Why is the AP giving a Warmonger Joe lackey a pass?

Sam Husseini has the goods at Counterpunch about how the Ukrainian missile that landed in Poland became an allegedly Russian missile.

A few key points.

First, this is indeed bad journalism, as Husseini documents. Burn the source, AP, as I tweeted.

Second, in addition to burning the source, does the buck stop there? Did this particular member of the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™inside the Biden Administration act on their own, or does the leaking food chain go higher up? Does it go to Warmonger Joe? How close? And, if it did not loop in Biden, what's he doing about it? 

Second, part 2: Did this Anon Y Mouse coordinate with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or any of his advisors?

Third, per the Internet Archive, which Husseini links, Poland didn't sign off on claims of the provenance of the missile, re allegations it was Russian, until after the warmonger inside Warmonger Joe's administration said something.

Fourth, Responsible Statecraft details how this unspooled and came close to a NATO Article 5 declaration.

Fifth, sadly, per Twitter yesterday, claims that this was not a Russian-made missile are now proven false, as the first pushback gets undermined. I don't think the people I read are official Russian PR Twitterverse, but, they're going to be assumed to be that in the future by a lot of people.

Sixth, with the shit hitting the fan, will the Congressional Progressive Caucus call out the Biden Administration on this, or will it be as cowardly and craven as it was a month ago? (As of the time I wrote this, even just the Fraud, er the Squad, let alone the whole not-so-Progressive Caucus, had said nothing.)

#FakeNews, thy name is Associated Press

Mainstream media has caviled about so-called "fake news" for the last year or so.

Of course, there's a high level of hypocrisy here.

The New York Times ran Judith Miller's fake news, nay, PUSHED it, then, if that contribution to the Iraq War wasn't enough, it spiked for a full year a story about Bush's warrantless snooping, which helped him get re-elected. Not that John Kerry would have done much different on Iraq, and judging by Dear Leader four years later, wouldn't have done much different on spying on Americans.

(And, I haven't even covered the fake news that's increased on the Times' op-ed page with hiring Bret Stephens.)

And, earlier this year, after it decried "fake news," the Washington Post then Tweeted repeatedly for a third-party group called "Prop Or Not," which made the Democratic Party's, and Clintonistas', "Putin Did It" claims about the presidential election read as soberly as wallpaper drying compared to Prop Or Not's McCarthyism — McCarthyism which later turned up to have seeming connections to Ukrainian fascists.

And, now? Per that screenshot up top?

It's the good old Associated Press, with the screenshot coming from this story.

The issue of posting crap from a place like Taboola has become even more decried in the last year or so, even as "digital dimes" in the online ad world become ever more "mobile nickels." (Thanks, Dean Singleton, and the 1990s AP board of directors, who touted the "TV model" of the Internet while ignoring that pay TV channels like HBO had already existed for 15 years or more.) Indeed, Taboola itself is one of the worst of the "sponsored links" folks, and most the news, or "news," you'll find off those links is sketchy at best, skeezy at worst, and almost certainly native advertising in some way, shape or form.

But, that's not all.

AP is writing, and photographing, its own clickbait as well, as shown above.

If American media dies, it will be from self-strangulation in its own crib.

Western wildfires, firsthand

Having coming from California, and firsthand through some smaller wildfires, and ground zero for fighting a biggie, the Rough, I have a new appreciation for the work and cost.

The Rough Fire had a 50-acre command and living center. No, that's not hyperbole.

I was able to leave Sequoia National Park the first night the northern entrance-exit, via Fresno, reopened. Kings Canyon National Park, including the General Grant Grove, remained closed. (I had hoped to go hiking in the actual Kings Canyon portion of the park, but that remained very closed.)

About halfway to Fresno, I drove through the command center for fighting the Rough Fire. It was a vast sprawl of tents (firefighters live in them, and they're usually sleeping in shifts), gear and equipment, vehicles — both personal to drive to a fire site and official firefighting vehicles, supply vehicles for food, fuel, additional firefighting gear and clothes, etc., and more.

And, for the hundreds, even thousands, of actual firefighters and support that are involved with suppression of a Western wildfire that big, it takes 40-50 acres to hold them all.

And, that whole area smelled like a massive barbecue restaurant.

Carpenter ants in Yosemite/Steve Snyder

Later, in Yosemite, the Butte Fire was more knocked down, and I didn't come across too much in the way of smoke problems from it. The Tenaya Fire didn't affect Upper Yosemite too much. But, the National Park Service had a couple of lightning-started fires it had already controlled, and was managing them, as a burn tool, rather than killing them. The carpenter ants at left are grubbing through the Yosemite Fire, near the top of what is putatively Yosemite Creek, but was pretty much dry as a bone. (One pothole a mile east, in the drainage of what NPS maps show as a Yosemite tributary, had a bucket or two of water.)

And, as anybody who follows the West knows, our federal firefighting budget in western lands has skyrocketed. And, they know why. Climate change.

Screw the deniers. And screw the Associated Press who now says it's officially impolite to call them deniers.

The AP tanks on climate change

In the biggest newspaper industry clusterfuck since refusing to use the word "torture" for torture, lest it be accused of taking sides, the Associated Press has said that "climate change skeptic" and "climate change denier" are both OUT.

"Doubter" is the official modifier.

However, this is itself taking the side of deniers.

It's just like not using the word "torture" to describe tortures that military and civilian representatives of the United States committed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And AP knows that. This is an issue of "legacy journalism." Sometimes, using particular language requires "taking sides" in an issue that has largely been settled scientifically (this) or otherwise empirically (torture).

And, if AP doesn't have the balls to do that, it can slide downhill along with individual legacy newspapers and other legacy properties.

And, of course, it has, for 20 years, since good old Dean Singleton was the chairman of AP's board, and started its clusterfuck on the business side. (Deano was a primary touter of the "TV model" of revenue for online newspapers, which of course was horribly wrong, including ignoring that, already in the 1990s, not only had cable TV been around for multiple decades, but pay cable channels like HBO had been around for a decade or more.) And, it's always fun to kick Singleton and his alleged newspaper business genius. (I've met him before.)

Unfortunately, when conservative pundits claiming to be reporters engage in philosobabble over this, the AP will continue to think it has to appease, yes, appease, "both sides."

We don't need an Académie Française; we have the #AP

For the unfamiliar, the Académie Française is the god, guru and guardian of French language usage.

American English users like to laugh at it as just another example of snooty French pretentiousness or something.

But, the reality is that we already have such an organization — it's called the Associated Press. Since its origins, the AP has somehow evolved from a newspaper collective into thinking it

I've been reading multiple newspaper industry blogs, like Ken Doctor, where, in the last week or two, there's been discussion of the Associated Press finally catching up with 600-plus years of common English usage on the use of "over," rather than "more than," in numeric as well as spatial relationships. A mix of vapid worship of the AP, combined with fears that this means "the barbarians are at the gate" with such relaxing of standards, made me realize that the AP is indeed America's Académie Française, or so it and its fanboys like to pretend. Said comments also, per the fact that "over" has been used in such ways since the 1300s, made it clear that the AP and its knee-jerk defenders don't necessarily know the English language as well as they claim.

Maybe the AP can see its way free next to adopting the Oxford comma. Until that happens, the Chicago Manual of Style need not fear any challenge from the AP on proper English usage, especially since Chicago is the style for most serious nonfiction writing, as compared to newspapers and magazines represented by the AP.

Maybe it can also see free to restoring "illegal immigrant," for that matter. I'm not a political conservative, but I do deplore political correctness. When AP banned that phrase from its Stylebook last year, it really lost me.

Beyond that, AP, maybe you can teach your own reporters about the "it's" vs. "its" issue — I've seen that mistake creeping into more and more AP stories.

Besides, as the Wiki link above shows, the AP is ultimately about the style of Ben Franklins more than anybody else. If we are to have an Académie Française, let's use the Chicago Manual, in part because it was started by a nonprofit university press.

#AP becomes an #advertorial sellout as does #TexasTribune

First, I don't like the term "native advertising," precisely because it's NOT pejorative.

So, in this webspace, we still call it "advertorial."

And, that AP in the header is the one and only AP, the Associated Press.

Since former AP CEO Dean Singleton, et al, botched up how much the AP charged news aggregators back in the 1990s, with dreams of a "TV model" for website advertising revenue, it's now trying to make up lost ground with ...

Advertorial from AP!

First, the why:

In an acknowledgment that licensing content has become a disappointing business, the Associated Press will begin introducing native advertising into its stream of news and features on mobile apps and hosted websites next year.

So, AP admits it screwed up.

Next, the what:

Sponsored content will run the gamut, from text to video to photography, though the AP declined to discuss what exactly content will look like except to say that the ads won’t look like AP content. Instead the sponsored content will sit alongside AP material.

Well, we'll see how different it looks when it comes out.

And, we'll also see how this plays out:

“They’re really new and want to be really careful as their credibility is at stake,” the source said. “When someone like the New York Times or AP gets into native, they have more to lose.”

Given that I've seen ever more grammatical errors in AP stories, like increasing "its" vs. "it's" misuse, the AP's credibility has ALREADY gone downhill in the past decade, editorially. And, on the business side, per what I said above, its credibility went downhill proportionally to that of ... Dean Singleton.

Of course, the AP itself has already "lost more" on the ethics side, like when it decided to prostitute itself to celebrities two years ago.

And more of the what:

The ads will not run on the AP’s roster of syndicated sites. Instead, they will only run on AP’s owned and operated sites. Sources say the ads will be priced as a premium ad product and can range anywhere between $3,000 and $25,000. The ad content would be created by outside freelancers, not AP journalists. The AP will be using Polar, a native ad platform, to deliver native ads across its sites.

Not cheap, but premium indeed.

Speaking of, as newspapers tout premium websites, and some, like the Dallas Morning News, tout their affiliated online marketing and branding shops for other businesses, I'm surprised more metro daily newspapers aren't going into their own advertorial "product" creation.

I'm sorry, they ARE. And, an official New York Times affiliate is doing that too ... at that "more to lose" risk.

The Texas Tribune will begin experimenting with sponsored content in 2014 with a site dedicated to both standard and paid opinion pieces.

TribTalk will be the Austin-based news nonprofit’s answer to both the newspaper op-ed section and and the wave of interest in branded advertising — a place for commentary on Texas politics and an opportunity for the Trib to find a new stream of revenue.

Oh, doorknob.

What will happen?

Rich conservative organizations that have been serious astroturfers in years past will now turn their astroturfing campaigns to this new venue.

So, guess what, Texas Trib?

You just lost a lot of "more."

Here's its "what":

As an exercise in sponsored content, what that means is the Tribune might see submissions from organizations like the Beer Alliance of Texas, AT&T, or Texans for Education Reform. But the goal is to round out the site with unpaid submissions from readers, officials, and others, Ramshaw said, and they’ve already reached out to 200 experts and other thinkers around the state to ask if they would be interested in contributing. 

Oh, those "experts and other thinkers" may be unpaid by you, but ... unpaid by anybody? I doubt it.

I just threw up in my mouth, twice, over this one.

Dear Leader spies on the AP

Eric Hitler, er, sorry, Holder! Attorney General
and Lord High Protectors of eroding of our
American civil liberties/SocraticGadfly Photoshop

Yes, you read that right.

Apparently as part of doubling down, or tripling down, on its witch hunt against leakers, The.Most.Transparent.Administration.In,HistoryTM sucked up phone conversations of multiple Associated Press editors and reporters.

Here's the details:

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

Wow. Just wow. More than 100 people may have been spied on. That's pretty "unfettered," eh, Jay Carney, but "unfettered" for snoops and not the press.

And, the AP gets the non-Kumbaya back of the hand from Team Obama. (Per first link, again.)

The government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

Thinking about all this made me wonder if wingnuts aren't Photoshoppping Attorney General Eric Holder to have a much narrower moustache, and renaming him Eric Hitler. Oh, I guess somebody did that!

And now, Dear Leader is saying the White House knows nothing about Holder's snooping. Yeah, right. And, in a later presser, the White House is saying "no comment" because, you know, there's an investigation. And Holder continues to defend this.

Also, in an NPR interview I just heard, the plot thickens. (Also covered in second link, about Carney and his and Holder's pressers.)

Holder said he was interviewed last year by the FBI over leaks issues, so he had his assistant, Jim Cole, handle the AP snooping. But, he says he saw himself one letter Cole sent to AP. Either you recuse yourself or you don't.

The latest? Dear Leader revives calls for a media shield law, which he has never pushed for in the past himself, and which still probably wouldn't put actions like the Justice Department's totally in the out of bounds anyway, the way this administration works.

Here's why:

It is not clear whether such a law would have changed the outcome of the subpoena involving The A.P. But it might have reduced the chances that the Justice Department would have demanded the records in secret, without any advance notice to the news organization, and it may have allowed a judge to review whether the scope of the request was justified by the facts.  

Under the 2009 bill, which was negotiated between the newspaper industry, the White House and the Judiciary Committee, the scope of protection for reporters seeking to shield the identities of their confidential sources or the calling records showing with whom they had communicated would vary according to whether it was a civil case, an ordinary criminal case or a national security case. 

The most protection would be given to civil cases, in which litigants seeking to force reporters to testify or seeking their information would first have to exhaust other means of obtaining the information before making the request. The burden would be on the information seekers to show why their need for the information outweighed the public’s interest in unfettered news gathering. 

Ordinary criminal cases would work in a similar fashion, except the burden would be on the reporter seeking to quash the subpoena to show by a “clear and convincing” standard that the public interest in the free flow of information should prevail over the needs of law enforcement. 

Cases involving the disclosure of classified information — as in the investigation into The A.P.'s disclosure of a failed bomb plot in Yemen last spring — would be even more heavily tilted toward the government. Judges could not quash a subpoena through a balancing test if prosecutors could show that the information sought might help prevent a future terrorist attack or other acts likely to harm national security. 

However, the prospect that a confidential source might leak something else in the future would not be enough to invoke that exception under the 2009 compromise legislation. 

It remains unclear what kind of legal device the Justice Department used to obtain The A.P.'s calling records from phone companies. It is not clear how the standards established by the media shield legislation would apply to administrative subpoenas called “national security letters” that the F.B.I. may issue to obtain customer records from a business without a judge’s permission. 

Hence, the AP would be in limbo, and in the journalism equivalent of a FISA court, the burden would fall in it, not Team Obama.

And, for people who think this is a tempest in a teapot, National Journal says this has implications for the general public.

Also, to guard against the snoops, the New Yorker has launched a new electronic system for leakers.

Meanwhile, the whole Benghazi brouhaha?

Both Tweedledee Congressional Republicans and Tweedledum White House Democrats refuse to address what should be the real brouhaha, and that's that Benghazi site wasn't an embassy or consulate, but was a CIA operation through and through. What was the CIA doing there? Did the terrorists who attacked it have some inkling it was a CIA operation?

These are serious questions not being asked, let alone answered, by either "mainstream" party.

And, on the IRS rifling through Tea Partier type returns? Uhh, in the 1960s, it happened to the Sierra Club, before it ultimately had its nonprofit status jerked. Liberals should always take such things seriously, no matter who the target was. I'm not saying that the Obama Administration was involved on that one, because I know it wasn't. But, Democrats should welcome any reasonable investigation. That said, such investigation is not likely to come from House Republicans.

The AP goes PC about #illegal_immigrants

Ahh, the Associated Press has apparently caved in to "PC" instincts as part of the national background for the current debate on how to reform US immigration law. Yes, I want to address the immigration issue, but ... if you're talking about a person who comes into a country not their home nation, they're an immigrant. If they do so illegally, they're an illegal immigrant. Pure and simple. And, should I have occasion to do further news stories or op-eds on the issue, that's what I'll still use.

I can agree with the last paragraph of the story on the AP's website:

People who were brought into the country as children should not be described as having immigrated illegally. For people granted a temporary right to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, use temporary resident status, with details on the program lower in the story.

True that minor children should not be identified the same way as adults.

Well, I'm betting a lot of people at AP member dailies, and nonmember non-dailies even more, ignore this bit of nonsense.

That said, legally, one could argue that the word "alleged" should be used in front of the phrase, if they've not been convicted of what is a civil, not a criminal, offense. I'm OK with that, pre-civil conviction. But, after that, drop the alleged. They're illegal immigrants, duly found to be so.

And, nobody elected the Associated Press to be the morals or sociological police, per this statement:

And that discussion about labeling people, instead of behavior, led us back to “illegal immigrant” again.

Good fricking doorknob. And, if we're not going to label people in general, have fun writing all sorts of news stories.

Other than that, the AP doubles down on the PC factor by saying we shouldn't use the word "undocumented," either. Here's what it says about that:

(Earlier, they led us to reject descriptions such as “undocumented,” despite ardent support from some quarters, because it is not precise. A person may have plenty of documents, just not the ones required for legal residence.)

In that case, the word "undocumented" shouldn't be used in all sorts of other contexts, either. This is even more stupid than the main "ruling."

Ahh, and here's the real reason why, at least in part.

As always, follow the money:

The updated entry is being added immediately to the AP Stylebook Online and Manual de Estilo Online de la AP, the new Spanish-language Stylebook. 

Geez o fucking pete. If the AP would start charging news aggregators more, it wouldn't have to pander to sell a Spanish stylebook.

Per that end, here's your current AP Board of Directors.

A bit of analysis.

Mary Junck almost ran Lee Enterprises into the ground.

Steve Newhouse is doing everything in the world he can to destroy print newspapers in his chain.

Donna J. Barrett? If the Alabama state pension system weren't a major stakeholder in CNHI (I'm guessing there's legal ramifications), CNHI would and should have been in Chapter 11 years ago.

Jim Monroney finally saw the paywall light, but Belo / The Dallas Morning News still often acts like its shit don't stink. And, how the eff does Belo have a seat on the board separate from the DMN?

Katharine Weymouth? Hey, say no more about the Washington Post, editorially or business-wise.


And how PC is this? Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano is OK with "illegal immigrant."

Is #AP prostituting itself?

Possibly, if you look at this story about what sounds like another cockeyed initiative that shows the Net-stupidity of AP's board vis-a-vis anybody under the age of 35:

The Associated Press said Wednesday that it has entered into a partnership with WhoSay Inc., a company that helps celebrities manage interactions with fans through social networks and traditional media outlets.

The AP will give celebrities who are members of WhoSay the option to provide exclusive, personal photos and videos to the AP for licensing to major media companies worldwide. ...

The company puts celebrities in greater control of —and offers the opportunity to profit from— their photographic lives. It also allows them to spread their social media posts easily across sites like Twitter and Facebook. As an example, (Sofia ) Vergara posted a picture of a family lunch in Miami last month. The photo has a copyright symbol, indicating she owns it and can make money from it if, say, a magazine wants to publish it.

At the least, it sounds like it's cheapening itself. Basically, WhoSay looks like an elitist version of Twitter. Which makes it look very much like AP is doing celebrity butt-kissing. Great. AP's entertainment feed will look like TMZ soon.

And, shock me that Dean Singleton, as ongoing chairman of the board (who should have been canned when MediaNews filed Chapter 11) would think this is a wonderful idea. Hell, look at AP's whole board of directors.

Singleton/MediaNews? Chapter 11. Mary Junck/Lee Enterprises? Chapter 11. Donna J. Barrett/CNHI? Should be in Chapter 11, but, being owned by the Alabama state pension system, probably can't be. Craig A. Dubow/Gannett? Should be. Still doing mandatory furloughs, isn't it? Michael Golden/New York Times? The company that has a fake paywall and lies about it. Paul C. Tash/St. Petersburg Times? Lives on its Poynter reputation. Katharine Weymouth/Washington Post? Would be in Chapter 11 if not for Kaplan. Gary Pruitt/McClatchy? Wouldn't surprise me if it winds up there.

As Michael Hirschorn at The Atlantic notes, it's precisely strategies like this that have made the general public undervalue daily newspapers for years if not decades. Add in the AP board originally selling its content to online aggregators for pennies, and the circle is complete.

AP? As an organization? Ideally, it would up its rates to Google, et al. But, with the degree that both Reuters and Agence-France Presse have expanded in the US in the past decade, that's probably not that realistic.

And, member papers should play Reuters off AP to negotiate prices down, if needed. Bigger chains should have kept more of their DC bureaus open and tried to bargain down AP at the same time.

#AP, new media and job/life segregation

The AP has issued official guidelines about staffers (doesn't just say writers) retweeting tweets they get from people who follow them, etc. I agree with the story, the stuff below is the pull quote:

Everyone who works for AP must be mindful that opinions he or she expresses may damage the AP's reputation as an unbiased source of news. AP employees must refrain from declaring their views on contentious public issues in any public forum and must not take part in demonstrations in support of causes or movements. This includes liking and following pages and groups that are associated with these causes or movements.

Sometimes AP staffers ask if they're free to comment in social media on matters like sports and entertainment. The answer is yes, with a couple of reasonable exceptions:

First, trash-talking about anyone (or team or company or celebrity) reflects badly on staffers and the AP. Assume your tweet will be seen by the target of your comment. The person or organization you're deriding may be one that an AP colleague is trying to develop as a source. Second, if you or your department covers a subject--or you supervise people who do--you have a special obligation to be even-handed in your tweets. Whenever possible, link to AP copy, where we have the space to represent all points of view.

That said, this gets back to the issue of unbiased media, whether such an ideal is achievable, and, even more, the he said/she said of modern mainstream media.

If I'm some far-right think tank (there are no far-left ones of any size), do I have somebody on staff who monitors AP political writers, science writers (climate change), etc., to see who all they retreat, to try to "prove" that they're biased? For all I know, this is already happening.

Beyond that, the third sentence of the first paragraph is ridiculous. It doesn't say such "liking" is limited to a person's professional Facebook account. It's saying that, even online, you have no right to personal opinions as part of a personal life.

That said, the AP has been almost as clueless on such issues as other media umbrellas, member newspapers, etc.

Spot the AP error with the Netanyahu bullying

From an AP story on the U.S. trying to jump-start Middle East peace talks:

Senior U.S. diplomats have returned to the Middle East for an unannounced visit to try to find a way to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that collapsed last year and now face new challenges.


They met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday (among others) and discussed ways to renew peace talks, Israel Radio reported.

In a statement late Wednesday, Netanyahu reiterated his key demands for a resumption of talks. He said the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, accept a demilitarized Palestinian state with an Israeli security presence along its border with Jordan and drop their demand for a return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. He also said all of Jerusalem must remain in Israeli hands.
All are conditions previously rejected by the Palestinians.

Not true on the "recognition" issue. The Palestinian Authority has long recognized Israel's right to exist. Arguably, Hamas does too, with preconditions, some claim.

That said, the other three ideas are simply bullshit. A demilitarized Palestine? That's essentially what Austria-Hungary wanted to make Serbia in 1914. All of Jerusalem Israeli? Not a chance. A "security presence"? Err, that means "an Israeli right to intervene."

Zionism treads on its merry way.

Dear AP: Learn about s-apostrophe

How many Republican governors are there? (Other than beyond the easy joke of "one too many.")

There's more than one, therefore it's the Republican Governors' Association and NOT the Governor's Association, no matter how much Rick Perry would like to be a one-man kingdom.

And, the RGA (sorry, but NOT providing a link) doesn't use an apostrophe at all, so now we have AP both using bad grammar AND making an incorrect citation.

Yeesh.

The AP keeps slipping

Really, AP? Using a photo from AOL serf labor site Patch.com for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's controversial helicopter flight to his son's ballgame?

Really?

Anonymous sourcing gets even more ridiculous

Here's the latest. On political strategy for a presidential race that won't have its first semi-binding vote for nine months .... granting campaign aides anonymity to "leak" about their boss's campaign plans.

Allies and aides who outlined the path that Romney is charting to the nomination spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publically discuss private strategy sessions.

Ridiculous. "Traditional media" gets worse at this all the time.

Oh, and Philip Elliott of the AP, "publically" is NOT a word. "Publicly" is.

Robert Wright jumps the shark again

Wright can be very insightful at times. And, at other times, as in his book "The Evolution of God," he can be stubbornly obtuse.

He's not being quite that bad now, but, his column welcoming the greater invasion of online privacy that HTML5 supposedly will offer is close. Why does he want this? He says greater knowledge of consumers will help newspapers.

Boy, if you think that's all that's needed, you're fucking clueless.

That greater knowledge, except in certain high-rent areas of a small number of newspapers, won't drive up the value of online ads.

Wright halfway admits that himself:

Besides, the idea of a coherent demographic has broken down. Most people who read Slate’s content aren’t regular readers in the sense of going to its home page every day and perusing its table of contents. Lots of them are just link followers; they’re referred to specific Slate articles from, well, God knows where.

Links, RSS, etc.

The only possible way around all this would be if the AP formed its own search engine or something. And, no, the AP ain't that smart.

When I grow up, I want to be a bankrupt media mogul too!

Dean Singleton, the man who built up, then overbuilt, MediaNews, while simultaneously wrecking the Associated Press and undermining its connection to its traditional newspaper members in the Internet Age by letting AP whore after news aggregators, once again shows his moxie, bullshit level, or whatever.

As Media News' parent company (a shell organization, if you will — Dean-o was one of the first media moguls in on that idea) emerges from bankruptcy court, not only does the Deanster get to stay on as CEO of the newly reconstituted Affiliated Media, he does so with a nice $650K base salary, and his MediaNews co-founder apparently getting pushed out the door.

Meanwhile, we have the brown-nosing of billionaire Jon Huntsman Sr., father of the former Utah governor, callling Dean-o "a smart businessman."

Can we change that to "a bamboozling businessman"?

Mark Cuban calls Google a 'vampire' – and he's right

He's also right that newspapers — and, even more, press organizations like AP — largely continue to be run by people who are too inept, timid, and "old thinking" as well as old media in dealing with this.

Cuban has cojones, if nothing else. He made his comments at an online media conference, and as the keynoter, no less.

Not just that, he called newspapers cowards for being afraid to let go of Google traffic even as they remain clueless, in his words, about how to monetize said traffic.

Salon, as part of its own take on his comments, highlights the pull quote:

“Show some balls,” he said. “If you turn your neck to a vampire, they are [going to] bite. But at some point the vampires run out of people’s blood to suck.”

The problem lies not so much with individual papers (though those with their own news services, like NYT, McClatchy, etc., fall under the following finger-pointing) as it does with AP (and Reuters and AFP, to the degree my solution could dodge collusion issues).

AP is not charging Google, MSNBC et al enough.

Pure and simple. If AP would increase its contract charges about six-fold — YES, as in 600 percent — and could do a work-around on the collusion stuff, not only with Reuters, but NYT News Service, MCT, etc., it might be enough to force Google to paywall.

And, yes, I think AP could write its contracts in a way as to do a work-around on the collusion issue while leaving the door open for Reuters et al to cut similar deals.

That said, AP's chairman of the board, Dean Singleton, is so effing clueless about this that he ran his own newspaper company, MediaNews, into the ground of Chapter 11, so what should we really expect?

If nothing else, maybe more newspaper chains will reverse cutting back on DC bureaus, and rebuild them — with money they save from canceling AP contracts.

Calling Jay Rosen and Google's chief ass-kisser Jeff Jarvis. Have you already started attacking Cuban?

MediaNews - The latest old media woes

MediaNews, one of the nation's largest newspaper companies, is also the latest to file Chapter 11. As I e-mailed a friend, Dean Singleton may have done a great job of building up MediaNews, but as chairman of AP, he was pretty clueless about how to monetize online newspapers, and related matters.

Paywalling, for example, is one matter.

Point No. 1, even before Deano became AP's chair? When newspapers said look at the "TV model for online papers, did they forget there was such a thing as cable TV? Let alone premium cable?

Point No. 2, on specific, why didn't AP jack rates for Yahoo, Google, MSN, et al high enough to potentially force them to paywall content, therefore giving member newspapers protection to paywall?

Point No. 3 - As both owner of a major newspaper company and AP chairman, why didn't he recognize that, on this issue, AP and its member newspapers are somewhat at cross interests?

Issue No. 2 is general business management.

Point No. 1? If you're not going to paywall locally generated content as well as AP written news, why do you post it online even before your print newspapers come out? (This is not specific to Singleton, BTW.) If online newspapers aren't "monetized" yet, this is a handout. It's like if Campbell's started selling its soup in plastic bottles as well as cans, and said that because the plastic bottles were made more quickly, it would give them away for free.

Anyway, that's a few thoughts for now.

No, newspapers aren’t dead yet, and they probably aren’t that close

Which is why I get frustrated by people both well-meaning and intelligent who want to bury newspapers, especially the hardcopy versions thereof.

First, yes, newspaper readership has been stagnant since what, the early 1960s? But, if you throw out illegal immigration, and even a fair chunk of first-generation legal immigrants, as a percentage of the populace, readership didn’t decline that much until the age of the Internet.

Second, half of the revenue decline of the last 2-3 years is due to the recession, pure and simple. Much of the ad losses will bounce back, except for some car and some real estate dinero.

More proof that a fair part of what does ail newspapers is recession-related? The rumors of an impending CBS bankruptcy, whether true or not — sparked by CBS’s ad sales dropoff.

That said, it is also frustrating when someone talks more specifically about the pending death of *newspapers,* gets Tweeted the CBS link above, and claims that this is irrelevant to the question of newspaper demise or not.

Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt doesn’t know what he’s talking about. First of all, Herr Freeloader (albeit abetted by the clueless chairman of the AP, Dean Singleton), there’s a difference between “news” and “information.” And, except when Google links to AP, Reuters or AFP news stories, you provide information, not news.

(Also, side note to Schmidt: Stop lying about how much China censors the Internet and how much you self-censor Google there. That alone makes the rest of your claims less believable.

And, while you’re at it, tell us if Jeff Jarvis gets paid a retainer by you.)

And, none of this mentions Google becoming the new Microslob, a point I've blogged about before.

Now, back to why newspapers are still going to be around.

Especially in smaller markets, businesses need a vehicle for advertising. Radio usually doesn’t cut it, and TV is too expensive for too many local advertisers.

That leaves a conventional newspaper vs. a shopper.

Shoppers are all ads; the worse aren’t even fully disambiguated by type of product, etc.

Newspapers have style and design, and news, which people want to read about local and regional events, to set off ads.

More proof that newspapers aren’t so bad off? The New York Times has plans to start a Chicago regional issue and maybe others.

Online ads? Thanks to Herr Schmidt, the margin on them is sinking out of sight, and newspapers are finally wising up that advertising-only is NOT a profit angle for online newspapers. Add in the fact that between hosts files, ad blockers, etc., that those in the know can block most online ads, and that there’s also a fine, and usually violently crossed, border between “creative” and “annoying” with online ads, and they don’t work for most advertisers, either.

Now, what are newspapers doing WRONG?

Plenty. Details after the jump.


One, most still don’t have paywalls, though more are talking about them again. And, those that are going beyond talk are often pricing them high, to which I say GOOD! Casual readers can go away. Real ones will pay for online-only, or else will buy a hardcopy subscription with a free online one with that.

Two, it’s possible that, at all but the biggest dailies, a lot of ad salespeople still don’t know how to sell online ads. It’s wholly different. At the minimum, instead of taking a couple of pages of spec sheets, if you want to show something to a customer, you have to take a laptop computer. And, you have to be “Internet intuitive” in some way.

Three, though, is that many newspaper corporations/execs have been incompetent, mainly in running up massive debt. That debt came from buying other overvalued newspapers 7-10 years ago, buying back their own then-overvalued stock, etc. Per the lines of pre-deregulation utilities, they need to accept smaller profit margins, look for “steadiness,” stop trying to buy each other out, and go from there.

That said, even with some of these chains in Chapter 11, let’s note that almost all individual daily papers in the U.S. still have decent, or better, profit margins. And, with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune coming out of Chapter 11 pretty decently on its debt restructuring, if its new management (unfortunately, primarily from LBOs) remembers the points I just stressed, it should do OK in the future.

Four, tying points two and three immediately above together, many of those same CEOs are clueless, still, about how the Net likely never will be monetized for newspapers on an ads-only basis. In hardcopy, for pay newspapers, circulation traditionally paid one-quarter the freight. Why, instead of a TV model, didn’t newspapers take their own financial model to the Net in the start?


Five, is it too late today to install a paywall? No. First, see the AJR column I linked. Second, if Dean Singleton had more brains, he would implement mandatory paywalls for AP content as part of new AP content package contracts.

He would then, instead of haggling with Google about a few dinky ads, would quadruple or quintuple the rates AP charges it, and have an exclusivity sidebar in there which would force Google to treat AFP and Reuters the same to avoid the freeloader problem.

The price would be set so high that, even after negotiated downward, Google couldn’t afford to cover it with ads alone, unless it wanted to do so as a major loss leader. In other words, if Dean-o had brains, he would force Google, Yahoo and MSN to paywall also.

But, while he may have built MediaNews into an empire, I’ve never accused Dean Singleton of having brains while running the AP.

As for online-only newspapers, if they don’t paywall, they have to depend on donations from individuals, non-profit foundations, or both. The latter puts you at the whim of non-profit interests, or potentially so. The former has worked for a couple of blogs that have expanded into reporting, like Talking Points Memo, but only (so far) for narrow, focused political news. Ditto for online papers.

Will people donate for bonus local sports coverage? Hell, no, is my intuitive answer. Ditto for feature stories. Will they donate for something as mundane as community calendar listings?

So, online newspapers, without paywalls, will simply balkanize the situation further.

(Note: This paywall issue and related parts will be posted again, separately.)

Dean Singleton looks at paywall model?

At least some non-daily newspapers owned by MediaNews are putting their content behind a subscription wall. You can do that with non-AP content, which, of course, is the basis of non-daily newspapers.

Even with them, it’s a bit behind the curve.

Next, will Dean-o try to figure out a way to do this with the Associated Press?