Tag: media

The buzz from 425 Portland the past two days has been about Avista suits in the building. Every good newspaper drone assumes this can only mean (more) bad news. (Has any corporate officer EVER come to town with good news? “Profits are up! 20% bonuses for all salaried employees!” or, “Great work! Drinks on us!” It doesn’t happen. They only come to squeeze.) No one thinks the Star Tribune’s new investment-group owners are in Minneapolis to personally break the news that they’re shutting down the press workers’ cafeteria, (which they have, by the way). Something bigger MUST be afoot.

With that in mind I offer The Grand Unifying Conspiracy Theory that I have cobbled together from the dark mutterings of local reporters. This theory has taken a hit recently with Media News honcho Dean Singleton’s shot at his erstwhile publisher, Par Ridder, the wealthy publishing empire scion who rudely dumped the dowdy confines of the Pioneer Press building for the, uh, opportunities suddenly available to a sharp young operator like him under Avista in Minneapolis.

To condense it down to something easily digestible, (and therefore also easily dismissible), the Grand Unifying Theory holds basically this:

Avista Capital Partners didn’t go into a $500 million deal for a newspaper without a carefully calculated plan for getting out, and not being particularly interested in newspapers, such a plan has more facets than merely wasting newsprint in the Twin Cities.

It assumes that Avista has done their math on all the Star Tribune real estate from the main building to the Metrodome and that it most likely cultivated likely buyers — Zygi Wilf — long before handing any cash over the McClatchy Corporation. The theory then holds that Avista’s interest in operating the Star Tribune is probably much shorter term than even they have said, (in what little they’ve said). Being methodical investor types with natural access to other publishers, Avista would only be exercising fiduciary responsibility by preparing its own exit. How? By entering into an implicit gentlemen’s agreement with their likely successors … in this case, Media News and Dean Singleton.

To facilitate this handover, both parties, perhaps over drinks at Pebble Beach, would consent to a, shall we say, migration of Media News management talent across town well prior to such a sale. If former Media News managers like Ridder had a couple years to settle in to their positions, trimming the fat as needed prior to Media News assuming control, everything would be all the better for it.

As I say, on the surface, Singleton saying unkind things about young Mr. Ridder’s loyalty would seem to undercut this theory. But my wretchedly cynical view is that a little righteous indignation by a tycoon like Singleton could create enough smoke to obscure the preparatory work going on.

This, as I say, is just another hair-brained, moonbat conspiracy theory. You can buy a dozen for a dime on any street corner. But if Avista’s interest in Minneapolis is mainly one of assured return on investment, and the sooner the better, (its not like the value of the damned newspaper is increasing), they’ll announce a sale of a chunk of their newly-acquired downtown real estate ASAP, maybe even real soon.

So what happens to the Pioneer Press? This theory also holds that Singleton, after picking up the post-real estate Star Tribune for a nicely discounted price, either dumps the PiPress off on some fourth or fifth-tier operator and/or commences his legal plea for a Joint Operating Agreement. A JOA would allow him maybe four or five years to convince federal regulators that the economics of daily newspapers are so deep down the toilet, the Strib and the PiPress should at long last be consolidated into one.

If you don’t buy the Singleton angle, and think his indignation over Ridder is genuine, then how about the cash-rich Ridder family instead? With Junior already running the show? Does anyone really know that the Ridders are NOT investors in Avista? Has anyone asked that question?

I know, loony. But consider the source here, folks. You’re getting this from a guy who thinks the Warren Commission’s is one of the most implausible theories of all.

Gary Kamiya at Salon has as thorough an indictment and theory for how all levels of the mainstream American press screwed up after 9/11 and before the invasion of Iraq.

It’s a long-ish read, but both cogent and provocative. The mainstream press — your local newspaper, the local TV news and all the national outlets are “info-nannies”, responsible for maintaining a national consensus.

This is particularly good, “… our mass media is charged with presenting not just an accurate view of the world but also an ‘appropriate’ one.

“What ‘appropriate’ means in absolute terms is impossible to define. In practice, however, its meaning is quite clear. It’s reflected in a cautious, centrist media that defers to accepted national dogmas and allows itself to shade cautiously into advocacy on issues only when it has the popular imprimatur to do so.”

Obviously there is also the problem of deferring to commercial dogmas, but you can see where he’s going.

Excellent stuff.

The upside to every one of these Don Imus-style broadcast faux pas is the “national dialogue” we get for a few days afterward. Everyone reports and weighs in, usually expressing dismay at the blunder and/or condemnation at the commonplace nature of this kind of stuff. It’ll disappear with the next Anna Nicole DNA report, but it’s worth having.

What with Proctor & Gamble and a couple other major sponsors bailing on Imus’s show the old goat appears likely to suffer more than I first expected. That’ll be for the good. (There is also a report that he will donate his two weeks’ salary to charity. Also good. But let’s not be chumps on that point. Demand he specify who gets the dough and take notice when the check gets cashed.) It’s money that matters.

Among the better facets of the “dialogue” over the Imus affair is how much the sexist imagery and attitudes of hip-hop contributed to his comfort level with witty street-crede jive like “nappy-headed hos”. Imus clearly figured the culture norms had moved his way on jargon like that. So it’s a fair and valuable point of conversation asking why the hell successful black “artists” get a pass on that kind of obnoxious crap if it’s offensive enough to pillory a white millionaire talk jock? A couple of the women on the Rutgers basketball team responded to exactly that question by saying they thought the excesses of hip hop were just as offensive.

The growth in the national dialogue I’d like to see is where the trans-racial consensus is equally comfortable condemning a grizzled old coot like Imus AND the producers of the kind of absurdly misogynist “entertainment” that gets regular play on cable and mainstream TV and radio. I mean, the Rutgers women have every reason to be personally offended, but the Imus act, and all the Imus-like morning drive clods — Opie & Anthony, Bubba the Love Sponge, and on and on all across the country — are just as offensive to reasonably broad standard of decency. I say they all deserve a ripping.

But don’t pull them off the air. Let the marketplace decide their fate.

Keep their advertisers notified of exactly the kind of asinine spew they’re trading in. The sponsor-boycott of Don Imus will make an infinitely bigger impact on the standards of CBS Radio and NBC than any FCC fine.

But I’m still curious, “Why now?” Imus, as I say, has a long, long history of saying obnoxious things about women and minorities — and like his imitators on morning drive around the country — it is very consciously contrived act, built to appeal to the large, “don’t screw with me” lunkhead demographic.

But something in the air made this particular blast of stupidity resonate like never before. Imus, I think, has met a tipping point of some kind.

Has, I wonder, the mass of media watchdogging coalesced with the mass of the instantly interactive cyber community to the point where garden variety vulgarity like Imus’s gets immediately flagged? Has the backlash to a decade and a half of ever-coarser commercial bullshit matured into a permanent, potent force for civility? A bona fide vox populi? Is there any connection to the newly invigorated liberal sensibility, disgusted by government and corporate corruption and corrupting influences wherever they emerge?

I don’t know. But Don Imus has to be asking himself, “What in the hell hit me?”

I’d like to hope there is something precedent-setting in CBS Radio and MSNBC suspending veteran talk jock Don Imus for two weeks … (with or without pay, I’m not sure.)

What with the current administration’s 3-to-2 advantage on the FCC we’ve sat through three fairly ridiculous years since Janet Jackson’s “boobgate” at the 2004 Super Bowl. There has been endless huffing and puffing about “indecency” and threats of fat fines for any and all TV and radio stations who air offensive content, even though what is offensive may be pumped through their transmitters by some network or syndicator.

Other than Howard Stern flipping off CBS and terrestrial radio and taking another massive pay-day via his mentor, Mel Karmazin, (himself a world class corporate vulgarian), the FCC’s puritan fervor toward sexual displays and profanity hasn’t had much effect on pop media’s biggest names. Its kind of like Abu Ghraib. No officers need suffer. Punishment is strictly for the hillbilly grunts.

You see, what Imus said about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, calling them “nappy-headed hos”, doesn’t qualify as “indecency” according to the current FCC. Imus did not show a nipple. Nor did he call the women, “[effin’] nappy-headed hos”? No way.

But Imus’ display of racial vulgarity is such a staple of morning drive radio everywhere in the country — the Twin Cities are almost a prime example — I’m telling you kids, it’d be crickets from sea to shining sea if the FCC ever re-wrote its rules. Characters of the Imus genre make millions, sometimes individually, playing the race card for their cloddish audiences.

Without even getting into the futile discussion of whether Don Imus is racist, lets just say there is a healthy minority of folks out there that don’t particularly appreciate some chronically sullen, grandly remunerated white guy tossing off “comedy” like that. I’m willing to bet some of them even find it indecent. Moreover, I’m guessing that if you ran down a greatest hits of FCC infamy, including Janet Jackson’s — which, remember, was “seen” by America’s huddled families only as a indiscernible long-shot as it played live, but forever after, after magnification, as a kind of cultural lap dance — there might be as many people offended by Imus as the sight of Jackson’s nipple, or Bono dropping a cheery “F-bomb” at an awards show.

Point being, the FCC standard is both silly and gutless. Silly because of who is punished. Offended by a nipple? Really? Well, go fine the nipple-ee. And gutless, because if they were truly serious about enforcing decency on the country’s air waves — which giant media corporations pay exactly zero to use and exploit to their maximum financial advantage — they’d have fat fines for vulgar racial “humor” like Imus today and about dozen other examples here in the Twin Cities that spring immediately to mind.

Technically anyone can file a protest with the FCC over anything. But under current conditions, you’re chances of prevailing, through the FCC “investigation”, is only if there was a wayward ta-ta involved or one of the seven dirty words.

And “Nappy-headed hos” ain’t none of those.

Now, with its own editorial page essentially echoing points made by one of its own columnists, more and more of us are wondering how long it will be before whoever is calling shots in the Star Tribune newsroom decides there is sufficient “linkage” in the US Attorneys “controversy”, (to use the Strib’s quaint description), for the paper to dare make a dent in the basic “hows” and “whys” of the Tom Heffelfinger-for-Rachel Paulose swap out here in Minnesota. The paper’s Saturday piece, hooked to a DC emissary trying to do damage control in the wake of three of Pauloses’s top deputies simultaneously demoting themselves, seemed to go out of its way to avoid making any of the connections being pointed out by blogger -gnats and the New York Times alike.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, it doesn’t look good when the Times jumps on “connections”,(more Strib-ese), to a major drama unfolding barely six blocks from the Strib’s front door. Compounding the embarrassment is when TPT’s “Almanac”, on a budget of about $1.99, brings in credible local legal talent for both a historical perspective on the coordinated self-demotion/mutiny of three deputies AND linkage to the bigger story out of DC.

If the Strib needs any more flogging it can look to the Boston Globe, where the always-solid Charlie Savage has his go at the role of Pat Robertson’s previously unheard of low-pedigree Regent University and Monica Goodling, (according to KSTP’s Bob McNaney a close friend of Paulose), now resigned after previously taking the Fifth to avoid disclosing her role in the, uh, “controversy”. There is also Dalia Lithwick via Slate/Washington Post, and Max Blumenthal.

At a moment in its history when friends and foes alike are looking for early indications of the new Avista Capita Partners-owned Star Tribune’s commitment to the kind of journalism that builds crediblity and influence, this episode is not encouraging.

Those of us baffled by what the Star Tribune meant this morning when, in its first straight news staff-reported piece on Minnesota US Attorney Rachel Paulose and the widening scandal out of DC said, “No one has linked her to the controversy in Washington,” (with “controversy” being a bit of a dismissive euphemism, I’d say), might want to check out the story KSTP’s Bob McNaney is putting together beginning with this morning’s 11 am newscast on ch. 5.

For the moment, McNaney is the only local reporter to get the ironically reclusive Paulose on tape. (“Ironically”, since based on her gaudy investiture — the one that prompted McNaney’s first story — this particular US Attorney is not afflicted with excessive modesty.) He says he had planned another piece on Paulose, possibly involving the rather provocative connections between her and the “controversy in Washington” — like the part, says McNaney, where Monica Goodling, the top justice official who copped the Fifth Amendment rather than tell Congress what the hell has been going on, had been invited to speak at Paulose’s investiture.

McNaney says the 11 am report will be primarily a talker as he and his editors edit previously unused tape from their earlier story for ch. 5’s 5 and 10 pm newscasts.

Perhaps by 10:30 tonight the Star Tribune will re-examine the possibility of “connections” to the “controversy”.

Dean Singleton, the face of the new ownership of the St. Paul Pioneer Press was in town today, meeting with various employees in addition to an afternoon general newsroom gathering, where we are told, he expressed great umbrage at the behavior of his former publisher, Par Ridder, who as most of you may know by now scurried across town a month ago to take the same job with the (formerly)arch-rival Star Tribune.

Most interesting was Singleton, head of Media News, telling the PiPress troops that he had learned of Ridder showing interest in moving to the Star Tribune eight months ago — last August — long before former publisher J. Keith Moyer stepped down. Who approached who is not clear. But if what Singleton says is true, Ridder was at leasy considering switching teams long before he actually did.

Singleton also told his employees that Ridder had offered a total of eight current upper level PiPress managers jobs at the Star Tribune, including St. Paul’s editor, Thom Fladung, who declined. Two offers have been accepted. The names of the other six are not known.

Newspaper Guild officer, Brian Bonner, described Singleton’s speech as, “feisty in tone” and that Singleton seemed, “genuinely upset by the betrayal [on Ridder’s part].”

“He said [Ridder] took confidential data and that he, [Singleton], is going to stop him from using it.” The “confidential data” business refers to a laptop computer with proprietary company information in it, which the PiPress had to insist Ridder return to them, apparently the Monday after he left. (One of the St. Paul executives involved in getting the laptop back, Kevin Desmond, later accepted a job offer from Ridder and left the PiPress).

Bonner, who called the gathering, “One of the most dramatic meetings I’ve seen in my 24 years here,” was pleased to hear Singleton show some passion over the Ridder departure. Many in the PiPress building regard Ridder jumping ship as both graceless and disloyal.

Singleton took pains to describe Ridder as “a good steward” of the PiPress and felt they had a solid, professional relationship, up to the point Ridder left.

For the record, Ridder did not have a non-compete clause in his contract, and Singleton has previously said he doesn’t believe in restricting the professional growth of his people. (He is however threatening legal action against Jennifer Parratt, Ridder’s other Star Tribune hire, who apparently did have a non-compete … Singleton wants to fight over.)

How Singleton would ever prove Ridder was using proprietary PiPress information to the Star Tribune’s advantage is hard to imagine. But Singleton apparently wanted to rally the troops with a little sabre-rattling.

“We still expect [Singleton] to be a very tough negotiator over the next contract,” said Bonner. “He has a reputation for extracting pretty tough concessions. But I for one was pleased that he came in and said what he did.”

Greg Gordon and two other McClatchy correspondents — people whose reporting used to flow directly into the Star Tribune, but with the sale to Avista Capital Partners now flows elsewhere — have an excellent story up today connecting dots in the US Attorneys firing scandal.

Titled, “New US Attorneys Seem to Have Partisan Records”, the McClatchy team makes a point of noting that presidential advisor Karl Rove, in a speech last April to the Republican National Lawyers Association, (there’s something redundant about that, but I can’t quite put my finger on it), specified Minnesota among 11 states pivotal to GOP election prospects in 2008. They then note that Rove/Gonzalez/Sampson et al have overseen the replacement of US Attorneys in nine of those states … including Minnesota, where Tom Heffelfinger had, to the surprise of many, stepped down a couple months earlier.

In his column last Sunday, Nick Coleman laid out connections that you’d think would tantalize any major daily newsroom. Like some of the rest of us, Coleman had waited weeks for the StarTribune to commence any kind of reporting on even the possibility of a connection between a major national story, the sudden departure of a Republican US Attorney at least as moderate as any of those later fired, and/or the processes and connections that brought Paulose to her present job. I mean folks, the 33 year-old woman arrives here direct from Gonzalez’ office in D.C., where she served as senior counsel to Deputy Attorney General, Paul McNulty, the guy now infamous for asserting that the eight fired US Attorneys were whacked for “performance-related issues”. That is … questionable.

This isn’t a presumed guilty until proven innocent question. It isa matter of basic professional skepticism. The fundamental question of the US Attorneys scandal is whether this was done to advance the political purposes of the Republican Party by politicizing a highly influential office of the judiciary. It seems fair to ASK if there is any possiblity that is what happened here in Minnesota. Local media is forever falling over themselves grasping for the vaguest, most remote “Minnesota connectrion” to any national story. (JFK Jr. dies in plane crash! Once ate Cheerios! Quotes from General Mills spokesman to follow!)

But in this case, nothing? What ever happened to basic journalistic due diligence? The new Star Tribune may be strapped for resources and staff, both here and in D.C., but certainly at this point, what with provocative work done by Minnesota Campaign Report, (which doth protest way too self-righteously about a minor mistake in a complicated story), a piece in the Salt Lake Tribune, (which ironically was sparked by a call from Coleman), and now this latest McClatchy report, the time is overripe for the Star Tribune to run … SOMETHING … on this.

All the tedious tut-tutting about journalistic ethics and appearances of conflict of interest — Sid Hartman does a TV commercial! — start sounding a little hollow if the paper can’t do the fundamental work of looking in to something this intriguing and close to home.

For the record, the Star Tribune isn’t alone in seriously avoiding this story. As best I can tell, of the local TV stations, only KMSP, ch. 9 has run a story on any kind of Heffelfinger connection. That is other than KSTP-TV’s Bob McNaney story on Paulose’s grandiose investiture early last month.

For his efforts McNaney, nobody’s idea of a flaming liberal, has been ripped by both Powerline and Star Trib gossip columnist, C.J. . (By certain standards I guess the CJ rip rates as “some kind of reference” to the broader story.)

Caught on the run the other night, McNaney was still steamed about the shots from those two. He smells a coordinated effort. “If the US Attorney’s office needs to use CJ to protect themselves from me they’re in even worse shape than I thought. And you can use that.”

McNaney said he had to be careful about saying much more right now because, “We aren’t done with this story.” But he was not impressed by Paulose.

“Watch the entire interview. All the raw tape. It’s up on our site. This is one of coolest, most buttoned-down, refined characters you’ll ever meet, until I start asking about the ceremony and the ‘problem journalist’ list. Watch her body language. The only time she squirms is when I ask about that stuff.”

What you don’t want to think in this situation is that the Star Tribune and the rest of the Twin Cities newsrooms are hanging back on asking impertinent questions about Heffelfinger’s departure and Paulose’s arrival … because she is a minority female. Modern newsrooms are hyper-sensitive to such issues, usually for good reason. But by definition anyone in a US Attorney’s job is a big girl playing in the big leagues with large, bonafide public responsibilities.

If you’re in the news business it is your job to ask such people, or people who know such people, tough questions.

Interesting event the other night at William Mitchell. A panel discussion titled, “A Strange Bond: The CIA and the Cinema”, with two ex-CIA guys, the CIA’s current acting chief counsel, (he’ll soon have a formal confirmation hearing), uber-author, Mark Bowden, (“Blackhawk Down”, “Killing Pablo”, “Guests of the Ayatollah”) and Star Tribune film critic, Colin Covert.

The tone of the event, which filled Billy Mitchell’s auditorium, was one of fraternal bonhomie more than any searing examination of the CIA’s role in Iraq or other foreign adventure. Along with enjoying the sight of a newspaper guy more than holding his own among such a rarefied crowd, when it was over there was an opportunity to ask the CIA types for their assessment of the work of Seymour Hersh.

Hersh has been doing some of the best work of his long career digging out the “hows” of the manipulated intelligence that validated the Bush administration’s targeting of Saddam Hussein. His October 2003 article, “The Stovepipe”, remains, to my thinking, the most illuminative explanation so far of how the deal went down.

(Inside journalism, it is also worth noting that Hersh, whose stories out of he CIA and the Pentagon are dense with anonymous, unidentified sources — the sort of thing that would never pass muster at either local daily — has fared quite well under the test of time.)

As the panel broke up, I asked John Rizzo, the dapper, soon to be CIA chief counsel, and a lifelong CIA man, what he thought of Hersh’s work? Certainly if Hersh had blundered anywhere a legal guy/company guy like Rizzo would both know about it and be only too happy to set the record straight.

“Overall quite good,” was his capsule review. “It seems to me he is returning to the same sources over and over again. I have a problem with that, in that not everyone at CIA is as unhappy as his sources seem to be. But in general, good.”

There was no, “But Hersh really screwed up on … .”

One of Rizzo’s panel-mates was Paul Kelbaugh, a retired CIA chief legal counsel. “Pretty impressive,” was his take.

Both men were at CIA during the term of George Tenet, the Clinton-appointee/Bush holdover who fairly or not has been tarred with
CIA failures both in the period prior to 9-11 and then again with the whole weapons of mass destruction fiasco. Surprisingly, for a guy the Bush administration has maneuvered to look like a loser, both Rizzo and Kelbaugh speak highly of Tenet, Kelbaugh in particular. A terrific manager. Worked hard and spent the time to know his people as people. Regularly interacted with the staff, etc.

Based on the work of Bob Woodward, Tenet’s obituary will undoubtably include the phrase, “slam dunk”, which is how Woodward describes Tenet assuring George W. Bush about the existence of WMD in Iraq.

In his (excellent) book, “The One Percent Solution”, Ron Suskind paints a rather more sympathetic picture of both Tenet and the “slam dunk” comment. In fact, Suskind treats Tenet so sympathetically — echoing some of what Rizzo and Kelbaugh say — it is often presumed that Tenet was a primary source.

Not so, says Rizzo, who ought to know. “It wasn’t Tenet.” He says Suskind approached the CIA for permission to interview several people, and, as Rizzo describes it, “had possession of some sensitive information”, which he used to bargain for the people he wanted to talk to. But not Tenet, according to Rizzo.

In fact, Tenet’s own book on his CIA years, under Clinton pre-9/11, and under Bush pre- and post-Iraq will soon be published. As chief counsel Rizzo had to give it the security once-over.

“Quite the read,” he said with a thin smile that could almost be read as contented. “Quite a read.”

As I say, Colin Covert, the Strib’s film critic played well with the panel as they talked the CIA image in the movies. In fact, Covert got off the best line of the night when the panel’s moderator A. John Radsan, a former assistant counsel at the CIA and now an associate prof at Billy Mitchell, asked Covert if he had a question he’d like to ask anyone else on the panel.

Covert paused. Hmmm. Hollywood. The CIA. Together. “If you think of Hollywood working with the CIA as a pact with the devil,” he asked, “which one is the devil?”

Big laugh.

A calendar note: On April 17, Kerri Miller of MPR will moderate a panel on, “Islam and the West”. It will include Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. If his name is familiar, it may be because of recent glowing reviews for the book, “The Shia Revival”, written by his son, Vali Nasr.

These panels are free, but you must “register” to attend.

Sen. John McCain who stuck his polished loafer deep in his mouth when he said recently that Americans weren’t getting a realistic picture of the situation on the ground in Iraq — because of that damned negative media constantly obsessing over a few hundred truck bombings and a couple hundred tortured bodies flopping into the morgues every day — also said Baghdad was safe enough after that surge he wanted so badly a guy can now go for a leisurely stroll. Riiiiight. As long as you’re wearing a bullet proof vest, have a hundred GIs with rifles to help, you know, carry your shopping bags, and a couple Blackhawk choppers overhead.

How badly will he regret this?