There was a brief flurry of activity yesterday as a rumor blew around town that Ramsey County Judge David Higgs was ready to announce his decision in what we here at Slaughter Central like to refer to as Le Affair Par. It proved a false alarm.
But the mere thought of another round of Par Ridder/Avista follies, (and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Higgs will dismiss Dean Singleton’s complaint as much ado about nothing), reminded me of a point worth reiterating in the matter of the closing of the Star Tribune Foundation.
As I reported last month, despite a recent letter to subscribers touting the on-going philanthropy of the Star Tribune Foundation, the Star Tribune Foundation no longer exists and the current Avista Capital Partners-owned Star Tribune has no foundation of its own and as far as any fund-raiser in town is aware Avista Capital Partners aren’t donating so much as a dull nickel to Twin Cities’ community and arts organizations. Zero.
Looking for a perspective on this sudden evaporation of contributions from a company that used to play a significant role in enhancing the vitality of life here in the Twin Cities — as opposed to simply sucking as much cash as possible out of it — I called around to people well aware of the now defunct Star Tribune Foundation’s role.
First was Colin Hamilton, executive director of The Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library. Hamilton emphasized that the Star Tribune Foundation was a small-ish player in comparison to something like the McKnight Foundation, making modest four-digit contributions routinely for years. But the Foundation stepped up big time when the library launched its capital campaign for the new building, donating $500,000, and just as importantly, donating first and thereby setting a precedent for other major contributors. (Cargill was another early donor.)
“First gifts are always very significant,” said Hamilton. “Often times you are not credible to other potential donors until someone else has demonstrated their confidence in you, which the Star Tribune Foundation did. We were extraordinarily grateful. Sam[antha] Fleitman has always been a very good friend to the library.”
Fleitman’s job managing the Star Tribune Foundation was axed as the McClatchy Corporation shut down operations here, took whatever was left in the Foundation accounts with them back to California and the new owners Avista, uh, DECLINED to establish a Foundation of its own. Fleitman now works for Andersen Windows’ foundation.
Among Twin Cities non-profit fund-raisers Andy Currie qualifies as something of a dean. He has personally been in the fund-raising game for 40 years, the last 32 in the Twin Cities. His recent work includes capital campaigns for Regions Hospital, Sister Kenny, the Minneapolis Planetarium and the Tubman Family Alliance.
I asked if he was aware of any kind of charitable funding coming out of the Avista-owned Star Tribune?
“I’m not aware,” he said, “of anything charitable being done right now at the Star Tribune. I certainly have not heard of anything. They seem to be having enough other problems, but I don’t know what’s going on there.”
The issue obviously is one of basic community quid pro quo. The guy running the corner sandwich shop knows enough to give a little get a little goodwill and customer favor. Unfortunately that game breaks down pretty fast when the company’s owners leave town — or in Avista’s case — never even bother to move here. No one expects Exxon/Mobil to dole out money to the Minneapolis Library or The Jungle Theater, although God knows they could. But a monopoly local daily newspaper, pitching itself as “The Newspaper of the Twin Cities” is playing a much different game, especially at a time when it is trying to sell “right-sizing” as a facet of a “hyper-local” or “local, local” uber-commitment to every neighborhood and suburb in the area.
In my mind a “hyper-local” editorial strategy gains credibility when it is accompanied by a return investment in the institutions that vitalize and sustain the neighborhoods a newspaper claims to be so earnestly committed to covering.
But I live here. Avista doesn’t. Although I have to assume that after tallying up their return-on-investment from all of their various businesses Avista Capital Partners, or Avista Capital Holding LP, should have at least $3 million a year left to sprinkle around/re-invest in Minnesota. You’d think they’d be hip to doing it if only as a gesture of goodwill and ingratiation by a faceless company that more Minnesotans every day regard as just another dispassionate siphoning operation, depleting us for the greater good of a few hedge fund types far, far away.
And if Avista’s argument is that they don’t have $3 million, I’m thinking that mortgage meltdown has crept higher than I ever imagined.
Obviously, GIVING MONEY BACK to one of the dozens of communities where it has investment interests is not even on the Avista radar. The sole point is to extract money.
Andy Currie notes that under ownership by the Cowles family, the Star Tribune was a founding member of The Keystone Club, the group of corporations who committed to the 5% of profits rule for local contributions, a standard that was the envy of other large metropolitan areas and contributed significantly to the Twin Cities much-touted quality of life.
“More community-minded people you could not find,” says Currie of the Cowles. “They were heroes to me.”
Currie also reminded me that that hefty library check withstanding, the Star Tribune Foundation normally eschewed gifts to capital campaigns, preferring instead to underwrite individual productions at Jeune Leune and The Jungle and other arts venues.
“When Honeywell was sold to that company in, where is it? New Jersey?” he said, “that knocked $11 to $15 million out of the local contribution market. And now the Star Tribune. You’re talking a pretty serious impact.”
Over at The Jungle, executive director, Margo Gisselman, explained the cruel irony that, “It takes a while to qualify for funding from the Star Tribune Foundation, and after years we had finally gotten in. They gave us $5000, and now it’s gone. It is such a bummer to us.” Individually, she says, the Cowles family continues to support The Jungle.
Avista? Not so much. “No, they are not donors.”
Currie says Best Buy, Minnesota’s 21st century empire, “is gaining momentum as a corporate contributor”. He commends the Hubbard family (of KSTP-TV and radio) for being “very generous” to various causes, notes that KARE-TV occasionally provides grants through parent company, Gannett, Inc., that other stations, like WCCO-TV are good about donating anchor time for charitable events. But that Clear Channel, which owns seven radio stations in the Twin Cities and over 1200 nationwide, “is not on any [contributor] lists that I look at.”
Clear Channel’s various stations do do heavily-branded events with percentages going to various causes. But Texas-based Clear Channel, with over $5 billion in net media revenue in 2006 (according to Ad Age), is not making any great philanthropic effort in Minnesota.
The old joke of course is that Clear Channel is the operational model for media investors like Avista.
