In fact, Warren Buffett has said don’t buy newspaper stock at any price. The days of the monopoly newspapers huge readership and advertising revenue are long gone.
OBEY OBAMA
You won’t see the mainstream media reporting who Nancy Pelosi is.
Citizens: Print, clip and save this free Obey Obama poster (Void where prohibited by law).
By Mick Gregory
I know quite a bit about her, having lived and worked in her San Francisco district. You won’t see the San Francisco Chronicle or New York Times mentioning that she is a multi-millionaire from earnings on her non-union Napa Valley winerey and resort hotel. Yet, the soon-to-be-crowned Speaker, gets one of the largest shares of union campaign money.
Your 68-year-old grandmother hasn’t spent as much on her home as 68-year-old Nancy Pelosi has on facelifts.
Democrats are America’s neo-progressives, better known as socialists. I lived in Nancy Peloci’s San Francisco, where transsexuals are given special status along with all the other classes of minorities and the city is a “sactuary city” for illegals.
Do you think I am exagerating? Progressive Democrats are America’s Democrat/Socialists — Google it for yourself. Why doesn’t the LA Times with it’s 950-person newsroom devote an afternoon of a reporter’s time to check into this?
Socialism in America is growing. Aided by such influential Congressmen as John Conyers, Ranking Member of the House Judicial Committee, and the one who will start impeachment proceedings against George Bush in the coming months. Nancy Pelosi is one of the stars of the nearly 60 other Democrats advancing socialism in America behind the “Progressive” label.
Here are a few excerpts taken directly from the web page of the Democratic Socialists of America.
“The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. DSA’s members are building progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics.
“At the root of our socialism is a profound commitment to democracy, as means and end. We are activists committed not only to extending political democracy but to demanding democratic empowerment in the economy, in gender relations, and in culture. Democracy is not simply one of our political values but our means of restructuring society. Our vision is of a society in which people have a real voice in the choices and relationships that affect the entirety of our lives. We call this vision democratic socialism – a vision of a more free, democratic and humane society.
0. We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.
0. We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.”
Here is what “Liberty” looks like to a socialist:
“A democratic commitment to a vibrant pluralist life assumes the need for a democratic, responsive, and representative government to regulate the market, protect the environment, and ensure a basic level of equality and equity for each citizen. In the 21st century, such regulation will increasingly occur through international, multilateral action. But while a democratic state can protect individuals from domination by inordinately powerful, undemocratic transnational corporations, people develop the social bonds that render life meaningful only through cooperative, voluntary relationships. Promoting such bonds is the responsibility of socialists and the government alike.
“The social welfare programs of government have been for the most part positive, if partial, responses to the genuine social needs of the great majority of Americans. The dismantling of such programs by conservative and corporate elites in the absence of any alternatives will be disastrous. Abandoning schools, health care, and housing, for example, to the control of an unregulated free market magnifies the existing harsh realities of inequality and injustice.”
The action agenda posted on the socialists’ web site very closely parallels Agenda 21, and the recommendations of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. The web site boasts the creation of the “Progressive Caucus” in Congress, as well as the coalition that is working to promote the socialist agenda in Congress.
Now you know that the third person in line for the Presidency is a socialist.
Secret Service, please make sure that President Bush and Dick Chaney are not ever again with in a mile of each other for the next two years.
Imagine this, the Democrats impeach George Bush for invading Iraq, Dick Cheney becomes president, he dies of a heart attack within weeks because of his spike in blood pressure. Nancy Pelosi becomes the first women President of the United States, and another first of much more import, America’s first Progressive Democrat president.
Sources: http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html,
http://www.sovereignty.net/center/socialists.htm
The decline of the newspaper media monopoly never slows. If you have any stock in newspaper-heavy media, it’s too late to get out. As of the end of 2008, 30 daily newspapers are for sale. Buyouts were the good old days. Now there are brutal Christmans-time layoffs. Google the Gannett Blog and find a running count by an ex-Gannetter.
The layoffs and firings that started this week at newspapers owned by Gannett, including at the flagship USA Today, have been especially ruthless, in addition to being timed just weeks before Christmas, they number in the thousdands. But why not? These are mainly socialists and athiests who mock families and call moms breeders.
It’s bloody news for newspaper journalists. Even the sill profitable Gannett newspapers (many still have profit margins at 20 percent) are shedding employees at a breathtaking rate.
This week a Gannett spokesperson said the cuts are being managed locally, at each newspaper, which is why as a company they’ve not released figures on specific jobs other than to say it’s a 10 percent cut companywide. While early figures compiled paper-by-paper totaled 1,700 Gannett jobs cut, it looks like that number may well pass 2,000 by next week.
In just the past week several thousand newspaper employees in America have lost their jobs, Cox Newspapers announced the closing of their Washington, DC, bureau, and the Tribune Co. will lay off more people at their flagship paper in Chicago.
In Chicago the credit analyst Fitch Ratings predicted that the continued decline in advertising revenues will cause some newspapers to default on their debt in 2009, and rated the debt of two huge newspaper companies – The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. – ask “junk.” Fitch also predicted that several cities could find themselves without daily print newspapers by 2010.
As many as 1,700 Gannett jobs were cut this week, from assistant managing editors on down, including reductions of up to 31 percent of the staff at one newspaper, The Salinas Californian, according to a reader tally on a blog published by a former Gannett worker, Jim Hopkins.
The most recent E&P (an online Web site on newspapers that ironically ended its print edtions a decade ago) reports that recruitment advertising declined in May. The Newspaper Conference Board, which measures job ads in 51 print newspapers across the country, said its Help-Wanted Advertising Index is 33. It was 38 one year ago.
“This is certainly a more negative picture going into the second half of the year, compared to the beginning of the year,” Ken Goldstein, a labor economist at the Conference Board, said in a statement.
In the last three months, help-wanted advertising fell in all nine U.S. regions.
The Dallas Morning News (a monopoly) said today it’s going to offer buyouts to the newsroom. That means waving a modest proposal of a few extra weeks of severance pay in front of the noses of older employees. Reality check: the UAW buyouts give auto workers 90 percent of their pay and free health care for life.
I was walking my dog this morning at 5:30 a.m. and watched a newspaper carrier in a junk car speeding around my neighborhood to drop a paper at every 20th house or so. Just a few years ago, 40 percent of the homes subscribed to the paper.
Imagine the carbon footprint of that old smokestack medium.
Who is a Democrat PR talking head and who is a journalist on MSNBC, NBC or CNN? Why stop there? The Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times and SF Chronicle are not investigating economic issues and massive bailouts. What kind of balanced journalism do you think the media performed during the two-year election?
First the gang journalists piled on Hillary, next they covered for Obama and attacked Palin.
MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.
The New York TImes had a reporter rewrite an AP story on the hoax and they spun the story to blame FOX News first with the hoax. This is called journalism?
MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.
David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, “a McCain policy adviser,” had come forth and identified himself as the source of a story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.
Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy and “a contributor to FOX News.” Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
The Eisenstadt claim had mistakenly been delivered to Shuster by a producer and was used in a political discussion Monday afternoon, MSNBC said.
“The story was not properly vetted and should not have made air,” said Jeremy Gaines, network spokesman. “We recognized the error almost immediately and ran a correction on air within minutes.”
Gaines told the Times that someone in the network’s newsroom had presumed the information solid because it was passed along in an e-mail from a colleague.
The hoax was limited to the identity of the source in the story about Palin—not the Fox News story itself. While Palin has denied that she mistook Africa for a country, the veracity of that report was not put in question by the revelation that Eisenstadt is a phony.
Eisenstadt’s “work” had been quoted and debunked before. The Huffington Post said it had cited Eisenstadt in July on a story regarding the Hilton family and McCain.
Among the other victims were political blogs for the Los Angeles Times and The New Republic, each of which referenced false material from Eisenstadt’s blog.
“The story was not properly vetted and should not have made air,” said Jeremy Gaines, MSNBC spokesman.
There are plenty of questions that are not asked.
How did Minnesota Democrat Party election officials come up with 500 more votes for the Democrat senate candidate days after the polls closed and none for the Republican candidate?
Why was there a crisis over $150,000 spent on Sarah Palin’s campaign clothing, but no comparison with Hillary’s warehouse of pantsuits or Obama’s Greek columns and semi-truck of suits?
Newspaper and news magazine circulation is dropping. Layoffs continue. (Wait until after January).
Don’t you find it repulsive the way “leaders” like Hillary talk so slow and dumb down their speeches. You know that the Harvard grad speaks a mile a minute with her elitist friends at cocktail parties.
Getting back to her speech and slide show showing baby pictures… WTF?
You missed Hillary’s little sideshow. She pointed out the son and wife of two of her super delegates who died within the last 10 days, one of gunshots, the other was found in her car (brain dead from a stroke).
Then she mentioned a cancer victim she met who wrote “Hillary” on her bald head who didn’t have medical coverage and was pleading for Universal Health Care. Well, how was she getting treatment? She actually was getting chemo treatments from a local clinic.
She failed to mention another similar incident on the campaign trail. Remember the man that came into her headquarters (Hillary was in another state) with a bomb and gun asking to speak with Hillary about getting more federal government help for mental patients. The life-long Democrat is locked up now receiving medication.
This post was published on Aug 25, 2008
There is talk that Sen. John McCain will take more air out of the Democrat Convention by announcing his VP on Thursday. Good plan. Now, make it Sarah Palin and he will get some of Hillary’s disenfranchised voters. Palin has it all, good looks right out of central casting, intelligent speaker, family values and governor of Alaska.
She has positive energy and wit. She will be able to out debate Biden and show that the Republicans trust a women for high office.
Visit http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/
Drill here, drill now!
Sarah Palin
What kind of reception will Bush get? Perhaps a steaming platter of dog or perhaps a horse penis, both delicacies in China.
In a speech highlighting America’s historic freedoms and challenges ahead in Asia, President Bush had boldly pushed China to enact a free press, free assembly, freedom of religion and labor rights in China, and spoke out sharply against its imprisonment of its citizens, human rights advocates and religious leaders. He said he wasn’t trying to antagonize China, but called such reform the only path the U.S. rival can take to reach its full potential.
This sets the stage for an interesting reception when he attends the opening ceremonies Friday evening and meets with Hu on Sunday after attending church.
No other U.S. president has been so blunt with the Chinese in modern history.
What kind of reception will Bush get? Perhaps a steaming platter of dog or perhaps a horse penis and testicles, delicacies in China.
By Mick Gregory
We are observing the death throws of a star on its way to becoming a white dwarf. Gasses spewing, used matter is shredded and thrown out. The size of the once bright, powerful force rapidly shrinks as it collapses on itself. These are the telltale signs of a dying star.
The Star Tribune, once among the Midwest’s largest newspapers, was purchased by the Sacramento-based McClatchy media company in 1998. The “executive editors” paid $1.2 billion for it from a family who wanted out of the business.
In less than 10 years, the rapid growth of Google, Drudgereport, Craigslist, E-Bay, FaceBook and WordPress lured away much of the newspaper audience and built new readers/users that were not newspaper-friendly. So the advertising found new rising stars.
Last year, Avista, a New York-based private equity group, purchased the dying Star Tribune for less than half of what McClatchy paid only eight years earlier.
Since Avista’s purchase, the star has been shedding reporters, editors, photographers, advertising sales staff and designers through two rounds of buyouts and the elimination of open positions. That was just a show for creditors.
Now, in January of 2008, the Star-Tribune filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The Star Tribune’s long-term business slump has continued, with revenue declining by about 25 percent, from $400 million in 2000 to $300 million last year, according to a Star Tribune story in July. While major expenses such as newsprint and transportation increased. Even those adult newspaper carriers throwning papers out of the window of their pickups, need to be paid.
Several weeks ago, Avista announced that it was writing down the value of its $100 million equity investment in the Star Tribune to $25 million. That’s $75 million wiped out in one year. The Star shed more than $1.15 billion in value over nine years. The new owners are getting pennies on the dollar trying to restructure their debt.
The only candidates for buying into debt-ridden newspapers now are hedge funds, especially those that make a specialty of distressed debt investments, according to several industry observers. It’s called a loan-to-own strategy, they calculate that the owners like Avista will default on their new loans and the fund becomes the new owner for pennies on the dollar. What’s left may be some downtown real estate and a false store-front Web site. This is the white dwarf stage. And there are hundreds more flickering, spewing gas and spitting out used up matter.
Mick Gregory
The New York Times empire is crumbling. Look out for falling debris. Stock is at a 10-year low.
Now, it is the top headline on the Drudge Report.
Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest shareholder in New York Times Co., sold its entire 7.3 percent stake today, according to a citizen journalist who knew of the transaction, sending the stock to its lowest in more than 10 years.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act didn’t do anything for investor rights of New York Times stock.
Continue reading
Mick Gregory
Here is another gem by “Joe Grimm,” advising journalisits on their shaky careers. He’s a big, fat, older white guy working for the Detroit Free Press. I believe he gets paid to write this advice on the job. It gives him some extra status among the elite editors. Maybe the Free Press even gets a few resumes from “talented” journos at 30,000 circultation papers in Podunk?
Let me know if you enjoy reading these slice of life stories as much as I do. I add my insider remarks throughout. BTW-There aren’t really top 10 signs your newspaer job is going down the toilet. There are too many signs to count. In fact, most newspaper journalists are “floaters.” You know what I mean, those stubborn turds that float back after you flush.
Do Warning Signs Mean I Should Go?
Q. Lately a few things have been happening in our newspaper company that I see as troubling, and I’m wondering if I should prepare to look elsewhere for a job. Buddy, you should have been looking for a new job a year ago.
Recently a couple publishers were fired. An official reason was never released, and I am not sure if they are looking for new publishers. (Publishers are the BIG SUITS). These mainly middle-age white men made a good living off the sweat of bright-eyed socialist reporters willing to work 60 hours a week for $30,000 a year.
Our previous publisher also decided he couldn’t pay $500 to send 10 of us to a local conference that would have had a big impact on our reporting. $50 per head for a little seminar. That’s the publisher’s bar tab for some cheap Central Valley white wine on one night out.
I’ve heard my editor on the phone casually mention that the only paper in our group that’s doing well had been marked for shutdown by an editor who left here months ago. The rest of our newspapers have been bleeding circulation like stuck pigs, despite our attempts to gain new subscribers. Our Web site, however, has been doing quite well with hits. Kiddo, it’s not the number of hits, it’s your demos and advertisers willing to place an ad schedule in your media.
We’ve also been under a hiring freeze since last fall, which hasn’t impacted our newsroom, but rather the secretarial staff. Hey, that’s a year, an entire budget cycle. How big is your newsroom? I didn’t catch that.
On the bright side, the company hasn’t frozen much else. I received a raise during my review earlier this year, and we recently bought a new computer to replace one that had finally called it quits. Hey, they actually let you work on a computer that runs? Mr. Grimm might call that a plus! How much was your raise, may I ask?
Every “10 signs your company is headed toward layoffs” site has indicated that something is up at my company. Then again, a lot of those signs are things newspapers are going through all over. I don’t know what to believe.
Ultimately I need to know if I should start applying for new jobs. I’ve gotten more than two years of experience here, so I think I could find a new job, but I had been hoping to stay for another year so I could get an even better job and wait for my boyfriend to finish school.
Still Working
A. By Joe Grimm.
Stay cool.
There is a lot going on — at your place and at others. Yeah, a lot of running around “scooping” the local weekly. That’s a lot. Sort of. It really doesn’t matter to the reader if you scoop another medium on a story. News is a very perishable commodity.
In addition to the warnings, you’ve received some encouragement. Yeah, they replaced your 12-year-old baige computer with a 2-year-old hand-me-down from a failing small daily in your chain. Right?
You don’t want to leave yet, so I wouldn’t. But I would be prepared.
Pay attention to bigger signs: A change in ownership. Multiple rounds of buyouts or layoffs. The sudden loss of a major advertiser. The signs you’ve mentioned are stressful, but don’t indicate an imminent death.
Yeah, wait around until they have that group anouncement when you and 50 others with your exact skill set are out on the street.
Have a fresh resume on your own computer, ready to go out in the mail or digitally. Keep topping your own best work. Pay off those credit cards and bank some money. And keep your network fresh. You’ll probably be able to make another year there as you would like, and can launch a search if you must.
Think of getting a real education with evening courses in business, law or engineering. Did you know that law firms actually pay their interns $1,000 to $2,000 a week?
How much do small dailies pay interns? Do a little digging and report back to us.
Mick Gregory
UPDATE:
Imus has campaigned for Al Gore, John Kerry and all the liberal Democrats up and down the East Coast. He’s been taking pimp/gutter slang from the street from start of his career in Cleveland in the late ’60s.
Tim Russert, the life-long Democrat, used to be on the Imus show every week along with Biden, Kerry, Leiberman, Sharpton, the entire list of the Democrat “Rat Pack.”
All but one, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Imus called her “the devil,” a Chavez-style nickname. It was clear, Imus was not on the Hillary/Obmama band wagon.
Talk show host and political watchdog, Michael Savage has a theory. The Clintons made the “hit” to take out Imus.
The Democrat’s biggest junkyard dog gets away with it again and again. So who knew he would get fired right at the start of the ’08 campaign for the presidency?
The MSNBC morning talk show host of “Imus in the Morning,” who supported the Al Gore presidency, the John Kerry campaign and this year, “the good liberal” Senator Dodd’s chance at the White House went a little too far this time. He called the Rutgers University Womens’ basketball team several N-word-style names. Rutgers is an Ivy League school and the young women on that team made it all the way to the national championships.
Can you imgaine if Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh said anything close to the Imus racist remarks?
The bias and propaganda machine is becoming more transparent due in part to citizen journalists.
Look at the attacks on Mel Gibson when he made some negative remarks about Jews and their treatment of Palsitinians and constant war in the Middle East.
It’s sickening when you look at how long this double standard has been in effect.
What is worse, the Democrat machine and media alliance will turn the Imus flap to their advantage. Watch them get the “Fairness Doctrine” back.
Gatekeepers in robes like the Revs Sharpton and Jackson will be joined by Oboma and Hillary deciding what content you should be allowed to see and hear.
Get ready for a Brave New PC World.
By Mick Gregory
Society of Hispanic Editors poster boy Andres Martinez dethroned from his prestigious appointment.
Mr. Bill Boyarsky, who retired from the Los Angeles Times in 2001, would like to see media reporter James Rainey and a team of top LAT reporters examine past Current sections and editorials to see whether they’ve been influenced by publicist Allen Mayer and his associate, Kelly Mullens, who has been dating editorial page editor Andres Martinez.
Executive editor Andres Martinez is forced to “buy the farm;” steps down as editor of the LA Times Sunday editorial section.
Look at this “holier than thou” memo from the shamed executive who is acutally putting his resume out to the public. It’s a “situation wanted” ad.
…. This event makes my continued tenure as Los Angeles Times editorial page editor untenable. The person in this job needs to have an unimpeachable integrity, and Hiller’s decision amounts to a vote of no confidence in my continued leadership.
I regret that my failure to anticipate and adequately address the perception of a conflict in this matter has placed Hiller — whom I like and respect a great deal, incidentally — and my colleagues on the editorial board in such an awkward position, not to mention Brian Grazer and Kelly Mullens, who did nothing wrong here but have been caught up in all this. Nick Goldberg and Michael Newman are two of the smartest, most talented people I have worked with, and any lapses in judgment here were mine, not theirs.
I accept responsibility for creating this appearance problem, though I also maintain that the newspaper is overreacting today. We are depriving readers of an interesting, serious section that is beyond reproach, and unfairly insulting the individuals we approached to participate in this guest editor program by telling them it is a corrupt concept. How we come about this decision when 24 hours ago the managing editor of this newspaper was assuring me he didn’t see a story after I walked him through the facts, and while Hiller maintains we did nothing wrong, is a bit perplexing. In trying to keep up with the blogosphere, and boasting about their ability to go after their own, navel-gazing newsrooms run the risk of becoming parodies of themselves.
Among the biggest possible conflicts of interest a newspaper can enter into is to have the same people involved in news coverage running opinion pages. I am proud of the fact that Jeff Johnson, Dean Baquet and I fully separated the opinion pages from the newsroom at the Times. I accept my share of the responsibility for placing the Times in this predicament, but I will not be lectured on ethics by some ostensibly objective news reporters and editors who lobby for editorials to be written on certain subjects, or who have suggested that our editorial page coordinate more closely with the newsroom’s agenda, and I strongly urge the present and future leadership of the paper to resist the cries to revisit the separation between news and opinion that we have achieved.
We’re a long ways removed from the fall of 2004 when Michael Kinsley and John Carroll lured me out to the West Coast, with promises of investing more resources on the LAT opinion pages and web site. Some of the retrenchment is understandable given the business fundamentals, but I have been alarmed recently by the company’s failure to acknowledge that our opinion journalism, central to the paper’s role as a virtual town square for community debate and dialogue, should not be crudely scaled back as part of across-the-board cuts. Decisions being made now to cut the one part of the paper that is predominantly about ideas and community voices go too far in my view, and are shortsighted.
Still, I am proud of what we’ve accomplished in the last two years. —Andrés
——
This brings to mind a former icon of “Bagdad by the Bay” who’s girl friend was a PR executive who would hit up celebrity restaurants around town: i.e., Stars, Postrio, Cafe Lulu, Greens, Boulevard, One, and Farallon. If they retained her services, “like magic,” some nice plugs would appear in the popular column.
I heard this from an executive chef.
Citizen journalism at your service.
By Mick Gregory
There has been an awakening of independent thinkers in response to the mass hysteria of crisis, catastrophe and convenient lies propagated by the party of Big Brother/Big Sis. I have mentioned “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton because he has loaded a thriller with facts. One of his references is to a ground breaking book by Bjorn Lomborg. It’s time to tell the environmental emperor, Algore that he isn’t wearing any clothes.
“The Skeptical Environmentalist should be read by every environmentalists so that the appalling errors of fact the environmental movement has made in the past are not repeated.
A brilliant and powerful book,” said Matt Ridley, author of Genome.
By Mick Gregory
Man-Made Global Warming May Be the Biggest Hoax Ever Supported by the Mainstream Media.
Maybe there is hope. It’s no longer a done deal. Now a European head of state speaks out.
Check when this will be in the mainstream media. This propaganda is worse than the era of yellow journalism. At least there were real facts hyped in that era.
Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.
In an interview with “Hospodárské noviny”, a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:
Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•
A: It’s not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it’s a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It’s neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it’s an undignified slapstick that people don’t wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the “but’s” are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•
Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions…•
A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.
• Q: But you’re not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?•
A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don’t know how to do it and don’t plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don’t have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don’t appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•
Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?•
A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it’s obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.•
Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right …•
A: …I am right…•
Q: Isn’t there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?•
A: It’s such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.•
Q: Don’t you believe that we’re ruining our planet?•
A: I will pretend that I haven’t heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can’t. I don’t see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don’t think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It’s clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It’s also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature – by eliminating private ownership and similar things – much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.• That’s why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you’re unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say.
[English translation from Harvard Professor Lubos Motl]
By Mick Gregory
“I don’t know if we will be printing in five years, and you know what, I don’t care,” said Pinchy Suzberger, New York Times publisher.
You know what Pinchy? Most of us don’t care either!
Profits at the Times have been declining for going on five years, and the Times company’s market capitalization has been crumbling faster.
The Times wrote down the value of its New England Media Group—which includes The Boston Globe—by $814 million, resulting in the shocking quarterly drop announced last week. Oopsie!
Yet, as they hold “town hall” meetings with their working stiffs at the Boston Globe, the editors made room to hire Dean Baquet and hand him the Washington DC throne. Baquet, you may recall, is the executive editor who refused to make any more cuts at the LA Times which has a 950 person newsroom.
But Mr. Baquet, you just joined a paper that has cut some 150 journalists in the past year? No problems with that, eh?
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Janet Robinson’s pep talk: first impression
Word is, the Times Co. president/CEO faced a very tough crowd at Morrissey Boulevard today. Here’s what Media Log has heard so far:
It was a very hostile meeting. I would say most of the hostility came from the classified ad people who’re being outsourced to India. This woman–her name doesn’t matter–got up and said, she’s been there 37 years, she loves the company, and basically, how can you do this? The paper’s been cut back; we’re kicked out; is this corporate greed or what?So Janet Robinson right off the bat had to handle this highly indignant, well-spoken classified ad person.
(Note: classified sales people are subhuman in the eyes of the far superior editorial department, so the surprisingly well spoken woman doesn’t get a name).
And she just kept on talking about how they’d had to make very difficult decisions, they wouldn’t be doing them if it wasn’t necessary. That was basically the theme: in order to save the village, we have to destroy it.
The people really kept at her about the outsourcing–that was really the main theme. Dan Totten [the Globe union head] said it was appalling and disgusting, and when did they make the decision–because let’s face it, we just agreed to this contract, and right after that they announced this outsourcing. Was that bad-faith bargaining? And [Robinson] never really gave an answer. She said [the outsourcing] had been under consideration for at least a year, but they didn’t make the final decision until the terrible results of the final quarter were known. They didn’t have a choice.
Somebody said, why do you still want us as part of [the Times Co.] portfolio? And she went on about, you’re a beacon of great journalism, people want to buy you and I admire their taste, but you’re a very important part of the company.
—thephoenix.com
Morgan Stanley, has set out on a campaign that could cost Sulzberger control over the paper. The New York Times is one of a unique few that have a two-tiered stock plan. The family holds a fraction of the stock, but they are voting stocks, the majority of the stockholders do not have a vote on decisions of the company. They ivory tower “executive editors” at the Times have been making horrible business decisions. And Morgan Stanley has been communicating the reasons why.
The details are by AFX International Focus — The New York Times has refused to list on its proxy a proposal from a Morgan Stanley investment fund that called for putting the company’s two-class share structure to a vote.
That system, which has existed since before the company went public in 1969, cements control of the company with the Ochs-Sulzberger family. The company says the control is necessary to protect the editorial integrity of the newspaper.
The Morgan Stanley fund had proposed the measure in November after expressing dissatisfaction with the company’s share price and what it called a lack of accountability to public shareholders.
Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for the Times, said the Times rejected the proposal last month, with the blessing of the Securities and Exchange Commission, after determining that the issues being raised in the proposal couldn’t be voted on by holders of the company’s publicly traded stock.
Those shares, which are called Class A stock, have limited voting rights, such as electing 30 percent of the company’s directors, the approval of certain acquisitions and other matters, she said. The more powerful voting rights belong to the Class B shares, which are almost entirely controlled by the Sulzbergers.
The company rejected the proposal last December, Mathis said, but the news became public late Tuesday in a regulatory filing made by Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
And Mr. Sulzberger had to get away. He jumped on a jet to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. Remember, that’s where Senator John Kerry called the USA a pariah to the civilized world?
Then they fit in some skiing at one of the ritziest resorts in the world.
What began as a casual chat ended in a fascinating glimpse into Sulzberger’s world, and how he sees the future of the news business.
By Eytan Avriel of Haaretz.com
Given the constant erosion of the printed press, do you see the New York Times still being printed in five years?
“I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either,” he says.
Sulzberger is focusing on how to best manage the transition from print to Internet.
“The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we’re leading there,” he points out.
The Times, in fact, has doubled its online readership to 1.5 million a day to go along with its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition.
Sulzberger says the New York Times is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will mark the end of the transition. It’s a long journey, and there will be bumps on the road, says the man at the driving wheel, but he doesn’t see a black void ahead.
Asked if local papers have a future, Sulzberger points out that the New York Times is not a local paper, but rather a national one based in New York that enjoys more readers from outside, than within, the city.
Classifieds have long been a major source of income to the press, but the business is moving to the Internet.
Sulzberger agrees, but what papers lose, Web sites gain. Media groups can develop their online advertising business, he explains. Also, because Internet advertising doesn’t involve paper, ink and distribution, companies can earn the same amount of money even if it receives less advertising revenue.
Really? What about the costs of development and computerization?
“These costs aren’t anywhere near what print costs,” Sulzberger says. “The last time we made a major investment in print, it cost no less than $1 billion. Site development costs don’t grow to that magnitude.”
The New York Times recently merged its print and online news desks. Did it go smoothly, or were there ruffled feathers? Which team is leading the way today?
“You know what a newspaper’s news desk is like? It’s like the emergency room at a hospital, or an office in the military. Both organizations are very goal-oriented, and both are very hard to change,” Sulzberger says.
Once change begins, it happens quickly, so the transition was difficult, he says. “But once the journalists grasped the concept, they flipped and embraced it, and supported the move.” That included veteran managers, too.
How are you preparing for changes to the paper that are dictated by the Internet?
“We live in the Internet world. We have, for example, five people working in a special development unit whose only job is to initiate and develop things related to the electronic world – Internet, cellular, whatever comes.
The average age of readers of the New York Times print edition is 42, Sulzberger says, and that hasn’t changed in 10 years. The average age of readers of its Internet edition is 37, which shows that the group is also managing to recruit young readers for both the printed version and Web site.
Also, the Times signed a deal with Microsoft to distribute the paper through a software program called Times Reader, Sulzberger says. The software enables users to conveniently read the paper on screens, mainly laptops. “I very much believe that the experience of reading a paper can be transfered to these new devices.”
Will it be free?
No, Sulzberger says. If you want to read the New York Times online, you will have to pay.
In the age of bloggers, what is the future of online newspapers and the profession in general? There are millions of bloggers out there, and if the Times forgets who and what they are, it will lose the war, and rightly so, according to Sulzberger. “We are curators, curators of news. People don’t click onto the New York Times to read blogs. They want reliable news that they can trust,” he says.
“We aren’t ignoring what’s happening. We understand that the newspaper is not the focal point of city life as it was 10 years ago.
“Once upon a time, people had to read the paper to find out what was going on in theater. Today there are hundreds of forums and sites with that information,” he says. “But the paper can integrate material from bloggers and external writers. We need to be part of that community and to have dialogue with the online world.”
And while on community, the scandal about Jayson Blair, the reporter caught plagiarizing and fabricating, hurt the brand, not the business, he says. Blair was forced to quit in May 2003.
You’re one of the few papers that continues to print on broadsheet, which people consider to be too big and clumsy. Until when?
“Until when? The New York Times has no intention of changing that,” Sulzberger promises. At any rate, transitioning from broadsheet to tabloid would be prohibitively expensive, he says.
If you own any of those secondary NY Times stocks, I think it’s time to sell.
For literally centuries, Swedish readers thumbed through the pages of the Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper. Not any more. The world’s oldest paper has dropped its paper edition and now exists only online. The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden’s Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1, 2007. It’s fate may await many of the world’s most popular newspapers.
Queen Kristina used the publication to keep her kingdom informed of the affairs of state, much like Democrat politicians use the mainstream media today.
What else is new? Editor and Publisher, the trade magazine for newspapers has been out of print for several years now. When in print, it was a small People Magazine size on a cheap glossy stock. Why wasn’t it printed on newsprint?
More bad news for newspapers — McClatchy Co., the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, behind Gannett, reported a fourth-quarter loss of $279.3 million Tuesday after taking a hit on the sale of its largest newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The editor-centric company is not very savvy at investments.
In late December McClatchy executives announced that it was selling the Star Tribune for $530 million to the investment group Avista Capital Partners, well below the $1.2 billion it paid for the newspaper in 1998.
Newspaper values have been hit hard in recent years due to slumping advertising trends as more readers and advertisers go to the Internet for news and information.
For the full year, McClatchy posted a loss of $155.6 million.
By Mick Gregory
Molly Ivins was the Texas Democrat party’s biggest supporter for 40 years. Newspapers always deliver big obits of their own, but when they are uber-liberal “celebrity” columnists, get ready for a state funeral pageant.
Although the press is fond of labeling FOX News journalists and nearly all Republicans “right-wing,” they rarely call even the most liberal journalist or Democrat left-wing.
But not so for Molly Ivins. Ivins was a self-described leftist agitator. She made her living as the Texas Democrats’ pit bull.
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Update: Sunday, February 4, 2007
Every day we have seen more updates on the late Molly Ivins. The journalists who have “touched her robes,” or sat at her feet and heard her anti-Reagan, Bush bashing, Arnold scorn (she said he looked like a condom filled with walnuts) one-liners.
James T. Campbell, at the Houston Chronicle, had his little brush with famous Ivans when she volunteered to speak at a conference of the National Association of Black Journalists. (One has to wonder about associations based on skin color).
For nearly 45 minutes, she captivated the audience with her salty humor and delicious tidbits about Texas politics and politicians. She saved the day. She was my heroine.
Sill, I was embarrassed. The conference had no budget to speak of, so I couldn’t even offer her a small honorarium. She settled for gas money, a couple of drinks and my company at the hotel bar.”
Read “The Mother of All Obits,” today in your daily newspaper. In The Houston Chronicle, she gets front page play today, a 2-col. photo with a jump to page four, about 80 column inches with “pull-quotes” and photo of her as an “intern” with the paper in 1966.
“I’ll remember sunsets, rivers, hills, plains, the Gulf, woods, a thousand beers in a thousand joints, and sunshine and laughter. And people…Mostly I’ll remember people.” — her farewell column to Texas Observer readers in 1976, when she took a job with the New York Times.
She was fired by the New York Times six years later, “because she didn’t show due respect and reverence to the great dignity…”
Andy Ivins, brother to late columnist Molly Ivins, recalled his sister smashing a beer can on the deck of the family’s boat in New York to the puzzlement of those on board.
He also remembered his sister disliking UT fraternities but devouring the beer they dispensed. His stories set the tone for Ivins’ memorial service, where those in attendance seemed determined not to focus on her passing, but on the unorthodox qualities that defined her as a friend, party girl and liberal megaphone.
Can you imagine being too liberal for the New York Times?
I met her in 1982 at Times Mirror‘s Dallas Times Herald. I was in my early twenties, fresh out of college and as promotion manager, advertised the super stars like Ivans. She was the headliner of the LA Time’s liberal journalism expansion into Dallas, Houston and Denver. She got top billing. Her face was on billboards and the sides of delivery trucks, and her quotes in radio ads. Her left wing, in-your-face rants may have helped sink each of those “left coast” papers in time. Only the Denver Post survives today, because of a Joint Operating Agreement for failing newspapers, with the Rocky Mountain News.
Her resume reads, “After the Times Herald folded, she joined the Fort Worth Star Telegram.”
Correction: The Times Herald didn’t fold. It was purchased by the Dallas Morning News and turned into a parking lot.
It wasn’t Ms. Ivan’s fault. Her anti-American rants is what she did. Her attacks on Ronald Reagan and the conservative values of Dallas readers caused a mass exodus of circulation and advertisers from the Times Herald to the Morning News. The same thing happened in Houston and Denver. Who knew? Editors still don’t get it.
One of her repeated gems was: “Ronald Reagan was so dumb he couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel.”
The Minneapolis Tribune hired her as its first female police beat reporter, and she claimed one of her proudest moments of her journalism career was when the department named its mascot – a pig – in her honor. Funny stuff. By the way, The Minneapolis Tribune, a well-known liberal New York Times wannabe, and was dumped off on private investors just a month ago.
It wasn’t the publisher’s fault, Thomas McCartin at the Times Herald was a Times Mirror Company (TMC) man all the way. His initials (TMC) allowed him to have custom monograms on his cuffs, stenciled into glass doors and in the marble. McCartin wouldn’t argue with Otis Chandler’s top editors’ plans. It was the editorial executives who had the vision that a socialist, poison pen columnist would increase readership in conservative Texas and Colorado. They were out to show the establishment who was boss.
Tom McCartin was a marketing, community events promoter of “Dallas, City of The Arts” and jazzy new sections publisher. He switched the paper from a blue collar afternoon paper to a morning, middle- and upper-middle class paper (on the surface) through promotion, almost overnight. He may have known about the liberal-snob link before the rest of the mainstream media. McCartin was a marketing genius. He didn’t dwell on the leftist takeover of the Times Herald’s editorial department. He was used to that, having worked at the LA Times and for a time, the Washington Post. Ken Johnson, the executive editor of the Dallas Times Herald also came from the Washington Post. David Broder — the famous lefty who is a regular on “Face the Nation” and other Sunday morning political shows actually had an office at the Times Herald for a stint. I promoted him too. We had a party at the downtown Dallas paper where liberal heavy hitters gathered. I even have a picture of me with Martha Graham, publisher/owner of the Washington Post. But I digress.
Johnson “knew” that Ivins was his kind of journalist. The editorial department was well funded at this boom time and there were layers of managing editors.
Here’s a little piece from an editor, Jim Schutze at the time:
…There were six or seven assistant city editors, a city editor and half a dozen people with the words “managing editor” somewhere in their titles sitting around the desk.
I harrumphed for attention, then said, “I have written a column for tomorrow’s newspaper that I am worried about. It’s a fairly personal attack on a wealthy and powerful citizen of the city, known to be litigious, and I fear that it may be libelous. I worry that the column, in its present form, may harm the paper. Would any one of you be willing just to read behind me on it before I send it to the printers?”
No one moved. There was a long silence, They all kept their eyes glued to each other or to their computer screens. I refused to move. I waited. Finally one of them whirled around and held up his hands before his face with the two index fingers in the sign of the cross, in the gesture used to ward off vampires.
Schutze was showing a friend that he was free to print anything he wanted and attack the big shots at will. That’s the environment that Molly Ivins worked in for a few years, anyway. The paper’s enemies — and even some of its liberal friends in the Democrat and black communities — closed in on the Times Herald editorial slant.
There were jabs by Ivins and others about “lavish holiday parties” by builders who were overcharging for their new homes, the same story on the evil new car dealers. The home builders and auto dealers simply pulled their advertising from the Times Herald and put it in the more conservative Morning News.
As ad revenues fell, editors were less able to defend the journalist “foot soldiers” from the Dallas establishment’s heavy weights. In 1984, the paper finally gave in to critics and Molly Ivins was kicked-off the metro section front page. Molly was still allowed a fairly visible spot on the Op Ed Page, but she had to get out of Dallas and move to Austin and she had to stop writing about the business leaders in Dallas. Ken Johnson left with a golden handshake from McCartin and Chandler and started a chain of weekly newspapers called Westward Communications. That chain actually got back to basics and covered local news. Johnson learned his lessson about letting the rabid left wingers destroy the advertising base.
Ivans was a diehard liberal. She boasted about that. She was at nearly all the fancy fundraisers with her gal pal, the former governor, Ann Richards. She hung out at with Dan Rather and Jim Hightower at fundraisers in lawyers private mansions around Texas.
Ivins had a reputation as something of a partyer, and, until her health declined, she hosted at her Austin home monthly gatherings of writers, Marxists, druggies and rabble-rousers.
She was a colorful writer. It’s just too bad she didn’t spread some of her talent and power of the press to attacks on LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Ann Richards, Hilly and Bill Clinton. Maybe the Houston Post and Dallas Times Herald would still be around today.
Ivans was actually born in Carmel-Monterey, California and grew up in Houston’s River Oaks. (That’s where Ken Lay used to live). She attended Smith College, her mother’s and grandmother’s alma mater. Her father was a rich corporate lawyer and a Republican.
She put on persona that she came from the piney woods of East Texas. Now you know that she has a lot in common with Democrat leaders, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Diane Fienstien, Teddy Kennedy, perhaps even fed with a silver spoon.
She missed her calling, that was some act she put on. RIP.
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Visit the Wonkette to see a liberal point of view. Like which conservative columnist should die next.
The New York Times Co. posted a $648 million loss for the fourth quarter as it absorbed an $814.4 million expense to write down the value of its struggling New England properties, the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
It’s fun to watch editors with no business acumen calling the shots and rearranging the deck chairs as the big old ship, New York Times takes on water.
The top editors made a space for the former LA Times editor, Dean Baquet. You have to wonder what hard-working, award-winning New York Times editors think of that, especially the next time there is another round of layoffs. Baquet was reported hoping and holding out for new owners of the LA Times to have him “back at the helm.”
“it became clearer and clearer to me that the New York Times was the place where I belonged now,” Baquet said.
Would Senator Biden think that Baquet is “clean and well spoken?”
By Mick Gregory
The progressive liberal desk editors have been hard at work keeping certain stories out of the well-read Sunday papers. For example, some news broke on Friday on Hannity’s radio show that Nancy Pelosi’s rush to raise the Federal minimum wage with one big exemption, that of Del Monte’s U.S. Samoa tuna factory, it was cut out of the wage hike. By next week, it will be “old” news.
The perverted teenage boy kidnapper was caught on Friday, and jailed. Police charged Michael Devlin, 41, a pizza shop worker who moonlights at a funeral home, with one count of kidnapping. (Wondering about that funny tasting sausage and mushroom?) Two boys kidnapped four years and 40 miles apart. Not a word on what Devlin wanted with the boys.
But the New York Post reports that Devlin had child porn on his computers. Thanks for sparing us the gay, pedophile details. But is this another white wash by the PC, liberal press?
Also on Friday, the federal deficit has improved significantly in the first three months of the new budget year, helped by a continued surge in tax revenues.
In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Friday that the deficit from October through December totaled $80.4 billion, the smallest imbalance for the first three months of a budget year since The budget year ends Sept. 30.
Tax collections are running 8.2 percent higher than a year ago while government spending is up by just 0.7 percent from a year ago. Last year’s spending totals were boosted by significant payments to help the victims of the Gulf Coast hurricanes.
The Treasury said for December, the government actually ran a surplus of $44.5 billion, the largest surplus ever recorded in December and a gain that reflected a big jump in quarterly corporate tax payments.
The $80.4 billion deficit for the first three months of the current budget year was down 32.6 percent from the imbalance for the same period a year ago of $119.4 billion.
Then no mention of icicles forming on snow covered, tiny Prius hybrids in California and Texas, nor of the billions lost in citrus crops. Where is Al Gore and the Democrat Progressives rants about global warming?
“We ruined their country? It was kind of a crappy country to begin with.”
—Tucker Carlson, on America now being blamed for ruining Iraq, Tucker’s show, January 2, 2007
Blog of the Week — http://jamilhussein.com
Jamilhussein.com is a blog “Borat” — It’s a hit!
Jan0414:11
Media Opportunities
By: Capt. Jamil Hussein
I am very interested in developing new relationships with media representatives in Baghdad. I would especially be interested in on-air opportunities with Western broadcast media. I have fluency in English and can also converse in German.As an Iraqi police captain I see many, many bad things. Just this morning I saw a Sadr City street brawl erupt into gunfire over a discussion about whether Cheetos Lip Balm is haram. Yesterday I witnessed a dog having sex with a sheep. Truly Iraq is descending into madness. I have many compelling stories to tell.
Please contact me through this website.
The end of elite liberal media empires and rise of citizen journalism 