after showing some kind of popular traction elsewhere. It has been a long, long time since any of our papers have let an arts writer muse or thumbsuck for any serious length about something the writer felt passionate about. In the absence of any “hot trend” as an obvious hook, I mean.

After all, why give people who enjoy the arts AND reading anything unusual or unexpected to read?

Walsh, by the way, just finished his book, The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History. It’s due out November 15th.

Also, if you’re the type who likes to test just how cool you are — or aren’t — Reveille Magazine is throwing a party for itself this Saturday at 9 p.m. at The Nomad, across from the Cedar Cultural Center on the West Bank.

I’ll be the guy in the Tijuana Brass World Tour ’69 t-shirt.

As promised, veteran ‘CCO-AM government and political reporter/enabler of Sid, Eric Eskola, returned to Dave Lee’s show this morning. Anyone anticipating a long, teary reentry speech was probably disappointed. Eskola confined himself to saying, “I just ran out of gas” last spring and thanking his ‘CCO colleagues and everyone who sent him notes of support.

The “issue” attached to Eskola’s abrupt departure became what some regarded as a “double standard”, where the Eskolas of the world routinely “out” politicians and other public figures yet insist upon privacy when they have their own difficulties. I took shots for on the one hand reporting that he had taken a leave for personal reasons while refusing to disclose what those reasons were. (My dodge was that I merely swatting down the rumor that he had been yanked for disciplinary reasons by either ‘CCO or CBS Radio.)

That debate kind of lives and dies on the notion of an obligation to public accountability. As in, elected officials are held to a different standard than people who are merely known well by the public. Moreover, get any reporter aside and they’ll tell you they know hundreds of juicy private details about public figures that they don’t put into stories simply because such private matters aren’t germane to the job the person is doing. That said, there is a short list of allegedly randy politicians in these parts whose private lives will become very germane the second they are stupid enough to paint themselves into a hypocrisy corner.

According to Eskola’s ‘CCO boss, Wendy Paulson, Eskola is still making the decisions on what and how much to say. In the context of “running out of gas” Paulson said she is encouraging Eskola to dial back on the 12-hour days he had been putting in.

Meanwhile his “Almanac” boss, Brendan Henehan, over at TPT channel 2 says Eskola will be back on the set this Friday with co-host/wife Kathy Wurzer just like old times. Henehan says he told Eskola he’d like him to say something about his absence, but, “That is entirely up to Eric.”

Wednesday’s meeting of Star Tribune Guild stewards ended with the 25 gathered employees blowing past a proposal to put a “no confidence” vote on publisher Par Ridder before membership. Instead, arguing that “no confidence” was “a little soft” considering Ridder’s behavior, the stewards voted unanimously to have membership vote on demanding Ridder’s resignation.

The membership vote is scheduled for 4:30 pm next Tuesday.

Reporter Chris Serres, a Strib Guild officer, says, “It became a pretty long discussion. The prevailing view was that if we believe what he has done is a violation of our code of ethics a ‘no-confidence’ vote is kind of soft. So then we had to work out questions of a proper statement and timing.”

Serres says some of the 25 or so stewards felt it would be better to wait until Judge David Higgs makes a judgment on MediaNews’ request for an injunction against Ridder, something that make take another month or more. But eventually the winning argument was that regardless of the fine legal definitions, Ridder’s behavior is already beyond what is acceptable within the Guild’s Code of Ethics. “We do have one, you know,” Serres joked. And that the membership, another several hundred Strib employees, should be given the opportunity to express themselves on the matter.

Prior to Wednesday’s vote I had spoken with several veteran Stribbers who were taking a, “What’s the point?” view of the “no confidence” idea. Since there was no money or job security in it for the Guild or the newsroom, they said, it struck them as a bit limp-wristed.

The counter-argument was that a vote of “no confidence” is unusual enough it would make a valid statement to the local community and journalists nationally that Ridder has violated a standard of professional behavior his employees value and feel themselves bound to observe. Put another way, whatever the legal decision, professional journalists are required to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard than what the law may allow, and Ridder isn’t anywhere close to that standard.

Whether a call for his resignation, (formally: For Avista Capital Partners to request Ridder’s resignation), ups the ante over “no confidence” I don’t know. But Serres says a committee within the stewards will go through the Guild’s Code of Ethics and produce a statement detailing Ridder’s transgressions in preparation for next Tuesday’s vote.

Incidentally, not to bury the lede, but corroborating sources at a recent meeting with MediaNews owner Dean Singleton confirm his statement that he has already spent $3 million on his suit against Par Ridder. While Singleton has laid out serious cash for lawyers and forensic work on the Pioneer Press computer files Ridder booted into the Star Tribune system, at least one prominent local attorney believes it is reasonable Avista has or soon will spend as much defending him.

Last time I checked $6 million was somewhere in the range of 40% of the Star Tribune’s annual newsroom budget. Obviously I don’t have the precise numbers. But the point is you can cover a lot of Minnetonka Sewer Commission meetings with $6 million … and eventually the loser in this disgraceful mess will be looking to paper over their losses with another round of “right-sizing” (to quote Ridder) in their Twin Cities subsidiaries.

The gist of a recent meeting Star Tribune publisher Par Ridder had with what is left of his editorial page was essentially this, (not a direct quote), “Readers get enough opinion about national issues in other places, they don’t need it from us.”

Said one Op-Eddie, “His message, basically, was to write with more of an eye on the marketplace, and he sees that marketplace as being less interested in national issues, like Iraq, Scooter Libby, the U.S. attorneys story, than local issues. Essentially its another step in the transition from treating readers like citizens to treating them like customers.”

Another emphasized that Ridder wasn’t issuing a dictum, nor was there any sense that punitive action would be taken if the staff continued offering opinions on Presidential commutations, (which they did the next day), the success of the surge, the role of Dick Cheney or whatever. The pitch was rather another facet of Ridder’s “Business Literacy” shtick, which, as he has explained to staffs at both the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune, requires gathering the types of stories and reporting them in ways most appealing to customers, which means of course both readers and advertisers.

To anyone outside of journalism this sounds profoundly obvious. If you’re selling cars, lay on the chrome! Hype the MP3 gizmos! Give the people what they want, stupid! But customizing news to fit the tastes of the target market has not been the traditional role of big daily newspapers. Yeah, there’s all that sports coverage and funny pages and weather forecasts and TV review stuff. But the essential news end of the paper — of which the Op-Ed pages are an important facet — are supposed to be about telling people (citizens) what they need to know, whether it pleases them or not.

The most obvious example of playing to your customers and giving them exactly what they want to consume is of course Fox News, where every viewer truly is a customer. None of the Strib Op-Ed team with whom I communicated regarded Ridder’s “suggestion” as having any particular ideological tilt. Rather, it was strictly business. But that still isn’t much different than orchestrating a bread and circuses cable channel.

One of the two occasions I had the good fortune to listen to Mr. Ridder up close — prior to his court appearances, I mean — was a “Business Literacy”-Lite gathering he held for the staff of the Pioneer Press A&E section back in 2004. At one point he explained how he believed it was a good idea to steer the Pioneer Press Op-Ed page into “a conservative alternative to the Star Tribune”. This, as I understood it, made good business sense (to him) as the Pioneer Press trimmed staff and budgets and re-directed its meager resources toward more conservative suburban readers.

I was reminded of this strategy when I learned that as part of pulling away from editorializing on national issues, Par was explicit, I’m told, in seeing no good reason for the Star Tribune to continue making presidential endorsements. (For the record, Par’s “conservative alternate” editorial board at the Pioneer Press famously endorsed … George W. Bush for reelection later in 2004.) And why is is it so damned hard to find that classic on the web today?

Pulling back on local opinions on national issues would have, I can argue, the effect, de facto, of relieving public pressure on the Bush administration which at this moment in its term is under near constant siege as a result of an unprecedented set of blunders and scandals.

I’m sure the White House would be pleased to learn that the largest media voice in the Upper Midwest was taking itself out of the Scooter/Dick/Alberto/Iraq/Attorneys/Halliburton/Climate Change/Katrina/Rummy game and devoting itself instead to issues of more local interest like, nickel a gallon gas taxes, light rail, and “cat-beheadings”, as one Stribber suggested.

The dilemma, as actual journalists see it, (in contrast to Par Ridder, newspaper manager extraordinaire), is that reducing the number of editorials on national issues of very high interest — Iraq, Libby, etc. — would just as likely have the effect of giving avid newspaper readers (citizens) another reason to ignore the local paper in favor of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or — for you righties, the always satisfying NewsMax.

The day after Clear Channel whacked President and 20-plus year top dog, Mick Anselmo, most of the inside-industry talk around town turned to the crude and rude way they did it … and then quickly segued into what this shake-out means for the seven Clear Channel stations immediately and the Twin Cities radio market in the near term future.

First, the rude part. How pissed off does Clear Channel have to be to drop a guy into a city on a Monday morning and fire a long-term, heretofore successful/reliable/loyal manager … by phone? Anselmo has been quoted elsewhere saying he was taken by surprise. Supposedly he was fishing up north. Well, maybe. Anyone who knows Anselmo knows he’s canny in the extreme and not at all above concocting a self-serving web for a predator to tangle in. So, knowing the hammer was coming down Anselmo may have just decided to stay out on his boat and make Clear Channel corporate look like clods — never a difficult thing to do — by leaving them no option other than to can him long-distance, without proper opportunity for him to say farewell to his troops and bobos.

At any rate, his peers around the market (off-record) regard the treatment he got as extraordinarily tacky. “I don’t care if he didn’t hit his numbers or whatever the reason. That is no way to treat someone who has given you that many years of service,” said one rival.

None of them, interestingly enough, think Anselmo will be out of work for long. The guy is very well connected to the national country music scene, knows Minnesota sports broadcast rights negotiations inside and out and, knowing what he knows about how Clear Channel can and will react to competition, he would be invaluable to any local radio group looking to exploit Clear Channel’s latest round of cost-cutting.

The most logical landing pad for Anselmo to land — after his non-compete expires, (and unlike Par Ridder he won’t be calling a rich daddy for advice on how to get out of one) — is the local CBS group — WCCO-AM, WLTE-FM and “Jack” FM. The Good Neighbor is long overdue for an infusion of direction and energy and, as a couple Clear Channel rivals pointed out, with all of Anselmo’s country music connections, it’d be a no-brainer for him to “blow-up” “Jack”, (radio jargon for “change formats”) and go head to head with one of Clear Channel’s premier cash machines, K102. He might even try slipping K102’s programming architect, Gregg Swedberg, out a side door when no one was looking.

Meanwhile, Anselmo leaves behind at least two sad sack stations out of the seven he ran. First is KTLK, the hard-right talk station, (where I worked briefly, until they realized they had a total whack-job, blithering lefty on their hands and tossed me out the door), and KOOL 108, the so-called “oldies” station.

As I’ve collected the thinking of best available minds over the last 24 hours, the emerging consensus is that KOOL 108’s problems are still in the “tweakable” range. Fuss with the damned playlist until you find the right number of aging Luddites who don’t own an iPod and think 25 minutes of commercials every hour is normal, fine and unavoidable.

KTLK is a whole different beast, and some think, key to Anselmo’s firing. While the idea of FM talk came out of Clear Channel corporate, (the idea’s parent is long gone and FM talk has few supporters inside Clear Channel corporate anymore), it was Anselmo who assembled the talent For KTLK, (or in my case, “lack thereof”), most specifically a very, VERY big annual pay check for Jason Lewis, which by any standard other than Anselmo’s and Lewis’s has not paid off in either ratings or revenue. The station continues to flounder despite, as I’ve said before, the aggregation of the biggest names in wing nut talk — Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. — and an unprecedented 20-month billboard campaign. No one interested in talk could NOT have known where to find Rush and the rest of the echo chamber. KTLK’s struggles are related to something other than “a start-up station”, as Anselmo’s team has tried to explain it.

Most likely Clear Channel will hang with right-wing talk, at least through the ’08 election cycle. They will bet that the few remaining hardcore Bush supporters will continue to linger — against all reality and logic — and KTLK can maybe — possibly — draw in a fraction of the old mid-’90s talk crowd. It is a rebound that becomes far more likely if Hillary Clinton gets the Democratic nomination. (A Hillary-Obama ticket would be every right-wing radio programmer’s dream come true. Then it’d be them against HER and Barack HUSSEIN … who just happens to also be black, with a heavy dose of Bubba redux thrown in for a kicker. An angry white guy trifecta! Perfect!)

Beyond the two problem stations, there is plenty of curiosity over what Anselmo’s replacement, Mike Crusham, a former sales manager will think of what he sees here in Minnesota. For the last two years Crusham has been barnstorming the country “cleaning up” Clear Channel properties. (That usually means “cutting costs to create profit”). If he is, as one Clear Channel rival put it, “A hit man with no real experience or aptitude for talk”, how long will he listen to KFAN and before he says, “WTF?”

From noon until 7 your average sports yob listening to KFAN can often go days without hearing a single extended rant about the opening of Vikings’ training camp, Matt Garza’s acne or A-Rod’s wife’s t-shirts. A talk generalist and corporate journeyman like Crusham may meddle with something that isn’t broken just because he — like the Clear Channel consultants with whom I’ve spoken — preach the Great Template sermon that the Twin Cities are “just like every other market, no difference”.

(Oddly, none of them ever had an explanation for why we here in Houston-North have a public radio news station with an audience three times the size of their megawattage know-nothing talkers. But then no Clear Channel consultant ever struck me as caring enough to look into why that is so.)

Point being. This Anselmo kacking will have blowback. Mark my words.

Mick Anselmo, GM of all thing Clear Channel in the Twin Cities — specifically radio stations KFAN, Cities 97, KOOL 108, K102, KTLK, KDWB and 690 The Score was fired today. His departure puts an end to one of the more remarkable success and survival stories in radio management in this market. Anselmo had managed to elude the blade through six or maybe seven previous management/ownership purges/changes.

Clear Channel, based in San Antonio, is notorious both for being by far the world’s largest radio group — in excess of 1200 stations coast-to-coast — and ruthless about profit delivery to its investors, primary among them being Lowry Mays his family, including son, Mark, Clear Channel’s CEO. The Mays family and other shareholders recently concluded a deal with private equity and hedge fund groups to take Clear Channel back to private, a move that netted them another fast fortune but has saddled the company with significant new debt which in turn has placed even greater pressure on managers like Anselmo to cut costs.

I’ll add more to this post as I work my three rings of gossip. But it would seem reasonable to expect the new GM, reportedly Mike Crusham a Clear Channel VP from Boston, to take very tough looks at under-performing Twin Cities stations.

It’ll be several more weeks before Ramsey County judge David Higgs hands down a decision in the matter of whether Star Tribune publisher Par Ridder’s actions upon leaving the Pioneer Press are grievous enough to warrant throwing him out of his new office in Minneapolis. One line of thought in the legal community is that Judge Higgs would be thrilled if the combatants in the case, Dean Singleton’s MediaNews and Ridder’s current employers, Avista Capital Partners reached an out-of-court settlement and spared him forcing anyone to do anything.

But considering the avidity with which Singleton has pursued full, public prosecution of his case against Ridder, it doesn’t seem likely he’ll settle for anything less than young Par’s impeccably groomed head on a pike. With that in mind, along with all the details of the case — not the least of which is Par conceding virtually every point of Singleton’s complaint — the Star Tribune Guild this Wednesday will take up the question of whether to put a “no confidence” vote on Par before its membership.

Says Strib Guild officer, Chris Serres, “We are definitely going to consider it at our stewards meeting Wednesday.” There are about 20 Guild stewards at the Strib.

“It has been bandied about quite a bit recently, in the light both of what he’s been accused of and what has he has said. So we’re going to discuss it, and if there’s enough interest among the stewards we’ll bring it before the membership.”

Serres says he hasn’t “personally decided” which way he’d go. And he says that as much as he and others are “obviously bothered by the stealing of the information, if that’s what he did, Guild members are more focused on the firings of valuable personnel, the loss of one out five newsroom jobs and the elimination of 30 pages of news space per week, 14 out of sports, than we are on [Ridder’s] problems.”

Serres’ fellow officer, Pat Doyle, confessed to being “a little out of the loop” working at the State Capitol as he does. He hadn’t yet heard of “no confidence” being on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting. But he did remind me that the Guild had asked weeks ago for Chris Harte, Avista’s lone newspaper person (as far as anyone knows), to explain and essentially justify Ridder’s behavior. Predictably, Harte replied that he would have to wait until the legal action had played out.

“I’m not sure what [a vote of “no confidence”] would accomplish,” said Doyle, “but I don’t have a sense right now that the Guild has much confidence in either Par or ownership.” He added, as many Stribbers do in this context, that the fact they have so little idea who all is represented by Avista, is a handicap when it comes to judging how aggressive to get in the face of a situation as unique as Le Affair Par.

In normal times a “no confidence” vote against a key manager would be weighed with a cautious eye toward how much it might antagonize ownership, usually in the context of the next contraction negotiation. But at this moment, with the very high likelihood that Avista will seek game-changing Draconian, Dean Singleton-like cuts and concessions in its next contract with the Guild, (due up next summer), does a principled stand against a top manager who is either guilty as charged of serious improprieties … or stunningly incompetent carry as much or any real risk?

At some point isn’t it like impeachment talk regarding George W. Bush? If the offense is serious enough — and again, the appearance of either A: gross impropriety, or B: gross incompetence would seem to qualify as sufficiently serious — aren’t you required, at some level, to pursue a conclusive public judgment? Or … if you don’t see the current situation as laden with serious
reflections on your own ethics and/or professional credibility … well then there’s really no point in having a “no confidence” option on the books, is there?

It is my view that at this point even George W. Bush knows he has nothing left to lose. This explains his completely predictable decision to commute Scooter Libby’s sentence as sufficiently as anyone really needs. With his approval ratings closing in on Richard Nixon circa July ’74, (and that was BEFORE his Libby decision), the Bush of July ’07 is playing strictly for the gang that brung him to the dance. Namely, his rigid, self-blindered conservative core and the only people who will dab at heir eyes when he departs D.C. in ’09.

With that in mind, I encourage any and all interested to read this succinct explanation of the “poor Scooter” mindset by Scott Horton of Harper’s magazine . The idea that the neo-con movement reveres the notion of the ends justifying any means is by now fairly well-accepted and I think understood by every rational observer.

What continues to fascinate me is how the pro-Libby forces, which includes (for your media context) the 1000 or so talk radio stations flogging the same rhetorical strategies 24/7 from coast-to-coast without a moment’s contradiction, sold the argument that Libby was the victim of a political vendetta.

Horton grabs a quote from Orin Kerr who asks:

“The Scooter Libby case has triggered some very weird commentary around the blogosphere; perhaps the weirdest claim is that the case against Libby was “purely political.” I find this argument seriously bizarre. As I understand it, Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as “overwhelming” and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate. And yet the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.

“I find this claim bizarre. I’m open to arguments that parts of the case against Libby were unfair. But for the case to have been purely political, doesn’t that require the involvement of someone who was not a Bush political appointee? Who are the political opponents who brought the case? Is the idea that Fitzgerald is secretly a Democratic party operative? That Judge Walton is a double agent? Or is the idea that Fitzgerald and Walton were hypnotized by “the Mainstream Media” like Raymond Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate? Seriously, I don’t get it.”

But in terms if understanding a very fundamental rhetorical stratagem routinely — if not incessantly — employed by right-wing talk radio, (a redundancy, that one), Horton drops in this bit:

“Back in my earlier life, I invested many years defending democracy and human rights advocates in the former Soviet Union (and in this effort, I had strong support from prominent Neocons, many of whom remain my friends today). I remember one afternoon sitting with Elena Bonner, the doyenne of the movement, in her apartment on Moscow’s Chkalova Street, turning over the case of a poor refusenik who was being persecuted by the KGB. And Bonner lectured me: “You need to remember one tactic of the totalitarian mindset, a tactic that belongs to the basic training of KGB cadres. They frequently accuse their victim of doing exactly what they, in fact, are doing. Why? It has a double utility. It forces the victim to use his meager resources defending himself from false challenges. But more importantly, it deflects attention from their own scheming and plotting.”

This is how we get the regularly-repeated concepts of “class warfare” where liberal support of minority and populist causes is always a “class” attack on … the wealthy and white, and the horror of “activist judges” where only liberal members of the bench interpret laws according to THEIR personal philosophies … while conservatives judges never make judgments that advance their view of how the world ought to work.

Or … in the latest absurdity repeated ad nauseum, how the Fairness Doctrine, which used to require equal time for countervailing arguments on the PUBLIC AIRWAVES is … censorship. (The Doctrine was a device to PROHIBIT de facto censorship.)

Anyway, enjoy the rest of your Independence Day break.

Reporters and other Guild employees at the St. Paul Pioneer Press got their first look at the totality of the plan owner Dean Singleton and his privately-held MediaNews group has in store for their next contract. That assumes of course you can call what Singleton wants from the Pioneer Press a “contract.”

By the time you scan down a long, Draconian list of demands, cuts, concessions and give-backs MediaNews’ “proposals” walk and talk more like disincentives than reasons to stay with the paper.

If you think I’m being alarmist, here is an overview of MediaNews’ proposal:

* Eliminate HealthPartners as a choice for health insurance coverage. All employees would be offered the same plan, which could be changed without negotiation with the Guild. (Under the current contract, employees who choose HealthPartners accept higher monthly premiums, while the company’s contribution to the premium is capped.)

* Reduce the amount of sick time and short- and long-term disability leave available to employees by eliminating the current Guild policy. The company did not immediately give details of the policy that would replace the Guild policy, other than to say it is the same as what is offered to non-union workers. These policies affect both people who have unexpected, serious illnesses and women who go on leave following childbirth.

* Eliminate the right to daily overtime. Overtime would only be paid only to employees who work more than 40 hours in one week.

* Eliminate “call-back” overtime, now available to employees called in to work for more than two hours on what had been a scheduled day off. The company wants to pay those employees only straight time.

* Freeze future accrual of pension benefits.

* Eliminate current vacation policy and replace with “earn-as-you-go” accrual. Under the current accrual policy: Employees in 2007 are earning vacation to be taken in 2008. This 2008 vacation time is yours; if you leave the company before the end of 2007, the company will pay you your accrued 2008 vacation along with any unused 2007 vacation. Under the company’s proposal: Employees would be earning 2007 vacation time in 2007; if you left before the end of the year, the difference between the amount of time taken and earned in a given year would be paid in — or, presumably, taken from — the employee’s last paycheck. Total accrued vacation is considered an accounting liability for the company; eliminating the policy results in a one-time savings.

* Allow for-cause drug testing.

* Allow sales representatives to be disciplined for not meeting sales goals.

* Eliminate the evergreen clause and add a clause that would give the company broad “management-rights” authority to set and change schedules, rules and assignments, without Guild involvement.

* Eliminate the restriction that prevents the company from making ownership of a car a condition of employment.

* Eliminate newsroom team leaders from Guild coverage.

* Exclude from union membership people who work for online and niche publications.

* Remove required preference for internal applicants when hiring.

* Remove the right of a Guild member to return to a previous position after being promoted to a job for which they are later deemed unqualified.

* Remove restrictions prohibiting the company from making a full-time position a part-time position without Guild agreement.

* Reduce the minimum level of required Guild membership in editorial and advertising departments.

* Eliminate provisions for minimum sales commissions and specified benefits for advertising staff.

* Reduce severance from 38 to 12 weeks and pay only to laid-off employees.

* Create a two-tier wage scale, under which new hires would reach top minimum pay after three years of service, not six. (Specific wages not yet offered.)

* Reduce mileage reimbursement to 35 cents per mile, from the IRS-determined level, now 48.5 cents per mile.

* Eliminate provision that prohibits reporters and photographers from being required to do each other’s work.

* Allow factors other than seniority to be taken into account when making layoffs.

* Eliminate restrictions on hiring freelancers and stringers.

* Eliminate health-care eligibility for future retirees.

PiPress Guild officer Jack Sullivan tried to maintain a civil tone as he reacted to the gantlet of hits. Still, he described it as, “The most thorough assault on everything that is good about working at the Pioneer Press.”

He added that if it is enacted as MediaNews would like, “It would offer no reason for experienced reporters to stay and no incentive to come here is you’re a talented younger reporter.”

Sullivan says, “I had 10 years experience before I came here, [the last year and a half in DC with the AP], and I can tell you I wouldn’t have done it if this was contract in place.”

Those of you sympathetic to management’s view that the bottom has already fallen out of the newspaper business and the best anyone can hope for now is a salvage operation run with skeleton staffs and minimal resources, will read Sullivan and dismiss his view as negotiating hyperbole. But it is my view — consider the source here — that Sullivan is being more rational than histrionic.

All the catty jabs thrown at reporters withstanding, about how lazy they are and what a cushy deal they’ve had with all their union protections and benefits, the fact is most of them are brighter-than-average white collar workers with sufficient talents to do reasonably well in PR, shilling for frozen burritos, miracle beauty aids, investment firms and generally adding to the giant megaphone of quasi-to-non-factual communications clogging our cultural atmosphere.

Overall effect: Fewer facts. More spin.

A “deal” like what MediaNews is “proposing” presents adults working for newspapers, people with children, mortgages and college tuition bills a stark choice. Be responsible to your family, accept that reporting is no longer a full-salaried adult job and leave, or stay, out of fear or selfishness and continue to watch your standard of living backslide further and faster.

Recent J-school grads (and less) may still take the remaining jobs. But under conditions such as Singleton is offering, the likelihood of many of them staying for 20 or 30 years and becoming deeply-versed in the history and folkways of the city and their beat grows ever less likely.

The antennae of several PiPressers went up at the line demanding reduction of standard (maximum) severance packages from 38 to 12 weeks, and with that new minimal maximum applying only to those being laid-off. Is this Singleton’s preparation for closing down the PiPress? Or maybe the oft-discussed merger with the Star Tribune? Either way it would save Singleton a fast $30,000-$40,000 per discarded employee.

Assuming that a merger is at least a couple years off, I’ve become intrigued with the maneuvering of both Singleton and Avista to use more and more freelancers to cover beats formerly assigned to full-time employees. Sullivan used the theoretical example of the paper shelling out $200 to a Baltimore-area freelancer to cover a Twins road game rather than send a sports reporter out on a week-long road trip. Other reporters see the freelance option having more immediate impact on arts and entertainment sections, where local freelance writers could — the argument goes — provide a reasonable facsimile of full-time coverage at a fraction of the cost, and of course with none of that pesky union interference.

In the 24/7 news cycle this commentary from Bill Moyers on Rupert Murdoch’s seduction of the current owners of the Wall St. Journal is now ancient history … but still relevant.

After so many weeks of following All Things Par I have to be careful not to imagine parallels and connections where few exist. But … Moyers’ underlying argument that Murdoch reduces a critically important facet of functioning democracy — a vigorous, independent media — to a black-or-red ledger entry really isn’t so different than what both the Star Tribune’s owners, Avista Capital Partners and MediaNews are doing to the Pioneer Press. Like Murdoch, neither Avista or Dean Singleton are prepared to sacrifice or risk anything to sustain genuine journalistic vitality.

Obviously the Wall St. Journal rests on a much higher plateau of breadth and quality than either of our local dailies, which is why its diminishment — through “right-sizing” and de-contenting, or Murdoch-style political gaming — is such a troubling prospect. Murdoch plays a much bigger and rougher game of information manipulation and out-right distortion. But the attitude of a totally commoditized media subsidiary isn’t really all that different.