The Hulk vs. Ed Norton

Will the Hulk survive?

Less news at Newsweek

It's not only newspapers.

According to Radar Magazine, 111 news and business staffers at Newsweek agreed to take buyouts last week:

The departure of so many senior staffers at once—all of them are expected to be gone by the end of this year—will mean the loss of much of the magazine's institutional memory, as well as many of its most talented writers and editors. All of the chief researchers are also leaving, including Nancy Stadtman, Ray Sawhill and Ray Anello, and their positions may be eliminated.

Superstars Howard Fineman and Jonathan Alter will stay.

Briefly

Muslims overtake Catholics

The Texas three-step

America dumbs down

"Misconstrued"

The New York Times has this correction today:

Editors' Note

An article on March 16 profiling three sex workers in the wake of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation after revelations that he patronized prostitutes misconstrued how two of the women, identified by the pseudonyms Faith O’Donnell and Sally Anderson, said they earned a living. The resulting misrepresentation of the two women’s work included a headline that referred to them as “high-priced call girls” and a paragraph that said they practiced “the 21st-century version of the oldest profession.”

The reporter who interviewed them, one of two who worked on the article, never explicitly asked the women whether they traded sex for money or were prostitutes, call girls or escorts; he used the term “sex workers,” a term they used themselves that describes strippers and lap dancers as well as prostitutes. Though Ms. Anderson advertises herself as a “dominatrix with a holistic approach,” he did not ask her whether that meant she also performed sex acts for money, nor did he ask Ms. O’Donnell what her work actually was before characterizing it. He and the editors should have explored whether he had determined these things precisely.

After the article was published, both women contacted The Times and said they do not perform sex for money; Ms. O’Donnell refused to be specific about what she does.

Because of an editing error, the article misstated the political work of the New York chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, a group in which Ms. Anderson is active; it advocates the decriminalization of prostitution, not its legalization, arguing that sex work should be regulated through labor law like other jobs but not subject to additional restrictions. Another editing error changed the meaning of Ms. Anderson’s observation that “no one” had come to an event she had helped plan to highlight difficulties faced by prostitutes; Ms. Anderson meant that no journalists had attended.

Fit the cog

Angryjournalist.com tells journalism graduates to get over newspaper writing and get Web skills. Most of the advice is sensible and practical and reflects the reality that knowing how to get the story - and how to get the story right - isn't what really matters most to most newspapers anymore.

Newsrooms discovering the Internet is like cavemen discovering fire. Maybe once we master this tool we can then start talking about how best to use it for the sake of good journalism. That's the discussion that we should be having.

Tales from the Sun

Sex, drugs and plagiarism at the San Bernardino Sun.

Paul Oberjuerge is unpacking 31+ years of memories in what he promises to be an ongoing series of posts (preparing for a book, maybe?) about his time at the paper.

After opening with a story of two hookers and the company credit card, Oberjuerge swiftly moves through a series of sordid, but anonymous, tales, with such tantalizing titles as "Coked up on the job," "The Streakers," "Sex in the Newsroom," and "The Torrid Hookup." These brief glimpses aren't really that wild in context. They read more like an outline for a naughty British sitcom than scenes of Roman debauchery.

Oberjuerge is at his best when he provides a setting, offering a few details about this distant time in San Berdoo, when JoJos and Bobby McGees and Benedictine & Brandy shots were as acceptable as Chevy vans and water beds; when the newsroom was more Fritz the Cat than Dilbert.

Says Oberjuerge: We tell these stories to the young people, and some seem almost wistful because most newsrooms have turned into relentlessly puritanical, uptight places — traveling 180 degrees in the matter of a generation or two.

Business is going to hell

The Economist lays out some dire predictions about the American economy:

CAPITALISM without bankruptcy, it is said, is like Christianity without hell. With recession looming, the air in America's bankruptcy courts is thick with brimstone and the coals are being heated in readiness for the many sad souls whose sin was to borrow too much. After several heavenly years, in which bankruptcies fell to record lows, going bust is back. How bad will things get?

Skinning rabbits

It's been three weeks since the LANGland layoffs and Paul Oberjuerge (cut from the San Bernardino Sun) is starting to assess his future job prospects.

He hasn't found anything yet, but he has reached a few conclusions:

...I do have an increasing sense that for better or worse, I’m done with print journalism. Or it’s done with me. The industry is in collapse. I’m like a steel worker in Allentown in the 1970s; my industry is going bust. I may have to accept that the rest of my working life I will be like most people: Working at a job I probably don’t love just to make ends meet. I know those are the sorts of “lives of quiet desperation” most people lead, so it can be done.

Inverted pyramid scheme

The numbers are out and, well, they're not good. The largest drop in advertising revenue in nearly 60 years, reports Editor and Publisher:

According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 -- the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

Figure in online ads and the numbers improve only slightly:

Total advertising revenue in 2007 -- including online revenue -- decreased 7.9% to $45.3 billion compared to the prior year.

The CEO of the Newspaper Association of America offers these comforting words.

"Even with the near-term challenges posed to print media by a more fragmented information environment and the economic headwinds facing all advertising media, newspapers publishers are continuing to drive strong revenue growth from their increasingly robust Web platforms," John Sturm, president and CEO of the NAA, said in a statement.

If recent history is any guide, most newspaper owners will react to these numbers by cutting staff and lowering quality in the hopes they can turn this dangerous trend around.

Did you hear the one about Tupac and P. Diddy? *(updated)

By now you've already heard about the big apology that ran on the front page of the Los Angeles Times today. I'd have posted something about it earlier but I was busy working on this.

Rather than rehash what has already been done here, here and here, I'll just point out that we did a segment on the fraudulent story as part of tonight's Which Way, LA?

The guests are Joseph Jesselli, the Smoking Gun reporter who debunked the story, NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, and USC professor of critical studies Todd Boyd.

*Plenty seems to have gone wrong before the Tupac/Combs story hit on March 17, but a breakdown in editorial oversight seems to be at the heart of it. Consider these few grafs from James Rainey's initial investigation into the investigation:

Other investigative stories published by The Times in recent years have in some cases received the scrutiny of at least one more editor and often of the managing editor or editor of the newspaper. The Shakur piece did not receive that many layers of review.

Bob Steele, a journalism values scholar at the Poynter Institute, said he would not pass judgment on The Times' editing process.

"But any time you have a substantive investigative project you need multiple levels of quality control," Steele said. "You need contrarians within the organization who are going to be very skeptical."

Now consider what cost-cutting newspapers have done with their contrarians in recent years.

The Times story also has a "Love and Consequences" vibe that should have raised alarm bells, and triggered a more thorough review. Slate's Jack Shafer helps make the point at the end of his post-mortem piece:

Seeing as the Smoking Gun broke the story, we should pay extra attention to the wisdom of its editor, William Bastone. The story simply violated his investigative instincts. "The whole thing did not pass the smell test," he told the New York Times. "Here you have this white teenager from Boynton Beach, Fla., who was in the middle of all these events and no one has ever heard of him."

Win a Date with Obama

You don't have to be well connected, you don't have to be rich, but you do need to make a donation if you want to win a date with America's newest BFF, Barack Obama.

Just back from a jaunt in the Virgin Islands, he's tanned, he's rested and he's ready to have that conversation on race relations with you and four of your closest friends over dinner. Don't worry, he'll pick up the check.

From the campaign site: Make a donation in any amount between now and 11:59 pm EDT on Monday, March 31st, and you could join Barack and three other supporters for an intimate dinner for five.

Hurry up. He's waiting.

Press-Telegram protests

More than 30 Long Beach Press-Telegram employees rallied outside of their offices Monday, calling for better pay and decrying recent layoffs. They had some company.

Staff writer Paul Eakins reports: Councilwomen Bonnie Lowenthal and Tonia Reyes Uranga, who are both candidates for the 54th Assembly District and have strong labor backing, walked with the marchers, who carried signs and chanted slogans. Mayor Bob Foster also appeared briefly at the rally, but he didn't march.

snip

"We want our Press-Telegram healthy, we want our Press-Telegram here, and we want to make sure that our dollars go to making sure that they have a competent presence in Long Beach," Uranga said Monday.

So, the newsroom employees have found it easier to make common cause with the officials they cover than with their own bosses? Singleton, you have a problem.

Draining the talent pool

The troubles at the MediaNews newspapers might seem far away if you're not employed by one. But author and former Long Beach Press-Telegram reporter Dennis McDougal makes the point that bad news floats upstream:

Company founder, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive William Dean Singleton has left no doubt about what's important to him in what remains of U.S. daily journalism -- profit margins. In relentlessly cutting "news" from newspapers to maintain profits, he and many of his peers have helped transform an industry. Journalists like Leppard are bought out or laid off, limiting -- or even eliminating -- the newsroom opportunities for mentoring that transforms youthful ambition into thoughtful journalism. The fact that the mistakes of reporters make it into print more frequently these days, and that newspapers increasingly shy away from investigative stories, can be traced to the slash-and-shrink policies of chief executives who vanquish veterans and intimidate greenhorns, all the while adding more "failing" newspapers to their portfolios.

Pair that with the pessimistic assessment of newspaper analyst John Morton, when asked whether newspapers can recover from their current economic woes.

“The industry is meeting these challenges by cutting, by reducing the news hole and the people who fill it,” he said.

“Newspapers have lived through recessions before and come back strong,” he added. “My worry is that when things do turn around, they will be coming back in an environment that is more competitive than ever because of the Internet, and that after all these cuts, they will have less stature, less product quality and less talent — all of the things that they need to compete."

The fate of the American newspaper

Eric Alterman writes in the New Yorker about failing newspapers and what might come next.

Will your cell phone dream of electric sheep?

With the advent of the iPhone, cell phones (in America) are finally stepping into the 21st century. This means a whole new generation of programming to turn these devices into something useful. The sale of the airwaves to Verizon and AT&T was a first step.

Next come the new platforms. Some say Google's open-source Android will do for cell phones what Windows did for personal computers.

Newspaper owners should be paying close attention to all of this.

In case you lost track

The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq is 3,996.

Prosecuting liars *(updated), **(updated again)

Xavier Alvarez did not win the Congressional Medal of Valor back in 1987 and he was never in the Marines. He lied about both at a meeting of the Claremont-based Three Valleys Municipal Water District Board of Directors last summer - Alvarez was elected to the board in 2006.

Now he's charged with violating a federal law, the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, and faces jail time and a hefty fine.

Alvarez may be a fool. Alvarez may be a liar. He should probably resign or be recalled. But I don't think he should be prosecuted.

First off, the Stolen Valor Act seems a highly problematic law to me. Its stated purpose is "to protect the reputation and meaning of military decorations and medals." However noble the cause might appear, I cannot see how Congress can justify piercing the First Amendment to protect the "reputation and meaning" of inanimate objects.

As for protecting the reputation of those who have won military medals and decorations, they don't need legislation to do that.

The only person tarnished by Alvarez's lie is Alvarez. He has no power to diminish the sacrifices of real Medal of Honor winners. However, we risk sullying the very freedoms they fought for if we prosecute him on these constitutionally questionable grounds.

*Blogger calwatch left a comment saying the prosecutors might charge Alvarez with fraud for lying to Pomona Mayor Norma Torres about his medal: On the other hand, the US Attorney argues in its response that it was fraud, not protecting speech, when Alvarez claimed that he had a medal. If you read the court brief filed, the US Attorney is going to try to prove that Norma [Torres] wouldn't have endorsed Alvarez had she known Alvarez never received a medal. Thus, the endorsement was given on false pretenses. What you are saying is that the only recourse voters have is to recall him and sue him for fraud. While I might enjoy the idea of forcing Alvarez into bankruptcy, it's not cost effective to enforce these sort of egregious statements solely via the civil courts. Hence the law.

There are times when lying rises to the level of a crime. Lying under oath seems the clearest example. Lying is also at the heart of criminal fraud cases, but the lie has to result in some unlawful gain. Lying to gain someone's endorsement, while shady, doesn't strike me as criminal.

For this to work, the prosecution would have to prove Torres offered her endorsement solely on the basis of Alvarez's statement that he had won a medal. I doubt that's true. Yet even if that could be proved, what material damage was done? If she gave him a campaign contribution that might - might - rise to the level of an unlawful gain. But, again, I don't think things are so clear in political circles, where true motives are near impossible to uncover.

I'd guess the fraud argument is simply an extension of the Stolen Valor Act allegation, with the prosecution trying to prove Alvarez had a clear intent in misrepresenting himself. Once again, though, the crime seems to rely on a theory that the government has a duty to protect reputations and guard against dishonest political speech. My, that's a slippery slope.

As inconvenient and inefficient as it might be, I think voters do have a responsibility to push a recall if they're outraged at Alvarez's actions. We can't expect the criminal courts to undo bad elections or fix our failures to properly vet a candidate. I know how little attention is given to water boards and their elections, and maybe this situation could serve as an object lesson about the corruption that can take hold when the watchdogs aren't really watching.

(Correction: I had the wrong last name for Pomona's mayor. Its Norma Torres, not Lopez)

**Claremont Buzz, who's been all over the Alvarez case, posts this comment: The fraud that can be prosecuted is Alvarez's including his ex-wife as a spouse on his water board's medical benefit plan. He has admitted to doing this, and the amount in benefits to the ex-wife was several thousand dollars, according to the Daily Bulletin. This seems pretty clear cut - grand theft and fraud - and could be charged locally. Three Valleys was in contact with the LA District Attorney's Public Integrity Unit about this, but we've heard nothing recently.

It may be that the Public Integrity Division is waiting for the Feds to complete their work. The PID is known to be, um, patient.

They come and they go

Editor & Publisher reports that the top 30 newspaper Web sites saw the total number of visits rise in February when compared with February 2007, but the average time per person spent reading the sites dropped - sometimes dramatically.

The Los Angeles Times saw the average time slip from 12 minutes to 7 minutes. Readers of The Boston Globe's Boston.com cut their grazing time from an average of 21 minutes to 8 minutes.

The numbers are probably skewed by the fact that millions of readers skipped around between sites to see what they had to say about various presidential contests. However, this news is likely to feed the trend of appetizer journalism, which is trying to tap into the shorter attention spans of finicky readers.

News sites are being retooled to fit this distraction model, boosting content that can be consumed quickly from a portable device or while not working at work. I just hope it doesn't come at the expense of everything else.

Local newspapers, already faced with limited resources, are finding it difficult to strike a balance between hits-based journalism (anything that makes 'em click) and old-style reporting. When your budget is falling, it's tough to justify full-menu service.

Of course, these are the same market forces that led to an explosion in fast food.

A mythic race

Sporting a new beard, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a native of Pasadena, endorsed Barack Obama for president today. It was welcome news for Obama, who desperately needed the beasts in cable television to find something to feed on other than his old pastor's sermons. (The passport breaches uncovered by the Washington Times didn't hurt either.)

But does the Richardson endorsement matter? I don't ask as a way to evaluate Richardson's influence in Democratic politics. I ask as a way to evaluate whether there is even a Democratic primary battle going on anymore.

The boys at Politico call it the Clinton myth.

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

snip

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.
In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

At what point does this assessment start to become conventional wisdom within the party? At what point does the Clinton camp hang it up?

The big breakup

Tribune Company owner Sam Zell hinted last week he might sell off company assets and now, according to the New York Times, three media moguls are angling to buy Newsday.

News of a possible sale comes as Zell ponders the ugly year he's had at the helm of his media empire.

From the Times: Tribune made public its 2007 results Thursday, showing why it is eager to unload assets. The company, which has been controlled by Samuel Zell, the Chicago real estate magnate, since the end of last year, reported a loss of $78.8 million for the fourth quarter, compared with a $239 million profit in the year-earlier quarter. For the full year, it reported a profit of $86.9 million, down from $594 million.

Maybe it was 3 a.m.?

When they include your name in the correction, it's likely you're getting fired.

At least that's my best guess as to the fate of poor Tribune-Chronicle reporter John Goodall, who seems to have confused Hillary Wicai Viers, a communications director for Ohio Rep. Charlie Wilson, with Hillary Clinton, a candidate for president.

My question: Who the fuck edited the story?

As embarrassing as this episode might have been, the paper had the foresight to include a link at the bottom of the page asking readers to "Subscribe to the Tribune Chronicle."

Ferraro vs. Obama, Round II (maybe III)

In interview today with the Daily Breeze, Geraldine Ferraro says Barack Obama was wrong to draw a parallel between her comments earlier this month and those of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in a speech Obama gave Tuesday.

Said Ferraro: "To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable. He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred."

Ferraro, a former vice-presidential candidate and Hillary Clinton supporter, told the paper in early March that Obama only made it this far in the race because he is black. She resigned as an adviser to Clinton's campaign shortly afterward.

New face at MediaNews

Oliver Knowlton has joined the management team at MediaNews Group. From the company's press release (via Romenesko):

Knowlton comes to MediaNews Group after a successful twenty five year career at Time, Inc., most recently as General Manager of the Sports Illustrated franchise, including SI Digital properties. Knowlton was instrumental in the development of Time’s early internet strategies in the late 1990’s, eventually running SI.com before moving into the roll of General Manager of the entire Sports Illustrated franchise.

Knowlton will join MediaNews President Joseph Lodovic, Executive Vice President Mark Winkler, and CEO Dean Singleton "to form the Office of the Chairman, whose responsibilities will be to provide strategic direction and operational oversight to the Company."

Knowlton likes to run marathons and keep to schedule, according to a 1991 profile in Time magazine.

The Ashley Speech*

How will history judge Barack Obama's speech today on race relations in the United States? How will voters?

Had Obama delivered it four months ago, it might have been just another speech - good or bad, maddening or insightful, depending on your political leanings and tastes. But the context here is different. The words were being spoken by a leading candidate for president.

So far, I've only read a few analysis pieces. Some, like this one from Roger Simon at Politico, seem bogged down in a fundamental misreading of the speech. To think it was an attempt to explain a wrongheaded relationship or make amends to those who might have been offended is to focus on the trees.

Simon says: Where it was weakest was in explaining the very reason for the speech: how the inflammatory, even repugnant, comments of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are understandable.

That may be what some people wanted from Obama, but that clearly wasn't what he was trying to do. Instead, Obama opened the window on racial division in America and showed where Wright fits in. He played the ultimately race card and dared his critics and the media to oversimplify the issue, and dared everyone else to acknowledge the Wright inside themselves.

James Carney at Time magazine seems to get it. Here's his long first graf (remember when ledes had space to run, like mustangs on the plains...):

Politicians don't give speeches like the one Barack Obama delivered this morning at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Certainly presidential candidates facing the biggest crisis of their campaigns don't. At moments like these — when circumstances force them to confront and try to defuse a problem that threatens to undermine their campaigns — politicians routinely seek to clarify, diminish and then dispose of the problem. They play down the conflict, whatever it is, then attempt to cut themselves off from it and move on, hoping the media and electorate will do the same. What they don't do is give a speech analyzing the problem and telling Americans that it's actually more complicated than what they believed. They manifestly do not denounce the offensive comments that stirred up the trouble to begin with and then tell Americans to grow up and deal with the fact that those same remarks, however wrong and offensive, are an elemental part of who they are, and who we are.

Indeed. The speech is more than unconventional. It's shockingly different, unlike anything we've seen since America got eaten by the television set. There are no easy bites for the nightly news, no sections that can stand alone on YouTube.

Obama also did something I've never seen a politician do before, regardless of their race. He gave voice to the lingering bitterness and fear that plagues white America, without condemnation or condescension:

Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

For four years I covered Pasadena as a reporter. It's a city where wealthier whites long ago separated themselves from poorer blacks and where poorer blacks increasingly feel threatened by a growing Latino community. Race dominates much of Pasadena's civic life. It's no different than a lot of towns. When I read this speech, I thought about the complex web that links all of these people together, but often leaves them feeling stuck.

But, again, the question for Obama is whether this was good politics. I'm anxious to see.

*Another thought, now that I've read more dissections of the dissections of the speech. I think that the speech will work as intended, over time. It is a sunshine disinfectant, rather than chlorine. In the short run, the conservative gaggle will continue hammering on Wright and flame worries that Obama is a Black Manchurian Candidate just waiting to visit his radical black ideas on America once he's elected. But I think Obama succeeded in articulating something true about our culture, and the truth will linger on longer than the Wright controversy. Maybe the speech isn't enough to win him Pennsylvania, but it will staunch the white-flight from his base of support. Most importantly, it will influence the superdelegates, who are the only thing standing between Obama and the Democratic nomination.

The Newhouse way

Another way to stay in print journalism might be to work for Newhouse, which owns the Oregonian and Times-Picayune, among other papers. From a story in the New York Post:

Donald Newhouse, the big boss of all the newspapers controlled by parent company Advance Publications, told Media Ink that the Star-Ledger newsroom will be spared in the latest downsizing.

"There will be none in the newsroom," said Newhouse.

One reason for that is that the Newhouse family long ago offered lifetime guarantees that spare editorial workers at its daily newspapers from cutbacks for economic reasons - provided the journalists never let the union inside the newsroom door.

Value of the product

The New York Times would sell the Boston Globe if only the paper was worth the effort.

Sam Zell is growing disenchanted with his purchase of Tribune Company, and hints at selling off assets: "The news business is something worse than horrible," Zell said. "If that's the future, we don't have much of a future."

Meanwhile, the Tribune Company's new innovation chief wants to turn newspapers into the modern-day version of Top 40 radio, with some baseball metaphors thrown in for good measure: If we can morph the Soul of Dylan...with the innovation of Apple and the eccentric-all-the-way-to-the-bank of Bill Veeck, the WORLD will be a better place. WE have that opportunity. (Read the entire memo here.)

Paul Oberjuerge offers some advice

Recently downsized, former San Bernardino Sun sports columnist Paul Oberjuerge has compiled a Top 10 list of things to do - and not to do - if you want to stay employed in the ever-shrinking world of print journalism.

A few of the suggestions: embrace the web, chase bylines, suck up and slim down.

Number 4: Stop whining. Journalism is a business notorious for its contrary and crabby people, for second-guessers and “that’s not how we’ve done it before” grousers. Five years ago you might have been overlooked as the Charming Curmudgeon. Now, you’re the Negative Nellie. When the call comes down to trash another 10 percent of the newsroom, don’t be the relentless kvetcher who immediately pops into the editor’s mind. Oh, and remember, “second-guessing” now consists of anything other than instant acceptance.

Number 10: Achieve excellence. Five years ago I would have listed this first. Now, it barely makes the list. Competence is a defense, but it no longer is first, second, third or ninth. But, all things being equal, if the cut is between you and someone else who is just as fat and bitchy as you are … the person who is better at their job will survive. (Till next time.)

Obama blogs

Barack Obama gives Rev. Jeremiah Wright the old heave-ho.

The Democratic campaign has hit the Horse Latitudes and now is as good a time as any to throw unnecessary baggage over the side. Still, a bad news cycle for Obama, who also had to answer more questions about Tony Rezko.

The news business (and the business of self-promotion)

Long before the Singleton strip mining got underway last week, getting my little blog some attention, I've been trying to wrap my mind around the seemingly intractable problem of saving the newspaper business.

The phrase "newspaper business" captures the conflict we face. Some see the newspaper as a business that creates a product for sale. Others see the newspaper as a civic function that relies on the profits taken from an ancillary business (ads). As revenues dip and further layoffs loom, the former view has subsumed the latter one.

Which is why I've argued that we should stop looking at the newspaper as a single entity that needs saving and instead look at its parts. What does a newsroom need to do to survive? What ancillary businesses should a newsroom associate itself with to support its mission?

Chris O'Brien of the Mercury News has a column related to this at MediaShift Idea Lab. Here's a portion of that:

I see tremendous energy going in to breaking new ground in gathering news, telling stories, and creating community. What I don't see is an equivalent amount of innovation occurring around the business models that will support journalism going forward. What I tend to see, over and over, is people experimenting wildly on the content side, and then falling back on the same old business model: Selling ads.

This model is dying.

I'm not sure the model is dying, but I am sure the model needs to change.

Which leads me to my other purpose today: self-promotion.

In case anyone is interested, I've written about turning local news outlets into aggregators of community journalism here, here and here. I've written about the systemic problems newspapers face here, and the corporatizing of the newsroom here. I railed against convergence theory here. I've ranted about the bastards here and here, and I've given a more reasoned argument here.

Portantino punished

Looks like I got it wrong when I predicted Anthony Portantino, the freshman Democratic assemblyman from La Canada Flintridge, might actually benefit from his short-lived run to become Assembly Speaker.

According to Shane Goldmacher at the Sacramento Bee, Portantino was stripped of his chairmanship on the Assembly Higher Education Committee on Thursday. He apparently angered Speaker Fabian Nunez - who is being termed out - by launching his bid for the leadership post. That seems to have screwed up Nunez's plans to hand the reins to Speaker-elect Karen Bass.

Sometimes these rebukes are temporary in nature, aimed at sending a message to the rank and file. We'll how long Portantino is made to stand in the corner.

Layoffs at the Washington Post?

The Washington Post is offering buyouts to an untold number of newsroom employees - I've heard estimates of between 60 and 80, but haven't confirmed the number.

If the buyouts don't do the trick, layoffs are possible.

The Post's main competitor, the New York Times, is trying to trim 100 newsroom employees through a buyout plan of its own.

Take the news out, put the new in*

In the wake of last week's staff cuts, top editors at the newly dubbed Inland Division newspapers have reportedly been telling reporters that, as they look toward the future, they don't have all the answers.

Bosses usually don't profess ignorance without a reason, so I wondered what was really going on. Then I read about the NewPaper Project.

Kevin Keane, executive editor of BANG-EB (Singleton's East Bay papers), sent out a long memo to his employees today asking them to help figure out how to capitalize on their streamlined operations. The project, he says, is "a comprehensive examination of the newsgathering priorities for Bay Area News Group - East Bay, both now and in the future."

At the outset, Keane does his best to navigate around the "do more with less" pitfall:

I will not ask you to do more with less. But I will ask you to challenge your assumptions on what readers expect of us and how to best use our time. You should consider the NewPaper Project a unique opportunity to re-examine everything, from what we find front-page worthy to how our news pages are designed and presented. Ask yourself how you would put together a locally focused news operation of our breadth and size if you were to start one from scratch.

Keane then asks a few questions to get the conversation started:

How, then, do we continue to cover the stories that readers have come to expect of us, and how do we respond to the challenges � ... Does community journalism hold the key, or do we develop a more professionally trained and reliable network of freelancers? If so, how do we best use our fulltime staff? What are our story priorities? And how should content be shared across mastheads?

Responding to the challenges means choosing between citizen journalists and freelancers? That's a radical move, if true.

A few more questions:

Perhaps we should shrink our coverage area and concentrate on what we know we can still cover well given the size of our staff. Or form regional partnerships with other media. With pressure to reduce newsprint consumption, should we combine sections on certain days? How should our papers be organized and zoned? And what elements of design should we embrace?

I'd guess that means they will form regional partnerships, combine sections on certain days, zone the fewest number of pages as possible. But that's just a guess.

Keane also includes this admonition:

We also don't want to give unfair advantage to our media competitors. So please respect your colleagues and keep all discussions confidential to allow for the free-flow of ideas and debate.

The memo has a few good suggestions, although I'm skeptical of any strategy that encourages reporters to think of ways to boost revenues or demands that they keep information confidential for the good of the corporation.

Thoughts?

*updated

Anatomy of a take down

The same NY(T) Observer that gave us the most detailed sketch of how the New York Times ended up with its flawed expose of Republican presidential candidate John McCain now has the insider scoop on how the NYT got the goods on soon-to-be-former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Something to cry in

The Society of Professional Journalists has a mixer scheduled for March 26 (that's a Wednesday) at the Redwood Bar and Grill in downtown L.A. Cal State Fullerton political science prof Raphael Sonnenshein is the guest speaker.

Festivities get underway at 6:30 p.m., and the SPJers have extended a special invitation to anyone recently laid off by LANG:

*** SPJ-LA Special – For anyone who was let go from the Los Angeles Newspaper Group this past month, arrive before 7 p.m. and we'll buy you ONE FREE BEER. ***

Oh, Mann*

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer will resign.

(from yesterday)

I know it's a day old story, but I'd be remiss if I didn't have at least one link to a story about the Spitzer scandal.

Here's another one.

*updated

More from Wes Hughes

In an earlier post, I quoted liberally from a comment laid-off San Bernardino Sun columnist Wes Hughes left on this blog.

Now, LA Observed has his final, unpublished - and spiked - column, along with a plea he made to Stanford President John Hennessy, asking that his university take the demise of newspaper journalism as seriously as it takes global warming. An excerpt follows (or read the whole thing here):

My request is that Stanford take on the problem of how to preserve public and investigative journalism with the same seriousness academia addressed global warming, because it is that desperate. Put some of Stanford’s best minds to work on it, create a think tank, talk to everybody but be wary when you talk to publishers and top editors because they are at a loss as to what to do and have succumbed to herd panic.

Metro Editor talks about cuts

Edward Barrera, my former colleague at SGVN, comments on the cutbacks at his paper's on his Editor's Corner blog.

Fallout, part 2

Former Sun sports columnist Paul Oberjuerge blogged about his getting fired (via LA Observed).

It took me, oh, about three seconds to process the meaning of the call from the newsroom secretary....

On his love for this hateful profession: I enjoyed what I did about 95 percent of the time. It was my own choice to work crazy hours and channel almost all my energy into my work. Yes, it damaged my family life, and I regret that … but newspapers do that to people. You HAVE to make a big effort in the next eight hours to get this section out … and then it happens again the next day, and the next … and then you look up one day and you’re eligible for AARP membership and wondering where all the time went.

On the slow slide in quality: I must concede, too, I had reached a point where I routinely was embarrassed by the product I worked for, and if you find yourself feeling that way, maybe it’s time to go. I had been there when The Sun was a good little paper, and it was hard for me to watch it slide into nothingness.

On his future: In subsequent posts I may look at my failed relationship with Steve Lambert, and the culpability of Sun/LANG management in the collapse of the newspaper … and I definitely will get back to sports topics. Such as the Lakers screwing around vs. Sacramento (again) and this time losing.

Fallout, part 1

The Pasadena Star-News is losing another reporter. This time, however, the separation is voluntary. Molly Okeon announced today she is leaving to take a job at the Daily Journal in Los Angeles.

That leaves five reporters in the Star-News newsroom - half the number that was there when I left only a couple years ago - and that felt thin enough.

Complicating matters, the Singleton papers have a hiring freeze in place, which will make finding a replacement difficult.

Anytime there are layoffs there is a risk that low morale will cause defections. The problem is exacerbated at papers where the staff has already been depleted. Too few people being asked to do more with less isn't a recipe for success, or even sane.

Unfortunately, there is little anyone can do unless MediaNews decides to reinvest, rather than constantly retrench.

It appears to me that Singleton is holding onto the papers for their name brand more than anything else. The Sun, The Star-News, The Press-Telegram, still mean something. He's parking on domain names, waiting for the magic intersection of trend lines, when rising online ad revenues finally meet the dwindling profits from print ads.

In the meantime, I think he risks turning his Southern California newspapers into cannibals, the journalistic equivalent of the Donner party.

Identity crisis

A bill by Kentucky Rep. Tim Couch would make it illegal to accept anonymous comments on a Web site.

The Public Editor's take

Larry Wilson, public editor of the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group and my former boss at the Pasadena Star-News, has some thoughts on the cuts announced last week at his papers.

Meanwhile, in Santa Barbara

The documentary "Citizen McCaw" opened Friday (via LA Observed)

Sunday morning quarterback

When I started writing about last week's layoffs, I had simple purpose: To give an account of what was happening in an often overlooked corner of the Singleton empire, and one that has little capacity to report on itself.

When the first eight comments came in, I knew I had record-breaking traffic. After all, my daily readership generally hovers in the single digits.

Predictably, this number jumped when Kevin Roderick at LA Observed linked to the blog, but I've been more impressed at how the Singleton staff (former and current) has seized the comments section to air its grievances, mourn its losses and, in some cases, savage its perceived oppressors. I've done little more than provide a forum, which I'm happy to do.

But people are paying attention. So, what do we do now? How do we make the jump and continue to give this story the attention it deserves?

For one, I'd suggest we avoid getting bogged down in insider-y gossip and vitriol. Isn't that what the Unisys messaging system is for? We should also avoid boring readers with tales of how much we hate our bosses and instead put our collective wisdom on display.

After all, these papers, as ragged as they are, are on the front lines of the journalism wars. They are standing at the very crossroads many media observers fear the newspaper industry could be approaching - and they've been waiting there for a while.

We saw waves of devastating cuts long before Thursday's pink slips went out. The newsrooms have struggled to cover growing cities with fewer and fewer reporters (the Pasadena Star-News now has six and a half reporters for more than a dozen cities). We've applied the gimmickry of the Readership Institute and Newspaper Next to little or no avail. We've tried to "innovate" without any investment, suffered an unforgiving economy, saw our futures mortgaged for the next good deal, and watched as our top editors were asked to put business first. We have been asked to go "hyperlocal" without any resources and under the direction of an out-of-state management team. Any discussion of newsroom standards seems to be drowned out by a debate over how best to market a failing business. (I say "we" only because I'm a former Singleton employee.)

So let's drag it all out into the light, without fear or favor, and without becoming overly fixated on the men who happened to be here when the beast began to slouch.

One of my projects in the coming days will be to go through the many comments and pull out some of the gems for consideration. Here's part of an entry from now-former Sun columnist Wes Hughes:

It’s hard to look at the Universe when your own little world is in flames.

These last few days have been difficult for all of us but unless you were one of those hit, it’s no different from what is going on at every newspaper in the United States from the Los Angeles Times to the New York Times and from the Chicago Tribune to the Miami Herald.

snip

We are all in a state of despair, whether we are in or out, whether we are here or in the East someplace. The newspaper world has been turned on its head and we are powerless to do anything about it.

From what I’ve been reading, the situation is worse in the MediaNews landscape than other places. It was precipitated by Wall Street, which waterboarded Knight-Ridder until it panicked and put itself up for sale and dissolution, which tempted a smaller McClatchy to get greedy and develop a critical case of dyspepsia. To get relief, it put some of its new properties on the auction block, and Dean Singleton, who didn’t have enough toys in his playroom, snapped at the bait (excuse my atrocious mix of metaphors). That was all well. The country was in the midst of a real estate boom and everything was fine, lots of ad revenue coming in. But that boom turned into a burst bubble and ad revenue went south, and those notes were coming due.

If the mortgage is due and you don’t have enough income, what do you do? You cut to save what you do have. And that‘s pretty much what happened to us.

snip

We have to control our pain and start working on the future. Don’t shoot the messengers. We should know better, because as journalists we are the messengers. We bring the bad news to the world and sometimes it hates us for it.

Naming names

I'm putting together a list of names of those newsroom employees who were fired/downsized/let go/bought out/left. Let me know if there are any names missing, misspellings or erroneous titles. I'll make a note when I have a final list.

SGVN (11 total, including two open positions)

Elise Kleeman, science writer for the Pasadena Star-News. A Caltech grad, she had covered her alma mater, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Altadena for the paper.

Emanuel Parker, a longtime staff writer at the Star-News who had recently transitioned into features at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Sharon Brawley, librarian at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Greg Andersen, staff photographer

Sean Moses, sports writer/copy editor

Rod Kamitsuka, copy editor/page designer

Steve O'Sullivan, executive editor, San Gabriel Valley News Group

There are two additional position set to be cut, neither are reporters

Sun/Daily Bulletin (13 total)

Wes Hughes, columnist at the Sun

Paul Oberjuerge, sports columnist at the Sun

Michelle Rester, assistant city editor at the Sun

Brett Snow, staff photographer at the Sun

Gina Tenorio, night cops reporter at the Sun

Ellen Timothy, copy editor at the Sun

Marc Campos, staff photographer at the Bulletin

George Paul, features reporter at the Bulletin

Adrianne Woodward, news assistant at the Bulletin

Gordon Campbell, political cartoonist at the Bulletin

Steve Campos, online content producer for the Sun and Bulletin

Corey Washington, online content producer for the Sun and Bulletin

James Folmer, editor of the Redlands Daily Facts

O'Sullivan out*, **

Steve O'Sullivan is out as executive editor at the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group.

Frank Pine, senior managing editor at the San Bernardino Sun, will be taking a new position as senior managing editor for the Inland Division, with authority over all five papers. He'll now be based at the Tribune in West Covina.

Here's the story in the Pasadena Star-News.

*updated
** updated again

Mandatory meeting*

I'm told SGVN Executive Editor Steve O'Sullivan has called a mandatory meeting at 1 p.m. to discuss a major organizational change.

Since the cat is already out of the bag (I was respecting the wishes of a source) it is expected that O'Sullivan will step down. It is unclear if he's leaving on his own accord or is being forced out by the new "operational efficiencies" that appear to have consolidated power at the San Bernardino Sun.

O'Sullivan took the exec ed job in 2006.

Elsewhere in the Singleton empire: Layoffs and buyouts at the Mercury News and the Bay Area Newspaper Group.

*Updated information

Did something happen yesterday?

Last week, Mark Lacter criticized the Long Beach Press-Telegram for its "lack of candor" in reporting about the layoffs that had occurred there and at its sister papers. He titled the post, "Glossing over a bloodbath."

"Talk about not fessing up to what this is really about: An implosion of the Socal Singleton papers," he said. He later added a post about some of the financial challenges facing Singleton's MediaNews Group.

Now we have this story about the cuts that were made at Singleton's five other SoCal newspapers, which comprise the newly dubbed Inland Division. It includes only one mention of layoffs, and it's buried under a layer of positive spin: The reorganization included the appointment of top division managers as well as the elimination of some positions at each property.

The rest of the story - which carries no byline - is mostly a rundown of the names and titles of those top division managers. There is no mention of the number of people who were eliminated, no details about the "really tough economy" that spurred the reorganization plan, no explanation of what it means to "maximize operational efficiencies."

A newspaper is supposed to report the news and cut through the jargon, not add to it. Otherwise, what's the point of maximizing those efficiencies?

The readers deserve better.

Housekeeping

I'll be concentrating on my day job for most of the day, so I may not be able to post updates as frequently as I did yesterday. However, I will continue to work on the list of names of those who were laid off and will publish any big happenings as soon as I can.

More on that big announcement, and other updates

The big announcement that was supposed to happen at the SGVN papers tomorrow might not happen after all, I'm told. I can say it has to do with rumors that one of the paper's top editors is either walking out or being forced out of his job. I'll post when I can get confirmation.

In related news, the SGVN papers are indeed further consolidating operations with the San Bernardino Sun. As one source told me, "We are now a satellite of the Sun."

Finally, of the 10 positions that were cut in editorial at SGVN, two are open positions, one reporter and one copy editor, that will be taken off the books. And another copy editor/page designer has been laid off.

More on the San Gabriel Valley blood bath *(Update), **(Update II), ***(Update III), ****(Update IV)

I now have a better idea of the scope of the cuts being made at Singleton's three San Gabriel Valley papers. At least 10 editorial positions will be eliminated before the day is out. Another 20 pink slips are scheduled to be delivered in the other departments.

So far, I've confirmed five newsroom cuts: two reporters, one from the Pasadena Star-News and one from the features desk; a page designer at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune; an editorial assistant at the Whittier Daily News, and the Tribune's librarian.

It doesn't look like any other reporters will lose their jobs today, but there are still more cuts to come (see updates).

Meantime, heads are rolling at the San Bernardino County Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. I know of at least one photographer and one writer who have gotten the axe.

Back in the San Gabriel Valley, anxiety among the reporters is running high, especially for those people working in the outlying offices (the management is holed up at the Tribune headquarters in West Covina, with the Star-News and Daily News treated as quasi-bureaus). Thus far, the management has been largely, if not completely, silent.

All of the newsroom cuts should be completed by the end of today, I'm told. However, employees should be prepared for a major announcement of some kind tomorrow.

*An anonymous commenter says that both the finance and marketing directors were let go.

**Two more cuts in editorial to report: A long-time photographer fell under the axe, as did a reporter/copy editor for the sports page. Both contributed to all three papers. Reports of boxes being filled and crying across the Tribune offices.

***Comments are coming in about the various cuts being made to the Inland Empire properties. Also, Fred Hamilton, publisher and CEO of SGVN, sent out a memo concerning the "restructuring" going on today.

Here's the meat of it: "This restructuring will help us to operate better and position us to grow revenues in our core newspapers, new custom products and on the Internet. In simplest terms, we're being as creative as possible in a really tough economy. Indeed, these are difficult times for many industries, including newspapers, and as part of our reorganization, there will be some job losses at all of our Inland Division properties. But we also feel, very strongly, that the steps we're taking will position us to reverse our business trends and grow our company again."

The company is "flattening the management structure" of its so-called Inland Division as part of the shakeup. Steve Lambert, who once headed the San Bernardino Sun, will stay on as VP of news for LANG. The memo says he is part of a team that will "take us boldly into the future."

****If the comments on this link are true, and the directors of finance, marketing and circulation (not classified, as I originally put) at the SGVN papers are now gone, that suggest a consolidation of operations between all five "Inland Division" papers. It would fit with Fred Hamilton being named publisher and CEO and his comments about "flattening the management structure." That would make the Sun the mothership for papers east of the 110 Freeway.

• Just got back home and saw that the comments section has blown up. I'm glad people are taking the time to speak their minds. However, while I'm big on free speech, I'd rather not become a vector for personal attacks.
  

For more recent updates, click here

The axe is swinging in the San Gabriel Valley *(Update), **(Update II)

At least one reporter I know at the Pasadena Star-News got a phone call this morning from the main offices at the San Gabriel Tribune in what appears to be the first confirmed layoff at the three papers that make up the San Gabriel Valley News Group (Star-News, Tribune and Whittier Daily News).

I don't know how many people will lose their jobs today, but this is already uglier than I'd imagined.

A source tells me the neighboring San Bernardino County Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin might also be paring back their already skeleton crew newsrooms. I'll try to get a tally later today if I can.

This follows on the heels of major cuts at the Los Angeles Daily News, Daily Breeze and Long Beach Press-Telegram.

All of the papers are part of Dean Singleton's MediaNews empire.

*At least one other reporter and the long-time librarian at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune got pink slipped this morning. That brings the running total to three.

**The tally is up to four at the San Gabriel Valley papers and may hold there. Two reporters were let go, along with a librarian and a receptionist. I haven't heard any updates from the San Bernardino County papers, although a top editor was reportedly making the rounds earlier today... Just as I posted this, I was told a photographer at the Bulletin was "downsized."

Ever shrinking Singleton

The Sacramento Bee, which has financial troubles of its own, reports on the cuts to Singleton's state Capitol bureau.

Whitewater, Wisconsin and me

The Police Chief and City Clerk of Whitewater, Wisconsin are talking about me. Or, at least they were, I think.

Why, you ask? That's a good question.

I first heard there was a Whitewater, Wisconsin earlier today when I opened an e-mail sent to me by Publius, an anonymous blogger who writes at the Foothill Cities Blog and who served as a source for a story I wrote back in September about the tactics some cities use to uncover the identities of anonymous bloggers they consider to be pests (the story, which you can read here, is key evidence of my involvement in the conspiracy - but more on that later).

Publius sent me a link to this post, and that's where I slipped into the rabbit hole. As I started to follow the links, I found myself at the center of a bumbling hunt to uncover the identity of one "John Adams," anonymous author of Free Whitewater.

In a series of posts based on memos and e-mails he got through a public records request, John Adams chronicles the strange interactions of a handful of city employees hell bent on finding him out. A few read like Fargo just before the wood chipper gets switched on.

Clearly John Adams has a few problems with Police Chief James Coan. And in a town this small - population hovers around 14,000 - feuds can get heated. But this got weird. Coan and Michele Smith, the city clerk, apparently enlisted the help of fellow city employees (a police detective, the city information officer), ran license plates, traded theories, spied on and confronted "suspects."

The memos and e-mails include some real gems that, upon first reading them, made me think the whole thing was a hoax.

Here's an excerpt from an e-mail sent by police Sgt. Tina Winger to Chief Coan, alerting him to the blog: I don’t know if you have ever visited this web site, but I think it is someone we want to keep an eye on. Do you know who John Adams is? Seems like an anti-government radical to me. I’m going to dig a little more to try and get more intelligence on this goof.

Chief Coan responds: Thanks for the heads-up, but I have been well aware of the website for sometime now. Although I have a few suspects, I do not know who “John Adams” is (yet). I agree with your assessment of the guy. He has been taking plenty of “shots” at me, our Department, and City Government in general (including DPW and the Fire Department).
It is certainly someone who actually writes pretty well, but who is obviously very arrogant, very liberal, and very condescending in what he writes. Please check with Ryan as I passed on to him some information that might be helpful in identifying who this might be. Thanks!

The City Information Officer also did a little sleuthing and reports that John Adams is a Charter Communications customer and, in his estimation, a student or teacher at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater because he posts to Wikipedia.

Maybe the winter weather has made them restless.

So how did I become implicated in this Whitewater scandal? It's all in this memo. Someone (the author's name is blacked out) did some digging around and found my September article and then came to some conclusions. It seems John Adams had linked to the Foothill Cities Blog and, since the Foothill Cities Blog had linked to my story, I must have some connection to John Adams.

Apparently, one of the people the Coan cabal suspected to be John Adams shares my rare last name, Scott (#36). A little more research revealed that I was "a prominent (arguable) reporter and blogger (wasn't at the time) who has worked for different newspapers in Pomona (no), Pasadena (yes) and Claremont (yes) as a political reporter since 1997." The person included a link to a feature story I did for the Pomona College Magazine and noted that "there are even 2 photos of him accompanying" the piece (the pictures are of Barry Braverman, the Disney exec I had profiled).

Then they nail me: WOW!!! BINGO!!! I just found a long, detailed, fascinating article by Gary Scott in the archives of the “FOOTHILL CITIES BLOG” on the legal rights of bloggers, especially in small towns across the country as these bloggers turn their sights [sic] on their local city halls and city governments.

Wait, there's more: This article, written by Gary Scott is INCREDIBLE because he states, in lengthier and more detailed form, all the same arguments that “John Adams” wrote about with a link on “Free Whitewater”.

Incredible? Well, that's too kind. I didn't think it was my best work.

Still, I've always wanted to be an influential writer. So I'll take it. I'm guilty. Am I under arrest?

More cuts at Singleton papers?*

Rumor has it that the Singleton-owned papers in the San Gabriel Valley - the Pasadena Star-News, Whittier Daily News and San Gabriel Valley Tribune - will announce newsroom layoffs sometime tomorrow.

About 40 reporters, editors and photographers lost their jobs at Singleton's other Los Angeles-area papers last week.

*Cuts could include positions at the San Bernardino Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin as well.

-30-

Soon to be former Los Angeles Times reporter Henry Weinstein talks about the effect of the cuts and buyouts in shrinking newsroom on today's Which Way, LA? Thus far, 30 reporters and editors have agreed to leave. Listen to the show at 7 p.m. on KCRW or anytime here.

Also on the program, state Senate leaders Don Perata and Dick Ackerman remind us that Democrats and Republicans can't find middle ground on taxes and Daily Breeze reporter Gene Maddaus talks about the horrific shooting of a 6-year-old boy yesterday in Harbor Gateway.

will.i.am, where.r.you?

Hillary Clinton wins Texas (according to CNN). Barack Obama now has to hope that headline writers run out of Comeback Kid cliches sometime before the start of April.

News cycles will be cruel to Obama, who has already suffered four days of drubbing without an effective response. Spinning your delegate lead isn't all that sexy. And now he can't even fire his economic adviser without inviting more criticism.

Will Wyoming and Mississippi kill the Clinton fire?

And don't forget Clinton's Florida card. If they re-vote there and she wins, could she take the delegate lead?

Who knew democracy could be such a pain in the ass?

Best blog of the night

Funniest comments on tonight's election results come from The Economist. Click here: "Caucus blocked."

Also, this: 11:06 : I should note, incidentally, that I'm at a small party with a gaggle of bloggers, and a New York Times reporter has just shown up to cover us covering the cable networks covering the returns. I've now covered her coverage of our coverage of their coverage, and this sentence is reflexive coverage of my coverage. If I recall correctly from my skimming of Godel, Escher, Bach and religious viewing of Doctor Who, this will create a strange loop that rends the fabric of the universe asunder.

Also, Ron Reagan is on Larry King and he somehow looks older than the host.

Hillary springs eternal

Hillary Clinton wins Ohio, she's closing in Texas, and nothing will be decided (probably) until Pennsylvania on April 22.

I'll put my money on a Clinton v. McCain November general election campaign.

The Zellecutioner

LA Observed has the list of LA Times reporters who have taken the buyout so far. These 30 names aren't backbenchers or layabouts. This will cut deeply into local and national coverage - and there's another 70 to 120 more cuts to go.

The inevitable becomes apparent

Mike Huckabee puts down his bass and drops out of the race - but not before giving a long-winded baseball metaphor.

If John McCain loses in November, expect to hear from Huckabee again in 2012.

Meanwhile, McCain, your official Republican nominee for 2008, is probably working on his own red phone ad right now.

Indeed, I'm expecting the resurgent SNL - a cultural touchstone, according nerdy political pundits - to have a skit Saturday with all three remaining candidates falling over themselves trying to answer that 3 a.m. phone call.

Who will be on the other end? God? Allah? Rove? Land shark?

Simon says

Because I left my notes from David Simon's talk at work, and because I'm transfixed by John King's map on CNN, I'll have to save the brunt of my Simon post for tomorrow.

But here's a rush job of what he had to say:

Capitalism has triumphed over labor. Capitalism favors institutions over men. Institutions are Gods and Gods are flawed. Our fate, then, is in the hands of flawed, greedy Gods.

And, thus, Greek tragedy makes for better TV in this post-modern world than Shakespeare.

Also, journalism is in deep shit.

Those are the main lessons I took away from Simon's talk Tuesday at USC and they are the precepts on which has built his critically acclaimed series The Wire on HBO.

I'm a prospective fan of The Wire, but I have to admit that the 5 minute clip Simon showed was the longest time I've spent watching the program. So I won't have much to say about it.

For his part, Simon was extremely literate - especially for a former cops reporter - and the very picture of the angry idealist. He seems humble considering his success and witty despite his passions. He also claims Paths of Glory to be the only movie to successfully capture the nuance of politics - except for a few minutes of The Candidate.

He believes in the journalist's creed, Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. He also believes crumbling newspapers more often afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.

He blames a lack of standards in the newsroom and a bad decision in the board room to give away newspaper content for free. Regional newspapers, such as the Baltimore Sun, his alma mater, are the most vulnerable to the changing economics and have already begun the long slide to ruin.

He feels a sense of betrayal and sees the newspaper as a pillar of society that, once it has fallen, leaves society vulnerable to those Gods of capitalism who stomp and kill with abandon.

And at an open bar, he chose to drink Corona beer.

Obama, Clinton and the long hard slog

John King at CNN just used his magic delegate board to show that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama has any chance of winning a majority of delegates at this point - mathematical proof that superdelegates will decide this election. The only question is, what will sway them?

Money? Momentum? Fatigue?

Probably all of them. But only time, and tonight's results, will tell.

As of 5:11 p.m. PST, Obama has won Vermont, Clinton looks solid in Ohio, and Texas is a jump ball. Rhode Island is expected to go to Clinton, but no results are in.

National Journal's The Hotline has given us one of the inevitable story lines for tomorrow (unless Obama can pull it off in Ohio): Going negative works.

Prepare for a long and ugly brawl on the road to Pennsylvania.

Getting freaky*

The boys at Politico credit SNL and a deft Howard Wolfson for throwing Barack Obama under the media bus in the days leading up to today's Ohio and Texas primaries. But Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has a different theory, and urges Politico Editor John Harris to go back to the book he wrote about how to win the White House in 2008, titled, creatively enough, "The Way to Win".

Here's the relevant passage from Greenwald's post: The reality is that the Clinton campaign has been complaining bitterly for months and months that the media has not subjected Obama to any real critical scrutiny. For the most part, that fell on deaf ears. The only thing that has changed over the past couple of weeks is that the right-wing noise machine, which now sees Obama as the likely Democratic nominee, began complaining just as bitterly that the media is "in the tank" for Obama. That is what moves them. As Harris himself wrote in his own book, it is Drudge -- not Howard Wolfson or SNL -- who rules their world.

*Speaking of freaky, Clinton must hate Anne Kornblut.

You get what you pay for

David Simon said yesterday at USC that the only way to save newspapers is to charge for online subscriptions. But he doesn't think it will happen. I'll have more on his talk later.

Meantime, the Los Angeles Times begins the next phase of its amputation therapy. As expected, a few Washington Bureau reporters are among those taking the buyout.

Also, Kevin Roderick of LA Observed will talk about the intersection of blogging, journalism, reporting and opinion today at 2:30 p.m. on KCRW. Details are here. Guests include a blogger reporter, a blogger professor and a blogger media critic. Can you tell me which discipline of reporting is missing from the lineup?

Brief shorts

I didn't get past the first paragraph of this article before I knew the book was bullshit.

Also, I heard David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire, speak today at USC. I'll post about it tomorrow.

In case you missed it...

President George Bush said this today: I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq.

In case you care (I'm not sure I do) *Updated

I predict Hillary Clinton wins Ohio by 5-8 points, loses Texas by a hair and stays in the race with the argument that Pennsylvania looks a lot like Ohio, Florida could hold a do-over and enough superdelegates dig her style to put Barack Obama's inevitability in doubt.

She's just getting warmed up after all.

Obama needed a sharp stake and a hefty hammer to finish this one off. I don't think he brung it. In the last several days, Clinton has owned the news cycles, with her red phone ad, her campaign's leak of Obama in foreign garb, her re-ignition of a story that Obama's adviser told the Canadians he wasn't really serious about renegotiating Nafta, and the Tony Rezko trial starting today.

All of this comes on top of her successfully convincing the media that it had indeed developed a crush on Obama, which, as in real life, caused them to act out in strange ways to prove they don't really like him like that. *(Here's some proof of this phenomenon.)

Obama needs a stronger argument coming out of tomorrow's results than "she needed to win by a bigger margin." He appears to have New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on his side to ask Hillary to step aside, but he'll need stronger surrogates than that. After all, she has Bill Clinton mounting her defense and this is where he will be most effective, working the party insiders.

Dissecting the autopsies

The cuts have been made and now media observers are trying to figure out what it all means. Twenty two reporters and editors lost their jobs at the Los Angeles Daily News, another 9 jobs were eliminated at the Torrance Daily Breeze and 9 at the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

One assumption I've seen repeated over and over, including at the Los Angeles Times, is that the economy is the reason for the staff cuts. Here's what Mark Madler has to say about it at the San Fernando Valley Business Journal: This time around a weak economy is to blame for the Daily News job losses and those at other papers. Advertising revenues continue to drop, not helped by the mortgage meltdown, the credit crunch and high gas prices.

I think that's wrong.

The current economic downturn played a role in the timing of the cuts, but it's not the reason the cuts happened. Reducing staff is one of the least effective ways to address a short-term economic crisis. Rather, MediaNews long ago devised a blueprint for consolidation of its Southern California newspapers to create a business model it believes will be successful over the long term. The bad economic picture provided the rationale to get it done at this moment.

Newspapers across the country are contending with what insiders call the "downward trend lines" in advertising and circulation. The idea is that whatever happens in the short run, papers will continue to lose subscribers and advertising dollars at a steady rate for the foreseeable future.

Different papers are dealing with this issue in different ways. The Los Angeles Times appears to be buying into the philosophy that going local is a safer, and cheaper, bet over the long term. MediaNews wants to eliminate the redundancies it sees among the papers in the chain. This means concentrating a few resources at individual papers to exploit a perceived strength while consolidating the rest.

Look at who lost jobs at the Daily News. Almost all of the reporters covered beats (the NFL, baseball, Washington, DC) that could be filled either by wire services or copy taken from "sister" papers. The remainder - editorial assistants, an editor emeritus, a music critic, a librarian - are positions considered luxuries in a chain that will rely more on common pages and online updates.

The cuts made at the Daily Breeze and the Press-Telegram were more obviously part of this consolidation plan. The P-T is now a bureau of the Daily Breeze and both papers will become feeders to the Daily News. Indeed, the Daily Breeze is getting an expanded copy desk out of this because it will become the hub for entertainment and features reporting for the chain.

Yes, the chain. That's the word to remember here. The Daily News, the Press-Telegram and the Daily Breeze all have long and storied histories. None of them wants to lose its identity or autonomy. Yet that's exactly what has to happen for the MediaNews dream to come true.