Tag: media

“Truth be told, that’s one of the reasons I left. I couldn’t stand covering random assaults and vandalism, stories that had no impact on the average viewers. TV news does violence because it’s fast, easy, requires no frame of reference or special reporting skills.”
– Heather McMichael, a former Kansas City Fox 4 Reporter….comments to the Kansas City Star

I’m a big fan of Robert Wright. His book, “Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny”, is one of the most sophisticated perspectives on human conflict — including radical religiosity — I’ve ever come across.

His various web-sites are now consolidating, including bloggingheads.tv.

There are entirely understandable reasons why commercial television stations, (hell, PUBLIC TV), haven’t dared try something like this — a regular, good-natured conversation/debate between broadly-informed thinkers, (not just politicians and government officials protecting a narrow partisan turf). The best reason? Once they inhale this stuff, there’s no way viewers will accept the latest drug killing, car wreck or house-fire as the most important thing going on in their world.

Bloggingheads.tv is another preview of the edifying potential of the internet-TV marriage. It may never counterbalance an unlimited-on-your-42″ LCD-in-your-living-room connection to ArgentineSluts.com, but it’ll help.

Even though the organizers of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland politely asked the likes of Sharon Stone and Angelina Jolie to stay home this year, the summit of big hitters is making news.

This Reuters report on Bill Gates’ statement that the full marriage of television and internet is less than five years away … (I’ll bet three, if anyone wants to start a pool) … is worth noting.

If what Gates believes actually comes to pass, and a fully-functioning internet, assisted by Hi-Def production values, (and fiber optic, for those of us lucky enough to have access to it), blows past commercial-(heavy) television, we will obviously be falling into a whole new rabbit hole. Note what he says about elections. Former Virginia Senator George Allen’s “macaca” moment will be remembered as the only the first incident of guerrilla election coverage.

It can’t come soon enough. Imagine, also, local TV newscasts with actual news.

This past Monday the Star Tribune staff received the following memo from editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie.

“Rob Daves has agreed to take on the role of project manager of buzz.mn through the end of March. In this role, Rob will be in charge of working with everyone in the newsroom to make the buzz.mn website a success and lay out a plan for its future, including developing marketing plans. To make this a success, we’ll need everyone’s help. Buzz.mn will succeed on the combined efforts of the newsroom, and contributors from the community.

“Only a handful of staffers currently contribute to the site on a regular basis. We’d like for all staff members who live in the communities where we are now developing buzz.mn to contribute items each week. We’re not talking about devoting large chunks of your day, but to file two or three short items off your beat or from your community. You don’t have to be a reporter. In fact, any member of the staff can participate. If you have any questions or need help learning how to contribute, please see Rob or your team leader.

Nancy and Scott

What is noteworthy here is the fact that no mention is made of Daves’ role as head of the paper’s Minnesota Poll, an iconic piece of enterprise reporting that is operating on a much diminished schedule compared to several years ago. By the estimate of one person with knowledge of such things, the current, McClatchy-operated, Star Tribune is devoting something in the range of 15% of what used to be budgeted for polling.

With Daves making this temporary move to goose growth in buzz.mn, one of a half dozen special/web-related productions the Strib has going, suspicions rise that cuurent managers may be quietly shutting the door on the Minnesota Poll in advance of their new, more likely than not budget-cutting owners, the Avista private equity group.

I called Daves for his comment and he made a convincing show of enthusiasm for the buzz.mn work he has been asked to do, but defered any speculation on the vitality of the Minnesota Poll to Scott Gillespie.

So … I sent Gillespie the following e-mail …

Scott:

I’m doing a media blog for The Rake. I’m told Rob Daves is temporarily moving over to handle one of your websites. I called him and he seems enthusiastic about the assignment, but defers any questions about the future of the Minnesota Poll to you.

Frankly, I’m getting expressions of concern from your newsroom that the Star Tribune is planning fewer polls rather than more, and/or that this move portends the demise of the Poll entirely. Can you comment on that?

I’m told the paper is budgeting roughly 15% of what it budgeted for the polls in their glory days. Is that number reasonably accurate?

Can you say how many polls you have planned for ’07? ’08?

Once Daves finishes his work with Buzz.Mn. will he be returning to his same role with the Minnesota Poll at the same or increased budget?

Thanks.

In an entirely timely fashion Gillespie replied as follows …

Thanks for asking, Brian, and I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

The Minnesota Poll will live on. Rob’s a really versatile editor who’s handled many temporary projects for us over the years while also running the poll. I’m not going to get into internal budget figures or frequency issues with you because we have competitors who would love to know what we’re doing and when. But I can assure you that the Minnesota Poll will continue to be an important part of our news report.

Hope you’re doing well.

–Scott

I think its safe to say that a few questions were left unanswered there. One I hadn’t thought of is, “Who really poses any serious competition to the Minnesota Poll”?

I’ll take Gillespie at his word, I guess, that the Minnesota Poll, which I regard as a valuable contribution to Minnesota discourse, will continue to be, “an important part” of the Strib’s news report”. But one truism of modern news “reporting” is that the public rarely complains about what is NOT in the paper, and pricey, labor-intensive endeavors like long-term investigative reporting and polling are therefore easily, uh, “down-sized”, occasionally to oblivion.

Finally, as someone who marvels at the dramatic increases in productivity of American workers … in a time when the real value of their wages has barely kept up with the rate of inflation … I have to be amused at Barnes’ and Gillespie’s call for “all staff members”, reporters and otherwise, to “file two or three short items off your beat …”, each week. You know, when they’re not doing anything else … and with no hint of financial incentive, other than of course keeping their jobs through the next round of “down-sizing.”

Steve Perry, the talented and reliably caustic editor of City Pages handed in his resignation Monday, ending 13 years, in two separate shifts, as the alternative weekly’s ruddering hand.

Perry cited more or less predictable philosophical differences with City Pages’ new(ish) corporate management, a recognition that journalism is moving on-line and that now was his time to bust a move in that direction. He offered praise to City Pages’ current publisher, Mark Bartel, (brother of Rake publisher, Tom Bartel).

The stories of writers and subjects getting bleeding rashes from Perry’s not-exactly warm and maternal personality are legendary, and pretty damned funny. But after making the obligatory rip on Perry’s prickly ‘tude, even the most offended conceded he was an unusually talented editor. Moreover, to political progressives so often dismayed at the compromised reporting/thinking of the mainstream media, Perry’s indignation was both timely and articulate. I’d like to think we’ll see his kind again soon. But I doubt it.

The mice were snickering Monday. Within the Star Tribune there was much chatter about Kate Parry v. Sid Hartman, Round Two. Or is it three? Or four? Maybe you caught Parry’s ombudsman column Sunday criticizing Hartman — Sid Friggin’ Hartman! — for appearing in an ad for Sun Country airlines, (with Ex-KSTP sports anchor, Joe Schmit). As I read it, I detected Parry’s displeasure both with Hartman’s appearance in the ad AND the fact he did not notify his, uh, superiors and ask for permission.

Parry frets that Hartman’s appearance might lead readers/viewers to perceive a conflict of interest, as in, I guess … “I saw Sid do an ad for Sun Country. So how do I know the Strib isn’t lying the next time they say Sun Country had a lousy third quarter?” Do you know anyone who thinks like that?

If you haven’t seen the spot, Sid appears from behind a copy of the Star Tribune and tells Schmit, who is yammering about Sun Country, to pipe down, because he’s reading, “the greatest newspaper in the world”. (Sid may be the only person capable of making that claim with a straight face. But to his credit as the ultimate homer, he said it). Hartman says nothing one way or another about Sun Country. But obviously his appearance is a tacit endorsement. (Hartman tells Parry he’s donating the free plane tickets he received as compensation, and I’m inclined to believe him. Believe me, Sid himself could take the Strib private. He does NOT need two Sun Country Super Savers to Cancun.)

But it was the other worldly loftiness of Parry’s concern that set off the snickering. The gist of the joke being … WHO, i.e. what possible reader, would ever connect Sid Hartman doing his patented Sid shtick in an ad with the grand ethics of the Star Tribune as a whole? In the interests of further full disclosure let me be among those who urge Parry to print the mail she gets on the topic, in particular the best case any outraged reader/ethics expert makes for how Sid on a Plane undermines the integrity of the work of hundreds of others.

I’m sorry, newspapers have a longstanding problem with the double standard that grants all sorts of latitude, in terms of outside compensation, to sports writers while keeping a very tight rein on most everybody else. Anybody in newspapers sees that all over the place. But lets not pretend anyone outside a 10′ radius of some pedantic editor’s office gives a damn. This kind of hand-wringing just doesn’t register with the general public. Nor should it. It just doesn’t matter.

As far as I can tell, the slice of the public that is hip enough to big media’s myriad failings is a hell of a lot more upset about a major newspaper’s errors of omission — like keeping their heads down and voices low as a President with killer poll numbers gins up a fraudulent war — than whether some sports columnist plugs a local airline.

As for 85 year-old Sid Hartman getting permission from his superiors … don’t make me laugh.

I’ve been cautioned to be careful with this. Schadenfreude, though a lovely sounding word, is unseemly. Its supposedly beneath a responsible adult. But what the hell is a media blogger supposed to do when confronted with the train wreck ratings for KTLK-FM (100.3), where I very briefly co-hosted a show? I mean, come on kids, this is news!

KTLK is one of gargantuan media empire Clear Channel’s experiments with FM talk. The way it was supposed to go was Clear Channel would steal Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity away from rival local stations, in this case KSTP-AM, (Clear Channel owns Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Network), and build a kind of instant dynasty in what the radio industry blithely refers to as “news-talk”. In reality of course these stations provide very little in the way of news, (Fox News is a punch line, not a news service), they do precious little original local reporting, and 95% of the talk is pretty much of the hard-right, mostly bullshit vein we’ve all heard for years and years ad nauseum.

In a very significant gamble, Twin Cities Clear Channel managers negotiated a deal, rumored to be worth $300k/per year for five years, to bring Jason Lewis, once a solid performer for KSTP-AM, back from exile in Charlotte, NC. Tragically, this meant tossing my partner, Sarah Janecek and myself out on the streets.

So what happens? More specifically, what happens through October, November and December 2006? Through the teeth and aftermath of another hotly contested election? With endless opportunities for impugning the patriotism, sanity and toilet training of liberals?

According to the quarterly Arbitron ratings report, KTLK, home of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Jason Lewis and various bizarre, late night Fox News fungal species, delivered an anemic 2.1 share of the Twin Cities radio market, good enough for … 18th place among adults 25-54 listening from 3pm to 7 pm. (The station is 13th with a 2.6 share through Limbaugh’s midday shift — virtually tied with Air America on AM 950, and 21st, with a microscopic 0.9 share through morning drive.)

It would be a monumental understatement to say that expectations for both the station and Lewis were much higher. Now in fact, the hourly breakdown of these ratings won’t be available for another couple days, which means KTLK may argue that the abysmal ratings for 3-to-7, which is two hours of Sean Hannity (3-to-5) and two hours of Lewis, (5-to-7), is all Hannity’s fault. And maybe that is so. But, bad as I am with math, it seems to me Hannity would pretty much have had to turn off the mike and play dead air in order for Lewis’s audience to “lift” them to a 2.1 share.

By the way, that 2.1 share/18th ranking puts KTLK in a tie with MPR’s “classical music service” on KSJN, and two notches BELOW, “The Lori & Julia Show” on FM 107.1, (a.k.a. “The Chick Station”). Meanwhile, MPR’s “news service” ranked 8th with a 5.0 share, and Clear Channel’s country station, K102, led the pack in afternoon drive, with a 7.2 share.

Now, I make jokes about the Arbitron diary keeping process. In the radio business people are often heard saying how all it takes is, “two drunks in a trailer court”, to skew the numbers all over the place. So yes, everything could change when the current quarter’s numbers come out in April. But KTLK’s audience appeal has remained more or less constant since the station debuted in January ’06, replacing Smooth Jazz. It is beginning to look like a 2-to-3 share is pretty much reality … for a radio property that has been the beneficiary of a wholly unprecedented year-long billboard campaign valued at nearly $1 million. (KTLK’s parent company, Clear Channel, owns the billboards you see all over town, which means they don’t have to pay rent on them, but I’m just talking value here … and those billboards will most likely disappear once Clear Channel goes private and cleaves off its’ outdoor advertising arm).

Because the fate of KTLK will be a fascinating story to watch over the next few months, I’ll spare you my deep analysis of what has happened so far. But I ask, what do YOU think is going on when the established, franchise lions of fog and spin generate so little business through an election season? Is the audience for run-of-the-mill “news/talk”, (i.e. “Fox News”/ludicrous spin), abandoning it just as average Republicans have abandoned George W. Bush’s failed presidency? Does that mean, as some of us have long said, that the fundamental emotional appeal of “news/talk’s” bloviating gurus is their delivery of bullshit triumphalism? And that people have had enough bullshit? Or has the rancid partisanship of the past dozen years — goosed in large part by Limbaugh et al and “hot talk” — finally turned off the public, leaving only the delusional core?

I don’t know. But when a proven act like Lewis comes back to town, with a hefty paycheck and more road signage than I-35 and his audience is so small he’s two rungs down the ladder from “The Current” (MPR’s eclectic pop act, at 89.3), something significant is going on.

Here’s the rankings for afternoon drive, adults 25-54, Oct.-Dec. ’06.

1. K102 7.2
2. KSTP-FM 6.1
3. KTIS-FM 5.5
4. KQRS 5.5
5. WLTE 5.4
6. KSTP-AM 5.2
7. Jack FM 5.2
8. KNOW 5.0
9. Cities97 4.9
10 KFAN 4.9
11 KOOL108 4.5
12 93X 4.1
13 WCCO 3.6
14 KDWB 3.1
15 “Current”2.4
16 FM107 2.4
17 B96 2.2
18 KTLK 2.1
19 KSJN-FM 2.1
20 AM950 1.8

A generally reliable voice from within the Star Tribune’s reporting ranks defends Ms. Moses in the previously-posted back and forth e-mail spat with City Pages’ Steve Perry. Reliable Voice defends her on the grounds that she may actually be making a defensible argument. Voice argues that Moses probably saw that she was the only one among the Strib’s current managers willing to defend the tattered ship, but that she feared corporate repercussions because she does not have authority to speak for her peers and superiors.

“The real problem here,” said Reliable Voice, “is that there’s no one running the place. What she said is probably true, as far as we know. But she’s not in the position of being able to say so publicly.”

The tiff left me bemused, because of years of listening to newspaper managers parrot the high-minded virtues of transparency … as in “we are a public institution”, “let the public see how we function” and “FOR PUBLICATION”. If Moses, by all accounts a McClatchy corporate climber,is confident enough in her argument and as passionate about the Star Tribune as she says she is, she ought to do the virtuous thing and say what she believes is right and proper and corrective in a transparent, public way, McClatchy bureaucracy be damned. If she can’t summon the courage to go public, well then, maybe she ought to just CALL Perry … or put a sock in it.

But the idea that you have this snippy back-and-forth and CC a bunch of reporters — OK, five not a dozen, sheesh — and think somehow no one will disclose anything to anyone beyond the perimeter is, uh, naive. McClatchy has pretty much torched the “loyalty” card in Minneapolis, and Moses ought to be smart enough to realize that.

Any professional newspaper manager who thinks the wretches are unconditionally sympathetic to the McClatchy corporate predicament might want to buy a few rounds of drinks and see what they’re really thinking.

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.

__
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?
_

________________________________

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.

________________________________