Category: Blog Post

Just one question here. You’re a big city newspaper manager. Why declare a letter to a rival editor “Not for Publication” and then copy a dozen reporters, several if not all of whom have little reason to be sympathetic to your argument? Have you perhaps not heard of the internets? You know, the thing with all those tubes?

For your edification. An e-mail exchange between Monica Moses of the Star Tribune and Steve Perry of City Pages.

Here is the City Pages package on the Strib sale.

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From: Monica Moses [mailto:mmoses@startribune.com]
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 3:35 PM
To: Letters
Cc: Anders Gyllenhaal; Doug Grow; Derek Simmons; Mike Meyers; Pamela Miller; Rochelle A. (News) Olson; Steve Brandt; Scott Gillespie
Subject: letter to editor, NOT FOR PUBLICATION

To the editor (NOT FOR PUBLICATION):

It’s tiresome to have to correct some of the biggest leaps of logic in City Pages’ recent coverage of the Star Tribune sale. But here goes.

It’s true that Star Tribune daily circulation declined 4.7% between 2001 and 2006. But guess what? That’s the third best record among Top 20 local U.S. newspapers, behind only The New York Post and The New York Daily News. Compare our five-year decline with that of the Boston Globe (down 17.3%), the Detroit Free Press (down 18.4%), the Los Angeles Times (down 20.3%), the San Francisco Chronicle (down 22.5%) or Newsday (down 25.7%).

Since 2004, the Star Tribune has deliberately reduced circulation sponsored by a third party by 20%, which accounts for a significant piece of the decline.

It’s hardly the case that the 2005 redesign caused some kind of notable circulation drop. Furthermore, circulation is not a terribly reliable indicator of how a newspaper is doing with its readers. Circulation is still the prevailing metric among U.S. newspapers, in large part because the big advertisers on the Audit Board of Circulation like it that way. Circulation declines mean cheaper ad rates.

Newspapers in Canada moved from circulation to readership some years ago, and the most respected researchers in the United States think readership is a more meaningful indicator of a newspaper’s value among its readers. Circulation measures how many newspapers have been somehow pressed into the hands of readers. Readership measures how deeply and frequently readers actually engage with your content –how many people are actually reading.

And that’s where you’ll find the real story of the Star Tribune following the redesign. Readership increased 2.3 percentage points, or 6%, in the six months following the redesign, according to Scarborough Research. That’s the first increase since 2002 and the biggest jump since 1996.

Monica Moses
Star Tribune
NOT FOR PUBLICATION

>>> >>> “Steve Perry” 1/12/2007 4:02:31 PM >>>

*Why* not for publication, Monica? Because it’s not exactly immune to rebuttal?
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From: Monica Moses [mailto:mmoses@startribune.com]
Sent: Fri 1/12/2007 4:16 PM
To: Letters; Steve Perry
Cc: Anders Gyllenhaal; Doug Grow; Derek Simmons; Mike Meyers; Pamela Miller; Rochelle A. (News) Olson; Steve Brandt; Scott Gillespie
Subject: RE: letter to editor, NOT FOR PUBLICATION

Ha. I have absolute faith in my argument.
The letter is not for publication because I am not the newspaper’s spokesperson. Moreover, your publication has not proven itself to be honorable in accepting criticism and looking at facts that don’t fit a preconceived, predictable, cynical, narrow portrait of the Star Tribune. Your motives are not pure. You can’t be trusted to do the right thing with the information.

Monica Moses
Star Tribune

______________________

From: Steve Perry
Sent: Fri 1/12/2007 4:36 PM
To: Monica Moses; Letters
Cc: Anders Gyllenhaal; Doug Grow; Derek Simmons; Mike Meyers; Pamela Miller; Rochelle A. (News) Olson; Steve Brandt; Scott Gillespie
Subject: RE: letter to editor, NOT FOR PUBLICATION

I’ve always heard that you were a first-rate suck-up.

Ha yourself.

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Here’s an interesting look from Slate’s Jack Shafer into the notorious incident up in Minot, North Dakota a few years ago when a train derailment threatened the city with a poisonous vapor cloud, but authorities couldn’t alert the population because all the Clear Channel-owned stations were on robot control …

I don’t know who looked less credible on last night’s edition of “60 Minutes”, George W. Bush or the president of Duke University, but the CBS News crew deserves a shout out for allowing both men to present their case regardless of how anemic each was.
It is fashionable to avoid ever complimenting bigfooting mainstream media for doing a decent job on a truly influential public figure. Presidential interviews in particular are generally way too deferential. And God knows history is not being kind to network news orgs and major newspapers for the way they capitulated in the face of Bush’s sky-high approval ratings prior to the Iraq invasion. (A failure I fully expect them to commit again, the next time a popular politician scams the public as baldy.)
Anyway, when you write about the MSM some unwritten law of cynicism says you’re supposed to niggle, I guess.
But Scott Pelley I thought got as much out of Bush as I would ever expect from a network correspondent allowed the kind of access Karl Rove has been cooking up for certain key media outlets as he desperately seeks support for Bush’s escalation in Iraq. (Pelley even declined to use the word “surge” in his knee-to-knee interview with Bush at Camp David, hitting him instead with the far more precise, “escalation”.)
Sure, Pelley could have wiped Bush’s face with a long list of outright lies and distortions the guy has engaged in — from Iraq to Intelligent Design to Kenny Boy Lay to Global Warming — but Pelley’s not Noam Chomsky and CBS isn’t TPM Muckraker.
What struck me was how Bush brought nothing new to his rationale for continuing the fight with US troops, and his weirdly rigid gait and stance as Pelley and he did the strolling-interview shtick around Camp David. You’d think Rove or somebody would be working with Bush full time, especially in the aftermath of his stiff, discomforting demeanor in the actual primetime speech last week. If nothing else, at least fake an appearance of confidence.
I’m sorry, I think Bush is losing it. (Pelley asked him as much.) The smirk never did anything for me, but I think Zoloft zombie when I watch him now.
BTW, let me go on record here, or in any betting pool anyone wants to start, and say that I see the prospect of a bonafide constitutional crisis if Bush and Cheney try to gin up some kind of Gulf of Tonkin rationale for attacking Iran. If they try something like that the only people willing to support him will be the talk radio choir, a gang of cynical bullshit artists that would rally behind him if announced he was deporting everyone lacking a first generation northern European bloodline.
But ask yourself, if Bush tries something militarily, based on his interpretation of “presidential authority”, how far would you be from accepting/consenting to a state sponsored coup d’etat?
As for the Duke president … pitiful chump. His position in the first hours of the rape charges against the lacrosse players was not enviable. He had every good reason to trust the DA — the now wholly discredited Mr. Nifong — but clearly overreacted to the roar of black activists and handed down highly punitive judgment well before all the facts were known.
The whole case is another example of the work left to be done in applying reason and perspective to race relations in this country. Fundamental to every individual and institution, particularly a toney institution like Duke, is the fear of being charged as racist. Like pedophilia, that sort of thing doesn’t wash off easily. As a consequence, you get frightened, ill-considered, media appearance-driven decision-making like we see at Duke.

A nagging techno-glitch has had the mighty Lambert mainframe down for a few days. Anyone out there who knows a sure-fire, never fail fix for preventing a router from crashing the cable internet connection, drop me a line.

As on election night, I spent the post-Bush “surge” speech with MSNBC. Since Fox is … well, Fox … and useful only as a window into the White House spin room, and CNN wouldn’t say “feces” if it had a mouthful, the Chris Matthews-Keith Olbermann act is my idea of the going gold standard in cable chatter. Besides, damn me to hell, but I love so splendid a clash of titanic egos.

Not to be a complete sexist swine, but watching Keith and Chris maneuver for higher ground is like watching a couple society divas duel for preeminence at a power lunch. See, the thrust of top end jewelry! Watch, the parry of the finest cosmetic surgery hedge fund money can buy!

Olbermann has been where he has been since Bush Co. started taking this thing — this Iraq-muddled-with-terror thing — over the cliff five years ago. That said, his latest “Special Comment” was unusually angry/passionate, which is damned refreshing, even if it is garnering him ratings. But what was noteworthy was Matthews, who, in answering a simple question from Olbermann about the White House’s political strategy, delivered his own angry stemwinder, lacerating the neo-cons and snapping at the end that it isn’t so much what Bush knows that we don’t, but rather what we know that Bush doesn’t. (Olbermann gives that rhetoric another twist in his “Special Comment” by wondering if even Bush knows what Bush knows.)

There may be some degree of theatrical shtick to this burst of passion, but I’m not one to complain. This isn’t Nancy Grace harping on some missing teenager, or homicidal husband, or Sean Hannity gasbagging Nancy Pelosi’s winery. Iraq is a monumental disaster and its encouraging to see someone in the MSM, say so … loudly.