By The River

It has been a year since I took a buy-out from the Patriot-News, and what a year it has been.

I had really expected to work there until I retired. At age 55, I felt like I was at the top of my game as a journalist, and proved it one last time with a long investigative piece on the 1969 unsolved murder of Penn State graduate student Betsy Aardsma, who was from my hometown of Holland, Michigan. But I left because the future didn't look very bright. I had been advised by management that I could be transferred to a telemarketing center or the crew that cleans the presses overnight if I did not choose the buy-out, and in no case would be permitted to continue doing the sort of journalism I loved. So I left, deciding to try a career change to documentary filmmaking.

I was accepted into the Institute for Documentary Filmmaking, a six-month graduate program at George Washington University. I commuted down to D.C. twice a week and enjoyed the intellectual challenge of applying what I had learned as a print journalist to a new and related profession. I learned much. But i was troubled by the open disdain for journalism expressed regularly by the woman who heads the program. And I was twice told (and the class, too, in one of the instances) that documentary filmmaking is "a business for young people," filmmakers like Albert Maysles notwithstanding. I concluded that she saw her program as being more about training production assistants, the young foot soldiers of the film industry, than about training filmmakers and that old guys like me just didn't fit into the plan. But they were happy to take my tuition.

For being located in Washington, D.C., you would think the Institute for Documentary Filmmaking would take advantage of the rich mixture of politics, policy and humanity in the capital and produce some outstanding student films. But that isn't very often the case. One year the student film was about hotdog eating contests. The film to which I was consigned was about bicycle polo. A "Lord of the Flies" atmosphere develops in the film groups and is indeed expected and encouraged. But enough. Like I said, I learned a lot, but the wounds have not healed and I wouldn't recommend the Institute for Documentary Filmmaking to older professionals, especially men, contemplating a career change.

Bite the bullet and go to a two-year program like the Documentary Institute, a renowned documentary school which has just moved to Wake Forest University in North Carolina from the University of Florida, after the Florida Legislature slashed its funding. I suspect the funding assault may have been in part because of the string of socially significant and interesting student documentaries the school has produced, which probably finally pissed off enough powerful people in the Sunshine State. If you have dreams of being a director and not a production assistant, this program or one like it is the one for you.

Meanwhile, I had received a contract from Globe Pequot Press to write an updated version of my book on the Centralia Mine Fire, Unseen Danger. I finished that in April, and Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire, was published Oct. 1. I am now working on a new book, The Epidemic, about a terrible typhoid epidemic in Ithaca, N.Y., in 1903. The company responsible for that became the company responsible for the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.

Can I make it as an author of books and the writer/director/producer of the occasional short film? That remains to be seen. The economics are tough, and I have already begun to search for a "day job" to help pay the bills. Fortunately my wife has a good job and benefits, so the pressure is somewhat reduced, but not gone entirely.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, and I'll be back soon.

Posted by David at 06:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I suppose I'll miss radio commentator Paul Harvey, who has died at age 90 after a very long career in radio broadcasting.

He was a regular part of my youth in the Midwest, where he was a ubiquitous presence on AM radio. I can do a fair Paul Harvey imitation, so many times did I hear him. "Hello Americans, this is Paul Harvey (pause) Stand by for news!" He had one of those classic radio voices. Broadcasting from Chicago, he would mix a few of the top headlines of the day with some cute little story.

But he was also quite conservative. Harvey was a big backer of Red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the spiritual father of modern movement conservatism, in the 1950s. He loved President Nixon. His "cute little story" more often than not seemed to bash hippies or any American youth who didn't toe the line of their conservative parents. And he supported the Vietnam War until Nixon expanded it into Cambodia in 1970, by which time tens of thousands of young Americans, many of them draftees, had already died in that useless and pointless war that McCarthyism had forced upon us.

Harvey's longevity was due to the truth that in radio, no one cares how old you are so long as you have a great voice and the commercial sponsorships keep rolling in. I was surprised to read in the obituaries of Harvey that he had a rich contract with ABC Radio that still had two years to run. I suppose, like Lawrence Welk reruns, there was still an audience for that sort of thing.

Posted by David at 06:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced a plan to help the ailing French newspaper industry that should help solve one of the main problems of the industry here and there, namely the reluctance of young people to subscribe to daily newspapers.

Sarkozy has proposed that when French children reach the age of 18, they be given a one-year free subscription to the daily newspaper of their choice. The publishers will give away the papers and the French government will pay for delivery. The theory is that if young people are presented with a newspaper every day, they will get into the habit of reading it and continue the subscription at their own expense after that first year.

I think there's something to that. My own children have gotten to like the Patriot-News now that we have it delivered to the house. I used to bring it home free when I worked there, one of the fringe benefits of the job, but since taking the buy-out I'm on my own. Admittedly, they go first for the comics, but are starting to read the stories, too.

Sarkozy's idea is a good one, and one that could be adopted here without government involvement. Newspaper publishers could give away a year's subscription to every high school graduate. They could have it delivered at home, or by mail if they are going away to college. Christmas tips would still be the responsibility of the subscriber.

Posted by David at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thanks to some good reporting by Forbes Magazine, we now know that Sam Zell--not the economy--is the main reason for the Chapter 11 filing of the Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Cubs, and a bunch of TV stations.

Zell put barely $300 million of his own money into the 2007 deal in which he acquired the Tribune Co., according to Forbes. That money came from his personal $900 million share in the $36 billion sale of an office REIT he owned to a group of hedge funds. The rest he--or rather the Tribune Co.--borrowed to pay off the various owners of the media company.

According to Forbes, Zell didn't really want, or at least didn't care that much about the media properties of the Tribune. He had his eyes on the Chicago Cubs, believing he could sell the franchise for a tidy sum and recoup his personal investment. It was all a game to him, and it resulted in the destruction, or impending destruction, of two of America's greatest newspapers. In his dealings with newsroom employees, Zell was coarse and rude if they asked "impertinent" questions.

Was it all necessary, despite the bad results? Nah. Forbes says apart from the debt that Zell loaded on the Tribune Co., operating cash flow was fine. Again, it was all a game that wealthy Wall Street types like Zell have gotten away with playing for the past 25 years in the name of "free market capitalism." They are free to play their high stakes game, and if the little people get crushed, that's all for the glory of free market capitalism.

Oh, and one detail I forgot to mention: as part of the bankruptcy, Tribune Co. will cut off severance payments to many reporters and editors who took buy-outs but elected, probably for tax reasons--lump sum payments under IRS rules are taxed at 37 percent, although you get some of it back when you file your next tax return--to take their severance pay over time.

I'd love to see the Tribune Co. employees, past and present, stage a sit-in at their newspapers, just like the employees of Republic Window and Door in Chicago are doing. This nonsense has to stop, and Zell should be investigated by Barack Obama's Justice Department come January.

Posted by David at 09:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been a bit distracted lately, which is why I haven't written anything. The newsroom of the paper where I work, The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., has been in turmoil since buy-out offers were given to the entire staff last Tuesday. The family that owns The Patriot-News and a couple of dozen other papers across the country like the Cleveland Plain-Dealer have a policy of not laying off for economic reasons. Thus the "voluntary" buy-outs. But that policy doesn't limit them from indirectly making it clear to many that they should take the buy-out. Pressure on the staff has been intense. There is a widespead feeling among the staff that the company wants most of us in the newsroom to leave. And I do plan to go and begin a new life doing somethng else, either in public or government relations or writing books. At age 55 with two daughters to educate, I can't just rest on my laurels, tempting as that is. I'll have a year to figure it out.

Posted by David at 06:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every journalist deals with hundreds of public relations people throughout his or her career. Most of them are decent people, even while doing a tough job on behalf of an obnoxious client. Some are exceptional, going out of their way to help you get your story. But there are a few who make you cringe at their blatant stupidity or wonder whether they are telling outright lies.

Gawker.com, an irreverent Manhattan gossip site that is a guilty pleasure for many journalists, including this one, recently put out a call for "bad flack" stories, flacks being the slang term for p.r. people. Back comes a tale from an unnamed executive who took his senior management team to a seminar put on by Edelman, one of the nation's largest public relations firms, one which counts Wal-Mart among its clients. I'll let Gawker give you the rest of the details, but one message of the seminar was that sometimes you have to lie to the press.

Edelman, needless to say, isn't happy about this story being reported by Gawker, but, as noted above, it goes to the worst fears of many journalists. We all wish the corporations-in-crisis we report on behaved like Johnson & Johnson during the Tylenol poisoning of 25 years ago, but the reality is that far more behave like GPU during the Three Mile Island crisis, bumbling and dissembling, or Enron, aggressively trying to stifle reporting about what they are doing.

I suspect Edelman will get through this with some good p.r., perhaps buying full-page ads in various newspapers proclaiming its innocence and commitment to the Truth. I'm always suspicious about the real motivation behind full-page ads, but that's a subject for another day.

Posted by David at 07:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tribune Co. overlord Sam Zell is now blaming Orlando Sentinel photographer Sara Fajardo for the F-bomb he launched at her after she asked him some hard questions at a staff meeting. It seems that Zell--doesn't he look like Golum from Lord of the Rings?--thought that Fajardo had turned her back on him and walked huffily away in response to his declaration that she was guilty of "arrogance" for defending good journalism. According to a Tribune Co. spokesman, Fajardo was being "disrespectful" in both the tone of her voice and body language. The Los Angeles Times, which Zell also owns, then pointed out that Zell's now-famous employee handbook directly encourages employees to ask tough questions of their supervisors.

I'm sure this "explanation" for the F-bomb was concocted by Zell and his people after long meetings on how best to spin his damaging behavior. Zell has allegedly attempted to call Fajardo twice to apologize but just can't seem to reach her.

The Orlando Sentinel has recovered from its temporary urge to suck up to the new boss and is now defending Fajardo, who for her part says she simply thought her turn at the microphone was done and was returning to her seat. She has refused all request for comment, which might be an attempt by her to hide out until the storm blows over, or may have been ordered by Sentinel management.

And what's this stuff about Zell wanting to run strip club ("gentlemen's club") ads in the Los Angeles Times? I guess that's part of his vision to raise more money so his papers can run more photos from Iraq and fewer photos of puppydogs.

Posted by David at 07:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Real estate zillionaire Sam Zell, the self-described "vulture capitalist," decided that he wanted to get into the newspaper business, having figured out (like Warren Buffett before him) that despite the protestations of the industry, newspapers still made a lot of money. So he bought the Tribune Co. last year and gained ownership of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, and, we shall see, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel. The question was how soon Zell would succumb to the tug of the dark side and decide that 25-35 percent profit margins just weren't enough when more could be squeezed out of the business by eliminating things like reporters and more reporters. Answer: very soon.

Zell has had a bad year so far, what with another editor being fired at the Los Angeles Times for refusing to fire more reporters, and the continuing media attention to the story line of "The Wire" on HBO, which among other things portrays a dysfunctional newspaper called the Baltimore Sun, which he happens to own. So that may be why he got a bit testy the other day while addressing a staff meeting at the Orlando Sentinel. One thing Zell apparently hasn't figured out, or didn't until this video began circulating, is that newspapers, for all their external posturing, are rather genteel compared to the commercial real estate world.

He may have thought it quite normal to launch an F-bomb at someone who said something he didn't like, because that's how they talk across the negotiating table in his world. It's not like no one has ever accused him of being an uncouth, foul-mouthed jerk. Zell's having a tough time in general adapting to the idea of the help asking tough questions, and was apparently quite put out when L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez knocked on his door in Malibu to chat.

Photographer Sara Fajardo of the Sentinel challenged Zell's views on the overriding importance of raising revenues, noting that, "we're not the Pennysaver." Zell then went on a tirade about how it was her duty and that of the rest of the staff to "help me" by producing journalism "that readers want." That phrase, incidentally, is code for dumbed-down, tepid, chicken-dinner reporting that a segment of the newspaper industry has convinced itself readers want. Fajardo tells Zell that "readers want puppy dog pictures," but is that what we ought to be doing? Which launches him on another tirade about "journalistic arrogance" and how they can't have both puppy dog and Iraq pictures until revenues come up. And then, almost as an afterthought, or Freudian slip, came the F-bomb.

When a member of upper management--the uppermost of upper management in Zell's case--launches an F-bomb at a rank-and-file employee, a young woman to boot, it goes beyond uncouth to potentially actionable. Gawker.com says Zell has called Fajardo at least twice to apologize. Wonder how the Orlando Sentinel reported the same event? Just like you'd expect someone kowtowing to the new boss to report it. There's a passing mention of Fajardo's exchange with Zell, but it's shaded in such a way to make him look like the wise new daddy lecturing the silly children, not an overbearing thug. The exchange is edited completely out of the video on the Sentinel website, and there's no mention of the F-bomb, of course.

Just another great day in the newspaper business.

Posted by David at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning at the Patriot-News, the newspaper in Harrisburg, Pa., where I am a reporter, one of the newsroom staff sent out an "all" message with the subject line, "The producer of 'The Wire' could have worked here." Attached was an essay by David Simon in today's Washington Post.

Everyone read it, even if they weren't aware, as I was, that Simon is the executive producer, creator, and lead writer of HBO's "The Wire," a gritty, urban crime drama set in Baltimore that is in its fifth and last season. Harrisburg actor Dominick Cicco plays a bit part in Episode 3 as Andreas, the counterman at Little Johnny's Diner. My daughter Lydia, who knows him from the Central Pennsylvania Youth Opera production of "The Araboolies of Liberty Street" in 2006, was thrilled to see him on TV. I think he told me about this at the cast party. But I digress.

What has the journalism world buzzing is the portrayal in "The Wire" of the Baltimore Sun, which is called, yeah, the Baltimore Sun. Simon worked there as a reporter from 1983-98. It's a dead-on portrayal--rare for TV--of modern newspaper life, the good, the bad, and very definitely the ugly. Simon is unsparing. The Sun, which is owned by the Tribune Co. of Chicago, has been decimated by buy-outs, i.e., staff reductions where they pay you to leave, but even more so by self-inflicted wounds. The owners have decided that the public wants less news, not more, and wants fluff over substance (all of which is cheaper to produce). They actually came to believe that readers knew more than professional journalists about how to report the news.

Call it suicide by focus group. Why focus groups? They've been the rage in the newspaper industry for at least the last decade, and supposedly tell management that readers want less news, shorter stories, and more fluff about church dinners and groundbreakings. Ever wonder who has time to be on focus groups? Not anyone with a serious job or family obligations. They aren't exactly representative, and can end up reinforcing industry preconceptions. When more comprehensive telephone polls are conducted of all residents of a region, the results differ sharply. They tell the pollsters they want more news and more explanation of important events in the world around them, and not just in their backyards.

In the real world, the Tribune Company fired James E. O'Shea, the editor of the Los Angeles Times this week for refusing to make huge and mindless newsroom cuts going into the Presidential election and Olympics year. In his parting remarks to his staff, O'Shea sharply criticized the Tribune Co.'s single-minded focus on cost cutting, its lack of investment in the Times, and "an aversion to serious news." This is the same Tribune Co. that owns the Baltimore Sun, the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, and other papers around the country.

Those of us who love newspapers, who love the profession and have devoted our lives to it, see ourselves as the radio operator on the Titanic, calling desperately for help after the captain steered the ship into an iceberg. At least our readers escape with their lives, picked up by the SS Internet and given warm blankets and hot chocolate. But enough of this strained metaphor. Suffice it to say the Patriot-News is no stranger to the woes of the industry.

That was why my colleague wrote, "The producer of 'The Wire' could have worked here." Gimmicks won't save newspapers. Only news will save newspapers. Maybe not even that.

Posted by David at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Former CBS News anchorman and reporter Dan Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against his former employer charging that he was made a scapegoat and wrongfully discharged to placate the Bush White House after CBS 60 Minutes ran an accurate story in the fall of 2004 on the President's avoidance of his military obligations during the Vietnam War. The conventional wisdom at the time was that the broadcast was based on forged documents, but that may not have been the case.

Rightwing Republicans have long hated Rather, whom they view as a liberal enemy dedicated to exposing their bad policies and failed leaders, beginning with President Nixon. Actually, Rather is just a good journalist, one who like many journalists is drawn to stories about little guys afflicted by big guys, who tend to be wealthy and powerful Republicans, and about leaders with feet of clay. It's not liberal or conservative, it's just hardwired into a reporter's operating system.

Rather says he won't take a financial settlement to go away and shut up. His dearest wish is that the lawsuit proceed to trial so his lawyers can take depositions from the CBS brass and possibly from George W. Bush himself. The back story to the lawsuit appears to be that CBS kow-towed to the White House for business reasons and failed to stand behind their reporter. Lawsuits can be dangerous and unpredictable--just ask former President Clinton how that Paula Jones lawsuit went--and both the network and the Bush Administration may be in for some serious trouble.

Posted by David at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone has seen World War II photos like the one above, which was shot in Sicily. If you're a Baby Boomer, you saw them in history books, in Life Magazine, and in the various photo compilation books about World War II. But if the Bush Administration and the Pentagon has its way, you'll almost never see images like this from the Iraq War. Thanks to the National Archives website for this photo.

In a move which is portrayed by the Pentagon as concern for the privacy of wounded soldiers and their families, photographers must now get advance permission from soldiers before photos showing them wounded can be printed in a newspaper or other print or online publication. Photos of dead soldiers may never be printed under Pentagon rules. The photo I always remember from World War II is the one of two dead American soldiers laying on the beach of a Pacific Island.

Yes, it's being portrayed as concern for privacy, blah, blah, blah, but in fact is just the latest, sure-to-fail effort by Bush and company to keep the reality of the Iraq War from the people of America. It's ugly, it violates our oldest and deepest traditions, and is an abomination in a free society. But that's never stopped Bush. Only impeachment will do that. The Pentagon, which is infested with officers who believe the press lost the Vietnam War, is only too willing to give Bush what he wants.

Posted by David at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I never thought I would appreciate Pennsylvania's abysmal open records law, one of the worst in the country, until I read this Associated Press story about how a news website in Pasadena, Calif., is trying to hire a reporter in Bangalore, India, to cover city council doings--from India.

Even when I heard that Reuters had outsourced coverage of certain financial news, especially routine earnings reports, to Bangalore at a fraction of a cost of hiring an American to do it, I rationalized that basic financial news was a special category of journalism, where everybody works off the same disclosure documents. But when you can dump an American and improve your company's bottom line, by golly, a little good old American ingenuity will make it possible to hire an Indian in India to cover municipal government news in your own American city.

It seems that California requires nearly all municipal government doings to be online, often in video form. I once watched a video of Apple CEO Steve Jobs appearing before the city council of Cupertino, Calif., on a zoning issue. The problem in covering city government, though, is understanding the nuances of what you are seeing.

For example, what would happen if a reporter in India witnessed a typical shoving match between two members of Harrisburg City Council, or a fistfight over a parking place? Would they lead with that, or with a debate over the incinerator? Or Mayor Reed's smoking habits? My guess is, horrified by the behavior of our elected officials, they'd write a responsible, dull story about the incinerator, and then we'd never know who punched whom.

But thankfully, most municipalities in Pennsylvania can barely run the copier to print agendas for the meeting, let alone videotape the proceedings and upload them to the Internet. No, sometimes being backward has its advantages. Like keeping your job.

Posted by David at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was long ago, but worth remembering.

On April 27, 1937, German warplanes struck the old Basque town of Guernica. Nazi Germany wanted to help Spanish rightist Catholic strongman Francisco Franco, then engaged in a civil war with the legitimate leftist government of Spain. It was also a perfect opportunity to test out new methods of terror from the air. Guernica was well behind the lines and of little military value. The attack was aimed solely at terrorizing the population.

London Times reporter George Steer was in Guernica when the attack occurred. After confirming it was a German attack--he found the German eagle on some bomb casings--he filed this dispatch by telegram to his editors in London. It is a classic of war reporting, and it also ran in the New York Times. Steer, who was honored posthumously by Guernica last year, did what the best journalists have always done: report on the abuses of the powerful against the weak and helpless.

At a time when extreme ideology and religion are making our world a terrible place, at home and abroad, it is worth re-reading Steer's classic story to remind ourselves what can happen.

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